Looking at the Lord God who had collapsed into her arms, a thousand words ultimately melted into a single, complex smile.
"In the end, you still have to rely on the great embrace of Lady Stella," she said, a barely perceptible note of pride in her voice. "A feeble creature like Athena certainly doesn't possess this kind of power."
She carefully cradled Seiya, her movements surprisingly gentle and clumsy, like a mother holding her exhausted child after a long and arduous journey. She lowered her head slightly, her cheek gently touching the top of Seiya's dust-covered head, one hand unconsciously and softly stroking his messy black hair.
But this motherly tenderness lasted less than a second, because in the next moment, she discovered with horror that the Lord God's body was covered in ceramic-like cracks, and even his life force was rapidly fading.
"Don't you die on me, friend... If you die, I'm done for, hey, hey...!"
Just as Stella was about to scream in panic, an owl, pitch-black with sharp eyes, materialized like an envoy of the night. It flapped its wings silently, landing precisely in the air before her, and looked down at her. A familiar and sacred aura flowed from it.
Seeing it, Stella's tense nerves suddenly relaxed, and her heart, which had nearly leaped out of her throat, settled back into place.
She let out a long sigh, her face once again adorned with that signature smile of relieved self-satisfaction.
Her previous worries now vanished. Compared to the Authority of Love held by the great Her Majesty Stella, Athena was indeed superior when it came to the cycle of reincarnation. Very well, it was best to leave this to the professional.
In the depths of the vast sea of dreams, fragments of Seiya's consciousness drifted, touching upon scenes he had never known in life:
After his time, Saints led by Hasgard of Taurus invaded the Underworld, destroyed Hades' castles on Earth and in the Underworld, and crushed the 108 Demon Stars.
Meanwhile, Pandora led the remaining forces, retreating to defend the last prison of the four circles of the Underworld—the infinitely vast Eighth Prison. There, they would rebuild their strength and await the return of Hades.
Through the faint connection of the Wheel of Friendship and the perception of the Incarnation of Strong Wind, Seiya's consciousness seemed to transcend the bonds of space. He saw the blue lands of the Siberian ice fields and felt the power surging beneath the ice and snow; he swept over the Jamir Plateau at the border of Tibet, China, and India, where a sacred aura permeated the air; he even glimpsed the mist-shrouded fairyland where the mysterious Taoist artisans lived in seclusion. These places he could see all had one thing in common: they were all discussing the same name—the Pegasus Saint.
His perception continued to extend, reaching the Celestial Realm suspended high above the Earth, a place solemn and indifferent; then it sank into the depths of the Underworld, capturing the image of Chama of the Heavenly Leader Star, who followed behind Pandora with a high hat and a bizarre smile; finally, the vision settled on the rebuilt Sanctuary.
There, the goddess Sasha, robed in white and holding the golden scepter symbolizing wisdom and victory, stood in quiet reverence. Her voice was the same as ever, carrying a soothing tenderness, but her expression was entirely different, her face bearing a mature solemnity. Having experienced this Holy War, she had grown tremendously. She possessed an inherent majesty that needed no words.
She was receiving guidance from the previous Athena, as well as the support of the Saints. One could see that a glorious century centered around Athena's Sanctuary was about to begin, lasting for hundreds of years to come.
But the scene suddenly shifted.
It was a place Tenma would never forget—a remote town in Italy. A giant olive tree cast a dense green shade, and beneath it, a young girl devoutly clasped her hands, praying with her eyes closed. The wind rustled her hair, carrying a low whisper:
"You're still alive, aren't you, Tenma..."
Seiya silently watched the dream before him. The Saints, golden stars streaking across the night sky. In the centuries to come, who would command this train of an era, and to what distant future would it travel?
In a trance, a voice from the distant past seemed to echo in his ears. It was at the mottled wall of an orphanage, as a quiet meteor streaked across the night sky. The young Tenma turned his head and excitedly asked his friend beside him:
"Hey, Alone, what did you wish for?"
Another voice, young yet incredibly firm, replied:
"I... I want a world with no difference between rich and poor, no suffering from war. I want... world peace."
