Chapter 327: Pinch Hitter

Divron’s fist—claws extended—went right through Fenrir’s head... Or at least, that’s what he thought.

"...!"

The next moment, he realized something was wrong. Despite being frozen by the residual electricity still crawling across her skin, sparking faintly with every twitch, Fenrir had still managed to tear open a rift before her face. The fist that should have struck her warped instead, redirected to the other side—slamming straight into Divron’s own back!

Once again, he had attacked, and ended up injuring himself instead.

His mind went blank, his thoughts grinding to a halt for one brief, disbelieving moment.

Then, a vein bulged on top of his forehead.

"No good!"

Axel realized what was happening and rushed to Fenrir’s side. Without missing a beat, he deployed one of his trump cards—something he’d had the dwarves craft specifically for a moment like this.

While Divron’s body began exuding powerful lightning bolts, crackling as though on the verge of exploding, Axel raised a large shield before himself and Fenrir—one that, oddly, looked to be made of leather rather than metal, its surface worn and pitted like something that had survived a hundred wars already.

"Aegis, activate!" He commanded.

He’d made it just in the nick of time.

The replica of the mythical shield pulsed once, and a blue barrier sprang up instantly, wrapping around Axel and Fenrir.

The lightning bolts coming from Divron, however, were powerful enough to crack their defenses almost on contact, hairline fractures spreading across the blue surface like frost over glass. Axel’s face darkened at the sight.

"I’m fine... Leave it to me!"

Thankfully, the time he bought was enough for Fenrir to get back to her feet.

Her limbs were still numb, but she could move naturally again. The glint in her eyes held no anger, no irritation—only a calm, steady focus, even in the middle of a battle for their lives.

"Got it." Axel nodded. "The shield will fall in five seconds. Jump to action at that moment!"

The Aegis in Axel’s hands was nothing but a replica, and it wasn’t as powerful as the original. But even a copy of a mythical object wasn’t something that would go down without a fight.

"Haaaap!"

Axel gathered his strength, pushing the shield’s remaining "life" to its absolute limit.

Then, the next instant, he let it explode outward.

The shockwave that erupted from it was strong enough to wash away the entire scenery in an instant, flattening grass and stripping leaves from trees a mile out. Even Divron was pushed back, his building eruption interrupted mid-charge.

In that moment, a brief opening appeared.

Fenrir didn’t miss it.

In the next instant, she pulled something from her inventory, gripping it tightly. This time, she wouldn’t be attacking with claws alone, but with a proper weapon.

A familiar one, used by Axel some time ago.

The Dragon-slaying broadsword—Gram (Replica)!

A sword fatal to dragons like Divron—its power scaling with the strength of whoever wielded it.

Gram had once let an ordinary human slay a dragon out of legend.

So a god wielding it should be able to do the same!

But fate had a different plan for them.

Fenrir jumped through a rift, arriving directly behind Divron’s massive back, and swung the blade in a single clean arc. It moved so fast that the edge burned red, the air igniting from sheer compression rather than friction, leaving a thin trail of scorched afterimage in its wake.

The sword landed right across the dragon’s back.

A supposedly fatal hit.

But...

CRACK!

"...!"

Gram snapped in half instead.

Only a shallow scratch opened across Divron’s back—nowhere near a fatal wound.

Although it hadn’t killed him, the scratch managed to do one thing, at least—irritate the dragon even further.

[Again...? Injured again?!]

Divron growled like he’d gone mad.

[Me, a Supreme Being, the Avatar of Lightning, injured again and again by mortals and a weak god?!]

At that moment, as if resonating with his anger, the sky went dark, the temperature dropping several degrees in the span of a breath.

Lightning jumped across the clouds, sharp and powerful, and most of all, ominous.

[This can’t happen... This is not allowed to happen!]

He continued raving.

The sky darkened further, the clouds sinking lower as if dragged toward the ground, and lightning began striking the earth in multiple places at once. Not a single, instantaneous bolt, but a sustained arc of energy bridging earth and sky.

[For the sin of injuring me, I, Divron, the Avatar of Lightning, shall destroy this world of yours! Take this punishment: Baptism of World-Ending Lightning...!]

Axel and Fenrir knew it was bad before the black cloud even began to fall. But there was no way to stop something that, quite literally, covered the entire planet.

Even if Fenrir forcibly relocated Divron elsewhere on the planet, she doubted it would stop the attack from landing.

They were at a stalemate...

No...

They were losi—

WHOOOSH!

But before the sky could fall, a powerful blast of white light tore through the several-kilometer-thick clouds, clearing them away.

It didn’t move in just one direction either, but in all directions at once, dissipating the danger from the sky as if it were nothing—like a windshield wiper brushing raindrops aside.

"T-This is...!"

Even Axel was shocked when this happened.

Fenrir was clueless too.

After all, no one on their team should have possessed that much power—enough to cancel out a world-ending attack entirely.

[W-What...? What just... happened?]

Even Divron himself was shocked speechless.

He knew his own strength, and his attack was something even he couldn’t have stopped if he’d wanted to. Yet it had simply dissipated, as if it were nothing at all.

All their gazes drifted down toward the middle of Axevaria Kingdom—to the ground, where a familiar, yet somehow unfamiliar, face could be seen.

It was a woman, clothed from head to toe, revealing almost nothing but her hands and feet. Her face, hidden behind a veil, was tilted straight up toward the sky, where Axel, Fenrir, and Divron stood a few dozen kilometers above. The fabric around her stirred without wind, rippling as though caught in a current only she could feel.

But something was wrong.

The woman—Queen Sharika Zareen—didn’t feel like herself at all.

She wasn’t only exuding a godly glow, a white flame wrapped around her body—she was even floating a few feet off the ground!

[I don’t have much time.]

Suddenly, Sharika’s voice echoed inside Axel’s head, surprising him.

It was the voice he knew, but the intonation was something else entirely—as if someone else were speaking through her.

[As my vessel asked, I shall lend a hand. I’ll limit the power of that lizard before you. The rest, you shall figure out yourselves.]

She spoke indirectly, almost like she was posing riddles. But Axel understood one thing, at least.

She was an ally, and she was helping them out!