On the contrary, Zeus carefully exhorted his two brothers: "Poseidon, Hades—the younger generation can't really be relied on. It's up to you two to seize the advantage."
"No problem." Poseidon was full of confidence.
"Mm." Hades, a tight-lipped gourd as ever, merely nodded his assent.
Of course, Zeus wasn't blind. He could see that the heavy losses among the slave gods were already severely hurting morale. After consulting Athena, he announced that in the coming divine war, the three slave gods with the best battle records would be freed from slavery and officially join the Olympian pantheon as true gods.
Those who felt they now had a chance at promotion were naturally thrilled.
At least on the surface, over two hundred slave gods together expressed their deep gratitude, showering Emperor Zeus with thanks.
This seemed to lift slave-god morale—slightly.
By contrast, quite a few Greek true gods voiced their dissatisfaction.
"Your Majesty, why should these lowly slaves share a hall with us as gods?" The hotheaded Ares spoke without restraint.
His contempt and fury were seen by every slave god present.
In an instant, the hard-won bump in slave-god morale sank again.
No—this was backsliding.
Zeus was incensed and immediately berated Ares for his lack of perspective. But Ares was famous for being hard-headed. If he admitted fault and changed, he wouldn't be Ares at all. He snapped back at Zeus: "They don't have our divine blood! I will not share a hall with insects!"
Yes, Ares was a fanatic for blood purity.
This put Zeus in a bind.
Athena and Apollo watched with heavy hearts—of all times, they were still infighting!
Fortunately, Athena had never counted on the slave gods' fighting power.
There was no help for it. A world naturally produced only so much divine power. When the Twelve God-Kings took a larger share, the slave gods below naturally got less.
And with only the trickle that leaked through their fingers, how could any powerful deities be raised?
Please. Don't kid yourself.
There was no solution to this. Zeus was just coaxing the cannon fodder, while that idiot Ares took it seriously.
This was Olympus in a nutshell.
Never of one mind.
Always scrabbling for power day by day.
Time flew by—one month later.
The great war began on the expected day.
It couldn't be hidden from anyone.
Pushed by the cosmic currents, the two colossal world-clusters began drifting closer to each other in the void. If not for two thick, mutated starfields jammed between them, Ginnungagap might have happily used the massive roots of the World Tree to "greet" the Greek world—whose outer shell (sky) and inner core (earth) so clearly had different ideas.
At this moment, chaotic energy had all but vanished from the universe.
Within both worlds, any god could use divine sight to extend their senses beyond their world's barrier and see the other's cluster.
Soon, huge spatial corridors—visually hazy, full of shifting light and shadow—began assembling themselves under the laws of the starfield, linking spaces, summoning elements from the void to form temporary land-bridges. These ultra-long battlefields were then handed over to the gods of both sides.
As expected, Thalos's number one powerhouse, the thunder god Thor, took the field—facing Poseidon.
And the "civil war" over the Death domain naturally paired Hel, with Ereshkigal and Scathach at her side, against Hades and the sleep god Hypnos. Knowing how troublesome Ereshkigal and Scathach were, Hades had no choice but to bring the Three Judges—Zeus's three sons.
While Ereshkigal fought Hypnos, the three judges of Hades's hell tangled with Scathach.
Hades didn't know whether the trio could accomplish their mission; he only hoped these sub-gods could hold Scathach without falling. That alone would be a success.
In the other corridors, Athena faced Gilgamesh, while Ares and Tyr engaged in a "civil war" of war gods.
Across a broader expanse, countless gods on both sides paired off and fought.
In an instant, innumerable elements and divine arts crisscrossed the heavens of this universe-ordained battlefield with feral roars.
Colorless elements alike rapidly chewed apart the collapsing temporary corridors.
The two sides were settling not just rank but life and death.
And just then, a spatial corridor spanning tens of thousands of kilometers of void reached out and latched onto the Greek world from afar.
This sight immediately drew the attention of Apollo, who was on patrol duty.
He saw it and at once sent a warning to the directly concerned Poseidon.
But there was nothing he, Apollo, could do—this was not his domain.
In South Atlantis, a terrifying vortex at least thirty kilometers across roared open in the heart of the sea.
Strangely hued spatial energy wrapped the edges of a collapsing rift.
Under the pull of an obviously divine, overwhelming force, the ocean twisted into a spiral, dragging shattered wooden warships and even the rubble of lone islets down into the maw.
"The sea… is disappearing?!"
On an island in South Atlantis a bit farther from the vortex, a priest of Poseidon stared in horror, letting the briny mist crystallize into salt that pricked his eyes. He stared fixedly at the shore, where fishermen knelt on the reefs, futilely trying to seize the vanishing foam of the waves.
The sea level was dropping at a frightening speed.
The roar of stripping seawater shook the marble columns of the Trench Kingdom's palace in the deep seabed.
The king of the Trench Kingdom clutched his head with both hands like a madman, squeezing as if to tear apart the very crown Poseidon had personally bestowed on him.
His kingdom, meant to sleep forever in the black depths, now saw a pallor emerging above—the terrifying sight of a light no deep-sea realm had ever touched.
Atlantis had seen the surface before—but never this sight in the abyss.
A sun-soaked seabed was drying at breakneck speed. The crackle of breaking coral thickets reached Atlantean ears not through water, but through air. Tens of thousands of silver-scaled fish fell like rain, beating a death rhythm against the newly bared reefs.
"Ahhhh! What is this?!"
A sea warrior holding a bronze shield trembled uncontrollably; his weapon slipped from his fingers.
The scant remaining water hissed against submarine volcanic rock, but its crisp report was drowned by the roar of collapsing walls of water.
Sunlight split open the dome of this Atlantean deep-sea kingdom, and in an instant, that blazing light illuminated every corner of the abyss—light that rivaled the hellfire of Tartarus!
Countless Atlanteans, unaccustomed to the sun, screamed in piercing agony.
The apocalyptic spatial corridor was siphoning not only the sea—but the entire Atlantean civilization.
The desperate prayers of the Atlanteans, Poseidon's faithful, crossed the void and reached his ears directly.
______
(≧◡≦) ♡ Support me and read 20 chapters ahead – patreon.com/Mutter
For every 50 Power Stones, one extra chapter will be released on Saturday.