The Hero Returns

* * *

KA-BOOOOM—!

Boom, ruuumble—

The booming noises of thunder after a blinding flash of lightning bolt crashed down, as well as the sounds of the ground being ripped apart by such a powerful lightning strike, came from far away.

The stupendously bright light coming from below created a small sun. Its location was where yet another Altar used to be.

The Emperor, who had been urgently making his way to the nearest Altar, had to stop and ask, "Just what kind of commotion is this?" The knights around him, who lost their swords earlier, all turned their heads in the direction of the raucous noises.

Those noises that came from the location where the blinding light flashed sounded quite ominous. Lightning struck from the heavens above and had created a massive pillar of light in that place.

"The kind of light that we can clearly witness despite such a great distance away...?"

The power that could be detected from that reddish-golden light was quite extraordinary. The explosion that happened there must have been equally out of this world since it produced a pillar of light of such a scale.

"Perhaps the gods are truly enraged now," softly muttered the Emperor, but his words still stunned the nearby knights.

The gods were enraged?

Nothing was more terrifying than that to them. To these people, who lived their entire lives for a chance to earn the acknowledgment and salvation of their gods, the rage of the gods sounded far more shocking than being abandoned by their parents when they were still young kids.

"Kuk, keuh..."

But then, a knight suddenly collapsed without warning, bubbles gushing out of his mouth.

The Emperor's head spun to take a look when a painful moan entered his hearing from somewhere nearby. It was the same story for the other knights who had been distracted by the pillar of light until then.

"F—fella, what's gotten into you?"

"Y—your throat, why are you...?!"

"Is he trying to commit suicide?!"

Other knights stepped up one by one to stop their collapsed colleague, but that was when the sh*t hit the fan.

Splaaaatter—

"Kuwaaaah!"

Knights began attacking each other while swinging their broken swords. Some even tried to choke themselves or stabbed their blades into their abdomens.

Watching this scene unfold, the Emperor, could only mutter to himself, "Have the gods really forsaken us?"

Wriggle—

An inexplicable desire to fight, as well as thick murderous intent, suddenly began writhing inside the Emperor's heart. These two things were now screaming at him, telling him to kill all the loyal retainers near him.

He raised his hand, and with some force...

Stab—!

He stabbed his own chest with that hand, but he wasn't trying to kill himself.

"Be silent!"

He was trying to suppress the murderous urge wriggling deep within him, even if only by a little.

He might be over 100 years old, but his mental strength was still strong enough to pull this off. However, the real issue at the moment was everyone else except him.

"Indeed, the gods have abandoned us."

He was certain of it now.

What was happening right now was definitely wrong; if the gods they worshiped really existed, if they were meant to save the denizens of this world, then a horrific spectacle unfolding before their eyes shouldn't have been allowed to occur.

RUMBLE—!

Another lightning crashed down. Was that thunderclap the sign of the gods' rage? The Emperor shifted his head and stared at the Altar not too far from where he was, the one he and his company were originally heading toward before this event began.

It was at that moment that the next event unfolded.

Flash—!

Ka-boooom—!

The lightning struck that very Altar, creating a blinding pillar of light. This would be the fifth one they had witnessed so far.

"The Altar, it's...?"

The massive structure exploded to bits, its debris shooting up in the air only to be disintegrated by the lighting pillar and scattered away in the winds as nothing but dust.

The boiling murderous urge and the desire to fight in the Emperor's heart calmed down by a little bit just then.

However, that wasn't the last of the light pillar to appear.

Rumble, ka-boooooom—!

The number of these light pillars began increasing one by one. These lightning bolts crashing down from the heavens accurately landed on other Altars next.

"If a real god is out there, then..." The Emperor watched the Altars being destroyed and muttered softly, "I pray that you come to our aid."

***

One, two, three...!

Flash—!

Another spear flew out of Su-hyeun's hand; accompanied by an eye-searing light, it flew toward a certain location, and soon, a loud thunderclap exploded from there. This noise arrived far later than the light, however.

Huff, pant—

That was already 46—the number of Thunderbolts he had fired by now after taking a careful aim.

Su-hyeun was currently focusing all of his being right now. Just one shot missing its mark would bring about a massive catastrophe.

