Then there was the matter of jurisdiction.
Poseidon was the sea god of the Greek world, not of the subordinate subworlds. Even if Zeus forcibly stripped the slave gods of those subworlds of their authority, whether divine authority ultimately transferred still depended on the will of the subworld itself. Forcing a subworld's will to submit wasn't so easy either.
The trouble piled up fast!
Just thinking about it gave Poseidon a splitting headache.
Worst of all was Thor on the other side.
This powerful Æsir god was truly a nightmare to deal with.
With his home waters being stolen out from under him, Poseidon's mind raced, looking for a way to exit quickly and safely.
Elsewhere, Athena faced Gilgamesh.
When she drew that target, she secretly rejoiced. If she could take down this child Thalos valued, she really might reverse Olympus's somewhat unfavorable situation.
Very quickly, Athena realized something was wrong.
The enemy's "Divine Treasury" was endless.
The artifacts that shot from the rifts behind him weren't random mortal trinkets. Every single one—even as a projected artifact—was condensed with historical legends unknown to Athena.
Don't underestimate "historical legend."
An artifact with a legend behind it isn't merely a crafted object—it's deeply bound to the fate of the world. That means it carries divinity, even a will of its own—hardly something you can casually disrupt or destroy with a strand of divine thought.
With Gilgamesh's projections coming so fast, Athena had no room to dodge; she had to meet them head-on with the Aegis.
The problem was that his barrages came from every direction—up, down, left, right, front, and rear—with no dead angles.
Each projected artifact struck with a force no less than a full-power blow from a true god. If Athena didn't block with her shield, she wouldn't be killed, but injury was unavoidable.
That meant every counterattack had to be calculated with precision.
"You don't dare fight me fair and square?" Athena tried to provoke him.
Far off, the Golden One spread his hands and smiled with mocking ease. "Compared to crude swordplay, I prefer to be a marksman."
Was he really just a marksman?
Athena couldn't help but doubt it, because she caught sight of the sword calluses on the enemy god's hands.
Was he deliberately disguising himself? Or did he truly just dislike close combat, rather than being bad at it?
Faced with Gilgamesh's resource-burning style—spending capital to hurt a god—Athena found herself stymied.
As the spearhead on whom Zeus pinned his hopes, she would have loved to kick this "bandit" to death with one blow. Her fear was that the leg she kicked out at night wouldn't be put down again until morning.
It wasn't without precedent!
Once there had been three virgin goddesses; now there were only two. Athena had to be wary.
Awkward!
In truth, Athena had done her math; she simply lacked certainty in the attack, not the ability to attack. She still had room to maneuver.
On several other battlefields, the Olympian gods were the ones being pressed.
Hades versus Hel—though both sides hurled up underworld-style oceans of corpses and blood, in a spatial corridor where the total divine power input was capped, neither could do anything decisive in the short term.
There, Hypnos was clearly a tier below Ereshkigal, but with ample divine power feeding him, he wouldn't lose for a while yet.
Once they actually clashed, Hades understood where his side was losing.
First, Ereshkigal herself was the rightful underworld queen of a great world. Only because the Sumerian world was swallowed by Ginnungagap—and she was on the losing side—did she have to come to Helheim and serve under Hel as a subordinate deity.
One was a Major God serving temporarily as a subordinate; the other was subordinate by birth.
When divine power ran hot, it was always the former Major God who performed better.
If left alone to drag on, Hypnos would inevitably be killed by Ereshkigal.
If Hypnos was only a matter of time, the Three Judges' front was a bloodbath.
"Waaah—"
Five minutes in, Aeacus was first driven back by Scathach's "Piercing Death-Briar Spear," then—shouldering through a divine spell from Minos—Scathach rushed in and one-shotted Rhadamanthys.
It looked absurd—until Hades caught sight of "Gungnir" in Scathach's hands, and he wanted to curse.
You're a subordinate of the underworld, and you're holding a top-tier, God-King-grade, space-aspected divine spear?
If selling sex appeal could score a spear like that, Hades was dead certain his two shameless brothers—Zeus and Poseidon—wouldn't mind selling their asses!
In that moment, Hades finally understood why Thanatos hadn't died unjustly!
The collapse of the Three Judges was bound to set off a chain reaction.
After Scathach pinned Minos in the spatial layer with a single thrust and then stabbed him to death with "Gungnir," Aeacus lost all will to fight, turned, and ran.
He ran—and failed. In utter disgrace, he was skewered from behind by Scathach's space spear, stabbed clean through.
With all three Judges cleared, Scathach, in flagrantly ungentlemanly fashion, shouldered her spear and went for Hypnos.
Hypnos panicked. "Shameless! Do you share everything between you?"
What he really meant was: I can't even handle one of you—how can the two of you still have the face to come at me together? Is there enough credit for you to split?
At that, Scathach tilted her cold, flawless face and, abruptly, she and Ereshkigal spoke in unison: "As a matter of fact!"
The two death goddesses had often been "put through the wringer" together by Thalos; they were already sworn sisters, with nothing they couldn't share.
Such outrageous and ungentlemanly ganging-up forced Hypnos to expand his dream-space in a rush, pushing the two death-aspect goddesses back.
Dream-space at least had formidable psychic offense. A straight rush wouldn't necessarily be wise, and the dream god's power interfered with Scathach's divine-lock, letting Hypnos escape calamity.
But the subgod's retreat also affected Hades's main front.
If the Æsir had fielded three male death gods here, Hades would have been spitting mad—even with his good temper.
Three female death gods… fine, he really couldn't bring himself to snarl.
He, too, was forced to fall back.
And the three death goddesses, emboldened, chose to pursue.
Ordinary deities might hesitate to fight as the away team. Not so for the underworld faction.
Underworld wardens, demon generals, ghostly troops—born cannon fodder!
And Hel's side had both numbers and quality.
"Kill—" At Hel's command, millions of undead formed a flood of death, crossed the spatial corridor, and poured into the Greek world.
Hades had half a mind to try to block them—but when he saw the titanic World Serpent Jormungandr beneath Hel, and the hellhound Garmr, the corner of his mouth twitched, and in the end he didn't dare raise his arms against the chariot.
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