Titan King: Ascension of the Giant

Chapter 1420: Divine Kingdom

"They’re panicking."

Leonidas curled his lip, letting out a dismissive snort. "War has rules. Pawns trade blows with pawns, generals with generals, and kings with kings. The fact that the Demigods of the Cetus Giants haven’t shown their faces yet? It’s driving the Cult of Four mad. They’re terrified of what’s hiding in the dark."

"Flushing the enemy out early is the only smart play," Orion replied, though his tone was tight.

A creeping sense of unease had settled over both Orion and Leonidas. They had been racking their brains for a way to expose the enemy’s hidden ace, but the Cult of Four had beaten them to the punch, making the first aggressive move.

"Gotta admit, brother," Leonidas murmured, "the Cult makes for a convenient ally. At the very least, they never run out of bodies to throw at the problem. Those corrupted sea beasts alone will keep the meat grinder turning for a while."

It was an undeniable truth. The Cult of Four had deep pockets, endless tricks, and a bottomless supply of cannon fodder. The only reason the Champions Alliance had managed to drive them back previously was the sudden intervention of the Commander, who had terrified the Cult’s Archbishop-level heavy hitters into retreating.

"Tricky. This is going to be tricky," Leonidas muttered, narrowing his eyes. He watched Clown’s puppet avatar weave into the battlefield, his mind racing for a strategy to wipe out both the Cetus Giants and the Cult in one clean sweep.

But deep down, Leonidas felt like a fisherman who had hooked a leviathan—the catch was too big to haul in.

Thoom! Thoom!

Two deafening explosions rocked the seabed.

Two Archlord-level Cetus Giants had rushed forward to intercept Clown’s puppet, only to be obliterated instantly by back-to-back energy detonations. It was a brutal, efficient double kill.

Watching from the front lines, Kraken’s pupils contracted into pinpricks.

"That is Clown?" Kraken whispered, the water vibrating against his skin. "Even his puppet is beyond me."

A cold realization washed over him. He now had a crystal-clear understanding of just how powerful the traitor to the Champions Alliance truly was. This was not an entity he could afford to provoke.

What Kraken didn’t know was that Clown had already ascended. He was a true Demigod now. And even before his ascension, backed by the faith energy of the Cult, Clown had been a force of nature.

With two high-ranking giants reduced to silt, Clown’s puppet continued its advance. Soon, another Archlord surged from the ranks, attempting to stem the tide.

"The Cetus Demigods aren’t here," Orion said, his voice cutting through the chaotic noise of battle.

"Heh... interesting," Leonidas added, a dark grin spreading across his face.

The puppet’s rampage was the ultimate litmus test. In a war for the survival of their entire race, for the Cetus Demigods to remain absent was irrational.

"Did they cut and run ahead of time?" Leonidas mused, his voice dropping to a low rumble. "Or is there nothing left here worth saving?"

He wasn’t asking Orion; he was debating with himself. "From the very start, the Cetus Giants have been acting strange. Why didn’t they ally with Atlantis? The whole situation stinks."

If the Cetus Giants fell...

Without their Demigods, the sea race had zero chance of victory. Leonidas began to calculate the next move for him and his sworn brother. Would the Cult of Four turn on them the moment the giants were dead? Or would they actually have to commit to this alliance and play the role of insiders?

Suddenly, a voice boomed from the deepest trenches of Azurehold.

Simultaneously, a spectral hand materialized from the void, closing around Clown’s puppet and crushing it into nothingness with a sickening crunch.

"Children of the Deep! The enemy is at our gates! This is a stain on our honor!"

The voice was thick, heavy with a violence that hadn’t yet fully erupted.

"Invaders destroy our homes! They strip us of our freedom! They seek to enslave us, to wipe us from existence!"

It was more than just a morale boost; the words carried a hypnotic, bewitching cadence—a classic warlord’s tactic.

"People of the Sea! Take up your arms! Stand tall! We resist together! With our weapons and our lives, we defend our home! We defend our kin!"

The voice grew more radical, pulsing with an unseen energy that radiated from Azurehold and latched onto every living sea creature. In a split second, the Cetus army went berserk. Their eyes went bloodshot, and their combat strength spiked visibly.

"Defend the homeland! Honor to the Deep!"

"Slaughter the invaders!"

"Purge the outsiders!"

The chanting grew feverish, empowering the voice even further.

"I, Morveth, fight until death!"

"I, Ishraena, stand with my people!"

"I, Amon, offer my flesh to destroy the enemy!"

Just as the Cult of Four’s hidden Demigods prepared to intervene, the missing masters of the sea finally revealed themselves.

Morveth, Ishraena, and Amon rose above Azurehold, manifesting titanic, avatar-like forms. In their hands, they each clutched a sphere of blinding light.

"Ancestors above, your children beg you—let the Dead Sea descend!"

"Ancestors above, your children beg you—let the Dead Sea descend!"

"Ancestors above, your children beg you—let the Dead Sea descend!"

Led by the three Demigods, the prayer echoed through the water. The civilians and soldiers who hadn’t joined the fray fell to their knees in the silt. Even those swimming contorted their bodies into shapes of reverence.

Slowly, the light died.

The water turned to ink.

The seabed and Azurehold were swallowed by absolute darkness.

Far in the distance, the Cult of Four’s position flared with holy light. Orion and Leonidas immediately flared their own divine power, carving out a sanctuary of visibility in the crushing gloom.

But because they pushed back the dark, they saw the impossible.

A dead ocean was descending upon the living one.

It was a spectral reality, a phantom sea of stillness and death, pouring into the Moon Sea, merging with it.

Miles away, on the Moonlight Continent, in Staghelm City.

A pillar of moonlight erupted toward the heavens. Gima, the Demigod of the Moonwell, ascended to the sky. He looked down at the ocean, his expression one of pure shock as he watched two seas—one real, one ethereal—fusing together.

"What madness is this? Has the ocean finally broken?"

He knew the Champions Alliance and the Cult were making moves on the sea, but this? This was a cataclysm of a different magnitude. Could they really be responsible for this?

Back at Azurehold.

If the sight was shocking to others, to Orion, it was a revelation that shook him to his core.

"That’s... a Divine Kingdom!"

"Not good. We need to—"

Before Orion could finish, the thunderous voice from Azurehold rang out again, echoing not through the water, but through the fabric of reality itself.

"The Dead Sea has descended. All outsiders shall kneel."

It wasn’t a threat; it was a decree. A divine law.

Orion felt the shift instantly—a heavy, suffocating rule of reality clamping down on them. He watched in horror as the rule invaded Leonidas’s body. The aura of the Demigod next to him began to wither, suppressed by the dominion of the Dead Sea.