"Yeah, we're willing to wait."
"You guys stop talking, let me laugh at this guy for three minutes first."
The Titans were at first still laughing wildly.
They couldn't sense any trace of magic, nor detect any energy fluctuations. However, in the very next second — their connection to this world abruptly ceased.
Without any warning.
"Hmm?"
One Titan suddenly lowered his head, looking at his own arm. His skin was losing its luster at a speed visible to the naked eye, more so because a certain power was directly stripped away.
The change in skin color was merely a manifestation after this power was taken.
"What's going on...?" Another Titan reached out to touch his chest, where the flesh no longer wriggled to heal, but... began to decay.
The once indestructible body suddenly crumbled like corroded steel. It was destined to decay, especially with Ian's Curse Magic reinforced by Transformation Technique.
The virus and infection Ian could imagine were just effects that his Curse could exhibit — losing immortality and self-healing, the Titans could barely withstand this overwhelming imaginative magic.
"No... impossible!" The furious roar exploded, and the Titans finally sensed the anomaly. Their power of immortality was being eroded by some incomprehensible force.
"How could this happen! How could this happen!"
Another Titan roared angrily, raising a mountain-like iron fist, but his stiff fingers pierced through his palm. When his laughter turned painful, his body froze like a paused statue in mid-air.
"I told you your bodies can't withstand even a bit of magic, seems like that's true." Ian lowered his hand after casting the Petrification Curse on the Titan not far away.
Having lost immortality and the connection to the natural world, the Titans' magic resistance was suddenly exposed — without relying on nature, their magic resistance was virtually negative.
"You use immortality to steal time, suppressing all beings with the Creator's identity — the funny part is, even time itself mocks your arrogance."
Ian saw some Titans whom he hadn't cast spells on also beginning to decay.
He couldn't help but feel a sense of wonder.
"What kind of power is this?! This isn't magic!" roared the Titan God King, fear flickering in his eyes for the first time as the molten Crown on his head cracked and shattered.
He seemed to be the one most severely affected by the backlash.
The purple blood flowing through enormous veins continuously crystallized — this change happened so fast that he couldn't react, not even managing a roar stuck in his throat.
"No! What is this! He isn't just a bird!"
The Titan God King suddenly turned around.
Looking at the location where those black-robed Wizards once stood — at this moment, the God King discovered the other side of the floating island was empty, only a few drifting black robe fragments proving they once existed.
Not a soul in sight.
The group had already fled without a trace.
Immortality was stripped away.
The Titans' bodies began to crumble.
This was the backlash.
The means of immortality.
Their skin cracked, flesh parched, the once indestructible bodies now fragile like withered wood. They struggled, roared, attempting to counterattack with their remaining strength.
But it was already too late.
"Seems like your creations are still smarter than you." Ian sneered, although he still didn't understand why those Wizards feared him, it didn't stop him from enjoying the Titans' current panic.
"What exactly have you done to us?!" The Titan God King desperately stood up, veins bulging on his forehead, his wrinkled skin covered with web-like cracks.
"I simply proved your lives shouldn't exist for so long; you are not naturally immortal but using your kind of power to steal time not meant for you."
Ian verified his suspicion.
The evident effect of his Paradox Authority proved these Titans' immortality was indeed something undue.
"Repent in Fiery Fire!"
Ian suddenly waved his Magic Wand downward.
The deep blue flames surged out like a tsunami, overwhelming everything, blotting out the sky. Where the flames passed, the air twisted, the earth was scorched black, even the clouds were stained with a strange blue.
The Titans wailed in the sea of flames as their bodies were devoured by the blaze, once eternal life now unbearably burdened under dual erosion of self-contradiction and magic flames.
The sky turned a bluish hue by the Fiery Fire, the entire city groaned under the distorting heat waves. The Titan God King's body too twisted and transformed within the blaze.
His skin cracked inch by inch like a dried riverbed, revealing the burning muscle underneath. Those once indestructible flesh pieces now melted like dripping candles.
"Despicable thief!" The Titan God King let out a deafening roar, his vocal cords already scorched by flames, making his voice as hoarse and abrasive as sandpaper. This guy was tough, being engulfed in fire, yet still took a fierce step forward, his gigantic foot crushing a bell tower to pieces.
"Do you think this will kill us? We are eternal! We will return!" The Titan God King shouted with his last ounce of strength, trying to defy this inevitable fate.
Ian stood amidst the fiery flames.
His black robe flapped wildly in the heat wave.
He calmly watched the Titans' futile struggle, the magic wand gently twirling between his fingers.
"Eternal?"
The young wizard chuckled lightly.
"Then what is being burned to ashes right now?"
He glanced around.
The other Titans had turned into moving torches, frantically beating at the flames on their bodies, only to make the fire grow even fiercer. One Titan tried to summon rain, but its power had long since failed with the loss of immortality. Another Titan knelt on the ground, digging with its burning hands.
Seemingly wanting to burrow back into the prison that had confined them for countless ages.
"Even if I die! You'll die with us!" The Titan God King suddenly burst into a chilling laughter, his burning eye sockets fixed on Ian.
"Then let's perish together!" Worthy of being the God King, burning fiercely like a pyre, seeing the Titan God King, completely corroded by fiery fire, charging directly at Ian.
He raised his arms.
The remaining flesh began to swell violently.
The blood vessels under the skin writhing like worms.
"In the name of the Titans—Die!"
The gigantic fist smashed directly towards Ian.
"Want me to die? Keep dreaming?"
Ian sneered.
As the Titan God King's body exploded like a fading light, Ian had already transformed into a pitch-black raven soaring into the sky. The explosion from the Titan's fist leveled buildings within miles.
Inside.
Including his fist's scorching flesh fragments, shooting in all directions like raindrops. The raven elegantly flapped its wings, flying up to the clouds, coldly observing the burning city below.
"No! You monster! You've destroyed our supreme race!"
The Titans' remnants were still burning.
They reached out futilely, as if trying to grasp that unattainable figure. One titan's half body struggled to crawl out of the sea of flames, only to turn entirely into ashes upon nearly reaching the edge.
"Farewell, creators, you are the real monsters."
Ian whispered softly.
The voice dissipated into the howling hot winds.
With the last Titan's demise, the Sky City also began to collapse. Buildings crumbled in the flames, fragments falling into endless abyss, while Ian stood quietly, letting the fire illuminate his face. Burning fragments of buildings and Titan remnants descended into the chasm, hot air currents lifting the cloud layer.
The fiery fire did not stop spreading, instead burning ever brighter, as if wanting to completely purify this sky.
When the flames blocked out the sky, the entire world seemed to plunge into an apocalyptic crimson, with Ian's figure barely visible in the firelight, as if a god controlling life and death.
In the distance.
The black-robed wizards hid in a hidden spatial rift. These people looked up at the burning firmament, faces pale, yet not for the lost city.
"Titans can really die..."
One muttered.
"What kind of power did that damned raven use?"
Another black-robed wizard spoke fearfully.
"I felt that wave before, it might be the final form of our magic." An elder mused, speaking with confidence.
"Really? Zeus."
"I guarantee it!"
In the exchange of questions and answers.
Perhaps the prelude to the Gods began precisely at this moment.