But he was still making sounds. Those sounds were not words or language, but the most primitive and instinctive moans and whimpering like a wounded beast.
It surged out from deep in his throat, squeezed out of his nasal cavity, escaped from the bloody mouth that could not be closed, and echoed on the beach, making everyone who heard it shudder involuntarily.
Dawg Russ stood aside and froze.
He has seen a lot of dead people, a lot of killings, and a lot of things more cruel than death on the battlefield.
But at this moment, he looked at Daemon's bloody mouth, looked at the two neatly severed arms, looked at the once arrogant "King of Stepstones" now squirming and twitching in a pool of blood like a trampled insect, making that inhuman sound - a strong nausea suddenly surged in his stomach.
He held back. He didn't vomit, didn't retreat, and didn't look away.
Because he knows that if he shows any discomfort or weakness now, Redd will see it.
And he can't let Redd think that he is a weak person.
His life was saved by Redd - no, not saved, it was the existence of Redd that saved his life.
He can't let go at this time.
He stood there without changing his expression, and even raised the corners of his mouth slightly, as if he was enjoying a wonderful drama.
His men did not have such good concentration as him. Several young soldiers had turned around, bent over, holding their knees, and retched on the beach.
It's not because they have never seen blood, but because they have never seen a person still make that kind of sound after having his arms cut off and his tongue cut off.
That sound was so terrifying, not because it was loud, but because it did not belong to human beings - it was made by human throats, but it was no longer human language. It was the sound made by the remaining things after people were expelled from the category of "human".
Redd stood up and took out the bone knife from Daemon's mouth.
The blade was stained with blood and minced meat, and the aqua-blue light became a little dim under the cover of those stains, but it was still beating and breathing.
He casually rubbed the substance stuck to the blade on Daemon's clothes - Daemon's leather armor had been soaked with blood and could not be wiped clean, but at least the large pieces of meat were shaken off.
At this moment, a change occurred.
The aqua-blue light on the bone knife suddenly became extremely bright.
The brightness was not gradual or slowly increasing, but it suddenly exploded from the original glow of fireflies to the dazzling light of the scorching sun in one heartbeat.
The light erupted from the blade, illuminating the entire beach, casting Redd's figure on the ruins in the distance, and reflecting King Ghidorah's golden scales in a strange blue-green color.
That light contained some kind of energy - not Ice Magic, not Fire Magic, but an older, deeper energy that seemed to come up from the deepest part of the ocean, with a salty smell and a smell of death.
That ray of light did not radiate towards the sky, but flowed downward along the blade, like a luminous river made of pure energy, gushing out from the blade and flowing along the tip of the blade into Daemon's wound - the mouth that was cut, bloody and still opening and closing.
Daemon's body arched up suddenly.
The light poured in from his mouth, entered his esophagus along his mouth, entered his chest along his esophagus, and spread throughout his body along the blood vessels and nerves in his chest.
His skin began to change wherever the light passed through it - water evaporated from the skin, muscles atrophied beneath the skin, and fat disappeared beneath the muscles.
In less than three heartbeats, the whole person changed from an adult man of normal size to a skinny, shriveled corpse, as if it had been exposed to the sun for several months in the desert and then buried in the sand to dry for hundreds of years.
His skin still retains its original color - dark brown, with traces of being soaked in smoke and blood - but it no longer has any elasticity, sticking tightly to the bones, like a layer of parchment that has been stretched to the limit.
His facial features were still barely distinguishable - sunken eye sockets, high cheekbones, the outline of the bridge of his nose was clearly visible, and his mouth - the bloody, unclosable crack - was still open, as if he was making a last silent cry.
His arms were gone, leaving only two empty shoulders wrapped in skin. The cross-sections of the shoulders had been sealed by the skin, as if they had never had arms.
Dawg Lars's pupils suddenly shrank to the size of a pinhead.
His hand subconsciously pressed on the hilt of the sword - not because he wanted to fight, but because of fear.
That kind of fear is not for Daemon, but for that light, that energy, that process of sucking a person into a mummy within a few breaths, an instinctive and uncontrollable fear.
Redd looked down at the bone knife in his hand.
The knife has completely changed its appearance.
The aqua light on the blade disappeared, not extinguished, not faded, but completely disappeared as if it had never existed.
The texture of the bones became gray, dull, and covered with fine cracks, like old bones that had been exposed to the hot sun for too long and would break if touched lightly.
The sharp luster on the blade was gone, and it became rounded, dull, and fragile, as if something had hollowed it out from the inside.
He raised the bone knife, pinched both sides of the blade with his thumb and index finger, and applied gentle force.
"Click--"
The bone knife shattered into dozens of fragments between his fingers. The fragments were of different sizes, with uneven edges, and colors ranging from gray to light yellow to dark brown. It was like the bones of an ancient corpse had finally failed to hold up after tens of millions of years of weathering and turned into a pile of worthless bones.
The fragments slipped from between his fingers and fell on the beach, scattered in a pool of blood. A few fragments fell on the mummified body of Daemon, bounced on his shriveled skin, and then lay there quietly, like paper money scattered in front of a tombstone.
Redd looked down at his empty palms and was silent for a moment.
Then he raised his head and looked at the pile of bone knife fragments scattered on the sand, and the corner of his mouth twitched slightly.
"This weapon," his voice was not loud, but it was very clear on the quiet beach, with a tone of suffocation and unwillingness after being cheated, "Is it fucking disposable?"
His eyes moved away from the bone knife fragments and landed on the mummy of Daemon.
The man who once proclaimed himself the King of Stepstones, the enemy who deliberately set up an ambush to kill him, and the captive who was wailing, roaring, cursing, and struggling under his feet, was lying quietly in a pool of blood at this moment, with his shriveled skin sticking tightly to his shrunken frame. The whole person looked like a mummy that had been abandoned in the desert for thousands of years.