"Wuwuwu… sniffle."
Hearing the sobs beside him, Ares, who was helping Hecate move the pot of hydra's blood, reluctantly put down the bronze pot and turned to look at Hydra, who was clutching her skirt tightly by the table, her eyes tearful as she watched him and Hecate.
He narrowed his eyes and said,
"What are you crying about? You have such good regenerative abilities. What's wrong with taking a little of your blood for research? I personally made that meal on your table for you. Are you really Typhon's child? Where's the backbone you showed when you fought Heracles?"
"This is oppression!" Hydra, using vocabulary she didn't know where she'd learned, weakly said to Ares and Hecate.
"Nonsense." Hecate impatiently put her hands on her hips, straightened up, and retorted, "You are my maidservant, and I am your master. Isn't our relationship one of oppression? What are you thinking?"
Hydra's crying stopped, and she thought for a moment in a daze before murmuring, "Huh, it seems that way?"
"So stop crying. You are indeed the maidservant Lamia now, but don't forget that you were once the powerful magical beast Hydra, truly." Ares muttered as he continued to move the water pot, then said to Hydra, "Eat everything on the table yourself, and remember to clean up after you're done. We're going to rescue him."
After instructing Hydra, Hecate set up two layers of barriers, one to prevent this confused snake from entering the Tree Palace and another to prevent her from wandering off after leaving the garden. Only then did Hecate and Ares move the fresh blood collected from Hydra into the Magic Workshop.
Although Ares had voluntarily appeared before Hydra, he certainly wouldn't place his true body near someone he didn't trust. While this snake was foolish, Ares couldn't trust her after only a few days of contact.
So, while Hecate went to pick up Hydra, Ares casually threw a clone here, and his true body returned to Hecate's Netherworld Magic Workshop, intending to stay there for now and not leave.
He and Hecate had been planning to extract hydra's blood for a long time. This potent venom, in Heracles' hands, was merely an enchanting ointment used to poison arrows. It was useless except for shooting down some monsters he could have easily dealt with otherwise. Moreover, in his own legend, Heracles not only used these arrows to kill his mentor Chiron but also indirectly caused his own death in the end.
Ares didn't mean to disparage his disciple's intelligence, but frankly, Heracles indeed failed to make good use of the hydra's blood in this matter.
If Ares and Hecate were to use it, at the very least, with the current technology and materials available to the master and disciple, creating a mechanical army composed of magical machines, each carrying Hydra's poisonous blood, would be absolutely no problem.
When these mechanical soldiers rush onto the battlefield, even against a Main God, there's a possibility of ambushing them. Although they are fragile, their bodies are filled with poisonous blood. Once damaged, they will initiate a self-destruct sequence. At that point, a pile of exploding poisonous mechanical insects will surround the enemy. When the enemy confidently shatters these mechanical insects with a single blow, they will find themselves facing a sky full of highly toxic rain transformed from hydra's blood. The sheer intensity of it is unimaginable to ordinary people.
Furthermore, besides this point, Ares also considered that in a while, the incident of Heracles accidentally shooting Chiron would occur. Therefore, Ares first brought Hydra to the Netherworld. Arrows not tainted with Hydra's poisonous blood cannot kill Chiron, who is a god. After this incident passes, if Heracles still needs poisonous arrows, Ares will give them to him then.
After Ares and Hecate moved the water pot into the Magic Workshop, they also took the opportunity to check on the first mechanical Main God Hecate was researching.
"Teacher, this mechanical Main God seems to be completely finished, doesn't it?"
Ares looked up at the colossal steel god, which resembled an inverted giant cross, and turned to Hecate, asking,
"Why don't you make it move?"
"Ah, that."
Speaking of this topic, Hecate also scratched her hair, somewhat troubled:
"It's finished, but this thing lacks a very crucial element. As expected, works from Earth are not that easy to replicate."
"What element?"
Because Ares's energy during this period was divided among Heracles, Medusa, and his Perseus alt account, he wasn't very informed about the research Hecate had been conducting alone during this time.
"It lacks a Divinity."
The Moon Goddess sighed faintly:
"A god, a god, only with a Divinity can one be called a god. Although this mechanical Main God is powerful, without a matching Divinity that can directly communicate with the world and influence reality, it is ultimately just a powerful mechanical weapon. It can fight against Main Gods and destroy the earth, but if we consider what you said about replacing the gods and preventing this world from being pruned…"
"Simply put, it's a pure War weapon, lacking the most important function of managing the world."
Ares scratched his hair:
"I roughly understand, but there's nothing we can do about it. The Starship Uranus has already been destroyed by Athena, and the technology cannot be restored. Our technology comes from Typhon, which is purely for destruction… Wait a moment, I'll go think of a way."
Although Ares's main goal right now is to defeat the gods of Olympus, preparing for the unexpected is also part of Ares's character. He cannot wait until after the War to clean up the devastated aftermath, so preparations must begin now.
However, this task is also very difficult. In the current world, various Divinities and divine positions have already been divided by the victors of the Titan War, the gods of Olympus. The previous four mechanical angels were fine; they were originally of subordinate god specifications, and for Ares and Hecate's ranks, it wasn't difficult to bestow some minor Divinities upon these subordinate gods. But the current mechanical Main God is very difficult. In the present era, the prominent Main God Divinities are all on other Main Gods, and they are all old acquaintances of Ares. He can't possibly start "killing gods and seizing treasures" now, directly plundering the corresponding Divinities from other Main Gods.
Moreover, as a prototype, this cross-shaped mechanical god was designed according to the divine position of the "War God." Ares couldn't possibly commit suicide and then hand over his Divinity for this mechanical god to use, could he?
Wouldn't that be putting the cart before the horse?
The only solution now is to find a way to extract some Divinities from other worlds. To go to other worlds, Ares's "black crystal" is needed. If Ares directly uses this "black crystal," it will likely still trigger the planet's inhibitory force, sending strange obstructors to him.
However, Ares now thought of a place that might not be interfered with by the inhibitory force.
His gaze turned towards Tartarus. There, a machine capable of rivaling the computing power of the youshing existed. Within its core, there was a circular spiritual particle barrier that could shield against eight dimensions, almost rejecting all interference.
If it weren't for the mysterious black crystal on Ares, which inexplicably helped him seize the authorization of this undeveloped super-machine, Ares would likely have had difficulty getting out after entering it last time.
Ares and Hecate estimated that this circular spiritual particle barrier should be able to withstand the interference of the inhibitory force. After all, another supercomputer in a parallel world, the Mooncell, had almost mastered everything within the Earth-Moon system after countless years of observation. However, ever since seizing the authorization of this computer, Ares had used it to analyze the core of the youshing Ark and had not yet tested opening a passage to other universes within the core of this machine.
But this time, Ares was determined to try.