For Odin, shirking responsibility feels great for a moment—and if you keep shirking, it keeps feeling great.
He'd never tried hoodwinking his subordinates like this before, and only after doing it did he discover: flashing big brother's name to swindle people was downright delightful.
He could run his mouth about asteroids all he wanted, and those former Greek slave-gods still had no choice but to believe him.
These days any god could see the Olympian pantheon's decline: six god-kings in a row dead or surrendered; Zeus had even had his sacred mountain lair torn down; even his God-Emperor title warranted a big, fat question mark—couldn't get more washed-up than that.
Compared to the wildly unreliable house of Zeus, it was obvious the Aesir's God-Emperor Thalos had the ambition and backbone, and the Aesir treated new gods better.
Add to that the Aesir hauling Athena away and flooring Apollo right before their eyes—whether out of reason or their hatred for Zeus, they had no reason not to believe Odin.
They even quietly pumped each other up in private.
"We're probably going to take a big hit for a while. But push a little harder and we can wear that bastard Zeus down—then head to new small worlds and be idle gods!"
"Hmph! Whatever it is, it beats serving under Zeus."
For gods who'd been slave-gods for years, living without an ounce of dignity, the pie Odin painted really did smell good.
Mm, from big talker to master of selling dreams—say what you will, that's progress.
Better yet, Odin actually guessed right.
Across three generations of leaders—Uranus, Kronos, and Zeus—when it mattered, they never lacked for decisiveness.
Or, put it this way: anyone who dared overthrow his father's rule was never a pushover.
The truly ruthless carve their way through!
Zeus and his brothers discussed for three full days and nights and finally hammered out a plan.
"We've decided! While the Aesir can't spare attention for Odin and those defected slave-gods following him, we'll cut Odin down first—then pool the resources of all the small worlds and turn around to suppress Kronos."
Hera's guts clenched. "What if Kronos really attacks us?"
Zeus clenched his teeth viciously. "We ignore him for now!"
Hera's eyes went wide with disbelief. "Ignore him?"
Zeus actually let out a bitter laugh. "Look around—what do we even have left? Our temples are gone! Mortals have either fled or died. Have you considered how many believers you can still sense?"
Hera fell silent.
She was the goddess of family. She could be a goddess on the premise that the world still had enough "homes."
Gods don't supply each other with divine power. The only thing that can generate power to sustain gods is mortals.
So, tell me—how many mortals are left in Greater Greece?
Athens, Mycenae, Corinth, Sparta… every notable polis was either smashed to bits by Ginnungagap's mortal armies—with most of the people carried off—or they were city-states like Athens and Troy that defected.
You could say the foundation of all faith-based Olympian deities had been gutted.
On ordinary days, Olympians could ignore mortal life. In the eyes of these Titan-born gods, mortals were chives—cut one crop and another grows, endless and inexhaustible.
When the blade touched their own throats, only then did they grasp the importance of mortals.
Without faith-based deities, element-only gods weren't enough.
On the other side, God-Emperor Thalos was plainly a grand master at looting elements; he opened with root-digging tactics and made them work.
Especially with Kronos, the former god-king, stepping out to redivide the world's elements and offices, Zeus's faction was left penniless.
Since Zeus and company couldn't settle those damned Titans in the short term, squeezing the softest target became inevitable.
Hera blurted, "Odin sent an envoy to say—if we attack him, Kronos will come after us."
"Hmph!" Zeus glared. "If an enemy threatens us into inaction, we're doing exactly what he wants!"
Zeus felt no hint—or chose to ignore—Hera's own little abacus. This wasn't her warning of an enemy raiding their home; she just didn't want to lose Zeus's protection and didn't want to follow him outside the world barrier to campaign.
Hades said in a low voice, "We no longer have the strength to fight on two fronts."
As he spoke, he fixed Hera with a hard stare—plainly hinting that Hera's jealousy had forced Athena and the others into peril, even surrender to the Aesir. If they were still here, at this very moment when the Aesir couldn't directly interfere around the Greek world, they could absolutely beat Odin till he couldn't find his teeth. It was her jealousy that had wrecked everything.
Hera flared and glared back: Zeus the old lecher set his sights on Athena—how could I not be anxious?
Seeing her dare glare back, even as her brother, Hades seethed.
"Enough." Zeus's voice cut in, choking off the spike in tension. "Raking the past is pointless. We will take back what we lost—and we'll build our new thrones from the flesh and blood of Aesir gods!"
Poseidon thrilled. Hades kept his silence.
Hera: Not a word about the Aesir's goddesses, eh!
One way or another, the Olympians reached a consensus.
It had to be admitted: Zeus could execute.
With no more core temples left in Greece anyway, they abandoned the remaining ones to god-tier defenses at most—leaving a few demigods as cannon fodder—and then Zeus hauled the main host skyward in a blaze of radiance, straight into space.
And ran smack into a… battle?! that left Zeus dumbfounded.
The moment they broke through the world barrier, Zeus and company were all stunned.
Wait—where are all our subordinate worlds?
Where a string of small worlds used to hang, there was only empty vastness now, with the ceaseless cosmic current howling in their ears.
In Zeus's understanding, those worlds had circled the Greek world like seven stars around the moon for who knew how many ages.
"Uranus! Where are those small worlds?" Zeus called his old man in a panic.
"A day ago they accelerated."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"You didn't ask me!"
That utterly content-free exchange made Zeus's scalp prickle.
In an instant, he realized what that beast Odin had done—Odin had run off with the small worlds!
All that diplomatic mission business was smoke and mirrors.
From the start, Odin had never planned on living under someone else's eaves. He'd simply crafted a show of meekness, pretending to await Kronos's favor.
In reality, the moment he sent the envoy, he used his control over five small worlds to crank the whole cluster's speed up.
By the time Zeus noticed, three days later, the cluster was already three hundred thousand kilometers out.
Chase them?
With what?