The Guardian gods Chapter 924

A magnificent, towering building materialized directly behind Tide, its architectural perfection casting a golden shadow across the higher plane. Tide stood proudly before its massive, heavily sealed gates, sweeping a hand back toward the structure with theatrical flair.

"An auction, hosted jointly by myself and the God of Sovereignty, Krogan, will be held in two months behind these closed gates," Tide announced, his voice ringing with absolute authority. "There, you will bear witness to treasures that my boundless vaults have hoarded until now."

A sharp, mocking edge slipped into his tone as a grin spread across his shark-like face.

"This auction could easily be held today, but I smell the utter broke-ness festering in all of you. These two months are a grace period, a chance for you to scrape together every last ounce of wealth, rare resources, and arcane capital you can possibly accumulate."

As his astral projection began to shimmer and fade into nothingness, Tide’s final words echoed in the minds of every god and paragon listening.

"Don’t take my words lightly. Behind these gates lie the exact answers you have all been desperately seeking, waiting to be claimed. This is an opportunity that, if missed, will leave you so far behind in the grand race that you will never catch up."

With a final, shimmering ripple, the projection vanished, leaving only the magnificent, impossible structure lingering in this space. Every paragon with a glance instantly recognized the truth of the architecture, the building was bound by a higher law, anchored by Tide’s authority who is acting upon that which his divinity entails.

Any notion of brute-forcing their way in or bypassing the gates before the appointed time was instantly extinguished. Those walls were untouchable until Tide willed them open. But that very restriction confirmed the weight of his words. Whatever lay hidden behind those gates possessed the value Tide claims it does.

Also the paragons knew precisely what they hungered for. At their level of existence, mortal gold and worldly artifacts were mere playthings. The only prize capable of accelerating a paragon’s ascent, the singular, desperately coveted secret every powerhouse in Nana sought was access to a pool of mana source, an infinite wellspring capable of granting them greater autonomy and deeper mastery over their respective laws.

As the realization settled in, heartbeats spiked in the chests of beings who had long transcended mortality. Their identity as the peak of power in Nana showed as they exerted their will onto the world.

The continent-spanning conflicts ground to an abrupt halt. Without warning, the great wars ceased. All resources diverted away from the battlefields, turning their entire kingdoms toward a frantic, world-spanning wild hunt. If Tide’s promise held even a shred of truth, every faction needed to strip their vaults bare, unearth treasures and aggressively inflate their net worth before the countdown to the auction expired.

Two weeks passed since Tide’s grand announcement, and while the paragons scrambled around, a creeping terror bled down to the mortals. Those below the sixth tier could not hear the divine bells, nor could they see the golden auction house. Yet, they felt the suffocating shift in the air.

It was a maddening psychological pressure, the unmistakable sensation of a somethin gathering just out of sight, of a game being played by invisible hands. This pervasive aura of knowing that something monumental was coming while knowing none of the details spawned a wave of blind panic and irrational fear. People clung to their daily lives with trembling hands, terrified of changes they could neither see nor control.

Then, on a night in the third week, the anxiety turned into raw reality.

The entire Western Continent violently shook. A tectonic upheaval that shook the earth physically, coupled with a crushing metaphysical tremor that rattled the souls of everyone living upon it. For a few terrifying moments, the world felt as though it were tearing apart at the seams.

Across the continent, the native paragons immediately took action to shield their kingdom and citizens from the quake.

Except for one region. There, no protection came, because the ones responsible for the disaster were the very entities meant to guard it.

Deep within the borders of two neighboring minor kingdoms on the Western Continent, the ground erupted. From the dust and fractured earth rose two towering nightmares, entities so vast that they defied mortal architecture.

The Glass Titan standing over the first kingdom, a colossal silhouette formed entirely of sharp, shifting, fractured glass loomed against the night sky, its crystalline body refracting moonlight into blinding, deadly prisms.

