Hades didn't realize it, but he had actually lost with some dignity along the way.
The war-god "civil war," though—that was brutal.
Deep within another spatial corridor, a blinding golden glare lit the entire passage. Tyr wore bright-silver forged-steel god-armor, every single rune on it personally inscribed by His Majesty the God-Emperor.
Its defensive power was so high that when the Greek war god Ares gathered all his divine might and thrust his bronze spear—wrapped in the power of War—into Tyr's shoulder pauldron… it didn't penetrate!
Ares was dumbstruck.
"How is that possible?!"
The corner of Tyr's mouth twitched.
Letting a shoulder pauldron take the hit was deliberate.
Tyr had long known his forged steel dwarfed the enemy's bronze, and that the runes Dad carved when bored were the real deal. But in war, unless you take a hit for real, you never know how strong you are—or how flimsy your enemy is.
With bottomless combat experience, Tyr chose the thickest plate to test the armor's limits.
He knew—but the test still startled him.
Yes—
both sides were shocked.
Two war gods, and one could take a blow without a scratch?
Especially when they saw the bent bronze spearhead—the very air went dead silent for a beat.
Absurd.
Tyr finally realized it wasn't just gear quality—it was the disparity in their respective levels of War.
In some small places, a few hundred versus a few hundred would be written up in the histories as a "decisive battle."
But in Ginnungagap, with a population over a hundred million, that doesn't even count as a village brawl.
Don't be fooled by all those recent "ten-thousand-man battles" in the Greek world. The divine power Ares could harvest was at best a fraction of Tyr's—most of those Indian and Mayan "fodder" were Tyr's and Arthur's followers!
Overwhelmed both in equipment and divine strength…
What fight was left to have?
Tyr's sword fell like a thunderbolt, and Ares was stunned.
A blow packed with crushing, war-god might shattered Ares's resolve like heaven and earth splitting apart.
By instinct, Ares raised his spear; halfway up, he realized that wouldn't do. With his left hand he yanked out the fat, stubby bronze god-blade at his waist, crossing the two in a desperate X to block.
Too naïve.
Tyr's sword aura alone sheared Ares's spear in two; instead of being consumed, his power surged in a second burst that lopped through the god-blade as well.
Ares nearly pissed himself.
On reflex alone, he twisted his torso to evade.
He dodged—but his chariot did not. The horses, the axle, and the car were all cleaved cleanly in two by Tyr's single stroke.
"Aaahhh—!"
Ares hurled the broken sword in his hand as a projectile, flinging everything at Tyr, then vaulted onto a surviving horse, smashed the harness, and fled like the wind.
"…Huh?"
This time, it was Tyr who was too naïve.
He never imagined the other side's war god would run.
Shouldn't a war god be the one in any pantheon with the fiercest fighting spirit, the one who loves to battle to the bitter end?
What the hell do you mean, running?
Because of that misread—and because Tyr wasn't exactly a high-mobility deity—he was a beat late mounting a horse, and found he couldn't catch Ares.
Remembering Father Thalos's pre-war instructions, Tyr didn't just quit. Failing to catch was one thing; failing to pursue at all meant no pressure on the enemy.
This fight ended so fast that Tyr became the first Major God to officially break into the Greek world.
In truth, by divine power alone, calling him a God-King would hardly be an exaggeration.
The only thing Tyr lacked was the title.
Once Tyr won, a large force immediately surged in behind him into the Greek world.
Right on his heels, the Æsir sun god Freyr and the god of knights Arthur charged in with their direct sub-gods, following Tyr's lead.
That left Ares too scared to keep running. No sooner had he exited the corridor than he spotted Apollo on patrol; he had no choice but to link up and rally his men to hold the line.
Ares thought his humiliation was his alone—only for Hades to retreat not long after, chased from behind by Hel and her army of death.
Now the Greek world was truly lively.
They'd come out right at the foot of Mount Olympus.
Right under Emperor Zeus's nose—Ares didn't dare sprint back up the mountain, coward or not.
That enraged Zeus.
The Æsir were getting way too bold. If Zeus didn't act, by tonight every last slave god would likely defect.
Divine curses were only a restraint. If a god was willing to let their soul be torn, to rebel even at the cost of shredding their essence—there was no stopping it.
Hadn't Odin already played the "patchwork soul" game?
The divine world operates beyond reason.
This time, Zeus had had enough. He finally sent out his trump card—
"Roooar!"
A mountain moved.
No—that wasn't a mountain. It was a hundred times more terrifying.
\[Hundred-Handed Giant] Gyes!
As sons of the first sky king Uranus and the earth mother Gaia, the Hundred-Handed Giants possessed bodies even larger than the second-generation Titans.
In myth, they could hurl a hundred mountains at once.
There's artistic exaggeration in that—but for mortals, it's not far off.
The giant before them stood at least five hundred meters tall.
Aside from the thick primary head and limbs, his trapezoidal torso was crowded with forty-nine other heads, each larger than a wagon box, and ninety-eight arms as thick as harbor cranes.
At a single clash, they hurled nearly a hundred boulders the size of small houses.
"Fwoooosh—"
"Wooooo—"
As the stones ripped through the atmosphere, the sonic booms they carved into the sky were so terrifying that the Æsir gods immediately thought of "meteor showers."
Absolute brute force, multiplied by absurd numbers—enough to drive ordinary deities into a panic.
Unfortunately for them, Hel was anything but ordinary.
"Second brother!" At the Helheim sovereign's soft call, the World Serpent revealed an equally outrageous side.
With a few deep, thunderous scrapes, Jormungandr curled his more-than-five-kilometer-long body into a massive coil. The underworld army that had just surged out of the corridor was shielded within that mountain of coils, while the serpent's thick tail snapped like a whip, batting the flying boulders away again and again.
The scene looked like a batter taking endless swings.
"Boom-boom-boom!"
"Ping! Pang! Pong!"
Many rocks were even smacked straight back along their original paths by Jormungandr—smashing into the Hundred-Handed Giant, who howled when he failed to dodge.
This time, Zeus truly couldn't sit still any longer.
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