Chapter 98: Chapter 97: The Red Crusaders Hit Again

The cold of Iceland was no longer a stagnant thing. It had become a projectile. The massive floating continent of frost and diamond-hard stone cut through the atmosphere of the Eternal Sky Realm with the momentum of a falling moon.

On the command throne of Iceland, Bella stood with her hands resting on the hilt of a blade made of condensed absolute zero. Her eyes, sharp and unforgiving as a winter storm, were fixed on the distant shimmering haze that marked the boundary of the Aquabyss Domain.

​Beside her, Carla Suarez adjusted the tactical gauntlets on her forearms. The logistics of moving a Floating Island were staggering, but Carla had managed it with the cold efficiency that had made her Bella’s right hand for years.

“We are less than an hour from the transition zone, Bella,” Carla reported, her voice tight with a mixture of excitement and caution. “The mana engines are redlining, but the structural integrity is holding. Once we hit the time-dilation field of Aquabyss, our internal clock is going to shatter. Are you ready for that?”

​Bella didn’t answer immediately. She was feeling the air. The atmosphere of the Sky Realm was usually thin and biting, but suddenly, it felt thick. Heavy. The sky ahead, which should have been a clear transition into the Sea God’s blue horizon, began to bleed a violent, angry crimson.

​”Anomalies detected!” a scout screamed from the lower observation deck. “Multiple high-energy signatures appearing in our flight path! Spatial ripples… they are warping in!”

​The clouds ahead didn’t just part; they burned. Out of the white mist emerged a fleet of scarlet-clad warships, their hulls plated in dragon-scale alloy. Surrounding the ships were thousands of individual flyers, warriors clad in high-tech red exoskeletons that hummed with the resonance of dragon fire. They moved with the precision of a hive mind, fanning out in a massive pincer maneuver that sought to encircle the moving continent of Iceland.

​”Who are they?” Carla hissed, her hand flying to her communication array. “This should be a neutral zone.”

​The sky became a sea of red. Over 100,000 soldiers, a force that could level entire nations, now stood between the Ice Queen and her King.

At the center of the formation, a flagship shaped like a roaring dragon’s head drifted forward.

Then,a projection manifested in the air where a towering figure in ornate crimson plate armor, his face obscured by a helm that mimicked the visage of a Great Red Wyrm.

​”Goddess Bella,” the figure spoke, his voice amplified by mana to shake the very foundations of the Glacial Palace. “You are a difficult woman to track. But even the wind leaves a trail when it carries the scent of a traitor.”

​Bella stepped to the edge of the balcony, her expression one of utter boredom. “I don’t remember inviting the Red Dragon’s dogs to my homecoming. Speak your peace quickly, Crusader. You are blocking my view.”

​The leader of the Red Crusaders let out a distorted laugh.

“Traitor? No, we are the pragmatists. We know the truth, Bella. We know about your secret meetings in the Primordial Battlefield. We know that you intend to hand the northern reaches of the sky to that Abyssal monster, Aegis. The Red Dragon Emperor does not permit such a shift in the balance of power. You will surrender your person to us immediately. You will be our ’guest’ while we negotiate the terms of the Sea God’s obedience. If he wants his Queen back, he will dismantle his defenses and bow to the Emperor.”

​Carla’s face went pale. “They want to use you as a hostage to chain Aegis. They know he’ll burn the world to get to you.”

​Bella didn’t flinch. She didn’t rage. Instead, she began to laugh. It was a cold, melodic sound that seemed to frost the very air around the Red Crusader’s projection.

​”You think you can use me to cage him?”

“You think you can threaten the man who erased a Titan Sovereign with dogs who hide in red suits? You call us traitors, yet you are the ones who sat in your gilded nests while the world nearly ended. You are the true stains on humanity.”

​She turned to Carla and the captains of the Frost Legion who stood ready behind her. The 80,000 soldiers of Iceland were already in formation, their white and silver armor a stark contrast to the burning red sky.

​”Carla, The rats thinks their numbers can compensate for his cowardice. Show him the difference between a soldier and a survivor. Wipe them from my sky.”

​Carla grinned, a predatory look crossing her face. “With pleasure, My Lady. All units, initiate the Diamond Dust Protocol! No prisoners! Break their wings!”

​The battle joined with a violence that shook the atmosphere. The 80,000 Frost Legionnaires launched from the surface of Iceland like a swarm of crystalline hornets. They didn’t use fire or traditional mana; they used the weight of the cold.

Buzz!

Waves of absolute zero frost erupted from the Frost Mages, flash-freezing the engines of the red warships.

​Bella herself did not stay on the balcony. She leaped into the open air, her body dissolving into a whirlwind of snow and ice. She reappeared in the center of the Red Crusader’s vanguard, her blade singing a song of slaughter.

With every swing, a dozen red-clad warriors were turned into statues of ice before being shattered into dust by the pressure of her aura.

​”You speak of capture?” Bella mocked as she tore through the enemy lines. “You cannot even capture your own breath in my presence!”

​The Red Crusaders were strong, but they were fighting a woman who had seen the Abyss and walked out of it. They were fighting soldiers who had been tempered by the reality of a God-Killer.

The 100,000 strong army began to buckle.

