Since he already knew that Mother Gaia stood opposed to him, how could he easily open his mouth to ask for her help before he had a full grasp of how events would unfold?
If he rashly asked and was refused, wouldn't that be an even greater loss of face?
As a result, once he began putting things back in order, the work dragged on until today—and still wasn't finished.
There was no helping it. Mount Othrys was too magnificent—a mountain rooted in the earth yet as tall as the firmament itself, nearly four trillion kilometers in height. Repairing it was far too difficult.
In truth, not all of this destruction had been caused by Zeus.
In fact, what Zeus caused could only be called a small part.
When the situation was urgent, he merely toppled the summit of the main peak at random, then immediately carried out a strategic withdrawal, collapsing roughly one quarter of the main peak as a whole.
This boundless, endless range had actually suffered its worst, most grievous damage at the hands of the enraged, irrational Kronos—the supreme God-King's terrifying handiwork wrought in his own fury.
His wrath had not merely destroyed the entire main peak; it had laid waste to nearly half the entire range!
On this mountain, tossing a random boulder into the starry void would produce a star.
And yet, under the unconscious venting of the God-King, it ended up like this.
Truly—worthy of a God-King!
Utterly mighty!
And this bout of destruction also brought a genuine, total calamity upon too many who dwelled on the divine mountain: gods, nymphs, elemental beings, and countless innocent ordinary lives.
The collapse of the divine mountain was like the sky falling. Its vast, overwhelming ruin was too terrifying; countless beings had not even the chance to flee before they were crushed to dust by merciless boulders and the aftershocks of divine power.
This was a true cataclysm, a calamity without cause.
Once a war that sweeps the world begins, none can keep themselves untouched.
Even beings far from the battlefield may be annihilated by nothing more than a stray aftershock of divine power.
A single mote of dust shaken loose in a duel between god-kings is, to small and humble lives, a lethal disaster.
Enough to destroy an ordinary world, to grind a weak sword-and-sorcery civilization to nothing.
And now, such a terrible war was unavoidable.
Its ferocity would only exceed all imagination—far worse than the first war of the god-kings.
For back then, heaven and earth were not yet opened. The cosmos contained only laws or their embodiments, and there were only a scant few Titan giants—no ordinary life existed.
After Kronos ascended, as God-King and a god of primordial creation, in order to expand his divine authority and to answer the hopes of the world and the gods,
He truly did create the vast majority of divine and ordinary life; the world became rich and colorful, brimming with vitality.
This was his great contribution to the world, a merit that cannot be erased.
His might also stemmed from this.
The first God-King, Uranus, possessed invincible power because he was the sovereign of spirit, master of the source of all spirits.
Kronos's might, by contrast, came from his leading role in the birth and evolution of life in the universe.
In this process, as countless lives multiplied, his power swelled swiftly and without limit, reaching unprecedented heights.
He was the embodiment of creation, growth, and harvest—and in addition, he held the authority of reaping.
From every life created or evolved by him—whether gods, nymphs, spirits, wondrous beasts, or all manner of mortal creatures—of all power that could strengthen or be derived, he could silently reap a portion and gather it to himself.
This was the true essence of "harvest."
He was not only encroaching upon the gods' authorities; he was also, impartially, exploiting the power of every living being in the universe. No matter the rank of existence, none could escape the grasp of reaping.
Moreover, this reaping was extremely covert, nearly watertight. Those who knew this key secret were exceedingly few.
The God-King could reap without a sound—imperceptibly drawing a portion of the power of near all living beings, like countless trickling streams, constantly flowing into himself and converging into truly vast and inexhaustible might.
And this was not only the exploitation of newly created beings' power; it also stole the labor's fruit of all the original gods.
For the creation of the world was not done by the God-King alone, but led by him and carried out together by all the gods.
The world's development, of course, relied upon the participation of all foundational laws—but most of the results were quietly enjoyed by the God-King alone.
Many Titans had long wondered why Kronos could grow so powerful, so quickly, as if without end.
The speed of everyone else's increase in power simply could not compare—in fact, it was worlds apart.
The crucial secret among all this Kronos hid exceedingly well, never revealing even a shred of it to any god.
By reaping a portion of the power of nearly all living beings and gathering it into a single god, and by accumulating this over countless eons, the power amassed became unimaginably vast. It would be strange if he did not grow swiftly mighty—strange if he were not invincible.
The power of a single living being may be negligible, but no one can stand against the terrifying force accumulated by an uncountable number.
The God-King's world-invincible power contained a "contribution" from every tiny life—it was a might formed by the convergence of countless lives together.
Only now, these ordinary beings who had added bricks to the God-King's power were to face the greatest might he wielded—with their own "contributions" within it.
They were swept up by their own power, and could only drift with the current.
Facing a war in which the God-King brought his full might to bear, they could only pray in despair to fate in the unseen.
But before a war between two supreme god-kings, even fate seemed so weak and helpless.
The God-King, who gathered the universe's might into himself—his divine power was so formidable it could shake the cosmos!
Even now, though his strength had been greatly reduced, cut by Zeus six times over, the power remaining still made gods tremble.
As with Mount Othrys now—this once boundlessly majestic divine mountain had become a wrecked ruin in just a few breaths under the mere aftershocks of the God-King's rage.
Of course, this also meant that restoring Mount Othrys, without the help of Mother Gaia, was truly a labor on the order of heaven itself.
Even if Kronos was a god of creation, the workload was akin to "hand-molding" the matter of half a star system. It truly gave him a headache; this colossal project only made his heart more irritable and wrathful.
When had he ever suffered such indignity?
And while putting this wreckage of Mount Othrys back in order, he also unexpectedly discovered something that threw more fuel onto his fury.
His lover, the beautiful and delicate ocean nymph Philyra, had been crushed beneath the towering peak, with not even a chance to escape—reduced to ash on the spot.
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