The Heavenly Martial Empress Returns: An OP Xianxia Returnee LitRPG

Chapter 124: War Against Divine Beasts

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RUMBLE!

The world around the camp started to change immediately. Once the Barbarian God decided to sacrifice the world itself just so he could defeat Bing Xue and win, he began to absorb the world of Elios’ very essence. All life within it started to wither and die, and even the core of the planet was boiling rapidly, causing several sleeping volcanoes to erupt, and burning the surface with lava.

But that wasn’t even the worst part, as everyone that had survived until now saw the already enormous God become even bigger, fusing with the world itself, its stones, ores, mountains, and all the life he absorbed, becoming fused with the very surface and also the heavens above, swirling around him.

Those that were still alive started to fall into despair as they saw the end of the world. Players began running away one after another, and well, even the inhabitants escaped, running towards higher or lower floors of the Tower, abandoning a world they already thought was done for.

Yet those with Bing Xue remained fighting, even as the Barbarian god's abhorrent body started squirming and abominably producing monstrosities from his flesh and blood, powerful Divine Beasts of War and Bloodshed, imbued with his Divinity!

“ROOOAARR!”

“SHAAAAHH!”

“GRUOOHH!”

They resembled distorted, horrible forms of the old beast gods he devoured or used to create his weapons, roaring ferociously, made of flesh, blood, and burning stone, covered with crimson flames. Each beast was at least thirty meters tall, gigantic behemoths—the smallest though. The tallest could reach as high as a hundred meters with ease.

The entire battlefield shook constantly; the army that obeyed Bing Xue quickly panicked; demons, cavemen, and their generals alike saw in terrifying horror as everything was set ablaze and how these beasts rapidly started moving towards the camp, aiming to burn the place.

The camp was perhaps the only area of the world of Elios with the most population and also where entire families lived. Not every single person there was a member of the cult, most of them being tribes that were absorbed by them and forcefully made into devotees; even when they didn’t truly pray to the god, they feared him and did as they were told.

“Dammit! Where the heck did these things come from?!”

The Demons started screaming and running away; the beasts were simply too big; their curses and other techniques barely affected their powerful and giant bodies; they were all dying, being stomped one after another.

“The Demons!”

“No!”

“Friends!”

The cavemen panicked as they saw many of the demons, not as fast and strong as them to evade the stomps, die one after another, exploding into particles of red mist.

“Don’t worry! Demon friends immortal! They revive inside Bing Bing book! Fine if they die!” Fiery Hair roared. “However…! Not so easy for us! I will fight!”

Fiery Hair leaped into the battlefield after eating a recovery pill that Bing Xue had given her to use in emergencies, and she started clashing against the titanic beast all on her own.

“SHYAAAGGH!”

A giant cat-like divine beast roared, clashing against Fiery Hair with its titanic, blazing claws and trying to tear her to shreds, only to find out she was actually pretty damn tough, tough enough to not easily be hurt.

CLASH! CLASH! CLASH!

“GRRRHH?!”

The beast glared at its own claws, suddenly realizing they had been torn apart. Instead, it was as if hitting Fiery Hair was like trying to destroy a mountain with its bare claws! Fiery Hair’s Primal Power Aura surged, encompassing her in golden colors.

“HYAAAH!”

She rushed forward, clashing against the beast and punching its head, spreading countless cracks through its stony and rocky exterior.

And then she punched it again and again and again, all while kicking it from below, jumping over it as much as she needed!

BAAM! BAAM! BAAM! BAAM!

“SHIEEEHHH!”

The creature gave an agonizing scream as the countless cracks over its blazing body spread to the point it quickly began to fall into pieces, collapsing into the ground into a pile of stone, flames, and flesh, and dying.

RUMBLE!

And Fiery Hair didn’t kill the little ones, but just felled a one-hundred-meter-tall one—the ones that were less than ten! The rest of the cavemen, both the Children of the Fire and the Hawkeye Tribes, were filled with inspiration.

