When it came to Hera's situation, Thea had to admit—even the most hateful people usually have their reasons. And Hera's fall from grace? That was mostly on Zeus and his complete inability to keep it in his pants.
You didn't even need to put yourself in her shoes. Replace Hera with any rational, clear-headed woman in the same situation, and they'd have done ten times worse—maybe even a hundred times worse.
After sighing and offering a few consoling words, the two reached an unspoken understanding. No longer enemies—just... neutral.
A slight tremor ran through the air. The fluctuations around the manifested house ceased, and they descended into the land of the dead.
"Looks like we've arrived. By the way, do you have a way back?" Thea put away her lantern ring, still wearing her casual outfit—red windbreaker over black pants and boots. She stood with her hands in her coat pockets, scanning their surroundings with a serious expression.
This godforsaken place made her teleportation spell difficult to execute. Even the basic rules of teleportation were different from Earth's. After just two attempts, Thea felt a strange, hard-to-define energy blocking her spatial positioning layer by layer.
"This is Hades' domain. I've never been here before..." Hera said vaguely. Through Thea's constant probing earlier, she'd learned the general situation between them.
As for the whole God King situation, Hera was in a pretty absurd position. Thea suspected this so-called God King throne was just a trap set by that stallion Zeus, but either way, if any of the remaining Greek gods wanted to claim it, they needed Hera's approval.
The younger generation had to make certain exchanges of interest to gain her approval. For example, even the incredibly arrogant Apollo was willing to serve as muscle for this very reason.
As Zeus's brothers, Poseidon and Hades didn't need such trouble—they planned to simply marry Hera. The goddess naturally refused, and this was the crux of their conflict.
Usually, holed up on Mount Olympus, her refusal was just that. But now, tricked by Hermes, with both of them stuck in the Underworld, things were getting awkward.
Seeing that Hera had no solution, Thea shrank her neck. It was really cold here. The sky was gray, the ground was gray, and the air carried a bone-chilling cold. This wasn't the natural environmental cold of below-zero temperatures—it was literally cold, a complete indifference to all life.
Methods to return weren't nonexistent. At the very least, Zeus's lightning bolt could definitely get her back. If it could traverse time itself, a small spatial barrier like this was nothing. However, considering Hera's emotional state, she decided to use another method.
She could try brute force—using the collective will of all living beings to teleport them both back—but that would require astronomical amounts of willpower. Thea still planned to connect with the "Source," so she didn't want to waste it here needlessly. Her plan was to temporarily modify some spatial rules just enough to teleport back.
Just as she was about to act, the previously silent and dark space seemed to receive some command. The space was slowly coming "alive."
The gray clouds in the sky were gradually approaching. Looking closely, those weren't clouds at all—they were countless skeletal remains of birds, some already broken beyond recognition, others still showing traces of their former lives.
Compared to the silently approaching bone-birds, the changes on the ground were truly shocking.
From the surrounding walls and rocks, countless filthy corpses crawled out. The ground beneath their feet also sprouted countless human hands and rotting heads. Men and women, young and old—all you could see in the walking dead's eyes was hatred. Hatred for the world, hatred for the living.
"Oh great..." Thea looked at this scene with some distress. For mortals, these things could scare someone to death, but for her and Hera, it was just a matter of a few fireballs.
The only concern was Thea's mild obsession with cleanliness. Facing corpses covering the ground and walls, that filthy environment, plus the thick stench accumulated by countless dead bodies, made her cover her nose.
Hera, who presented herself with an image of elegance and nobility, wasn't doing much better. She wrinkled her nose and squinted her eyes, equally overwhelmed by the smell.
What caught their attention came next. Countless walking corpses began to frantically converge. Large masses of flesh and blood were forcibly mixed together, and countless pools of stagnant blood were squeezed out. The gray ground was covered with a thick, heavy layer of deep black plasma.
Such stomach-turning imagery made Thea grimace. The masses of flesh and blood didn't care whether she was disgusted—they forcibly formed into a face dozens of meters high. The facial features were blurry, but visible. At the mouth area, a large opening split open, and a dark, slow voice emerged.
"Hera, have you come to be my bride?"
Discovering that the other party had ignored her, Thea was about to pull out her holy sword and go into slaughter mode when she held back. Her friendship with Hera could only be described as "former enemies"—they were far from being friends. There was no need to stick her neck out for the goddess.
As it turned out, even a dead tiger keeps its imposing presence, and Hera had no intention of letting Thea take the lead. Without a word, the goddess instantly grew her body to fifty meters tall, looking straight at the giant face Hades had formed from the flesh of the dead.
Thea gave her a thumbs up. This move was really something—her aggro-pulling ability had reached max level. After Hera grew larger, no one paid attention to her, this "little person," anymore.
However, this trick was all show and no substance. Making one's body larger actually made it easier for opponents to attack and reduced agility. At the same time, divine power consumption per unit time also increased. After just a casual glance, Thea found a whole bunch of problems with it.
But since no one was paying attention to her, she was happy to watch the show. Apart from being dirty and smelly, the environment here wasn't too bad...
"Open your filthy gate and let us leave." Hera knew nothing about negotiation tactics. Right from the start, she issued a hard command. The only good news was that she was kind-hearted enough to include Thea.
Hades was amused by her tone. The face formed of flesh and blood seemed to tremble a few times. "Come to my throne and let's talk properly." After the flesh face finished speaking, it dissolved into sludge and fell to the ground. Countless corpses and zombies emerged from underground, countless death knights assembled in the distance, giants who had lost their intelligence, and monsters killed in myths and legends all made their appearance.
For hundreds of miles in every direction, everything was covered by an ocean of the undead. A path only two people wide suddenly appeared—this should be the "road" leading to Hades' throne.
"You're really going in there?" Thea grabbed Hera, who had returned to normal size and was preparing to walk in.
"Do you have a better idea?" Hera looked at her curiously.
Thea roughly explained her plan. After listening, Hera shook her head. "There isn't enough time. The other side won't give us much time to prepare."
Thea had to admit this point. Once she began concentrating on rewriting the rules, she'd need at least two to three minutes. During that time, Hera would need to hold off the surrounding monsters.
First, there was a trust issue—Hera wasn't Diana. She wouldn't fight to the death to protect Thea.