It seemed he had noticed something. Charon abruptly turned his gaze toward the distant sky. It wasn't just a black dot but a figure at the highest point. In a flicker, the figure appeared somewhat disappointed, shook his head, then, gripping a longsword, slashed downwards.
An inexplicable sense of alarm surged in his heart, a feeling of fear conveyed by the Styx River itself to Charon. Instinctively wanting to flee, he found there was nowhere to hide.
The next moment, as if it were a continuation of the previous changes, when the Black Sword pressed down, the entire realm shook with it.
The water of the Styx River churned out of its banks, the molten magma of the fire river flowed through fissures in the ground, and then everything, everything came to a halt with a sword slash that split the entire Underworld from east to west, as if everything had utterly died.
The River of Sorrow was no exception, this river which caused all who approached to sink to the bottom and wail in despair, now also seemed to have lost its vitality; even as the riverbanks cracked, its waters remained still.
Charon's consciousness swirled and danced in the river. He felt no pain because he knew that he was about to become yet another deity to sleep eternally.
No, in this instant, the Styx River ferryman, hovering between life and death, seemed to sense something. He wouldn't rest eternally, because of that sense of falsehood and emptiness pervading everything...
The next moment, Charon's consciousness was completely extinguished. In this false world, he was the first deity of Chaos to die, but he would not be the last, for high above, Laine once again raised the edge of his sword.
Flicking the sword's blade, although it was a temporarily condensed Black Sword of authority, it now seemed to have taken on a physical form.
Listening to the crisp and pleasant metallic tremor, Laine gazed down upon the Underworld.
This was the seventh sword strike. It had eradicated the creatures of the Underworld, split the axis of its land, and calmed the three Styx Rivers. Looking out now, the entirety of the Underworld appeared as if stricken by an apocalyptic disaster.
But this was only the perspective of mere mortals. If one looked beyond appearances and gazed directly at the Origin of all things, Laine would be startled to find that what he had done was actually of very limited use.
The world is physical, it is spiritual, and it is conceptual—in what he had just done, at best, he had damaged its physical structure, and even when reflected at the origin, the impact on the Underworld was not as dramatic as imagined.
It would be wounded, but it was just wounded...
"Stop, what on earth are you trying to do?!"
A roar interrupted Laine's thoughts. Not far away, Hades with his severed arm watched the strange deity with incomprehension.
The power of this being was unimaginable. Hades had attempted to stop him once, but the sword light had almost instantly erased his arm, then continued to tear through the ground.
"You cannot destroy the Underworld, just as you cannot kill me... Your actions will enrage the entire world, just like Typhon, The King of All Monsters who once sought to destroy the world, you——"
"No, we are not the same."
Interrupting, Laine lifted his head to look at Hades in front of him. The previously elusive train of thought suddenly connected.
He needed a method, a way to directly harm the Origin of the world, something that mere destruction of physical structure could not achieve. And now, looking at the armless Hades, Laine suddenly understood.
Deities are the delegates of Laws, the origin of a deity is the most direct path to the Origin. As for the essence of immortality...
This illusory world has none, and neither do the gods of Egypt, above and below Hemenu.