Aergia found herself unable to refute him for a moment.
Feeling he had explained things clearly enough, Thanatos prepared to continue on his way, only to realize the maiden goddess beside him had not kept up.
Aergia continued to look at the weeping souls of the deceased, while in her mind, the authorities held respectively by Hypnos and Thanatos silently surfaced.
Sleep... death...
One temporarily suspended wakefulness; the other permanently suspended life.
In the world she had once lived in, sleep was often viewed as a shallow death, and death was described by countless people as an eternal slumber.
Of course, those were merely metaphors.
Sleep and death were fundamentally different in nature, yet from the structure of their laws, there truly seemed to exist a subtle point of commonality between the two.
When she had researched Drowsiness previously, what had she truly discovered? It was not making the physical body weary, nor was it simply making a living creature unwilling to move. What was truly weakened by sloth was the consciousness's drive to continue maintaining a certain state.
And what about these souls before her?
Death was already complete, and their physical bodies had perished.
Yet their consciousnesses still constantly maintained their fear and resentment, repeating over and over, “I won't accept this,” “I'm not resigned to this,” and “I don't want to stay here.”
The body had stopped, but the consciousness carried on...
The languor in Aergia's eyes gradually faded, and a new question surfaced along with it.
Since sloth could cause a wakeful consciousness to no longer obsess over maintaining wakefulness, could it also cause those overly intense emotions to gradually grind to a halt for souls that had already lost their physical bodies?
When this thought occurred to her, even Aergia herself found it somewhat strange.
Yet strangeness was never a reason to dismiss a hypothesis; research only cared about results.
“Lord Thanatos, could you give me a moment? I want to test something.”
Thanatos immediately grew bewildered.
“What?”
“I want to try making the weeping souls quiet down.”
“...”
Thanatos stared at her for several breaths.
“You?”
“Mm.”
“Did Hypnos teach you that?”
“No.”
“Then don't mess around,” he warned almost instinctively. “Souls of the deceased aren't like living creatures. They've already lost their physical bodies, so if divine power is used even a bit too heavily, the soul itself will be damaged.”
Though his words sounded blunt, Aergia picked up on their true meaning. This God of Death, who grew so irritated by the weeping of souls that he wished the entire Underworld would shut up, actually understood better than anyone how fragile those souls truly were.
“I'll control my strength,” Aergia said, raising a hand. “It's just a tiny experiment.”
Experiment? What a novel word.
Thanatos looked at her with furrowed brows for a moment, ultimately refraining from stopping her further.
“You can only test one. If anything goes wrong, stop immediately.”
“Understood.”
Aergia quickly selected the soul closest to her.
It was a small ancient creature whose soul form still retained the outline of a four-legged runner, though its body had become almost translucent.
Curled beside a black rock, it emitted continuous sharp, hurried whimpers, raising its head abruptly every few breaths to struggle toward the direction of the earth in its memory.
Fear—an extremely obvious fear.
Aergia did not touch it; the divine power belonging to sloth slowly seeped out from the core of her godhead like an imperceptible mist, cautiously enveloping the soul.
At first, there was no change. The soul continued to scream and wail.
Aergia did not increase her power; instead, following the method she had used when studying Drowsiness, she adjusted the point of application of her authority bit by bit.
She did not intend to erase its fear directly; those emotions belonged to the soul itself.
What she truly wanted to affect was the power that constantly maintained this intense state.
To continue being afraid, to continue weeping, to continue trying to escape the Underworld with a body that no longer existed—again and again, without end.
The godhead of Sloth vibrated gently, sending silent power seeping into the soul.
The creature's cries gradually slowed. At first, it was merely the interval between two wails stretching longer, but soon, its repeated movements of slamming against the black rock began to turn sluggish as well.
The fear had not vanished; Aergia could still clearly feel its instinctive resistance toward the unfamiliar darkness.
Yet this fear no longer burned continuously like a raging fire.
It began to grow weary; the soul itself began to grow weary.
After a little while longer, the translucent figure finally ceased its struggles and lay down slowly beside the black rock.
It still raised its head to gaze into the distance, but it had grown quiet.
Seeing that the soul had truly quieted down, wonder flashed across Thanatos's face. He glanced at the soul, then looked back at Aergia.
