Just the History of Everything

They were quickly seated up high in a VIP seating area, which they had all to themselves, and they looked around.

It was quite a large theater with classic velvet seats, a huge stage that could depict a rather large battle scene if need be, magical crystal lightings high up above that would most likely act as spotlights and a few hundred seats in neat rows and on balconies.

Maya took out a fancy light powder blue fan with fluffy white rims and intricate patterns from a crack in space and elegantly waved it near her face, covering her lips which obviously had a big smile on it. No one was around to see her high-class display and it wasn't hot enough to need to fan yourself.

"Having fun I see?"

"Fun..." She folded the fan dramatically and peered over at him, "...with class~"

"..."

"Oh, don't look at me like that. It's very ungentlemanly to give strange looks to a refined lady such as myself~"

He suddenly became suspicious that all this money was getting to her head a little too much. But she was having fun and that's all that matters.

"So what's this play about?"

"Hmm, it was on a human demigod named Aphaeleon, who was especially legendary and heroic among the other demigods. It was during the Reawakening Era I believe, and some new evidence of one of his many great feats has been unearthed recently."

"The Aphaeleon?! Wow, that's quite amazing."

"Do they teach you about demigods of other races back in Gruta lake?"

Maya reopened her fan as she remembered everything she knew about the particularly chaotic time period, "Of course because they are the foundation of our entire history after all. Without the demigods of the Reawakening Era, none of us would be here today and this place would remain a living hell for the demons to fester."

"Hmm, would you mind explaining the timeline to me?"

He was aware of the most recent history of the Eternity war, but he didn't go beyond that, or at least he told Leo not to bother to.

He was quite curious about the game's lore because it was supposedly more deep, profound, and complex than Earth's history. It was surprising that Monolith only used the powerful Ultra AI to help with world generation considering the magnitude and detail of everything.

"Well, it's a long story so I'll try to simplify it as much as possible..."

They still had time until the play started so she started with the basics.

According to Maya, there are a total of four major periods since the beginning of time, with countless little ones in each one.

The first time period, The Enigmatic Primordial Age, was basically where time began and everything was slowly created by the first primordial consciousness, the Primordial Trinity.

There were not many primordials known by the general populace currently, and not much was known about the ones they did know of. They were basically the gods of gods, with literal infinite power and authority. Regular or even peak gods and divine entities didn't even come close to their level.

The Primordial Trinity was technically three primordials who made up the one all-powerful being or consciousness. This unfathomable existence was similar to the god of Christian belief back on Earth, but with many differences that would say otherwise.

Other than human supremacy, this was the god the Archaic Church believes in and worshiped the most. Even their symbol was based on the Primordial Trinity, which Kyren never paid attention to before.

Although not much was known about this age, it would take too long to explain everything she did know.

The Enigmatic Primordial Age ended when the first signs of life appeared and therefore started The Blinding Abyss Age. It was officially called this, but it was also referred to as the Ancient Age or the Archaic Age by some.

The official name for this period was perfect because it was both the brightest and darkest period in existence, and there will never be anything like it again. It was a horrific learning experience for even the Primordials themselves, who were also shaken to their very core along with everyone else after the events that occurred back then.

This was where the first sentient(1) and sapient(2) life began, such as the humans, then followed by others.

Humans were the founding sapient species that branched off into others, so for a time, only humans existed. Because of this, the Archaic Church believed humans were the superior race since they were the first to appear and had a longer lineage. They were basically god's (the Trinity's) first creations, so of course, they would feel a sense of superiority.

After a brief but unbelievably prosperous golden age, something really, really bad happened that slowly but painfully wiped everything out. The world was a complete mess and practically all life was wiped out.

From the ashes of the crushed civilizations rose the gods that are still around today.

These new gods somehow all reached the Celestial Realm and replaced the original gods that the Trinity created, the Primordial Titans, which eerily sounded familiar to the Titans of Greek Mythology, but that was another long story.

The newborn gods all had dreadful mental and physical scars from that era and whenever their followers asked them about it, they would always show extreme reactions, with some committing acts of Divine Wrath because mortals merely mentioned it.

The event that extinguished all life back then also left the fabrics of reality itself in shambles too, forcing the gods and primordials alike to slowly work on restoring and rebuilding everything.

This reality-ending event occurred four to five billion years ago and it began the Forbidden Devastation Age.

This period of time was called this way because the Primordial Trinity literally forbid something like that from ever happening again, who was also slightly shaken by the experience. This motivated the Trinity to create the Divine Laws, therefore restricting the movement of all beings, showing no leniency to the heavenly beings.

During this age, the demonic entities, who were safe the whole time down in the underworld, had something close to a total take over as they danced on the ashes of the overworld.

Technically, the Eternity War was also going on back then in the Blinding Abyss Age against the sapient life of the time. Since the creation and founding of the demonic race, and until even now, the Eternity War with the Demons has been continuously going on.

