Global Islands: I'm The Sea God's Heir!-Chapter 75: Ch : The Change In Plan

Ann woke buried in stone. Not entombed, but sheltered.

​The mountain itself had swallowed him at the final moment, carrying him deep beneath the surface through divine tunnels carved instinctively by the Mountain God’s bloodline. The earth had parted for him like a mother’s embrace, closing behind him to hide his heat and scent from the gaze of the man who could kill gods.

​Ann lay still for a long time, chest heaving, lungs burning with the silt-heavy air. He was alive, though the cost of survival felt like a slow death. His divine avatar had been shattered into prismatic shards.

The backlash from Avatar Displacement still ravaged his body, cracking bones that had been harder than granite and tearing through meridians like jagged glass. His essence was a leaking sieve, draining faster than his core could pulse.

​If Aegis had pursued for even a second longer, Ann knew the truth: he would have been erased from existence.

​Just then, a faint rhythmic glow pulsed nearby.

Gaia, the Giant God’s heir, emerged from the stone wall itself. His form was a haunting sight—half-solid, half-merged with the living rock. His face was pale, the confident warmth that usually radiated from him completely extinguished.

​Neither spoke at first. The silence pressed in, thick and heavy, laden with the weight of miles of earth above them. Finally, Ann laughed. It was a broken, hoarse sound that rattled in his chest.

​"We survived," he said, disbelief lacing every word.

​Gaia did not smile. "We escaped. That is not the same thing."

​Ann wiped a mixture of black blood and dirt from his lips and forced himself upright.

"Don’t pretend you weren’t terrified."

​Gaia’s jaw tightened, "I was calculating the probability of our atoms being scattered across the ley lines."

​Ann barked a laugh. "Liar. You were shaking."

​Gaia turned toward him, looking serious. "He broke my Domain, Ann. Do you understand what that means? The Anti-Magic Domain is not a spell. It is a fundamental law of my existence. It strips gods of their greatest advantage. It is absolute. And yet..." 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢

​"He still dominated us," Ann finished quietly.

​Gaia nodded once. "Not through magic. Not through authority. He won through sheer physical supremacy, through experience, through something honed specifically to kill our kind. He is a predator that has evolved beyond the reach of our divinity."

​Ann clenched his fists, feeling the tremors in his hands.

"That trident... the moment I felt its wake, my bloodline screamed. Not in anger, but in mourning."

​"The God-Killer," Gaia whispered. "A relic that should have remained a myth."

​Ann exhaled slowly, trying to stabilize his flickering essence. "We cannot face him alone. Not again. If we try, he won’t just break our avatars. He’ll hunt our souls back to the source."

​Gaia looked at him with an unreadable expression. "I already know what you’re going to suggest."

​"Then say it," Ann replied.

​Gaia’s gaze hardened. "The other heirs. The ones we swore to surpass. The ones we planned to harvest once we ascended."

​Ann nodded. "All of them. Every drop of divine blood left in this world needs to be concentrated into a single spearhead."

​Silence followed as they contemplated the heresy of their own suggestion. Then Gaia spoke again,

"Three remain active. One slumbers in the Void Trenches. One is hidden within the shifting sands of the West."

​Ann smiled faintly, a predatory glint returning to his eyes. "Then we will wake them up. Or drag them into the light by their throats. We offer them a choice: join us, or wait for the man with the trident to find them alone."

​Gaia’s expression turned grim. "You understand what that means. Cooperation between heirs has never lasted. Our egos are literally woven into our DNA. Pride alone makes a true alliance impossible."

​Ann’s eyes gleamed with a cold, hard light. "Pride dies when gods bleed. And we have bled enough to learn humility."

​They began moving through the subterranean passages, guided by the mountain’s fading memory. They emerged hours later into a forgotten stretch of the Primordial Battlefield. The land here was ancient, scarred not by the recent Titan incursions but by wars that predated the System itself.

​As they walked, Ann tugged at his ruined sleeve, tearing it away entirely to reveal his forearm.

All of a sudden, runes glowed faintly beneath his skin, deep and ancient. These were symbols carved by divine inheritance rather than mere magic.

​Gaia noticed the movement too late to warn him.

​"S-Sage...?" a voice trembled nearby.

​Ann stopped, his hand going to a non-existent blade. A thin, dirt-streaked man stood a short distance away, clutching a broken spear. His eyes were wide, fixed not on Ann’s face, but on the pulsing markings along his forearm.

​"No," the man whispered, falling to his knees as if his legs had turned to water. "It cannot be. After all this time... the Primodial God has spoken."

​Ann frowned. "Get up, scavenger."

​The man shook violently, tears carving tracks through the grime on his face. "The mark. The Mountain Sigil. The Ruthenian Crest. It matches the carvings in the Deep Cathedral."

​Gaia’s eyes widened slightly. "Ruthenia," he repeated slowly. "The lost kingdom of the subterranean strata."

​The man bowed deeply, his forehead pressed into the dust.

"The Kingdom of Ruthenia has waited for you, Sage. For generations, we have lived in the dark, tending the forges, sharpening the iron, waiting for the return of the Earth-Born."

