[White Ice Coast — Chikoka Prefecture]
The Atlantean shock-troopers who had stormed the beach fanned out across the dunes, sweeping into the perimeter of the coastal villas and seaside resorts.
The buildings were hollow shells. No defensive barricades. No trembling civilians. Not a single trace of human life remained in the resort district.
Seeing the ghost town, the vanguard relaxed their guard. Weapons lowered slightly, and the front ranks began pushing deeper past the tree line, laughing among themselves at how easily the surface world yielded to their advance.
SCREEEEEECH—
High in the pale sky, a heavy black warhead trailing a dense plume of dark exhaust cut through the clouds, descending toward the shoreline at terminal velocity.
Having survived the missile strikes during the naval engagement, the Atlantean warriors recognized the screech instantly. Panic erupted across the sand as thousands turned on their heels, scrambling desperately toward the foaming surf.
It was already too late.
BOOOOOOOOM!!
A blinding, incandescent wall of fire swallowed the horizon. A titanic mushroom cloud tore into the upper atmosphere, blotting out the sun.
Japan possessed no sovereign nuclear arsenal, but the archipelago had never lacked weapons of absolute, apocalyptic devastation. The Thermobaric Munition—the pinnacle of non-nuclear kinetic destruction—ignited its aerosolized fuel directly over the dunes.
In a fraction of a millisecond, the blast consumed every atom of atmospheric oxygen across a three-kilometer radius.
The pristine sands of White Ice Beach transformed into a molten, glass-scorched abattoir. Warriors caught near the epicenter were instantly vaporized into ash. Those fortunate enough to be shielded from the immediate thermal wave suffered a far more agonizing fate; the catastrophic vacuum ripped the air from their lungs, collapsing their thoracic cavities and leaving them to convulse and suffocate on the burning earth.
"NOOOOO!!"
A heart-wrenching, guttural shriek tore from the surface swells.
Just beyond the breaker line, Attuma clutched General Arno's armored forearms with hands that shook uncontrollably. His yellowed eyes were bloodshot, staring at the shore in paralyzed horror.
"Annihilate them... tear every single one of them to pieces!!" Attuma roared, his voice cracking with weeping rage. "Arno! It was my failure! I should have listened to your counsel!!"
Looking upon the charred, smoking remnants of thousands of Atlantean warriors and the suffocated corpses littering the dunes, Attuma felt a despair so profound it burned his throat.
His grand dream of an immortal terrestrial conquest had evaporated into ash, replaced by the most humiliating disaster in the military history of the undersea empire. Had Arno not physically anchored him in the surf, the newly crowned King of Atlantis would have perished alongside his men.
Every shred of imperial vanity vanished from Attuma's soul. He no longer cared for territorial conquest or dry land.
He wanted only vengeance. He wanted to drown this entire continent beneath the Pacific and bury this ruthless nation alongside the bones of his army.
Wiping the soot from his eyes, General Arno steadied his sovereign. He had opposed the landing operation from its inception, and seeing Attuma finally break through his delusions was the exact pivot he had prepared for.
Arno turned to the elite command division guarding the deep currents.
"Mobilize all deep-sea survey units," Arno commanded, his tone chillingly level. "Locate the structural fault lines and tectonic anchor points supporting this island shelf. The second our converter array is anchored into the bedrock... the warriors who strike that blow will be heralded as the supreme saviors of Atlantis."
"Understood!"
The legion dispersed into the depths, fanning out along the continental shelf. At the formation's core, an elite, cold-eyed squad remained unmoving, forming an iron perimeter around the dormant tectonic converters.
[Tokyo — Ministry of Defense Command Center]
"Those fish-men are complete savages," an officer scoffed, leaning back in his chair with a triumphant grin as live satellite feeds played across the war room's main holo-screens. "To abandon the water and charge an empty beachhead... they couldn't even identify a standard coastal bait trap."
"And to think Saitō managed to lose our entire naval vanguard to beasts of that intellectual caliber," another official chimed in, adjusting his glasses with disdain. "An absolute disgrace to the nation."
Around the central command table, several staff officers were practically beaming, eager to celebrate the total annihilation of the enemy's landing force.
"Silence! Every last one of you!"
A furious shout echoed through the operations bunker. Defense Minister Gen Nakatani slammed his palm onto the table, his cold glare silencing the room instantly.
"The war is far from over! What in the hell are you celebrating?!" Nakatani barked, his veins bulging against his collar. "A ambush of that nature works precisely once. Do you truly believe an abyssal civilization will offer us another stationary target on dry sand?!"
