Deep beneath the earth, Ereshkigal—who had only just composed herself from the sheer embarrassment of receiving a literal confession of love—acutely structuralized the subtle shifts in the air before the brewing storm descended.
Words were words and play was play.
Although her heart was practically bursting with sweet, bubbling joy because of that line, “I infinitely prefer your sister, Ereshkigal,” as the absolute sovereign governing the Underworld, she remained logically aware that this situation possessed the exact chemical makeup to capsize an entire empire.
And this flawless intuition was born entirely from her absolute, unwavering faith in her idiot of a sister.
Yes, regarding the fact that Ishtar would inevitably stir up a monumental disaster, Ereshkigal harbored zero doubts.
When it came to acts of petty retaliation and carrying out a toxic vendetta, Ishtar had literally never once disappointed.
According to Ereshkigal’s complete data model of her sister’s psychology, Ishtar was currently, one hundred percent, throwing a massive tantrum in the celestial realms, weeping, shrieking, and rolling around the pristine floor before their supreme father, Anu, desperately demanding a world-ending weapon of mass destruction to erase her profound humiliation.
And in reality, the situation within the heavens mirrored Ereshkigal’s calculations to an absolute, pinpoint precision.
“Father!
You have to fix this for me!”
The Goddess of Venus was currently splayed across the floor of the Sky Father Anu’s grand temple, completely abandoning her divine decorum as she violently pounded the solid gold tiles, unleashing furious, piercing shrieks.
Regarding this historic, public humiliation, Ishtar naturally refused to swallow her pride.
She unleashed a frantic barrage of accusations against the King of Uruk, screaming about how arrogant and barbaric he was, claiming his actions weren’t merely a permanent stain upon her immortal name, but a literal desecration of the supreme dignity of the entire pantheon of gods.
Concurrently, she ruthlessly slandered Enkidu, screaming that the clay doll had stood idly by on the sidelines, casually spectating while a deity faced ultimate disrespect, completely failing to execute its designated parameters as a restraining chain.
Anu gazed down at his daughter throwing a violent fit on the floor and let out a helpless, heavy sigh.
As the King of the Gods, he possessed absolutely zero capability to refuse his most pampered child.
Furthermore, standing strictly from the perspective of divine governance, he genuinely desired to utilize this specific window to test the metrics of the King of Uruk—whose exponential growth had completely veered out of their control—to map out exactly how far the mortal’s limits extended.
After a brief calculation of the variables, Anu ultimately reached a compromise.
He placed the reigns of the divine beast, the Bull of Heaven, directly into Ishtar’s hands.
However, as he transferred the administrative authority of the beast, the chief deity delivered a solemn, weighty warning:
“Ishtar.
Launching a punitive strike to discipline that arrogant king is permissible.
However, do not drive the situation to an absolute, unfixable extreme.
Most crucially…
that king appears to possess an exceptionally close relationship with your sister, Ereshkigal.
If you unleash irreversible causalities and deaths outside the designated borders of the Underworld, it will prove highly detrimental to your sisterly dynamic.”
Had he omitted Ereshkigal’s name, things might have remained stable.
But the moment Ereshkigal was introduced into the equation, a flash of cold, toxic fury ignited within Ishtar’s eyes.
“My relationship with that gloomy woman has been completely dead for eons, okay?!”
Leaving that single line behind, Ishtar snatched the reins with absolute violence, bolting straight out of the grand temple without a single second of deliberation.
Sisterly dynamics?
A concept of zero value to her.
Her mind was entirely consumed by a singular, burning fixation: descend upon the mortal realm with this invincible divine beast and thoroughly scrub clean the supreme, unmitigated disgrace she had suffered this morning.
The Bull of Heaven was an invincible, planet-class cataclysmic disaster fashioned from the stars—a monster from which even gods actively retreated.
No matter how exceptionally skilled the King of Uruk was in a physical brawl, with the absolute addition of this goddess personally directing the offensive, it was mathematically impossible for a mortal to survive a natural disaster of this tier, wasn’t it?
Half a day later, the sky above Uruk violently fractured without a single syllable of warning.
The originally pristine, sunlit day was instantly swallowed whole by a dense, suffocating canopy of pitch-black storm clouds.
A violent tempest, saturated with a localized famine aura that caused flora and fauna to instantly wither into ash, swept across the entire Mesopotamian plain like a literal tsunami.
Amidst flashing arcs of lightning and booming thunder, a colossal bovine entity—possessing a physical mass equivalent to a massive mountain range, its entire structure radiating a suffocating, terrifying divine pressure—stepped through the shattered void, descending headfirst directly above the city-state of Uruk.
High above, Ishtar directed her celestial boat, Maanna, looking down upon the microscopic city below with absolute, cold superiority.
