Chapter 689 Wrath
Eisen slowly opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling of the large hall after sleeping for quite a while. In the corner of his eyes, he could already see the notification that told him that he passed this challenge, but he felt a little bit too lazy to stand up, or even get rid of the notification right now.
He just felt like sleeping a bit longer instead, closing his eyes and laying there for a while. However, as he did so, he could feel the edge of his sword pushing a bit into his abdomen. Eisen had been hugging it the whole time as he was sleeping, but it didn't seem like he had been holding it weirdly.
He slowly sat up properly and realized what happened. With a loud groan and long yawn, Eisen rubbed his eyes, "How come my sword has more motivation than me..?"
Since it was most likely that his sword's ego chose to wake Eisen up before he fell back asleep so that they could leav, Eisen was actually rather glad that this was the case, even considering how unpleasant this was. And it wasn't like the blade had really cut into his skin, that would require a lot more force. It was unpleasant, and that was it.
The old man pulled his legs over the edge of the bed and slowly pushed himself off of it, with his sword trying to help him up by pulling him up- and forward. Eisen walked toward the gate and stopped when he reached the Satel's side. He quickly kicked the guide-devil into the side of their body, and watched as they slowly pushed themselves off the ground.
"Heh..? The fuck d'ya think you're doing, you bastard?" Satel asked with a tired glare, and Eisen looked at them a bit annoyed, "Be quiet and just come with me. We should get out of here. Just two more challenges and we can get out of limbo."
"...Let's just keep sleeping instead..." The Devil said in a bothered tone of voice, "I really don't wanna deal with any of that, you know? All the other realms are really... And I mean 'really' annoying..."
"So? Then that's even more reason to hurry up so that we can get it over with as quickly as possible."
"Urgh, I hate people that think that way... Disgusting..." Satel groaned, but still followed Eisen to do their job, "Then come on, let's hurry and finish Wrath so that we can quickly finish this place up with some fun afterward..."
"Sure..." Eisen yawned as the two of them stepped out of the hall, and the moment that the door closed again, it seemed like they were practically jolted awake.
"Which one is the Wrath Gate?" Eisen asked, still a bit tired, as he rubbed the rest of his tiredness out of his eyes, and Satel quickly pointed at the gate in question.
The old man walked over there and prepared mentally for this. At the very least, this place should help him wake up properly. Eisen took a deep breath and thought about the things that made him angry, trying to rile himself up before getting in there. He thought about people that he disliked, actions that angered him, and of course, he thought about this whole completely horrible, annoying situation.
Eisen grabbed the handle of his sword more tightly and spun it around a couple of times, swinging it so that he could loosen his body up as well. He had spoken to some of the people here in Limbo, and of course to Satel, and learned a few more things about the challenge he was about to face.
And for the most part, it seemed to be kind of straightforward, albeit chaotic. It was simply a free-for-all of furious, undying people that wanted to let out their neverending anger somehow. Of course, it wasn't just all done through combat, but through general destruction of anything that got in one's way.
Since that was the case... Eisen would definitely have to fight quite a bit in there. He pushed the golden gate and stepped inside. Immediately, Eisen saw the true chaos of this place. Blood was splattered all around, everyone was ripping each other apart in destructive fury.
The old man took a deep breath as he looked at this and stepped inside. Just a few moments later, he noticed a chair being thrown toward him. Of course, Eisen just had to step to the side, and the chair hit someone else instead, but it was still clear how dangerous this place was.
He already read through the quest-notification and waved it away, but now, he still had to get started. And the best way to do that was to be straight-forward with it, probably. Nobody here seemed especially powerful, so the old man figured that this would be rather easy to get started with. Especially since he had a new trick that he wanted to try out with his Demonic Sword.
"All of you useless, ugly fucking bastard, come at me!" He screamed out at the top of his lungs, even using Royal Authority to make them more inclined to do just what he said on top of that which their fury already provided anyway.
