The God of Underworld - Chapter 266
Chapter 266: Chapter 24
“All Nordic Gods—strike! Destroy those abominations before they consume the roots of the universe itself!””
Odin’s voice thundered across the realms, shaking the heavens and echoing through the Nine Worlds.
His words were soon followed by Nyx, whose tone was calm but filled with unshakable authority.
“Greek Pantheon—focus your power on the tentacles! Tear them apart before they drain the cosmic essence!”
Countless deities, from the mightiest of Aesir to the lesser of Olympians, unleashed their powers in unison.
Storms of divine lightning split the heavens.
Torrents of divine fire rained down.
Oceans rose to drown the tendrils, and spells of celestial magnitude flashed like stars being born.
Yet, for all their efforts, the result was despairingly negligible; the tentacles merely shuddered and absorbed every ounce of energy thrown at them, devouring divinity as easily as they consumed the stars.
The gods watched helplessly, horror reflected in their divine eyes, as the colossal tendrils, each one thicker than entire worlds, continued to writhe and constrict, pulsing with an energy that made the fabric of the universe scream.
The constellations flickered like dying embers, the Nine Realms trembled, and for the first time in countless eons, even beings like Odin and Nyx felt the weight of futility pressing upon their immortal souls.
Just then, the oppressive despair was pierced by a voice—clear, powerful, and resounding through the sea of chaos like a song of defiance.
“It’s not over yet!” It was Freya, holding her shattered sword and cracked shield, bleeding heavily. “He’s still out there! Fighting! That man is still out there fighting that thing! Why should we give up here!?”
There was silence, before a chuckle broke into the battlefield.
It was Hecate.
“You are right, little girl.” Said Hecate, rising above the battlefield, her form blazing with violet flames as her staff shone with an ethereal radiance that bent the void around her. “As long as our faith endures, the cosmos will not fall!”
With a single motion of her staff, the skies twisted and parted, and from the rift poured a vast purple mist that carried the scent of ancient magic and forgotten divinity.
From that mist descended a shadow that shook the heavens, a massive wolf with fur dark as midnight and eyes like molten suns.
It opened its maw and clamped down upon a tentacle, tearing through the flesh of the abomination with a roar that shattered the soundless void.
The creature howled, and the gods felt their spirits rise.
Odin’s eyes widened in shock and awe, “That… that’s Fenrir!”
Before he could recover, the mist swirled again, and from it emerged an immense serpent that coiled around a writhing tendril, crushing it with such force that the heavens themselves groaned in protest.
“Jörmungandr, Fenrir…” Loki whispered, a grin spreading across his face as he laughed wildly. “My children have come to dine on the gods’ nightmares!”
Then, as if the floodgates of divinity had been opened, countless lights appeared across the battlefield—Athena, Artemis, Apollo, Hermes, and the rest of the Olympians, having remained in Asgard, now descended in unison, their divine auras lighting up the dying cosmos like a storm of stars reborn.
And yet, the final wave was the one that made even the heavens tremble.
From the cracks of space itself, vast shadows emerged, colossal beings, each one radiating the power of mountains, oceans, and storms.
They were the Giants, the offspring of Hades and Gaia, long hidden from the eyes of the pantheon, their blood carrying the rage of the earth and the darkness of the underworld.
At their forefront stood Porphyrion, the King of Giants, his presence towering over all.
His body gleamed with divine magma, and his voice rolled like thunder when he roared, “Brothers! Sisters! This is the day of reckoning! The day we repay the pain and torment of our mother! Tear apart this wretched fragment and let it know the fury of the Children of Hades!”
With a single swing of his colossal axe, Porphyrion cleaved a tentacle clean in half, the impact so immense it caused ripples through the very laws of reality.
The Giants, roaring in unison, followed his lead, each blow they struck igniting bursts of divine energy as they tore into the monstrous mass, shaking the stars themselves with their defiance.
Watching this, the Olympians stood dumbfounded.
Zeus, his thunderbolt dimming in disbelief, could only stare and mutter under his breath, “Children of Hades…? Giants of Gaia…?”
Then his face twisted into irritation and exasperation.
