Seeing the situation turning bad,
Zeus, with his scalp tingling, decisively picked up the proposal he had abandoned earlier and roared loudly.
"Let's make peace first! Everyone take up your weapons and prepare for battle! Everything for Olympus!"
During this, he did not forget to invoke the banner of righteousness to inspire the troops before battle.
However, there was only silence behind him.
No one responded.
He subconsciously turned his head and was shocked to see that the ruins where the rebels had gathered earlier were now completely empty.
"..."
After a brief silence, a grief-stricken curse resounded through the clouds.
"I XX##XX!"
At the same time, in a certain cave on Olympus.
The rebel gods sat slumped together, panting heavily with lingering fear.
After the great battle against Zeus's side, they were all basically injured, with some even showing faint damage to their divinities.
They had fallen into complete disadvantage and would need a fairly long period of rest before fully recovering.
And that guy's unexpected self-explosion had also been shockingly powerful.
Not only had it heavily wounded Zeus and the three Hundred-Handed Giants, but it had nearly sent them off on the spot as well.
If the other party had not still had some conscience and informed them to withdraw in advance through a small handshake gesture while rescuing Hera and Athena, they would probably have been buried under rubble by now.
Although rubble and lava would not have done much to them, the Titan gods and Typhon's demon army that appeared next might have been a different story.
Thinking of the sky-covering, locust-like swarm of terrifying phantoms on Mount Olympus,
Apollo could not help feeling some lingering fear.
Fortunately, they were not coming for them...
"Where is my sister? How is she?"
Then, Apollo, whose mood had calmed slightly, looked toward the opposite side.
"Rest assured, she only fainted."
Athena spoke calmly and casually placed Artemis, whose head was swollen high, down from her shoulder.
Because she had not received Lorne's message in time, this hunting goddess had immediately erupted after seeing her lover self-destruct and wanted to fight Zeus to the death on the spot.
Fortunately, Athena had been quick-eyed and swift-handed.
She knocked Artemis unconscious and carried her away while she was unprepared.
Of course, this action was out of good intentions, but judging from the degree of swelling on the back of Artemis's head, it contained a bit of personal grudge.
After confirming that his sister was fine, Apollo breathed a sigh of relief and looked again toward the team's strategist.
"So what should we do next?"
Zeus's strength far exceeded their imagination, and that bizarre [Heaven's Mandate] always stabbed them in unexpected places, causing their efforts to fail at the last step.
In addition, the Titan gods and Typhon's demon army, who should have been imprisoned in Tartarus, had also come to join the fun, making the situation even more unpredictable.
The successive changes had left Apollo's mind in a mess, so he could only ask Athena for advice.
Athena thought for a moment and suggested in a deep voice.
"Right now the outside is surrounded by the phantoms of Titan gods and Typhon's demon army.
If we go out, we will definitely become live targets. Since everyone is quite injured, let's rest and recuperate for three days first and focus on healing."
"But on the mountain..."
"Rest assured. He is the god-king of [Heaven's Mandate]. Even when we joined forces we could not pull him down from the throne.
Those [phantoms] who have just broken free with a bit of consciousness will not find it so easy to change the heavens and earth."
Athena spoke calmly, then a trace of mockery appeared in her words.
"Besides, this is his Olympus. Defending his own kingship is what he should do. We should take care of ourselves first."
Apollo nodded and put away the faint sense of responsibility that had arisen in his heart.
That was right. Heal first, stabilize the injuries, recover some strength, and then talk about joining forces to quell this turmoil.
Then, the gods looked at each other, nodded, reached a tacit understanding, and each chose a quiet spot to focus on self-healing and recovery.
However, having just gone through successive changes, the atmosphere inside the cave was somewhat oppressive.
Seeing this, Hephaestus in the corner gave a light dry cough.
"Actually, Lorne he..."
"Hephaestus, everyone is in a bad mood right now. Let's not talk about this."
Athena spoke to dissuade him.
Facing his friend's suggestion, the dull craftsman god could only comply and obediently swallow the rest of his words.
But soon he raised his hand again and spoke hesitantly.
"Um, I still have one thing to say."
"What?"
Before Athena could raise an objection, Apollo, who had opened his eyes, took the opportunity to ask.
Hephaestus in the corner looked around, his gaze sweeping over Athena, Hera, Apollo, Artemis, and Aphrodite in turn, and spoke faintly.
"Have we... forgotten someone?"
"..."
In the eerie silence, the gods looked at each other, their faces full of mutual glances.
~~
At the same time, on the mountaintop.
