Chapter 873: 873
Over the years, her laws, her schools, and her structural order had woven themselves so deeply into the fabric of the kingdom that the common folk and the Paragons alike looked to her for permission before they looked to him. They had forgotten that a god of warfare is fed by the raw, unadulterated terror of the battlefield, not the quiet murmurs of a library.
Björn’s divine consciousness practically vibrated with repressed rage. He could feel the tether of Finn’s fierce, unquestioning devotion, a hot beacon of pure, golden faith amidst a sea of lukewarm, hesitant thoughts from the others. The rest of his Paragons were hesitating, looking toward Yuki for a nod, a sign, a calculated strategy that would mitigate their risks.
"A battle where both sides lose," Björn growled to himself, the words tasting like ash.
Sitting alone in his divine realm, a grim desolate expanse filled with rivers of blood, shattered armor, and fields of broken weapons. Björn stared down at the heavy gauntlet fused to his hand. This was the very artifact Ragnar was demanding he return. At the mere thought of the request, a mocking smile twisted his lips.
Over the centuries they had spent bound together, the artifact had fundamentally integrated into his biology, becoming one with his flesh and bone. It had fused so deeply that he could now exert his full influence on it, but doing so would completely shatter the core reason he had taken the artifact in the first place.
It was never about wielding its power. The unyielding pain and the artifact’s violent rejection of his nature, its constant, agonizing attempt to purify him was the sole reason he kept it close. Whenever his consciousness was on the verge of being entirely eroded by the chaotic, maddening feedback of his own warfare divinity, it was that searing, localized agony that snapped him back and kept him sane.
By now, that excruciating burning had become a constant background noise, a perpetual torment he had fully adjusted to living with. It was his anchor and losing it was something that can never be allowed.
Handing it back was never going to happen. And since the Silver Kingdom had already made it abundantly clear that they wouldn’t back down until they reclaimed it, a catastrophic war wasn’t just likely, it was entirely inevitable.
Even without the stolen artifact acting as an immediate catalyst, Björn’s geopolitical standing was at stake. The volatile situation with the Silver Kingdom, coupled with the unpredictable maneuvering of the gods, left him dangerously isolated. For a long time, he had been trapped, searching for any viable avenue to bridge the diplomatic and relational gap between himself and the other major deities of Nana.
His son’s carefully cultivated relationship with the godling princess had been his absolute best gamble, a golden opportunity to secure a blood alliance that could stabilize his divine position. But that political liferaft was gone. The Silver Kingdom had already taken decisive, aggressive action to reclaim the princess, pulling her back into their orbit, while his son seemed entirely unbothered by the loss, seemingly distracted by some independent, rogue plan of his own.
With so many factions moving pieces across the board, Björn couldn’t afford a stagnant, peaceful kingdom. He needed to shatter the comfortable illusion of safety Yuki had built before his warriors grew completely soft. If his people refused to march out of sheer, unquestioning obedience to his divine command, he would simply have to force their hands.
He would orchestrate a crisis so absolute that it would strip away their fine silk robes and scholarly titles, testing once and for all just how much of that feral instinct still burned beneath their civilized appearance.
He had the perfect catalyst for this. His last manifestation in the mortal world, he had left behind a spectacle, a blessing of blood rain that had saturated the soil and the bodies of his people. Months had slipped by since that day, and the tangible presence of the blessing had faded to a miniscule, lingering trace. But for him, that tiny spark was more than enough to enact his will.
While the seasoned soldiers, disciplined mages, and high-ranking powered individuals in his kingdom possessed enough mental fortitude to resist a subtle nudge, the commoners did not. They were raw, impressionable, and already primed by the latent energy sleeping in their veins.
As night fell over the frozen northern continent, Björn acted.
From his realm, he cast his divine consciousness downward, weaving a single, collective nightmare into the minds of his sleeping people. The commoners, already tossing and turning from the restless heat of the fading blessing, were pulled simultaneously into the same vision.
In the dream, the sky wept crimson. Björn’s colossal, armored silhouette loomed over the horizon, his deep, resonant voice vibrating through their very bones as he led them into battle. He didn’t ask for prayers or hymns, he demanded their worship through blood. He showed them visions of fields littered with the corpses of themselves and their enemies, promising them that the only way to appease his wrath and to survive the coming cataclysm was to paint their hands red.
But it wasn’t just a threat, it was a temptation. Woven into the terror of the nightmare was a intoxicating promise of evolution. He offered them an opportunity to shatter the static hierarchy of the kingdom, to completely rewrite their bleak fates, and to grow in raw, unchecked power. If they shed blood in his name, the blessing dormant within them would awaken, elevating even the lowest peasant into a terrifying warrior.
By the time the first rays of dawn broke over the kingdom of Björn, thousands of commoners sat bolt upright in their beds, drenched in cold sweat. Their eyes were wide, bloodshot, and burning with a terrifying, newfound zeal. Just like that, the illusion of Yuki’s peaceful, orderly society had just received its first fatal fracture from within.
Björn’s promise was not questioned not for a single second by the people drawn into the dream. As dawn fully broke and neighbors began to whisper to one another across fences and inside tavern walls, a chilling realization swept through the common folk, they had all dreamt the exact same nightmare.
The shared vision instantly unlocked old, buried memories, igniting stories of the kingdom’s bloody past. The stories spoke of a time when ordinary men and women, marching into battle under Björn’s direct gaze, would exponentially grow in power with every enemy they slaughtered. It was an open secret that almost all the current high-ranking individuals and nobles in the kingdom had once been nothing more than normal, destitute peasants who had risen through the ranks by bathing in the blood of their foes. Yuki’s modern schools and structured meritocracy were new, but the law of the blade was as old as their kingdom.
To the restless commoners, the dream became an invitation. It was their one true chance to break free from their mundane fates and achieve power that no library or academy could ever grant them.
The frantic energy built all day, a suffocating tension that the guards and local mages completely failed to read. When night fell over the northern continent once more, the dam broke.
Silently, thousands of ordinary citizens took up arms. Farmers grabbed rusty scythes, blacksmiths hoisted heavy iron hammers, and laborers gripped woodcutting axes. With bloodshot eyes, rapid breathing, and purely zealot expressions, they marched out of their homes and plunged into the dark woods.
They didn’t form an orderly military column, they moved like a massive, frantic pack of wolves driven by a singular, primal instinct. Guided by the lingering warmth of the blood rain blessing and the lingering echo of their god’s voice, their collective gaze locked onto a single target, the fortified boundary stations separating their kingdom from the Silver Kingdom. War has arrived and it was carried on the shoulders of the very people Yuki had tried to civilize.
The dark old woods of the north abruptly gave way to a stark, heavily fortified clearing. Stretching across the rugged landscape was a massive, weathered wall, a dividing line of stone and iron that separated the kingdom of Björn from the Silver Kingdom.
Under normal circumstances, this boundary was a tense but meticulously managed chessboard. On Björn’s side, disciplined border guards trained under Yuki’s modern military doctrine paced the ramparts, their eyes scanning the horizon. On the opposite side, the gleaming, immaculate soldiers of the Silver Kingdom stood tall in their polished armor, keeping the northern "barbarians" in check. The two forces existed in a fragile, highly bureaucratic stalemate, watching each other through slot-holes and iron grates.
But tonight, the silence of the border was shattered.
The sound reached the wall before the people did, a low rhythmic, terrifying rumble that sounded like a stampede of animals tearing through the forest. It was the synchronized trampling of thousands of bare and lightly booted feet, accompanied by a chorus of heavy, ragged breathing and frantic, whispered prayers to the god of warfare.
