Having traversed countless realms, can you possibly be as clever as me?

It's naturally because of 'binge eating'—what do you use to eat if you don't use your mouth?

However, Mo Jila clearly couldn't forgive Tsurugi's actions. She glared at Tsurugi with anger and embarrassment, her eyes filled with murderous intent!

Boom! Boom! Boom!

A heavy rumble came from above the hall, accompanied by the sound of wings flapping.

"Ha, I should go now, otherwise it'll be troublesome when your sisters come."

Looking at the embarrassed and annoyed goddess of vengeance, Tsurugi chuckled and pinched her cheek before stepping into the dark passage behind the temple. At the end of that passage lay the boundless realm of gray mist and lava in the Narcissus Plain.

Mojira touched her lips lightly with her fingertips a moment after he left, and whispered something.

Having officially left Tartarus, Tsurugi arrived at the Narcissus Plain.

This land, which was no longer unfamiliar to him, was no longer fraught with danger like Tartarus.

And here, it's just right.

He leaped onto a plank adrift on the endless sea of ​​the Styx, the wreckage of Charon's ship, and sailed on the Styx for a very long time, until he came from Styx to the River of Lamentation, Cocytus.

Unlike the snow-red of Styx, the color of Coctos is a somber gray. This is because what gathers here is the tears of sinners.

What Tsurugie needs to do next is jump into it and use Mojira's power of vengeance to create a suit of armor for herself.

That said, his former appearance as an angry demon was also forged in the River Styx.

But at that time, he wanted to forge a raging fire, so he leaped into the hatred-filled Styx.

What he needs to do next is no longer simple hatred—but the power and attitude derived from the divine power of revenge.

“Revenge, slaughter, and placing justice before atrocities—respond to me, vengeful god, with the curse of Uranus as your source.”

Tsurugi opened her arms, chanting a song that summoned the power of revenge, and then jumped into Coctos without hesitation.

The moment he entered the River Styx, all was silent.

Because he was enveloped by the power of the vengeful gods, he was not taken by the River Styx. Moreover, the water of this river had a completely different texture compared to the heat of Styx.

The murky river water wasn't cold, but it carried an extremely heavy texture, like a gel solidified from the sighs and cries of countless people. His body passed through the water without splashing any water; only ripples spread outwards along the turbid surface, and at the end of each ripple emerged a distorted human face, which shattered and disappeared after a brief cry.

He didn't struggle, letting himself sink.

Coctos's hatred differs from Styx's hatred—hatred is fiery, angry, and intensely directed. The River of Lamentation flows with something deep and tranquil. It is the lingering attachment of countless souls who, in their final moments on earth, could not let go; it is the undercurrent formed by their broken promises, trampled dignity, and betrayed trust.

Dongjiang opened his eyes.

The murky river water could not obscure the vision of Hades's bloodline. He saw faces slowly rising from the depths of the riverbed—men's, women's, old people's, and children's. Their eyes were all murky gray, and their mouths were slightly open, as if they wanted to say something, but could only exhale silent bubbles.

As the bubbles rise to a certain height, they break into tiny streams of light that merge into the river water.

Dongjiang reached out and touched a bubble that was floating towards him with his fingertips.

In that instant, he saw the lamentations of souls floating and sinking in the River Styx, which transcends time and space.

A farmer had all his land taken away by a lord during the harvest season. He fled with his wife and daughter, but was overtaken by the lord's men on the way. His wife was kidnapped, his daughter was thrown into the river, and he was tied to a tree, listening to his daughter cry out "Father" in the water until her voice disappeared.

Dongjiang saw the hatred burning in his heart, like an inextinguishable spark.

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He continued to sink, more bubbles came towards him, and more memories flooded his consciousness.

A young soldier, returning home after the war, discovered that his fiancée had been raped by a fellow soldier and then committed suicide. He sought revenge with a knife, but was killed by the same soldier. As he lay in a pool of blood, he saw his comrade laughing as he stepped over his corpse, and in the last glimpse of his eyes, he saw the blue ribbon his fiancée had tied to the window, fluttering in the wind.

