Chapter 706 Five Souls and Treachery
Once Eisen had a rather good, logical guess for what he was supposed to look for within these ditches, one after another, he squatted down in front of them and brought a bit of order into the ditches. With his Draconic Demon King form, he frightened the monsters within the ditches enough to have them be silent for a while, before he was able to talk to each of them individually.
This took Eisen quite a while, but at the very least it was better than nothing. Soon, however, the old man managed to stumble upon the first of the bunch that counted an "Odd one out". It was a monster that instead of promising Eisen random things, was actually asking him what he wanted to achieve. And after Eisen told him something random that maybe wasn"t too far off from the truth, this monster made a proper suggestion for how it would be able to help.
And so, the old man pulled the soul out of the ditch, soon noticing that his quest had updated, and he managed to find one of the five target creatures.
"Alright, that"s good..." Eisen mumbled quietly to himself, before he took a closer look at this monster"s soul. It seemed to be something like a Satyr, a creature with the ears and legs of a horse. It seemed to be extremely happy about finally getting out of this ditch it wasn"t suppose to be in in the first place, and simply started to follow Eisen around for now, while the old man moved on to the second trench.
There, all the creatures that could speak were trying to gain favor with Eisen by complementing him, calling him handsome and powerful, intelligent and brave, and hollow things like that. He once more made all of the monsters fall silent before giving each of them a short chance to say what they wanted. Most of them continued to compliment Eisen in the same way as before, even trying to give better compliments than the one that went before, until it came to another certain creature.
It was a Lizardman intelligent enough to speak to Eisen, who just glared at him silently. And instead of talking about random things that could be used to compliment anyone, this creature actually looked at Eisen and complimented him for what counted. And that was the quality of the items he was carrying. The fact that he was carrying tools with him instead of weapons here in h.e.l.l.
"You must be great crafter. Reached this place, but not a fighter..." It said, and Eisen quickly smirked as he extended his hand toward the Lizardman and pulled it out of the ditch. Once Eisen confirmed that he pulled out the right one, seeing his quest updating again, he moved on to the next ditch, ignoring the empty, flattering words of the trench he was just at.
Everyone there was simply trying to make Eisen think they were impressive beings, and that they weren"t supposed to be there. They were trying to speak to some sort of religious side of Eisen, saying that they were dedicated priests to a certain deity, and that they would pray for this old man"s success. This time, it was actually a bit easier to figure out which one the "odd one out" was.
It was the one creature that didn"t try to use the G.o.ds to its benefit, not even mentioning religion in the slightest despite obviously being a creature of faith. Eisen recognized the symbol of Ohm tattooed into the side of their neck. Or rather, "carved". This time, it was a Dryad, that was trying to make use of other things to get Eisen to help tehm, instead of using their G.o.d for their own benefit, which was what got all these other creatures here into the ditch in the first place.
Eisen pulled the Dryad out, and moved on to the fourth ditch, where all these fake "Great Sorcerers" were supposed to be. From the beginning, they were telling Eisen that they would be able to bless him through certain spells or that they would be able to help him on his journey. Some said that they would see into his future to find out what laid in front of him.
But at the end of the day, all of these things sounded like empty promises, things that they wouldn"t actually be able to do. They just sounded like scammers on the side of the road trying to target gullible people to exploit them for money. And amongst these, there was just one creature, a man with hair that seemed to be made of black, translucent flames with waves of color inside as well as white specks, hair that looked like the night sky itself, that was able to say something else that didn"t seem like an empty promise.
Or rather, it wasn"t a promise at all. He showed Eisen what he was capable of instead of promising things that it might not be able to keep, like all the others here.
"You come from a foreign land, do you not? So foreign that none of us could ever know how different it truly is. You have suffered a lot, both in that foreign land and in this new home of yours, and now, you don"t seem to belong in either, but both at once. It must be hard, must it not?" The man asked. Eisen grumbled quietly to himself, considering that he didn"t like to have his life be read so easily like that. But he knew that this monster was the real deal then, and pulled it out of the ditch.
