The Sword Emperor Transmigrates-Chapter 260

The River Styx.

According to the great Olympian mythos, it was the famous boundary between the land of the living and the land of the dead. Even the four other rivers combined couldn’t compare to Styx’s power and renown.

Any oath sworn in its name was absolutely binding, and any mortal who dared to break that oath would be sentenced to Tartarus, trapped in an agonizing limbo between life and death. Even divine beings would fall into a death-like sleep for ten years and wake up with their power greatly diminished.

Not even Zeus, the king of the gods, could bypass Styx’s frightening power.

Leonard felt a strange sense of appreciation as they entered the river.

It’s not so different from the Buddhist beliefs regarding the Sanzu River. All dead beings must pass through the afterlife, and once they cross, there’s no going back. They even have to pay for passage, just like with the River Styx.

Leonard had been under the impression that murim had never been ruled by gods like this world, but now he wondered if that was a hasty conclusion.

After all, murim had once been ruled by the Three Emperors and the Five Sovereigns during the Xia Dynasty, and the Yellow Emperor had faced off against the demon god Chiyou, who had led an army of ten thousand evil spirits. The Battle of Zhuolu, which had been destructive to both sides, wasn’t so different from the God-Slaying War. What if that battle had also left a power vacuum?

In that case, perhaps Rifts and dimensional distortions would have manifested in the Central Plains as well. On one hand, the conclusion of the battle had been very different, with the Yellow Emperor emerging victorious and leading the nation to prosperity. But on the other hand, murim might have come very close to suffering a fate similar to that of this world.

...Though, it’s not like I’ll ever find out.

Even if Leonard reached the Deification Tier, traveling between worlds was no easy feat. After all, multiple Outer Gods had attempted to invade the world, and every single one had failed.

Besides, Leonard had no intention of returning to murim, as it was far less interesting than this world. Although, he would like to get a glimpse into the era depicted in the stories of the Fengshen Yanyi, where celestial beings and demons kept clashing as they roamed the earth...

“Ahem...!” Simon snapped Leonard out of his daydreaming.

Turning to him, Leonard realized that the Grand Magus wasn’t so different from a celestial being himself.

“According to the legends, the River Styx isn’t simply a body of water, but a manifestation of the goddess Styx’s power. She sided with the Olympians against the Titans, and as a reward, Zeus made her the mistress of a river with such great power to match her contributions. In some accounts, she is also said to be the river itself.”

“So Styx doesn’t possess that much power herself?” Leonard asked.

“She is hardly weak, but she was not strong enough to join the Olympians, so she does not have enough power to be considered a Great God.”

As Charon listened in, he added, “The reward she received after the Titanomachy was more of an honorary gift, not raw power. Because the war was something of a family strife, it wasn’t quite appropriate to award anything grand. Her husband Pallas was also killed during the war, so I would imagine that she was not entirely joyful when she accepted the gift.”

“How did this Pallas die? What happened?” Demian asked, his curiosity evident.

“He was slain by the bright-eyed Athena, the goddess of wisdom and war, who flayed his skin to make the aegis shield. It was the price he paid for siding with Kronos.”

“Geez, that’s brutal. You’d think they’d go a little easy on each other, being members of the same pantheon and all...” Demian muttered.

“It is the opposite. While they may mercifully overlook an injury inflicted by another’s pet, it is inevitable that their resentment would build if they are wounded by a fellow god.”

Mortals generally failed to wrap their heads around this, but such were the ways of the gods. While Demian and Leonard looked a little repulsed and bewildered, Simon stroked his beard and nodded, as though he understood.

Their conversation ended there, and before they knew it, the ferryboat had reached the other side of the river and halted at the shore, which led into gray plains.

“My duty ends here. May you have a safe return.”

Charon bade them farewell, and the three men climbed out of the boat onto solid ground. The boatman paddled away and disappeared.

Now, the trio was left with no choice but to seek out Hades. They couldn’t use a lightness art to go back across the river on duckweed, nor could they use any flying or teleportation spells. The only way they could go was forward.

Demian let out a forced laugh. “It’s not like I ever had any thoughts of turning back, but I’m at a loss for words. I thought this was only supposed to be an illusion of the real thing,” he muttered to himself.

