Chapter 109: Devour if You Can't Kill
A thunderous impact rolled through the deepest layers of the Abyss.
Blades launched from the Gate of Babylon rained down among the Titan Giants, carving through the surging magma and kicking up titanic waves of liquid fire.
Their roars were cut off for a heartbeat.
Then, as if something in their primitive cores had been tripped, those roars came back even louder.
They were enraged.
"Why are you provoking them on purpose?" Athena frowned, clearly puzzled.
"Because that is exactly what needs to be done."
Rowe smiled. He flicked his hand again, and the Gate of Babylon behind him flared open once more. A fresh volley of Noble Phantasms shot out, bombarding the Giants.
The spectacle was magnificent.
But it was mostly spectacle.
The Titan Giants were not like the Hydra. The Hydra's strength lay not in its hide, but in its endlessly splitting bodies and quasi-immortality. If you failed to erase it entirely, it would eventually drag you into a war of attrition and kill you that way.
These Giants were different. Their outer shells were as tough as interstellar warships.
It was an ability they had inherited as "machina gods" from the Titans.
Even within the Gate of Babylon, there were only a handful of Noble Phantasms that could truly pierce those shells. Combined with their massive size, this barrage could only peel off a superficial layer of stone and flesh at best, causing nothing more than a stab of pain.
And what followed pain?
Provocation. Rage. A full-force counterattack.
Exactly what Rowe wanted.
He wanted them to burn through all their courage and strength.
He wanted to see how far they could push the limits of his body.
"Athena, cover me."
He left those words behind, then kicked off and soared upward.
A roaring crimson storm wrapped around him. In that moment, Rowe moved through Tartarus as easily as a fish in water.
The Abyss of Tartarus was a primordial environment.
For Rowe, it was also the perfect battlefield.
Athena drew a deep breath. Her fingers tightened around her spear, knees bending slightly as she closed her eyes.
"In the name of Athena, Goddess of Wisdom and War, I call upon my friend Nike, Goddess of Victory."
Her clear voice rang out in the fire-lit darkness.
"Grant us guidance, and let your hand lead us to Victory here."
She closed her eyes fully, then opened them again. A dazzling brilliance flickered above her head, and an invisible field expanded outward, becoming a full-spectrum blessing that covered her and Rowe both.
This was the authority of the Goddess of War.
As long as she stood upon a battlefield, even beings of chief god calibre could be significantly strengthened in an instant.
Empowered by that blessing, Rowe closed the distance to the first Titan Giant.
The Giant bared its fangs, golden eyes blazing with fury. Its raised palm churned the Abyss into a storm of flame as it slammed down toward the small figure approaching it.
Rowe clenched his fist.
His body bent like a drawn bow, then straightened as he drove his punch forward.
The crimson storm spiralled, crushing everything in its path. Even space itself seemed to wrinkle in a series of folding creases.
The Titan Giant's shoulder exploded, half of it blown away, and a howl of pain shook the molten air.
Behind Rowe, and to both sides, more Giants attacked.
He did not bother to dodge. His fist simply opened into a palm and swept backward.
The rotational force of the Primal Stars turned like a colossal wheel, grinding through the hulking figures that lunged at him from three directions.
Fragments of Giant flesh and stone sheared off, dropping into the fiery torrents below and melting back into the flow.
Rowe might have looked tiny in comparison, but every movement of his hands and feet inflicted catastrophic damage.
He hovered in mid-air while more Giants moved toward him, step by step. At the same time, the pieces of the ones he had just torn apart began to squirm and reassemble, slowly knitting themselves back together.
"Tartarus is where the Titans are imprisoned," Athena reminded him, her voice steady even as her eyes tracked the regenerating forms. "Their main brain is here."
The Titans were machina gods.
Older-model starships compared to the original machina god bodies of the Olympian gods born from Chaos.
They were shackled within Tartarus and could not leave, yet their influence permeated every layer of the Abyss. Their vast computation capacity had already fully integrated with the environment.
