Death dispersed as five incompatible poisons were forced together using five compatible forms of corruption. A frightening amount of potential built up over five short seconds, causing nearby buildings in the Undercity to corrode and collapse.

Even Ratten was backed up while Sorin poured half of his impressive energy reserves into a single attack. “You’ve been the one attacking so far, Ratten,” said Sorin. “Let’s see how you like defending instead.”

Sorin lobbed the orb of poison towards the center of the Undercity. The slow-moving ball of potent poison was an overt threat—Ratten could either attack a greatly-weakened Sorin or defend his considerable assets in the Undercity.

“You’ll regret this!” shouted Ratten as he sped away to intercept the ball. “Sharn, restrain him!”

Space rippled as Sorin sped towards the ceiling of the Undercity’s Cavern. Two more seconds thought Sorin as he approached. Two more... wait. My path. It curved. Space in the Undercity is now curved!

Sorin used Dance of the Tail Biter to burn holes in space, only to find himself redirected once again every time he landed. “You realized the crux of the problem more quickly than I anticipated,” said the pleasant voice of an old man. “Perhaps a small conversation might be a better use of our time and energy? Modifying space is rather difficult in my old age.”

Sorin turned around to inspect the new arrival. The old wore a black robe. He carried an oar in right hand and stood atop an ancient boat.

The boat was nothing special, but the oar… the oar seemed to contain a raging river. Twisting spatial currents threatened to break free from its feeble wooden body and devour Sorin’s surroundings.

“I thought there were no demigods in the Ratten Clan,” said Sorin to the old man.

The old man smiled. “A common misconception. I’m from the Sharn clan, not the Ratten Clan. My clan specializes in taking care of the Hyde Clan’s dirty work. Specifically, we deal with sensitive matters like transportation. You can banish any hopes of escaping.”

Sorin frowned as he inspected the demigod. His spirituality was several times higher than Grand Elder Kepler. It was thanks to this quality that the karmic threads Sorin attempted to map out were annihilated before he could analyze them.

If I can’t map out an escape path, I can only rely on the element of surprise. The Undercity was particularly chaotic right now; Sorin kicked off a platform of air and shot downward towards the disintegrating city.

But the old man was surprisingly swift. Sorin raised Nemesis to block his oar and was pleasantly surprised when he discovered that his physical strength was more than a match.

Since his focus is spiritual, he must have an abnormally weak body. Sorin brandished Nemesis and forced his way downward. He reminds me of Elder Adrian. Detecting him is impossible, and neither is reading his intentions. Brute force is the only answer to such an enemy.

The number of predictable escape paths dwindled as Sorin fled into the Undercity’s uncertainty and chaos. Streets were melting, and half the buildings had already been reduced to molten puddles. Only key businesses and buildings chock full of agents and myths were able to resist Sorin’s potent poison.

The epicenter of the explosion, the Styx Auction House, was in especially good position. A thick river of death had enveloped it; it was the same for the Styx Bank, the Styx Emporium, and a festering nest of corruption most of the Agents in the Undercity called home. ou

Everything else suffered immensely, adding tens of thousands of blood-red threads to Sorin’s karmic web. Over half of Sorin’s victims were innocents or victims themselves, greatly frustrating whatever moral justifications he’d been making for himself.

I do what I must. Sorin repeated the mantra as he continued pressing Sharn towards the poisonous miasma filling the Undercity’s streets. Sharn found himself hindered by the miasma, while Sorin was reinvigorated.

Does he possess endless energy? By now, Sharn had breathed in a huge dose of poison. Even a demigod would have trouble coping, but the old man was still brimming full of mana. Death mana, specifically.

Right. Ratten. No wonder.

One of the reasons the Ratten Clan was so powerful was due to his ability to channel nigh-endless death mana into his followers. Gabriella had warned Sorin of this phenomenon. Faced with the very real possibility that his pursuer had infinite endurance, Sorin could only give up on a war of attrition.

If I can’t attack his energy reserves, I’ll need to attack something else.

Sorin stopped an inspected the old man. “There’s no way you’re able to channel so much pure death without side effects.”

The old man shrugged. “My life has never been my own. Yet I must ask—why have you stopped. Have you finally seen the error of your ways and decided to serve Young Master Ratten?”

Sorin snorted. “Young Master my ass—let’s see how you deal with this.”

Sorin reached out with a golden hand and twisted. Corruption and poison in equal amounts suddenly appeared inside Sharn’s body, filling it with chains of mana-inhibiting toxins.

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The few seconds of paralysis gave Sorin more than enough time to break through the spatial blockade and return to his original location near the peak of the Undercity’s cavern.

He was almost there. All he needed to do was take a single step…

A paralyzing sigh ripped through the air just as Sorin was about to make the attempt. Ratten stepped out of a spatial door much worse for wear.

His suit and hat were burnt and charred. Familiar poisons oozed out of the chained god’s resilient body.

“You can’t even begin to imagine the losses you’ve inflicted upon me and my family, Sorin,” said an aggrieved Ratten. “But thanks to this, I’ve realized what’s most important to me: my core businesses. For that I thank you.

“Now, you can no longer harm what remains. You have no further ways to threaten me. I’ve also realized that I don’t really need you alive for my purposes. An animated corpse will do just fine.”

He pointed the Underworld Bident at Sorin. No, past Sorin. Towards the Gate of the Underworld. “Sharn, lock down space. And Sorin… try not to die too quickly when faced with the real thing.”

