The western side of the invading army was massive — easily the largest division, composed of hardened mercenaries, knight battalions, siege specialists, holy warriors, and a staggering number of conscripted soldiers. If the other three divisions existed to surround Tempest, then this one existed to destroy it.
Their goal was simple and merciless:
Total annihilation.
At the head of this force rode a young-looking man with leonine yellow hair, eyes as crimson as blood, and a presence that twisted the air around him. His warhorse thundered over the earth, hooves pounding like war drums as he advanced.
This was no mortal commander.
Lucian felt the divinity the instant the man appeared on the field. Even before transforming, even before stepping forward, he recognized the signature across the battlefield:
A god.
Typhon's Essence made him extremely sensitive to divinity — after all, Typhon was the natural predator of gods. The god-eater. The god-killer.
Lucian stepped forward, leaving the city behind. His body shifted, bones stretching and reshaping, black scales forming, muscle coiling like compressed thunder. His Draconian form unfurled, towering and monstrous, yet eerily beautiful.
The ground cracked under his steps.
And then he ran — straight toward the god leading the army.
Ares — for that was clearly who this being was — leapt off his warhorse as Lucian closed the distance. He met Lucian halfway in a clash that shook the world.
Ares' fist shot forward.
It wasn't merely divine strength.
It was war-made manifest.
The punch tore through air and sound, and when it struck Lucian's chest, it launched him backward, smashing him through the ground like a meteor.
Lucian skidded across the battlefield, carving a trench of smoking dirt behind him.
Powerful.
Even in Draconian form.
But Lucian's eyes narrowed.
He was the embodiment of Typhon.
The predator of gods.
Being pushed back by a god?
Unacceptable.
Lucian's aura intensified, spiraling upward into a vortex of eldritch-scaled energy as he stopped holding back the Essence of Typhon. The ground trembled. Air warped around him. His shape twisted — horns sharpening, wings darkening, claws lengthening.
But before he could complete the transformation—
Ares moved.
The god's eyes flashed, recognizing danger. His arm snapped forward, throwing his spear with enough divine force to tear the clouds open.
The weapon flew like a comet, wrapped in dense red divinity. It struck Lucian in the abdomen before he could dodge, piercing through him and exiting cleanly out his back with a spray of blackened blood.
The impact shook Lucian's entire frame.
The divine energy riding inside the spear should have eaten through his organs, flooded his veins with burning destruction, crippled him instantly.
But instead…
Lucian's body absorbed it.
Ares froze mid-step.
That spear had held divine energy condensed to a lethal degree. And here, in the middle of a war — the very domain Ares ruled — his divinity was boosted to unprecedented levels.
Yet this creature…
This abomination…
Was drinking it.
"Impossible…" Ares whispered. "Even gods burn under my war divinity."
Lucian's transformation finished.
His wound closed instantly.
His aura exploded outward.
His body elongated into a fifty-foot titan — half-dragon, half-eldritch, layered with chaotic anatomy that defied logic. Darkness and starfire rippled across his skin. His presence alone caused lesser soldiers to vomit or faint, their minds unable to process what stood before them.
Lucian grabbed Ares in one massive hand.
The god, for the first time in centuries, looked small.
Lucian lifted him effortlessly, claws digging into divine flesh.
And then—
The first volley hit.
Thousands of arrows, spears, javelins, and enchanted bolts rained down from behind Ares' army, striking Lucian from all directions. He felt some pierce into his flesh, only for Ultra-Speed Regeneration to erase the damage instantly. Others simply snapped against his scales.
A few stray holy spells exploded against his chest, ripping chunks of flesh away — only for the tissue to reknit before it even hit the ground.
Lucian turned his glowing eyes toward the army.
They froze.
He looked back at Ares.
His claws tightened.
He crushed the god's body — severing torso from hips, shattering ribs, pulverizing organs.
Divine ichor sprayed across his fingers.
Ares' eyes widened.
Then—
The god reappeared.
Right back on his warhorse.
Completely uninjured.
Lucian blinked once.
Ares smirked coldly.
"Killing the god of war during a war is far more difficult than you imagine, monster."
Lucian didn't reply.
He unleashed his attack.
Eclipse Breath.
A lance of fused moonfrost and sunfire burst from his maw, melting and freezing the earth at once. It churned the battlefield into glass and frost simultaneously, a paradox that defied nature.
But the moment the beam left Lucian's mouth—
A cubic prison snapped shut around him.
Perfect Cube.
Then another spell detonated.
Continuous Nuclear Disintegration.
A cascade of atomic dissolution flooded the cube, consuming everything inside it. Flesh melted. Bone dissolved. Air ionized. Hair-thin fractures of space appeared inside the cube from the sheer intensity.
And then—
A third attack descended.
A fireball like a small sun slammed into the cube.
