Chapter 687 - Self-Loathing and Greed

Eisen swung his sword to the side to get rid of the blood that had been stuck on it, watching as the body of the man with the perfect memory was repairing itself. And the moment that he was able to stand up again, Eisen slashed downward with his blade once more. Due to the sheer weight of the blade, combined with the old man's strength and of course the support of the sword's ego itself, the old man was able to cut through him with ease.

The old man continued to do this over and over again, hacking his target into small pieces. Everyone was staring at him as he was doing so, but none were brave enough to help Eisen's victim. There were a couple people here that became envious of Eisen's strength and his blade now, though. And somehow... it made him feel pretty good. 

He knew that this was an emotion that he shouldn't feel, and it was one that he didn't want to feel, but it was a part of him that would be unhealthy to force away. Whenever someone tried to approach Eisen, trying to attack him to prove that they were stronger than him or to take his sword, Eisen would cut them in half as well.

All these people were incredibly weak, somehow. They weren't made for combat. They were cowardly, that were only capable of taking from those that were weaker than them. Well, it made sense. These people were devil-worshippers. They were supposed to be vile and chaotic, and Eisen was here in order to strengthen his own chaotic side. 

For the most part, Eisen didn't really feel that great about killing this man over and over again in such a horrible way. But he knew that he couldn't die, so it didn't really matter to him in the end. Only when he was cowering on the ground, shaking in fear in response to the pain that he had felt over and over again for a while now, the old man somehow felt better. And it's when a notification popped up in front of him.

[Sub-Quest Complete – Challenge of Envy]

[Description] In your quest to conquer the Limbo requires you to take on the Challenge of Envy, which means you have to deeply indulge in this sin.

More specifically, you have to indulge in the feeling of following your envy by taking that which you want the most from someone else, or by punishing the one that has which you want.

[Conditions] Indulge in your Envy

[Reward] Advancement in the Quest

[Penalty] None

The old man finally stopped and turned around, waving the notification away as he got rid of the blood on his sword. 

"Heh... I'm a good person deep down, huh..? Yeah... screw that..." The old man muttered to himself. It had started in the hall of Pride, but now here, in the hall of Envy, he had realized it some more, although he still didn't want to truly acknowledge it fully.

Everyone had certain sides of them that they weren't proud of. Over the years, they would learn to either live with them, or to bury them in other sides to hide those things. Either way, at the end of the day, even if you tried to live with your bad sides, you still wouldn't fully let them show. You would simply try to overlook the few parts that slipped out every once in a while.

At least, that's what Eisen was doing until now, or at least he figured so. But finally, he understood the difference between himself and the 'Eisen' that lived in this world for 100 Thousand years, and the reason why the current Eisen got angry so easily lately.

The Eisen that had lived in this world for so long had learned to truly 'live with his bad sides'. He didn't hide them anymore. It might be because he simply didn't feel ashamed of them anymore, or because he grew tired of hiding that side of himself.

Either way, it would explain why Eisen had been subtly changing for a while now. That part of him had made its way to the front of Eisen's current consciousness quite quickly. And because over the past few years, Eisen's mind wasn't particularly in the best state it could have been in, that probably wasn't particularly hard either.

But all of this meant that Eisen had a choice to make. A choice that would define if he would end up staying 'himself', or if he would end up becoming the Eisen of this world. Well, both sides were technically the same person... It was just that one of them accepted 'himself' more, while the other recently declined into depressive self-loathing.

And even if it might make him an objectively worse person... What if Eisen would feel better that way? What if he would be happier, letting those hidden parts of himself loose?

"Heh, you might not be as boring as you might look, old man." The Guide-Devil, Satel, pointed out with a broad smirk on their face, "Although, I'm surprised that it took you that long to finish this task... You sure that the thing you wanted the most was to remember your past?" They asked. Eisen hated to admit it, but Satel was rather sharp, even if they didn't look like it.

