Extra's Death: I Am the Son of Hades

Barbatos watched him without a word. But his stare didn’t go unnoticed for long.

Zagreus moved beside him. He followed Barbatos’s line of sight, then glanced back at the Reaper.

“Do you recognize him?”

The hammers didn’t stop. The man didn’t even glance up. He was locked in focus, unaware of the eyes now settled on him.

Barbatos didn’t answer immediately. Then he slowly turned to Zagreus.

“Is it… him?”

Zagreus exhaled. His shoulders slumped just a little.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “It feels like him. But look at his soul.”

Barbatos said nothing but kept watching.

Zagreus continued, “His soul’s completely different from him. And if it was him, it doesn’t make sense he doesn’t recognize anyone of us.”

A soul’s shape was tied to the Seed of Existence. Even if someone reincarnated, the soul retained some similarities to it’s original shape.

However, since Nameless Death could devour other souls and it would change his soul’s shape, no one knew what his original soul looked like.

“I can’t sense any Blessing on him, not even unawakened one,” Asmodea said. “Did you ask him about his bloodline?”

Zagreus’s face tightened. “I did.”

Asmodea raised a brow. “And?”

“I asked him directly, six years ago,” Zagreus said. His voice took on a dry edge. “I wasn’t able to find if he was Neo. So, I got impatient and asked, ‘You have the Monarch of Death bloodline, right? I have it too.’ Simple as that.”

Barbatos waited for him to continue.

“If he said yes, then he was at least from Hades’ line. It would’ve been a step in the right direction.”

“And?” Asmodea questioned.

Zagreus rubbed his forehead. “He thought I read his mind.”

Asmodea blinked. “What?”

“He’s paranoid,” Zagreus muttered. “The moment I said it, he froze. Eyes wide, hand half-formed into a spell. From that point on, he stopped revealing anything about himself.”

“And yet,” Asmodea said, “he’s still working with you.”

“Barely,” Zagreus said. “If I hadn’t already healed him back then, he might’ve walked away. I had to use every ounce of leverage just to keep the deal intact.”

Silence lingered.

“The only thing I could confirm was that he has Monarch of Death bloodline, since he reacted so strongly,” he sighed.

The change in atmosphere was immediate.

Asmodea’s expression sharpened. Leonora straightened slightly, glancing at her master. Even the ever-calm Barbatos stiffened.

Cereberus lifted his heads one by one, watching the forge with renewed interest.

Without a word, Asmodea stepped forward, walking toward the forge.

Cereberus followed her.

Barbatos stayed still for a moment longer, then looked at Zagreus.

“Does he use a sword with a spirit?”

“No,” Zagreus said. “He uses a sword forged from Intent.”

Barbatos frowned. “So he’s a Heavenbreaker?”

“Yes.”

That answer made Barbatos’s expression tighten even further.

How was he walking Heavenbreaker Path and Elemental Path at the same time?

The hammers hadn’t stopped. The metal had been shaped and reshaped a dozen times in the last hour, layered with strands of Chaos-forged alloy and refined under Hellfire-infused heat.

Finally, Barbatos spoke again.

“I have a method to confirm if he’s the Prince,” he said. “But it’ll take time.”

Zagreus didn’t ask what method, since Barbatos didn’t explain it.

He just nodded.

Barbatos stepped away and began walking toward the forge.

Zagreus let out a slow sigh.

Then he called out.

“Hey! Little shit!”

The voice snapped through the silence like a whip.

Nameless Death’s head jerked toward him.

It made his concentration waver just enough for one of the hammers to strike off-balance. The metal twisted wrong and cracked.

Nameless Death froze.

He turned to the broken metal and stared at it.

The piece had taken four years.

Four fucking years, and it was only a week away from competition. It was why Nameless Death had been so absorbed in the forging process.

And now it was destroyed because the bloody Zagreus bastard disturbed him.

He took a breath. Then another.

Slowly, he turned toward the group.

His eyes scanned over Barbatos, Asmodea, Leonora. They lingered on Cereberus, who had padded up next to him.

“I take it you’re the Grim Reapers,” Nameless Death said flatly.

He jumped down from the elevated chair with a quiet thud.

“Indeed,” Barbatos replied, bowing slightly.

Asmodea mirrored his bow. Leonora followed a second later. Even her cat spirit was quiet, though it stared at Nameless Death with wide eyes.

“He’s so handsome…” the cat muttered softly, tail flicking once.

Nameless Death ignored the comment.

“Why are you bowing?”

He sounded more irritated than confused.

