Ominous Portent - (2)
The prayer of a follower who worships me. And not just any follower—this is the desperate plea of a fully ordained priestess.
I trace the thread of her supplication, focusing for a moment on her vision. Something flickers into view. A fleeting glimpse of a monster with the lower body of a serpent and the upper body of a human… a Gigante.
So we’ve finally caught their tail?
“Lady Styx, it appears a Gigante has manifested in the mortal realm. I’ll need to descend into a human vessel, so for a moment—”
“…! I’ll notify Olympus at once!”
Styx sets down the Nectar she’d been sipping and moves with surprising agility. I, too, quickly leave the banquet hall.
“What the…!”
“A Gigante?!”
The distance from the Underworld to Thebes is far too great to traverse physically. But my follower possesses enough faith to accept me… descending into her body and assessing the situation is the fastest method.
“Heh heh… Even if we devour one or two of these pathetic humans, no one would even notice…”
“Patience. We must use them as sacrifices for the descent ritual.”
Halfway up a mountain not far from Thebes, inside a dark cave. Muscular monsters with serpentine lower halves and human upper bodies licked their lips as they stared at the humans they had dragged inside. Roughly ten of the creatures, each with a physique that looked like several grown men fused together. Just as I had suspected, they were the gods’ sworn enemies—the Gigantes.
“Ugh… Mom…”
“Lord Apollo will surely descend from the heavens to save us…”
“Lady Artemis, I beg you, please answer our prayers.”
Dozens of people huddled together in one corner of the cave, trembling violently. They were ordinary civilians kidnapped by the Gigantes near Thebes. Among them was Penedeia, a priestess of my temple.
She had believed no one would dare touch a priestess of the Underworld and had let her guard down while venturing outside the city. “So this is why people kept disappearing near Thebes…”
She never imagined that monsters far beyond human comprehension would be the ones to abduct her.
“Hahaha! Do you really think the Olympian gods watching from the heavens can peer inside this cave?!”
“If you behave, we’ll kill you without too much pain!”
The Gigantes mocked the people who wept in despair. The gods had not answered their desperate prayers. Because not every wish reaches the ears of the divine.
Prayers offered outside a god’s own temple, those without sufficient sacrifices, or those from ordinary people rather than nymphs, demigods, or ordained priests rarely reach the gods.
‘Is the reason they kidnapped us that ritual they’re preparing over there?’
While all the other monsters had male faces, the one in the center of the cave was different. A beautiful female monster stood atop a magic circle drawn in blood, chanting a spell.
“With this many sacrifices, it should be enough to summon him…”
“Lord Enceladus. The preparations are complete.”
“Is that so? Then shove the humans in!”
One of the half-human, half-serpent monsters called out to another that carried a massive club. He was likely the one commanding this group.
“You. Come here first.”
“Kyaaaaa!”
A brutal hand seized a woman by her hair and hurled her forward. The female monster reached out, clutched the woman’s heart, and ripped it out, flinging it onto the floor.
“Ugh… Aaaaah!”
“N-no! I don’t want to dieeee!”
Thud.
“Stop that annoying screaming.”
There was no escape. Resistance was futile. Every human dragged here would be offered up as a sacrifice for that grotesque ritual.
The next chosen victim, a man, shouted in defiance.
“D-do you really think the gods will stand by and do nothing?! I’ll watch your end from the Underworld!”
“How terrifying. Wahahaha! If anyone’s coming, I’d prefer it to be the goddess Athena!”
The leader Gigante with the club sneered, and the entire cave echoed with their laughter. These inhuman beings who feared neither gods nor men cackled wildly, and the humans shrank back in even greater terror.
“Hmph. Once we crush every last Olympian god, I’ll take Athena as my wife.”
“Of course Lord Enceladus could do it. But first we must summon him, so…”
“Shut up. Are you really trying to order me around while trusting that defeated husband of yours?”
The female monster urged the ritual forward, only to be rebuked by the leader. My priestess, Penedeia, closed her eyes and offered the most fervent prayer of her life.
‘Lord Hades! Please, I beg you, help us! Monsters that are half snake and half human…!’
“Hey, bring that woman in the black clothes over here.”
“Yes!”
It was her turn next. The Gigante who received the order roughly grabbed the priestess by her long hair. Penedeia bit her lip hard enough to draw blood, clasped her hands together, and whispered.
‘Please… I beg you with all my heart. These horrible monsters…’
Her hopeless prayer continued. The instant felt like an eternity.
Then—
Salvation had arrived for the mortals.
