The God of Underworld - Chapter 325
Chapter 325: Chapter 24
“They are doing far better than I anticipated.” Hades muttered, “Hm, humanity truly are amazing.”
He then shifted his gaze from the frantic defense in the mortal world to the monumental siege occurring at the Hyperverse’s boundary.
He had actually covered the Hyperverse boundary with a conceptual barrier that ‘stops outsiders from entering’, so no large scale battles took place yet.
His eyes then landed on Nyx. She was standing perfectly still, her eyes locked on the shifting, spheres-and-tentacles mass that was Yog-Sothoth.
“Nyx, are you okay?” Hades asked, his voice cutting through the hum of the Empyrean’s power.
Nyx turned to him, a faint, sharp smile playing on her lips. “I am more than okay, my Lord. I am simply surprised. I didn’t expect to see my Father so soon.”
“Father?” Hades, Hecate, Hera, and Aphrodite all spoke the word in unison, their expressions mirrored in shock.
Nyx nodded and pointed directly at the core of Yog-Sothoth. “That thing is the source of my existence. Yog-Sothoth, the Key and the Gateway. Now I understand why I was able to forge that key, because I was a fragment of that thing that pretty much controls the concept of ‘boundary’.”
Being so close to that thing also seems to cause some sort of resonance within her. For example, Nyx was able to gain some knowledge regarding the Outer Ones and their respective powers and abilities.
Most of them are ‘nameless’ and aren’t something to be worried about, they can be handled by the combined efforts of the gods augmented by the fusion of ten different universes.
But there are also those Greater Chaos Gods that can pose a threat even to the combined efforts of the Transcendent Primordial Gods, or even the likes of Shiva.
Hades observed the Outer One, Yog-Sothoth, who was simply hovering light-years away from the barrier he had erected, as if it knew that banging itself towards the barrier is futile, unlike those other Outer Gods who are mindlessly smashing their bodies.
“Then, what do you plan to do now, Nyx? Facing the source of your own concept is a gamble. It could affect you and control you much easier than other gods.”
“Hehe, maybe…” Nyx’s grin turned predatory. “But then again, maybe not. We shall see… Will I be controlled? Or will I replace It?”
Hades raised an eyebrow, seeing that look on her eyes, “Nyx, do you plan to…”
“Yes. I want to devour it.” She chuckled, “Being a mere fragment, a ‘daughter’ of chaos, is no longer satisfying. I want to consume that essence and become the True Key and the True Gateway. I want to be the one who decides what stays in the Book and what leaves.”
She then turned to Hecate, Hera, and Aphrodite, her eyes burned with temptation, “And you three shouldn’t just watch. There are Great Ones out there specifically suited to your concepts. If you devour them, you won’t just achieve Transcendence. You will become cosmic horrors capable of walking out of this fictional reality by your own will.”
She pointed into the swirling Black Tide, identifying three massive signatures of power.
“Hera,” Nyx said, pointing to a pulsating, forest-like mass of black flesh and thousand-mouthed spawn. “That thing is Shub-Niggurath, the Black Goat of the Woods with a Thousand Young. She is the perversion of motherhood and fertility. Devour her, and your sovereignty over life and family will become absolute and infinite.”
Hera stared at that thing, and despite its grotesque appearance, she couldn’t help but ponder Nyx’s words…
Devour it… Yes, she wanted to devour it.
“Aphrodite,” Nyx gestured to a shifting, humanoid shape that seemed to change its face every second, radiating a chaotic, mocking beauty. “That thing is Nyarlathotep, the Crawling Chaos. He is the messenger, the heart of desire and madness. He manipulates the souls of men and gods alike. Consume him, and your beauty will become a Law that can drive even other Outer Ones to madness.”
“Oh?” Aphrodite stared at that thing, and unlike Hera, she was far more direct. “Hehe~, my, my, to prepare a feast for your sister, what a good sister you are Nyx.”
Finally, Nyx looked at Hecate and pointed at a pot-bellied, Toad-like monstrous entity with countless tiny arms with countless eyes acting as an imitation of a fur, “That thing is Tsathoggua, the Sleeper of N’kai. He is the manifestation of forbidden sorcery and the forgotten depths. He sits on the throne of all dark knowledge. Devour him, and your magic will no longer be a tool; it will be the ink that writes the world.”
The three keeps staring at the horrors Nyx had named, the desire to ‘devour’ and Transcend the fictional reality burning brightly in their hearts.
