Chapter 222: The Battle That Tears Heaven and Earth
The gods in the colosseum finally began to show slightly more serious expressions.
Especially those gods who had lived through the same era as Zeus understood all too well what it meant for him to draw his divine weapon.
Up until now, Zeus had used his divine weapon only a handful of times, not even enough to count on one hand.
Since then, no one had ever forced him to use it again—all had been crushed to death by his bare fists.
Even when he slew his own father in the past, Zeus hadn't used his divine weapon.
"Hoh~! Truly magnificent. It's been so many years, I'd almost forgotten what my divine weapon felt like."
Zeus grinned, his eyes radiating a fearsome, savage intensity.
The muscles in his arms suddenly bulged, his veins standing out so prominently they seemed ready to burst. With a low roar, he repelled both the sword—which had been inches from piercing his heart—and its wielder, sending them flying.
The excessive force caused the air to explode and the atmosphere to churn as if boiling.
The repelled figure was sent flying almost to the horizon.
"Boom—!"
Accompanied by a terrifying roar, the ground where Zeus had stood collapsed, doubling in size, and he himself had vanished.
He himself leaped directly, with a jump that shook the earth's crust, his speed instantly surpassing the third cosmic velocity as he caught up to the person who had been sent flying.
"Hold on, don't die!"
Before he even finished speaking, his lightning sword was already descending upon the opponent's head.
Clang!
As the heavy sound of metal clashing reached their ears, the opponent's figure vanished—not because they had dodged, but because they had been sent flying by Zeus's strike.
At the same time, the lifeless sea below the opponent exploded, exposing the seabed, while tsunamis formed by the explosive impact surged outward in all directions.
Boom—!
Before the hollowed-out seabed could be refilled by the returning seawater, a terrifying roar caused the exposed seabed to form radial craters, and the ocean floor began to collapse.
"Wh-what just happened?"
"I can't see anything at all."
"What is all this?"
Even the spectators from another world widened their eyes, watching nervously as they strained to see the two figures that were completely invisible to them.
"Everyone, please use this with caution."
The host, Heimdall, suddenly spoke up and put on a pair of glasses.
Following his lead, Serafall also put on the glasses, which now had an additional function: a feature that accelerated consciousness and vision through the Akashic System.
Activate!
In that instant, Serafall felt as though her eyes were about to burst, and her brain seemed to be incinerated by an intense heat.
When she regained her senses, her head felt dizzy, but as she gradually adapted, she barely managed to catch sight of the two figures engaged in combat.
The two were clashing at unimaginable speeds on the seabed. Every time their weapons collided, the resulting shockwaves made the ocean floor tremble in agony, pushing the seawater even farther away.
Gradually, the force of their impacts compressed the surrounding strata, causing it to rise and form a massive crater, resembling a volcano.
This crater rose above sea level, preventing the seawater from flooding back in.
Boom—!
A sudden strike from Zeus's lightning sword sent an electric arc that sliced through the enormous crater and cleaved the sea behind it.
"Hohoho, now that my blood is boiling, try my sub-light-speed thrust~"
As Zeus spoke, his body seemed to genuinely heat up as if his blood were boiling, emitting a terrifying high temperature that rapidly dried out the ground beneath his feet.
Then, true to his word, he thrust his sword at his opponent at sub-light speed.
Thump—!
The unmistakable sound of flesh being pierced echoed as the lightning sword tore through the side of the opponent's abdomen, the deepest part of the wound estimated to be nearly ten centimeters.
With a ferocious expression, Zeus attempted to use his strength to bisect his opponent at the waist, but the opponent's sword had already moved to block, and the two were locked in a struggle.
"Is... is this the power of Lord Zeus?"
"This time, the seawater wasn't just parted—it was completely evaporated."
The tip of the sword that had pierced King Arthur's side pointed toward a newly formed gap in the crater, while the sea behind him was once again split apart.
But this time, the sea wasn't forced apart by pressure; instead, a straight path through it was directly vaporized, creating the illusion of being cut.
And because the earth was not flat—it was a sphere—the straight-line impact pierced a hole through the atmosphere at the edge of the sky.
This battle that tore through heaven and earth was truly awe-inspiring.
"Damn it, I can't take it anymore!"
A god could no longer endure it. After turning off Akasha's function and removing the glasses, his eyes were bloodshot, with blood trickling from both corners.
Merely witnessing this strike had pushed the burden on his brain and eyes to the limit.
Therefore, it was unimaginable that King Arthur could barely evade this terrifying blow.
"Fortunately, only the thrusting motion reached sub-light speed, not all your movements simultaneously. Otherwise, I truly wouldn't have been able to dodge this strike."
"Hah, that is precisely the realm I am currently pursuing."
As King Arthur stated, Zeus's thrust reached sub-light speed—only the motion of his arm achieved this velocity, while his other movements could not synchronize at the same speed.
Thus, the reason his opponent could evade the fatal strike was that the accompanying movements failed to keep up, allowing him to react and dodge in time.
Therefore, the ultimate realm Zeus pursued was to synchronize all bodily movements, or even surpass the speed of light entirely, achieving complete dominion over time and space.
Hmm?
Using this move again? Zeus immediately defended.
Boom—!
The compressed wind covering his opponent instantly exploded, sending him flying.
Whoa!
This time, the blast propelled him upward, breaking through the atmosphere into the weightlessness of outer space.
Using the lightning released from his lightning sword as propulsion, Zeus descended back toward the Earth's surface.
"Hmm?"
Normally, during a fall, friction with the atmosphere would be intense, but he barely felt any—it was almost a vacuum.
The atmosphere was gone!
He saw it: the atmosphere in this region had been gathered by King Arthur.
All the air was compressed at the tip of his sword, forming a point of light that swelled in the blink of an eye into an energy sphere resembling a ball of plasma, shining as brilliantly as a silver sun.
Then, the silver sun hurtled toward him.