In her psychological assessment of the scenario, when faced with a world-ending cataclysm of this tier, that arrogant mortal should currently be experiencing violent tremors in his knees, preparing to drop to his face and beg for her divine clemency with tears of absolute despair.
However…
Boom—!!!
Accompanied by an ear-shattering, supersonic sonic boom, the grand gates of Uruk were violently blasted open from within.
Twin streaks of light resembling falling meteors—shrouded in a towering, absolute battle intent that pierced the heavens—shot straight out from the city walls, landing with absolute stability upon the high ridge directly facing the Bull of Heaven.
“You know, you are the absolute textbook definition of an insecure kid running home to drag their parents into a playground fight because they lost a match, aren’t you?”
Gilgamesh hadn’t even bothered to equip his iconic heavy battle armor, choosing instead to wear a lightweight, casual combat tunic.
He held his twin broad greatswords loosely in his hands, that classic, feral, sweeping grin pinned firmly to his face.
Beside him, Enkidu’s frame churned with visible waves of golden, dense earth, infinite glinting chains flickering in and out of existence within the surrounding void.
“Gil.
It appears this goddess has absolutely zero intention of accepting your diplomatic rejection.”
“Ha!
Then we simply beat her until she does.” Gilgamesh burst into a booming laugh, violently slamming his twin blades together to spark a blinding, brilliant arc of friction light.
Floating in mid-air, Ishtar looked down at the two fully armed figures, and an inexplicable, sudden jolt of anxiety rippled through her chest.
She harbored a brewing, background sensation that the operational development of today’s events might deviate slightly from her projected screenplay.
And right at that microsecond, Ishtar perceived a glaring anomaly.
Surrounding the golden-haired youth’s physical vessel, why was there an incredibly dense, flawlessly pure aura of absolute death rippling through the air?
That was…
the supreme protection of the Underworld?
That was the distinct, unmistakable presence of her sister, Ereshkigal?!
Why on earth did this mortal carry Ereshkigal’s personal signature within his soul?
Furthermore, this presence had been thoroughly engraved into the core of his spiritual foundation; this absolutely wasn’t some basic, run-of-the-mill divine blessing—this was a literal, empirical proof of an exceptionally intimate bond!
“Could it be that you…
genuinely possess a connection with that gloomy woman—?!”
Ishtar’s eyes widened to absolute limits.
The fury that had originally been fueled strictly by a petty romantic rejection underwent an instant, volatile chemical mutation.
A toxic cocktail composed of absolute resentment, wounded pride, and a pathological, obsessive desire for dominance began gnawing at the Mistress of Heaven’s heart like a venomous viper.
As a thoroughly spoiled, capricious deity, the concept of “yielding” or “blessing someone else’s joy” simply did not exist within Ishtar’s operational vocabulary.
Had it been an item prized by anyone else, she might have passed it over; but since this was an entity valued by the very sister who constantly opposed her, she was duty-bound to seize it by absolute force!
She wouldn’t merely obliterate this arrogant mortal’s physical body; she would systematically subjugate his entire mind and heart!
She would seize Ereshkigal’s precious treasure and squeeze it within her own grip until it broke!
“To dare stand before me while completely saturated in that woman’s scent…
Absolute execution!
Die!”
Accompanied by Ishtar’s hysterical, piercing shriek, the mountain-sized Bull of Heaven unleashed a deafening, primordial roar.
Rearing its front hooves into the air, it channeled a localized, catastrophic storm, stomping downward toward the ridge with planet-shattering velocity.
Yet, when facing this divine beast and goddess capable of leveling faults and shifting tectonic plates, zero traces of panic manifested within the eyes of Gilgamesh or Enkidu.
So what if it was a deity?
Throughout his years traversing this earth, Gilgamesh had already used his twin greatswords to systematically cleave through god-knows-how-many arrogant descendants who claimed supreme divinity.
Today simply meant adding one more spoiled, toxic goddess and a slightly oversized piece of livestock to his kill list!
More crucially, within this timeline, he wasn’t locked in a desperate, isolated struggle all by himself.
Right beside him stood his absolute brother—a companion to whom he could entrust his very soul without a single filter!
“Let’s move, Enkidu!
Tonight, we are roasting premium beef in the grand plaza of Uruk!”
“A magnificent strategy, Gil.”
The historic, epic war of the Age of Gods erupted into existence at that exact millisecond.
The Chain of Heaven and the Wedge of Heaven unleashed their absolute luminescence simultaneously.
Two mortal vessels charged straight into the sky, initiating a wild, ferocious counter-offensive against the high-and-mighty goddess and her divine beast.
Ah, what will the ultimate resolution of this historic clash be?
Faced with a powerful deity entirely consumed by toxic jealousy and unbridled fury, can they preserve their physical vessels and human dignity?
Find out in the next installment:
The Goddess Breaks, the Bull Falls!