“Don’t fear! Not so different from home! Giant-scaled beasts we punched to death!”

“OOOOHHHH!”

The cavemen roared, rushing towards battle, and surrounding the divine beasts, unleashing barrages of powerful physical attacks. The children of fire mostly did the blunt work while the Hawkeyes helped them with mobility, covering them with their winds and also firing their wind-powered arrows.

BOOM! CLAASH! BAAM! CRAASH! RUMBLE!

For a second, the impossible happened. As the people of the camp escaped to the lower or higher floor, they glanced in disbelief as a group of cavemen started singlehandedly stopping an army of dozens of titanic creatures.

“We also have help, Merkite!”

“Yes sis!”

Urbosa and Merkite charged into battle, unleashing several piercing blows using their powerful element-powered spears of thunder and wind, their auras overflowing with spiritual energies, ki, mana, and small fragments of divinity.

“I feel stronger and faster now!” Merkite said. “Is this because of the power we absorbed from Leos?”

“Most likely, when he died, an explosion of divine spiritual energy from the beast spirits ended up falling over our bodies,” Urbosa nodded. “Bing Xue said that we grew strong from that, but let’s see how strong!”

The twins charged against three gigantic divine beasts at once; their giant claws and fiery breaths rapidly reached them, yet the twins easily evaded, using their elements to quickly leap into the skies and escape their deadly attacks.

At the same time, they descended with their spears pointing at the monster’s flesh, lightning and winds shrouding their bodies as their growing divinity continued to become stronger and mightier, making their very presences shake the surroundings.

CLASH! CLASH! CLASH! CLASH!

Leaping down and up, their spears rapidly impaled the gigantic monstrosities, imbuing destructive windstorms and thunderstorms inside their wounds and making the creatures explode into pieces from the inside out.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM

Indeed, they had become much stronger than they ever thought they could become; defeating Leos not only allowed them to avenge their fallen and also all those that were betrayed, but it also helped them reach a new level.

Their Martial Cores were already about to ascend into Rank 6 with all the surplus energies they had gained. Thanks to Bing Xue’s special formations within their bodies, their growth in levels and other energies hastened their Ki cultivation greatly!

“I can feel it… Within me, something is surging!” Urbosa said. “This Aura is different…”

“Yeah, me too, sis!” Merkite agreed. “Our Martial Aura… it’s growing constantly!”

They had already reached the pinnacle of Rank 5, and the last thing they needed to do was combine their Soul and Aura together to acquire an Immortal Spark within the core of their Souls. Once this process was finished, they could finally ascend into Immortals.

And as they battled, almost instinctively, their Aura and their Souls were rapidly melding together, as if they had dissolved and combined, becoming a single force, a single power within them. What emerged from their bodies was no longer just the excess energy that generated Auras.

No, it was the very aura of their soul, the radiance of their Ki, Spirit Energy, Mana, and the Spiritual Divinity Fragments they obtained from Leos.

“Keep going; we’re getting somewhere, but we need to keep fighting!”

“Leveling up will help us get there!”

The pair continued fighting, clashing against the beasts one after another. At the same time, Mursha and Peperina also joined them and Fiery Hair in their battle against the invading creatures.

“They’re progressively growing stronger or is that my idea?!”

Peperina rushed across the burning grasslands as her entire body was set ablaze, making her resemble a rabbit goddess of blue flames. She leaped with her superior agility and abilities, easily crushing her foes with her hammer, which she shapeshifted in a myriad of ways or even enhanced its size temporarily.

CRASH! CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!

RUMBLE!

The ground shook as she finished off her fifth beast, pulverizing their heads into pieces. After hitting it five times in a row, the creature died, collapsing, and immediately turning into a pile of stone and flames.

“GRUOOOHHHHH!”

The beasts continued roaring furiously, charging against the last stand, protecting the camp and the thousands of people behind it.

