Chapter 250
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 250
Chapter Title: One Question and One Answer
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“Urk!!”
Dianes had revealed his true face, dredging up old memories to show his real nature. Since then, Antaios hadn't had a moment's peace of mind.
“Hahaha!! This is exhilarating. So exhilarating!!”
Was this what the assaults of the Hecatoncheires were like, the ones that had made even the Titans cower in the past?
The ceaseless barrage of punches hammered at Antaios's rock-solid guard like a downpour.
But the punches, growing fiercer with every moment, were more than just a shower.
-Thudududu!!
“Grraaah!”
Each strike didn't end with just one blow; they chained endlessly, one into the next, gradually building power.
It shattered Antaios's common sense, which had assumed it was merely a relentless combo of single hits strung together.
No matter how sturdy a fortress wall might be, it would eventually crumble under unrelenting rain and gale-force winds.
By comparison, the black demigod's strikes—small and slender as they were—pummeled Antaios without end.
And just as the combo seemed to reach its close...
-Boom!
“Hup!”
A ferocious kick, evoking memories of being struck by his father's great spear long ago, sent him flying once more.
-Thud! Crash!
“Kuhuk!”
The massive blue warrior rolled across the ground, and everyone in the arena fell silent, feeling the impact reverberate through their toes.
The invincible overlord, the king forged in hardship, rolling on the dirt at the hands of that frail-looking demigod.
Yet Antaios was a monarch who had conquered the sea of trials through millennia of tempering and training.
No matter the vast gap in their levels, could it surpass the rage he'd honed against Olympus over those endless years?
No sooner had he been flung back than he kicked off the wall and charged again.
“Raaah!!”
-Wooong!
Once more, a blue fist that shook the earth came flying, rumbling through the space.
-Boom!
Once.
-Boom boom!
Twice.
-Boom! Boom! Boom!
Three times, four, five, six, seven...
The roaring fist that rent the air was crude and rough beyond measure, yet the mystery blooming within it unmistakably resembled the heaven-shattering combo he'd just endured.
“This is...?”
Even Antaios himself was stunned by the punch he'd unleashed unconsciously. It wielded power on a wholly different dimension from the one Dianes had just demonstrated.
Unlike before, when it merely mimicked the wrath of the earth or the pressure of a tsunami, this fist now carried the unmistakable divine power of an earthquake, shaking everything around it.
But what was truly astonishing was the reaction of its originator, Dianes.
Heaven-Shattering Chain Assault absorbed!?
“?!”
Dianes wasn't raging at the theft of his technique. Instead, he welcomed it with uncontainable joy.
Antaios swallowed yet another surge of astonishment—this one he couldn't even count amid today's shocks.
Unlike the gods who would deem such a challenge to their divinity and authority high treason,
this one was delighted by it?
“Ahaha! This era, this world—it always surpasses my expectations!”
Laughing as if he didn't belong to this world at all, Dianes looked like a child.
Like a kid overjoyed by a single piece of candy, his pure delight only heightened the awe he inspired.
“Ahahaha!”
“Kuhahaha!”
The two warriors burst into laughter together, swept up in the rising mirth.
'They say the domains of Dionysus and Tethys differ by a hair's breadth.'
Dionysus, overseer of madness.
Tethys, protector of purity.
Antaios shivered at the sight of Dianes embodying both divine roles at once.
Purity and madness.
Light and darkness.
Their coexistence meant chaos—and chaos was the ancient god whose name had been forgotten, the one who birthed this world.
“I have one question...”
“Need a moment to catch your breath?”
“A little.”
Antaios gave a faint smile at Dianes, who joked so casually and cheerfully.
Then he asked.
“Do you intend to bring down Olympus?”
“Hm? If necessary?”
If necessary?
If necessary?!
“Necessary... hahaha!”
Splendid Olympus, great Olympus.
The paradise where every Greek deity's subject would gladly lay down their life for a single step inside.
The ideal realm for which countless demigods died, dreaming of eternal residence in that heavenly kingdom.
To treat the wrath of such an Olympus like a mere pebble in one's path?
Was this a ploy to deceive him?
A mask to hide his ambitions or fears?
Even straining his eyes to scrutinize,
“...?”
“Haha...”
That face, beautiful enough to make Aphrodite weep, bore only a smile implying it was the most obvious question in the world.
