Chapter 143: Menka's News, The Terrifying Underworld
Deep within the cosmos, a sacred palace floated silently, acting as a gathering hall for a massive congregation of deities.
Seated upon a pristine, magnificent throne was a man with stark white hair. His face was as smooth and flawless as it could be, but his long, narrow eyes carried a profound, gloomy chill that naturally radiated an inexplicable sense of heavy pressure.
Not too long ago, a deity had sent a desperate prayer up to him. Yet the moment he channeled a wisp of his divine power down across the void to answer it, that energy had mysteriously vanished without a trace.
His deep, piercing gaze cut through countless cosmic layers, projecting across the universe to lock onto the far edge of the galaxy. It didn't take long for him to lay eyes on the Dark Death Star shrouded in heavy darkness, as well as that massive abyssal trench carving straight across the planet's surface.
An expression that hadn't shifted for a ten thousand eons finally showed a rare trace of genuine surprise.
"Is this the will of Hell? Or does it belong to the Underworld? Or perhaps... a certain Arbiter of Truth?"
The Holy Sovereign's low murmur instantly drew the attention of the assembled gods below. One after another, they raised their heads, looking up at the magnificent figure resting on the sacred throne.
"Holy Sovereign..." someone called out, their voice laced with a hint of hesitation.
"There is no need for worry. The Divine Realm remains ironclad, eternal, and immortal." The Holy Sovereign offered a gentle smile, though a deep, unreadable light flashed through his pupils.
Seeing his calm demeanor, the gods instantly let their worries slide. Since the Holy Sovereign explicitly stated everything was fine, then there was nothing to stress about. They could all just go back to their daily routines.
However, absolutely none of them noticed that the Holy Sovereign's slightly solemn gaze stayed firmly glued to the coordinates of the Dark Death Star.
"The presence of Hell is growing denser by the day..." the Holy Sovereign murmured under his breath. "Is something truly catastrophic about to unravel across this world?"
"Forget it. I'll watch from the sidelines for now. Let's just hope the final outcome won't be too terrible..." With those final words, the magnificent silhouette seamlessly faded away, vanishing from the grand hall. Seeing his departure, the remaining deities also began filing out, not lingering inside the sacred temple for long.
"Little Meow~ Where exactly are we heading?"
The black train roared with a blazing layer of hellfire, running at absolute maximum horsepower to bridge a distance of tens of thousands of light-years in the blink of an eye. Inside the carriage, Shiro sat gracefully right beside Shirazawa, her puzzled gaze fixed on the cat-eared maid sitting directly across from them.
"We're heading straight to Hell, obviously~"
"I finally managed to secure a single day off, and now I'm already being dragged straight back to work. *Sigh*..." Menka let out a thoroughly depressed groan.
Hearing their final destination, Shirazawa was slightly surprised. But knowing that the region safely fell under D's personal domain, he didn't let it bother him too much.
"Where did that Zeus guy end up?" He asked the question that mattered most to him. That was a genuine Middle God's core they were talking about; it was their primary ticket to potentially forcing another major breakthrough, so he absolutely couldn't let the cat-eared maid pocket it on her own.
"That guy has probably already been handed over to Big Sister Underworld-Earth well ahead of us. Relax, an Underworld Deity has zero interest in absorbing a bird-man's energy reserves. That stuff tastes absolutely terrible anyway."
Shirazawa instantly caught onto the blind spot in her words and pressed further, "Then how do you guys actually train? Where do you absorb your energy from?"
"That's a total secret, I can't tell you guys." Menka let out a proud, arrogant huff.
Seeing her defensive stance, Shirazawa dropped the topic and smoothly pivoted to a new angle. "I still have a Lower God's severed head sitting in my inventory. Is there any way you can help me thoroughly grind away his true soul? I need a completely blank divine core that's stripped of all lingering consciousness."
Hearing his request, the smugness completely melted off Menka's face, replaced by an incredibly serious and solemn expression. "It's technically possible, sure. But in the Underworld, a true soul is considered vastly more precious than a standard divine core. I'd highly advise against doing something that stupid. Besides, a divine core isn't something you can just casually absorb whenever you feel like it."
Shirazawa and Shiro's interests were instantly piqued, and they immediately prepared to listen with an open mind. "We're all ears."
"Since you guys are asking so sincerely and politely, then Lord Menka will show a bit of mercy and break it down for you." The cat-eared maid puffed out her perfectly flat chest, proudly stepping right into the role of a teacher.
As she began mapping out the cosmic reality, Shirazawa suddenly realized he had been heavily oversimplifying things. He had mistakenly assumed that simply stacking raw energy would allow him to casually scale the ladder to become a Middle God or even a High God—which was exactly why he had been so ravenous for a core packed with a deity's lifetime reserves.
