Chapter 1068: The Hard Way

With the destruction of the chains and mountain of boulders, the seals were broken, and the Hydra, raising its upper body from the ground for the first time in over a hundred millennia, was quiet.

The weight that had been pressing down upon it for thousands of years had disappeared.

Its breathing became rough on its own, and it felt as if its chest would burst from the unrealistic notion of freedom after it had once abandoned the possibility of ever experiencing it again.

In the early stages of its imprisonment, it had struggled desperately to escape. It had worked hard to maintain its consciousness, but it eventually gave up on everything when tens of thousands of years passed.

What it had been feeling from being pressed down by this heavy mountain of gravitationally enhanced rocks wasn’t freedom, but pain.

Because of that, the Hydra stopped thinking about anything at all. It forced itself not to think, thousands of years passing by like that, until eventually, the Hydra, in its attempt to think about nothing, seemed to develop the ability to shut down its consciousness and hibernate its body.

This hibernation state of its, however, was very sensitive to external stimuli, although the Hydra wasn’t aware of this until today, when, after having experienced virtually nothing for thousands of years, its instincts suddenly reacted to something, causing its consciousness to awaken slightly.

Someone, or rather, two people, were approaching it, and they clearly weren’t fools who had simply gotten lost and somehow wandered into the Swamp of Lerna.

But even after sensing them, the Hydra’s consciousness was still barely awake, at least until one of them suddenly hit it with a powerful pulse of energy.

That was what jarred the Hydra’s full consciousness awake, and when it raised its heads and opened its nine pairs of eyes, it found a man and a woman standing not too far away, staring up at it.

The man radiated the faint energy of the universal law of destruction, as well as the power of another universal law that hadn’t been seen much of in Olympus since the fall of its previous King: the universal law of time.

The woman, on the other hand, radiated such powerful temporal energy that the Hydra’s instincts screamed danger whenever it even glanced in her general direction.

In the end, it was actually the man who spoke, while the woman seemed far more interested in looking at the swamp around them than at the Hydra itself.

The man had called himself the child of the King of the Underworld, and the last time the Hydra had checked, that was Hades, child of Olympus’s former King, Kronos, and the uncle of the Hero god who had put it here.

He had produced a memory gem containing a great deal of information, which he claimed represented the current state of things outside the cursed swamp where it had been sealed for over a hundred thousand years, and he had quite literally asked the Hydra to become his subordinate, promising it the opportunity to gain revenge against Olympus along with avenues through which it could acquire greater power.

The man’s entire demeanour radiated a confidence that bordered on arrogance, and faced with that demeanour, the Hydra had then told him that he should break it free from the place where it had been sealed before it would even consider his offer.

What followed was a small display of the man’s strength, where he had quite literally erased the boulders that had pressed its body down for millennia with seemingly no effort, while also revealing in the process that he too possessed the ability to control gravity.

"So, I’ve broken you free from your seal," the man said, his voice still carrying that same casual note. "What’s your response?"

The Hydra turned all of its eyes towards him and stared at him in silence for several moments.

Suddenly, the blue-haired woman beside the Hydra raised an eyebrow, and she abruptly vanished, a split-second before an explosion erupted in the centre of the swamp.

The powerful blast of poison and wind law energy engulfed several hundred kilometres of the surrounding land in seconds, its sheer force shaking the planet itself. Cracks spread across the ground in every direction, ripping through the surface of the planet as if it had been cracked like an egg.

The devastation didn’t stop at the ground, however, as powerful shockwaves spread through the atmosphere and blasted away the poisonous clouds that had filled nearly half of the planet’s skies. The shockwaves continued pushing beyond the planet’s atmosphere, reaching into the surrounding space and even knocking several of the planet’s natural satellites from their established orbits.

And then, after several moments of overwhelming destruction, the enormous blast finally began clearing away, revealing the Hydra at the centre of the devastation.

The creature finally closed its mouth, wisps of poisonous law energy and wind law energy slipping from between the rows of sharp fangs that had momentarily been revealed before its lips completely shut.

"Hmm. Your power control is impressive."

"..."

The Hydra’s eyes narrowed at the sound of that casual voice, and as the remaining poison and wind law energy gradually cleared from the area, Arthur’s body was revealed, standing exactly where he had been before, completely unscathed.

Tilting his head slightly, Arthur looked towards the Hydra, whose eyes seemed to contain traces of surprise, before asking, "What? Never seen gravity used as a shield before?"

