"Why did you betray me?" Apollo, known as a god of many things—most notably archery, the sun, and intellect—asked the gods before him.
An arrow, shot by Heracles and coated in the venom of a Hydra, was lodged in his stomach. The venom was fatal; only the strength of a god delayed the inevitable.
"You have grown too powerful, my son," Zeus, the head of Olympus, answered his son's question.
"You are just like your father. You've become what you despise. You've forgotten all your morals, your goals, everything," Apollo laughed at his father's rhetoric. Zeus was acting almost exactly like Cronus, the father of Zeus and grandfather of Apollo.
"You shouldn't have said that—"
Hermes, the god of travel, was enraged by Apollo's speech and raised his staff, the Caduceus.
"Shut up," Apollo said, with no visible fluctuation of emotion in his eyes. He raised the bow in his hand and condensed an arrow made from the core of ten suns. He shot it faster than ten times the speed of light, instantly penetrating Hermes' body, which melted to an atomic level. His cells fused and transformed into a ball of light holding extremely explosive energy.
"Impressive technique, Apollo. Hermes is just a weak god. I could easily kill him. My shield could block that attack and your little ball here," Ares, a great rival of Apollo, taunted him, hoping to raise his prestige by defeating and mocking Apollo.
"Let's see," Apollo challenged with a terrifying smile.
Apollo let the ball explode.
The terrifying shockwave and explosion hit Ares head-on. Ares was hurled across Olympus.
After a considerable distance, he was finally stopped—not by his own power.
Ares felt something stiff inside him. He looked down and saw the blade of a sword penetrating his stomach.
"IMPOSSIBLE! HOW CAN YOU BE THIS FAST?! I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS! NO! NO! NO! FUCK YOU, APOLLO!"
"I'm not this fast, Ares. I switched places long ago and silently created a phantom of light. The me who exploded the ball and is in front of Zeus and the others is only an illusion made by distorting light. As for how I knew you would be here, I can easily deduce that," Apollo calmly confronted Ares and mocked him for his lack of intellect.
"TAKE THIS, YOU BASTARD!"
Ares thrust his sword into Apollo's body with the strongest blow he ever made.
When his sword penetrated Apollo, he suddenly vanished.
"You are way too predictable, Ares. You hail yourself as a great strategist, but you only follow your instincts. If you had used some intellect, maybe you would be a bigger challenge," Apollo laughed at Ares one last time before finally killing him.
Soon after, Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Hades, and many other gods arrived at the place where Ares had been killed.
A storm of emotions mixed on their faces—fear, anger, and anxiety.
It didn't bother them as much that Apollo had killed Hermes. Hermes was a god with little combat power and just one of many children of Zeus.
But Ares was a strong god. Not many could kill him.
The one with the most anger was Zeus. This was a blatant display of Apollo's intention to kill him. Ares was Zeus's most loyal follower.
"Enough, Apollo!" Zeus's voice finally boomed, the air trembling with his divine authority. "You have proven your point. But know this: our betrayal was not without cause. We acted out of necessity to preserve the balance of the cosmos."
Apollo's gaze narrowed, his anger not abated by Zeus's words. "Balance? You mean to say you were afraid of my power. Afraid that I would surpass you all and reshape the world in my own image. Don't pretend this was anything but a desperate move to cling to your fading authority."
With this final shout, a desperate battle for power began.
Apollo against Olympus. It was a battle so great that more gods died in this conflict than in the previous ten million years.
As the battle neared its end, every god was severely injured, many with only a very short time to live if they didn't get treated.
The worst was undoubtedly Apollo. He was covered in divine blood, his expression obscured by the thick blood on his face. Many bones were visible on Apollo's body, some even falling out.
"I know I will die right here and now, but with me, some of you should also die!" Apollo screamed. His voice was filled with many emotions, but mostly desperation.
He pulled out his most powerful move.
"Solar Eclipse."
Apollo's voice rang out.
Suddenly, the sun was obscured. Nothing was visible anymore.
Everything was filled with darkness. Even the gods couldn't see anything and couldn't use their divine perception. They were blind.
