The Holy Grail War Blessed by the Gods

Manshu found a relatively clean house that wasn't too badly damaged and spent the night there.

Manju himself would not accidentally slip and fall into the city's underground, into the underworld.

When Ereshkigal is not in the underworld, he is not so worthy of fear.

The night was quite peaceful, without any disturbances or visitors.

After all, the city of Kusa, which is located above the underworld, is generally quite dangerous at night. It's possible that the souls of the dead might crawl out at night, and the number of them that do manage to do so is certainly not small, given that the underworld is right below.

Manshu had no desire to do anything more, so he set off in the morning, leaving the quiet city of Kusa and heading towards Mount Ebif.

It doesn't even take half a day to get from here to Mount Ebif. You can see a cluster of mountains not far ahead, but among those peaks, you can see the most precipitous one, which has an extremely strong divine aura and magic.

This leads us to conclude that the location must be Mount Ebifu, where the goddess Ishtar resides.

It seems that Ishtar hasn't gone out to mooch off anyone today, wandering around elsewhere, frolicking on the pastures near Uruk.

Manju sensed an extremely strong divine aura, which meant that the goddess was indeed still on the mountain, a point that was quite easy to determine.

Mount Ebif was the foremost sacred mountain in Sumer, conquered by Ishtar, a mountain even the highest Sumerian god, An, feared.

Anne's daughter Ishtar was very attached to the mountain. Anne told Ishtar, "Mount Ebif is incredibly bountiful, as are its blessings and its depth. To rebel against Mount Ebif is the act of a fool."

However, this advice only fueled Ishtar's anger. She took all the weapons she could carry and, with a raging storm in her wake, headed toward Mount Aibif.

Of course, Mount Ebif would not remain silent; all sorts of wild beasts, storms, rivers, and cold air from the mountain assaulted Ishtar.

Whenever attacked, Ishtar would complain, “Snake venom, a rain of falling rocks, scorching lava! Unbelievable, I am being treated like this!”

She was clearly the one who barged in and yet she complained; it was like a thief crying "stop thief!" But these disasters only fueled Ishtar's fighting spirit. She overcame all obstacles and was determined to reach the summit.

Finally reaching the summit of Ishtar, they seized Mount Ebiv by the neck and plunged the blade deep into its body.

As a result, Mount Ebif collapsed due to the pressure, and Ishtar thus proved to the world her identity as the goddess of war.

Ishtar built his temple here and lived here regularly.

This rather precipitous mountain peak, once climbed, is not as difficult as it appears.

Manjusuke experienced the feeling of climbing a mountain, but quickly found it boring. He then used his magic to quickly climb the mountain and arrived at the temple of Ishtar.

Although climbing mountains is not a boring activity, it can still be enjoyable, especially when you reach the summit.

However, the thrill of reaching the summit of this mountain is probably not very strong, or even at all.

With this in mind, Manshu quickly used his magic to climb to the top of the mountain. The view from the top came into Manshu's eyes. It was a temple that left people speechless and only able to shake their heads in admiration.

To various degrees, Ishtar's aesthetic sense here is somewhat problematic, at least in retrospect.

Actually, the temple itself is quite magnificent and looks very majestic, as long as you can ignore the golden lucky cats on both sides of the steps.

Those two lucky cat statues completely ruined the overall aesthetic of the temple.

"What a tasteless goddess. Although her power as the goddess of beauty has declined, it shouldn't have fallen to such a low level."

Manju couldn't help but comment on the temple, shaking his head and criticizing it as he prepared to step onto the stairs to enter the temple.

"To criticize someone else's temple in front of its gates is utterly shameless. Should we call you incredibly audacious, or simply courting death?"

There was nothing superfluous on the summit of Mount Ebif. It seemed that Manju had fallen into the ears of the master of this place. The shining goddess of Venus appeared above the temple, shooting out the light of Venus from her fingertips.

"Unfortunately, neither is true."

Manju shook his head and unleashed lightning from his hand, knocking down the magic bullet that Ishtar had fired.

"Haddad's lightning, is this what gives you the audacity to be disrespectful before my temple? You've got some nerve. Fine, I'll play with you a bit."

Ishtar said with a gloomy expression, as magic continued to gather in her hands, and the brilliance of Venus was shot out one after another, bombarding the area in front of the goddess's temple.

