After this tragic bloody battle, the result seemed to be a stalemate... neither could completely overwhelm the other.
However, Hades was unhurried. After all, this was his divine domain.
"Athena, you do surprise me." Hades's voice was cold. "But this is Elysium, the world I created!"
He suddenly spread his arms wide, and all of Elysium began to resonate violently.
The earth cracked open, spewing forth the primal deathly underworld energy.
The sky twisted, raining down corrupting grey light rain.
Countless phantoms of ancient, powerful souls that had long been sleeping in Elysium, carrying terrifying resentment, were forcibly awakened and let out silent roars.
He intended to borrow the power of his entire divine domain to severely wound, even kill, Athena.
At this critical juncture—
"Hades!" A roar like an erupting volcano suddenly exploded in Elysium.
Seiya, who should have been near death with his God Cloth almost completely shattered, had somehow forcibly propped himself up with sheer will.
"I will never allow you to harm Saori-sama again! Pegasus Ryuseiken!"
A punch, trailing a dark red tail flame, struck Hades's cheek with speed surpassing thought.
Even with Hades's power, Seiya's punch sent him flying.
He quickly steadied himself in the air but felt a warm liquid trickling down his forehead.
"Divine blood..." Hades touched his fingers to it, his face livid. "You ant, you dare make me bleed?"
Even as he raged, he felt a nearly absurd confusion.
In this human's state, how had he even stood up, let alone thrown a punch that could injure him?
Even as the God of Death, he could not find an answer at this moment, but that did not stop him from retaliating.
In his fury, Hades temporarily ignored suppressing Athena and punched toward Seiya.
A deathly shockwave, capable of annihilating galaxies, instantly struck Seiya.
"Gyah—" Seiya's scream was only half uttered before his body was sent flying, blood spraying wildly like a fountain.
"Seiya!!!" Saori's heart clenched tightly at the sight.
"Hmph, how foolish!" Hades said coldly. "A mere ant, daring to repeatedly interfere in battles between gods… so foolish it's nauseating!"
Hearing Hades's mockery, the anger and sorrow in Saori's heart completely erupted.
"Hades!" Saori's voice was no longer ethereal and majestic, but filled with emotions belonging to a 'human'.
"A cold god like you will never, ever understand the power of 'love'!"
"Love?" Hades shook his face, still numb from Seiya's punch, and scoffed. "I have no need to understand such weak power."
"Then I will show you the power of love!"
Saori gripped the Nike staff tightly with both hands, pouring into it everything… her love for humanity, her desire for peace, her response to Seiya's selfless protection... all of it, without reservation.
The Athena God Cloth erupted with unprecedentedly intense light. The light was warm, yet contained terrifying power capable of shaking divine authority.
Hades's expression became one of shock. He felt his connection to the universe being severed.
In that instant, Saori's figure teleported directly in front of Hades. The Nike staff in her hand did not swing but thrust into Hades's chest like a spear of judgment.
"Ugh..." Hades grunted, his body shaking violently.
He looked down, unable to believe his pierced chest.
"You... how did you suddenly become so strong?" Hades could not understand.
Saori said coldly, "The power of love is infinite!"
"God damn love is infinite!" Setsuna, hiding in the shadows, could no longer suppress his inner urge to rant.
A certain scientist from the another world had been defeated by the protagonists shouting 'love is infinite'.
"I lost in the Underworld to... Athena's reincarnation?" Hades murmured to himself. "What exactly is love? I truly do not understand!"
With deep confusion, his consciousness sank into eternal silence.
Rumble rumble!
The instant Hades completely fell, the entire Underworld and Elysium, like a magnificent building losing its central pillar, began to violently oscillate and collapse as if the sky were falling and the earth splitting.
The earth cracked open, bottomless abysses appearing out of nowhere, swallowing the underworld soil and palaces.
The sky shattered, no longer eternally dim, but revealing the furious, chaotic space-time turbulence behind.
The laws maintaining order in the Underworld began to disorder. Countless souls wailed as they were dispersed. The underworld rivers flooded back. Hell disintegrated...
This was the chain reaction collapse of a divine domain following the fall of its master.
Without Hades's authority to sustain it, this kingdom of death was heading toward its own destructive end.
"Go!" Saori swung her staff, a soft golden light lifting Seiya and the other five.
Her divine power transformed into a sturdy golden passage, breaking through the constantly collapsing spatial barriers of the Underworld and racing toward the Living World.
However, in a dimension unnoticed by Saori, above Elysium, where the sky was shattering and being eroded by Space-Time turbulence.
A patch of extremely obscure dark clouds, as if absorbing all light, quietly emerged.
This soul phantom was Setsuna, like the most patient hunter, waiting quietly for all the dust to settle.
When Saori's figure completely vanished, Setsuna hesitated no longer, absorbing all the power Hades had dissipated.
This power was so vast that it caused even Setsuna's soul phantom to tremble slightly and ripple.
But he had been preparing for this for a long time. His own understanding and control of the authority of death, coupled with the status of the Heavenly Chief Star Surplice and his familiarity with the essence of Hades's power, allowed him to conduct this gluttonous feast with relative safety.
With the infusion of a vast amount of deathly origin, Setsuna could clearly feel his understanding of the Eighth Sense deepening at an unprecedented rate.
He directly broke through the barrier that the Twin Gods had been unable to break for hundreds of millions of years, entering a new realm: the third stage of the Eighth Sense.
If the world he had previously created could only be considered a dead silent space, unsuitable for living beings, now he could completely, like Hades, create a real world.
Just as Setsuna was silently digesting his spoils in the sky, two disheveled figures, supporting each other, struggled out from the out-of-control Space-Time turbulence in the ruins of shattered Elysium below.
They were Hypnos, the God of Sleep, and Thanatos, the God of Death.
Their divine cloths were tattered, their auras weak, but more importantly, their eyes were full of confusion.
"Hades-sama is actually dead?" Thanatos still could not believe it. "Can the God of Hades, who controls death, also die?"
Hypnos's condition was slightly better, but his face was equally pale, his elegance completely gone.
"Is the Underworld... finished?" Thanatos looked at the scene of collapse around him and murmured.
Without Hades, they were powerless to maintain the stability of such a vast divine domain.