The Guardian gods Chapter 964

They all felt the exact same thing, the agonizing, abrupt severance of a connection they hadn’t even realized was cradling them. It was as if the faint, maternal warmth quietly humming in the background of their lives had suddenly been extinguished. The sensation was so visceral, so overwhelming, that tears began to stream uncontrollably from the eyes of millions before their minds could even register what had happened.

High above the atmosphere, where the void of space met the upper strata of the atmosphere, Ragnar froze mid-blade clash.

Engaged in a relentless duel with Yuki, the sudden, hollow ache in his soul made his heart stutter. Sensing the shift, he violently parried a incoming arc of energy and used the recoil to create immediate distance, breaking off the engagement. Ignoring the ongoing clash, he turned and allowed gravity to seize him, falling back toward the world of Nana below.

Tears cut clean tracks through the dust and dried blood on his face, burning hot against his skin. His fingers gripped the hilt of his sword so tightly the leather wrap groaned under the pressure.

As he tore through the cloud layer, his descent offered him a vantage point over a sight no mortal had ever been permitted to witness.

The merged, localized space where the gods had clashed was now completely eroded, shattered into jagged spatial rift remnants. Out of the lingering thermal haze walked Björn, the undisputed victor. The God of War took a slow, casual step across the void, returning to his own domain as effortlessly as a man returning to his home after a light exercise. Before disappearing into his realm, Björn cast a single, indifferent glance downward at the vast, chaotic battlefield below.

Following the war-god’s gaze, Ragnar looked down.

Driven wild by the undeniable triumph of their deity, the armies of Björn were surging forward, their morale soaring into a frenzied, terrifying fever pitch. They attacked the weeping, disoriented ranks of the Silver Kingdom with renewed, savage fervor, turning an already brutal battle into a bloody, desperate struggle for survival.

"Björn!!!"

Ragnar’s anguish-filled roar ripped through the sky, carrying across the expanse of Nana with enough raw, shattering force to split the clouds.

The God of War halted mid-step, turning back slowly with a raised brow. Trailing right on Ragnar’s heels was Yuki, diving through the atmosphere in hot pursuit. But the Silver King seemed entirely oblivious to her presence, his bloodshot eyes were locked onto Björn, blinded to everything else by a tide of pure, unadulterated rage.

Björn’s bloodlust, left unsated by the hollow construct he had just crushed, flickered back to life. A wide, predatory grin spread across his face as he opened his arms wide to welcome the falling king.

"Young one," Björn boomed, his voice carrying the heavy, metallic reverberation of a titan at play. "Have you come to deliver your father’s treasure to me?"

Raising his heavy, gauntleted hand, Björn gently stroked the metal along his knuckles, his tone laced with dark, mocking affection. "She has missed him terribly. What a filial son you are, ensuring your parents always find their way back to one another."

Yuki, who had been closing the distance to strike Ragnar from behind, ground to an abrupt halt mid-air. Her eyes shifted from her target to her husband, reading the sudden, dangerous flare in his posture.

Björn had officially marked the young king as his next quarry. Knowing the insatiable, possessive nature of his combat thirst, interfering now would yield her no favor and might only turn his bloody appetite toward her. She lowered her weapon, stepping back to let the God of War take his prize.

Björn vanished from his position.

Before Ragnar could even process the displacement, the God of War materialized inches from his face. A massive, calloused hand clamped over the king’s jaw like an iron vise, completely cutting off his roar. Without losing a fraction of momentum, Björn spun in place, utilizing his entire body weight to hurl Ragnar straight up into the firmament.

The kinetic force was absolute. Ragnar, utterly powerless to arrest his upward trajectory, tumbled through the upper atmosphere in a blinding, friction-heated streak, piercing through the sky of Nana and breaching the cold vacuum of space.

Björn was right behind him, a crimson comet tearing through the void.

Closing the distance instantly, Björn brought a crushing fist down toward Ragnar’s head. But the moment impact was made, the king’s form shattered into a burst of absolute-zero ice shards. The frost didn’t scatter into the vacuum; it acted like a parasitic growth, instantly creeping onto Björn’s arm, freezing his muscle fibers, and locking his system in a rapid, cryogenic spread.

