Fate: No One Plays the Villain Like I Do

As night fell, the stars dimmed and the noise faded. The Uruk embassy, its lights now extinguished, returned to silence.

In a dark room, Samael sat on the balcony by the window, a chisel in hand, patiently carving into a clay tablet. His tightly knit brows reflected a weighty unease and unresolved questions.

Over the course of the day, after gathering information both openly and covertly, he had uncovered a number of discrepancies between reality and his memories.

First: the Sky Hole, created by the Demon God King Goetia to burn away the foundation of humanity, had been sealed by Tiamat's instinctive rejection. As a result, the future Chaldea staff—those tasked with restoring human order—had been cut off outside the World Egg of Mesopotamia and never arrived as expected.

At this rate, that mysterious organization might never appear.

No outsiders. No messiah.

Which meant the burden of facing Mesopotamia's "Three Storms" now rested entirely on the shoulders of the Sumerians.

Their future would be theirs to decide.

Although this deviation carried serious implications, Samael had anticipated it and could still manage the outcome. Misfortune and fortune often came hand in hand. With the true Tiamat gone, the possibility of an extinction-level ecological reset vanished, and the Three Goddess Alliance, being mostly filled with uncommitted turncoats, posed less of a threat.

So far, the crisis remained within control.

But the next deviation was far more significant.

Second: after returning from Kutha, the Hero King Gilgamesh did not, as history records, fully awaken his bloodline's innate talent for Magecraft or become a true Master of the Staff. In other words, it seems he glimpsed a different fate.

The situation remained unclear, and Samael wasn't sure whether his own presence had already been exposed.

Third: since the wise king had not chosen to forsake his combat prowess in favor of becoming a spellcaster ahead of his time, the historical event where he summoned the seven Heroic Spirits to stand beside him and defend Uruk also diverged from the original timeline.

According to tales circulating among the citizens, faced with the siege of the three goddesses, Gilgamesh was stretched too thin to handle everything alone. To better protect the kingdom, the King of Heroes generously opened the royal treasury and gathered priests and magi from the Astrology Tower to construct the foundational summoning circles.

Then, the shrine that had once successfully invoked the descent of the Great Goddess Ishtar was commissioned to carry out an ambitious summoning ritual, aiming to call forth powerful beings from distant lands.

In the end, only two "outsiders" responded to the call and appeared on the altar to serve Uruk.

One was Merlin, the court magus and overseer of the Astrology Tower. The other was Leonidas I, the Guardian of the Hot Gates from the Absolute Demonic Front.

They were good-natured and sincere foreigners, willing to aid Uruk in its time of need.

Indeed, among the seven standard Heroic Spirit Classes that typically embodied humanity's Mystery, only these two had materialized. The rest—the "outsiders" meant to fill those roles—were nowhere to be seen.

Of course, Ana, who had been picked up by that white haired Incubus in the northern Cedar Forest, could be considered another exception.

And then there was the commander of the demonic beasts, the scorpion general Girtablilu, who in recorded history was meant to perish alongside the "foreign" Archer Tomoe Gozen in the early stages of the Babylonian defense. This time, however, Girtablilu had been slain personally by Gilgamesh.

Things were taking a very different turn.

Samael rubbed his chin with one hand, while his other traced patterns onto the back of the clay tablet, frowning as he etched a revised relationship map.

Moreover, based on what he knew, among the three goddesses who had pledged to destroy Uruk and dominate this land, two were also drifted "outsiders."

One was Quetzalcoatl, a deity of the Maya pantheon, who had spread into the south by multiplying the rainforest and claimed Eridu.

The other was Gorgon, a Greek divine spirit who had seized the northern Cedar Forest, constructed the Blood Fort Andromeda, stolen a portion of Tiamat's authority, and begun mass-producing demonic beasts.

The final hidden pillar was, of course, the native goddess of Mesopotamia who ruled the underworld—Ereshkigal. While she appeared to spread plague to Kutha, in truth, she was gathering human souls and sheltering them.

Drawing on his experience surviving within the Sea of Imaginary Numbers, Samael had a vague sense that more than one World Egg floated within the "void." These fruits of civilization, nurtured since the Age of Gods, were gradually ripening and descending toward the surface of reality.

During this process, as civilizations intersected and concepts became increasingly entangled, the gods residing in different World Eggs would project fragments of their existence onto other lands. Some projections, through faith and worship, would take root and flourish, eventually gaining significant influence.

Take, for example, the Egyptian god of death, widely known by the name "Anubis"—a name that is actually of Greek origin. Though he was born in the divine age of ancient Egypt, during the Ptolemaic period, his image merged with the Greek god Hermes to form "Hermanubis." This syncretic deity found a focal point of worship in Cynopolis, literally "City of the Dog."

According to Book VI of Apuleius' The Golden Ass, belief in this deity persisted well into the Roman era, surviving at least into the second century.

Therefore, divine projection—what's often referred to as "descent"—is not necessarily limited to a single era or confined to one World Egg. When belief spreads, fails to blend well, or for other reasons, gods may, under certain conditions, project their existence through the Sea of Imaginary Numbers and take root in a new world.

The Gorgon, that snake-haired monster who stole part of Tiamat's power, was originally one of the "Three Gorgons": the eldest Stheno, the middle sister Euryale, and the youngest Medusa. As indigenous goddesses, their fate was tragic. To escape the persecution and harm from the Greek mainland, they fled to a hidden island to take refuge.

Yet even in isolation, heroes came in waves, eager to slay them and display their strength for the approval of the gods. Pushed to the brink, it was the youngest—Medusa—who, despite being the most immature, had the greatest potential. She devoured her two sisters, transformed into the Gorgon, and slaughtered the so-called heroes who dared to challenge her.

Such was the cruel destiny of the false Tiamat.

And when a rift opened in the Mesopotamian world, this deep-seated hatred for humanity was exploited by the Demon God King Goetia and the divine child Kingu. Through spiritual descent and conceptual fusion, they aided the summoned Gorgon in seizing a portion of Tiamat's authority and created the Goddess of Demonic Beasts, who vowed revenge against humanity.

Perhaps, in his eyes, destroying mankind and reclaiming life upon this land was the future he longed for. Yet tragically, he was likely nothing more than a disposable pawn used by those pulling the strings behind the scenes.

As for Quetzalcoatl, it was likely that with the end of her reign over the Second Sun Age of the Mayan world and the upheaval of her World Egg, the exiled Kukulkan had no choice but to leave and seek out new soil where belief in her could take root.

In short, from Goetia's perspective, this war was about annihilating the foundation of human civilization and restarting the world.

From the viewpoint of the three goddesses, it was starting to look more like a war to claim dominion over human faith.

If they could destroy the current Uruk and usher in a new age under their will, then even their atrocities could be spun as acts of divine triumph and the cultivation of belief.

So who said these "outsiders" were kind and pure-hearted?

...

(40 Chapters Ahead)

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