Chapter 26

SHALLTEAR POV:

From an eerie black portal on the 27th floor of the Dungeon, Shalltear and her entourage of Death Knights emerged, each one carrying a member of the bound and gagged Soma Familia. The room they arrived in was a 'field', a dead-end room in the Dungeon, that was indeed a field of crystals, with crystal columns sprouting throughout it like groves of trees.

Since it was a spacious room without walls nearby, there were no hiding places for monsters to sneak up on them. She wasted no time and gave orders to her knights.

"Deposit them in a circle in the center and damage the room's floor. Make sure no monsters come to annoy us," she instructed her knights.

Following her orders, the towering, black-armored knights formed a protective circle around the group. Shalltear gently placed Soma, who was still bound, gagged, and blindfolded, on the ground.

Her demeanor shifted, her expression taking on a mischievous quality. She looked like a naughty child about to indulge in forbidden pleasures. Without hesitation, she removed the deity's blindfold and mouth gag, greeting him with a teasing smile.

"Hello~~" Shalltear chimed, her voice dripping with playful excitement.

Blinded momentarily by the sudden blue light emanating from the room's ceiling, which reflected off the surrounding crystals, Soma could only manage a bewildered, "Where...?"

"You are on the twenty-seventh floor~" She answered cheerfully, delighted to unveil their current location in the depths of the Dungeon.

The deusdea's vision cleared, revealing his predicament of being inside the Dungeon. Bound and immobilized, he couldn't help but voice his annoyance. "This is... much too bothersome," he muttered, clearly displeased with the situation.

The gods didn't have their Arcanum sealed per se, since they could unseal it at any moment to use it.

But of course, the gods and goddesses came to this world to enjoy a 'game,' and therefore they had to follow a set of rules. Unfortunately, activating Arcanum was against the rules that the gods set for themselves. If broken, they would be sent back to the heavens as punishment, never to return to the lower world.

That being said, if a god didn't care or was in a really precarious position, said god could activate it once to do whatever the deity pleased, before being sent back to the heavens. This was always possible—except in the Dungeon.

If a deity were to use his Arcanum or be harmed in the Dungeon, the deity will not be sent back to the heavens—They will be sucked into the Dungeon instead.

The fact that Shalltear brought Soma into the Dungeon made him almost helpless.

This was in fact the first reason why the Gods weren't allowed to enter the Dungeon. The second one is because if they activated their Aura, the Dungeon would detect the gods and spawn a jet-black monster specifically to assassinate them. After all, the Dungeon hates it. It hates the fact that the gods are all the way down here. So of course it would send special monsters to kill the gods who came too deep.

Shalltear had no intentions of making things easy for him. She teased, "You've been a bad, bad deity, Soma, so now it's time for your punishment~~."

The deusdea's response was laced with a touch of resignation as he muttered to himself, "Operational regulation... Penalty... My passion, my reason..."

His long, unkempt hair partially concealed his downtrodden face, and an aura of melancholy and despair seemed to envelop him.

But she was resolute, her determination clear. "Yes, a penalty—for you!" she declared firmly.

Soma, however, was not one to back down easily. He asserted, "You have no right... to judge a deusdea."

Unfazed, Shalltear responded with a hint of irritation, "Is that so~?"

Soma's reaction suggested he considered this conversation futile. "Release me, child," he demanded dismissively.

But she wasn't about to yield. "I disagree. I am judging you by your own rules set by your peers, and your own morals!" she retorted fiercely.

In this 'game', the responsibility of a deusdea encompasses everything that happens inside his Familia, from the recruiting strategy, wars, and crimes to even brawls with other familias. And therefore the achievements of the members were the achievements of the head of the Familia.

Soma, with his wine, which was practically a 'drug' with its addictive effects, caused a disaster in the Familia. He could as easily stop producing soma (the wine), but even if not, you only need to compare it to Dyonisus Familia, they can work together effectively and have a functional Familia, even when Dionysus grape wine effects are so strong that it had the same effect as Soma's wine on the deusdea themselves.

