Chapter 597: Rare Path

Grey waited several seconds for an answer, and when none came, his brow slowly rose.

"You know, the whole dramatic silence thing was interesting the first few times, but now it’s getting kind of old, so where do I find something that can fix my Frame?"

The angel lady remained quiet inside his mind, which only made Grey’s expression flatten further as he realized she was seriously considering refusing to answer again.

"Come on, wings, I’m not asking you where you hide your underwear, I’m asking about something that’s currently making half my Neural Frame run twenty times faster than the other half." Grey waited again, received nothing, then sighed and rubbed his forehead. "If you give me another speech about how knowing things is dangerous, I swear to God I’m going to find some way to dunk your ghost ass in a toilet."

"You insolent little—"

The angel lady’s fury flashed through their connection strongly enough that Grey could almost picture her black wings flaring behind her, but this time he refused to let her steer the conversation away. He kept pressing until her anger slowly faded into irritation, and when she finally answered, the name left her with enough reluctance that it almost seemed physically painful.

"Kronos."

A chill ran through Grey the instant the word entered his mind, and deep within his Neural Frame, Prometheus flickered in response. It wasn’t quite fear and certainly wasn’t recognition in any human sense, but Grey could feel something old moving beneath the surface, enough that his joking expression faded as he waited for the angel lady to continue.

"There are very few Gods who stand on the level of Prometheus and Atlas," she explained, each word seemingly dragged out through clenched teeth. "There are others who possessed Recursive and Branching Frames, and there are treasures that might imitate the effect you need, but if your intention is to correct this imbalance rather than merely suppress it, there is only one answer. Kronos."

Grey frowned as he searched through what little Earth mythology he remembered, which mostly consisted of half-forgotten school lessons and things he had picked up from movies, games, and the internet.

Kronos was the father of the Titans—or close enough depending on which version humans had managed to butcher over the years—and more importantly, he was associated with time. That second part made Grey’s expression slowly become strange.

"Hold on, that doesn’t make any fucking sense."

The angel lady went still.

"Kronos is supposed to be the big time guy, right? Father of the Titans, ancient monster, eats his kids, probably terrible at family reunions, all that shit." Grey tapped one finger against The Virtueless while his eyes narrowed. "So why does Prometheus have an ability involving time, and why the hell does Kronos only need a Dual Frame when Prometheus somehow has all four?"

Inside their connection, the angel lady was shaken because she genuinely hadn’t expected him to notice so quickly. Mysteries like this were often easier for outsiders to recognize, while people standing in the center of them grew accustomed to inconsistencies until they stopped questioning why the pieces didn’t fit.

Grey, unfortunately for everyone trying to keep secrets from him, had made a habit out of picking at crooked pieces until they annoyed him enough to pull the whole puzzle apart. He almost had an innate feel for pointing out flaws.

"I’m getting tired of this mystery shit," Grey said, his voice losing most of its humor. "You keep telling me things are dangerous to know, except apparently not knowing them keeps nearly getting me killed too, so from now on, unless learning something literally makes my head explode, just fucking tell me."

The angel lady gritted her teeth before finally relenting. "The story you know about Prometheus stealing fire is incomplete. Fire was merely one of the gifts he stole and placed into mortal hands. Prometheus stole many things from the Gods, including pieces of the Authorities and abilities possessed by those powerful enough to believe such things could never be taken from them."

Grey’s eyes sharpened.

"Kronos was one of them," she continued. "After Prometheus was punished, almost everything he had stolen was stripped away, damaged, or sealed, and the only Divine Ability he has managed to retain even partially is Kronos’. What you possess is incomplete and cannot approach the original scope of Kronos’ control, but when Prometheus reaches Phase IV, his ability to steal from Gods will begin returning."

Grey slowly nodded, only for her next words to stop him.

"The problem is that you began doing it yourself before Prometheus was capable of allowing it."

That explained her shock during several of Grey’s recent breakthroughs. What she had assumed were aberrations were beginning to form an increasingly obvious pattern.

She admitted that she had never witnessed anyone so compatible with Prometheus, to the point that Grey wasn’t merely inheriting his Frame but instinctively reproducing the path Prometheus himself had once walked. In some ways, Grey was beginning to resemble a second Prometheus far earlier than should have been possible.

Grey waved a hand. "Alright, alright, as much as I enjoy being praised and sucked off, I asked where I get Kronos’ weapon, inheritance, magic underwear, whatever the hell fixes this."

The angel lady exhaled slowly before explaining that while the Second and Third Arcs lacked the clean formulas of the First, every Genesis Game ultimately pursued the same question.

The Games were a replay of a war from eons ago, continuously reshaped to see whether someone could eventually discover a better answer to the problem that had destroyed countless civilizations before them.

What happened when a universe pushed life toward evolution, only for that very evolution to eventually become powerful enough to kill the universe sustaining it?

"Even Gods are limited in what they can do once that cycle reaches its end," she said. "The Genesis Games therefore seek a Genesis King, someone capable of presenting a satisfactory answer where those before them failed, but producing that answer ultimately requires confronting the Gods themselves."

How that confrontation occurred changed from Game to Game. Some participants allied with Gods while others opposed them, manipulated them, or built coalitions around competing Divine factions.

Most final battles eventually narrowed down to the few remaining participants who had earned the acknowledgement of a God powerful enough to support their answer. Those Gods, however, were usually members of the later generations, the ones who had inherited the heavens and eventually sat upon Olympus after the ancient order fell.

"There is another route," the angel lady said, and Grey could feel her reluctance returning. "A path through the Third Arc so rare that no participant has ever successfully completed it. Rather than gaining a God’s acknowledgement, you establish a Godly Path entirely your own.

"To even begin that clearance method, you must kill, conquer, or otherwise subdue the strongest God the Genesis Games can manifest from that ancient age." The angel lady paused, and this time the name carried even greater weight than before. "You must defeat Kronos."

Grey stared silently into the distance.

The angel lady’s next words were almost quiet.

"Something even Prometheus failed to do."