Chapter 856: The Battle Approaching Deity
"Not bad for Tiamat’s most loyal lackey," Kai Xiusu sneered, spreading his wings wide. With a thunderous roar, the intense solar orb blazing at his back began to drift slowly toward Kazul, radiating searing flames that burned through the lingering ash of The End, scattering the shadows from the sky.
"You're too young, too arrogant," Kazul murmured, his eyes flickering with cold calculation. His gaze remained unnervingly calm as he locked onto the Emperor of the Ashen Flame. Within his narrow pupils burned a clear, unhidden intent to kill.
With a sweep of his obsidian Dragon Wing, he unleashed a torrent of destructive divine power—ash that surged like a flood across the heavens. It collided violently with the blazing sun, each force canceling the other in a relentless cycle of destruction. The sky itself trembled, flickering between blinding light and suffocating darkness as if torn apart by two colossal beasts locked in eternal struggle.
Every flap of their wings screamed like a storm’s fury. Every slap of their limbs sent shockwaves through the air, triggering deep, thunderous detonations that rippled across the churning crimson lake below. Mountains groaned beneath the shadows cast by their passing forms.
Mortals on the ground looked up, their eyes stinging with pain, skin burning as though scorched by fire. Many instinctively shielded their faces, some even blinded instantly—this was a battle between existences beyond legend. Even from ten kilometers away, mere exposure could inflict unimaginable damage upon ordinary mortals.
Boom!
The blazing solar orb cracked open, pierced by a jagged thread of black light. A massive, burning fragment plummeted from the sky, crashing into the earth with catastrophic force. The resulting explosion unleashed a surge of divine energy—sunfire imbued with fire, light, destruction, and the spark of new life.
The ground trembled violently. Flames and smoke erupted into the heavens. When the dust settled, a mountain peak over a hundred meters tall had been reduced to a flat, smoldering plain. Trees, stone, and rock had vanished without a trace. Only a crater stretching over a thousand meters in diameter remained, surrounded by a shattered ruin of debris.
This single explosion had erased an ancient mountain that had stood for centuries, annihilating countless lives within its depths and leaving a permanent scar upon the land. Yet even this devastation was but a minor aftereffect of the battle.
"This is the strength of a Dragon," Adrian whispered, watching the two massive, indistinct silhouettes engulfed in fire and ash. His expression grew darker, more complex. The deeper he looked, the more he felt the sheer terror of the Emperor of the Ashen Flame’s power. His heart sank for the future of the Kingdom of Seleucus—could a being with such strength truly be content with mere dominion over the Feiansuo Continent?
But Adrian also knew: if His Majesty harbored ambitions beyond this world, they would be powerless to resist.
"Even King Amanatara himself, if he stood here now, would—"
The bitter thought died in his mind before it could fully form. He recoiled inwardly—such thoughts were sacrilege. He repeated silent prayers to the Sun God, begging for forgiveness, then forced his mind back to the sky, to the battle unfolding above.
Around the two dragons, space itself had become mangled by the collision of divine forces. A web of jagged spatial rifts cracked open like shattered ruins, spreading across the heavens. Burning meteors, blinding lightning, fragments of void, and black ash twisted together in chaotic swirls. Elemental beasts born of raw energy, remnants of dragon blood, surged forth from the rifts—swirling like a thick, dark storm cloud, tearing at each other in a violent dance.
For a moment, Adrian felt as though he were not in the Material Realm at all, but lost in some alien Outer Plane.
But then came the roar of the dragons—shattering his trance.
"Kai Xiusu! You will soon learn how foolish it is to oppose me!"
"Is that so?" Kai Xiusu’s voice was icy, devoid of warmth.
Kazul continued, unmoved. "It’s time to end this. I’ll make you feel the true power of world-destroying might. I’ll make you know—Queen Tiamat’s arrival is inevitable. Unavoidable."
Hummm—
The sky convulsed. Reality blurred. A crack thousands of meters long split the heavens like a spiderweb across the blackened sky veil.
Centered on the Ancient Red Dragon, the space within ten thousand meters began to fracture. The ground cracked open, rivers of molten lava surged wildly across the earth like living veins, devouring everything in their path. Fire and ash flew through the air. Massive monoliths and tiny pebbles floated in midair like asteroids.
Gravity itself seemed to vanish. The entire realm lost its sense of up or down, as if adrift in a stellar expanse. The laws of the world had collapsed.
As Kazul flapped his obsidian wings, everything around him began to disintegrate—dissolving into fine, spiny ash that reeked of decay. This was The End.
Just as the prophecy foretold: "When lava covers the earth, and ash shrouds the sky, the old era shall be utterly destroyed."
Each deity transcends the laws of the Material Plane. Their mere existence warps reality, creating realms akin to divine domains. And now, Kazul had reached such a level.
The black ash clinging to his body began to coalesce—forming thick, armored scales, a massive tail, and fearsome bone spines. A new, monstrous form emerged.
Kazul’s original body, once eighty meters long, expanded rapidly—growing from one hundred to two hundred, five hundred, a thousand, and finally stretching to two thousand meters.
What kind of beast was this?
For context: the tallest peak in Seleucus—Sunset Mountain—stood at just over three thousand meters. A dragon two kilometers long was like hurling an entire mountain into the sky. No mortal in the Material Realm, with their limited imagination, could ever truly conceive such a sight.