The Iron Titan directly opposite, towering over the second kingdom, stood a heavily armored behemoth gripping a spear the size of a mountain, its metallic plating grinding with the sound of collapsing mountains.

Though miles of territory separated their actual kingdom, their sheer size warped perspective itself. Because of their size, the vast distance between them seemed to shrink entirely.

They stood face-to-face, locked in a silent standoff, casting long, foreboding shadows across the trembling kingdoms below.

Every higher entity in Nana instantly snapped their attention toward the Western Continent. The grand scramble for wealth ground to a temporary, breathless halt as the higher powers tuned in to watch the unfolding spectacle.

Amidst the groaning of fractured earth and the shimmering light of the glass frame, a deep, resonant voice echoed across the continent. It was the armored Titan of Iron, speaking down from the sky.

"You have made the wrong choice, Markus," the Iron Titan rumbled, his voice shaking the foundations of the kingdoms below. "Submitting to me would have been the best choice for us both."

The colossal figure tightened its grip on its massive spear, casting a dark shadow over the land.

"If I acquire whatever Tide promises, it would be only a matter of time with my newly gained strength to help you acquire yours, too."

A heavy, suffocating silence blanketed the Western Continent as the Iron Titan’s Parduk words hung in the air. The offer was a pragmatic proposition, an alliance of power, asking one higher power to bow so that both might eventually ascend to unimaginable heights through the spoils of Tide’s impending auction.

For a long, agonizing moment, the world held its breath.

Then, the towering silhouette of the Glass Titan shifted. As its fractured crystal body moved, millions of razor-sharp prisms caught the moonlight, creating a blinding, hypnotic lattice of light across the landscape. When the Glass Titan, Markus finally spoke, his voice sounded like a billion shards of crystal sliding across one another, sharp, melodic, and hard to listen to.

"Power shared on a leash is no power at all, old friend," Markus replied.

Markus slowly raised a massive, crystalline hand, pointing a sharp finger directly at the armored behemoth opposite him.

"Your entire proposition is built on the premise of subservience disguised as unity. If Tide’s auction holds the key to true autonomy, I will not taste it as a second-hand reward handed down from your table."

The air between the two colossal entities warped, the sheer density of their colliding domains creating visible shockwaves in the sky. Far above, the watching gods and paragons narrowed their eyes at the possible conflict.

The air above the Western Continent split and groaned under the weight of two fundamentally opposing truths.

Markus, who commanded the law of Refraction and Transmutation, hovered as a shifting silhouette of infinite, prismatic facets. Opposite him stood Parduk, who commanded the law of Subjugation and Inflexibility.

The Iron Titan made the first move. He stepped forward and commanded the space around him to yield. His aura of Subjugation slammed down onto the battlefield. The earth and kingdom below them in the blink of an eye was forced utterly flat, the very dirt and stone compressed into a smooth, kneeling mirror under the sheer tyranny of his law.

He thrust his heavy spear forward, at a speed impossible for someone his size. This wasn’t just a physical stab, it was an application of Inflexibility. The trajectory of the spear was locked onto Markus. It could not be dodged, bent, or diverted. It was a decree that demanded the target’s absolute submission.

Markus immediately felt the immense pressure. To directly alter or break an inflexible law would cost an ocean of mana. So, he didn’t try to break it.

As the spear closed in, Markus tapped into Transmutation, shifting not the spear, but his own physical composition and the air immediately in front of him. He turned himself into a cascade of living, liquid glass, completely devoid of solid form or resistance. Simultaneously, he applied Refraction to the kinetic energy of the thrust.

Because the Iron Titan’s spear was inflexible, it refused to be redirected. The conceptual friction between the two laws shrieked, instantly burning through massive chunks of both their mana reserves. Markus’s glass form fractured, bleeding shimmering light, but the refraction worked just enough to let the unstoppable force slide cleanly through the gaps in his liquid-glass body, burying the spear’s energy into the continent below.