From Shalltear's perspective, Soma was responsible for everything. And she was very angry for Lili and honestly, had just held on for too long thinking what sadistic retribution would give to the deity.

He attempted to respond, but the expression on his face revealed that he regarded it as a futile effort. "What good are the words of children that succumb to wine so easily?" Soma scoffed, dismissing Shalltear's words with a tone of condescension.

Her frustration was evident as she firmly grasped the deusdea's chin, forcing him to meet her gaze. However, when she peered into his eyes—dark as ink—she found no reflection of her own face, only an overwhelming sense of disappointment.

Her anger boiling over, Shalltear confronted the deity. "You first drug them and now berate them because they are unable to resist it???!!!!" she exclaimed, her fury palpable.

Unsurprisingly, Soma remained silent, offering no response.

But it was the despondent look in his eyes that caught her attention. It became clear to her that Soma wasn't just disappointed in his followers; he was disillusioned with the entire world of Gekai.

In a moment of resignation, Shalltear sighed. "I see... you don't care about anything anymore," she remarked, releasing his chin. This interrogation was proving to be increasingly unsatisfactory.

Internally, she couldn't help but feel displeased by the turn of events.

This is so disappointing...

Changing her approach, she decided to make an offer. "Very well... I will consider taking you back to the surface if you agree to two demands," she stated, her expression now filled with detachment.

Recognizing that the situation wasn't unfolding as she had hoped, Shalltear resolved to use Soma for what she could gain from him and bring this ordeal to an end.

The deity didn't utter a word but simply nodded in response to her proposition.

She approached one of the captured Soma Familia members, an adult female cat person with charcoal-colored hair clad in a dark brown jacket and a sandy-colored skirt. With a swift motion, Shalltear hurled the woman onto the ground and pulled open her dark brown jacket to expose her bare back. Without hesitation, she sliced through the woman's bra, declaring, "This is in the way," thus baring the cat-woman's back.

Turning her gaze toward Soma, Shalltear issued a command. "First, unlock her Status Lock," she ordered, releasing the deity from his bindings.

Soma, now free, moved his previously bound arms and used his teeth to create a small cut on his own finger. With the first few drops of blood, he placed his finger just below the cat-woman's neck. In a deliberate, steady motion, he traced a sequence of movements on her back, almost as if he was writing his signature. As his blood flowed, it formed both straight lines and intricate patterns.

The turning point had arrived—the Status hieroglyphs now became visible. This was what Shalltear had been seeking: Soma's divine signature.

"Now, for the second step, initiate the Familia conversion ceremony," Shalltear instructed the deusdea.

Soma made another small cut on his finger and drew it across the hieroglyphs, the ichor in his blood causing the markings to emit a soft glow. His finger moved swiftly across the woman's skin, as though he were unriddling a puzzle. With each passing moment, the hieroglyphs grew brighter, until every mark began to pulse with light.

After completing the process, the deity withdrew his hand and awaited further instructions from Shalltear. However, she remained passive, not taking any immediate action. Consequently, the blinking characters returned to their normal state.

If Soma had cared more about his Familia members, he might have considered her intentions for the child she had requested. He might have questioned why she wanted to initiate a Familia conversion ceremony that had been left unfinished instead of simply releasing the contract or allowing the pact to remain open for conversion with another Familia. However, the deity's current state of disappointment with everything around him left him with only one response: "I did my part...now do yours."

But Shalltear instead abruptly struck Soma on the head, sending him unconscious and sprawling to the ground. With a sinister grin, she declared, "No, I only agreed to consider it...and the answer is—no."

Did you really think I would allow this to end like this?! With this unsatisfactory development?!

She had no intention of allowing matters to conclude in this disappointing manner. She lifted the unconscious deusdea by his hair and taunted, "You love wine, don't you~? Then rejoice! For today, you will become wine!"

