Above ordinary gods, the power of a Creator God was invincible.
Unlike ordinary gods, a Creator God had reached the absolute pinnacle in both divinity and domain.
In certain worlds, gods were bound by limitations, they might require the faith of believers, they might only wield their full power within the realm they presided over, and even their temperament or way of dealing with mortals could be shaped by their worshippers or their domains.
But a Creator God was never subject to such restrictions.
As a perfect deity, a Creator God needed no worshippers.
More often than not, they were the most inconspicuous among the divine, to the point that even the mortal world might lack any trace of their legends.
Nor did a Creator God require a divine kingdom, nor did they need to stand within their own dominion to unleash their full power, for their might was not granted by heaven and earth.
Quite the opposite: heaven and earth were born because of them.
A divine kingdom or a home-field advantage meant nothing to a Creator God, for they could create one at will.
Such was a Creator God: whoever stood beneath them would be utterly crushed.
Of course, summoning a Creator God was no easy task.
The Arceus and Herakdi that Alaric had summoned were, in truth, nothing but hollow shells, replicas, false creations.
Yet even as false creations, they could still utterly overwhelm gods beneath the level of Creator.
The gods pooled their remaining power into Aegis. The liberated divine shield became a towering barrier, stretching between Alaric and the pantheon.
Fully unleashed, the shield carried the strength of all the gods combined. Its defenses were comparable to the entirety of Mount Olympus itself.
And Mount Olympus was the true domain of the gods, the stronghold of strongholds, their ultimate bastion.
Unless one possessed the strength to shatter Olympus with a single strike, there would be no breaking through that barrier.
Once the shield was raised, Arceus's assault descended without pause.
Normal, fire, water, lightning, grass, ice, fighting, poison, ground, flying, psychic, bug, rock, ghost, dragon, dark, steel, fairy.
Eighteen types of devastating attacks rained down like a storm, pounding the shield so violently that it immediately began to tremble on the brink of collapse.
Each individual blast, equal in force to a miniature nuclear warhead, would have been nothing against Aegis fueled by all the gods.
But when eighteen different attributes combined, clashing and reinforcing each other in intricate cycles of strengths and weaknesses, the resulting devastation far surpassed any single force.
As he gazed at the faltering shield, Zeus felt despair creep into his heart.
So this was the power of a Creator God?
Indeed, only a true Creator could weave disparate forces and attributes into a seamless whole, unleashing effects beyond imagination.
If the power of an ordinary god was "one," then that of a Creator God was "all."
Trying to stack countless "ones" to reach the realm of "all" had always been wishful thinking.
If the assault continued like this, the shield would inevitably shatter, and when it did, the entire Greek pantheon would be annihilated.
And in truth, Zeus was not wrong.
If this went on, Olympus itself would be wiped out under the rain of judgment.
Yet Alaric himself was running out of time.
Not only because the world resisted the existence of a Reality Marble,
But also because his own power could no longer sustain a being of Creator God level.
Even in his current state, having entered the mode of the God of Magic, channeling the might of a Creator God was far too much of a strain.
Otherwise, he would have summoned Arceus at the very start and wiped them all out in a single wave.
Now, relying on Arceus alone, it was impossible to break through the shield and deal a decisive blow before the Reality Marble dissipated.
That left only one option: to test the power of Herakdi.
As the judgment stones hammered down, the Light of Creation from the God of Light also descended upon Aegis.
Unlike the purely destructive judgment stones, the Light of Creation seemed beautiful, almost dazzling, yet it caused no earth-shattering effects on contact with the shield.
But for the gods, it would have been far kinder if it had been a destructive strike.
For under its radiance, the shield began to vanish.
Not shattered, not drained of power, but assimilated, absorbed into the Light itself, made part of it.
The shield's energy frantically gathered to resist the assimilation, struggling to hold back the breach. But it was nothing more than a drop in the ocean.
No, worse than that. It was like fueling a fire with more wood.
For every effort only fed the Light, strengthening it further while the shield weakened faster.
To turn everything into a part of the Light of Creation, this was truly a terrifying power.
Soon enough, the gods tasted its horror firsthand.
The shield's futile resistance opened a tiny crack.
Through it, a single beam of the Light pierced inward, striking one of the gods it was meant to protect.
Fortune had it that only one was hit.
The unlucky victim was none other than Hermes.
Caught off guard, his knee was struck.
In an instant, the struck limb vanished, not destroyed, but transformed into light itself.
Quick as lightning, Athena shoved him aside and severed his leg, preventing the creeping radiance from devouring him whole.
Otherwise, the Light of Creation would have swallowed Hermes entirely, making him nothing but a fragment of itself.
Its sheer dread drove the gods into despair. Yet before the Light could fully assimilate the shield, the judgment stones struck home.
Weakened by the Light, Aegis could not withstand their storm forever.
Cracks spread across its transparent surface, then it shattered with a thunderous crash.
Unimpeded, the radiant blasts surged toward the gods.
And at that very same moment, the Light of Creation engulfed them as well.
All gods not secretly spared by Alaric, Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty; Artemis, goddess of the hunt and the moon; and Athena, goddess of wisdom and war, were about to face annihilation.
But just as despair closed in,
The Reality Marble began to unravel.
The world's resistance had finally undone the Sea of Chaos. Its turbulent power melted away under the order of the world, like snow beneath the sun.
The judgment stones and the Light of Creation struck just as the Marble dissolved more than halfway.
A Reality Marble was born from a single mind, in this case, Alaric's, an inner world imposed upon reality.
Thus, its rules differed entirely from those of the outside world.
And unlike most Reality Marbles, Alaric's was a complete inversion of the world's laws, the Sea of Chaos was the absolute antithesis of order.
This made it immensely powerful, yes. But it also meant nothing within it could exist once it collapsed.
No matter how mighty the attacks of two Creator Gods, they were bound inside the Marble, like figures on a screen unable to break free of it. Outside its bounds, their force held no sway.
And therein lay the Greek pantheon's fortune.
But fortune only came to them halfway.