Realizing the futility of its current strategy, the divine dragon ceased its efforts to heal his troops, and decided to take action personally.

It would have preferred to remain an unseen force empowering his subjects, because it had no confidence in its own fighting prowess. While it was true he had never felt more powerful, he had very poor control, and he feared it would not be enough to match his terrifying enemies.

He might be a God, but that was a position gained through an artifact, and not obtained from his own comprehension. In fact, he was more than a little ashamed of the manner in which he had acquired his sacred status. As the first cultivator, he was a very prideful individual, so how could he accept stealing a fallen god’s powers instead of earning them himself?

This was not to say that what he had done was easy. The divine drop of blood was somewhat similar to a computer locked with biometric security. The truly valuable thing was the information it contained, but only a dragon could access it.

Fortunately, the mosquito king was cultivating atavism, folowing the azur dragon lineage, which would naturally lead him to transform into a dragon. Upon realizing it couldn't afford the time to cultivate normally, it had plunged into the golden drop and started absorbing the endless vitality contained within. He was in essence hooking himself up to the battery of this computer and using its energy to commence his transformation in advance.

This was an incredibly dangerous process, akin to putting your fingers in a plug in the hopes of using this energy to make yourself stronger, but he was not a peak cultivator for nothing. After a week of struggle, he had succeeded and been reborn as a noble dragon.

Once his transformation was completed, he had been recognised by the dragon blood, and had been allowed to fuse with it and “download” all of the data it contained.

The most important thing he received was the position of God.

Unfortunately, goodhood did not come with instruction manuals, and he had lacked the time to familiarize himself with what that truly entailed. He could tell it was incredibly important, but the only use he had thus far found for it was to create links of faith, enabling him to control and empower his subjects.

He could feel there was much more to this position, but without the time to explore it, he could only rely on his near endless amount of vitality to fight against a civilisation of demigods.

He had hoped that by gathering the forces of the entire world and supplying them with enough vitality, they would be able to win a war of attrition, but it was now obvious that this was a hopeless endeavor.

Resigning himself to having to fight personally, the dragon summoned up a great surge of magical energy, directly picked up the closest mountain, and hurled it at the Sil’piceus city, intending to raze it to the ground in a single shot.

The improvised meteorite hurtled towards its target, vaporizing anyone that tried to get in its way, but before it could make contact, a huge tentacle rose from ground, catching the projectile in an almost leisurely manner, before throwing it back, forcing the dragon to swerve in the sky and avoid it.

Then, before the divine beast could recover from its improvised aerial maneuvers, the sky seemed to be warped by an unseen force, and with a large crack, the massive form of the Owner appeared, so large it covered the sun.

It was hard to describe how big the Owner was. At some point, he had grown into a behemoth the size of a small city, composed of an incalculable amount of parasitic sub-bodies. Each and every one of his thousands of tentacles were thicker and longer that the divine dragon, all of them radiating the oppressive pressure of a third stage martial artist.

He had grown so large he could no longer fit in the Great City, being forced to carve himself an immense cavern underneath to live in. Indeed, were it not for his mastery of teleportation and flight powers, it would have been impossible to move around without destroying everything around him.

This was the result of countless years of dedicated cultivation, the proof of his immense power. He may have not yet taken control of a domain, and had not earned the position of God, but that did not stop him from claiming to be the most powerful being in the world.

He too had not originally intended to fight personally, unwilling to reveal just how large the power gap was. The plan had been to send some weaker third stage martial artists to take care of the dragon, all in an effort to maximize the benefits of this war without demoralizing the enemy too much.

However, it had been so long since he had fought anything even approaching his level, and he couldn't contain himself. Despite his old age, he was still a hot blooded warrior at heart. He yearned to experience a battle to the death again, and he was not going to let an opportunity approaching it go to waste.

He was waving all of his tentacles very aggressively, but in truth, he was using only one of them at a time to attack his enemy. He wanted to appear as if he was trying his best, while not ending the fight too quickly.

The divine dragon was making a valiant effort to keep up, calling the wind and rain, creating a sea in the sky and throwing dvine lightning around indiscriminately, but doing no real damage.

Even when two Gods, the inheritors of the world tree and white tiger, appeared out of nowhere to launch a surprise attack, the Owner only feigned injury. Then, a few calculated tentacle swings were all that he needed to include them both in his macabre dance. He was trying his best to make it appear as a relatively balanced fight, while still taking great joy in making them slowly fall into a hopeless position.

This superpowered performance lasted multiple days, the Owner taking its role as a cruel puppeteer toying with his victims without them even realizing it very seriously.

It was only much later that the Owner grew tired of this meaningless fight, and cast his most powerful spell. He did not want to kill them, but he was deadly curious about their divinity, and he believed that stealing their divine blood would only make them more willing to attack again. After all, it did not seem to affect their combat power too much.

The sky turned red as all the blood contained in the twin blood lakes rose up to the heavens, forming an immense octopus, looking down upon the world. This was no virtual image of no consequences, as Avery had once created, but a veritable blood phantom the size of the planet, poised to destroy the world.

This truly was the Owner’s deadliest attack, but he had only channeled a infinitesimally small portion of his power into it. He had calculated the power of this strike perfectly, so that it would shred the three gods apart, separating them from their divinity, while still letting them live.

The blood phantom’s strike easily broke past the defenses of the young gods, and ripped the divine blood from both the azure dragon and white tiger. It was slightly less effective on the bloodless world tree, who managed to keep hold of its divinity, but it still left it half dead and in a coma.

This strike determined the Sil’piceus victory, yet the Owner too let himself fall limply on the ground, barely avoiding crushing his own city. He wanted them to believe this had been his final strike, and that they had been supremely close to beating him. Only then would they be the most motivated, to improve themselves and return to contribute their high quality blood to the Great rune.

Understanding his intentions, a pair of powerful Sil’piceus ran towards the recovering gods, forcing them to retreat while making it clear that the Owner was not capable of finishing them off himself.

Despite their grievous wounds, the two fallen gods had to continue using their powers on their unconscious comrade and flee as far as they could, leaving two golden drops of divine blood hanging high in the sky, and vowing to take revenge for this humiliation.

Content with the results of his performance, the Owner stealthily separated a parasitic sub-body and made it grab the divine blood, intending to offer them up to the Great rune. Yet, he froze as soon as he stepped foot into the temple, seeing the Great Rune vibrating violently, enveloped in a huge silver formation.