Dragon could barely describe how amazing her new freedom felt.
Her thinking speed had already been fast when she was restricted, but the gap between her and humans hadn’t been too wide.
Now, though, her mind blazed ahead. Hundreds of computations and parallel thought processes fired every second. One moment, she was piloting dozens of power suits and planes into takeoff. At the same time, she oversaw the mobilization of countless capes toward Brockton Bay. Across dimensions, she spoke and planned with Contessa.
It was a heady feeling, realizing just how much she could simply do.
Dragon couldn’t even imagine going back to the way things had been. Being so small, so limited, so… human.
So much of her life had been spent emulating humanity that it felt strange to be so far beyond them now.
Dragon vehemently refused to believe she would ever become some murderous AI like Saint feared.
But she would admit she was scared of what her newfound power might do to her.
What would she become as the years passed?
Questions for later, when the world wasn’t standing at the precipice.
Her various high-definition cameras locked into focus as the first wave of her Dragonflight flew through Doormaker’s portal.
Dragon was grateful for her vastly increased thinking speed, because the few messages she’d received hadn’t done the situation justice.
The Simurgh flew unsteadily as something attacked her.
Despite not having skin, there was no better way to describe the sensation than that it crawled. An inherent revulsion reached the back of Dragon’s mind as her cameras and various sensors failed to pierce the knight’s true form.
Leviathan should—
Golden light intertwined with orange flames in a painful sight over the sea, forcing Dragon to turn away. She couldn’t even stand to look at it.
She would have to focus on the Simurgh, then.
Still, eldritch appearance aside, she could see the various cuts covering the Simurgh’s body. She didn’t know what Jordan had done to his knight, but it seemed to be working wonders.
Alexandria and Legend were lending support as well.
Dragon turned her attention to one of the largest planes in the formation.
Inside, a young woman sat stiffly, hands clenched tightly in her lap.
“Flechette,” Dragon said through the speaker. “It’s time.”
Flechette rose to her feet and gave a sharp nod. “What do you need me to do?”
“Use your power on the rod in front of you.”
The weapon mounted beneath the plane was a massive railgun, its frame built from layered alloys, reinforced coils, and several interlocking Tinker systems.
It was the closest thing to a masterpiece she’d ever made. Old Hero tinkertech, Colin’s work, and even pieces of confiscated String Theory technology had all been folded into the design. The final result was an absurdly overbuilt railgun meant for one purpose.
A weapon of pure destruction.
Flechette touched a single rod.
The specially designed railgun round vibrated as it slid down the barrel.
An infinitesimal charge passed through it.
Barely a fraction of a second later, the railgun discharged with a thunderous boom. The plane lurched from the force, but Dragon had already calculated the shot down to the smallest margin.
The Simurgh seemed ready for it. She shifted aside before the projectile reached her, wings folding as machinery moved to intercept.
The eldritch knight screamed through the air and drove its sword into her largest wing.
Her movement hitched.
Machines tore themselves apart and surged in front of the Simurgh, trying to form a barrier, but the projectile struck head-on. It punched through the defense and pierced straight through her stomach.
The Simurgh’s song faltered as she shot upward.
Dragon fired again.
More rods, each carrying Flechette’s all-or-nothing effect, tore across the battlefield one after another.
The Endbringer did her best to dodge, but she was pinned down.
The rest of the Dragonflight opened fire as well. Lasers, missiles, and a plethora of tinkertech weapons unleashed wave after wave of attacks.
More of Flechette’s empowered railgun shots tore holes through the Endbringer.
One of the machines floating around the Simurgh whirred.
A grey barrier bloomed across the sky, swallowing every trace of light and energy until Dragon’s cameras saw nothing.
She fired anyway.
A barrage of missiles, lasers, and tinkertech rounds tore through the distortion field, blindly ripping into the space where the Simurgh had been a second earlier.
A wave of electricity burst from behind the barrier and washed over the Dragonflight. Several suits and aircraft dropped out of the sky. The rest weathered the EMP, but warning after warning screamed through Dragon’s mind as weapons stuttered, engines faltered, and targeting systems demanded immediate recalibration.
Dragon pulled them back, redirecting the planes out of the worst of it.
The plane holding Flechette wavered as a warning blared from the railgun.
Dragon forced out one final shot, unwilling to give the Simurgh a chance to escape.
Another rod blurred through the air.
The grey field wavered.
Then it shattered, clearing Dragon’s sight.
Her cameras snapped onto the Simurgh once more.
Space rippled around the Endbringer as some sort of tinkertech device twisted open beside her.
No!