Poseidon, who had laboriously reassembled his body and crawled out of the rubble pile, looked at the nuclear-flattened ruins of Olympus and the densely packed Typhon's demon army and Titan gods in the sky. His brain could not help but freeze.
Teammates? Where are my teammates? This is not right!
"Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!"
However, before he could remain stunned for long, lightning bolts smashed down one after another and exploded beside him.
The phantoms attracted by the roaring sounds all turned to look at this sea king with sinister and tyrannical gazes.
Looking at a certain familiar figure who flashed into the clouds above, Poseidon's entire old face instantly turned from blood-loss pale to pitch black like it had been smeared with pot bottom ash.
A grief-stricken roar resounded through the clouds.
"Zeus, I XX##XX!"
But before his words finished, the locust-like phantoms swarmed over and vented the anger of being imprisoned in physical form and stripped of their divine rights upon this Olympian main god.
At the critical moment,
Poseidon steeled his heart.
While frantically waving his trident to summon ocean authority to protect himself, he endured the phantoms' gang beating and gnashed his teeth as he charged toward the thunderclouds in the sky.
'You won't let me have it easy, huh? Then no one gets to live! If we die, we die together!'
Under Poseidon's guidance, those phantoms quickly found the real target who had been hiding his head and showing his tail.
Harboring intense resentment in their hearts, they ganged up on Zeus along with his three Hundred-Handed Giants and Ares, who had been dragged into it.
Of course, as one of the Olympian gods, Poseidon himself was also one of the phantoms' attack targets.
Thus, a divine battle fiercely unfolded amid the cursing from all three sides.
~~
At this moment, at the cave entrance.
Seeing the faint blue halo flashing in the sky above Olympus, the gods' suspended hearts finally died.
They uniformly averted their somewhat guilty gazes and each walked deeper into the cave where the sky was out of sight, beginning to focus on self-healing.
As for their ally Poseidon, sorry, he could only ask for blessings himself.
Just as Athena closed her eyes and prepared to enter meditation, the defensive spell array arranged in front of her was pierced by a cold arrow light.
Artemis, who had woken from unconsciousness, looked at the wisdom goddess through gritted teeth.
"Why did you knock me out?"
"He requested it."
"He... Lorne?"
The hunting goddess's eyes lit up and she immediately rushed forward, grabbing Athena's arm, her face full of excitement and wild joy.
"He is still alive, right?"
"I don't know."
Athena shook her head and explained calmly.
"He only asked us to wait patiently for three days. After three days, everything will end."
"Three days? Good! Such a short time will pass very quickly!"
Artemis nodded excitedly again and again, then immediately turned to go heal herself.
Looking at the hunting goddess's decisive departing back, the long speech Athena had prepared got stuck in her throat and a trace of complexity flashed in her purple eyes.
Another one who has been charmed until she is utterly devoted...
So what exactly do you want to do three days later?
In the shadows, the goddess of wisdom slowly opened the five fingers of her clenched right hand and quietly looked at the motionless twelve-sided snake-patterned die in her palm, falling into long contemplation.
At the same time, a new divine battle on the mountaintop officially began.
Zeus used clouds as armor, thunder as shield, lightning as spear, and thunderbolts as arrows as he rode the chariot of time racing across the dome of the sky.
Cottus, Briareus, and the warlike Gyges, the three Hundred-Handed Giants, flanked him as attendants.
The god of savage war Ares protected him in front, and the sea god Poseidon was forced to follow.
The leading demon ancestor Typhon and Titan god-king Cronus among the phantoms were not to be outdone.
One stirred up fierce ether storms that swept everything around, while the other raised a giant illusory scythe in his hand and specifically targeted Zeus's lower body.
The Titans and divine monsters gathered in the sky let out earth-shaking roars and launched a gang assault on the culprit who had imprisoned them.
Facing the powerful offensive,
Zeus either dodged, split attacks with lightning, or drove the chariot of time to ram, while also stirring up thunder and storms to constantly disrupt the formation of the Titan giants and Typhon's demon army.
Soon, Typhon could no longer hold on first.
A large half of his phantom was shattered by thunder and fell straight toward the Oceanus sea.
The phantom of the Titan god-king Cronus was also pierced by lightning and cracked apart.
Although they had descended upon Olympus for unknown reasons, the [True Dream] in Elysium was still suppressing their bodies and dividing their divine rights.
So what had broken free for now was only part of their consciousness.
For Zeus, it was troublesome but not yet to the point of being unmanageable.
But before he could catch his breath, a huge vortex rose on the Oceanus sea.
The three bronze walls at the seabed emitted trembling tearing wails. The three dark curtains of the underworld prison overflowed with rolling black smoke.
