'Thi-this is j-just horrible!'
Seeing the situation in front of him, Gollmiran wanted to shed a river of tears; however, his tear glands seemed to have stopped working.
In front of him, the disfigured bodies of eight beings could be seen floating around, and some of them were in terribly ruined states as if they'd been torn apart by a raging whirlwind, with nearly half of them missing multiple limbs as well.
The only thing consistent among them was the gaping holes in their chests and the expressions of agony on their faces, or at least on what remained of their faces.
They looked as though they'd been tortured continuously for heaven knows how long before finally receiving the release of death, which wasn't surprising considering their souls had been ripped out of their bodies while they were still alive.
The pain of having one's soul ripped out, regardless of one's will, was simply unimaginable.
As for the culprit responsible for this sight, he was seated in front of Gollmiran on a rock, a piece of space debris that had come from somewhere Gollmiran would never know.
With a jovial laugh, the culprit cleaned the blood from his swords.
The amount of energy being emitted from his body was something Gollmiran had never expected to witness, since the information he'd received had never mentioned that the being in front of him would possess this level of strength.
As he lamented internally about his impending doom, his mind couldn't help drifting to the circumstances that brought him here.
'I simply wanted to prove I was the superior one. I didn't expect this at all. If I'd known, I would've never accepted this damn mission!'
◇ ◇ ◇
Three Days Earlier
Borgeth Universe
It was a universe situated west of Olympus.
It was one of the few smaller universes positioned between Olympus and Hell, and when ranked, Borgeth was at least a middle-level universal power.
However, the people of Borgeth were an extremely prideful lot who couldn't accept that there were other powers stronger than theirs.
Their greatest compromise was claiming all other pantheons were on the same level as them.
This pride of theirs was damaged when they clashed with Olympus a few thousand years ago, and although the initial reason for the clash had been lost to time, the defeat they suffered wasn't forgotten.
Since then, the people of Borgeth had harboured great animosity toward the Olympians.
As one of the leading universal powers in their region, they had subjugated most of the universes around them, which strengthened their belief that they were unmatched.
This pride was also what made them stretch their hands toward Olympus, and in that short war, three Main Entities of their pantheon were eliminated by Hades alone.
The gods had dared to invade Hades' domain, the underworld.
As such, their deaths were only natural, since even the twelve Olympians didn't dare enter the underworld casually.
Among the three Main Entities Hades killed was Borgeth's god of death and Gollmiran's predecessor.
Gollmiran had hated Hades ever since he learned Hades was responsible for his predecessor's demise, and he'd pushed himself to improve his strength in hopes of challenging Hades to a fight so he could avenge his predecessor by proving he was a stronger god of death, completely ignoring the fact that Hades wasn't a god of death in the first place.
His hatred for Hades was no secret, so when the master of Borgeth learned about Hades' involvement with the prophesied child and the responses he gave to the threats of the other pantheons, he decided to teach the 'arrogant Hades' a lesson.
However, he was the Master of Borgeth, and they had many enemies, and he wasn't foolish enough to leave his position easily, so he sent Gollmiran on the mission of defeating and, if possible, killing Hades.
Having spies in other pantheons was an unwritten rule among Masters, and Borgeth wasn't an exception.
He naturally had spies in both Hell and Olympus, so he was able to find out when Hades left Olympus and arrived in Hell.
The Main Entities of Hell were aware of this, but they all chose to ignore it on Diablo's orders.
Gollmiran accepted the mission and set out with nine of his followers, all of whom were at least in the superior stage of the Mid-Tier Deity Realm, with the strongest among them being an Intermediate High-Tier Deity Realm Existence.
◇ ◇ ◇
Hades was returning from Arthur's fifth birthday celebration when he suddenly sensed ten distinct auras heading in his general direction.
'Hmm...?'
He considered covering both himself and his spacecraft with illusion magic but decided against it, and he remembered Diablo's answer to a question he'd asked right before leaving Hell.
"How do I stabilise this unstable aura of mine?"
"There are many ways, but the best is to fight."
"Fight? Seriously? That's what I've been doing for months now."
"It's different for lesser stages. Here, you need a fight that would actually be worthwhile and not a one-sided beatdown.
You can limit your strength to your opponent's level and see if you would succeed."
He'd been wondering where he could find perfect opponents, but he never expected them to come to him.
Although they tried to ambush him, the moment Hades stepped out of his spacecraft and stared in their direction, they abandoned the idea.
Hades flicked his finger, and the spacecraft was pulled into his subspace, after which he focused on his assailants and addressed them.
|To what do I owe this visit, um... where are you from?|
|You bastard! How dare you not recognise us Great gods of Borgeth?!|
Gollmiran shouted in growing rage when he realised Hades still didn't recognise him, and even after he mentioned his pantheon's name, Hades remained confused.
"Borgeth? What's that? A planet?"
The question pushed the so-called great gods of Borgeth into deeper fury, and one of them launched an attack at Hades.
A massive ball of flames the size of a star illuminated the dim stretch of space as it raced toward him, although the god who attacked never imagined Hades would respond the way he did.