The combined detonation blew a crater half a mile wide into the earth.
Ares watched the explosion proudly, divine energy rippling around him.
"Hmph. Mindless monster. As if a mangled imitation of a dragon could defeat a god in his own domain."
His voice deepened.
"I am Ares. Named by Veldanava himself. Holder of the Instinct Skill: God of War."
He lifted his spear as winds of divine heat crackled around him.
"This power surpasses even many Ultimate Skills. I can take war anywhere. I can command armies across the world. And above all—"
His grin widened. As he continued to boost about himself to use his Sub-skill Surrender before Truth.
"I can use every magic, every skill, every technique my army has used."
He raised his spear—
—but then froze.
A roar erupted, shaking his bones.
The Perfect Cube shattered.
The nuclear storm imploded.
And emerging from the cloud was—
Not Lucian.
Not the Draconian.
Not the half-eldritch titan.
This new form transcended monstrosity.
Lucian's face was gone.
Because Lucian was no longer using a face.
Shapes flowed across his head like liquid physics.
Eyes flickered in and out of existence.
Flesh warped like fractals devouring themselves.
Bones spiraled into geometries that shouldn't exist.
His presence alone broke things.
Magicules refused to move.
Spells collapsed into dust.
World laws bent and warped.
Sound died around him.
Color drained from reality before returning wrong.
Ares stepped back without meaning to.
"I-I… Ivarage? No… this is impossible…"
He had mistaken Lucian for Ivarage, the Sleeper of the Dungeon, one of the strongest beings in existence.
Lucian tilted what resembled a head.
Ares panicked.
He activated the most dangerous function of his Skill.
The remaining one million soldiers — already weakened, terrified, and bleeding from the earlier storm — felt their souls being pulled.
Half a million souls tore free screaming.
Soldiers dropped like puppets with cut strings.
Some died instantly.
Some convulsed.
Some simply fell silent, empty eyes staring upward.
Their souls spiraled toward Ares, funneling into him like a hurricane of agony.
Ares convulsed, back arching, body swelling with stolen life-force.
His skin cracked.
Divine energy blasted outward.
Chunks of flesh peeled off his arms from sheer overload.
His voice rose into a distorted godly screech.
"LIMIT BREAK!"
His divinity spiked.
His aura shook the mountains.
He pointed his spear at Lucian and roared the name of his ultimate attack:
"DIVINE JUDGMENT!"
A torrent of holy destruction erupted — a world-cutting beam wrapped in condensed war divinity, annihilating everything in its path, turning earth into vapor, sky into dust, and air into screaming vacuum.
The attack struck Lucian dead-on.
The battlefield flashed white.
The explosion devoured the horizon.
Ares panted, trembling, nearly collapsing from the overload of power and unstable mountain of stolen souls inside him.
"It's… done…"
It wasn't.
Lucian opened his mouth.
And devoured the attack.
It didn't slow him.
It didn't burn him.
It didn't scratch him.
He ate it like a delicacy.
Then he devoured Ares.
The god vanished down Lucian's throat in a single distorted gulp.
Inside Lucian's eldritch maw, Ares struggled — divine energy thrashing like a caged star, ripping at Lucian's insides, roaring for freedom.
But escape was impossible.
Inside the body of Typhon, gods became food.
Ares' scream faded.
The barriers protecting his soul cracked.
Then broke.
And the god of war died.
Lucian's form rippled.
He returned to his Draconian shape as the Voice of the World finally reached him through the collapsing space around his eldritch transformation.
Acknowledged: Ultimate Skill – Ares: God of War acquired.
Acknowledged: Individual "Lucian" has fulfilled requirements to Awaken as Demon Lord.
Concerning Harvest Festival…
.
Then he lifted a hand and transferred a massive surge of souls to Rimuru.
After that, Lucian rose into the sky.
His wings spread.
His aura stretched across the field like judgment.
Then he spoke — his voice amplified by raw magicule pressure, booming across the battlefield.
"YOUR COMMANDER IS DEAD."
Silence.
"You may surrender now and I will spare your lives."
The army trembled.
"Your countries will be contacted. Until then, you will be treated as prisoners of war."
He gazed down at them — not cruelly, not with malice, but with absolute dominance.
"Choose. Surrender… or follow Ares into oblivion."
The battlefield shook.
Because just moments before, half a million soldiers had dropped dead, their souls ripped out by the god they trusted.
Lucian floating above them, wings spread, divine energy swirling, eldritch remnants flickering across his frame…
Their will to fight shattered.
A/n: That concludes the war and next we've got the harvest festival.
Should I make everyone connected to Lucian evolve? Like the Devils and Eve etc or should I keep it to Tempest? If I go with former than Rimuru won't be getting a Harvest Festival since she'll also be counted as his subordinate and evolve.