Chapter 21: Goddess of the Underworld and People of the Underworld
In the end, even if Rowe did not share Gilgamesh's outright hostility toward the gods in the high heavens, one fact was still obvious.
He did not revere them.
Rowe came from a modern world. To him, these so called gods were real in power, but not in faith. He became a priest only to get close to Gilgamesh. He accepted the Key of Heaven only to move freely without being suppressed by divinity, so he could keep chasing death with both hands open. In a twisted way, it was precisely because he did not trust the gods that he accepted their gift.
He had even wished they would try to trap him.
But distrust never meant obedience.
Rowe could never accept a future decided for him by beings who looked down from the sky and called people chess pieces.
Mortals, at their core, value the self.
And the self, at its core, values freedom.
The Demonic Beast Forest west of Uruk was still ruined from the earlier battle. Trees lay broken. The soil was torn open like scars. Magical pressure lingered in the air, thick enough to make even the wind feel heavy.
And now, another scene unfolded that made the world feel too small to contain it.
Enkidu fully released the power of the Chains of Heaven. She no longer bothered with shaping countless earth forged weapons. Her body vanished from its place, becoming a vast silver white chain that rose from the ground and shot into the sky like a living pillar.
Above her, golden light rippled.
Gilgamesh opened the Gate of Babylon until the air itself became a sea of radiant doors. His power as the Wedge of Heaven formed a passage that linked above and below, a corridor of authority forced between earth and the ceiling of the world.
And Rowe hung at the center of it all.
He held the Wedge of Heaven and the Chains of Heaven. His body floated where their forces met, head tilted upward, staring at the divine eyes that hovered faintly beyond the firmament.
From a distance, it looked almost beautiful.
A colossal flower blooming in the sky.
The chain was its stem.
The gates were its petals.
And the Key of Heaven, suspended at the heart, was its core.
Magnificent, impossible, arrogant.
The gods murmured over it.
What is he doing?
What are they trying to do?
Wedge of Heaven as a road, Chains of Heaven as a guide, Key of Heaven as the door.
They want to shake the heavens?
Presumptuous.
The answer came as wrath.
Thunder split the sky. Divine curses rolled down like a flood. The natural world obeyed their anger, because gods were nature given a voice. The air screamed. The wilderness shook. Lightning braided itself across the clouds.
But none of that could stop Rowe.
He extended the Chains of Heaven upward.
From the side, Gilgamesh laughed as if he had been waiting his whole life for this moment.
"Hmph hahahaha. Rotten cowards. You hide behind curtains and call that authority? I, the King, am right here. If you want to be angry, come down and fight me to the death!"
The gods fell silent.
This man is unbearable.
However we cannot descend.
Forget it.
Rowe glanced at Gilgamesh's wild grin and could not help but laugh under his breath.
This reckless freedom.
This shameless joy.
This was exactly the feeling he wanted.
The thunder grew fiercer. The gods' rage sharpened.
Then Rowe moved.
He gripped the Chains of Heaven that Enkidu had become, and drove them upward like a spear.
The sky cracked.
Lightning shattered like fireworks. Wind and cloud were swept aside like dust. The chain pierced through the long vault of heaven and stabbed straight toward the divine eyes.
The gods panicked.
Damn it.
How dare they.
Our last remaining eye in the human world must not be destroyed.
They could not fully descend in their true bodies. If even their eyes were blinded, they would lose the ability to observe the present era, much less interfere with it. Not every god could descend by possession, and suitable vessels were painfully rare.
So they retreated.
Leave first.
They cannot truly harm the realm where our true bodies reside.
One by one they began to leave.
The eyes vanished one after another, escaping into the depths of the firmament.
Rowe was not surprised.
He had never planned to drag the heavens down into the dust. He only wanted to make them shake. The Wedge of Heaven, the Chains of Heaven, and the Key of Heaven were terrifying tools, but none of them were being used at full potential yet.
Still, this was enough.
His determination was clear.
His defiance was loud.
Most importantly, the gods were furious now. Really furious. Furious enough to remember him.
From this moment on, their main conflict would not rest on Gilgamesh or Enkidu.
It would rest on Rowe.
Once a divine attendant, now a traitor.
They would hate him to the bone.
Good.
If so, perhaps the fates of Enkidu and Gilgamesh could change as well.
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu withered and died beneath a god's curse. Rowe would happily accept that curse instead.
He just did not notice, or perhaps did not care, that the shaking reached deeper than heaven and earth.
It reached the Underworld.
The Netherworld was silent, cold, endless. A wilderness of ash and black stone where nothing truly lived. Only clusters of eerie blue ghost fire drifted through the dark like lonely lanterns.
In that eternal stillness, a pair of ruby red eyes opened.
Golden hair spilled like a fallen crown across the ground.
The Goddess of the Underworld lifted her gaze.
A crack had appeared.
Light bled through the ceiling of the Netherworld. On the path that led to the surface, a thin line of brightness trembled like a miracle.
"Is this… real?" she whispered.
Her voice carried countless years of solitude. Tears slid down her face in a quiet, aching relief.
Ereshkigal had been buried here for so long that even her own name felt like an echo. Yet now, she heard the world above again. She felt the boundary shake. She felt the footsteps of an era that was no longer hers.
And on a layer closer to the human world, another presence stirred.
A man stood in the dim blue fire light, leaning on a great sword planted into the ground.
Armor clinked softly as he straightened.
"The vast heavens tremble. The boundless lands shake. The gods rage at the contempt shown to their authority, yet they can do nothing."
"Because this land no longer belongs to them."
"Because their era has already passed."
"Divine authority wavers. The gods retreat."
"The three originals…"
"Heroes who dared to shake the divine multitude."
The man exhaled as if savoring a memory.
"This body, which has walked through long years, can still witness such a scene."
"I, Ziusudra, am honored beyond measure."
Ziusudra, the ancient immortal of Mesopotamia, a being who dwelled in the depths of death.
He pulled his great sword free with a ringing clang.
Then he stepped forward.
One heavy step after another, he walked toward the crack, toward the light, toward the human world.
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