Chapter 520: The East Sea Counteroffensive
Though the Goddess of Dreams and the Demon Lord had both fallen into a deep slumber after the great Divine War three thousand years ago, the Dreamland Continent never truly found peace. Humans, demons, ghosts, arcane beasts, and half-beasts continued to wage endless wars over territory, resources, and survival, with conflicts breaking out across the continent year after year.
A thousand years ago, one such conflict escalated into a catastrophe that rivaled the Divine War itself. History would remember it as the bloodbath of the East Sea.
At the time, the Demon Clan’s supreme naval commander, the Shark Demon Lord, had just mastered the legendary Shark-Sky Ocean Art. Drunk on ambition, he turned his attention toward Paglan Mountain before setting his sights on the underwater kingdom of Water Heaven City. His goal was simple but terrifying: seize Water Heaven City as the cornerstone of his empire, then use it to gradually conquer every ocean on the Dreamland Continent.
His relentless expansion ignited a war that spread with astonishing speed, drawing one power after another into the conflict.
The decisive turning point came in the waters of the East Sea, where the Sea Goddess gathered the Water Clan and launched a massive counteroffensive. The Dragon Dynasty’s naval fleet joined her forces, meeting the Shark Demon Lord’s army head-on in a brutal campaign that would later be known as the East Sea Counteroffensive.
But the conflict didn’t stop there.
The demon race and ghost race had always been at a disadvantage in naval warfare, yet they immediately recognized the chaos as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Rather than stand aside, they entered the war hoping to seize territory and claim a share of the spoils.
What began as a war between two powers quickly spiraled into an all-out struggle involving four major factions: Humans, Demons, Arcane Beasts, and Ghosts.
The war raged across the East Sea for more than three years before finally reaching its breaking point. Every side committed everything they had left, preparing for one final battle that would decide the fate of the entire sea.
On that day, the battlefield stretched across both heaven and ocean.
High above the clouds, the Sea Goddess personally led the sea dragon warriors of Cloud-Mist Palace alongside the Dragon Dynasty’s Royal Pegasus Corps and its elite eagle archers. Facing them were the Demon Clan’s flying monsters, the Arcane Beast Race’s winged predators, and countless ghostly specters drifting silently through the sky.
Far below, across the endless sea, the Sea Goddess commanded the Water Clan’s strongest fish-man champions together with the human steel fleet. Opposing them were demon warships wrapped in corrupting dark energy, the Shark Demon Lord’s terrifying sea monsters, the Arcane Beast Race’s aquatic behemoths, and the Ghost Race’s eerie fleet of undead ghost ships.
Every race committed its finest warriors. Divine Beasts and Mythic Beasts entered the battlefield without restraint, and the moment they did, the war transformed into an uncontrollable struggle where survival was the only thing that mattered.
Once creatures of that level joined the fighting, no commander could hope to control the battlefield any longer.
Chaos swallowed the East Sea. After two days of uninterrupted fighting, the flames of war had spread across every stretch of ocean that could sustain life. Even the remote Twin Wing Island was dragged into the conflict, becoming one of the war’s four primary battlefields.
As if that weren’t enough, multiple Divine Beasts and Mythic Beasts from every faction converged on the waters surrounding Twin Wing Island. Their arrival transformed the archipelago into the bloodiest battlefield of the entire war, the place where every side would make its final stand.
From that day onward, Twin Wing Island earned a name history would never forget.
The Last Stand.
Standing atop the island’s highest peak with a spyglass, one could barely make out four separate battlefields unfolding in every direction.
To the west, Divine Beasts battled in the skies. Three sea dragons of the Water Clan fought three black dragons of the Demon Clan, while a twin-winged demon serpent of the Arcane Beast Race dueled a Ten-Thousand-Age Thousand-Blade Dragon of the Ghost Race. Their clashes shook the heavens, forcing every weaker creature to flee from their overwhelming power.
