In the beginning of Earth’s long and troubled history, for the most part things went well. Earth was a mana rich planet that was inhabited by all kinds of magical beasts and creatures that had their levels, stats, skills, and titles regulated by an interplanetary system. Throughout a billion years, these beasts and creatures evolved and went on to found their own civilizations, cultures, and countries.
The proud and haughty Merpeople built their grand kingdom on the ocean floor assured of their safety far below the waves. They were the world's most prolific race in water combat and had no equals when it came to pride and patriotism.
The peaceful and withdrawn Bird Beast-men built a great floating monastery on a magical flying island which only they could access. They built their monasteries in the mountains beneath their flying citadel to spread their buddhistic religion to the rest of the races who could not fly.
The stout and resilient Dwarves lived a tribalistic lifestyle and inhabited the more tropical parts of the world, mining up so much gold and other precious metals that they made a city out of them. Dwarves became renowned craftsmen for their specialization in the enchantment of weapons, armors, and even buildings.
The Beast-men banded together forming a large nation within a tropical forest valley. With their superior strength and special talents, the Beast-men constructed a grand capital that attracted travelers from all around the globe and built their castle’s spiraling towers until they seemed to reach the heavens.
For another 1.2 billion years these races continued to rule the world. That is, until she showed up…
The Goddess of Birth, Origin, and Beginnings, Ardvite.
Ardvite had been partying with the gods of alcohol and merrymaking when she had gotten a little too drunk and wandered off from the festivities. Ardvite drunkenly wandered the universe for several years until she stumbled and landed upon the comparably small world of earth. Ardvite began to casually observe its inhabitants while enjoying her 5th bottle of godly ambrosia.
Ardvite took notice of how the beings of this planet slowly and subconsciously used the surrounding mana to evolve themselves over the course of hundred of thousands of years instead of being simply created fully formed when their planet originally made them.
Intrigued by this concept, Ardvite thought it would be a funny idea to create a race that actively sucked up mana to evolve themselves at incredible rates.
As a result, Ardvite created the first primordial humans that began to rapidly suck up all the mana that almost all life on the planet needed to live, quickly killing 90% of the world's total population within the first 5,000 years.
Unfortunately Ardvite could not intervene in this situation and save the mana of earth as she had passed out in the middle of her 6th bottle of ambrosia after she finished creating humans.
By the time that those 5,000 years had passed, all of the ambient mana on the planet had been sucked dry by the evolving humans and earth lost both its connection to the world system and all of it's mana dependent races.
Humans became the dominant race of earth, inhabiting the former empires and cultures of creatures they had inadvertently killed. The Greeks inhabited the scant amount of ruins that the Merpeople left on the land and learned of the great city of atlantis that had crumbled to dust at the bottom of the ocean at that point.
Monks inhabited the monasteries of the Bird Beast-men and took on their religion and traditions. They too began to spread stories about the mythical flying temple of Shangri-La, which had in fact crashed into the ocean when the mana it used to float had run out.
The indigenous people of the Mexico region told stories of a great city of gold whose records were carved into the ruins that they fooled themselves into thinking that they had created. In fact the golden city ‘El Dorado’ as the conquistadors later called it had collapsed under it's own weight without runes and enchantments in place to hold it up. Over the years the city was slowly buried by the surrounding jungle until not a trace of it could be found.
The great fertile tropical forest valley that the Beast-men had inhabited dried up, died, and was buried under an entire desert. The only indication of its former glory was a single solitary river that ran through the middle of the valley and the spires of the beastman castle that poked up through the desert. Humans later came upon this valley and settled in what little land was available and took advantage of the buildings that were conveniently towering over the desert. Later these humans would use those spires as a place to store their most revered dead.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
Finally, around 12,000 years after she had accidentally ruined the world, Ardvite woke up from her drunken slumber with a nauseating hangover.
When Ardvite pushed through the numerous bottles surrounding her, she noticed something was … missing. For a couple minutes she tried to figure out what was wrong before she finally realized…
‘...there's no mana anywhere in the air…’
Ardvite quickly looked back to her empty bottles of ambrosia and alcohol and then remembered creating a race that sucked up mana at incredible rates during her drunken stupor.
‘...I seriously fucked up, didn't I?’
Ardvite quickly got up and traveled to the largest source of human activity nearby.
When she reached it, she was shocked. The humans had created giant stone buildings reaching to the heavens with advanced technology that supported them even without the use of mana.
Then she witnessed how they continued to destroy and pollute the planet despite knowing the consequences.
‘Well not like it really matters, the planet was already dying rapidly from a lack of mana anyway, they’re just speeding up the process’
Ardvite sighed and pulled herself together. She had created perhaps the biggest mistake in godly history. She was a Goddess of Birth, Origin, and Beginnings and yet she had created a race that had not only ended the circulation of mana in this world but had inadvertently killed 90% of the world's population. And that's just what they did by existing, notwithstanding all of creatures that had hunted to extinction.
If word of this got out she would never hear the end of it from the godly community. She would hear constant mocking jokes from other gods asking how a goddess of beginnings could have possibly ended something.
Ardvite steeled herself as she realized that she would have to both reintroduce mana into the world’s core and keep a low profile so that other gods would not notice her involvement.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ardvite quickly realized that the fastest way to reintroduce mana, cull the human population, and to restore the diversity that was destroyed by humans was to have the humans drop bombs filled with massive amounts of mana on each other.
Ardvite had seen how quickly humans would fight each other simply because of a difference in culture and knew it wouldn't take much to induce all of them into all out war.
Not only would this serve as a way to cull the human population, but it would kickstart the planet’s mana streams and reconnect it to the world system. Additionally large amounts of mana being injected forcefully into creatures that hadn't even felt mana in the past 7,000 years would either cause them to die or mutate, resulting in more diversity.
Thus with her plan ready, Ardvite set out to fix her mistake as quietly as possible.
First she indiscriminately blessed all of the world's high powered explosive devices with massive amounts of mana that would be released upon impact.
Normally doing something as large scale as this would draw massive amounts of attention from nearby sentient life. However the life on this planet hadn’t felt the presence of mana for the past 7,000 years, meaning that it would be hard for any of them to notice mana after all that time without feeling it.
Her next task was to then induce the humans into firing these mana enhanced bombs at each other, after that she could kick back and relax with another bottle of ambrosia and celebrate a job well done. The rest of the work would do itself.
First she caused international incidents between the largest countries on the planet, kidnapping officials in foreign countries, killing citizens on vacation in rivaling nations, and having government officials publicly denounce one another.
Next she rallied up the smaller countries to band together against the larger world superpowers. The majority of African nations rallied together to create the Great African Nation, which became one of the world leaders in manpower.
Saudi Arabia absorbed Yemen, Oman, Iraq, and Syria and became the Arabian Commonwealth. Finally every country on south america except for Brazil partnered together and became the Southern Alliance.
The smaller countries drew themselves back from world politics and armed themselves in an effort to show brinksmanship.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No one knew who fired the first atomic bomb, but soon after the entire planet had divulged all of their payloads all across the world, no country was spared at least some destruction from their enemies.
In the time that it took the first missile to fire and the last missile to land on it’s location, the war had ended and only a day had passed. It ended in total defeat for all nations involved, there were no winners. Ardvite looked on this situation happily as she drank ambrosia on the earth’s moon.
Her work here was done, and no god was any the wiser
As she finished her bottle a little pop up message appeared before both her, and every surviving sentient creature on earth.
=========================
The Planet: Earth had regained its mana and reconnected to the world system. Welcome back Planet: Earth
=========================