I Am Zeus - Chapter 233

Chapter 233: “My turn,”
The world had shrunk to the space between his staff and Mephisto’s smug face.

Wukong moved like a golden hurricane, his staff a blur that cracked the air with every swing. But here, in the heart of Hell, Mephisto was different. He wasn’t just dodging or blocking. The very darkness obeyed him. Shadows solidified into shields at the last second. The ground itself would soften to mud under Wukong’s feet, breaking his momentum.

“Fight me straight, you coward!” Wukong roared, leaping over a suddenly-spiked pit of darkness.

“This is straight,” Mephisto replied, his voice calm as he flicked his wrist. A whip of condensed despair snapped out, not aimed at Wukong’s body, but at his spirit. A wave of crushing hopelessness tried to drown the Monkey King’s fire. “You are in my house. The rules are mine.”

Wukong shook it off with a furious snarl, but it cost him. He was slower for a split second. Mephisto was there, his hand lancing out like a serpent. His fingers, cold as the void, brushed Wukong’s shoulder.

It felt like his very life force was being siphoned away. A patch of Wukong’s golden fur turned brittle and grey. He gasped, stumbling back.

“See?” Mephisto said, not even breathing hard. “You are a creature of life and chaos. This is a realm of death and order. My order. You are a candle fighting the night.”

“I’ll burn this whole damn night down!” Wukong shot back, but his grin was strained now. This wasn’t like their last fight. Mephisto was pulling less punches, and the realm itself was his ally.

He launched forward again, this time splitting into a dozen copies. They swarmed Mephisto from all sides. The Lord of Hell simply sighed, as if bored by the trick. He snapped his fingers.

The air pressure dropped violently. The clones flickered, their forms destabilizing, and then popped out of existence one by one, like bubbles. Only the real Wukong remained, his charge faltering.

“Your parlor tricks are wasted here,” Mephisto said. He thrust his palm forward, and a wave of invisible force hit Wukong in the chest. It didn’t feel like a punch. It felt like the universe itself was rejecting him. He flew backward, crashing through a petrified rib the size of a tree and skidding across the bone-littered floor.

He pushed himself up, spitting out a glob of blood that sizzled on the ground. His arms trembled. Mephisto was right. He was fighting an uphill battle against the terrain itself. He needed more. He had to stop holding back.

It was then that a streak of fire cut across the battlefield. Nezha, his cosmic wheels blazing, landed between Wukong and Mephisto, his fire-tipped spear leveled at the demon lord.

“Monkey! You’re in over your head!” Nezha called out, not taking his eyes off Mephisto. “We’ll take him together!”

For a fraction of a second, relief warred with a furious, possessive pride inside Wukong. He saw the logic. They could win together. But the memory of his last defeat, the humiliation of being outsmarted, burned hotter than any hellfire.

As Nezha lunged, Wukong moved faster.

He didn’t go for Mephisto. His staff swung in a low, brutal arc, catching Nezha square in the ribs with a sickening crack. The young god was thrown sideways, his charge broken, his wheels sputtering as he tumbled into a heap.

“I SAID STAY OUT OF IT!” Wukong bellowed, his voice raw with a fury that wasn’t meant for Nezha. It was for himself, for the situation, for the demon who was making him struggle. This was his fight. His score to settle. His victory to claim.

Nezha stared up, stunned and clutching his side, the betrayal sharp in his eyes.

Mephisto actually chuckled, a dry, rasping sound. “How touching. The mighty sage is too proud to accept help. It will be your epitaph.”

The mockery was the final spark. Wukong’s eyes began to glow with a fierce, red-gold light. The air around him started to shimmer with heat haze.

“You want to see a parlor trick?” Wukong’s voice was low, a promise of violence. “I’ll show you a main event.”

He planted his staff and took a deep, shuddering breath. When he exhaled, it wasn’t air—it was raw power. His body began to grow. Not just a little. He swelled, muscles bulging, his form expanding until he was three times his normal size, then ten, then fifty. The air itself groaned in protest.

The Law of Heaven and Earth: Giant Form.

He loomed over the throne room, a golden colossus. He raised a foot, large enough to crush a house, and brought it down where Mephisto stood.

The resulting shockwave sent demons and lesser gods alike flying. The bone floor shattered into a crater a hundred feet wide.

But when the dust cleared, Mephisto was untouched, standing on a single, untouched pillar of stone in the center of the devastation. He looked up, unimpressed.

“Bigger target,” he remarked.

He raised his own hands, and the shadows of the room converged. They didn’t form a shield. They formed a copy. A giant, monstrous doppelgänger of Mephisto, woven from the absolute darkness of the abyss, rose to meet Wukong’s height. It was a void given shape, with eyes of dying stars.

The giant shadow fist met Wukong’s own.

The sound was beyond hearing. It was a physical pressure that made eardrums bleed. The two titans strained against each other, light and darkness warping the space between them.

Wukong roared, pushing with all his might, but the shadow form had no muscles to tire, no will to break. It was an extension of Hell itself.

“You see?” Mephisto’s voice echoed from the tiny figure below. “You expend your energy to become a god. I simply ask the darkness to lend me a hand. Which is more efficient?”

The shadow giant’s other fist swung around, catching Wukong in the jaw. The impact was colossal. The Giant Form flickered, and Wukong shrank back to his normal size, stumbling to his knees, panting. The effort had drained him. He’d given it his all, and it hadn’t been enough.

Mephisto began to walk toward him, the shadow giant dissolving back into the ambient gloom. “A for effort, monkey. Truly. But the lesson is over.”

He extended a hand, and darkness began to coil around Wukong, binding him, squeezing the air from his lungs. It was over. He had lost. Again.

But as the darkness tightened, something in Wukong’s eyes changed. The frustration, the pride, the anger… it all burned away, leaving behind a cold, clear focus. He had been trying to overpower Hell. That was his mistake.

He wasn’t the King of Hell. He was the Great Sage, Equal of Heaven. His power wasn’t in matching the darkness. It was in being everything the darkness was not.

He stopped struggling. He closed his eyes.

And he began to laugh.

It was a quiet laugh at first, then it grew, ringing out across the battlefield, clear and defiant. Mephisto paused, his brow furrowing slightly.

“You find your imminent destruction amusing?”

Wukong opened his eyes. They were no longer glowing with rage, but with a pure, brilliant gold.

“I just realized,” Wukong said, a genuine grin spreading across his face. “I’ve been playing your game this whole time.”

The bindings of darkness around him began to smoke. Not from heat, but from pure, unadulterated life. A golden aura erupted from him, so bright it was painful to look at. It wasn’t an attack. It was a statement of existence.

“You can have your rules. You can have your house.”

The darkness shattered like glass.

Wukong rose to his feet, his form shimmering, not with size, but with potential. He wasn’t fighting the realm anymore. He was simply being himself, so utterly that the realm had to make room for him.

“My turn,” he said.

The fight was no longer about winning in Hell. It was about reminding Hell what it meant to face the sun.