Titan King: Ascension of the Giant

Chapter 1563: The Trap Beyond the Mountains

The North. The New Continent.

The moment that Demigod-tier screech echoed across the world, Orion knew the heavyweights of the swarm had slipped past the vanguard. He had no choice but to make the trip personally.

It was a surreal sensation. Marching from south to north, crossing the very territories he had once conquered in blood, before cresting a colossal mountain range and stepping onto entirely alien soil.

Here, Orion witnessed a veritable ocean of insectoids. They blotted out the earth and sky, pouring over the mountains and roaring as they surged southward. Yet, none of these creatures were Orion’s true enemies; they weren’t even worthy of his attention. The only target locked in Orion’s sights was the Demigod powerhouse in the distance—the entity that had sensed his aura and was rapidly closing the gap.

"Your Grace, this is the homeland of my people. I ask that you do not cross the border."

The voice was male. It was as resonant as a tolling bell—deep, powerful, and laced with a solemn, almost sacred majesty.

"The homeland of your people?" Orion let out a soft, incredulous chuckle, genuinely amused by the sheer audacity of the claim. If this continent was the swarm’s homeland, what the hell did that make the Stoneheart Horde?

"Where the continents meet. Everything north of the Convergence Ridge is our domain."

The Convergence Ridge was the massive, newly formed mountain range born from the violent collision of the continental plates—the very mountains Orion had just crossed.

Orion understood the enemy’s logic perfectly. His expression remained as placid as still water, betraying neither anger nor joy, though a dark, predatory amusement flickered in his quiet eyes.

"Who are you?" Orion asked. "If everything north of the Ridge is your home, what about the south? Did you honestly think you could carve up this territory without my permission?"

Orion’s tone had started off dangerously mild, but by the final syllable, it had plummeted into an absolute, glacial freeze. It wasn’t a question; it was an interrogation.

"I am Abaddon. I have come to test your measure."

Abaddon was arrogant. He defied convention, completely bypassing the courtesy of asking for Orion’s name. Accompanied by the howling wind and the heavy beating of wings, Abaddon closed the distance in a blur, halting just a short distance from Orion.

Abaddon was a terrifying chimera. His upper body was a bare, heavily muscled humanoid torso, while massive, iridescent butterfly wings sprouted from his back. His lower half slithered—a thick, serpentine tail trailing behind him. His eyes were a liquid, glowing crimson, radiating a soul-piercing bloody light.

But what caught Orion’s attention the most was the intricate golden rune etched deeply into his flesh, starting from the center of Abaddon’s brow and running all the way down to his navel. To Orion’s heightened senses, that golden inscription felt intensely, uncomfortably familiar.

A Divine Sigil!

An Insect King!

The God-Devouring Insectoid Race!

Orion instantly pieced it together. Long before the two realms had fully integrated, Orion had seized control of an Insect King from the God-Devouring Race. The divine, devouring aura radiating from Abaddon’s runic inscriptions was exponentially denser than what Orion had felt in his own Insect King avatar.

"Your Grace, we do not wish for war," Abaddon reiterated, his tone dripping with that same solemn majesty, attempting to dictate the moral high ground for his swarm. The way he spoke made it sound as though Orion was the unprovoked aggressor. "This is a newborn world. Both you and I require peace to thrive."

"Peace?" Orion burst into a fit of unbridled, raucous laughter, as if he had just heard the greatest joke in existence. "Hahaha! You think peace exists just because you demand it?"

"It appears Your Grace does not desire peace."

It wasn’t a question; it was a death sentence. The moment the words left Abaddon’s lips, his body violently fractured. In the blink of an eye, twelve identical avatars split from his form, completely surrounding Orion and unleashing a simultaneous, deafening shriek.

A devastating, chaotic, and mind-shattering sonic wave crashed into Orion. For a terrifying fraction of a second, Orion felt his physical defenses violently shatter, his body and mind ripped to bloody shreds by the sheer auditory force.

