The gigantic chamber was in a much worse condition than any structure we’d seen so far during the climb up the mountain. There were weeds growing between the beautiful stones, and the flowers that once adorned the place had been left to rot and blacken.
Mother had always tried to put some color into this place and keep it beautiful. It seemed that after what Cronus did, she’d stopped caring about such niceties. In a way, the state of Cronus's palace reflected the image I had of him. All these years, Mother had been trying to make things look better than they actually were, in an effort to bring back the old, good side of Cronus she had met—the one who liberated the world from his tyrant of a father.
Now that she’d stopped trying, the true face of Cronus was visible. And it was one of ugliness, doom, and gloom, exactly how this hall looked. Decrepit and malicious. A ghost of what once had been grand and noble, a beacon to the whole Greek world. The physical representation of that change was difficult to achieve, but possible nonetheless.
In the back of the chamber was Cronus himself, sitting on his gigantic throne, the one I’d seen him sit in the last time he’d addressed his three children before eating them alive. Floating all around him and above him were orbs of different sizes and colors, moving slowly and carefully so as not to bump into each other.
"Those are far-sight orbs," Aphrodite murmured.
"You mean people are watching us?" Artemis asked.
"Not people," I said. "Gods and titans."
"There must be hundreds of th—" Ares said, but his sentence was cut short.
"And so he has returned." Cronus's voice boomed around the high chamber, a sign he was trying to project his authority to those watching. "The prodigal son, who—"
I wasn't just going to let him spew his intolerable nonsense anymore. I’d let him do just that for centuries, and it was high time he understood that he commanded no respect anymore. It was also time for the world to see it.
"Shut your mouth, old man," I said and then waited, knowing the silence that followed would hit him harder than my actual words.
"Looks like you forgot who your sire is, boy," he said, maintaining a cool tone, but I could see his hands were pressed hard against the arms of his marble throne.
"You may have sired me, but you are not my sire, Cronus," I retorted, realizing for the first time that I’d addressed him by his actual name instead of calling him my father. "You have taken too much time on the—"
"I can play the interrupting game as well, son," he snapped at me, not letting me finish. "I specifically ordered you to come here by yourself. Yet you bring your usual riffraff with you. A bunch of whores and your gambling drunkard mates."
I knew full well that he was trying to goad us into attacking him in a fit of rage, but wasn't sure what the rest of my companions were thinking. Before I managed to say anything in response, Aphrodite replied for me.
"Do you truly believe that you can provoke us with such weak words?" she said, and chuckled. "Oh, you need to do better than that, honey."
If there was anything that my father truly hated, it was when others were condescending to him. Not that I had ever seen this in person, of course, but the story of a Hindu deity arriving at Mount Orthys and never leaving had spread all over the Greek world.
Apparently, the god had behaved in such a way to my father, and they never even found his body. His soul never returned to his home realm and his pantheon was still angry to this day about the fact that they weren’t able to pin this on Cronus definitively, despite being sure that he had killed their god.
Cronus's face was now red with anger and the orbs above us moved faster, as if showing their excitement for the battle that was clearly coming.
"Your concubine has a loud mouth, son," he said, and Aphrodite rolled her eyes at his weak attempt to hurt her ego. "You have come at my bidding but failed to follow my orders. Why is that?"
"I did not come here because you called for me. I came here to avenge Demeter, Poseidon, and Hades. My siblings who you devoured."
"It’s vengeance that drives you then?"
"Is that not enough for you?"
"It is a great motivator in some cases, but it’s not enough for what you're trying to do. You know so little of this world still, and yet you're reaching for the throne. Do you have any idea how many have tried the exact same thing before you? Do you know what happened to them?"
"You slaughtered them like animals."
"Exactly," he said, and stood up. "Why do you think you're going to be any different from them?"
"I’m not different. Only stronger. But you’re different," I said. This seemed like it had caught him by surprise. "You’re a weak old man who has rested on his laurels for far too long. You have been watching your own back for so long that you didn't realize you've reached the end of your road. You have no friends left."
"Friends?" he exclaimed. "What am I supposed to do with friends? A friend is only a backstabber waiting for the right time to strike. Just like you."
"Don't ever let me become like him," I said to others, then accessed the special ability of my gloves.
* * *
Name: Dark Energy Gloves of Invisibility +3
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Type: Hands
Rarity: D Grade
Physical Defense: 52
MP Increment: 0
Durability: 19,986/20,000
Weight: 630st.
Description: Once every hundred trillion crafting attempts, the Dark Energy shows its magnificence by gifting an item with a truly remarkable ability. The person wearing these gloves can make themselves completely invisible for 10 minutes per day. No magical or divine means can pierce through this true invisibility. Additionally, the wearer can trigger the awakened form of this ability, during which they can also become immaterial for up to one minute per day.
* * *
"You conniving little bastard!" Cronus shouted, retrieving an enormous two-handed sword from his inventory. "Now you all die!"
I ran in the opposite direction from where my father was looking, doing my best not to make any sound as I did so. This concern of mine was almost instantly made less important as Artemis started shooting arrow after arrow at my father to distract him. At first he did not pay her any heed, remaining completely consumed by his anger against me, but soon he got irritated. He roared at her, causing a few rocks to fall from the ceiling above her.
Luckily, this was nothing she couldn't easily avoid, and her distraction proved good enough for me to get closer to Cronus and land my first strike on his thigh. Though, not before I activated the only skill I’d received specifically for this battle.
