SON OF THE HERO KING

"Your conversation with Little Lilith was particularly interesting."

Sol made a deadpan face, while he looked at Edea, at the way his teacher brought up her peeking habits to him.

Still, he nodded. He was rather happy about his discussions with her and every time managed to learn some new things he didn't have a complete grasp on.

Edea smiled before waving her hand in the air, mana gathered at the tip of her fingertips, and soon a spherically shaped holographic map was slowly formed in front of him.

"But she is right. It's necessary for you to always have a better grasp of the world."

It wasn't the first time he saw that map. After all, it was the map of the known world.

"As you know, our world is a body made out of 30% land and 70% water. We have a worldwide population of nearly 2 billion and a ratio of 3:7 men to women."

Each time Sol saw the map, he couldn't help but fall deep in thought. Even though the formation of the continents was a little different, this map really made him think of Earth.

'No, this is more like Earth's Pangea map with the continents already a bit away from each other.'

He could already roughly recognize the shape of Africa and America. This was one of the reasons that made him think that this world should either be the Earth of the past or most likely, a parallel Earth in an alternate universe conforming with the multiverse theory.

"The living places are divided into seven countries, with each of them taking a huge chunk of the habitable land."

On the map, the number of places where living and farming was possible was highlighted in green while the ones that weren't were highlighted in red. From a glance, it was clear that the green parts were overwhelmingly inferior to the red ones.

"Our country, the kingdom of Lustburg is headed by the Luxuria royal family and the Castitas Church. We are one of the largest countries with an area of more than 3 million square kilometers. The largest one being Gluttony Foss with 18 million."

Sol and Edea mirrored a grimace at the mention of Gluttony Foss. The royal families and church of Gluttony Foss worked differently than the ones for the other countries. Since one woman held power over the two structures, the Temperantia church, and the Gula royal family, with total impunity.

Echidna Gula. Also known as the mother of thousands of monsters.

A being only slightly younger than the fourteen divine beasts. Some even called her the fifteenth divine beast.

That woman was the stuff of legends and nightmares. Mothers used her name to scare their children. Some people even thought that her existence was a myth.

But this wasn't the actual problem. It wasn't like there weren't a bunch of old monsters in this world, aside from Echidna, already. No, the problem was the fact that, for some unknown reason, she would regularly wage war on a random kingdom every few decades.

No one knew her goal, no one could understand her.

She was in no way interested in conquest. The fact that the world still had seven kingdoms was proof enough of that claim.

She wasn't interested in resources. The part she held control over was fraught with minerals and cultivable land. Her kingdom was completely independent of any form of trade outside of its natural borders.

She wasn't even interested in slaves nor manpower, the population of her kingdom was the largest by far in the world.

In short, Echidna was an enigma, and getting her attention was synonymous with inviting calamity. She was the personification of Pandemonium. The last time she waged war…was 13 years ago, against the Lustburg kingdom.

The result? An overwhelming loss and the death of the majority of the men who were sent to war, making the man/women ratio of Envilya lower to 2:8, and the death of the hero king and his dragon wife; Mars and Blaze.

----

A depressing atmosphere settled briefly between the two.

Sol clenched his fists tightly in frustration. In this world, Echidna was no different from a natural calamity.

No, that wasn’t a viable analogy. At least with magic, you could stop an earthquake or a tempest. But, no amount of magic was enough to stop Echidna.

At least this was the consensus… Until Mars appeared.

The man of miracles.

'Man, no matter how pathetic he was with women, my father was truly a badass.'

He didn't know much about this part of history. No one around him was forthcoming about what happened and there was no exact record of what happened either.

The only thing that was known was that, at the price of his life and that of his dear wife, Mars managed to create a barrier that sealed Echidna within her castle and would slowly but surely weaken her for each year she was inside said seal.

Moreover, he inflicted such a severe loss to the chimera army, that it was simply unbelievable and unprecedented throughout history.

Mars Luxuria was a hero. He was the Hero King, the man of unending miracles, and yet… he was also dead.

Should he feel proud of having such a father?

Sol didn't think as such. He would rather sacrifice the world than to sacrifice himself or, more than anything, his loved ones.

He didn't hate his father per se. He didn't have the qualifications to hate him, nor did he have enough memories about his parents for them to be anything more than blood-related strangers.

But… If Mars was the hero in people's minds, in Sol’s opinion Mars was just a bastard bitch who murdered his wife and died alongside her, effectively making their only child an orphan.

He knew it was an extremely selfish thought to have. A thought not worthy of a future king. But, humans were selfish and the last he checked, he was half parts human. He wasn't a saint nor was he willing to be one.

"Master, forget it, let's continue with our lessons."

Sol wasn't one to dwell much on negative thoughts, there were simply too many things he had to do than to lose time worrying or brooding over things of the past or events he had no control over.

Edea, cast an approving glance at her disciple before continuing,

"This world’s structure is rather simple. Fourteen goddesses, fourteen divine beasts, seven kingdoms, and seven churches, and at the very peak of all that–."

She made another hologram appear between them. This time in the form of a pyramid. She lightly touched the very peak as she continued he trailing words,

"The Mother Goddess of Order."

-----

This was the genesis of the known world. The mother goddess created the world. She was an all-powerful being, but she wasn't satisfied. She felt alone and isolated. And so she decided to have people surround her.

Those people were her fourteen daughters, each of them born from one of her sins or virtues.

Each of her daughters was born as a pair. Making seven pairs.

For a time, a long long time, those fourteen lived together in relative harmony, but then the daughters also wished to create life as their mother did.

The very first of their creations were the fourteen divine beasts. But, those creations weren't enough. Or rather they were too perfect. So perfect that they had no way to grow nor change.

So, the fourteen daughters turned their attention towards the uninhabited world.

"What if we created life on this world void of any life?" Asked one of the sisters.

"What if they were granted imperfections so that they could grow and change?" proposed another.

And soon they reached a joint consensus and created living beings. Each pair created one race.

This was the reason why nowadays all of the seven races created kingdoms and churches following their respective goddesses.

---

Edea finished her tale as she smiled, "Of course I don't need to ask you which of the fourteen goddesses created humans right?"

She didn't wait for him to answer as she continued,

"The same happened to the divine beasts. They followed the goddesses who created them and became the symbol of their respective kingdoms and churches that were created."

Another image appeared, it was that of a bird. No, more precisely–

"The sacred Phoenix of Chastity, Gabriel and–"

A second image appeared close to it,

"–The adroit Snake of Lust… Asmodeus."