Fragments of dragon scales, dragon flesh, and torrents of dragon blood rained down into the sea below. Swarms of sea monsters immediately descended upon the priceless remains, tearing each other apart in a frenzied struggle for even a single bite. Every dragon that fell left behind treasures beyond measure: dragon meat, dragon bones, dragon blood, dragon gall, dragon sinew, all priceless Mythic-grade materials. The waters beneath became a savage feeding ground where countless monsters slaughtered one another over the corpses of fallen Divine Beasts.
To the north, the battle belonged to the giants of the deep. Sea turtles the size of sports fields, colossal octopi with mountains of writhing tentacles, thirty-meter sea serpents lined with razor-sharp fangs, massive whales, thousand-year jellyfish, gargantuan deep-sea spiders, enormous dragonfish, and countless other apex predators collided beneath the waves in a merciless bloodbath.
Every collision churned the sea into towering walls of water that reached toward the heavens. Their sheer presence drove every creature below Mythic rank to flee for its life, unwilling to remain anywhere near those monstrous titans.
Naturally, those sea beasts couldn’t take to the skies, but the birds and flying sea monsters of Twin Wing Island quickly recognized the opportunity. They gathered in enormous flocks above the battlefield, patiently circling overhead and waiting for one of the giant sea beasts to finally die and float to the surface. The moment it happened, they descended in overwhelming numbers to feast upon the carcass before anything else could claim it.
Legend claimed that this gruesome banquet alone raised the average strength of Twin Wing Island’s flying seabirds by more than ten levels.
To the east, the sky and sea blended into one enormous battlefield. Schools of clawed flying dragonfish, packs of monstrous sharks, carnivorous sea anemones, hordes of great-mouthed water serpent dragons, giant-fanged stonefish demons, and countless other swarming sea monsters crashed into human fleets, demon warships, ghostly skeleton vessels, and aerial squadrons locked in desperate combat overhead.
Ships shattered. Monsters screamed. Soldiers vanished beneath the waves. Bodies drifted endlessly across the surface while blood poured into the sea until the once-blue waters remained crimson for hundreds of miles in every direction.
To the south lay the most breathtaking battlefield of them all, where the Sea Goddess personally led more than a dozen of the Water Clan’s greatest masters alongside humanity’s strongest champions. Opposing them stood the Shark Demon Lord and his elite generals, the Arcane Beast Race’s ancient millennium-old overlords, and the Ghost Race’s oldest and most terrifying specters.
These were the absolute pinnacle of every race. They unleashed world-shaking spells capable of changing the landscape, exchanged blows with legendary weapons forged in forgotten ages, soared across the skies one moment before diving into the depths the next, their mastery of combat reaching a level few could even comprehend. The overwhelming pressure radiating from their battles was so terrifying that no ordinary sea monster dared approach the area.
In every direction, the waters surrounding Twin Wing Island had become the most merciless battlefield in the entire war.
As the Divine Beasts and Mythic Beasts fought without holding back, the immense magical energy they released shattered the region’s natural balance. In barely a single day, the surrounding elements had descended into complete disorder, while the very fabric of space itself began to twist under the unbearable strain.
Unfortunately, nature had already been preparing its own disaster. Long before the battle reached its peak, an enormous storm had been gathering over the seas surrounding Twin Wing Island. The endless clashes, unstable elemental currents, and violent magical eruptions released by the Divine Beasts forced that storm to arrive far earlier than it should have.
The situation, already disastrous, was pushed beyond the brink. From the highest point of Twin Wing Island, the four battlefields were swallowed by darkness as towering black clouds rolled across the sky. Lightning ripped through the heavens one strike after another, hurricane-force winds screamed over the sea, and waves rose to heights that seemed capable of swallowing entire fleets.
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Author’s Note:
Twin Wing Island plays a crucial role later in the story, so it’s worth remembering everything that happened here. Its significance will become clear soon enough.