Meanwhile, battle reports from across the globe flooded into the Golden Battleship like snowflakes.
On the Indian subcontinent, the followers of Shiva and Vishnu gathered to the soaring chants of Brahma. The radiance of the Trimurti intertwined, weaving a colossal web of divine power that blanketed the heavens and the earth.
Tens of thousands of gods, demigods, and Asuras surged from their respective divine realms, merging into a torrential flood of overwhelming majesty. This was the final desperate counterattack of the Pantheon; they intended to use their most violent form to demonstrate the grandeur of the Indian pantheon to the blasphemers.
Chagatai Khan, the Primarch of the Fifth Legion, merely gave a contemptuous snort. He had little patience for wars of attrition.
"Too slow."
With a wave of his hand, a white storm instantaneously swept across the battlefield. The shriek of engines and the whistle of blades tore through the air.
The warriors of the Fifth Legion, the "White Scars," rode their mounts like bolts of white lightning, weaving effortlessly through the Pantheon's ornate but bloated formations.
A god of war with three heads and six arms, clutching various divine artifacts, had barely settled into a combat stance to lock onto a white blur when all six of his arms were severed at the root in a single heartbeat.
By the time divine blood sprayed into the air, he only sluggishly realized what had happened. By then, the Khan was already a hundred meters behind him, casually flicking the golden blood from his blade.
"Decent strength," the Khan remarked, "but too many redundant parts. It ruins the speed."
Elsewhere, Ganesha, the elephant-headed god, rode his divine beast and attempted to cast a bewildering labyrinth of divine power. However, he found that the white lightning ignored the maze entirely. They simply used pure violence and the most direct path to crush everything in their way—be it gods, divine beasts, or the nodes of the array—into fragments.
This wasn't a war; it was a hunt. A swift, efficient, and almost elegant hunt.
Simultaneously, in the Americas.
The crimson haze shrouding the tropical rainforests was forcibly torn open, revealing a series of golden pyramids stained with dark red blood. The warriors of the Thirteenth Legion descended from the sky in a disciplined tactical formation, each step making the earth thunder with precision and stability.
"Kill these damned mortals!" Quetzalcoatl perched atop the pyramid, letting out a raspy roar. The vengeful souls of countless believers surged from his body, pouncing toward the giants clad in blue power armor.
The response was a volley of unerringly precise bolter rounds.
The head, which was as large as a small hill, exploded instantly. Green divine blood and brain matter splattered across the altar. The massive serpentine body slid powerlessly down the pyramid, collapsing half of the temple.
The Legion Master's cold voice rang out over the comms channel: "Target 'Quetzalcoatl' eliminated. First squad, secure the remains in Main Temple Zone A as a warning to the local primitive faiths. Second squad, continue the advance and purge all secondary divine entities in the lower sectors."
Using massive, specially forged rivets, the Legion's warriors nailed the gods—who had once stood high above, enjoying bloody sacrifices—one by one to their own temples.
To the Legion, these so-called "gods" were nothing more than heretics. Their very existence was a pollution of the order of human civilization. Their mission was simple: purge the heresy.
Under the thunderous onslaught of the Empire, the old gods across the globe were thoroughly eradicated.
***
Inside the Egyptian pyramids, facing the provocations of Chaos, the air around the Emperor seemed to freeze.
He released a torrent of psychic energy capable of reshaping reality. Golden flames ignited silently, incinerating the surrounding matter while simultaneously burning the mass of Chaos on a conceptual level.
The Chaos mass let out a harrowing shriek that no living creature could produce. Within the golden flames, it was reduced to a stream of primordial information.
Along with the entire pyramid, it was completely erased from the universe, leaving behind nothing but a giant, mirror-smooth glassy crater on the banks of the Nile.
The Emperor turned and announced via global broadcast: "All parasites that have enslaved humanity on Earth have been purged. From this day forward, the Age of Gods is officially over. The Age of Human Supremacy begins."
The world fell into a brief silence, followed by an explosion of celebration.
Soon, a piece of news set the internet ablaze: the "Divine Re-employment Guidance Center" located in Japan would be opened to the public as the "Post-Mythology Era Theme Park."
Driven by curiosity, a desire for humiliation, and a love for spectacle, crowds flocked to the park. They saw legendary, once-mighty mountain gods sweeping floors, door gods working as security guards, and the gods of wind and thunder tied together to perform as human batteries. An unprecedented sense of satisfaction surged through the people.
"Serves them right! Let's see them act high and mighty now!"
"Look at that! There's actually a god of toilets, and now he's in charge of disinfecting public restrooms. Talk about a perfect career match!"
However, a strange question began to spread among the tourists: "Hey, have you noticed? Everyone working in this park is either a ridiculously handsome male god or a completely plain-looking goddess. Where are the beautiful goddesses from the legends? Where is Amaterasu? And what about the Yuki-onna and Izanami mentioned in the news... where did they go?"
To this question, no one had an answer.
***
In Ian's private dimension.
Inside a massive, blindingly bright display cabinet, rows of palm-sized "figurines" were meticulously arranged.
Amaterasu, Artemis, Athena... each one was frozen in the final expression of terror or confusion they had held before being captured, their poses varied and lifelike.
Beside the cabinet was a sprawling, mist-shrouded hot spring resort that looked like a celestial paradise.
Yuki-onna, the Goddess of Hot Springs, and a host of other beautiful goddesses with special constitutions stood respectfully to the side, dressed in matching uniforms.
Ian lay back lazily and snapped his fingers, ordering the Goddess of Food to prepare a feast.
The goddess in charge of food stepped forward with tears in her eyes, forced to use the essence of her own divine power to cook a series of dishes infused with various laws of the universe.
Each dish shimmered with iridescent light and emitted an irresistible aroma.
At Ian's signal, Lin Qiye took a bite of sushi made from divine beast meat, seasoned with the Goddess of Food's condensed powers of "Protection" and "Abundance."
The moment it entered his mouth, a warm surge of power flooded his mental world, beginning to repair his psyche. He felt his spiritual power break through once more, reaching the Klein Realm.
Afterward, Lin Qiye entered the world of dreams, while Ian headed to the upper floors of the resort to enjoy further massage services.
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