Staring at Gollmiran's headless body before him, Hades sighed and shook his head. He then asked a question that would've made Gollmiran and his companions spit blood in shock had they still been alive to hear it.
|In the end, who were they anyway?|
He tried to recall the name of the universe they'd come from but ultimately couldn't remember it.
Deciding it wasn't important, he retrieved Gollmiran's soul before taking out the teleportation orb.
He channelled the ambient multicoloured energy into it, causing the orb to emit a brilliant flash of light. By the time the light faded, Hades was nowhere to be seen.
Not long afterwards, the groups of beings rushing toward that location finally arrived, only to find the shredded corpses that were already beginning to freeze in the cold vacuum of space.
After discovering Gollmiran's head, they would go on to spread the news of the death of one of Borgeth's Main Entities.
By then, however, Hades had long since returned to Olympus.
◇ ◇ ◇
The first day of a new year was usually a day of celebration for most beings across many universes.
However, for the group gathered around a table inside a room on the top floor of one of the many towers within the capital of the Olympus Universe's Underworld, it was no day for celebration.
Of the four beings engaged in a heated discussion, one was a bearded young man with ash coloured skin. Two feathered wings of the same colour extended from his back.
Opposite him sat a woman with black hair and black eyes, dressed in a red robe decorated with the symbol of a burning torch.
The third was a beautiful young maiden with fair skin and a face that could only be described as the epitome of youthful beauty.
She wore long, flowing garments and a wreath of flowers rested upon her head.
Lastly, there was a pleasant-looking mature woman with a veil covering her head, though her face was still visible. She wore brown robes adorned with symbols of wheat.
Suddenly, a bright flash of light filled the room as another being teleported inside.
Shock spread across the faces of the quartet, as they hadn't sensed the arrival until the very last moment.
Naturally, that immediately put them on guard, but after confirming the identity of the newcomer, they relaxed, although they were still surprised that they hadn't sensed his arrival.
"Thanatos, Hecate, Persephone, and Demeter? Now that's one combination you don't always see."
The newcomer, Hades, looked around at the quartet curiously before greeting them one by one.
His voice snapped them out of their shock, but before any of them could speak, he raised a hand to stop them.
"Hold up. Firstly, Hecate.
I used up all its charges. Toss it into Tartarus, and it'll recharge automatically."
Hades tossed the teleportation orb in his hand toward her as he spoke. Catching the orb, Hecate examined it carefully before crying out in surprise a moment later after recognising what it was.
"This is one of Kronos' artifacts! Weren't these supposed to be sealed?! And you're telling me to just toss it into Tartarus?!"
The identity of the orb shocked the other three in the room. It also explained how Hades had managed to teleport in without any of them sensing him beforehand.
Hades, however, took a seat and began cleaning Gollmiran's blood from his great sword.
"Yeah. What about it?" he asked, looking at Hecate with a raised brow.
"'What about it?' These things are banned, you know?!"
"I know," Hades said. "So?"
Demeter realised they weren't going to get anywhere with the way Hades was responding, so she turned to Hecate.
"He's not going to give you the answer you want. Just keep the artifact properly."
Hecate sighed and gave up on getting an answer out of Hades. However, before she could leave, he spoke again.
"Don't keep it anywhere else. Toss it into Tartarus."
As expected, she finally snapped.
"IT'S AN ARTIFACT OF KRONOS, YOU KNOW?! THE TITAN KING!
AND YOU WANT ME TO TOSS IT INTO A PLACE WHERE THERE ARE THOUSANDS OF IMPRISONED TITANS AND GIANTS?!
WHY THE HELL WOULD YOU WANT THAT?!!!"
She yelled at him, but he only looked back at her in confusion before repeating what he'd said earlier.
"I used up all the charges. Tossing it into Tartarus would recharge it automatically. What other reason is there?"
Hecate only frowned at him in silence, and seeing her deepening frown, Hades suddenly raised a hand to his lips, then burst into laughter.
The unexpected laughter caught all of them off guard, and as he leaned back in his seat, he smiled and said, "Sorry. I took that a little too far."
The realisation that Hades had simply been messing with them immediately dawned on Hecate, her eyes widening in surprise before she narrowed them into a glare.
"You're insufferable, you know that?"
"I know," Hades replied with another laugh before continuing, "It's a Cosmic Artifact. It automatically recharges anywhere with an extremely high concentration of cosmic energy, and Tartarus happens to be one of those places."
