Damned Healer-Chapter 662: Failure?

"Dan!" Alear saw Darian arrive and spat those words out, along with a mouthful of blood. All of her scales were shattered, and one of her arms was broken at a strange angle. Her condition was absolutely miserable.

Darian felt his chest explode as he roared and charged forward with all his strength. In that instant, a wave of power swept away all the violent Void energy. Alear quickly hugged him, burying her face into his chest.

She started trembling, unable to look at him. "I'm sorry… I… I failed…"

Darian swallowed hard. "It's okay, don't worry about that," he murmured as gently as he could, while using the white power to heal her.

Her voice came out heavy with pain. "I had a long discussion with that thing… but the universe's consciousness always came back to the same point. It said I have a confused mind and don't understand myself… that I don't have what it takes…"

At that moment, Darian's eyes were fixed on the Immortal Chaos Essence, shining like a small, distant point of light.

"You do," Darian said seriously, his voice turning a little hoarse. "This isn't your fault."

His curse activated automatically. Before his eyes, it was like facing a colossal, pulsating mass of blackness, radiating such absurd black karma that it made him feel crushed.

He had never felt or seen anything on this level before, not even when he faced the Risen Lords or the Celestial Shadow.

His mind worked quickly. There was only one explanation.

"The collective karma of this universe is massive and horrifying… over millions of years, both the Nether Beasts and ordinary people competed to see who could be the biggest piece of shit. Countless races were wiped out, and massacres of entire islands were pretty common. Only very distant and weak islands managed to live in relative safety. Almost half the islands in this universe never knew peace."

Alear grew serious. She knew some dark secrets of the Primordial Empire.

The Nether Beasts were influenced by Nether corruption, but their numbers were far smaller than the ordinary population of the universe. Instead of people uniting to fight that evil, they actually contributed even more to that karma than the beasts themselves.

"It's not that you're incapable. It's that the universe's karma doesn't allow you to connect, because you're incompatible with it. In the end, they deserve self-destruction," Darian concluded coldly.

Alear took a deep breath, her body returning to its perfect state. She looked up, meeting Darian's face.

He lowered his gaze, his expression softening. "Don't worry, everything will be fine. This is my fault, I should've thought of this earlier."

Alear hugged him tightly. Darian, in turn, moved forward slowly, his power still active around his body, ignoring the terrifying Void energy trying to destroy them.

They approached the Immortal Chaos Essence, then Darian stopped.

"I've told you about karma before. You understand that this is something really terrifying, something that directly affects everyone's lives without anyone even noticing, right?" Darian asked, turning to her.

Alear nodded.

"The collective consciousness said you don't know yourself yet, because you're still young and can't even imagine the terrible things that have already happened in this universe. What's recorded in the Primordial Empire is probably just the tip of the iceberg. The Empire's people and other powers did things a thousand times worse in the shadows, all to gain more power," Darian said slowly, sighing.

"I'm going to do something unusual. I'll connect the universe's karma to you. This will completely stain you and might cause you problems. But it will tie you fully to the evil of this universe. It will prove your honesty. That way, you won't be a foreigner trying to act like a savior, but someone who took full responsibility and has to dedicate themselves to changing everything here, to cleanse that karma from yourself."

Darian spoke calmly, but inside he was restless. If this worked…

…she would have found an absurd cheat to create Spiritual Sovereigns far more easily in the future.

What was a Spiritual Guardian?

In short, it was a figure created by Heaven's Will to save and resolve complex problems that arose in the universes. After that immortal war in the past, all universes ended up with random individual laws, capable of generating absurd chaos.

For Darian to connect a Spiritual Guardian to a universe with karma that was almost impossible to resolve naturally was exactly what Heaven's Will wanted most. It couldn't interfere directly because of the karma, and if things weren't resolved, the entire universe would eventually be destroyed.

So Darian was sure that if he showed the potential to resolve everything and fully connected someone to the place, Heaven's Will would subtly help him.

Alear didn't hesitate. "I don't care about the problems…"

Darian snorted and moved his hand forward.

Within seconds, Alear felt a strange cold spread over her entire body, like an icy cloak being placed over her skin. Shortly after, her mind started to feel strange, and a slow-growing anger began to rise in her chest.

Alear's karma was already black, but now the difference was absurd. To Darian's eyes… it was like he had painted a beautiful white canvas with the darkest, most foul-smelling paint possible. It made him feel sick; still, he had to trust his adopted daughter.

Alear snorted, her fluctuations growing more and more violent.

"Stay focused." Darian's voice sounded serious in her ears. "Don't let external things influence who you are and make you act wrongly in the future. I taught you what's right and what's wrong. So always think things through properly before acting, or you'll be dominated by external influence. If that happens, you won't be able to blame anyone but yourself. You always had the option not to do it."

Alear's eyes widened. Only now did she realize that it was already affecting her.

Darian saw the doubt in her eyes. "Don't come at me with 'this is unfair' or 'that was corrupting me'. Life isn't fair, and most people always have a lot of problems to deal with, on top of external things pushing them toward evil."

Alear swallowed hard and understood the message. From now on, she would have to be twice as careful not to let the karma connected to her make her act the wrong way.

"I won't disappoint you, papa," she said seriously. Then she let go of him and moved closer to the Immortal Chaos Essence again.

Darian activated his power to the limit, creating a multicolored dome around them and preventing the Void's power from attacking. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

He grew nervous. She had to succeed quickly. His energy was being burned at a high speed, and he probably wouldn't last more than twenty minutes.

But Alear's fluctuations were steady like steel, and her senses seemed locked onto him right behind her. Darian couldn't look away or show even the slightest discomfort, or she might interpret it as a lack of trust.

Fifteen minutes…

Ten minutes…

Darian held firm as the minutes passed quickly.

Five minutes.

Darian swallowed hard. All he could see were Alear's agitated fluctuations, as if she were having a mental argument.

**Buzz!**

Suddenly, the entire area began to hum with an even more furious power, coming from the universe itself.

At that moment, Alear trembled.

Darian tensed up. Had she failed?

But…

Suddenly, she turned around, and then her wings flapped hard.

She lunged at him, hugging him with all her strength.

Darian looked ahead and could no longer see any sign of the Immortal Chaos Essence. In fact… she had succeeded.