Surviving the Evil Gods – Chapter 40

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Translated By Arcane Translations
Translator: Mod7
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All the Old Gods were dead.

This was a fundamental truth. They had been utterly defeated, crushed, devoured, and torn apart.

Aslan, knowing this, struggled to reconcile the appearance of an Old God with his understanding of Gelladrion’s history. He sifted through his memories, analyzing the situation.

The conclusion was simple. He remembered the reason he had been shown this illusion and understood.

“Divine energy.”

The named banshee, the Daughter of Grief, was, according to the game’s lore, a close attendant and priest of the Goddess of Grief and Death.

And not just her. All banshees were priests of the Grief and Death Goddess.

Unlike the current, corrupted meaning of priesthood in Gelladrion, they had served their god in human forms, true clerics of the old faith.

And the Daughter of Grief, the highest-ranking among them, even in her monstrous form, would have possessed a significant amount of divine energy.

That divine energy, clashing with the unknown power of Aslan’s skill, had caused the explosion.

The explosion had swallowed him and Angie, transporting them to this strange, unknown space.

Aslan sensed a deliberate hand in this sequence of events, a design that defied natural causality.

The explosion of light, the illusion that seemed to draw from his memories – he pieced it together.

The divine energy hadn’t exploded. It had absorbed them, drawn them in.

To meet him and Angie, the vestige of the Old Gods, those who held the potential to change the world.

The widowed goddess, her face stained with the dark tracks of dried tears, nodded, a flicker of relief softening her melancholic expression.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Lee Hyun-woo. I am the mistress of the realm you call Hell, the Underworld, the Afterlife…”

She bowed her head gracefully as she spoke, her voice gentle.

“…the Goddess of Grief and Death.”

Just as he had suspected.

Aslan had recognized her, the familiarity of her appearance too strong to ignore. She smiled sadly.

“Or rather… it would be more accurate to say… I am the last vestige of her will.”

That, too, was as he expected.

He knew all the Old Gods were dead, the principal gods among them slaughtered by the current deities.

But questions lingered.

How could she communicate through a simple burst of divine energy? How did she know his real name?

And this “vestige of her will”…

Aslan couldn’t understand.

If this had been an event in the game, he wouldn’t have been so surprised. But this… this wasn’t in the game. Not an event, not a quest, not even a random encounter.

The goddess, seeing his confusion, his struggle to understand, watched him with a gentle gaze.

“You’re wondering… how I managed to do this?”

“…Yes.”

She had seen straight through him. Aslan nodded.

“As far as I know, you were all slaughtered by the gods. You had no time to prepare, no chance to fight back. The God of War and Knowledge tried to resist, but even he was defeated.”

“You’re well-informed.”

She acknowledged his words, her voice calm, but a deep sadness, an inherent melancholy, resonated within her.

“But… how are you here? You had no time to prepare anything…”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Then how?”

“What if… I had made preparations before they arrived?”

Before they arrived?

Aslan frowned.

“They” undoubtedly referred to the gods. Was she saying she had known they were coming?

“You’re right. We knew the gods were coming.”

The melancholic goddess smiled sadly.

“That’s why we were able to make preparations. You’re asking this, so I assume you haven’t seen the others yet. The first… should have been the God of Fire and Metalworking, shouldn’t he?”

Aslan’s confusion was now replaced by a growing sense of unease.

“How did you…?”

The “first” she referred to was the first Old God whose power the protagonist would obtain, according to the quest order.

The main quest line involved finding the places where the Old Gods had died and absorbing their powers.

It wasn’t something an Old God, dead for millennia, should know.

The goddess, seeing his wariness, smiled faintly.

“Someone told us. Told us about your destiny, Lee Hyun-woo.”

Aslan couldn’t reply. He didn’t believe in destiny, but judging from her words, the “destiny” she referred to was the main quest line.

The Goddess of Grief and Death, unfazed by his silence, continued,

“We read the threads of fate, saw our defeat, and made preparations. We poured all our remaining power into preparing for what would come after our deaths, carefully staying within the boundaries of fate.”

Aslan felt a flicker of unease.

Normally, when presented with a glimpse of the future, a vision of destiny, one would prepare to change that future, to fight for victory.

Not to accept defeat and plan for the aftermath.

“Why… why give up? You might have been able to win…”

The goddess shook her head, interrupting him. Aslan closed his mouth, watching her dark hair sway gently.

“You truly don’t understand. It’s… chilling, to see how thoroughly… he… has planned everything.”

“…What are you talking about?”

The goddess stepped closer, and while Angie would normally react with suspicion, she simply stood there, frozen, her body rigid.

“I’ve… stopped her, for now. If you weren’t the one listening to this, he would be… displeased.”

“He? Who are you talking about?”

The goddess didn’t answer his question. She reached out, her hand resting on his chest.

“I can’t tell you directly. Only that… he has existed since time immemorial, since before we shaped this world.”

