Chapter 508: The Grandest Ceremony

From dusk until well past midnight, Coin Island remained perfectly quiet.

Lyon's delegation had braced themselves for the orcs to cause trouble, but they waited through half the night without a single sign of disturbance. Just as they'd begun to believe the night might pass peacefully, a sudden deafening boom sent every Lyon soldier drawing their weapons in alarm, layering protective divine spells over themselves and each other, bracing for combat.

But it didn't take them long to realize it had been a false alarm.

The thunderous booms had been nothing more than fireworks.

Countless brilliant fireworks tore across the night sky, blooming into dazzling bursts of light that lit up the entire island. The heavens bloomed with vivid, multicolored flowers, more beautiful than any real flower could be. Down on the water, the ocean's surface shimmered and rippled with reflected light, as though the entire sea itself had been set alight.

No one alive had ever witnessed such a grand spectacle.

Fireworks themselves weren't unheard of, but the kind most people had seen were the simple sort that gave off a small pop and a brief burst of light, mostly used for long-distance signaling. Fireworks like these weren't cheap, and no one had ever witnessed anything on the scale of hundreds of millions blooming across the sky all at once.

No one had ever imagined fireworks could take on so many colors, nor so many shapes.

And that wasn't all. Once the fireworks display began, hymns praising Thanos began ringing out across the entirety of Coin Island.

Storms, thunder, destruction... The soaring, triumphant movements blended seamlessly with the fireworks overhead, producing a spectacle unlike anything ever witnessed before.

All those present found themselves utterly stunned.

Was this what a god's wedding looked like? Who knew a wedding could be so awe-inspiring?

Under the overwhelming bombardment of sight and sound, the guests were fully enthralled by the ceremony.

At that very moment, Ambrose himself soared straight past the highest point of the fireworks, climbing deep into the clouds above.

Wrapped within a shroud of storm clouds, Ambrose arrived before an enormous palace.

It was a vast, austere hall built entirely of massive stone, ancient and desolate in its grandeur. Countless giants knelt just outside its walls, bowing toward the churning core of thunder at its center, chanting Thanos's name in thunderous unison.

This was the Tower of Ruin, a projection of Thanos's own divine realm.

Mortals could not enter a divine realm directly, not without a god's express permission. Ambrose was hardly a devoted follower of Thanos, and Thanos, for his part, had no particular interest in letting this lich of dubious loyalty set foot inside his own domain.

But Thanos was making an exception, projecting a fragment of his realm into the mortal world and permitting Ambrose to stand within it.

The instant he crossed into the divine realm, Ambrose felt his entire body engulfed by countless unseen bolts of lightning and howling winds—nothing physically real, merely a sensation so vivid it felt more real than reality itself.

No wonder Thanos was confident enough to allow any god to enter his realm freely.

He was powerful enough that it simply didn't matter. Within the Tower of Ruin, Thanos feared no one at all. Even the Lord of Dawn himself would be torn apart by the raging thunder and hurricane-force winds that filled the realm.

Ambrose made his way past the kneeling giants. Even the ones prostrate on the ground were so massive that he had to leap just to reach their knees.

Ambrose felt like a single ant crawling through a crowd, threading his way through the gaps between them and into the thunderous temple beyond.

Fortunately, Thanos had no taste for elaborate decoration. The moment Ambrose entered the temple, he could immediately see the mighty god seated upon his throne at the very center, three bolts of differently colored lightning radiating outward from the seat itself, stretching off into some unseen distance.

Ambrose lowered his head and, following the customs of Thanos's faith, performed a respectful bow, raising three fingers as a gesture of devotion. Once he'd completed the full ritual, he finally rose to his feet and looked up at the Lord of Storms.

Thanos remained every bit as majestic as ever. He looked down at Ambrose the way one might glance at an ant underfoot.

"Not a bad imitation of the ritual, I'll admit."

Thanos's voice came laced with thunder, shaking Ambrose's very soul nearly to pieces. Standing directly before a god's true majesty was terrifying beyond words. Even without a shred of hostile intent, Thanos's presence alone could kill a mortal outright.

Ambrose steadied himself and said, "Honored Lord of Storms, your wedding preparations are now complete."

Thanos, though, didn't seem especially interested in the wedding itself. Instead, he asked, with evident curiosity, "Lich, you're supposed to die today. How are you so remarkably composed? Found some clever way to slip past your fate, have you?"

Ambrose shook his head and answered honestly. "The price of Fate's gifts was known to me from the very beginning. It's time to settle my balance. I have no intention of trying to run from it."

"Heh. A mere mortal, certainly, couldn't manage such a thing, but what of a god?" Thanos's gaze pierced straight through the walls of the temple, taking in the magnificent fireworks display unfolding below. The dazzling spectacle of light was currently reenacting his own great triumphs, putting them on display in the most awe-inspiring way possible before every kingdom in attendance.

"For the sake of this fireworks display alone, I could help you. Right now, this instant, I could elevate you to become my attendant god."

