Chapter 546: Chapter 546
Adam stepped through the portal last.
His generals stood in a semi-circle, their solemn gazes fixed on the Mesopotamian ziggurats that rose like golden fangs from the earth. Even from this distance, he could see tangible energy pulsing through the divine city—power that made the air itself vibrate with accumulated worship and ancient authority. Lightning arcs struck the golden ground in a rhythm that mimicked war drums, while around a figure wreathed in storms and scalding arcs, fifty gods sat on towers shaped like thrones.
Adam frowned, recognising the signs of a power transfer ritual. Before he could give any command, Tiamat’s figure passed through the closing portal behind him. His frown deepened, and he raised a questioning palm.
"Worry because I haven’t recovered completely?" Tiamat’s lips curved into a predatory smile. She struck her fists against each other, the impact blasting air outwards in a shockwave that flattened the grass around them. "I told you on the very first day that Marduk and Ea will die by my hands, even if I must let all the others escape. Today, my vengeance ends. Today, Apsu rests in peace in his grave after eons of injustice. Today, the children who thought they could keep primordial chaos shackled to claim the universe will remember the cost of defying me."
Adam remained silent for a moment, his features twisted with the expression of a son worried for a parent rushing toward certain doom. The odds were impossible—eleven against fifty, and those fifty were channeling their combined might into a single champion. Yet he eventually nodded. Some debts could only be paid in blood.
"Don’t die on me, sister."
She smirked, and he raised his fist, his voice thundering across the golden plains.
"You heard her. Today, another pantheon falls at our feet." Dark plasma condensed in his palm into a tangible blade of searing heat and chaos, the weapon’s edge crackling with barely contained destruction. "Charge. But remember: people are waiting for our triumphant return. We can’t disappoint them, right?"
The charge erupted with the force of an avalanche. Adam’s generals spread across the golden plains like hunting wolves. Maven’s bronze wings carved through the air overhead, casting shadows that danced across the crystalline ground. The fallen angels moved in perfect formation, their dark halos pulsing with unholy light as they flanked the main advance. Garduck’s healed face split into a grin of anticipated violence, while Shihan’s bow sang as she nocked arrows tipped with concentrated shadows. Ifrit’s flames trailed behind him like a banner of war.
Tiamat moved beside Adam, her steps cracking the golden stones beneath her feet. With each stride, fragments of her true power leaked through—water that burned, chaos that took physical shape, the raw essence of creation’s first rebellion against nothingness.
The ziggurats rose before them like monuments to divine hubris. Each stone had been blessed by ten thousand prayers, each tier sanctified by the blood of countless sacrifices. This was holy ground, and they were bringing war to its very heart.
The Mesopotamian gods watched their approach from the tiered platforms, their faces twisted with smirks of divine superiority. They had sacrificed their individual power, but in return they would witness the birth of something unprecedented for the second time—a god empowered beyond anything that had walked the cosmos since the first days of creation.
"Do you see how they cluster together like frightened mortals?" called out Enlil from his perch, his voice carrying the mockery of wind through dead leaves. "Twelve rebels against the unified might of civilisation itself."
"The fallen angels think their borrowed darkness can match our ancient light," laughed Ishtar, her beautiful face twisted with contempt. "They’ll learn the difference between a god’s true power and the scraps that demons call strength."
But their taunts bounced off Adam’s forces like arrows against adamant. They had crossed too many battlefields, faced too many impossible odds, lost too much to be intimidated by divine posturing.
As they reached the base of the great ziggurat, reality itself began to buckle under the weight of accumulated divine energy. The power transfer above had reached its final stages, turning sacred architecture into a conduit for forces that strained the boundaries of physical law.
The voice boomed from the peak as tempestuous winds exploded outward in all directions. Marduk stood revealed at the summit, his form in the final stages of transformation—fifty divine essences merging into a single vessel that would transcend the normal boundaries of godhood.
He towered above the ziggurat itself, lightning playing across muscles that contained the accumulated strength of an entire pantheon. Each breath sent shockwaves through the air, and his eyes burned with wisdom acquired from the greatest minds in divine history.
"You brought me such a pitiful army," Marduk continued. "A mortal risen from the mud of insignificance, playing at godhood with his collection of pet demons."
His laughter cracked the air like breaking stone. "Where are the eleven-headed dragons you birthed to tear heaven apart? Where is Kingu, who carried the Tablet of Destinies and commanded the very laws of fate? Where are the scorpion-men whose stings brought madness to gods, the storm-demons whose wings blotted out stars, the Mushussu dragons that darkened the sky with their numbers? Where are the fish-men whose scales turned divine weapons to rust, the snake-dragons whose breath poisoned the very concept of life, the lion-men whose roars shattered the pillars of heaven?"
Marduk’s transformed features twisted into a mask of divine contempt. "You ruled an army that numbered in the thousands—monsters that made lesser gods flee screaming to their hidden realms. Creatures that embodied chaos itself, each one capable of laying waste to entire galaxies. And now? Now you bring me ten warriors—eleven if I count your diminished, pathetic form."
The god’s form continued expanding as the final streams of divine power flowed into him. "I embody every facet of these fifty domains now—war, wisdom, justice, storm, earth, and sky. Authority flows through me faster than blood, just as it did eons ago when I first killed you and carved your corpse into the foundations of creation."
Power crackled between his fingers, and the gesture alone sent lesser ziggurats tumbling into dust.
Tiamat’s response came as a snarl that made the golden stones beneath her feet crack like ice. Ancient fury blazed in her eyes—not just anger at the taunts, but rage at the truth they contained. Her army was indeed diminished compared to the legendary host she had once commanded.
"I remember everything, bastard, including how you needed treachery to murder your own father in his sleep. Including how you’ve spent eons in terror of my return."
Adam stepped forward, his plasma blade extending to its full length.
"All this talking," Adam called out, his voice carrying across the golden expanse. "Are you planning to fight us, or bore us to death with speeches about your glorious past?"
Marduk’s attention turned to Adam like a hurricane focusing on a single target. "The mud-born pretender speaks. Tell me, mortal—when you die screaming beneath my heel, what final words will you offer to the gods you thought you could challenge?"
But even as he spoke, Adam could see recognition in the god’s blazing eyes. Marduk remembered the fallen pantheons, the scattered remnants of divine alliances that had underestimated the mortal who refused to bow. The taunts carried an edge of uncertainty that belied their confident tone.
The air itself began to thicken as Marduk’s swelling form suddenly condensed. The god’s massive frame compressed like a star collapsing into itself, fifty divine essences wrapping around him like holy raiment. Authority became visible as golden threads that wound through his armor, and wisdom settled into his eyes like accumulated starlight. The ritual reached its climax, birthing something that transcended the boundaries between god and concept.