[Oliver’s PoV]

  A single droplet gathered at the edge of Odin’s eye. Then it fell, ticking against the marble with a sound that cut through the ballroom.

  Oliver’s HUD flickered, the text punching through the haze of pain and static.

  [Sovereign Myth Level reduced: 6 ?? 5]

  The air changed with it. Not in warmth or scent, but in pressure. Odin’s presence, once a crushing certainty, tightened and compressed as if an invisible collar had been cinched around divinity’s throat. The power was still immense, still suffocating compared to anything mortal, but it no longer felt so distant.

  Odin’s face twisted, shock and fury colliding in a heartbeat.

  “W—what did you do?!” he roared.

  The sound shook the chandelier’s dead crystals. Odin’s Energy surged outward in a wave, but it hit the room with a muted edge, contained, restrained. The blast still scraped across Oliver’s armor and rattled his bones, yet it wasn’t the same annihilating flood Odin had thrown around moments before.

  Oliver tasted blood. It ran from the corner of his mouth in warm pulses, and when he tried to inhale, pain lanced through his chest.

  Same level. We're on the same level.

  At least in Myth.

  It didn’t mean equality in anything else. Odin had millennia of battles behind his eyes, layers of powers Oliver couldn’t guess. But the universe itself, its invisible rules, was putting them on the same scale.

  Oliver forced his head up, one arm missing, the stump sealed by his own scorched desperation. His vision swam, then sharpened just enough to find Odin’s stare.

  “A gift,” Oliver said, the words broken by a cough.

  Odin vanished.

  He reappeared directly in front of Oliver. A kick landed before Oliver’s armor could fully brace.

  His body slammed into the floor with a crack of impact that drove the breath out of him in a single, helpless burst. The marble bit into his back.

  Odin stepped down.

  A boot pressed into Oliver’s throat.

  Above him, Odin leaned slightly, purple eyes burning with a fury that finally looked personal.

  Oliver couldn’t move much, couldn’t breathe properly, but he could still feel it, even from the ground.

  Odin was still a god.

  Yet he was no longer untouchable.

  “Who helped you?” Odin demanded, voice low and vibrating with fury. His purple eyes narrowed, scanning Oliver’s face like it was a document he could force to confess. “That was magic. Ancient magic.”

  He shook his head once, sharp and dismissive, as if discarding possibilities like broken tools.

  “Elves? No.” He clicked his tongue. “They keep their distance. Another race? No, they’re not old enough.”

  Odin leaned closer, the weight on Oliver’s throat increasing by a fraction. Oliver’s armor creaked under the pressure.

  “Sovereign?” Odin whispered the last word, tasting it. Testing it.

  Oliver didn’t change his expression. He forced stillness, forced emptiness into his face despite the pain, despite the blood running down his chin. But Odin’s eyes sharpened anyway, picking up something, as if Oliver’s silence confirmed what words would not.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Odin’s lips curled.

  “I will extract it from you,” he promised, voice turning smooth and deadly. “Sooner or later, I will know. There will be no Crystal left of them. Not a seed. Not a fragment. They will be erased. Forgotten.”

  His confidence was absolute.

  It didn’t fit the new reality the System had declared. Myth reduced, divinity restrained. Odin spoke like someone still standing at the top of the universe, like someone who hadn’t noticed the ground had shifted beneath him.

  That was his mistake.

  Oliver’s fear was gone.

  With Mordred shattered on the floor behind him, with the ballroom split open and the Emperor’s dead piled around them, there was no one left to see him, no secret left worth saving.

  Without Mordred… I can use everything.

  Oliver inhaled as much as he could under the pressure. The breath came thin, sharp, but it was enough. He let his mind sink inward, reaching for a Crystal he hadn’t touched in too long.

  A Crystal he had avoided.

  But now it was what he needed most.

  He called it.

  Before Odin could notice the shift, Oliver’s remaining hand snapped up and clamped around Odin’s heel.

  The Green Armor erupted across Oliver’s body in a rapid cascade, plates taking over what was once red.

  For the first time in the fight, Oliver pushed back.

  He drove his shoulder into the floor and twisted, using Odin’s own weight against him. The motion wasn’t elegant; it was violent, primal, fueled by desperation and the sudden surge of green power stabilizing his body.

  Odin’s boot lifted from Oliver’s throat.

  The Sovereign stumbled backward two steps, then three.

  Surprise, real surprise, flashed across his face.

  “Ah,” Odin hissed, the irritation sharpening his voice. “The old. The Elf Father. Of course. He adores poisons. I should’ve remembered him.”

  Oliver stood hunched for a moment, breathing hard. He had forced Odin off his throat, but the air still felt scarce in his lungs, as if the god had left a handprint inside him.

  “I’m not… finished with you,” Oliver managed, the words breaking on exhaustion. He was upright, but not ready. His legs were unsteady, his balance subtly wrong without the arm that had anchored so many fights.

  Odin’s lips curled, amusement returning as if he could afford it again.

  “Boy,” Odin said, almost laughing, “you won’t finish anything.” His purple eyes flicked over Oliver’s posture, over the missing arm, over the blood at his mouth. “Do you really believe facing me changes something?”

  He began to gesture, slow and theatrical, as if the ballroom full of corpses were an audience.

  “Look around you. Everything. Every atom, every cell, every star in the sky.” Odin pointed as though the ceiling could open and display the cosmos on command. “All of it was created by us. By me. Built for one purpose, feeding.”

  Oliver didn’t move. He didn’t answer. His remaining hand stayed low, fingers flexing once, twice, as if testing whether his body would obey him on the next command.

  “You don’t have freedom,” Odin continued, voice flattening into certainty. “Not in any form that matters. Your revolution, your republic. Every little dream you dressed up as rebellion. It was always inside my calculations.”

  He stepped closer, the soles of his boots clicking softly through blood.

  “You are rats in a labyrinth,” Odin said, eyes cold. “You can choose left or right. That’s it. But I…” His gaze tightened, predatory. “I am the owner of the labyrinth.”

  Oliver’s face didn’t change. No flinch. No widening of the eyes. The Sovereign’s monologue rolled over him like weather, loud but distant, because Oliver had already reached a point where fear was a luxury and hope was a tool.

  Odin’s voice rose again, amused by his own inevitability.

  “Everything you’ve done, your entire life, I will recover in a few millennia.” He smiled, as if offering comfort. “You’ve only increased the time I’ll need from your species.”

  Oliver swallowed blood and forced his voice to work.

  “That’s why,” he said, slow and rough, “from the beginning… I’m not going left or right.”

  Odin paused, a faint crease forming between his brows.

  Oliver lifted his chin, pain shaking in his breath but not in his intent.

  “I’m going to brake,” he said. “I’m going to stop everything.” His gaze stayed locked on Odin, steady in the dim light of the ruined hall. “So you’d better hold on, because I’m slamming my foot on the brake.”

  He brought his hand up to the side of his helmet. The motion was small, but it carried a finality that didn’t belong to someone half-broken on a blood-slick floor.

  “Command,” Oliver said into his comms, voice low and clipped, “I need them.”

  For a heartbeat, there was only static.

  Then a voice answered, sharp and immediate in his ear.

  “All of them?” Lian asked.

  Oliver didn’t look away from Odin.

  “All,” he said.