Chapter 142: Perseus (34)
Just as they had confidently declared.
The magic Poseidon had cast—[Ἡ Σιδηρὰ Χεὶρ τοῦ Βασιλέως / Hē Sidēra Cheir tou Basileōs — The Iron Hand of the King]—was a unique spell developed by Athena herself.
It had been created for the sole purpose of allowing her to overpower the weapons of the gods with her bare hands.
The defining feature of this magic was its ability to crush steel weapons and tear apart armor using nothing but naked grip.
Above all, this signature spell of Athena’s had remained hers alone to wield up until now.
If the caster couldn’t endure the immense physical and magical (or divine) strain it placed on the body, the hand wearing the gauntlet would simply explode.
That was why even her priests and followers could only imitate it at best—never fully cast it.
At least, as far as Stheno and Euryale knew, no one else had ever truly succeeded.
[If he can fully wield that spell…]
[Then he is an extremely dangerous individual.]
Moreover, the fact that a mage capable of using such magic was now harboring suspicions about them filled Stheno and Euryale with a profound sense of crisis.
***
After the clash of power forced them apart, the sisters deliberately widened the distance.
They needed time to prepare the decisive move that would surely kill this unknown mage.
A massive obsidian bone serpent coiled around Stheno.
Twisted branches made of world-corrupting venom wrapped around Euryale.
Watching their preparations, Poseidon let out a sigh and finally began to grasp the true nature of the situation.
If they were truly following the original programming implanted by the Gorgon goddesses, they never should have thrown everything they had into trying to kill him like this.
“The most fundamental principle of any hunter—even when the prey escapes—is to conserve strength and wait for an opening…”
Yet these two were doing the complete opposite: expending power aggressively in a way that directly contradicted their original directives.
Observing Stheno and Euryale radiating killing intent within the Nereid realm, Poseidon finally drew his conclusion.
“So that’s it… They’ve gained self-awareness. No wonder something felt off from the beginning…”
[[Die!!! We can never let you live!!!]]
“Haah… Somehow I’m the one suffering more than Perseus.”
Watching the sisters rocket toward him like arrows from afar, swirling torrents of water rose around Poseidon, and the form of a nine-headed dragon opened its jaws wide.
In the next instant—
The massive bone serpent, the venomous plant-serpent spewing deadly poison, and the nine-headed dragon collided in a thunderous explosion.
***
—Those husks—no, those children—were stronger than expected. To think they’d be so tenacious and even capable of using fragments of the Gorgon sisters’ authorities.
“You’re telling me. I never imagined they could erode an entire world like that.”
Poseidon surveyed the aftermath scattered throughout the cave.
He had originally thought this wouldn’t be particularly difficult based on what he knew.
Who could have predicted it would turn out this hard?
And on top of that, the husks had even developed their own egos…
“Sigh… Now I’m actually worried about Perseus.”
—I feel the same.
At the very moment Poseidon and Atropos were expressing their concern—
Surprisingly, Perseus was the one pushing Medusa back.
Clang. Clang. Clang. Clang.
The harpe clashed again and again against Medusa’s elongated claws.
Whenever her snake heads lunged, Perseus casually conjured small ice shields to block them.
After his tremendous growth during the battle with Diogenes and overcoming the trial of the Graeae, this level of attack posed no real threat to him.
“Hup!”
Perseus swung the harpe upward in a clean arc from below.
Medusa blocked it with her claws, then stabbed at him with her remaining hand in an attempt to impale him.
But Perseus twisted the blocked blade just enough to slip free of her grasp and parried once again.
Exchanges like this happened dozens of times per second.
Both constantly feinted, slashed, and stabbed, aiming for each other’s most vital points.
After more than ten minutes of relentless, deadlock combat—
From Perseus’s perspective, after his one successful ambush, his only option was to target Medusa’s single greatest weak point.
Her arms and legs were obvious targets, but even if wounded, they regenerated quickly—and they were far too tough to inflict serious damage anyway.
The situation was the same for Medusa.
Her petrifying gaze was currently blocked by the Aegis shield.
Moreover, thanks to the blessing of the golden sword, Perseus’s reaction speed was now on par with her current state.