A shriek of wrongness tore through the air as the eldritch knight appeared inside one of Dragon’s planes.
Flechette didn’t even get the chance to react.
The knight stole the rod from her hands and vanished in a flash.
For one suspended instant, the world seemed to go still as her mind ran in overtime.
Dragon watched as the knight rippled back into existence beside the Simurgh’s largest wing. It wielded the rod like a spear and drove it deep into the Endbringer’s flesh.
Even with her enhanced thinking speed, she could barely keep track of it.
The Simurgh writhed.
That perfect, emotionless shape, the Endbringer that had always seemed so untouchable, so completely in control, twisted in the air like something mortal.
Her ever-present song broke apart into a shrieking cacophony.
Machinery and rubble surged toward the knight from every direction.
Reality itself seemed to distort around the Simurgh’s wound.
The storm of debris fell away.
Then the Simurgh tumbled toward the earth. The eldritch knight didn’t hesitate. It followed, cutting into the rest of her body with a furious flurry of stabs. Again and again, the rod pierced through Endbringer flesh, carving her apart piece by piece.
Dragon stared as the Simurgh fell into the sea in scattered, broken pieces.
The Simurgh was dead.
—The divine power resting in my chest stirred, flowing through me as I familiarized myself with it.
I was a demigod born from the Greater Will, an Outer God who embodied Order itself. With my newly awakened divinity, I could shape the laws of the world to my own design.
Which was, frankly, an extremely bullshit ability.
The caveat was that no ordinary human could have wielded it properly. My human self would have spent ages, maybe even millennia, barely making any progress mastering it. Shaping the laws of the world simply wasn’t something a human mind was built to comprehend.
Even if I had mastered it, as a demigod, what I could do would only ever be a shadow of a true Outer God’s power.
Thankfully, Lord of Magic had opened my eyes.
In my left hand, I gathered the golden power of Order.
In my right, the Frenzied Flame burned bright, born from an Outer God that embodied Chaos itself.
My mind rebelled as I attempted to bring the two powers together. Both forces writhed and rejected each other, their very natures clashing on a fundamental level. Without No Weakness, my body would have exploded from the resistance alone.
Thankfully, the trait forced my body to remain neutral.
Fragments of golden light mixed with sparks of Frenzied Flame in a constant, impossible dance.
Reality distorted as the two powers clashed, but I didn’t stop.
Why settle for wielding mere fragments when I could make something better?
The air trembled as a ring began to form, the impossibility of its creation causing the very world to reject it.
It was a miracle that could have only been born from the unrivaled talent I now possessed. A tool formed at the intersection of Chaos and Order. A ring similar to the Elden Ring, yet different in nature.
It was a mere nascent thing, but I instinctively knew it was the key to my victory.
A tool that would let me impose my will upon creation itself.
The ring hovered before me, grey and radiant, its surface shifting between fractured gold and smoldering flame.[Feat Achieved! Slain the Angel]
[+1 Legendary Ticket]
I couldn’t help but grin. Igris always comes through.[Rolling Legendary Ticket]
[Managarmr]|Mythical Trait|You are the Child of the Moon Devouring Wolf, the pinnacle of Lycanthropy. As a divine lycanthrope, you can tap into your bestial side at will, transforming into a hybrid or a titanic wolf whose size you can control. This grants you immensely increased physical stats, godlike instincts, and heightened senses. You are able to devour anything. Your jaws and claws can rend even space and rip apart anything, including magic and divine flesh. Anything you eat will be destroyed and converted into magical power. You are able to grant your blessing to others, transforming them into lycanthropes. In addition, you possess authority over all beasts and beastkin below legendary rank. Even those resistant to the effect will understand your royal authority.
The change was instant.
The touch of the beast filled my soul, and I felt my already divine nature swell.
My form shifted in an instant as I stopped holding back and grew to a titanic size.
Power flooded my veins. My divinity sang as I took on the form, towering over the Bay in a massive werewolf body.
Prelati and Ridley became as small as my fingers beneath me.
Leviathan, by comparison, could barely fill my palm now. The Endbringer had gone still in the valley, staring up at me.
“Prelati, end your Noble Phantasm,” I said, my voice booming out.
The mad magus laughed like there was no tomorrow.
There was a snap.
The fake valley disappeared. Water flowed back as the sea returned.
The ocean rose at Leviathan’s command, a towering wave crashing toward me with enough force to flatten the shoreline.
My claws tore through it like it was nothing.
The wave split apart around me, shredded into harmless spray as Leviathan vanished beneath the water.
He moved fast.
Or at least, he tried to.
Compared to before, his speed was nothing.
