Chapter 175 – Asphodel, Some Powers are Hated
Zagreus holds the shade foreman up by the collar and demands, “Tell me more!”
The shade foreman stammers and quickly explains, “Ah, s-sure Prince Zagreus. The Well of Charon is exactly as its namesake suggests. We build a well and enchant it so that it falls under Charon’s Authority. You can throw coins into and receive temporary power-ups from Lord Charon himself! Only the richest of us can afford the prices, though.”
“On the other hand, the Fountain of Healing is free and it is our most luxurious construction! A single dip into it will heal chthonic flesh to a significant degree! The mechanism of the healing fluid is designed to mimic the blood of the River Styx, but our imitation cannot quite do it perfectly. We’re still working on improving it.”The siblings confer telepathically as Zagreus releases the shade foreman. Zagreus transmits to Nuwa, ‘This could be vital to our journey upwards! If we get stronger and have a reliable spot to heal..’
‘Exactly! I get it, bro. Let me handle this.’ she replies.
Nuwa adds a little sway to her hips as she approaches the shade foreman. She narrows her eyes at him with interest, “What’s your name, big guy?”
Ending her statement with a little shake of her boobies, Nuwa smugly watches a cartoonish red blush cover the green hues around his face. He meekly replies, “Blobbie.” while trying his best not to stare too much at the Princess’ plump fishnet-encased chest.
Nuwa exclaims, “Blobbie! How adorable. Your mother must have loved you a lot when she was alive.” She squeezes her shoulders together and leans forward, making her E cup tits seem even larger than usual. She stops constraining her passive daon field, releasing a low-level form of allure that is more than enough to handle a non-combat shade like this one.
Blobbie’s blush deepens and he can no longer take his eyes off her cleavage. He nods dumbly and says as if in a trance, “Mommy loves me.”
Nuwa takes soft steps towards him and hugs him tenderly, pressing her pillowy chest against his semi-immaterial body with one leg raised. In a quiet voice, so that the nearby shades cannot hear, she says, “Mommy loves you! Can you build 60 Fountains of Healing for Mommy, one on each platform?”
Blobbie fidgets, but keeps his dumb look. In her thoughts, Nuwa curses that his greed almost broke him out of her trance. He says, “Not enough.. healing fluid in the Underworld for that many Fountains.”
‘No good..’ the siblings transmit to each other simultaneously.
Nuwa tries a different method, “Can you tell Mommy how the bridge layers work? Is there a method to always end up on the same platform?”
With a proud smile, Blobbie lowers his voice and eagerly spills his secrets, “Of course there’s a trick! That arrogant bitch Meg tortures us and treats us as her slaves, but she still doesn’t know how the platforms of the bridge work, so she had to buy the same item 30 times over! The secret is that every platform is attuned to a certain minute on the hour.”
“We designed it to be that way! Once you figure out the ‘minute’ that a platform is attuned to, you can always enter the bridge at that minute and end up at the correct platform! This platform is the 32nd, the one next to us in that direction is the 57th and in the other direction is the 8th. They’re not in linear order or it would be too easy to figure it out! What do you think, Mommy?”
Nuwa giggles victoriously while Zagreus smiles in the background. She strokes his back, “Great job, Blobbie. I’m so proud of you. What do you think about building a Fountain of Healing for Mommy on this platform, the 32nd?”
Blobbie shudders pleasantly at the heavenly feeling of Nuwa’s breasts against his body and his own movements make him feel her nipples trail up and down. “Sure Mommy.. That’ll be 500 gems.”
Whining, Nuwa mutters seductively, “Blobbie, surely you can give your precious Mommy a discount. One free Fountain is no big deal.”
“FREE?!” Blobbie immediately wakes up. He slinks out of Nuwa’s grasp by flattening himself on the ground and backs away. With consternation, he angrily shouts, “You.. you bewitched me! I should report you to Lord Hades right away!”
Nuwa feels frustration over pushing the shade too hard when she knows of his greed. The word ‘free’ just slipped out. Zagreus interjects, “No you won’t. If you do, I’ll snitch to Megaera. You know how that’ll end for you..”
Shaking with rage, Blobbie is left speechless. The Prince's threat rings true. He’ll be in for at least a torture session or two.. or twenty-nine.. one for each of the sofas he scammed Megaera into buying. Then again, waiting up to fifty-nine minutes for a chance to sit on a sofa doesn’t exactly make sense from a cost-benefit perspective, so she definitely would have bought more than one even if she had known the secret. In any case, it doesn’t matter. Simply him having the intention to scam her is enough for her to torture him.
