Leveling with the Gods

"So, this guy came out of there?"

Tap~

Hargaan poked his head out and stared at him, and Danpung blinked a couple of times with those big eyes.

It was a look as if to say, What the hell is that?

"Yes."

"Wow, it's so cute."

Hargaan's reaction to Danpung was that of a cute little pet.

He certainly was cute.

With a head and a body almost half and half, he really lives up to his name and looks like a character from a video game called. Autumn Leaf.

In this tower, where all sorts of quirky monsters were sold, Danpung looked enough to steal someone's tenderness.

"Don't get too close."

Of course.

"Or it will eat you."

In YuWon's eyes, he didn't just look cute.

'It's more monstrous than anyone could imagine.'

When Danpung hatched, YuWon saw the monster that had been sleeping inside him.

Moreover, the monster was now part of YuWon.

Hargaan, oblivious to that fact, could only scratch his head, wondering what the hell he was talking about.

"Anyway, you're telling me you're going to adopt it as a son?"

"Yes."

"I see that you really cherish this son of yours."

"That's what parents should do."

Turning Hargaan's face away from him with the palm of his hand, YuWon immediately mentioned the matter for which he had summoned him.

"So, tell me about your mother."

"What about my mother?"

"Now that we've taken a hit, it's our turn to attack next."

He couldn't play defense forever.

Hercules was busy moving alone now, but it wasn't clear how far he would get.

Fortunately, I had a rough idea of Hercules' movements.

Every time he raided a temple, Hercules would announce his next destination in his player kit.

'I can't keep watching Hercules get out of his boxes, otherwise the tower we've been working on might collapse if he stays like this a little longer.'

Pandora and Athena, the cards he had been holding, had now been captured.

Zeus had only one option.

"Zeus is going to move now."

Finally, he managed to draw out the crouching giant.

"So you must know about the hidden card in this fight."

"A hidden card? What is it?"

YuWon and Danpung blinked.

After a moment of silence, Hargaan asked, puzzled.

"No way, me?"

"What did you hear before you came here?"

"No, what the hell have I got?"

"You have half of Zeus."

Hargaan gaped at YuWon's words.

Half?

Himself, did he really have such a thing?

"Right now, the vessel is too small to channel its power, but it's there."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"First of all. Tell me about your mother, what she was like."

"My mother was...."

Hargaan hesitated for a moment.

Before speaking, he took a breath.

Then.

"She was a very beautiful and pure woman."

Hargaan began to talk about his mother.

"And she loved only one man in her life."

* * *

Pang -

Zeus' body was covered in golden armor.

It was an unfamiliar feeling.

Besides the white cloth, he hadn't worn such hard armor since the Gigantomachy.

No.

Even in the Gigantomachy, thanks to the exploits of Hercules, he was rarely called upon.

Pap-

After preparing himself, Zeus turned his head towards the pond.

His own face reflected in the pond looked somewhat sad.

On the outside, he still looked calm, but....

"This makes me feel bad every time I see him."

Tak~

Crunch~

With a slight snap of his fingers, the calm surface of the pond shuddered with the sound of something falling.

The natural reflection of Zeus' face had disappeared.

In its place was an expression Zeus had been hiding.

'That's how I know.

A pool reflecting the truth.

In front of it, everyone was naked.

The expression hidden inside was revealed and the truth came to light.

This is how he learned.

'That everything in the world is bad'.

He had brought many people to this place.

At first, it was curiosity.

To see what his own women thought of him.

They, oddly enough, had the same expressions in front of him, but hid another identical expression.

"Sure. I couldn't expect another harassment either."

Even Zeus knew who he was.

A man with a hundred wives, a hundred children.

That was why he had come to love no woman and no child.

It was greedy to expect love from someone in that position.

Everyone had contemptuous faces towards Zeus and smiled in front of him because he was the King of Olympus.

The surface of the water of the broken pond soon became calm.

On a calm surface.

Then, another face surfaced.

"He was mad."

He was the only one laughing in this room.

"Falling in love again."

A love he thought would never appear in his life.

When he finally brought her here, Zeus was surprised.

It was the second time.

The face outside the pool was the same as inside.

The other thing is that the other one, Hera, was the only one who despised Zeus equally in and out of the pool.

"Yes, madman..."

Above the pool, he saw his reflection again.

With that, Zeus turned and walked out of the temple for the first time in a thousand years, his Thunderbolt in hand.

"Like to give my other half to that boy."

* * *

"So that's it in a nutshell, the only woman who ever loved Zeus."

"Was that summed up so simply?"

After a long conversation, Hargaan smiled awkwardly and nodded.

