Seven days was but a blink of an eye for the Gods and their legions.
However, during these seven days, the troops sent by other Gods still accomplished what they considered a "great feat."
When Ares announced to the entire army to prepare for the Snake-Footed Giants of the Pallene Peninsula in seven days, the troops from other Gods also mustered their courage and protested to Ares.
Of course, as mentioned before, Ares currently held absolute power over the army, and these non-divine races dared not protest Ares directly. They merely conspired with some individuals from the Apollo, Artemis, and Hephaestus factions whom Ares had placed in the rear, and then sent reports of their current situation back to the chief Gods on Olympus.
Seeing Ares's troop deployment, Demeter, Athena, and other chief Gods who were not on good terms with Ares knew exactly what he was planning. Demeter immediately led the other Gods in a joint protest to Zeus. Athena also lent her support. Upon hearing about this, Zeus symbolically contacted Ares on the front lines, subtly expressing his dissatisfaction as a father with Ares's methods.
Ares was also very cooperative; as soon as Zeus finished speaking, he immediately ordered his four adjutants to withdraw a portion of the front-line troops and move them to the very rear of the entire formation, to stay with the troops from the Apollo and other divine factions with whom they had better relations.
Although Zeus felt a little strange about Ares's reaction, he couldn't pinpoint what was odd.
If anything, Ares's reaction was within the Heroes' expectations. After all, for Gods, any non-divine race was insignificant, no different from objects. Faced with the dissatisfaction and protests of these races, Ares could either kill them directly for peace and quiet, or choose to ignore them entirely.
Choosing the former meant he valued his own faction; choosing the latter would imply he didn't care about the loss of his own faction's troops.
After the new round of troop deployments was completed, the Gods' army appeared to be greatly boosted in morale, but in reality, Ares had also sown the seeds of division among the factions of the other Gods.
After all, he only withdrew a portion of the troops to the rear, not all of them. Currently, the Snake-Footed Giants had not yet attacked, and with him, Ares, commanding the army, these factional troops of the other Gods would not say anything about it.
In this era, Gods were everything. The Gods' Legion could be said to be invincible, sweeping all before them. When they first heard they were going to fight the so-called "Giants," the Gods' Legion troops probably only imagined fighting the smaller Giants of this era, ranging from four or five to ten meters in height. Such Giants were several generations removed from the Titan Gods. Although their strength was extraordinary, it was far inferior to the Gods, and mortal races were not entirely incapable of dealing with them.
The only ones who knew what the Snake-Footed Giants truly were were the Spartans in the army, but they were strictly disciplined. Ares had ordered them to keep it a secret, and they had not told anyone.
Once the battle began, when the vanguard and front lines of the legion were crushed by the Snake-Footed Giants, who were comparable to the Titan Gods, the survivors from the battlefield would surely resent their comrades who had abandoned them and fled to the rear of the battle formation to save themselves.
Moreover, with Ares's clone, Ephialtes, serving as a strategist for the Snake-Footed Giants, he certainly wouldn't adopt a strategy of having the Snake-Footed Giants simply "F2A."
In this situation, the rear army might not necessarily be safe either.
After Ares's army completed its rearrangement, seven days had passed. On the morning of the seventh day, in front of the Gods' army, on the barren land where there was nothing, space suddenly tore open like glass, forming a huge crack. This crack stretched for tens of miles and was still expanding. On the other side of the crack, there seemed to be another region desperately trying to squeeze into this world.
And the moment this crack appeared, Ares's army blew their horns. The vanguard and front lines were fully mobilized under his command. All the warriors took up their weapons and formed their formations. The Nymphs and monsters specially invited into the army, who practiced witchcraft, also prepared their magic, waiting for the enemy to appear to unleash their spells.
However, what surprised them was that even when the vanguard and front lines had fully formed their formations, and the crack had expanded to a height of a hundred meters, there was still no movement from the other side. No enemies appeared from the crack; the other side seemed dead.
The Heroes strained their eyes, but through the crack, they could only see vast grasslands, sparse woodlands, and the foothills of several continuous mountain ranges on the other side.
The armies waited for another half-day until the crack finally slowly expanded to nearly two hundred meters. Finally, someone noticed something was amiss.
"Wait, is there something below that mountain range? Like a giant rock on the mountain?"
Two lesser Gods, serving as commanders of the vanguard, enhanced their vision with divine power and then looked at the object in the crack, finally discerning what the stone was.
That was no giant rock at all; it was clearly a massive skull of some unknown mythical creature, worn as an ornament at the waist! And those several mountain ranges were not mountains at all, but several thick snake tails!
Each of these Snake-Footed Giants was at least four hundred meters tall, as tall as mountains!
Gazing at these mountain-like Giants, the two lesser Gods turned pale. They both thought of a powerful type of Giant, who were the forefathers of the Gods, beings who ruled this land before the Gods.
"It's… it's the Titans!"
Among the vanguard, other races also used unique abilities or magic to discern the truth about those mountains. This news spread throughout the entire army with their shouts. As a result, the vanguard, which had little discipline to begin with, immediately fell into disarray.
But at this moment, perhaps sensing the chaos in the vanguard, the Snake-Footed Giants on the other side of the crack no longer waited. At the command of their leader on the opposite side, they swung the massive rocks in their hands, using sheer brute force to smash open the spatial Rift from the Pallene Peninsula to the real world, expanding it enough for them to pass through.
With a resounding crack, the scene on this barren land dramatically changed. The original barren land shattered like glass fragments, replaced by a vibrant, magic-filled land.
And on this land, a hundred Snake-Footed Giants stood tall, reaching the sky. They held torches and massive rocks, clad in shining armor, and with savage roars, they charged towards the Gods' vanguard.