Return of the Mythic Bloodline

"Divine Lightning: Lance of Annihilation"

At blinding speed, splitting the ground apart in its path, the lightning lance surged forward, its dazzling radiance turning the battleground from night into day.

Iskandor responded instantly, materialising multiple parallel walls of thick ice with a wave of his hands.

The lance struck the ice barrier, held for a brief moment, then shattered through the walls one after another before finally hitting Iskandor. The impact produced a thunderous boom, sending shards of ice and clouds of dust flying in every direction.

As the dust settled, Iskandor's figure came into view, his upper body encased in thick ice like armour. However, several cracks had appeared on his shoulder, spreading outward where the golden lance had pierced through the ice armour, and through his shoulder as well. The lance vanished, breaking into uncountable fragments of light, leaving behind a gaping hole from which blood gushed out.

"L-Lord Iskandor is injured!?" the demons murmured, their eyes widening as their bodies trembled in raw fear.

"Wi-with only one attack… he injured Lord Iskandor."

"How could he become so strong in just two and a half years?"

It wasn't only the demons who were stunned, the humans were equally shocked. The child who had struggled to kill even low-ranked demons when he first arrived was now not only facing a demon whose strength surpassed that of a True Sage cultivator, but was also dominating the battle.

"Fuck…" Iskandor growled inwardly. I underestimated him. "Ice of the calamity class is useless against him. In that case…"

Iskandor's white skin began to glow, the wound in his shoulder sealing itself within thick cyan ice as his black hair whipped violently in the air.

However, before he could complete whatever he was attempting, a sharp arc of lightning surged toward him. He instinctively ducked low to dodge the attack, causing hundreds of demons behind him to face Taranis's unleashed power head-on. Helpless before such might, the demons were sliced apart like vegetables, their agonised screams echoing briefly before vanishing as their souls left their bodies.

"Y-you bastard! How could you attack me while I was preparing?" Iskandor roared, his veins bulging violently.

Taranis, whose sword still flickered with golden lightning, whispered coldly, "Are you dumb or what? Why would I wait for you to prepare yourself? We aren't sparring. This is war."

With that, Taranis raised his sword again, thick crackles of lightning roaring across the blade, ready to be unleashed once more.

"I… I will destroy that arrogance of yours!" Iskandor barked. In an instant, his body became encased in a thick sheet of cyan ice, twin sharp blades of the same ice emerging from the knuckles of both his hands.

"Th-that colour… It's the ice attribute of the heavenly class," the humans gasped, their eyes nearly popping out of their sockets in shock.

"So he was hiding his true strength? Can the platoon leader hold against that power?"

"He should be… he is a god, after all."

The subordinates of Taranis murmured among themselves, their voices laced with doubt and fear for their leader.

In the blink of an eye, Iskandor vanished from his position, a trail of ice forming in his wake as he reached Taranis, the twin blades already swinging toward Taranis's neck.

Taranis bent backward, letting Iskandor's blade brush past his golden hair, while simultaneously launching a kick toward Iskandor's gut.

The kick landed, producing a sonic boom from the sheer impact. However, the ice armour covering Iskandor's body remained completely unfazed.

On the other hand, bone-chilling ice began wrapping around Taranis's foot that had struck Iskandor, freezing even the blood within his leg.

"Hahaha! You can't break my ice armour with a pathetic kick like that," Iskandor laughed, a wide smirk creeping across his face.

Taranis paid no attention to his mockery, his expression remaining cold and emotionless as he launched a punch toward Iskandor's face.

Another sonic boom echoed, yet Iskandor remained unfazed as an ice armour of the same cyan hue materialised between Taranis's fist and his face.

The ice once again spread around Taranis's arm, crawling from his fist all the way up to his shoulder. The cold was so extreme that his arm instantly went limp as the veins froze solid.

"Do you really think a brat like you can break my heavenly-class ice?" Iskandor barked, delivering a sharp kick to Taranis's gut.

The impact sent the Lightning God flying through the air. When he finally struck the ground, he barely managed to remain standing by stabbing his sword into the earth, skidding several feet backward.

At the spot where Iskandor's kick had landed, thick ice rapidly formed and spread outward, within mere seconds, freezing Taranis's body entirely.

---

"Voltrex, your son is about to die. Do you not wish to save him?" Azhryx mocked as he battled Voltrex high in the sky. "Iskandor's ice attribute is of the heavenly class. Once that ice touches any being, it freezes them from the inside out. The moment your son first touched his ice, his fate was already sealed."

For a moment, Voltrex said nothing.

After a brief pause, his lips slowly parted. Then he spoke, his voice low, a smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"A heavenly-class attribute, huh?"

"Hahahahahahahahahaha!"

Voltrex's deafening laughter rippled across the battlefield as he repeatedly facepalmed himself, as if Azhryx had just said something utterly foolish, something laughably stupid.

"Is your son's death that amusing to you?" Azhryx asked. Though he smiled, unease flickered beneath his confident façade.

Taking a deep breath, Voltrex roared, his voice shaking the heavens,

"My son, Taranis El Thunderbane, the heir of the Hundred Sky Mountains, the God of Lightning and Thunder, is born for greatness, blessed by the heavens themselves! As if he would die to a mere heavenly-class attribute!"

The moment those words—heard loud and clear by everyone on the battlefield—left Voltrex's mouth, several cracks appeared on the thick, steel-like ice encasing Taranis's body.

A thunderous roar of lightning followed.

The frozen shell shattered apart as Taranis emerged from within, his golden hair blazing like the sun itself, his eyes glowing with twin pools of divine gold. Violent electric pulses surged across his body as he defied gravity and rose into the air.

In his hand, a sharp, crackling bolt of lightning materialised. Its thunderous roar sent shivers down the spines of every cultivator, demon and human alike. The power contained within the bolt was so intense that even the space around it began to twist and distort.

With a low, cold voice, Taranis whispered, his words descending like the will of the heavens themselves,

"The demons will lose tonight."

Raising the lightning bolt high above his head, Taranis murmured,

"Divine Lightning: Thunderbolt of Judgement."

And he released it.

As the Thunderbolt descended, bending space itself in its path, raw, primal fear surged through Iskandor's soul.

With every last ounce of Soulforce he could muster, he summoned an ice barrier as large as a mountain, over a hundred parallel shields layering together, sealing him completely within.

Not stopping there, he wrapped himself in even thicker layers of ice, an armour ten times stronger than the one he had wielded before.

Yet what could a mortal do when a god had already passed judgement?

The Thunderbolt pierced through the barriers as though they were nothing more than scattered leaves before a raging storm. It struck Iskandor square in the chest.

The divine lightning tore through his armour like paper, pierced straight through his heart, and slammed into the ground behind him, leaving a gaping hole where his heart had once beaten.

In the very next instant, Taranis vanished from the sky.

He reappeared before Iskandor, his face calm, his expression unchanged.

"As I said," Taranis spoke coldly, "I will dig out your core, forge a sword from it, and gift it to my wife."

With that, Taranis's hand pierced through Iskandor's abdomen, ripping out a large white sphere from within.

"Fuck…" Iskandor murmured, a waterfall of blood spilling from his mouth as his lifeless body collapsed to the ground.