* * *
Name: Detect Weakness on Titans
Level: 1
Type: Active
HP Consumed: 0
MP Consumed: 50
Power: -
Range: Self
Precondition: None
Description: Be it through rigorous study, extreme hatred, or a combination of the two, one can discover and take advantage of the weaknesses all races have. The creature affected by this buff sees an increase of 5% to their damage output against titans.
* * *
With a better idea of how I would be able to hurt him more, I shoved the spear an inch closer to his core. A shining light escaped his wound as I twisted the spearhead, and flooded out like a flashlight as I pulled the weapon from his thigh.
"What did you do?" Cronus shouted. He swung his sword from above, aiming for exactly the spot where I had landed after my attack.
Under normal circumstances, I would have been able to avoid the sharp edge of the weapon coming down on me, but he was making a bludgeoning attack, rather than a slashing strike, using the flat side of his sword as a hammer. His sword was consumed by a black flame, and I knew it might even be able to take me out in one strike.
Not wanting to take the risk to find out if my new armor and increased level would be able to withstand the attack, I triggered my gloves' secondary ability, making myself immaterial. The feeling was very strange. It took concentration not to fall through the floor, but I still flinched when the blade came crashing down on me.
With relief, I watched Cronus's sword hit the ground, causing a small earthquake at the top of the mountain. This brought more of the roof down, trapping a couple of orbs underneath the rubble.
So fierce was his anger at not being able to hit me that he managed to squeeze one more attack from his black-flaming sword skill. With incredible agility, he swiped the two-handed sword at Ares and Hephaestus who had been previously rushing toward him but were now struggling to keep their balance as the earth shook beneath them. Ares was fast enough to drop completely to the ground, the blade shearing his cloak but leaving him otherwise unharmed.
Hephaestus on the other hand tried to stop the attack by blocking with his hammer. As powerful and skillful as the god of the forge was, this attack was much stronger than anything he’d encountered before. As a result, his arms buckled, the hammer flew over his shoulder, and the sword struck him in the gut.
It didn't quite cut him in half but it split his armor and skin open before throwing him back several dozen feet. I glanced at his HP in the party view, and my fear was confirmed. His HP had dropped to zero, just from this one skill.
"One down!" Cronus shouted in satisfaction.
Aphrodite, who didn't want the automatic resurrection of Hephaestus to kick in too quickly and show Cronus our hand, rushed to his side and cast a resurrection spell on him. With only a couple of seconds out of the battle, Hephaestus was now back up, downing a healing potion while Aphrodite rushed to fully heal and rebuff him.
Ares also cast his own buffs so Hephaestus would be back to full strength, as well as renewing his buffs on the rest of us, before resuming his charge at Cronus. The titan's weapon had now lost its black flame outline, and his excitement about having killed one of us had now turned to disappointment.
"Only cowards fight with healers and buffers," he said, heading straight for Aphrodite.
Ares unleashed his most powerful strikes but the titan didn’t seem to care about them at all. He was focused on taking down the biggest problem in our group, the one who could bring people back into the fight. But his narrow focus presented a great chance to land a critical hit.
I cast all my self-buffs and was happy to see that even my battle roar didn't pull his focus from his target. As hidden and protected as I was at this moment, landing a critical hit when I could barely reach his waist just wasn’t possible. I needed more freedom of movement. So I pulled up the ability of my new, upgraded boots.
* * *
Name: Boots of the King Roc +3
Type: Feet
Rarity: A Grade
Physical Defense: 52
MP Increment: 0
Durability: 18,958/19,000
Weight: 840st.
Description: These boots were infused with the magical essence of the king roc, a truly nightmarish beast found in the elemental plane of earth. The massive predatory bird can fly without needing to rest and is considered merely a legend by many. In utilizing a king roc feather to craft these boots, they have stored the ability to fly for 12 hours. This ability can be used either all at once or in several shorter flights, each time using a minimum of 1 minute of flying. The boots regain 1 hour of flight time toward a maximum of 12 hours with every 6 hours of continuous non-use.
* * *
I felt some concern initially, as I hadn’t had the chance to use them prior to this battle, but as soon as the ability was activated I knew exactly what I needed to do in order to move. Merely thinking about the direction I needed to go was enough to propel me forward. And the speed at which I was able to move was much greater than my running speed, or Cronus's for that matter.
Within a second, I was flying level with his shoulder and thrust my spear, which was still immaterial, into his head. Hoping that this would deal a lot of damage, I dropped the ability of being immaterial just as Cronus was about to strike Aphrodite.
There was a sickening wet crunch as rays of light flew in all directions from the titan's head. He dropped his weapon and brought both hands up onto his head, screaming in agony.
I barely managed to pull the spear back out, and was almost blinded in the process by the intense light from the gaping hole. Twisting the blade as I pulled the weapon out might have been overkill, but it looked like he still didn't want to die.
"Now!" I shouted, and all of us started pummeling, slashing, and stabbing the titan king wherever we could, unleashing our most powerful attacks.
Light escaped from each new hole we created in his body, and his head shook in pain. Just as I was thinking that it might all finally be over, the luminosity intensified and we were forced to cover our eyes. I smiled, assuming this was the end of him.
But then I was blasted backward.
When I opened my eyes again, the whole palace had been destroyed, the walls and ceiling exploded outward and the orbs of spectators were now up in the sky, framed by the light of the setting sun.
It was far from over.
* * *
Name: Cronus
Race: Titan - Awakened
Class: King of Titans
Level: 64
* * *
My father's appearance had completely changed, now showing us his true self. A disgusting monster. The very same one that had devoured my siblings.