"Aiyo! Well, what can I say? Your mother's beauty is naturally unmatched. No mortal body could ever do justice. I'll just make do with this one, I guess."
No matter how long they'd been around each other, Gilgash and Ishtar were like oil and water. Just a few exchanges, and poor Gil could feel his blood pressure spiking.
Thankfully, a few "blood pressure stabilizers" were around.
Elle scolded her brain-dead sister: "Ishtar, it's not that Gilgash is unfilial—there just wasn't enough ti. That was the best body he could find."
Ishtar mumbled an okay, but the next second she turned around, grumbling again: the body wasn't beautiful enough, the chest too small, the legs too thick...
Gilgash's fists clenched.
This was a divine descent!
Finding even this many mortal vessels capable of withstanding their divine power had been a miracle. His current role was Pharaoh. He had flipped this conveniently inherited country inside out to dig up a dozen barely qualified mortal believers and a few well-trained priests as material for the descent.
Gilgash had nearly worked himself to death, and his mother still found reasons to complain. If he wasn't frustrated, who would be?
Fortunately, Enki, the forr god of wisdom and water from Sur, had also descended. The affable elder god quickly cald everyone down.
Once greetings were done, Gilgash began to explain the current situation.
"In this world, the gods of Heliopolis are ranked by status: the Nine Pillars and the lesser gods. The pantheon is currently split because the god of the desert and storms, Set, murdered his older brother, Osiris, god of the underworld and agriculture, and usurped the throne of God-King. Now, Osiris' son, Horus, is rallying the gods to resist Set's rule. Both the divine and mortal realms have split into two, locked in a full-scale civil war."
Any Aesir god hearing this would be ecstatic—ripe for exploitation.
After all, no fortress is ever taken by force—it falls from the inside.
Had the Nine Pillars and their pantheon remained united, it might've taken real effort for the Aesir to conquer this Egyptian world.
But with a false king wreaking havoc…
Not long ago, this world had also faced a Chaos incursion. To repel the demons, it sacrificed massive amounts of water-elental power, resulting in widespread desertification.
A great famine had wiped out large swaths of the human population. The survivors now clung to life along the Nile.
As if that weren't bad enough, Set used the collapse of the agriculture domain as an opportunity to assassinate his brother.
Thus, internal war and external corruption created a double crisis that was slowly tearing the world apart.
To make matters worse, Horus and Set were nearly evenly matched. Their two factions fought like rabid dogs, so preoccupied with each other that neither noticed the creeping Chaos at their doorstep…
Though intel was still limited, after hearing Gilgash's report, Enki imdiately understood why the world's will had "rescued" them:
"This is a once-in-a-millennium opportunity!"
"Enki the Wise, what should we do next?" Gilgash had no illusions about his unreliable mother and placed his hopes in Enki instead.
"We do nothing. We just need to adapt to this world's rules as quickly as possible."
"Uh, what?"
Enki chuckled. "The Egyptian gods fighting each other into the dirt is what benefits us the most. Before I ca, His Majesty said the sa."
"Father already knows what's happening here?"
"The mont you sent your first mind-image, His Majesty used his prophetic powers to infer the rest."
"What if sothing changes?"
"If Horus begins to lose, we give him a slight nudge. After all, one of our King's core god-rights is Sovereignty—he favors only true legitimacy. If Set proves stronger, we just sit back and watch." Enki's deeply lined face stretched into a peaceful smile.
Gilgash's mouth twitched. "That feels a little…"
"Underwhelming? Your Highness, you'd best heed your father's teachings—the master of war wins without glory. What His Majesty excels at is stacking every victory condition before battle even begins, then forcing the enemy to engage and crushing them in one stroke. You still have much to learn."
"I understand." Gilgash had never been stingy with his respect for true wisdom.
As for his ridiculous mother… let's just move on.
anwhile, back in the Silver Palace, Thalos watched Ishtar complete the descent of her avatar and return.
He let out a long breath. "If nothing unexpected happens, the situation is basically settled."
Thor was surprised, even a bit disappointed. "That's it? It's already decided?"
"More or less."
If Thalos weren't bound by his divine aspect of Honor-Keeping, or if the god-king were soone like Odin, he could've easily played both sides—backing whoever was weaker to prolong the war and watch both factions bleed out before striking.
Hatred only grows the longer a war drags on.
Had he no moral code, Thalos had a hundred ways to destroy both Egyptian sides.
But lack of integrity is a double-edged sword. When the king himself stops playing fair, you can't expect his gods to uphold any order either.
And a lawless pantheon like that only looks strong against weak enemies. Against real opposition? They fall apart.
In dealing with Egypt, Thalos could stay out of the fray early on—but the mont he stepped in, he'd have to back Horus, or at least his bloodline.
Thor asked, "So we can only wait?"
Thalos casually dismissed him:
"Thor, I've taught you this. If you were just a vanguard, a warrior hungry to make a na for yourself, it would make sense to charge in. That would be your only shot at glory. But as the Crown Prince of the Aesir, you must learn to seek orderly victories, minimizing losses. And never forget—if we strike Egypt, what's stopping another world from attacking us at the sa ti?"
"I understand, Father."
Once again, Thalos' divine perception drifted across the veil between worlds, returning to the Egyptian world's outer layer.
Thanks to Ishtar's repeated recon missions, he now had a good estimate:
Egypt's world was roughly 3 to 7 in size compared to Ginnungagap.
In other words, Ginnungagap was more than twice as large.
If it weren't for that flute-shaped spatial current blocking the way, Thalos was confident he could devour Egypt in a week.
But with this bizarre conduit in place… things got complicated.
If the passage remained closed off, the only way to consu Egypt would be to dismantle it—split it into strips and funnel the pieces through the holes.
A logistical nightmare.
Naturally, the Egyptian world would resist. Every ti a world splits, its world-will fragnts too.
Unless Gilgash gained absolute control over the Egyptian world and its will, such partitioning was impossible.
Which left only one option.
Use Chaos power…
To blow the Egyptian world to pieces.
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