Seiya slowly opened his heavy eyelids, his body drenched in sweat, as if he had just struggled out of a long nightmare that spanned time and space. White mist swirled before him, and warm spring water enveloped him. An indescribably comfortable warmth was steadily seeping into his exhausted limbs.
"Athena?" Seiya's voice was hoarse from just waking, a mix of surprise and understanding. Before him, the girl in the knit cat-ear hat sat by the edge of the hot spring, her feet also soaking in the water. Seeing him awake, her almost icily transparent face showed a rare hint of helplessness.
"It just so happens that I am also a lord of the Underworld. I took on a part of it for you; otherwise, your life would have completely drained away in your sleep. You are far too reckless, Tenma."
Seiya said nothing, enjoying the warmth of the hot spring.
This was the Sacred Spring of Minerva, the Goddess of Wisdom—in Roman mythology, the goddess of wisdom, war, the moon, and memory. Her essence was so closely linked to Athena's as to be almost identical. Seiya was no stranger to this place; he had awoken in this spring, a symbol of divine miracles, several times after crossing the boundary of life and death.
Seiya assessed his current condition. An unprecedented sense of weakness filled his heart.
Fragments of memory flooded in. The final moment, when he and Hades pierced each other's chests, emerged clearly. His Golden God-Slaying Blade was a top-tier anti-god weapon even in the multiverse, but unfortunately... given the tropes of the Saint Seiya world, like the God Cloths, it was just temporary equipment for clearing a story mission.
After Sasha's Cosmo vanished, the Pegasus God Cloth reverted to its previous state. Seiya wasn't as troubled by the lingering wound in his chest as Athena had been; instead, he finally had time to examine his current status.
[Name: Seiya]
[Class: Saint]
[Level: Seventh Sense]
[Combat Techniques: Resuscitation Strike, Pegasus Meteor Fist, Pegasus Comet Fist, Pegasus Light-Speed Fist, Lightning Plasma Light-Speed Fist, Pulse of Light, Pegasus Corona Punch, Pegasus Rolling Crush Punch (Cloth Exclusive), Raging Tiger Gale Purple Lightning Fist (Cloth Exclusive), Raging Dragon Blizzard Dance Fist (Cloth Exclusive), Unicorn Gallop, Strong Wind Airflow (Cloth Exclusive), Empty Fist, Boar's Charge, Boar's Rush Punch, Demon Palace Rose, Scarlet Needle, Bloody Rose, Wheel Tornado, War God's Pressure (Wrath of God), Sunlight Flame Burst, Hell Cyclone, Karmic Fire Cyclone, Aura Oppression, Freezing Fist, Fire Vortex, Psychokinesis, Fist Pressure, Excalibur Unsheathed, God-Slaying Power]
[Authorities: Incarnation of Strong Wind, Incarnation of the White Horse, War God, Great Avatar of Sunlight, Covenant of Decay and Revival, Pegasus Incarnation (Fetus of a God)]
[Cloths: Pegasus Cloth (Strong Wind Type), Verethragna's God Robe (Damaged), Orion Cloth (Damaged)]
The continuous, fierce battles in the Saint Seiya world had compressed time to a suffocating degree, leaving him no leisure to sort through all this. The wound from the God of Death had not yet healed before he plunged headfirst into a life-or-death struggle with the Specters, immediately followed by the exchange of curses with Alone. The fact that he was still alive meant his gains were naturally substantial.
Setting aside the battles that had no conclusion, the main victory feedback came from his fights against Thanatos, the God of Death, and Hades Alone.
The former allowed his Incarnation of Strong Wind to develop further. Its ability had reached a point where if anyone mentioned his name—even a false name or a title referring to him—he would be able to sense it.
And the latter was the Covenant of Decay and Revival, which addressed his current condition.
Just as he had inflicted a fatal wound on Hades's chest with his God-Slaying Power, what Hades left in his own chest was Hades's curse. In the SS timeline, this curse would have continuously eaten away at Seiya's life, reducing both his Cosmo and life force to near zero. In GA, although its effect was diminished, the residual curse still caused Seiya to suffer in agony, a fate worse than death.