Zagreus brings out his gem pouch with a smile and holds out some gems, “Build us a Fountain of Healing. Here’s 500 gems.”
Blobbie looks at the gems longingly, but still, none of it sits well. He glares at Nuwa and says, “All of us shades knew of the Princess as innocent and kind, but now.. now I’ve seen the real you!” He snatches the gems from Zagreus’ hand and says with the resignation of a downtrodden dog, “I’ll build your damned Fountain. After all, we exist to serve.”
Zagreus grits his teeth and almost draws his weapon on Blobbie for speaking ill of his sister, but Nuwa stops him. She says, “Give him 250 more gems.”
“What? Why?” asks Zagreus while Blobbie raises his head in confusion.
Nuwa addresses Blobbie seriously, “You’re right that I’m not your innocent and beloved Princess anymore. What I still am and always will be is a sister that will do whatever I can to help my brother in his goal of escaping the Underworld. This 250 extra is for your troubles. All I ask is that you try to understand.”
Sighing, Zagreus dashes over and drops another 250 in the hat Blobbie is holding to carry his 500 gems. The foreman looks down, silent for a brief spell before he eventually says, “I’m still mad.. but I get it.” He turns around and waves his free arm up, shouting “Blobs! We have a Fountain contract! Yer all about to have a major payday! Let’s get to wooork! INURGI..!”
-750 gems, Total: 6,261 gems
The shades nearby and off into the distance chant along and echo the word, “.. INURGI.. INURGI.. INURGI..”
Blobbie turns around and promises, “Give us a few days and it’ll be ready.”
Nodding her thanks, Nuwa turns to Zagreus and notices he is still agitated. She goes back to him and telepathically says, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Those shades are subordinates of our family! I don’t get why you’re explaining yourself to them or tolerating their disrespect.’
Nuwa pulls her brother up the steps to the next area and replies, ‘Those shades are also people and they deserve basic respect. Anyway, you’re too hyped up on my Dao Strings to think clearly. Let’s go see the lava plains that Achilles told us about!’
True to her words, Zagreus quickly calms down when his arm makes contact with his sister’s breasts and they excitedly head up the stairs. At the top of the stairs, they see a fiery orange light. Bright lights like these are unusual in Tartarus and the House of Hades.
The stairway leads to a fairly luxurious open area. The floors have nice purple rugs and skull decorations befitting the Underworld vibe. What is strange, however, is that much of the lower levels of the area appear to have been unexpectedly submerged by the superheated lava of the River Phlegethon.
Similar to the River Styx, wailing souls constantly try to reach their immaterial hands out of the lava, eager to drag in anyone wandering too close. And unlike in Tartarus, the river flow, due to the flooding, is all over the place, making it a difficult environmental hazard to avoid. Simply standing close to the lava is enough for both siblings to sense that their chthonic fire-resistant bodies would take constant flame damage if they happen to slip in. Zagreus would be able to dash out right away, but Nuwa would have it worse due to her weaker body and poorer mobility.
“This..” mutters Zagreus. “..Is gonna be tough.” Nuwa finishes his sentence.
At the edge of the immediate area, a pile of tied together skulls floats upon the River Phlegethon. The sign on the skulls seems to indicate that the next area is going to offer an Aphrodite boon. Furthermore, the fact that the sign is on the skulls instead of a door or wall means that the way to the next area is via the raft.
“Oh, an Aphrodite boon. Lovely!” says Zagreus as he heads over, already growing a boner. Nuwa pulls him back and yells, “Snap out of it, bro! Have you forgotten what we did?”
…
Pausing, Zagreus quickly starts to sweat out of nervousness, which is all the easier in the insufferable heat. “Oh shit. We had a threesome with her man. She’s going to be really mad. What do we do!? I’ve never skipped a boon before, but that should be possible, right?”
“I don’t know, but be on your toes.” says Nuwa before hopping on Zagreus’ back.
He gets on the raft and passes some of the hijacked Authority of Hades through it, upon which it dislodges from the island and starts moving on auto-pilot against the current. The tortured souls of River Phlegethon give the raft plenty of space, perhaps because of the Authority imbued within it.