Words like that would have driven any ordinary mortal to madness: this was a chance to ascend to godhood, dangled right before Ambrose's eyes. But he only shook his head, calm as ever. "That's impossible. Even someone as great as you cannot defy a fate already fixed in place. Even if I agreed, you still couldn't make me your attendant god."

"HAHAHA! Bold words for a mere mortal. Do you even understand what you're saying?"

Violent power slammed into Ambrose's body in an instant, rattling every single bone in his frame. With a single thought, Thanos could reduce him to nothing but ash. Not even his phylactery could bring him back from that.

"I understand exactly what I'm saying, Honored Lord of Storms. Your might could genuinely shatter heaven and earth, that much is true. But my fate doesn't rest in your hands. You won't make me a god, and you won't kill me either. Whatever limits Aion may or may not have placed on you, this is simply beyond even your power. I came here today only to fulfill my promise to you, not out of fear of your glory."

Ambrose kept his head raised, gazing calmly at the towering god above him, as though he truly feared nothing at all.

Thanos clearly wanted to say "Let's just see about that," but before the words could leave him, he burst into booming laughter instead. "Cunning lich. You very nearly had me there. Did you really think I'd hand over the position of an attendant god that easily? I hadn't even named my terms yet, and you nearly talked your way straight past them. Keep your little tricks to yourself. I won't be creating a second traitor like Valarun.

"And I certainly won't be played the fool the way Shara and Loss were, tricked into breaking Aion's laws for your benefit. You've got one resurrection left on you, courtesy of that ancient Shadevir, don't you? I already know everything. You'll never manage to deceive me."

Ambrose: "..."

He knew perfectly well nothing Thanos did could ever change his fate, but watching Thanos act so pleased with his own cleverness was almost unbearably awkward. He was a god of violent devastation, one not known for his wit—but of course he'd try to flaunt precisely what he was lacking.

Ambrose really didn't want to spend what little remained of his life sparring with an overconfident deity, so he simply urged Thanos to begin the wedding ceremony instead.

The reason the wedding had been scheduled for deep in the night was simple enough: Thanos's glory was always more striking against the darkness.

Lightning during the day never looked half as dazzling as it did at night.

Thanos, unable to divine Ambrose's thoughts, only gave a cold snort and reached out to seize a bolt of lightning from beside him.

Within that cage of interwoven lightning bolts lay Blobdilpulp, the enormous lobster-headed goddess, sprawled weakly within. Her body was far smaller than Thanos's own, small enough for the Lord of Storms to hold her in one hand like a toy. Whatever madness once defined her seemed to have vanished entirely, leaving nothing behind but exhaustion.

Ambrose felt no particular sympathy for her situation. The deranged goddess had brought this entirely on herself, having driven the majority of her own followers to switch their devotion over to Aige. By his estimate, she'd likely dropped from intermediate divinity all the way down to lesser divinity by now, leaving her with nowhere near enough strength to resist Thanos in any meaningful way.

Thanos extended a finger and drove it directly into Blobdilpulp's chest, channeling an immense surge of divine thunder into her body and inflating her like a balloon.

Her twisted, lobster-like head began to shift and change as well, gradually taking on a more humanoid shape.

Thanos was sharing his own divine power with Blobdilpulp and reshaping her appearance with that same power, exactly as he'd once done for Valarun.

Once marked by Thanos's divine power, Blobdilpulp would become permanently bound to him as a slave—and unlike Valarun, there would be no escaping this time. Thanos had no intention of making that same mistake twice.

Ambrose watched as the lobster-headed goddess was reshaped into a stunning, statuesque beauty, her body now marked with tattoos of lightning and storm. Thanos's chains of binding, disguised as ornamentation.

By the time the transformation was complete, the kouto goddess was unrecognizable to anyone who'd known her before.

Blobdilpulp knelt beside Thanos, glaring at Ambrose with pure venomous hatred.

It was the very mortal standing before her who'd reduced her to this state. Blobdilpulp would have loved nothing more than to crush this lich flat with a single strike.

But Thanos's power held her utterly immobile, leaving her nothing more than a puppet to be manipulated at will.

As the wedding's two central figures finished their preparations, brilliant lightning began erupting across the sky above Coin Island, picking up precisely where the fireworks had left off.

The heavens lit up once more. This time, the interwoven lightning formed the shapes of Thanos and Blobdilpulp themselves, presenting the newlywed couple before the eyes of every guest in attendance.

Thanos gave a grand sweep of his hand and said to Ambrose, "Go now, mortal. Today, you are the second lead in this performance. I look forward to your part in it."

Ambrose bowed and stepped backward. The next instant, he found himself cast out of the divine realm entirely, plummeting from the sky toward the ground far below.

Watching the island grow steadily larger beneath him, Ambrose swept both hands outward. The magic circles across the island flared to life, and the entire island transformed into one colossal arena.

The wedding's second ritual, the duel before the god, had begun.

Whether the challenged agreed to it or not, the challenger's blade would force the challenged to fight back regardless.

A roar erupted from the direction of the orc territory, as an endless torrent of crimson light came thundering straight toward the Lyon delegation...