Mountain of the Immortals

Cronus’s soldiers didn’t know what hit them. I fell from the sky like the divine judgment they deserved for the hubris of going against a god.

The soldiers and monsters that had tried desperately, and in vain, to bring down the impenetrable walls now offered very little resistance, despite being heavily armed.

Soldiers wearing full-plate armor and monsters whose bodies were covered in thick metal scales all fell dead with each swipe of my spear. It had been quite some time since I last fought someone or something at a significantly lower level than me, and I’d forgotten how brittle mortals could be. Even the strongest of Cronus's troops that I encountered were no higher than level forty. They didn’t die with a single strike, but didn’t outlive the single use of any of my offensive skills either.

A path of blood was drawn across the side of the mountain as I charged forward. The attacks of the puny mortals were barely able to touch my HP bar at all before my regeneration simply filled it back up again. There was nothing and no one here who would be able to stop me—at least until I reached the base of the siege golem's foot that remained on the ground.

Half a dozen warriors wearing leather armor and carrying two short wooden poles connected with a few chain links jumped down and charged toward me. They flung their strange weapons around their bodies menacingly, and one of them even managed to deflect my strike with it.

He was level forty-nine. Luck had been on his side during my first attack, but the second time, I managed a deep cut across his chest. But focusing my attacks on him created an opening for the other five to attack me all at once.

It hurt more than I expected when the wooden poles struck me, though this wasn’t reflected in the damage I took or the HP I lost from them. Still, they seemed like more trouble than I wanted to deal with at the moment, especially since my presence was attracting the attention of other soldiers too.

The enemies that had been steadily flowing along the golem’s other leg onto our dome now redirected down the leg still in contact with the ground—the one I wanted to climb. If the general was inside the head of the construct, I had to get at least as far as the knee before I'd be in range for Artemis's attack to work.

I unleashed my Spear of the Thunder God attack on them, hoping to get rid of them all at once, or at least the majority of them. The spear did cause piercing damage, but they all brushed off the electric field as if it was nothing. It was at that point I realized that they were probably equipped with items that gave them immunity against lightning damage. Suddenly the weapons made of wood made a lot of sense.

These soldiers were probably an elite squad that had been trained specifically for a fight against me. As well-trained and equipped as they were, however, they clearly had no idea what they were getting themselves into. They weren’t just fighting against someone with lightning skills. I was lightning itself.

Looking around me and anticipating the incoming strikes, I caught one of their weapons with each arm and pushed out a burst of electric energy from my hands. The wood splintered and exploded in a burst of flame. I threw the flaming sticks back at their owners before activating Maelstrom of Steel, damaging all of them in one fell swoop.

To my surprise, two of the warriors were still standing, though stunned at the sight of their comrades now bleeding out on the ground around them.

"Tend to them, and don't follow me," I told them, and turned to leave.

This wasn't their fault and if it could save me some time as well as spare their lives, it'd be a win-win situation. But the youngest of the two remaining warriors didn’t want to take the deal. He let out a war cry and charged me. Before I was able to end him, his comrade used all the strength he had to duck and release his chained weapon at the raging fighter.

His strike on the man's feet was enough to bring him to the floor, but the surprise seemed to hit him harder that the actual attack.

"Help me find a healer," his comrade told the man on the floor. "This fight is not worth losing our lives over."

"He's right," I said. Then I ran forward and away from them, flicking my spear in the air to get rid of any blood still covering the blade.

Ascending the golem's leg while being attacked from all sides was challenging. First, there were the flying monsters that were probably being manipulated by a powerful sorcerer of some sort. Normally, I would just locate their puppet-master and take them out, then watch the critters escape. But I had no time, or any idea really how, to find them right now. So I had to kill the monsters off as they came at me. Luckily, there weren’t any significant flying monsters around me—I suspected they were probably still trying to get onto the mana field, hoping to drop into the middle of the city when it failed. For sure, they hadn’t been expecting me to charge through their ranks.

Apart from the flying critters, I also had to take care of soldiers and larger monsters as I climbed the golem's leg. The climb was really more of an upward trek, with enemies concentrated on vantage points in the hopes that they would be able to take me on there. But they were sorely mistaken. No amount of cover or high ground would protect them from the wrath of a god.

