71: Chapter 71: Total Annihilation and... A New Battlefield!
"Don't go! You can't win! Run!"
A-Dai shouted hoarsely, but the residents who usually sold her apples and gave her butter cakes in the market merely smiled, waved at her, and then rushed headlong toward death.
The citizens of Uruk were nearly all dead within minutes.
Just as a Lahmu let out a strange, eerie laugh and raised its bloodstained claws high to split the dazed A-Dai in two...
"Bang!"
A massive golden battle axe fell from the sky, smashing that Lahmu into a pulp!
"Don't freeze up, mongrel! Do you want the blood of Uruk's people to have been shed in vain?!"
Accompanied by an angry roar, the Wise King Gilgamesh, who always sat on the throne issuing orders and had even died once from overwork, now personally descended from the throne, wielding a battle axe, and stood before the player.
His royal robes were stained with dust, and his Caster-class body appeared especially frail before the Lahmu, but his ruby-like eyes burned with the unyielding wrath of a king.
"My King... You..."
"I am the King of Uruk! How could I cower behind my subjects and cling to life!"
Gilgamesh laughed loudly, using his staff to fire beams of light to repel the monsters while shielding A-Dai behind him.
However, the Lahmu were too numerous.
They ignored the terrain, surging madly from all directions.
"Thud!"
A chilling sound of flesh being pierced rang out.
A-Dai's pupils dilated sharply.
She stared blankly at the tall figure blocking her way—a Lahmu that had suddenly emerged from the ground had pierced straight through Gilgamesh's abdomen with its spear-like sharp limb!
Blood stained the king's golden hair and splattered onto A-Dai's VR window.
"My King—!!!"
The livestream erupted with countless heart-wrenching screams in the barrage.
"Cough... cough..."
Gilgamesh coughed up mouthfuls of blood. He swung his axe backhandedly, severing the Lahmu's head, then fell to one knee, somewhat exhausted.
He turned his head, looking at A-Dai, who was full of tears and at a loss, and a proud smile barely tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"What are you crying for? You look awful, mongrel."
The king's presence grew fainter, but he did not fade away in light like a Servant departing. Because the one standing here was not a dead Heroic Spirit, but a living human king of flesh and blood.
"I have fulfilled my final duty as king... If you want to survive this apocalypse, drag that monster into the underworld."
With these last whispered words, the Wise King Gilgamesh, leaning on his battle axe stained with black mud, his body riddled with wounds, still shielded the player like a mountain.
He slowly closed his ruby eyes that had seen through the world, and his breathing ceased completely.
This oldest Hero King, as an ordinary 'living Anna,' met his tragic death in the darkest hour before dawn.
"Drag into the underworld?"
A-Dai was stunned, staring blankly at the king's gradually cooling back.
Just then, the tactical sandbox, which had turned a dead gray, suddenly lit up with a massive hidden coordinate!
It turned out that long before the final battle began, Gilgamesh had already collaborated with Ereshkigal in the underworld to hollow out the entire rock layer beneath Uruk, setting up a giant physical trap leading straight to the abyss of the underworld!
The surface world could not kill Tiamat. The only way was to lure her to the center of Uruk, collapse the fragile ground, and forcibly drag this Mother Goddess of Creation into the lifeless realm of death!
"So Gilgamesh had planned everything! He used his own life to buy us time!"
Chu He shouted excitedly in the livestream. "There's still hope! As long as we lure her over and she falls, Ereshkigal can judge her in the underworld!"
However, before the flame of hope in the players' eyes could fully ignite, an even more despairing scene unfolded.
In the distance, Tiamat seemed to have sensed the abnormality in the ground ahead.
Stopping her advance as she crossed Uruk's defenses, deprived of the cover of the black mud tsunami...
With a horrifying sound of tearing flesh, the pristine back of the beautiful Mother Goddess of Creation suddenly bulged and split open.
A pair of enormous wings, blotting out the sky and emitting a faint blue light, forcibly grew from her back!
[Warning! Beast II has undergone morphological evolution! Tiamat has gained the ability to 'fly'!]
"She... she grew wings?!"
A-Dai watched the apocalyptic beast about to take flight, and the hope that had just ignited was instantly crushed.
"Are you kidding me... If she flies straight over, won't the underworld trap that Gilgamesh died to dig be completely useless?!"
"Dream on! This goddess will never allow you to trample the city that idiot king fought to protect!"
At this critical moment, a light a million times brighter than any star suddenly shone in the sky.
The Venus goddess Ishtar, who in the players' eyes was always a bit greedy and prone to messing up, now hovered in the air above the battlefield surging with black mud.
She looked down at the completely destroyed Uruk, at the citizens who had turned to blood protecting it, at the place where Gilgamesh had vanished, and large tears uncontrollably rolled from her eyes.
"This is my city... the humans who believed in me, worshipped me, and smiled and prayed to me even in despair..."
Ishtar bit her lip hard, and a trace of tragic blood seeped from the corner of her mouth.
It was a sign of divine core overload and imminent spirit origin collapse.
"That arrogant, always high-and-mighty guy... the era he risked his life to protect—how could it be destroyed by a disgusting monster like you!!!"
With a heart-wrenching roar, Ishtar suddenly pulled upward.
Under the stunning visual effects of the FGO full-dive engine, all players looked up as Ishtar, like a reverse meteor, dragged a brilliant golden trail straight into the sky.
She broke through the thick blood-red clouds, pierced the atmosphere of Mesopotamia, and even flew into the quiet, deep starry sea of space!
"Maanna, full power deployment! Remove all concept restrictions!"
In the vacuum of space, the giant divine bow behind Ishtar expanded to its limit, transforming into a grand gate connecting heaven and earth.
"Open, Gate of Heaven!"
Under the players' breathless, stunned gaze, the entire concept of Venus was forcibly summoned by Ishtar.
The massive planetary phantom of that shining celestial body in the solar system materialized behind her.
Terrifying energy converged madly on the bowstring, ultimately compressing into a spear of light capable of piercing a planet.
She gripped the spear radiating endless light and heat tightly, her eyes reflecting the blue planet below and the huge scar polluted by black mud.
"This is the final blow entrusted to me by those humans who struggled to live and that detestable Gilgamesh!"
Ishtar poured all the power from the depths of her soul and hurled the star spear fiercely toward the earth.
"Shatter! An Gal Ta Ki GalŠè!!!"
"BOOOOOOM—!!!"
A beam of destruction tearing through the vacuum of space, like divine punishment from the heavens, struck the Uruk ground beneath Tiamat with pinpoint accuracy.
Under this all-out attack by the Venus goddess, the entire foundation of Uruk, along with the hollowed rock layer trap below, instantly shattered!
The earth cracked open a massive fault abyss hundreds of kilometers long and bottomless.
The Mother Goddess of Creation, who had just spread her wings and not yet tasted the joy of flight, lost all foothold.
Her massive body lost balance, letting out a shrill, incredulous cry, and together with tens of thousands of Lahmu, endless black mud, and the players standing on the edge of the ruins, she fell madly into the dark abyss of the underworld!
"If you want to destroy humanity, you'll have to get past my little sister's territory first..."
With Ishtar's weak murmur as she exhausted all her power in the sky, players across the internet, in a violent sensation of weightlessness, plunged rapidly toward the final battlefield called the 'Underworld.'