And then, it came to the last ditch. And there, Eisen surprisingly was able to find the "odd one out" rather quickly. Most of the creatures there were trying to climb on top of each other to get out of the ditch, although that obviously didn"t work through whatever magical means was simply keeping them in there. The only monster that, instead of trying to use the others to get out, was actually trying to somewhat help the other monsters get up higher on the pile, was the one that had to be the odd one out that Eisen was looking for in this case.
He made them stop through fear, and quickly pulled that monster out of the pit. It was some form of humanoid wolf, although it was a lot bulkier than a Kobold would be. Rather, it looked like the cla.s.sic bipedial "Werwolf", although the old man didn"t know what its race would be. Not that he cared, since all that mattered was that Eisen was able to finish his quest with this.
And now, instead of just one person following him in the form of Satel, he had a total of six beings following him in a row. Eisen didn"t know why that was the case, but since he only had one circle left ahead of him, that was all that he was focusing on.
And even when the gate appeared at the outermost part of this colosseum, the monsters that Eisen pulled out of the ditches kept following him. Eisen turned around toward Satel for a moment when he noticed that they walked through the gate as well, but the Guide-Devil simply said, "Don"t worry, it"s supposed to be this way." Satel explained.
Eisen figured that it was alright, in that case, and swiftly continued. And there, he saw the deity that reigned over this realm, the G.o.ddess of Fraud. The moment that he saw her, Eisen felt a somewhat cozy feeling in his chest. It was the same thing that he felt when seeing friends of the past for the first time here, and getting the feeling that he would end up remembering them soon enough.
The G.o.ddess walked up to Eisen and smiled brightly. She had a somewhat child-like and innocent appearance, although Eisen figured that this very much wasn"t the case. She probably had a rather vicious personality, if he had to guess, "It"s nice to meet you, Fraud."
"And it"s nice to see you again, you old f.u.c.k~!" The G.o.ddess exclaimed, "I see that you"ve made your way through these eight first circles of h.e.l.l really f.u.c.king easily!"
And there it was. Eisen figured that this cute and innocent woman had a rather foul mouth. Well, not that Eisen really cared, "I would like to say so, yes. I struggled in some of them more than in others, but that was to be expected, I a.s.sume."
"Of course! But everyone that thought you"d struggle too much is a dumba.s.s anyway!" Fraud exclaimed, while Eisen let out a slight sigh. It felt weird to hear such language from a being that outwardly looked like a child.
"Anyway... Could you tell me why these guys are following me?" The old man inquired, pointing at the five monsters. Fraud looked at them and shrugged, "How am I supposed to f.u.c.king know that? Treachery asked me to let them through, so that"s what I"m doing."
"...Treachery? They are supposed to be part of the next trial, then?"
"Probably, but I don"t give a s.h.i.+t about that. So, do you want to move on to the next circle already?" Fraud inquired with a broad smirk on her face, although Eisen simply looekd back with a wry smile, "You sure? Don"t you want to talk some more?"
"Sure I do, but I know you probably wanna get home. I don"t want to keep you here, so I suggest you get the f.u.c.k out and keep on going." Fraud pointed out in a blunt tone, before Eisen scratched the back of his head, "You"re right. I would really like to get home and see the others again. But I will certainly come back here at some point soon so that we can catch up properly, alright?"
"What makes you think that I"d care? Just get off your a.s.s and keep on going." The child-like G.o.ddess said with a smirk, as she waved her hand to the side and created a gate for Eisen to walk through to get to the circle of Treachery.
The old man stepped through there, and found himself surrounded by the freezing cold. He was standing quite literally on ice, in which numerous monsters were frozen, as the old man expected. This was the frozen lake Cocytus, where those that betrayed others in one way or another could be found.
And just as Eisen thought about what the challenge might be in this realm, the quest-notification appeared in front of his eyes, but before he was able to read any of it, he could hear three of the five monster-souls that he brought with him run toward the old man.
This trial was about fighting back against the "betrayal" of the five souls that he saved in the realm before this.