However, in the direct clash between Zeus and Kronos, these two supreme God-Kings, every material existence and every physical concept turned to naught, as if unreal. Their sole purpose was to set off the power of two sovereigns that surpassed all.
Zeus shook out his hand, feeling the countershock traveling back through his fist, and could not help but sigh inwardly: truly worthy of an invincible God-King—hard as can be, a walking black hole—no, even more terrifying than a black hole.
A punch so fearsome it could shatter a river of stars and destroy a star system—yet when it landed on Kronos, the God-King, aside from blasting him away, it left almost no substantive harm at all, let alone piercing his divine body or annihilating him.
Zeus had barely finished marveling when Kronos's vast divine body had already steadied. He let out a deafening roar and charged back, bellowing.
Being driven back earlier had been mere carelessness; he had not expected Zeus's strength to have reached such a height.
Zeus, too, unfolded his own heaven-supporting, earth-bracing divine body without the slightest retreat, loosing a thunderous roar in turn, and the two fell to grappling.
The two Titan bodies crashed together in the void with savage force, grinding everything around them into nothingness.
Before absolute power, flame could not draw near; cultivated growth was swept to dust by the gale; and even Queen Rhea's law that could alter the trajectories of all motion could not, under this absolute disparity of divine might, so much as constrain the God-King's body now driven completely berserk.
Space tore with each of their collisions, revealing deep rifts of void. Cosmic hurricanes and aether tides battered their bodies and amounted to no more than a breeze across the face.
Fragments of space sharp enough to cut all things could not even shear off a single strand of their hair.
Even the foundational laws that constitute the universe's bedrock could not touch their battlefield in the least, much less influence its outcome.
Mount Olympus, newly lifted by Mother of All, Gaia, was reduced to rubble within mere breaths after Zeus and Kronos began, its debris scattering dazed into the cosmic void, then ground by the battle's aftershocks back to the most primal material particles.
The sky, along with the earth, heaved violently in the God-Kings' combat. Everything around their battlefield was ceaselessly erased back to the purest elemental sources, as if the cosmos had returned to the primordial state of chaos at the world's beginning.
All was worn down into emptiness; only boundless silence and disorder remained.
Fearful portents arose one after another; earth, fire, water, and air—those primal elements—spread and rolled mindlessly through the void, steeped in chaos.
Within that chaotic nothingness, the only real existences left were the two Titan giants who propped the heavens and trod the earth.
With the most primitive, most feral means, they hammered one another, fist to flesh, each blow containing power enough to annihilate a star river.
Under this terrifying pressure, the other gods could not approach in the slightest—in fact they could only keep retreating, lest they be caught in the battle's aftershocks.
Rhea, the Mother Goddess with a grave face, guarded Hestia and the others with taut features and swiftly withdrew beyond the world to keep them safe.
Just-returned Poseidon stared in shock at the devastation and regeneration before his eyes.
In his sea-blue gaze flickered a trace of disbelief and fear.
Though he had been imprisoned within the God-King's body and had peered at a portion of Kronos's might from Kronos's perspective, the God-King had gone too long without truly displaying his power in the outer world.
So long that almost all gods had blurred memories of the God-King's strength.
He had always thought that, no matter how formidable the God-King was, with six great gods gathered on their side, and with Mother Rhea, herself a primordial Titan, lending aid, they ought to have at least a fighting chance—not be completely helpless.
Only now did he understand how childish and laughable that thought was.
If not for Zeus, equally terrifying and able to stand against the God-King head-on, he and his siblings who had once been swallowed would soon have been swallowed again.
Mother of All, Gaia, watched impassively as Kronos and Zeus tangled, turning what had been a whole stretch of heaven and earth into a complete mess.
All matter was battered back to its most primitive base particles, and then, between their collisions, matter re-gathered again, evolving into earth, fire, water, and air in their primal forms.
Then this newborn matter was again destroyed in durations beyond measure, and again created—cycling without end.
Gaia looked on in secret and sighed in silence. This was why—even she could not directly resist Kronos.