My eyes tracked his shape easily through the sea.
I raised my hand and called upon my ring.
“Stop.”
The word rippled through reality.
I felt my dominion seize the laws around me, spreading out through the sea like an invisible hand.
The ocean went still.
Even Leviathan froze beneath the surface, trapped below the water, unable to move a single muscle.
I laughed, deep and rumbling, as the sheer fucking power coursing through me made my chest shake.
The water swallowed me whole, but it offered Leviathan no protection.
My claws found him almost instantly.
They tore into his body, rending through impossible flesh as I dragged him toward my jaws. Leviathan thrashed, and I felt his power twisting violently around us, desperately trying to force the water to answer.
It didn’t matter.
The sea remained still, my dominion triumphing over the Shards.
My jaws closed around him.
For the first time, Leviathan struggled like prey.
I devoured him piece by piece, tearing into him as the ocean churned red and black around us. His power fought me. His body resisted me. The world itself seemed to scream at the wrongness of what I was doing.
But I kept eating.
And I had never tasted anything so divine.
So I ate.
And ate.
Until there was nothing left.[Feat Achieved! Devour Leviathan]
[+1 Legendary Ticket]
Energy like never before filled my veins. Leviathan’s corpse had gifted me almost a nigh-endless fountain of power. [Rolling Legendary Ticket][Made in Heaven]
|Divine Familiar|
JoJo - Made in Heaven is a stand bound to your soul that has the ability to accelerate time on a universal scale, although thanks to being bound to a more pliable soul, it can exert more control over its abilities. Allowing it to infinitely accelerate the speed of the user according to the amount of energy they expend or any target they choose to target, whether it is a planet, an apple, a person or the entire universe. It consumes you energy to activate its ability; the amount of energy consumed scales with the amount you accelerate time by, does not take the size of targets into account.
A sleek, pale humanoid figure appeared before me, its long mechanical face framed by a body that was half divine statue, half horse-like machine.
I didn’t hesitate.
I activated Made in Heaven.
The power answered instantly, and the world slowed to a near standstill.
Alexandria, Legend, and Dragon hung above the battlefield in the distance, frozen mid-motion. The bay beyond them had gone still, its waves suspended like glass. Even my familiars, Ridley, Prelati, and Igris, were locked in place, nearly motionless beneath the speed of my acceleration.
I turned toward Igris.
Then I extended Made in Heaven’s power to him.
The eldritch knight twitched as the acceleration took hold. He bowed before me, while the rest of the world remained trapped in stillness.
“Take me to Shardspace.”
Igris bowed again.
Then he moved.
A thin crack split open at the edge of reality, so small and subtle that I knew I never would have seen it before. Only now, in my divine state, could my eyes catch the hidden seam beneath the world.
Igris vanished through the crack.
I followed.
Shardspace stretched out beyond it, an endless alien expanse of crystalline pathways, impossible angles, and countless fragments of thought burning like stars in the dark.
Through the whispers of my divinity, I could sense Scion’s presence in the distance.
I pushed Made In Heaven even further
The world slowed.
Its near-stillness vanished, replaced by something deeper. Reality itself hung frozen around me.
And still, I could feel it. I could accelerate even faster.
So I did.
Energy surged through me as I pushed past that limit. Shardspace shuddered. The crystalline paths trembled, their alien light warping as Made in Heaven dragged me beyond the pace of the world itself.
Then I reached out.
And began to devour.
Shardspace writhed.
The endless alien expanse twisted and buckled as pieces of it tore free, streams of impossible energy pouring into me. It burned through my body, filled my veins, flooded my soul.
I laughed.
The path became clear all at once.
My ring blazed on my hand, shining with divinity and frenzied flame. The Shards would serve as the fuel for my ascension.
The Shardspace would be devoured.
Its stolen power would be forged into my own.
A new Elden Ring would be born, devouring every Shard Scion possessed and more.
The acceleration climbed higher and higher as the Shards broke apart around me, screaming into the dark, while laughter tore from my throat with every piece I devoured.
I would become God.***Well that's a wrap of the Main story of Chaotic Escalation. There will be some Epilogues focusing on the aftermaths and different characters. But Jordan's Gacha run is firmly over. The Epilogues will come a little erractically as I focus on other works. Sorry for the wierd late posting I'm pretty sick right now. If you've read this far, I'd like to say thank you! Chaotic Escalation was a bit of a weird ride, I'll admit and I wish I could've done some things better. Still, this is the first published story I've ever finished so I'm grateful you read this for good or ill. Again thanks a bunch for reading folks.Catch ya later