Chapter 227: The First Eight
“…The First Eight…” Xi Wei muttered quietly in his divine kingdom.
Being a newcomer, the G.o.d of Games naturally didn’t have such knowledge. Still, having the keyword and searching through the memories from the Aquatic Lord’s divinity gathered him some information.
After the Trinity had created the world, they had also made many species that lived in the Prime Material Plane that flourished over generations and brought about numerous wondrous cultures.
Those races grew from strength to strength under the protection of the G.o.ds. Just like the Ediacaran biota before the Cambrian Explosion, they were at once progressive and unique.
That was the prehistoric age of this world.
And as mentioned before, three divine wars were waged in this world.
There were no records of the first one in the memories of the Aquatic Lord’s divinity, probably because he had yet to be born.
However, it could be ascertained that it wasn’t waged in the Prime Material Plane, and that it didn’t affect the mortal realm by much.
The reality was Xi Wei had no idea what the G.o.ds could have been fighting aside from each other in the first war… but the Second Divine War was completely different because it had everything to do with the Prime Material Plane, which in turn led to widespread extinction.
The G.o.ds had been grievously injured in the first war and did not mind the progress of mortal creatures for a long time. Ironically, it was exactly in that G.o.dless era that the mortal races had developed beyond the G.o.ds’ interference.
While the specific timing wasn’t certain, one thing could be sure: the races had developed to stunning heights, forming a dazzling civilization that wouldn’t lose out to Earth.
And that was the First Age recorded by the races.
In turn, the flourishing races and the booming population led to the rise of many deities who fed on belief in the divine realm.
Their presence gradually ate away and even plundered the authorities of the first G.o.ds, and when the conflict piled past the reservation, the first G.o.ds waged a war against the G.o.ds who fed on belief, igniting the Second Divine War.
It appeared that the first G.o.d of Games, who in turn was a first G.o.d and the predecessor of Xi Wei’s predecessor was slain in that war and had his divinity stolen.
Furthermore, unlike the First War, the fires of the Second War had not only caught the Prime Material Plane but also many other planes, all of them sacrifices in a divine conflict for power and influence.
The great conflict that raged on for over three hundred years devastated all ecosystems in the Prime Material Plane, with all living beings getting wiped out in unending natural calamities over three hundred years. The dazzling radiance of the First Age hence died.
In the end, neither the G.o.ds of belief nor the first G.o.ds claimed victory (although Xi Wei believed that if the war lasted a little longer, the G.o.ds of belief would soon be destroyed in the absence of believers). Unable to stand idly by, the Trinity of Creation moved in to stop the divine conflict, and reshaped the world.
Almost everything directly developed out of nothingness. After the G.o.ds had been given a thrashing by the Trinity and understood the anguish they brought about to the world, they temporarily shelved their differences and dutifully carried out their divine order and authority, carefully watching over the new sentient races born after the Second War.
It was also when the ancestors of humans mysteriously appeared upon the world. Seizing the precious time to develop in a rare moment of concern and tenderness from the G.o.ds, they rapidly spread their shadows to virtually every corner of the Prime Material Plane!
And that was the Second Age.
Still, the sentient race that outperformed everyone else was actually the gnomes. They enslaved most of the other races (including humans), going the distance with technological progress and eventually invented a warship that could invade into the divine realm and fight the G.o.ds directly.
Hence, after the G.o.ds slapped them into the dirt and adjusted them, reducing them to small fry devoid of their original wisdom, the G.o.ds also ceased their care and concern for the mortal creatures.
Their att.i.tude in various aspects began to shift towards the present age.
It was probably because the gnomes had incurred the wrath of the G.o.ds that most of them actually saved mortal sentient races in the Third Divine war but didn’t actually allow their civilization to survive. They watched as the developed multicultural societies of the Second Age died, taking every race back to the stone age where they would develop themselves all over again.
What was more, the G.o.ds would often pull little tricks in the midst of progress to stall any development. In fact, the humans’ present progress had nothing to do with the divine teachings that the innumerable churches preached at all, but was completely built upon the graves (ruins) of the First and Second Age!
One should also mention here that the Trinity of Creation had disappeared after the end of the Second Divine War. If the iron rule that prevented the G.o.ds from entering the Prime Material Plane was almost violated when the Third Divine War almost extended into the mortal realm, newcomer G.o.ds like Xi Wei would have a.s.sumed that they had fallen after the Second Divine War.
In turn, the First Eight that the Elven Queen mentioned were the various races molded by the Trinity and escaped the widespread extinction of the Second Divine War, surviving until the present day.
Those eight races were dragons (dragons that fought in the divine wars are all destroyed, while those who survived are their descendants that hibernated in the wars), nephilim (descendants of angels said to be molded by the Trinity from leftover materials), gyans (precursors of the giants that bears resemblance to humans but with zero relations to the Barren Giant), devils (the sole survivors of h.e.l.l), nightstalkers (dark creatures and ancestors of vampires), high elves (the ancestors of all elves), orks (ancestors of modern orcs) and the mountain dwarves (the only race that did not see much change, the gray dwarves being a branch of their kind).
If the zombification this time was truly occurring to the First Eight, then aside from the zombie dragon, zombie devil, and zombie orks, there would also be zombie nephilim, zombie gyans, zombie vampires (?), zombie elves, and zombie dwarves.
Xi Wei felt the ball that was his body aching at that very thought.
“Ouch… isn’t this a little bad?”