Probably the most annoying attacks on me were the rocks and even boulders being thrown at me from above. Some of Cronus's troops were so zealous in their attempts to crush me, or perhaps so blinded by the prospect of glory, that they didn't even seem to care for their own comrades.

"Watch out!" Aphrodite shouted in the guild chat. "Big one coming."

I ducked to avoid the two-handed sword of a half-orc brute and then dodged to the side once I saw the shadow of a boulder drawing closer. The orc's surprised grimace at how easily I was able to parry his blow froze on his face as his body was crushed beneath the boulder with a sickening crunch.

The new terrain element served as a great stepping-stone for me, however, saving me a good two minutes of climbing another path carved into the golem's knee. The disappointment of the enemies on the path when I just jumped onto the boulder and then onto a rocky crevice some feet above me was mixed with relief that at least they now wouldn't have to fight me.

In fact, most of the enemies I skipped by didn’t even bother to chase and attack me. I had no doubt that had their morale been higher, they would likely have continued to pursue me and even given their lives fighting. But such is the state of an army that has no real skin in the fight.

I hacked and slashed my way forward, occasionally stopping for a second or two to down a potion and increase my HP regeneration rate for a few seconds.

"How are things looking from up there?" I asked in the guild chat as I cut down two goblins and pushed a third one to its death off the golem's thigh.

"The troops seem to be in disarray," Ares replied. "There isn't much space for them to maneuver in order to reach you, and there's a lot of infighting."

"You mean they can’t decide what they should be doing?" I asked, as I sprinted up a path that was completely devoid of enemies.

"I mean they're actually fighting with each other," Ares said. "It seems that some of them want to head for the mana field while others are pushing them to attack you."

"So they all know I'm coming for them?"

"It looks like it," Artemis replied instead, "but not many of them seem keen to actually fight you."

"That's what you get if you run your armies based on fear, extortion, or money," Ares said.

"It really does look like less warriors are coming my way compared to monsters," I noted. "Well, I can't blame them for not wanting to waste their lives like this."

"You know our people would gladly do this if you asked them to," Ares said.

"They would, and I'm proud of—"

"Can you just focus on getting there safely?" Aphrodite interrupted, worry filling her voice.

"Almost there!" I said and stopped communicating with them for the next few minutes.

I focused on the highest point of the golem's knee and avoiding as many of the enemies as I could or even outrunning the slowest of them, I made progress very fast. Hacking and slashing at monsters was a lot easier than killing people who had no place being here and fighting against us in the first place.

Once I reached the point where I was sure Artemis's skill would work, regardless of where the general might be hiding, I cleared my immediate surroundings of enemies and called the winds to push them back and stop them from coming straight back at me immediately again.

"Delta!" I shouted at the general vicinity of the golem’s head. "Show yourself. Let us end this now!"

For a few moments nothing happened. But just as the enemies were about to reach me again from both sides, the golem started shaking his leg, as if trying to rid it of all the creatures now approaching me—for the general must have known it would never be able to throw me off. I stabbed into the stone with my spear and held on to it until the shaking stopped.

"Your friends are dead!" I shouted again. "They are finally free from my father's tyranny. Show yourself. This one last brave act, and you will be reunited."

"I thought he couldn't act against Cronus's orders?" Hephaestus said in the guild chat, confused.

And he really couldn't. But if I proposed something that wasn’t specifically against his master's orders, then he just might be willing and able to do it.

"Come fight me, and let's end all this needless bloodshed!" I shouted. "If you kill me, you can have everything I have, and the glory of being the only general who made it out alive. I'm sure my father would be very pleased."

I waited for a few moments, hoping that this would be enough to bring him out. In the meantime, no other monsters or soldiers moved to attack me, and even though I thought this was a good sign, the general didn’t reveal himself. I looked at my spear and smiled. We’d had a good run together.

"What if I was willing to fight you without a weapon?" I said, and threw my spear down the hundreds of feet below me. "Don't you think that evens the odds quite a bit?"