“By the Fates,” he growled, rubbing his temple, “that brother of mine really needs to learn to keep it in his pants… his ‘children’ nearly destroyed Olympus once, and now they’re saving the cosmos. Typical, for all his quietness, chaos follows him everywhere.”
Freya almost stumbled hearing Porphyrion’s words as she stared at them. ‘Children my Odr!? They are all my stepchildren!? That’s too much! Is my Odr a womanizer!?’
Even as the battle raged on, the gods could not help but share a momentary laugh through their exhaustion.
A fleeting spark of humor amidst the infinite dark, before turning once more to face the nightmare that loomed before them, united now not by pantheon or blood, but by the shared will to keep their universe alive.
Nyx exhaled a long, weary sigh, relief washing over her like the faint warmth of dawn after a night spent drowning in chaos.
At least, for now, she wouldn’t have to use that, the final, forbidden measure she had kept hidden even from most of the Primordials, a contingency so dangerous it could tear apart what they were trying to save.
For the first time since the battle began, she allowed herself a flicker of hope.
The tides had shifted a little, thanks to the arrival of the Giants, the divine beasts, and the renewed fury of both pantheons, the despair that once suffocated the battlefield had been replaced by roaring determination.
Her gaze drifted across the legions of gods, seeing the fire return to eyes that had dimmed only moments ago.
The Olympians, the Aesir, the Vanir, divine spirits, souls of heroes—once fragmented, now fought as one.
She stared at Freya, her earlier words still echoing in her ears. It was almost a slap in the face that someone so young would be the one to remind her of the fact.
Nyx felt a faint smile tug at her lips.
That’s right, she thought, glancing toward her. Hades is still fighting out there, beyond the universe itself, facing that horror alone… if he hasn’t given up, why should we?
Yet, as her divine senses reached across the writhing expanse of corruption that blotted out the heavens, her mind began to race.
She could see it clearly now, every blow, every blast of godly power did little more than inconvenience the monstrosity.
The tentacles regrew faster than they were destroyed, the wounds sealed as if mocking their futile defiance.
It wasn’t even fighting them seriously, no, it was feeding, ignoring them to slowly, deliberately, consume all of the cosmos.
They were gnats to a god of infinity, distractions to something whose existence defied meaning.
“Damn it…” she hissed under her breath, her eyes narrowing. “We’re not hurting it. We’re not even touching it.”
Her mind spun through countless calculations, strategies, theories—each one more hopeless than the last—until a bitter laugh escaped her lips.
“If only this one was as weak as that fragment who invaded our world… the one that took over Gaia. At least that thing could bleed.”
Then, like lightning splitting the fog of despair, realization struck.
Her breath caught, her eyes widened, and the endless puzzle of their failure suddenly aligned into clarity.
That’s it.
The entity before them wasn’t truly here.
It existed beyond the universe, a higher-dimensional corruption forcing itself into a realm too small to contain it.
Just like the one before, it needed a host, a vessel tethered to the material plane, a bridge through which it could act and devour.
That was why their attacks felt almost meaningless.
They were not striking it, only the shadow it cast upon reality.
Her heartbeat quickened. If it can’t act without its host… then all we have to do is sever the connection.
Her eyes darted across the storm of flesh and chaos, scanning through the infinite maze of twisting tentacles, her consciousness expanding beyond sight and sound, seeking the pulse of consciousness hidden within the madness.
And then—there!—a flicker of divine resonance buried deep within the endless sea of corruption, faint but unmistakably alive.
“There!” she shouted, her voice cutting through the clamor of battle like a blade of starlight. “The host is there! That’s where its core is! If we destroy it, the connection will collapse and the fragment will crumble!”
But the words had barely left her lips when the universe itself seemed to pause.
The monstrous mass of tentacles froze mid-motion, as if reality had stopped breathing.
For a moment, the silence was unbearable, then, in a single, horrifying instant, every eye across the entity turned toward her.
And it understood.
The tentacles convulsed, twisted, and in the next heartbeat, all of them—thousands upon thousands—surged toward her like a tidal wave of nightmares.
Nyx’s eyes widened in shock, her blood turning to ice as the shadow of death swallowed the stars above her.
“Oh crap,” she muttered under her breath, face paling. “I’m so screwed.”
The next instant, the sky shattered.