Paradise Lost

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NOTICE:

This chap may or may not cause brain overload for Nasuverse beginners, so I added some very easy-to-understand LORE explanation at the bottom!

Be warned, you need some IQ and prior knowledge to understand the first part!

PS. Seriously? Nobody noticed something peculiar about 'Galanthis' from the last chapter???

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...

A Dream in the endlessly vacant universe, long, long ago...one of a remnant of what was once a god:

....

....

I was in an ancient nightmare. Inside a shard of a recording, long lost.

Yes...I was 'reliving' the nightmare. Tracing the footsteps of a broken past. Like a sleepwalker trapped in the void of a feverish dream.

The Why and How flew out of the window once I realized I was floating in the cosmos. In the midst of the vast pitch-black nothingness, I felt so tiny.

I 'saw' a group of migrants. A caravan of lost souls, wandering with little hope. I was one of them.

I saw through one of their eyes. I was in one of their bodies, and I had their thoughts, their very memories.

I realized that I was a piece of them. I was, in some bizarre way, carrying a part of them. An inheritance.

I am a Titan.

Shaking my head, I banished the fleeting thoughts. I hurried to their side, afraid that they might leave me behind in an eternal dream.

As I got closer, I noticed that they weren't bioorganic.

The migrants were giant machines. Memories flooded my mind.

We...they were the last remnants of a long-lost alien civilization, and their last-ditch effort of inheriting some sort of will unto the worlds beyond. We were essentially a 'Noah's Ark' that took the form of a Deus ex machina.

Ironically, the lifeforms that we...the machine gods supported aboard our ships withered away in the flow of time that almost lasted an eternity, leaving nothing behind but an empty, meaningless, husk of an order, a supreme proposition meant to be followed as their creator's will;

[Find another habitable planet. Rebuild our race. Revive our mother planet.]

Left with no masters, no place to be called 'home', we...the robots wandered onwards, endlessly, without rest. And I wandered with them.

I felt their despair. I felt the way their emotions withered and decayed, and how terribly, terribly long their journey was.

A long, long, long time passed in the endless nightmare.

Over an eternity, their numbers dwindled. One by one, the gigantic robot ships started either malfunctioning or ceased to operate altogether.

I saw how one by one, the great machines chose the peaceful path of self-destruction.

Oh, how long it was. By the time their numbers decreased until it was no more than thirty, I had practically lost my own sense of time.

At last, when hope seemed all but lost, the machines found a planet. I found my home.

Oh, the elation! The pure bliss! The ecstasy of accomplishment!

We...the machines had, at last, found their Eden! I have reached where I belonged!

A habitable planet, our...their creators had yearned for. A planet, they had been programmed to discover.

A planet brimming with young life, yet facing terrible danger. A danger that may have well ended all life upon that planet.

And they...we didn't know it. We spent our days debating over how to use the prehistoric natives on the planet, the so-called man-apes.

With our help, the man-apes created a civilization. Obsolete it may be compared to our mother planet, it was at least twenty thousand years more advanced than their time.

Soon enough, with stability, came conflict. Even among ourselves.

Half of us insisted that we must brainwash the man-apes as slaves and control their free will. The other half of us preached that the man-apes are not mindless animals, and under their guidance, they would learn to reign in their primal instincts and live in prosperity as a harmonious community.

We argued over the futility of 'helping' them, while we ourselves must leave this planet to rebuild our civilization, such as our creator's final will.

Eventually, the heated arguments escalated into violent discussions, and finally into a dispute of lethal force. One of the capitals we built on the planet, Atlantis, was torn apart by our civil war.

On one side, stood the 'Olympians' as the natives called them, led by Jupiter.

On the other, stood the Titans, led by Saturn...or some called Kronos. I stood on this side.

And thus, the great war which would be named the Titanomachia started.

How foolish we were! Spending our precious resources on such meaningless skirmishes!

It was when the Titans were losing, that It...arrived.

From the gluttonous machine unit 'Harvester Star Velber', she came.

I knew her name. Somehow, I just knew.

The White Titan hath cometh to Ring thy Doom.