I was looking up at the head of the golem carefully, trying to suss out where the general was hiding. But instead, several large boulders pushed out from the chest area of the construct and behind them, my father's last remaining great general appeared. I couldn’t get a reading of his Dark Energy signature from where I was standing, but it was definitely him.

This was a great man that had been reduced to a pawn in a game he had no business or wish to play. I couldn’t make out his exact expression but I thought he was smiling. He had a longsword in his hand but there was something odd about the way he was holding it. It wasn't the grip of someone going into battle but rather someone coming back from it.

The man probably guessed that there was more to this than a single fight but felt satisfied that he was able to sidestep the rules set out for him by my father. I didn’t know his real name, nor those of his fellow generals that had already fallen. But I knew they were powerful and wise people. Perhaps not clever enough to avoid falling into one of my father's traps in the first place, but that did not remove any of their honor. And even if there was nothing I could do to restore his name in the river of history, I could at least end his torture.

"What are you doing, Zeus?" Artemis almost shouted in the guild chat. "Pull me in, I can see him clearly!"

"It is not the end that defines a man's life, General," I shouted at the man who was now walking lazily toward me, "but all of the years leading up to it."

I turned to face Artemis on the palisades and triggered Thunder Switch. Within a split second, my feet were back on the walls again and I was facing the city behind me. I turned just in time to see Artemis loose a black arrow from her bow.

It resembled an arrow in shape, but it seemed that it had no real substance—more like the complete absence of light. It traveled much faster than any normal arrows could, leaving specks of darkness behind it before it lodged itself in the general's chest.

I was half expecting some kind of dramatic end for him, or an explosion of some sort from such a powerful attack. Instead, the general fell to his knees, and then onto the ground, without making so much as a sound. The monsters and soldiers around Artemis looked at their leader in confusion before the ground below and around them started to shake. Only then did they realize they had lost the battle.

"Artemis run back!" Aphrodite shouted at her. "You can make it to the dome."

Artemis did as she was told but it was obvious she wasn’t going to make it in time. She was going to be buried under tons of rocks and dirt if she wasn't teleported out of there instantly. And that was something I’d already thought of.

I triggered the same divine skill, switching places with her, and found myself falling as the golem beneath my feet collapsed, now on a collision course with the last foot soldiers of the enemy army a couple of hundred feet below us.

"Why did you do that?" Artemis shouted, her voice surprised and angry.

I used my last three divinity points to cast Instant Divine Teleport and appeared on the ground in the middle of our town, right where the guild core was located. Luckily, the speed I’d built up while falling didn’t translate into hitting the ground hard, and I gently touched down on the perfectly cut grass.

"Where did he go?" Aphrodite asked in the guild chat.

"I teleported back to the guild core," I said, "but I'm completely out of divinity points now. How are things looking over there?"

"The golem is falling apart,” Ares replied. “It looks like this is the end of it."

I stood up and started running toward the walls when I remembered I didn’t actually have to go all the way back up there to see what was taking place inside and outside of the city. Instead, I sat down and opened up the siege view to get an overview of the battlefield.

My viewpoint changed just in time to see the last of the golem crash to the floor right outside of our walls, and I smiled. Our plan had worked perfectly. I randomly scanned some of the ground units around the area and even those on different sides of the city, where the siege constructs had fallen before.

All of them were either retreating or had yielded. I wasn’t sure how I felt about them surrendering to us, since there was no way I was going keep them as prisoners here, but wouldn’t let them in as citizens either. That would have to be a problem for another day and probably another god, likely Aphrodite.

The important thing was that the battle was won. I tried looking at what this meant for the siege status but couldn’t find anything new. That was until I got my response as clear as day.

My view suddenly returned to my actual body and I was greeted with a slew of notifications.

* * *

Siege overview mode is no longer available.

You have successfully defended Mount Olympus against the invading armies.

All guild members have been awarded 50,000,000 XP.

* * *

"Fuck yes!" Ares shouted in the guild chat. "I won't need to XP again for the next hundred years."

"Did we just get ten million XP each?" I asked, simultaneously pulling up my own information.

"We just got fifty million each," Aphrodite replied. "Welcome to the A-ranks, everyone!"