"You think it will be so easy?" Zeus’s voice rolled like thunder, and the sky answered him.
Clouds twisted into violent spirals, the heavens rumbling as lightning gathered, each bolt thicker than the tallest trees.
Neo tried to move, but his body would not obey.
The first strike landed.
A blinding arc of lightning tore across the peak, striking him with a force that made the ground split apart.
His flesh was being obliterated in an instant, bone after bone crushed and dissolved.
Yet, at the same rate, his body rebuilt itself, as if time itself was weaving him back together.
Zeus narrowed his eyes.
His face shifted into something between curiosity and irritation.
Neo’s lips curved into a faint smile, though half of his face had already melted away.
He could move even without a body.
Yet he did.
Every time the lightning reduced him to nothing, his form returned.
He was not only resisting Zeus but showing him he could stand against him.
"Vain pride," Zeus muttered.
He raised his arm, and the lightning answered his will.
Sparks spread across the sky. The threads of lightning wove together until a colossal figure formed.
A man of lightning, upper body only, beard flowing like a storm cloud, and in its hand a massive trident of pure current.
The giant hurled the trident.
It screamed through the sky, tearing sound apart before it struck.
The explosion swallowed the mountain.
A blast wave ripped smaller peaks away, collapsing stone into dust. The world seemed to end in that single strike.
The dust slowly cleared.
Neo was still walking forward.
Each step came with the crunch of bones snapping and flesh twisting unnaturally, warped under the pull of gravity and the force of Zeus’s World Law.
His body tried to fall apart, but he forced it back together.
One step.
Two steps.
He did not stop.
Zeus was about to move when something shifted in the air.
Danger.
He turned his head sharply, just in time to dodge a blade that sliced through the space where his neck had been.
A figure floated before him, clad in black armor that revealed nothing. A faceless, and silent knight summoned by Moraine. Its weapon was aimed for Zeus’s throat.
Zeus clenched his fist.
The backhand came with the sound of the world breaking.
The knight’s chest caved in, armor shattered, and the body was thrown down from the sky into the mountain below.
Zeus did not follow.
His gaze observed as golden threads appeared, weaving from Moraine’s body.
They extended into the broken knight, seeping into the shattered armor, pulling it back together.
The crushed plates bent into shape again.
Slowly, piece by piece, the knight stood once more.
Zeus’s brows furrowed.
"What is that?" His voice was quieter now, but edged with danger. "You are using Fate to heal him? How is that possible—"
He stopped.
His expression changed in an instant, as if something he had sensed reached too deep.
"Who are you!?" His voice thundered again, but it was not just anger. It was alarm. "How do you have something like that?!"
His figure blurred.
One moment he was high above the peak, the next he was in front of Moraine, hand stretched like a claw towards her neck.
But then he froze at a voice.
"That’s it? It wasn’t hard."
Zeus turned his head sharply.
At the tallest peak stood Neo.
In the brief moment Moraine had distracted him, Neo had reached the summit.
"So what if you reached the peak?" Zeus said. "Even if I am not invincible, what can you do? You are nothing compared to me—"
Before he could finish, the air split.
An overwhelming surge of energy erupted from Neo, bursting outward in a wave that swallowed the mountain, the clouds, the sky itself.
Zeus frowned.
He felt the weight of the energy but did not understand what Neo was trying to achieve.
Then he sensed it.
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