On the very night Thalos completed the "Full Collection" achievement, Odin's little heart was quivering nonstop.
In a straight-up divine battle, even with all that supplementary power, he still couldn't outlast the trio of Athena, Apollo, and Heracles. Going straight to self-destructing small worlds and slamming them into the Greek world was already the limit of his resistance.
He hadn't expected big brother Thalos to really come through—actually helping him take care of both Athena and Apollo.
Now Odin could finally, once again, stand up straight.
"I told you, everything was within my and big brother's calculations." Odin, in high spirits, came back to himself and looked down over the gods.
The gods all lowered their heads and bowed, paying lofty respect to this ruthless god-king.
Odin's methods were venomous, but effective.
What's more, when he had Ah Puch blow up the Dogon world, he had at least done the relatively democratic thing of asking first. His exact words then were: "I need one former god-king to stand up and, at the price of destroying his own world, bury an Olympian god-king. If he does that, I swear I'll treat his family well, and every deity in his pantheon will be promoted and granted a new small world."
The prize Odin offered then—this so-called new small world—was a "patch-stitched world."
You couldn't quite say it wasn't a complete small world, because it used the continent Gilgamesh had hewn off the Greek world with the "Ea," plus two of the Seven Seas of Atlantis, plus the Dogon world's sky—barely cobbled together into a new world.
The biggest difference between this "patch-stitched world" and the original Greek subsidiary small worlds was that it had no Olympian god-spells interfering on it, and no world will present.
It had all four prime elements, but because it had once lost the sky—lost air—almost all life had died out.
To run this world back up again, without a dozen or more deities working together for half a century, it would be very hard to pull off.
Unless you had a Thalos-like absurd Creator God who could do everything—that'd work too.
It was precisely because Odin threw out that compensation that Amma, who hated Zeus to the bone, was willing to die, dragging Heracles and Helios down with him.
As for the other unlucky world used to ram the Greek world—that was Odin's show of force. He butchered the softest-willed minor god-king, the one most inclined toward Zeus.
That was the limit of the resources Odin could bring to bear.
Truth be told, Odin had really been afraid Athena would charge in heedless of everything with her army.
Who knew Thor would immediately lead a force over and "take care of" Athena, Apollo, and a host of Olympians.
Now Odin was thrilled.
He was absolutely certain Zeus had no extra god-kings to launch another encirclement of Odin—unless Zeus wanted to give up even the Greek world, his old lair.
Odin was overjoyed. "My beloved vassals, next we fortify our defenses just in case, and then quietly await the arrival of Olympus's 'Twilight'!"
Ah Puch and the other underlings knew nothing about "Ragnarok," and even cheered because their boss had used such an artsy term for the Olympians' end.
Had Thalos heard it, he'd definitely have sprayed his foolish little brother with a faceful of spit—"You punk, the mastermind and culprit of 'Ragnarok' is you, all right? And you're gilding your own face?"
Luckily, Thalos didn't hear Odin's off-the-rails lines.
Compared to the disposable tool of a little brother Odin, Thalos actually cared more about the reaction over in the Greek world.
First came Athens.
Thalos could hardly believe it himself—an Athens that big was basically undefended.
Perhaps Zeus trusted Athena too much, and he didn't care about mortal lives. In the whole of Athens, the only one still willing to grant divine protection to mortals was Athena.
When Athena granted an oracle to her priestesses, telling them to hasten mortals into a spatial corridor to a place where they could escape apocalyptic calamity, the priestesses believed without hesitation.
Why?
Because the meteor shower brought by the world Odin had slammed down looked too horrifying!
Since Mount Olympus had been destroyed, mortals had almost no word from the gods. With the land cracking and the Titans' huge, heavy footsteps rumbling from the north, they had long since been terrified.
With Athena deliberately concealing her whereabouts, her temple's priestesses had no idea their goddess had defected to the Aesir, much less that the Athena they adored and would die for was presently yielding tenderly beneath the opposing God-Emperor. They thought Athena favored them especially and was bringing them out of the sea of suffering.
Uh—say what you will, they did get out.
In chaotic times, human life is like grass. Ever since the meteor shower, heaven and earth had been somber.
Mortals didn't yet know that from that moment on, the entire Greek world no longer had sun and light.
Helios, the sun god, had fallen; Apollo, the god of light, had been captured. In a world where deities and divine offices were bound tight, losing those two meant the world entered perpetual night—until some new deity took up those two divine offices so vital to mortals.
The crowd shoved and screamed, yet under the priestesses' stern command kept some semblance of order, barely forming long lines to pass through the spatial corridor.
They suffered no unexpected fright and reached the South American continent of Ginnungagap safely.
When they saw bright sunshine again, lush green grass, and a vast land, countless people cheered.
"Praise Athena—"
"Praise Zeus… huh?!"
To the Athenians' surprise, those praising Athena were fine; a faint light even spread over their bodies—clearly Athena's blessing. A priestess was just about to congratulate one such person, unaware that the poor sap beside him who praised Zeus suddenly felt pain all over, as if scorched by a nameless fire, and rolled on the ground in agony.
Athena's priestesses were stunned.
"Ah? Is this divine punishment?"
"How can this be?"
"Why does praising Athena do nothing, but praising Zeus…" As the priestess spoke, she suddenly felt a surge of dread, as if Athena were sternly warning her not to speak carelessly.
Just then, the receiving party arrived from across the continent.
A stir ran through the Athenian refugee column, because those approaching were Amazons they did not favor. Many who had lived through the day the Amazons broke into Athens remembered it keenly.
"Amazons—what are you doing here?" The Athenian guard hurriedly formed ranks.
Luckily, these fierce women weren't here to make trouble.
Queen Penthesilea rode a pure-white winged pegasus, descending slowly before the Athenians. Looking at the portal behind the line, just about to close completely, the corners of her mouth lifted into a crooked smile.
"Congratulations, Athenians—you have escaped the doomed Greek world and come to the Ginnungagap world. Yes! You guessed right! Your goddess Athena, together with our Amazon-patron Artemis, are now the favored consorts of His Majesty Thalos Borson, God-Emperor of the Aesir!"
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