The space surrounding Arthur was completely distorted, so much so that one could see the air shimmering from the compressed gravitational law energy surrounding his body, which had formed a thick shield around him, completely protecting him from every single bit of damage caused by the sudden attack.

Arthur took his hands out of his pockets and cracked his neck lightly before saying. "So I guess we’re going to do this the hard way, huh?"

He stretched his arms out lightly, cracking his knuckles as he continued, "You’ve had your shot, so..."

His eyes lit up with a dull crimson glow, and he looked up at the Hydra before asking, "It’s my turn now, isn’t it?"

The Hydra’s giant body immediately moved backwards, but in that instant, the entire world around them seemed to slow down. Arthur moved normally within that slowed world, casually pulling his right hand backwards as he clenched his fist, gravitational law energy rapidly condensing within it.

|Anti-Divine Gravity Authority: Silver Nebula.|

With those words, Arthur thrust his fist forward, a massive wave of gravitational force erupting from his fist in an expanding wave. The enormous shockwave tore through the space between them before smashing directly into the Hydra’s massive body with devastating force.

Time immediately returned to its normal speed, and the Hydra’s enormous body was sent flying across the land from the immense impact.

The ground beneath the creature was blasted apart as its body was launched into the air, its hundred-metre-tall body smashing through entire mountains and crashing onto the ground with so much force that it bounced back up once and tumbled violently across the ground.

Despite all of that, the Hydra managed to flip its enormous body back upright, its nine heads stretching outward as its muscular quadrupedal body firmly planted itself against the ground, powerful earth law energy swirling around its legs.

The Hydra’s nine heads immediately turned in the same direction, all eyes falling on Arthur, who was casually walking across the ruined land that its body had burrowed through mere seconds earlier, waving his hand to clear away the rocks and debris blocking his path.

Looking up at the Hydra, Arthur then said, "I made you an offer, and you said that you were going to consider it, so I suppose this is your form of consideration?"

The Hydra didn’t immediately answer, but Arthur didn’t mind as he shrugged lightly and went on.

"Oh well, I did expect something like this anyway. If you’d accepted my offer so easily, I would’ve had to worry about you becoming insubordinate later."

Without a single change in his expression, he continued, "But now, I have the opportunity to beat you into submission."

Powerful law energy burst out of Arthur’s body, the power of the laws of gravity and destruction slowly infusing into his arms.

Arthur then raised a finger, pointing towards the Hydra before speaking.

"Now then, Hydra, let me tell you exactly what it is that I’m going to do with you right now."

With a dead calm voice, he declared, "I’m going to beat you within an inch of your life, and after I’m done, I’m going to utilise my Progenitor Authority on you to turn you into a godslayer-dragon.

In other words, you’re going to become my subordinate, whether you want to or not."

The Hydra’s eyes all narrowed in displeasure, a powerful storm of magic power erupting from its massive body as it pulled its heads back.

Its bones folded beneath its pale hide, and all nine serpentine heads opened along their entire length through vertical seams, splitting apart to reveal enormous maws lined with rows of needle-like teeth.

The interior of every neck and jaw revealed a deep crimson, fleshy pink lining, while large crystal gems appeared across its lower necks and chest, glowing with deep poisonous green, light windy green, and an earthy brown.

Their radiance increased by the second as multiple law energies rapidly gathered within the Hydra’s maws, earth for the farthest heads, wind for the next two, poison for the next two, while the three central heads had earth, poison and wind respectively.

Along the outer edges of its enormous serpentine tail, sharp yellow feathered spikes also emerged, extending down towards the tail’s tip.

Ambient cosmic energy began swirling around its body, and at this sight, Arthur shrugged lightly and spoke casually.

"Feel free to use as much ambient cosmic energy as you want. I’m not going to restrict your usage, even if I can."

|Your arrogance is boundless!| The Hydra immediately snapped back, and in response, Arthur just scoffed.

"It’s not arrogance," he said. "It’s confidence."

|Then your so-called ’confidence’ would be your doom!|

The Hydra roared in the same instant its nine heads unleashed all their accumulated power in a devastating combination breath that tore through space as it raced toward Arthur.

Facing this combination of law energies, Arthur raised his right fist, gravitational law energy and Anti-Divinity gathering around it.

|Silver Nebula.|

His calm declaration rang out in the instant his fist shot forward, a massive shockwave erupting from it and colliding with the Hydra’s breath, the resulting impact immediately erupting into a gigantic explosion that swallowed the surrounding area in destructive energy.

Space itself ruptured around the point of impact, and the explosive energy was violently sucked into those ruptures, while the ground beneath their feet crumbled from the immense force of the collision.