The shattered phantoms of Typhon, Cronus, and the Titans and divine monsters regrouped and seemed even clearer than before.
Roars came from the abyss, growing more tyrannical and resounding.
Zeus's heart sank, and his expression became extremely ugly.
Their power was continuously recovering, their will was continuously breaking free, and their authorities were continuously restoring!
What exactly is going on?!
No one answered the god-king's question.
The phantoms, whose divine senses had not fully recovered, driven by instinct, launched wave after wave of attacks on Olympus like a tide.
New gods and old gods clashed fiercely.
The terrifying turmoil and anomalies spread from the heavenly realm to the mortal world.
In a daze, countless lives on the ground looked up.
They looked up at the thunder representing divine wrath and the old demonic shadows racing across the sky and colliding with each other.
"Swish swish swish swish!"
Meteors fell from the dawn sky.
A stream of light streaked across the pitch-black river of the dome and vanished.
In the friction with the air, boiling rich ether bloomed with dazzling light in the night.
The scenery of looking up from the earth to the sky was frozen like a still oil painting.
But in the next moment.
"Boom boom boom boom!"
The sky collapsed, stars fell, bringing death and terror.
The earth's surface was burning.
The world was burning.
Buildings, villages, fields, towns...
Things that humans called "civilization" were trampled and destroyed one after another.
Frail lives were so insignificant.
In this sudden catastrophe, even breathing was not allowed.
O Lord who presides over revelry, please once again bestow mercy.
All living beings trembled, knelt, and prayed...
However, this time no one responded.
The statues remained dim and lightless.
In a daze, they received the answer.
The petitioner who had answered their prayers and ascended to Olympus had already been martyred.
Unprecedented grief sprouted and boiled in the hearts of the weak, eventually brewing into waves of sobs and wails.
Rumble!
Thousands of purple-white thunderbolts exploded from one cloud layer after another.
In the boundless night curtain, they either shuttled and wandered or struck vertically, like angry dragons descending upon the world.
Through the faint light of the thunder and lightning, one could see that surging turbid currents had completely flooded the coastal lands.
The height of the Oceanus sea had reached a thousand meters.
One hurricane after another crossed and swept diagonally amid the undulating waves, raging and connecting heaven and earth, shining together with the dense thunder light.
The clamor and fighting in the sky finally drowned out all other noises on the ground.
In the deep darkness, the world seemed to fall into eternal lonely perdition and, with the passage of time, was constantly twisted and rewritten by this unprecedented divine war.
On the first day, light and dark were indistinguishable, and day and night lost balance;
On the second day, the stars hid and the sun and moon sank;
On the third day, the dome was lost and the earth fell into chaos.
Thick ether turbulence was visible to the naked eye.
Even humans inside city protective barriers found it difficult to breathe. Only the fierce thunder shuttled and wandered in the sky.
Forests burned, oceans boiled, mountains disintegrated, the sun and moon gave no light, and the stars were all falling.
The entire world presented an apocalyptic scene.
"It came too fast." The prophets trembled uncontrollably.
"Take up sword and shield to protect yourselves!" The rulers rose valiantly.
"Everything is already too late."
The scholars understood and gave up.
"But there should still be a sliver of hope, right?" The living gathered before the temples and issued confused and painful pleas.
Finally, beneath the bricks in front of the statue, they saw grapevines poking out tender shoots.
— What sin have the righteous committed to fall into such peril; grant relief and return them to the flock.
The lost flock seemed to hear the comforting voice from the unknown.
Like drowning ants clinging tightly to this withered leaf representing [Hope], they jointly performed the blessing in the apocalyptic darkness.
"Lord of the paradise.
You are my shepherd, I shall not want.
You make me lie down in green pastures, you lead me beside still waters.
You restore my soul, you guide me in paths of righteousness for your name's sake.
Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
Lord of the paradise.
If you sing, light shall rise for you,
If you bleed, filth shall be washed away,
Fellow beings whisper, the gospel is heard for a thousand miles,
Wine gushes forth from this, the three phases become one.
Lord of the paradise.
We invite you to look upon the radiant other shore and join this heavenly banquet,
The world is a dance, laughter until the end.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;
For you are with me!"
...
Finally, a beam of light lit up on Mount Olympus, illuminating the darkness and announcing the end of this long night.
The Titan gods and Typhon's demon army in the sky, who had almost coalesced into solid form, decomposed uncontrollably as if encountering a natural enemy.
Their authorities turned into cornerstones to refill the world's blanks, and their consciousness was once again dragged by an invisible force into the Tartarus prison beneath the deep sea.
The remaining divine imprints, under the forging of light, turned into a golden giant egg.
