Having traversed countless realms, can you possibly be as clever as me?

Vast stretches of the ocean turned into steam, while the mortals in Colchis wailed in waves of excruciating pain, their bodies nearly burning.

"Show your true form, hidden by shadows!!!" Helios shouted, raising his scepter. In the next instant, boundless light and heat emanated from it.

The image of Tsurugi, which had been hidden in the shadows, was now completely revealed!

All the gods' eyes were fixed on this place!

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747. The True Face Revealed

Helios did not love his offspring.

Or, as Aeetes said, Helios poured all his love into his only and most powerful child, Phaethon, and with Phaethon's death, he also took away all his love and power as a father.

He knew perfectly well that his descendants could never become gods. Regardless of who their parents were, they were destined to become ordinary mortals.

Moreover, Helios also hated his mortal descendants.

Why? Because he hated the realities of ordinary life!

How revered Helios was in the past! He dragged the sun to bring light to the world and was almost as respected as Zeus during the Titans' reign and the early Age of the Gods!

The evidence is the Colossus of Rhodes, a massive and majestic bronze statue that no mortal has been able to replicate even now, and which was a tribute to Zeus.

Mortals so respected, worshipped, and loved him, and Helios was the proud sun. His glory and presence were omnipresent, which made him appear so magnanimous and majestic.

But now, it's all over.

With the rise of Apollo, Helios's foundation as the sun god was gradually being stripped away.

In the concepts of light and the sun, there is actually no distinction between the two.

Just as Helios' mother Theia was the radiance of the heavens, and his father Hyperion was the primordial sun, their statuses were equal.

Together they gave birth to Helios, a Titan who could completely control and wield the sun.

If the concepts are equivalent, then the comparison is about who is greater than whom—and Helios's power is always greater than Apollo's!

This is why Apollo rarely reveals his true form as the god of light in the mortal realm, but rather through his divine pronouncements, medicine, and even art.

However, objectively speaking, this strength is indeed being gradually stripped away.

Helios's control over the sun was gradually waning, and Apollo's rise was a process of stripping away his essential nature as a Titan. Similarly, this also applies to the relationship between Artemis and Selene, the two moon goddesses.

This is not only because the changing times led to the rise of the Olympian gods compared to the Titans, but also because the Olympian gods took a completely different path compared to the purity of the primordial gods and the Titans' pursuit of power.

Beyond their immense power, they also established other divine offices that seemed meaningless to the Titans. However, these offices were inextricably linked to human civilization, and thus destined to receive the most offerings, remembrance, and worship from humankind!

Offerings do not bring power to the gods, but they gradually make them remembered, while the Titans who have lost their power are gradually forgotten and then relinquish their divine authority.

In this mythological world, being 'forgotten' means the disappearance of one's personification.

Just like Helios' father, Hyperion, who was once one of the twelve Titans, but whose existence has long been forgotten and abandoned by the world—do you see any trace of him in later stories?

The gods are immortal, but if they are forgotten, they will fall into an eternal slumber that is no different from death.

This is most evident to the primordial gods—of the gods created from Chaos, only Gaia and Nyx are remembered, because the former is the earth, and the latter is the embodiment of the underworld and eternal night; their many offspring have made them deeply remembered.

And what about the others? Tartarus has long become synonymous with hell, and Erebus has become the embodiment of darkness. Even their offspring—Aether (light in the sky) and Hemera (daylight)—were forgotten even before the Titans.

People use their names to refer to regions, forgetting that they were once the corresponding deities.

Uranus merged with the sky, Pontus became the ocean and was gradually replaced by Oceanus, while Uriah merged into Gaia much earlier, and its mountains had long since become part of the earth!

It's not just the primordial gods; how many of the original Titans are still remembered by mortals? Humanity probably only remembers their offspring, forgetting their parents.

Helios occupies this position; he is remembered by humankind, but humankind has long forgotten his parents.

Gods do not die, but the eternal sleep of being forgotten is no different from death!

This is why he initially betrayed the Titans and joined Olympus, but even though he was not stripped of his power as the sun, his monotonous divine duties still caused him to be gradually forgotten by the world.

How hateful are humans!

Is it because I cannot bring you the good things you expect that you will not worship me?

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If it were the Golden Age, I would have already unleashed punishment and pain, death and torment, so that you would worship me once more!

Perhaps in the eyes of later generations, the Olympian gods were the embodiment of capriciousness and capriciousness. But compared to the past, they were a great improvement.

The age of the gods did not allow deities to punish mortals without reason, but the age of the Titans had no such rule. Since Prometheus created mankind, the way to gain mortals' memory was to destroy and harm them.

Therefore, Helios hated Colchis so much that he did not exclusively honor or worship him, even though Colchis was the son who created the nation!

Now he arrives riding the sun chariot, ready without any scruples to use the sun's majesty to remind humanity once again of the terror of the great sun in the sky!

He drove the chariot of the great sun, plunging the entire city of Colchis into a scorching hell the moment he descended.

Seawater and rivers evaporated instantly, plants withered and died in large numbers, flames ignited houses, and the air itself was distorted by the scorching heat.

People wailed and begged Helios for forgiveness inside the house, gradually being steamed to death in the unbearable heat.