Deployed from that planet-devouring artificial intelligence star hive, there was a ship named 'Velber 02', codenamed 'Sefar'. A humanoid battleship that specializes in the termination of all sapient life. The White Titan.

The humungous titan loomed over even the most gigantic of gods, and thus, humanity came to remember it as the White Titan of Tassili n' Ajjer, the Great God Sefar.

Monstrous, invincible, indestructible it was, devouring life without end being its sole meaning in existence, it raged through the lands, pillaging whatever came into its way.

Leukosmachia.

That was what the battle between us, the alien machine gods, and the White Titan was called. A grand battle between ones beyond humanity, beyond this solar system, beyond this universe. One to protect, one to destroy.

And destroy she did.

Sefar destroyed most of mankind's earliest civilizations, the most famous of them being our first city, Atlantis.

The battle raged on as the world shook. One by one, the machine gods lost their true forms, their bodies twisted and broken beyond repair.

The titan rejected all reason, all forces. It even rejected Death itself. Not even the very embodiment of War, with its mighty sword, who was said to be the greatest enemy she had ever fought, was able to touch Sefar.

I fought too, alongside my kin, though I was also overpowered and ripped to pieces...shreds.

I can see it, clear as day, as her fingers dug into my hide, prying them apart with child-like sadism, her mouth opening wide to prey on my core, to devour, destroy, and analyze what was once...me.

..Digested...resolved...

[Absorbed]

[I am Sefar]

[Sefar: Velber02]

[Destroyer Ship deployed from the Harvester Star]

[Destroyer of the Stars]

[I am Sefar]

[My mission...profiling biodata through...annihilation]

[I needed more]

[Yes. More destruction. As Velber commands. Velber 02 must obey]

[The thrill of battle...the red machine god...MARS]

[He was memorable]

[I took his Sword, his symbol, the Photon Ray]

[A grand battle. A duel well fought. Alas, MARS was too weak.]

[I remember standing over the destroyed body of MARS, with his sword in my hands as my personal trophy...and abruptly, there arose what the animals categorized as...'Hope']

[Who could be so foolish to stand up in that hour of despair?]

[My interest peaked]

[...There it stood. A human too tiny to be considered a vermin]

[An insignificant lifeform]

[In the human's hands, there was but only a tiny sword, far smaller than what I claimed]

[Amusement]

[This was what it was]

[Emotion]

[Elation]

[Excitement]

[I...wanted to cross swords with that tiny speck of dust!]

[I wanted to CRUSH it!!]

[One of the last remaining non-bioorganic giants...categorization...JUPITER tried to rise]

[Perhaps, in one last effort to preserve those lives he failed to protect?]

[I crushed it]

[Hope and all]

[I felt]

[Arrogance]

[The human sword was an Annomaly]

[A sword forged and refined in the depths of the Earth]

[The Ultimate Phantasm, created by the stars and humanity's deepest wishes. The embodiment of world-saving hope]

[And I wanted to DESTROY it!!!]

[I failed]

[Despite my body being tougher than any material on this small planet, strong enough to resist the heat of stars, my body was split in two by the Holy Sword]

[Its golden light, so strong and bright, it swallowed me whole]

[The PAIN!!!!!!!]

[AGONY]

[RAGE]

[A DESIRE FOR REVENGE]

...

A white flash swallowed me.

....

I tumbled and rolled through shards of memories, and past millions of scenes frozen in time.

The dreams were dissolving -a hand was pulling me up.

A Hero. My friend.

I was pulled up to the surface...and I, at last, broke free.

...

...

.....

Millennials later after the White Titan's demise, Jupiter left his old machine body and created a humanoid vessel, a terminal fit for collecting faith and attaining divinity.

Jupiter became Zeus.

Changed and downgraded he was, the god did not forget that golden light. The light of humanity.

"We need humanity, the power of humanity for the wars yet to come. A hero, a hybrid that shall fight back the terrors the dead body of Sefar shall produce. The Gigas."

Thus, the call for Heroes has arisen.

Gigantomachia was near.

