Strongest Among the Heavens
Chapter 444: Ravaged

Chapter 444: Ravaged

The creature’s eyes widened, its roar of defiance cut short as the blade drove deeper, tearing through its jaw and into its core. The lightning erupted from within. Arcs of electricity ripping through its massive frame.

Until the flames ravaged and overwhelmed it.

Suddenly, it was a struggle of titanic magic. Fire versus lightning. Yokai god versus human god.

"I-it’s stronger!" Jules and Matty had taken flight on the Ibong Adarna. Booker was there as well, although rather than being mounted, he clung onto its tail. "He’s going to lose at this rate!"

"Are you shitting me...?"

It was not the fact that Kazi Hossain even with all that power was losing. It was what Booker himself had to do. This gradual loss, this was the plan. This was what Kazi meant. Stand by. Be ready. Study the papers.

Booker knew what he had to do. He did what he was told. He memorized. He remembered. The professor and his cohorts could not figure out how the fire spawned. What organ caused it. He was a soldier. He knew how to analyze and apply.

With everything illuminated as it was, now he did. The bones were brightening orange and the longer this went on, the softer the bone became. The easier he could tell where the heat was concentrated.

’The stronger the heat of an area, the more likely the location of the malfunctioning organ for this ridiclous attack.’

Booker released the Ibong Adarna’s tail and free-fell. Strapped to his back was the primitive sniper. He flung it over and aimed. The heat and intensity, his focus and vision blurred.

So what?

’I’ve shot in worse conditions.’

Falling, falling, falling.

Bang!

The anti-magic bullet was off. The tiny bullet went through the bone, into the organ hosting area of bone, and struck the most superheated, red section.

It was a bullet well-aimed. The Great Fire Annihilation malfunctioned. Suddenly, Kazi Hossain was overpowering the fire until—

KRRRRA-KOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!

The battlefield was bathed in blinding light as the Gargantua Super Strike thrust inside the Bake-kujira and detonated.

*******

"As my scribe pesters me as so, I shall talk and he shall write. And so, I shall write. It is a king’s right.

There are few things in this life that I fear, but the memories of my youth still haunt me, and among them, none claw at my thoughts more than the encounter with the Bake-kujira. In those days, I was a prince, untempered by wisdom and as eager for glory as any young warrior. The Heavenly Tower called to me with its promises of valor and riches, and I answered with steel in hand and fire in my heart. Little did I know that I would stand before a creature so horrifying, so relentless, that it would shatter my youthful arrogance.

The Bake-kujira first appeared to us at the 32nd Gate of the Heavenly Tower, an immense lake suspended in the void like a jewel carved from night. At first, there was nothing but silence, the kind that presses upon the chest and demands reverence. Then, the surface of the water broke, and it rose—a behemoth of bone and malice, its skeletal frame glistening with the ichor of its domain. It was as if vengeance itself had taken form, the very wrath of nature made fleshless and unstoppable.

We were not prepared for what followed.

To fight it is to fight an army, for the creature summons monsters in swarms so vast that they darken the skies and churn the waters into chaos. Fish, slick and ravenous, hurled themselves at us like living arrows, their jaws snapping with impossible ferocity. Birds, skeletal and shrieking, rained death from above, tearing through our ranks with merciless precision.

I still recall the futility of cutting down one only to be swarmed by ten more. The sheer quantity of them is a weapon in and of itself—a living tide of claws, beaks, and scales. We fought as men possessed, and yet we were drowning in them, overwhelmed by numbers that no army could withstand.

My army could not withstand. I lost good men that day.

But the mist is not the apex of the Bake-kujira’s arsenal. No, that honor belongs to its Fire Annihilation Breath. I witnessed it only once, and it is a sight I would gladly forget. A searing wave of destruction erupted from its gaping maw, a fire so intense that it left nothing but ash in its wake. The lake boiled, the air screamed, and men who had stood beside me moments before were simply gone. I do not know if their souls remained to find the afterlife, or if even that was consumed.

Ah, but wait, the plague. The sickness I experienced afterward? Was that its greatest attack? It took our best healers to rid myself of its effects...

Ah, or was it its bone? Bone that our feeble spells could only break and dent but never destroy? It healed quite quickly, you see. Minutes after, it would always heal.

I have had decades to reflect upon that day, to revisit every moment, every decision. We did not defeat the Bake-kujira that day. We survived it, nothing more. We should have been tighter in coordination. We should have overwhelmed its healing factor with numerous strikes.

But even in the throes of our desperation and loss, I saw something—a crack, not in its bones, but in its resolve.

The Bake-kujira is not a mindless beast. It is driven by something deeper, something primal and consuming: revenge. I do not know what ancient wrongs gave birth to its wrath, but it carries them in every movement, in every breath. It fights not just to survive but to punish, to destroy. And it is this need, this unrelenting hunger for vengeance, that makes it vulnerable.

Hrm. Or perhaps it is what makes it so great.

Perhaps...it is no different from the strongest of us humans who act on emotion and love.

Perhaps."

- Journal Entry of King Harald Yngling II, Aided by a scribe, ???