After Abel was sealed for attempting to crown himself King of the Gods, his name was struck from the ranks of the Twelve Main Gods. So although his divine power remained great—still that of a main‑god‑class deity—he had almost no subordinates left besides a handful of Corona Saints.
Even after so many years, the only one who had bothered to find and free him was the man kneeling before him—Cain.
"Your servant wouldn't dare," Cain replied, neither humble nor arrogant.
Abel stared at him for a long time, then sighed. His words were more bark than bite; at most he'd give Cain a lesson. He truly did not dare kill him. If Cain spoke only for himself, it would be one thing.
What Abel feared was the power behind him. Whoever had been able to locate his place of sealing had to be at least a god from his own era.
Yet he could not place who it might be. Fortunately, whoever it was seemed to have little interest in the earth.
"To defeat Poseidon… it seems my sister Athena has awakened the War Godhead this time." Abel murmured as he gazed up through a gap in the palace ceiling.
"It has been so many years since I saw her…"
"But this time, I will claim dominion over the earth—no matter if I must kill my own sister." His voice hardened. He had not forgotten his former ambition.
Seize the earth. Amass power. Reclaim the throne of King of the Gods.
I will make the gods regret the sins they committed against me.
Behind him, Cain's eyes glowed blood‑red beneath his hood.
"Heh… that idiot uncle of mine ended up sealed by my dear little sister after all. What was he thinking, going to provoke others before he'd even fully awakened?" In another palace opposite Abel's, a tall, handsome man in an ancient Roman helm spoke lazily.
"Earth… rather than leaving it to that weakling sister, it should be mine."
"Ares." Leaning at the war god's side, a charming woman whose allure was tinged with something wicked looked up at him, worry in her eyes.
"It's nothing, Aphrodite. I'm not like that old fool Poseidon. I am the War God—Ares." His tone brimmed with confidence. "Even if my sister has awakened the War Godhead, there's nothing to fear. Believe in me, Aphrodite. This time, I won't fail like before."
"Mm, I believe you." As the saying goes, love makes a woman's IQ drop to zero. Aphrodite gazed at Ares's handsome face, and heat flushed through her body.
Ares seemed to notice. He turned, shot her a wicked smile—
And swept her up, carrying her up the high steps of the palace.
The Goddess of Love, Aphrodite, and the War God, Ares.
After a bout of cloud and rain, Ares, refreshed, issued orders to his four armies of "Flame," "Fire," "Terror," and "Calamity."
"Be ready at all times. Prepare to launch an assault on Athena's Sanctuary."
Though the sea war was over, the North was far from peaceful.
Alongside the Norse Celestial Palace, the other great northern power, the Valhalla Sect, had lost its original leader, Doluba, to an untimely death. Now the sect had fallen into someone else's hands.
That man's name was—
Andreas.
"Heh… Ice Saints. What a weak, pathetic lot. If not for the need to avoid alerting the enemy back then, would I have let you grow so bold? But now, everything that belongs to the Valhalla Sect is mine. Ahahaha!"
"My god… unbelievable. A single drop of blood contains this much energy. And not just that—there's some kind of law woven into it. This is truly a perfect gene. So this is what the gods of this world are like? Amazing. Completely different from all the worlds we've seen before. Perhaps this is the true evolutionary target of the Chimera Ants… it's perfect." A Chimera Ant elite stared, enraptured, at the scarlet droplet in his test tube.
Like a starving man ogling a peerless beauty, utterly lost in it.
Ever since Poseidon fell into Meruem's hands, the Chimera Ant research division had hardly paused for a moment.
Countless elites worked feverishly to analyze the Sea Emperor's divine blood.
Genome plunder was what the Chimera Ants did best. If they could crack the secret of the gods, then in theory all—or at least some—Chimera Ants could become gods.
Unfortunately, while they successfully uncovered part of the truth behind divine genes, the special "law" contained in that blood remained utterly beyond them.
"That special law must be what they call godhead—or divinity," Meruem concluded. It was the power by which gods invoked the rules or domains of the world in battle.
He recalled the sea power Poseidon had used against him—quite formidable.
As Sea Emperor, Poseidon's godhead was the Water Domain, one of the fundamental elements of the world.
And don't think petty lake gods or river gods share that same Water Domain. Impossible. They merely grasp a few scraps of the surface. Poseidon alone holds the true, orthodox Water Domain.
Hades holds a derivative of the twin primal forces of creation and destruction—namely, the Domain of Death, one half of the twin domains of Life and Death.
Zeus embodies Punishment through Lightning. Apollo's case is more unusual—his domain is the Sun, akin to an amplified Fire Domain.
As for Athena's domains, Meruem had never quite figured them out. With two divine offices, she had two domains. One was easy enough to understand: War. Theoretically, any battle anywhere would grant her a buff.
The other was stranger. Under that domain, Saints could explode with their full potential, far beyond their normal limits. In theory, Athena's other domain ought to be Wisdom.
But what, exactly, is wisdom? It's a very broad concept. Precisely because Athena's second domain was like this, the Bronze boys in the original were able to unleash such incredible power.
At last, persistence bore fruit. One month later, the Chimera Ant elites presented Meruem with a conclusion.
That law‑type power could not be granted to every Chimera Ant. There was only one way to obtain a godhead, or divinity.
Seize it from a god.
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