The People's God: Sacrificing Trillions to Ascend

The five Noble Vampires gathered, each possessing the strength of a King life form and the Blood Domain. They expanded their Blood Domain to cover 10,000 square kilometers of the arena, where it continuously summoned thralls to fight alongside them.

This wasn’t over, though. Dark Night was a God with five Divine Aspects, of which Summon was only one. She still commanded the Blood, Darkness, Vampire, and Martial Aspects. The Divine Skill: Blood and Divine Skill: Vampire perfectly complemented the Noble Vampires.

Drawing energy from her bats, Dark Night activated two more Divine Skills from her remaining Aspects. The first expanded the Blood Domain to a staggering 50,000 square kilometers. The second enhanced her thralls and granted them flight, blood-sucking abilities, and the capacity to inject venom into their victims, converting them into additional thralls.

With her Divine Skills, Dark Night had transformed her previously weak core race—the bats—into formidable vampires. Her ingenuity drew admiration from the crowd. Those who had initially come to see her appearance now recognized her talent and tireless effort. It seemed entirely plausible that she could ascend to a Major God if she continued to grow at this pace.

Exhausted from channeling the energy of her 80 billion bats, she could no longer sustain the Darkness and Martial Divine Aspects. She paused and cast a disdainful gaze downward at the tiny Han Wu.

“Locust Plague, your end is here,” she proclaimed.

Han Wu smiled bitterly. Dark Night was clearly forcing his hand, but since she had already revealed her true power, he saw no reason to hold back. He activated True Demon King Transformation and stood on equal footing with her. All of his enhanceable organs pushed his strength to match hers.

Simultaneously, he activated his Divine Skills. Thanks to the effects of Defiance, he had gained eight Divine Aspects instead of the usual four. Each was powerful enough to serve as the core Divine Aspect of a standard God. Today, however, he chose to employ only one for his locusts: War. It was perfectly suited for commanding an army.

He used all five Divine Skills—Fanatic, Last Stand, Haste, Knowing, and Unparalleled—on his locusts, and their power intensified visibly. Stamina flowed from deep within their bodies, seemingly without end. He held back his other Divine Skills and commanded his locusts to activate their Monster Armor.

In an instant, his 400 billion locusts morphed into a variety of monstrous forms.

The audience froze in shock. The locusts were supposed to be his core race, so why had they all transformed?

Han Wu resembled a zookeeper overseeing an impossible menagerie. Ordinary animals appeared, like rhinos, giraffes, and zebras, alongside bizarre, unidentifiable life forms that even he could not name. He longed to dissect the tiny brains of the locusts to understand why they revered such forms, though the battle left no time for curiosity. Without hesitation, he ordered them to strike.

The battle between the vampires and the locusts promised to be spectacular. The spectators stood on their seats and shouted in excitement. Two Gods, each towering over 1,000 meters and with fully transformed core races, commanded forces capable of destroying ordinary Gods.

Han Wu and Dark Night watched the clash between their units with keen interest.

Dark Night’s surprise grew as she observed the locusts in their monstrous forms holding their own against the thralls, one-on-one. She knew the thralls’ strength—they were at least Heroic life forms, enhanced by her Vampire Aspect. For Han Wu’s locusts to match them in combat meant each transformed locust equaled a Heroic life form. Multiply that by 400 billion, and the scale was staggering.

It was absurd. Even a weaker civilization didn’t have 400 billion life forms, let alone Heroic ones. Not even Major Gods could summon so many Heroic life forms from their divine realms. The more she thought about it, the more bewildered she became.

Yet this was not the full extent of Han Wu’s power. He didn’t seem satisfied watching his transformed locusts spar with the thralls. True, they had reached the strength of Heroic life forms, but their combat effectiveness remained low. The locusts had awakened too many types of Monster Armor, and they hadn’t yet learned to utilize their transformed bodies.

Their limited intelligence prevented them from using claws and fangs skillfully. Instead, they attacked like typical locusts, headbutting the thralls repeatedly. Each thrall required multiple strikes to fall. They were remarkably foolish, yet fortunately, their transformation made them far tougher. Otherwise, their relentless headbutting, combined with their low intellect, would have gotten them killed.

Han Wu sighed. “It seems they need more training.”

Dark Night bristled, believing he was criticizing her and her units.

You fucker. Bats are my core race, not the thralls. Isn’t it normal that I haven’t trained with them before? She had every reason to curse, but she held her tongue and focused on the battle raging before her.

Dark Night’s blood pressure spiked as her forces faltered. Four hundred billion locusts against two billion thralls was overwhelming. The thralls failed to convert the locusts into more of their kind; instead, some of the locusts had transformed into monstrous, blood-sucking predators and drained the thralls dry.

Ultimately, the five Noble Vampires were left to fight alone. Even united, they could not pierce the defenses of Dark Locust, who had transformed into Heracle.

It was not a matter of weakness. Dark Locust was a Sage life form and now assumed an even more heavily fortified form. Despite using every Skill at their disposal, they failed to breach his carapace.

Dark Locust shrugged off their attacks and manipulated Dark Domain at will. The Blood Domain crumbled under his power.

Dark Night bit her lower lip as she could already tell that she had lost.