To divine eyes, mortal beings are "resources," "soil," "tools," "playthings," "offerings."
Even the lowest divine lives will never regard mortals as equals.
God and mortal are absolutely different.
For many divine beings—especially those whose divine bodies are not divine forms but monstrosities—
to devour "humans," who look like gods yet bear higher intelligence, is to gratify certain unspoken, twisted desires deep in their hearts.
It is a warped imitation of the lower for the higher.
A dark possessiveness that says, "If I cannot become you, then I will eat you."
Toward the truly great gods they feel both awe and envy, both reverence and jealousy.
Those great gods are beyond them.
But you—who are "only humans that look like gods"—are you beyond us?
You small, fragile, lowly mortal beings!
You "mere things" without a trace of divinity!
Your tiny spirits even need souls granted by His Majesty the God-King just to keep from dissipating!
By what right do you look so much like true gods?!
By what right do you possess true higher intelligence?!
By what right do you so easily obtain the treasure we have struggled so long to grasp?!
As for some higher-tier divine beings who already have divine form and high intelligence—even if they have no interest in tasting other intelligent life—
they still very much want to keep a flock of intelligent beings.
After all, raising mindless mortal creatures is far too dull.
Stupid mortal beings cannot truly communicate, cannot understand, cannot grasp meaning; one tires of them quickly.
But if one keeps beings who truly possess higher intelligence, the amusement they bring into a long, dull god-life is beyond count.
Not just any divine being has the right or the power to be served by intelligent life.
On Mount Olympus, in the God-King's Heaven, those nymphs might not draw much notice—
but these nymphs who serve at the sides of the great Olympian gods are, in the mortal world, the sort of beings no life would dare slight.
The nymphs who attend the great Olympians enjoy benefits and status others would fight to the death to obtain.
His Majesty the God-King does not intend that gods and nymphs who strive so hard should, after succeeding, do nothing more than serve other gods—though that is another story.
"True wisdom" is forever a rare treasure in the cosmos.
Sadly, humankind as they are now lack the strength to guard it.
They pose no threat at all to divine life, but they do possess intelligence and selfhood.
They can converse, can understand intelligent thought, will think, will resist, will despair, will flatter, will even deceive…
The "fun of grooming," the thrill of "control," the pleasure of "being served"—these are great delights of a god's life!
The first to strike at humankind were those "with water nearby" and thus first in line; those with a bit of backing (though not much, and their backers were hardly eager to shield them); with a bit of wit (but not much)—the divine monsters known as "Abyssal Whelps."
Their goal was simple, pure, and unpretentious:
they just wanted to taste these "top-tier new dishes"—beings they had never once dared even look at before, and had never tasted, but whose very "scent" promised incredible flavor.
It was a midsize tribe of some six thousand people.
Over a hundred in charge of hauling water, carrying crude wooden buckets and hide skins, walked the familiar river path over damp gravel to the river they knew so well.
Time can wash even the deepest grief thin.
Though this stretch without holy fire and divine shelter had been agonizing and hard beyond measure,
those who had survived the blood and tears still struggled to hold a positive heart and live on.
All the hardship that had befallen them, they now seemed capable of facing squarely, believing firmly they would one day overcome.
Even without sacred fire, even when life was too bitter, too exhausting, too dangerous…
life still sought its path.
Grief for dead kin still lay in the lines of their brows and eyes, not easily erased.
Yet in breaks from labor, they could now laugh and talk.
They had learned to fold pain into the folds of memory and cover midnight wakings with busyness.
They had learned to speak with smiles—
even if the smiles were still hoarse and bitter at their edges.
But to dwell forever in grief and pain is to be unable to survive on this cruel, wild land.
They remembered the gods' teaching: they must live better.
They must live better, carrying the hope of those kin who now rested in peace.
Just as they chatted with one another, cheering each other on, discussing the day's haul and tomorrow's plans,
they never noticed that under the seemingly calm water, deadly danger had slipped near.
Or rather…
even if they had noticed, it would have made no difference.
The danger had already come.
There was no longer any avoiding it.
Boom—!
Two shadows, each ten-odd zhang tall and too hideously terrifying for words, erupted from the riverbed, blasting skyward in a thunder of water!
With the shriek of sundered air and the crunch of shattering bone, two true "bloody maws" snapped open!
Cold fangs flashed, and with a single bite they crushed several people—
and swallowed them, along with their hide waterskins and wooden buckets, down those endless dark throats.
"Splutch—"
In a heartbeat, mangled limbs and broken bones, mixed with blood and viscera, rained down like a storm, staining the broad, clear river red with nauseating gore.
The annihilating catastrophe came too suddenly.
The few who had not been swallowed in the first snap were frozen, unable even to react.
Their minds went blank under such absolute terror; they stood dumbly where they were, not even noticing the waterskins slipping from their hands.
In their eyes was still the twisted, ultimate fear on their companions' faces at the moment of death.
Only when several more comrades were snatched up and devoured by limbs they could not clearly see,
did those remaining awaken with a shudder from the deepest part of their souls.
"Ahhhh—!!"
"Monsters! Monsters!!"
"Run!!!"
Cries and screams tore the air in an instant; the sound of despair spread along the whole bank.