Leonard sensed that he was itching for a fight. “Need I remind you that we’re not here to fight Hades?”

“Of course not, but shouldn’t I unsheathe my sword at least? If we approach him too passively, he’ll offer less favorable conditions.”

“Well, I don’t think he’ll be more favorable if we do that,” Leonard argued, “given that his pride is one of the only things he has left.”

“All I’m saying is that we don’t have to act so compliant when Hades isn’t even the only god of the netherworld.”

“Ah...” Leonard finally understood what he meant.

So this is the Asphodel Meadows, he thought, turning away to take in the landscape.

Before them stretched the field of ashes, the Asphodel Meadows. Whitish green-gray buds and flower petals sprouted and swayed as far as they eye could see.

According to the legends, this place was supposed to be teeming with souls, but since the Divine Territory was only a remnant of the Underworld, that was one thing it hadn’t been able to recreate. This was where the spirits of the common people wandered—those who weren’t particularly good, nor particularly evil.

Unlike figures such as Tantalus, who was sentenced to starve and thirst for all of eternity, those spirits weren’t punished, but they also weren’t greeted with banquets like heroes were. They simply fed on flowers and leaves as they waited to be reincarnated.

If the trio went to the right, they would reach the paradise of the Elysian Fields, and if they went left, they would reach the realm of eternal damnation, Tartarus.

Or so the legends said. It wasn’t like they could check.

“Let us proceed forward. We have no reason to turn left nor right,” Simon said.

Leonard and Demian followed behind him, venturing deeper into the meadows. It was so vast that they couldn’t even guess at its size.

The stalks and flowers were taller and thicker than the build of a grown man, obstructing their view.[1] But it wasn’t much of a problem for Demigod Tiers.

They opened their way forward simply by willing it. The three kept walking like that for several hours, taking their time. Finally, they reached the end of the meadows, coming across what seemed to be the entrance of Hades’s palace.

It’s enormous...!

Pillars rose up from the canyon, shooting several kilometers into the sky. Despite its tremendous size, however, there didn’t seem to be any sort of gate to block off intruders.

Of course, that was to be expected—Hades had a guard dog, the very one from the tales of Heracles. Leonard had glimpsed it once while clashing with the Swordmaster Herman, but seeing it in person was an entirely different experience.

Cerberus—it was a beastly giant, though it wasn’t absurdly big like the Leviathan. Even with its shiny hide and fur that shimmered like fire, it was less than a hundred meters tall.

The son of Typhon and Echidna and the brother of the Outer God Hydra, Cerberus came from a lineage of monsters. But unlike the members of his kin, he didn’t attack gods. He had a contract with Hades to reside in the Underworld to act as the guard dog to his palace,[2] so he also didn’t end up being reduced to an Outer God.

“If a mere recreation of Cerberus is this impressive... I have no doubt he would have been considered a True God when he was alive,” Simon said with awe.

“Even Heracles couldn’t kill Cerberus and had to capture him instead... what a beast,” added Demian, equally impressed.

As Cerberus glared down at them, Leonard met his three pairs of eyes. This beast sat at the peak of the Demigod Tier. In a one-on-one fight, he would beat any of them two times out of three.

At that level of power, where the victory margin was already razor-thin, they would lose most of the time even if they gave everything they had. Cerberus was only a servant of Hades, not the master of the Divine Territory himself, and he was still this powerful? They couldn’t imagine how grueling the fight would be if Hades joined him.

“It doesn’t seem like he’ll attack first, but I don’t think he’ll let us through without a fight either,” Leonard observed. “What should we do?”

“I don’t know. Since it’s three against one, I don’t think it would take long to subdue him, but...” Demian glanced at Simon. He was afraid of wearing down the Grand Magus, considering how he almost never left his workshop.

But Simon merely snorted. “This old man must have been too idle, I see! All right then. It’s been a while, so perhaps it’s time to show you youngsters how it’s done. It’s been a few decades since I last had a proper fight, so I’ll need to warm up first.”

Simon Magus, whose prestige in the world of magic rivaled that of the House of Cardenas in the Arcadian Empire, raised his staff. There was no bloodlust, not even hostility, in his movement.

Awooooooo—!

