Chapter 5: The Nether Laws
When the next day dawned, Urdur had come to the dormitory and woken everyone up.
Urdur had gone outside with everyone except Dean, leaving him to sleep.
Almost two hours had passed since then.
[Congratulations, Host!
You have just received the daily random reward: 5,000,000 Nether and Aether Coins]
Dean had been woken by the system window.
The young man closed the window straight away and stood up. He then looked around carefully and saw that there was no one else in the dormitory.
He immediately opened the dormitory door and stepped outside.
He could see numerous ghosts wandering about.
It seemed much busier today than yesterday. One might even say there was a rather peculiar crowd.
The young man had gone to the storeroom to get on with his work, or rather, to check whether everything was running smoothly.
When he saw that the recruits were working with great enthusiasm, he was convinced that everything was going according to plan.
He headed straight for the restaurant.
To tell the truth, he wanted to run into the person who had spoken to him the day before.
So he made his way directly to the restaurant and went inside.
Naturally, all eyes were fixed on him.
In particular, the head chef’s eyes were watching Dean with a look of irritation.
The young man took a few steps forward and turned politely towards the kitchen door.
"Please restrain yourself from destroying things."
The young man had heard the same voice again. That gentle, beautiful woman’s voice that had spoken to him yesterday.
"I’ve got nothing else to do. I suppose I need someone to chat to," said Dean.
There was no reply to Dean’s words.
Silence had spread throughout the restaurant for five minutes.
Dean didn’t recognise the owner of the voice, but it seemed the others knew exactly who this person was.
"All right. Please go up to the third floor of the restaurant. Straight into the room on your left."
When that lovely woman’s voice spoke again, Dean headed for the stairs and went up to the third floor of the restaurant, just as he’d been told.
He opened the door to the room directly on his left and stepped inside.
The interior had a rather gloomy appearance. It could be said to be even gloomier than the outside world... or even the underworld itself.
A few lamps, through which blue flames could be seen, cast a faint light over the room.
The room was practically shrouded in smoke. It was obvious that something had been smoked inside. It was a heavy smoke, yet one could still see through it, much like the smoke from a pipe.
There was a curtain in the middle of the room.
It was a thin curtain, through which, perhaps because of the lamps, the silhouette of a woman could be seen on the other side.
Even before stepping through the curtain, the young man could tell just how beautiful the person behind it was.
There was little need to describe the figure’s beauty.
It would suffice to say that it was a silhouette beautiful enough to capture the attention of even someone like Dean, who truly didn’t care about beauty or outward appearance, for a few seconds.
"I’ve never met anyone quite like you before, so unconventional, carefree and fearless," said the owner of the silhouette.
The young man smiled and then said, "I have my own ways and reasons, my lady. With your permission, might I have something to sit on?"
As soon as he spoke those words, a chair materialised right in front of the young man.
The moment Dean sat down, he felt as though he were sitting on a cloud.
It was very soft.
"I hope it’s good enough for someone of your calibre," said the owner of the silhouette.
"Haha... more than enough," replied Dean.
"Very well. Now let’s get to the main point. You’ve somehow managed to outwit the dungeon. You’ve managed to bypass the rules, the laws of the Underworld with your money, but there’s one thing I can’t quite make sense of. If I may, I’d like to ask."
Every time the woman spoke, her silhouette shifted.
"Please," Dean replied, once again.
"I can gauge your level. You possess no power whatsoever, neither in the Aether nor within the Nether. There isn’t even an angel, a demon or a divine beast following you. You don’t even have a ghost. How is it that you can possess Nether and Aether Coins in such a state of purity? Who... are you?"
When the woman behind the silhouette spoke these words, Dean began to think.
He was so convinced he wasn’t mad and so obsessed with survival that he hadn’t even considered such a thing.
He didn’t know why the system was within him, or why he possessed so much money.
His name... was Dean. Just Dean.
"Who am I?" Dean had muttered. His gaze had faltered for a few seconds, then fixed on the silhouette.
Then he spoke again:
"You might say I am Fortune Incarnate. Let’s just say I have an insane amount of money."
At these words, the silhouette gripped the pipe in her hand tightly. One could even make out the woman behind the curtain smiling.
"Very well. Let it be as you say. But what do you wish to discuss with me?" asked the woman behind the silhouette.
When Dean heard this question, he smiled and then asked, "I was wondering. The Laws of Nether, what exactly are they?"
Since there was time to talk, he might as well use it to gain some knowledge. Wasn’t that right?
"Ah... I knew people were ignorant on this subject. Still, I’d thought you weren’t an ordinary person," said the woman behind the silhouette.
With those words, she began to speak:
"Every realm has its own rules. The Nether harbours the dead, the Aether the sacred, and the Earth the mortals. The Laws of the Nether exist to prevent the dead from harming other realms and destroying their own. In short, we cannot defy these rules."
"As in?" Dean asked.
"Like yesterday, when the old cook threw a bowl at you and broke it to punish you. Since the bowl hit you first, then fell to the ground, AND then it broke, that meant you were to blame for it."
"Because of that, the Nether Law now says she can physically harm you. Normally, she’s not allowed to touch you. Of course, this law only applies when you’re not in a fight."
Comments