Chapter 966

Chapter 966: 966

Ragnar’s conceptual authority was the Law of the Matron’s Husk.

At its core, the law dictated that ice was not merely frozen water, but a predatory, maternal entity seeking host bodies to incubate within. When invoked, the law treated Ragnar as a vulnerable child, encasing him in a living, protective, absolute womb, while simultaneously treating any aggressor as a host organism meant to be bled dry and fed upon.

This allowed Ragnar to shed near-perfect, lifelike ice surrogates in a fraction of a millisecond. These shells acted as false wombs that absorbed large amounts of kinetic force, confused the spatial senses of attackers, and totally obscured the king’s true position. Because each ice surrogate perfectly mimicked Ragnar’s unique biological signature down to the subatomic level, even the God of War could not immediately distinguish between the real user and a newly gestated husk.

Worst of all was the retaliation mechanism.

The moment an enemy struck a surrogate husk, the predatory ice treated the attacker as a direct, existential threat to its "child." It bonded instantly to the point of contact, driving microscopic frozen tendrils straight through skin, pores, divine armor, and conceptual aura.

Once latched, the parasitic ice fed aggressively on the attacker’s vital source. Whatever form that power took, whether pure physical stamina, bloodlines, ambient mana, or raw war divinity, the ice adjusted its frequency, latching on to devour it. Within seconds, it spread inward along the host’s circulatory and energetic pathways, calcifying living tissue into brittle, frozen structures from the inside out.

Against an opponent who relied on overwhelming kinetic strikes and relentless physical contact, it was a perfectly crafted, living nightmare.

Without a word exchanged, the void became a crucible of pure conceptual violence.

Björn’s physiology once again mutated in direct response to the Law of the Matron’s Husk. Realizing that any sustained cellular contact invited the parasitic ice to root and feed, his divinity re engineered his physical frame into a modular, brittle-jointed system. His limbs, muscle bundles, and internal organs were no longer permanently bound they became loosely segmented, pressurized husks of compressed blood and kinetic energy, designed to be severed and detached at the microsecond of contact.

Ragnar shifted forward, stepping through the fold of cold space.

Five surrogate husks gestated around Björn simultaneously, their blades biting into his flanks. The moment the steel touched his skin, the predatory ice surged forward, driving its microscopic, maternal tendrils to claim a host.

Instead of fighting the intrusion, Björn’s body instantly triggered a voluntary localized necrosis. The flesh hit by the tendrils detached in solid, segmented blocks before the frost could crawl an inch further. As the severed blocks of meat floated away bloated with parasitic ice, Björn used the recoil of his own self-amputations to accelerate his counter-strike.

He swung his four armed battle-array.

Ragnar’s surrogate husks shattered, their kinetic-absorption mechanism attempting to bind Björn’s weapons. But the moment the false wombs latched onto the steel, Björn released the tension in his gauntlets, abandoning the weapons entirely to detonate the compressed kinetic charges stored within them.

The spatial shockwave blew the false husks to dust. Through the blinding mist of absolute-zero ice, the true Ragnar materialized above, his crystalline arm extending into a massive, conceptual drill intended to pierce Björn’s core and force a full incubation.

Björn didn’t dodge. His chest cavity split wide open, intentionally welcoming the strike.

The moment Ragnar’s frozen lance pierced his sternum, the Law of the Matron’s Husk flared, treating Björn’s torso as an ideal host to feed upon and freeze from within. But before the parasitic frost could establish its circulatory bridge, Björn’s adaptation locked his ribs around the lance thrust.

With a brutal, silent twitch of his spinal cord, Björn severed his entire upper torso from his lower spine.

His discarded upper half exploded outward, flushing the parasitic ice with a localized burst of volatile war-divinity, while his detached lower form already regenerating a fresh, uninfected upper body, drove two bare, gauntleted fists straight into Ragnar’s unprotected face.

Ragnar’s head snapped back, his living ice mask splintering under the kinetic overload. As he was hurled backward into the deep void, a dozen new surrogates instantly gestated around him to absorb the momentum, while Björn’s formed a platform below his feet, his body shedding another layer of infected skin as he surged forward to keep the momentum going.

