NOVEL NEXT Chapter 229: Slaying Gods - 5
Damian narrowed his eyes from the sky down at the war god, who lay in the massive crater created by his earlier attack.
Now, Thor seemed to be surrounded by lightning and wind that disrupted the very fabric of space itself.
The entire surrounding area, stretching hundreds of meters in radius, instantly transformed into a battlefield about to be ravaged by a god-killing storm.
Darkness swallowed the world as the bright sun vanished. Ominous clouds covered the sky as far as the eye could see.
Lightning fell like rain, each strike accompanied by thunder that shook the heavens.
Wherever lightning struck the land, it obliterated everything it touched.
A colossal bolt of blue lightning, thick and violent, struck directly onto the fallen god.
Thor's wounds regenerated rapidly, and one of the most powerful weapons in all of the Norse pantheon, Mjölnir, vibrated furiously in his hand as lightning covered the hammer before spreading across his entire body.
The presence of a god became more prominent than ever as Thor rose from the crater, standing face-to-face with Damian, the two floating across from each other.
"I was hoping to just devour you… but I guess I'll have to beat you up first," Damian muttered, arms crossed.
"You will pay for this," Thor said in a thunderous tone.
"Heard that before, like a million times. And everyone who said that ended up as dust and ashes," Damian shrugged.
Before he could even finish his sentence, a colossal bolt of lightning, powerful enough to destroy hundreds of kilometers of land, descended from the stormy, furious sky and struck down at Damian.
From Damian's perspective, everything slowed.
His [Eyes of Earth and Heaven] allowed him to see the world in slow motion.
He could clearly see the giant lightning bolt summoned by Thor descending toward him.
"Well, more power to me then," Damian smirked. In the next second, his entire body became covered in the energy of [Predation].
Time returned to its normal pace as the lightning struck him.
But instead of harming him, the lightning simply vanished into his body, devoured by the armor of [Predation] that enveloped him.
[You have devoured Lightning imbued with the Divine [Concept of Storm] and [Concept of War]]
[Beginning Extraction…]
[Extraction complete]
[Purified [Divine Essence] has been extracted]
[[Law of Storm] has been extracted]
[[Law of War] has been extracted]
[Assimilating with the [Law of Storm]…]
[Assimilating with the [Law of War]…]
[Your understanding of the [Law of Storm] has increased]
[Your understanding of the [Law of War] has increased]
[Storing the Purified [Divine Essence] in your Spiritual Space]
"Purified [Divine Essence]… great. Now I can achieve godhood whenever I want, and I can even make others achieve godhood," Damian muttered, ignoring the baffled god of storms, who was now in a crisis, seeing that his strongest lightning, imbued with the divine concept of Storm, had done nothing.
"What… how?" Thor felt his world shatter.
That attack just now...
It wasn't ordinary lightning.
It carried the divine concept of Storm.
The Divine [Concept of Storm].
The concept of Storm was considered one of the higher-tier divine concepts.
Not because it was the most powerful, but because it was an amalgamation of many minor concepts.
To comprehend Storm, one must first comprehend its components: Lightning, Rain, Water, Fire, and Wind.
This meant Thor wasn't just a god of storms.
He was also the god of Lightning, Rain, Water, Fire, and Wind, all united under the singular concept of Storm.
And beyond that, Thor was also a god of War, another divine concept that required mastery of countless sub-concepts before it could be understood.
Which meant his attack on Damian carried the weight of many divine concepts woven together.
Not even another god-king level deity could have survived it intact.
Yet Damian didn't just survive;
Thor could feel it.
His attack had actually made this mortal stronger.
This shouldn't be possible.
No matter how broken this mortal seemed, how could a human grow stronger by taking a god's attack?
"Are you shocked?" Damian asked with a grin.
He couldn't help but smile at the helpless expression on the god's face.
Thor was hailed as one of the greatest battle gods in the entire lower plane, alongside the Greek god Ares, a genius in war, a genius in fighting.
If he truly lived up to that legend, then he should already have realized what the rumors spreading among the pantheons suggested: no matter what attack was thrown at Damian, nothing would work.
He would simply devour it, feeding his eternal hunger that seemed to stretch into an endless abyss.
And everything he consumed only made him stronger, endlessly, infinitely.
All of this brought a terrifying figure to Thor's mind.
But before that figure could fully take shape, he shook his head violently, refusing to accept the reality.
"No… I won't accept this… I can't…" Thor's reality crumbled before his eyes, his mind losing all sense of reason. In the next instant, his figure vanished.
