Foolish Brother Odin

Chapter 445 Odin is having a blast

Tartarus?
Hades nearly lost his composure when Zeus uttered that name.

No, bro, don't you think your 'suggestion' is a bit much?
Underworld under Hades' rule was generally neutral, which was closely related to Hades' personality.

Almost every underworld follows a similar pattern.

In the Greek world, beyond the gates of Hell guarded by Cerberus, the three-headed dog of hell, and beyond the Acheron River, through which those going to be judged must cross, lies a vast gray plain called the Field of Truth.

Here, two paths connect, one leading to the Land of Bliss, a place of happiness, and the other to Hell, a place of torment. The dead are judged before the judgment seat in front of the Garden of Truth by the three judges of the underworld, composed of Zeus's three sons. The guilty receive punishments of varying severity in Hell according to their sins, while the innocent leave the underworld to live a carefree and blissful life in the beautiful and peaceful Land of Bliss, enjoying food, clothing, and the beauty of nature.

The problem is that with the surge in deaths, the three judges are simply overwhelmed.

Even if they delegate some power, they still cannot conduct thorough reviews.

Originally, the souls of both Greeks and Greek slaves were to be interrogated.

Zeus's command meant that Hades should abandon all slaves and the souls of foreign warriors who died in the Greek world, and throw them directly into Tartarus. As for the souls of the Greeks, they were to be examined as much as possible; those that could be put to good use would be, and those that couldn't be put to good use would also be thrown into Tartarus.

This would be a serious challenge to Hades' principles.

The mighty King of the Underworld, unusually, had his facial muscles twitching and his eyes showing displeasure.

"My brother! This is a temporary measure. You should know that after we defeat the Aesir, we will also face a large number of souls." Zeus didn't finish his sentence—those were the souls of the enemy mortals, weren't they all stuffed into Tartarus?
Hades knew that the population of the Ginnunga world far exceeded that of the Greek world, and Zeus was telling the truth.

It's always better to die an enemy than to die one's own followers.

We can only make those outsiders feel a little guilty.

"Okay! That's fine for now!"

The Underworld is the dwelling place of the souls of the dead, while Tartarus is the imprisonment place of the defeated Titans, guarded by the Hundred-Handed Giants.

Uranus and Cronus also imprisoned the Hecatoncheires and Cyclopes in Tartarus, fearing they might overthrow their rule. In later mythology, it was no longer merely a prison for defeated Titans; some of the most notorious villains in life were also imprisoned there, such as Sisyphus and Ixion.
Zeus once threatened to cast gods who disobeyed him into Tartarus, so that they would never see the divine light of the sacred mountain again. Tartarus was both a personified god, who had Typhon with Gaia, and a representation of one of the fundamental elements of the universe—the abyss.

In summary, this place does indeed possess the conditions to contain souls, but the conditions are far too harsh...

Enveloped by three layers of bronze walls inscribed with divine spells and three layers of dark sky, Tartarus now has countless rusty chains hanging from the sky, their terrifying barbs piercing the collarbones of wandering spirits and pulling their translucent forms into twisted shapes.

Large numbers of guilty or innocent souls were driven forward by jailers sent by the underworld, treading on the scorched ground. Every now and then, one could see the broken leg bones of the souls being swallowed up by the ravines filled with churning lava.

The smell of sulfur, mixed with a mournful wail, poured into the soul's nostrils, which had almost become mere decorations, and solidified into a burning phantom pain in the throat.

Occasionally, one can see instruments of torture by the roadside or next to buildings suddenly baring their fangs like ferocious beasts ambushing their prey, piercing the chest cavity of some unfortunate wandering soul with rusty spikes.

As the metal instruments of torture crushed his ribs, the humanoid silhouette materialized anew amidst the excruciating pain.

The torture inflicted on the great sinner Ixion now falls indiscriminately upon every new soul dying in the Greek world. Driven by instinct, the poor wandering souls huddle towards the middle of the procession, only to have their ankles clamped by bone claws emerging from the cracks in the ground—the owners of the bluish-purple knuckles are embedded in the rock, their empty eye sockets oozing phosphorescent light.

Despair churned everywhere.

All he could see were pale arms thrashing violently in the boiling pool of blood, fingertips covered in bits of rotting flesh desperately reaching out, trying to pull more victims from the roadside to suffer with him in the hellish pool of blood.

Such a horrific scene was even too much for some of the jailers brought from the underworld to bear.

"Isn't His Majesty Hades going too far?"

"Shh! I heard this was His Majesty Zeus's idea."

"But to throw the dead here to suffer without distinguishing right from wrong is just too much..."

"Sigh, what can you do when the underworld is full?"

Everywhere was a scene of utter devastation, with countless suspended souls colliding with each other in the scorching winds of purgatory, the scattering of spiritual fragments like a never-ending meteor shower. The jailers, however, failed to notice that some souls possessed a peculiar glow; they were gently pulled into the pool of blood and vanished without a trace.

Has it really disappeared?

Just as the strange feeling of being submerged was about to squeeze out the last few strands of consciousness from these souls, they were surprised to find themselves in a strange place where there was no pain, only gentle sensations.

On a huge platform five stories high, a figure wearing a mask familiar to their ancestors stood with his arms outstretched.

"I am Apche, the Grim Reaper—you have fulfilled your mission well. Now, rest in peace—"

In the next instant, these tormented and abused souls smiled, transformed into tiny streams of light, and finally into beams of soul light, which were converted into divine power and flowed into Apche's divine body like rivers flowing into the sea.

This 'Apuche' sighed softly, turned and entered a more secluded spirit realm, ignoring the divine light beside him, and bowed deeply to the majestic deity phantom on the head seat, which was as tall as three people.

"My Lord Odin! The eighteenth wave of souls has been gathered. My divine power has been restored to half of its peak."

“Very good!” The semi-transparent Odin smiled. “The same as before.”

"Yes!" Apche obediently transformed the divine power he had just extracted into a trickle of divine power and distributed it to Odin and the other Mayan gods.

Generally speaking, converting divine power of different attributes is a very troublesome matter. After all, divine power carries the characteristics of a deity. To convert the divine power of another deity into one's own, one must erase the other's divine power imprint. To be honest, even with this process, after deducting losses, it's good if only a third of the divine power remains.

However, Apche, being the god of death, deliberately erased the divinity from these divine powers and transformed them into more neutral attributes, thus avoiding most of the trouble.

Odin, seated at the head of the table, raised his eyelids slightly: "Now, who still has any objections to my elder brother—God-Emperor Downs Paulson's brilliant plan?"

(End of this chapter)