Ch.885Clash

After shaking off the interference from the Ami Faction, the Celestial Demon Divine Palace resumed their march not long after.

Toward the “Revered Mountains” where Little Forest, the first sect established by practitioners, was located.

It was an advance as swift as flight.

Since the Ami Faction’s guerrilla unit had lost three-tenths of their forces in just one battle, no other sect dared to think of confronting the Celestial Demon Divine Palace.

And so, six days later.

“It’s somewhat pleasant to see you again. You grass-munching practitioners.”

“Celestial Demon…!”

The main force of the Celestial Demon Divine Palace, led by Persiella, finally reached the territory of “Little Forest.”

“Tell that forest keeper hiding in the back room. Your death has come, the end of Little Forest has arrived.”

Looking down at the gatekeepers of Little Forest who were gathering mana with tense faces, Celestial Demon Persiella declared in a voice full of arrogance.

“The Celestial Demon has come to destroy you.”

The annihilation of Little Forest.

—-

Little Forest, the sacred ground of practitioners that had maintained peace and tranquility without any troubles for the past thousand years.

The first righteous sect began to burn and bleed.

“Kill them all and burn everything! So that no one in future generations will know the name Little Forest, so that not even a trace of that name remains. Erase everything in sight! In the name of the Celestial Demon Divine Palace!”

“In the name of the Celestial Demon Divine Palace!”

“Celestial Demon rules! Ten thousand demons submit!”

As soon as Persiella’s order fell, the Dragonborn of the Celestial Demon Divine Palace charged over the mountain gate of Little Forest with ferocious roars.

Their momentum was like a pack of hungry wolves jumping over a fence to raid a village.

“You’ll receive divine punishment, you demon minions…!”

“Amitamir! Protect Little Forest!”

The practitioners of Little Forest, who had formed ranks inside the mountain gate, also charged toward the Dragonborn of the Celestial Demon Divine Palace, wrapped in vast amounts of mana they had gathered.

The first righteous sect and the strongest evil sect.

An overly powerful military faction and the royal family’s dagger seeking to eliminate them.

“Kill them!”

“Stop them!”

Beyond the power struggle between righteous and evil sects, a battle that would determine the fate of the Dragon Kingdom began.

In the form of thunderbolts, blizzards, flames, and steel storms.

“Kyahaaap!”

A practitioner with whirlwinds wrapped around both arms shot out a fist force that reached a hundred paces away like a cannonball, while a Dragonborn of the Celestial Demon Divine Palace soared high into the sky and spewed flames from its wide-open mouth, burning the mountain gate.

A fierce battle like a natural disaster.

Swords and spears, magic and breath, claws and tails clashed violently, scattering calamity and destruction in all directions.

“Kuhahaha! Is this all? These so-called practitioners of the renowned Little Forest!”

A Dragonborn man with purple scales. Tasios burst into laughter and slightly bent his waist.

The scales covering his entire body made creaking noises as they flipped and sharpened. Soaked with terrifyingly powerful mana.

“Behold the Ten Thousand Scales Rain!”

Tasios arched his back wide and discharged all the mana imbued in his scales at once.

A thunderous sound like lightning striking the ground. The scales covering his body shot out like bullets, sweeping everything within a radius of over ten meters.

Practitioners who couldn’t respond in time fell back, coughing blood, with scale fragments embedded all over their bodies.

Ten Thousand Scales Rain.

A magic that fills the scales of the entire body with mana and shoots them out in all directions like a wave of hidden weapons.

“Remember my name. I am Tasios. Tasios the Piercing Wave Demon!”

It was a unique magic belonging only to Tasios, a Dragonborn whose scale regeneration was abnormally fast.

“That guy’s gone crazy too. Showing off such a technique. Doesn’t even know how to be ashamed.”

Simeir, the Taiji Phantom Demon, muttered with a hollow laugh. As she said, Ten Thousand Scales Rain was a technique that no sane Dragonborn would dare to use.

Due to its characteristic of explosively shooting out all body scales at once, when Ten Thousand Scales Rain was activated, even the clothes worn on the body would be torn apart by the scales.

In other words, Ten Thousand Scales Rain was a magic that immediately exposed one’s naked body upon use.

Moreover, it wasn’t just ordinary nakedness, but a shameful appearance with not a single scale left, even if temporarily!

Unless one had an exhibitionist tendency, it wasn’t a technique suitable for use in front of others.

Yet he used such a technique without any shame, and even went so far as to shout his own name proudly.

If that wasn’t madness, what was?

“With such a pervert right next to me, why does everyone leave him alone and come charging at a normal Dragonborn like me, calling me a deviant? Isn’t that strange?”

Saying this, Simeir turned her head again to look down at the Dragonborn kneeling before her.

“Taiji Phantom Demon…! This, witch…!”

The practitioners glared at Simeir with eyes full of grief and hatred as they rolled on the ground.

Their hearts were filled with bottomless contempt and anger, but all they could do was collapse on the dirt floor, gritting their teeth and enduring the excruciating pain.

Because they had been hit by Simeir’s wickedly evil magic, “Soul Descent,” and their bodies were being twisted into bizarrely grotesque forms.