Before anyone could answer, Cereberus approached.

The massive three-headed dog sniffed at Nameless Death, circling around him once.

Then, slowly, it licked his shoulder.

Then again.

The middle head let out a confused huff, followed by a light wag of the tail.

It licked once more, then paused, tongue out, as if tasting something.

Nameless Death looked at the beast, then at the others. “Why’s your dog licking me?”

“It’s checking something,” Asmodea replied calmly.

“Checking what exactly?” Nameless Death questioned.

Cereberus remained confused, as it licked Nameless Death every so often.

Asmodea, watching him, sighed. So even Cereberus could not affirm his identity.

No, it didn’t matter.

He was still the Blood Of Monarch.

“It’s confirming whether you’re one of the previous prince or a new one.”

“And?”

“It seems uncertain,” she replied.

He shot her a deadpan stare. “You’ve got a magical three-headed lie detector and it’s confused?”

Cereberus whimpered, and its ears dropped.

It continued sniffing and occasionally licked his side, its brows furrowed — or at least as furrowed as a massive canine creature’s could get.

The moment stretched awkwardly until Nameless Death stepped aside, finally putting space between himself and the oversized mutt.

“Stop licking me,” he muttered.

Then he looked up, eyes landing on Barbatos.

“Why did you bow? What’s with the whole ‘prince’ thing?”

“We apologize if we offended you, Prince. We are the Angels of your father, the Monarch of Death. It is how we are meant to greet you.”

Nameless Death said nothing. His expression didn’t change, but internally, his mind churned at a rapid pace.

Prince? That part didn’t sit well with him.

I know I might be the son of this Monarch of Death guy, but this whole thing reeks of suspicious.

Zagreus who said he had the bloodline of Monarch of Death, showing up here, in the same place where he’d been imprisoned for the seemingly next fifteen thousand years, conveniently just as he’d started climbing in power?

And now it turns out he could call Angels here?

This many coincidences didn’t just happen.

He didn’t trust it. Not even a little.

He knew his status screen said he had the [Monarch of Death] bloodline. That was a fact. But that only made things more suspicious.

It made him think back to that damned conversation with Zagreus. The smug bastard had randomly blurted out that he had the same bloodline, almost as if trying to draw a reaction.

Now it felt like a trap.

A part of him wondered if Zagreus had somehow read his status screen using some rare skill or hidden trait.

That would explain the sudden change in tone.

He wouldn’t be surprised if the others were in on it too, putting on this show to get something out of him.

What that ‘something’ was, he didn’t know.

If not for Zagreus healing him back then, he would’ve split up already.

The only reason he stayed was because breaking the deal after receiving the benefit didn’t sit well with him.

Still, that didn’t mean he trusted the man. Far from it.

He was double-checking every technique Zagreus had taught him about building the Womb of Death. Even the forging process. He refused to be manipulated into creating something powerful that would later be turned against him.

‘Maybe it was a mistake to connect with the Universal Codex,’ he thought grimly.

Back then, he had done it out of desperation.

But now, the more he thought about it, the more problems it brought.

What if this Codex was actually what Zagreus accessed and then found out his bloodline?

‘I need to look into severing the connection,’ he thought. ‘If I can cut it off… maybe I can move without being tracked.’

It might look like he was being too paranoid.

But there was one big reason that supported all his claims.

Zagreus was in Shadow Trial.

Shadow Trials were nearly impossible to clear.

Did it make sense that Zagreus had a demon with overpowered ability, and could summon Grim Reapers, all of which were quite strong, perhaps peak Stage 4….

Nameless Death stared at Barbatos. Or perhaps even stronger than Stage 4.

With everything in his arsenal, it looked to Nameless Death that the Shadow Trial was pathetically easy.

Sure Berserker was a fragment of Supreme of Void, but his strength was limited to Stage 4.

‘Am I really on the right guy’s side?’

‘What if everything Zagreus told me about Berserker was fake, and he is actually a good guy, just someone with too much lust for bloodshed?’

Of course, the lust for bloodshed and massacre was a problem, but Nameless Death and Zagreus were not saints either.

As Nameless stood there, arms crossed, eyes narrowed in thought, Asmodea watched him carefully.

She tilted her head slightly and spoke without preamble.

“You don’t believe us, do you?”

“Would you if you were in my place?”

Silence followed. Even Cereberus had stopped licking and now sat to the side, still watching Nameless Death with slightly drooped ears.

Then, Gremory stepped forward. Her posture was stiff, as though she had been waiting to speak for a while.