Odin didn't know that the Greek warrior who'd just slain his champion was more commonly known as "Lesser Ajax"—and in truth, among Greek heroes, he was at best second-tier.
Yet Lesser Ajax had killed Pakama, one of the brightest rising stars of the New Maya pantheon, a prime candidate for Odin's new version of Valhalla.
And now? That so-called candidate was dead in a spatial cavity duel.
These spatial cavities weren't part of Lyranca World's territory. That meant his death was permanent—his soul couldn't even return to Odin's Valhalla.
A mortal warrior with divine blood had died, and along with him, dozens of square kilometers of spatial territory—including their earth, water, fire, and air elements, mortals, and local wildlife—all were forfeited to the Greek pantheon under the rules of the duel.
Maybe a single loss like that wasn't too serious.
But what if the Greeks just kept coming, in endless shifts, morning, noon, and night?
This was death by a thousand cuts—and the cuts never stopped.
With about a hundred Greek heroes rotating through each day, the damage done in one cycle rivaled the loss of a god's avatar.
Odin was furious!
Both sides had demigod warriors. Everyone was cheating—so it came down to who cheated harder.
Clearly, the Greeks had the upper hand.
For over ten straight days, they won far more matches than they lost.
Especially the well-known heroes—Odin could recite their names by now.
Achilles, Heracles, Odysseus…
"Trash! Utter trash! Is this the elite you've trained over fifty years?" In the temple, Odin flew into a rage.
Over the past half-century, Odin had, for once, been diligent.
Maya and Aztec cultures already had a tradition of blood sacrifice through combat. After seizing millions of mortals, Odin hadn't gone too hard on them. But every month, he'd held large-scale intertribal tournaments—each guaranteed to draw blood.
By any metric, this was a "martially virtuous" world.
But clearly, the Greeks were even more martially virtuous.
In just two weeks of sub-divine level duels, Lyranca World not only lost much of the territory and elemental resources it had seized early on, but also gave away thousands of square kilometers of land—and the associated space.
For a mature and stable pantheon, this posed serious risks.
If things kept going like this, the divine power pool of the New Maya gods would start to shrink.
Thankfully, several gods had already died—otherwise, there wouldn't be enough faith to go around.
At this point, Odin had no choice but to allow the remaining gods to divvy up the followers of the fallen.
Dividing meat—especially the meat of your own kind—was a foolish move.
Once territory fell below a critical threshold, Odin's rule would collapse.
He could already sense the restlessness of the newly surrendered Greek sub-gods.
He didn't dare assign them divine offices. All he could do was lock them in the side halls of his temple, treating it as "veneration" when in truth it was soft imprisonment.
Odin's martial strength was his last line of defense—but he was like a camel already buried under weight, never knowing which final straw would break his back.
Desperate, he once again resorted to sending dreams.
"My brother Thalos! If only you were here…" In the dream, Odin wept—crocodile tears.
On the other side, Thalos nearly laughed out loud.
"Allies in distress? Stand still and do nothing?"
That only works if you're actually my ally, Odin.
You, a traitor, trying to stick the Aesir label on yourself—
Did you ask the God-Emperor? Did I agree?
Thalos didn't know whether Odin had some bizarre "feed-forward when losing, feed-enemy when winning" divine quirk—though it seemed unlikely.
What he did know was that Odin had a gift for manufacturing headwinds out of tailwinds.
A century had passed, and the man was still the same old disaster.
Thalos was speechless.
And now there was no more Loki to save Odin.
What Odin would do next, Thalos was genuinely curious about.
"Surely he's not going to… just give up?" Thalos mused aloud, stroking Amaterasu's soft hair.
Unfortunately for Odin—Thalos guessed half right.
What could Odin do? He was already in despair. His brother was leaving him on read, and even when stretching Lyranca's perception range to its limit, he couldn't detect any trace of the Aesir. All he could do was keep enduring.
Not that Odin had done nothing.
He at least purged the "traitors."
"Odin, you shameless beast! You've killed us! From this moment on, no Greek-aligned god will ever surrender to you again. I curse you! I curse—"
SMACK! The Polynesian volcano god Pico's head flew into the temple dome, then crashed back to the ground.
With his last breath, he tried to curse Odin using all his remaining divine power.
Unfortunately for him, Odin—though a Norse god—had taken the body of the Rage God Lau. And when it came to curses and prophecy, the Maya were practically primordial beings.
Odin easily dismantled Pico's crude spell.
No intermediaries, no borrowed hands—he simply waved his hand, and crushed the god's body with divine power, obliterated his soul, and extracted the divine essence.
Soon after, the entire New Maya pantheon knew that a group of surrendered gods had attempted rebellion—and had been swiftly executed by Odin.
Apche and the others said nothing.
If they were to grow stronger, those surrendering gods would've been quite useful.
But while other pantheons could keep baking a bigger cake, Lyranca's cake was visibly shrinking.
Better to dismantle the bombs now than risk them exploding later.
Odin's executions, under the pretext of treason, were no exaggeration—anyone observant could see those gods had been unusually active in their secret dealings lately.
So—traitor gods? Just kill them.
After Odin distributed their divine essences (those matching existing divine offices) to his loyal gods, everyone wisely shut up.
All of Lyranca World, from top to bottom, was gritting its teeth—trying everything to resist the Greeks' slow, grinding war of attrition.
But some things can't be overcome with effort.
Lyranca World's population was either native to the island or drawn from India's Dalits.
Why had Lyranca once become a vassal to the Indian pantheon?
And why were the Dalits India's fourth caste?
Because they were the conquered little brothers.
Decades of vassal status had long since bled them of their fighting spirit.
To make matters worse, the New Maya pantheon was filled with gods of defeat—what pride or confidence could they possibly have?
This fragile, obedient atmosphere was the worst soil for birthing strong warriors.
After a month, aside from Odin and a few of his gods who occasionally couldn't help themselves and wiped out some third-rate Greek heroes (along with their spatial cavities), Lyranca World remained in a depressing state of counting losses as victories.
But Odin couldn't afford to act often. Violating starfield laws by interfering was too draining.
And when gods couldn't fight, and their champions still lost even after giving everything—
That was just pure humiliation.
(End of Chapter)
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