The Protagonist Already Knows

Chapter 7: Tartarus

Standing before the miniature castle, I approached the large wooden door sealing the building off from the outside world.

Although Specters were already considered S-rank beasts, the one I was about to face was in a league of its own.

Anubis: Death’s Guardian.

Hundreds of years ago, Anubis had once taken over this city, brainwashing over a million humans in Ascent and simultaneously turning them into his puppets.

However, before he could expand Death’s authority to the entirety of the human continent, Eres, the previous #1 hero and Creator of The Grove, appeared and sealed Anubis in Tartarus

Eres sealed Anubis’s fading will in this house, the place nearest to Death’s gates, and specifically commanded architects to rebuild Ascent to resemble one massive trap for a single reason.

Ascent lay atop the entrance to the underworld, the dimension of death.

Therefore, if the gates of the underworld ever opened and undead beasts flooded out, heroes would be able to contain the beasts within Ascent, preventing them from escaping and destroying other human cities.

Glancing at the replica of Ascent on my smartwatch, now filled with various red lines, each starting at the Tartarus building and ending at the train station I had arrived in, I confirmed my route one last time.

Without wasting another moment, I pushed open the double doors, immediatly met with utter darkness.

It was as if there were an intangible barrier preventing sunlight from outside from leaking into the building.

As I entered the building, the darkness enveloped me, blocking my sight completely and erasing my figure from the outside world.

Countless voices flooded my mind, invading my brain and preventing me from forming a single thought of my own.

"Join us."

"You want to return home, right?"

"I can guide your soul back."

Of course, entering this castle alone and hearing voices wasn’t enough to trigger Anubis’s wills; or else the guardian of Death would have been released long ago.

Thus, I chanted the words that the previous Ash had discovered in his father’s study.

"Hades, the omnipresent death, your loyal and humble servant, Anubis, requests your assistance."

Did I remember it correct-

*BAM*

As I completed the phrase, the floor below me began to shake wildly, and the mysterious voices vanished, replaced by silence.

Though my surroundings were nothing but darkness, I could feel a subtle shift start to take place as an overwhelming feeling of coldness enveloped my body.

In the next moment, I found myself under the night sky, right outside the tiny medieval castle, Tartarus.

We had been transported into a replica of an Ascent’s District...located in the underworld

Recalling the route I had planned after analyzing the entire layout of the district, I immediatly looked forward, my legs bursting with energy and ready to start sprinting

*CRASH*

The wooden doors of the castle suddenly burst open, revealing...a familiar face.

A child with black hair and blue eyes, whom I had seen on a paper not too long ago.

"Ah..."

My mind instantly plunged into chaos as I hesitated for a moment, an overwhelming sense of confusion and fear overtaking me.

How was he here!? Was he in the castle? Why was he in the castle? What should I do?

Blood dripping out of his mouth, he managed to say in a voice just loud enough for me to hear.

"n-no, please don’t steal my chance. I-i just want to help m-my paren-"

Yet, before the boy could finish his sentence, a scythe burst forward from behind the boy, piercing straight through his body

His body...trembled for a moment before freezing permanently.

I was forced to watch as his ocean-blue eyes halted in place, his mouth still wide-open as he gazed at me.

Steal...what? There was no way the boy knew about the Specter’s will...did the voices in the haunted house get to him?

Peril...he must have thought there was some mysterious power in Tartarus and wanted to get it to before me.

Snapping me back to reality, the scythe impaling the boy slowly ascended in the air, slowly revealing the figure holding it.

A figure three times the size of a human, wearing a large, night-black cloak, emerged from Tartarus with a night-black scythe. The opening in the cloak where the face was supposed to be was pitch-black.

I commanded my body to move, I screamed at it to move, I... begged for it to move.

I had everything planned perfectly; my mind knew exactly which stores to run through, which couches to leap over, and the fastest route to escape the underworld and claim the specter’s will.

But my eyes remained locked onto the dead boy’s corpse.

Another loss of human life occurred as a result of my actions.

I had thought I had so much... so much knowledge that could save millions of humans and make this world a better place, but, in the end, only death followed me like a loyal dog.

Perhaps it was fitting I met my end here in the underworld.

As the Specter slowly cast his gaze on me, Peril’s corpse still hanging on his scythe, a soft yet familiar voice sounded behind me.

"If you die here, Anubis would have two vessels to descend upon the real world and wreak havoc. Is that what you truly want?"

"No..."

My ice-cold body ignited with fire and slowly defrosted as I felt a soft hand touch my shoulder.

A cheerful voice then reverberated through the air.

"Then, go!"

As my mind filled with malicious thoughts, telling me to just give up and stay still, I managed to sprint forward.

Despite the Specter’s mind attacks that should have easily broken through my G-rank defenses, the route that I had to follow appeared perfectly in my mind.

Leaping through windows and weaving in and out of houses, I turned back for a moment, seeing a massive purple ball, the size of a car, surging toward me.

However, my route had already accounted for such things.