"Apollo. Those rays of sunlight just now. That was you, wasn't it?"
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Stop denying it; your expression already gave you away completely.
He is supposed to be your sister's follower, not yours."
"That's right, brother, you should pull the sunlight back.
Compared to sunlight, that child is obviously more brilliant bathed in moonlight anyway."
Up in the heavens at that moment,
A cluster of gods were having a casual conversation.
Apollo, with a dark line forming across his thoughts, looked at his sister.
Not only was she not taking his side, she was actually...
Not that he would pretend he hadn't noticed.
As someone who doubled as the lighting director, Apollo had caught how these gods looked when they saw that tall and commanding figure illuminated by the several beams of light breaking through the clouds.
Like they were barely keeping themselves from drooling.
As for Artemis's words,
Apollo did not agree at all.
Only a hero bathed in the light of the god of light could truly be called the most radiant.
Damn it.
Thinking about how he missed his chance by one step, how he had wanted to fully savor the joy of a protégé's growth only for his own sister to cut in and take that remarkable hero from him,
Apollo felt the regret welling up all over again.
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Meanwhile, on another side.
"Very good!! Then let the new battle begin!!" As Zeus's authoritative voice rang through the heavens,
The people below finally came back to their senses from the frenzy.
Since the previous bout had been voided, Paris's result was cancelled, and a new round would need to be held.
Considering that Paris had just fought one bout and was already significantly worn down, sending him straight back into another fight would be no different from handing away a free loss.
The Trojan side began deciding their lineup again.
This time they were cautious and did not send anyone forward first, choosing to wait and see who Greece put out.
The Greek heroes, having recovered from the shock and regained their composure, listened as Odysseus suggested sending the king of Sparta first.
Just as the Trojan side had done before, fielding the least powerful fighter to probe the enemy's strength.
Of course, Odysseus would never say the king of Sparta was the weakest.
He used a certain amount of rhetoric and successfully convinced the suffering king to volunteer.
On Night's side, he was in no rush to step forward either.
After pulling out the divine spear, he returned to the formation and calmly cleaned it, raising no objection to this new order of appearance.
Very quickly,
As the king of Sparta stepped out, the warrior who appeared on the Trojan side was the Amazon queen Penthesilea.
Unlike what might happen in the myths, where armor made gender unclear, this time the lineup had been announced by the gods themselves.
So, seeing a woman step forward as his opponent,
Even though Penthesilea's face was hidden behind her armor, the king of Sparta Menelaus was furious, feeling personally humiliated.
"Is Troy out of men? They actually sent a woman to the battlefield!" he taunted before the fight even began.
Penthesilea said nothing in response and simply hurled her weapon at him without warning.
Boom!!
A terrifying burst of force exploded outward, as though cleaving through thunder itself.
The sudden and lightning-fast attack caught Menelaus completely off guard, and he scrambled frantically to dodge.
Having barely ducked under it, he looked up to see her charging on horseback, drawing the sword at her side and swinging for his neck in one flowing motion.
Menelaus kept dodging, but the elbow strike that followed the sword caught him fully.
He gagged and retched.
Before he could react, a full back throw sent him into the ground. Boom!!
After a crash that shook and cracked the earth, the hero Menelaus went silent.
It was only when the rainbow goddess announced that the king of Sparta had lost consciousness that the heroes understood he had been knocked out.
The humiliating sight made the expressions of the Greek heroes go sour, and what surprised them even more was the terrifying strength Penthesilea displayed in that fight.
Even if Menelaus was not among the very top tier of warriors, Penthesilea had handled him with startling ease.
The heroes stopped taking her lightly purely because she was a woman.
Odysseus was sweating at his temples.
In a different situation, he might have been indifferent to the outcome of the war itself.
But this duel was held under the witness of the great god Zeus.
If Greece lost, the suspended divine punishment would come down doubled.
Greece had to win.
And the only remaining fighters were he and Griffith.
Recalling the ferocious figure of Griffith in his battle with Diomedes, soaked in blood and fighting with savage intensity,
Odysseus took a slow, deep breath.
He gritted his teeth and volunteered to go second, to create an opening for Griffith.
"If I can defeat that Amazon queen,
Then the only threat left that could truly challenge you will be the strongest of them all, Hector!
Griffith! I will do everything I can to wear down Hector's stamina.
That is our only chance at winning."
Odysseus, knowing exactly how much was at stake, set aside every grudge and petty thought and spoke to Night with genuine sincerity.
Then without waiting for the latter to respond, he walked toward the battlefield with the air of someone who had already accepted whatever came.
On his way out he caught a sight that made his expression go stiff.
The Amazon queen Penthesilea had lifted the unconscious king of Sparta on her spear and ridden back, dumping him into the Trojan formation.
It was something Penthesilea thought of in the moment and simply did.
The Greek side wore collective expressions of people who had eaten something foul.
What?!
The strategy they had planned to use against the Trojan side, the capture of the hero Paris, was still unachieved.
And now Menelaus was the one taken prisoner first?
Agamemnon and the heroes were outraged, but the gods' messenger, the rainbow goddess Iris, told them this was not a violation of the rules.
A victor taking a defeated, unconscious opponent as a prisoner was perfectly standard.
The rainbow goddess Iris thought back to the command God-king Zeus had just given her.
'No matter what, Troy had to win.'
Until Agamemnon went back and apologized to Achilles.
So the rainbow goddess tilted toward the Trojan side as well.
This was clearly the result of Achilles's mother, the sea goddess Thetis, and her earlier request taking effect.
Zeus intended to make Agamemnon learn a painful lesson.
The heroes, swallowing their fury, could do nothing but watch the second bout begin.
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Penthesilea against Odysseus.
Though Greece sent out a top-quality hero this time,
Odysseus, whose intelligence far exceeded his raw combat ability, was still slightly below the strongest demigods in terms of sheer physical fighting power.
He had thought about using the natural strength advantage of a male fighter to break Penthesilea down.
But Odysseus was not careless.
He fought with calculated caution, advancing step by step, bringing his abilities to the sharpest point he could manage.
However, he greatly overestimated himself and greatly underestimated the Amazon queen, a demigod in her own right.
A hero not known for physical power, operating under enormous psychological pressure on top of everything else, seemed to have a predetermined outcome.
He had hoped to buy some time for the last hope of the whole Greek side, but he seemed to have forgotten what his actual limits were.
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(End of the Chapter)