The God of Underworld-Chapter 77 - 31: Humans and Earth

In the heart of the Herion Kingdom stood the grand palace of Solara, its golden spires piercing the sky like the fingers of men reaching toward the gods they once feared.

It was a marvel of early human civilization, a city not born from divine decree but from mortal will.

Its people, once scattered tribes surviving in caves and thatched huts, now walked paved streets with pride in their hearts and steel in their hands.

At the center of the palace, within a marble hall illuminated by stained glass depicting humanity’s rise, Herios sat upon his throne.

Draped in a crimson mantle trimmed with lion fur, his bronze armor gleamed with a subtle warmth that came not from polish but from the sacred fire Prometheus had gifted him.

His crown, forged by the finest smiths of the realm, bore no jewels—only a band of black iron taken from the ruins of the first monster nest they had ever destroyed.

Before him, in the high-vaulted chamber, a scout knelt.

"Your Majesty," the young scout said, bowing low with sweat on his brow, "we bring grave news from the northern watchtowers."

Herios leaned forward slightly. "Speak."

The scout swallowed. "Several tribes who had refused your offer for unity have formed a coalition. They refused your offer and turned towards the Olympians, bowing before the gods."

The word hit the room like a thunderclap.

A ripple of tension moved through the Council of the Flame, Herios’ inner circle of generals, ministers, and high sages.

Several stood, voices rising with fury.

"Bow before the Olympian gods, you say?" snarled General Amun, the burly commander of the Iron Legion. "The gods who watched us suffer, who sent monsters to feast on our children, those gods who punished Lord Prometheus for giving us hope!?"

"They are opportunists," spat councilman Caldas, his wrinkled hands clenched behind his back. "Lady Hecate have sent an oracle of how gods needed the faith of mortals. Now that we dominated the land, they wanted our faith, for sure. Damn bastards, where were they when we were suffering!?"

"They seduced the weak with promises," another noble hissed. "Cowards who chose to kneel before those who would leash us once more."

"Traitors!" a councilwoman declared. "Every last one who raised their hands against us should be buried beneath the ashes of their false temples!"

The room erupted into shouts of anger, calls for vengeance, and cries to the gods themselves to witness humanity’s fury.

But Herios said nothing.

He sat still on the throne, his eyes unmoving, his face cast in the colored light of a window depicting the moment he lit the first fire in mankind’s name.

The chamber fell quiet only when a massive figure stepped forward and knelt.

It was General Kaerion, Herios’ most trusted warrior and the commander of the Royal Host.

His breastplate bore a fresh gouge from the last border skirmish, and his braided hair was streaked with blood and ash.

"Your Majesty," Kaerion said, his voice deep and solemn, "give the order, and I will ride. I will burn their banners, raze their altars, and drag the bones of false prophets through the streets."

The council watched in hushed anticipation.

Herios still did not answer.

He closed his eyes.

He saw flames. Not the flames of war, but the sacred one—Prometheus’ fire. The fire that had given humanity its future. That flame, flickering within every heart, was now being pulled in opposite directions.

’Choice,’ he thought. ’This is the cost of free will.’

He had known this day would come. The day when mankind, once unified by desperation, would be divided by faith.

It wasn’t just a rebellion. It was an existential question: To whom do humans owe their allegiance?

Himself?

Or the gods?

Finally, Herios opened his eyes and stood.

The room held its breath.

He descended the stairs from the throne, standing face to face with Kaerion. His voice, when it came, was calm and clear—but it carried the weight of a nation.

"No."

Kaerion looked up, stunned. "Your Majesty?"

"We will not go to war with our brothers," Herios said. "Not yet."

"But they raise arms against us! They slaughter our border guards! They build temples to Zeus and Poseidon and Ares—gods who abandoned us when we were hunted like beasts!"

Herios turned to the council. "And you think more blood will bring peace?"

A murmur swept the hall.

"They were weak," Herios said. "They doubted the path we walk. So they looked skyward instead of forward. They saw gods offering salvation and chose chains over hardship. That was their choice."

He turned back to Kaerion.

"Prepare the armies. Reinforce the borders. But we will not strike unless they enter our lands. If they bring war to us, then we will answer in kind."

"But, sire," said one of the sages, "if we don’t act first, they may gain ground. They build temples to the gods. Their prayers may give them real power." ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom

"I am not afraid of the gods. We have the blessings and protection of Lord Hades." Herios said coldly. "If those gods dared to interfere with the mortal affairs more than they should be, then they will suffer the wrath of the Underworld."

The chamber fell silent once more.

Herios raised his hand, and the flames within the sconces of the chamber grew taller, brighter, as though they echoed his will.

"We are not tyrants. We are not crusaders. We are builders. Let them make their choices. But if they bring death to our doors... then we will become fire, and burn everything that they have."

