Under the gaze of everyone present, Griffith called out, "If their form, ability, and power are exactly the same, why is it that one becomes the king and controls the battle, while the other becomes the horse and carries the king?!"
As he asked this, his eyes locked unblinking onto Penthesilea, and he began releasing his nature as a dragon-born without holding anything back.
Boom!!
The fierce wild energy struck Penthesilea, and the Amazon queen's eyes suddenly turned deep red.
As though she glimpsed another world.
In a realm of blood and fire and nothing but battle,
Fighting, fighting, only fighting.
In endless battle, endless slaughter, a crimson queen with bloodstained lips curved into an utterly captivating smile.
That was?
And gradually the vision seemed to merge with reality, and the figure of the hero in front of her began to change.
In her eyes, Night slowly became a different image.
A red aura, dark clothing, wearing her own face and bearing her own posture, but burning with an ominous crimson flame and smiling with wild abandon.
Another self.
And in that moment, this other self,
Night said, "There is only one answer."
The voice grew quiet and then burst out like the collapse of a mountain and a crashing tide.
"Instinct!!"
Boom!! It detonated.
When that classic line from a Bleach universe appeared for the first time in this mythological world of another era,
Something no one had ever witnessed at this level of savage conviction, yet which inexplicably set the blood of every god boiling with excitement, what kind of impact was that?
Thud!!
Among the twelve principal gods, the war god Ares gripped his throne in excitement and snapped off a corner of it.
His eyes blazed as though lightning was shooting from them, and for the first time he found words for what he had always felt was the greatest difference of all.
"Instinct! Instinct?!!
Yes. That is it. That is exactly it.
What I have always been searching for, the highest joy that warriors should pursue and understand, the ultimate pleasure!"
To anyone watching,
Ares looked on the verge of abdicating his own throne and descending to earth to personally invite Night to take the seat of the war god for him.
Everyone could tell Ares deeply admired and was moved by what he just said.
Down on the earth, facing the heroes who had been struck speechless, stunned as though hit by a massive storm of thought and unable to speak,
Night's words were not finished.
"What does it take for a man to release strength beyond his limits?
To transcend equality and become a true king? It is a hunger—an absolute, starving desire for battle and power.
It is the refusal to let a single enemy escape; the will to crush them, tear them apart, and grind their very souls to dust. It is the pure, unadulterated instinct for slaughter.
Carved into the deepest layers of our soul, etched at the most primal level, lies a sharp and terrifyingly precise killing response. That is the difference. The King lives by it; the Horse is broken by it."
And you have none of this.
That extracted instinct.
You always fight with reason and want to defeat the enemy using reason.
You have sheathed the edge of your blade. But who exactly do you intend to cut? That is why you are weaker than me."
Boom!!
When that terrifying presence, like the howl of a primordial beast, was released in full, it reached into the deepest place of yearning inside Penthesilea.
That overwhelming form left her transfixed.
Instinct?
Like throwing a punch with five parts of your strength but deliberately holding back two and only landing three, keeping something in reserve to protect yourself, and thus being unable to release your full power.
Precisely because she had understood this principle deeply from childhood, or rather because every woman of the Amazon understood this principle,
As women born to be warriors, who revered the brave and fearless and powerful war god Ares, they feared no enemy however strong.
And in pursuit of that frenzied battle, they could abandon all defense entirely.
Yet this principle she had always lived by, in the end she still needed another to teach it to her again, and this time with a far deeper understanding.
Then,
Like feeling some lock deep inside her finally come open, releasing the beast within, the thorned rose who was already savage and unapproachable on any battlefield released something even more forbidding.
Deep rumbling!!
The blood of a god was boiling.
It had to be said, Penthesilea, inheriting Ares's bloodline, was every bit the battle fanatic her father was.
Just like Ares, she held Night's words in the highest regard and almost wanted to leap down herself and fight that mortal below, to enjoy a perfectly glorious battle.
And as one of the two fighters directly involved in this battle, Penthesilea felt a joy beyond words. She was going to give everything. She was going to savor this fight.
She understood now.
She finally understood exactly where she had been falling short.
And so,
Blood began to burn.
The useless and fragile mortal part of her began to be cast aside. The blood of a god began to boil. Reason began to evaporate. Nothing remained in her mind except the absolute determination to give everything in response to this battle.
Tear through it, bite through it, crush it, blast it apart, shred it. Kill with the sword, split with the blade, even crush with her legs if it came to that.
Turn the whole body into a weapon. As long as blood still flowed, as long as consciousness had not yet gone, the battle would continue.
Until this feeling, this glory, had been fought all the way to the very end of the world and the last moment of time.
Only then would it be enough.
Outside,
Boom!! The instant Penthesilea's realization hit, crimson flames began to rise from her body.
Her hair and pupils began shifting toward deep red.
Like the blood being squeezed out through every capillary, breaking loose and dyeing her entire form from the inside out.
For every hero across all of Greece, this was an absolutely shattering day.
Watching one transformation after another.
Those two on the battlefield, so different from any other hero, who came out swinging like the highest draw in a deck from the very start, burning through it within two minutes, and fighting like a gas explosion that would tear down every structure in the surrounding area.
It was fortunate they were outside the city walls and not inside. Otherwise Troy would have lost a few floors off its height.
Odysseus was covered in cold sweat.
I was just fighting against something at that level?
The fact that he was not beaten to death on the spot genuinely felt like the only blessing in an otherwise disastrous situation.
The scene in front of him even brought back the hazy memory of Griffith's first arrival in camp, and that fight with Diomedes.
This was even wilder than that.
And at this point Odysseus glanced over at Diomedes on instinct, and suddenly noticed,
Diomedes was trembling, like someone holding himself back from something with everything he had.
"What is wrong with you?" Odysseus asked.
Then a terrifying energy and visible flames burst off Diomedes's body. Like a devil resurrected from the depths of the underworld, he showed an expression that nearly stopped Odysseus's heart.
Diomedes: "I can't stand it. I cannot stand this!! In the middle of a true warrior's battle, I am forced to stand outside the field and watch. Aaaaaa!! I want to fight!!
To show valor before the goddess Athena whom I revere, and offer her victory!
Damn it all!! Why was I not chosen as one of the fighters for this duel?"
At some point Great Ajax had also appeared beside the two of them, and a rumbling voice came from beneath that enormous armor: "Agreed. Even I feel my blood surging from watching this!!"