**SLAP!
**BOOMMM!!!!!
Hades instantly created a large palm construct using darkness and slapped the star-sized blaze aside, sending it several thousand miles away before it exploded.
He then called on darkness to produce a dome that held the explosion in place and kept it from touching him, after which he turned toward the gods with an increasingly annoyed expression.
"Since you're attacking, I'm guessing you're all hostile, right? Good, I could use more tools."
That was the breaking point.
Although they were momentarily stunned by how easily Hades brushed aside an attack that carried more impact than a mere exploding star, they remembered their mission and immediately activated their various Authorities, deciding not to hold anything back against him.
"You once killed my master, and now I'll avenge him and prove I'm a better god of death than you!"
Gollmiran roared as he summoned a black scythe and charged toward Hades, although Hades only watched him with complete confusion.
"But I'm not a god of death in the first place, though?" he muttered, eyebrow raised.
Gollmiran ignored the reply and brought his scythe down with the intent to cleave Hades in two, although Hades simply summoned his twin swords and raised one to intercept the attack.
As their weapons collided, the other gods launched their attacks using different weapons and magic.
Hades raised his second sword to block a blade aimed at him from behind, and he then spun and answered with a slash toward the attacker.
When a spear came from the side, he bent his body to avoid it and sent a kick into the wielder's stomach, causing them to cough blood from the force of the strike.
As the spear wielder crashed into a nearby asteroid, Hades instantaneously moved away from the impact zones of the two magic attacks coming from both sides, although the spells carried homing properties and curved toward his new location.
Landing on a nearby asteroid almost the size of an average planet, Hades filled his swords with aura to counter the two curved aura slashes sent by Gollmiran.
Another god used gravity magic to drag all the nearby asteroids toward Hades, and he then flicked his fingers, causing the rocks to ignite.
'This is tricky...'
Just before Hades could begin dealing with the attacks, something unexpected happened
|Authority of Space|
|Authority of Magic|
|Authority of Proliferation|
Three gods activated their Authorities simultaneously.
The first made every attack vanish and reappear barely a meter from Hades' body, the second added missiles of pure magic power to the growing flurry, and the third amplified everything, increasing the destructive power by more than 50%.
A colourful explosion spread outward as Hades was struck without getting a chance to defend, and the blast expanded for nearly an entire light year before the smoke finally began to thin.
Hades' tattered appearance became visible, and although the gods weren't surprised by the damage, they were taken aback by the fact that he wasn't wearing any protective gear for some reason.
Someone on his level should possess thousands of protective artifacts, armours, and similar items, and none were visible on him.
Gollmiran found this suspicious, but he had no time to dwell on it.
Before Hades' natural regeneration as a god could even take effect, ambient multi-coloured energy that Gollmiran and the others couldn't see or sense was drawn into Hades' body, restoring every injury within seconds.
The gods were preparing to attack again when Hades spoke with his hand stretched out.
|Wait! Gimme a second.|
He flicked his fingers, and a blue glowing orb appeared in his palm. The gods grew instantly wary, though Hades surprised them by explaining what the orb was.
|Chill out, it's not an offensive artifact. All it does is teleport anyone and anything in the area to a set destination, regardless of will. Twas one of the few 'gifts' I received from my father.|
The Borgethian gods grew even more cautious since Hades could use such an item to separate them and eliminate their numerical advantage.
The god with the Authority of space roused his divinity in preparation to resist any sort of teleportation, and noticing this, Hades shook his head with a sigh.
|That's a futile action. You can't resist it with a mere divinity. That's not the main point, though.
You see, many eyes are watching us, and it's quite irritating. I just want us to go somewhere we can exchange pointers in private.|
As Hades spoke, Gollmiran sent a message to the space god, telling him to use any teleportation resistance techniques he had, while speaking to buy time for that.
|It's better this way. Let them all see the fall of the bastard who killed my predecessor.|
|Well, I don't want them to see how I kill you all. I like keeping my strengths hidden, so I won't be accepting any objections,| Hades replied as multi-coloured strands of energy flowed into the orb from the surroundings while it shone with a bright blue light.
The next second, the eleven gods vanished from the area, shocking the countless eyes watching the fight from within the folds of space.
◇ ◇ ◇
At another empty region in the space between universes, the group of gods reappeared as the ten who'd been taken against their wills were stunned.
The Space god's Authority to resist forced teleportations was useless against the artifact's power.
|Tsk...I only have one charge left. Might as well use it to go home when I'm done here,| Hades muttered, his voice pulling them out of their stupor.
|How do you have such an artifact?!|one of the Borgethian gods bellowed.
|Didn't I tell you, it was a 'gift' from my father? He always said 'Surprise!' when he used it, so I'd do the same,| Hades replied casually.
As Hades spoke, his body flashed with dark light and an illusory suit of armour covered him. Smiling ominously, he continued,
|It's the god of the underworld's surprise!|
At his words, they all felt it immediately. The aura around Hades had changed.
It was time for round two.