Kapitel 2: Sealing The Earth's Mana

The skies above the mortal and heavenly realms suddenly trembled and were dyed a crimson red. Typhon's roar tore the barriers between the realms asunder exposing the heavenly realm to the mortal realm. The residents of both realms panicked as a creature of absolute nightmare reared its head and roared once more. The very foundation of the world shook with his roar.

With a deep bellow, a beam of chaos fired from his mouth and tore a country size hole through the heavenly realm killing hundreds of thousands of heavenly residents. A follow-up roar carried a shockwave that reached all his children held enslaved in the various main pantheons of the heavenly realm, completely breaking the mind control on them and causing them to go berserk. They had only one thought in their minds, 'DESTROY!!'

They wrought chaos in the pantheons, annihilating multitudes of lower gods and deities and even putting up a good fight against the senior gods. Without the luxury of another surprise attack, the gods had no other choice but to fight head on against Typhon and his family.

Over the course of a decade, the cataclysmic war waged on. With the gods' ability to resurrect, as a result of the activated resurrection rune, their number barely went down. The resurrection runes fed on the mana that was perpetually produced in the heavenly realms.

This however did nothing to aid in their being victorious. Typhon seemed to never grow weary or dreary. He fought like one who had unlimited stamina. He was a beast on the battle field.

It finally took gods of nature like Demeter and Artemis to realize the true source of Typhon's unfathomable and unquenching power. As the battle progressed, the senior gods called for an emergency meeting where the information was laid bare. "He isn't getting any weaker because the source of his power is the very Earth upon which he stands. The mana of the Earth is continually being funneled into his monstrous body, granting him infinite power. His mother is the Spirit of the Earth after all, we should have made the connection long ago. We can't ask Lady Gaia to get involved in this battle either. The only option we have is to break his connection to the source. We must seal the Earth's mana", Artemis reported.

"Does any one of you have any objection to this suggestion?" Zeus asked the other gods. Receiving no response, he turned to Odin, "In order to guarantee success, we must be extra cunning. What do you suggest?" "I'll leave it to the experts", Odin said, turning to his son Loki, the god of mischief. Loki sneered as he stepped forward. "Ananse, join him", Abosom commanded and a humanoid spider stepped forward. (Ananse is a deity associated with stories, wisdom, knowledge and trickery in Akan Folklore). Loki gave Ananse a nasty side eye and snorted. He then proceeded to give his idea.

"Sealing the world's mana is obviously going to take time but the beast will definitely realize it the moment the connection is tampered with. The only way out is to hit him with everything we've got at the same time. No more of this 'taking turns' crap. But our forces are spread too thing holding back his abominable children".

"Egyimifuo (Fools), had you not taken the idiotic initiative to kill his wife and send him on his murderous rampage none of this would have happened. Even I'm disgusted", Ananse cut in.

"But, that's all in the past", Loki interjected and continued, "The best strategy is to wipe them out before we can focus everything on their raging monster of a dad. The senior gods will attack them one by one and wipe them all out. After we have no more distractions, all forces can keep Typhon busy until the gods of nature can fully seal the Earth's mana. Immediately he's weakened, we'll pour all efforts into finishing him off at once", Loki explained. Ananse slowly nodded agreeing with Loki still clearly disgusted with the actions of the chief gods of the pantheons. With no right to counter his accusation, the chief gods chose to ignore it and focus on and agree to the actual plan Loki suggested. The plan was immediately put into effect.

In the course of a year, the gods plan was proceeding as expected. They had finally managed to ambush and take down the last of Typhons children. It was finally time to move on to the main stage of the plan, 'distract him long enough'. All the forces of every pantheon in existence joined together to form one big force and launched an all-out assault on Typhon.

Using their divine weapons, all the chief gods led the charge striking a big blow against the great beast. An attack he easily tanked of course, but they fulfilled their goal of properly distracting him. All the gods of nature from all the pantheons, led by Demeter initiated the sealing process in the center of the Earth's core. This was going to be an extremely long and grueling process as the seal had to first absorb all the mana currently in the atmosphere all over the Earth before the actual lock could be put in place. All the while, they had to endure the torturous heat of the core.

Weeks passed by as the sealing team continued their task while the rest tried their best to keep Typhon's focus solely on them. Typhon after a while began noticing the considerable drop in his power but he realized it was too late to do anything about it. The gods really abused their ability to resurrect. They came at Typhon again and again no matter how many he decimated. They mostly stopped caring about the semi-finite divine mana from their realm that was necessary for the resurrection process.

A month later, the seal was final complete. The Earth was now officially mana less. With Typhon's source of power completely cut off, his power started to drop at an alarming rate as the battle progressed. Noticing this, the gods' vigor was renewed as they gave the final push. Even in his perpetually weakened state, Typhon was still a tough contender. The final push lasted days until Typhon finally couldn't fight back anymore.

Zeus, taking the opportunity, charged up his ultimate attack and fired it at the staggering beast. "Typhon stared at the unavoidable attack speeding towards him and it felt like time had slowed down. His life flashed before his eyes as he recalled his days with his wife and his children and couldn't help but smile. He then realized that time had indeed slowed down and even the supreme gods were none the wiser. A translucent projection of a very beautiful woman appeared and wrapped her arms around him from behind.

"It's been a while mother. Never thought you'd be the last person I saw before I died", Typhon said to her with a smile. "I'm proud of you, my son. Do not fret. The souls of your family are safe in your father's care. You'll rejoin them soon", Gaia whispered to Typhon with a smile and he couldn't help but shed a tear. "Thank you, mother. I'll be taking my leave then", Typhon responded to her as her figure faded away slowly. Upon her disappearance, time resumed and Zeus' attack finally hit its mark, striking him dead centre, completely shattering his body.

The almost permanently red-dyed sky slowly reverted back as the sky cleared revealing the sun for the first time in this decade-long war between order and chaos. The very Earth had been permanently reshaped as a consequence of the battle, with continents broken apart and separated by the oceans.

The army of the gods gave a loud resounding shout of victory that could be heard all across the world. Both mankind and gods shed tears as the terror was finally gone, but it wasn't over yet. The decision was made.

In order to prevent a creature from being born again the chief gods of all the pantheons agreed to sever to connection between the two realms. The basic understanding was that if they are unable to influence the mortal world, the cosmos would find it unnecessary to find any sort of balance.

With that decided, they first gathered the remains of Typhon's shattered body as well as those of his wife and children and entombed them deep within the mountain Etna. After sealing the tomb, all heavenly beings promptly returned to the heavenly realm and proceeded to sever the connection, leaving humanity to fend for themselves.

Due to the lack of mana, the number of demihumans reduced across the generations as children born to demihuman parents came out as regular human beings.

A millennium later, there was no trace of demihuman left on the Earth; their demihuman genes forever dormant in the genome of regular humans.

For the next few millennia that the remains of Typhon and his family stayed buried deep in the mountain Etna, the shattered pieces started to coagulate and compress in on itself until there was nothing left but a fist-sized red pearl. A few more millennia passed with the pearl silently waiting, buried beneath the Earth until a crack opened up above it on one fateful day.