"What are you talking about?!"
The boy's mother's eyes flew wide, her voice rising with a sharpness born not of anger, but of fear—and love. She loved her child too much to accept that he would simply surrender the possibility of survival. Staying here meant almost certain death.
Only the injured, or those clinging to less than a ten percent chance, would choose to remain.
The boy looked into his mother's furious gaze and took a step back.
"I said, I don't want to be displaced anymore! Ever since I was born, I've been running from the so-called gods! Running, hiding, never eating enough, never sleeping well. In all those legends you told me, didn't humans once live good lives? Why can't I see that?!"
His teeth clenched as he continued, his words striking harder than he knew. "I've had enough. It would be easier just to die! Why did you even give birth to me in a world like this?!"
The woman's face tightened, her voice trembling but firm. "Because I love you! If I didn't love you, why would I have brought you into this world?"
The boy turned his head away. She lowered her gaze as well, silence pressing between them. It was true—this world was no place to raise children, no place to pass down suffering. Yet love was not the only reason for life. Humanity needed to endure, to continue. Cruel as it was, extinction was not an option. They could not allow all Western humans to vanish, nor could they accept becoming nothing but pets of the gods.
In every corner of East and West, there were always those who saw hope within despair. For as long as that hope existed, mankind's resistance would not end today.
Aslan did not intend to linger on debates of love and birth in a ruined settlement. He moved silently behind the boy, placed a hand gently on his neck, and pressed. The child slumped into unconsciousness.
"Take him away," Aslan said flatly. "If you have words for him, save them for later. This is no place to linger."
Children seldom understood the weight of their parents' choices. Nothing could be explained in a few sentences; only time could teach.
For Aslan, the truth was simple: no matter how broken this world was, one had to grit their teeth and live. And with his arrival, perhaps—just perhaps—the world could change. It might be presumptuous to think so, but he had some confidence.
After all, who says one rat can't spoil the whole barrel?
The boy's mother lifted her child onto her back, grief shadowing her face. She had grown up in this same hell; she knew exactly how harsh life was. Yet she also knew its small, defiant beauties. The golden light of a sunset glimpsed through smoke. The waves glittering when the sea god slept. The endless stars scattered across the sky. The wild thrill of falling in love. She wanted her son to live long enough to feel all of it.
And perhaps—even if the chance was slim—to live to see the gods fall, so he might walk freely beneath the sun.
Even in the desert Gobi, plants managed to grow. If they could fight to survive, how could people abandon hope?
But such words would mean little to a boy still caught in despair. All she could do now was carry him forward. With Aslan's protection, the journey of migration would not be so impossible. They had even managed to destroy a messenger of God along the way.
This new messenger, once dismantled, proved much the same as the last—save for slight differences in function. Their differing colors confirmed they belonged to different gods, though both were crudely forged things. Likely the God of Fire had manufactured the base models, distributing them to other gods who then made minor alterations.
Aslan dissected one thoroughly, though he found little he had not already mastered while studying the Supreme Mecha. In truth, every technique contained within this "divine messenger" was within his grasp. In his own world, given a few decades of dedicated magi and engineers, humanity could have built such machines themselves.
"God's messenger"—the name was apt. Compared to humans, they were miracles, armed with powers mankind could never match. But they were still only messengers. With enough strength, humans could slay them. Compared to gods, these crude creations were pitiful imitations.
Yet in form they resembled the gods' mecha-bodies, and so belonged to that race of beings. Perhaps, millennia from now, after the gods themselves had perished, humanity would forge similar machines of its own—and forget that once they had been tools of oppression. Perhaps they would become mere myths, symbols of a bygone age. And in that moment, people would declare themselves to have entered a new era.
So is that what people call the "development of the times"? Nothing but another kind of Renaissance?
Two messengers lost in quick succession could not go unnoticed. Each god's number of messengers was limited, determined by bitter contests among themselves. For those with few to begin with, the loss of one was agony.
And now, during a great gathering of the gods, any change in expression could not escape the eyes of rivals.
So when Athena's face darkened at the loss of her messenger, Ares could not help but smirk. He did not know who had caused her grief, nor did he care. To see the goddess of wisdom and war unsettled was enough to delight him.
One the god of war, the other the goddess of wisdom and war—together they were a contradiction made flesh. To imagine harmony between them was a fantasy.
-End Chapter-
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