If You Have a Family You Can Trust
How to draw Cronus out for certain.
That was the question, and Prometheus had answered it.
He would never tolerate anyone taking what was his. The moment someone tried, his eyes would roll back in pure rage and he would come charging. Especially if what was at stake was power and vengeance he could never surrender.
Following the clue that answer gave me, I immediately laid out a plan and put it into motion.
The result was the perfect bait: Zeus’s execution. At the same time we pulled off the rescue of Athena and Metis. And Cronus, completely snared by it all, found himself surrounded by the gods in the blink of an eye.
Zeus, knocked cold by the cracked skull, was useless, but the gods present were more than enough to handle Cronus.
“I’ve waited for this moment, Cronus!”
“Father! This time you’re going to die for real!”
“Prepare yourself.”
“You insolent brats! How dare you!”
Hades, Hestia, and Hera drove Cronus back with terrifying force. Their assault, the power of the highest-tier gods among us, left him with no choice but to scramble into pure defense.
Meanwhile I finally got a moment to catch my breath and started sorting the situation as fast as I could.
“Are you all right?”
“I… I’m fine… But who in the world are you…?”
“Hephaestus, son of Eurynome.”
“What? You’re… Eurynome’s…?”
Metis, like my mother Eurynome, was one of Oceanus’s daughters—my aunt, in other words. Looking at her, I let out a quiet sigh of relief.
If I hadn’t known she was there from the start, I probably never would have been able to save her. In the original myths, when Athena burst from Zeus’s head, Metis had been with her and never managed to escape.
Satisfied that I had gotten her out safely, I turned to the goddess of war who had already stepped to my side. Officially my cousin, in truth my half-sibling: Athena. I spoke in a serious voice.
“Thanks for earlier.”
“N-no… Rather, I am the one who should thank you. For saving Mother and me—thank you, Lord Hephaestus.”
Athena clasped my hand tightly and bowed her head deeply. True to the Athena of the original myths—one of the few gods with a decent sense of divinity—she looked straight at my face without a flicker of discomfort and offered her gratitude with complete sincerity.
“…”
“Mmm…”
Aphrodite and Thetis, watching her, looked somehow put out. But right after that I no longer had the luxury of paying attention to their reactions.
“Lord Cronus!!”
“You bastards! I’ll wipe every last one of you out!”
Atlas and a handful of other Titans had already flown this far. Down below, Keres and the gods of death were sweeping the battlefield as planned, holding the rest of them back—but even they couldn’t stop every Titan.
From here on it was a pure race against time. We had to bring Cronus down right here before any more enemies poured in.
The instant I made that decision, I rose to my feet with my young-god comrades.
—KRA-KOOM!!
“Tch!”
After several exchanges the spear was already starting to crack. Hades clicked his tongue automatically at the sight.
In pure combat power he and his two sisters still held the edge. But the decisive difference was that scythe. Wielded with total freedom in both offense and defense, the adamant weapon refused even a scratch from anything they carried.
Damn it… If only we had stronger weapons…
If he had known it would come to this, he should have asked Hephaestus for a loan of arms when he visited Lemnos Island. Even while the belated regret gnawed at him, Hades and the goddesses kept fighting for that final decisive blow.
Then—
—“You lot!!!!”
“!”
“Damn it, Atlas!”
A massive Titan came charging straight at them. Atlas—the strongest fighter among Cronus’s Titans. His sudden intrusion forced Hades and the others to turn and face him first.
“Lord Cronus! Fall back for now!”
“We are at a disadvantage here. Would it not be wiser to withdraw and regroup?”
“Mm… Very well.”
Cronus had lost his reason for a moment and rushed here, but that did not make him a fool. His body was covered in wounds, and in this relatively cramped space they were clearly the ones at a disadvantage. Outside, their great army still waited. With his composure restored, Cronus decided there was no reason to keep fighting and lower his odds of victory.
“I’ll leave this place to Atlas and withdraw for now.”
“Yes, Lord Cronus. However…”
“Hm?”
“Forgive us. We can no longer restrain our feelings for you, Lord Cronus!”
“We love you, Lord Cronus! Accept our bodies and hearts!”
“?!? Wh-what… Urgh!”
The next instant the Titans suddenly lunged at him. Tearing open their clothes like beasts in heat, they threw themselves at him in an “attack” that left Cronus momentarily stunned with pure bewilderment.
