Watching one companion after another take on the appearance of someone about to turn into a combat maniac,
Though they all had genuine ability and would likely become top-tier heroes with enough tempering,
Odysseus, who preferred using his mind, who favored rational combat above all else,
Could not understand the mentality of these battle-hungry warriors, and kept a respectful distance from that kind of fervor.
But he could not deny that warriors with that quality were the most terrifying thing you could encounter on any battlefield.
And at this moment,
Agamemnon, who had discovered yet another quality in Night that he found admirable, who was already treating his earlier words as classic wisdom and wanting to spread them across all of Greece, felt his fondness for Night deepen further.
"Griffith is invincible." He murmured it with an expression of profound peace.
Having now seen the core of Griffith's nature, Agamemnon's feelings were close to overflowing.
Understanding the depth of conviction driving his fighting, who could possibly defeat a warrior like this?
Not Penthesilea. Not Agamemnon himself. Not even Achilles and Hector, Agamemnon was sure,
Well, raw power-wise he might not quite measure up to those two yet.
But given enough time, Griffith would be able to defeat every hero in Greece.
There was nothing left to fear now.
Why? Because that man was right here, standing by his side, standing ahead of him, fighting for him.
Very quickly,
The second round of combat began again.
Boom!!
Two fighters who had abandoned defense, who ignored each other's attacks entirely, and fought purely on instinct.
When their fists split the air and shattered the earth,
When blood soaked the battlefield,
Both of them grew fiercer with every exchange. More and more blood covered Penthesilea. Her armor began to break apart, revealing slender, pale arms that were being covered with countless small cuts, dense as rain.
Blood dyed her form crimson.
But her presence grew stronger with every passing moment.
The mortal blood burning away, dwindling, leaving only the god's blood behind, and growing more formidable with every drop of mortality consumed.
Penthesilea in this moment, transformed like a female tyrant dinosaur in full fury, was like a smaller Ares, her fighting style growing wilder and more ferocious.
And through this process, the power of both fighters continued to climb.
Night too began releasing his strength in stages.
By the end, in that blazing light, the battlefield held only two streaks of colliding radiance.
The path of a king was meant to be different from all others,
Opening a new royal road beneath its own feet in this very moment.
And this contest of kings on the battlefield was not the kind that worldly understanding could encompass, the kind that would make figures like Agamemnon wary, yet they could not help but admire that blinding brilliance anyway.
At last,
Boom!!
Like two meteors falling together from the sky.
In the massive cloud of dust and smoke, the two figures locked in battle disappeared from sight, and everything on the field went still.
Was the battle over?
Who won?
People's breathing quickened, desperate to know who the final victor was.
In that atmosphere, even the gods found themselves slightly tense.
If at the start Penthesilea's strength genuinely posed no threat to him, then through the process of burning away the mortal half and approaching the divine, even with the boost of divine equipment, Night had begun to feel a faint pressure.
But then,
When the smoke and dust cleared,
The only one still standing on the field was Night, stripped to the waist.
Everyone's mouths fell open.
"What, what is that?!" Patroclus cried out.
Night was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm.
On that aesthetically powerful form, across the well-defined chest and abdomen, lines and curves were carved in like molten rock branded into the skin.
That brilliance extended all the way up to his face, and when that stunning face was once again visible to the open air, it carried an additional edge of dangerous beauty, making the overall image even more compelling.
His lower half was clad in golden armor and a battle kilt with a deep crimson trailing cloth.
The form bore a faint resemblance to a certain most ancient of kings after his final ascension.
Though the visual impact was clearly a step beyond.
That substance flowing like magma through skin and muscle radiated a pulse of power that was both magical and divine, deeply unsettling to the senses.
No one fully understood what had just happened.
But when the goddesses looked at Griffith, silver hair flowing, standing with quiet authority over the earth, eyes calm as he looked down at the unconscious Amazon queen at his feet, they let out a collective excited cry at that image full of masculine force.
And at this moment, Penthesilea, clearly the defeated party, was showing an expression that mixed pain and satisfaction in a contradictory blend, her entire body burning hot, flushed and collapsed like a lovely petite young woman who had drunk herself senseless and was waiting to be picked up from the side of the road.
By this point, one of
Night's pupils had taken on the golden form of the dragon-born's eye.
In the latter half of that fight, he had used his full power and even borrowed significant additional strength from the red dragon on credit.
A fully awakened demigod was genuinely terrifying.
If a demigod before awakening still fell within the range of human, then a demigod after awakening had begun to evolve into the range of the divine.
Fortunately, at the final critical moment, as though responding to his fighting spirit, the divine equipment seemed to undergo a new change.
The concept armor began actively bonding with him, fusing into his body, granting him greater magical power and greater foundation for battle.
Divine equipment, divine equipment.
If it were only remarkable for being extraordinarily defensive and impossible to destroy, it would not deserve to be called divine.
That level, Achilles could achieve through his own natural ability alone.
The possibility of responding to its owner's will, evolving together, even transforming its own form,
Night finally discovered what was truly special about the concept divine equipment he obtained.
And at this moment, he could not even feel the armor being worn at all.
It was as though it had always been his own power, completely merged with him into one.
Though this was also likely because the concept equipment had no physical form to begin with, making it far easier to reshape itself and even merge into a human body.
And it seemed that because the concept equipment and the original armor were one and the same,
Even the actual physical armor of Achilles from this world underwent a special transformation, completing a mode conversion and merging directly into Night's body.
The concept equipment served as a bridge, fully absorbing and transforming the materialized armor into new power added to his form.
Whether this transformation was irreversible, or whether he simply hadn't figured out how to reverse it yet due to it being the first time, he couldn't immediately find a way to take it off.
So.
"Does this count as me having accidentally kept the divine equipment?"
Well, the heel probably wouldn't mind lending the equipment for Night to use for a while, but would absolutely not want to give it away permanently.
But in this state that looked like a final ascension, he had no idea how to return to normal.
And at this moment, whatever he was thinking about it,
After a few seconds of silence, the battlefield suddenly erupted in frenzied cheering.
One wave rising over the last, climbing higher and higher, until it reached the clouds themselves and even the gods were startled by it.
"Griffith!!"
"Griffith!!!!!"
"Griffith!!!!!" x N
At this moment, everyone forgot themselves, and in their minds only the name of that perfect and captivating man remained.
The hero. "Griffith!"
.
.
.
(End of the Chapter)