An old woman watched helplessly as her son was wrongfully executed. She spent the rest of her life gathering evidence, drafting legal documents, and traveling between various cities. A week before her death, she finally submitted her case to the official in charge of the judgment, only to have it contemptuously thrown into the furnace.

Her last memory was the flickering light of flames engulfing the paper, and a cold, expressionless face.

A slave, a priest, a merchant, a mother, a child.

Dongjiang's body sank deeper and deeper, and the memories of these wandering souls grew more numerous and denser. They washed over his consciousness like a torrential rain, each one a dagger, precisely piercing the soft spot called empathy.

He could have shut down his senses, but Tsugumi didn't. Because what he wanted was revenge.

It was not a superficial revenge, nor a beating for emotional venting, but a pure power that grew from trampled dignity and clung to the depths of the soul like rust.

That is the only thing left for every mortal after their last hope has been taken away.

Dongjiang lay awake in the deepest part of Cokutos, watching the vengeful memories of countless souls swirl, entwine, and coalesce around him.

The vengeful power of Mogira within him began to resonate.

Megara's revenge is divine—an ancient, ritualistic act with clearly defined rules and purposes. It represents order and punishment, a law beyond the law itself. Often, it has nothing to do with good or evil.

But the revenge of these mortals is different.

They are brutal, filthy, unreasonable, and disregard rules. They are driven by the simple instinct of "you destroyed me, so I will destroy you in return." They are unclean and inelegant, but more fervent, more real, and more—deadly—than Merciful revenge.

This was a power that Tsugumi was intimately familiar with; it was the same power he had seized from Eris—except that in his anger he had grasped pure destruction, while now he was touching upon the very essence of revenge.

Tsurugi's chest began to burn.

Those memories of revenge transformed into countless fine threads, seeping into his pores, his eye sockets, his mouth and nose, traveling along his blood vessels to his bones and muscles. He felt as if his skin was being cast by layers of molten iron, being reshaped from the inside out.

Does it hurt? A little. But more than that, it's a strange feeling of fullness, as if something that has been suppressed for a long time has finally found an outlet.

He opened his mouth, but no sound came out. The waters of the Coctos River poured into his throat, along with the lamentations and roars of the dead.

"revenge."

"Kill them."

"Let them taste my pain too."

Why should I be the only one to suffer all this?

"A blood debt must be a blood debtor."

"A blood debt must be paid in blood!"

"Blood debts—blood must be repaid—"

The sound coalesced into a torrent, washing over, forging, and tempering him repeatedly within his body. His bones grew harder, his muscle fibers were rewoven, and layers of dark patterns appeared on his skin, like marks left by some ancient forging.

He didn't know how long he had been submerged at the bottom of the river. It could have been a moment, or it could have been days, but when Dongjiang opened his eyes again, the waters of the Kokutos River had changed color. The originally gray liquid was now mixed with wisps of dark red, traces of the vengeful power burning within him igniting the lamentations in the river.

He was now completely encased in the armor that was being forged.

When the Thrush emerges from the surface of the River Cocurtos, it creates ripples on the surface of the River Styx, but the ripples quickly subside.

He stepped onto the riverbank, his feet resting on greyish-white rocks covered with some kind of moss, which shimmered with a pale blue glow in the eternal, dim light.

He looked down at himself.

This armor was much smaller than the raging form he forged in Styx; it was truly just a suit of armor, not the demon's true form.

It covered his entire body seamlessly, its material indistinguishable as either metal or some kind of solidified dark light—its surface shimmered with a deep, dark green that seemed to have absorbed all light, like hellish steel that had been forged and tempered countless times.

The shoulder armor is broad and angular, with fine, almost indistinguishable patterns engraved on its sharp, outward-extending edges. The breastplate is thick and has a smooth curve. The armor on the arms wraps from the shoulders all the way to the back of the hands, with a precise layered structure at the joints, ensuring both flexibility of movement and protection.

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But what's most striking is his helmet.

To be precise, it wasn't a helmet that looked like armor at all; rather, it was a sci-fi style powered armor headgear!

