63: First

"Since... since you insist on taking Gilgamesh's soul, then prove it with your strength!"

Inside the Great Hall of the Underworld, seeing the atmosphere about to sprint headlong toward becoming a "grand matchmaking scene," Ereshkigal on her throne finally snapped back to reality.

She suddenly stood up, using her broad red-and-black cloak to cover her flushed cheeks, and slammed her massive spear-blade heavily against the ground.

"The rules of the Underworld cannot be broken! If you want to snatch a soul from my hands, you must pass through the [Seven Gates of the Underworld]! Go and taste endless despair and death, humans!"

Accompanied by the tsundere goddess's exceptionally flustered "tough words," her figure vanished from the throne, dissolving into a sky full of blue spectral light.

Immediately after, the entire hall erupted in violent tremors!

"Rumble—"

The immersive story CG came to an abrupt halt here.

The scene before A-Dai's eyes instantly shattered and reorganized, transforming into an extremely complex tactical holographic sandbox filled with the aura of death!

The system's red warning text flashed frantically in pop-up windows before A-Dai's retinas:

[Main Story Stage: Seven Gates of the Underworld (First Gate)]

[High-Risk Environmental Warning: Cold of the Underworld]

[Environmental Mechanics Description: In this realm of death where the living may not enter, all deployed allied Servants will lose 2% of their maximum health every second. Additionally, the natural Cost recovery speed is reduced by 50%!]

*Hiss—*

Seeing this ridiculous environmental mechanic, A-Dai sucked in a cold breath. The maternal love that had been overflowing due to Ereshkigal's cuteness was instantly smashed to pieces by cold reality.

The bullet chat in the stream also instantly shifted from pink bubbles of "claiming a wife" to a screen full of horror and wailing.

"Holy crap! Losing 2% max HP per second?! You don't even need enemies to hit you; you'll just drop dead on your own in a minute!"

"What's worse is the Cost recovery speed is halved! This means you can't even deploy high-cost Servants at the start; you can only watch helplessly as the defensive line gets overrun!"

"Family, don't panic! We have our invincible Kouhai!"

A-Dai took a deep breath and quickly entered commander mode.

She looked at the main road on the sandbox, the only path leading to the blue gate in the rear, and without hesitation, placed down that forever-reliable 8-cost card.

"Mash! Deploy to the front blocking position!"

"Yes, Senpai! No matter what kind of desperate situation we face, I will protect the defensive line!"

Accompanied by a determined voice, Mash Kyrielight, holding her massive cross-shield, descended with a crash onto the bottleneck of the tactical sandbox.

As the only special class in the game, "Shielder," Mash was always the player's final line of defense in a crisis.

"Waaaagh—"

Accompanied by hair-raising screeches, the first wave of enemies appeared.

They were a group of massive Underworld Ghouls, their bodies wreathed in the aura of death. They surged like a tide toward the defensive line Mash was guarding.

At the same time, the health bar above Mash's head began to slowly decrease at a visible rate—this was the continuous damage mechanic of the Cold of the Underworld taking effect!

"Hold on, Kouhai! Healing! I need healing!"

Watching the Cost bar grow at a snail's pace, A-Dai was as anxious as an ant on a hot pan.

When the Cost finally crawled to "14" with great difficulty, she immediately deployed the high-ground Caster Servant, Andersen.

"Take this fairy tale!" The small writer Servant waved his quill, and the radiance of his continuous-healing Noble Phantasm showered over Mash, just barely neutralizing the HP-drain debuff from the Underworld environment.

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Mash used her massive shield to stubbornly withstand the enemies' frantic biting, while A-Dai concentrated fully in the rear, timing everything perfectly to deploy a high-ground Archer and a blocking-position Saber in sequence.

As a pure "waifu-over-meta" player, she would rather have the defensive line under high pressure just to insist on placing the cute but low-damage Archer, Euryale, on the high ground.

She then slapped down the swordsman Artoria Lily, whose stats were at the bottom and who relied entirely on her looks to carry the show, onto the ground to share the damage.

With such a severely lopsided lineup, any single mistake—like a high-ground unit facing the wrong way or a healing skill being a second too late—would cause the defensive line to collapse instantly.

After a full ten minutes of high-intensity, nerve-wracking combat, as the final massive Skeletal Bicorn crashed to the ground, the system finally popped up the golden [CLEAR] text.

"Phew... we won!"

A-Dai slumped onto the virtual command console and let out a long sigh of relief. "That was too hardcore. This mechanic simply doesn't treat players like human beings."

The bullet chat in the stream immediately exposed her without mercy:

"You have the nerve to call it hardcore? Who the hell brings Euryale and Lily to a high-pressure map with full-screen HP drain! You're probably the only person in the entire server who ground through it with this low-damage lineup!"

"Relying entirely on Kouhai to take a beating in the front while you look at beauties in the back? Doesn't your conscience hurt!"

"Mash: Senpai, my shield is about to break, yet you're in the back admiring Lily's pure white skirt..."

"Feels inferior to Gil... one blast."

However, before A-Dai and the viewers could finish their banter and catch their breath, the mist ahead cleared, and a bronze gate towering into the clouds appeared before everyone.

[Seven Gates of the Underworld — The First Gate].

In front of the gate, blue spectral light flickered, and Ereshkigal's holographic projection emerged once more.

She stood with her hands on her hips, trying her best to put on a cold and heartless expression as she looked down at A-Dai.

"Hmph, to think you actually defeated my Underworld guards. As fragile living beings, you are barely worthy of praise."

"However, to pass through the first gate, besides martial force, you must also answer my question!"

Ereshkigal's clear ruby eyes stared intently at A-Dai, her voice carrying a trace of an undetectable longing and curiosity for the human world:

"Answer me! As humans, compared to the quiet, eternal, and painless Underworld, is that fleeting surface world of yours, filled with war and sadness... really that good?"

As soon as this question was asked, the bullet chat in the entire stream instantly went silent.

Everyone could hear the deeply hidden loneliness in the tone of this high-and-mighty goddess of death.

As the mistress of the Underworld, she had been in this sunless underground since her birth, never seeing flowers, never basking in the sun, only listening to the wails of the departed. She was using her pride to mask her sorrow.

The system popped up three options.

A. [Of course it's good, because there are flowers and the sun on the surface.]

B. [The Underworld is too cold and gloomy; I don't like it at all.]

C. (Input your own voice answer).

"Is there even a need to choose?" A-Dai looked at the young girl before her who was forcing an air of majesty. She suddenly smiled, chose option C directly, and shouted loudly:

"The world above is indeed wonderful; there's delicious food, beautiful clothes, and fun games!"

"But! If little sister Ereshkigal is here in the Underworld, I think staying here for a long while occasionally would also be a very wonderful thing!"