Heavy breathing filled Diomedes' ears.
Some heroes were the kind who grew more dangerous the more they were wounded, whose combat power rose the deeper into a fight they went.
Diomedes was exactly that kind.
Or rather, it was only after taking wounds that he truly began to release the potential that made even gods tremble.
Boom!!
The ground caved in beneath a stomping kick loaded with everything he had.
Knowing there was no avoiding the spear, Diomedes went all-in.
A wild grin broke across his face as he roared, "Come on then!!
I acknowledge your strength!
Man with an undying body just like Achilles!"
He raised his shield and charged directly at Night.
This time all focus is on a single point, battle spirit and bloodlust burning without limit.
Boom!!
When Diomedes's shield met Night's spear in a direct clash,
Diomedes felt in that moment as though he were actually fighting against a mirror image of Achilles.
That feeling sent his blood surging to the absolute limit.
With my mortal body, fighting a demigod!!
Yes, come on! Today I will break the limit that says a mortal cannot defeat a demigod.
Who said a truly powerful hero cannot come from ordinary humanity?
Holding to that conviction with all he had,
In the age of Greek heroes, there existed a particular kind of spiritual force, a force rooted entirely in belief.
Strong enough that sometimes, if the conviction was sufficient, it could allow a mortal who had received nothing more than a single blessing from Athena to slay a god.
Even Athena herself could not have accomplished that feat, yet a mortal could.
And now, after Night had found his opening and wounded him, Diomedes exploded into full force in direct combat.
Night's approach up until this point had relied somewhat on tricks.
Information advantage here, leveraging the deer's power there, landing a disabling blow with a sucker-punch technique before his opponent could fully engage.
Now, fighting one-on-one against one of this era's finest heroes after driving him into a corner and triggering that fearsome eruption, Night felt as though he had walked face-first into a mountain.
So, there's no need to hold back anymore.
In an instant, recognizing that there was no path left but to fight with everything he had,
Night activated the blue flame mode.
Burning blue fire began rising from the corners of his eyes, and with a roar of his own, the force behind his spear increased.
Two waves of violent force erupted from the point where their weapons clashed and swept outward in all directions, sending countless soldiers and structures flying.
The next moment, boom!!
The earth under their feet shattered and sank, and the surrounding ground began to spread and collapse inward.
Odysseus gritted his teeth.
"Two monsters..."
He immediately started roaring commands and ordering soldiers to pull back.
He knew Diomedes's power.
On an ordinary battlefield, even the finest heroes rarely had the chance to display their true fighting ability, mostly facing regular soldiers.
But that presence, dangerous and overflowing with life force like a human-shaped Leviathan, told Odysseus that even if Diomedes, in terms of raw power, might fall slightly short of Achilles, the blazing new star,
It was not by much.
If Achilles and Hector were in the absolute top tier of Greek heroes,
Then Diomedes was at the very peak of the first tier, a man who pushed endlessly toward the level of those true monsters.
What this guy truly lacked was only the physical gifts and the weapon to match.
Such as Achilles's undying body of steel or Hector's powerful divine weapon.
A man like this had been pushed to such extremes by a youth who looked barely older than his own children.
That Night could display such staggering power was something Odysseus had not anticipated.
Even setting aside all the tricks, the pure, ferocious, and unstoppable destructive force he was showing right now, something like that of a dragon, was astonishing to everyone watching.
And in the middle of their direct clash, Night felt the power on the other side of that shield continuing to build and strengthen and finally understood why this man had been able to go to war with multiple gods and come out as terrifying as ever.
Damn.
A berserker type who just kept getting stronger.
It's practically the standard talent package for a protagonist.
Where did this cockroach of a saint and fighter come from?
The man really was a warrior who believed in Athena.
But at that same moment, inside Night, Apollo's blessing, that force that brought miracles, was flickering wildly.
Just when his output should have reached its limit, a surge of heat came rushing through, and his arm found one more measure of strength, pushing the shield back.
Diomedes gritted his teeth. "...!!"
He still had something left?
But because one of his arms had been injured earlier, even at full eruption he could only push with one arm, and now Diomedes felt the first cracks appearing in his momentum.
This guy is the same type?
Still growing in the middle of a fight.
Now this is a real warrior!
And the real warrior Diomedes was now imagining was actually burning through his own life force at a terrifying rate.
With the goal of sending Diomedes to the underworld permanently,
Night had held back only on not applying the divine-spear concept, fearing some god might notice.
Everything else was on the table now.
He was fighting for his life.
Night was coming fast, and the moment the full darkness fell, no matter how beaten up he was right now, with the moon blessing granting revival and the sun blessing providing combat endurance beyond all limits, he was absolutely certain he would be the one standing at the end.
The sun's blessing locked his health above zero and kept him at peak performance.
The moon's blessing continuously replenished his recovery.
Together they made him nearly impossible to kill through attrition.
Creak.
His bones were beginning to show signs of fracturing.
He had accelerated his development too late.
Compared to heroes who had been training since childhood, almost all of Night's strength came from feats feeding back power and from talent growth.
If not for the red dragon Helena's contract continuously supplying him with force, going head to head with a top-tier hero like this was still too early for him.
But then Night noticed a bug.
His cells were dying, but the power drawn through the soul contract from Helena was immediately flowing in to make up the deficit.
Under this extreme consumption, the rate of the feedback went absolutely haywire, as though something had been awakened and activated, accelerating like something had snapped.
If it started as a dropper needle, now it was like someone had turned a firehose on full blast.
(Helena, raging internally: You're drawing straight from the tap now?! Learning tricks from that debt king next door?! Slow down!! I can't take it; you're going to drain me dry!
Precisely because he noticed this, he started squeezing every last bit out of his body without any hesitation.
Blood began seeping from his eyes.
No, from all five senses.
His skin was beginning to crack.
But just like Heracles, who once burned through all his human blood chasing the divine deer, replacing his blood entirely with divine blood, and in the end came out not weakened but stronger and sharper than ever,
The red dragon's power kept flowing in.
And then in one of Night's eyes, the blue flame suddenly vanished.
No, it was swallowed by a crimson flame, and then the two began to coil around each other, twisting into a two-colored blaze.
But Night was smiling.
This moment was witnessed by a certain god watching from above, a goddess who had been furious at seeing Diomedes pushed to such a state.
That anger suddenly faltered, and she went still.
Why was he smiling?
She could even faintly sense a genuine, heartfelt joy coming from him.
Burning himself out like this just to press the advantage and drive Diomedes to his limit, throwing himself into it with this much desperation, and in the end doing nothing more than putting both of them at the edge of life and death together.
Did that outcome not make him angry?
How could he still smile like that?
Or was it that fighting for his goddess made him this happy and full of joy?
.
.
.
(End of the Chapter)