As for highly intelligent beings among mortals, aside from demigods personally fashioned by the gods and born extraordinary, there were none at all.
"Demigod" is a tier of life-level, not a specific reference to bloodline or status.
What refer to divine bloodline and status are "divine scions" and "god-blooded."
The first generation of a deity's direct children are "divine scions," whether or not they are deities themselves, even if they are merely mortal spirits.
"God-blooded" broadly refers to all descendants who carry divine lineage, including first-generation mixed-blood descendants and the mortal descendants of those mixed-bloods; so long as they bear divine blood, they are god-blooded.
The direct first generation may be called both divine scions and god-blooded, but from the second generation on, they can only be called god-blooded.
As for "hero," it refers to exalted beings who accomplish extraordinary deeds and pursue immortal glory; it is not a life-tier, does not specifically refer to the god-blooded, and does not even hinge on strength.
But if one has none of the three, it is indeed hard to become a hero.
At present, beneath the high gods, the most numerous are still the Nymphs.
"Nymph" is a blanket term for all such fae; its original sense is roughly "the living soul and vitality of nature," a symbol of youth, fertility, and beauty.
The vast majority of nymphs are embodiments of nature, possessing divinity and divine power. At the high end their ceiling can rival a Major God, while at the low end they may be little different from mortals.
The Ocean's Daughters are a kind of nymph as well. Many nymphs are themselves gods; even those who are not are of a rank equivalent to demigods. Generally, once one becomes a god, one is no longer considered a nymph by default.
Most nymphs preside over some domain or locale, and the size of their fiefdoms varies enormously.
Most nymphs will die, naturally or otherwise, but under normal circumstances their lifespans are exceedingly long.
Indeed, in today's cosmos, the lowest tier of highly intelligent beings is the demigod, and all are entwined with the gods in countless ways.
Any lower, and they are truly low-level beings without awakened sapience, mere creatures with rudimentary sentience.
Moreover, aside from deities and nymphs, the vast majority of highly intelligent beings look bizarre, brimming with that, well, freewheeling aesthetic of the creative process.
Some are agglomerations of spirit born by chance, unrefined by any deity's careful chiseling, and thus rather free-form.
One can even sense, from their willful bodily structures, the cosmos's occasional flights of wild fancy.
Others were made by gods of mediocre craft in their idle moments, and their forms are, unsurprisingly, hard to describe.
They feel like cosmic-scale sacred "mud-sculptures," full of commendable creative zeal but producing results one hesitates to praise.
Still others survived cosmic calamities (chiefly the wars of the gods) by luck, only to be steeped in mottled divine power and divinity. Such beings are like living, twisted monuments bearing witness to the carnage of war.
And some have nothing of the sort happen to them; their divine nature is simply peculiar, or their personal aesthetic uncommon.
All one can say is: a hundred flowers bloom, varied and colorful, each absurd in its own way.
This is all normal. After many great gods devised a universal divine-body template, the gods themselves freely modified it to suit their tastes and traits.
The gods' faces and forms all differ somewhat; how much more so other creatures.
Still, most deities' everyday bodies differ little, merely simple tweaks on the common template.
This is mainly for ease of communication and daily life—what is called the "normal divine form."
In most gods' daily bodies, at least most parts are of the common shape, aligned with the template's basic structure.
As the supreme deities of cosmic origin, the aesthetic they collectively shaped is, naturally, the pinnacle of beauty in the universe.
Under normal circumstances, the higher a being's life tier and the stronger its divinity, the more it unconsciously tends toward this "divine aesthetic."
Hence many beings whose rank ascends to deity will specifically craft a body conforming to the "divine form" for everyday use.
Of course, the gods generally personalize the common template.
But for battle, or for manifesting divine might, their bodies or other modes of existence can differ vastly.
They are truly protean and diverse, fully displaying each deity's law's uniqueness and majesty.
Of course, the most ultimate beauty remains the formless, imageless "law-essence," which is supremely good and beautiful.
Especially those foundational laws that serve as the universe's bedrock: the grander and more crucial and fundamental they are, the more they flow with an ineffable, most primordial splendor and beauty that enthralls all things.
Even those unlucky children the Lady of Night birthed herself, after Zeus expanded their purviews, possess law-essences that remain exceedingly beautiful.