She knew that God's Arcanum wouldn't activate immediately if Soma were hurt or sick; it would only do so when he was mortally wounded. This also meant she couldn't drain him with her fangs and convert him into a vampire without triggering his Arcanum. Instead, she made a small cut on the deity's left arm artery, then positioned a small wine bottle nearby, one she had taken from his own wine cellar.

As Soma's heart continued to beat, each pulse filled the bottle a little more with his divine blood. Shalltear meticulously drained him, filling several small wine bottles with his precious essence. Although his condition grew increasingly dire, his body trembling, he had not yet reached the threshold of being mortally wounded.

With Soma still in her grasp, she executed a swift leap and brought herself close to the Dungeon's stone walls. In her free hand, she brandished her parasol like a wicked blade and sliced a large, gaping gash in the Dungeon's surface.

"I have no more use for you," Shalltear declared to the helpless deity in her grip, her expression one of contempt. But her demeanor quickly shifted, and she grinned as she said "Farewell".

Gently, she placed the trembling, still-living god inside the Dungeon's gaping wound, poised to witness the next cruel act. She waited for the Dungeon's regenerative abilities to kick in.

As the Dungeon sensed the presence of the god, the fractured sections of the wall began to grow with unusual speed, resembling demonic claws unwilling to release their prey. Soma's body was gradually drawn into the Dungeon's depths.

She just fed the Dungeon with a god.

Shalltear's actions were nothing short of insane. She had not only exacted retribution upon Soma for his wicked deeds, nor had she simply drained his blood and left him to endure suffering, but she had taken it to an inhuman extreme by feeding him to their most dreaded enemy—the Dungeon—all the while, she wore a smile akin to that of an affectionate mother telling her child to eat, conveying a level of spite and sadism beyond measure.

In her quest for vengeance, Shalltear had crossed a line that few would dare to tread, and she reveled in every moment of her merciless cruelty.

As far as the people of the lower world knew the gods were unkillable. If a god would be fatally harmed, his Arcaneum would activate healing them and he would be sent back to the upper realm, but even so, they would continue to exist.

Even in the upper world—the heavens—except for special gods like Odin with his divine spear, gods couldn't kill other gods, both Loki and Dionysus had tried to do it so many times that it is not even funny, and if you compared to how meekly they behaved in the lower world you would think they are another person.

Loki had tried to kill many gods, she had wrought havoc and caused confusion whenever possible. She got into some serious knock-down, drag-out fights with other gods. In fact, she'd been so brutal and unprecedentedly destructive that she'd earned herself a nickname—The ultimate trickster in all the heavens.

Dionysus also tried to kill other gods to bring them fear and despair to create a true orgia, but no matter how much he tried to kill them, they just kept laughing right up until the end.

None of them had ever managed to kill any other god, no matter how much they tried.

—And yet...

—Shalltear had done the impossible

—She broke the unbreakable rule

—She killed an unkillable god

—By using the Dungeon

—To fight the power of the gods

—And this was just the beginning

o-O-o

OURANOS POV:

In his customary seat at the altar within the chamber of prayers beneath the Guild, Ouranos remained the picture of divine composure. However, an unexpected disturbance rippled through the Dungeon, and his divine senses honed in on the anomaly deep below.

The quartet of torchlights surrounding the altar, once unwavering in their brilliance, flickered with uncertainty. His ancient eyelids, long sealed in contemplation, abruptly lifted, unveiling his celestial eyes akin to a boundless sky. Within their depths, a rare emotion surfaced—dismay.

Emerging from the shadowed recesses of the chamber, Fels materialized, their presence a mere whisper. They acknowledged the unusual sight with a remark, "This is the first time... I have seen you so bewildered, Ouranos."

With a measured tone, Ouranos relayed the peculiar phenomenon he had detected below in the Dungeon. "The Dungeon is suddenly calm... and stopped spawning monsters."

Intrigued, Fels offered their perspective, perhaps tinged with a glimmer of optimism. "Wouldn't this be a good sign?"

Ouranos, however, bore a weightier concern in his eyes as he contemplated the unsettling tranquility that had overtaken the labyrinthine depths. "I hope... it is not the calm before the storm."