"Thanatos-sama, we've been attacked by the 'Spirit Elite Soldiers'!"
An Evilus member, one arm already mangled, rushed toward Thanatos in a panic.
Thanatos frowned at the sight of his follower's severed arm.
"The rampage of the 'Spirit Elite Soldiers' was already set in motion the moment we chose to nourish them with flesh and blood… but how did they hatch this quickly?"
Feeding them flesh and blood should have required several more hours for the incubating Spirit Elite Soldiers to fully mature. They shouldn't have started hatching this soon.
The incubation chamber was located deep on one side of the entrance.
If Loki Familia had chosen the opposite path, the incubation would have proceeded normally, meaning the hatchlings wouldn't appear until several hours later.
But if Loki Familia entered the side with the incubation chamber, and if they did anything even slightly stimulating to the Spirit Soldiers absorbing flesh inside, then the Spirits would forcibly hatch.
Forcibly hatched Spirit Elite Soldiers would differ greatly from those that matured normally, but wiping out Loki Familia would still be… possible.
Yet the report Thanatos had received earlier said his followers were still doing everything they could to slow Loki Familia's advance. So how had the Spirit Elite Soldiers—who should've hatched hours later—hatched immediately?
Thanatos's expression tightened as an ominous dread rose in his chest.
'Is there really another faction involved!?'
He had already considered the possibility of a third party aside from the Guild and Enyo. After all, claiming the earlier incidents were orchestrated solely by those two felt slightly out of character for both.
Even if Enyo truly belonged to Evilus, he wouldn't go so far as to massacre them—he still needed them. In fact, Enyo's ultimate plan was likely to use his own death to secure complete control over Evilus.
As for the Guild… the Guild wouldn't resort to such vile methods. More importantly, if the Guild took action, the evidence left behind would be far too obvious. Ouranos would never allow that.
Thanatos had even wondered earlier if the Guild and Enyo had silently agreed on something while attacking Evilus.
But now, in light of the Spirit Elite Soldiers' abnormal hatching, Thanatos had every reason to believe a true third-party force existed.
"Hah… hahh…"
Thanatos covered his face with a weary, bitter smile. He never thought his earliest suspicion—the one he had dismissed—would turn out to be the correct answer.
'It seems everything has been under that third party's control, even the Spirit Elite Soldiers.'
"Aaaahhh!"
A blood-curdling scream echoed through the dark corridor, followed by a shadow darting toward them at terrifying speed.
"Protec—! Ugh!"
Before he could finish his sentence, the man was decapitated. The remaining Evilus survivors were slaughtered one by one by the rushing shadow.
Only when the figure finally stopped did Thanatos see it clearly.
"Spirit Elite Soldier."
"As expected."
Thanatos let out a silent, bitter sigh. He never imagined he would be driven into a dead end by a third party he had never even noticed.
Just as Thanatos waited with his neck bared for the execution, the "Spirit Soldier" only glanced at him before slowly walking toward the opposite side of the dark passage.
"Hm?"
Thanatos's face twisted in rage. As a god, he could accept his own defeat, but he could not accept being treated with such blatant contempt.
Yet all the curses he wanted to spit out never left his mouth. Thanatos knew that the loser had no right to protest—that was the rule of the game.
The gods created the rules. Therefore, the ones who had to follow them were also the gods.
As had been said before, gods must be willing to play, and willing to lose.
If you lose in a direct confrontation, then no matter what schemes you tried to pull, defeat is defeat. The loser must accept whatever terms the victor sets—that was the game established by the gods. In the end, Thanatos let out a long sigh and shook his head helplessly.
"Fine, fine. I'll accept the victor's rules."
"Before I return, at least let me see who that person is—the one who played all of us for fools."
By now, the projection had split into four screens.
The first showed Bell turning away after finishing his words. The second captured Thanatos, face full of grief and resignation, walking into the darkness. The third displayed Dionysus calmly accepting his defeat as he stepped into the shadows with his last remaining child. Only the fourth screen showed the battle of Loki Familia.
While many still watched Loki Familia's fierce struggle, even more were focused on the other three projections.
Not because Loki Familia's battle lacked excitement, but because the information revealed in the other three screens was far more shocking.
"Thanatos… Dionysus… those two are really something…"
Zeus pressed a hand to his forehead, unsure what to even say. Both of those fools had fallen into that brat's trap at the same time and only realized they'd been played at the very end.
Was it because that brat hid himself too well?
Or should he mock those two idiots for being too simple-minded?
"Tsk tsk~ That Bell kid really pulled it off."
Hera looked on with great amusement. To hide behind the scenes and still orchestrate such a massive setup—most people could never manage something like that.
"Two gods falling in one go. But I still feel like that brat has more in mind."
Maybe it was a goddess's intuition, but Hera felt Bell still had further plans in motion.
And staging such a grand spectacle just to witness Evilus's downfall—if it ended merely with surrender, it felt like something was missing.
"That brat's goal is nothing more than covering up his identity as a member of Hestia Familia, completely separating himself from who he is now, and then revealing secret intel that could terrify even us gods."
"Isn't that already enough?"
To Zeus, this level of shock was more than sufficient, but Hera still felt it was lacking.
"It's enough, sure. But don't forget—today is the day Evilus is to be purged. Without an even bigger blow, those rats will just crawl back out in a few years."
Hera had always found the resilience of those vermin astonishing.
Evilus had already existed back in her and Zeus's era, but with the two of them suppressing everything, not even a single dissenter dared make a move. How could those rats possibly have room to act?
They'd stayed hidden for so long just for the chance to plunge the surface into chaos. It wasn't hard to imagine them continuing to curl up in the sewers, biding their time for another chance.
"So what comes next… is probably the real key."
Zeus understood immediately.
"Godslaying?"