They sobbed and screamed, scattering in all directions, despair flooding over reason like wave after wave of blood-red water.
Confronted by such colossal beings as if out of myth, these women, children, and frail folk in charge of water had no thought of resistance at all.
And the facts proved that their despair was entirely, absolutely correct.
Even if one did not speak of their natural monstrous abilities as divine beings, nor of the divine power within them mortals could not resist…
their sheer, hill-like size alone crushed any hope of fighting back.
These two divine beings were classic "divine monsters"—
their forms so savage, so nightmarish that mortal words could hardly describe them.
They were two Abyssal Whelps.
For beings birthed by the deep sea, it would be a marvel if they grew up looking pleasant.
Even so, their looks defied any normal tongue.
Every inch of their bodies bore the "special variety" of the sea's creativity.
Mortals of weaker heart might die on the spot just from a glimpse, their spirits blasted apart by that chaotic divine aura, even without a finger lifted by the monsters.
But these poor humans could not flee, even if they tried.
One of the monsters had a shark-like streamlined torso but a head like an indescribable beast's, its surface crowded with countless, patternless compound eyes.
Beneath its body sprouted a dozen or so sharp claws, each ending in huge webbed "feet."
Every claw was larger than a grown human.
From its lower body dangled over a dozen thick, snake-like ink-black tentacles.
The tentacles bristled with barbed spines whose tips leaked an obviously lethal slime.
It hardly had to give chase; it only had to lash out with those agile tentacles to hook fleeing humans one by one into reach.
Then their desperate screams would be cut short in that dark maw, vanishing utterly.
The other being was even larger.
Overall, it resembled an octopus.
But its head looked more like that of some ancient sea turtle, layered over with barnacles.
Aside from having "a little bit" more in the way of tentacles than your average creature,
there was not much else unusual about it—
other than the two heads.
Which meant its feeding speed far outpaced its friend and brother's.
Many hands, many mouths.
The hundred-plus humans in charge of getting water had no chance to escape; within a few breaths, in the utmost terror and agony, they were all devoured.
The commotion by the river had already reached the tribe's main encampment.
When they saw the two monsters standing in the river, "tasting" their comrades' corpses, everyone reacted just as the water-bearers had:
with suffocating, absolute despair.
They, too, had not the slightest thought of resistance.
One chief who had remained behind fell into sheer horror the instant he saw the two "divine monsters."
Yet he still acted at once; mustering all the strength in his body, he shouted to the tribesfolk, now lost in chaos and stupor:
"Drop everything!"
"Everyone! Scatter and run! If one lives, one is gained!!!"
Eyes already bloodshot with fury and grief, he swung his crude stone axe and roared as he charged the invincible terror!
With a final roar of his life, he hurled himself at those two monsters!
His scarred, powerful body exploded in one last burst of strength from the extremity of fear and rage!
Behind him, dozens of the tribe's fiercest warriors refused to obey that "stay alive" order.
In the same extremity of fear, knowing they were doomed, they roared and followed their chief into the deepest abyss of "despair" they had ever seen.
The outcome was certain.
The two Abyssal Whelps threw up wild waves at will.
Under their divine stirring, the icy river became a raging flood, spilling across both banks.
They eagerly listened to the mortals' cries and laments.
They delighted in watching mortals scatter and panic.
They "played" as they sampled for the first time the topmost "delicacy" scented with the fragrance of "wisdom."
They did not merely destroy human bodies.
Under the erosion of their deep-sea-born, chaotic divinity, they devoured human souls as well.
And they truly did absorb a portion of humanity's "wisdom"!
Ordinary divine lives could not so easily swallow a human soul—
much less gain in spirit and understanding through such predation.
But they were children of the deep sea.
The sea is the source of life and the abyss of its end.
Thus, when they devour spirit and life, they can indeed draw in the victim's wisdom and power.
The common mortal lives they had eaten before had been no brighter than they; their spirits were meager, and no matter how many they ate, it did them no good.
But these humans, whose "wisdom" so clearly surpassed their own, now filled them with an utterly different kind of "nourishment"!
The slight increase in spirit and power was nothing to them.
Yet the growth in "wisdom"—that sudden clarity of soul, that sharpening of thought—was immediate.
At first, they had only wanted a taste, a single hearty meal, and to move on.
But they had not expected such a great and unforeseen delight!
With the rise of their intelligence, that instinctive greed and hunger—
that urge to "complete" themselves—
flooded the minds that had only just grown "brighter"!
And so their gazes turned upon the now-chaotic, wailing tribal camp.
In those many strange, grinding-wheel-sized eyes burned a greed they could no longer restrain.
A greed for "wisdom"!
This tribe of more than six thousand people suffered total annihilation.
Aside from those few who had gone too far afield, not one survived.
Every single person in the camp was devoured.
The sea-born monsters raised the river in towering waves, tens of meters high, crashing them down.
The banks were drowned in water.
Mortals, bound to the ground, could not fly into the sky; they could not escape the surging tide and deadly vortices.
Though these humans were of noble stock, their bodies far stronger than those of later ages, mortals are still mortals.
Death enveloped them—gentle and merciful in its way.
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