The boulder turned to mist, blowing away in the ocean breeze, and for the first time in my current playthrough, I stepped out of the tutorial zone.
Achievement Unlocked: Touch Grass.
I stood on the precipice of Mount Ida, gripping the golden clasp of my Aegis, completely prepared to look upon a blasted, dystopian wasteland. I was ready for skies choked with ash. I was ready for rivers of blood. I was ready to look down at the mortals of the earth and say, Fear not, NPCs, your server admin has arrived.
I looked down at the valleys of Crete.
"What... what is this?" I whispered, my jaw dropping.
It was perfect.
It wasn't just beautiful; it was aggressively, annoyingly perfect. The sky was a pristine, cloudless azure. The fields were bursting with golden wheat that seemed to be harvesting itself. Down in the valley, I saw a group of mortal humans lounging under a massive olive tree. They weren't toiling in the dirt. They weren't crying out for salvation against a dark overlord. One of them literally opened his mouth, and a perfectly ripe fig just dropped from the branch straight into it.
"Dost thou marvel at the bounty of the earth, Lord?" Pyrrhichos asked. The giant spirit of war stepped up beside me, resting his heavy bronze spear upon his shoulder. "The mortals rejoice in the sun's warm embrace."
"Pyrrhichos," I pointed a shaking finger at the humans. "Why aren't they suffering? Where are the slave camps? Where is the crushing tyranny of the Titan of Time?"
Pyrrhichos looked at me, his bearded face scrunching up in profound confusion beneath his Corinthian helmet. "Tyranny over the mortals of clay? Lord Zeus, thy father Kronos is the Sovereign of the Golden Age. Under his reign, the earth yields its fruit without the strike of the plow. Men age not, they know no plague, and they pass into death as softly as one slips into a dream."
I stared at him. I blinked once. Twice.
Recalculating.
"Hold on," I said, putting my hands on my hips. "You're telling me Cronus is a good Admin? He's running a utopian pacifist server?"
"They live as the immortals do, free from sorrow and heavy labor," Melisseus chimed in, his deep voice carrying the absolute certainty of ancient truth.
Oh, no, I thought, a cold sweat breaking out on the back of my neck.
I looked at my hands, crackling with raw, destructive plasma. I looked at my elite, heavily armored strike team. I looked at the literal infinite-food glitch—the Cornucopia—hanging from my belt.
If Cronus was running a literal utopia... and I was about to go to war, overthrow him, and plunge the universe into a devastating ten-year Titanomachy...
"Pyrrhichos," I said slowly. "Are we the baddies?"
"I know not this word, 'baddies', Lord of the Storm," Pyrrhichos answered solemnly, his brow furrowed in deep thought. "But if thou asketh if our cause is just, look not to the soil, but to the Sovereign's throne. The Devourer may bless the dirt, but he feasts upon his own divine blood. Thy brothers and sisters—Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon—languish in the dark acid of his belly. His uncles, the Cyclopes and the Hundred-Handers, rot in the blackest pits of Tartarus. A King who devours his own legacy rules a kingdom built on terror."
I let out a long breath.
Right. Okay. Cronus wasn't a cartoon villain destroying the environment. He was a paranoid narcissist who was running a perfect kingdom by cannibalizing his own dev team and locking his family in the basement.
"Okay," I slapped my cheeks, resetting my focus. "So he's got good PR. Fine. It doesn't change the main quest. I'm not here to be the savior of humanity. I'm here to do a prison break. And if I have to ruin the global economy to get my siblings back, that's a sacrifice I am willing to make."
I pointed down the mountain. "To the beach. We have a hacker to meet."
The Sapphire Shore
The walk to the northern coast was infuriatingly pleasant.
No monsters jumped out of the tall grass. No random encounters. The weather stayed at a perfectly regulated seventy-two degrees. It was like walking through a pristine desktop background. Honestly, some reincarnated guys want to wake up and immediately crash out, acting like edgelord villains with negative aura. Not me. I just wanted to fix the server without my siblings getting fanum taxed by our dad's digestive tract.