Those with some intelligence and knowledge of history would know that the Void Armageddon never ended the war, only postponing it at most.

It was called the eternal war because it would never end.

When pairing the arrival of the demons with the fact that the fabrics of reality were in tatters after being thoroughly mutilated by god knows what, the overworld became a second hell. It was supposedly even worse than the actual underworld itself.

After several eons of toiling and arduous effort, reality became stable yet again and that awful age ended, starting the next and current era, The Promised Fantasy Age.

It was a known fact that the Trinity was a benevolent and caring existence, even if the church secretly abused its power, so it truly felt guilty for what happened during the Blinding Abyss Age. As humanity and the other races of that age took their final breaths, it vowed for the first time in its existence to bring everything back.

This era that they were currently in was the perfect fantasy that the Trinity promised to bring back.

As soon as the Forbidden Devastation Age ended, the gods sent down their offspring and servants, the natural-born demigods, to do some cleanup. These great beings reignited life, nurtured them, and defended them against the opportunistic demons who sought to take control early on in their infancy.

The demigods fought back against the demons and killed or banished a majority of the more powerful ones back to hell.

An unimaginably vast myriad of races and species was reintroduced to the world while many more were invented.

This initial period of revival in the Promised Fantasy Age was commonly known as the Reawakening Era...

He needed a moment to let that all sink in. Monolith seriously packed in a lot of effort into this world, that's for sure.

"Many demigods appeared in the Reawakening Era, but Aphaeleon was one of the more notable ones. Although this was his real name, everyone generally called him by his heroic name or title, Hercules."

"Eh, they called him that because he had great strength?"

"Huh? No, they called him that because he was the bearer of Hercules."

Kyren drew a blank as he tried to decipher the meaning behind her words. This Aphaeleon character was the same Hercules of Greek mythology from Earth? Is that what she's saying?

<Allow me to explain. Aphaeleon, or Hercules, isn't the only mythological being derived from Earth in this game. Many of your world's history, stories, fables, and myths were used as a reference for the Ultra AI and Monolith when they were creating the game. So, many events that did or will occur in-game might be familiar. This information was readily given to me from the system so I know a bit about this without any research.

I would also like to point out that the name, Hercules, is most likely the name of the item or equipment set that Aphaeleon most commonly used or was known for. Any references to mythical or historical entities the system makes will typically always come in the form of an item unless there are special conditions met. For example, if the system decided to add in a reference to the Egyptian God, Anubis, it would most likely be in the form of an item or weapon with a small chance of it becoming an actual character.>

'Oh... So you're saying this guy used an item related to our Hercules in some way and was therefore referred to as the item's name?'

<Yes, but this doesn't usually happen, so you won't be finding stuff like this very often. You can think of it as a stage name. Another example would be the little girl's dagger from earlier. It's called, The Quartz Antler, Clareste, so if she get's super famous in the future and this dagger is a signature item of hers, she might get nicknamed Clareste.>

'So it's a 'thing' in this world to have nicknames after named items?'

<You could say that. But titles or nicknames can also be determined by actions.>

'So the play we're about to see will be related to the actual story of Hercules?'

<It should have some defining similarities, so yes.>

While he was chatting with Leo, Maya also got lost in thought.

"Did you know I liked history?" She gazed at the grand stage down below as she delved deep into her memories.

"No, I didn't. I guess this place was a 'lucky' choice then."

"Ha. ha. ha. I was never very good at the subject during school, but I admired the stories a lot." After blandly laughing at his horrible joke, she got a little sentimental while she looked off into space, "My mom used to tell me all sorts of thrilling stories when I was young, but after she got busier with my father's work, she only did it occasionally.

Then dad took over after pitying me and tried his hand at it. He obviously botched them all and tried to cover it up by improvising along the way. He even had a book to go off of so it was both sad and hilarious to watch him rewrite the stories that he could've simply read aloud. But he normally got the gist of it down. This world's past is very... uh, what's the word..."

Kyren fiddled with a little ball of fire in his palm which he formed from using some pyromancy. He got entranced with its unnatural movements as he quietly said, "Fantasy-like and magical? Almost unreal?"

"Yeah, that's it. This world's history is just so freakishly long and filled with literally countless mysteries. It would be impossible to discover them all, but for every one of them I hear, it just shows me how wide the world is."

He nodded his head in agreement, as he to had a similar feeling.

The corner of Maya's lips twitched as her tone switched from sentimental to ridiculing, "In my opinion though, there were definitely too many heroes everywhere back then. There were so many tales of the same old 'Legendary Hero versus Demon King' situations that it got repetitive. Even with each story's uniqueness and originality, they all had the same basic structure so I didn't usually listen to those, despite a majority of our books being on those..."

"Hehe, well—"

Kyren was about to continue the conversation when the lights dimmed and the magically powered spotlights focused on the stage. The seats were filled to the brim with the high class and the atmosphere became soothing as elegant and lovely music began to fill the room.

