"Huff—huff—huff—"
Amid ragged panting like the wheezing of a broken bellows, the young man who had slain the Mother of Orcs slowly rose from his half-kneeling position. His entire body swayed, as though a fierce battle had drained every last ounce of his strength.
Yet all he had done was draw a sword and plunge it down.
His once-black hair had also turned gray in an instant, and both eyes had grown terribly dull. He looked like a man on his last legs, liable to die at any moment.
Without question, this was the terrible price of directly touching and destroying a deity's spiritual essence.
Of course, the outcome would not have been much different for other deities or beings with quasi-divine power.
The reason was simple!
A deity of the same lesser divine power would lose almost all their strength after doing so, and would need a long time to slowly recover.
During that period, any creature possessing divine power, including hostile deities and their Chosen, could kill them effortlessly.
Only a higher-ranking god killing a lower-ranking one would avoid being weakened to the point of helplessness. Even then, they would suffer severe losses, potentially giving enemies of equal rank an opening.
This was why struggles between the gods rarely escalated into divine wars. They mostly fought proxy wars, having mortal followers, clerics, and Chosen battle one another to achieve a particular goal or thwart an enemy's scheme. There was something almost restrained about it, like sparring partners who knew when to stop.
Once a direct conflict broke out between deities, it would most likely cease to be a feud between just one or two gods. Instead, it could trigger a chain reaction that plunged the gods into an all-out war.
Then it would become an endless succession of