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It wasn't Loki's first time visiting Mount Olympus.
As neighboring mythologies, Norse and Greek gods had clashed countless times over the years. Between diplomacy, conflict, and the occasional attempt to stab each other in the back, both sides were fairly familiar with the other's home turf.
At least, the Olympus Loki remembered had been a paradise.
Mist drifting around the mountaintop. Fruit trees everywhere. Thick green forests covering the slopes. Beautiful nymphs laughing and splashing in crystal-clear springs.
But now? Forget the nymphs. At this point, even the bugs had probably been frozen into ice sculptures.
What the hell happened here?
Did the three factions actually storm Olympus?
But among those factions, the only top-tier ice user Loki could think of was Serafall Leviathan, and even she shouldn't have been capable of freezing an entire divine mountain.
Filled with questions, Loki hesitated for a while before finally deciding to head straight for the summit.
First, he couldn't sense any signs of life up there.
Second, as a Norse god, all he had to do was claim he was acting as an envoy from Asgard, and most people would hesitate before attacking him.
Third, and most importantly, this wasn't even his real body. It was just a magical avatar.
With all three safety nets in place, Loki gathered his courage and headed directly toward Zeus's temple.
Passing by the guards frozen into lifelike ice statues, he immediately spotted the shattered temple roof.
And beneath it... Eleven frozen figures.
The Eleven Olympian Gods.
"What the...?"
Loki sucked in a sharp breath.
The cold air was so brutal that he instantly broke into coughing.
"Cough... cough...! Ice statues? No... wait, there are still signs of life. These are the Greek chief gods?"
He hurried closer, horror spreading across his face as he stared at the frozen figures.
"Poseidon, Athena, Ares, and... Zeus?!"
Unable to resist, Loki reached out and touched Zeus's frozen face.
The moment his fingers made contact, an absurdly chilling aura surged into his hand.
He shivered violently.
Then he noticed something.
Zeus's eyes moved.
The frozen king of the gods glared at him with naked disgust.
"You're still alive?"
Loki's eyes lit up.
Without hesitation, he slapped Zeus lightly on the cheek and raised a middle finger right in front of his face.
Zeus nearly exploded with rage.
Unfortunately, trapped inside the ice, all he could do was glare helplessly while Loki openly mocked him.
After confirming Zeus truly couldn't fight back, Loki's grin became completely unrestrained.
"Hahaha! No idea who did this, but I'm definitely benefiting from it."
"The eleven Olympian chief gods... heh. If I use the Ring of the Nibelung to control all of you, why the hell would I ever need to put up with Odin again?"
Not wanting to waste any time, Loki immediately cast a spell.
One magical rope after another appeared in the air, binding the frozen gods before lifting their ice statues off the ground.
Originally, Loki had only come here because Indra had passed him information about the war.
His plan had been simple: sneak into Olympus, ambush a few chief gods, and make the conflict even messier.
Zeus, Poseidon, Ares, Athena...
Loki already had a list of enemies he desperately wanted to screw over.
After all, as the Norse God of Mischief, he had an almost instinctive love for chaos and war.
The more unstable the world became, the happier he was.
So the moment he heard the three factions had gone to war with Greece, his first thought was naturally to loot the battlefield.
He was sure he wasn't the first person to think of it. But he was absolutely certain he was the first one crazy enough to act on it.
Or so he thought.
Who could've guessed someone had beaten him to it and outright wiped out Olympus first?
This was no longer some limited regional conflict.
If Greece had really been crushed, then every mythology faction in the world would start panicking.
This had world-war-level consequences written all over it.
To Loki, this was basically a gift from heaven.
And several of his old enemies had gotten caught in the disaster too.
Double happiness.
Even though he didn't know who had done him this massive favor, Loki understood one thing very clearly: Stealing these frozen gods right now was basically snatching meat from a tiger's stomach.
Which meant he needed to move fast.
The moment he finished binding the ice statues, he activated a teleportation spell and prepared to escape immediately.
Then he turned around.
Click.
The sound was exactly like an old-fashioned camera shutter.
At the same time, the teleportation spell abruptly shut down on its own.
Loki's smug grin froze solid.
Slowly, he turned his head.
Standing behind him was Ryo, holding a bizarre-looking camera in one hand and a freshly developed photograph in the other, carefully comparing the two.
"With this, I guess the evidence is pretty airtight now, huh?" Ryo said while looking at the photo.
In the picture, Loki was using magic to tie up Zeus's frozen body, his face twisted into a gleeful expression that made him look like a deranged six-year-old.
Honestly, if this photo got uploaded online, people would probably mistake it for promotional material for some weird homoerotic blockbuster.
"Evil God Loki launches a surprise attack on Mount Olympus and critically injures the Twelve Olympians."
Ryo waved the photo around with a cheerful smile. "That headline should get plenty of attention, don't you think?"
"You are..."
Cold sweat rolled down Loki's face.
He recognized Ryo immediately.
The man rumored to have defeated Ophis.
The new Governor-General of the Fallen Angels.
The supreme leader of the three factions.
And now that same man was standing here, on a frozen Mount Olympus.
Anyone with half a brain could tell something shady was going on.
Loki had always considered himself cautious by nature.
Which was exactly why he strongly suspected Ryo was the one responsible for freezing Olympus in the first place.
"Looks like you were planning to take all of them with you?"
Ryo glanced around at the frozen gods hanging in Loki's magical restraints and raised an eyebrow.
"Sorry, but that won't work. I was planning to hand them over to Lady Athena from Little Garden and let her deal with these troublesome people herself."
In newly observed worlds, if multiple versions of the same gods existed under the same concept, the stronger version would inevitably absorb the weaker one.
Under normal circumstances, once Ryo finished observing the DxD world, the Greek gods here would eventually be absorbed by the Greek pantheon of Little Garden.
Of course, thanks to Ryo and Algol's project, preserving these gods wasn't impossible.
But doing that would also mean making permanent enemies.
The people he already hated? Those could be auctioned off without hesitation.
But allies, useful contacts, or people worth recruiting were another matter entirely.
That was why Ryo had originally planned to hand this world's Athena over to Little Garden's Athena and let her decide what to do.
Using an Athena who would eventually be absorbed anyway as a favor for another Athena...
And making sure she remembered the favor.
Ryo really was thinking like a seasoned capitalist.
"Isn't this Governor Ryo?"
Loki forced out an awkward smile.
He had fully recognized him by now.
And judging from the fact Ryo was casually walking out from the inner sanctum of Olympus, the truth was obvious.
The new leader of the three factions was this terrifying?
One man wiped out Greece by himself?
What was this guy supposed to be, the reincarnation of the Biblical God?
"We know each other?" Ryo asked with an amused look.
"We didn't before, but we do now, right?"
Loki clasped his hands together with an ingratiating smile.
At the same time, he quietly released the frozen gods.
This avatar might not be his true body, but it was still valuable. If possible, he really didn't want to lose it here.
Thinking that, the flattering smile on his face became even brighter.
"I never imagined Governor Ryo would personally defeat the Greek gods..."
Before he could finish, Ryo interrupted him.
"I didn't defeat them."
He smiled, "Loki defeated them."
Loki's smile instantly stiffened.
He stared blankly at Ryo, who was lying through his teeth with a completely straight face.
Wait.
He wants to pin the fall of Olympus on me?
What kind of insane move is this?
Loki narrowed his eyes suspiciously.
Then, as if realizing something, he immediately nodded.
"Right. Exactly. I, Loki, was the one who did it."
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