The exact millisecond the battle formally erupted across the wilderness outside Uruk, the strategic division of labor between the two brothers was locked in seamlessly.
“That bovine is yours!
The woman in the sky belongs to me!”
Gilgamesh roared at the top of his lungs, stomping his legs violently against the ground.
His entire vessel transformed into a reverse-launched missile, tearing straight toward the celestial boat, Maanna, high in the cloud cover.
Without a single microsecond of hesitation, Enkidu charged toward the mountain-sized Bull of Heaven, drawing a shimmering golden waterfall of infinite chains that poured from the open void.
And just like that, Ishtar suffered an immediate, absolute disaster.
Yes, it was a simple reality—Gilgamesh had grown significantly stronger yet again.
Having successfully solo-farmed Humbaba in that high-intensity, raw melee, his control over his demigod physique and his combat instincts had been honed to an absolute peak of perfection.
Though Ishtar was the supreme Mistress of Heaven resting high above the masses, the fundamental issue was that Gilgamesh was absolutely no pushover.
More critically, coiled around Gilgamesh’s physical vessel at this very moment was a faint, shimmering veil of dark-crimson, ghostly light that went completely unnoticed by ordinary eyes.
That was a supreme blessing of the Underworld, desperately funneled through divine authority by a certain goddess resting deep beneath the earth who was currently gritting her teeth to shield her beloved.
This shroud didn’t merely neutralize the localized aura of famine and pestilence radiating from the Bull of Heaven; it pushed Gilgamesh’s baseline physical output to an impossibly absurd threshold.
Consequently, when the metrics of these factors overlapped—
Ishtar was unilaterally thrashed as if she were a mere speed bump on the pavement.
“Insolent savage!
Do not dare display such arrogance before me!
Taste my—”
Standing atop her celestial boat, Ishtar gathered a dense, terrifying pool of magical energy between her palms, attempting to completely vaporize the rushing mortal.
Yet her words cut off mid-sentence.
A feral, gold gleam ignited within Gilgamesh’s eyes.
Dozens of golden ripples snapped open across the sky in a fraction of a second.
Immediately following, a dense volley of divine weaponry erupted into the air—not to inflict direct damage, but to systematically lock down every single trajectory of evasion and retreat available to her.
During the 0.5 seconds of stiffness where Ishtar frantically deployed her defensive magical barriers, Gilgamesh’s lightly armored frame had already forcefully smashed through the peripheral currents of wind pressure, closing the distance to the very rim of Maanna.
She had been closed-quarters intercepted.
Gilgamesh bared his teeth into a wild, terrifying smile.
Revolving his shoulder with full momentum, his colossal greatsword swung in a sweeping arc, violently slamming against the barrier Ishtar had hastily thrown up.
This mountain-shattering physical mass, paired with the Underworld’s aura of death coating the blade, instantly caused infinite fissures to spider-web across the goddess’s shield.
The proud deity who had once successfully flattened Mount Ebih stood absolutely zero mathematical chance against an all-out, completely unprincipled Gilgamesh.
After absorbing over a dozen consecutive, bone-crushing heavy cleaves, Ishtar released a sharp, resentful shriek.
She was forcefully batted straight off her celestial boat, tumbling violently through the sky as she fell headfirst toward the dust-shrouded earth below.
Naturally, while the aerial exchange concluded in a unilateral massacre, the scenario unfolding upon the ground carried a significantly higher weight class of tension.
Though Ishtar had been successfully grounded, the sheer physical mass of the Bull of Heaven—sufficient to fill an entire fault valley—coupled with its divine authority over famine, was far from a simple issue to resolve.
Enkidu had deployed the full output of his golden chains, firmly binding and anchoring the bovine’s four massive limbs into the earth, but he ultimately remained a single entity.
Attempting to completely throttle this star-born catastrophe to death single-handedly was a monumental chore, and over the course of the struggle, Uruk’s grand city walls would inevitably face severe collateral damage from the beast’s frantic thrashing.
In pure theory, that was how the screenplay should have run.
But in practical reality?
The moment a thoroughly grime-covered, disheveled Ishtar dragged herself out of the dirt, expecting her divine beast to salvage her broken pride, she bore witness to a scene that permanently petrified her into a block of stone.
The Bull of Heaven had been completely defeated.
The celestial monster was currently being rubbed flat into the dirt in a state of absolute humiliation.
How could such a calculation even be possible?!
Had that clay doll named Enkidu somehow undergone an instantaneous, rule-breaking power awakening all by himself?
Naturally not.
While Enkidu was peerlessly strong, he had yet to reach a tier where he could instantly execute a planet-class divine beast solo.
The reason this historic battle concluded with such breathtaking speed was beautifully simple.
Because…
he had brought a friend along.
Accompanied by a violent, earth-shaking roar, a colossal divine beast charged out from the direction of the Cedar Forest, slamming its full mass brutally into the flank of the Bull of Heaven.
