Twelve Capable Slaves
Here it comes.
Watching the lightning reach for my face, I flooded my entire body with divine power. Crrrk— Outside, compressed divine power sheathed the surface of my skin; inside, it seeped into every strand of muscle, every single cell.
Physical Reinforcement through divine power—the foundational technique of the combat arts Eve had taught me. Back when I was learning how to use divine power from her, she had drilled it into me until my ears ached that this Physical Reinforcement mattered more than anything else. Among the attacks of those who had become Constellations, plenty were fast enough to make the speed of sound look like a joke, so dodging every blow was impossible. That was why Eve insisted the technique that let you take a hit and still stand was the most important of all. And so, from the day I began learning to fight, what I drilled myself half to death on for decades was precisely this: reinforcing the body with divine power.
Not that I couldn't dodge it...
With the reinforcement finished, I watched the bolt streaking toward me inside a perception of time I had accelerated to its limit. Zeus's lightning. If I meant to evade it, it wasn't an attack I couldn't evade. But the reinforcement was already done, and getting a firsthand feel for what was probably Zeus's strongest strike didn't seem like a bad idea. Take this blow—one that looked as if he'd put real power behind it—and I'd have a sense of how I ought to block and dodge from here on. More than anything, judging by the amount of divine power I felt in the lightning, a single hit wasn't going to drop me, so I could make the call without hesitation.
All right. Let's take it.
Once I'd decided, moving was the easy part. I planted the leg I'd been about to spring off and, watching the lightning close to the tip of my nose, crossed sword and arm in front of my body. An instant later Zeus's lightning swallowed me whole.
KRA-KOOM—!!!
Thunder loud enough to stuff my ears in a single beat rolled out in every direction. The roar was so tremendous it nearly matched Eve's voice from that time she'd gotten in a snit and sulked at me. At the same time, lightning bright enough to boast of its own destructive power kept lingering, flashing as it circled around me.
"...Huh?"
Admiring the admittedly flashy display lasted only a moment. I tilted my head at a body that felt even less than I'd expected.
"A feint?"
I'd taken the lightning dead-on, and yet there wasn't a shred of pain. Even if the sword had blocked some of it, shouldn't the rest of me at least be tingling? With a body that wasn't even sore, let alone tingling, I could only conclude the attack had been for show. There was no way a bolt thrown to actually hurt me would feel like nothing at all.
"If this was a smokescreen... then I just have to take those tridents coming at me, right?"
So I opened my eyes clear inside the white flash and looked past it at the tridents of seawater flying in. If the lightning had been the feint, the real attack would be those. Deciding as much, I covered only my vitals with arm and sword and gave my body over to the strike, determined to take this one properly.
A heartbeat later, the tridents of seawater slammed straight into me.
Pok, pok, pok, pok—
"...No. What the hell is this."
Not even a second passed before every last trident had driven down, and all I could do was mutter at the sight of them. They weren't even toothpicks, and they couldn't so much as stick properly in my body before they fell away. I would have had better luck stabbing myself with an actual toothpick.
While I let out a hollow laugh at the absurdity of it, two long spears shot toward me. They carried a considerable amount of divine power, but the result was hardly different from the tridents a moment ago. Pok. Two spears that couldn't even pierce my divine power, that failed to make me feel a thing. Only after seeing that could I finally understand.
"...I'm fucking strong, aren't I?"
That the self I had worried over so much was, in fact, way stronger than I'd thought. Four thousand years of training I had never once neglected, even while I was building the Constellation Realm. Only today could I see the fruit of that effort bloom in full color. One hour a day, for four thousand years. The harvest was more tremendous than I had ever imagined.
"Aha... so that's why."
Only now did I understand why Eve had been able to declare it with such confidence. Because as I was now, I couldn't lose even if I wanted to. No matter how I fought, I couldn't picture a version of this where I lost to the Olympian gods in front of me. That must have been why Eve, after hearing my worries, had been able to promise it so firmly.
At the realization, late as it was, I nodded along while lightly taking the rain of arrows pouring down on me. Now that I knew roughly how strong I was, there was nothing left to hold me back. Even the last pinch of worry had vanished, so all I had to do was what Eve had asked—walk all over the Twelve Olympians.
"Now, how should I handle them..."
Once my thoughts reached that far, I couldn't help sinking into a brief dilemma over exactly how to deal with them. Eve had taught me so much over the years that the options were ridiculously plentiful. The dilemma didn't last, though. By the time dozens of daggers and fire-heated hammers were drumming against my body, I had finished thinking, and I nodded from within the settling dust.
"Yeah. Beating them with the same technique will make the gap the clearest, won't it?"
When did you feel the difference between yourself and an opponent down to the bone, if not when you lost a mirror match? So once the dust had fully settled, I raised a bolt of lightning in my grip before the Olympian gods, who were staring at me in shock—a pure-white lightning that spat out a peal of thunder bigger and louder than Zeus's own.
KRA-KOOM-KOOM—!!!!!
Lightning detonated with a tremendous roar, and Zeus's body went flying far into the distance. Under ordinary circumstances the blow had enough power to erase his body in a single strike, but a Constellation in the Constellation Realm could never reach death so long as Eve and I existed. No matter how lethal the attack, the body would not vanish; they would go on living. Originally it was a function meant to protect the Constellations of the realm, but in this moment it had become a safety that let me go all out without worrying about killing anyone.
