The whimpering of a thousand-odd believers landing in Poseidon's ears would be no more than a brief tinnitus—one buzz and gone.
But what about the wails of every believer across Atlantis's Seven Kingdoms, along with all sapient beings in the seas?
There was no avoiding that!
Poseidon was never the patient type, and his anger was instantly and utterly ignited!
On any other day, he would have immediately rushed back to slaughter the shameless thief daring to rob his home while he was away!
These were his "Seven Seas"!
The source of his divine power, the lifeline of his godhood.
The reverse-scale no one was allowed to touch!
Yet some bastard God-King truly made a move, and to make it worse, Poseidon was currently facing the other side's fiercest God-King: the Æsir crown prince—Thor the Thunderer!
In the eyes of the Olympians, Thor's feat of "capturing Artemis" was unspeakably brutal.
Up against Thor, Poseidon truly mustered one hundred and twenty thousand parts of focus—no carelessness allowed, and certainly no withdrawing in the current situation.
If he bolted headlong without thinking, Thor would hound him mercilessly and might even inflict a terrible wound.
Poseidon ground his teeth.
Fury or not, his hands didn't stop. Inside the colossal spatial tunnel—over fifty kilometers in both width and height—he raised apocalyptic seas.
His golden war chariot raced over the waves; skimming too close to the tunnel's ceiling, it felt as if the wheels were grinding the clouds.
His trident churned a world-ending maelstrom.
Under the reflection of the surging sea, the white-haired god's mane seemed washed a deep blue. Behind him, nine sea dragons formed from living water roared and writhed; where their tailfins swept, the heaving surf sent dazzling ripples across the supposedly indestructible walls of the corridor.
Poseidon kept hurling annihilating waves at Thor.
Thor answered in kind.
His ram-drawn thunder chariot wheeled in the sky. Mjölnir in his hand drew the lightning of all twenty-seven Ginnungagap realms; a dense lattice of blinding bolts blanketed heaven and earth, as if scorching grooves through the air itself.
The rolling thunder never ceased.
Energy equal to who-knew-how-many volcanic eruptions became a billion thunder-serpents crashing down.
"Whaaash—"
"Zzzzzzt—"
Pure water-walls and a deluge of lightning collided in the corridor.
The sea diluted the lightning; the lightning ionized the sea.
This was a raw clash of wind element and water element from two worlds.
It felt like each passing second forcibly evaporated a lake the size of the city of Athens within this unreal tunnel.
And that was only on the elemental level.
The two top gods also drove their chariots into brutal midair charges.
Closer!
Closer!
Poseidon's pegasi pounded the empty air, the trident's tip bursting with deep-blue divine power like seven seas overturning.
From the ram-chariot hurtling through the void, Thor's corded forearm swelled, the ancient runes on the hammer's haft lighting one by one. With a sweeping strike he launched a ball of imploding lightning straight for Poseidon's face.
"Boom!"
Two peerless forces collided and carved a vacuum lane; a wave as large as Mount Olympus itself flashed to steam in an instant.
The pegasi on Poseidon's chariot reared with a shrill scream, forequarters upright, seeming to run upon emptiness; the wheels—spinning—skittered, inadvertently swerving off course.
Poseidon spat in fury.
The destruction of South Atlantis's Trench Kingdom, and the loss of control over a massive volume of seawater, had finally affected the transmission of his divine power.
He wasn't losing to Thor's divine skill, but to the despicable god on the other side.
"Shameless! Dare you face me one-on-one with your own strength?!" Poseidon finally couldn't hold back and cursed.
Thor knew all about Operation Sea-Draining, and he had zero qualms.
He laughed broad and bright. "Hahaha! I don't mind you and your brothers ganging up on me!"
Right! We have more gods on our side against fewer on yours—hardly sporting. But I don't mind you Olympians running a relay on me either.
That left Poseidon speechless.
There is no such thing as a fair fight in this world.
Human or god, the outcome of a battle is shaped by talent, effort, opportunity, resources—and your opponent—plus a host of subjective and objective variables no one can control.
If Thor didn't mind taking on many at once, what grounds did Poseidon have to carp?
And don't think a dogpile is easy.
Gods with different attributes are notoriously hard to coordinate—elementals most of all.
Do it wrong and your own ally becomes the fatal stumbling block.
Poseidon knew well: a born "Titan-bodied" elemental like Thor was the most troublesome foe on any field. Toss in just any ally—even the sea nymphs he'd fought beside for ages—and they still wouldn't match this seasoned, battle-hardened juggernaut.
Winning wasn't certain; escape was impossible.
His one original chance had been to exhaust Thor's divine power. Lightning, as a branch of wind, is infamous for guzzling energy.
But now, with his home being robbed, who would exhaust whom was anyone's guess.
Bitterly, Poseidon could only hold out.
Elsewhere, the Æsir's sea god, Enki, was grinning so wide it was crooked.
It's not that Enki couldn't fight—elder brother to Enlil, his martial skill was anything but shabby. He simply preferred to crush foes with wisdom rather than force.
Don't let the "odd jobs" fool you—working with a flock of water deities, getting assigned by Thalos to dig a hole and redirect the sea, to drain Poseidon's waters dry and dump them in a Greek vassal world.
In truth, this might well be the winning move that changed the balance of power between the two worlds.
Letting water out is easy—putting it back is hard.
Even if both worlds were under Zeus's umbrella, that didn't mean Poseidon could reclaim his seawater as the base of his power.
First, cross-space water transfer requires a top-tier deity with the \[Space] domain.
If your head doesn't contain the concepts of "space" and "cosmos," you simply can't do it. Zeus does hold a piece of the \[Sky] domain, but he's spatially illiterate! He knows squat about astronomy—doesn't even have the basics. Never mind Zeus: even Uranus, the true sky god, only uses his office by instinct.
Expecting a bunch of illiterate gods to run interspatial plumbing? Don't be ridiculous.
Then there's the divine power cost—and the technical finesse of a real sea god. To haul back even one-seventh of Atlantis's seawater would mean Poseidon taking a massive divine-power hit up front.
Leave it be, and your extraction base shrinks. Pull it back, and your current reserves shrink.
Either way, Poseidon loses.
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