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/-\
Arthur charged.
No teleport. No tricks.
Just raw momentum.
Arthur leapt, shadow-reinforced muscles propelling him upward as he grabbed one of Nidhogg's necks with both hands. The serpent thrashed, coils tightening, crushing pressure threatening to pulp him, but Arthur held on.
He slammed his forehead into the serpent's skull.
Again and again.
Each impact sent ripples through the head, but Nidhogg barely slowed. Another head struck Arthur's back, biting deep. Venom flooded his system.
and did nothing.
Arthur's resistance burned it away as fast as it entered.
Shadows erupted outward.
Not blades.
Not spears.
A guillotine formed around the frost head. violet and shadow fused together, screaming as Arthur poured everything he had into that construct, if not for the endless energy supply from central power battery back in Qward, this construct alone would have made his Shadow Ring screaming for charge.
His arms trembled.
The FEAR debuff still weighed on him.
Nidhogg thrashed violently, other heads smashing into him, cracking ribs, ripping muscle. Arthur screamed in fury.
"COME ON!"
He brought the guillotine down.
The blade bit.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then
CRACK.
The frost head separated from the body in a geyser of dark blood and frozen energy, crashing into the roots below. Nidhogg roared in pain, the sound shaking the abyss itself.
Arthur was thrown backward, tearing free as the frost released its grip.
He hit the ground hard, rolling, clutching his arm as blood poured freely.
He laughed once breathless, exhausted.
"…Got you."
Then he felt it.
Nothing changed.
Arthur's smile faded.
He looked up.
Seven heads remained.
And the power… was still there.
"Damn it…Wrong one," he muttered.
Nidhogg's remaining heads reared back, their fury now sounded worse.
Arthur dragged himself upright, pain screaming through every nerve, eyes burning brighter instead of dimmer.
"…Guess I'll have to keep cutting," he said hoarsely.
Arthur clenched his jaw.
Shadows surged from the Shadow Ring, flowing like liquid night over his injured hand. They hardened, layered, locking into place, an articulated cast of shadow, reinforced at every joint.
Arthur flexed his fingers.
The construct responded instantly.
"…This will do," he muttered.
Nidhogg did not give him time to admire it.
The serpent attacked
Seven heads struck at once.
Arthur vanished forward instead of back.
He dove into the kill zone.
A massive head wreathed in dark flame descended, jaws opening wide enough to swallow him whole. Arthur twisted mid-air and drove the Kamish Twinblade upward, plunging it straight through the roof of its mouth.
The blade sank deep.
Black fire erupted outward, engulfing Arthur completely.
Arthur shielded himself with Ruler's Authority but did not let go.
The flames burned hot, eating everything in its path, the head did not stop. It thrashed violently, smashing Arthur against the roots, trying to shake him loose.
"…This blade is deep enough to reach your brain.." Arthur snarled through clenched teeth. "You should be dead..."
A second head slammed into his side, venomous lightning tearing across his body, nerves screaming.
"Seems beheading you is the only option here."
Arthur was thrown clear, crashing hard, rolling twice before skidding to a stop on one knee. Smoke rose from his shoulders. His shadows flickered, but held.
Nidhogg advanced.
Coils tightened. Roots shattered beneath its weight. The serpent exuded immeasurable strength.
Arthur stood slowly, violet eyes blazing.
"Seven heads," he said to himself, breathing heavy. "And every one of them could wipe out a Monarch it seems."
The serpent roared.
Arthur felt the pressure again that ancient presence pressing down on his spine, daring him to kneel.
He didn't.
Shadows surged outward not forming weapons this time, but structures.
Arthur sprinted forward as shadow pylons erupted from the ground behind him, curving inward mid-charge. The head spewing venomous lightning fired again
but the lightning struck the constructs instead.
Arthur snapped his fingers.
The pylons collapsed inward, forming a rotating shadow cage around the lightning head. The energy rebounded inside, chaining back onto itself, frying scales from within.
The head shrieked.
Arthur leapt.
The dark-flame head surged to intercept him, fire roaring. Arthur twisted, shadows forming a counter-rotating spiral shield around his body, compressing the flames instead of blocking them.
He slammed both hands forward.
The compressed fire detonated backward into the serpent's own neck.
Nidhogg recoiled.
Arthur landed atop a root, chest heaving.
"So that's it," he muttered. "You shrug off blades… but shadows shaped by my will?"
He smiled grimly.
"They hurt."
Nidhogg answered with brutality.
Two heads struck simultaneously one crushing downward, the other snapping sideways. Arthur raised his shadow-cast arm, reinforcing it instantly. The impact shattered the ground beneath him, but he held barely.
Bones screamed.
Arthur pushed back, roaring, and drove his knee into the underside of the crushing head. The force sent shockwaves rippling through the roots.
