The moment Zeus saw the golden pagoda still spinning serenely above the Celestial Court's army, he understood exactly what had happened.
His ultimate attack had been blocked by that artifact.
Olympus had never built structures resembling pagodas, but at the level of a god, form hardly mattered. Powerful divine objects carried their own meanings. Their nature could often be understood at a glance.
The instant Zeus laid eyes on it, information flooded his mind.
The Heaven and Earth Mystical Yellow Pagoda.
Untouched by all laws.
Immune to all techniques.
An absolute bastion of defense.
What confused him wasn't its purpose.
It was why the Celestial Court had never revealed such a terrifying artifact before.
Still, Zeus refused to believe true invincibility existed.
Even the Aegis wasn't perfect.
Why should this pagoda be any different?
Drawing himself upright, Zeus unleashed another thunderous roar.
The authority of the King of Gods swept across heaven and earth.
He gathered every remaining ounce of power and struck again.
Darkness swallowed the sky.
Lightning descended with apocalyptic force.
BOOM!
Thunder collided with the pagoda's golden radiance.
The explosion shook the world.
Beneath the freezing black storm clouds, golden lightning overwhelmed the ocean's blue hues, as if attempting to shatter the sea itself.
Boiling currents of divine thunder rained destruction in every direction.
Blinding white flashes illuminated the battlefield.
Countless arcs of electricity burst from Zeus's body and danced through the air, generating violent shockwaves wherever they passed.
Then came the spear.
A streak of frigid brilliance cut through space.
Wrapped in unstoppable thunder, it hurtled toward the Celestial Court.
The gods beneath the pagoda didn't even flinch.
Once they learned what artifact was protecting them, all concern vanished.
The Heaven and Earth Mystical Yellow Pagoda.
If that treasure was present, there was nothing to worry about.
Watching Zeus continue his assault felt less like witnessing a divine battle and more like watching a man challenge a mountain with his bare fists.
The Lightning Spear struck the golden light.
The resulting eruption of energy rivaled a newborn star.
BOOM!
BOOM!
The world trembled.
A pillar of white radiance surged into the heavens and remained there for several long seconds.
The shockwave tore through the surrounding region.
Space itself fractured.
Twisting black cracks spread outward like scars across reality.
The earth convulsed.
A colossal mushroom cloud rose above Olympus.
Dust and debris engulfed the sky.
Then, suddenly, everything froze.
The dust hung motionless for a heartbeat before collapsing back to the ground all at once.
The air cleared instantly.
Visibility became unnaturally sharp.
The surrounding mountains shook together in a grand, terrifying resonance.
An invisible pressure spread outward.
Even gods felt fragile beneath it.
The force was chaotic and orderly at the same time.
An impossible contradiction.
And it was devastating.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
The reflected energy carved glowing scars through the atmosphere.
Air ignited from friction.
Several seconds later, the delayed scream of the atmosphere finally arrived.
Then it was drowned beneath an endless chain of explosions.
Red-hot beams raked across the earth.
Everything they touched disintegrated into ash.
Mountains vanished.
The ground was flattened.
Smoke columns rose toward the sky.
The land was transformed into a wasteland beneath an endless bombardment of reflected destruction.
BOOM!
When the devastation finally subsided, the entire region had become a sea of scorched ruins.
The terrain had been lowered by hundreds of feet.
Olympus itself had lost nearly half its mass.
The source of all that destruction wasn't the pagoda's attack.
It was Zeus's own power.
The Heaven and Earth Mystical Yellow Pagoda automatically reflected hostile force.
A perfect countermeasure.
A perfect mirror.
The stronger the attack, the stronger the retaliation.
Zeus had effectively struck himself with the full force of his own Lightning Spear.
And the result was immediate.
The King of Gods had been blasted away to parts unknown.
When the dust settled, a significant portion of Mount Olympus had collapsed.
The Olympian gods were nowhere to be seen.
"Move!"
One of the Celestial Court gods shouted.
"Don't give Zeus a moment to recover!"
The gods immediately surged forward, leaving the pagoda's protective range.
Every one of them understood how close they had come to disaster.