It was something he had never heard of, not in the game.

“Perhaps even before that. Perhaps even before the creation of the universe.”

“…Who is he?”

“I can’t tell you. You wouldn’t get an answer from anyone else either. Even the gods, the Old Gods… they all feared and avoided him.”

If she spoke his name, if she revealed his identity directly, he would know.

She shook her head, her hand, still resting on his chest, trembling slightly.

“Lee Hyun-woo, he prepared this world for you. This entire world, this Gelladrion… it’s a trap designed to consume you. He… this being you should fear… he set the trap, but he has never shown himself to you, not directly.”

A being feared even by the Old Gods who had shaped Gelladrion, feared even by the transcendent beings who had slain them.

A being who had never revealed itself to Aslan.

A figure flickered in Aslan’s mind, but the goddess shook her head.

“It’s not her. There’s only one thing I can tell you.”

She straightened up, pulling away from him. The faint scent of salt lingered in the air.

“If he realizes his plan is failing, he will intervene. So now, while he isn’t watching, this is your chance. Beware the creature symbolized by an animal that doesn’t exist in this world.”

Aslan frowned, confused, and she sighed, a long, weary sound, then plunged her hand into her chest.

–Squish.

The sickening sound of tearing flesh. The goddess, still in her human form, pulled out her heart.

It pulsed with a faint blue light, still connected to her body by a network of veins and arteries.

“Take this.”

She offered him her heart. Aslan stared at it, then at her, unable to comprehend the situation. As he instinctively stepped back, something was pressed into his hand.

“…What?”

A sword.

A long sword with a blade that shimmered like a polished gemstone, its surface pure white.

The crossguard, the hilt, the pommel – every part of the sword glowed with the same pure white light.

Aslan felt a surge of familiarity, recognizing the energy.

The same energy he had channeled into his axe to sever Ereta’s connection to her god, the same energy he had used to strike down the Daughter of Grief.

The power of the unknown technique.

It was now blazing within the sword, its form solidified.

While he was distracted by the sword, the goddess stepped closer, taking his hand in hers, guiding the blade towards her still-beating heart. The heart pulsed, its surface shimmering blue, as the blade touched it.

The sword pierced the heart, but no blood flowed from the wound. Only a single tear of blood rolled down the goddess’s cheek.

“We might have been defeated, but we never gave up. And he didn’t anticipate this.”

The game is already afoot, she added, the blade sinking deeper into her heart.

“This sword… is the key, Lee Hyun-woo.”

Divine energy flowed into Aslan through the hilt of the sword.

“Its name is Purity.”

With each surge of divine energy, the white blade glowed brighter, its light washing over them, dissolving the illusion.

“It is the hope we prepared for you.”

And then, the edge of his vision shimmered, and a message appeared.

[!!G?d’s Bl??d!! Eff!ct?]

[Can sever the connection between god and priest.]

[Will not be extinguished as long as the user has Fighting Spirit.]

[S?rr?w’s H??rt – C?n cl?av? d?v?n? ?n?rg? ?nd ?th?r??l b??ngs.]

[Obt??n?d thr?ugh ?n ?nkn?wn qu?st.]

The message, unlike the previous garbled system notifications, was written in formal, respectful language. And it was a message he had seen before, though corrupted then.

The distorted characters shifted and rearranged themselves, the errors resolving, the text becoming clear.

[Purity’s Effect]

[Can sever the connection between god and priest.]

[Will not be extinguished as long as the user has Fighting Spirit.]

[Sorrow’s Heart – Can cleave divine energy and ethereal beings.]

[Grows stronger as it resonates with the divine energy of the Old Gods.]

Something that hadn’t existed in the game.

Aslan finally understood the Old Gods’ preparations. He stepped back, staring at the glowing sword, Purity, his mind reeling.

The goddess, her heart now pierced by the blade, spoke softly,

“He won’t tolerate your absence, not even for a moment. He’s probably already looking for you.”

As the illusion crumbled around them, Aslan gripped the sword, his gaze fixed on the goddess.

She smiled, a serene, gentle smile.

“Good luck, Lee Hyun-woo.”

And then, the world turned black.

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Aslan opened his eyes, the darkness receding, and found himself back in the Shrine of Grief, in the chamber where the banshee and the priest had been fighting.

He looked around.

“Ugh… my eyes…”

Angie, a short distance away, was rubbing her eyes. Ereta, who had shielded her eyes before the flash of light, was blinking rapidly, her face creased in a frown.

Everything else was unchanged. Exactly as it had been before the light erupted.

Except…

–Thud. Thud. Thud.

The sound of approaching footsteps. Multiple footsteps.

And the corpses… were rising.

The priest of the Poison-Breathing Dragon, dead just moments ago, stood, his eyes, now glowing black, fixed on Aslan.

He spoke, his voice a low growl,

“Found you.”

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