Helios, however, paid no heed to this, recklessly radiating the sun's brilliance and carrying out his own private affairs without restraint, in accordance with the orders given to him by the goddess Hera.

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As for who Tsurugi was, Helios had no idea.

He also thought this was probably Zeus's son—ha, let them deal with their own Olympian mess!

"Show your true form, hidden by shadows!!!" Helios shouted, raising his scepter and roaring.

The next moment, the illusion obscured by the moonlight of Serenne dissipated, and Tsugumi revealed his true form.

In an instant, all the gods and heroes turned their gazes toward it.

He stood in the void, without a foothold, without support, yet the entire sky seemed like the land beneath his feet. The sun, which Helios rode, burned behind his shoulders as a blazing white halo, but its dazzling light seemed afraid to look directly at him, shattering into countless golden dust that rolled down his broad back.

The heavens were beneath his feet, the clouds fled in panic at his knees, and his scarlet cloak materialized into a stream of flame-like light, cascading down his steel-like shoulder blades.

Of course, the most important thing is always that face.

Without a doubt, it was an exceptionally handsome face.

It's the same face, yet it evokes completely different feelings. Perhaps it's due to growing up, or perhaps it's because they've gone in different directions; that face no longer possesses the androgynous beauty of a pretty boy, but rather a different kind of ultimate beauty.

The three-dimensional beauty of that face was enough to make even the best sculptors in all of Greece weep with envy—it was a perfect fusion of strength and beauty, with brow bones like knife-cut mountain ridges, a straight nose, and a jawline that was both strong and gentle. Yet, the three-dimensional beauty did not appear stiff but rather possessed a complete beauty.

This is a kind of beauty that belongs to men, the beauty of the unhindered release of masculine power.

And those eyes were no longer golden, but a blue as if washed clean by a storm, leading to eternity. The gaze cast from them pierced through the clouds, across the continental shelf, and over the waves of the Pacific, fixed on the distance. The shadows cast by his thick eyelashes made him appear both pensive and sorrowful.

Without a doubt, he is a handsome man by all standards.

It still exudes that masculine aura, yet it doesn't give off any aggressive vibe. Instead, it inexplicably evokes a maternal feeling of beauty.

Upon witnessing this beauty, the heroes of Argo couldn't help but show burning gazes and a hint of shyness, and the same was true for the gods.

The gods also loved such handsome men. This kind of beauty, so different from that of pretty boys, pleased them just as much. Even the gods—like Apollo—stroked his lyre and cheek and exclaimed with delight, "Just as I thought!"

Beautiful boys need to eat, and handsome men need to eat too; only then can they be considered healthy!

But—some deities see further than appearance itself.

Through those sky-blue eyes, they saw a pair of golden eyes from twenty years ago.

“Origrotes…is that you?” Aphrodite stood up abruptly, her gaze burning, and murmured.

Without a doubt, the owner of those eyes was his lover whom he had been separated from for twenty years! Although things had changed, the soul and the appearance were undeniable!

She said she had searched the entire underworld but couldn't find him; it turned out he had already returned to the human world.

Aphrodite was about to rush down almost immediately, but Athena stopped her.

"Do you want to turn this into another war of the gods?" Athena asked sternly.

Aphrodite had initially intended to slap Athena's hand away, but upon hearing Athena's words, she hesitated, remained silent for a moment, and then sat back down.

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"Did you know all along?" she asked through gritted teeth, her voice low.

Athena remained silent, simply gazing quietly downwards.

Handsome, mature, and full of masculine beauty—for a moment, Hera even felt as if she were seeing Zeus in his youth.

A blush crept onto Hera's cheeks without her noticing, but she quickly became even more certain.

—He really is a descendant of Zeus!

The thought that she might have been forced to make a humiliating vow by an illegitimate child made all her romantic thoughts vanish, replaced by even greater resentment and anger.

"Reveal your lineage, in the name of Hera, the Queen of Gods, protector of marriage and family!!!"

Hera coldly raised her scepter, adorned with lotus flowers or cuckoos at the top, and in an instant released divine radiance, tearing apart the deceptive scheme in the name of Hermes.

The bloodline of Tsurugi was laid bare before Hera, however—

"Not a demigod?!" Hera exclaimed in astonishment.

Yes, revealing bloodlines, marriage, and family, Hera discovered that the man was not only not Zeus's son—he didn't even carry any divine blood.

He was not only not the son of Zeus, but not even a demigod! Nor was he a descendant of the Titans or the primordial gods!

He really was just an ordinary person!

But how absurd is this claim? A mortal tore Charybdis apart and defeated Heracles—where did his power come from? What is his bloodline? Who... really is he?

"I am hope."

He opened his arms to the sun, proudly proclaiming...

Hope? What does that mean? A god of hope? Does such a deity exist?

But he no longer answered. He simply spread his arms and absorbed the power from the sun, taking in the light and heat that was originally radiating to Colkis without reservation!

"Arrogant! You are but a mortal being, how dare you face the sun's radiance?" Helios roared angrily, looking at the thrush that had shielded the Colchis from disaster.

"Fine, you want the sun, so I'll give it to you!!!"

In an instant, the scorching primordial sun burst forth with even more dazzling and intense light, seemingly endless! Helios sneered; he wanted to see with his own eyes how this arrogant mortal would be burned away by his sun!

But—as time went on, Helios's expression hardened.

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