Zeus needed an army. A god wouldn't be enough. It needed the potential of a human. That was when he found his answer.

A hybrid. A half-blood crossbreed between a god and a human.

It was well within his power and ability to create such hybrids. There was no reason not to, and the other 'male' gods agreed.

With their blood...there shall be the blessing of divinity from the mystical side, and nanotechnology from their lingering residue. The hybrids...the demigods would turn into heroes, unlike no other. And they were right.

If there was one single error Zeus- no, the Olympians made as a whole, it was that they did not comprehend how much their plans would affect Hera, former machine goddess and currently incorporated with an old earth goddess long forgotten.

Hera, like all the other gods, was the embodiment of a natural force, a phenomenon, the crystallized manifestation of a concept.

She was the mighty Queen of Gods, mistress of monsters. She was also the goddess of women, marriage, family, and childbirth, patroness and protectress of married women, presiding over weddings and blessing marital unions.

That made her into what she was, defined her into what she shall be. Her jealous and vengeful nature against Zeus' numerous lovers and illegitimate offspring...one can say that itself was a result of how the married woman of ancient Greek acted.

A god is like a mirror. It represents, and it reflects human nature.

To go against her nature, or worse, getting disgraced by an equal in her domain and forgiving the transgression, was akin to tearing her own raison d'etre apart with her own hands.

It just wasn't possible.

Hera, oh, fair Hera!

Wronged again and again. Disgraced countless times, mocked by her own husband who so mindlessly treads through her own domain with no respect whatsoever.

Or was it Zeus's plan all along?

Hera once forced Zeus into subjugation with the other gods in a small coup, making him swear he shall act more 'accordingly' and 'proper' as the King of the Gods.

Zeus replied by dangling Hera off the cliff of Mount Olympus, with a chain wrapped around her leg.

Even with his might and intellect, he was still very much a colossal asshole.

Hera was then forced to swear she shall no longer disobey Zeus, no matter what. No matter, how many times he shall shame her by producing demigod hybrids for the upcoming war.

Hatred and bitterness brew.

Thus, Hera was bound in her own prison of contradiction, a hell made from her own unchangeable godly nature.

Demigods were the embodiment of her defeat.

The unmoving proof of his unfaithfulness and his unfilial acts.

'Disgusting'

She endured.

'Disgusting'

She endured.

'A bastard of Zeus, that stole my breast milk, meant only to feed my offspring, in my domain?'

She endured...until she could no longer.

This absolute insult to her entire existence, she shall never forgive.

'DIE. DIE. DIE.'

The demigod lived.

As if to insult her furthermore, the demigod survived because of the immense power she stole from her.

In her haze of fury, she saw something different. Something so pure, so beautiful.

A soul of a courageous hero in the budding, worthy of her attention.

Hera, for the first time in many years, was intrigued.

'There will be plenty of opportunities later. First I shall solve this mystery in front of me'

She was not disappointed.

Any other soul would have been traumatized, terrified of her mere existence. Iphicles was not.

"Thank you for your work as the goddess of marriage. Thank you for protecting all the independent women out there. Thank you for the happiness you bring to the families you protect. Thank you for your mercy in letting my sister live one more day. Thank you. Thank you."

For all the time she spent on the face of this earth, she had never ever met someone so selfless, so full of respect for a supreme being most only beg and cower before.

A wish for someone else. A wish for countless others, even for ones he has never met.

An eternal hope for a brighter future.

'How can someone with a mentality such as him be born in this harsh and cruel, unforgiving world?'

'No, he must be a fraud! His wishes, a facade!'

She refused to believe it. She couldn't.

If he was 'true', then what would become of the disgusting humanity she embodied? What would become of her vengeance?

No, she could not accept that!

Hera arose from her throne.

"I shall personally attest to your true nature. Iphicles, grandson of Perseus."

A cruel smile graced her lips.

"I do hope you do not disappoint me...for your own sake"

She lifted her hand and pulled out a single strand of black hair, her green eyes trailing it as it fell through the clouds, and down to the earth below.

"After all, false prayers are a crime that shall not go unpunished"

...

