Even with his neck torn off and only a head left, Kronos still did not fall at once.
"Zeus! I curse you! I curse you to never sit your throne in peace! I curse you and your brothers to fall soon! I curse your sons and daughters to be slaves forever! I curse—"
Kronos could not finish. In Zeus's frenzy, countless bolts of lightning of varying thickness burst from every orifice of Kronos's face, and then, under the ceaseless surge of thunder-power Zeus poured in, Kronos's colossal Titan remnants began to crumble inch by inch.
A body taller than mountains was, under the wringing of both "Sky" and "Chaos," turned to rotten meat, then to ash, and utterly dispersed into the world.
Only the second-generation earth-mother—Rhea—collapsed to her knees, weeping that her son had slain her husband.
Between heaven and earth, all the plants once strongly tied to Kronos had begun to wither; the current goddess of Agriculture, Demeter, swiftly took up the "Agriculture" office that had been half-dug out before, at least keeping the greenery from dying on the spot.
It wasn't much better.
The entire cycle of the world had been broken.
Especially with the God-Emperor Zeus himself stained in chaotic power, the sky grew more turbid still. If Uranus were not still bracing the firmament, and if the Titan Hyperion had not taken the office of Sun, and Theia that of Light, things would be worse yet.
"Who—who else dares challenge my authority?!" Zeus raised his father's head and thundered at the Titans who remained. His god-voice rolled far and wide, reverberating through the whole Greek world.
King or Emperor—the road to the supreme seat, from ancient times to now, is forever drenched in blood and cruelty.
Three generations of Greek god-kings—each climbed the throne by stepping on the last.
Once, Zeus had shut his father in Tartarus; at least he had not committed patricide, merely exile, and the gods could keep their faces.
Now, Zeus had opened the account of father-killing… who knew whether Thalos would finish him first, or whether he would uphold Olympus's fine tradition of sons toppling fathers.
As Zeus made his show, all things under heaven and earth replied.
Wind stilled, fire died, water lay calm, earth grew steady.
Countless living beings fell quiet; they seemed to bow at the feet of Zeus, who had again ascended the imperial seat.
Mortals, demigods, true gods, and even the eight Titans who remained—they still chose to kneel toward Zeus and lower their once-proud heads.
"Hahaha! Hahahahaha!" Zeus was plainly delighted. He laughed for a full five minutes before stopping.
Soon after, they returned once more to the summit of Mount Olympus.
The sacred mountain was not that sacred mountain.
The place was the same; the gods were not.
Having suffered a new Titanomachy, the summit was over a hundred meters lower on average than before; where once it rose in graceful undulations, now it was just a supersized hump.
"You lot—restore the sacred mountain to its original form!" Zeus pointed at the Titans present, his mother Rhea among them.
Restore?
Easier said than done!
Set Titans to destroying—simple.
Set those sky-scraping lummoxes to piling rocks—maybe; set them to carving temples—now that was asking a lot.
Everyone knew that to reproduce the Pantheon's "original look" at 100%, you could forget it without a few decades.
What's more, the temples of "traitors" like Athena and Artemis—rebuild them, or not?
Zeus knew it was impossible; at this moment he only wanted to vent.
"Rhea! Work with Uranus and slow the Greek world's movement as quickly as possible."
Rhea pulled a bitter face. "That'll consume a lot of the world's elements."
"Do it!"
"…Yes."
Then the immense "Thousand-Handed Giant" body beneath Zeus slowly knelt; under the gods' gaze, Zeus in his mortal-sized form popped free from the giant's severed neck with a "plop."
He came to stand before Queen Hera.
Hera… had no idea what face to show her husband.
Outwardly, Zeus was still Zeus—no blood-tie to that damned giant carcass, no bodily deformation.
If anything had changed, it was that Zeus's face had turned purple… like a yam spirit.
Hera forced down her revulsion and squeezed out a stiff smile. "Dear, you've suffered."
The violent, disordered aura rolling off her husband felt utterly alien. She knew, of course, this was the sacrifice Zeus had made to maintain his dominion. By sloughing off the Hundred-Handed's remains, he seemed to be proving his earlier claim: "If I wish, I can cut off chaotic power at any time."
But could one truly slip the taint of chaos so easily?
Hera did not know.
She only knew that the way Zeus looked at her was no longer the old indulgent gaze. Once, even if she killed his mistresses, he dared not utter a word. Now, Zeus gave her a fierce, unfamiliar feeling.
Off guard, Zeus said, "Rest easy—even if I die, I won't let that bastard Thalos touch a single hair on your head!"
"Th-thank you. I'm… much relieved." Hera's smile went even stiffer.
It sounded like "even in death I'll protect you," yet somehow felt like if he lost, he'd kill her first to keep Thalos from defiling her.
Hera shivered.
She wanted to ask more, to see if it was just her imagination.
But Zeus had already joined Poseidon and Hades—who had also "shed" their giant shells—and the three brothers once more discussed the coming war.
Hera grabbed the just-returned Ares. "Child, you'll protect your mother, won't you?"
"Protect? I won't protect!" Ares, brimming with confidence: "Whoever tries to hurt you—I'll kill them all."
That was… one solution.
But the chill at Hera's heart would not fade.
Over there, Zeus and his brothers rode straight for the underworld; in the past, with ancient gods like Nyx, Zeus had kept to a "well water not mixing with river" policy.
Now, with the Aesir's day of decision drawing near, Zeus couldn't care so much.
Like a drowning man who couldn't swim, he grasped for anything his hands could find.
In moments like this, he didn't care whether he'd latched onto a plank that could keep him afloat—or a corpse that might drag him down.
Hera had no words for Zeus's behavior now; it felt like he was stringing a mess of sampans together and calling it a mighty warship.
Could it really be that easy?
"No! Zeus—you must do it! Otherwise Athena will never let me go!" Hera trembled; her divine sight seemed to pierce space, to see Athena—bending and swaying beneath the enemy God-Emperor, whispering on the pillow, coming back to take revenge on her…
As cruel as she'd been to those children of Zeus back then, so fearful was she now of the reckoning.