He shrugged before adding, "Besides, Tartarus is an entire galaxy cluster, you know? There's a very low probability of any wandering Giant or Titan coming across it.
Even if they did, it has no charges, so it'd be useless to them."
"What if there are charges?" Thanatos asked.
"It's bound to me. No one else can use it."
Hades' answer made Thanatos realise why Hades had never even considered the possibility of someone else using it.
Before he could say anything further, Hades spoke again.
"Oh yeah. You said I'd ended up using a lot of resources during my recent trips."
As soon as he said that, Persephone's expression darkened immediately. That reaction was only natural, since the trips he was referring to were his visits to the son he'd had with another woman.
No normal wife would be happy about that.
As Thanatos nodded in affirmation, he remembered that the reason he'd called Persephone and Demeter over in the first place was to convince Hades to reduce how often he travelled to Hell.
Although the Underworld possessed more than enough resources to fuel Hades' spacecraft for dozens of millennia, Thanatos wasn't someone who liked unnecessary overuse.
That, however, was only the excuse. The real reason was that Hades had been travelling to Hell, a universe that had been an enemy of Olympus since even Kronos' reign, far more frequently than the Olympians were comfortable with.
Hades stretched out a hand and activated the Soul Preservation ability of his Authority of Death, causing the space before him to crack open slightly.
Ten balls of light, one of them noticeably larger than the other nine, emerged from the crack before it sealed itself shut.
"This should do the job, right?"
Hades gestured towards the souls as they drifted over to Thanatos. This time, it was Thanatos' turn to be shocked, even more so than Hecate, who'd still not left the room.
"Did you attack a pantheon or something?"
"Why would I do something that stressful? I was travelling on my own, got attacked, and turned my assailants into a potential energy source."
Hearing Hades' answer, Persephone's expression immediately became worried.
"Are you okay? You're not hurt, are you?"
Normally, she wouldn't have asked such a question, but the souls before her all belonged to mid-tier and high-tier deity realm existences.
No matter how strong he was, casually taking on multiple gods of that level wasn't something anyone should do.
Of course, she had absolute confidence that he'd win, but she still couldn't help worrying that he might've been injured in the process.
"Nah, I'm fine. The only problem I've got is trying to get that last guy's blood off my sword."
Persephone examined him several times, confirming that he wasn't injured before asking,
"You normally avoid situations like this. This time, though, you not only fought back, but also killed them and harvested their souls.
What was your real reason?"
"Nope. I needed to fight for something else. It's not important to you, so don't worry about it."
Before she could ask anything further, he finally succeeded in cleaning Gollmiran's blood off his sword and spoke again.
"I'm mentally tired. So, I'm gonna get some rest. Feel free to use those souls however you want, Thanatos," he said before turning to Hecate and adding, "Don't forget to toss that into Tartarus. I'm gonna need it again soon."
He got to his feet and placed his sword into his subspace before making his way towards the door. Stopping just in front of it, he looked back at Thanatos and said,
"Thanatos, please make it more widely known that you're Olympus' god of death, not me. I don't find it funny when idiots attack me just to prove they're better gods of death than I am.
How are they supposed to prove who's better if I'm not even one in the first place?"
He shook his head and sighed in exasperation as he walked out of the room, leaving the dumbfounded quartet behind.
Picking up the three-headed dog lying beside the door, he patted its head while remembering that Cattleya had once said she wanted to meet it.
'I'll think about that later. I need some rest.'
On a side note, Borgeth had fallen into chaos because of the death of one of its Main Entities, but that was a story that wasn't worth telling.
◇ ◇ ◇
"Well, that's enough of you guys' stories, huh?"
Arthur yawned lightly as he patted the sleeping Layla's head. Hades, who was seated opposite him, nodded in affirmation while looking out the window.
"A lot happened in such a short time."
"I know, right..."
Hades turned his gaze towards Cattleya, who was sleeping soundly with her head resting on his lap, before speaking to Arthur.
"We somehow ended up becoming pillows, huh?"
Arthur chuckled as he looked at Layla sleeping on his lap, gently poking her cheek before speaking.
"Now, you all know what happened before my birth, during the period I was born, how I found out about the prophecy, why I started training at such a young age, and the adventures I went on with Uncle Creusery that exposed me to the darker side of society while I was still so young.
It's about time you readers got back to the main story, don't you think?"