After confirming the location of an Altar, he had to precisely aim at it before firing his spear. If a stray shot landed in a densely populated city by mistake, then in the blink of an eye, millions, no, tens of millions of people would lose their lives.

His control over the destructive power also had to be exact. Each Thunderbolt possessed immense power that was strong enough to obliterate the Altar with a single shot.

He couldn't make it any more, or any less, powerful than that. If he made a mistake with that task, he could potentially fail to destroy the Altars or end up with a much larger range of destruction that could affect the nearby cities.

"Two more shots left."

All 46 spears accurately hit their targets. There hadn't been any collateral damage so far as he destroyed the Altars for good.

Now, only two more Altars remained. Su-hyeun raised his hand and then grasped a Thunderbolt floating up there and took aim in a certain direction.

One, two...

"Three."

Paaaaaaang—

Flash—!

Ka-boooooom—!

A bright light flashed, followed by a loud thunderclap, to illuminate the land below.

A humongous pillar of light shot up into the air; due to the sheer size of the Altar, Su-hyeun could vividly see the spectacle taking place below even though he was so high up in the sky that he could take in the entirety of Pangaea with just one glance.

Fuu-woo—

He relied on the breathing technique to get a hold of his heavy panting. His hotly burning chest cooled down by a bit.

Now, only one shot remained.

"This isn't something I want to repeat ever again, that's for sure."

Grip—

Su-hyeun grabbed the last Thunderbolt.

Only one Altar remained, but it was the farthest one away from him, and he was honestly most hesitant about this one. He even briefly entertained the idea of relying on Miru to narrow the distance to this Altar, but in the end, he figured that it would take quite some time before he could get close enough.

Back at the beginning, he was worried about whether he could accurately throw a spear that far or not, but now, he was already rather confident of his spear-throwing ability.

Flash—!

The spear left his hand and hurtled forward as a streak of pure light. Su-hyeun used Insight and observed the situation of the last Altar in the far-off distance.

The Thunderbolt accurately struck it, pulverizing the entire structure and turning it into nothing more than a pile of scorched rubble.

How much time passed by after that happened?

Ku-rururu—

The noises of destruction reached him quite sometime later, but due to the great distance, the noises were really faint.

[The 200th floor's trial has been cleared.]

[You have acquired 300,000,000 points.]

[Strength has risen by one.]

[Agility has risen by one.]

[Reward handout is being delayed.]

[Reward will be handed out in 10 days.]

[Will you transfer to the next floor?]

No matter when he heard those messages, they sure perked him up. They were proof that he had definitely passed this floor's trial.

"But my reward is being delayed?"

Rewards regarding his stats and points had been definitely handed out, but another reward was being delayed, only to be handed out 10 days later? This would be his first time experiencing something like this.

"Is there a special reason for that?"

Regardless of why, this was still better than not getting anything at all. In all honesty, the other rewards were already pretty good. The increases in both the strength and agility stats were a far better reward than most items, after all. On top of that, he also gained 300 million points.

Maybe it was because this happened to be the trial of the 200th floor that the acquired points were quite extraordinary indeed.

"With this amount, maybe I can finally buy that thing."

A new store window became available after he crossed the 100th floor, but the general pricing of items there was incredibly steep, and he had already spent most of his accrued points on purchasing the God's Tear, so in his current situation, even if he wanted to, he couldn't buy anything else.

Still, he had memorized a few useful-looking items from the store.

"I don't know if they are as good as the Thunder Glove, but things like Master Subhuti's Robe or Indra's Eye, or even Odin's Golden Bracelet, are definitely god-tier items.'

The administrators used the classification of "god-tier" to refer to the items that represented the "gods." Those items were either used by the gods or were made by them. Unfortunately, every single one of them was ridiculously expensive.

"The one I want the most is, without a doubt, Odin's Golden Bracelet, but..."

Su-hyeun remembered that the golden "armor" cost as much as five billion points. Not only was his current point amount not even close, but he couldn't even be certain if he could save up that much any time soon.

From the get-go, that price tag of five billion seemed just too outlandish to seem realistic to him.