Darkness is a shared fear among humans and gods alike.
They tried to raise their voices but couldn't hear themselves or anyone else.
This continued for a while until they finally heard a voice again.
But they trembled in fear after hearing it. It was Apollo's voice.
"Solar Collapse."
Shortly after, they saw something again.
It was Apollo.
Apollo's form began to radiate an unbearable brilliance, his entire body enveloped in a sphere of pure solar energy. The very air around him shimmered with heat, and the void surrounding Apollo cracked and fractured from the sheer force of his energy.
Apollo focused his divine will on concentrating solar energy into a singular point. The temperature soared to unimaginable levels as the sun's core energy was drawn into this focal point, causing the space around it to warp and bend.
A small, swirling vortex began to form above Apollo, its event horizon glowing with a mesmerizing and deadly radiance. The gravitational forces intensified, pulling everything in its vicinity toward it.
The concentrated energy reached critical mass, and a black hole began to form. Apollo's control over the gravitational forces meant that the singularity was stable and highly potent. The entire surrounding area began to bend and distort under the influence of the black hole's gravity.
The void around the singularity buckled, and divine structures were pulled into the growing black hole. The atmosphere itself seemed to be sucked into the vortex, creating a deep, resonant hum that echoed through the void.
As the black hole matured, its gravitational pull increased exponentially. The remaining gods, their divine powers rendered powerless against such a force, could only watch in horror as their surroundings were consumed. The light from the black hole's event horizon cast eerie shadows, and the divine realms began to collapse into the void.
The once-majestic Olympus was now a desolate landscape, with remnants of divine glory being swallowed into the black hole. Even the celestial fabric seemed to tear apart, as if the very essence of the cosmos was being unraveled.
Apollo woke up, already physically dead. He forced his spirit to remain in his lifeless body.
He let instincts control his body and looked around.
Everything was completely devastated. Nothing was as it used to be.
Suddenly, he sensed something behind him.
His body instinctively turned around.
What Apollo saw shocked him.
Heracles' body was still intact.
That was not the most shocking thing, though. The black hole seemed to have sucked out Heracles' godhood. This was something that should have been impossible.
"HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! IT SEEMS THAT I AM INDEED FAVORED BY LUCK! THIS ALLOWS ME TO INTEGRATE HERACLES' GODHOOD!"
Apollo began to laugh maniacally into the air.
His body instinctively walked toward Heracles' godhood and absorbed it.
With this, his body was resurrected, and he was alive again.
He felt the abundant power in his body.
Apollo was filled with joy. Not for long, though, as he saw his powers being siphoned away by the cosmos. He didn't have long to live.
"It seems that I have to use that technique," Apollo said with a sigh, no longer acting like a maniac.
"Helios's Resurgence."
These were the last words of Apollo's second life as he transformed into a small ball of energy and traversed into a world in this or another universe where he could reincarnate.
You heard that right.
This was Apollo's second life. In his first life, Apollo was just an ordinary person on Earth until he one day transmigrated into the body of a young Apollo.
The originally ordinary person suddenly gained immense powers. He, of course, relished the feeling of that power and began creating many techniques that Apollo originally didn't possess.
Because of this, Olympus deemed him a danger.
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Eternities passed, and Apollo finally reincarnated into a new world.
The world was called Earth, and the year was 2005 when he was born.
"It seems that I was finally reborn," Apollo thought as he looked at his surroundings.
Many doctors surrounded his mother.
"It seems she died as her body absorbed a small amount of my energy. What a pity," Apollo sighed as he looked at his mother in this life. He didn't have many feelings for her since he didn't know her.
"This is not good. THERE IS NO ENERGY IN THIS WORLD! WHY?! IT SEEMS THAT I WAS WRONG—I AM NOT FAVORED BY LUCK! FUCK! FUCK! FUCK!" Apollo began screaming loudly, of course, in a baby's cry.
This startled the doctors, who had given up on Apollo's mother and now looked at him with pity.
"What a poor child. He has no relatives. His father is unknown, and his mother was an orphan. With her dead, he will end up in an orphanage," a female doctor sighed and pitied the