"Chirp!"
Accompanied by a faint crisp bird cry, a heartbeat-like pulsing came from inside the giant egg.
And with each cycle, it brought earth-shaking changes to the world.
The first time, day and night were divided and the four seasons operated.
The second time, the dome mended and the stars lit up.
The third time, the waters were divided above and below, the angry waves retreated, the continents appeared, and the cities were preserved.
"Crack!"
A crisp trembling sound came from the heavens.
The giant egg cracked open, and a gem-like figure was born from within, with bright golden feather wings shining behind.
Only at this moment did the trembling lambs in the high walls and temples completely believe that the disaster had subsided and the world had found peace as they quietly sobbed in joy and jointly celebrated their survival after the catastrophe.
~~
At the same time, inside the cave.
"Buzz!"
A buzzing and trembling twelve-sided die flew out from Athena's hand, directly piercing through the belly of Mount Olympus and shooting upward.
The wisdom goddess suddenly opened her eyes, then immediately summoned the Aegis shield and the Spear of Victory, walked out of the defensive spell array, and spoke solemnly.
"Time is up. Head up the mountain!"
The gods, who had just finished recuperating, were excited and immediately rushed out of the cave, turning into streams of light as they hurried to the top of Mount Olympus.
In the burning firelight, a familiar figure stood tall and unmoving with a warm, breeze-like smile.
"Lorne!"
Artemis cried out in surprise and joy, wishing she could directly throw herself into her revived lover's arms.
Facing the fiery hunting goddess, Lorne could only give her a comforting look, then turned his head to look at the ruins ahead.
The three Hundred-Handed Giants had almost turned into bald fleshy mountains and lay motionless on the ground;
The god of savage war Ares was bloodied and slowly healing himself;
The sea king Poseidon had turned into a pool of gel-like seawater, wriggling with difficulty;
And the final figure, though also riddled with holes, still held the Aegis shield and could barely stand.
Seeing this scene, Lorne cursed inwardly.
What the hell, this is ridiculous!
First he was beaten by seven rebel main gods;
Then he was caught off guard by his self-explosion to the face;
Finally he was gang-beaten for three days and three nights by large numbers of Titan giants and Typhon's demon army.
Yet this old guy could still jump around lively?
One had to know that although those Titan giants and Typhon's demon army had initially been phantoms carrying only small portions of consciousness and divinity, and their strength could not be considered powerful.
But with his "death" and Hecate's imprisonment, the dream world of Elysium had lost the support of contingency divinity and could no longer restrain their main bodies.
So these old gods would gradually break free of their restraints over time and regain their former power and authorities.
And within these three days, the entire world would also gradually show signs of collapse along with their liberation.
Because the separated authorities and flesh of those old gods were the cornerstones for building and perfecting the new world.
Once the cornerstones were taken away, the [World] would inevitably fall apart.
According to Hecate, the former chief warden, without restrictions, they could at most aggregate from phantoms into solid form and possess extraordinary combat power in three days; in at most seven days they could recover to their peak and completely sever the restraints from the dream world.
Therefore, the Typhon's demon army and Titan gods could be used as assistance, but they could not truly be relied upon.
But even so, these old gods he had placed high hopes on still failed to explode Zeus's gold coins within the limited time.
Sure enough, as Hecate said, Zeus who possessed [Heaven's Mandate protection] was almost an undefeatable BUG.
To take down this god-king of heaven's mandate, only by completely stripping away the heaven's mandate halo on him would there be a chance for a decisive victory.
With thoughts flashing through his mind, Lorne made up his decision and smiled as he looked up toward the half-sky behind Zeus.
Among the thunderclouds, three goddesses wearing soft and thin long skirts stood side by side.
One held a thread, one held a measuring ruler, and one held scissors.
Their deep eyes jointly overlooked the mortal beings below, cold and mysterious.
— Clotho who spins the thread of life, Lachesis who measures the length of life, and Atropos who cuts the thread of life.
They were none other than the legendary Three Fates.
Their appearance was the real reason Zeus had turned defeat into victory.
In the Greek divine era world there was a widespread consensus that the Three Fates' authority surpassed everything.
Neither gods nor humans could defy it.
Even if Zeus was the king of the gods who controlled all things in heaven and earth with infinite power, his own fate was still manipulated by these three goddesses and could not be completely controlled by himself.
Similarly, whether Typhon's demon army or the Titan gods, they could only accept their destined defeat before [inevitable fate].
Looking at the three final bosses who had finally appeared before him, Lorne's face bloomed with an incomparably brilliant smile.
"So, shall we talk, you three?"
(End of this chapter)