Chapter 116: Varanus Vs Damascus [1]
"Hey, are you ignoring me now?" Damascus frowned.
"Probably" Roy chuckled. "I saw no reason to answer a man who’s about to die" his lips curled faintly.
"I’m about to die?" Damascus exhaled a soft chuckle, "You are quite funny I must say..."
Damascus clenched his fist tightly, taking a step forward.
"It doesn’t matter tho, I can’t get my answers from your corpse"
"It’s been a long time since I last killed a person. Please humor me!"
Damascus vanished from where he stood, spawning below Roy...
’Below me!’ Roy frowned, he positioned his arms to block the attack when Damascus’s punch collided.
Bang!
"Keeeuuukkk"
The air trembled as Roy was sent flying. But Roy was nimble, quickly suppressing his momentum, he twisted his body.
Regaining his stance, he inhaled deeply.
"This is fun hehehehe" Roy giggled softly.
He loved the thrill, the intense force he received from Damascus’ punch.
The verbal standoff ceased to exist.
In its place, reality shattered.
The collision of their first forward step tore the air pressure of the cavern to absolute zero.
Roy dashed forward.
His fist slammed against Damascus’s forearms, the resulting kinetic and divine discharge did not create a standard explosion.
It generated a vacuum.
A blinding shockwave of pristine gold and toxic, bruised-purple divine energy expanded outward in a fraction of a millisecond.
The obsidian walls of the Grand Sanctum did not collapse.
They disintegrated into fine, microscopic dust.
The ancient stone pillars supporting the entire subterranean layout were instantly pulverized, and the millions of tons of desert rock overhead simply dissolved.
Exposing the violent, dust-choked midday sky of Norona City above.
The divine prowess of the two entities transcended mortal comprehension.
They were not merely fighting.
Their passive auras were actively fighting for the right to dictate local physics.
Damascus sneered, his golden eyes flashing with malicious pleasure.
The 10% capacity of his Lesser-tier divinity was still a bottomless well of highly refined, ancient concept-force.
With a simple, brutal twist of his wrist, he redirected the spatial vectors around Roy, seizing the gold-haired False God by his collar and slamming him violently into the earth.
The impact crater expanded across three city blocks, liquefying the stone foundation of Norona into bubbling magma.
Before Roy could stabilize his form, Damascus was already there, his foot driving into Roy’s ribs with the force of a falling meteor.
The strike sent Roy hurtling horizontally through the ruins of the city.
Not given Roy a chance to breath, Damascus spawned behind him, grabbing Roy by the neck.
He unleashed distorted waves of emerald divine energy, burning through Roy’s skin in the process.
Roy struggled to break free, sending Damascus flying with a single kick. But Damascus was much stronger.
Amplifying himself with vast quantity of divine essence, he regained his balance. Spawning before Roy in a span of seconds.
Bang!
Damascus unleashed a knee kick to the head of Roy.
His divine frame smashed through reinforced military barracks, fractured the defensive walls of the outer bastions, and leveled three grand administrative buildings, leaving a trail of absolute devastation in his wake.
"Fuck! He’s strong" Roy groaned, he slowly emerged from where he was sent crashing into.
Damascus dominated the exchange with terrifying ease.
His divine essence reserves were vastly superior, pure, and thoroughly tempered by centuries of universal law.
Every single punch or kick the God of Misfortune delivered sent chaotic, rippling distortions across the local space-time fabric.
The atmosphere around them grew wildly unstable—weapons left in the ruins spontaneously exploded.
The air burned without fire.
And space itself began to crack like brittle glass under the weight of their exchanges.
The localized battlefield became an absolute death zone.
The raw, unfiltered divinity leaking from their clash radiated an intense, conceptual heat.
Any scattered troll soldier or beastman vanguard caught within a two-kilometer radius did not even have time to scream.
Their physical flesh, armor, and bones instantly melted into raw, bubbling liquid under the passive radiation of the gods.
Inside Roy’s consciousness, the system began frantically screaming, a barrage of neon-blue alerts flashing at a dizzying speed.
[WARNING: Divine Essence reserves are depleting rapidly!]
[Current Reserve: 74%... 61%... 48%...]
-Divine Essence: 45
’Fuck, his energy is too dense,’ Roy cursed internally, his teeth grinding as he threw a counter-jab that shattered Damascus’s defensive barrier but cost him another massive chunk of his reserves.
He clearly understood the math.
At this rate of attrition, he would run dry before he could even scratch the vessel’s divine sea.
He needed the battlefield entirely cleared.
Using his divine connection, Roy forced a sharp, high-frequency mind transmission directly into Alisa’s consciousness, bypassing the ambient spiritual noise.
’Alisa! Order a complete withdrawal immediately! Take everyone, leave Norona, and retreat back to Varania this instant!’
’Do not look back!’
**
High on the distant ridge, Alisa’s eyes widened as the telepathic command struck her brain.
Beside her, High Priest Croak’s beast instincts had already calculated the apocalyptic nature of the event.
The invasion was over, this was now survival of the fittest.
A catastrophe had befallen the Hudeii Desert!
"High Priest" Alisa called, facing the Duke "The Apostle has instructed us to retreat at once, whatever this thing is..."
"If we stay here any longer...."
"We will all die!" she warned.
"I know" High Priest Croak bent his head, his arms quivering. "Let’s run"
He didn’t waste a single syllable on arguments.
"But not without him" he stated.
Turning instantly toward Hector, the human knight-priest who was frozen in place trying to comprehend the melting environment.
Croak’s massive hand swiped downward.
A swift, heavy blow struck the back of Hector’s neck, knocking the human completely unconscious before he could protest or fall victim to the divine radiation.
"Move! Everyone out! Retreat to the borders!" Croak roared, hoisting Hector over his massive shoulder.
With Alisa ruthlessly enforcing the command.
The remaining powerhouses—Brenda, Trojan, and Manuses—shattered their paralyzed states, turned their backs on the collapsing city, and fled toward the safety of the Varanian borders at their maximum possible velocity.
Back in the heart of the ruins, Roy wiped a smear of golden divine blood from his lip, his long golden hair whipping wildly in the self-generated gale.
Damascus floated a few inches above the melting stone, his gray hair flowing, his lips curled into that same cruel, arrogant smirk.
"How does it feel to get pummeled by a True God?" Damascus mocked, "To think you aren’t dead yet"
"You sure are resilient" the True God grinned.
"Finally" Roy heaved a sigh of relief, "Any longer than this...."
"They’d have died" he whispered.
"Huh?" Damascus frowned, "What the hell is this bastard talking about?"
The stage was completely clear.
It was just the False God and the 10% manifestation of Misfortune.
Roy stepped forward, "Now that there’s no one to distract us, Damascus" Roy raised his head, a lopsided smile written on his face.
"Why don’t we go all out?"
"My hands are itching....they are begging me to kill you!!"