NOVEL WEB The hanged man
Issei Hyoudou’s fist met with the sword of Bishmamonten with a loud boom. The Earth exploded around them, caved and moved by their might.
The god’s spear moved in a way that could only be called divine, unbalancing the boy by moving to the right softly.
The back of the spear whipped and tore through the air, its target the neck of the reincarnated devil.
The spear met the flesh of the devil and found resistance. “I knew that it would not be so easy,” the god sighed before a punch from the Gremory pawn encountered his armour sending him flying away into a faraway mountain.
The pawn jumped, clearing a distance of at least a dozen kilometres between the two of them.
He fell from the sky into the prone form of the god like a lion on a prey. Crimson Flames erupted around him turning the sky into a scarlet scenery.
Bishamonten chose to dodge by moving, his form gliding and travelling through space like a spectre.
The mountain took the brunt of the rage of the brown-haired boy burning and exploding like a mighty volcano.
The boy chose that moment to attack. He put his spear before him, pushed against the Earth and sent himself flying as fast as lightning toward the Pawn of the Gremory Heiress.
The boy's head turned toward Bishamonten but it was too late. The spear pierced a hold in the heart of the devil sending a showcase that destroyed the enflamed mountain making fall from the sky into gigantic balls of lava.
Blood erupted from the mouth of Issei. “I guess I worried for nothing,” the God mused out loud before a claw removed one of his eyes from his face.
Bishamonten instincts had saved him. If he hadn't instinctively moved before the attack of the brown-haired boy, his head would have been what he would have lost.
He was not able to dodge the dragon shot in the chest that followed immediately after though.
The god was sent ragdollimg away from Issei creating with his body angry gouges on the Earth.
“You have to use your head. Don't lose yourself in your anger, don't let it consume you” the voice of Ddraig sounded from Issei’s gauntlet.
“I'm not losing myself in it. My anger is just fuelling me,” Issei said to the dragon.
It didn't matter what was on his path. He grabbed the spear and removed it from his flesh before throwing it to the ground.
He would make the god pay for everything did. He needed strength. He needed more anger. He needed more power!
flames began to flicker in existence around the boy. His skin felt hot as if he was being lit from inside. It was so painful wrecking him from inside but this pain was nothing before the anguish and hatred he felt because of the god.
Issei threw himself to the god creating craters and earthquakes with each step. He appeared over the careening form of Bishamomten.
He pounced on him, a punch directed to the face of the god. It pummeled the divine being into the Earth's crust and sent flying in the air absurd quantities of dirt.
Issei tried to follow after the god but he was unable to. A mountain of sword grew from the Heart of the Directed at his flesh.
He met them head-on with his flames covering him acting both as an armour and a shield. The swords encountered his flames and tried to snuff them out.
Issei’s flames burnt through them. As long as the hatred of the boy crackled in his heart like a bonfire, there would be nothing that would stop him.
The time it took for the flames of the boy to melt to nothing thousands of swords was enough for the god to resurface away from the boy, his form soaring toward the Heavens.
The god touched the sky and shaped it. Lightning took shape taking the form of a sword of massive proportion as big as a mountain.
With a movement of his hands, the sword fell toward the ground like a falling star. Issei prepared himself to dodge when he was stopped by Ddraig’s words.
“Partner, look around you,” the dragon told him. He turned to do so and with his sight realized that there was a little town, not one kilometre away from him.
His anger grew at the realization. The god had done it on purpose. He knew that Issei hated him because of what the god had done to the city of Kuoh.
He knew that the brown-haired boy would not allow something similar to happen if he could help it.
His anger grew to heights he didn't think were possible. His anger fuelled his flames making them brighter, deadler.
The flames around him were burning the air itself erasing atoms and matter. The only reason why the world itself was not art ablaze by the wrath of the red dragon emperor was because his wrath was directed to only one being.
The god was looking at Issei, a smile etched on his face waiting to see what the boy would do. Would he stay in place saving the town but allowing Bishamonten to injure if not destroy him or would he disregard thousands of lives so that he could clench his need for revenge?
Issei grounded himself his feet pushing deep into the Earth to steady himself. His flames moved, gathering like a vortex between his two palms before coating his hands.
The sword made of lightning fell on the Earth illuminating the world with its might and its gloriousness.
Issei’s hand moved breaking through the laws of physics and caught between them the tip of the sword.
Issei used his demonic energy and his flames to create a platform under him that would not cave because of the strength of the impact between the giant sword and his hands.
A spark of his flames left him barreling toward the city to erect a crude fire barrier to help protect it. What would be the point of trying to catch the lightning sword created by Bishamonten if the shockwaves themselves and the heat killed the inhabitants of the city he wanted to protect?
Pain blasted through his body in a wave of agony but the boy didn't move, continuing to endure.
“Do you really think that I would stay still!” the god screamed, a crazed smile etched on his face and looking blood-lusted before he flew toward the handle of the gigantic lightning sword and pushed it.
Issei’s right heel snapped and he fell on one knee half kneeling, still grabbing and holding away the gigantic sword as if he was Atlas holding the universe in his grasp. “That is war! The only thing that matters is who is the winner! The loser is the sinner! The winner is the saint!” the god shouted.
A scream erupted from Issei’s lips “Shut up! Sinner? Saint?! I don't care about those notions. I only care about killing you for what you did, for the innocents you killed!”
“There were no innocents in that accursed city,” the voice of the god boomed.
“Who the hell are you to decide this?!” the boy yelled back blood seeping from the ruptured part of his body in his flames.
