Xu Zhi gazed down at the proud king with a trace of rueful admiration.
Gilgamesh had lost. But from beginning to end, he had shown no fear—even when faced with an overwhelming, divine force.
He was a man of paradoxes. Regal yet brutal, wise yet tyrannical, charismatic and deeply flawed. His fall stirred something strange within Xu Zhi. A sense of pity, perhaps. But pity could not change the fate written in his bones.
His time had simply run out.
He had failed to ascend. He couldn't integrate a third gene. The limits of mortality held firm. In the end, he could only die of old age.
Xu Zhi had merely come to witness his passing.
He hadn't expected Gilgamesh to attack him.
Nearby, Ishtar coughed violently, blood staining her lips.
Her chest heaved with each breath, but even in the face of annihilation, she held her gaze steady, fearless, and unbowed. Death never frightened a true Sumerian warrior.
She gave a hoarse, bitter laugh.
"So… this is the gap between us. What kind of being did we just challenge in war?"
Xu Zhi's golden glow bathed the ruined city in divine light. His form loomed above them like a forgotten god from myth—inscrutable, distant, eternal.
"Do you regret it?" he asked softly.
Gilgamesh laughed between bloody coughs. "Regret? We made our choice."
The Sumerian civilization had fallen.
Utterly and completely—before the Great Beast of Wisdom.
They had known the price of failure when facing a god. This was no longer just defeat. This was the end of days.
Xu Zhi looked down at the chaos below. Soldiers fled in every direction, their screams lost in madness. Some wailed. Some laughed. Others simply knelt in despair. Faced with extinction, all pretense shattered.
"I never intended to interfere with the fate of a people," Xu Zhi murmured. "Or decide the rise and fall of a civilization."
His gaze shifted to the aging king.
He remembered the savage Bugapes that once shouted "Baldy! Baldy!" at their bewildered creator. He had joked back then that they must be a selfish, brutal species.
He hadn't expected to be right.
"Is this the end of us?" Gilgamesh rasped. Despite his shattered bones, he pulled himself into a sitting position and laughed, hollow and weary. "Just like how we slaughtered countless ancient beasts… will you now slaughter us? Will you avenge them?"
The fearless Bugape from long ago remained unchanged. Even as the Hero King, now on the brink of death, Gilgamesh refused to kneel. Pride was the last thing he would ever let go.
Xu Zhi considered his words carefully.
"You refused my warnings. I have no choice." His voice was calm, resolute. "You destroyed the world's balance. You exterminated entire species without restraint. I cannot allow your kind to multiply any longer."
Gilgamesh smiled bitterly. "Back then, you answered my questions about civilization. Before the end… will you answer my final questions?"
A long silence followed.
The battlefield fell still.
The Great Beast of Wisdom remained motionless. His divine glow pierced the clouds, painting the sky in a pure, deathly white. Then his voice rang out like the chime of a sacred bell, deep and resonant:
"You may ask."
The world stopped.
Soldiers froze in place. Armor clattered to the ground, forgotten. All eyes turned to the towering god above.
Ishtar lay bleeding, her blood soaking the ground. Yet she smiled through the pain, gaze fixed on the being in the heavens.
"You'll answer us again?" Gilgamesh murmured, then asked:
"First question. How will you destroy us?"
Xu Zhi thought for a moment. Their kind was everywhere—countless in number, like locusts across a field. But he had made his decision.
"I will use water," he said, voice unshakable. "A great flood will wash away your civilization. Not even a trace will remain."
The world fell deathly silent.
This land had become too filthy—saturated with cruelty and sin.
Would the Beast of Wisdom truly drown it all? Cleanse it in water, as though purging disease from the body?
But how could even a god summon a flood to swallow an entire world?
That wasn't the power of a beast.
That was—
Divine.
Terror dawned across the faces of the crowd.
Gilgamesh swallowed hard and raised his voice again.
"Second question. Why could I never find any trace of you in this world?"
His voice cracked, hoarse. "Where did you come from? What are you, really? Why did you give us the fire of civilization, only to stop us from dominating others? You said all are equal before you—plants, beasts, and men. Then tell me… what is this land to you?"
Xu Zhi looked down at him and answered plainly:
"This land is a world I created with my own hands. All life within it—plants, animals, and men—are my subjects. Before me, there is no distinction."
Silence followed.
Gilgamesh stared, stunned. He could not speak.
Then, slowly, he began to laugh.
At first, it was soft. Then louder. Then louder still—until it echoed across the broken walls of Uruk like mad thunder.
"Hahahaha! How absurd… how utterly absurd! So the Great Beast of Wisdom isn't just a beast… he's the Creator Himself!"
The first idea of God was born that day, in a land of forgotten idols.
"I once called my own writings Genesis," Gilgamesh choked out between laughter. "I thought I was the Creator of Civilization. But it was you. You were the one all along! All things under heaven… were already yours."
The more he laughed, the more unhinged it became. He laughed until he coughed blood.
Until there was nothing left but laughter and the ruins of a dead world.
Xu Zhi watched silently.
He had always been even-tempered. Even now, he tolerated the Hero King's final insolence.
Gilgamesh's laughter faded into a hoarse whisper.
"Last question," he said, "How many days did it take you to create this world?"
Xu Zhi thought back to the beginning. To the sickly man kneeling in a backyard garden, barely strong enough to stand. Hoe in hand. Weak from chemotherapy.
Seven days.
"It took me seven days to create this land."
And so, in death, the old world ended.
And a new myth was born.