With a rounded figure and a dark yet transparent mask, the front of which features a dark V-shaped mask that runs across the entire face, allowing one to see Tsurugi's face if they get close.

Yes, the design of this armor is largely inspired by the famous Doom Slayer who slaughtered the entire hell!

Even the power that comes with this divine power is the same as his.

Tsurugi flexed her fingers, and the scratching of her nails produced an extremely crisp metallic screech.

He felt the armor resonating with his breath. With each breath, the crimson core in the center of the breastplate would pulsate slightly, and the power of vengeance gathered within Kokutos would flow through the armor's patterns, making its texture more solid and sharper.

He felt a more primal, more savage power surging through his blood—the imprint left by the vengeful will of countless mortals within him, a pure driving force condensed from the sighs of the dead souls deep beneath the Cocutos River.

He is the prince of the underworld, the child of the ruler of the underworld.

But now he is also—the very obsession with revenge.

Tsuruga raised her hand and gently clenched her fist.

The armor emitted a low, muffled thud. A thin crack silently appeared on the gray-white rock beneath his feet, as if it had been crushed by an invisible weight.

The true core power of this armor is not defense, or even attack itself—but an extremely cruel, almost greedy efficiency.

As long as he kills in battle, as long as his victims are driven by "revenge"—whether that revenge belongs to him or to those he kills—this armor will draw power from it. Every life ended in the name of revenge, every drop of blood shed for revenge, will be absorbed, transformed, and fed back to him by the crimson core at the center of the breastplate.

The more he kills, the stronger he becomes. The more intense his vengeance, the more unstoppable his power.

This is a power growth method with no upper limit. It is fundamentally the same as the desire for revenge of the souls in the underworld. The revenge that those who were suppressed, betrayed, or killed could not complete is completed by Tsugumi. And with each step he completes, the obsession left by those souls in Cokutos will be released, merging into his armor and becoming a heavier foundation for his next punch.

"Rip and tear......."

Tsurugi looked down at her body, which was covered by a mixture of dark red and bluish-black, and took a deep breath.

Dongjiang raised his head and looked into the depths of the Narcissus Plain. The boundless gray mist was no longer hazy in his eyes—the mask of this armor had the ability to filter perception, allowing him to see farther and more clearly in the darkness.

In the distance, the spirits wandering on the Narcissus Plain seemed to sense something. They had no faces, only blurry humanoid outlines swaying in the gray mist, but at this moment they all stopped and turned in unison towards the direction of the Thrush River.

Then, these souls, who should have been forever lost and in darkness, seemed to see something unimaginably terrifying, and scattered and peered out amidst silent screams.

Dongjiang chuckled. He still had two stretches of road to travel before leaving the Underworld—the end of the Narcissus Plain was the Land of Bliss, and beyond the Land of Bliss lay the Sacred Forest of Poplars leading to the human world.

They were only one step away from leaving the underworld.

The book club forum opens up a whole new world when you turn the page.

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I highly recommend "Traveling Through Heavens, Can You Be Smarter Than Me?"!

779. Hades: Sekishiki - Meikai Ha!

The snow from the sacred poplar forest fell silently onto Dongjiang's shoulder armor.

He encountered no significant obstacles as he crossed the Narcissus Plains—the undead spirits in the gray fog, sensing the aura of vengeful cosmos emanating from him, scattered like duckweed pushed aside by the tide.

The souls of Blissful Paradise cast curious glances from afar, but none of them stepped forward to stop him. News of Prince Zagreus's attempt to break through the barrier was nothing new in the Underworld; what was new was the aura emanating from him this time, which made them instinctively choose to give way.

Tsuruga struggled with whether or not to take the initiative to fight and break out.

But after thinking about it, I decided against it. The souls of the Land of Bliss were not worth absorbing at all, and as for the heroes of Paradise Island...

He's capable of fighting, and Tsugumi estimates that most of them have something to offer for revenge. But to be honest, that would be too much of a fuss and a huge waste of time—the heroes of Paradise Island are immortal, so it would be easy to fight them all over, but getting out would take too much time.