But according to Menka, raw energy inside a divine core was basically cheap garbage back in the Underworld.
When living entities across the infinite realms passed away, their spirits universally journeyed back to the Underworld. The latent energy brought along by those endless torrents of souls was completely infinite. Therefore, the one resource the Underworld absolutely never lacked was raw energy.
It functioned almost exactly like a standard system from an alternate world—when a random bystander dies, their soul loops back to the central system, gets thoroughly drained of its raw power, and is thrown right back into the reincarnation cycle. The Underworld was essentially a grand system scaled up by hundreds of trillions of times, systematically harvesting everyday mortals across the multi-realms.
The only difference was that to preserve the overall structural integrity of a soul, the Underworld wasn't nearly as ruthless as a standard system; it only skimmed a tiny fraction of power during each cycle. But over eons, those tiny drops eventually pooled into a colossal ocean, which was more than enough to effortlessly churn out a massive legion of Underworld Deities.
Because of this fundamental layout, the Underworld was entirely different from other realms; raw power was an absolute commodity there.
A true soul, however, was an entirely different story. It contained pure divinity, universal truths, absolute authority, and primal cosmic rules.
If a person managed to absorb a true soul, they could use it to instantly polish and perfect their own divine authority and core truths. That was the single rarest resource required to ascend to the absolute apex of the higher realms. Without a true soul to bridge the gap, a deity would be forced to invest raw time and painstaking effort to manually cultivate their authorities from scratch—and you could easily forget about seeing any real results for tens of millions of years.
But gods weren't exactly easy to kill, meaning it was exceptionally rare for a divine soul to willingly loop back into the Underworld's embrace. With their infinite lifespans, even the central administration of the Underworld had an incredibly difficult time naturally collecting true souls.
Since the foreign deities had zero intention of checking into the Underworld willingly, the localized gods had only one real alternative to advance their personal authorities: launching massive divine wars to aggressively invade and conquer external pantheons.
Only now did Shirazawa finally realize that the universe housing Earth was merely one spacious sector amidst a vast sea of infinite worlds. And the Underworld had already thoroughly locked down and conquered no less than nine separate realms of that exact caliber.
The couple finally began to grasp just how staggeringly massive of a territory D—the entity standing at the absolute apex of the Underworld—actually governed!
Even more shocking was Menka's next revelation.
"That Zeus guy wasn't even a genuine Middle God to begin with. At best, he was just standing right at the absolute peak of a basic High-Tier mortal standard."
"In terms of actual combat output, he'd probably get completely dusted by someone like Güli-güli."
"The older guy who dropped in at the very end is the only one who actually qualifies as a standard Middle God. Back in our core offices, that level of strength is basically on par with the aunts who sweep the floors and dust the trash cans."
Menka's casual bombs left Shiro and Shirazawa utterly frozen in sheer shock, taking a long moment before they could even process the words.
"Wait a second—floor-sweeping aunts? What on earth do you mean by that?"
Menka casually waved a hand. "Exactly what it sounds like. The cleaning ladies who handle the dust cloths and sweep the corridors around the facility."
Shiro's mouth twitched uncontrollably. In her mind, a full-fledged deity was supposed to be a majestic, untouchable entity resting high above the clouds. Who would have thought that a creature of that caliber was barely qualified to handle janitorial duties back in the Underworld?
The couple exchanged a long look, seeing a deep sense of absolute powerlessness mirrored in each other's eyes. If they ever wanted to thoroughly break free from D's absolute clutches, the road ahead was looking impossibly long and grueling.
"Then why did their divine positions feel entirely different from what our senses were picking up?" Shirazawa asked. He could clearly perceive that Zeus's tier sat distinctly above his own. The guy was explicitly a Middle God according to their sensory feedback, which heavily contradicted Menka's description.
"The world level is entirely different. Your current worldview is just way too low; you need to open up your perspective," Menka explained, tossing her small hands out in a casual shrug. "When a guy like that travels to a higher-level world, he gets automatically downgraded. The world's laws will naturally adjust everything. You'll understand how it works later on."
The couple wanted to push for more details, but the train suddenly let out a loud, echoing whistle.
"Final stop: Hell Sector D001 has arrived. Passengers, please secure your personal belongings and exit the train in an orderly fashion."
As the low automated announcement echoed through the carriage, Menka acted as if she had safely stepped right back into her personal backyard. Adopting an incredibly smug, overconfident stride, she led the couple straight off the train.
"Welcome back, Lord Menka!"
A pristine row of exceptionally stunning succubus attendants had already been waiting at the platform for a long time, bowing in perfect unison to greet her arrival.
The sheer visual layout of the welcoming committee was packed with a truly overwhelming amount of heavy pressure.
It was just... staggeringly massive, and blindingly white.
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