Hestia's Resolve

Even now, if Lein pulled a public kamikaze stunt and announced that he wasn't really the Outer Realm God King, nobody would believe him.

No!

To put it more dramatically, even if the gods secretly believed Lein wasn't the God King, he still had to be.

The Chaos Lord was watching hungrily from beyond, and Lein was the one and only common denominator accepted by the good, neutral, and evil factions in the entire pantheon. There was no real replacement for him.

The old Chaos Continent gods had struggled so hard to become gods above gods. If Lein suddenly backed down, they'd lose their biggest banner. What else could they use to keep the New Gods who'd surrendered in line?

The same went for New Gods who'd come over from other pantheons... If Lein wasn't even a God King, then he'd destroyed my original pantheon and my world—my plane—for nothing. What exactly would I have surrendered to?

And even if you took things one step further, what about Lein's divine-level disciples? What about all the goddesses under his protection? What about the goddesses who'd surrendered and placed themselves at his mercy?

Things had reached this point. Even if Lein truly wasn't a God King, he had to be!

Lein had boasted too big in the beginning, and now he was being roasted over the fire. Yet somehow, as the roasting went on, he'd turned into steel through a hundred refinements. Who could believe something this absurd?

So the thought of publicly exposing himself crossed Lein's mind for only an instant before he stamped it out.

When Downs and the others asked him about their next strategic move, Lein acted like a true God King and casually countered, "Can the Chaos Lord's main force break through Pello and the others' front