Simon had only raised his staff by a few centimeters when Cerberus responded. The monster’s tremendous aura flared several times stronger, and spiritual energy resembling hellfire billowed around him.

The fiery wall around Cerberus would burn anything that tried to penetrate through. It could incinerate any enemies who even tried to touch it and could nullify most attacks, essentially like an augmented energy shield.

This chapt𝓮r is updat𝒆d by ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom.

And yet, Simion remained calm. He aimed his staff at Cerberus again.

“That is the weakness of a guard dog. If you had bit instead of barked, you would have made this much harder for me, but your judgement is slow,” he mused, taunting the legendary three-headed beast.

He then cast his spell, unleashing a Class 9 magic array without a single word of incantation. The space around Cerberus folded, lengthened, and twisted.

In an instant, Simon’s spell trapped the monster into a spatial cage.

The walls of the cage could compress to crush the prisoner, but what was more surprising than the destructive power of his spell was how fast Simon had cast it. It had happened so fast that not even the Demigod Tier beast could have possibly dodged.

Grrrrrr—!

Still, to a monster like Cerberus, the magical cage was nothing more than a pesky obstacle. His six eyes blazed with bloodlust. Now he was truly enraged.

He tore the walls with a few swipes of his paws and broke all the way through with a bodyslam, even ripping apart the magic array itself. Not even Antonius, a mage specializing in barriers, could have held Cerberus for more than five seconds.

But that was plenty of time for Simon.

“...Come forth, Adam Kadmon.”

The space seemed to bend around him as he burst forward like lightning. His hand shot out just as he stopped right under Cerberus’s nose.

Not even Leonard could comprehend what Simon was doing, despite the ability to intuitively read structures of magic given to him by his Dragon Heart. The magic array wasn’t flat, but it wasn’t three-dimensional either. This was Simon Magus’s own principle, something that went beyond understandings of the three dimensions.

It was the manifestation of a Grand Magus’ knowledge, one who pursued the Class 10 title despite it being inherently unattainable in their world.

Tree of Sefirot[3]

The transcendental magical theory was portrayed with three columns of ten sefira. Each one represented an attribute across the four planes of existence: the World of Emanation, the World of Creation, the World of Formation, and the World of Action, with twenty-two paths to connect each sefira.

Supposedly, achieving a full understanding of the sefirot and their connections held the key to truth, but that was a near impossible task, even for a Grand Magus. Despite his extensive years of study and experience, Simon could only create an outline as of yet.

“A lowly beast should feel honored to face this spell,” Simon pronounced, cackling.

Adam Kadmon, a fragment of Class 10 magic, looked like a giant made of light. The humanoid was an incomplete creation with shabby limbs and joints, let alone facial features.

But it stopped Cerberus’s headbutt with just one hand. In fact, it flung him back.

Boooooom—!

The ground shook violently, but none of them were so weak as to be thrown off by an earthquake. Cerberus’s tail drooped slightly, as if recalling old memories, but then he realized that Adam Kadmon was weaker than Heracles and stood back up.

Space itself seemed to bend as the two pushed against each other and locked into a power struggle. It was because neither of them were entirely material.

Graaaah—!

It seemed that Cerberus emerged victorious.

But just as the beast was about to let out a howl of victory after overpowering his enemy, Adam Kadmon brought its hand down, clamping the monster’s jaws shut as he pummeled it into the ground.

True, Simon Magus’s supreme spell couldn’t even begin to compare with the legendary hero, but with Cerberus reduced to the Demigod Tier, they were on relatively equal footing.

“Ah, don’t you think this resembles a fight from the older eras?” Simon remarked, watching with a satisfied expression on his face.

Leonard and Demian nodded in agreement. Cerberus, a former True God that was now reduced to a netherworld beast, against Adam Kadmon, the giant made of supreme magic and heavenly light.

The two combatants clashed once more.

1. The asphodel flowers in the Greek Underworld are presumed not to be real asphodel. Some have also suggested that they may be narcissi. ☜

2. Cerberus is actually typically portrayed as guarding the Underworld itself, particularly to prevent the dead from leaving. ☜

3. Concept from Jewish mysticism. While the Tree of Sefirot itself isn’t a thing, the sefirot are represented in the tree of life (Kabbalah). This may be a mistake on the part of the author. ☜