What does the sun represent?
In the world of the gods, the sun represents the rule of light — the very source of energy for all dimensions and planes!
The Primary Material World, the numerous sub-planes, and even the Divine Kingdoms of the gods had all grown accustomed to drawing upon the sun's power. It was an indispensable condition for all life to flourish.
Some things are taken for granted as utterly ordinary — until the moment they are lost, and only then does one truly grasp the horror of their absence!
After Leilin devoured the sun, the entire multiverse was plunged into endless darkness. Countless beings wept and wailed, crying out to the heavens in prayer — but it was all to no avail.
The Pantheon.
Loshanda's complexion had turned ashen. His divine domain was tied to the Sun — and now that the sun itself had been destroyed, the devastating repercussions upon him were catastrophic.
Crack!
The divine throne representing his Greater Godhood shattered. His divine rank plummeted, crashing almost instantly into the Lesser Godhood. Had a handful of Greater
"Ah… Ah… My sun! Nightmare Serpent — Dandel!!!"
Once his divine power stabilized, Loshanda let out a twisted, anguished roar. But the looks cast his way by some of the Evil Gods around him had already turned distinctly unfavorable — the Lord of the Dawn had always been a deity who despised evil with a passion, and he had offended more than a few Evil Gods in his time.
If it were not for the current Twilight of the Gods brought on by the Wizards' invasion, demanding that all deities stand united, the Evil Gods would likely have seized the chance to strike him down and send him into oblivion long ago.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Explosions rocked the Pantheon, one after another. Most of the deities whose domains were tied to the Sun or Radiance suffered devastating blowback.
Loshanda was actually comparatively fortunate — several of the other Intermediate and Lesser Gods did not merely suffer a drop in rank. They perished outright!
Their fate mirrored that of the Moon Gods who had perished when the moon exploded — a truly wretched end.
The gods of the Pantheon sat in stunned silence, seemingly still unable to recover from the shock.
"This is bad!"
Oghma, the wisest among them, turned pale. "Our plan to migrate the Divine Kingdoms… Even if we can manufacture light and heat within them, it will not be enough to sustain the full population. And with the sun annihilated, the resulting dimensional and spatial shifts mean the gates to our Divine Kingdoms must be reconfigured from scratch…"
The gods' Divine Kingdoms were sustained by faith, but they also drew upon supplementary energy sources.
The sun had always been the single most important one. Gods were supremely stingy beings — in hoarding divine power, even the most stubborn misers among mortals could not compare. They even relied on borrowing the Magic Web's infrastructure for their faith networks, and when it came to constructing Divine Kingdoms, that frugality only intensified.
True, with a god's power to alter reality, they could conjure a miniature sun inside their Divine Kingdom at any time — but all of that was built on consuming divine power!
And divine power came from the faith of believers! With the Primary Material World in ruins, the gods' Magic Web faith networks collapsing, and the need to invest ever more resources, everything had become agonizingly insufficient.
Oghma now realized they had stumbled into a terrifying deadlock: to win the Twilight of the Gods, they needed to expand their flock. But the drain of the faith networks and the cost of rebuilding light sources in their Divine Kingdoms left them with no surplus divine power to transport a sufficient population. And the shrinking number of believers would cause their divine power to plummet further, creating a vicious, inescapable cycle!!!
This was Leilin's method of attack — striking at the very foundation of his enemies' resources!!!
The gods' foundation was faith. And Leilin intended to shatter it to dust!
After all, his Divine Kingdom was situated in Hell. At worst, he could convert all his believers into devils. Even if the Divine Kingdom collapsed entirely, he would lose nothing more than a puppet controlled by a Chip.
But the gods had to pay with their very lives!
……
The Primary Material World.
Dorlan slumped onto the ground, not even bothering to check on the meager belongings on his cart — possessions he had once regarded as precious as life itself.
He lifted his gaze toward the sky, his mouth hanging wide open.
What had he seen?
A monstrous beast with nine heads and nine pairs of wings — those nine grotesque heads suddenly merged into one, and it swallowed the sun whole!!!
Darkness! Then total, absolute darkness descended. Dorlan rubbed his eyes frantically, almost convinced he must be dreaming.
The refugee crowd erupted into chaos. Cries and wails filled the air. The doomsday that the priests had long preached about had arrived before their very eyes. The psychological terror of it was enough to shatter any ordinary person's sanity.
"Don't panic! Stay calm!"
A faint holy radiance emanated from a priest, barely illuminating the surrounding clearing. Dorlan could see that the faces of everyone around him were contorted with terror — some had been so frightened they had simply frozen. For them, the sun being devoured was no different from the sky itself collapsing.
"Check the teleportation gate!"
The bishop issued his orders swiftly. A priest rushed forward, made several attempts, and then reported back with a helpless shake of his head. "It's no use! The gate to the Divine Kingdom has been completely destroyed, and our Lord's divine coordinates have shifted. It needs to be recalibrated from scratch!"