As long as they remained in Tartarus, the Titan Giants received infinite support from the Titan gods.
They could not be killed. They could not be truly erased.
Unless Tartarus itself was destroyed.
And even with the power Rowe had shown so far, that was beyond him.
The brief exchange had been enough for him to confirm it.
Even if he lowered his guard and allowed the Giants to attack freely, even the strongest among them could not truly threaten his life.
They were not enough.
"In that case," Rowe said, smiling, "we move to the contingency plan."
Contingency plan?
Athena blinked, taken off guard for a moment. Then she heard his next words.
"Athena, push your support to the maximum."
She still did not understand what he intended, but she responded instantly.
The blessing of the Goddess of War.
The blessing of the Goddess of Victory.
Power like an endless tide poured into Rowe's body.
At that very moment, the Giants around them abruptly paused.
They lifted their heads in eerie unison, golden eyes sweeping across the Abyss with a look that held not just confusion, but fear.
Athena froze.
"This is… the sea?"
An invisible pressure spread outward from Rowe, slowly flooding the entire Abyss.
It felt like an ocean rising to swallow the world.
It was the Promise Poseidon had given him.
The sea would be as his body.
Which meant that Rowe, too, could manifest power in the way of the sea. Like the sea, his very existence could envelop, contain, and devour all things.
And right now, that was exactly what he intended to do.
To take the might that Athena had poured into him, spread his "sea" across Tartarus, and then—
Devour.
The Giants were afraid.
They feared that primordial, oceanic presence.
They feared Rowe's madness.
Athena was stunned.
"You will die."
The words slipped out of her before she could stop them.
Even brushing against the essence of Tartarus was enough to twist a main god's mind into madness and inversion.
Attempting to devour this furnace-like purgatory, this primal reactor, was something even Zeus would not dare to try.
But Rowe?
Rowe was not afraid of death.
Death was exactly what he was seeking.
In the raging wind of the Abyss, Rowe opened his hands wide.
The Noble Phantasms he had scattered earlier from the Gate of Babylon served now as anchor points, and invisible chains extended from them, wrapping around a portion of Tartarus itself.
In the midst of that surging sea-like pressure, those chains began to haul that section toward Rowe.
To hold eternal wisdom, and at the same time possess the courage to move forward while looking directly at death.
That too was a form of transcendence.
It was another expression of wisdom.
Athena's lips parted, silver hair falling forward as her ruby eyes filled with a complex, divine light.
Rowe, meanwhile, merely acted as someone who had done this sort of thing too many times.
Understanding something was one thing. Doing it was another. After so many failed attempts, he knew well that staking everything on a single plan was meaningless.
This was his contingency.
"Since the world insists on calling me a 'Wise Man,' then a Wise Man must know how to use every last scrap of strength available to him."
Rowe raised his gaze.
"If you do not wish to be devoured by me, then come out."
"King of the Titans—"
"Cronus."
The Giants roared.
Their cries blended into a chorus of wails as the fiery currents of the Abyss flowed toward a single point.
There, a pair of eyes slowly came to life.
A crisp, mechanical voice rang out through Tartarus.
External stress detected.
Combat response initializing.
Initialization complete.
Starting [Second Generation Interstellar Combat Annihilation-Type Mobile Fortress], Codename: [Cronus].
The monster, the second-generation god king of the Giants, Cronus, who had been lurking in the dark, was dragged out by Rowe's challenge.
The pressure released by that prior-generation god king silenced the entire Abyss in an instant.
Rowe, however, smiled in earnest for the first time.
Now this was a proper opponent.
If devouring Tartarus was one path to death, then forcing Cronus, the second-generation god king, into a life-or-death battle was another.
Both were feats beyond ordinary beings.
Both were achievements that most could never even aspire to touch.
"Come, then."
Rowe extended his hand.
The awakened Cronus stared back at him, its blazing eyes flashing as streams of incomprehensible data surged across its being.
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