The woman who had been praying while gripped by her hair suddenly lifted her head and stared directly at the Gigante before her. Instead of human pupils, her eyes swirled with deep, abyssal darkness.
“Huh? This one’s eyes… Gaaargh!”
The black shadow beneath her feet surged upward, piercing the Gigante’s wrist and throat in quick succession. A pitifully anticlimactic death for a monster capable of challenging the gods.
“Divine power? Even an Olympian god shouldn’t be able to wield this much while possessing a human body…!”
“You dare appear here without any divine artifacts or weapons?!”
I flicked my hand lightly. Black lines connected the Gigantes charging toward her—no, toward me—and tore through space itself. The jet-black divine energy ripped apart even their steel-hard bodies.
Crack-crack-crack!
Boom!
All that remained were the female monster blocked by Enceladus, who had raised his enormous club to intercept the attack, and the female monster herself, now scowling behind him.
“Who the hell are you? One of the Twelve Olympians?”
“The God of Wealth, Pluto… No. I am Hades. Surely you’ve heard my name?”
“…One of the three chief gods!”
The Bident only answers the call of my true self, not an avatar. The sword of Styx remains at the waist of my main body in the Underworld. The Kynee forged by the Cyclopes is stored in the Underworld’s treasury. The human body that offered the prayer belonged to an ordinary female priestess—neither hero nor demigod. Yet the god who had descended here was the Lord of the Underworld himself, Hades.
“Filthy vermin…”
These careless Gigantes could never hope to stand against me.
I had succeeded in descending at the very last moment. Had I been even a little later, my priestess’s head would have been crushed in that monster’s grip.
“P-Pluto… Lord Hades!”
“The master of the Underworld…”
“The wealthiest one, the sovereign of souls, has come to the mortal realm to save us…”
The surrounding humans murmured among themselves. Yet rather than fear at the name Hades, they felt relief. After nearly being sacrificed in that horrific ritual, it was only natural.
I glanced at the humans kneeling with clasped hands and tear-streaked faces, then turned my gaze back to the club-wielding Gigante. The creature flinched when our eyes met, then barked an order to the female monster behind him.
“Hmph. You are no threat at all. Once he arrives—!”
But the moment I descended, I had already grasped the entire situation—including the nature of that ritual.
“That bizarre circle on the floor resembles the trap you creatures dug on the island of Naxos.”
“…!”
“Thick divine energy of the earth, a plea for someone to descend, and it feels remarkably similar to the sorcery the goddess of magic Hecate displayed during the Titanomachy…”
I waved my hand, sending the humans out of the cave. What was about to happen might cause the entire mountain to collapse.
“Hurry and complete the ritual!”
“I have no intention of stopping you, so take your time. I need to see with my own eyes who is backing you vermin.”
The two monsters regarded me with extreme wariness, but I truly had no plans to interfere with the ritual. The spell circle on the floor, created by grinding up countless humans and pouring in the power of the earth, was meant to summon a god. I had to confirm exactly who was siding with the Gigantes.
When the descent ritual succeeded, the resulting surge of energy would alert the other gods as well. It wouldn’t be long before the gods’ assault overturned this entire mountain. There was no way Lady Gaia didn’t know that. Yet she was still trying to summon someone…
“This is Lady Gaia’s declaration of war. A provocation and warning because the trap on Naxos failed.”
“What nonsense are you spouting?!”
“By the way, who exactly are you? All Gigantes are male. You are not one of them.”
The female monster trembled as if struck at her core. She had the same serpentine lower body as the Gigantes, yet she carried none of their presence. She was clearly some other kind of monster that merely resembled them.
“I am Echidna, wife of Typhon! I will slaughter every last one of you detestable gods!”
Typhon’s wife. That explained her motive. The strange ritual on the floor must have been taught to her by Lady Gaia.
“Come to me! O great Titan who exists everywhere and never perishes!”
Stab!
Echidna raised a dagger high and plunged it into her own chest. She collapsed, but a tremendous divine power erupted from the wound, shaking the entire cave.
Rooooooar—
Her body stiffened. Time itself seemed to slow. Then the very Echidna who had stabbed herself and fallen rose once more, turning her gaze toward me.
This was a desperate poison-against-poison tactic that even Lady Gaia would have found distasteful… It seemed the Earth Mother truly wished to drive us out.
“It has been a long time, my eldest son, Hades. Did you miss your father?”
To think they had dragged the consciousness of Cronus, imprisoned in Tartarus, into the mortal world.