Nakatani swept his gaze over the pale officers. "The enemy commands total subsurface mobility across every nautical mile of our archipelago. They can launch localized amphibious raids on any undefended village along thousands of kilometers of coastline. While you fools sit here popping champagne over a single scorched beach, our civilian population remains entirely vulnerable to mass panic. Deploy all Ground Self-Defense reserves along the regional perimeters immediately!"
[The Nibelungen — The Sky Palace]
Outside the great gates of the floating citadel, the violent crisis had finally reached its conclusion.
Through the synchronized containment of the Atlantean sonic shock-troopers, Tony Stark's repulsor traps, and Natasha Romanoff's steady psychological stabilization, the Hulk's feral trance had broken. Bruce Banner lay curled in the grass, shivering and panting, his skin returning to a pale mortal tone.
Yet inside the throne room, an entirely different nightmare had reached its zenith.
Pinned to the shattered flagstones beneath the crushing genetic gravity of Dr. Herzog's White King aura, Chisei Gen, Yasha, Sakura, and Crow were entirely helpless. Their blood burned like liquid acid, rendering even the act of breathing an agonizing ordeal.
Standing half a pace away, Chinu Gen watched his paralyzed brother with quiet, sadistic amusement.
He had once asked Herzog why they didn't simply sever the heads of the Execution Bureau on the spot. Herzog had merely offered an enigmatic smile.
'Dead men cannot carry tales,' Herzog had remarked. 'And for my new world order to rise, the old powers must be plunged into total, blinding chaos.'
CRACK.
Above the throne, the pulsing Bone Reliquary Jar fractured. Ancient, petrified bone parted as a brilliant, terrifying luminescence spilled across the dais.
Within the shattered vessel, a towering, armored silhouette slowly unfurled its limbs.
A single, blinding golden eye snapped open.
"Have I... returned to the waking realm?"
A voice like grinding tectonic plates echoed through the hall, carrying the primordial chill of an ancient gale.
The towering sovereign glanced down from the dais, his lone eye sweeping across the figures before him.
"The White King..." the monarch murmured, his gaze shifting to Chinu. "...and a half-blood mongrel. It seems the terrestrial world has fractured considerably during my millennia of slumber."
Odin, the King of Sky and Wind, stood tall upon the ruined stone.
He held zero interest in conversing with either of them. Even in the primordial era before the dawn of human empires, his alliance with the White King against the Black King, Nidhogg, had been born solely of ruthless, opportunistic survival.
Now, having just clawed his consciousness back from the reliquary jar, Odin was at his absolute physical nadir. Facing an entity wielding the supreme mental and spiritual authority of the White King while his own divine flesh was brittle was a risk he had zero intention of taking.
"You are unbound," Herzog said smoothly, offering a slight, respectful bow as he took two deliberate steps backward, clearing an unobstructed path toward the ruined gates. "There is no reason to look upon me with suspicion, Ancient Sovereign. Your return to this world is the greatest gift you could ever offer me."
Odin offered no reply.
WHOOSH.
Before the draft of the open gates could even settle, the air warped violently. A localized vacuum tore through the hall, and Odin vanished from the throne like a phantom riding the storm.
"He remains remarkably cautious," Chinu murmured, adjusting his chains as he watched the empty archway. "Letting him depart unchecked... is that truly enough for your designs, Master? In his weakened state, severing his divinity would have been trivial."
"It is more than enough," Herzog replied, a razor-sharp, chilling smile curling across his weathered face.
He had never intended to harvest Odin in the cradle.
The modern world was far too vigilant, with Cassell College, S.H.I.E.L.D., and ancient secret societies monitoring every geopolitical anomaly. Herzog could not afford to draw their collective firepower while his own apotheosis remained incomplete.
With an ancient, resurrected Dragon King loose upon the terrestrial plane, Cassell College's entire war machine would be forced to deploy every elite asset to hunt the storm god.
Odin was the ultimate, living smokescreen.
Herzog turned his golden eyes toward the floor, casting a final, condescending glance at Chisei Gen.
"Go, little Patriarch," Herzog whispered, his voice carrying the cruel amusement of a puppet master. "Run back to your elders. Spread the gospel of the storm... and ignite your precious dragon-slaying war."
With a soft rustle of dark cloth, the spatial fabric around Herzog and Chinu rippled.
In the blink of an eye, both monsters vanished into thin air, leaving only the paralyzed Dragon Slayers struggling upon the cold, blood-stained stone.
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Give me powerstones.
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