"Very well, I commend you for getting straight to the point. Show me your power, Ishtar!"

Manju acted as if he were the host, while Ishtar was the guest visiting the temple.

"Don't look down on me, I'll crush you!"

Ishtar grabbed several gems and infused them with divine power and magic before launching them.

However, this was just a prelude, something meant to be a test, but the enraged goddess skipped this stage and took up her bow as Archer—the Sky Boat Maana.

Maanna, now a bow, was nocked an arrow of light. Magic coalesced into several arrows the length of a person, which were then fired simultaneously, blasting towards Manju.

The Goddess of Heaven began to unleash her full power, the barrage of magic engulfing everything in front of the temple. Qiu

Chapter 138 Enlightenment

Although Ishtar acts like a comedian, her essence as a goddess remains unchanged; she is still a brutal goddess of war.

Fueled by ignited fury, she would naturally unleash a demonic cruelty, sending battle and destruction from the heavens to earth.

On the sacred mountain of Aibif, Ishtar's destructive power struck once more. (Part Three)

Although not like Ishtar in the past, who climbed to the summit of Mount Ebif and killed the mountain by thrusting his spear into the heart of the earth's veins.

As an Archer, Ishtar can now wield a spear, but as an Archer, she naturally adheres to her class. Using the enormous bow beside her, taller than herself, she unleashes a torrent of dazzling magical light.

The mountain was once again subjected to destructive ravages, but this time Mount Ebif was powerless to resist; only the rocks at its summit were continuously eroded from the land in front of the temple, creating craters. ④

"Simply bombarding me won't do, Ishtar. If this is all the power you have as a goddess, then it's utterly pathetic."

In Manjusaki's hands, lightning transformed into a torrential downpour of spear-shaped bolts, which surprisingly suppressed the light arrows fired by Ishtar.

More intense lightning and magical power, under the influence of the gods, converged in Manjushri's hands, reshaping the twin hammers in the hands of the Canaanite god-king. 4

"Before arriving at Mount Ebif, I first visited the Blood Temple of the Beast Goddess, and then toured Elidu, the original city of this land."

I came here after visiting the other two goddesses who appeared on this land. Compared to those two goddesses, you, as the Goddess of War and the Goddess of Venus, are rather disappointing.

Manjusaki was still not satisfied with Ishtar, because this guy was definitely not the type to go all out from the start and completely crush or destroy Manjusaki.

The goddess Gorgon harbors endless hatred for humanity, and any human who appears before her will be torn to shreds without mercy.

Gorgon can shred people into minced meat with her serpentine body, or turn them into stone statues with her petrifying eyes.

Quetzal Coyatt, on the other hand, throws herself into her battle of equals, using her power without restraint and without worrying about who she might kill.

Quetzalcoatl, as the pinnacle of good gods, wields the power of wind and water. She can kill people, but those killed by her own will do not die; she will make those deaths cease to exist.

But Ishtar was different. She did not harbor deep hatred for humans. As the native god of this land, she naturally regarded Uruk and its inhabitants as her property.

If it were the real Ishtar, she might indeed show her violence and cruelty to the challenger without any mercy, but the Ishtar in front of us is not the real Ishtar, but a pseudo-Servant.

Unlike Quetzalcoatl and Gorgon's summons, Ishtar appeared at the summons of the natives.

When the goddess of monsters, Gorgon, had already appeared on this land, and monster hordes appeared in the north of Mesopotamia.

While Gilgamesh was away in Uruk building a fortress in the north to resist the monsters, the priestesses of Uruk secretly performed some kind of ritual behind the king's back.

After all, in such an ancient society, divine authority and royal authority could never coexist peacefully, and power struggles always occurred between the two.

Early Sumerian society was undoubtedly a theocratic society, as can be seen from the construction of Sumerian cities, which initially expanded outward from the temple.

The concept of a king did not appear in Sumer until the Early Dynastic Period, which can be seen from the layout of cities, as the king's palace was not located in the center of the city, but on the edge of the city.

Clearly, the king's rule was incorporated into the urban system during the city's development, and the Sumerian kings evolved from military leaders.

Prior to the Early Dynastic Period, there is no evidence of large-scale wars between Sumerian city-states.

