Neo could hear the souls thanking him.
He freed them.
They were grateful for ending their centuries-long despair.
Sensing their emotions, Neo understood why his blessing had cried.
Among the hundreds of voices, Neo heard a particularly different voice.
[??? is satisfied with your Judgment.]
[??? has unsealed the 2nd stage of your blessing.]
Neo felt his soul expand.
A soothing warmth surged throughout his body and—
It turned into searing pain.
Neo fell to his knees, clutching his chest, gasping for breath.
Something dark.
Something ominous appeared within his soul.
He closed his eyes, concentrating.
It wasn’t easy to locate his soul.
However, Neo, having reached Adept mastery in Death, could use Death Elemental Vision.
It allowed him to see souls if he concentrated.
Neo followed the power of his blessing rushing into his soul.
He saw ‘that’ within himself.
Hell.
It was small and broken.
The power of his blessing nourished the Hell present in his soul.
Suddenly, his Divine Energy churned.
It flowed into his soul, helping his blessing repair the Hell.
The cracks disappeared slowly.
Neo lost track of time.
He remained on the ground, writhing in agony as his blessing and Divine Energy repaired the Hell.
It took days for the process to complete.
His body was covered in sweat when it ended, and over half of his Divine Energy was constantly flowing into the Hell to keep it working.
“What the is this damned thing?”
The Hell had always been in his soul. Just broken.
The blessing repaired it.
“This thing better be useful for making me go through all that.”
He tried to look inside the Hell.
Basic information about it flowed into his mind, and he saw thirteen layers—thirteen circles—of different hells.
“Is this…”
The place was empty.
Neo could see the whole place with a glance.
Each layer was as big as a city.
He noticed the Necromancer’s soul in the 5th circle.
“The Fifth Circle — the Furnace of Regrets.”
Neo pursed his lips.
As if led by his instincts, he concentrated and used his blessing.
His Avatar appeared inside the 5th circle.
He looked around.
The place was covered in flames.
He walked towards the burning soul of the Necromancer.
The Necromancer raised his head sluggishly when he sensed another presence.
The flames, instead of killing him, forced him to relive the worst regrets of his life.
His gaze was unfocused and meek.
“You…”
His eyes regained clarity when he saw Neo.
“It’s you!”
He tried to pounce on Neo, fueled by rage and hatred.
The flames surged and pushed him down before he could hurt Neo’s Avatar.
The Necromancer was not discouraged.
He began to laugh.
“I told you! You are just as evil as me! Now you’ve been imprisoned in the Hell too!”
He was gloating until he saw Neo unharmed.
The flames weren’t burning him.
“You… why are the flames not harming you? Why!?”
“I was the one who sent you to the Hell. Who do you think I am?”
His words answered plenty.
They were enough for the Necromancer to know why Neo stood in the Hell perfectly fine.
Before the Necromancer could answer, Neo canceled his Avatar.
His sense of self returned to him.
Opening his eyes, he saw himself sitting on the ground inside the Shadow window.
“Only the Necromancer is present in my Hell.
“It’s almost as if he is a…”
“Gift to celebrate the achievement of creating my Hell.”
His Hell was still young.
The Hell would grow stronger and larger as Neo fed more Divine Energy to it, as he regained his blessing and as he ranked up.
“But again, what’s the point of the Hell…”
Unfamiliar information surged inside Neo’s head.
They were the memories of the Necromancer.
Unlike earlier, they weren’t a simple overview of his life, but detailed recollections of some of the Necromancer’s experiences.
He exhaled deeply, unable to believe what he had just gained.
“Is this really true?”
He raised his hand and muttered chants under his breath.
The chants were something he learned from one of the Necromancer’s detailed recollections.
“O Death Beyond, be my hands, crush my enemies.”
His Divine Energy churned.
The Incantation activated.
Giant bone hands appeared from the ground, waiting for Neo’s command.
Neo was stunned.
He shouldn’t have been able to use an Incantation just by knowing the chant.