Without the Heavenly Emperor's protection, Zeus's previous attacks would have killed some of them outright and left the survivors gravely wounded.
The fallen would have needed to be reborn through the Celestial Restoration Pool.
Now was not the time to hesitate.
The Celestial Court launched a full pursuit.
Their targets were simple.
Zeus.
And every fleeing Olympian god.
Meanwhile, Athena arrived in the Underworld.
The Celestial Court had moved its forces elsewhere, focusing entirely on Olympus and the mortal world.
As a result, the realm of the dead seemed eerily empty.
Athena advanced cautiously.
No guards.
No patrols.
Nothing.
The absence of resistance surprised her.
Hades had already fallen, yet the Celestial Court apparently hadn't devoted much attention to maintaining control of the Underworld.
Or perhaps they simply hadn't noticed certain things.
Her destination lay far below.
Tartarus.
The deepest region of the Underworld.
The Abyss itself.
A primordial force representing one of the universe's fundamental components.
This was the prison of eternal sinners.
Gods.
Monsters.
Ancient horrors.
Anyone deemed too dangerous to remain free.
After Zeus and his siblings rose to power, the second King of the Gods, Cronus, had been imprisoned here alongside many Titans.
Over the ages, countless other divine criminals and legendary villains had joined them.
For Zeus's family, Tartarus had always been a place of fear.
If the Titans ever escaped...
The result would be another war capable of destroying the world.
Under normal circumstances, Athena would never consider disturbing its prisoners.
But circumstances were no longer normal.
Olympus stood on the edge of extinction.
Nothing else mattered anymore.
As she moved through the Underworld, Athena occasionally glanced upward.
Even from here, the signs of battle remained visible.
She witnessed Zeus's defeat.
She saw the Olympian gods scattering in every direction.
Running.
Fleeing.
Escaping.
Faster than rabbits fleeing a wildfire.
Athena wasn't surprised.
Disappointed, perhaps.
But not surprised.
Zeus had spent centuries suppressing and controlling the other Olympians.
Even within his own family, intrigue and betrayal were everyday occurrences.
Gods seduced each other's wives.
Stole each other's lovers.
Manipulated each other's children.
Family loyalty was practically nonexistent.
Many gods had grown resentful long ago.
Other pantheons weren't nearly this dysfunctional.
Now that Olympus was collapsing, everyone was looking out for themselves.
The moment the tree began to fall, the monkeys abandoned it.
That was simply the reality of Olympus.
Far above the battlefield, seated upon the Heavenly Throne, Drex Valen watched the unfolding chaos.
The battle had been entertaining.
But something bothered him.
"Gaia still hasn't shown herself..."
He frowned thoughtfully.
That was unexpected.
The fighting had escalated to the point of threatening the survival of the entire Olympian pantheon.
Yet Gaia remained absent.
Gaia.
Mother Earth.
Mother of the Gods.
The embodiment of life, creation, and the world itself.
Trying to define the limits of her power was nearly impossible.
For all practical purposes, she was close to omnipotent within her sphere.
The downfall of the Titans hadn't occurred solely because Cronus had become unpopular.
A major reason for Zeus's victory was Gaia's support.
Many neutral factions and countless descendants of Gaia had sided with Zeus because of it.
Others who originally favored Cronus had chosen neutrality instead.
After the ten-year Titan War ended, Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades divided the cosmos among themselves.
Sky.
Sea.
Underworld.
The earth, however, was supposedly shared.
Supposedly.
Everyone knew the truth.
The earth belonged to Gaia.
No one was foolish enough to challenge her authority over it.
Most of the time, Gaia ignored the struggles of gods.
She rarely involved herself in divine politics.
But when someone truly angered her...
Things tended to end badly.
Very badly.
Uranus had learned that lesson.
The first King of Gods had been overthrown by his own son and mutilated in the process.
Cronus had learned it too.
The second King of Gods had been overthrown by his son and thrown into Tartarus.
Yet now an invading pantheon had pushed Olympus to the brink of destruction.
Surely Gaia couldn't remain indifferent forever.
Unless...
Drex raised an eyebrow.
"...she's somehow still too busy with a lover to notice her pantheon is collapsing."
...
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