When we finally reached the Aegean Sea, the water was a vast, glittering expanse of sapphire blue.
"The perimeter is secured, Lord," Pyrrhichos reported, as the five Kouretes fanned out along the white sand, their bronze shields gleaming in the sun. "We stand as thy bulwark. Yet, the waters before us belong to the Elder Titan, Oceanus. Tread with reverence, for his depths are old, and his memory is unforgiving."
I walked right up to the edge of the surf.
"Alright," I said to the empty ocean. "Time to summon an NPC."
I picked up a smooth, flat stone from the beach. I channeled a ridiculous amount of kinetic energy into my throwing arm, overclocking my muscles with a micro-burst of electricity. I whipped the stone side-arm across the water.
It didn't just skip. It broke the sound barrier.
CRACK.
A sonic boom echoed across the beach as the stone skipped across the Aegean, hitting the water fifty times and leaving a trail of flash-boiled steam in its wake before vanishing over the horizon.
I dusted my hands off. "If that doesn't trigger the cutscene, nothing will."
About a hundred yards out, the ocean stopped moving. The rhythmic crashing of the waves ceased. The water smoothed out until it looked like a perfect, flawless sheet of blue glass.
Then, the sea began to rise, forming a towering, spiraling waterspout.
Standing atop the swirling pillar of water was a being of such profound, ancient majesty that my max-level brain paused for a solid three seconds.
She wore a peplos woven from sea-foam, starlight, and the crushed pearls of the abyss. Her hair was the color of the midnight zone—deep, crushing blue—and it floated around her head as if she were still submerged. Her eyes were liquid silver, radiating an intelligence so sharp, so unimaginably vast, it felt as though she were dissecting my soul and reading my atomic structure simultaneously.
This was Metis. The Oceanid Titaness of Wisdom, Deep Thought, and Prudence.
The waterspout glided toward the shore, lowering her gently until she hovered just inches above the wet sand.
"Who dares break the sacred stillness of Oceanus's domain with the violence of the Sky?" Metis spoke. Her voice was not loud, yet it resonated in my very bones, melodic and terrifyingly cold. "Thou casteth stones with the fury of a falling star, yet thou standest upon the shore with the stillness of a mountain. Reveal thyself, child of the lightning."
"Just Zeus is fine," I said, giving her a casual two-finger salute. "And you're Metis. I hear you're the smartest person on the server."
Metis's silver eyes narrowed slightly. "Thy tongue weaves strange, jagged syllables, Son of Rhea. Thou speakest in riddles to veil thy true nature. I am Wisdom incarnate; do not play the fool with me. The Titan King's gaze is heavy upon the world. Why hast thou summoned me from the silent deep?"
"Because I need a backdoor exploit," I said, dropping the casual posture and stepping forward to the edge of the surf. "I'm going to overthrow my father. But I have a logistical problem. If I walk into Mount Othrys and hit him with a million volts of atmospheric plasma, he dies. But he has five immortal gods sitting in his stomach right now. If I blast him, they get caught in the AoE... sorry, the crossfire."
Metis tilted her head, her expression unreadable. "Thou conceptualizest thy divine wrath in remarkably structured bounds. Thou wishest to strike the Sovereign without shattering the divine lives held captive within his belly. Thou seekest a key to a lock forged of flesh."
"Exactly," I nodded. "I need an emetic potion. Something strong enough to bypass a Titan's immune system and force Cronus to purge his stomach contents before the boss fight starts."
Metis glided forward, her bare feet finally touching the sand. She circled me slowly, her eyes tracking the latent static electricity sparking off the golden clasp of my Aegis.
"Thou asketh me to commit high treason against the King of the Golden Age," she said softly. "I am an Oceanid. My father, Oceanus, remains neutral in the bloody affairs of the Sky and Earth. Why should the House of Oceanus draw the ire of Kronos to aid a hidden princeling who brings the scent of the ash-nymphs and the burning aether to my shores?"