The red suits were designed to resist dragon fire, but they had no defense against the Abyssal Frost that Bella had brought back from the Battlefield. It didn’t just freeze their armor; it froze the runes of their crafts.

​Amidst the carnage, a sudden change occurred in the environment. The temperature didn’t drop further, but the air became… heavy.

It felt as though the ocean itself had decided to rise and claim the sky.

​The water vapor in the air began to condense, not into ice, but into spheres of perfectly still, dark water.

Thousands of them hung in the air, motionless.

​The fighting slowed as a shadow fell over the battlefield. It wasn’t a cloud. It was a presence.

​Standing atop a pillar of swirling, dark water that had risen from the distant ocean below was a single figure. He wore no ornate armor, only the dark, shifting shroud of the Sea God. In his hand, the God-Killer Trident hummed with a low, vibrating note that seemed to command the heartbeats of everyone present.

​It was Aegis.

​He didn’t intervene immediately. He stood there, his deep blue eyes fixed on Bella. He watched as she carved through the Red Crusaders with a satisfied, almost predatory smile playing on his lips. He watched her not as a damsel in distress, but as his equal—the Queen of his heart and the commander of his northern flank.

​”Look at them,” Aegis murmured, his voice echoing through the spatial ripples of the battlefield. “Dogs barking at the moon, hoping it won’t notice them.”

​The leader of the Red Crusaders, seeing Aegis, tried to rally his flagging troops.

“Target the Sea God’s Heir! All units, fire! Destroy him while he is alone!”

​Aegis didn’t even look at the warships as they unleashed a barrage of crimson dragon-fire beams.

He simply raised a finger.

“Buzz!”

The spheres of water hanging in the air suddenly expanded, forming a massive, rotating shield of high-pressure liquid. The dragon fire hit the water and was simply… extinguished. There was no explosion, no steam. The power was just gone, swallowed by the infinite depth of his mana.

​”My Queen,” Aegis said, ignoring the chaos around him. “You are late. I was beginning to think you’d found a better offer.”

​Bella shattered the helmet of a Crusader captain with her bare hand before looking up at him, her face flushed with the exertion of battle.

“I had to deal with some pests, Darling. They seemed to think I needed a chaperone.”

​Aegis laughed, a sound like the deep ocean floor shifting. “Then let us finish this. I have a palace waiting, and the time-dilation makes every minute you spend out here a week of my life I’m losing.”

​With a flick of his wrist, the God-Killer Trident glowed with a terrifying red fracture. The water shields around him transformed into thousands of liquid spears. They didn’t fly; they simply existed where the enemy stood. In a single, synchronized heartbeat, the Red Crusader’s 100,000 strong army was decimated.

Their warships were crushed by invisible hydraulic pressure, the hulls imploding as if they had been dropped into the deepest trench of the sea.

​The sky cleared of red in an instant. What remained of the “loyal army” was nothing more than falling debris and scattered mana.

​Aegis descended, his feet touching the balcony of the Glacial Palace where Carla and the others stood in stunned silence. He walked toward Bella, who had landed softly before him.

​”You’ve gotten stronger,” he noted, his eyes tracing the glowing runes on her skin.

​”I had to,” she replied, stepping into his space. “I can’t have my husband being the only one the world fears.”

​Carla stepped forward, clearing her throat awkwardly. “Lord Aegis. I’m Carla. I believe we have a Island to merge?”

​Aegis looked at Carla, then at the massive, sprawling expanse of Iceland behind them.

He smiled.

“Indeed we do. Felix is already preparing the merge. Once we cross the threshold, the System will announce the Union of the Tide and Frost.”

​He turned back to Bella, his expression turning serious.

“The Red Dragon Emperor won’t be the last to try this. By merging our islands, we are officially declaring war on the old order of the Eternal Sky Realm. We are becoming the ’villains’ of their story.”

​Bella reached out, her fingers lacing with his. “Let them call us what they want. They feared us apart. Now, let them learn what it means to be afraid of us together.”

​As Iceland crossed the final boundary into the Aquabyss Domain, the world did indeed tremble.

Then, A system-wide announcement, gold and unavoidable, flashed across the vision of every living being in the Eternal Sky Realm.

​[ GLOBAL ANNOUNCEMENT! ]

[ THE ISLANDS OF AQUABYSS AND ICELAND HAVE INITIATED CORE-MERGE! ]

[ NEW REGIONAL POWER DECLARED: THE FROST-TIDE EMPIRE ]

[ RANKING UPDATE: SOVEREIGN AEGIS AND QUEEN BELLA HAVE ASCENDED TO RANK 1 (JOINT) ]

​The sky above the newly formed empire turned a brilliant, shimmering violet. Below, the sea and the ice began to knit together, forming a territory so vast and so magically dense that it distorted the maps of the realm.

​The union was complete. And in the high towers of the Iron Sky Union and the Celestial Concord, the leaders of the world watched the horizon with sinking hearts. The reign of the Sea God and his Queen had begun, and the world was no longer big enough to hide from them.

​”So, What’s the first order of business, My Emperor?”

​Aegis pulled her closer to his chest. “We will find out who is truly at the top of this sky. And then we take it from him.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep