GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?

The ants are history now. The ant queen was just a pawn to be used and discarded. Her death wasn't even intentional. She died as a consequence of his struggle with the sun god. So there's no mystery to be found in the ant mound. The Colossus came a little too late.

Helios nodded. "I should meet this colossus since there's no one here anymore. It will be a shame if his trip was wasted."

He found it to be a shame if the Colossus had to run here all the way from the headquarters of the church of the sun and yet come to find nothing. So he decided to occupy the Colossus for a while. Let's just say the sun god raised him to be polite.

He was hovering in the air but he suddenly disappeared. There was no need for preparation. He wanted to move and so he moved, very quickly too. There was a flash of light and exploding sound as he broke the speed of sound. He pierced through the supposed impenetrable material of the ant mound like a shooting star to reach the Colossus.

The Colossus didn't see him coming. It was moving forward with purpose. Each of its feet was smashing into the ground as he gained on the ant mound. It was thinking of its impending success when it sensed a fast-moving entity with a mind-boggling amount of energy coming straight for its head. Its instincts and reaction entered hyperdrive by the unexpected threat.

"Rawrrr!"

It roared as it raised its massive hand to block the projectile that Helios had become. But it didn't work. There was a flash of light that blinded anyone watching the Colossus and a sound like no other that deafened those that heard it. When the light faded, the Colossus was no more.

It all happened so quickly that it looked like someone launched an annihilator except this annihilator can harm a Colossus. Helios had penetrated the hand entirely. The flesh and the bones can't stop him when the ant mound couldn't stop him. A large white beam coming out of his eyes preceded him. The beam bore a hole in the hand that Helios passed through. Then he went on to collide with the head of the Colossus.

The punch that landed on the Colossus' head literally stopped it in its tracks. It even did more than it. It lifted the giant monstrosity off of its feet. The bones in its head were thick and strong enough to block the beam. But then Helios exploded in his face. He expanded and became a small star. Then he discharged the energy he used in his expansion to create an explosion.

The giants and god's avatars in the camp saw it all. For the mortals in the camp, it was the last thing they saw. The Colossus had just passed the camp and was approaching the ant mound. They were all watching with anticipation. They were waiting to see how the ant mound will cave beneath the might of a colossus.

Soldiers had come out to watch. So did the priests, the bishops of the various churches, the demigods that were just saved, and the avatar of gods. They waited for the action to start. Then there was light and there was nothing. So maybe, they saw nothing after all. The explosion killed them but they didn't even see what exploded. It might be a good thing that they did not survive that explosion or they would have regretted being alive for however short the experience of having your flesh evaporated is.

Either way, they are in no way different from the ants. They came here on instructions from their gods to subjugate the ants. They found more than was expected. At the end of the day, both they and the ants are the same. They are both weak and they both died as bystanders to the activities of their betters. The thing that killed them wasn't even aiming for them. They were all simply collateral damage.

The gods watching saw what happened but that's only because they focused on the event from the divine realm through their divine vision. Their avatars in the mortal realm saw streaks and nothing else. The screen showed the progression of events.

They saw a yellow streak coming from the ant mound. It was too fast to track and unexpected but they caught it. The streak penetrated the hand of the Colossus and clashed with its head then it stopped. It was that brief moment of pause that enabled them to see what the streak is.

Harkam's mouth opened in shock. "The sun dwarf?"

The streak stopped to reveal a golden figure. He isn't sure of its identity. The figure is in no way similar to Helios when it comes to looks but they both have white runes on their golden bodies. Seeing as Helios was a mana entity while this figure is a transcendent then it might be a transformed Helios.

Then the golden man deformed into a ball and the ball expanded before it suddenly shrunk. The change happened so quickly that it looked like he became a giant balloon then he exploded. But what came out of his body was an explosion of heat and fire instead of air. Then their screen went dark as all their priests died.

The gods started talking excitedly amongst themselves.

"Did you see how he lifted that Colossus with one punch?"

"Yes, I did. He must be a transcendent now. Demigods always get terrifying when they become transcendents."

"That's true but this is a little too much. The fight lasted less than a second."

"But how did he break through to become a transcendent? I thought he was bonded and captured."

They were surprised by the situation and perplexed by a lot of things. How is Helios a transcendent? Why is he fighting a Colossus? What about the Goliath ants? Isn't Helios a little too strong for a transcendent? There are so many questions and the mystery surrounding the ant mound has only gotten thicker. So Helios was wrong about the absence of mystery. But one thing is sure, the fight was entertaining even though it was too short.