"Light is darkness, and God comes from the devil.
I destroy, and I create.
I harm, and I save.
None may escape my hand, none may slip from my sight.
Glory, majesty, power, and authority, all belong to me!
My will shall be done in heaven and carried out upon the earth. Pray, let your sins burn and be branded as a mark. The land without stain descends here. Judgment has come. I am the Revelation of the end!
Mandate of Heaven: Judgment!"
The supreme deity of the Orpheus faction stood atop the Colchis feral dragon, steadying himself. With both hands gripping the long spear, one above and one below, his lips moved rapidly as he chanted divine words.
The pitch-black cross spear erupted in a towering blaze of golden flame. The authorities of space and time layered and interwove, forming a spectacle both magnificent and severe.
A marble-like Greek star disk, engraved with the signs of the twelve zodiac constellations and inlaid with the birthstones of the twelve months in order, rose slowly from the sky behind Samael, like an ancient clock.
At its center, a colossal black serpent coiled. Its vertical pupils opened and shut with sinister calm, its crimson tongue flickering. Its head and tail became the turning hour and minute hands, and at the moment they trembled forward across the marble star disk, the two aligned as one.
Clang!
A solemn, extinguishing doomsday chime rang out. Heaven and earth seemed to freeze into a still painting as a beam of gold-black ripples shot from the Greek star disk. Like a razor-edged paper cutter, it swept forward, slow to the eye yet impossibly fast, crossing the vast sea in an instant, spanning the Storm Sea, and passing straight through Sefar's chest.
Ssssh!
In the blink of an eye, the world itself seemed split like a shattered mirror, a pitch-black rift stretching for hundreds upon hundreds of miles. Along its path, space fractured, time fell hollow, and all things seemed to return to final chaos.
Sefar, struck head-on, warped out of alignment. Dense cracks spread from his chest over his entire body, like a damaged porcelain doll that would shatter at a touch.
"Laaa!"
But then a piercing, ethereal hymn rose. Star patterns across Sefar's body pulsed and flashed madly, while the light wheels around him turned in a dim, unreadable rhythm, focusing on the crucial Unit 2.
Hum!
Bathed in that alien starlight, the spread of the fractures slowed, then began to contract and fade.
"Sky, be torn asunder. Stars, be crushed. All that is in the heavens is mine, and all who rule the stars are mine! I am the thunder that rends the stars!"
At the same time, that majestic, arrogant roar shook the battlefield. Man-eating centaurs ran alongside the chariot, and atop the golden war chariot personally driven by the mighty hero, Zeus slammed his thunder scepter hard against his sheepskin divine shield.
Rumble!
The cloud curtain of the sky was cleaved apart by dazzling blue-white arcs, revealing lightning paths like pitch-black ravines. Countless bolts, drawn down in a torrent, hammered savagely into the Sefar who had just begun to mend.
Bang!
The white colossus that had once refused to budge was sent flying like a ball, whipped away by the countless bolts twisted into a single raging force. The innumerable points of starlight suspended above the Storm Sea dimmed and fell in its wake.
Sefar, the strongest of the three Alien vanguards, was driven back across the sea for hundreds upon hundreds of kilometers after the two God Kings struck together without restraint. His starlight-made body flaked and shattered all along the retreat.
The first exchange ended in victory, and from the rear, both the human ranks and the gods' formation erupted in deafening cheers.
Without a word, the two God Kings' combined strike that broke Sefar displayed a shared, instinctive understanding of the battlefield.
But as those scattered points of light drifted down onto the sea, more divine monsters, sea beasts, and ordinary creatures throughout the region were immediately seized by the titans' aberration factor. They poured out in dense swarms, charging toward the front of the Oceanus Sea and replenishing the losses among the titanic aberrations.
"An hour and a half until the Velber main body descends! Don't let those three Alien vanguards regroup and guide that thing, or it's all over!"
Samael stared at Sefar in the distance. Even with half her body shattered, the cracks were already shrinking as luminous fragments rushed back together. His brow knotted as he shouted a warning to Zeus, racing alongside him.
"As if I need you to tell me! I'm already doing it!"
The God King of Wisdom caught sight of that thing's regeneration, now several times faster than before. His face darkened like a gathering storm as he wrapped himself in thunder and charged straight at Sefar, who was healing as she advanced toward the Eye of the Tidal Sea.
After repeated clashes and probing, the two astonishing God Kings were no fools. They had already identified what made Sefar the key.
She was both [Celestial Sound Assimilation], the prototype that provided the other two Alien vanguards with their advancement templates and data, and the mastermind manipulating the Great Altar starship, establishing signal bases, and guiding the stellar route for the Tear Star, Velber.
On top of that, she occupied the Eye of the Tidal Sea, blocking the force's path into the Interstellar Mountain City range.
So crippling Sefar and preventing her from merging with the other two Alien vanguards was the first step toward breaking this deadlock.
Samael's eyes lifted. His cross-shaped star pupils opened wide, gazing at the distorted sky above, and a savage grin split his face.
Without the Alien vanguards' guidance, if the Tear Star, Velber forced its way through, and ended up jumping into some region of space crawling with unknown horrors, who knew if it would even make it out in one piece.
Thinking about it now, the Ancient Serpent was almost grateful for how hostile the vast sea of stars was to travel through. It was exactly that harshness that gave fragile Earth a chance to grow in the cracks between greater powers. Otherwise, it would have been swallowed clean long ago by some passing monster.
"High-threat combat units detected. Conceptual armament deployed. Conceptual defense deployed.
Disperse and recalculate stellar navigation routes. Stellar guidance permits delayed synchronous upload.
Autonomous target acquisition initiated. Switching to annihilation posture. Intelligent life extermination mechanism, activate."
Just as the not-yet-restored Sefar was shattered once more under the combined assault of Zeus and Samael, that cold, murderous directive echoed from within her trembling, humming core.
At once, the more rigid and machine-like Alien vanguards—Unit 1 and Unit 3—still stationed on either side of the Storm Sea, began to pulse with ominous star patterns. The star rings interlocked above their heads separated, then recombined into new configurations.
Like colossal beasts rousing from slumber, the two raised their Sword of the God of War high and turned their icy gaze toward Samael and Zeus.
Clearly, the priority of eliminating them and purging the Greek civilization host had now overtaken the mission of guiding Velber's descent.
As the two Alien vanguards surged in to support Unit 2, Sefar, streams of divine authority swept across the sea, cutting down countless titanic aberrations in the way. The power then lanced toward Unit 1 and Unit 3, slamming brutally into their luminous bodies.
Blood Dominion! Spear of Nation-Building!
Soul's Rest! Thou Art the Lust of Disordered Stars!
Mother of Sighs! Thou Art the Fertility of Cultivated Stars!
Plague's Arrow! Purifying Arrow!
Power of Water! Power of the Sea!
…
At the same time, the Greek gods—Ares, Aphrodite, Demeter, Artemis, Apollo, Poseidon, Hades, and many others—closed in on Unit 1, cutting off its path.
Sword of Justice! Stellar Tribunal!
Wisdom's Insight! Hymn of Victory!
Earth's Authority! Petrification Mystic Eyes!
…
The three goddesses Themis, Athena, and Medusa, along with the serpent mother Echidna, the sage Chiron, the prophet Prometheus, the underworld moon goddess Hecate, and the three gods of death, intercepted Unit 3, exhausting every ounce of strength to hold back the other deadly threat.
Everyone understood, humans and gods alike, that this was their last chance.
The Titan War had entered its white-hot phase.