With a flash, Ragnar materialized directly behind Björn, his face a mask of absolute hatred. Using the spatial momentum of the trade, he brought his sword down in a blinding, full-circle executioner’s arc intended to cleave the God of War in half.

Two additional, brutal arms burst from Björn’s torso in a violent display of war divinity. The heavy, blood-stained battleaxe manifested into one of his four hands. With terrifying, callous precision, the axe swung backward, severing his own frozen, parasitic arm clean off at the shoulder before the ice could reach his heart.

The amputated, frost-covered arm floated into the path of Ragnar’s descending blade. The king’s sword cleaved through the discarded limb, the kinetic shockwave rippling through the severed flesh and dissipating the lethal force of the swing before the steel could ever touch Björn’s spine.

Simultaneously, Björn’s upper body contorted with unnatural elasticity, twisting a full hundred and eighty degrees to face Ragnar head-on. His blood-soaked features split into a wide, brutal grin, completely unbothered by the arm he had just severed.

His remaining free hand coiled into a massive fist, driving forward with the force of a collapsing star into the wide open center of Ragnar’s chest.

Ragnar threw his left arm across his body to block, but the kinetic explosion on impact was catastrophic. Bones shattered into splinters, muscle tore from the joint, and the king’s arm was instantly reduced to a mangled, bloody mass of crushed flesh. The sheer momentum sent Ragnar hurtling backward through the vacuum, carving a trail through the starlight.

Björn remained floating in place, his smile fading slightly as he looked down at the hand he had just used to strike the king.

The frost was back. The parasitic, absolute-zero chill from Ragnar’s defensive divinity had transferred upon contact, rapidly climbing up his forearm and calcifying his veins into brittle glass. Without a second thought or a flicker of hesitation, Björn grabbed his own shoulder with his upper arm and ripped the entire limb away from his socket, letting the frozen flesh float aimlessly into space.

VROOM.

Red kinetic aura surged from the gory stump as fresh muscle, bone, and skin rapidly knitted together, regenerating a pristine new arm in a matter of seconds. Reaching into the rift of his domain, he pulled forth the gauntlet and slid it securely back over his fingers, flexing the newly formed hand.

Farther out in the void, Ragnar arrested his backward spin.

The mangled, bloody mess of his left arm sloughed off, disintegrating into dust. In its place, liquid frost surged forth and solidified, forming a lifelike, crystalline arm of absolute-zero ice that hummed with pure divine intent.

Björn stared at the young king’s new limb, the feral, predatory grin returning to his face with full force. His laughter rumbled softly through the void, echoing directly into Ragnar’s mind.

"Your lineage seems to thoroughly enjoy losing pieces of themselves to me."

Down in the world below, Yuki stood hovering in the air, her eyes sweeping over the vast, bloody expanse of the battlefield.

The army of silver kingdom people was like a giant serpent stripped of its head. The death of the Avatar had clearly struck a catastrophic blow to the Silver Kingdom’s morale, leaving their ranks shattered and weeping. Watching their enraged king get hurled into the upper atmosphere by the God of War like a stray rock certainly wasn’t helping them pull together.

For Yuki’s side, this war was already won. The momentum had shifted beyond repair.

Now, all that remained was for the paragons under her banner to ruthlessly eliminate the surviving paragons of the Silver Kingdom. With Björn keeping Ragnar thoroughly occupied in the cold void above, the path was wide open to leverage their absolute advantage in high-tier combatants and crush the last remnants of resistance.

Her thought was abruptly cut short.

A sharp, sudden distortion in the atmospheric currents caused her to snap her gaze toward the distant horizon. Far across the waters, deep within the southern continent, two tremendous Paragon presences flared to life. They didn’t surge toward the ground armies or deploy defensively.

Instead, like two burning spears, their auras shot straight up toward the heavens, their destination clearly set for the high-stakes duel unfolding in the vacuum of space above Nana.