Just as Setsuna was filled with emotion, a dramatic change occurred in the battle below.
Boom!
The giant mausoleum of Hades burst open with a roar.
An ultimate divine power of death, many times stronger than the Twin Gods, like a cosmic black hole, swept out from within.
The true body of Hades had finally descended.
He wore a pitch-black, magnificent Hades Divine Cloth, inlaid with countless star-like jewels, and held...
Hmm? His hands were empty? It seemed something important was missing?
Of course, this did not detract from his absolute authority, which surpassed all things.
Hades didn't even bother to look directly at the five charging Bronze Saints. He merely waved his hand casually.
A wave of death, capable of freezing time and the soul, spread out.
"Argh!!" A spiritual storm swept over the five.
The five Bronze Saints, who had just defeated the Twin Gods and were full of vigor, were instantly defeated.
They sprayed blood from their wounds, and even their God Cloths cracked.
"So strong!" Seiya gritted his teeth. The enemy before him was simply unbelievably powerful, surpassing any enemy he had faced before.
A casual wave of his hand had cracked the Pegasus God Cloth, which had evolved to that level.
"Saori-sama..." Seeing Hades walking toward the magic jar, blood vessels spread in Seiya's eyes. His body, nearly exhausted, somehow found new strength from somewhere.
"Even if you are Hades, you will not stop us from rescuing Saori-sama!" Seiya let out a hoarse roar.
He forcibly drove his nearly stagnant Cosmo, burning the light of the Pegasus God Cloth to its limit.
"Pegasus… Ryuseiken!"
Enhanced by the Eighth Sense and the God Cloth, Seiya's punch seemed condensed from billions of starlight.
Carrying the terrifying force to shatter stars and surpass the speed of light, this beam of light tore through the heavy domain of death and blasted toward Hades's face.
"For the love and justice on earth!" Shiryu followed closely, the power of the Rozan school's ultimate technique and the Dragon God Cloth perfectly combined.
He did not use the long-range Rozan Shoryuha, but moved with his fist, his entire body transforming into an azure dragon, lunging at Hades from the side with a dragon's roar that tore through space.
"Absolute Zero - Aurora Execution!" Hyoga's figure appeared behind Hades. The Aquarius God Cloth bloomed with absolute freezing air more brilliant than the aurora and colder than the eternal ice prison.
Where the cold air passed, even the pervasive aura of death was frozen into black ice crystals, which then shattered.
"Nebula Chain – Nebula Storm!" Shun, enduring his natural fear of Hades's true form, the chains of the Andromeda God Cloth, like living tentacles, descended upon Hades from above.
The chains not only contained powerful physical binding force but also carried a spiritual field that soothed the soul and weakened malice.
"Phoenix Wing Divine Strike!" Ikki, like a phoenix reborn from fire, let out a soul-shaking screech.
The phoenix's fire, carrying the will to burn away all impurity and evil, pounced on Hades.
Energy torrents, physical impacts, absolute low temperatures, soul binding, divine flame purification...
The attacks covered all directions… front, back, left, right, above, below. The energy level was so high that even the defeated Twin Gods would have been alarmed.
However, facing this combined attack, powerful enough to overturn galaxies and draw the attention of the gods, Hades's cold face did not show even a ripple of emotion.
He seemed to merely see a few slightly stronger ants wielding blades of grass, trying to shake the eternal, unchanging mountains.
"Noisy." Hades pointed lightly at the five.
Time, at this moment, was infinitely stretched, then instantly frozen.
The next moment, the five's combined attack suddenly dissipated, as if erased from a drawing.
"What?" Seiya and the other five's pupils dilated to their limit, 'Our full-powered attack had been erased like that?'
The gap was so large it was despairing!
And this was not the end.
Hades did not retract his extended index finger. He pressed the tip of his finger down slightly.
"Gyaaaaaaah!"
Seiya and the other five seemed to have been directly hit countless times by countless meteors. A terrifying spray of blood burst from their bodies.
The God Cloths, which had only cracked before, had their light completely dimmed under this attack.
Just as Hades was about to make further moves to completely end these annoying insects—
Crack... craaack...
A clear sound of cracking came from the golden magic jar.
Under Hades's slightly surprised gaze, fine cracks like a spiderweb began to appear on the surface of the magic jar, which was claimed to be 'unbreakable even by Zeus's thunder'.
Bang!
The magic jar exploded with a bang, golden fragments scattering everywhere.
Saori, dressed in a simple white skirt, slowly rose from the broken jar, completely unharmed.
In her hands, she was holding the Athena God Cloth, which Seiya had risked his life to deliver and which was now in strong resonance with her.
The God Cloth emitted a warm golden glow, suddenly decomposing and then automatically assembling onto her body.
When the final helmet descended, what appeared in Elysium was unmistakably a goddess of war.
"You..." A flicker of obvious emotional fluctuation finally appeared on Hades's face. "You deliberately lost, letting Hypnos seal you in the magic jar?"
"If not for this, how could I have lured your true body out of this eternal mausoleum?" Saori's voice was ethereal and majestic, echoing through Elysium.
Hades was silent for a moment, then let out an ambiguous low snort.
"Such courage... such wisdom..." Hades praised coldly. "You could be said to be the reincarnation most like my niece, the [Goddess of Wisdom and War], among all your incarnations."
Saori stepped forward. The light of the God Cloth grew even more intense.
The Nike staff in her hand pointed at Hades. "Hades, I am ready. Let us end this pointless war, which has lasted since the Mythological Era, here with us!"
"End?" Hades seemed to find this laughable. He slowly raised his right hand, as if to grasp something.
"With you, this incompletely awakened reincarnation? Your true body might be barely enough..."
He moved to strike, but his movement imperceptibly paused, and his brow furrowed slightly.
"Eh, my Sword of Hades..." He suddenly recalled that his [Sword of Hades], along with part of his divine essence, had been stolen 243 years ago in the last Holy War by that despicable mortal ant.
Because that experience was too humiliating, he had sealed away those memories, only now suddenly remembering them.
A surge of anger and frustration, accumulated for centuries, instantly welled up in Hades's heart.
"Damn it..." Hades couldn't help but growl, his gaze toward Saori growing even colder.
"As expected of the Goddess of Wisdom. Were you scheming against me from the last Holy War onward?"
In his view, that mortal ant was Athena's Pope. Surely Athena must have been secretly driving things from behind.
"Huh?" Saori was taken aback upon hearing this, 'The previous incarnation of myself was so cunning? Why didn't she have any memory of it?'