The Olympian encampment was in an uproar.
"What?! They've advanced again?!"
Zeus's face sank, his gaze turning rigid.
Damn it. In less than two days, the Alien vanguard's strength had ballooned to the very peak a divine pantheon could reach. Among the Olympians, only he—having unified his divinity, inherited the power of the primordial Five Creator Gods, and traced it back to the origin of Chaos—could truly stand against them.
Even the serpent of Areopagus would need Medusa, bearing the Authority of the Earth's Abyss, Athena inheriting the Authority of Sky and Sea, and Themis wielding Order and Fate. And even then, they'd still need human faith and the support of collective sacrifices just to barely brush that peak.
A staircase they'd climbed over tens of millions of years… the Alien vanguard had cleared in barely two days.
Their growth rate was absurd.
At this pace, Greece would collapse in under five days.
The only consolation was that their leap in power had come too fast. They needed time to adapt and stabilize their forms, and hadn't moved yet. That gap was the gods' only precious window to respond.
"Why don't we strike while they're advancing?"
"If we wait for them to come out, we're done for! The longer we drag this out, the lower our odds. We should smash them now!"
"Attack? Easy for you to say! Don't forget, we gathered the Sky Gods, the Underworld Gods, even dragged in forbidden Old Gods, and we still couldn't do a damn thing. We lost nearly thirty percent of our forces!"
"Exactly! The Alien vanguard is about to enter Phase Four. As long as those three units don't die, their subordinate monsters will just keep multiplying. Our numbers are losing their edge. What are we supposed to use to win a head-on fight?"
"You're just scared of dying, you cowards! You're going to disgrace the honor of the gods!"
"Bullshit! When I charged earlier, I killed more of those giant bastards than you did. And what did it change?"
"Yeah, use your brain. If this worked, we'd have torn the Alien vanguard apart seven or eight times already. They should've been crippled ages ago! We wouldn't be standing here arguing!"
"Damn it! A war we're guaranteed to lose—how do you expect us to fight it?! We should fall back to Athens and regroup!"
"Retreat, retreat, retreat! We've already lost the Peloponnese. If we retreat to Athens and still can't hold it, what then? Retreat to Olympus? And after that, do we just get kicked out of Greece entirely?!"
"You all know what these Alien vanguards are like. If we don't act now, once they're fully fed, our hope gets even slimmer!"
"Then give me a way that actually works!"
"We've tried everything. Those star-born monsters are basically immortal. No matter how many times we blow them apart, they put themselves back together. We can't win!"
"There's no point!"
The shouting spiraled into pure chaos. The Olympian gods wore grim expressions, trapped in a deafening, vicious argument, as if they'd been dragged back to the nightmare days when the demon progenitor Typhon ruled their lives.
Even Zeus's face darkened, storm clouds gathering between his brows, as if thunder and lightning were about to break loose.
"Have none of you considered that the Alien vanguard's weakness might not be on their bodies at all?"
Just as the camp's tension hit a breaking point, several streaks of light slammed down like meteors outside the tent. The sudden voice cut straight into the gods' argument.
Zeus's expression sharpened. His aura turned razor-edged as he locked onto the old rival stepping in, the glare fading from his body as he crossed the threshold.
"You mean… outside themselves?!"
The gods reacted in a beat. Understanding flickered in their eyes, only for fresh doubt to settle in.
If the key to the Alien vanguard's endless regeneration wasn't in their bodies, then where was it?
"To see the real issue, you have to stop staring at the surface. Step outside the frame and trace it back to the source. Where do these so-called Alien vanguards get their power? And who gave them their mission?"
Athena, following behind Samael, strode forward with a cold snort, arms crossed. She tapped her temple, offering a pointed hint.
"Could it be… the Tear Star?!"
The realization spread through the tent, but no one sounded confident.
"That's right. By my count, the Tear Star has fully manifested at least five times, and partially more than twenty. And almost every single time lines up with the Alien vanguard's damage and reconstruction, their spatial delivery, and the rhythm of their stellar patterns. They're things of the cosmos. If something's wrong, the reason is tied to the Tear Star."
Athena spoke crisply, combining what she'd learned from Samael with her own observations, and delivered her conclusion without hesitation.
"Did I hear you right? You want us to go after a celestial body we can't even touch?"
Hera's gaze slid toward Athena, irritation flashing across her face as she let out a scornful snort.
"Idiot. Try using your head for once. If our Authorities can't even reach that star, do you really think the Tear Star just crossed space, tore open the world's barrier, and granted the Alien vanguard those traits that easily? Then why didn't it simply erase every last Greek god?
If we can't strike the star itself, we can still cut the channel that lets their resonance sync up. If the Alien vanguard can't regenerate, we have a chance to win!"
Athena didn't bother being polite as she tore into Hera's shortsightedness. On her golden throne, the Queen of Heaven went pale with fury, resentment deepening.
"Easy to say. Where's this 'channel'?"
"I said you were stupid, and you really are hopeless."
Athena's eyes flicked to Hera's heavy chest, and she sneered, sharp as a needle.
Hera started to flare up, but Zeus's cold glare pinned her in place. The silver divine mark on her forehead flickered, its menace seeping into the air. A chill ran through Hera, and she lowered her head and shut her mouth.
Athena's expression eased slightly as she laid out the key point.
"The Alien vanguard are things of the cosmos. The Tear Star is anchoring a hunting ground, driving a wedge into Greece. We might not know exactly how the link was made, but they'll follow instinct and protect that fragile 'thread' connecting the two. So tell me—where's the most likely 'reef' that anchor is hooked to?"
In the same instant, Hades, Zeus, and Poseidon all rose, answers bursting out one after another.
"The Storm Sea!"
"Atlantis!"
"The Interstellar Mountainous City!"
That was it. The Alien vanguard first appeared in the Storm Sea, and the white colossus that called in the other two never left that place.
And there was more. When the Olympians and the forbidden Old Gods formed a coalition and pushed toward the inner Eye of the Tidal Sea, Unit 1—already poised to land at Athens—was immediately recalled to help defend that area.
Athena's deduction hit Poseidon like a hammer. The heavy, bottled-up confusion in his chest suddenly cracked open, and his face flushed as he muttered, half to himself.
"No wonder I could crack that starship and get my hands on all that alien light-energy tech!"
"No wonder I was like I'd been bewitched, copying the entire civilization system of the Light Era… only for it to be dismantled and seized in an instant!"
"No wonder the Ten Kingdom Islands surfaced, but Atlantis and the Interstellar Mountainous City never did. The giants' revival was planned from the start!"
Yeah, sure. Like you were some spotless saint with no ulterior motives.
Samael gave a dry cough, cutting off Poseidon's convenient self-exoneration.
"Your Majesty, if Sefar needs to anchor its connection to the Tear Star, then in the Interstellar Mountainous City, what place—or what object—is most likely to serve as the medium?"
"Yes. There is one."
Poseidon answered without the slightest hesitation, then finished with a hateful snort.
"Above the great altar of the Interstellar Mountainous City, in the Star Sea guarded by the Twelve Machine Gods—there's the Star Ship that serves as Atlantis's core drive."
"I knew that thing was suspicious from the start."