I am Thalos, Odin's older brother
Chapter 275: [The Inner Sparrow]
Destroying a world carries immense karmic consequences.
Though one could dress up every god-tier war under the veneer of the Dark Forest theory, the truth is that the aftermath is always messy.
Leaving the Slavic pantheon to handle the cunningly treacherous Mayan pantheon was Thalos's contingency plan.
And once the Mayan world was drained of its atmosphere (wind element), it was the Aztec world's turn.
Cruelty, yes—it was certainly cruel. But not nearly as cruel as what the three Mesoamerican worlds had once inflicted upon the Slavic realm and several African worlds.
At the very least, Thalos had relocated most of the mortals and capturable animals from those three worlds to the Ginnungagap's newly-formed South American Continent at the world's lower layers. He hadn't truly wiped them all out.
One carrot, one hole—pull out the old carrot so the new one can take root.
After Perun and the Slavic gods annihilated the fauna of two worlds, things seemed to settle... but what was bound to come still came.
One silent night, moonlight spilled over the new South American continent.
Here, the divine servitors of the Slavic pantheon were busy disciplining the former "slave masters."
Having gone from slaves to slave masters, the Slavic servitors and mortals were now exacting a harsh vengeance—merciless, though not lethal.
The Aztecs had once lived on corn. The famous tortilla was their favorite.
Now, ten million enslaved people from the three destroyed worlds had been relocated so quickly that food supplies hadn't kept pace.
Fortunately, after Ragnarok, every mortal kingdom in the Ginnungagap world had developed a habit of stockpiling grain.
Large stores of aging food were distributed—black rye that hadn't even been baked into bread, just ground into slop and dumped into bowls. Even the "bread" given out was often mixed with roots, sawdust, and other foul ingredients. If it didn't kill you immediately, you were being treated well.
Still, with a hard limit of no more than 20% loss tolerated, Perun didn't dare to let his men push the slaves to death.
But even without fatal abuse, life was bleak.
Thankfully, the new South American continent—like the older mini-worlds of Sumer, Midgard, and others—didn't have extreme climates.
Most of the year, the weather was temperate, which made housing simpler.
This was a slave camp. On the roof of a straw hut, two eerie lights flickered in the moonlight.
The high-intensity labor during the day had sent the slaves into deep sleep early. Only the whisper of a breeze disturbed the calm.
Suddenly, a small creature appeared beneath the eaves. It looked like an ordinary sparrow—but carried with it a sinister, unknown power. Its beady black eyes shimmered with eerie light.
This creature, sparrow in name but demon in truth, stared down at the dozens of mortals sleeping side by side on the communal mat. Its gaze resembled that of a pork vendor inspecting live pigs at the market—full of picky calculation.
To anyone watching, this would have been pure cruelty, laced with devious malice.
The demon fluttered upward, its body glowing with a hypnotic shimmer.
Gracefully, it slipped through the hut's thatched window and entered the room where the slaves slept.
In the quiet of the night, this demonic sparrow began a horrific, secretive reproduction.
Its wings fluttered silently, melding into the darkness, transforming into a ghostly wind. Like a surgical airstrike, it passed over the sleeping forms, laying countless tiny eggs as it went.
These eggs were minuscule—dust-like in scale.
Yet they seeped in through the pores of the slaves, burrowing into their flesh and blood.
One victim twitched slightly. He scratched an itch. To him, it felt no worse than a mosquito bite.
The next day, the man rose, worked, ate his subhuman rations, and slept again as usual.
The same went for the second day.
Then, on the third day—without warning—he collapsed in agony, clutching his stomach in searing pain.
"Report! Anochi's sick!"
His companions looked on coldly and reported him to the overseers.
No medicine. No mercy. He was tossed into a relatively isolated sick house in the slave camp—a building over a hundred square meters, already full of similar cases.
If you could survive, you might live. If not, you died.
No one knew what was actually happening inside him.
Inside his veins and organs, eggs the size of quail eggs had begun to form. Then, one after another, sparrow-sized demons burst from within, tearing him apart with razor-sharp beaks and claws.
His screams echoed throughout the sick house. No one came to help.
It was a place meant for the dying. Even if someone survived, they'd just be thrown back into labor.
The victim writhed nonstop. The torment was like being flayed alive, and death soon followed.
He would never awaken again. But the nightmare wasn't over.
As the other sick slaves cried out in terror, bloody sparrow-demons erupted from the man's chest and abdomen, leaping onto the next victims.
By sunrise, the guards smelled blood and came cursing to inspect the scene—only to find that the demons' offspring had already completed a new cycle of egg-laying.
The newborn Blood Sparrows screeched with hunger, craving fresh meat.
They flew out through the windows, ready to hunt again.
Human organs became their feast, slaking their unending thirst for flesh and blood.
And so the blood-colored sparrows vanished into the sky, leaving only carnage and malice in their wake.
The damage they caused was immense.
Several Slavic priests were killed.
And these blood sparrows were just one type of monster. Across the new South American continent, a host of bizarre demons began to appear. Even Midgard and the Celtic Isles felt their influence.
Reports climbed the chain of command, eventually landing on Perun's desk.
Crushed by pressure, Perun dared not conceal the truth. Steeling himself, he reported directly to Thalos.
In truth, Thalos had already known about it via Heimdall. He was merely waiting to see when Perun would confess.
And now, he saw that the timing was... acceptable.
"Reporting to Your Majesty—this servant failed in his duties. Unnamed monsters have slipped into the Ginnungagap world," Perun bowed low, trembling. He was truly terrified.
After all, as an outsider who had managed a comeback under Thalos's rule, he considered his fortune miraculous. And now, to have let strange creatures wreak havoc on Ginnungagap's lands—he couldn't afford to shoulder this disgrace.
Thalos didn't respond immediately. Instead, he stood, descended the steps, and with great interest, gazed at the bizarre creatures currently bound by divine restraints.
They were clearly not Western-style monsters.
Then, as his gaze fell upon the sparrow-like one, Thalos finally spoke a name:
"The Inner Sparrow!"
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