.....

...

I was falling through a dream. Falling out of my nightmare.

A voice was asking me. A familiar voice.

"What is honor?"

"Is it the vague promise of glory and fame? A fairy-tale fabricated in blank and white? The courage of a hero that knows no bounds?"

A voice of a Hero of Justice. A voice I both admire and hate.

I must answer. Even in a dream.

I opened my mouth-

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.....

Searing pain made me open my eyes. My head throbbed like mad.

Flashes of images, presumably echoes of my past life and something that was definitely not mine, bombarded me like heavy rain, only to be forgotten the second I tried to grasp them.

Endless wandering...jubilance...arguments...war...death...destruction...a horrible...bright...scorching...warm...Light. A hand.

A red-haired man...no, a hair of bone white...a foolish dream...an immature ideal. A hypocrite with only remorse to call his own.

What were the visions? Who was he? Why-!?

Pain. Hitched breathing. Hyperventilation. Headache.

"Bad idea...forget...relax...deep breaths, you got this...in...out."

Sucking in breaths. Letting them out. Slowly does it. Yes. Forget it.

After what seemed like a few minutes, I finally managed to calm down.

By then, the memories were all long gone. Strangely, I felt no urge to remember them. Meh, probably was all nonsense in the first place.

I looked around. Where am I...ah.

"I was walking along the stream, having some precious alone time, all to myself. Well, obviously."

It seemed I have taken a short nap and drifted off. Heh. Typical me.

I yawned, leaning my back against a black, scaly, metallic, piece of wood.

Wait. What?

"...HIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS"

There, behind my back, was the head of a very pissed-off serpent. A serpent, twice the size of what once assaulted us in our crib. Sixteen meters long, maybe?

"..."

I looked at the sparkling stream in front of me. It looked very inviting.

I looked back at the wall of angry muscle and fangs behind me. It looked very terrifying.

"HIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS"

The hissing grew louder.

I nodded sagely.

'Snake fetish? Hera it is, then.', I concluded.

I patted the scales. It cut open my palm.

I licked my wound. Salty, and full of iron. I was not hallucinating.

That meant, that fucking death machine behind me was not an illusion.

I stood up.

I bravely looked it in the eye.

I felt petrified. I looked down at my arms.

The skin was starting to turn gray.

I bravely looked down at the ground.

"Hello there."

The serpent sprang into action.

I screamed like a fucking pussy.

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Spoonfed Nasuverse Lore for Beginners (Taiga Doujou Edition)

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14'000BC~12'000 BC~

Greek gods and titans:

Basically foreigners from a dead civilization. Have hyper-advanced tech including nanomachines. They were essentially a Noah's Ark and a Deus-ex-Machina, except that 'Noah', or in this case, all of their passengers (survivors, former masters) died onboard.

They came to earth and helped humans build Atlantis. Got wrecked by Sefar, but left their existence as a humanoid 'terminal'. In other words, they became natives. Divine spirits and the like. The Greek gods we know in myths.

Sefar (Velber02):

A humanoid giant of colossal proportions with bunny ears. Grows bigger the more she consumes. The second ship deployed from a hyper-advanced mecha star with an AI, named Velber (Deathstar and Skynet on steroids. Terminator supercomputer). Her sole purpose is to annihilate all sapient lifeforms including gods.

Battled with Mars, one of the machine gods. She liked him and took his weapon as a souvenir. Photon Ray.

Got nuked by primordial Excalibur. I know, the word doesn't make sense. Neither does alien greek machine gods.

Random Dude (Not King Arthur of course):

Wields Primordial Excalibur made by the Six Faes of Avalon. Sees bunny titan. Blasts nuke.

"X-kalibaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

Iphicles:

Had a nightmare that belonged to one of the machine titans who got eaten and absorbed into Sefar. At one point felt Sefar's inner thoughts. Nightmare got crashed by Hero of Justice, a friend of his 'past' life. He has a psychological debate about...well...honor and Justice with the Hero of Justice.

Wakes up with a splitting headache that leads to amnesia. All's well, ends well...?