The Guardian gods Chapter 945

In the span of just seventy-two hours, the global population of paragons had been brutally decimated, plunging from the triple digits down to a two-digit few. Those who survived were completely paralyzed by a mixture of lingering awe and deep, psychological horror.

Every time they closed their eyes, every time they glanced up at the sky or cast their gaze across the newly formed geography, they didn’t see normal landscapes like most would. All they saw were the stone-calcified corpses of their comrades, the eternal monuments of their collective arrogance.

Meanwhile, as the sun rose on the radically altered world, the mortals of Nana blinked open their eyes in total confusion.

They woke up sprawled across the floors of their homes and streets, disoriented and entirely unaware of the war that had raged around them. The crushing darkness, the deafening screams, and the existential terror of the last three days were entirely absent from their memories. As they picked themselves up, dusting off their clothes and looking out at the horizon, a single question echoed in their minds:

Where did all these massive mountains come from overnight, and why were they lying on the floor?

Even more staggering was the state of the sky. The healed world around them hummed with a long awaited stillness. No longer was the earth beneath their feet violently shaking from the earth-shattering clashes of the paragons, and no longer did terrifying godlike figures tear through the air above them, treating the sky as their personal battleground.

Questions rippled through every city and settlement, and confusion reigned everywhere. Across the high kingdoms, fifth-tier powerhouses and royal generals who had long knelt in servitude to the paragons suddenly found themselves met with dead silence, no commands, no decrees or orders coming from their lords.

Even weirder was the realization that they weren’t alone in this sudden vacuum. Allied kingdoms and foes alike quickly discovered a shared, eerie reality, their respective paragons were entirely gone, vanished without a trace or a final word.

As the days drifted by, the mortals found themselves experiencing a strange, miraculous phenomenon, they simply stopped dying in droves. The relentless, catastrophic collateral damage that had previously threatened to wipe out their civilizations had vanished, cleanly erased overnight thanks to the meticulous restoration work of the world spirits.

For a little while, it felt as though the entire world of Nana had been struck by a reset button, plunging a chaotic world into an unprepared, disorienting peace.

Even the rings containing the Tower materials had vanished entirely from the world, swallowed up by the realignment. Yet, remarkably, not a single soul had the stomach or the heart to venture out and search for them. The lingering terror of those three days had done its job, every surviving paragon was suddenly on their absolute best behavior, entirely purged of their former arrogance.

The bitter, ongoing disputes over who deserved the Tower distribution, arguments that had previously had the high kingdoms at the edge ceased. Even those harboring quiet dissatisfaction dared not voice their grievances. Instead, they buried their ambitions deep, masking them with compliant obedience, holding onto the silent, desperate hope that if they played the long game, they might eventually be granted what they felt they deserved.

An unquenchable hunger for the Tower still lingered in their hearts, but the blind, reckless pursuit of the past was gone forever. Caution had become their new dogma. The paragons had learned the hard way that the absolute best way to survive in a world owned by origin gods was to emulate the gods themselves.

They needed to distance themselves from the mortals entirely, retreating into the shadows to pull strings exclusively from behind the scenes rather than marching openly across the world stage. Mortals were no longer playthings, they were fragile existences to be kept at a safe, untouchable distance. While ruling from the shadows was still permitted, wielding one’s will to crush them simply because they had the power to do so was a sin they would never dare commit again.

Across Nana, a sweeping wave of quiet, desperate reforms began to take place, reshaping society from the ground up under the watchful, petrified gaze of the mountain peaks.

For the first time since the ascension of the paragons, a historic gathering was called. Every surviving paragon across Nana received the invitation and not a single one dared to ignore it. The summons had been sent out by Zephyr.

Before the cataclysmic awakening of the Origin Gods, Zephyr and the other godling leaders had planned to bide their time. Their original design was a patient, drawn-out strategy, they intended to wait out the chaos and selectively forge their alliance only with the human kingdoms that ultimately emerged victorious from the ashes of the conflict.

The terrifying wrath of the Origin Gods, however, had violently shattered that timeline. It taught Zephyr and his peers a humbling, unforgettable lesson, the world would not bend to their careful pacing, and things would no longer unfold simply because they expect it to.

With the landscape of power irrevocably altered, the surviving godlings and humbled paragons could no longer afford to wait. They needed to establish a foundation, a basic framework for mutual survival. While it was far too fragile to truly be called an alliance yet, it was a vital, tense assembly where the remnants of power sat together to draw up strict, non-negotiable rules for a world now rigidly watched by its true masters.

These weren’t the cosmic laws they already knew, but a localized code, a strict internal pact forged by the residents of Nana, meant to govern the current paragons and bind every generation that would ever follow.

The trauma of the Origin Gods descent had laid bare a simple truth, they had taken their immense freedom for granted, and the sudden, suffocating loss of that autonomy had nearly cost them everything. The haunting memory of standing helpless while their power sat locked and dormant inside them was a feeling none of them ever wished to experience again.

And so, this historic gathering served a singular, desperate purpose. They sought to draft a binding internal code of conduct, rules explicitly designed to police themselves, ensuring that no paragon ever crossed the line or triggered a catastrophe massive enough to draw the Origin Gods back down into the mortal plane.

To the absolute shock of the high kingdoms and many other paragons, even the godlings readily agreed to this measure. Though they had always revered themselves as the loyal servants and direct children of the Origin Gods, the sheer, unfiltered horror of those seventy-two hours seared a vital lesson into their souls. It could have easily been them hanging in the sky.

Deep respect for their creators still remained, but that reverence was now heavily reinforced by fear. To the paragons and godlings alike, the Origin Gods were no longer paternal figures to seek out or lean upon, they had transformed into terrifying forces of nature, beings best admired from a very safe, distant horizon, and never, under any circumstances, up close.

While the surviving paragons huddled together in desperate unity to draft their self-preserving rules, Murmur recognized the sprawling chaos for what it truly was, the greatest opportunity of his existence.

Across Nana, a massive vacuum of power gaped wide open. Too many thrones sat empty, their previous occupants now serving as silent, stone-calcified mountain ranges.

Before the cataclysm, Murmur had already set his sights on Nwadiebube, a carefully chosen pawn meant to pioneer an entirely alternative path of ascension for those whose evolution had hit a permanent brick wall. A casual gaze cast toward the eastern continent revealed that his grand experiment was indeed progressing, but it was moving at a glacial pace. Nwadiebube’s budding divinity was little more than a fragile flicker in the dark, a spark vulnerable enough to be snuffed out instantly if a stray gust of wind hit it wrong, or if the young mortal faltered under the weight of his own ambitions.

Murmur needed to accelerate the timeline. With the other paragons paralyzed by caution and locked in their summit of fear, the board was wide open, and the pieces were his to move.

Nwadiebube had once been Murmur’s only viable gamble, a single, fragile thread in a long and uncertain web. But now, the board was littered with vast, unguided possibilities. Where Murmur previously had to tread with utmost caution, weaving his schemes beneath the watchful, suspicious eyes of dozens of the paragons, the sky was suddenly clear.

The surviving paragons were shivering on their thrones, too consumed by their own terror to notice a subtle hand moving in the shadows.

A slow, cold smile spread across Murmur’s face as he sat alone in the quiet darkness of his domain. It had been centuries since he felt a spark of genuine expectation, an electrifying, intoxicating thrill. Most paragons had witnessed the brutal three-day purge with sickening, soul-crushing horror. But Murmur? he had watched the Origin Gods descend with absolute, rapt fascination, particularly when his eyes fell upon Ikenga.