He needed to train, gain experience, and increase his understanding of the chant first.
“I stripped the Necromancer of the Incantation and took it as my own with the power of the Hell.”
His amazement only increased.
He gained only one incantation among the dozens of incantations and Divine Energy manipulation techniques the Necromancer possessed.
However, this could be solved as his Hell grew stronger.
When that happened, he would be able to strip more possessions from the sinners trapped within him and use their abilities as his own.
“Finally, I got something good.
“I don’t need to depend on Darkness and my luck to gain abilities from the corpses from now on.”
Theoretically, Darkness allowed him to gain knowledge, memories, experiences, and techniques when he devoured someone.
However, he had gained only stats until now.
Secondary stats on top of that.
He knew his luck was bad, but wasn’t it too much to not gain a single technique or Spell after using the Darkness for years?
“The Hell is great, but I wish there was a more detailed guide—”
A thick book appeared inside his soul before he could complete his sentence.
Neo stared at the book with a strange gaze.
“They actually gave me a guide.”
He opened the book.
It contained examples of Judgments.
Each example allowed him to experience the life of a sinner from a bystander’s point of view and the sinner’s point of view.
After the vision ended, the book asked him to give a Judgment.
It would grade his Judgment.
He received C- and A+ for the two examples he tried.
The blessing had been guiding him until now during the Judgments to make sure he didn’t make mistakes.
He lost its guidance after he opened his Hell.
The book and the examples were to help him train.
A chuckle left Neo’s lips.
“Even the Underworld is adopting modern education system.
“What’s next, sending practice questions online?”
He closed the book after going through two examples.
Even for him, seeing so many memories of different people was exhausting.
Neo stood up and dusted his clothes.
He looked around.
“My Shadow never appeared until now. It’s safe to say it won’t spawn in this Window.”
Neo pursed his lips.
He had expected to fail during the first few tries.
“Now, what do I do about this?”
He stood in front of the Spirit Seed of Darkness the Necromancer created.
It was powerful, but unstable.
Obitus was far stronger, and it had even more potential.
The Spirit Seed of Darkness might be a treasure in others’ eyes.
However, it was lackluster for Neo.
While he was wondering how to deal with the Spirit Seed, Obitus’ voice appeared inside his head.
No…..
The single word carried intense emotions.
Panic, fluster, and jealousy.
The sword didn’t want to share Neo with another spirit.
Neo smiled bitterly.
“Fine, I won’t take this Spirit.”
Obitus buzzed with happiness.
Neo commanded it to devour the Spirit Seed.
The sword’s blade split apart from the tip.
It opened it’s maw and gulped the Spirit Seed in one go, chewing it for a few seconds.
It’s bitter….
[Sense +4] [Spirit Synchronization +3]
Neo could feel the connection between him and Obitus grow stronger.
After completing the goals he had inside the Window, he returned to the entrance.
There was no need to close the Window, even though he could do it without proper equipment.
If he closed it, he would fall into the World of Shadows—if he was lucky.
In case he was unlucky, he would end up in the gap between dimensions.
“Waiting like this is just wasting time.
“I might as well train.”
Neo brought his palms together until they were almost touching.
Red lightning crackled between them.
Instead of creating large bolts, he tried to create smaller, compressed bolts.
His brows creased.
He tried to compress the lightning further and further until it was strong enough to kill the ‘space.’
There were different ways to create a miniature black hole.
One of them was to destroy the space.
Neo kept trying to conjure enough Death to kill space.
He failed.
His mastery of Death was lacking.
He was gasping for breath after hours of training.
“If I can’t do this here, I doubt I’ll be able to do it outside either.
“Windows are a passage between two dimensions.
“The space here is unstable and weaker.
“I should be able to do this, dammit.”
The entrance of the Window reopened a few days later.
Neo jumped out when the time came.
An invisible power wrapped around him as soon as he fell through the sky.
‘Someone is holding me with Telekinesis,’ he thought.
The telekinetic hold brought him down carefully.