Add to that the mobility granted by the Talaria and the fully manifested Aegis, and she found him incredibly troublesome.
Clang!
After dozens more exchanges, Perseus and Medusa finally broke apart, putting distance between them once more.
At this rate, neither would be able to finish the fight easily.
However, neither of them currently had a decisive trump card.
Even as they exchanged blows, the authorities clashed fiercely: Poseidon’s power of ice and water wielded by Perseus against Medusa’s petrification and venom.
When Perseus’s ice and water lashed toward Medusa like whips, her petrification seized control of parts of the cave to block them.
When Medusa’s venom transformed into tiny serpents and lunged at Perseus, the power of water turned into nets that melted the snakes away.
In short, Perseus and Medusa were now pouring everything into the fight — authority, technique, and even their very wills.
Dozens of exchanges per second.
Thud.
“How about we end this soon? Just obediently offer your power to the goddesses and go back.”
Thud.
[Kiiik. If I just devour you, I’ll become the real Medusa. Why would I do that?]
“You really don’t listen, do you!”
[That’s rich coming from you!]
Once again, Perseus’s harpe clashed against Medusa’s claws, and the violent battle resumed.
Water, ice, stone, and venom exploded outward even more fiercely in every direction.
***
Perseus and Medusa were locked in a perfectly even match.
Neither side showed any clear superiority or weakness.
But…
Perseus knew.
He knew that the blessing of the golden sword wouldn’t last forever.
If that blessing vanished, in his current state he would no longer be able to keep up with Medusa’s physical abilities and authorities.
‘I have to come up with something fast. She hasn’t noticed yet, but…’
Anxiety made Perseus’s attacks grow faster.
What he didn’t realize was that Medusa was feeling the exact same impatience.
The harpe was a divine sword — one Athena had taken from Ares, a blade specifically forged for slaying mythical beasts.
Having been struck by surprise with such a weapon, Medusa could feel the authority lingering in the half-severed wound, interfering with her regeneration and slowly strangling her life force.
[I have to… kill him no matter what. Only then can I survive.]
Medusa, too, began accelerating her attacks.
***
Both sides were racing against a time limit.
Unfortunately, the one who reached the end first was Perseus.
The blessing of the golden sword — the very thing that had allowed his body to move — was gradually fading away.
“Guhk!”
Perseus tumbled across the ground from Medusa’s strike.
Without the blessing, he could no longer match her physical prowess.
Seizing the advantage, Medusa pressed him relentlessly like a mad beast.
The exchanges were now completely different from before.
Perseus was barely managing to block her swinging claws.
Even her tail — which had previously only been a means of keeping the Talaria in check — now struck with the weight of an iron mace.
“Ugh!”
[Kikiki. Now I’ll finish you for good, brat!!! You’re the first one to ever fight me this evenly. Go ahead and brag to Hades when you get there.]
Mocking Perseus — who would never even reach the underworld — Medusa unleashed the full force of her petrifying gaze to end it once and for all.
All so she could continue taunting him until the very last moment, knowing that everyone she had ever devoured would ultimately be digested and absorbed into her body.
[Die, brat!!!]
Squelch.
Medusa’s claw pierced straight through Perseus’s heart.
Or so it appeared.
[…Huh…? How… are you… moving…?]
But what had truly been pierced was Medusa’s own heart.
The blade of the harpe had driven straight through her chest and out through her back.
“Haa… haa… haa…”
Perseus’s mind was blank.
In that final moment, he had clearly felt the gaze of Thanatos looking straight at him.
One tiny mistake, and it would have been his heart that was impaled.
[Ugh… aaaah… no… I don’t want this… I want to become real!!! I’m alive too!!!]
Unlike the half-severed neck earlier, this time it was clear the husk could no longer sustain its form.
Sensing that truth, Medusa screamed in despair — but the authority already embedded in her heart by the harpe was mercilessly strangling the last of her life.
And so, the husk of Medusa — still shrieking with her heart run through — melted away in an instant.
All that remained was her head, which still contained a fragment of her mighty petrifying gaze.
“Haa… I’m really gonna die.”
For such an intense battle against such a formidable monster, the end felt almost anticlimactically hollow.
Then, from the spot where Medusa had melted, a round orb of light rose gently into the air.