That wasn't the thing he wanted the most, not deep down at least. He thought it was, but in the end, the thing that Eisen was jealous of was the fact that the man from before was so confident, so prideful.

"How ironic... By indulging in pride, I realized that I wasn't fully proud of myself?" The old man whispered, before he raised his head and stepped out of the hall, with the golden gate closing right behind him, "Satel, show me where the hall for Greed is."

"Will do~!" The Devil exclaimed, seemingly getting quite excited about watching Eisen get through all of these challenges at this point. Meanwhile, Eisen felt worse than at his formerly lowest point in life... He felt truly disgusting, really.

But for now, he should be able to stop thinking for a while. After all, most 'Greed' referred to materialistic greed. And while Eisen wasn't a particularly greedy person, he did always try to make as much money as he could for his family so that they could survive and get everything they needed. So it wasn't like he wasn't greedy at all.

The old man stepped into the next hall, and immediately saw that most of the people here seemed to have a similar definition of 'Greed' as himself. In this huge hall, there were incredible amounts of treasure of all kind piled up on top of each other. It somewhat reminded Eisen of Ailren's treasury in his cave. 

Well, either way, it was clear what it was that the old man had to do here, but just to confirm, he looked at the notification that appeared in front of him a little more closely.

[New Sub-Quest – Challenge of Greed]

[Description] In your quest to conquer the Limbo requires you to take on the Challenge of Greed, which means you have to deeply indulge in this sin.

More specifically, you have to indulge in the feeling of following your greed by taking as much of that which you wish for as possible, with whatever means you deem necessary. Once you have the most of this thing out of everyone around you, you will have beaten the challenge.

[Conditions] Indulge in your Greed

[Reward] Advancement in the Quest

[Penalty] None

He already figured that this was going to be the case, but seeing this still made Eisen a little surprised. This would be a lot easier than he thought, considering that he has some items that will be able to help him out considerably. 

One of them was made specifically to clear out such large amounts of treasure, just as a small gimmick to test out part of Komer's abilities and how they could be used in items. 

The old man opened up his Item Storage and pushed his hand into the small opening that he made for it so that none of the items he stuffed in there would fall out somehow, and soon reached the bag filled with the items that he was looking for.

And after getting rid of his item storage, that a couple of the people here seemed to be rather interested in, the old man pushed his hand into the bag, taking out a handful of small marble-sized metal orbs. Before anyone here in the room could react, Eisen threw one of these metal orbs at each of the ten largest piles of treasure.

And then, Eisen snapped his fingers and let the Golem-Part of these small items do the rest to let the old man finish this straightforward challenge as quickly as possible.

With his mana-sight, the old man saw pulses of mana spread out into the piles of treasure, or more specifically all the coins and gems in them. And the next moment, the piles suddenly shrunk down. The coins were being combined with each other through Komer's Coin Element, and the gems were being combined into one through Eisen's Item Fusion skill. He would be able to easily split them up later, so it was fine if they became one item for now.

The people that owned all of these piles were of course trying to stop this, but due to the speed at which it was happening, they were unable to do anything. Once the coins were combined to the largest value coin possible at the moment, they were taken into a spatial gem that was part of the metal orb, same with the crystal item, until only the metal orbs were laying on the ground.

And then, the metal orbs folded open, turning into tiny mechanical spiders that immediately crawled over the ground toward Eisen, and up the old man's leg into his hand.

Within just a few moments, Eisen gained the vast majority of the treasure here in the room. He wasn't interested in the items, since he could make better ones himself if he tried to. So, this sub-quest was very easily finished.

And now, all Eisen had to do was to slice through the angry, former owners of the treasure until they were too scared to approach him anymore, so that he could leave in peace. Well, part of the reason why Eisen did this was also so that he could infuse 'Greed' into his Demonic Blade a little more.

It took surprisingly long to get these people to stop attacking him, but when he managed to do that, Eisen turned around and left this room, while Satel was staring at him with awe in their eyes.

"Dude... you're totally rad."