Chapter 19 - Arthur Vaughn

"Arthur? That was the name you both decided on?"

"Yep, the his full name is obviously something else but we're gonna go with Arthur Vaughn, Hades doesn't exactly have a last name so he'd go with mine."

To the question asked by her mother, Cattleya replied while rocking the baby in her arms to sleep.

"Well sorry for not getting one from my dad, he was too busy eating his kids to care." Hades' grumbled in response to Cattleya's words. Cattleya, ignoring him spoke,

"I don't really want him to see the scary faces of all those guys outside so he needs to be asleep."

"Why not just use a spell?" Seeing her reason for rocking the child to sleep, Hades asked feeling this was going to take quite a while. Looking at him with annoyance, Cattleya replied.

"No! I want to do it normally, like humans do."

"Might as well get a human nanny for him."

"On a second thought I might just do th- Oh he's asleep, let's go, we'd talk about the nanny later."

Seeing as the boy had fallen asleep in his mother's arms, the trio finally walked into the hall where the celebrations were ongoing.

"Entering! Grand Duchess Inglis, Her Highness Cattleya and His Highness Arthur alongside his Olympian Father, Sir Hades!"

As they were announced, everyone in the hall stopped what they were doing and looked towards them, seeing the various dignitaries and representatives of multiple pantheons present, Cattleya clicked her tongue while thinking,

'What the hell, there is more than I thought, so many auras so widely released might cause him to wake up!'

Before she voiced her concerns, Inglis coughed quite loudly attracting the attention of most of the eyes in the hall.

"I'd appreciate it if you all toned it down a little bit."

She then smiled at them, upon realizing what she was talking about, most of the auras around died down.

Seeing this, Diablo laughed before speaking out,

"Arthur here is quite sensitive you see, his mother doesn't really want anything to disturb his sleep."

He then raised his glass high and continued,

"I thank you all for coming to celebrate with me on this new addition to our family, Here's to the new prince of the Devilian Royal Family, Arthur Vaughn."

Many others raised their glasses in response and there was a round of applause. After this, many began bringing forward the gifts they had prepared.

Various powers sent representatives with a few Masters attending in person. The entire celebration party was broadcasted to various locations across various galaxies via advanced magi-technology as many wanted to see the face of the prophesied child that had garnered so much attention in the past few months.

In Olympus, as Zeus heard of Hades' appearance he bellowed with rage before summoning Hades' wife, Persephone.

"Do you not know how to keep control of your husband, how did you let him go out and bed that devil?"

As he asked her this question, Demeter appeared and stopped Persephone from answering before shouting back at Zeus.

"Shut your mouth, as if you do not do the same even though you have Hera as your wife."

"Demeter! You Dare!"

"Yes, I dare, how many children have you had with the hundreds of mortals and women of other races you have slept with huh?"

Before Zeus could say anything in response, a voice rang out cutting him off.

"She has a point doesn't she Zeus?"

The one who spoke was a woman wearing purple robes adorned with gold lining, she had dark brown shoulder length hair and purple colored eyes, she was Hera, the queen of the Olympians and Zeus' wife.

Seeing his wife take Demeter's side, Zeus was temporarily stunned however, he recovered himself quickly and asked her with annoyance,

"Are you really taking her side on this Hera? Hades' child is one prophesied to bring destruction, we have to do something about it."

"Do what? Kill the child? Go ahead if you want to see Olympus torn in two. The nearby giants would gladly welcome the opportunity to attack us."

Hearing Hera's words, Zeus was still angry but stopped to think about it. If anything happened to the child, Hades would be enraged and Zeus knew better than anyone did, what the consequences of that would be.

"You should take this time to think of how to ask Hades to make the child have a good impression of the gods from a young age, this will reduce the chances of him turning against us later down."

Hera words were the best solution they could take at the time, although Zeus did not want to admit it, she was right. He angrily dismissed Persephone and Demeter before teleporting over to a world under his domain.

He walked towards a seemingly empty area and then spread out his senses to be sure no one was around. After making sure, he placed his hand on the ground and pulled out a tiny object from the sand. This tiny object was shaped like an archaic door. Activating the authority he possessed as the Master of Olympus, the tiny door began vibrating as a frightening amount of energy poured out, an amount capable of wounding the average god seriously.

Zeus just watched this energy flow without doing a thing, he didn't need to, after all he wasn't the average god, he was completely unharmed. After the energy flowed out, he then watched the tiny door enlarge itself to a size where he could pass through. Inside the door, a dark realm with not an ounce of light in it could be seen.

He entered it without a word, as soon as he entered, it shrunk back to its tiny size and flew over to another random uninhabited world before settling down in a desert and burying itself in the sand.

Inside the realm, Zeus navigated himself with ease despite the absence of light in which to see. After a few twists and turns, he arrived at an open space with nothing but a giant orb floating in the middle. This orb shone with various colors and flashed repeatedly, a small beating sound could be heard occasionally too.

He walked up to the orb and looked at the only part of the orb that seemed to be cracked slightly, that section of the orb was also the only part that did not have any light coming from it. While looking at it he spoke to no one in particular.

"Just a few more years, not more than two decades, it should be enough by then."

◇　◇　◇

While Zeus was doing things one could not consider anything but suspicious, Cattleya was laughing at Hades who had been continuously ignored by his son after announcing that he was about to leave.