But Orion knew better. It was an illusion.

Roar!

A primal bellow erupted from the absolute depths of his soul. The towering phantom of a Stoneheart Titan materialized behind Orion. In an instant, the hallucinatory hellscape shattered, snapping reality back into perfect, crystal-clear focus.

Squelch! Squelch!

Four of Abaddon’s twelve avatars spontaneously exploded into gore. His Domain of Illusions had been violently breached by Orion, and he was suffering the catastrophic backlash.

"Her Majesty, the Insect Queen, was right. You are undeniably powerful," Abaddon rasped, his expression hardening. His crimson eyes locked onto Orion, flickering with a treacherous light. "Simultaneous avatar fission, divine sonic disruption, and the Domain of Illusions—all unleashed at once, and yet you didn’t succumb to the madness."

"No wonder you dared to face our descent alone. In that case, let’s see how you handle this."

Abaddon’s remaining eight avatars slammed their palms together. Instantly, four of them detonated as if offered as a living sacrifice, transforming into a dense, suffocating crimson mist that swallowed the battlefield.

It happened in a fraction of a second. By the time Orion sensed the lethal shift in the air, Abaddon had already parted his hands. The final four avatars each manifested a unique, horrific weapon: a serrated blade, a jagged hook, a venomous stinger, and a bladed chain.

The four Abaddons converged on Orion, launching a synchronized, lethal assault.

"Call of the Abyss!"

Facing four bizarrely coordinated enemies, Orion wasn’t about to play games. He instantly channeled his Divine Kingdom, summoning the phantom projection of the Abyssal World. His goal was simple: drag them all into his Divine Kingdom and offer them up as living sacrifices.

A cosmic law of death, unique to his Divine Kingdom, crashed down onto the battlefield. Orion wasn’t pulling his punches. The moment they were dragged into his territory, he didn’t give a damn if they were the true body or mere avatars—they would all be ground down into pure fuel.

However, the moment the Abyssal phantom descended, Orion felt a jarring, unnatural resistance. It was a sickening sensation, like swallowing a jagged stone that caught perfectly in his throat, choking off the connection.

Orion scowled. He stared intently at the Abaddons trapped within the Abyssal phantom, but he couldn’t detect any foreign auras radiating from them that could actively stall the descent of his Divine Kingdom.

What the hell just happened?

Something shifted just now, something completely under my radar.

Caution gripping his heart, Orion withheld the killing blow against Abaddon. He refused to blindly step into what felt like an elaborate, invisible trap.

...

Meanwhile, outside the combat zone on the New Continent.

At the exact location where Orion and Abaddon had first crossed paths, a stranger materialized. To be precise, it was a stranger and a spherical, golden ward.

Though the golden sphere was barely the size of a soccer ball, it radiated an eerie, deeply unnatural power. Countless golden, insectoid runes threaded out from the surrounding void, wrapping tightly around the sphere like silken webs. It looked exactly like an ongoing sealing ritual.

"Is this Giant truly that dangerous?" the stranger murmured. "For Her Majesty, the Insect Queen, to order me to coordinate with Abaddon just to orchestrate his temporary sealing... is such a massive mobilization truly necessary?"

It wasn’t that the unknown Demigod underestimated the enemy, nor was he specifically looking down on Orion. It was simply that the swarm’s raw power was so overwhelmingly vast. In his mind, under their command, the swarm could simply bulldoze across this newborn world without resorting to parlor tricks.

Nevertheless, this was a direct edict from Insect Queen Moriphara. She was the absolute zenith of the swarm’s intellect; her calculations were infallible. Under her reign, the God-Devouring Insectoid Race had evolved from the weak into the invincible, without a single misstep.

"Our swarm has successfully descended. No one will snatch the food from our jaws."

As the unknown Demigod manipulated the insectoid runes, he cast a cold, shadowy glance toward the horizon, his eyes locked in grim determination.