After all, the "divine form" is merely a "shell" co-created by the Mother of All Things, the Twelve Primordial Titans, and the Lady of Night—something that accords with the gods' shared aesthetic and makes it convenient for them to enjoy the universe.
No matter how lovely the outward form, it cannot compare to the grand beauty of "being" at its most essential.
In today's cosmos, Zeus the God-King is that utmost "beauty," second to none.
His very existence is the supreme manifestation of cosmic order and the fullness of truth, goodness, and beauty; the nexus where myriad laws converge; the highest embodiment of what is most exalted, most good and beautiful, most powerful and wise!
And aside from Zeus and his avatars, the most beautiful are the Mother of All Things and the Goddess of Night.
Indeed, the Goddess of Night's beauty at the source is a hair's breadth shy of the Mother of All Things.
Thus when Zeus joins with those goddesses, what he delights in is not merely the beauty of divine bodies, but the intermingling, clash, and sublimation among their law-essences.
It is the most profound communion and resonance, unfolding at the deepest level of law-essence and divinity.
The meeting and merging of foundational laws is a symphony of being with being!
It is a supreme ecstasy that makes all divinity tremble, beyond any definition of the senses!
A highest rapture so ultimate, so absolute, that all language fails to describe it!
Of course, divine bodies have their virtues: they are a perfect product jointly created by the gods and ceaselessly evolving.
Any god with decent craft has a body flawless and without defect, keenly perceptive and brimming with inexhaustible vigor.
And thanks to the gods' personalization, each has its own character and its own delight.
They can also be changed at will, or freely modified and optimized—in short, their virtues are endless.
However, as of now, among mortals created by the gods, essentially none resemble the gods' "divine form."
Any that are similar in form must, at the outset, be beings with divinity.
There is an essential gulf between "god" and "mortal."
Given the gods' pride, none would deliberately create lowly mortals similar in shape to themselves but fragile and insignificant.
At least not for now.
Upon the earth now, plants remain the most flourishing.
They are the myriad flowers, herbs, and trees carefully nurtured, evolved, and created by countless nymphs over endless ages.
Only, though they have adorned the earth like the most gorgeous tapestry, they cannot embroider upon it a true soul.
Next come the beasts, birds, fish, and insects—low-level lives with faint spirit.
The world, bedecked by the nymphs, is indeed beautiful.
Yet this beauty lacks, in the end, a "vitality" that can resonate with it.
It lacks that true "flourishing" that can look up at the stars and marvel.
All highly intelligent spiritual beings still suffer a silent torment from the world's suffocating vastness and loneliness.
And Prometheus and his brother, entrusted with heavy responsibility by the God-King and granted "the right to call upon the gods' assistance," had in this time also tried to create some lives.
But there was nothing distinctive about them.
Though a little wiser than existing life and more beautiful in form, they did not differ in essence from what the gods had made before.
They were still just lowly beings, ignorant and bewildered, in this empty world.
For now, the two brothers, as the sons of the One of the Eternal Cycle, had contributed most by reordering the world's biological chains, giving the mortal ecology a relative dynamic balance.
Alone, Prometheus sat quietly upon a weathered boulder, sunk in deep thought.
He was not pondering what Zeus had tasked him with; bringing prosperity to the cosmos was not urgent, nor could it be rushed.
His Majesty the God-King had set no deadline, and the gods' lives are endless—what need to hurry official business?
What gnawed at his anxious heart was another matter.
Of course, the affairs of his own House of Iapetus!
Not long ago, he keenly sensed that the "Creation" authority His Majesty had granted him to wield freely for the time being had suddenly swelled in scope out of nowhere.
Moreover, its essence had fused more perfectly into the operation of the cosmic order.
Most importantly, all beings in this world—from birth to final demise, and the evolution of mutual generation and restraint among all lives—had become more harmonious and natural than before.
Thereafter, the three lunar-phase goddesses newly engendered by the God-King and the Lord of Pure Radiance also bore a rather familiar feel in their law-essences.
All these signs pointed to a possibility that made his heart quake: His Majesty the God-King seemed, probably, perhaps—no, forget "perhaps."
His Majesty had surely already obtained the primordial authorities of the old God-King Kronos and of his own father Iapetus—their four Primordial Titans' source powers.
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