He wasn't wrong, after all; his mother had certainly loved Zeus.

"But I don't know if she's the only one. There's Nemesis, there's Themis, there's..."

YuWon's heart sank at the mention of a few names.

The names he was hearing were the names that would later be among the most vocal in their opposition to Zeus.

They had wished his downfall more than anyone else on Olympus.

"They're all on Hades' side - haven't you heard?"

"Really?"

"What do you think of your mother?"

At that question, Hargaan hesitated for a moment and then sighed.

There was nothing to think about.

"Even if the sky collapses, she'll probably side with my father."

"It's different from you."

"Because love is bigger than anything else, and my mother was a foolish woman who knew what was right and wrong, but she was blinded by love."

"Is it okay for you to say that?"

"It doesn't matter. She knows it herself."

Shrugging, Hargaan smiled faintly.

"That's why I didn't want her to live like him."

"I wondered why you were standing on this side, and it was for that reason."

"Yes. Because it's the right thing to do, because it's Olympus."

The belief that Olympus is a righteous collective.

It is said that Olympus was created to bring order to the chaos of the Tower.

Perhaps Hargaan wished to honor those roots.

Pak-

The player's kit in Yuwon's arms rang.

At the same time, a familiar cry rose above Hargaan's head.

"Abaat, baa-."

Danpung was now on top of Hargana's head, patting him on the head.

YuWon put Danpung back on his shoulder and said.

"Come on, get up. We'll talk about the rest on the way."

"The rest? Is there anything else to talk about?"

"The story I couldn't tell before I got here."

"Oh, that... But where are we going?"

"Your uncle just started moving."

The vibration that sounded a moment ago.,,

That vibration was a message from Hades.

"It's time for us to move too. Zeus will do it too."

"My father..."

Zeus had not been seen in public since the Gigantomachy.

But with Olympus in such dire straits, even Zeus could not afford to remain confined to his temple.

'No. He wasn't just hiding.'

Zeus would sit in his temple and watch the world through his pool.

Not long before, he had also cast a Thunderbolt directly at Camelot, the city ruled by the Round Table.

He stopped all activities and was planning only one thing.

Second Gigantomachy.

The great war that would ultimately lead to the destruction of the Giants.

Hargaan asked with a slightly tired face.

"Will this fight be the last?"

"Maybe."

YuWon nodded.

"The fight against Olympus will be the last."

"Against Olympus?"

"Yes."

"And you, I suppose there will be others."

This time, YuWon nodded.

Olympus was a mountain to cross.

But that didn't mean that beyond it was a flat plain.

The last mountain to cross was much higher, and Olympus was only the first of many.

"You said you were going to break the roof."

- "I broke the roof of this Tower.

What YuWon said in the Tutorial.

When he heard that, he just thought he was a guy with high goals.

He thought that only a guy like this could stand beside him, that he could rival the future King of Olympus.

But that wasn't the case.

The tower he experienced as a player was too wide to look up from the ceiling, and the ceiling he was looking at was too high to see.

But YuWon wasn't.

He was looking higher, even now.

"Tell me, what's up there?"

It was a question he would never know, but Hargaan was curious.

What the hell is above him, why Yuwon and Zeus want him so badly?

And for some reason, he wondered if YuWon would even know what was up there.

And that thought was the same.

"You don't have to know yet."

YuWon didn't say he didn't know.

"Not yet."

* * *

Quaang-!

Boom, boom, boom.

The ground collapsed and the temple collapsed.

It only took a minute or so for the castle-like temple to collapse.

Hercules threw his short club, just over a meter long, on his back and muttered.

"This is the fifth.

Fifth.

That was the number of temples on Olympus destroyed by Hercules.

First Hera, then Poseidon, then Dionysus, then Hestia.

And now, the temple of Demeter.

The Rankers, who had been busy blockading the second temple, had suddenly disappeared from the third.

Right now, all the way to the fifth temple.

'He was right.

"After you take down the second temple, they probably won't bother to stop you at the third. They'll know it's a lost cause."

At first, I was skeptical.

Even if it was predictable enough, he really hadn't expected them to behave as YuWon had predicted from the second temple.

'He's a mysterious guy.

Kurrureung-

Above the collapsed temple...

Thick black clouds rolled in, slowly cooling the air.

The foreboding began when Hercules first stepped onto the 32nd floor.

'Surprisingly, even this last thing he said came true...'

A thick black cloud filled the sky.

"And from the fifth temple, perhaps...."

BANG!

A rumbling and furious thunder.

As soon as he saw it, Hercules was sure....

"You'll be able to meet Zeus, the person you most want to see."

That he was right.