SSS Rank Sword Mage: Awakening Starts with Weakest Mana Affinity-Chapter 114: A God’s Thirst for Higher Death

"I can do it, but I need time. This isn’t a simple spell," Morgana warned, her eyes lingering on her shattered long-sword. "To anchor the seal, I’ll have to sacrifice my own blade’s spirit to complete the ritual bridge."

Father stood beside me, his face pale as the implications began to set in. I looked at the raw log in my hands and then back at him. "So, the plan is to seal him inside the Wood-Steel forever?"

"Not exactly," he whispered, his voice tight with a new kind of dread. "From what I can gather, she cant just locking him away. Only possible way now is for Bagu to become the energy source for the wood steel.

"Wood-Steel was never meant to be a prison," Father said, his voice a low tremor. "It was forged to be the ultimate conductor designed to siphon dragon energy and use it as fuel for its own growth. But it was never intended to contain that power forever."

A chill ran down my spine. "So... using it as a cage was never actually the plan? It’s just a temporary fix?"

Father turned his head slowly, his eyes fixed on the regenerating titan. "Exactly. At best, it’s a symbiotic relationship. At worst, it’s a parasite. I remember my great-grandfather telling stories... he said Wood-Steel wasn’t an ordinary metal. He claimed it originated from the same primordial place as the dragons themselves."

I looked down at my own hands. My body hadn’t fully healed, and the pains from the earlier clash still flared. I thought of my Judgment Chains could they help? I tried and looked within my core my mana reserves, and see how much mana I had left , but they felt like a cobweb compared to the mountain of power Bagu was projecting. They wouldn’t hold. Not like this.

"If the material isn’t strong enough to house a spirit that massive," Father stated, the finality of a death sentence in his tone, "Bagu won’t just break the seal. He would have also gained a lot of mana the becomes more of a threat and tear his way back into our world."

The weight of the situation was becoming clear: this was a desperate, temporary fix.

"I need to prepare," Morgana declared, her voice cutting through the chaos with elven clarity.

In a blur of motion, she blitzed away, leaping from tree to tree with a fluidity that defied gravity. She was searching for a sanctum a place of power where she could focus her mana to activate the raw Wood-Steel and prepare it for the harvest. I watched her go, my mind spinning. I still hadn’t grasped exactly what Wood-Steel was, let alone how a specialized material could possibly help in sealing a monster as strong as Bagu.

As she vanished into the dense treeline, the sound of a ragged cough pulled my attention back to the clearing. Greyjoy slumped, spitting a violent spray of blood into the dirt. The flames of his mana beast, once a roaring inferno, began to flicker and dim, sputtering like a candle out of wax. It was a grim omen—the intermission was over, and the next round was about to begin.

Beneath us, the nightmare stirred.

The hands of Bagu’s headless body finally regained their strength, the black crystalline fingers twitching with renewed malice. He reached up, his claws sinking deep into the spectral serpent’s scales with a sickening crunch. With terrifying, raw force, he began to uncoil the beast, tearing it away from his torso.

Within moments, he was free. With a savage grunt that vibrated through the ground, Bagu seized the serpent by its tail. He began to rotate, swinging the massive mana-construct like a living flail, building a momentum that distorted the air. Then, with a flick of his wrist, he flung the serpent directly at the weakened Greyjoy.

The impact was only lessened by Lord Zedd’s swift intervention; a flick of his wrist sent a cushion of high-pressure wind to meet the collision, blunting the force before it could pulverize Greyjoy.

"Fire kid," Bratan grunted, his face a ghostly, bloodless pale. "Don’t choke now. We need every second Morgana can buy."

"Obviously!" Greyjoy yelled back, his voice cracking under the strain. Despite the fire in his tone, his hands were trembling so violently he could barely maintain his stance.

"We go all out!" Bratan snapped, his soldier’s discipline flaring as he braced his weight against the scorched earth, his eyes locked onto the looming shadow of the creature.

Beside me, Morad was finally stirring. His eyes fluttered open, dazed and heavy with the fog of unconsciousness. He looked up at Father and me, his voice nothing more than a dry, sandpaper rasp.

"What... where? Ugh, I blacked out," he muttered, shaking his head as if Bagu had cast a sleeping spell on his very soul. He looked at me, his gaze wandering. "Astraga... did we defeat the dragon? Why are we still alive?"

I drew him closer. His body, which had been deathly cold just moments before, was now radiating a strange, pulsing warmth. He didn’t seem to hear me. His eyes were wide, searching the air. "What is that mana? Where..." he continued, his breath hitching. "I sense something... coming. It feels... powerful."

Poor Morad. He was so disoriented he didn’t even realize the "monster" he was sensing was the very thing standing right in front of us. His eyes were glazed, fixed not on the Bagu we saw, but on something at the opposite end of the spiritual spectrum. He was sensing Bagu’s true, overwhelming presence, but he couldn’t differentiate the source from the nightmare.

Father and I shared a sharp, worried glance. In this graveyard of a battlefield, "powerful" was a terrifyingly vague word. I could only pray that whatever Morad sensed was actually on our side—and not just another guest arriving to join the feast.

In the blink of an eye, Bagu’s mangled head and body began to undergo a sickening transformation once more. The speed of his healing was no longer just fast—it was unnatural, a biological insult to the laws of life. It appeared Greyjoy’s inferno hadn’t just wounded him; it had forced Bagu’s physiology to evolve once more, accelerating his regenerative abilities to a terrifying new peak against fire attacks.

Bagu’s head popped back into existence with a sickening, wet squelch. He stretched his neck, his claws tracing the new lines of his chest and face while a low chuckle vibrated in his throat. He pointed a long, jagged finger toward Greyjoy.

