"They call this a Familia? And here I was thinking it was just a harem in disguise… what a filthy mind I have! Surely their goal wasn't to fuck the people they call their children." Baal laughed at the gods and their degenerate tastes; he expected nothing better from them.
"A bunch of needy, perverted bastards! No wonder Zeus loved coming—" Suddenly, a heavy chill came over him.
The air seemed to condense into a red wave of blood and death, crashing down on his back and drowning him.
The apocalypse itself had descended.
"Shit." He smirked mockingly and raised his hand toward the heavens.
His eyes saw nothing, his spirit was numb.
Yet, as someone who had walked side by side with death for so long, he knew exactly what that was.
"Fuck you, Zeus! You Old bastard!" He flipped the middle finger, fully aware he was being watched.
Immediately the sky roared as natural lightning manifested, striking down toward him.
And this time, there was nothing he could do—except wait.
Only time would say if he lived or died.
***
A little before that, in the skies of a lower world…
Zeus had arrived with bloodshot eyes, his immortal wisdom and experience telling him the only place the divine bird could have escaped to was the lower worlds.
And so, he would search endlessly across countless worlds for clues. To his surprise, he found one in the very first world he visited.
After some hours of following the trail, it led him back to the divine realm, but he found nothing. Just a common clearing filled with beasts.
As soon as they saw that there was a visitor, they attacked ferociously. A cerberus inhabited those lands and with its three heads, they tried to tear off and taste the flesh of a god for the first time.
After a fierce battle, Zeus defeated the beast and walked away with a few scratches.
Frustrated and realizing it was a false lead, he moved to another world and found a new clue. Following it—once again, it led back to the divine realm! This time to the residence of Hades, who promptly pursued him in an attempt to kill him.
Zeus had killed his pet!
And not only that, of course, Hades had more than a little grudge against the tyrant god.
This god thought he was above everything and everyone! He deserved to be put in his rightful place.
His ghostly flames still burned Zeus's skin to this moment.
He fled like a mangy dog, only to be disappointed again.
The fact that his authority over wisdom was refusing to obey him made things very difficult.
His own power refused to obey one so 'weak' and 'arrogant'.
This time, he clenched his teeth so hard he sent shockwaves across that entire lower world.
The damn bird was likely dead and still playing games with him!
He felt castrated.
His mind spun, convinced it was a divine conspiracy, that several gods were helping the bird. He wondered if the next clue would lead him to another god's house—one who'd kill him without hesitation.
He saw many possibilities, but none pointed to the right path.
That's when Zeus finally realized a hard truth.
The bird hadn't acted on impulse. On the contrary, it fully understood Zeus's mind.
No, not just Zeus's, but that of several gods.
This was a beast, yes, but one that had specialized in killing and stealing from gods more than any other creature. Which, in itself, was an insane thought! Gods were far more dangerous than any beast out there!
Zeus had killed Cerberus with his bare hands! Without his major powers!
But to the bird, Zeus was just another variable in its plan—a puppet like so many others it had toyed with.
Meanwhile…
Baal was in a lower world, where time passed much faster compared to the divine realm that Zeus kept returning to. Thus giving Baal more time to escape.
One day in the divine realm equaled more than a thousand days in the lower world where Baal was.
Still, it had to be considered that Zeus was far faster than any mortal, at his peak, he was way faster than light itself. In lower realms he could even manifest even more power than normal.
But also, he was constantly jumping between time zones in the lower worlds to the divine realm.
The moment Zeus realized this, he made his riskiest and most accurate decision.
He stopped following the clues.
He immediately charged like a madman into every possible world in the cosmos, having narrowed down his search zone to a large area.
The moment he arrived in a new world, his spirit would envelop every living being there, searching for the bird, and within mere moments, he would decide whether there was a lead or not.
The process took mere milliseconds, though it was exhausting.
For the first time in ages, Zeus felt exhaustion creep over his godly body. He had just fought gods of equal caliber for hundreds or even thousands of years—he had lost count. And now, with his spirit and body depleted, he still had to reclaim his prize from a damn thief!
He kept at it until he stopped in a lower world, seemingly ordinary.
His spirit enveloped every living being without issue, and in a fury, he was about to leave…
Until...
His spirit failed.
It was like a hole in his vision.
There was something there he couldn't see.
He smirked.
"Finally found you. Your tricks won't save you this time!" He immediately teleported to the divine bird's crash site. Only a few scorched feathers remained.
"Another false lead?" He grabbed the feathers with his hands and inspected them. "No, unlikely. There's real power, and a lot, in these—no one would leave this behind." Even so, he couldn't help but frown.
He'd been tossed from one place to another so many times that now he constantly doubted his own judgment.
But with determination, he searched for more traces and then he found more and more, his smile widening.
He burst into laughter.
"So many feathers scattered through space! Stars destroyed, a moon soaked in beastly aura! This is an anomaly! I can smell roasted bird from miles away!" But at that moment, his eyes narrowed.
"These are the signs of his passing, and death. But what is mine… isn't here." He clenched his fists so tightly that blood began to run down his hands.
He refused to accept the truth!
for a few moments, becoming even more enraged.
Birds didn't have spirits—they had a lesser version, a soul.
Therefore, he couldn't have taken on a new body.
That was common knowledge.
Beasts weren't capable of that.
They don't even have the knowledge to do that!
Only gods know, only gods do!
Zeus was increasingly losing control over his authority of wisdom, It was turning a deaf ear to him.
Zeus was enraged.