When Shiomi clasped the sickle left behind by Demeter, turned the blade downward, and slammed it heavily into the ground, a quake rippled out and shook the entire Interstellar City. Only then did the others, thrown off balance by the tremor, realize what Shiomi was doing.
"Wait, my husband…" Morgan staggered as well, forced to summon her magic spear to steady herself. "Are you trying to manipulate the Interstellar City… no, Olympus itself? To reshape the terrain?"
"There's no other choice." Shiomi lifted his eyes to the sky, his resolve unshaken. "Before Zeus completely cuts off the Interstellar City from the Orbital Grand Temple, we have to fully reconnect the two."
Taking action so abruptly could only mean one thing: in Zeus's eyes, Chaldea—Shiomi in particular—had grown into an unwieldy threat. He could not allow them to draw near the Orbital Grand Temple, the very core of Olympus.
Shiomi had underestimated Zeus's decisiveness.
Zeus could annihilate the Chaldea personnel who had appeared in the urban district by having Demeter destroy the city along with herself. Or, to flush out those whose whereabouts were unknown, he could order Aphrodite to unleash a wide-area, indiscriminate psychic assault.
To Zeus, humans were nothing more than primate pets raised and managed at will. For the continuation of the entire Lostbelt, they were sacrifices he could discard without hesitation.
Just like now, sealing off the Interstellar City from the Grand Temple with a barrier and abandoning both Chaldea and the city's inhabitants without a second thought.
"But an earthquake on this scale…"
Scáthach trailed off, unsure how to continue.
She turned her gaze through the forest toward the towering buildings of the city district beyond.
Shiomi's interference with the terrain, drawing on the power Demeter had left behind, had caused an earthquake of terrifying intensity. Yet the buildings of the Interstellar City showed no sign of collapse, not even of swaying.
This was Olympus, where civilization had advanced to the point that even death had been eliminated. An Olympus untouched by disaster. The structures here possessed a durability far beyond anything in Proper Human History.
Only gods could destroy this city.
Shiomi never intended to lay waste to what lay below. What he needed was merely a path to the Orbital Grand Temple, a "Tower of Heaven."
That realization finally eased Scáthach's lingering unease. She did not want to see her beloved disciple shoulder the sin of killing the people of Olympus alone just to carve out a road.
If such a burden had to be borne, then the master would bear it too.
The earth roared, and the forest shuddered.
Even the Mana in the air grew restless.
Using the forest belt that linked the Interstellar City's four cardinal districts as its foundation, the land responded to Shiomi's will and shifted as one. Peaks burst forth from the ground, surging upward at astonishing speed, stretching from all four directions toward the Orbital Grand Temple.
Thunderclouds gathered once again. The skies of Olympus lay firmly under Zeus's dominion. Shifting weather, the turning of day and night—such phenomena were his to change with a single thought.
Lightning did not strike downward. Instead, it hurtled straight into the mountains, each several kilometers thick, seeking to shatter them from within.
But these peaks were not barren stone spires. As they rose, countless plants and trees sprang up alongside them.
The trees seemed to move with wills of their own, coiling around the mountains. In the blink of an eye, branches and leaves flourished in profusion, cloaking the peaks in lush green and filling them with vibrant life.
More than that, the trees on those mountains stretched their branches toward neighboring ranges. In the sky, they intertwined at last, locking together like two hands clasped tightly, refusing to part.
Once their canopies connected, roots quickly pushed downward, reaching the ground below and sinking deep into the earth, firmly anchoring themselves to the land.
The mountains that enclosed the central region of Olympus like hollow stone pillars were struck by Zeus's lightning and erupted into roaring flames.
Yet even then, new life continued to emerge. From the ashes, more trees took root and sprouted, growing back even lusher than before.
At last, before the barrier sealing off the sky between the city and the Grand Temple could fully close, towering mountains that led straight to the gods' dwelling were born. Like tenacious trees, they rooted themselves within the aerial garden beneath the Grand Temple, linking heaven and earth as one.
More trees kept growing upward, wrapping even the aerial gardens where the Olympian gods once rested in a dense sea of green.
In just a few minutes, the mountain range that led directly to the Grand Temple was completed, almost in the blink of an eye.
No matter how one looked at it, Zeus's plan to seal the barrier and then destroy all of Olympus had failed. The areas not enclosed by the barrier, along with the space between the four peaks, became a region that even Zeus could no longer effectively control.
Because beyond those mountains lay a wall in the truest sense of the word, a "Wall of Light."
It was the same kind of "Wall of Light" that had once enveloped Britannia.
As Shiomi completed this astonishing feat, Morgan activated her Magecraft, layering the mountains with protection and turning the four peaks into a single, unified "Tower of Heaven."
"Sure, the gods of Olympus have done their share of outrageous things, like dragging rivers into the sky and turning them into constellations," Orion said. "But honestly, buddy, you've gone even further than the Olympian gods."
When the tremors finally subsided, Orion, who had been half-kneeling to keep his balance, stood back up. Staring at the unbelievable "Tower of Heaven," he let out a heartfelt remark.
Shiomi did not answer. He simply leaned on the long handle of the sickle in silence. Morgan beside him was silent as well.
"Hey—" Orion sensed something was wrong.
The next moment, the sickle slipped from Shiomi's grasp and fell to the ground. Husband and wife both pitched forward one after the other.
Thankfully, Scáthach caught them.
"The husband throwing caution to the wind is one thing," she said, "but why did you, as his wife, have to go along with it?"
After glancing at Shiomi, who had passed out from exhaustion, Scáthach looked at Morgan. She was still conscious, but utterly unable to move after releasing Magecraft on such a scale. Scáthach could only speak with helpless resignation.
"If it weren't for that temperament, we wouldn't have repeated that 'stupid mistake' for two thousand years," Morgan replied with an easy smile. "This way, the road to the Grand Temple is completely secure. Zeus has no choice but to face us directly."
"…Sigh."
Scáthach let out a silent breath.
"Don't worry. Drake and Bartholomew's ships can't come up here, so they're standing by at sea," Orion said, glancing toward the Knights of the Round Table. "The others are already on their way."
Having just recovered from the shock of the "Miracle," the knights nodded in agreement.
"I'll help," Gareth said, hurrying over.
The petite girl draped Morgan's arm over her own shoulder and supported her with her entire body.
"…Gareth, you're too kind," Morgan said with a quiet laugh. "But I'm not your mother."
"That's not what this is about…" Gareth replied, flustered as she tried to explain.