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[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
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Chapter 178: Poseidon (3)
I looked at Triaina, which Poseidon referred to as a masterpiece.
A blue trident.
Well, I suppose it’s a decent weapon…
“Should I just kill you here and take it?”
“Triaina is linked to me. If I die, my divine weapon will disappear as well.”
“Really? Well, that aside… When we fought earlier, it just seemed like a weapon that summons seawater. Doesn’t look all that useful.”
Poseidon's expression twisted at my words.
“You think Triaina is useless? It may not have reached SSS rank, but it rivals such weapons.”
“Poseidon’s trident is certainly famous. They say it causes earthquakes and tsunamis.”
Asura chimed in from the side.
Earthquakes and tsunamis, huh?
Sure, those are powerful effects, but if you ask whether I personally need them…
Well.
I’m not so sure.
They’re powerful, sure… but wouldn’t it be better to get stats from Poseidon instead?
“Soul God. Accept it.”
Just then, Cthulhu offered me a suggestion.
He, who would benefit more from Poseidon’s disappearance, was the one making this proposal first.
What is he thinking?
“Wouldn’t it be better for you if Poseidon were destroyed?”
“That’s true. But the value of Triaina outweighs that. And with your power, Soul God, you could make me a true god without needing to eliminate Poseidon…”
Why is he placing so much faith in me?
But now I was curious what made Triaina so valuable for him to say this.
“What exactly is Triaina’s value?”
“Poseidon and I pioneered a ‘path’… Beyond the divine realms. A space of dark chaos and swirling soulual energy. Vast and boundless, like an endless ocean, we named it ‘Okeanos.’”
“A path? Okeanos?”
“Do you know how travel between divine realms works?”
Cthulhu suddenly asked me that.
I shook my head, and he began to explain.
“Unless a divine realm opens a portal to invite you, the main entrances are limited. There’s only one passage that links to Earth. That’s the only one that’s maintained.”
“That’s why each realm can easily defend itself. In cases like mine, where I invited you, it’s different. But during invasions, the entry point is singular. They only need to block that one entrance.”
“Right. For large-scale movements like wars, you must go through the entrance to the divine realm.”
I see.
The reason I could come to Asura’s Path was because Asura invited me…
If divine realms go to war, they must enter through that gate.
“But Olympus is different now.”
“Different?”
“All divine realms are now connected by the path we pioneered. Olympus can now strike at the vulnerabilities of other realms through it.”
“No way… how could you open a path through that space?”
“That’s why Poseidon and I joined forces… I, the leader of the false gods, and he, the god of the sea. It took an unfathomable amount of time…”
“So it’s really possible?”
“Yes.”
At the mention of exploiting other realms' weaknesses, Asura's face turned pale.
“Then the gods Asgard sent are meaningless…!”
“Probably so.”
“This can’t be. I thought the unaffiliated gods were being attacked by Zeus… But now, other divine realms might’ve been invaded too.”
“We keep in touch with each other, so wouldn’t we have known?”
Asura replied with a grim face.
“It’s quite possible. Even after the Black Thunder incident, many realms have poor communication. Often, only one god is in charge of communication. If that god is controlled, we’d be fooled into thinking ‘that realm is still safe.’”
“Hm…”
“Cthulhu. So Zeus has already invaded other realms?”
“Who knows. We only did the work Zeus assigned us—paving the path. We don’t know what happened to the other realms. Some may already be under his control.”
“I see…”
Zeus and the gods created through Black Thunder…
I thought mostly unaffiliated gods were being attacked, but now it seems many more may have already been taken over.
“We were even opening a path into the Buddhist realm. We moved slowly to avoid detection, but thanks to you using Apollo’s power, we were exposed. Honestly, if Poseidon hadn’t reacted, who knows what would’ve happened.”
“Ugh… Creating the path feels like drifting aimlessly through space. I felt a familiar energy and responded… and now look at me.”
So I caught him purely by chance?
Man… lucky me.
“In the future, Olympus will send troops through the completed path, Okeanos. If you have Triaina, you can hinder that movement. Delay their arrival and stop them from moving their full force.”
“The spear has that kind of function?”
“Poseidon created it as a safeguard against Zeus… To use it, you’ll need ownership of Triaina.”
“Yes. That power is sealed within Triaina. Doesn’t this make it worth sparing my life and sealing me instead?”
Poseidon asked me with a weary face.
I gave it some thought.
The Okeanos they’ve been pioneering.
The path they’ve created…
It’s a way to strike the divine realms from behind.
If I can hinder it, Triaina is more than worth keeping.
“Alright. I’ll seal you instead.”
“Thank you…”
[The Sea God Poseidon requests to be sealed instead of destroyed in exchange for granting ownership of ‘Triaina.’ Do you accept this contract?]
The moment I answered, a system window popped up.
Was this prepared in advance?
When I suggested using the system for contracts earlier, he completely ignored me.
Now that he’s in danger, he suddenly offers terms like this.
“I accept.”
[‘Triaina’ is now the property of Soul God Kim Jiho.]
[You have gained Poseidon's recognition. You can now use Triaina’s power.]
Triaina flew into my hands.
At the same time, a warning appeared before me.
[You are causing severe damage to Poseidon. At this rate, he will disappear.]
[Please cease your attack.]
The warning flashed in bright red letters.
Now that I had Triaina and didn’t intend to kill him, I sheathed my soul sword.
Poseidon began to be engulfed by the same coloring as Cthulhu.
