CHAPTER 274: CHAPTER 275: THE BERSERKER WAKES

"Ooorcuuuusss!!" Atlas bellowed, his voice tearing through stone and ash, shattering silence like a war drum that belonged to no army, only to madness. His throat ripped as sound turned into vibration, vibration into quake, and quake into the breaking of mountains.

He rose out of the crater with a grin stretched too wide, blood painting his lip, bones creaking under their own rebellion. His lungs rattled, his ribs screamed — but his face betrayed none of it.

"It hurrrtttt!" he roared.

It was no complaint. No plea. The sound was delight — reckless, childlike joy masquerading as a scream. His smile widened, crooked and unrestrained, the kind that mocked the very concept of pain.

Pride? Shattered. Vanity? Buried. All that remained was something raw, something dangerous — a forbidden joy found only in destruction.

Something new.

Orcus’s voice bled across the battlefield like oil catching fire.

{{{That was my intention... jackass.}}}

The demon king’s body sank, melted, melded into shadow, his colossal shape dripping into black tar until the darkness itself clothed him. A living armor of night sealed around his form, seething with wrath older than empires.

Atlas hovered in the air, a predator at rest. His ears still rang from the earlier blow. His chest throbbed with aftershocks. He licked the blood on his lip and chuckled.

"Damn... it’s been a while. I got punched with such fucking impact." His laugh scratched against the wind like claws dragging across glass.

Then — the world shifted.

The shadow beneath him quivered. It thickened like oil.

Atlas’s grin faltered. Not fear. Not yet. But recognition — the instinct of a killer who had just sensed another killer’s move. Something was pressing against the laws of this world.

"...what the fu—"

A jagged hand erupted from the shadow, fingers like black spears. They coiled around his leg, cold as iron, crushing as a vice.

Before Atlas could blink, he was dragged down.

Slam!

The mountain swallowed him.

Stone split, veins of fire ruptured, ash plumed like the breath of titans.

Orcus rose from the shadow like a nightmare, still gripping Atlas’s leg. He didn’t stop. He couldn’t stop. His chest heaved with the old truth written into his marrow: Atlas wasn’t just a problem. He was the problem.

Too unpredictable. Too dangerous. Too happy.

What he struck with wasn’t desperation. It wasn’t rage. It was authority — the authority to kill, to end, to erase.

And still, all Atlas did was laugh.

Smash!

Smash!

Smash!

The earth convulsed beneath every strike. Atlas’s body bent at wrong angles. His arm twisted backwards. His shoulder tore open like fabric, bone gleaming white through red. His dislocated leg dangled like a broken marionette.

Each slam cracked the land like porcelain dropped from the heavens. Lava bled from the mountain’s heart. The forests below shrieked as avalanches consumed them.

{{{LEAVE.}}}

Smash!

{{{MY.}}}

Smash!

{{{HOME!!}}}

The final roar fractured the sky as Orcus leapt, higher than any fortress tower, his body eclipsing clouds. Still clutching Atlas like prey, he hurled him down with the violence of judgment.

{{{ALONEEE!!!}}}

SMASSSHHHHHH!!!

The mountain split in two. The world screamed. Dust blotted out the horizon as ruin avalanched into valleys.

Orcus stood amid it all, unmoved, a god among debris. A boulder the size of mansions slammed toward him, but his aura burned crimson, vaporizing it on contact. His breath hissed like storms. His eyes glowed blood-red. His armor of shadow rippled and tightened until even the air bent away from him.

Honor. Rage. Dominion. The weight of an old god reclaiming chains.

{{{I know you are still there....}}}

The words trembled not with doubt, but with certainty that gnawed the marrow of the world.

A laugh answered him.

"Hahahahaha!"

Not joyous. Not cruel. Something deeper. Menace sharpened into melody. A sound that crawled into Orcus’s spine and squeezed. His instincts recoiled before his mind caught up.

Through rubble, a silhouette rose.

Atlas.

Stone dust clung to his body. Blood dripped like ink down his jaw. His dislocated shoulder dangled, useless — until with a snarl he slammed it back into place. Crack! His bones reset. His grin widened.

"You reminded me of the past," he muttered, voice almost conversational. "I slammed a knight like that once... broke his back, his jaw, and his pride in one move."

He grabbed his own hip — crack! — forcing the leg back into socket. His breath shuddered, but not from pain. From thrill. He swung the leg casually, like testing a weapon.

"Still good... fuck, this body’s scary. Convenient in many ways."

Then —

Doom!

The world cracked.

He moved.

From nothing to supersonic.

From zero to four hundred meters per second.

Not strength. Speed.

And that’s what chilled Orcus. Strength had counters. Speed this unnatural mocked reality itself.

Atlas rammed him with a shoulder check.

BOOOM!

The impact broke sound and sense. Atlas’s ribs bent from the recoil, but his grin only deepened. He vanished —

Doom!

Reappeared midair — grabbed Orcus by the throat, twisted, hurled him down.

Doom!

Gone again — caught him mid-fall — drove his knee into his spine.

The land warped from each hit, mountain ridges buckling. The atmosphere screamed, air currents twisting into hurricanes from sheer velocity.

"Haha... my turn." His voice was low, intimate, like predator whispering before the bite.

{{{WAIT!!!}}} Orcus’s roar cracked with desperation. His instincts screamed extinction.

He broke the seal. He had too...

The spell that caged him, that bound his size, that chained his wrath for centuries — shattered.

His body swelled. Muscle stacked upon shadow, armor fusing to flesh. His voice dropped into tectonic rumble. His aura split skies.

Atlas tried to hurl him — but his grip broke as Orcus grew. His leg transformed into a pillar thicker than towers. The force blew Atlas back like a leaf in a storm.

"Fuuckkk..." Atlas spat, his grin twitching between awe and hunger.

The shadow didn’t just swallow him. It swallowed the mountain, the forest, the horizon.

The ground buckled. The quake wasn’t local. It spread outward, through valleys, kingdoms, seas.

Orcus landed.

Apocalypse took form.

Orcus the Berserker.

A calamity clothed in armor of crimson and blue, each plate locking in place with thunder. Sparks crawled across him like captive lightning. His eyes burned suns. His roar curdled air into flame.

He rose, taller than mountains. Taller than Loki. A titan eclipsing sky itself.

Atlas craned his neck back. For the first time, his grin faltered into awe.

"Ohhhh... he’s fucking taller than Loki."

The earth groaned. The air thickened. The world itself bent under Orcus’s weight.

And still, Atlas’s heart beat louder.

Not fear.

Hunger.

Orcus’s fist rose.

It blotted out the horizon. A single punch that could erase Atlas — erase everything.

Atlas licked the blood from his lip, eyes burning with delight.

"Heh... finally."

The fist fell.