I watched Zeus, taken out of the fight by a single bolt, for a moment, then slowly started walking.
"Looks like that king of yours is down. Want to keep going?"
At my words, the gazes that had been checking on Zeus turned to me—shock, fear, awe, rage, eyes stabbing into me, each carrying a different feeling. I'd half expected them to surrender on their own once their leader fell, but, as was only natural if you thought about it, that didn't happen.
"Y-you bitch, how dare you do that to Father!!"
The first to move was the man with the reddish hair who had thrust a spear at Eve. The man I took for Ares forged a bronze sword in his hand and charged. Seeing him, I raised the sword in my own hand and set my stance.
"Swords. I like it. Let's see how well a god of war can actually fight."
Originally, mine was a body that had no need to learn the sword. Ask me why, and it was because I already had more than enough ways to fight without one. But once I'd gotten a decent handle on wielding divine power, Eve had insisted that a supreme god ought to have at least one weapon they handled well, and so I learned the sword. Ten years for the basics, ten years for the advanced course, a hundred years to master every sword art Eve taught me. One hundred and twenty years of instruction in all, and after that I had trained the sword every day, the same as everything else.
Invest fifty years or so in a craft and, as a rule, you become skilled enough that people will call you a master. So what level was my swordsmanship after something like three thousand five hundred years of training, even by a rough count? The answer was simple.
CLANG—!!
Ares's sword came swinging, loaded with a fairly powerful charge of divine power. But the instant it met mine, it was sucked downward and slammed into the ground.
"What kind of strength is this...?!"
"It isn't strength. It's technique."
At Ares's voice, thick with shock, I corrected him at once. This exchange wasn't like before, where I'd crushed him with raw power or shoved him back on a gap in divine power. What I had unfolded here was nothing but my swordsmanship, honed to the extreme. Purely in mastery of the sword, mine had simply overwhelmed his.
Crack—!
Ares's sword, driven into the floor, burrowed deep into the earth and tore free of his hand. All that remained was Ares himself, empty-handed at point-blank range. I kicked him as he was, too rattled even to think of guarding.
BOOM—!!!
Ares flew far off, tumbled several times, and crashed straight into a mountain. I left him behind without another glance and turned to the ones still standing.
"So. You lot want to keep going too?"
Poseidon, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Hephaestus. The six gods standing with weapons in hand exchanged troubled looks. Hera, Hestia, Aphrodite, and Demeter—who had stayed in the rear, focused on support rather than joining the fight—were no different. The first among them to speak was the woman in the helmet: Athena.
"...I surrender."
Clank— The moment the word left her mouth, Athena pulled off her helmet and set down her spear. With the helmet gone, a face came into view—golden-blonde hair cut short, and cold, striking features. The classic look of an ice-cold beauty. Before I could even admire it, though, Poseidon bulged a vein across his forehead and shouted.
"What are you saying, Athena! Our brother lies fallen like that, and you speak of surrender?!"
He roared as if he'd heard something he couldn't bear to hear. But Athena scowled right back and shouted in return.
"Which is exactly why we must surrender! Our attacks do nothing, and Father fell to a single strike! And still you cannot see the gap between them and us, Uncle?!"
"There are battles one must continue even when defeat is all but certain!!"
"This fight, at the very least, is not one of them! However foolishly we may have acted until a moment ago, if we've come to our senses now, we ought to look at reality!"
At Athena's words, Poseidon fell silent for a beat. Seizing the opening, she went on, quickly, and in a calm, persuasive voice.
"The only reason we are here now, having escaped a future of total annihilation, is that Miss Arche... no, Lord Arche's side sent us an invitation."
She had let "Miss" slip without thinking, glanced this way, and corrected herself. When I showed no particular reaction, a hint of relief crossed her face, and she picked up where she had left off.
"Could the master of the house who sent that invitation not drive us out with the simplest of acts? Especially when a gap this overwhelming exists? The reason we are still permitted to remain is that Lord Arche judges us to be of some use yet. Then shouldn't we seize that chance while some opportunity still remains?"
Having said that much, Athena drew in the breath she had run short of. When she finished, the other gods who had been listening could not bring themselves to speak. Small wonder—even to their ears, there was nothing wrong in what she had said. Only Poseidon, who had spoken first, tried one last rebuttal, but he could not turn a current that had already been decided.
"But even so, our pride as gods of Olympus..."
"Uncle. Our Olympus already met its end together with a setting age. All of us knew it, even if no one bothered to say it aloud. Then in this second life we've been given, it would not be so bad to stop clinging to Olympus and live in a manner befitting the station of a Constellation."
Poseidon let out a low groan, but he opened his mouth no further and stepped back. And when everyone else chose only silence, a woman who had been standing toward the rear stepped out before me and spoke.
"I, the goddess Hera, will express our intent to surrender on behalf of Olympus."
Hera bowed deeply at the waist as she delivered the words. Confirming that no one rose to object, I nodded and answered her.
"Fine. I'll accept that surrender."
The matter of securing twelve capable slaves. Fortunately, resolving it hadn't even taken ten minutes.