Bzzzz!
At the same time, atop the coastal wall, a golden shield slammed hard into position at the edge. Behind it, two hands gripped tight in perfect alignment, one fair and smooth, the other long-fingered and strong. Knees bent, they braced and drove forward.
As earth and spatial authority pulsed in rhythm, the ground shuddered with a deep, roaring rumble. Specks of light-dust rose from all directions, drifting upward, and dense golden patterns formed in the air. They twisted and interwove like serpents, knotting together into an unbreakable firmament.
Boom!
The instant the barrier took shape, a multicolored beam that skimmed over the sea slammed into it. The world lurched as if mountains and earth were shaking. A blinding seven-colored aurora stabbed at everyone's eyes, and a violent tide of Ether surged outward.
Hah!
Medusa and Samael dipped low and stamped down hard to steady themselves. They blew out the stale air in their chests as their divine cores spun at full tilt, finally erasing the Planetary Vanguard's savage blow. Only then did they manage to lower Medusa's shield.
"Ahhh! We're going to fall!"
"Damn it… it hurts…"
But as red-black Ether turbulence spread through the air, Samael faintly caught the sound of thin wooden slats snapping somewhere over the water, along with a familiar woman's cry.
He and Medusa instinctively looked out.
In the airspace toward Crete, tiny black specks, no bigger than flies at this distance, were wobbling under the impact of the Ether turbulence and dropping into the sea one after another.
Could it be…
Survivors?
At this time, in this place…
Euryale and Stheno.
"Save them!"
They exchanged a glance. Their eyes lit up at the same time, and the words came out together, as if they'd reached the exact same conclusion in the same instant.
At once, the hundred-headed Great Dragon Ladon vaulted over the coastal wall and swept in on beating wings. Samael grabbed Medusa and jumped onto its back.
Seeing the core in Sefar's chest flickering, as though it were gathering strength again, he decisively invoked spatial authority, tore open a rift by force, and drove Ladon straight into it.
Scales flashing silver, an Ether film clinging to it as protection, the hundred-headed dragon shot through the pitch-black tear in space. It emerged over that stretch of sea and immediately folded its wings into a steep dive.
Wind howled. The world snapped bright.
And Samael saw two flailing figures in midair.
"Ana!"
The moment he spoke, Medusa understood. Her crimson-purple hair blasted out behind her like living whips, weaving and lashing across the air.
"Help! Catch!" Euryale and Stheno called.
Still hanging in the air, Euryale and Stheno visibly relaxed. Without hesitation, they hurled the Crete survivors they were holding toward the onrushing serpent hair. Then they spread their purple scaled wings and swooped down, snatching up falling people one after another and tossing them down like sandbags toward Samael and Medusa.
Working together, the four of them quickly hauled most of the survivors out of the air and off the sea's surface.
As for the unlucky ones who'd been clipped by Sefar's beam or fell into the water only to be swallowed by sea beasts, there was nothing they could do.
Even so, by rough count, more than seventy of the hundred-plus refugees who'd fled Crete by air had made it. That was already better than anyone had the right to expect.
Standing on Ladon's back, Samael scanned the area and let out a small breath.
Good. Pyrrha and Deucalion were safe. Otherwise, he'd have no idea how to explain it to his old friend Prometheus.
And those two brats actually dragged this one out with them.
Samael lowered his gaze to the horned youth sitting obediently behind them, looking dull and a little uneasy, and could only shake his head.
The Minotaur's monster, Asterios, nicknamed "Little Bull."
The King of Crete had broken his pact with Poseidon by hiding the white bull meant to be offered as a sacrifice to the sea tyrant.
Poseidon flew into a rage and cursed the king's wife, Pasiphaë, to desire that white bull. In the end, the queen couldn't escape fate. She coupled with the beast and bore a child.
He had a human shape with the traits of a bull. The Minoans raised him as a sacred yet ferocious monster and built a labyrinth to imprison him.
That was Asterios.
But he wasn't evil by nature. When he killed those who entered the labyrinth, it was mostly out of self-defense.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have been so easily "tamed," reduced to running errands for Euryale and Stheno, those two disasters, working without complaint.
Normally, a monster offspring like this, fated to be cut down by a hero as a stepping-stone to glory, wouldn't be something Samael, as a god, needed to care about.
Except for one little coincidence.
The one destined to clear that "dungeon" was the identity he was wearing right now: the Theseus of history.
In the fixed course of fate, the Minotaur's monster was meant to die by the hand of the Prince of Athens.
Destiny… heh.
Samael glanced at the dark-gold, wedge-shaped divine pattern surfacing in his palm, a trace of ridicule pooling in his eyes.