So now he’s fully transforming into Cthulhu?
“How foolish… I shouldn’t have reacted back then…”
With that final comment, Poseidon disappeared.
His former soul appeared with a smile on his face.
“Poseidon is now sealed within this body.”
“Is there any chance he’ll break free?”
“As long as I control his soul, that’s impossible. If you provide me a new vessel, Soul God, then perhaps he’ll try to gather SP for release. But as things stand now, I have complete control.”
So there’s no worry about him breaking out.
Had I destroyed him with the soul sword, I would’ve gained more soul power and SP…
But Triaina’s ability to block the Okeanos path is far more valuable.
“Cthulhu. Is there anything else you know about Okeanos? This could be a serious issue.”
“Okeanos is no different from the space of the universe. We’ve merely carved out an optimal path by following the coordinates of each divine realm we obtained in advance...”
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[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
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As Cthulhu stretched his hand to the ground, countless tentacles reached out and touched the earth.
Then, the tentacles all began rubbing the ground in unison.
The first thing they drew was a large circle.
Then, from outside the circle, they extended countless lines outward.
At the end of each line, they marked a slightly larger dot.
“The circle is Earth. The dots are the divine realms. The lines are the paths connecting Earth to each divine realm. As you can see from this drawing, there are no paths between divine realms themselves.”
“Yeah. That’s the common understanding.”
“But we started from Olympus and began to carve faint paths to all the divine realms.”
Cthulhu extended his tentacles again, and faint lines began to connect the dots to one another.
“At first, we connected the weaker realms. The weaker the realm, the easier it was to forge a path. Even when you all were sealed away, the difficulty of connecting to each realm depended on the level of that realm.”
“Hmm…”
“Even after you were unsealed, the difficulty didn’t change much. Poseidon and I immersed ourselves in expanding the network. We used a lot of the Dreamlands’ power during that time too...”
Then Cthulhu started going on about this and that—about false gods, Poseidon's powers—his explanation growing more and more technical and hard to follow.
“The Dreamlands are a false divine realm... but even we had a path connecting it to Earth. The nature of that path is...”
“Ah. Hold on. Let’s put a pin in that for now.”
“Hmm… it would be good for you to know, though.”
“No, seriously. That’s enough for now. So you're saying you've connected paths to all the divine realms?”
“Not quite. We've managed most of them, but the realms with EX-class were harder to tackle. The realms of Christianity and Buddhism... we couldn’t fully connect to those.”
“So aside from those?”
“Yes. All the rest.”
Asura’s expression turned grave.
“Kim Jiho. I’m going to head out. I need to contact the other gods about this, see if any realms have been taken over.”
“Right. Go ahead.”
“Then, until we meet again.”
With that, Asura and his group vanished.
Cthulhu also bid me farewell.
“I’ll be going to retrieve R’lyeh, which I left in Okeanos.”
“R’lyeh?”
“My city. My fortress... Now that there’s no need to further explore Okeanos, I must recover it and regain my strength.”
“Got it. Go ahead.”
“Ah, right. Soul God. Could I ask for an SSS-grade soul fragment?”
“That stuff’s expensive, you know? And I only sell it to trusted allies.”
“Heh heh heh. I’ll pay the appropriate price. Besides, aren’t we allies with a common enemy?”
With a sly smile, Cthulhu gradually disappeared.
Seriously, dropping bombs like that and just vanishing.
“Triaina has a function to monitor the paths of Okeanos. Make good use of it.”
Those were Cthulhu’s final words before he vanished completely.
Once he was gone, I tried touching Triaina.
Whoosh.
As soon as I touched it, seawater sprayed from the tip of the spear.
“Ugh. Salty.”
It was real seawater, with actual salt.
Maybe because I didn’t inherit the Sea God's authority, I couldn’t freely control the seawater like sunlight.
It was basically just a fancy water sprayer at this point.
Didn’t seem all that useful to me.
“Tsunamis and earthquakes don’t sound that great either…”
Maybe it’s best to use it for monitoring the paths in Okeanos?
As I was fiddling with the spear and thinking, suddenly, a woman’s voice rang out.
[Would you like to activate Okeanos Monitoring Mode? Once monitoring begins, Triaina's power will be unusable.]
Oh?
Yeah, not much use as a weapon anyway—this is better.
Once I activated the monitoring mode, another voice followed.
[When movement of gods is detected in Okeanos, the user will be notified.]
[Due to Triaina’s low grade, only large-scale movements can be detected.]
[If Triaina is placed in your inventory, monitoring will be disabled.]
Can’t put it in the inventory, huh?
Hmm…
Guess I’ll stick it in my domain, Asura’s Path.
Once I planted Triaina in the ground, the voice stopped.
So nothing’s being picked up at the moment?
Well, it is low grade and can only detect large-scale movement…
“Heimdall’s Return.”
I went back home to assess the situation.
But even after several days, nothing much happened.
Guess Olympus hadn’t made any moves yet.
Just as I started to relax a bit, I heard a woman’s voice again.
[Movement of gods detected.]
Then, a screen appeared.
A view of black space, with an intricate web of lines crisscrossing like a net.
The screen began zooming in on one of the dots where the lines intersected.
Only Olympus should know the paths of Okeanos, so maybe they’re starting from Olympus?
As the screen zoomed further, what once looked like tiny wriggling ants grew clearer, and I couldn’t help but frown.
“What the… why are there so many places moving at once?”
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[Translator - Night]
[Proofreader - Gun]
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