“Then allow me one as well?”
“As many as you like.”
That leisurely smile, fixed on his face since he'd appeared astride the giant crab and faced him down.
Now it shifted hue as he posed his question.
“What fuels your rage?”
“...What?”
Had he forgotten the blood grudge and clan hatred they'd discussed in his captain's cabin just moments ago?
'No.'
This man wouldn't ask something so simplistic.
“Right, after coming to this land, going through all sorts of ordeals, and retracing stalled paths.
Passing through this journey time and again, surely that curse draped over your sister can be lifted somehow.”
I've lived quite a long time for someone who started as a human, and done plenty of research, so I can make a decent guess?
“But as with so many others, a flame that burns for ages crumbles and dies the moment you pull out a single log.”
“You mean...”
“Yes, just as you say—it's obvious I'll clash with Olympus, or more precisely, with Zeus.”
“No prophecy needed to guess that. Countless kings have stood before me, even emperors above ten thousand. They all looked at me with Zeus's eyes, hiding their own like him.”
“Prepare without excess, lest you invite disaster through overpreparation. With readiness comes no fear of calamity.”
In such preparations, how far could Poseidon's son keep up?
Powered by the rage in his chest, the hatred in his heart?
How mighty would that fury be, one that would naturally dissipate in time if he simply followed along?
“I...”
Antaios tensed to argue, but the twelve-armed god quietly raised a hand to stop him.
“Think you've caught your breath enough now?”
Let's push to the end once more.
The pitch-black deity straightened his stance.
And behind Dianes appeared a god with the face of a baleful demon, drawing back his fist.
“With the single style of the giants I revere most, whom even the lords of ten thousand demons respect without end, I shall hear your answer.”
Heaven-Shattering Demon-Fighting Extreme Fist
'This is...!'
Antaios had always sought to embody the earth within it.
Not some farmland of Demeter's, but the steadfast earth of his mother Gaia.
The vast earth that embraced all things yet swept them away in an instant.
But this attack sought to upheave that earth itself and plant itself there.
“This... impossible...!
Before the stunned Antaios could even raise his head in shock,
the power that made the earth ripple like waves crashed upon him.
“Earthwave Palm.”
-!!
Power.
Pure, immense power surged in.
Overwhelming force that twisted the soft and pulverized the hard.
The power he'd sought his whole life, yearned for to topple Olympus and reclaim his sister—it now sought to kill him.
-.....
His ears lost all sound in an instant, his vision bleached white, seeing nothing.
In his fading consciousness, he could only tremble at the overwhelming force sweeping all away.
“Keurgh...”
In the snow-white blur of his sight, Antaios glimpsed something shattering into glittering fragments.
'That is...'
“Ah....”
It was his life.
His grudge.
Mighty father, loving mother, beloved sister.
Zeus's arrogance, Olympus's oppression, Eriteia's hatred.
The earth's quake-shaking might, the ceaseless tsunami rage.
Antaios wielding fists that gathered it all, kicking off the earth.
Joy and longing, regret and hatred, and above all, the massive blaze of fury—all shattered into pieces and scattered.
Everything crumbled powerlessly.
'Ahh...!'
As all vanished and fragmented,
in the white void that remained, only the final blow that felled him lingered.
'I thought I'd truly embodied earth and sea all this time.'
He'd merely clung to the surface, trying to imitate.
He hadn't resembled, nor even seen, the true essence they held.
'Pure power.'
The power that made earth quake and seas rise, rendering trifles insignificant.
The true force that orchestrated it all!
In that place of total ruin, Antaios gladly grasped the new path revealed and the massive hand guiding to it.
“Kuhk!”
Air stabbed sharply into his lungs, and the giant rose with ragged breaths.
Before him crouched a god, chin propped on his hand, grinning stickily down at him.
“Got a lot of questions, huh?”
“...Of course. Cough cough!”
A sharp, bloody taste lingered in his stinging throat.
As the price for blocking that overwhelming strike, his arms and chest bore hideous wounds like a boar's ravaging, blood streaming freely—but Antaios felt more refreshed than ever.
“Of course.”
The one who made unflowing blood flow, who came to break unbreakable shackles.
The herald proclaiming his stagnant path of millennia correct.
And the guide who would finally open the blocked road ahead.
The questions he wanted to ask would pile higher than Olympus's peaks.