No one can surprise the thoughts of a god

I saw my life passing by as if I was going to die.

I was dreaming of thousands of parallel universes where I was getting married to Emmy and thousands of more parallel universes where I was starting a business with Evan.

When the story began, I lost consciousness, woke up only a few hours later, to find some kind of huge statue, at least 20 meters high, in front of me.

It was a dull gray color, you almost couldn't see it.

It was standing, it had a spear in its hand, but it was stationary, I didn't know where it had come from.

Its face was very scary, it was the embodiment of every human being's nightmares.

I couldn't believe my eyes, I couldn't move.

I was paralyzed with fear.

Until the statue shook the spear, giving off a huge light, which brought me back to sleep.

But this time was different.

I fell into a realistic dream.

Unlike the others, this one lasted quite a while.

In my sleep, I had no sense of time, although I was in a real lucid dream.

I seemed to be a spectator though. I was not participating in the story.

I had seemed to have gone back in time. All the things around me were moving very fast, but in reverse, as if time was rewinding.

I was in the middle of darkness, in space.

I was floating in nothingness. Is this what it feels like to die?

Absolutely nothing was happening, until I heard this voice:

*mythology has been readjusted according to the story of the novel, not at all identical to the legends*.

"Previously there were only two gods, Izanagi and Izanami.

They were brother and sister.

They wielded the very strong spear, the Ame-no-nuhoko, the Jeweled Celestial Spear.

With it, they created Earth, humans, Hell and Heaven, and the various connections.

But above all, the various child gods, who protected the gates of Hell and Heaven, but also the various natural beauties of the earthly world.

Humans advanced with science, to such an extent that they forgot and neglected the gods who protected them.

Not even the greatest of the ancestors, Izanagi and Izanami, were revered anymore.

On top of all this was the fact that humans continued to destroy their living environment, the Earth.

Most of them were ending up in the Underworld.

The world was collapsing.

Humans and all animals would die with it.

Therefore, the gods gathered, and decided to act, according to the rules that would be instructed by Izanagi and Izanami.

All of the gods' children, both those created with Ame-no-nuhoko and those born out of nature and human emotions, gathered.

Yokai, Kitsune, and other beasts were not invited to the meeting, because they were not considered worthy." said a voice in the background. I didn't know who it was. It sounded like a classic narrator like in the books.

It was as if I was a participant in that meeting, but I could neither speak nor move.

It was the strangest feeling.

This meeting was attended by many of the Japanese deities mentioned by Acuro. Maybe the legends were true or maybe it was just a lucid dream like others.

The problem was that I couldn't wake up. No matter how I felt, it was impossible to escape from this lucid dream.

"I have gathered you here to talk about the future of mankind," said the main god. That must have been Izanagi, next to him was his sister, Izanami.

I looked at him closely and noticed the great resemblance to the statue I saw just before I fell into this dream.

Maybe it was him.

The statue.

It was Izanagi, the god of all gods. The one who, together with his sister, had created everything we know as the "Universe".

I refused to elaborate further and focused on their speech.

"Future of mankind? Wasn't it about the future of the Earth?" said one of the gods, this one was completely blue, from head to toe, AND he had shark gills. His voice was a little hoarse, it almost sounded like a raven's voice.

"The future of humanity is closely linked to that of the Earth. If we do not act, humans will soon reach the truth." the god Izanagi, whose existence I still found hard to believe, replied to him.

"What we have gathered you together for today is to make a decision about humans. According to the rules of the deities, stipulated by me and my sister, millions of millions of years ago, 'you must always decide with all the deities on what to do, leaving no one out.'" he continued.

"Get to the point, old man, we're not here to waste time!" replied a goddess, which must have been the sun goddess, Amaterasu.

"Calm down," replied Izanami, Izanagi's sister, who spoke for the first time.

"Humans have always been a mistake, we should never have created them, we didn't know it would end up like this, so we have to decide what to do with them." said Izanagi.

"......." no one answered.

Maybe all those gods were attached to us humans and hearing that criticism had left them speechless. The same was true for Izanami, who, despite being the creator goddess, seemed to care about humans.

"I get it, maybe I need to cut to the chase... Well, there are two possibilities, two chances," Izanagi continued.

"The first one is to destroy humans and every beast, however, to do that we will need enormous power. Destroying is not as simple as creating."

"Noo! We don't agree!!!" some deities replied.

There was a big commotion, you could not understand who was speaking.

Others, however, were on the yes side.

"Yes! It's the right thing to do! They're just ruining the only livable planet!"

Izanagi slammed his spear into the ground, making a great noise that echoed throughout the room.

The gods immediately fell silent.

"The second chance... is to continue like this, to let the world be destroyed and ruined by humans and let science come to the truth, and then let humans ascend and become semi-divine. The only human so far who ever succeeded in that is Buddha."

"..."

It was true. At the table also resided with him, the man of legends. The man of religion.

Buddha.

I recognized him immediately because he was very similar to the form he had in the statues and books, only he was less fleshy, even though he was eating, right then.

There were several disputes. The gods present talked among themselves to see which was the best choice for the future of humanity.

Voting took place. Even in the world of the gods, democracy reigned.

"Well, then it will be decided," said Izanagi.

Decided what?

They must have used some strange technique to communicate the answers to each other.

"The votes are even, and as the rules say... 'In the event of an even vote on the Divine Verdict,' everything will be destroyed." said Izanagi.

