Chapter 240: White-Hot, Equally Matched?
The seventh match began with such impact and destructive force that everyone watched intently.
"He's actually evenly matched with Shiva?"
The Greek god of war, Ares, leaned sideways, staring in disbelief.
"And what is that? Firing massive quantities of divine weapons out of thin air?"
Well, Ares wasn't foolish enough to think the weapons being shot out were ordinary arms.
If they were ordinary weapons, would Shiva need to block them?
Ordinary weapons couldn't harm a god.
Moreover, those weapons weren't shattered by Shiva's divine weapon but were deflected instead.
If they were ordinary, they would have broken long ago.
So, where did this King Gilgamesh get so many divine weapons?
"Did he take the entire Babylonian Treasury?"
Hermes mused, stroking his chin.
The Babylonian pantheon was renowned for having the most divine weapons. Their so-called Babylonian Treasury was rumored to contain enough divine weapons to rival half of all pantheons combined.
It was also said that the Babylonian pantheon loved researching divine weapons, so it wouldn't be surprising if they had replicated divine weapons from other myths.
But to create ones with nearly identical power? Was that even possible?
However, this alone wouldn't be enough to defeat Shiva, and Shiva's greatest strength wasn't the four divine weapons he wielded.
"What? Taking the entire Babylonian pantheon's divine weapons? That's—that's against the rules! It's outright cheating!!"
Ares couldn't help but shout.
Just as he was about to say more, the two combatants, who had crashed into two mountains, launched new attacks.
Shiva released black, meteor-like light arrows, while Gilgamesh unleashed golden, meteor-like light arrows.
The two sides' attacks collided and canceled each other out.
Through a special lens, it was clear that both were using bows to exchange blows.
Some of Shiva's black light arrows that didn't cancel out with the opponent's veered off course upon contact. When they struck near Gilgamesh, the ground instantly melted as if corroded by a highly acidic solution.
In reality, this was because his bow had the ability to spread plague and potent toxins.
Meanwhile, Gilgamesh's light arrows, when they hit the ground near Shiva, pierced through effortlessly, leaving holes—a clear sign of their intense penetrating power.
In the blink of an eye, the mountains where they stood became more porous than a honeycomb, more riddled than an ant nest.
Suddenly, Shiva shot a light arrow into the sky.
In an instant, the sky turned pitch-black, and billions of arrows, denser than a torrential downpour, rained down indiscriminately.
But before they could reach the ground, the dark mass began to be consumed by golden points of light.
"He caught up!"
Heimdall shouted.
Some gods and humans might not have noticed, but when the God of Destruction shot his arrows into the sky, the King of Heroes also fired an arrow toward the heavens.
From the arena's god's-eye view, one could see dense black arrows being chased and destroyed by an equally dense volley of golden arrows descending from above.
In the blink of an eye, half of the black arrows were devoured, and then the remaining black arrows seemed to disintegrate—no, they directly transformed into black mist.
The mist was so thick that it condensed into raindrops, and a torrential downpour began to fall.
For a moment, the entire scene was swallowed by darkness.
When the black mist dissipated, what appeared before everyone's eyes was a sea resembling a swamp, and it was boiling.
In this highly toxic sea, there was an extremely small island—less than fifty square meters—on which stood the King of Heroes.
However, this island would likely dissolve soon as well.
The camera suddenly focused on a figure—the God of Destruction. With unimaginable speed, he leaped forward, raising his leg high to deliver a downward kick aimed at the King of Heroes below.
A closer look at the God of Destruction's foot revealed it was burning. Some recognized it as one of Shiva's ultimate techniques, known as—Krittisava.
Yet, before the God of Destruction could land his kick, countless lightning strikes instantly descended from the sky, all converging on him as if he were a lightning rod.
Thus—
"Krittisava"
The God of Destruction, poised to strike below, abruptly flipped and kicked toward the lightning. In an instant, the countless bolts of lightning were engulfed by flames and vanished.
At the same time, something became visible in the sky—an object that resembled a vajra.
It was this object that had released the countless lightning strikes, and its tip was preparing to unleash another volley. But a flash of light streaked across, and a sword pierced into it—that was Shiva's sword.
It seemed that the piercing of the sword had caused this divine weapon to go berserk, releasing all its energy indiscriminately.
For a moment, countless bolts of thunder struck the poisonous sea below.
By the time the thunder subsided, the poisonous sea had vanished, replaced by what appeared to be scorched, blazing earth.
"What... what just happened?"
"Unbelievably, both sides are injured!"
Almost everyone was stunned, wondering what had occurred in that instant.
While injuries weren't surprising, the strange part was that both had been struck by weapons—and from a considerable distance apart.
The King of Heroes, Gilgamesh, had been impaled by a trident, clearly Shiva's divine trident.
The God of Destruction Shiva, meanwhile, had been stabbed by a spear, undoubtedly Gilgamesh's.
Between the two, the King of Heroes seemed more severely wounded, as the trident had three prongs—though not all had struck him. The right prong had pierced his heart area.
Pierced his heart? Wasn't that a fatal wound?
The issue was that it hadn't fully penetrated, as the King of Heroes had used a sword to wedge between the prongs.
As for Shiva, a spearhead had also pierced his heart area, but he had firmly grasped it with both hands.
The distance between their hearts and the weapon tips was infinitesimally small—a single heartbeat away from contact.
Thus, this scene, broadcast through the Akashic System, revealed to all humans and gods just how perilous the moment was.
Like a human CT scan, the display showed the positions of both combatants, with the weapon tips frighteningly close to their hearts.
Closer than the thickness of a sheet of paper.
A single heartbeat would instantly pierce and rupture them!!