novelraw Chapter 508 508 Extra: Traveling the Cosmos
Chapter 508 508 Extra: Traveling the Cosmos
Thalos left—cleanly. Before departing, he even handed Thor the highest permissions to all the World-Swords.
That left Thor at a loss for words.
So long as he wasn't stupid enough to hand more than half the World-Swords to some deity, his dominion over the Ginnungagap world would be absolute.
Even the other god-kings had, at most, usage rights to a single World-Sword.
Someday, perhaps, a preternaturally gifted god might crack a world's permissions, win the world-will's backing, and quietly overturn Thor—but don't forget, there was still an all-capable former God-Emperor, Thalos Borson, pressing down from above.
Unless Thalos fell before the whole pantheon's eyes, Thor's rule would be as stable as the cosmos.
That was an invisible threat.
Maybe some self-styled clever sorts could hoodwink Thor for a while, but not for long.
Not to mention, loyal deities like Loki and Hela stood at Thor's side.
Times had changed; with ever more foreign gods about, the old Aesir with giant-stature would naturally band together. In that, Loki and Thor's interests aligned.
There was nothing to worry about.
Thalos left, taking with him a new world opened with parts of the Greek world's elements.
This floating continent, rebuilt by grinding earth element to powder and recombining it, covered roughly 960,000 square kilometers, and its outline was identical to the homeland he missed in his midnight dreams. Across a sea lay a 38,000-square-kilometer island.
At the sight, Amaterasu's heart leapt—and then sank.
Because she found that Thalos's greatest pleasure was to toy with that island that looked so much like the Fusang world.
Thalos called upon the divine office of Life and near out of thin air molded all kinds of humans and spirits upon the main continent—phoenixes, the Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Black Tortoise, all manner of mighty beasts the goddesses had never heard of—and then went to thrash whatever monsters he pinched out inside that fake Fusang across the water.
A new mortal hero was born; he claimed his name was Tang Ren!
He rode the Azure Dragon, a Green Dragon Crescent Blade in his left hand and an AK-47 in his right; each round in the chamber bore runes carved by the Four Symbols themselves; between his legs was a steed named Athena. Thus he charged into the land of Fusang alone.
The Azure Dragon split the sky!
Dazzling blade-light cleaved through the thirty-three-layer mini-Fusang barriers with ease. Wreathed in the oldest divine might of the Ginnungagap world, the blade-bearer Tang Ren rammed into that mist-wreathed divine realm. In the wash of his black cloak, runes seemed to flicker; with its haunches welted red by the riding crop, the pegasus stomped cracks into the white-jade steps that burst with the god-force of War.
In this divine nation called the Low Takamagahara, the goddess Amaterasu drew her sword; ten thousand rays of gold flared from the blade; the Yata Mirror shone forth, revealing a man and a goddess—no, a man and a horse, to be precise.
"Aes—no! Madman of Great Tang!" The goddess's sun-wheel crown spewed searing white divine fire; with a sweep of her fair hand through the air, the phantoms of the eight million kami she'd conjured all cursed the foe as baka in unison.
Too bad—the AK opened up, and every lunging phantom was blown apart.
Tang Ren laughed. "Powerless goddess! Even your rage is laughable! Submit beneath the feet of this mortal!"
"Impudent!"
All eight million kami shrieked together!
But with one swing of the great blade, the eight million phantoms ignited at once and died in screaming ash.
Tang Ren charged up to the dais. Amaterasu's heart lurched and she nearly knelt—only for Tang Ren's eyes to harden as he barked, "Stand up straight! No kneeling!"
Eyes swimming, the goddess Amaterasu's brow bloomed with the sun-wheel sigil; in her left hand the blade drew forth the Great Sun's glassy flames; in her right, she crushed the magatama around her neck into a circuit; beneath her feet, a phantom of Yamata no Orochi formed from air.
All in vain. When the guandao rested against her neck, she still had to make the M-shaped defensive stance and meet the storm of blows from the "god-slayer." In the end even the steed Athena got in a kick.
"Uuuuuu!"
Amaterasu knew she had just completed yet another cosplay.
"My lord…" After a chorus of coy, warbling sighs, Amaterasu finally dared to ask, "Every time you find a new way to conquer me… does it feel that good?"
"Come on! Of course it does!" Thalos answered with perfect rectitude.
"Uuu…"
Drifting aimlessly through the chaotic cosmos and dreaming up new tricks now and then—this was one of Thalos's few remaining joys.
He did have more outrageous, more brutal ideas—but he wouldn't use them.
Chasing extremes of blood and debauchery would only end with himself turning into an evil god.
This time wasn't without fruit; Thalos roughly probed the boundary of this chaotic cosmos. By the measure of his life before crossing over, perhaps this seemingly broad cosmos was only comparable to the Solar System. It only seemed enormous because of the many mutated star regions that could not be traversed.
Even if he'd found it, that didn't mean he could leave at will.
More precisely, he couldn't leave with absolute safety.
There were several regions of extremely turbulent spatial riptide, whose destructive power was enough to rip to shreds in an instant some small world belonging to an African pantheon.
Thalos sent the old unlucky Kraken's soul.
This time the sea-monster brother was no exception—ripped apart.
After serving him one time, Athena tilted her face up and boldly made a suggestion: "Your Majesty, perhaps… send in the remnant souls of deities captured by His Highness?"
A god's fragment soul would certainly be stronger than a random chaotic beast's.
And since the main souls were in Thalos's hand, by the connection he could still know the state of the fragments.
It was the same trick as when Thalos cut Odin's soul and sent the poor wretch to scout.
The difference was—whose soul would Thalos use this time?
After much thought, Thalos first used a fragment of the Sumerian wind god-king Enlil's soul. Three months later, Thalos finally got a reply.
On the far side of that black-hole-class cosmic "sewer," there really did seem to be a brand-new world, where humans and all kinds of monsters likewise arose.
The world was big—and small.
Big, in size.
Small, in the upper limit of god-force it could bear.
A mere fragment carrying a ten-thousandth of Enlil's power actually became the final boss there!
"No matter—just for fun." Even if Thalos's own soul fragments couldn't pass because his divine power was too great, it didn't stop him from being a proper observer.
He watched for a century, tirelessly, with relish.
Out of the blue, after 114 years and 514 days, Thalos received word that the Ginnungagap world was under attack.
Thor: "Father, the Ginnungagap world has been challenged. A world called Rome has come against us. Their god-king is named Jupiter! But I think I can handle it. Father, it's been so long without word; I kind of miss you. If you get this, please reply."
Thalos: "Hmph!"
Thor: "Dad, could you be a little less terse?"
Thalos: "Hmph hmph!"
Thor: "All right! Dad, since you're fine, your son won't bother you."
Thalos: "Scram, scram. Your old man's busy watching a show."
In any case, the former God-Emperor Thalos—his existence itself—was the Ginnungagap world's greatest confidence. Thor, with his siblings' morale surging, beat the pantheon led by Jupiter—basically a Zeus variant—to a pulp…
Then Odin marched back to help—too late—and got nothing.
Seeing Odin so glum, Thor tossed him an Aurora to console him.
Odin groused, "This time this Aurora isn't another of Uranus's dicks, is she?"
Thor: "…You knew?"
Odin, helpless and despairing: "I'd rather I didn't!"
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