Reincarnated with a lucky draw system

Chapter 458: SOVEREIGNS’ BATTLE III

Aaron raised his hands slowly, deliberately, palms facing outward as though conducting an invisible orchestra.

His eyes ignited with a molten gold glow, bright, unnatural, almost liquid metal swirling within his irises.

The light from them cast harsh shadows across his face, sharpening every line of cruel amusement.

Pitch darkness erupted in front of him.

It didn’t simply appear; it tore into existence like a wound in reality itself.

The shadow was absolute, deeper than black, hungrier than void.

It pulsed with a living malice, tendrils writhing outward in slow, deliberate curls that seemed to swallow light, sound, and even the concept of distance.

The air around the canopy grew colder, heavier, thick with the scent of old iron and decaying starlight.

The white-hot flames of the Primordial Dragon, pure annihilation compressed into a solar-system-sized inferno, slammed into Aaron’s shadow canopy with cataclysmic force.

The collision should have ended everything.

Everyone sneered in unison, Sovereigns, dragons, gods, demons—expecting instant obliteration.

Lips curled in contempt.

Eyes gleamed with anticipated victory.

They had seen the Primordial Dragon’s white fire erase entire pantheons before; no mortal, no upstart, no weakling could possibly stand against it.

"Sorry to keep your hopes up," Aaron said in a mocking, almost playful tone that cut through the roar of clashing energies like a knife through silk. "But that’s not happening."

To the absolute, stunned surprise of every adversary present, the canopy of shadow did not buckle. It did not burn. It did not even tremble.

Instead, it opened wider, like a greedy maw, and swallowed the white-hot flames whole.

The dragon breath, larger than worlds, hotter than creation’s birth, vanished into the darkness as though it had never existed.

Tendrils of shadow coiled greedily around the last flickering embers, dragging them inward.

The blinding white light dimmed, guttered, and died, devoured like a candle flame pinched between fingers.

The heat that should have scorched planets vanished without a trace, leaving only a faint, acrid aftertaste of ozone and charred nothingness in the air.

"How?" Zeus asked, the single word escaping him in a hoarse whisper.

The question echoed the disbelief burning in every Sovereign mind.

He couldn’t comprehend it.

Minutes ago he could have ended this human with a casual sneeze, reduced him to ash with a stray spark of lightning.

Now that same human had casually blocked the Primordial Dragon’s ultimate attack.

The impossibility of it clawed at Zeus’s pride like talons.

"How is he exuding the aura of a Sovereign?" Odin asked, voice low and urgent.

He leaned forward, single eye narrowing as he tried to peer deeper into Aaron’s essence searching for the source, the trick, the lie.

But the more Odin looked, the less he saw.

Aaron’s presence slipped through perception like smoke through fingers.

Layers upon layers of obfuscation wrapped around him.

The harder Odin pushed, the more the truth retreated, leaving only echoes and blind spots.

No one could provide an answer for Aaron’s mysterious, impossible jump in rank.

Not Zeus. Not Lucifer. Not the Primordial Dragon.

Not even Dracula himself, though the vampire’s crimson eyes held only faint, resigned amusement rather than shock.

He had long since learned to live with the absurdity of Aaron’s power spikes. Everyone of Athanys had.

The only person who truly understood what was happening was Aaron himself.

A single, fleeting reward drawn from lucky wheel: Sovereign Halo.

For one day, one precious, devastating day, its activation elevated him to true Sovereign rank.

Power borrowed, not earned, but no less lethal for its temporary nature. Time-bound. Precious.

Knowing he was on borrowed time, Aaron snapped into motion.

He moved toward the nearest enemy with predatory grace.

Ares, god of war, reacted instantly, spear already in hand, body igniting with crimson mana as he triggered War Mode.

Muscles swelled, veins glowed, lethality multiplying a hundredfold. In this state, Ares could wield any weapon with perfect mastery, turning even a stick into an instrument of apocalyptic slaughter.

His versatility had made him a legend, feared across pantheons.

But to a Sovereign-ranked Aaron?

A non-Sovereign Ares was nothing more than a plaything.

Aaron controlled space with a casual flick of will.

The area around Ares folded inward, sealing every inch into an invisible prison.

The god of war found himself unable to move so much as a single leg; limbs locked as though cast in unbreakable steel.

Panic flickered briefly in Ares’s eyes, then fury.

Aaron void-stepped.

He appeared directly before the trapped god in a heartbeat.

Before Ares could snarl, Aaron forced his mouth open and fed him blood, thick, dark, alive with destructive intent.

Ares thrashed violently, trying to wrestle free, muscles straining against spatial chains, spear clattering uselessly against nothing.

Aaron’s smile turned wicked.

With one brutal twist, he snapped Ares’s neck.

The crack echoed like breaking stone. Life fled Ares’s eyes in an instant, replaced by the dull glaze of transition.

The body slumped, held upright only by Aaron’s grip, before vanishing into the sanctuary rift Aaron opened behind him.

All of this happened in a single, merciless instant, faster than most Sovereigns could even register the movement.

"Get away from my son!!!" Zeus bellowed, voice cracking space with raw paternal rage.

Lightning surged around him like a living storm.

He used it as a booster, body blurring into a streak of electric fury as he hurtled toward Aaron, who still stood calmly beside Ares’s vanishing corpse.

Aaron reacted without haste.

Layers of space materialized before him, dozens of translucent walls folding into existence like stacked sheets of unbreakable glass.

Each one shimmered with void-black edges, distorting light and distance.

Zeus was not so easily stopped.

He summoned his lightning bolt, jagged, white-hot, forged from the wrath of storms, and hurled it forward with all his divine strength.

The bolt struck the first space wall with apocalyptic force.

Cracks spiderwebbed across the barrier instantly.

The second wall shattered next.

Then the third.

Each destruction released deafening cracks that rolled outward like thunderclaps.

But that single instant of delay was all Aaron needed.

He void-stepped again, slipping through the collapsing barriers like smoke through fingers, and reappeared behind Athena.

The war goddess barely had time to turn.

Caught completely by surprise, she felt Aaron’s hand clamp around the back of her head like an iron vice.

Before she could summon her shield or spear, he twisted, brutal, efficient, merciless.

Her neck snapped with a wet crack.

Blood, his blood, had already been forced into her bloodstream in the heartbeat before the kill.

Just like Ares, Athena’s body went limp.

A sanctuary rift swallowed her instantly.

Zeus spun, eyes no longer blue but bloodshot crimson, veins bulging, lightning arcing wildly across his skin in uncontrolled spasms.

The sight of his children murdered so casually, so quickly, so humiliatingly, ignited something primal and unhinged within the king of Olympus.

His roar shook the heavens themselves.