Chapter 22 - Gollmiran’s Despair

Gollmiran was in the superior stage of the high tier deity realm, he was a superior high-ranked god. His Zone was strong enough to withstand being offset by most gods he knew were on the same level as him.

However that did not mean that it could not be broken, one of the situations where it could be broken was where he met someone with a higher proficiency in law control than he did, or one who was just more skilled at utilizing their zone.

This time he combined his zone with eight other gods, although their levels were lower than his, they were still able to enhance his zone and increase its strength. Even with that, it was still broken, five of the gods who combined zones with him were in their true forms, still, it was broken.

He was simply unable to accept the reality in front of him, the same was true for the others, they were shocked beyond measure. They knew the reason this happened, yet they refused to admit it. Steeling himself, one of them was finally able to admit it albeit reluctantly.

He spoke up with a shaky voice,

"Mo-mon--!"

However, his words were never completed, perhaps it would have been better for him to have remained unaccepting of the situation like the others, if so he might have lived a little longer.

"You talk too much."

Hades voice could be heard as he drew his sword out of the chest of the mage god, the sword was loaded with a stellar amount of divinity that easily pierced through the god's defenses. Just by being in Hades Domain, they were weakened even more so than when he was in their combined zone.

In such a situation, the defenses of the mage god that could survive a solar system explosion without a scratch were easily pierced by a stellar level strike. Hades then used soul invitation to retrieve his soul and stored it with soul preservation.

"That was for the meteor." Turning to the rest of them, he added. "Play time is over."

His actions brought them out of their shock as they just watched another of their brethren fall right before them.

Roaring in rage, the others promptly entered their true forms as they dashed towards the three meter tall Hades who was looking at them like one would look at mosquitoes they were about to crush.

He put the asteroid he was standing on into his space ring and jumped off to another one, stretching out his palm, he spoke,

"Dark Magic: Black Nova."

Hades casted one of his most powerful attacks, an attack magic that most high rank deities would consider a trump card.

A sphere of pure darkness, about the size of a ping-pong ball, emerged from his palm. Slowly and softly, it drifted to the ground.

The instant the sphere touched the ground—

It became a hyper nova.

A thunderous roar completely overtook his sense of hearing. Even those who were a great distance away, were able to see the hyper nova in all its glory. It was just that big, various people ran away from the direction while many moved towards it to check it out.

His vision was covered in the blinding light of the explosion; he was unable to hear anything; and because the spell had locked him in place, he was not even able to move. His pseudo-underworld was also deactivated automatically, alongside all other skills he had active, this was one of the effects of the spell, the caster was not allowed to do anything else while it was active.

The pseudo-underworld however, did it's job of amplifying the spells effect by almost 15% before being deactivated.

One might think it's only 15%, however, it should be remembered that this is 15% of a Hyper nova.

Maybe it was because it was just that kind of spell, or maybe it was the effect of his increase in strength—but while he himself took no damage, everything within the spell's area of effect had already been repeatedly breaking down on a molecular level.

Any and every defensive spells that were and could have been casted by the gods of Borgeth, any defensive artifacts they weilded, any defensive skills they might have had, all rendered useless. They couldn't even attempt to escape, even teleportation was pointless, after all, the explosion spread at a speed faster than that of light.

This was the power of a Hyper nova, if this battle had taken part inside a universe, any and every planets or star systems within a few hundred lightyears from their location would have been reduced to space dust.

The end result of the spell was nothing short of devastating, any and every celestial body in the area of effect was destroyed completely. There was simply nothing left. As for those, the attack was originally intended for, all Hades had to do was go around and pick up the souls from the bodies floating around, or at least what was left of them.

[Soul Invitation.]

At his words, the souls of the gods, that were still lingering around what was left of their physical bodies were sucked towards his hands, while they were effectively dead, in order to truly kill any being in the deity realm, their souls had to be damaged sufficiently, if not it was possible for them to revive themselves in another body.

Hades' attack had hit the threshold of damage their souls could take before they were considered truly dead, at least for some of them, this was why there were still screams of pain as he used soul invitation.

Some of them had survived, albeit barely as they were weakened to the point that even a mortal legendary expert could end them, but they survived all the same. This was within expectations, they were gods after all, even though they did not have the chance to use their full powers after getting serious, they could still survive a nova or two.

Unfortunately for them this was a hyper nova, one caused by a spell casted by Hades, a god far stronger and higher ranked than any of them. It is often said that spells could be stronger depending on the caster and this is a prime example of such a case.

As such, them being weakened to the point of being unable to move was also within expectations. This also meant that they were unable to resist their souls being torn out of their physical bodies and they screamed in pain.

Hades counted the souls in his hand and came to a realization, one was missing. He looked around and saw the last one standing, the only superior high-rank in the group.

"As expected of the main god of a pantheon, you can survive a hyper nova and still have strength to resist your soul being pulled out of your body, or is it because you're a god of death?"

Gollmiran did not have the strength to answer Hades question, even if he was in a better state than the others, he was still weakened greatly. Looking at the bodies around him, he could only despair.

Hades, brought out the asteroid he had put away earlier and sat on it, and began cleaning off the blood of the deceased mage god left on his sword. Thinking about how Diablo was right in a fight being the best way to stabilize his strength, he laughed jovially.

This seemed to scare Gollmiran more but Hades couldn't care less, as for Gollmiran, he was on the verge of tears, his subordinates who had followed him for thousands of years had been killed and he was bound to be next.