Kaerion lowered his head. "As you command, my king."

Herios returned to his throne, his mind already turning.

If the gods want to make this a game of faith, he thought, then let them see what mankind’s faith in itself can become.

Above him, the stained glass caught the dying sunlight.

And across the land, battle drums began to sound.

*

*

*

Far above the clouds, where even the wind feared to tread, rose the sacred peak of a primordial mountain.

It was a mountain so ancient that not even the gods remembered its birth.

Here, where the sky kissed stone and the earth whispered in tongues older than time, Gaia, the Primordial Mother, sat alone.

She was the Earth itself—not merely of it, but it. Her form shimmered with wild majesty, neither flesh nor stone, but something in between.

Her skin bore the hue of fertile loam and ancient roots, her hair wove with vines and petals from flowers long extinct, and her eyes—deep and vast as mountain lakes—shone with sorrowed fury.

She sat upon a natural throne, carved not by hand but by eons of pressure and tectonic sighs.

Around her bloomed gardens untouched by the hand of man or god—an Eden that lived on only here, where time hesitated and memory slept.

Below her, the world groaned.

Gaia’s senses spanned the vastness of the earth like nerves extending into every crack, forest, and river.

She felt the ache of dying woods—the once-lush canopies now stripped by axes bearing divine sigils.

She heard the cries of animals hunted not for survival, but for sport and trophies.

And she felt the filth of human waste leaking into pure mountain streams—rivers she had nurtured like her own children now gagging on bile and blood.

And the gods rejoiced.

She watched as Poseidon blessed ships that tore coral reefs apart in search of pearls and plunder.

As Ares armed human tribes, urging them into brutal conflicts that trampled fertile plains into scarred battlegrounds.

As Dionysus led humans into gluttonous revelries, draining the life from forests to fuel their excesses.

Even Hephaestus, once noble in his labor, now taught them to forge tools that razed the wilds instead of honoring them.

And worst of all—Zeus, her own descendant, her blood diluted through countless divine generations—rewarded this ruin.

He promised mortals dominion over the world so long as they built his temples and fed his vanity with prayer and sacrifice.

Gaia clenched the arms of her throne, and the mountain beneath her shuddered.

"Fools..." she whispered, her voice echoing like thunder inside the earth itself.

The same rage that once swelled when Uranus, her first consort, imprisoned their children now burned anew.

But this time, it was deeper, more visceral.

This destruction did not come from Titans, who at least revered her soil. Nor from the Primordials, who do not interfere with others domain.

No, this came from her grandchildren, the Olympians—drunk on power and heedless of consequence.

Worse still, the humans, had followed them.

"Prometheus made them to be stewards," Gaia said softly, pain etched into every syllable. "Not parasites."

It was then her thoughts turned again to the Underworld, to the one being she had not yet abandoned hope for.

Hades.

Of all the gods, he alone had not marred her surface. He ruled the realm beneath, where roots twisted into silence and souls slumbered in endless procession.

He took no forests.

He razed no plains.

He asked for no temples, demanded no blood from her beasts.

Even in his brooding silence, he had respected the sanctity of life and death.

It was why she had descended to him.

Once, not long ago, she appeared before him in a grove that lay between the realm of the dead and the soil of the living—a place only Primordials could reach.

She had made him an offer few would dare dream: to sire a race with her, children not of heaven nor hell, but of the Earth itself.

Beings who would rise not as gods, but as judges and punishers, harbingers of balance and wrath.

Beings born not to rule, but to cleanse.

She remembered his gaze—heavy with caution, clouded with conflict. He had said nothing, only listened, then returned to his fortress to meditate, to hide.

But Gaia knew.

He was tempted.

But he feared the cost. Something was holding him back.

Gaia sat upon her throne, staring into the horizon.

Far below, she saw the flames of industry, the smoke of war, the spreading desecration of man emboldened by god.

Cities rose like tumors across the fertile plains. Forests fell like dominos. Sacred groves bled sap like open wounds.

She dug her fingers into the stone of the mountain, and flowers around her wilted under the sheer pressure of her frustration.

"I have waited long enough."

She rose from her throne, her form towering and terrible, the sky dimming as if the very heavens feared her ascent.

Her voice echoed into the infinite winds.

"Hades. The time to hesitate is over."

She sent her will through the soil and stone, across the fault lines and rivers, down into the black veins of the Underworld, where it would whisper into the pocket dimension where Hades hid.

She did not compel him—but she made herself known. Let him feel her fury. Let him know her patience had reached its limits.

And then she waited again, her silhouette framed by twilight, as storm clouds churned around her like mourning shrouds.

If Hades would not stand beside her, she would act alone.

And the Olympians would remember what it meant to awaken a sleeping world.