These creatures were not just monsters beyond comprehension, they were the dark mirrors of their own divine identities.
Hades felt the shift in the room. The air was no longer filled with the dread of a defensive war, but the hunger of a hunt.
He looked at his wives, seeing the hesitation in their eyes turn into a cold, ambitious fire.
“Nyx is right,” Hades said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous tone. “We are no longer playing by the Author’s rules. We shouldn’t aim to just survive, but evolve passed what a fictional character can.”
He stood up and extended his hand toward the projection. “I will provide the opening. I will suppress their conceptual defenses with the Power of Law. When the path is clear, you will strike. We will tear the hearts out of these gods and make them our own.”
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The conceptual barrier surrounding the Hyperverse hummed with a deep, oppressive power as Outer Ones all instinctively drive themselves towards it.
But how could the barrier created by Hades be broken with something like this? After all, this was not a wall made of divinity or magic, but a solidified Decree of Law enacted by Hades.
To the naked eye, it looked like a shimmering veil of purple starlight that turned the vacuum of the void into a solid, impenetrable frontier.
Shiva stood at the edge of the ramparts, his arms crossed, his third eye glowing with a dangerous, expectant light.
He watched as the lesser outer ones, those monstrosities the size of galaxy clusters, slammed their amorphous bodies against the veil.
Each impact created a shockwave of conceptual noise, but the barrier held, repelling the chaos with the combined weight of ten integrated pantheons.
“This barrier is truly one of a kind,” Shiva observed, his voice vibrating through the vacuum. “Even with this many outer ones, it didn’t even crack.”
Odin, standing beside him with his spear on hand, nodded, his lone eye was fixed on the distant, swirling center of the enemy swarm.
“Lord Hades created this barrier in a way even the Norns could not have woven. It is a masterpiece of a conceptual shield. However…” He trailed off, his gaze shifting toward the weeping fissure Yog-Sothoth had earlier torn into the mortal realms. “I did not expect one of them to have the authority to bypass the Lord Hades’ Law so easily. I hope those mortals are doing alright.”
Just then, as Odin spoke, the pressure on the barrier suddenly shifted as the thousands of lesser Outer Ones stopped their frantic banging.
Then, they moved aside, parting like a sea of black oil.
Yog-Sothoth drifted forward. Its body was a cluster of iridescent, glowing spheres that pulsed with a light that felt like a headache made manifest.
It did not strike the barrier with force. Instead, it pressed one of its massive, non-Euclidean tentacles against the shimmering purple veil.
A sound like a thousand books being torn at once echoed through the divine realm.
Yog-Sothoth let out a roar—not a sound of anger, but a tonal frequency that directly countered the Law Hades had set.
Under the tip of the tentacle, the purple starlight of the barrier began to rot, turning a sickly, translucent grey.
The tentacle whipped once, a sharp, surgical movement, and literally unzipped a gateway directly through the Anchor’s protection.
The gods stood in a moment of stunned, frozen silence. The “impenetrable” shield had been breached with the ease of a needle piercing silk.
“The barrier has been breached!” a minor deity screamed.
The Outer Ones did not hesitate.
Driven by the singular, overwhelming directive of Azathoth, they surged toward the gap.
The first to enter was a galaxy-sized mass of weeping mouths that immediately lunged toward the Egyptian sector of the ramparts.
Following it were the weeping fragments of infant-like creatures drowing the border of the Hyperverse.
Zeus roared, his thunderbolt expanding into a pillar of light with a heat far exceeding the Big Bang. “To the breach! Do not let them gain a foothold on the inner ramparts!”
Ra’s solar barge flared, the sun at its center turning a fierce, vengeful crimson. “Burn them! Burn the void until nothing but ash remains!”
The battle had moved from a siege to a frantic, close-quarters slaughter.
The divine borders of the Hyperverse, once clean and orderly, were now being flooded by the chaotic, twisting shapes of the Great Deletion.
In the Empyrean, Hades stood up from his throne, his purple eyes fixed on the breach.
He felt the pain of the barrier’s rupture as if it were a wound on his own skin. “That Yog-Sothoth is truly troublesome.”
He then looked at Nyx, who was already beginning to dissolve into a terrifying, concentrated shadow.
“The Gatekeeper has made his move,” Hades said, his voice dropping into a lethal, low register. “It’s time we showed him that a gateway works both ways.”