Fortune favors the bold! This applies just as well in the divine realm!
Even though Thalos had never promised or hinted whether new gods were qualified to vie for a God-King's throne, that didn't stop the new gods from being fired up.
Battle merit was the only path of promotion for them. As long as a new god still had any hope at all, they wouldn't choose to slack off.
What's more, making a choice is hard when the outcome is unknown; once a glimmer of victory appears, you'd be a fool not to place your bet!
At this moment, never mind veterans like Thor—the very South Asian gods Thalos looked down on the most were eagerly raising their hands, volunteering to be the vanguard.
Thalos saw them—and ignored those rookies.
He continued, "God-King-level combat will become the norm. I'll repeat myself: the Olympian pantheon is a powerful opponent fully capable of matching the Æsir. Don't indulge in fantasies of defeating the Olympians in one go."
Thalos paused here, turning his gaze to Enki, god of the sea and of wisdom.
"Your servant is here." Enki dutifully stepped out.
"Zeus's strength isn't just his alone. His brothers Hades and Poseidon must also be taken seriously." With that much said, Enki needed no more explanation.
Hades wouldn't be easy to deal with in the short term. With a surge of deaths across the Greek world—whatever happened later—right now a death-sourced underworld king would not lack divine power.
Since Thalos mentioned Poseidon, the "sea god" Enki naturally had no room to shirk.
"I will do everything in my power to defeat Poseidon." This wasn't bluster. In the old Sumerian pantheon, aside from Enlil, the former wind God-King, Enki's strength was among the highest.
Especially since his stewardship of the "sea" had expanded again and again with Æsir victories—his divine power had increased tenfold over what it used to be, at the very least.
The total seas directly under his control certainly weren't more than Poseidon's, but the scope of his jurisdiction was no less.
Unexpectedly, Thalos shook his head at Enki's bold claim. "No. In some matters, 'doing your best' is not enough."
One sentence left Enki at a loss.
"Great God-Emperor, forgive this dull servant—I don't understand Your Majesty's meaning." If even the acknowledged sage called himself dull, most other gods could hardly follow Thalos's thinking.
Thalos didn't answer directly; instead, he chose to demonstrate via psychic projection:
"This is the sea. This is also the sea. And this—still the sea!"
Miniature three-dimensional models of Ginnungagap's worlds appeared in his hands: first Vanaheim, then several seas near Midgard, then the Celtic world, the Sumerian world, and the seas of several subsequent conquered worlds.
Although after Ginnungagap devoured these worlds their seas had been merged into Ginnungagap proper, the old gods still remembered whose seas they had been.
Thalos continued, "In legend, Poseidon rules seven sea-kingdoms—Trench Kingdom, Fishermen's Kingdom, and so on. If Poseidon's ocean were split up and isolated into separate small worlds, would he still have that much divine power?"
Gasp! Enki and the others finally realized what Thalos intended.
Enki's voice trembled. "Your Majesty, you plan to draw away Poseidon's Seven Seas? But where would all that seawater be discharged?"
The Æsir had already grasped the Greek world's structure—they knew how immense Atlantis was.
Over seventy million square kilometers of ocean area, most of it deep sea. The amount of water involved was astronomical.
It was no wonder Poseidon boasted three thousand sea nymphs.
One had to admit—Poseidon's territory was truly vast.
Likewise, such a colossal volume of seawater wouldn't vanish into thin air. You couldn't just say Thalos would toss in a few extra suns and evaporate nearly eighty million square kilometers of ocean, could you?
Where to send the seawater—that was the problem!
At this point, anyone with imagination knew which side would be the unlucky one.
Amaterasu sighed lightly first; then Perun—who had just taken over the Lyranca world—looked a bit stricken.
Then Tyr spoke up: "So His Majesty's earlier focus on striking down the Olympians' subordinate slave-gods wasn't indiscriminate. It had purpose."
The Olympians had forced their slave gods to wear down the Æsir, which had a predictable consequence: a mass die-off of subordinate gods across the attached worlds. That, in turn, weakened Olympus's grip on those vassal realms.
By now everyone understood the key to this operation still rested on both sides' sky gods.
If your own sky god was up to the task—guarding the spatial barriers—then even trying to siphon away seawater wouldn't be easy.
But the sky happened to be one of the Olympians' fatal weak points.
The Greek sky god—the first-generation God-King Uranus—was profoundly displeased with Zeus!
It was foreseeable that if Thalos constructed spatial channels to drain Atlantis's seas, Uranus would absolutely pretend not to see a thing.
And on Ginnungagap's side, the sky god was Thalos himself!
Another unavoidable, open-handed stratagem!
Hearing this, Artemis already had a hand over her mouth; she was holding a moment of silence for Poseidon.
If Atlantis's Seven Seas were dismantled, Poseidon would immediately drop from a top-tier God-King to a Major God—or even to an ordinary true god.
At the strategic level, that would sever one of Zeus's arms.
With Thalos's plan laid out, every ocean-related deity's eyes lit up.
"Enki, assemble the water-aspected gods and coordinate with my operation."
"Yes!" Enki swept his gaze around. The first to enter his view was the Lady of the Lake of Celtic origin—no, by now she was the Goddess of the Lake.
A lake deity's power could never match that of a sea god.
The former Lady of the Lake had no objection to seeing her divine office jump up a grade.
Every single one who could manipulate the water element, whether famed Æsir water gods or South Asian deities drafted to make up the numbers, could greatly reduce Thalos's burden in Operation Sea-Draining.
Hel stepped out as well, speaking excitedly, "Your Majesty, with the most troublesome Poseidon gone, I'm confident I can lead the gods of Helheim to defeat Hades!"
Hel wasn't shooting in the dark.
"Death" also measured the world—in terms of the dead.
The more fallen divine souls imprisoned in Helheim, and the more mortal souls within, the stronger Hel and the other death-aspect deities would grow.
Ginnungagap had a vast population—and therefore many dead. In terms of sheer scale, Hades could hold his own for a while, but if the war dragged on, he would not be Hel's match.
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