The foundation of Sumerian city-states was irrigation units; agricultural production was impossible outside of the irrigation system, meaning that the land between city-states was wasteland.

That is, before the early royal period, when the population of each city was still quite sparse, the land within the city was sufficient for use, and there was no capacity to cultivate the wasteland outside.

However, as the population grew, the city-state began to organize and expand its irrigation system, gradually developing towards the edge of the city-state and turning wasteland into arable land.

As cities expand, territorial disputes between different cities naturally arise, and the scale of these disputes and conflicts inevitably escalates.

The ancient city-states fought for a considerable period of time. The inscription on the Vulture Stele in Rajash records the war between Rajash and Umma, which lasted for a century as Rajash and its neighbor Umma fought for a piece of land.

In order to cope with the growing scale of conflict in such a society, a military leader to deal with war was born.

Of course, there should be another factor, namely another group of people who also lived in Mesopotamia, the Semites.

Unlike Sumerian cities, which were centered around temples, Semitic cities in the Levant were centered around palaces.

This also suggests that the Semites themselves may have had the concept of a king, and the northern cities of Sumer had close ties with the Semites, with many Semites living in the cities. These people are what we commonly refer to as the Akkadians.

Given the existing exchanges, it's quite normal for some Semitic concepts and cultures to have spread to the Sumerian region.

When another ruler emerges, it will inevitably affect the existing rule, and the struggle between divine right and royal power will inevitably arise.

Of course, a king who is a military leader has an advantage in the struggle. Unlike a king who relies on accumulating resources and establishing a temple in the name of God to establish his rule, a king with power can more directly obtain the power of the entire country.

However, divine right cannot be erased. Despite losing in the struggle, divine right still occupies a certain political position and retains a certain ideological advantage. When royal power declines, divine right can also make a comeback.

This is quite common in neighboring Egypt, where the struggle between royal and divine power is constant.

The priestesses, who represent divine authority, naturally value the gods who bring them status the most, since this is a world with gods, and divine authority truly relies on real, existing gods.

The priestesses discovered that this era was about to become a singularity, and sensing the instability of spacetime, they regarded this as a golden opportunity.

They secretly held a ritual in which the priestess summoned a soul that matched the divinity of the goddess Ishtar, and then used this soul to summon the goddess Ishtar.

This ritual is similar to the summoning ritual of pseudo-Servants performed by Chaldea, and the Priestess did succeed, but at the cost of having all her magical power drained and dying on the spot.

The spirit of the girl and the goddess Ishtar were completely merged together, becoming a completely new, yet still able to serve as a pseudo-servant created by the original goddess.

As a result, the goddess Ishtar gained more humanity and appeared to be closer to a human than a god.

Even with a more tolerant personality, Ishtar could not possibly tolerate the constant taunts from some unknown person, especially since such sarcasm reminded her of her less-than-pleasant past.

As for Ishtar, the goddess of beauty, she pursued Gilgamesh passionately but was rejected, and was even accused of promiscuous behavior of abandoning her lovers throughout the ages.

Enraged, Ishtar begged her father, Anu, to send down the Bull of Heaven to punish Gilgamesh. However, both the Bull of Heaven and Ishtar were defeated by Gilgamesh and Anu together. The Bull was killed, and Ishtar was humiliated once again.

This is an unforgettable, shameful past, and now, the shameful scene is repeated before her eyes, only making the goddess even angrier.

"Even if Haddad himself came, he wouldn't dare to offend me like this. You want to see my true strength? What am I going to do? I really can't find any reason to forgive you, so I'll just crush you!"

Ishtar threw dozens of gems directly from her hands. The large number of gems, infused with divine energy and magic, transformed into deadly attacks, with each gem flying out tracking Manjustra like a missile.

Ishtar pulled on the sky boat Ma'anna with all her might, and three terrifying magical arrows, powerful enough to shatter mountains, appeared on Ma'anna and were shot out.

But these attacks were merely a prelude, something casually scattered to stop Manjusque's actions in place.

The true power had already gathered in the heavens. Ishtar placed her left hand on Maana and followed her celestial vessel into the sky.

"Ma'anna! Open the door!"

Ishtar, using her spaceship Maana, opened an interstellar transfer portal connecting Earth and Venus with the effects of her main weaponry.