The outcome was already sealed.
No—truthfully, the moment the Anunnaki gods launched their war against the Aesir, the outcome had already been decided.
Thalos looked up at the sky. The Ginnungagap world barrier, battered by the force of world collisions, had grown more turbid than before. Yet no matter how cloudy it became, it couldn't compare to the chaos unleashed during Odin's rebellion.
A wild storm howled, seemingly trying to reestablish contact with its master, the god-king Enlil, trapped beneath the deep sea of Vanaheim.
But no matter how furiously the winds screamed, they couldn't touch that poor bastard in the abyss.
At the intersection of the two worlds, the glow of elemental energy that had once lit up the chaotic zone was fading, as more and more Sumerian gods fell.
The once-murky air, tainted by divine battle, began returning to a more muted and uniform tone—evidence that order was reasserting itself.
The Sumerian gods were growing increasingly desperate. Even those few capable of displays of great valor—defeating a Danu god or even a pure-blood Aesir—would find a new opponent immediately upon victory. They were never allowed a moment's breath.
The number of Sumerian gods was visibly shrinking.
And just when their number dipped below thirty, something unexpected happened.
Enki, god of wisdom and water, suddenly bowed deeply to his opponent, the forest god Víðarr.
On the battlefield, this was practically suicide.
Yet with that bow, he also summoned a massive wave, thirty stories tall, to shove Víðarr back—not to harm him, but simply to disengage.
"I, Enki, god of wisdom and water, on behalf of the remaining Anunnaki gods, hereby offer our lives, our souls, and our undying loyalty to His Majesty Thalos Borson, the Supreme God-King—unconditionally."
Enki's voice rang out across the entire battlefield.
At the same time, he mustered the last of his divine power to raise colossal walls of water, temporarily separating all gods locked in combat.
A risky move, no doubt.
Though it looked like Enki was singlehandedly holding back countless Aesir and giants, in truth, he had poured out the last of his power. If Víðarr had pressed the attack, Enki would've been dead.
But that bow stunned the still-young Víðarr, who found himself frozen in place.
The moment he instinctively looked skyward, at Thalos's divine eye hovering above, Enki knew he had bet right.
Watching from above, Thalos sighed to himself. As expected of the god of wisdom.
Among the Sumerian pantheon, Enki was the one holding things together—a stabilizing force. And now, with a single glance, he had divined Thalos's bottom line.
No more than 30 surrendering Sumerian gods.
That was the secret number Thalos had drawn in his mind.
The Borson lineage—including all his divine descendants—numbered around thirty. That was enough to keep 40+ weakling pure-blooded Aesir in check. And just barely enough to manage 20 or so Vanir.
Though Thalos had little affection for pure-blood Aesir, and no desire for the other pantheons to grow too powerful, as long as the Sumerian gods numbered more than thirty, he would never accept their surrender.
But clever Enki, analyzing the various categories and numbers of Aesir on the field, had discerned Thalos's hidden threshold.
Accepting a hundred Sumerian gods would be asking for trouble. Even if most were sixth- or seventh-generation gods—essentially glorified laborers—they'd still cluster around the stronger fourth-generation ones, forming a faction within the Aesir ranks.
In contrast, thirty Sumerians relegated to the bottom rung would never threaten Aesir dominance.
By offering himself as the first to surrender, Enki made the rest of the Sumerians breathe a secret sigh of relief.
As Enlil's elder brother and one of the top three gods under him, Enki held an exalted status. If anyone had to take the fall, better him than them.
The remaining Sumerians swiftly withdrew from battle.
They thought that would be the end.
They had no idea that the eyes in the sky—Thalos's divine eyes—were already passing judgment.
"Heh. You fight when you want, surrender when it suits you? Who gave you that right?"
Thalos's cold, disdainful voice echoed through the heavens:
"Any god whose hands are stained with Aesir blood has no right to surrender. Your only fate—
—is to fight to the death."
Enki's face turned ghostly pale, drained of all color.
He realized he'd miscalculated.
He thought the Sumerians held enough value to be spared. Even if they were reduced to cannon fodder later, at least they might survive a while longer.
But Thalos… didn't care about their value.
And that spelled disaster.
Every surviving Sumerian god had blood on their hands.
Even those who had slacked off early in the battle couldn't bring themselves to keep fighting now.
Which meant the truly powerful Sumerians were left to bear the brunt.
The two fire gods—Gibil and Nusku—were utterly dumbfounded as they suddenly found themselves squaring off against the fiercest of Aesir: Thor and Týr.
There would be no mercy.
"Aaah! Traitors! You'll die miserable deaths!"
Gibil's final screams weren't aimed at his enemies, but at Enki.
Nusku, still clinging to hope, cried,
"God-King Enlil! Avenge me—!"
Not long after, the last of the Sumerian resistance was wiped out.
Back in their heyday, the Sumerians had over a thousand gods—including slave-like sixth- and seventh-generation deities tasked with feeding the higher gods by literally digging in the earth.
After this battle, that number was whittled down to barely ten.
The carnage was unimaginable.
Enki was silent.
Watching through the live projection, Ishtar and her sister Ereshkigal were also silent.
Every survivor… fell into silence.
Thalos spoke:
"You wanted to know what became of Enlil?"
His voice echoed across the skies.
"Then witness—now that noon has come—the end of your god-king."
Thalos looked up.
Three quarters past noon. A good time for an execution.
Of course, no sunlight pierced the sea's surface that day.
Because the sky itself was too low.
The heavens, which mortals always imagined towering far above, now drooped under divine pressure.
From a distance, it looked like an enormous drop of water the size of the sky itself had descended—dripping down from the firmament onto the sea.
It was a scene destined to be immortalized in epic legend.
Mortal languages had no fitting words to describe it.
Only the surviving Sumerians could comprehend the truth:
Thalos, the God-King of Ginnungagap, had used the divine authority of \[Sky] to suppress Enlil's dominion over \[Wind].
"Crashhhhh—!"
Suddenly, a strange white line appeared on the sea's surface, stretching from the surface all the way to the ocean floor.
Like a grand double door, it parted left and right, forming two parallel waterfalls upon the sea.
From within them…
a black figure surged upward!
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