“What did you do?”
“I simply stopped it from continuously maintaining that fear.”
“What do you mean?”
“Emotions themselves need to be maintained,” she explained, choosing her words carefully. “Anger requires constantly recalling the target of that anger; fear requires continuous vigilance toward the source of that fear; unwillingness requires consciousness to tell itself over and over, 'I cannot accept this.' If even doing that itself becomes wearying...”
Aergia looked toward the soul that had gradually fallen quiet.
“...then the emotion will naturally settle down as well.”
Thanatos fell silent. As the God of Death, he had seen far too many souls—so many that he no longer remembered how many lives he had harvested.
These souls weeping, trembling with fear, and struggling had always seemed like the most normal thing after death in his eyes—just as normal as life ending in death one day.
He had never thought that there was actually a part of this that could be changed.
An extremely faint fluctuation of law emerged from the soul. It was not yet enough to form a true godhead, nor could it even be considered an independent rule, but Aergia could already clearly feel the faint outline of that concept.
Soothing—a power that caused negative emotions continuously surging within the mind to gradually quiet down.
“Does that method of yours work on other souls as well?”
“I wasn't very sure before, but guided by the rules, the concept of Soothing has already formed, so there shouldn't be any problem.”
Thanatos nodded. He stared at the soul that had finally stopped screaming for several breaths, then slowly raised his head to look further away.
Over there, the crying remained incessant—wails, curses, and entreaties blended together, echoing repeatedly against the cavernous rock walls of the Underworld.
“Over there.”
Aergia looked in the direction he indicated; at least several dozen souls were gathered there.
“Make them all quiet.”
“...”
Aergia fell silent for a moment.
“All of them?”
“All of them.”
Thanatos answered without hesitation. Just then, an especially harrowing wail sounded in the distance, causing a vein on his temple to twitch visibly.
“Especially that one.”
Aergia did not refuse. The newly born concept of Soothing was still very weak; if it was to become a truly stable rule, acting on a single soul was far from enough. And now, Thanatos had conveniently prepared more than enough subjects for her.
And so Aergia raised her hand, and the power belonging to Soothing truly spread outward for the first time.
At first it was only a few souls, then a dozen, and then more and more souls that had been crying and struggling continuously were enveloped by that gentle power.
They still remembered everything from when they were alive, but those constantly surging emotions no longer dragged them endlessly into deeper chaos.
The crying died down bit by bit, and a long-absent silence washed over vast stretches of the previously noisy Underworld.
Standing to the side, Thanatos's expression visibly relaxed.
The power of Soothing continued to spread outward. As more and more souls truly calmed from their intense mental turmoil, the originally faint rule rapidly began to complete itself.
Strands of law traces rose from the souls one after another, converging with one another before ultimately returning in full to Aergia.
The world was responding to this newly born concept. When the crying in the final area gradually quieted down, an extremely clear vibration suddenly echoed within Aergia's body.
The law of Soothing, which had possessed only an outline, rapidly solidified as countless intricate rules interwoven with one another. Ultimately, a brand-new godhead slowly took shape. Divine light shone within Aergia as an extraordinarily gentle power spread outward in all directions with her at its center.
It lacked the hazy quality that Sleep Induction possessed, which guided consciousness toward sleep, nor did it share sloth's inherent sluggishness that robbed the drive to "continue." It was far gentler, closer to a process of the mind itself regaining balance.
The instant the godhead condensed, Aergia's divine power underwent a shift as well. Much of the new energy was compressed and settled, merging into her divine nature, which was already approaching saturation.
Her divine power grew even more solid, and the barrier of status belonging to Second-Rank Divine Power that stood before her became all the more distinct.
Thanatos stood not far away, saying nothing for a long while.
Aergia turned around.
“Lord Thanatos?”
The young God of Death remained silent for a long moment before finally giving a soft hum.
“Not bad.”
Having said that, he immediately turned around.
“Let's go. Time to head to the earth. We still have actual work to do.”
Aergia fell into step behind him, the newly born godhead hovering quietly inside her alongside Sloth and Sleep Induction. The third godhead she possessed had officially taken shape.
Rate on N.U.