"As for Indra's Eye, that's two billion. Meanwhile, Subhuti's Robe was three billion. And also…" Su-hyeun then recalled one more item with a god's name attached to it. "Hephaestus's Hammer, 500 million."

It was an item that Su-hyeun could feasibly buy with his current points. This hammer alone could, depending on how it was used, create several god-tier items. Of course, Su-hyeun wouldn't necessarily be the one to wield such an item in this case.

However...

"Well, I might not need to buy it, after all." Rather than spending his hard-earned points to buy this item, Su-hyeun came up with another idea, "Besides, I have another matter to attend to there, anyway."

He thought of two matters that needed his attention, and to get them done, he started moving once more.

***

The skies and the air were black and murky that it was nearly impossible to find a normal patch of ground here. The terrain was also seemingly filled with spikes made of hardened steel. As for the temperature, it seesawed between boiler-cooker hot and as cold as the North Pole. To top it all off, dead spirits continuously howled cries of torment.

This was Hell, the "world" where those existences who committed grave crimes and thus carried the weight of karma would eventually end up.

On this specific part of Hell, a certain young man was happily humming away within a lava fall found inside a lava cave. However, this place was supposed to be the ultimate destination for the souls that had committed the worst sins.

"Well, you seem to be enjoying your life here."

Step—

Another man entered this lave cave. This man, who boasted abundant and unkempt black beard, was none other than the master of this cave, as well as Hell itself, Hades.

"Uncle, lava as hot as this one cannot be found anywhere else except in Hell, so I might as well enjoy it to the fullest while I'm here."

"Why don't you just live here for good, then?"

"Aha, but I couldn't do that. It's just too boring here. I fear that I'll get bored of this lifestyle in less than a century," Apollo replied to Hades while leisurely bringing some grapes to his mouth.

That was the heavenly fruit that didn't melt or burn to a crisp despite being inside the hot lava of Hell. Such a fruit would've been seen as the greatest heaven-sent elixir to some people, yet Apollo simply munched on one every time he got a little bored.

Although this whole spectacle seemed unbelievable, he was currently being punished for his indiscretions. For the price of burning the netherworld down, he was sentenced to 1000 years of imprisonment in this part of Hell.

Of course, that was already a rather soft sentence. If Apollo hadn't been Zeus's son, Hades wouldn't have ended the punishment there, after all.

"Still, this lava fall isn't bad at all, uncle. It's so warm that it's easy to fall asleep in here."

"Are you sure you're here to repent for your crime?"

"But uncle, you weren't really planning to punish me anyway, were you? In any case, what brings you here?" asked Apollo as he got back up to his feet and stepped outside the lava fall

Splash—

A chiton boasting an amber hue that leaned closer to being a golden color materialized over his chiseled body with not a single ounce of unnecessary fat.

Apollo chose to step outside since his bath time was over, and Hades addressed him while leaning against the nearby wall, "Kali has died."

"Kali?" Apollo was tying his long hair, only for his hands to come to a stop at that surprising news. "Was it also that black dragon that devoured Asura?"

"No. It was that human from before."

"When you say that human from before..."

"The one who accompanied Hercules."

"Aaaah! That human," Apollo nodded sagely as if he just finally remembered. "Yes, he certainly was an extraordinary man. Not only did he manage to suppress Hercules, who has inherited father's blood to an unbelievable degree, but he now even defeated Kali?"

"Is it hard for you to believe?"

"Well, it certainly is unbelievable news." Apollo finished tying his hair. "But I have no choice to believe it after seeing 'this' now."

Just as he finished speaking…

Bang, bang bang—!

Someone loudly knocked on the door. It was not just any doorway but the entrance of Hell itself, and that person was now busy pounding on such a door.

"It seems that our reunion has come about sooner than expected, uncle," Apollo smiled brightly. Then, his figure transformed into flames and vanished from the spot.

Rumble—

Hades stared at the spot where Apollo used to stand.

It seemed that his nephew was really glad to see that human again, but that made some sense, seeing how Apollo was destined to spend several centuries more in Hell. That human's visit would prove to be a joyous distraction, indeed.

"This is the second time that a human willingly waltzed into Hell, isn't it?" Hades muttered to himself while recalling a certain event from a long time ago. "The world of the gods will get a bit noisy for a while, it seems."