Yet here it was—real, massive, stretching across the sky like a living mountain range, radiating an aura of absolute intimidation, a hurricane of destruction that defied all resistance.
"By the Gods Above!"
"God…"
"By Amanata! Is this truly the Dragon of World Destruction? Even the Emperor of the Ashen Flame—"
Mortals stared in awe, their faces etched with shock and disbelief. The Ancient Red Dragon was now a monstrous, obsidian-red beast. Its vast wings blanketed both sky and earth, casting a shadow so immense it was no longer an exaggeration to say it obscured the sun.
Its wings were like curtains of storm clouds. Even a slow, deliberate sweep sent wind pressure that flattened everything within ten kilometers. The torrent of destructive divine power from its wings reduced entire mountain ranges and hills to ash in an instant.
It was a scene from myth—worthy of the Twilight of the Gods. And the dragon in the sky seemed to be the very avatar of The End, a force capable of delivering the world’s final, hopeless destruction.
At the Empire’s frontline, Lanpu, the Dragon-blooded Ogre Magus, lifted his head, his gaze sharp with intensity.
"This… this is reality itself being rewritten. That Primordial Dragon has grown beyond all limits!"
He turned to face the Emperor of the Ashen Flame, his eyes filled with anxiety. Though he trusted His Majesty’s strength completely, witnessing the sheer terror of a dragon stretching two kilometers through the sky—such a sight even shook his resolve.
As a Legendary-level spellcaster and head supervisor of the Empire’s Deity Research Institute, Lanpu understood the true meaning of Kazul’s power. He knew what this meant.
Could King Kai Xiusu truly defeat this "Dragon of the Apocalypse"?
"Kai Xiusu," Kazul hissed, his voice a dry rasp from his bloody maw, echoing like a curse from the bottomless abyss. "Tremble before the might of world destruction!"
With a sweep of his sky-shrouding wings, a frenzied black wind surged forward, carrying ash that pulsed with devastating divine power. Any substance touched by it was instantly consumed and assimilated.
Divine pressure filled the air from all directions, pressing in on Kai Xiusu like a physical weight. In a sense, Kazul—now fully channeling the Heart of Tiamat—was already half a true god. And Kai Xiusu stood before a deity.
"Get out of my way!"
Kai Xiusu didn’t hesitate. He flapped his wings with all his might, the air imploding with each beat. A torrent of flame, like a rising tide, poured forth, barely holding back the oncoming storm of black ash.
He clenched his right claw and activated The Authority of Storm Monarch. His vertical pupils flared with blinding electric light. Crackling thunder echoed as silver-white storm clouds formed around him, laced with lightning that wove into a vast, shimmering net.
"Useless resistance."
The voice was a dry, guttural whisper—like a voice from the void. Kazul was now the avatar of The End. Even his words carried the power to shatter mortal minds, to plunge souls into despair.
Before the words ended, the black wind intensified, wrapping around Kai Xiusu like a living beast, seeking to devour the Red Dragon whole.
Under the relentless assault of divine force, the flames around Kai Xiusu were nearly extinguished. His scales were torn open, revealing deep, smoking wounds that exhaled black vapor.
Roar—
Kai Xiusu reared his head, roaring with every ounce of strength. The heart within his chest—born from the divine body of Karex—pounded wildly, pumping chaotic divine energy and scorching dragon blood through his vessels.
From the Dragon Crystal embedded in his chest, a torrent of power erupted: the blazing light of the sun, the silver fire of order, the crimson chaos flame, the sacred light of heaven, the dark hellfire, and the pale thunderbolt—all poured out in an endless cascade. The energy enveloped him completely, forming a new, enhanced physical form.
Inside this new body, countless destructive forces intertwined—each powerful, each dangerous—yet they coexisted in a self-contained micro-realm governed by strange, unique laws.
And as they surged outward, they warped the surrounding environment. Within a radius of kilometers, the very fabric of reality shifted. The world itself bent to this new domain—a realm that belonged solely to Kai Xiusu.
Now standing nearly five hundred meters long, Kai Xiusu stood like a mountain range, his form majestic and imposing. Though far smaller than the "Dragon of the Apocalypse," he had reached a comparable scale, no longer at the mercy of total annihilation.
His appearance remained largely unchanged—strong, harmonious, perfect, radiating sacred dignity. His scales shimmered with hues of crimson, silver, deep red, and black. The Dragon Crystal on his chest glowed with a swirling, starry depth.
But most striking were his eyes and horns.
His golden eyes were now profoundly deep, as if capable of seeing through all things. The narrow vertical pupils emitted a faint aura of intimidation. His four massive horns stood like a crown—sacred, regal, exuding a divine presence that made even the strongest wills feel compelled to kneel.
Having consumed the divine bodies of Erebus and Gorazdra, Kai Xiusu had transformed his own flesh, refining it using their divine essence. He had reshaped his eyes and horns into materials akin to divine form.
Boom—
The air roared around him. A surge of divine pressure erupted, enough to stand even against Kazul’s overwhelming presence.
This was Kai Xiusu’s new ability—Semi-God Body—the result of days of experimentation and refinement after ascending to Dragon of Divine Ascension. This power was forged specifically to counter an existence like Kazul—something on the verge of true divinity.
(End of Chapter)
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