"Then get to it immediately!!!" The bishop furrowed his brow — but in the very next instant, his expression changed drastically.
"There is a new divine decree… The plan to transport believers has been terminated…"
The bishop spoke the words one by one, his face twisted in horror.
"What?"
The surrounding priests were all stunned into silence. In their view, the Primary Material World, stripped of the sun's glory, was doomed to destruction. Only the gods' Divine Kingdoms could save them.
And now the transport plan had been suspended?
This was like luring a mass of people into building an ark at the end of the world — and then kicking them off at the very moment disaster struck!
Because of the sheer shock, no one bothered to keep the news secret. The information spread rapidly, and the refugees erupted in roars of fury and clamor.
The temple knights and guards could no longer maintain order — because they themselves could not be certain of their own future or fate. Even many of their own comrades had joined the angry mob.
"Everyone, please calm down, we—"
The bishop, realizing the situation had spiraled out of control, tried desperately to salvage it, but he had already lost command of the crowd.
The clamor grew louder and louder, gradually escalating into a full-blown riot. Even Dorlan was swept up against his will.
The mob surged forward in a torrent of bodies. The sounds of trampling and cursing filled the air, and who knew how many had been crushed to death beneath the feet of their fellow man.
In their utter desperation, the refugees seized several priests and guards, venting their despair and hatred with knives, spears, stones, fingernails, and teeth, tearing them apart without mercy.
In the end, they even set ablaze a massive bonfire, hurling every unfortunate soul who had failed to escape in time into the flames, watching the fire consume their bodies as they writhed in hopeless agony.
Buzz… buzz…
Dorlan, positioned at the outermost fringe of the mob, still retained a sliver of reason. His ears perked up — he could hear the sound of countless wings vibrating.
"Huh? What is that?"
A flicker of confusion crossed Dorlan's mind as he looked upward. Then he saw it: a grotesque insect, its body entirely green, sporting a fearsome mandible and what looked like a colossal bee — but with terrible barbed hooks on its legs — plummeting from the sky.
"Aaah—"
A rioter closest to the bonfire was pounced upon by a bug the size of a human head. Its razor-sharp abdominal legs tore through his skin in an instant, and torrents of blood gushed forth as he let out a piercing scream.
Suddenly, the screaming cut off — the insect had already plunged its sharp mandible deep into his skull.
"Monster! Monsters—!"
People shrieked and scrambled backward, instantly clearing a wide open space. Adventurers and mercenaries rushed forward, using sharp blades and swords to split the insects open, releasing streams of corrosive green ichor.
But it was all futile. The insects descended like rain — an overwhelming swarm numbering in the tens of millions, perhaps even hundreds of millions — and they swallowed the few professional fighters in the blink of an eye.
The buzzing of countless wings and the horrifying sound of chewing merged into a惨烈 symphony of hell.
"It's the fire… the light of the flames attracted them…"
Dorlan's sharp attention allowed him to notice the difference: the swarm was visibly denser around the bonfire.
Realizing this, he shouted and instantly extinguished the torch in his hand, then bolted into the darkness…
……
"Lord Leilin, how are these lowest-tier 'Phototactic Bugs' performing?"
In the Primary Material Plane, amid a vast purple swamp, a hive as massive as a mountain range had been erected. The strange insects from earlier poured endlessly out of the holes dotting its surface.
One of Leilin's avatars stood alongside the Mother of the Earth's Core, watching as the insects surged toward every source of light, annihilating everything in their path.
"This is merely the lowest-level capability of the Queen Bug's Hive. Once it has collected enough flesh and souls, it will continue to evolve — producing King Bugs that rival Morning Star or even Dawn Sun Wizards. At the final stage, the Queen Bug herself may even possess the possibility of breaking through to the Realm of Rules…"
The Mother of the Earth's Core provided her explanation to Leilin with a note of pride in her voice.
"We have already deployed Queen Bug's Hives at forty nodes. Our ultimate goal is the total extermination of every mortal in the Primary Material World…"
The Mother of the Earth's Core spoke with perfect composure. In the eyes of such a being, the annihilation of billions of lives did not even warrant a furrowed of the brow.
"Of course… this would not have been possible without Lord Leilin's tremendous assistance!"
She was deeply appreciative of Leilin's decisive blow — striking at the root. Unfortunately, her own nature was incompatible with the Plains of Despair and Destruction, and she lacked Leilin's ability to traverse the Hazy Domain in an instant. She could only watch from the sidelines.
"With the destruction of the sun as our opening move, we Wizards have completed our preparations…"
The Mother of the Earth's Core's colossal form materialized, radiating a terrifying killing intent. "This final battle shall bring about the complete annihilation of the gods' radiance!"