FAMILY ABOVE ALL: BATTLING AGAINST GODS

"AHH!"

"RUN!"

"WE ARE GOING TO DIE!"

Iris looked at the chaos around her as she panted for breath. The once great magical beast's capital city has descended into chaos. Smoke rose to the sky, as countless buildings caught aflame. The sound of explosions constantly shook the city, causing her to lose her footing and fall clumsily.

But every time she fell, Iris would quickly rise and run.

Run for her life.

She didn't want to die...

No, she couldn't die. She had yet to avenge her father, mother, and her big sister. Not to mention that she still wanted to see her little brother.

Joe!

Despite not being from the same mother, Iris loved Joe like she would any other. She had always wished to have a junior sibling as she hated the way she was always treated as the last boy. Everyone spoilt her and would grant her every wish. That in itself wasn't bad, but the way they treated her words like a little child's always infuriated her. Of course, she was a child, but it was as if they all wanted her to remain that cute girl, whose cheek they could always pull in joy.

But the heavens had answered her wish, and her father had brought a little brother for her from outside.

And she had abandoned that little brother of hers a few months ago.

Every night Iris spent since then always felt long, as she couldn't sleep, her thoughts clouded by her brother's welfare.

She had already regretted her decision many times and had gone in search of her little brother. However, she couldn't find him no matter how she searched.

It was almost as if he had disappeared or...

He was dead!

'No, no...' Iris shook her head as she rejected that thought, 'He is alive. He is alive.'

Finding renewed strength from her belief, she ran faster towards the gate of the city.

However, she wasn't alone, as the streets were crowded by terror-stricken beasts who were trying their hardest to escape from the great clash far behind them.

Iris had no choice but to push and squeeze past several bodies. There were times when she saw people fall accidentally in their hurry before they were stampeded by the crazy crowd. Children cried for their mothers but she ignored them. Elderly beasts cried for help but she ran past them.

After months of suffering and struggles, she finally found her way back to the capital city, where the target of her revenge was. Only Iris knew what she had suffered and lost to Join the Beast Association. No other family could help her fight her enemy who now wielded the entire power and force of the Royal Basiliks.

And among the other three great families, only one could help her.

The Beast Association!

But it wasn't easy joining the association, after all, she was a member of the people they had formed to fight against. But she had proven herself to the higher-ups of the association and after seeing that her will for revenge was indeed genuine, they finally accepted. It hadn't even been a week since she was allowed into the main branch in the capital city.

Yet it seemed death had come for her even before she could achieve her goals.

'No...'

'I have to survive!'

'I must survive!'

Suddenly...

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

Iris turned her head back in time to see in the distance how a several hundred-meter-long green-scaled snake coiled around itself, before launching itself up like a spring into the sky.

Its razor-sharped teeth plunged into the neck of the red wyvern eliciting a pain-filled scream, before its hundred-meter-long body quickly coiled around it and drew taut.

The wings of the massive red wyvern were forcefully squeezed against its body, causing the two titanic beasts to fall from the sky.

ROOOAR!

The red wyverns roared in anger, a fiery breath shooting out from its mouth, destroying countless buildings and lives in its paths before spreading a wave of fire to its surroundings. More smoke rose to the sky.

However, despite his mighty attack, the wyvern's struggle was to no avail. The rapid descent of the two titanic beasts pulled by gravity reflected in Iris's eyes.

Subconsciously, she quickly braced herself for what was about to come.

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

A mighty shockwave spread out from where the two beasts had fallen, destroying the structures in its path, and arriving before Iris in less than three breaths.

Iris's irises contracted to the utmost, as she watched the shockwave impact into her and send her body flying forward for tens of meters. She collided with several objects, some soft and some hard eliciting several bursts of moan filled with pain from her mouth. Throughout the entire flight, the ground shook greatly as if experiencing a severe earthquake.

After what seemed like an eternity, she came out of her disoriented state and weakly raised her head. A trickle of blood fell down the side of her mouth and it wasn't until after a full minute that she finally came to. As her blurry vision cleared, what Iris saw elicited tears from her eyes.

Countless bodies were strewn around her with no sign of movement. A pool of blood had long covered the region. Iris realized that she couldn't move her body. A deep feeling of fear engulfed her when she thought she had lost her lower limbs or worse had damaged her spine. It wasn't until after she calmed down a little that she realized that she was buried under several bodies or rather corpses.

She struggled to push them off her to no avail. It seemed that despite surviving, she wasn't in her beast state.

The image of the hundred meters long snake pulling the massive wyvern was still imprinted in her mind.

’How do I face that...Him?' There was no need for her to ponder the identity of the green-scaled snake. There was a reason why her eldest brother was named Razor. Normally, the Royal Basiliks had two long sharp fangs protruding out of their mouth, with which they could bite into their enemies and inflict deadly poison. However, Razor was different. Rather than two long fangs, what filled his mouth was a set of razor-sharped teeth, hence his name.

A feeling of tiredness suddenly gripped Iris's heart as she was awoken to her great weakness.

Raising her head stiffly, she looked into the distance and saw how a forty-meter-high black panther suddenly appeared from the back of a sixty-meter-high yellow-striped tiger. Five huge earth spikes suddenly rose from the sides of the tiger to attack the falling panther, only to be held back by dark hands that seemed to have risen from the tiger's shadow. The panther successfully landed on the back of the tiger but just when it opened its jaws to bite into its neck, the tiger twisted its body, causing the two to tumble around themselves and destroy whatever remained of the buildings around them. Iris could feel the slight tremor in the pool of blood beneath her every time the two beasts clashed against them.

Raising her only free hand to no one in particular, Iris struggled to shout but her voice only came out as a low whisper:

"Help..."

However, even after many breaths, no one appeared to save her. Just when Iris's hand was about to fall, she suddenly felt a small yet firm grip on her hand.

Opening her eyes once again, she saw how a boy about twelve years old grabbed her hand while he threw the bodies off her.

Her eyes slowly widened when she identified her savior, and soon after two lines of tears fell down her face.

'Is fate playing a prank on me?'

She watched as the short dark-haired boy with green reptilian eyes like her, carried her before placing her body on his back. Then with slow but steady steps, he made his way out of the city.

Closing her eyes, Iris relaxed weakly on the boy's back.

To think that she would be saved by the son of the person she was trying to kill...

That is right.

The person who saved her was no other than Razor's remaining son, his last born, and her nephew.

*****

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