He tried to touch the Arthur, only to have his hands pushed away while making a facial expression as if he was sulking, or at least that is what Hades thinks. Arthur was a baby of only a few months old, there is no way he'd be able to make such a facial expression already.

While trying to pacify his son who seemed to dislike the fact that he was about to leave and was obviously not happy with it, Hades remembered what had happened in the past few weeks after the Celebration party.

Naturally, news that it was Hades, an Olympian god who was the father of the prophesied child of destruction got out faster than anyone could imagine. There were some gods who were enraged that someone with a high status was the father of a child that could be a threat to them. Even the ones who did not believe the prophecy before had no choice but to after feeling their greatest fears on the day of 'Black sun'.

Some of them were reasonable like Hera and said that it would be in their best interest to make Hades teach the child in a way that he would not hold any animosity against the gods. They said this would deter the chances of the prophecy being fulfilled as many reasoned that Arthur bringing an end to the gods was only a possibility not a future that was set in stone.

Some however, were not as reasonable as the others were, they even banded together in an attempt to pressure Olympus to sanction Hades in some way. An attempt that enraged Zeus as he felt that those gods were looking down on him and Olympus. Even Poseidon who was usually silent was enraged at this.

The ones who threatened to attack Olympus were the ones who Poseidon was most annoyed at. He dared them to try this and even made a show of summoning his armies to prepare for war. Seeing this, the alliance of pantheons that made these threats broke up quickly.

They were mainly greedy gods who were envious of Olympus' power and wanted to make them reduce it in any way possible. However, Olympus is not a force to be trifled with, although they might not be able to win against other ancient powers that had existed before them, they would not necessarily loose out either.

What made most pantheons fear Olympus, was the feat accomplished by its eldest gods. Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, with the help of Hera, Demeter and Hestia were able to defeat their father Kronos who was the master of their universe.

This was a feat never before heard of, as the differences in strength between the both parties was just too much. However, they somehow accomplished this feat, and although they were not able to kill him, they succeeded in imprisoning him for eternity.

They also went on to lead the other younger Olympians to defeat the giants of the nearby universe who were invited into Olympus by the primordial goddess Gaia. As if that wasn't enough, they succeeded in defeating Gaia herself, although there were some strange circumstances surrounding Gia's defeat, a defeat was a defeat. All these were done when the current Olympians were young and a lot weaker than they currently are.

After over two hundred thousand years had passed, the Olympians had visibly become stronger than before and were even more of a force to be reckoned with. Although the bad blood between the three eldest brothers was known far and wide, it was also known that in an event where Olympus was threatened, even Hades would put aside his differences with his brothers and take up arms to defend Olympus.

Knowing they would be faced with three high rank gods who had the feat of defeating a master under their belt, most lost all hope of conquering Olympus.

The other ancient powers and stronger pantheons were also agreeing with the idea of making the child inclined to the gods to prevent chances of him turning against them. Although this was unsaid, the real reason they agreed was so the child could be watched more closely and in the event he displayed any powers that would be detrimental to the gods, they would end him immediately.

To all these, Hades released one statement in reply shocking most of them,

"Go f*ck off, deal with your own internal problems first before telling me how to raise my kid."

Naturally, many were enraged by this as Hades' statement did not give them any face, there was almost nothing they could do. At this point Cattleya, also spoke up to silence the voices of the gods who were of the mind that the child should be killed.

"You want to kill my son, let me see you try. Do you really think the devils and their allies would allow you to attempt such?, do you think I would let you? If you do, then it seems the you all need to be reminded the reason our devil race is not to be looked down upon."

This statement was also supported by the allies of the devils for various reasons, some to curry favor, while some did so simply because they wished for a weapon to use against the gods, in this case that weapon was none other than the prophesied child, Arthur.

After finally managing to pacify his displeased four-month old son, Hades finally began to make his way back to Olympus. Hades had gone back and forth between the Olympus and Hell a lot of times in the past two months, this had consumed a lot of energy and resources so he decided to take a break and return when his son was a year old.

'I definitely have to attend his first birthday.'

On Hades first return to Olympus after the Celebratory dinner, he found out about Zeus action of scolding Persephone and was very pissed off. He almost ended up fighting with Zeus and the two had to be separated by a combination of Poseidon, Hera and Demeter. As an internal fight in Olympus at this point was the worst thing that could happen, the three spared no effort in separating the two who seemed like they were about to begin a civil war.

Since then, it had been quite tense in Olympus as even their believers were beginning to fight against themselves. Wars had been waged on various worlds between Hades' believers and Zeus' believers. Persephone's believers also joined hands with those of Hades to go against those of Zeus. Hades even had to personally interfere when two inter-galactic empires were about to go to war with each other because of it.

As he was thinking about all of these, he sensed multiple auras moving towards him, although they were making and attempt to conceal themselves, it was useless in front of Hades Perception.

He sighed and was about to use illusion magic to disguise himself as he felt it was a waste of time to fight them only to remember the words Diablo spoke to him not too long ago.

"You just got to that stage, that's why your aura is still unstable, even if you can hide it, you won't be able to for long, if you get into another bout with your brother, he's bound to notice it."

"Then how do I stabilize it?"

"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, not a one sided beat down."

"Haaa, its gonna take a while to find a suitable opponent."

"I can offer myself as an opponent."

"Nahh, that would make a lot of noise, it will blow my cover."

"Suit yourself then."

As he remembered that Hades scanned the Auras of the figures approaching his craft, he smiled and thought.

'Seems like it won't be so hard after all.'