From Nuwa’s perspective, the sweltering heat and almost monochromatic scenery of Asphodel is not much of an upgrade from the torture racks and dungeons of Tartarus. She can sense, though, that Zagreus prefers it here. His chthonic genes make flames aesthetically pleasing to him and his cramped upbringing makes him prefer the open spaces. She simply cannot wait to get to the Surface and show him the sky.
‘Sky!’ he picks up one of her thoughts.
She shoves him out of her head. ‘No! It’s a secret. You can’t peek. Just wait until you see it for yourself. It can be part of your motivation!’
‘Haha, fine.’ he replies nonchalantly as the raft comes to a stop at a donut-shaped island. Baddies start to spawn from summoning circles. To start with, there are two enemies. A nest of skulls that does nothing but spawn offensive skulls every few seconds to bite at Zagreus and a living stalagmite called the skullcrusher that jumps up really high and locks onto Zagreus’ location to try to flatten him.
The skullcrusher jumps high enough that his bottom camouflages into the distant ceiling, so the only way to tell where he is going to land is by watching his shadow. They both take one hit due to the shockwave of the skullcrusher landing, which extends well past his shadow, but they keep their distance after that. Overall, these two enemies are relatively easy to deal with given that Zagreus stays on the move. Nuwa takes care of the extra skulls that spawn and they complete the island without too much hassle.
Still, Zagreus is at 7% health and there is not much Nuwa can do for him. If she heals him with another Dao String, she’ll not have enough to shoot enemies with and he’ll be too horny to fight. Their escape attempt is ending soon for sure. Aphrodite’s orb soon spawns in a safe area of the island.
Zagreus makes a break for the raft and tries to pass the hijacked Authority through it, but it doesn’t take. The divine energy of the orb smothers it. “Uh.. Sis, it’s not working.”
“Don’t tell me..” Nuwa groans, “..that as long as I’m present, we have to meet Aphrodite every time her orb shows up?!”
Zagreus gulps in fear. The cute heart symbol on the pink orb grows more ominous by the moment. “Let’s just open it and get it over with, Sis! I can’t take this suspense!”
Slow to concur, Nuwa eventually relents, “.. Fine. I don’t see any better options.”
Zagreus approaches, places his hand on the orb, and does the usual. When the nude divine projection of Aphrodite appears, there’s something.. off.. about her. At first glance, her cheerful expression is the same, but her smile is stiff and it doesn’t quite extend all the way to her eyes. “Hello dearest,” she starts the same as before, giving a prescribed message to Zagreus, but Nuwa’s presence immediately ‘wakes her up’, after which her fake smile fades and she turns to stare at Nuwa atop Zagreus’ back blankly. “Bold of you to face me.. My wayward apprentice.”
Looking back into the Goddess’ pink eyes with as strong a glare as she can, Nuwa holds her ground. Zagreus himself is frozen. He’s too horny to move. The pressure on Nuwa steadily increases and she starts to feel like she’s standing atop an active volcano about to blow, simply waiting for death.
Suddenly, the pressure vanishes. Aphrodite states venomously, “Nuwa.. I had so many plans to torture, disfigure, and cripple you, but I see the folly of that now. All it takes is a little bath in the Styx and you’d be right as rain. I see now that there is a better revenge.. One might even call it.. karma!”
With a supremely malicious smile, Aphrodite lowers her gaze to Zagreus, with whom she locks eyes. Pink hearts appear in both her irises and Nuwa gets a terrible feeling. She covers Zagreus’ eyes, but the effect seems to have already taken. There’s only a few steps between them, but he slowly starts walking towards Aphrodite uncontrollably.
Nuwa mutters, “No.. no..” She would have tried to fight, but she can tell that Aphrodite is ready for her attacks and that it wouldn’t end whatever is happening to Zagreus, unless she killed the projection. This thing happening to Zagreus has to end as soon as possible! There’s no time for a fight!
She panics, “No.. ! Mistress, stop!”
She throws everything in the book at her, “Please! I’m sorry.”
“I’m really sorry!”
“Not my brother!”
“I’m begging you!”
“We won’t do it again!”
This only causes Aphrodite to smile even wider and shout, “Reap what you sow, slut! He’s mine now!”
With Zagreus only one step away from Aphrodite, Nuwa tears up as utter despair starts to encroach upon her psyche.
(A/N: Zag is in trouble! Everybody spam Begone Thot gifs!!)