'Thi-this is ju-just horrible'

He thought internally, staring at the broken bodies of his subordinates floating around, he then looked at Hades.

The aura around Hades was something Gollmiran never expected to see, the information they received never mentioned that the being in front of him would be this strong.

As he lamented internally about his impending doom, he thought back onto 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 mission.'

He remembered the words his pantheon leader told him, that Hades could never beat him, he was so over in his head that he did not realize he was simply being used, even if he had succeeded, when Olympus came for revenge, he might have been sacrificed as a scape goat in an attempt to appease them.

However, he never thought about that, he also forgot about the stories of Hades and his brothers.

'He defeated the master of his universe alongside his siblings when they were barely high-ranked, it's only natural he's gotten stronger since then.'

Although his injuries were healing at a visible speed, it was never going to be enough to defeat Hades, the gap in strength was just too much, from what he could sense, Hades had barely used up to a third of his energy for that attack, he could dish out two more Hyper novae of that scale and have enough strength left over.

He finally understood why Hades said playtime was over, he was only playing with them since the start, he had'nt taken them seriously at all, this was also evidenced by the fact that they were barely able to survive one of his spells while he was being serious.

Hades who had been silent all this while finally spoke,

"Have you recovered enough to fight, I'm done cleaning my sword."

"What's the point, just kill me already."

"You made me use one of my strongest attacks, you deserve respect for that, even if it's only temporary respect, as I would most likely forget about your existence soon."

"Hah!, so I'm not even worth remembering, huh?"

"Your words, not mine." Hades shrugged as he replied, "Are you going to have a last stand or you'd just die a dog's death."

"Either way, I'd die a dog's death, i would just like to make it a little less disgraceful." Gollmiran replied as he brought out his spare weapon, his original scythe had been destroyed in the Hyper nova.

"Let's begin then..." Hades trailed off a little before his body disappeared.

Appearing above Gollmiran with flames flickering off his body, he twisted his body and slashed at him with his sword. Focusing on his muscle movements, he then snapped her finger and pushed his momentum to the opposite direction, catching him off guard.

Shocked at the sudden change in attack direction, Gollmiran widened his eyes at the deep cut on his shoulder.

"Ssss!!!" Taking a sharp breath of pain, he grabbed the sword while the flames tried to seer his arm.

However, Hades only smiled when Gollmiran grabbed his sword. Switching the element of his sword from flame to darkness, he began corroding his hand.

"Tch! Just let me hit you already!" Gollmiran growled and pulled the sword out of his body forcefully.

Letting go of his sword, Hades flipped his body into the air and pushed his hands in front of him.

Four magic circles expanded out from under Gollmiran's feet.

**BOOM!!!!!!

A firestorm appeared within the magic circle and attacked Gollmiran's body relentlessly, leaving faint burn marks everywhere.

But Hades wasn't worried about the result since this was meant to be a distraction anyways. He spoke while smiling,

"Your comrade tried this, let me see how good mine are."

Darkness poured out of his body and took up humanoid forms, 10 copies of him charged towards Gollmiran relentlessly. Instantly locating the main body, Gollmiran sneered and swung his sword towards him.

"Aiya, never leave your back open. What if that was the true body?" Hades grinned.

"You can't trick me. I see through your clones!" He shouted out.

Narrowing his eyes, Hades waited until the very last moment and switched places with his illusion.

Leaving a shallow slash wound on his back, Hades flexed his fingers and created a small dagger of darkness, shoving the dagger deep into the wound, he twisted it.

He jumped back and quickly dodged Gollmiran's panicked swing.

Making some daggers that were enhanced with divinity, he twisted his body and threw them towards Gollmiran.

Swatting them away like flies, Gollmiran clasped his hands together and summoned a magic circle.

"Infernum Sanction!" He commanded.

Several columns of fire were created around them. These columns then spun towards Hades.

But before Hades could do anything offensive, Gollmiran's sword rapidly closed in on his head, forcing him to slide backwards as to avoid being decapitated.

"I really would not like to get hit by an attack I just used on someone else you know?"

Quickly tracing his finger along the floor, he sent darkness spikes piercing towards Gollmiran. Unfortunately, they were deflected with ease, even so they were just a distraction in the end. Exploding out from under the floor, a giant spear of darkness shot out towards Gollmiran.

Widening his eyes, he realized that he couldn't block this and could only grit his teeth and try to reduce the damage he took.

Piercing through his body, the spear propped him up in the air before another appeared and pinned him against the ground while he coughed up a mouthful of blood. Seeing this, Hades saw this as a perfect opportunity.

Just as he was about to approach him, two of the columns of fire spun towards him sprang into action and charged towards her.

'Those were still there?' Hades thought to himself in annoyance while dodging their attacks.

However, every time they spun past him, they would send an inferno chain shooting towards him in an attempt to lock him down.

Furrowing his brows, he glanced towards Gollmiran that was trying to unhinge the spear from his chest but was failing due to lack of strength.

Gritting his teeth, Gollmiran formed a knife of flames and tried to cut the spear in half.

But before he could succeed, Hades activated his Zone and pulled him inside, Gollmiran widened his eyes and tried to move but it was too late. His already low strength dropped even further. At this point, he could not dodge the sword that came for his neck.

The head of Gollmiran, Borgeth's god of death, rolled.