Mountain of the Immortals

I hadn't met any of the Sumerian gods in person but I had definitely heard stories about this one. His faith was based on fear, and the way he treated mortals was much worse than anything I had ever seen from a Greek god.

Each of his followers carried a mark of disease on their body but the sickness lay dormant as long as they did their god's work and spread it to other people. As soon as they stopped or retreated somewhere where they would no longer be a problem to society, their god showed his real face. Their slow and painful descent toward death was torturous. In fact, they had to live in horrible and excruciating pain for six months before their bodies succumbed to it. And this wasn't even the worst of the trials he put those who abandoned his faith through, for the deterioration of their health came with its temporary reliefs, giving the people hope they'd been cured before putting them through even worse pains.

I still didn't know why my uncle had him imprisoned here though.

As bad as this god was to his people, I was sure Hyperion wasn't acting as the champion of these poor souls. There must have been another reason for going out of his way to take in a Sumerian god and make sure he never saw the light of day again.

As the god approached, the mana bird raced toward us, toward the perfect position for us to jump off the ledge and into the clouds below.

Then I felt the pressure in the air rise. A couple dozen of levels back, I might have felt a pressure on my chest from this effect but I was used to it by now. I still knew it was very bad news.

Such a dense concentration of mana could only mean that someone extremely powerful was willingly trying to make his presence known. I didn't know many people who would be able to do that, but I was positive it wasn't going to be someone who wanted to help us.

"Get ready to jump on my mark," I said in the guild chat, to avoid notifying the steady flow of enemies and those few powerful prisoners that had emerged somehow unharmed by the explosion.

Artemis was running dangerously low on MP as she used more of her powerful skills to take out enemies with just one hit. At this point, I didn't care too much about leaving witnesses behind, only avoiding being completely overrun.

She used her new skill to turn HP into MP a couple of times and Aphrodite was quick to react by healing her back up. Ares was also getting physical with his attacks now, taking care of any guards that poured through the two openings into the room, though he'd found an unexpected helper in the god of disease.

Nergal moved his hands in the air and the green luminescent fog around him concentrated into a thick veil which he threw over a small group of warriors creeping through the opening in the ceiling. The poor bastards didn't know what had hit them, and their sharp inhales to help them hold their breaths only made the foul gas enter their bodies even faster.

As I watched, their skin changed color and all veins in their faces and necks throbbed and turned black. Within a couple of seconds they were all coughing violently, spitting blood around them on the floor and on each other. Only after their lungs were empty of oxygen did they understand that they were no longer able to draw in any more air.

One after the other, they hit the ground, clawing at their necks, desperately trying to take in some air. We continued fighting other guards as they flapped on the ground like fish out of water, one of them even throwing himself at the gaping hole in the wall, hoping his suffering would end faster by hitting the ground.

"Now!" I shouted as the vessel reached the spot right underneath us.

The cloud it was hidden inside wouldn't have looked suspicious to anyone but those who knew exactly what was in there. I could only hope that my guild members would be agile enough to land on it and get inside before our attackers understood what was happening.

Aphrodite was the first to jump down. The goddess landed on the glass roof of the vessel and with a swift motion, managed to pull herself in through the side door. The next to jump was Ares, who had hoisted the frail old Hephaestus onto his shoulders, and this time I had to move our concealed getaway vehicle to offset the sudden force that would be applied to it by two people landing on it. As prepared as I was, I almost lost control completely when the air around me became even heavier and I started feeling a low thrum in chest.

"We need to go!" I shouted at Artemis. "Quick!"

The goddess of the hunt looked around confused, obviously sensing the same thing I was feeling. We both turned to look at Nergal, who--as disgusting and odd as he was--seemed to be looking back at us for an explanation the same way we were looking at him.

Artemis nocked an arrow and targeted the god of pestilence. He didn't react at all, whether because he knew that there was no way the arrow would harm him or because he was sure there was nothing he could do to stop it. Artemis leaned forward into the gaping hole leading to the clouds below and unleashed her arrow as she fell, striking an assassin that was almost behind Nergal right between the eyes.

The hooded woman was still holding the dagger in her hands when her last breath left her body and she landed on the ground behind him. If I didn't know any better, I could have sworn that the sick god smiled at Artemis as she disappeared into the cloud.

The air became almost too thick to breathe and Nergal's face became hyperfocused on the exploded doorway that had led us down here. The source of the mana abnormality had finally reached us, but there was nothing they could do now to keep us from escaping.

I waved two fingers at Nergal, knowing I had probably earned myself another favor from a powerful being, and leaned forward, falling straight through the hole in the dungeon floor. As I did so, I met the eyes of the powerful being coming our way.

There was this feeling I sometimes got when my father caught me messing with mortals after I was explicitly told not to--a heavy mental gut-punch of knowing I'd been caught red-handed doing something that would cause me a lot of trouble, even perhaps a painful death.

That was exactly how I felt when I saw my uncle.

* * *

Name: Hyperion

Race: Titan

Class: The Radiant Light

Level: 65

* * *

He was wearing his shining heavy armor, complete with pauldrons, and boots that illuminated everything around him. His blond hair was covered by his helmet, and what I could see of his face did not look surprised. He looked determined if anything. His wide shoulders scratched the sides of the walls as he crossed through the broken doorway.

