Lightning and thunder rumbled as Dao Ma began taking long deep breaths while preparing himself for the Ascension ahead ignoring Rowan.
For over a hundred thousand years he had gathered and reared hundreds of billions of creatures inside his Divine Kingdom, aided by his Divine Spark and his authority over the deep, he would make sure that nothing would reach him until he ascended.
Inside his armies were millions of Earth gods, he had sacrificed intelligence for strength but it was worth the price, he did not need intelligent subordinates, he only needed good henchmen.
His Divine Spark was fed by countless beasts of the deep, granting him access to large volumes of Essence, this was what had partly fed his quick ascension to the stage of a Major god. It was well known that he was among those with the greatest potential among the gods.
His armies, if he willed it, were endless.
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One of the Angels holding the strained Formation above happened to be at the exact spot where the clash occurred between the Creator and the horde of endless beasts.
The sound that erupted from the impact was surprisingly dull, and then a loud rumble followed by a shockwave that traveled through the horde nearly reaching the frozen Anima of Dao Ma.
The Angel became frozen in awe and many others too when he saw a massive red flower bloom. The red flower began to rise until it reached the heavens, and then it fell and scattered where it became a rain of blood.
What the Angel just witnessed was the entire blood of hundreds of millions of beasts blasted away from their shattered bodies and lifted into the air for thousands of miles before falling.
This was not just butchery on a scale beyond most mortal comprehension…. This was Art.
Eva spat, "Show off." but she did her part in making sure that the blue and green portals continued growing bigger, the green portal spitting out wind devoid of power while the blue collected all the powers in the winds.
She would be the hand inside the shadow that would quietly chip away at the foundations while Rowan could be the shining light in the open drawing all the attention.
That was the reason for her Title—The Lady of Shadows.
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Another flower bloomed and then another, and when they fell back to the earth like rain, the next blooming flower would push every blood drop back into the sky, making each flower bigger until it broke the bounds of the battlefield and poured into space, where it began to spread.
For millions of miles, blood washed the void of space where it froze like tiny red gems. These gems held sizable powers, as most of them were taken from the bodies of Earth gods, perhaps they might fall on a planet, and a lucky person or beast might acquire it, changing their destinies.
Life was a fickle thing, and great glory or endless mediocrity could fall to luck.
Rowan kept moving forward, below him was a carpet of bodies that continually thickened. His hair was carried by ephemeral winds and the scream of Envy reflected the savagery in every motion of his body.
Yet, it still fell short.
The creatures emerging from the Divine Kingdom of Dao Ma were seemingly unending and they were ejected faster than he could kill them.
Each swing of his Axe killed millions and more took their place, he could not get tired, but his killing speed had a limit, he was growing fast, but not fast enough to match the amount of bodies being thrown at him until he was buried under a press of bodies, thousands of miles in diameter, creating a ball of flesh that was sickening to look at.
The sounds and sight of billions of lives squeezing down on a single person were horrific.
Dao Ma looked below and laughed, for a while there he was a bit worried that his enemy would have charged through his horde, but he had an endless amount of beasts and his Divine Kingdom would produce an endless more of them as long as his Divine Source existed.
"Keep him leashed.* He commanded, "I will personally peel the flesh from his bones, and bathe in his screams"
Dao Ma turned to the first Flower of Eternity, bracing himself he stepped on it, a blinding light erupted from the flower and he screamed, as he underwent the Tribulation and baptism of the Eternal Flower. His attention was covered by the world inside the Eternal Flower and his perception of the outside world was cut off.
For a short while, only the sounds of beast howling could be detected from the horde as more beasts kept piling into the gigantic ball of flesh.
Rowan had been crushed, and there was no single inch of space for him to move, Envy vibrated, vaporizing large swatches of bodies, but more filled the gap before he could make any movement.
Slowly the weight increased as millions of tons were added to the unholy pile every second, until the size of this flesh ball was approaching the size of a large city.
The roars, hoots, howling, and shrieking increased until it could be all that was heard. The creatures disregarded their lives as they paid for time with their bodies.
A loud laughter was heard as Dao Ma succeeded in his first Tribulation and stepped on the second Eternal Flower, he was processing faster than he had thought.
Then a roar resounded, it was long and sonorous, like a trumpet blown from the depth of hell that froze the entire battlefield and the ball of flesh seemed to pause. Even the flood of beasts from the Divine Kingdom slowed.
The roar could not be described, possessing endless bloodlust and sovereignty. It was from a beast that could look down on all creation as inferior specimens, it was in a league all on its own.
A powerful Wyvern who was an Earth god wanted to roar back in challenge but was silenced when another roar followed, this one was slightly different but still possessed the same majesty and intent.
Another roar followed and another, until six mighty roars silenced the heavens, and the massive ball of flesh shuddered, and six holes that resembled vortexes opened around the ball of flesh.
