“Damn it… that bastard is too strong,” Maahes said as his wounds continued to heal.

  “I’ll use all my power now, Maahes. If we can’t win, I don’t know what else we can do,” Montu replied, his own regeneration still underway.

  The falcon-headed god flew into the sky and began raising his divine power.

  Two massive horns burst from his head, and his musculature doubled in size.

  He dropped back down, landing on all fours and forming a small crater beneath him.

  Montu began to bellow like a furious bull, his pupils vanishing as his eyes glowed red.

  Khonsu stared at him, surprised—

  but in the next instant, Montu drove one of his horns straight into Khonsu’s chest, his entire body shining a fierce red as he roared:

  “Backa Peh (Buchus Assault)!”

  Montu took off, carrying Khonsu skewered on his horn, and smashed him through a mountain.

  The entire formation collapsed in a violent landslide, burying the moon god in rubble.

  Maahes opened his mouth and shouted:

  “Apedemak Tawe (Breath of Apedemak)!”

  A torrent of fire erupted from his jaws, blasting the debris in an atomic-like explosion.

  “You haven’t spent all your manna yet, Montu?” Maahes asked between breaths.

  “No… but almost. This transformation drains my manna every second,” Montu said.

  “How unfortunate. I, on the other hand, still have plenty of icor and manna left,” Khonsu said—

  emerging completely unharmed from the debris.

  “I can’t waste more time playing with you two. I need to kill those malakim and capture the tannin boy. He’ll be fascinating to dissect,” he added, stepping out of the dust.

  But before he could react, Montu launched himself again, unleashing a flurry of blows.

  Khonsu attempted to burst his organs—

  —but for the first time, he felt skin too hard to manipulate.

  “You should know, Khonsu—while this form drains my manna, it multiplies my strength and speed!” Montu roared, his fists tearing into Khonsu’s body, ripping him into a mess of blood and shredded flesh.

  Montu bellowed:

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  “Daser Setewet (Crimson sunbeam)!”

  A sphere of red energy formed between his horns—

  and he fired it into the mangled moon god.

  The sky and the entire horizon turned blood-red.

  The blast was so intense that nothing could be seen except red light.

  Montu kept bellowing, pounding his chest like a possessed beast.

  “No— not yet!” Maahes shouted, firing another devastating blast from his mouth.

  A second explosion tore through the red wasteland.

  Montu’s transformation then abruptly ended—his manna completely depleted.

  He collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath.

  “That’s… all I can do…” the falcon god said, exhausted.

  “Don’t worry, Montu. I think you finally hurt him for real—” Maahes began—

  —when his expression froze in horror.

  Montu burst like a water balloon, exploding into a cloud of blood and organs splattering across the crimson Martian desert.

  Khonsu was standing—

  but this time seriously wounded.

  His left arm—the one that wielded his whip—was gone.

  Half his face was burned, and his left eye completely destroyed.

  He held his remaining hand aloft—the hand that had detonated Montu’s body.

  “I, the great son of Amun… injured by worms like you?!

  Unthinkable!” he roared, pointing his palm at Maahes.

  He attempted to make the lion god explode—

  but Maahes dashed toward Khonsu’s blind side, the side missing its eye.

  Khonsu snarled and tried again, but Maahes kept circling that blind spot, avoiding every attempt.

  “You need your eyes to activate your telekinesis. One is gone, and the other is clogged with blood—you can’t see. You’re no match for me like this!” Maahes shouted, sprinting full speed toward the moon god.

  “My strongest technique!” Maahes roared.

  “Deha Des Et (Multiple knife attacks)!”

  Standing right before Khonsu, the lion god’s arms blurred—

  as though a thousand hands had sprouted from him.

  Thousands of slashes struck Khonsu in an instant, crimson-glowing blades carving his body apart.

  Lotus flowers floated through the air, shaping into small spears that pierced him as well.

  Khonsu’s consciousness began to fade.

  “I am not dying to this worthless animal,” he thought—

  and at the last moment, he spotted Maahes’s head clearly enough to act.

  Maahes brought down both blades in a final X-shaped slash—

  drawing a brilliant crimson crescent moon in the air.

  Khonsu detonated the lion god’s brain.

  Maahes’s body collapsed lifelessly at Khonsu’s feet.

  Barely clinging to consciousness, Khonsu dragged himself across the bloody ground.

  “Ambrosia… I need ambrosia…” he gasped.

  At that moment, the spot where Maahes had delivered his final attack erupted, forming a massive sphere of red light.

  Khonsu’s body split in half—torso and head sliding away from his legs as his intestines rained across the red desert.

  Barely alive, vision fading, he saw the silhouette of Keres Number Twelve—the foreign god from the distant land of Yamato.

  “Y-you… for…reign…er… h-help… me…” Khonsu tried to call out, but his voice was wet and broken.

  “You fought with great honor, Khonsu,” the eastern god said.

  “Though you’re despicable, your courage deserves recognition.

  I will give you a warrior’s death.”

  He unsheathed an enormous katana with a blue-tinted blade.

  “Don’t… wai—” Khonsu tried to beg.

  Too late.

  A single stroke severed his head.

  “You loved intestines,” the Yamato god said dryly,

  “and now you bathe in your own.”

  He sheathed his blade.

  “Well then… time to catch up to the ones who escaped.”

  He flew off at full speed toward the path Rodrigo and the surviving malakim had taken.

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  Next chapter tomorrow!