Mursha stood in front of them, and only minutes after having killed the cult leader, the battle had yet to end as the monsters continued emerging.

She could see in the skies as Bing Xue battled the God of Destruction in his strongest form. Her attacks were tremendously potent, but the bastard was constantly recovering and regrowing.

“He’s using the power of the world to regenerate endlessly! And Bing Xue is taking her time because she doesn’t want him to end up destroying the world either…” Mursha immediately tell what was happening. “Dammit… DAMMIT!”

She grew furious; even after avenging her family and her tribe, the world was still in peril, and the monstrosity that the cult created was running rampart, left alone for too long. It ended up becoming too powerful, capable of controlling the Elemental Laws and Pillars of Elios and empowering himself endlessly.

“RAAAAHHH!”

With a furious roar, Mursha harnessed her new Divinity, overflowing with the Aura of not just a mortal anymore, but a Demigoddess. The body of a mortal was there, but her soul was now that of a goddess, and her divinity overflowed with great power.

The Divinity of Hope harnessed millions of small particles of light around her body, giving her the strength that the people of Elios possessed. Their hope, their prayers—everything became her strength!

Like a charging and unstoppable bull, Mursha sliced apart dozens of divine beasts at once, using her sheer body prowess to easily cut through them and shatter the divine beasts into pieces.

Her titanic axe overflowed with its cursed powers, capable of breaking the pathways of mana and the connections it produced within magic and beings, easily making it possible for her to ignore most of her foe’s defenses.

BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM! BOOOM!

The explosions caused by her attacks were the divine beasts themselves, which were exploding like bombs one after another. The explosions were powerful enough to send flying the other creatures, weakening them in the process.

This helped Mursha pick them up and kill them quickly. While everyone else was also fighting right behind her, Mursha was the one that was singlehandedly pushing forward the most, yet even with her newfound powers, she was growing weary and tired.

“Hahhh… Hahhh… When… when is this ending?” She muttered, looking at the sky. “Dammit…!”

The rest of the warriors behind her were already beginning to have similar thoughts; the monstrosity that the God of Destruction became continued creating more and more divine beasts from his flesh and blood, endlessly.

“Was destroying this world entirely always part of their plans?” Mursha thought. “That bastard and his tribe... They have condemned the entire world to catastrophic destruction. Why? Just why did he accept the offer from those outsiders?!”

Mursha recalled the memories the Bloodfang Wolf shared with her of those mysterious beings, or "people,” that had talked with Ultimus' tribe three hundred years ago.

The ones that granted them the artifacts and the grimoires containing the knowledge to create a God quite literally, an Evil God that didn’t embody natural elements of the opposite.

Gods created to destroy, bring demise, and curse all living beings.

“I don’t know what even their goal is, but those beings… those people…” Mursha muttered. “They have already targeted many worlds; ours is only one of many… I have to tell this to Bing Xue somehow…!”

“ROOOAAARRR!”

As Mursha kept pushing forward, a titanic divine monster reached her, with three lion heads and the tail of a snake, set ablaze and covered by volcanic stone. It charged against her.

Mursha gritted her teeth, preparing herself for the worst. At this point, she didn’t know if she would be able to win against such a behemoth or not.

“RAAAHHH!”

She roared back at it, swinging her axe against it!

Yet, amidst the despair...

FLASH!

Suddenly, the sky was illuminated, as five bright lights illuminated the sky above and then rapidly descended towards the surface.

And then, it was as if the world’s time itself had suddenly stopped.

Mursha found herself standing, bleeding and exhausted, in front of a creature of myth.

A huge animal made of blinding spiritual light, exuding divinity!

It was a beautiful phoenix made of golden light and fiery flames.

“Mursha Bloodfang, the last member of the strongest tribe of Elios... I have a request for you.”

“H-Huh?”

“Please, become my vessel and help me save our world from its demise.”

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