Just as his thoughts began to drift, the Planetary Vanguard in the Storm Sea spread its hands and pressed down into the air. The fog churned violently, and the sea erupted into broad stretches of white foam as the waves surged outward in all directions.
Ssssss! Ssssss! Ssssss!
In an instant, hundreds of crimson beams swept in from the boiling sea fog and from beneath the water.
"Rrroar!"
The hundred-headed Great Dragon Ladon threw back its necks and bellowed. Rapid divine words and dragon tongue burst from its maws as surrounding Ether surged violently, piling into layer after layer of crystalline, dazzling magecraft barriers in front of them.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Explosions hammered the air. Under the concentrated barrage, Ladon's massive body shuddered and rocked, and the struck barriers dimmed, then shattered one layer after another.
What the hell is that?!
Samael snapped fully alert and stared toward the storm sea and the nearby waterline. His pupils tightened.
Warships were rising from below, one after another. Their frames were forged from black metal, red patterns linked across their surfaces like circuitry. They punched through the sea mist, light-formation diagrams shimmering along their flanks, and opened their vicious gun mouths.
At the same time, dense as a swarm, eyeball-shaped wide-area annihilation weapons with ruby cores burst through the wind columns and rolled in from the sky.
And that wasn't all. As the deep-sea fleet's hatches opened, rows upon rows of humanoid combat weapons were revealed, each clad in black armor inlaid with crimson stripes. They leapt from the decks, gripping cylindrical gold-and-red light swords, and charged straight at them.
Even the sea nearby started belching strings of bubbles. Nine-headed serpentine metal monsters, heavily armored humpback whales, dolphins, mutated octopuses, and other grotesque things surfaced one after another, becoming stepping-stones for those humanoid combat weapons.
Damn it… the Atlantis fleet!
Samael's blood ran cold. A possibility struck him hard. While urging Ladon to move, he kept his gaze locked on the storm sea still churning in the distance.
And in the next instant, his suspicion was confirmed.
Bzzzz bzzzz bzzzz bzzzz!
Rings of light flared and spread rapidly under the water. Beams of light as thick as a hundred meters blasted skyward amid the raging tsunami, the violent tremors carrying a powerful Ether resonance out in all directions.
Under the stunned stares of everyone on the dragon's back, ten islands rose in an arc from beneath the storm sea.
Damn it… Atlantis's outer defensive ring. The Ten Kingdom Islands.
The Interstellar Mountainous City has fallen.
The Sea God's Temple is finished.
Realizing just how bad it was, Samael saw the infected, puppet-like Atlantis fleet already beginning its second wave and bellowed a warning.
"They're closing in! Ladon will handle the outside. You lot take care of anything that gets through to the inside!"
As he organized their line and pushed for a breakout, the Ancient Serpent wanted nothing more than to curse Poseidon until his throat bled.
So that's where Atlantis's black tech came from. No wonder that bastard kept the Great Altar's secrets so tightly sealed. No wonder he'd rather hand over little Rhode than let me keep digging.
So the starship that fell into the Greek Age of Gods, the one carrying the Planetary Vanguard Sefar, was something Poseidon fished out of the sea and kept like a treasure!
Which meant the rule-twisting Storm Sea, the bizarre spatial distortions, even the near-miraculous Interstellar Mountainous City… all of it traced back to that thing!
And with Atlantis's advanced civilization right on top of it, how could the Sefar inside that starship not awaken early?
Worse still, a Planetary Vanguard feeds on civilizations.
Good job, Poseidon. The moment Sefar woke up, it got a full meal in Atlantis and even "dropped" a whole army while it was at it.
And that's why the Olympus rebellion fizzled out without a real conclusion. It all started with the Oceanus Sea anomaly.
What an unbelievably cursed teammate.
Once he stitched the pieces together, Samael understood the chain of causes at last. His expression turned pitch-black.
By then, the first clashes with the Atlantis puppet fleet were already raging through the air.
Ladon's hundred heads chanted in strange syllables, rapidly conjuring magecraft formation diagrams in dense clusters like stars. Flame, venom, ice, thunder, falling meteors… attacks poured out without pause. Wide-area annihilation weapons and humanoid combat units shattered one after another and dropped into the deep.
But there were simply too many. And while Ladon was also weathering the Atlantis fleet's savage focused fire, plenty slipped through the net, swinging around to target the people on the dragon's back.
"So damn noisy! Why are there so many flies?" Stheno snapped.
"Tch. I hate hotheaded idiots. I hate brutes too," Euryale added.
Halo-like divine rings appeared behind them as the two couldn't help but complain.
The proud Goddess of Power lifted the hem of her skirt, frowning in disgust. Beams of magical power from her divine ring sliced through swaths of combat weapons, throwing off showers of dazzling sparks.