The vacuum of space bled into a violent, churning stalemate, but the balance of the clash was quietly tilting.

Björn was adapting at a terrifying pace. His modular body now shed infected meat, bone, and organs as naturally as a dog shaking off water. The parasitic tendrils of the Law of the Matron’s Husk barely had time to taste his divine marrow before the corresponding segment of flesh was jettisoned and detonated in a burst of volatile kinetic pressure. Every exchange made the God of War faster, cleaner, and more precise at bypassing the surrogate traps.

Yet, as Björn closed the distance once more, his four eyes narrowed at the entity fighting back.

Ragnar no longer looked like the young king who he had launched into space.

With every clean strike Björn managed to land on the true body, an extensive, flesh-tearing wound was opened, only to be instantly sloughed off and replaced by a lifelike, absolute-zero frozen structure. Piece by piece, mortal meat and blood were being shed under the impact of Björn’s fists. Beneath the shattered surrogate husks, Ragnar’s core was slowly changing, replacing his natural biology with a dense, pristine, crystalline form. It was as if every crushing blow acted as a midwife’s tender hand, stripping away the fragile child to birth something far more cold and stronger.

A dark, primal instinct thrummed deep within Björn’s soul.

That monstrous, slumbering part of him, the pure essence of War and Madness was stirring, stretching its claws. It begged him to hold back, to let the young king finish his painful metamorphosis just to see what kind of magnificent slaughter that would unfold. It was this exact divine madness that was effortlessly digesting the staggering ocean of faith energy his people had poured into him since the war began, converting raw belief into pure divine energy.

For a split second, the temptation to surrender to the madness was overwhelming.

"Just a little longer. Let him hatch" Then, Björn’s mind snapped clear. He was no longer the mindless storm of his early centuries. He could not afford to let himself be blindly steered by the lure of his own divinity, no matter how sweet the hunger felt.

With that single, cold thought, Björn suppressed the rising tide of madness.

The dark void of space ruptured. A crimson blood dripping rift tore open behind him as his Domain Space descended upon the battlefield. Massive, blood-soaked weapon-spires and rusted chains manifest in the vacuum, spreading rapidly to engulf both in a localized realm of War.

Ragnar smacked his lips in bitter annoyance at the sudden expansion of Björn’s domain.

Feeling the state of his own evolving body, he knew he was nowhere near ready. This was far from the optimal condition he needed to complete the transition. A surge of fury flared within his chest, forcing him to grit his teeth so hard the frost on his jaw cracked. With no other choice, he responded in kind, unleashing his own domain authority to force a brutal, volatile domain clash.

The entity standing before him made his blood boil. This current iteration of Björn infuriated him far more than the wild monster he remembered ever could, stoking a vengeful flame that threatened to scorch his rational mind.

The Björn he had prepared for would never have aimed for an early domain clash. The Björn of his nightmares would have dragged this out, taking his sweet time to inflict maximal agony, savoring every moment of watching Ragnar’s flesh slough off and fracture. Ragnar had built his entire strategy on that single assumption, he was betting everything that the God of War’s sadistic, instinctual nature would grant him the precious minutes he needed to fully hatch.

Yet once again, Björn had defied his expectations.

Ever since this war between their realms began, Björn had operated with an uncharacteristic clarity. He was simply no longer the same reckless beast. Ragnar had spent this whole time refusing to believe it, clinging to the phantom of his past. The Björn burned into his memory was a hurricane of pure, unadulterated madness, a double-axe-wielding calamity who tore through friend and foe alike on the battlefield. That was the monster who had clashed with both his father and his mother and emerged victorious.

Ragnar’s very law, "the Law of the Matron’s Husk" had been birthed, forged, and refined specifically to kill that version of Björn. It was built for the mindlessly aggressive battlefield god. It was designed for the day their paths would inevitably cross again, where the parasitic, feeding frost would drown the mad titan in his own reckless bloodlust.

It was not shaped for this Björn.