But his current state was clearly far from such a living death.
First, the miracle of returning from the dead had itself reset most of the curse's foundation. The remaining curse's power was then firmly bound by the newly awakened Authority, the Covenant of Decay and Revival. This fourth effect, the power of the life-and-death cycle, which only manifested after defeating Hades Alone, was slowly but surely converting the curse of Hades festering in his chest into source energy of life that Seiya could absorb.
This meant he desperately needed a long and thorough period of rest.
Having been awake for only a moment, an irresistible wave of heavy fatigue washed over him like a tidal wave, his eyelids feeling as heavy as lead.
"I'm just going to... take a short nap..." Seiya managed to squeeze out these words to Athena by the spring, his voice already slurred. He no longer resisted his body's call, obediently closing his eyes as his consciousness instantly sank into a comfortable darkness.
The Batanes Islands, a string of pearls at the northernmost tip of the Philippines. This small archipelago, lying between the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea, is geographically closer to Taiwan than to the rest of the Philippines. On Y'Ami Island, the northernmost, uninhabited, and desolate islet of the chain, one of the most powerful individuals in the world now made her appearance.
"It is indeed a Divine Ancestor. Offering her as a sacrifice to awaken my nemesis is most fitting."
The Martial King of Jiangnan—Luo Hao—stood proudly on a reef. A look of satisfaction touched her incomparably beautiful face as she gazed at the "gift" presented by the Divine Ancestor Guinevere—another Divine Ancestor on the brink of death. At this delicate moment, when the seal of the great "Tamer of Horses" spell was about to weaken, offering a being with deep ties to the God of Steel was undoubtedly the most effective key to awaken the nemesis suppressed by the Wokou at the Nikko Shrine in Dongying.
For hundreds of years, Luo Hao had never felt such joy.
"Then, state your wish." Luo Hao's majestic and beautiful eyes, cold as stars, turned to Guinevere. "I am not an ungrateful and shameless person. For one who has rendered meritorious service and presented a treasure, I shall never be stingy with rewards. Your request is granted."
She did not consider whether the one offering the treasure had a hidden scheme, nor did she suspect any ulterior motives or guard against any plots, for none of these were the actions of a king. If there was a trap, she would smash it with her fists. If it was a conspiracy, she would sever it with a single slash. If they sought to rebel, she would crush them with her kingly might.
This was the conduct befitting a king who had reached the pinnacle of martial arts. It was precisely this self-assurance that fueled her declarative tone.
"—None. I do not intend to ask you for any reward," Guinevere replied calmly.
Luo Hao furrowed her gallant brows in displeasure.
"Once that hero of steel is revived, he will surely engage in a world-shaking battle with you, Cult Master." Guinevere's beautiful lips curved slightly upwards, forming a mysterious smile. "If His Majesty, the Hero, is victorious, it will be the beginning of the new event I anticipate. If you are victorious, Cult Master, it will prove that he is not the one I seek. Regardless of the outcome, I suffer no loss."
"I see. You gain what you desire regardless of victory or defeat... Your courage is indeed commendable. I, Luo Hao Lian, approve of such an answer."
Guinevere bowed slightly and continued, "However, compared to the suppressed God of Steel, what you should be more mindful of, Cult Master, is the current King of Magic in Dongying, the ruler they revere as the Great Avatar of Sunlight—Saint Seiya."
"So, there is a new compatriot in Dongying. This, on the contrary, pleases me."
Hearing Guinevere's explanation, Luo Hao simply nodded.
It had been two hundred years since she usurped the authority of a god. She had never investigated the peers born during this period, nor had she any interest in doing so. At most, she would remember their names.
Luo Hao Lian was the one and only under heaven. She was the pinnacle of martial arts, undefeated and seeking defeat. There was absolutely no need to display her majesty to others; she would not concern herself with such trivial matters.
No matter who it was, even the most ancient Demon King, she paid them no mind, let alone a mere junior.
"Consider it a small bit of amusement before the life-and-death battle with my nemesis."
____
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