He didn't give it time to recover.
The Shadow Ring flared.
A massive circular construct formed around both the dark-flame head and the lightning head interlocking shadow arcs spinning faster and faster, tightening like a closing maw.
Arthur thrust both hands forward.
"Don't look up." he said.
The construct collapsed inward, forcing both heads together.
and then a blade formed between them.
One blade.
One drop.
Arthur poured everything into it, fury, focus and will.
The blade came down.
Both heads were severed in a single catastrophic strike, crashing into the abyss below in a storm of shadow, fire, and lightning.
Nidhogg howled this time in genuine pain.
Arthur staggered backward, dropping to one knee, breathing hard, shadows dripping from him like smoke.
"…Two more, still the wrong ones." he said hoarsely.
Five heads remained.
Blood dark, poured from the stumps, sizzling where it touched the World Tree.
Arthur forced himself upright, eyes burning brighter than ever.
"what a monster..." he said quietly, staring up at the colossal serpent.
He clenched his shadow-cast hand.
"But I'll pull through this."
Nidhogg reared back, remaining heads gathering power.
Arthur took a breath.
And stepped forward again.
****
EARTH – ATLANTIC OCEAN
The sea felt him before the sky did.
Across the world's oceans, tides hesitated. Waves slowed, and ancient things lurking in the deep stirred uneasily as if a long-forgotten name had been spoken again.
Poseidon emerged.
No storm crowned his arrival. No lightning split the heavens.
The clouds simply parted.
He stood above the water, trident resting lightly against his palm, eyes scanning the horizon not the surface, but the air itself.
Hermes never truly vanished.
That was what the others never understood.
The Messenger God did not simply move. Even when airborne, even when running across clouds, he left behind faint, razor-thin shears of divine energy. And when Hermes ran on water, as he preferred to, the sea remembered him.
Poseidon raised his trident.
The ocean answered.
Not with waves, but with memory.
The surface beneath him darkened, turning mirror-smooth as currents reversed themselves, flowing backward in silence. Ripples unraveled. Foam sank back into the deep. The sea rewound not time itself, but impression.
Poseidon's gaze sharpened.
There.
A distortion raced across the ocean's skin fast, impossibly fast skipping from crest to crest. Not flying.
Running.
Poseidon exhaled slowly.
'Of course you ran on water instead of flying..'
Hermes always did.
The divine wake streaked eastward, a straight line cut through sea and air alike, too fast for mortals to ever perceive, but unmistakable to a god who ruled the waters.
Poseidon followed the trail with his eyes alone.
Past the last breath of the ocean.
Past the thinning blue.
Toward land.
Toward the desert shimmering in the distance.
A memory surfaced.
Athena's words about Hermes mentioning a desert he was about to investigate.
Poseidon's jaw tightened.
"…You were right," he murmured.
The sea released its hold, memory dissolving back into motion as Poseidon stepped forward.
The ocean vanished beneath him.
The desert greeted him with silence and heat.
At the heart of it lay a crater.
Not the kind left by meteor or bomb, but something far more man-made or God-made. Glassed sand spiraled outward in unnatural patterns, fused into blackened arcs that still faintly glimmered with residual divine energy.
Poseidon descended slowly, boots touching sand.
His trident hummed.
He knelt at the crater's center.
There were signs of combat everywhere if one knew how to look.
Scorch marks that were not fire.
Fractures in the earth that spiraled inward instead of outward.
Traces of speed so extreme they had burned absence into the air.
Then he saw it.
What remained.
It could not be called a skeleton.
Bones implied time. Decay. Natural erosion.
The remains were bleached beyond white, smoothed as though centuries had passed in an instant, yet perfectly preserved, the shape was vaguely humanoid but fragile, like something that had been emptied rather than killed.
Poseidon's breath caught.
There half-buried beneath the remains were the sandals.
Winged.
Cracked. Scorched. One wing bent backward at an impossible angle, the divine metal dulled, ancient runes eroded as though time itself had gnawed at them.
Poseidon reached out, fingers hovering just above them.
He didn't need to touch them.
He knew.
These unmistakably belonged to the fastest god to ever live.
Poseidon's eyes widened, sea-green irises darkening as realization struck him.
"Hermes…"
The word left his lips as a whisper.
Only the wind passed over the crater, carrying grains of sand across the remains of a god.
Poseidon straightened slowly, trident tightening in his grip. 'Whatever had happened here…
…was not the work of the mortal Arthur' that much he knew.
And that truth frightened him even more.
/-\
If you Like this story! Check out my other stories! Solo leveling in Westeros.
&
If you wish to read more or simply support me than check out my patreon at
"https://www.patreon.com/FrenzyAren"
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want