'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.
Some of their bodies were in very horrible states as if they had been torn apart by a raging whirlwind, nearly half of them were missing a few limbs too.
The only thing consistent about them was the gaping holes in their chests and the expressions of agony on their faces, or at least what was left of their faces.
They looked like they had been tortured continuously for heaven knows how long, before finally being granted the sweet release of death.
This was only natural, after all, their souls were ripped out of their bodies when they were still alive. The pain of having one's soul ripped out of their body, regardless of their will, was simply unimaginable.
As for the culprit responsible for this scene, he was seated in front of Gollmiran on a rock, space debris that came from somewhere Gollmiran would never know.
With a jovial laugh, the culprit cleaned off the blood on his swords.
The amount of energy being emitted from his body was something that Gollmiran never expected to see, the information he received never mentioned that the being in front of him would be this strong.
As he lamented internally about his impending doom, his mind couldn't help but wander to the circumstances that led to this.
'I simply wanted to prove I was the superior one, I didn't expect this at all. If I had known, I would have never accepted this damn mission!'
◇ ◇ ◇
Three Days Earlier
Borgeth
It was a universe that was situated west of Olympus.
It was one of the few smaller universes in-between Olympus and Hell. When ranked, Borgeth was at least a medium-level universal power.
However, the people of Borgeth were an extremely prideful lot and did not accept the fact that there existed other powers stronger than theirs.
Their greatest compromise was saying 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 back, the real reason for the clash had been lost to time but the defeat they suffered was not.
Since then, the people of Borgeth harbored great animosity towards Olympians.
As one of the leading universal powers in their areas, they had most of the other universes around them subjugated under their control. This was what made them believe they were unmatched.
Their pride of theirs was also what made them stretch their hands towards Olympus. In that short war, three main entities of their pantheon were eliminated, by Hades alone.
The gods dared to invade Hades' domain, the underworld.
As such, their deaths were only natural, as even the twelve Olympians didn't dare enter the underworld casually.
Among the three main entities that Hades killed, was Borgeth's god of death and Gollmiran's predecessor.
Gollmiran had hated Hades ever since he learned the latter was responsible for his predecessor's demise. He had improved his strength in hopes of challenging Hades to a fight to avenge his predecessor by proving he was a stronger god of death.
Completely ignoring the fact that Hades was not a god of death in the first place.
His hatred for Hades was no secret so when the master of Borgeth found out 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, he was not foolish enough to leave his position easily so he had Gollmiran go on the mission of defeating and if possible, killing Hades.
Having spies in other pantheons was an unwritten rule among masters, Borgeth was not an exception. He naturally had spies in both Hell and Olympus, so he was able to find out the times when Hades left Olympus and arrived in Hell.
The main entities of Hell were all aware of this but they all chose to ignore it on Diablo's orders.
Gollmiran received the mission and set out with nine of his followers, all of which were at least in the superior stage mid-tier deity realm with the highest 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 wanted to cover both himself and his spacecraft with illusion magic but he decided against it, he also remembered Diablo's answer to a question he had asked right before he left Hell.
"How do I stabilize 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 beat down.
You can limit your strength to your opponent's level and see if you would succeed."
He had been wondering where he could find perfect opponents but he never expected the opponents to come to find him.
Although they tried to ambush him, seeing Hades come out of his spacecraft and stare in their direction made them change their mind.
Hades flicked his finger and the spacecraft was sucked into his subspace, he then stared at his assailants and spoke to them.
"To what do I owe this visit, um...Where are you from?"
"You Bastard! How dare you not recognize us Great gods of Borgeth?!"
Gollmiran shouted out in rage as he realized Hades did not recognize him, nevertheless, Hades did not still know of him even after he said his pantheon's name.
"Borgeth? What's that? A planet?"
The question left the 'great gods' of Borgeth enraged as one of them ended up attacking Hades.
A giant ball of flames the size of a star, lit up the slightly dark space as it blitzed towards Hades, however, the god would have never expected Hades to deal with the attack the way he did.