But—
“You bastards!!”
“Guh-haaaargh!!!”
“Kh… Lord Cronus… I love… y…”
After a brief, brutal grapple, Cronus simply tore their heads clean off. The scene was so grotesque it made the skin crawl, yet his cold, swift response at least prevented anything truly unspeakable from happening.
Even so—
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“!… You…”
That brief delay was more than enough to block the path of a man who had been about to flee.
Hephaestus.
Nerites and Thetis.
And Ares and Athena.
Looking at the five young gods standing before him, a cold smile curved Cronus’s lips.
“So… it was you. From the very beginning, every last bit of this was your doing.”
Avoiding an unfavorable fight was the wise course. But when a fight could not be avoided, you met it with everything you had. Knowing that truth all too well, Cronus righted his scythe and settled into a combat stance.
Then—
—Thud!
Cronus shot forward. Hephaestus swung his axe to meet him.
The adamant scythe collided with the weapon wreathed in ultra-high-temperature flames. Power that did not yield even to Gaia’s own armaments. And as he registered how much stronger Hephaestus had grown in a single year, Cronus finally understood.
From the start… I was wrong.
He had always believed his true rival was Zeus—the only being with the strength and the right to cast him down and seize dominion over the world. That belief had been mistaken.
His real enemy was not the Zeus lying over there. It was the one standing right in front of him.
The one who had wrecked his plans from the very beginning of the great war, who had toppled Tartarus himself—whom everyone had feared—and who had now driven him into the worst crisis of his life.
Hephaestus.
This was the one he should have watched more carefully than anyone. The true nemesis of his entire existence. Cronus realized it far too late.
Yet even so, he could not fall here.
“I am Cronus! King of the Titans, the king who once ruled the world! I will not fall to a greenhorn like you!”
With those words he swung the scythe in savage arcs, driving Hephaestus back. In pure martial power he still held the upper hand. The sheer toughness of the other’s gear made punching through his defense no easy task, yet Cronus’s carefully aimed strikes were gradually carving wounds into Hephaestus’s body.
“Haaaaah!”
“Get lost, spawn of Zeus!”
“Kh!”
The attacks raining in from every side from the other gods barely registered. Even as he batted them away with arms and legs, their blows did land and wound him—but the powerful divine force he wore like armor over his entire body reduced the damage to a minimum.
Only one thing mattered now.
Bringing down the man in front of him. His true nemesis.
Cronus pressed the overwhelming assault even as he carved away at his own body. Hephaestus’s wounds grew steadily worse.
And then—
—Thud!
One knee finally buckled and Hephaestus dropped to the ground. Seeing it, Cronus raised the scythe high, a smile of pure triumph on his face.
“A fine attempt! But remember this! What seizes the world is not some clever little scheme—it is power! Overwhelming power that forces everything to its knees!!”
Victory was already in sight. Without the slightest hesitation Cronus reached for it.
In that instant—
“…I’ll grant you that much. But.”
—Thud!!!
“Guh-hehk!! Wh-what…!”
A chilling strike slammed into Cronus from behind. It shattered the defense of divine force, tore straight through one of his lungs, and burst out of his chest, revealing three spear-blades blazing with vivid divine power.
The Trident.
Originally Poseidon’s weapon, its master had changed in this world. Gripping it, the beautiful youth who had been waiting for the single perfect opening all this time wore a deep smile.
Nerites.
“Got you!”
“Y-you… little… cough!”
His defense pierced by the unexpected blow, sudden mortal pain flooded in—yet Cronus still forced his body to move through sheer grit.
But—
“Hahaha!!”
A whip of water cracked down onto the heel he had just tried to plant. Thetis’s strike made Cronus’s stance collapse; his whole body lurched.
“Die!!!”
“This ends it!”
In that same moment a sword and a spear drove into both of Cronus’s flanks.
“Guh… haaa… aargh…”
Under Athena’s and Ares’s attacks he finally lost his grip on the adamant scythe.
And then—
“One more for good measure.”
“!”
Right before Cronus’s eyes the man raised his axe.
Hephaestus.
“If you have a family you can trust, that’s even better.”
With those words the flame-wreathed axe came down toward his head. Watching it fall, in the final moment, a hollow smile touched Cronus’s lips.
“…I see…”
—Thud!!!!