​Ann stared down at him, a strange sensation stirring in his chest.

"You mistake me for someone else. I am an heir, not a savior."

​The man laughed through his sobs. "Impossible. The Sage of Stone was prophesied by the first King. The bearer of the Mountain Sigil would return when the world cracked and the heavens fell. You are the heartbeat of the mountain."

​Ann’s heart skipped. He looked at the vast, desolate landscape, then back at the kneeling man.

​Gaia stepped closer, his analytical mind already spinning.

"Explain the state of your people."

​The man looked up, eyes burning with a sudden, fanatical faith.

"Ruthenia was built beneath the Spine Peaks. A kingdom hidden from Titans, sustained by ancient covenants and the heat of the core. We are ten million strong, hidden in the veins of the world. We were told to wait. To endure. To prepare." He swallowed hard. "For you."

​Ann’s breath slowed. He saw the potential unfolding like a map. Gaia saw it too. A kingdom. An army. Infrastructure. Millions of souls whose collective faith could provide a source of essence that no single god could match. It was the same foundation Aegis had used to bolster his own rise.

​Ann looked at Gaia. Gaia met his gaze. Neither spoke, for they did not need to. The balance of the war had shifted. They were no longer just two fugitives; they were the potential catalysts of a holy war.

​Three days later.

​Aegis stood atop a jagged ridge, surveying a battlefield stripped nearly bare. The air here was thick with the scent of ozone and charred meat. Broken Titan corpses, some the size of small hills, littered the land like discarded toys. Craters stretched to the horizon, but the area was oddly silent. Sky Crystals floated in neat clusters, already tagged and claimed by his subordinates.

​Bella hovered beside him, her arms crossed and her brow furrowed.

"This is inefficient, Arlan. We are killing them faster than the world can generate them, yet we are only covering a fraction of the map."

​Ruina nodded, her draconic eyes scanning the distance.

"Masters, the respawn rate of Earth Titans cannot match our extermination speed. But the land area is vast. If we continue like this, the event will expire before we reach the heart of the anomaly."

​Pyro, now a sphere of intense white heat, bounced on Aegis’s shoulder.

​Boink.

​Aegis remained silent, his eyes fixed on a distant mountain range that seemed to shimmer with an unnatural hue. He had been feeling a shift in the atmospheric pressure of a gathering of intent that had nothing to do with the Titans.

​"You’re thinking the same thing, aren’t you?" Bella asked, glancing at his profile.

​"Yes. The game has changed." Aegis replied.

​"This battlefield wasn’t designed to be cleared by a handful of monsters," Bella continued, voicing the realization that had been gnawing at them. "No matter how strong we are, we lack the presence to hold territory. The System didn’t intend for a single God-Killer to win this."

​Aegis turned his head slightly. "It was designed for armies. For mass mobilization."

​Bella’s eyes widened. "An army? But the players are scattered, and the local factions are terrified."

​She exhaled slowly. "The underground kingdom Gravenia exists, So there are others. They are starting to move."

​Aegis nodded. "And then there are the adventurers. The players who are tired of being cannon fodder."

​Bella frowned. "They are unreliable. They care for loot and levels, not the fate of the realm."

​"But they are numerous," Aegis countered. "And they are motivated by the very things that make them predictable. If you give them a direction and a reward, they become a tide."

​Silence followed as the wind howled through the ribs of a fallen Titan. Then Pyro hopped down from Aegis’s shoulder and expanded slightly, his flames flickering with a strange, rhythmic pulse.

​Boink.

​Aegis looked at the slime. "What? You want to command them?"

​Pyro puffed up proudly, his gelatinous body glowing with an inner light.

​Bella laughed despite herself. "A Slime General. That would certainly be a sight for the history books."

​"We need scale, Coordination. Logistics. A command structure that doesn’t rely on me being in ten places at once. We need to stop acting like hunters and start acting like a state."

​Ruina straightened, her wings unfurling to their full, majestic span.

"If you give the order, Master, I can rally the draconic forces. The lesser wyverns still roam the upper skies, waiting for a leader strong enough to claim their loyalty."

​Bella nodded slowly. "And I can awaken the dormant legions bound to the old ice contracts. The Frost Walkers have slept for a thousand years, but they will answer the call of the North."

​Aegis looked toward the horizon, toward the Spine Peaks where he felt the faint, distant thrum of a new power rising.

​"And I will do what I do best."

​Bella smiled faintly. "Break the system?"

​"No," Aegis replied, his eyes glowing with an intensity that rivaled the sun. "Rewrite it. If the System wants a war of armies, I will give it a war that burns the very concept of ’levels’ to the ground."

​Far away, deep beneath the Spine Peaks, Ann stood before a vast stone throne. Thousands of Ruthenian soldiers, clad in armor forged from heart-stone, knelt in a sea of steel. Their rhythmic chanting shook the foundations of the world.

​In that moment, two immense tides began moving toward each other across the Primordial Battlefield. They were not yet colliding, but the path was set. The event had stopped being a mere hunt for resources. It had evolved into a total war for the future of the world’s hierarchy.

​The world would soon learn the terrifying meaning of armies led by gods’ heir who had nothing left to lose.