Kukukung.
As if declaring that its task was finally complete, the entire cave began to shake violently, on the verge of collapse.
“Ugh… My body won’t move at all right now!”
Having poured every last drop of his strength into the fight, Perseus panicked as he realized he couldn’t move a muscle.
“Khk… I have to get out… This is bad…”
Feeling the cave’s vibrations grow stronger by the second, Perseus tried to force his body to move in every way he could — but it refused to budge.
Kuuung!
The stalactites embedded in the ceiling began to shake loose one by one and fall. Cracks were even starting to spread across the cave floor.
“Waaah! Am I really going to die like this?!”
After finally killing Medusa, the thought of ending so pathetically — crushed beneath the cave ceiling — was unbearable.
But his body remained as lifeless as an engine that had been switched off.
At that moment, a massive stalactite directly above him began to fall toward his head.
“AAAAAAAAAHHHH!!”
BOOM!
The falling stalactite crashed down with a deafening roar, shaking the entire cave.
Certain he was about to die, Perseus squeezed his eyes shut tight, bracing himself for the excruciating pain that was sure to follow.
“……”
Yet no pain came.
…Huh?
Confused by the absence of agony, he cautiously opened his eyes.
Standing right in front of him, smiling gently, was the blue-haired mage with the ponytail.
Behind him, the entire cave — including the enormous stalactite that had been falling toward Perseus — was frozen solid in ice.
“Lord Njord!!!”
“Haha, is the hero who just slew Medusa really cowering with his eyes closed over a single stalactite?”
“Lord Njord! You’re… really okay!”
“Of course I am. Now come on — let’s get out of here.”
“Yes!!”
Overcome with joy, Perseus threw his arms around Njord in a tight hug.
***
One might think the final moments between Perseus and Medusa ended rather anticlimactically.
But in truth, several critical mistakes had been made by Medusa’s husk.
The first was her failure to accurately gauge how much power she had lost when Perseus was initially being overwhelmed.
Under normal circumstances, Perseus wouldn’t even have been able to perceive the difference.
The gap between them had been that vast.
Yet when his strength began to wane, the anxious Medusa failed to notice — while Perseus, though struggling, had started to match her movements to some degree.
The second mistake — one Medusa never realized — was that her petrifying gaze had also weakened by exactly the same degree as the difference between them.
The only reason her gaze had been able to oppress Perseus in the first place was because of that overwhelming disparity.
The problem was that, from the very beginning of their clash, Medusa had misunderstood.
She believed her gaze was still affecting Perseus.
Even though she was not the true Medusa — merely a husk with only a fragment of the original’s power — she arrogantly assumed she had partially pierced through Athena’s Aegis.
Tragically, she never realized that what had been burdening Perseus was merely the aftermath of raw power, not the gaze itself.
That single delusion blinded her to the fact that her gaze was no longer restraining him effectively — and it created far more openings than she ever imagined.
And those tiny miscalculations ultimately decided someone’s life or death.
Perseus, who in that fleeting instant realized he could still move even without the golden sword’s blessing.
Medusa, who remained utterly convinced that her gaze was still binding him completely.
If Medusa had frozen in place, convinced to the very end that he couldn’t move — then the one who died would have been him.
***
Poseidon glanced up at Perseus, who was dangling in the air, held securely in his grasp.
The boy’s battered, grinning face suited his age perfectly.
But the severed head of a monster clutched tightly in his other hand looked utterly out of place.
“Call it luck or call it skill — either way, it was pretty dramatic.”
—Haa… Even the gods couldn’t have predicted that difference. Who would’ve thought Medusa would be that powerful?
“But he still won in the end, didn’t he? Almost like it really was the fate of a hero.”
—Who knows. As far as I’m aware, his fate was only supposed to extend up to meeting the Gorgon sisters. Anything beyond that… I don’t know.
“Is that so?”
Poseidon shook his head as he watched the bizarre sight of Perseus clutching Medusa’s head like a precious treasure.
The earlier talk of heroic destiny suddenly felt a little ridiculous in light of the scene.
“Perseus, you still have that pouch Athena gave you, right? Put that head in the kibisis immediately.”
“Ah! Right!!”
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