Eclipse of the Usurper

The Ethereal Court has initiated the Culling - a brutal survival game meant to entertain bored deities. When a divine Envoy descends into a collapsing bunker to draft Earth’s most brilliant tactical mind as a puppet, the paralyzed and ruthless Zirul turns the tables. In a tense, dying bargain, Zirul forces a permanent identity swap, stealing the Envoy's flawless avatar and trapping the god's servant in his doomed human body. Now recognized by the System as a divine administrator, Zirul claims the forbidden power of Shadow Extraction. He doesn't raise rotting corpses; he tears the ethereal essence directly from his foes. Starting with the Envoy's own ghostly assassin - a phantom capable of phasing through solid walls - Zirul's solitary march snowballs into an unstoppable one-man army. His ultimate prize? Slaying the ocean-dwelling leviathan Abzu-Kurgal to serve as a living, sea-faring fortress for his endless shadow legion. The story alternates between Zirul's calculating conquests and the machinations of Osham, a wise human elder who knows Zirul's secret and plots to use the false god for his own ascension. Surrounded by enemies, can a usurper survive the wrath of true deities?