I am Thalos, Odin's older brother

There's a term in the mortal world: "sunk cost."

Right now, the Sumerian God-King Enlil was the perfect embodiment of a gambler gone mad—having already lost twenty Sumerian deities, he knew that if he didn't take down the Ginnungagap world, it would be a total, irredeemable loss.

If he fails, he's not just a loser—he's a clown.

If sacrificing a main god like Utu, the Sun God, yielded nothing in return, then Enlil's seat as God-King would be hanging by a thread.

That's how cruel the world is.

The last time Enlil was dethroned, it was because he'd gone bathing with the goddess Ninlil in the holy river—and did a few shameful things while at it. For desecrating the sacred river, he was punished by the gods and temporarily kicked out.

But that incident was just a breach of decorum, not a crisis for the world.

This time was different.

The world was damaged, and it desperately needed replenishment.

Although the Sumerian world didn't have a clever or articulate world will like Ginnungagap, its survival instinct still compelled the gods and living beings within it to seek salvation.

Same old truth: if you won't save the world, the world won't save you.

If the world couldn't hold together, and began to shrink, the gods who consumed the most resources would be the first to be culled.

This was a gamble that had to be played.

Either win it and fatten the world—maybe even push it toward ascension...

Or lose it, and the world falls apart, disintegrating into pieces.

Yet the more Enlil tried to push the Sumerian world closer to that strange otherworld with a real, sky-piercing tree, the faster the opposing world pulled back.

So much so that even Enlil, god of wind and storms, began to panic:

"Isn't there anyone who can do something—anything—to stop that damned world from retreating?!"

Enlil looked around the divine hall, finally fixing his gaze on the wisest god among them.

"Enki! Think of something!"

Enki, god of wisdom and water, was the eldest son of sky god Anu, and elder brother to Enlil himself. In the Sumerian mythos, he was the one who proposed creating humans—so that mankind could serve the gods and relieve the poor sixth- and seventh-generation deities from digging and toiling just to feed their betters.

Enki's involvement in humanity's creation had led to no end of drama. Humans reproduced too much, made too much noise, and Enlil had ordered their extinction—three times. There were endless tales to be told of that mess.

Compared to Enlil's brutality and disregard for life, Enki was far more gentle.

Seeing how badly things were going, the god wrapped in snaking currents of water sighed heavily.

"My brother... Have you considered that if we truly cannot conquer this world, perhaps we should try to coexist with it?"

"No! Never! I will never share my authority as God-King with anyone! Destruction is the only fate for those bastard pseudo-gods! I want you to find a way to crush them, not speak of peace with our enemies!"

Enki could only sigh silently to himself.

His brother was the same as ever—brutal, wild, incapable of tolerating dissent.

He demanded that everything in existence conform to his will.

Enki had known all along that Enlil's three attempts at human extinction were nothing more than acts of selfish cruelty. But he had been powerless to stop it—he could only make secret moves to preserve the flame of hope called "humanity."

This war, too, had come far too suddenly. Enki hadn't even had the chance to reach out to the other side.

Rather than chasing some vague hope of victory, Enki was more concerned with what happens if they lose.

Unfortunately, the arrow had already left the bowstring—there was no turning back.

Over on the other side, when Thalos sensed the Sumerian world begin to accelerate, he curled his lip in disdain:

"A kingdom, a family, a person—they all have the right to declare war.

But war is easy to start and hard to stop.

If you kick things off by breaking all the rules... you deserve to die."

In his spiritual vision, that colossal planetary Sumerian world began to accelerate.

As everyone knew, accelerating something that massive came with a price.

What Thalos hadn't expected was just how ruthless Enlil could be—the Sumerian God-King's method was to sacrifice their own sun.

That was honestly insane.

The fall of Sun God Utu meant that the remaining sun of Sumer was destined to die anyway.

So instead of letting it fade into uselessness, Enlil decided to burn it up—convert its last remaining energy into a fuel source to drive the world forward.

In Thalos's sight, the entire Sumerian world looked like a gigantic comet, dragging a vast tail of golden solar fire as it hurtled toward Ginnungagap.

To be frank, if any other god had been in Thalos's place, there might've been no good solution to this kind of shameless, close-range world-ramming attack.

The sheer mass of a world was terrifying.

Thalos could already imagine it: if the energy-based world barrier of Ginnungagap were ever breached, the resulting collision would likely destroy three or four of its ten internal worlds—most likely the middle or lower ones. Somebody would be the unlucky one.

Fortunately, Thalos was someone with plenty of experience in titanic-scale battles.

Well, his "experience" came mostly from Earth's novels, anime, and manga.

In this kind of clash, things like energy beams and light cannons were often useless.

The main problem was: long-range attacks lost too much energy. They rarely had enough force to stop a charging world.

It was like facing a berserk bull. Unless you had some god-tier sledgehammer to crack its skull, the better tactic was to break its balance.

The Sumerian world was getting closer!

Closer still!

Anyone with divine sight could already glimpse the walnut-like stone shell of the oncoming world, pressing ever nearer to Ginnungagap's borders.

The Sumerian world was so massive, it actually blocked out part of the ambient chaotic light from the void, casting a shadow over Ginnungagap.

And then—

At the roots of the World Tree, glowing green lights began to shimmer.

Across the void, Sumerian god Enki nearly cried out in shock. He saw it clearly—those weren't light particles. They were massive, snake-like roots, twisting and spinning in the air like whips.

The roots reached far beyond Ginnungagap's borders, rotating as they rose skyward—finally braiding together like strands of rope into one gigantic, coiled whip.

At that moment, Enki could feel it—it wasn't his imagination.

A cold, merciless voice came from the Ginnungagap world:

"The Sumerians… seriously need a beating."

A dark, enormous shadow shot upward between the two worlds and swept horizontally across half of the Sumerian world's surface.

In that instant, all of Sumer trembled as their sky god Anu let out a scream that echoed through heaven and earth.

The world's massive stone shell was torn open, leaving a gaping wound.

Countless broken chunks of rock were hurled into the chaotic void—

And at the same time, an overwhelming torrent of chaotic energy surged into the Sumerian world, devouring everything in its path.

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