Those around Eisen turned their attention toward him, at least those that were still capable of hearing him through their hyper-focused, angry minds. He could hear Satel lift off of the ground behind him with flaps of their wings, so that they wouldn't get caught up in all of this.
And instantly afterward, Eisen held his sword horizontally, holding the tip behind his back so that he could swing it properly. The old man twisted his whole body around and pulled the blade forward in the process. While this was happening, the size of the sword increased considerably as Eisen and the ego-sword made use of the abilities that the old man had given this wonderful weapon.
Due to the enchantments that made it so that the handle practically stuck to Eisen's hands, he didn't have to worry about not being able to hold it either. But because of the sudden, rapid increase in mass and weight, Eisen, who stayed at his normal size, was pulled into the direction that he swung the blade into.
Numerous people were sliced in half and blood splattered around as the old man jumped through the air, rapidly decreasing the size of his sword again. And when he reached the range of some more people, Eisen swung the sword down and increased its size again so that he could slice through as many people as possible while landing from his swing.
Through this method, Eisen was able to control the sword rather easily. Especially by just decreasing the size for a few moments to make it lighter and hence easier to swing around, to change the direction of the swing more easily.
The old man proceeded to cut through everyone here in this room rather violently, and he became angrier and angrier by the second. Until now, the combat in this room was more like a brawl, but now, it was more akin to true slaughter.
The air became filled with the taste of iron as Eisen proceeded to cut everyone that he came across into pieces. But it wasn't only the people, he even destroyed every object that was in his path, even the stone pillars that were set up inside of this hall. It seemed like they were useless, and this place couldn't actually be destroyed anyway, so it didn't matter that much.
Just a moment after the pieces settled down after falling, the damage was being reversed and the pillars coud be destroyed once more. The same thing as what was happening with the people that Eisen was 'killing'.
The more he did this, the more not only he but everyone else became angry. It was as if these people of the Limbo were pushed higher by Eisen, who in turn was pushed higher by the people around him. All of the frustration that he had built up was something that he could get rid of in this environment without consequences.
He was slicing these people into pieces, but they were already dead anyway. And most likely not the best sort of people you could meet anyway. It actually felt pretty good to Eisen to indulge in this sin in particular... There was something rather therapeutic about just letting your anger loose like this for once. And sure, especially lately, Eisen didn't particularly hold himself back from doing that as much as he used to anyway, most likely because the former Eisen's personality started to shine through some more.
But even then, even in the situations where Eisen showed his anger... Because of those around him, he still held back. But not now, not thist ime. There was no reason to hold back, no reason to not completely indulge in this feeling.
Slowly, the old man's Demonic Transformation was activated without him noticing at first. Probably due to his strong emotions right now. And these emotions of anger were the ones that triggered Eisen receiving the 'Golden Eyed Demon' title in the first place, at least this time around, that was.
This all continued for a few hours, the anger of none of those inside of this place subsiding at all. And at the end of it, once Eisen finally finished this challenge, it was like his mind had been completely cleared of a lot of his worries.
It felt good. He was able to take a deep breath once he was outside of the hall, and he didn't feel any sort of anger inside of him anymore.
Obviously that didn't mean that he wasn't angry about everything that was going on, but right at this moment, he didn't directly feel it inside of him anymore. He felt quite happy right now, which might be something rather insane after all that Eisen did today and yesterday.
"Really, I keep liking you more and more~!" Satel exclaimed with a broad grin on their face, "I'll really enjoy our time together from now on, geezer!" The Devil smirked. Eisen looked back at them with a smile on his face, "Of course. You seem a lot better than the Guide-Angel up in heaven when I was there."
"Hah, yeah, they're all assholes up there." Satel pointed out as they brought Eisen to the last gate, "But well, that doesn't matter for now. How about it, should we have a bit of fun before heading off to the shitholes that are the other realms of hell?"
With a light smile, Eisen opened up the golden gate to the place where he would face the Challenge of Lust.