Across hundreds of small islands, even in one modest nation, sacred fires blazed against the dark night sky, their light dazzling and impossible to ignore.
In the underworld, Oakes lit his own altar as well. Persephone's captured soul and Hades's body were both laid upon it as offerings.
"Great God of Eternity, please accept the sacrifice of your humble believer Oakes, and descend upon this disordered world..."
Countless voices rose in prayer at once.
Liu Che, far away in his own Eternal God Realm, smiled the moment the believers' call reached him. So Kratos had finally done it. Time to see what this venture had actually earned him.
He narrowed his eyes slightly, and his consciousness pierced through layer upon layer of space in the space of a single blink, arriving in the world of the god of war.
Many native gods slept scattered across this world — the previous generation of Titans, Gaia, and others, along with the world serpent. All of them were, in the end, potential threats to the gods that would come after.
"But they're nothing more than insects," Liu Che murmured.
He smiled faintly, and countless streams of light converged toward him. The Sandman let out a shriek and crumbled instantly to ash. The sky lit up in a heartbeat — a glow unlike sunlight at all, something dreamlike, the color of glazed jade.
With the Sandman destroyed, the sleeping goddesses began to stir.
Pandora, still lying on the altar, blinked awake in confusion, utterly lost. Why was she lying on the ground? Hadn't she been resting comfortably in her own palace only a moment ago? And what was this thing wrapped around her body? Why couldn't she summon her divine power?
"Don't struggle, child. We all became prisoners the moment the sun god was captured..."
A familiar voice reached her ears. Pandora turned to find Athena kneeling on the ground nearby, her expression strange.
By rights, being taken captive should have made her furious. Instead she looked frightened — trembling all over.
"Athena, goddess of wisdom, who took us—"
Before Pandora could finish, a scream cut through the air.
"Who's captured us?"
"We are the goddesses of destiny!!!"
"No... what is that in the sky? That power..."
The screaming lasted less than a second before it went utterly silent.
Pandora felt it too now — a pressure pressing down from the depths of her own soul, nothing like what she'd felt in Zeus's presence before. This coercion was immense, but it wasn't even aimed at her specifically. It was aimed at every living thing at once. Powerful. Majestic. Noble. Beyond anything she understood.
Pandora trembled from head to toe and slowly, almost against her will, lifted her eyes — and finally saw a radiant figure standing in the sky.
A man. Roughly the size of an ordinary person. And yet the aura pouring off him was nothing any of them could comprehend.
At that moment, Kratos, kneeling before them all, was the first to speak, his voice a full-throated roar. "Kratos, your devoted priest, greets the coming of the God of Eternity..."
"Well done," Liu Che said. His voice was indifferent, ethereal, as though it came from eternity itself. "Bringing down the Olympian pantheon has indeed restored balance to this world."
The three goddesses of destiny went utterly mute. The instant they'd looked upon him, they had glimpsed an entire river of time unfold in the space beside him.
Who was he? Some ancient god from a bygone age?
None of the three dared even to speculate. None of them dared look at him directly.
Liu Che surveyed the sacrifices laid out on the altar and smiled faintly. "This world is ignorant. Both generations of native gods, the ones before and the ones after, are nothing but reckless vermin. The first generation had no minds at all, only enormous bodies. The second still hasn't outgrown the behavior of wild animals.
They deserve to die.
In recognition of your effort here, I grant you the power of destruction. Go and conquer this world. Wipe out every native god who refuses to submit to me.
Tell them there is always a price for tormenting my people!!!!"
A crystallized force of black and crimson law descended and sank into Kratos's body.
In an instant, the bald warrior felt power surging through him and tried to test it with a swing of his arm — only to accidentally obliterate a small island in the distance.
The power was terrifying. It left even the Olympian goddesses trembling.
Zeus's lightning had always been said to be the most destructive force in this world, but the power Kratos had just been granted was purer, cleaner destruction than anything Zeus had ever wielded. The law of destruction meant mastery over annihilation in its purest form — no defense could stand against it, unless matched by a law of equal and opposite creation. But what world this barren could ever hope to possess a complete set of laws? Even its own sun needed a driver to make it move.
How pathetic.
Under Liu Che's blessing, Kratos's wife and daughter were both resurrected, granted a measure of divine power of their own in the process.
"Work hard, believer. I'll be watching you from the God Realm..." Liu Che said.
"Thank you for taking time from your busy schedule to bless us. Kratos is unworthy of such honor!"
The gods, as it happened, stayed quite busy. Aside from the occasional appearance from Ye Laoxie, it was mostly the goddesses handling matters day to day. Everyone understood that much by now.
Before Liu Che's consciousness withdrew, he let his gaze drift briefly toward the Norse gods. Then it faded and vanished.
That single glance was enough to send a chill straight down the spines of the gods under Odin's rule. Some of them even slid off their thrones entirely.
So this was what it meant to stand before a true Creator — every ounce of pride they'd carried as gods amounted to nothing more than a toy in his eyes. If they didn't take proper care of their own people, sooner or later they'd meet the same fate as the Olympian pantheon.
"Lord Odin, what should we—"
"Say nothing. Find the Creator God's believers. We need to open contact with them at once..."
"Yes!!!"
Under any other circumstances, Odin's posture in that moment would have drawn nothing but scorn from every other god watching. But after witnessing the God of Eternity firsthand, none of them dared laugh. Their legs were still shaking. In that one glance, they'd genuinely believed they were about to be wiped from existence.
...
Once the gods had gone, Kratos looked up at the sun still hanging in the sky and shouted to every believer gathered around him. "Did you see that? The gods answered us!!!"
"Oh!!!"
The believers roared with wild abandon.
Kratos raised his voice again. "Next, we take the fight to the rest of this world. Every giant left standing will be enslaved or destroyed. Anyone who dares resist our God — kill without mercy!!!"
"Kill, kill, kill!!!"
"Kill the blasphemers!!!"
The believers screamed themselves hoarse with fury. Backed by a true god, they would be unstoppable, unafraid of any obstacle. Even death held no terror for them — it only meant returning to the God Realm and becoming a believer once more.
And there was more still, spread through the faith's own teachings. Kratos himself preached that anyone who earned enough merit in the eyes of the gods could be reincarnated with their memories intact. Hadn't everyone already seen the chief priest's own wife and daughter brought back to life?
Work hard enough, and anything was possible.
———
Please give me Power Stones!
Support me on Patreon @ patreon(dot)com/SorenEclipse
Read 15 Chapters Ahead on Patreon!