The System Awakens: Rise of the Champion-Chapter 292: Typhon
Damian couldn't help but laugh out loud as he looked at the expressions of the gods and goddesses when they heard the name of the Greek pantheon's very own Beast of the End, Typhon.
"Oh, my heavenly mother… are you really that afraid of Typhon?" Damian shook his head in amusement as he turned his eyes toward his wife, Gaia, and continued. "Even you, my dear Gaia. Isn't Typhon one of your creations?"
"Husband, I created him when I was in a state of uncontrollable rage," Gaia replied with a weary sigh. "It was because of Zeus's actions, his overthrow and slaughter of so many first generation gods and goddesses. Typhon was the embodiment of my fury. While he did manage to temporarily kill and incapacitate many of Zeus's underlings and even injure Zeus himself, he was completely lost to that rage."
She lowered her gaze.
"All he could think about was destruction and chaos. He cannot be controlled. As painful as it is for me to admit this about my own creation, it is best that he remains frozen for all eternity."
"He may be a Beast of the End, like Fenrir or Jörmungandr of the Norse pantheon, or Apophis of the Egyptian pantheon," Gaia continued, her voice heavy, "but he is worse than them. He is consumed by nothing but fury and destruction. He cannot be reasoned with."
"Well, if that's the problem," Damian said calmly as he stood up and walked a few steps toward the door, "then I'll simply remove that fury that has consumed him."
He turned his head back to look at everyone, a faint smile on his lips.
"Let's take a stroll through the abyss of Tartarus, shall we?"
…
It was not as if Thanatos and Hypnos could object. Before the Heavenly Son, the god above all gods in existence, they could only sigh and lead their emperor toward the abyss of Tartarus.
No matter how great their fear of Typhon was, it paled in comparison to the fear they felt toward the Heavenly Son.
Casually following Thanatos and Hypnos, Damian walked beside Demeter, Gaia, and Persephone as they made their way toward the abyss.
A few miles south of the castle of the Greek underworld lay the entrance to the realm of Tartarus. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎
When they reached it, they gazed upon a cavern filled with nothing but darkness. Faint, eerie wails of tormented souls reverberated from deep within.
The moment they arrived, thousands of daemons emerged from the shadows along with three gods.
Briareus, the god of restraint, imprisonment, violence, and enforcement.
Cottus, the god of strength, binding, and annihilation.
Gyges, the god of containment, suppression, inevitability, and apocalypse.
These three were known as the Guardians of Tartarus.
Unlike other Greek gods, they were originally daemons who later ascended to godhood, becoming an integral part of the Greek underworld and earning their status as the eternal wardens of Tartarus.
The instant the three guardian gods and the countless daemons laid eyes upon the Heavenly Son, all hostility vanished.
Their threatening gazes lowered. Their violent auras dissipated, replaced instead by overwhelming submission and reverence.
One by one, they knelt, parting to either side and paving a clear path for the Heavenly Son and his companions to walk into Tartarus.
Damain gave a small nod in acknowledgment before walking into the cave, vanishing into its eerie darkness.
He didn't even bother to conjure a ball of light to illuminate the way; he simply walked through the darkness as if it meant nothing to him.
The path inside the cave sloped downward and seemed to stretch endlessly the farther they walked, with no visible end in sight. Faint sounds of weeping and sobbing echoed through the tunnel, and he could sense countless presences. Yet none of those presences appeared to be moving. It was as if they were frozen in place. The deeper they ventured, the more prominent those presences became.
Before long, they reached the other end of the cave. Stepping out, they found themselves standing in another realm, one nearly identical to the Greek Underworld, except this place reeked of hatred, despair, pain, and every negative thought and emotion imaginable. It was as if the realm itself was the manifestation of a nightmare.
There wasn't a single living soul in sight, not even demons. It was as though the living had no business setting foot in this place unless they had come to die.
Looking down from the cave entrance, they saw countless souls scattered across the ground, frozen like statues, as if turned to stone. Yet despite their petrified forms, those souls were still very much awake, forced to endure writhing pain while their minds were consumed by nightmares. Each one was crafted from their regrets and the choices that had led them to this hell.
Unlike the biblical pantheon, the Greek pantheon had no heaven where virtuous souls could rest. Instead, they entered the cycle of reincarnation. Sinful souls, however, were cast into Tartarus, where they were frozen like stone and subjected to suffering for countless years.
"Hm. Not bad," Damain said, nodding slightly as he observed the population of suffering souls. "It's nice to see the Greek Underworld is doing its job well. I don't have anything to change here."
"Let's get to the Abyss."
Without stopping, he began to fly toward the far end of Tartarus. The other gods had no choice but to follow. After crossing several thousand miles, they finally arrived at the other side of Tartarus, an area known as the Abyss.
This part of the realm shared the same appearance as the rest, except it was drowned in far deeper darkness and an unbearable, bone-chilling cold. The cold possessed a supernatural quality, making it painfully intense even for the souls of gods.
"Husband, are you really going to awaken Typhon from his eternal slumber?" Gaia asked hesitantly.
"Why not?" Damian chuckled as they landed upon a land where a colossal shadow was cast, a shadow so immense it seemed to veil the entire realm in suffocating darkness.
No matter how many times the gods had witnessed the monstrous entity before them, they could not help but lift their heads in silent awe and dread as they gazed upon the being that stood there.
Before them stood the massive, monstrous figure of the Beast of the End of the Greek pantheon, Typhon.
Yet he was frozen in stone, just like the damned souls condemned to Tartarus.
Typhon's petrified body was far too large for the world to comfortably contain, towering hundreds of meters into the sky, a scale the Greeks could only describe by likening him to mountains that reached for the heavens themselves.
His upper torso rose like a living mountain range, broad enough that clouds gathered around his shoulders as they would around real peaks. When he stood fully upright, his head scraped the stars, as though the sky were a low ceiling rather than an infinite expanse.
From his waist downward, his body did not taper into legs but unraveled into vast coils of serpents, each as thick as a city wall and long enough to encircle islands. Standing near him would feel like standing at the center of a collapsing horizon.
His arms stretched outward like advancing storm fronts, each limb long enough to span entire valleys. From them erupted dozens of serpentine dragon heads, snapping, hissing, and writhing, so numerous they resembled a forest in violent motion rather than individual creatures.
Even his wings were not merely wings, but moving continents of darkness, vast enough to eclipse entire regions when they beat, plunging land and sea alike into sudden night.
To face Typhon was not to face a single monster, but to confront an immovable, overwhelmingly powerful force of nature that had chosen to rise and fight, a body so vast and violent that geography, weather, and sky themselves became extensions of his flesh.
"Even frozen in the abyss of Tartarus, he still radiates so much chaotic presence," Hypnos muttered, gulping slightly. "Just feeling it gives me chills."
"There's a reason we never set foot in this abyssal region of Tartarus," Thanatos added, his expression uneasy, as though something deeply unsettling gnawed at him. "Half of this realm became an abyss in the first place because of the energy leaking from his frozen body. No sinful souls can even be housed here anymore."
Among all the Beasts of the End that exist across the many godly pantheons, Typhon was considered one of the most dangerous, second only to Apophis, the Beast of the End of the Egyptian pantheon.
Even the gods of the upper planes regarded Typhon as a catastrophic threat, and some even feared him, for he was a living divine disaster.