The play was about to begin...

.....

Just as he expected, the contents of the play so far had many blatant similarities to the tales of Hercules. He didn't remember much about Earth's versions, but he could recognize some important details that helped unlock some forgotten memories from when he casually searched it up one time out of curiosity.

Aphaeleon even carried out the same twelve labors of Hercules in a similar style. There may have been some heavy changes and adaptations to help it fit this world, but it was undoubtedly close to the same.

The contents of the play seemed to be more focused on depicting an altered version of The Twelve Labors of Hercules. However, there were many holes in the plot as if not enough was known about the ancient stories... like it was incomplete.

<Your proficiency, [History], was upgraded to [Advanced History].>

As soon as that notification appeared, the actor that was perfectly playing a buff and brawny Hercules raised his blunt weapon and finally defeated a humongous three-headed hound with magma-like veins running over its horrifyingly massive muscles and body. Three spiked collars along with special-looking obsidian black chains bound and wrap around its body, desperately trying to retrain the beast. The creature looked at home among the hellish lava fields that seemed occasionally to launch lava up like geysers.

*Bam* *Woosh*..... *CRASHHH* *FWOOOSHHHHH*

The creature was instantly struck down unconscious by the mighty strength of the demigod, making the theater itself shake violently and a gust of wind pass over the audience, giving off an immense feeling of immersion for everyone.

A supposedly poisonous foam was secreted from each of the vicious jaws of the mighty beast and Hercules heroically stood atop it with one foot and yelled with triumph after a long battle!

The audience roared with enthusiastic cheers and a great din of clapping filled the building after witnessing such a marvelous spectacle.

This creature was a tamed pet that was using some illusion magic to look similar to the legendary Guardian of Hell, Cerberus. Subduing this monstrosity was the twelfth and final labor of Hercules.

The lights dimmed as a new scene was being prepared.

While this happened, the narrator's voice was amplified so all could hear. "After accomplishing this supposedly impossible feat all by himself, Hercules proceeded to hastily look for and secure a pathway to the underworld while the Guardian of Hell was unconscious. Killing it permanently proved to be hopeless so he was in a rush to find something before it recovered..."

It only took a few seconds for the lights to come back on and show another scene. Hercules looked to be frantically rushing through the various intense scenes of the underworld as he searched. He passed volcanic hells, icy hells, swampish hells, and countless other environments that were all too extreme for any normal life to exist.

The narrator continued as he said the next part with a grim tone, "The catastrophic battle between Hercules and Cerberus lasted for well over half a year and he was running out of time. What little time was left in that year was used to look for any clues, and it's said that he only discovered something towards the end of the year, right before Cerbeus completely recovered and reawakened.

Things wouldn't have looked so good if he didn't find a lead at that very moment. Cerberus might've made a full recovery but Hercules was still heavily wounded and exhausted so another fight would've been the end of him and all his efforts for the past twelve years would've been in vain..."

There was a dramatic pause before he proceeded. "But the gods were on his side and he found a way for his allied forces to have easy access to the underworld!! This was nothing short of a monumental victory for the overworld!!! The demigods, their underlings, and the many races and heroes of the overworld could now bring the fight to the demons, pushing back the endless invasions to buy themselves some time to develop! They were also granted the ability to banish the incredibly powerful evils back to hell, greatly decreasing the load on everyone's shoulders.

Some say that without Hercules' bold intervention, the possibility of the demons and devils taking over would've been frighteningly high, and if we didn't gain the ability to banish the stronger demonic creatures before all the demigods either left, perished, or disappeared... our fate would've been sealed. We cannot dream of fighting the true forces of hell without the demigods so the most recent parts of the Eternity War would have been our immediate loss..."

The narrator seemed to be closing up and there was a commotion among the audience of nobility. The advertisement said there was a special event? Weren't they supposed to be shown never before seen evidence from that time? There hasn't been anything changed to this play so have they been fooled?

Kyren squinted and his facial expression tightened as he easily heard what everyone was whispering about. The play and story itself were stunning and engaging, the actors and props were extraordinary, and the visual and magical effects made it looked like a genuine top-class movie... but he wasn't keen on getting tricked in any way, shape, or form. This might've been a trivial matter and the money he spent wasn't even a drop in the vast ocean of his wealth, but he despised those who cheated him. He could deceive others or his enemies, but he'd never stand for it being the other way around, especially when he was out on a date.

The narrator who wasn't physically present, but only verbally, also heard the commotion as he was closing up. He chuckled and reassured them with his following words, "Now ladies and gentlemen, for the moment you've all been waiting for!! I must say, your in for quite the treat~! So please wait patiently as we get things prepared..."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

1: Sentient) Able to perceive or feel things and has consciousness. An example would be animals and humans, not plants.

2: Sapient) Is wise, or attempts to appear wise, so capable of higher intelligence. An example would be humans, not animals or plants.

These terms will be used frequently throughout the novel so make sure you can tell them apart.