Titan King: Ascension of the Giant
Chapter 813 - 813: Know Thy Enemy

To conquer a kingdom is easy; to rule it is the difficult part.

Alexander could understand Leonidas's sentiment. He too was a peak Archlord, and in the presence of demigods, he felt the weight of his own voice diminish. It was especially galling with their protégés right there beside them.

This wasn't about vanity; it was a stark reflection of their own insufficiency. There was nothing to be done for it. They could only clink their casks together and drink, hoping to wash away the bitter taste of their own limitations.

"I heard," Isabella began, tilting her head as she looked at Orion, "that you two killed another pair of Archlords?"

The question was sharp enough that even Kraken, luxuriating in his wine bath, lifted his head from the glass tank to look at Orion.

"It wasn't me," Orion said with a sigh. "It was Leonidas. He swallowed one of them alive. The other… the kill was only possible because of a switch he made. I was just the executioner holding the blade, the tool for the job."

He felt a pang of his own inadequacy. Even after ascending to the Archlord tier, he realized the gap between himself and his brothers—Leonidas, Alexander, Arthas—was far larger than he had imagined. In the recent battle, he had been completely powerless against Grand General Dorian. Yet the moment Leonidas appeared, Dorian was dead.

"A switch?" Isabella pressed, her curiosity piqued.

Orion paused, trying to find the right words for a concept he barely understood himself. "Think of it this way," he began, gesturing to his own armor and then to Isabella's. "I am wearing plate, you are wearing leather. Leonidas has an ability that can, in essence, swap our armor."

He went on to describe the battle with Dorian, the infuriating time-slowing ability, and the final, decisive moment. "So when I struck the final blow, the enemy's defensive ability had been swapped with Leonidas's own. I was just the headsman. Leonidas was the one who truly won the fight."

The battle had been a harsh lesson. Orion now saw with painful clarity the deficiencies in his own combat style.

First, there was a fundamental difference between his mirror avatars and Leonidas's dragon incarnations. His avatars were echoes, perfect copies of his own skills and bloodline. They were dependent on his main body for growth and could not truly evolve on their own. Leonidas's avatars, however, were distinct beings with their own unique powers and skills, their growth untethered from his own. One was not necessarily better than the other, but they had different paths and different limitations. He needed to study this field more deeply.

Second, he realized that while his own skills were powerful and fast, he lacked the experience and tactical variety to deal with highly specialized opponents. Brute force could not, in fact, solve every problem. He needed to enrich his arsenal, to develop abilities that could counter any foe, not just overwhelm them.

Finally, he needed to cultivate more avatars. He would send them out into the world to fight, to learn, to experience, and to gather the combat data and insights he so desperately needed.

"The last time I saw you, you were a peak Legendary being," Isabella said, staring at him. "Now you are an Archlord. I confess, it feels… unreal."

She remembered his arrival on the Dawn Continent, watching him fight alongside Alexander to slay an Archlord while he was still of a lower tier. Back then, she could still see his back, a goal that felt within her reach. She had believed that if she could just reach the peak of the Legendary tier herself, she too could perform such feats.

But now, learning of his ascension to Archlord, a sense of despair washed over her. It was the crushing, suffocating feeling of being utterly surpassed by a peer of her own generation, and it was a difficult pill to swallow.

Kraken felt it too. But unlike Isabella, his frustration was mingled with a fierce confidence. He knew he was not so far behind Orion. If Orion could become an Archlord, then so could he.

Besides, he knew that in this cross-realm war, he was poised to be the biggest winner of them all. Once the Champions Alliance secured the Dusk Continent, the vast oceans surrounding it would become his domain—a territory larger than Orion's and Isabella's combined.

Orion reached out and snapped his fingers in front of Isabella's face. When she blinked, startled, he flicked her sharply on the forehead.

"You—!" she yelped, glaring at him.

"You can still feel pain," Orion said with a grin. "That means this is the real world."

He turned back to Kraken's tank and resumed pouring, while Kraken deftly filled his goblet and raised it in a toast.

"Cheers!"

Titanion Realm—The World Tunnels

Within the Archmage's shimmering prison of light, Orion dug the Lord's Stone from the heart of the reptilian behemoth and pocketed the soul-gem the creature left behind.

With its anchor destroyed, the illusion shattered, and Orion, the Sea-Drake King, and the Saint of the Order of Man stumbled back into reality, all three of them bloodied and utterly exhausted.

"Orion, we owe you our thanks," the Sea-Drake King wheezed.

"Orion, if you ever have the time, please visit my kingdom," the Saint added, his voice strained. "I have the oldest, finest vintages on the continent in my cellars."

Both of them were on the verge of collapse. They had nearly died in the light-illusion, hounded by an endless swarm of reptilian phantasms. It was only at the last moment, when Orion had finally located and killed the behemoth's true form, that they had been freed.

Without him, the true bodies of a king and a saint might have fallen that day. Their gratitude was immense.

In truth, Orion could have slain the behemoth far earlier. He had deliberately held back, using the opportunity to observe the combat capabilities of his two powerful neighbors.

The humans on land, the sea-drakes in the ocean—he would have to deal with both of them in the future. Know thy enemy, and know thyself, he thought, and you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. It was an invaluable intelligence-gathering opportunity, and he had no intention of wasting it, even if they never became enemies. It paid to be prepared.

"You two held the line against the horde," Orion said, his tone warm and friendly, betraying none of his cold calculations. "That's what gave me the time to find its true form among the thousands of illusions. We escaped with our lives because all three of us worked together."

He clapped them on their shoulders, a gesture of camaraderie. After all, they had faced life and death together, had they not?