Chapter 97: The Next Step
"There’s been a lot of movement already, even though it’s only been a few weeks," Raya started, bowing her head lightly at me as she stood in front of my throne, "Your takeover of the devils didn’t go unnoticed, and the Norse Allfather, Odin, called for a meeting between various factions recently. It’s probably about us, and even though the scouts have gathered a lot of intel about the Greek Pantheon, with so many factions making moves at the moment, waiting might be the best course of action."
I simply nodded my head easily, taking in what she had said. It’d been roughly a week since my first entry to the E-Rank World, also known as the HOTD universe, and things hadn’t been stagnant on the DxD side even with time being slowed down while I was gone.
My scouts had been gathering intel on the Greek Pantheon, as while I had a shit-ton of man power with the Maou under my control now, they still weren’t enemies that I could challenge carelessly.
They were in a similar position to many god-centered pantheons, and conquering them would be annoying. That position was how their power was distributed - instead of like the devils, who had four powerful Maou, with 2 ultra-powerful leaders, or the Grigori who had pretty much just Azazel and a couple of weaker leaders, the Greek Pantheon was much more well-rounded.
It wasn’t as simple as targeting the head and forcing the rest to follow. There were the 12 strongest gods, the Olympians, but they weren’t even the main problem. While all of them were powerful gods in their own right, none of them except for Hades could make a case for being within the Top 10, and as a result, none of them were really all that threatening to me.
Even Hades probably couldn’t hold his own against me at this point, as I had taken down Sirzechs - someone much stronger than the God of the Dead - with inferior armor to my current set, and with much lower stats before completing all the quests after conquering the devils. Their top dogs weren’t the problem, but instead their lower-ranking gods.
To say my army was top-heavy was putting it lightly. There was myself, Tiamat, and many strong subordinates, such as Sirzechs, Ajuka, Azazel, Benemue, Vargan, etc., but the majority of my troops were fodder. The hundreds of thousands of soldiers comprised of low-level direwolves, dwarves, succubi, devils, fallen, and various other creatures couldn’t compete in a war like this.
The Greeks’ lower-ranking troops, by comparison, were still gods, as there were countless minor and less powerful gods related to damn near anything in the world you could think of. The ’Minor Goddess of Ants’ might not look strong next to Zeus, but she could probably still take on a thousand direwolves on her own.
You would think that they’d run out of things to create a god around, but the Greeks certainly didn’t. There was a god for damn near every river, mountain, and probably even pond in the human world. So, while I was probably still winning in the troop-number battle, it wasn’t an overwhelming landslide.
But, while I knew the Greeks wouldn’t just roll over, the more overarching concern was the other factions in the world. Raya warning me about this impending supernatural-worldwide meeting right now was the first time she had mentioned it, and it had become a central point for my next plan.
Odin had apparently been going around trying to hold a meeting between various factions, and considering that he hadn’t done that in canon, it was safe to assume that the meeting was probably about me, or something I had done to change this world. The most concerning part was that he had contacted the Hindu Pantheon, which just so happened to be the home of two gods who could actually pose a threat to me.