Thinning skeletons, rapidly widening pelvises.

Half their faces twisted into female forms, skull and all, and a cloaca for laying eggs was forming in their lower bodies.

Literally, they looked like male and female merged and mixed in one body.

Soul Descent, a curse magic that forcibly summons ancestral souls into the body and mixes spirit and flesh.

It was a magic that fully embodied Simeir’s evil taste.

Summoning female ancestors into male Dragonborn, or conversely, male ancestors into female Dragonborn, creating monsters that were neither male nor female.

That was Simeir’s hobby.

She claimed it was a blessing that combined yin and yang to form taiji, but no one considered it a blessing.

A being with half a male face and half a female face. Moreover, having both male and female genitalia.

Taiji? That was a monstrous appearance by anyone’s standards.

In fact, Simeir didn’t sincerely consider it a blessing either. Of course not.

If she truly thought Soul Descent was a blessing, would she use it as an attack against enemies and enjoy mocking them as they mutated?

She simply found it too entertaining to watch those who were twisted into a mess and suffering.

Befitting the most vicious madwoman ever produced by the Shaman Sect.

“Nightmare of the Shaman Sect…! You were hiding in the Celestial Demon Divine Palace!”

“Hehe… You didn’t know? I never really hid it. I’ve always been proud.”

Simeir mocked the practitioners’ appearances and cast all sorts of curses on the Dragonborn rushing toward her.

Curses that made scales rot and flow off.

Curses that forcibly induced heat and hallucinations that made nearby comrades appear as supreme beauties.

Magic from the Returning Soul system that summoned the ancestors of attacking opponents to use as shields, and curses that summoned animal souls to reduce opponents to beasts.

The scene that unfolded was too horrific to watch with open eyes.

“Kuaaaak! My body, my body!”

A Dragonborn clutching his melting face and struggling.

“Huk… heuk…!”

“Damn it! Open your eyes! I am a woman…!”

A Dragonborn pouncing on a fellow practitioner, licking his face and tearing off his clothes.

“Woof! Woof woof! Woof woof woof!”

A Dragonborn running on all fours and making animal cries.

It was literally a scene from hell. Filled with Simeir’s tastes.

—-

While Tasios and Simeir were engaged in what could be called either feats or disgraceful acts of madness, Persiella was not idle either.

“Show me.”

Cold air extending from her fingertips engulfed and froze five Dragonborn.

“I’m truly curious.”

With a light swing of her grasped longsword, an ice blade over ten meters long shot out like a cutting wind, severing the waists of seven practitioners.

“What have you prepared.”

Stomping her foot down on the earth, dozens of stalagmites suddenly rose up, skewering the feet, abdomens, and groins of the Dragonborn like skewers.

“Celestial Demon!”

“To face me, what exactly.”

A small-winged practitioner who had avoided all these attacks and rushed at her was suddenly stopped as Persiella grabbed his head with her left hand.

With a squeeze of her left hand, Persiella burst the practitioner’s head and tossed the corpse like garbage at another Dragonborn as she continued walking.

Easily killing every practitioner who blocked her way, as if swatting mosquitoes.

And then.

“…Your show of might ends here, child of the Celestial Demon Divine Palace.”

The forest keeper of Little Forest who finally stepped forward declared, blocking the path of the relentlessly advancing Celestial Demon.

“Hmm… I see. Old man, are you Diarma?”

Persiella smiled as she looked at the green-scaled old Dragonborn blocking her path, and the hundreds of Dragonborn gathered behind him.

“Still lining up and swarming like a herd of beasts. I had quite a hard time because of that during the last great war.”

The memory of the battle that determined the outcome of the last Righteous-Evil Great War flashed in her mind.

The battle where, while she was trapped in the Twenty-Four Zodiac Binding Formation, the remaining righteous Dragonborn launched an all-out attack and defeated the evil Dragonborn.

“So, I’m almost afraid to ask… You didn’t invite me here believing in just that one formation from before, did you?”

Little Forest’s Binding Formation, the Twenty-Four Zodiac Binding Formation, where hundreds of practitioners surrounded one powerful person and bombarded them with relentless attacks.

“I’d like to believe not. If the trap you’ve prepared is just one binding formation, I would be terribly disappointed at how pathetic it is.”

During the First Righteous-Evil Great War, she had no choice but to suffer a great defeat due to their numbers, but now Persiella was confident.

If they came at her with the same numbers, unlike before, she was confident she could defeat all two hundred and forty Dragonborn and lead the war to victory.

“Keukeuk… The young girl has no shortage of words… Disappointed? That remains to be seen.”

As Diarma raised his left hand with a laugh mixed with anger, Little Forest’s elite two hundred and forty flew to the left and right, surrounding Persiella.

“You must have grown old and dim-sighted. Do you really need to see it through to the end to know such a thing?”

Bursting into laughter with her masked face, Persiella drew up her mana to the fullest and grasped her longsword with both hands.

“Attack!”

“Ha! Come at me. I’ll teach you the difference in class!”

And so, the battle of two hundred and forty against one began.