The Battle Grind

Having spent a pleasant evening with Sylvia and Estelle, Astrid and Valencia bade them goodnight before spending some time alone. Cuddling on the couch and hanging out, the two played a simple video game together as a storm swept through the city. 

One not-so-intense gaming session later, the two headed off to bed. Astrid, even though she knew she didn't need the sleep, liked to maintain a sort of... routine, if that made sense. By sleeping every night, she could cordon off every day. She didn't want, after all, to have the days, then weeks, then years blend together. 

According to Valencia, it was a common situation among older, more bored deities to lose track of time and, eventually, their motivation to live. In fact, it was that very phenomenon that had driven her to undergo the divine rebirthing ritual. 

As the two flicked off the lights and headed off to bed though, they were, as always, unaware of the more intense battles going on in and out of the city. 

Sylvia and Estelle had gone back to patrolling the city. The cover of night and the storm was a perfect time for people like the cultists to enact a second phase of their plans. Plus, because night was her dominion, Estelle thrived under the darkness. Her power heightened to another level, one deserving of her "Empress of the Night" title. 

Outside of the city, the battle had edged its way closer and closer to Marcen's Cliffs. Unable to stop the three cataclysmic monsters from advancing, Rainier, Joanna, and Solomon had been pushed back towards the city. 

In particular, because their battle had come so close to Marcen's Cliffs, Rainier's storm had begun to batter the city. Hurricane-force winds roared between buildings as trees began leaning sideways, or worse, uprooting themselves from the ground. 

"How are you, Rainier?" Joanna asked as she waved a forest of chains forward to shackle the All-Encompassing Crimson Cancer to the ocean floor. "Still the usual buff?" 

"Yep, just the usual, no hidden special effects," Rainier wiped a trail of blood from his mouth. With both his glacier and lightning katana unsheathed, he disappeared from his spot to stop another charge from the Ever-Advancing Viridian Taurus. 

Slamming his swords into the massive bull's head, Rainier clenched his mouth as a wave of electrified ice began spreading from where he struck. Encasing the bull's entire body in a layer of ice, Rainier felt his fatigue climb as he backed off. 

The Viridian Taurus was longer than an entire cargo ship. Each time it began charging, though rare, he felt an entire chunk of his divinity get used in stopping it. 

With a field of lightning beginning to strike in the distance, Rainier grimaced as he saw the figure of an enormous golden lion roaring towards the skies flash in and out of view. "Sorry, Solomon."

His storm, as a field-type technique that covered the whole battlefield, helped him massively. It saved him tons of energy in terms of not having to lower the temperature as much along with not having to create most of the ion differential for lightning strikes. 

Yet, for now, it also seemed to have increased the power of the Exalted Golden Leo by a fair few notches. 

Feeling a set of scales lift him into the air once more, Rainier breathed out a misty breath as he felt his natural divinity regeneration rate double. Refocusing on the task at hand, Rainier squinted at the faint figure of the Crimson Cancer. 

Out of all of them, the Crimson Cancer was the most... cunning, and, thus, the most annoying. It had cloaking techniques the others didn't. It couldn't cloak everything at once though, which was one lucky star Rainier had to thank. 

Therefore, because of the darkness the night and storm provided, the Crimson Cancer elected to focus all its energy in masking its divine signature. 

That left Rainier in his current situation. Where every few moments a lightning bolt would come down and illuminate the Crimson Cancer's massive figure. Otherwise, however, Rainier needed to create lightning bolts himself just to locate the massive asshole of a monster. 

Zipping forward through the sky, Rainier refreshed the ice encasing the Taurus to keep it immobilized for a few moments longer while flying off to the Crimson Cancer. 

It looked... bad at least. 

Slamming down a couple dozen ancient column sized lightning bolts onto the Crimson Cancer's shell, Rainier decided to save some energy and run across the waves. 

Blood came pouring out of each of the Crimson Cancer's orifices. By now, it had lost two of its legs and didn't have energy to regenerate them either, but it still fought on without any trouble... 

Freezing the surface of the ocean all around the Crimson Cancer, Rainier felt a sense of nausea overtake him as the stadium sized crab towered out of the water. Whaling away with his swords, Rainier began a never-ending stream of swear words while chaining lightning bolt explosions with each strike. 

Blowing the crab back by a few of its large crab paces, Rainier backed off as three sets of pincers materialized around where he was. Flipping, weaving, and flying away to dodge them, Rainier lamented on how unfair the crab's very existence was. 

Last time he had fought it was still a baby compared to how it was now. It was just a hair larger than a building, didn't know cloaking, and only had one set of extra-dimensional pincers... 

Watching the pincers create sonic booms as they snapped together, Rainier just paused for a moment. "These things need some sort of balance patch. There's no way it just did that." 

Half a second later, with the words just past the tip of his tongue, Rainier felt himself get slammed down into the ocean below. Sending huge waves in every direction, Rainier sank in the ocean for a second as he let his body stitch together his shattered torso. 

Flipping in the ocean, Rainier looked up to see a set of pincers materialized right behind where he had been floating. Slashing his glacier katana underwater to send waves of ice outward to slow down all the fighters, Rainier let Joanna maintain the situation for a moment while he sighed. "... Well played, stupid crab. What a distraction. Speed of sound-breaking pincers... who would've thought?" 

Scenes like this continued on throughout the night. With the Primordial Deities and Cataclysmic monsters evenly matched, they were almost analogous to rival siblings. After all, they did all come from the same "Primordial Fog Wall'' parent. 

A trade-off did happen though. By disregarding the damage they were taking, all of the cataclysmic monsters made more progress towards the city. Being within view of the outermost ring, stray attacks were now beginning to pose a danger to the outermost ring's buildings. 

For now, each stray attack was getting deflected by the city's natural barrier set up by the Primordial Deities centuries prior, but every combatant, monster or deity, knew an actual physical attack would crumple the barrier like paper. 

Despite giving up on their own safety, the monsters' progress remained slow. Their distance to the city still didn't concern the residents and, thus, the residents woke up to a new day as the sun began its daily trip across the sky. 

As the sun's rays flooded the world, illuminating the streets, the battle, and everything in between, three cultist leaders were on a secret video call. Hidden in various parts of the city to dodge Estelle and Sylvia's searches, the three communicated as they wormed their way through the city to finalize the next part of the ritual.

"Tonight," Kieran whispered into his microphone as he set down an inconspicuous stone by a park bench before continuing to walk along as if he was just another random deity associated with a small organization in the city. "Tonight we enact it, everyone in agreement?"