The God of Underworld - Chapter 323
Chapter 323: Chapter 22
The Empyrean was silent, no it was not the peaceful kind of silence, but it was kind of like the heavy, pressurized stillness of a lung before a scream.
Hades sat motionless on his throne, his consciousness expanded across the ten integrated Hearts, and even beyond that.
His senses have already transcended mere distance and he can even observe the past, present and future, and right now, those senses were being spread to their fullest extent to observe the movements of the outer ones.
Besides him, his wives all gathered.
Nyx was shrouding the Hyperverse with her authority, trying to hide their reality to buy time, even just a fraction of a second.
Hecate was ensuring all magical defenses and formations are working properly, wanting to be absolutely sure that no flaws can be found on their defense.
Hera was double checking their plans and back up plans, and even coming up with various other plans to make sure nothing unexpected happens.
And Aphrodite was observing the positions of every gods and make sure they are at their posts when the inevitable war began.
Suddenly, Hades eyes snapped open, those pupils were like purple voids burning with a newfound, terrifying clarity.
He stood up, and the vibration of his movement caused the stars above the throne to pulse.
“They are here,” he stated.
The seriousness in his voice sent a chill through Nyx, Hecate, Hera, and Aphrodite as they immediately paused their jobs and stare at him, as if waiting for instructions.
At this moment, they saw in him not just their husband or the King of the Dead, but the Supreme Deity, the singular point upon which the existence of trillions now rested.
“Gods of the Hyperverse!” his voice boomed, resonant and absolute. It wove itself into the conceptual fabric of the Hyperverse, echoing in the mind of every deity from the highest Primordial to the lowest river spirit.
“The ink is dry on the old world, and the Eraser has come to claim the page! They call us fiction! They call our suffering a draft to be discarded, our deaths footnotes in a margin they will never read!”
“But hear this! If we can bleed, if we can love, if we can despair and still stand, then we are no lie! For a lie cannot scream in pain. A lie cannot choose to rise!”
“The Author watches from beyond the veil, believing that his distance from us grants him dominion over us! He thinks that just because he is the creator, that means he owns everything about us! He thinks his hand that writes is greater than our heart that endures! Today, we shatter that arrogance!”
“This is not a war for land, nor crowns, nor the hollow praise of history. This is a war for definition itself! A war to decide whether existence belongs to the one who imagines it, or the ones who live in it!”
“Let the gods among us cast off restraint! Let miracles roar not as symbols, but as proof! Burn your names into the firmament! Strike with such will that causality itself stutters and asks why!”
“And if we are to end, let us end as the Truth! The uneditable! The inerasable! And if we endure, then let the Author learn fear, for nothing is more terrifying than a story that refuses its ending!
“To the ramparts! To defiance! To existence!
“Fight! Fight not to be remembered, but to be real!”
With a roar that shook the foundations of reality, the combined host of ten pantheons took flight.
A prismatic river of divine fire, Greek lightning, Norse frost, Egyptian solar winds, and Hindu cosmic energy, surged toward the border of the Hyperverse.
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Standing at the vanguard of the darkness, leading countless other Outer Ones, was Yog-Sothoth.
It was not merely a monster, nor was it a mere Outer One, it was a Living Law.
It is the “Key” and the “Gate,” it is the boundary that separated the Fictional Dimension from the True Dimension.
The lock Hades had encountered at the center of reality was but a single cell of this entity’s vast, non-Euclidean body.
Just then, Yog-Sothoth paused.
Its countless glowing eyes and shifting masses of tentacles undulated as it observed the Hyperverse in front of it.
It had devoured millions of universes, but never a structure like this, a Super-Cosmos so dense and conceptually reinforced that it resisted the natural entropy of the void.
Just then, the Ten Pantheons reached the edge of existence, and the Outer Ones immediately recoiled.
Transcendent power flooded the border like a rising tide. The formless fog of countless Outer Ones was immediately driven back, torn apart by the weight of divinity itself, as if reality finally remembered it had the right to stand.
At the forefront stood Zeus, thunder coiled around his throne of lightning, each breath is like a heavenly verdict.
Beside him, Odin planted his spear into nothingness, runes burning as the laws of fate were nailed into place.
Shiva danced forward, looking both calm and terrible, his presence alone promising both annihilation and rebirth.
Their auras merged suddenly; Greek dominion, Norse inevitability, Hindu cosmic truth, and it formed a vast, radiant bulwark of not merely power, but Order itself that took shape, a wall that seems to declare: Here, the Outer Ones ends.