"Everything? Wait, you don't mean that right? You fucking old man!!!" shouted some kind of deity, with a snake face and scales.

"Nooo!!! No way!!!"

All the gods began to ruffle.

I didn't understand what was going on.

After all that commotion, the lesser gods headed towards Izanagi, as if to kill him.

Perhaps they were very angry about that law, which I was not aware of.

One of the gods, he was all on fire and his hair was in the air, jumped on the sacred table, destroying it and dropping all the objects on it.

Also on it was the big divine book that Izanagi was reading.

From the position I was in (I couldn't move) I could make out a few words and read what was written in it:

"The Divine Verdict is the destruction of all children deities, destroying every futile and inferior creation, such as humans and animals. The gods are used as carnage. It is applied only in case of extreme parity in the vote of the Divine Gathering against the creations."

I was beginning to understand.

The gods would have been destroyed to eliminate living things on the Earth.

Perhaps what I was experiencing was a flashback. It was real...

The meeting I was observing was the "Divine Gathering against the creations..."

Before I could continue reading, I quickly turned around. Something was about to happen.

Izanagi had brandished his sword, the famous Ame-no-Ohabari* of legends.

*Tail Feathers of Heaven.*

Acuro had told me about it. Only that sword could match the Raijin in terms of sharpness.

He slowly drew his sword, then placed it in front of his opponents and his descendants, the lesser gods.

He eliminated the fiery god first, cut him in two, his soul vanished.

It had not vanished, actually.

His soul had been sucked in and then sealed on the blade of the Ame-no-Ohabari.

In fact, there was a strange black symbol on the blade, like some sort of seal. It was shaped like an arched triangle, but with flames around it.

All the other gods tried to get out of the fortress where we were, but there was no escape. It was also stronger than all those gods.

Izanagi without thinking twice eliminated all the gods, including Buddha and other semi-gods.

Many of them were sealed, others were not.

More than them, their essences, their powers, were sealed too.

In fact, eight essences could be seen at the end of the massacre.

The sword contained eight essences, they could be counted.

In random order, they were:

The first, that of fire.

The second, electricity and lightning.

The third, that of water.

The fourth, that of radiation.

Fifth, that of infinity.

The sixth, that of vital energy.

The seventh, that of the wind.

The eighth and last, that of emptiness.

Everything coincided, they were the essences of the eight stones, which, before passing out, I had collected and absorbed all in the stone of the void.

So there were 7 essences, gathered in one, the most powerful one.

That of the void.

So what Acuro said was not false, these kamien were truly something divine.

After seeing the gods being eliminated and sealed, I was teleported spatiotemporally to another place and time.

I only began to understand where I was after I saw what Izanagi was holding.

A huge piece of rock, but a particular rock, it seemed to be divine as well.

I didn't stop twice to think and realize that this was the meteorite.

The famous meteorite that had brought the apocalypse.

It was huge, and Izanagi wielded it with one finger.

Izanami didn't seem to want to help him, she was most likely weaker than his brother.

In fact, there were tears in her eyes, she was crying.

Izanami did not want this to happen.

But she didn't want to tell her brother she wanted to hide it.

She didn't want the destruction of humans and animals, she had probably grown attached to them.

Izanagi drew his divine sword, then stabbed it into the meteorite.

All the collected essences were scattered around the meteorite. They were tiny, covering only small pieces of the meteorite's rock.

They were the kamien.

"Now go, Hiderigami!" shouted Izanagi, just before throwing the meteorite into the void.

I say "into the void" because I didn't understand where we were.

That place was probably light-years from Earth, but for a deity like Izanagi, it wouldn't be too difficult to destroy it, even from that far away.

"This world shall know Pain!" shouted Izanagi.

"..."

There was a large explosion, even from such a distance it could be heard.

"It's done, Izanami. Let's go." said Izanagi... but Izanami wasn't there.

She was no longer there.

She had disappeared just before the meteorite launch.

I was transported spatiotemporally again.

Exactly ten seconds before the meteorite conflicted with the Earth, I was close to the Moon.

The meteorite was about to enter orbit when...Izanami arrived.

The goddess prostrated herself and positioned herself in front of the Earth as if to protect it.

Maybe she really cared about living beings. She did not want their disappearance and destruction.

But she was not fast enough, although she was gigantic, as big as the Earth.

She was enlarged to protect it better, but as I said, she was not fast enough.

She managed to place its entire right hand on central Europe, while only its thumb on North America, or rather... Northeast Canada.

A very small part of it, to be honest.

We hadn't made a mistake.

Evan, Emmy, and I were right about where Clark and Reid were coming from.

They were coming from there.

The locations coincided with the places protected by Izanami.

The meteorite, however, contained the strength and the essences of all the gods, so it ended up eliminating and killing Izanami for good.

But her efforts were not in vain.

The two places were protected by the explosion as if a dome had formed around them.

Immediately all energies were sucked out by the meteorite, which had interacted with the essences of the kamien, the minor gods.

After watching this inferno, I was teleported spatiotemporally once again.

I had not been teleported yet.

I had awakened from the dream, or rather...

"The illusion. Did you like it... Tenkei Nowak?" said the statue I had seen just before entering the illusion-flashback.

It was Izanagi, there was no doubt about it.

Although the statue-god was huge, it was much smaller than the size it could reach, which was the size of a planet.

I didn't answer, I didn't have time to answer, or maybe I didn't have the courage...

Continued...