Drex Valen had long since outgrown the stage where he found that sort of thing exciting.
These days, it felt tedious and dull.
Of course, if Tifa or Esdeath wanted his attention, he would never turn them away. Whenever he indulged them, they always left more than satisfied.
"You are... the new Heavenly Emperor of the Celestial Court?"
Below the throne, Hades knelt in a battered, disheveled state.
He stared at the figure seated high above him.
Behind the Heavenly Emperor stretched a vast celestial panorama of sun, moon, and countless stars. The sight was like gazing at the heavens themselves. His presence alone shook heaven and earth.
One glance was enough to tell that this Heavenly Emperor stood on the level of primordial beings like Gaia, the Mother of Earth. In fact, Hades wasn't even sure Gaia could defeat him.
The Celestial Court's new ruler possessed such terrifying power.
No wonder the previous Jade Emperor had been eliminated without so much as a struggle.
"Take him away."
Drex had no interest in recruiting a being at Hades' level.
The only reason he had spared him was out of a measure of appreciation and respect. Otherwise, Hades would already have been sent directly to the Immortal Execution Platform.
After the Black Hole Dimension manifested as the Celestial Court, many of the Court's original functions had undergone significant enhancement.
The Immortal Execution Platform was among them.
It had become vastly more powerful and practical.
Once placed upon it, it didn't matter whether the target was a Skyfather, an All-Father, immortal, or possessed some extraordinary method of resurrection.
Everything could be executed.
And once executed, the victim became nourishment for the Black Hole Dimension itself.
Body and soul were erased completely.
No rebirth.
No resurrection.
No second chance.
The ropes binding Hades were equally extraordinary.
They were Immortal-Binding Cords from the Celestial Prison.
The stronger the captive, the stronger the cords became.
Only a being at the level of a single-universe entity might have a chance of breaking free.
One thing did ease Hades' worries.
The Heavenly Emperor had not ordered Persephone separated from him.
The couple was escorted into the Celestial Prison together.
"Hades..."
Persephone stood helplessly beside him.
Her power was so insignificant that no restraints had even been placed on her. She was free to move about the cell as she pleased.
But freedom inside a prison was still freedom inside a prison.
Even the Heavenly Soldiers and Generals stationed there found the place bitterly cold.
For Persephone, who was little more than a decorative queen compared to the gods around her, the environment was almost unbearable.
Fortunately, Hades soon discovered he could still use his divine power.
Using it, he shielded Persephone from the freezing atmosphere.
What surprised him even more was the complete indifference shown by the gods of the Celestial Court.
No one paid attention to them.
No one cared.
None of the horrifying scenarios Hades had imagined came to pass.
The Underworld Queen wasn't dragged before the Heavenly Emperor.
She wasn't passed around among the Celestial Court's gods.
She wasn't humiliated, corrupted, or turned into some tragic trophy.
The fact that Hades could imagine such things so vividly wasn't entirely his fault.
His brother and much of his extended family had established a rather terrible precedent.
Growing up around the Olympians had left him with a permanently cynical view of divine behavior.
After protecting Persephone with his divine power, Hades sat silently in the freezing prison.
He endured the cold without complaint.
Without a single word.
Meanwhile, the Celestial Court pressed its advantage.
Leaving the Underworld behind, the divine army advanced toward a destination visible to mortals yet forever beyond their reach.
Mount Olympus.
As for the creature that had once guarded the gates of the Underworld...
The legendary Cerberus was now a pot of stew.
At that moment, Drex was enjoying a hearty bowl of three-headed hellhound hotpot.
The meat was surprisingly nourishing.
And surprisingly delicious.
If his assumptions were correct, Olympus still had no idea what had happened in the Underworld.
That was one of the primary reasons Drex had chosen the Greek Pantheon as his first target.
From top to bottom, the entire divine system had rotted away.
Its gods were consumed by indulgence, pleasure, and decadence.
A dying structure propped up by old power.
"Maybe there are still some ancient gods left over from the Titan War."
Drex leaned comfortably against the Heavenly Emperor's throne after finishing his meal.
"If so, I can clean them up in one sweep."
The Titan War had been the great conflict between the Olympian gods and the Titans.
It marked the transition between the old divine order and the new.
The war had nearly destroyed the world.
Human civilization had almost been wiped out alongside it.
After ten years of warfare, the Olympians emerged victorious.
The defeated Titans were punished, imprisoned, or banished to the depths of hell, never to rise again.
Not every god had participated in that war.
Many remained neutral, preserving themselves while waiting to see who would win.
When Zeus secured victory and began distributing authority among the gods, those neutral factions quickly banded together.
Over time, they became increasingly difficult to control.
They obeyed commands when convenient but ignored direct oversight.
Conflicts over divine authority multiplied as old gods and new gods competed for influence.
Many refused to fully accept the framework Zeus attempted to impose.
It was a historical problem born from the rapid rise of Zeus' family.
After overthrowing the Titans, they had consolidated power so quickly that numerous unresolved issues were left festering beneath the surface.
Those weaknesses created opportunities.
For rival pantheons.
And now, for the Celestial Court.
One unique characteristic of this world was the relationship between the divine realms and the mortal world.
Whether it was Olympus or the Underworld, neither existed in some distant dimension inaccessible to ordinary beings.
They were physically connected to the material world.
They could be seen.
Touched.
Reached.
This reflected the worldview of many ancient civilizations.
An age when gods and mortals occupied the same world.
Perhaps even the late Mythological Era itself.
The era when gods and humans still walked the same lands.
At this moment, the gods of the Celestial Court advanced toward Olympus through flight and direct travel.
Mount Olympus.
The sacred mountain towered over the world.
Steep.
Majestic.
Its enormous form stood at the center of creation, worshipped by countless mortals living under the rule of the gods.
In Greek mythology, Olympus was known as the Place of Light.
Its status was comparable to Heaven itself.
Gods, demigods, and their servants all dwelled there.
The Olympians remained above the mortal world.
Distant.
Untouchable.
And so the mountain rose to impossible heights.
Snow-covered peaks stretched across the horizon.
Verdant valleys wound through its vast ranges.
Whether dawn's first light or the moonlight of evening, both seemed to wash across Olympus before touching the rest of the world.
It was a symbol of divine authority.
A declaration of the gods' superiority.
Upon its summit stood magnificent palaces from which they governed creation.
Though "governed" might have been a generous description.
Zeus was frequently absent.
And whenever he was discovered, he often looked as though he had left somewhere in a hurry without bothering to straighten his clothes.
The Celestial Court's gods traveled at astonishing speeds.
In a single breath, they could cross thousands of miles.
Before long, the colossal form of Olympus appeared directly ahead.
Yet something strange soon became apparent.
After another minute of flight, the mountain looked no closer than before.
Despite the immense distance they had covered, the gap between themselves and Olympus remained unchanged.
As though the mountain occupied a completely different reality.
"A divine domain?"
The advancing gods slowed and came to a halt.
Every pantheon possessed its own unique mysteries.
Olympus was evidently no exception.
The mountain served as the ancestral source of the world's ley lines.
To put it simply, it occupied a role similar to the Himalayas on Earth, or Mount Buzhou in ancient myth.
It was the focal point where the power of the world's ley lines converged.
An even simpler explanation would be this:
A portion of the world's energy naturally leaked into the ley line network.
That energy eventually gathered in locations like Olympus.
Even if only one percent of the world's total energy accumulated there, that one percent still represented a fraction of an entire world's power.
A force so vast and immeasurable that ordinary individual beings could never hope to resist it.