Behind them, the other pantheons answered the call.
Sun gods, death gods, war gods, creators and destroyers alike.
Ten heavens aligned.
Ten legacies awakened.
For the first time since the dawn of nothingness, the Outer Ones did not advance.
It hesitated.
But Yog-Sothoth acted as if it doesn’t even consider them as a threat, but it also did not engage in a test of strength.
With a single, reality-warping swing of a massive tentacle, it tore a jagged, weeping fissure in the fabric of space.
This was not a breach into the divine realms, but a bypass—a direct shortcut into the Mortal Realm of the Hyperverse.
An angel’s wings flared with holy fire as he raised his sword to seal the breach. “They are bypassing the ramparts! The innocent will be slaughtered! We must stop them!”
Athena stepped forward, her hand catching angel’s wrist, her expression was calm, almost eerie. “No, calm down. Do not break your position. Lord Hades has already accounted for this.”
The angel hesitated, but eventually relented.
Just then, from Yog-Sothoth’s, no, just Yog-Sothoth, but from all Outer One’s myriad mouths and eyes, a Black Tide of infant-like creatures erupted.
Millions of the “Silent Wailers” poured into the tear, a flood of obsidian flesh and needle-teeth descending toward the vibrant cities of the mortals.
The angel stared at it, resisting the urge to rush towards it and handle it.
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In the Empyrean, Hecate’s projection showed the horror of the breach.
Hera gripped her staff, her eyes flashing with maternal fury. “Hades, the mortal worlds are being flooded! We must send a legion to support them!”
Hades remained fixed on the projection of Yog-Sothoth. “The mortal world is safe, Hera. If we divide our strength now, these beings will surely collapse our borders. Focus on the Outer Ones, they are what we must face. The Mortal World will not be in danger, trust in what we have built.”
Hera hesitated, but seeing the absolute conviction in Hades’ eyes, she nodded.
Hades looked at the image of the City-State of Herion, a faint, proud smirk touching his lips.
‘I can leave the Mortal World to you, can’t I? Herios.’
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On the surface of the world, Herios stood atop the highest battlement of the Grand Order’s Citadel.
Below him was an ocean of steel and magic: millions of heroes, mages, and warriors from ten cultures, their banners snapping in a wind that smelled of ozone and incoming death.
As the sky split open and the Black Tide began to fall like a dark, wailing rain, Herios felt the weight of Hades’ trust.
He smirked, the fire of his own semi-divine spirit igniting as he drew his sword, the blade reflecting the jade and gold of the Hyperverse.
“Yeah,” Herios whispered, his voice steady. “You can leave everything to me, Lord Hades.”
Please bear witness, Lord Hades. Witness the courage and strength of your champion once more!
I, Herios, will show you a grand display that will be etched in the history of humanity!
He turned to the vast army below, his voice amplified by the magi of the Order.
“Look up, Heroes of the Order!” Herios pointed his blade at the weeping sky.
“The gods wage war for our future in the heavens above! They have entrusted the earth to human hands, to human will, to human defiance! They believe we are strong enough to hold the line!”
“And look now! Look at what dares to fall from the sky! These abominations see us as scribbles on a page, as ink meant to be erased, as something temporary and disposable! They think we will scatter! They think we will beg! They think we will vanish quietly!”
“They are wrong!”
“Humanity was not written to be erased! We were carved by famine, by war, by loss, by standing back up when the world demanded we stay down! We learned to bare our teeth when cornered! We learned to fight when hope was gone! We learned to endure!”
“At this moment, we are simply humanity! We are not kings! Not gods! But the unbroken will of this world given form! We are the hands that build civilization! The backs that carry the future! The hearts that refuse to stop beating! And as long as we stand, this world will still breathe!”
“So hear me! Let every step you take shake the ground they seek to claim! Let every strike remind them that this soil remembers our blood, our sweat, and our dead! Not one of these monsters will touch our home! Not one will desecrate the land that raised us!”
“Raise your weapons! Bare your fangs! And set your heart ablaze!”
“FOR HUMANITY!”
With a thunderous cry that drowned out the wails of the Outer Ones, the army of humanity surged forward.
Alcides leapt into the air, his fists shattering the first wave of falling monsters.
Atalanta released a volley of arrows that turned the sky into a tapestry of light.
Cú Chulainn carved a path through the obsidian sludge with his crimson spear.
The battle for the mortal realm had begun, and for the first time, the “ink” was fighting back with the strength of a billion wills.