First Demonic Dragon-Chapter 1274: The Harshest Winter

The battle was surprisingly even.

In the air and on the ground, members of the infamous heavenly kings of the Celestial Court waged a small war against an unseen adversary.

They were not members of the pantheons they were familiar with. But their strength was somehow not inferior to their own.

The battle shook the transfigured Earth to its core. Great destructive powers clashed with equal force, and the ensuing collisions tore open the sky with ease.

The king of the south fell from the sky like a dead star. With his massive body, he split the ground underneath him into a web of fractures. Before the debris had settled, three figures clad in white and gold were already upon him.

Their armor was of a splendid design. White and gold with long flowing robes and many ceremonial markings. Plates of strange, glowing metal wrapped around their forearms and shins as a protective measure. Beyond the smooth masks that covered their faces, their eyes shone with a lethal stillness.

The south of the east rose to combat them once more. He ballooned in size, wearing armor made of a black-scaled loong, draped in stormy blue cloth.

Virudhaka, the South’s Guardian, was already injured. Molten-like blood ran down a hole in one of his arms, staining his deep blue skin before it dripped onto the Earth.

His blood fell from him and hit the ground like an unholy avalanche.

Around the god’s feet, the soldiers of the celestial court waged their war against the opposing forces of the golden men.

They seemed to be having just as much trouble with the enemy as the kings were.

The king of the South raised his sword above his head. He began to rotate his arm, churning the wind into a fierce gale more powerful than any tornado.

To their credit, the gold-masked men were doing well thus far. However, much of their luck had been due to their ability to move as one. Distracting, dodging, and attacking before the Wind god could redirect his focus.

But an attack of this nature that would strike all of them at once was no easy thing to counter, at least without posing a risk of injury to oneself.

One of the masked men looked away for a moment, towards an entirely different corner of the battlefield.

Underneath a slab of fallen stone, several humans cowered behind the back of a woman with a very rattled demeanor.

In the split second after one of the masked men turned to check on the downed humans, the masked man had unconsciously sealed his own fate.

The southern king brought the wind down, and the dreaded cyclone rended flesh, metal, and fabric alike. His wind was like the sword in his grasp, sharp and precise to a fault.

The masked man never stood a chance.

He was shredded into pieces so fine that he was nearly indistinguishable from blades of grass. His companions who were left behind seemed to mourn him. However, their time to do so was relatively short.

Their other allies were failing to hold back the other heavenly kings as well. The battle that had previously been a stalemate was now heading toward an inevitable victor.

But then the storm came.

It seemed to arrive from out of nowhere. As chilling as deep space, as obscure as a total eclipse.

Ice formed along everyone’s bodies in thin sheets. The lesser members of the opposing armies were frozen outright.

All at once, the masked men turned to the heavenly kings, believing them to be the culprits behind the change in weather.

How surprised they were when they found the towering giants of men as fearful as newborn lambs.

It was a most unsettling sight. What could beunsettle these veritable gods, these four Buddhist devas who were well over three hundred meters tall and held dominion over the four quarters of their world?

The answer came without warning or polite entry.

A mighty blue fist, larger than any mountain, fell through the sky like a meteor and landed atop the head of the southern king.

He was instantly crushed flat into the earth. And he was hardly the only one.

In an instant, miles of land were upended by a brutal geyser of dirt and stone.

Fearing for the safety of herself and those she protected, the witch endeavoured to encase them all in a barrier. But even before the collision, she knew this would hardly be enough. Her magic was weak.

After running for days on end, she was exhausted. So weak that she could have been smited by a single gust of wind.

The cold that had come out of nowhere had dried up any chance she may have had to save the lives of those who followed behind her.

Heartbroken, she closed her eyes tightly to stop her tears from spilling in front of those whom she had only wanted to protect.

"Honey, be careful. You almost crushed these little ones. I mean, I don’t particularly care... but I think Tati and Val would be upset if they knew we weren’t thinking about collateral damage."

The witch’s eyes snapped open.

Standing in front of her was a large, scaly lizard the size of a horse.

It blinked at her once without making any sort of dramatic movement. But that was enough for the young witch to let out a scream heard from here to the East Coast.

She fainted almost instantly. Bayle looked down at her small, crumpled form for less than a moment before turning to Izanami.

"...No, you can’t eat her, she’s not dead."

Bayle let out a small, depressed noise before turning to the ruined battlefield.

"I’m not sure. Maybe? You’ll have to ask your other mommy what she wants to do with them." Izanami shrugged.

She flicked her gaze back toward her wife, who was acting as a beautifully eye-catching engine of destruction.

From her fist that was punched into the ground, the jotunn spawned abyssal dragons by the hundreds.

They took to the skies, blotting out the clouds with their enormous wings and quickly taking control of the battlefield.

They suppressed not only the army of the celestial court. Even the strange golden forces were not a match for the dragons’ surprise attacks.

The remaining three heavenly kings seemed less inclined to admit defeat than the rest of their men. But struggle had almost been what Sif was counting on.

In a much smaller body, she fell from the sky like an icy meteor. Towering over the king of the east, she grabbed the Buddhist deity by his face and slammed his head into the ground.

With a strength greater than any beast, she picked him up by the head again and brought him back down once, twice, then three more times. She even added a fourth just for good measure.

Almost as if she had eyes in the back of her head, Sif suddenly switched her grip on the neck of the deity before her, then whirled around, flinging him like a javelin at his brother, the King of the West.

The two collided with an explosive thud, and both were sent plummeting out of the sky.

Izanami shivered, but not from the cold. As of this moment, she had scarcely ever felt warmer.

"W-Wow... You’re so incredible, my darling..! T-Those muscles... a-and..."

Bayle looked up at the sky above them, but immediately frowned not long answer.

With no rain clouds anywhere in sight, how was he supposed to explain this sudden wet feeling on his back...?