Sorin shivered as his surrounding froze. A tunnel in space appeared; on one end waited Ratten and his bident. On the other end was the Gate of the Underworld, which had opened like a sluice gate, releasing a flood of concentrated death mana and actual souls that smashed against his spirit.

The sensation was like being blasted by thousands of tiny grains of sand. In theory, such a process would take thousands of years to wear Sorin down.

Yet it only took a few seconds for Sorin to determine that he didn’t even have minutes, let alone years. This was the true River Styx that embodied the passage of time.

If that alone wasn’t enough, the souls flying out of the river didn’t just contain death mana and residual spiritual energy. They also contained hints of rare death-aligned corruption that crashed against his sanctified flesh, introducing weakness into its structure.

Sorin used Dance of the Tail Biter to try and weave around Ratten, but the man was virtually omnipresent. Clash after clash further destabilized Sorin’s accumulated divinity.

Fine. If I can’t flee past Ratten, I’ll have to force my way through the river.

Sorin pulled away from Ratten and let the mysterious waters of the river Styx pull him backward into the portal.

“I know you’re basically stuck between a rock and a hard place,” called out Ratten. “But you do realize that gate leads to the true underworld supporting Pandora and the other split continents, don’t you? Even if I don’t get to you on time, Death will take its due.”

Sorin ignored Ratten’s taunts tried simulating his odds of survival. The results weren’t encouraging.

The problem is that only two avenues are barred to me. What’s more, Ratten doesn’t really seem to want to kill me; instead, his goal is to force me toward the portal. But why?

One option he had was to open the Gate of Life. He might not have the tincture, but like the Gate of Death, the Gate of Life was easy to open. The tincture merely provided a potent necrotoxin that would wear away excess life energy and prevent his body from mutating.

I don’t have the tincture, but I do have access to an absurd amount of death energy. Breaking open the gate would only take a moment. The only problem would lie with fully opening the gate pursuing perfection. Maybe that’s what Ratten is trying to prevent?

It was unlikely, Sorin decided. There was no better way of thwarting Hope’s plans of fusing all the evils than simply killing him. In other words, Ratten wanted to force him towards the gate for other reasons.

That’s not all. Ratten isn’t the only one who wants me to go down there. Thick white threads of white karma were also pulling Sorin towards the gate. Not the other side, he noted. The gate itself.

The Gate of the Underworld was a magnificent crystal structure. Golden veins of divinity formed a semicircular portal that separated the world of the living from the world of the dead.

Sorin hadn’t had a chance to inspect the gate, largely due to the warning given to him by Grand Elder Kepler. Now that he looked at it, however, it seemed very familiar. That runic structure… it’s connected to the many chains tying down the cultivators of Pandora!

Something clicked as Sorin realized that fusing the evils might not even be Hope’s real goal. Every step of the way, Sorin had broken through human limitations and broken open the divine locks tying down his physique. This had eventually culminated in damaging the many chains binding humanity.

Fusing the different evils almost seems incidental.

Though Sorin was leery about playing to both Ratten and Hope’s tunes, he truly had no choice in the matter. His only hope of survival lay in satisfying these two bound monsters.

“Fine then,” said Sorin. “Have it your way.” He used Dance of the Tail Biter to approach the gate and stabbed it using Nemesis. The spear pierced into the impossibly hard crystal to produce a small chink in its structure. A large flaw appeared, through which Red-Eyed Devourer invaded the crystal structure and infiltrated its golden network.

“Oh no!” said Ratten in mock worry. He appeared beside Sorin and basically hugged the crystalline object. “The Underworld Gate! The Underworld Gate I’m specifically bound to protect via divine oath! The Underworld Gate that I specifically can’t harm of my own volition! Whatever shall I do!”

He pointed his bident at Sorin. “How dare you damage this sacred artifact originating form the time of the gods with your filthy tarnished energies! I would punish you if my priority wasn’t stabilizing the gate so that it can’t collapse!

“Sharn! Help me! Cerby, come out and detain this miscreant!” A cute, three-headed puppy jumped out of the gate and growled at Sorin. “Kill him quickly! The longer he survives, the longer his poisons will have to erode at the complex yet surprisingly uniform structure of the gate. If he destroys over ten percent of it, it’s finished!”

Sorin’s eye twitched as the playful three-headed puppy ran towards him. He raised his spear to bat the creature away but froze when terrifying flames emerged from the dog and directly attacked his spirit.

Of course, this puppy is deadly, thought Sorin as he retreated. Just about everything else is. Fortunately, Ratten doesn’t want to kill me. Already, Ophiuchan Simulation was mapping out a potential escape route. At the same time, Red-Eyed Devourer was evolving to better tackle the crystalline gate and satisfy Ratten and Hope’s goals.

He then tried to step to the surface but discovered that he was still trapped in a spatial maze. So, your plan is to keep me hostage until I fulfill my end of the bargain? Fine. I’ll play your game.

At the same time, he wondered if things were so simple. The web of fate spanning Pandora was currently undergoing massive changes. Threads were being wiped out by the tens of thousands with no end in sight. Others were consolidating while some of the larger threads were splitting.

Unfortunately, Sorin had no control over these events. He’d been drawn into the Undercity by two potent plotters and could only dance to their tune until whatever transpired was over.

His only assurance was the fact that the threads he cared about, his companions, Gabriella, and Grandpa Hargrave, were not in any immediate danger. The Kepler Clan also seemed to be profiting from the situation above.

As though they’d known the disruption would happen the entire time.