"Oh?" Damian's world slowed again, his perception racing ahead of time itself.
He saw Thor reappear before him, hammer gripped with both hands, raised high overhead.
The god of war and storms brought it down with all his strength, his entire body covered in the Laws of Storm and War, unleashing a god-killing strike.
Damian narrowed his eyes. "Something happened… what did he remember that made him lose his mind?"
"Whatever. Let's just have some fun and investigate later," Damian sighed.
Time returned to normal, and the hammer came crashing down on him with full divine force.
As the attack made contact, explosions of different kinds manifested, it was like hundreds of storms suddenly erupting at a single point of impact.
From the area where they were fighting, hundreds of kilometers surrounding it were instantly destroyed as hordes of lightning blasts and extreme winds swept everything clear.
Waves of fire were created and rapidly expanded everywhere due to the violent currents of wind, burning all in their path.
Within seconds, nothing remained but ash and dust as far as the eye could see, and at the very center of this mass of destruction lay a single naked figure.
Damian calmly stood up, cracked his neck, and looked at his arms, or rather, where his arms used to be. Both had turned to dust, along with one and a half of his legs.
A large portion of his torso was also gone.
Blood poured out, but it was not red, instead, it was a mixture of bright crimson streaked with countless shimmering particles, most prominently gold, silver, and purple.
Looking at his exposed insides, no organs could be seen. Instead, thick multicolored energies swirled within him.
It was as if only his outer appearance was human, while inside, he was made of pure energy.
"I see… you are slightly stronger than me physically, that is…" Damian muttered with a faint smile.
In the next instant, his body regenerated as if he had never been injured.
"Let me show you what a Progenitor can do…" Damian grinned as his appearance rapidly began to change.
[Blood King's Descent: Racial Transformation Activated]
His hair turned blood red, growing longer as if drenched in gore.
His height increased, his physique became leaner, and his muscles gleamed like the strongest metals.
His vampire claws, influenced by his [Werewolf Progenitor Essence], extended like razor-sharp blades.
His eyes darkened entirely, turning black as night, with a pair of crimson dots glistening in the void.
Three pairs of massive, blood-red bat-like wings burst from his back, twisted with the influence of his [Demon Progenitor Essence] and [Dark Angel Essence], their talons sharp as knives at every edge.
Blood spurted from his skin, coating his pale body like armor as his presence rose higher and higher, seemingly without end. The transformation took only a few seconds.
[Transformation Complete]
[Your physical attributes have increased by 300%]
[You can now use all your vampire bloodline abilities at 500% capacity]
[Your regeneration has been strengthened by 500%]
[You have become one with the Blood of the Night King]
"Let's see… what can a god do against the might of the true Vampire Progenitor?" A deep, demonic voice echoed from the Night King.
Thor wasn't in any condition to think, his body was frozen under the weight of that monstrous presence.
In the next instant, tendrils of blood-red lightning, flames, wind, blood, thread-like energy of corruption, crimson ice, and shadows wrapped around Damian's form like unstable atoms.
Then he vanished, reappearing directly in front of Thor.
Even with his [Law of Storms], the god couldn't react to the impossible speed of a mortal.
Before Thor could realize it, his vision blurred. In the blink of an eye, he was hurled away at such speed that everything became a blur until he crashed into the ground, a massive hole gaping through his stomach.
Yet before Thor's body even hit the ground, the Vampire King was already waiting for him.
His fist swelled, covered in blood, lightning, ice, corruption, and tendrils of darkness, forming a gauntlet of thorns.
Planting his feet firmly and pulling his arm back, Damian unleashed all the combined power of his vampire bloodline into one devastating uppercut directly into Thor's chest.
The impact triggered another cataclysmic explosion, flattening kilometers of land in an instant.
Thor didn't even have time to scream, his body shattered into pieces, his very soul torn apart.
Every strike from the Vampire King carried the influence of the progenitor's soul-manipulating abilities, rending the god's essence with each blow.
What little remained of Thor, a fragment of his head still attached to part of his torso, was flung hundreds of kilometers away.
The Vampire King, in his full glory, hovered above the broken remains of the god.
Thor's soul lay in fragments.
Stripped of all abilities, unable to move, heal, or regenerate, he was reduced to nothing more than a conscious corpse, fully aware and enduring every ounce of agony.
Damian raised his arm, preparing to devour him, when suddenly he felt a force trying to stop him.