When Ares, looking utterly disheveled and still hitching up his pants, brought Aphrodite to the battlefield, the fight had already reached a white‑hot stage.
Each Gold Saint was locked in a dead‑even battle with one of the three remaining legion commanders under Ares. Just from the circles of surging Cosmos rippling out around them, one could see how fierce the fighting was.
Although the two sides were evenly matched in strength, this was never going to drag into some so‑called "thousand‑day war." Berserkers were famous for not caring about their own lives. They were anything but conservative, and every move they made was an all‑out barrage that completely abandoned defense, trading injury for injury.
As for Aphrodite's Beauty Warriors, they were already all lying on the ground. The little toughs had taken less than ten seconds to deal with them. After that, they also threw themselves into battle against the Berserkers. By now, even Jabu among the little toughs had already reached the early stage of the Seventh Sense. While that level of strength was still not enough to handle a legion‑commander‑class opponent from the three great legions, taking on the senior officers within the legions posed no problem at all.
The little toughs' strength was rising at a terrifying pace in the midst of battle, like they were riding a rocket, especially the top powerhouse among them, Ikki. At this point, even a high‑tier Gold Saint might not be his match, which left the Sanctuary's Silver and Bronze Saints green with envy and resentment.
But there was no helping it—he was one of Athena's Five Personal Guards. In the entire younger generation of Silver Saints, only Misty and Algol had barely reached the beginner standard of a Gold Saint.
Zhaka, Cepheus, and Orpheus belonged to the older generation.
"Athena, huh—didn't think you'd really come. Do you dare fight me?" A golden‑red God Cloth shimmered into existence over Ares's body. He wore a rather decent‑looking Roman helmet, a massive shield bearing a sun emblem on his left arm, and a huge spear in his right hand.
Boundless divine power poured off of him, and paired with Ares's naturally handsome looks, he was practically like the lead in some Korean drama—only missing a heroine who hadn't yet been hit by a car or diagnosed with a terminal illness.
"Why wouldn't I?" With Saori's clear shout, Athena's own golden, gleaming God Cloth appeared on her body.
Channeling divine power, Saori rose into the air and brought her scepter crashing down toward where Ares stood.
Just because that scepter was flat‑headed and lacked sharp edges didn't mean its destructive power was low. In Athena's hands, that thing's might was immeasurable; even Hades had ultimately died from a single thrust of Athena's scepter.
Let alone Ares himself. In terms of divine power, Ares was far inferior to Hades.
"Good thing I had Athena's Cloth finished early. Otherwise, if she had to fight Ares now, she'd probably be at a disadvantage. With just Athena's scepter alone, taking down this war god wouldn't be so easy." Stroking his smooth chin, Meruem watched the duel in the sky.
This time, he had no intention of stepping in. Ares wasn't Poseidon; though he bore the title of war god, he was a notoriously pathetic one, with more defeats than anyone could count.
He'd even been captured several times by the Titans, and once was stuffed into a tiny jar. Back when Ares fought Athena, he'd already lost multiple times.
If Saori had awakened the divinity of wisdom, Meruem might have worried a bit, but what had awakened was the divinity of war. She could rip enemies apart in minutes—cough, cough. In short, pummeling Ares was no problem.
Sure enough, after just the first exchange, the sheer force behind Saori's blow had left Ares's arms tingling and numb.
"What trick did that little bitch Athena pull?!" Aphrodite was the classic idiot in love; at the first sign of Ares being pushed back, her immediate reaction was to blame some scheme of Athena's.
She never stopped to think that although Ares was one of the Twelve Olympians, his divine power and combat strength were hardly top‑tier. Even her nominal husband, that famous lame fire god (god of craftsmen) Hephaestus, had more than enough ability to beat up this so‑called war god Ares.
On that note, Hephaestus was not actually ugly. It was just that his complexion wasn't as fair and handsome as Ares's; he was a typical dark‑skinned, square‑faced big guy, and yes, one leg was a bit lame. But that did nothing to diminish his status in the heavens. Hephaestus's divine power and fighting strength were among the top ranks on Olympus. Not even Hades or Apollo and their ilk dared lightly make him an enemy, because Hephaestus not only had tremendous divine power and combat strength, but also the skill to forge superb armor, weapons, and other artifacts. You never knew how many divine weapons Hephaestus had on hand—he was basically a walking, talking Doraemon.
He was also one of the very few gods who had no strong objection to Athena's efforts to protect humanity.
But Aphrodite, as goddess of beauty, only liked those pretty‑faced, flashy types who looked sharp but were useless in a real fight.
Seeing Ares gradually fall into a disadvantage against Saori, Aphrodite drew her weapon—the bow and arrows of the love goddess.
"Tsk, tsk, how embarrassing, oh revered goddess of love and beauty. But this is a battle between Athena and Ares. Don't you think it's a bit unfair to step in now?" As Meruem's sinister voice rang out, one of his hands had already clamped firmly around Aphrodite's slender neck, with not the slightest hint of pity for her beauty.
"If you move recklessly again, I can't promise I won't be disrespectful to you, 'Lady Goddess.'" Meruem looked with clear distaste at the absolutely stunning goddess in front of him.
Purely in terms of appearance, Aphrodite's beauty did indeed outclass every woman Meruem had ever seen; it was beauty that could topple cities and nations. Even Saori paled beside her, and her explosive figure could easily stir desire in any man. But despite such a goddess, Aphrodite only stirred a feeling of revulsion in Meruem.
Because with his supremely keen senses, Meruem smelled a strong stench of rank fishiness on Aphrodite.
As a man, he certainly knew what that meant.
Meruem was not the kind of guy who froze in his tracks at the sight of a pretty face. When it came to killing decisively and "destroying flowers with a cruel hand," he had no qualms about going that far.
With Meruem's fingers locked around her throat, Aphrodite could not utter a sound, but from the furious shapes of her lips, it was easy to see what she was trying to say.
"How dare you threaten a god—"
But threatened her he had, and so what? What could she do about it? Run back to heaven and complain? Aphrodite had eloped from the heavens with Ares. If the two of them ever dared return to the celestial realm, the first god who wouldn't spare them would be Hephaestus. Aphrodite, at least in name, was Hephaestus's wife. Not only had she cuckolded him, she had even run off with her lover.
Even a clay man has some fire in him; when a "nice guy" gets angry, it can be terrifying. All the more so when that nice guy happens to be a powerful god.
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