“I am god! That is why,” the god screamed before summoning with his right hand a stream of energy that began to run through the lightning sword and make it take a golden appearance.
The sword weight increased drastically in Issei’s hands. Breathing was becoming harder. It was like he was suffocating. He was feeling so cold and too warm from the inside of his body.
His right hand snapped under the weight making the sword come closer to touching the ground. Only one of his hands was restraining the sword but it was clear that his flames were struggling against the lightning of the god.
“I don't care if you are a god!” the pawn groaned painfully under the weight of the sword.
He knew that he could not be called the most moral person. He was not kind like Asia or the president.
He was not smart like Yuto, Koneko or Akeno to understand things that were beyond him. The only truth he knew deep down was that what he was doing was right!
His broken arm snapped back in place with a sickening snap. With a yell, Issei threw a fist against the head of the sword and another one and another one and another one until four punches became ten and fifty and one hundred and broke through the sword.
Issei pushed against the Earth with his intact foot propulsing himself toward the god. Flames materialized and erupted like volcanoes under his feet to make him faster.
The god was smiling looking down cockily at him and it infuriated him so much. He needed more strength now. It didn't matter that the ten seconds needed for his sacred gear to increase his strength hadn't passed.
“Boost,” the voice of the dragon in his arm yelled. It made him reappear before the god as if he had slipped through space a first coated in crimson flames.
The god’s eyes widened. He tried to move out of the way but it was too late. It wasn't completely able to do so. The only thing he was able to do was move so that his armour would be between the Red Dragon emperor’s first and him.
Issei's fist met the armour of the god and burnt through it before perforating his flesh and knocking him out of the sky sending him flying away into the Pacific Ocean.
His flames didn't stay idle. Like missiles, they took life and flew weaving through the air and burning it to strike the spot where the god had fallen into the Ocean.
The heat of the flames of the red dragon emperor was so high that They evaporated the water surrounding them creating a chasm, a separation in the ocean as if it was an act coming from Moses.
The god moved through the ocean as if he was a creature that was born and made for it swimming, running on the ocean floor, shapeshifting, weaving and dogging the flames following him.
Bishamonten leapt breaking out of the water. Under him, the flames of Issei followed him. The god directed his palm toward the horizon and from it came flying faster than sound his spear.
He grabbed it with one hand and pivoted in the air before turning in it like a buzz saw. The blade of his spear met the flames under him. With one move that was angled perfectly, he cut through all of them.
The might of his strike continued after destroying the flames of Issei separating the ocean under him in two.
‘I had played too much with my prey’ Bishamonten realized. He had thought the boy weak and he hadn't been wrong in thinking such but the problem was that the boy was growing too fast in strength.
For now, he could allow himself to play with the boy, to not fight seriously but doing such created a possible if slim risk of the boy catching him in strength. Sure he would still win even if their strength were equal because Bishamonten had been fighting for a thousand years longer than the existence of the lineage of the reincarnated boy but it would be such a drag.
There was also the worst scenario that could happen, that he felt could be triggering at any moment, that was scaring him. The Juggernaut drive.
Who in the moonlit world hadn’t heard of this unholy abominable transformation? This was why more than anything red and white dragon emperors were feared.
They were already volatile emotionally and this was why some people subjected the ideas why they chose to host the two sacred gears by the system of the Presence in the formation of their souls while in the womb.
A strong enough emotion, too strong for themselves to regulate and they would fall prey to the juggernaut drive and its madness.
The juggernaut drive gave them the unchecked power of one of the heavenly dragons while stripping them of their life force and their sanity.
Dozens of pantheons, hundreds of Pantheons both major and minor, both old and young were extinguished due to the rage of a dragon emperor.
Atlantis, El Dorado, Biringan, Chryse and Argyre, Adlivun, Aztlan, Mictlan, Vineta and Vyraj were just a few places that were destroyed, erased by a dragon emperor to the point most were thought to be myths even by the descendants of some of the lucky survivors of the rampages of the red and white dragon emperors.
There had been no dragon emperor that had been in the past reincarnated as a different being or that descended from a supernatural being.
With a normal Heavenly Dragon emperor, there was a certainty in the fact that sooner or later, the hosts of the heavenly dragons would die.
The boy had been reincarnated as a devil by the little sister of the crimson Lucifer. With the resources at her disposition both because of her nature and who she was related to, it was clear that there was a chance that the devils may have gained control of the red dragon emperor for all eternity.
This was not something that he could allow. A red dragon emperor who had lived long enough to master their sacred gear, a red dragon emperor who was under the direct cup of the devils and their armies. It would only bring more injustice and cruelty to the world.
It was such a shame. if only the soul of the Japanese teen hadn't been corrupted by the Gremory heiress, they would have probably been able to make the boy join their ranks and with his potential, the chances of them regaining their prestige and foothold over and before the world. They would have been able to negotiate with the devils, to banish them for Japan through fear of attacking their underworld.
Well, there was no point in wondering about things that he could not change. Snow, black-coloured snow began to fall all over Japan.
The armour of Bishamonten began to flake off to gather behind his head in the form of a frozen floating green Halo that radiated a soft golden light leaving his chest bare. In his back, his Prabha mandala took shape and the lid that he had placed on his own existence was lifted.
Rhyme and frost took life burying and surrounding all of Japan In their icy grips. He has been called and worshipped as lord of the north for a reason.
His eyes lit up from the inside, his pupils shrinking until they left behind an empty gold of coldness. The white of his eyes peeled to be replaced by black. Bishamonten had played enough. Now was the time to kill a dragon.