He looked at me with those uncaring eyes for a moment that seemed to stretch out into an eternity. He wasn't disappointed or angry, but rather looked like he understood what was happening, as if he had been expecting this moment to come someday. Perhaps not from me, but from someone.

I turned my eyes away from him in regret. As much as I hated my father, I didn't want to make an enemy of any other titans. I didn't know what I was expecting to happen when we raided his dungeon, but I had secretly hoped that we would be in and out without anyone ever finding out.

A beastly roar echoed from above as I was in free fall. Nergal must have attacked my uncle, and he would have transformed to his awakened form in response. There was no way the god of pestilence would be able to fight my uncle and win but that wasn't the point of it at all.

My uncle had trapped him there to keep him alive. If he let him die, he would return back to his place of origin, much like Astaroth had, escaping his grasp. So Hyperion would now have to try to fight and trap a god that was willing to do anything, including dying, to break free.

My feet touched the glass surface of the mana bird as soon as they broke through the cloud. My party members reached up and grabbed my ankles from below so that I wouldn't slip and fall.

Once they were sure I wasn't going to lose my footing, they let go and I was able to climb down into the vessel. Large chunks of rock were now falling around us from the destruction taking place above our heads, taking tufts of the thick white cloud with them.

I focused on the crystal and moved the vessel forward and down, making sure that the cloud was still providing cover. Even if there was a remote possibility that someone might have noticed our cloud moving slightly too quickly, the battle taking place in the bottom layer of the dungeon was enough of a distraction.

"We made it!" Ares proclaimed a moment later. "We really fucking made it."

"What's wrong, Zeus?" Aphrodite asked between healing spells on Hephaestus. "Are we still in danger?"

"Let me try first," I said, and cast my divine teleportation skill.

In the blink of an eye, the soaring skies of the Minoan kingdom disappeared from view and were replaced by the thick forests of Mount Olympus. We were all still in the mana bird, presumably because I was still holding the crystal, which technically meant it was still part of my inventory.

"You've still got that look," Artemis said as we stepped out onto a hillside overlooking our city. "What happened, Zeus?"

"That powerful presence that appeared before we left," I said. "It was my uncle."

"The titan Hyperion?" Ares asked, immediately alarmed. "He saw you but didn't attack you?"

"He would have found out it was us one way or another," Aphrodite rationalized. "Did he say anything?"

At that exact moment, a notification reached me and I glanced at it.

* * *

You have received a message from Hyperion.

Do you want to read it?

Yes No

* * *

"He just did," I said and opened the message.

* * *

I know what you want to do. You have two months to use the forge god. Don't make me come knocking on your mountain, boy.

* * *

The tone of the message was hostile but so was everything that concerned the titans. The meaning of his words, however, had no edge other than the smug superiority that was inherent to my uncle's speech.

I showed everyone the message and they were as surprised as I was.

"It looks like we won't have an issue with him for some time then," Ares said.

"But he wants him back after two months," Aphrodite said.

I looked over at the old man who seemed like he wasn't paying any attention to what we were saying. Instead he was lying on the ground with his eyes open, but his irises having completely disappeared. There were strange wisps of black smoke emanating from his body. It looked an awful lot like it was coming out of his pores.

"What's wrong with him?" Ares asked, and I instantly looked at his HP bar in our party view.

Despite the fact that his HP was at a hundred percent, he looked nothing like he was at full health. He was completely non-responsive to our calls. I thought of falling on my knees and shaking him, but the smoke suddenly thickened and started enveloping him.

"What in the world is happening?" Ares asked. He tried blowing as hard as he could to move the smoke aside, but only managed to make it thicker.

For a couple of seconds, the smoke swirled around the god's body, obscuring him from view. Just as I was about to channel the winds, thinking I might be able to at least save him from inhaling too much of it, it started dissipating by itself.

When all of the blackness was removed, the body that was left behind looked nothing like the old man we had just rescued.

* * *

Name: Hephaestus

Race: Greater Deity

Class: Forge of Divinity

Level: 60

* * *

"He's..." Artemis said, at a loss for words. "He’s enormous."

The young man lying on his back was wearing nothing but a leather apron and leather boots, presumably the ones that he was wearing when my uncle had cast whatever transfiguration spell he'd used on him. He slowly shifted, and Aphrodite helped him on his feet.

His bright blue eyes complimented his red hair and freckled face perfectly, while his massive arms were a dead giveaway that he had spent hundreds of years striking hammers on an anvil.

"Thank you for rescuing me," he said, and another notification was added to the list of those I'd received after our dungeon run. "And most of all, thank you for helping me get rid of that retched body I was imprisoned in."

"You mean, you really aren’t ugly?" Ares asked, and promptly was slapped on the back of his head by Aphrodite.

"Whose body was that?" Aphrodite asked.

"That's a story I have not told anyone before, but it is high time you found out," Hephaestus replied. "The moment has come for the world to find out that not everything that seems invincible really is. Especially not the titans."