As the words of refusal left his mouth, Shiomi imdiately realized he might have made a mistake.
Even dealing with soone ntally unstable required caution.
Let alone a god who was just as unstable.
"What a naughty child…" A look of sorrow surfaced on Deter's face.
At the sa ti, the air suddenly grew heavy, as if it had frozen in place.
An invisible pressure bore down on Shiomi and Skadi.
Sensing that combat could erupt at any mont, both of them braced themselves at once.
"I see no reason to obey you," Shiomi said, his eyes wide with anger, his voice low but steady.
That pressure was Deter's authority as a goddess, the manifestation of her divine power.
If they failed to respond properly, the consequences were impossible to imagine.
"Look around you!" Skadi warned.
The Olympian soldiers Shiomi had killed suddenly began to move. Their limbs twitched, and one after another, they struggled back to their feet.
"They revived?" Shiomi exclaid in shock.
"No," Deter said sadly. "Lives that have already been taken cannot return. But I cannot allow their sacrifice to be aningless. Letting these children fight one last ti as warriors is the final rcy I can grant them."
Shiomi found her words deeply disturbing. "aningless?! Do you even understand what you're doing?!"
"Turning fallen soldiers into walking corpses and sending them back into battle. Is that truly sothing a goddess of the earth should do?" Skadi couldn't help but challenge her. "What you're doing now is nothing more than putting their sacrifice on display!"
"…?!" Deter looked as if she had been struck hard, clutching her forehead in pain. "Their sacrifice… I'm putting on a show?"
Shiomi desperately wanted to seize this opening to attack, or at least suppress Deter completely, but he couldn't get close at all.
The authority of the Goddess of Harvest perated everything around them. He had to exert all his strength just to counter it, restraining its influence and preventing it from spreading further.
If it were allowed to engulf the entirety of Hestia Island, Shiomi couldn't begin to guess what it would do to their companions still on the island, or to the humans living there.
This wasn't an uncontrolled rampage. If divine power were exercised consciously and without restraint, the first consequence Shiomi could think of was what his mother, Tiamat, had once wrought in Uruk.
"How do you view sacrifice?" Deter suddenly asked.
"I believe it would be better if there were no sacrifices," Shiomi said after exchanging a glance with Skadi. "But more often than not, they're unavoidable."
Along their journey, everyone had made sacrifices within their own limits.
He couldn't deny those sacrifices. All he could do was acknowledge them and carry them with him.
"Exactly," Deter said. "You, , and everything that exists now is built upon sacrifice. Because of that, we must respect those who gave themselves and offer them our gratitude."
She lowered her hand, then raised the scythe high above her head, ready to bring it down.
"That is the mindset a harvester must have."
"I won't let you reap him!"
Skadi raised her staff, having already sensed Deter's intent.
While Shiomi was suppressing the spread of her authority, the Goddess of Harvest was still able to lift her scythe.
A spring wind swept across the land as the blade descended. Skadi loved the breeze of spring, the vibrant life of tender shoots erging in early growth.
But she felt no fondness for this wind.
The power of the Goddess of Ice manifested, halting Deter's strike. The force of the harvest could not advance and instead veered away from Shiomi and Skadi, spreading across the plaza outside the temple.
The soldiers who had risen monts earlier froze in place. Their bodies were wrapped in green light, then scattered into the air in an instant.
Snap.
Seizing that mont, Shiomi took a large step forward, closing the distance to Deter, and reached out to grasp the blade of the scythe.
The sa words rang out at the exact sa instant.
"My authority."
The ground began to tremble, and the temple shook along with it.
From the once-barren sanctuary, countless shoots of fresh green forced their way up through the cracks in the hard listone floor.
Deter drove her scythe forward, then swept it aside in one fluid motion. The blade of the Goddess of Harvest sliced across Shiomi's palm, yet the mont his skin split and blood welled up, it flowed back in, vanishing as if it had never been there.
For either of them, a wound like that wasn't worth noticing.
Shiomi's authority and Deter's authority clashed, each fighting for dominion over the land beneath their feet.
Whoever prevailed would not only seize control of the earth itself, but would be free to harvest everything upon it.
None of this should have been necessary.
As long as Deter set foot on Hestia Island, her authority over the land should have naturally taken hold. Shiomi's presence, however, obstructed her.
And the sa was true in reverse.
"You are…"
Deter still looked lost, her mind shrouded in confusion.
There was no doubt that her earlier words about "sacrifice" had been nothing more than an instinctive response from the goddess.
"At least… not your child…"
"Ah… yes… that seems to be the case…" Deter's voice was sorrowful and lilting, like a mournful song. "My daughter, Persephone. My beloved child…"
As her words faded, Deter swung her scythe once more, its sharp force driving Shiomi back.
When he tried to advance again and thrust forward with his crimson Gáe Bolg, dense vines and foliage surged up, blocking his path.
He slashed through them with his spear, only to find the space ahead completely empty.
"Don't think you can escape—!"
Skadi's voice rang out as biting frost swallowed the vegetation that had just sprouted, racing upward toward the sky. Yet it ca to a halt just a short distance from Deter.
"Your power cannot reach ," Deter said, looking at Skadi, "just as mine cannot reach you, foreign goddess of ice and snow."
"…" Skadi had no words to refute that fact.
Then Deter turned her gaze back to Shiomi, sorrow still lingering in her eyes.
"I never expected to encounter such an interesting child here. It seems I underestimated that person's request."
"Running away?" Shiomi tried to provoke her.
Deter did not answer directly.
"Child of Tiamat, you are the only golden ear of rice in this world. We will et again. Until then, be careful not to be harvested by soone else."
With those words, her figure dissolved as if lting away. Even if Shiomi wanted to pursue her, it was already too late.
"Golden ear of rice… harvested?" Skadi froze, unable to grasp what Deter ant.
But before either of them could dwell on it, a familiar and imnse surge of magical energy from the heavens left Shiomi no ti to think.
"This is bad. Because of that goddess, our coordinates have been exposed!"
Once again, Artemis's arrows took aim at the earth.
...
If you'd like to support my work and unlock advanced chapters, you can follow on p-@-treon.
[email protected]/PinkSnake (100 Chapters Ahead).
You can also follow as a free mber to read a few advanced chapters.
User Comments
0 comments from readers