Kronos truly was too strong—so strong that even Mother of All had nothing she could do before him.
He had become so mighty that no single law could bind him easily; any isolated law, so long as he was on guard, could not limit him in the least, much less pose him any substantive threat.
The God-King Kronos had gone too long without truly acting before the world; many gods did not know how strong the God-King truly was. But Gaia, as Mother of All, knew all too well the terrifying degree of his power.
And the Kronos who now looked frightening enough to scare gods to death was already in a state "hacked down" by Zeus to a wreck; his strength was far from what it had been at his peak.
Even so, he remained indisputably the strongest among the Titan giants!
By the same token, Zeus's formidableness far outstripped even her expectations.
Though Zeus was slightly at a disadvantage in direct confrontation with Kronos, the gap was not great; it was an almost evenly matched stalemate.
At the very least, Kronos could not, in such a pitched fight, spare a hand to deal with anyone else.
Gaia understood in her heart that Zeus was not a child who could be easily raised under her aegis.
Even if she herself had engendered and nurtured him personally, it would be difficult to rear someone so strong he could meet the God-King head-on.
Zeus's strength had deeper causes; it was not something that could be brought up merely by drinking holy honey and goat's milk. It was an innate, beyond-imagination potential.
Nor had he reached the limit of his growth now—he was still becoming stronger.
As the source of all things, the Mother of All could clearly feel the infinite potential and surging power contained within Zeus, which is why she chose to support him; otherwise she would never help a god destined to lose.
Even so, Zeus's might was beyond her expectations.
She did not yet know that this Zeus was also far from his own peak—he had even "carved off" himself twice.
And he had not yet obtained the thunder that was his destiny.
This fearsome war drew the attention of all gods.
Heaven and earth shook, the universe crumbled, aether tides and spatial storms swept all—so terrible a scene that it made countless gods' spirits tremble and their divinity waver.
The God-King, long inactive, now acted with full force, and his dreadful power overawed many gods watching in secret.
All gods knew the God-King was absolutely the strongest, but even so, this strength exceeded their imagination and all they knew of power.
And this new god who had burst into the sky—Zeus—was absurdly strong as well, strong to an unimaginable degree!
He could actually stand nearly equal with a God-King so fearsome and so powerful to the extreme—this was a myth among myths!
No—the two of them were gods among gods!
Aside from a limited few, the other gods were no different from mere things before them.
Both sides were too terrifying—so strong as to the utmost degree.
Even the universe itself—even this grand world whose mass should not exist—kept keening under the battle of these two God-Kings, bearing wounds beyond imagining.
The great gods who only wanted to use Zeus as a spear, and those who followed merely because of Zeus's birth, now had completely changed their mindset and were filled with awe.
And countless goddesses watched Zeus's blood-soaked figure with brightened eyes—especially many warm, unrestrained daughters of the Ocean. Their gazes brimmed with worship and adoration, swooning over Zeus's power beyond the limit.
In this dreadful war of chaos and ruin, only the Weaver of Death, Iapetus, and his eldest son Atlas and second son Menoetius still held an unshakable loyalty and longed to join the battlefield no god dared to join—to go help the God-King Kronos.
But Clymene held them back with all her might; the same words again—until the God-King spoke, this was the God-King family's household affair, not to be entangled in!
What if they could not decide a victor and made peace in the end? The gods who helped would be finished then.
Clymene almost failed to dissuade them this time; it was only with their third son, Prometheus—the famous clever one of the family—pulling hard alongside her, and relying on his extraordinary wisdom and eloquence, that they barely managed to hold them back and stay their hands for now.
Her foolish husband and children—truly they worried her to death.
Look at that battlefield—neither side is one you can afford to offend!
Whatever the gods thought, the two God-Kings' battle raged on, with every great deity in the universe a spectator with their heart in their throat.
The outcome of this battle would determine the universe's future.
Determine everything.
All the gods were waiting for an ending.
That ending would decide what choices they must make.
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