"You there... not bad," Bagu said, his amusement warring with the irritation burning in his eyes. "You made things interesting for a moment. But you were uninvited, little one. That is the mistake that will get you killed first. You should have stayed out of fights that don’t concern you."

Greyjoy spat a thick glob of blood to the side, his face pale but his eyes steady. "Sorry, but that’s the whole point of outnumbering you," he countered. "And it freaking concerns me the moment you decide to trespass on Manyblood territory."

If we were to freeze the frame in that moment, Bagu’s expression would have told the whole story: he was not just unimpressed—he was bored of being challenged.

"lets move" Greyjoy commanded, his voice cracking with the strain of his mana.

His eyes began to glow with a fierce, molten light as he doused his entire body in a sheath of living, white-hot flames. He gestured frantically for his mana beast to stand guard over the wounded mages, shielding us from the heat. Then, his voice rose in a rhythmic, desperate chant that seemed to pull the oxygen right out of the air.

"With this flame, I shall reclaim this town’s freedom! O blazing heat, fire of never-ending burns, grant me this wish... let my enemies turn to dust by touch!"

A massive aura in the shape of a lion erupted around Greyjoy. It was alive with flickering, jagged heat, its mana signature roaring as loud as the beast it resembled. With the Lion’s Pride fueling him, Greyjoy blitzed forward, his fist cocked back for a devastating blow.

Bagu didn’t move.

Catching the punch, stopping Greyjoy’s fist dead in its tracks with a single hand. But in a blink, the fist didn’t just strike—it detonated almost like a bomb.

A concentrated explosion of thermal energy rippled outward. Bagu stared at his own hand, which had been reduced to charred bone and ash, and simply willed it to regrow. "Interesting," he murmured.

He prepared to swat the nuisance away, but Greyjoy used Bagu’s momentary curiosity to his advantage. He leaned in and spat a massive wad of thick, black phlegm directly into Bagu’s vortex-like eyes, blinding him for a split second. Then, using his other hand—which he had coated in abrasive grit and razor-sharp wire—he scratched a deep, jagged gash across Bagu’s face.

As Bagu’s jaw unhinged in a roar of fury, Greyjoy didn’t retreat. He shoved his entire fist deep into Bagu’s open throat and screamed, "DETONATE!"

A second, even more violent explosion erupted from within Bagu’s chest. The shockwave sent his body tumbling backward, his heavy heels carving deep trenches into the earth as smoke trailed from the jagged, ruptured cavern of his neck.

"You filthy worm!" Bagu bellowed. It wasn’t a taunt this time; it was a sound of genuine, raw pain and primal disgust. For the first time, his god-like calm had been hit. "Daring to thrust your unclean hand into my very throat..."

He climbed to his feet, his muscles twitching with a life of their own. I watched in grim fascination as his throat knitted back together and his chest cavity reformed in a matter of heartbeats, the scales sealing over the wound like cooling lava.

But as I stared at the shimmering reconstruction, a flicker of doubt took root in my mind: How much healing could he actually sustain? Every cell he remade required energy. There had to be a limit—a breaking point where even a God’s fuel tank runs dry. The question was, would we still be alive even when that happens?

Greyjoy attempted a desperate follow-up, but Bagu dismissed him with a contemptuous backhand, flinging him away like a broken toy. But the damage was already done; the distraction had been flawless.

Before Bagu could reset his stance, Bratan lunged. He delivered a bone-shattering smash that rattled the God’s ribs with the force of a tectonic shift. He was followed instantly by Lord Zedd, whose wind-blade hissed through the air, delivering a surgical, pressurized slice that carved a deep, smoking trench across Bagu’s massive torso.

Greyjoy, even while hurtling through the air, refused to let the opening go to waste. I watched in awe as a searing, volcanic heat bled upward from his belly, glowing through his skin like molten glass until it reached his throat. He unleashed a primal roar, and a concentrated torrent of white-hot fire lanced directly into the wound in Bagu’s chest.

On paper, their teamwork was a masterpiece—a perfect synchronization of brute physical force, magical precision, and raw elemental fury. But in practice, it was a race against an infinite clock.

Bagu kept regenerating from the impacts; he absorbing the critical hits . His body was shifting and adapting mid-strike, his flesh knitting together before the golden ichor could even hit the grass. They were tearing him down with everything they had, but he was rebuilding himself in return.

Morad watched the exchange in awe, finally grasping the true, terrifying scale of the battle. Behind us, the protective barriers groaned and shimmered violently; the mages were working overtime, their faces pale and slick with sweat as the shockwaves from the clash threatened to shatter their defenses at any moment.

Bagu had seen enough. Despite the superficial damage, the Dragon exploded with a sudden pulse of mana, shattering the combined assault. The crushing weight of his presence returned tenfold. He slammed his massive foot down, detonating a shockwave that threw Zedd, Bratan, and Greyjoy backward like autumn leaves, slamming them into the jagged rock formations at the clearing’s edge.

Their formation was decimated.

As I watched the high level mages struggle to catch their breath, a sickening realization took hold of me: he still wasn’t taking us seriously. Despite the broken ribs and the scorched chest, Bagu’s movements remained fluid, almost detached.

What was he waiting for? Why was a creature with the power to shatter us at anytime playing this game of cat-and-mouse?

Then, the true horror of his biology clicked into place. He wasn’t trying to win; he was trying to achive something.

He was waiting to die again. Every "death" was just a activation of some sort of modification to his being.

Every time we found a way to hurt him, Bagu simply returned in a more enhanced form, carrying a perfect countermeasure. It felt as though he was running a live simulation—using our desperate best to cultivate his own invincibility.