"Because you're the Titaness of Prudence," I countered, turning to face her. "And Prudence means looking at the long-term data. Cronus might have the mortals living in a utopia right now, but he's a paranoid cannibal. He swallowed his own kids because of a prophecy. How long until he gets paranoid about the oceans? How long until he decides your dad is a threat? Wisdom isn't just knowing things, Metis. It's calculating the inevitable. Cronus's reign isn't sustainable."
Metis stopped circling. She stood before me, her silver eyes piercing mine.
"Thou dost not speak like the brute I expected," she admitted, a ghost of a smile touching her immortal lips. "I sensed the power of thy storm from the abyssal plains. I expected a wild, raging tempest. But thy logic is... sound. Kronos's fear consumes him. It is a rot that will eventually spread from the mountain to the sea."
She raised a graceful hand. A sphere of water materialized in her palm, swirling with glowing, bioluminescent herbs and dark, abyssal kelp.
"I possess the knowledge to brew the Pharmakon—the purge," she intoned, the water glowing with ancient alchemy. "It is a draught so potent it will force Time itself to vomit up the past."
"Perfect. Hand it over, and I'll go spike his drink."
"It is not that simple, Sky-Child," Metis said, closing her fist. The water vanished. "The brew must be administered willingly. Kronos is terrified of poison. He accepts neither food nor drink unless it is poured by his personal Cupbearer."
Ah. The stealth mission phase. "Let me guess," I sighed. "I can't just throw it in his face."
"If thou approachest Mount Othrys as a challenger, he will simply sever thy thread of time and cast thee into Tartarus," Metis explained. "Thou must infiltrate his great hall. Thou must become the very thing a King ignores."
I crossed my arms. "So, I need a disguise."
"Kronos swallowed the Omphalos stone, wrapped in swaddling clothes, believing it was thee," Metis said, her eyes flashing with brilliance. "He knows not the face of his youngest blood. To him, thou art a phantom. Thou must walk into the halls of Mount Othrys not as a God of Thunder, but as a lowly, mortal servant seeking a master."
I stared at her.
She wanted me to un-equip my high-level gear, put on an apron, and walk right into the final boss room carrying a tray of drinks.
"A stealth infiltration," I muttered, a grin slowly spreading across my face. "We really got Zeus doing stealth missions before GTA 6. I'm basically playing Hitman: Bronze Age Edition."
Metis looked at me, her brow furrowing slightly in ancient confusion. "A Hit-man? A striker of mortals in the shadows? Kronos is no mortal man to be struck in the dark, Zeus. He is an Elder Titan."
"It's a metaphor," I chuckled. "Okay, Metis. You brew the potion. I'll figure out how to compress my files and hide my aura. How long will the potion take?"
"Three days and three nights," she replied, stepping back toward the ocean. The waterspout formed beneath her feet once again, lifting her majestically above the surf. "Meet me upon this very shore when the moon is full. If thou canst prove thy storm can be silenced, I shall bestow the poison."
"It's a date," I winked, making sure to project max aura points.
Metis paused, hovering over the water. "Thou art an incredibly strange deity, Zeus of the Dictaean Cave."
"I'm an acquired taste," I replied.
With a final, elegant nod, the Titaness of Wisdom sank beneath the waves. The ocean smoothed out, returning to its normal, rhythmic crashing against the shore.
I turned back to the tree line. The Kouretes emerged, looking completely bewildered, their minds struggling to comprehend the casual way I had spoken to an entity of such terrifying age and intellect.
"Lord Zeus," Pyrrhichos said reverently, bowing his head. "Did the Oceanid agree to weave our fate?"
"She did," I said, walking past them. "But we have a lot of work to do. I have three days to figure out how to turn myself from a six-foot-six thunder god into a scrawny, non-threatening waiter."
"A waiter, Lord?" Melisseus asked, his voice trembling with religious awe. "Is this... a secret art of war? A hidden stance of the Sky?"
"No, Melisseus," I sighed, looking up at the perfect, annoyingly blue sky of the Golden Age. "It's the oldest trick in the book. We're doing a stealth run."