“My gratitude, Humbaba.
I rejoice in your timely arrival to aid us.”
Standing atop a massive pillar of rising earth, Enkidu directed his chains with fluid grace, offering a warm, serene smile to his companion.
Right at this moment, Humbaba, the Guardian of the Cedar Forest, was working in flawless synchronization with the absolute suppression of the Chain of Heaven, dropping its colossal paws time and time again to violently smash the Bull of Heaven’s massive skull deep into the bedrock.
The forest guardian typically harbored zero desire to invite friction with the celestial deities of the heavens.
However, the individuals currently locked in a grueling struggle here were its two dearest friends.
When a brother encounters a complication, you show up and jump the target together.
That was basic principles, wasn’t it?
Trapped between the absolute conceptual suppression of the Chain of Heaven and the brutal physical battering delivered by Humbaba, the Bull of Heaven released one final, agonizing wail before permanently parting with its life force.
Just like that, the unbridled, arrogant Ishtar and her star-born engine of global demise suffered an absolute, unmitigated defeat.
Gazing down from the high cloud canopy at the grime-covered goddess splayed in the dirt and the slaughtered carcass of the mountain-sized beast, the deities resting within the celestial pantheon wore exceptionally complex expressions.
The silent air of the heavens seemed to ripple with a subtle, unnamable wave of profound amusement.
Because Ishtar had truly suffered a public humiliation of historic proportions.
She had been the one to brandish her divine authority to forcefully claim the King of Uruk as a personal toy.
She had faced a clinical, ruthless rejection, and had been used as a literal stepping stone to elevate her sister’s standing.
Afterward, she had thrown a toddler’s tantrum before her own father to secure an external cheat-code weapon, marching down to the mortal realm to balance the ledger.
And the final metric of her campaign?
She had attempted to casual-farm a lower-tier zone, only to end up getting farmed herself.
Her prize bull had been dismantled into crafting materials, and she had been thrashed out of the sky like a common leather ball.
Recalling the absolute, overbearing majesty she had brandished upon her descent, the deities could only mutter inwardly: Everyone claimed a historic storm was brewing, but in the end, she simply laid a massive egg.
The absolute dignity of the Mistress of Heaven had been dropped into an infinite, bottomless abyss.
Undeniably, this singular victory propelled Gilgamesh’s legendary prestige to its absolute zenith across the mortal earth.
However, the singular caveat was that Gilgamesh had never harbored any intention of driving the situation to an absolute, unfixable political extreme.
Though he had treated the heavenly goddess like a common punching bag on the pavement, their faction had strictly limited their lethal execution to the destructive Bull of Heaven.
Gilgamesh was perfectly logical; he harbored zero interest and absolutely zero spare time to wage an all-out, exhausting total war against an entire divine pantheon.
Ultimately, Gilgamesh merely executed a smooth command to open the Gate of Babylon, systematically harvesting the massive mana-infused horns and priceless divine materials from the Bull of Heaven’s carcass until the frame was completely bare.
Then, without granting the goddess resting in the dirt a single microsecond of attention, he clapped Enkidu on the shoulder, gestured to Humbaba, and walked proudly back toward the gates of Uruk, their unified, boisterous laughter echoing across the plains.
Meanwhile, within the gray, freezing expanse of the Underworld temple.
Ereshkigal had watched every single frame of the earth-shattering war unfolding outside Uruk’s walls without blinking for a single second.
The moment she saw the blonde youth violently strike her insufferable sister out of the sky, the goddess tightly clasped her hands against her chest, her eyes practically sparkling with infinite stars.
“He truly is…
the individual I chose.”
The mistress of the Underworld murmured softly to herself, a sweeping wave of unvarnished pride and pure sweetness flushing her cheeks.
Yet, this sweet euphoria did not linger for long.
As her blood sister, Ereshkigal understood Ishtar’s baseline psychological makeup far too intimately.
That woman was absolutely, unequivocally incapable of simply letting a grievance of this caliber slide.
Having suffered an unmitigated disgrace of this magnitude, Ishtar would inevitably slink into the shadows like a venomous viper, waiting with absolute malice for the most toxic window of opportunity to deliver a lethal, unfixable retaliation against Gilgamesh.
At that thought, Ereshkigal took a deep, steadying breath, her facial features hardening into a mask of absolute resolution and solemn majesty.
She would never stand idly by and spectate while the man who journeyed down to share stories with her every single night faced permanent harm.
“I am the sovereign goddess who governs death.
Within this universe, I alone hold the absolute right to dictate which souls plunge into the abyss.”
Ereshkigal spun around sharply, marching toward the deepest, darkest vault of the Underworld.
For the sake of her beloved, the deity who had silently endured absolute loneliness through eons of time had reached her final, unyielding consensus.
“Wait for me…
I will ensure absolutely no one strips you of your life force.”