Unlike the Aesir gods, the Greek pantheon already had a large number of deities.
Zeus became the King of the Gods by overthrowing his father Cronus, who had in turn brutally seized power by cutting off his own father Uranus's genitals.
The whole family was filled with "fatherly love and filial piety," "sibling harmony."
In such an environment, Zeus didn't even fully trust his own children, let alone give foreign gods a chance to rise. Therefore, foreign gods and mortals from conquered worlds were doomed to become slaves.
The mobilization order issued by Athena was not only directed at Greek mortal heroes who wanted to stand out, but also at a large number of slave warriors who had once been heroes.
Thousands of mortals who either held or had held the title of "hero" arrived in the Hittite world, directly escalating the intensity of this low-level war by several tiers.
A new hero of obscure origin was born every quarter hour, and these Greeks who emerged from the spatial cavities holding the severed heads of foreign heroes were naturally greeted with cheers from the local garrison and populace. The foreign armor they seized was the object of much envy, with not a few powerful individuals gathering around, hoping to buy a set of this exotic armor and weaponry.
Unfortunately, such lucky individuals were still the minority.
More Greek warriors—or those from subordinate worlds hoping to cast off their slave status by defeating foreign warriors—simply vanished silently with large portions of space from the Hittite world.
The situation here was not only being personally monitored by Athena, but also closely reported by a large number of priests and believers, delivering firsthand accounts to her.
"Great Goddess! The enemy's armor and weapons are indeed harder and sharper than ours. But the good news is, some of the superior armor we seized can now be used after undergoing a purging ritual. May the Goddess show us favor…" The speaker was Agamemnon, King of Mycenae, son of Atreus. Originally, he would have been the commander-in-chief of the Greek coalition during the Trojan War.
In this life, he hadn't fallen out with the huntress goddess Artemis, and thanks to his bravery, had naturally won the favor of the gods.
Athena cast him a glance and casually bestowed her blessing.
The so-called purging ritual was merely erasing the divine enchantments originally bestowed on the armor. Judging from the divine blessing placed on the armor's former owner, it was clearly given by a Third-tier God's priest.
Handling that was easy.
What truly worried Athena was something else—the mysterious Aesir clan could equip even Third-tier heroes with such powerful armor and weapons. That was definitely not good news.
Even if powerful Greeks could easily suppress the enemy with divine arts or divine blood, at the level of mortal warriors, they could very well be crushed by the other side.
Heroes don't just emerge out of nowhere.
Frankly, it's only through trial by fire and blood, after rigorous selection from among promising mortals, that a hero is born.
If too many mortal warriors are lost, the number of new heroes will plummet off a cliff.
Athena furrowed her brow.
Naturally, she thought of how she had used the advantage of the Greek coalition to suppress the opposing Ylanca world not long ago.
The current moment mirrored that previous time.
Only, last time it was the Greeks suppressing the other side—this time, the Greeks were the ones being suppressed.
The roles of victim and aggressor had completely reversed.
Athena contacted the sun god Helios. "How much longer will this spatial rift last?"
Helios pondered for a moment. "About the time it takes me to cross the central axis of the sky seven times."
That meant seven days!
"Thank you."
While Athena actively responded to the Aesir invasion of mortal heroes, Thalos was utterly bored.
In the great hall of the Palace of Silver, more than a thousand psychic projection screens hovered in midair.
Whether it was Thalos, lazily slouched on the God-Emperor's throne, or the Aesir gods who had specifically come to watch the battle, they only had to focus their divine senses on a given screen to enter a spatial cavity in third-person view, watching mortal hero duels up close.
Listening to the heavy breathing and blood-curdling cries of both heroes, coupled with the visceral impact of blades cutting into flesh, truly, the sense of immersion—wasn't it even more exciting and thrilling than being a spectator at a Roman gladiator arena?
"Yes, yes, that's it! Kill him!"
"Go, Beowulf!"
"You got this, Siegfried!"
A group of brawny warriors led by Thor, though unable to enter the field themselves, were having a blast as frontline spectators.
Even though they regularly visited the Valhalla Hall of Heroes to watch duels among the einherjar.
But after seeing it so many times, it started to get stale.
Not that the heroes fought poorly, but they'd watched so much they could recite each hero's moves and special attacks by heart.
Besides, the heroes never truly died.
That inevitably took away the adrenaline of a decisive blow or last-minute reversal.
How could that compare to the thrill of real interdimensional duels?
Don't be fooled by these lofty Aesir gods seemingly treating mortal heroes as entertainment—if one truly earned their favor, the lightest reward might be a divine artifact, while the greatest honor would be elevation to a subordinate deity.
So Thalos was more than happy to see Thor and the others shouting and hollering inside the Palace of Silver.
While Thor and the others watched for excitement and potential recruits, Thalos's perspective was entirely different.
Over the past few days, the Aesir mortal heroes' assaults had captured nearly ten thousand square kilometers of territory, along with the four great elemental forces and a number of mortals. This was a remarkable achievement for them.
But for a God-Emperor, it was merely a minuscule blip in resource gain.
Compared to such minor skirmishes at the mortal level, Thalos was more interested in re-enactments of classic or mythological stories.
Even though both the Aesir and Greek pantheons had placed a forward-operating world directly in front of the spatial rift to block incoming spatial cavities as much as possible, a few still managed to slip past and reach the rear of the Greek world.
That was where Thalos's greatest interest lay.
Both pantheons waged war through proxies, which certainly prevented their own domains from being directly attacked. But such warfare felt like scratching an itch through a boot.
Be it mortals or gods—
Double standards were inevitable.
Who doesn't enjoy the feeling of "I can hit you, but you can't hit me"?
As the God of the Sky, Thalos possessed even greater means to manipulate spatial cavities.
A few days ago, he'd sent over some brave enough to take the risk.
"Judging by the timing, it should be about now."
...
Greek World.
Legend has it that far away from Greece, on the shores of the Black Sea, there existed a place called Colchis (modern-day Caucasus region), home to a treasure beyond compare—the Golden Fleece. Countless heroes and warriors had embarked on perilous journeys in pursuit of it, but none had succeeded. Many didn't even catch a glimpse of the treasure before falling along the arduous path.
With the help of the goddess of wisdom Athena, Greece's finest shipwright Argo built a large ship for the hero Jason. The ship was constructed from wood that would never rot in seawater, and its elaborately carved beams and painted columns only accentuated the heroic aura of its crew. It could hold fifty rowers and was named "Argo" after its builder, meaning "swift ship." It is said to be the first great vessel the Greeks ever sailed into the sea.
Time passed, the ship remained, but everything else had changed.
(End of Chapter)
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