The faster Flying Maiden drew her shortbow and fired in rapid succession, her arrows coming out like a Gatling volley, knocking the flickering wide-area annihilation weapons and the humanoid combat units out of the sky one after another.
"Someone's inside those mobile armors?"
Samael steadied himself, still holding Medusa's hand as they maintained the large-scale spatial transfer formation behind the coastal wall. Frowning, he called out to Euryale and Stheno, who had instinctively taken up positions to guard their flanks.
"Yes," Euryale answered, her figure flitting like a butterfly through a garden. She thrust upward and punched straight through the skulls of two humanoid combat units overhead. Divine power riding her arrows detonated, shutting their functions down. "But their intellect's been drained. They're just empty shells now!"
"What, you've got some special kink?" she added with a sniff. "Tch. What's so great about unresponsive dolls? Tell me your twisted little thoughts, cute Lady Goddess. Maybe I'll even help you make them come true."
Even with things this dire, the brat couldn't stop being vain and running her mouth.
"Euryale's right," Stheno chimed in smoothly. "These fools can look at someone as beautiful as me and not even blink, then attack so crudely. You should give up. They're just puppets with no sense of romance."
Samael's eyelid twitched. Veins bulged at his temple. He seriously wanted to find something—anything—to stuff into their mouths.
"Lord Samael, how much farther to the defensive line?" Deucalion asked.
Deucalion, Pyrrha, and Little Bull formed a triangular formation, shielding the remaining survivors with everything they had.
"Almost there! Hold on a bit longer. And…" Samael soothed them with a few quick words, then caught sight of a green-blue figure in the distance leaping onto a Colchis fierce dragon, bow already drawn. Behind her, a large group of nymphs spread dragonfly-like wings. He finally let out the breath he'd been holding. "Reinforcements… are here!"
"Apollo of Light, Artemis of the Deep Forest, we pray for your divine might to descend. A plea written in arrows, offered to the two great deities!"
Atalanta, leading the nymphs in to relieve them, knit her brows and snapped the words out. Two arrows were pinched between her fingers. She loosed them skyward with full force, and a huge magecraft formation diagram bloomed in the air.
A rain of green and lapis-blue arrows poured down like a waterfall, clearing the area in an instant.
Among those firing arrows and weaving magecraft were not only familiar faces from the Arima Caverns, but also Artemis's battle nymphs.
For a brief moment, the Atlantis fleet's forward pressure was forced back.
"Two hundred meters east! Fall back!" Prometheus roared in divine speech from atop the coastal wall.
Under his command, the human Magi and nymphs shifted their chanting, closing part of the outer light screen and opening a corridor to receive allied forces.
Samael seized the opening and urged Ladon into a steep dive toward the gap.
But right then, an Ether tide so dense it looked like red-black flowing water surged violently.
With their backs to the Oceanus Sea, Samael and the others felt their hair stand on end.
Ssssss—!
Hundreds of thick beams, like scythes swung by Death, blasted out of the storm sea. The water boiled into steam, and space itself warped and shattered like glass.
That crimson, icy light nearly filled everyone's vision.
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Explosions chained along the coastline. Protruding rock shelves sheared off in huge chunks and crashed into the sea.
When the dust and smoke finally began to thin, seven or eight sections of the coastal wall had collapsed outright. Beyond those breaches, trenches dozens of meters deep had been torn open in the ground, stretching for tens of miles.
Along that path, mountains cracked apart, rivers were severed, forests were erased, and several human settlements were wiped clean from the map.
"Cough… cough… you… you all okay…?" someone rasped.
As the coughing continued, the golden light shield covering roughly the middle third of the area wavered, then slowly dispersed.
Samael scanned the scene and only relaxed once he confirmed the familiar faces were still alive. He let out a long breath.
It had happened too suddenly. All he could do was throw everything into protecting the central stretch of wall and the open space behind it. As for the rest… they'd had to fend for themselves.
But that concentrated barrage was absurd. Even the deep-sea fleet's main cannons, pushed into overload, shouldn't be able to cause this kind of destruction.
Samael looked past the seven or eight breaches at the smoke-choked fissures, and at the aftermath beneath the rubble—white bone glaring through splattered flesh, the traces of thousands of reinforcements buried there. His face darkened.
Then, standing atop the broken wall, the Ancient Serpent looked up.
His pupils shrank, and he muttered in a dry, hoarse voice.
"These are… Giant God Weapons."
Amid the surging, splitting waves, more than a hundred bronze giants, each around a hundred meters tall, were striding out of the deep. They gripped spears of light, wore star halos above their heads, trailed luminous tentacles from their backs, and bore gold-and-blue patterns across their bodies as they marched toward land.
...
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