The Grand Duke's Son Is A Heretic

Chapter 553 553: 553

Elsewhere, Asana and Nina pressed Edwina harder with every exchange between them, as ice locked entire regions of the battlefield while flames erased every resistance they found, and the space around Edwina turned into a violent combination of freezing storms and burning destruction that pressed in from both sides and left very little room to breathe between them.

Then Edwina's body radiated with an immense and glorifying intent that hadn't been there a moment ago.

A sacred light burst from her and spread outward like a rising tide across everything it touched, and the space around her stabilized under that glow while her figure became untouchable for a brief and absolute moment that felt like the battlefield itself had paused to acknowledge her.

She moved, and while her steps were calm and unhurried, every single motion carried divine authority that pressed against everything nearby, and waves of radiant power spread outward with each movement and pushed back ice and fire together without distinguishing between them.

But Asana's eyes turned colder as she watched it happen, and her frost thickened and layered over itself again and again in rapid succession until it became something that felt less like cold and more like the complete absence of warmth as a concept, while the storm around her condensed and pressed inward from every direction at once.

At the same time Nina's flames surged higher, pulling themselves tighter and building pressure inside that compression until the heat intensified to a level that distorted everything around it, and the burning force hit Edwina's radiance directly and didn't yield.

BOOOOOOM!

The sacred light cracked under the combined pressure, as ice locked it from one side and fire burned it from the other, and the force between the three of them crushed Edwina's advance and stopped her where she stood.

.......

Below, the worshipers trembled under the shockwaves rolling down from the battle above them, and while the ground shook beneath their feet and the air itself felt heavy and full of something enormous pressing down on it, none of them stopped praying.

Their voices continued, steady and desperate together, and faith gathered around them into a visible flow that moved like something alive and surged upward toward Kael in a stream that didn't waver.

An immense influx of belief and faith gathered around him and poured endlessly into his body from every person below who had ever called his name and meant it, and the crimson lines across him pulsed faster as the power concentrated inside him and built toward something that hadn't been reached yet.

Everything was moving in his favor, but the problem remained.

Integration.

Along with the power came madness pressing in from every edge of his mind, as chaotic whispers and broken thoughts and endless noise tried to overwhelm the clarity he was holding onto, and he pushed it aside with force and gripped the center of himself with everything he had and refused to let go.

The next step was before him to integrate with the world, to proclaim himself as God, and to make what was happening inside him something that existed in reality and not just in the space between his fingers.

He reached toward that state and resistance appeared immediately not from beings or angels or armies, but from the world itself.

The consciousness of the universe pushed back against the change he was trying to make, rejecting it the way a body rejects something foreign pressing into it from outside, and at the same time the will of the Gods pressed down from above with a weight that had nothing physical about it but felt heavier than anything physical ever had.

It became a tug of war between existence itself and the divine authority of one man who had earned his place through blood and slaughter and the faith of people who believed in him when the world gave them no reason to.

The pressure was unbearable and had no comparison, and reality trembled under it while the dimension around the battlefield shuddered with the force of a conflict that most of the fighters below couldn't even perceive.

Kael held on, and then suddenly the resistance shifted. The will of the Gods faltered not completely but for a brief moment it fell back from the pressure he was pushing against it and left a gap that hadn't been there before.

It was due to the domain crafted by Christina.

Kael did not hesitate and pushed forward with everything he had. His divine authority of slaughter gathered itself and condensed into a dense and violent force that had nowhere left to go but forward, and it spiraled like a drill and swept across the universe with the weight of every life he had ever taken and every battlefield he had ever walked off of, forcing space to open ahead of it as it moved toward the place where it belonged.

Then it locked onto its place.

BOOM.

A dense divine intent flashed into existence in the sky like a crimson star appearing where there had been nothing before, and it pulsed with overwhelming power while the light it gave off was nothing like the sacred light below it was deeper and older and entirely his.

Kael's eyes opened slightly and he raised his hand slowly and reached toward it with the certainty of someone who has already decided how this ends, and his fingers moved closer through the space between them while the distance shrank with each fraction of movement.

Closer.

Just one step more. His hand was about to close around it.

Then suddenly a hand tore across the universe from somewhere that had no direction attached to it and grabbed it first, and a deep chilling sensation ran through Kael from the point of contact outward

A strange laughter echoed across the universe, rolling through the space between stars and dimensions like it belonged there and had always belonged there.

"Kekekekeke..."

The voice that followed was unhurried and deeply familiar in the worst possible way.

"Leonard... did you forget your dear friend the Almighty Fish Head."

Then the sound hit everything at once.

"PERUUUUH!"