**SLAP!
**BOOMMM!!!!!
In an instant, Hades formed a giant palm with darkness divinity and slapped the star-sized ball of flames, sending it flying a few thousand miles before it exploded.
He then used darkness to create a dome that contained the explosion and prevented it from reaching him before turning to the gods with an annoyed look on his face.
"Seeing as you are attacking, I take it you are all hostile, right? Good, more tools for me to use."
That was the final point.
Even though they were slightly stunned at how Hades easily thwarted the attack that would have dealt more damage than just a single exploding star, they did not forget their mission and instantly activated their various authorities, deciding not to hold back against Hades.
"You once killed my master and now I shall avenge him and prove I'm a better god of death than you!"
Gollmiran bellowed as he summoned a black scythe and charged towards Hades, however, Hades only stared at him in pure confusion.
"But I'm not a god of death in the first place though?"
Without regard for Hades' reply, Gollmiran swung down his scythe, intending to cleave Hades in two. Hades only sighed as he summoned his twin swords and blocked the incoming scythe with one of them.
**CLANG!!
As the duo clashed weapons, the other gods decided to launch their attacks with various weapons and magic.
Hades rose his second sword to block the blade that came from behind, he then spun around and sent his own slash to the attacker. As for the spear that came from the side, he bent his body to dodge it and sent a kick to its wielder's stomach, causing them to cough out blood due to the force of the kick.
As the spear wielder was sent flying into a nearby asteroid, Hades then instantaneously moved out of the area of effect of the two magic attacks that came from both sides, however, they possessed homing abilities and changed directions to 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 utilized gravity magic and pulled all the nearby asteroids towards Hades, he then flicked his fingers, causing these rocks to be engulfed by flames.
'This is tricky...'
Just before Hades could begin to deal with the attacks, something unexpected happened.
[Authority of Space]
[Authority of Magic]
[Authority of Proliferation]
Three gods activated their authorities simultaneously. The first made all the attacks disappear and reappear barely a meter from Hades' body, the second added missiles of pure magic power to the flurry of attacks.
The third amplified the attacks, increasing their destructive power by more than 50%.
**SWISH
***BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!
A colorful explosion could be seen as Hades was hit by these attacks without having a chance to defend. The blast radius spread out for nearly an entire light year before the smoke from the explosion began to clear out.
Hades' tattered appearance could be seen, but the gods were not surprised about that. What surprised them, was the fact that Hades was not wearing any protective gear for some reason.
Someone on his level should possess thousands of protective artifacts, armors, and so on, yet none could be seen on him.
Gollmiran saw this as suspicious but he had no time to address those suspicions.
Before Hades' natural regeneration as a god could even kick in, ambient multicolored energy that Gollmiran and the others could not see or sense was absorbed into Hades' body, healing all his injuries in seconds.
The gods were about to attack 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 all instantly became wary but 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 became even warier as Hades could use such a thing to separate them and end their numerical advantage. The god with the authority of space roused his divinity to resist any sort of teleportation.
|That's a futile action. You cannot 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 simply want us to go somewhere we could...exchange pointers in private.|
Hades spoke with a smile as he prepared to use the artifact. Gollmiran sent a message to the space god and told him to cast teleportation resistance spells on them as he spoke to buy time.
|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 shot back immediately as multicolored strands of energy flowed into the orb from the surroundings as it flashed a bright blue light.
The next second, the eleven gods had all vanished from the area, shocking the countless eyes who were watching the fight from the shadows.
◇ ◇ ◇
At another empty space in...space, the group of gods reappeared as the ten who were taken against their wills were shocked.
The teleportation resistance spells cast on them were useless against the power of the artifact.
|Tsk...I only have one charge left. Might as well use it to go home when I'm done here.|
Hades' voice brought them out of their stupor as one of them shouted in rage.
|How do you have such an artifact?!|
|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.|
As Hades spoke, his body flashed with dark light and an illusory suit of armor covered him. Smiling ominously, he continued.
|It's the god of the underworld's surprise, Bitches!|
At his words, they could all feel it instantly. The aura around Hades had changed.
It was time, for round two.