Lance's Role

by Thrudgelmir2333

A 'shonen' fic that sequels Next Dimension and Lost Canvas. In 1960, the Pope of Athena receives three prophecies from an old enemy that irremediably set the course of his reign over Sanctuary's tragic history and almost two decades later a Saint of Pegasus finds himself put through the unfolding of a new age of violence caused by the Pope's actions. Please enjoy and review.

57. 2A: The One Closest to God - Part 2 of 3

Notable OCs: Pegasus Lance's Saint Generation, Civil War Saint Generation, World War Saint Generation, Daemon Lucifer's Specters, Maiden Elisa, Priam's Black Saints; Cyrulian Refugees

Notable Original Concepts: Mount Olympus Training Ground, Sanctuary Court, Teos Cloth, Athenian Empire mythology, Isle of Gardens, Stardust Prison, Hades' Dark Princes; Desert Beyond, Sanctuary Town Layout & Buildings; Kido Mount;

Recurring/Cameo OCs of Jenny DeVic: Mrs. Schafurwatt, Cyrus

Recurring/Cameo Concepts of Jenny DeVic: Great Bodyguard Legend, Golden Line Heritage, Sanctuary Orphanages, Andromeda Island's Geography & Tests, Sanctuary Nobility, 88 Knights Festival

Author Notes:

-Story is celebrating 1.200.000 words landmark! Yay! Well, not really, but it's 3000 words short, so let's round it up!

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Please enjoy and review (^_^

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On our way back from Sanctuary, I noticed Michael seemed altered after his battle with Asmita. I could tell because he didn't have the same pitiable look on his face that he gets every time he gives a Saint what they deserve like he wishes he didn't have to lay a hand on them.

No, rather than lamenting the death of his opponent like he usually does, he seemed… spooked. Something tells me that my only counterpart in this world did not come off from his battle as unharmed as he claims to have.

That fool. I'm sure he let his guard down like he always does. If it were me, I'd have destroyed that Virgo Saint without hesitation. Instead, Michael is sent to defeat Sanctuary's champion, and like he always does, he lets his sympathy get the best of him and creates weak points in what should be an impenetrable hide. Does he not know how insidious the more mental Saints are?

…I am a bit curious, though, at what kind of threat the Virgo is… He's clearly not the most battle-hardened of the twelve, yet generation after generation he is hailed as the most powerful. Why? Just because of some incense-baked nonsense religion from Asia? What is a cult that worships reincarnation and karma to a Specter, who is the very definition of immortality and purity?

More importantly, against these mind-wielding Gold Saints, it shall always be the sharp willpower of a warrior that will prevail. In the darkness and confusion of their techniques and spells, it will be my unbendable drive to reach the stars of the Cosmos that will see me through, not meeting them in their own terms like Dark Angel! All Michael drives to is a pathetic memory from his mortal life! I, on the other hand… want it all!

And no pagan prophet's palm will be big enough to contain me! Even if I have to sail across the very stretch of the galaxy!

-Entry on Daemon Lucifer's journals, dated 1751

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The Past – The Lost Canvas War

Death Queen Island – Main Cauldron

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The Andromeda Saint beheld the golden shine emanating off the lava deep below them in the volcano's main cauldron. He hadn't sensed this kind of Cosmos since they encountered Ophiuchus Odysseus at the Suikyo Incident. It felt familiar to a Gold Cloth, yet his 7th sense was baffled at feeling a myriad of other familiar signatures on it, from lower Cloths, to Scales, to even a Surplice.

What was going on? "Saint Haisaku…"

The orange-haired woman got up from her prayer with the help of her sheathed sword. "Contact is established… Now I just need to unravel my seals."

The green-haired Andromeda was bewildered. "Tell me! What kind of armor is this?! Is it really the Phoenix Cloth down there?! It can't be, because you're going to give it to Saint Dohko!" She then turned her face to him, revealing her traits, including her red eyes. Andromeda gasped and covered his face. "Saint Haisaku, your MASK-"

She shook her hand and held his reassuringly. "That won't matter anymore after today, Shun. My day is set. You can look at me."

Slowly, the kind teenager uncovered his eyes, unsure if this was okay, and he gazed upon the Amazon's face. He was first taken by the subtle signs of aging, namely the subtle creases on her face, but most importantly, he saw blood-red irises on her eyes, a traditional sign of being cursed in Sanctuary folklore. Odysseus sported similar markings in his snake-slit iris and so did Tenma, somehow. Given that their own Pegasus Saint friend from back home didn't sport the same feature, they were yet to unravel the secret behind Tenma's affliction, but now it surprised him even more to encounter it in the Phoenix Saint, especially since Andromeda's older brother shared it not.

She sighed sadly. "I'm sorry for misleading you all, but I couldn't openly talk about this in Sanctuary. You are right… the Phoenix Cloth isn't what we're here for," she admitted. "Like I told Hyoga and Dohko at the Argo's resting place, my Bronze Cloth vanished off my shoulders in a flash of fire years ago, when your brother Ikki emerged. Perhaps… it felt it could do more good things through him than with me."

"GUYS, CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS LATER?!" the Cygnus urged, suddenly rushing for the exit. "WE GOT COMPANY! FREEZING COFFIN!" And they saw the Cygnus Saint cast out of his fist a powerful white blast of cosmos that forged a wall of indestructible ice that covered the entrance to the volcanic cauldron they were on.

Andromeda rushed to his side. "Hyoga, what's going on?!"

The Cygnus fired off more layers of ice till it reached the top of the cavern entry. "It's that Specter version of your brother, Bennu! He got past Roshi somehow!"

Their 7th senses raised in alarm at feeling a powerful attack on the other side and a shout was heard. "CORONA BLAST – INFERNAL PYRAMID!" and a quintuplet of massive, sun-like golden balls of flames were fired on the other side, linked by an array of heat formed after the ancient Egyptian wonders, blasting the Freezing Coffin with heat rivaling that of the volcanic island itself.

To Cygnus' shock, it ate away at his technique with a loud shower of steam! "Shit! DOES THIS BLASTED MOVE EVER WORK ON ANYONE BUT ME?!" he ranted, trying to reinforce the wall even more with more ice layers!

But Kagaho was merciless, and this time he pulled for an even more fearsome move! "RISING DARKNESS!" and the scorching black sun that could turn oceans into deserts was unleashed, instantly obliterating Freezing Coffin with an explosion of boiling steam that bashed back the two Bronzes, flooring them! Kagaho walked through the wall of steam like an arriving demon and confronted the Godslayers. "At last!..."

Andromeda got up and lashed his weapon. "NEBULA CHAIN!"

With his powerful analyzing instinct, the Specter of the Violence Star easily bobbed to the side to dodge the Triangle End before dashing around the links to smash his knee right on the Andromeda's face, slamming him onto the volcanic outcrop with a scream.

"SHUN!" Hyoga roared, coming to his aid with a charging move. "DIAMON DUS-!"

But Kagaho's reflexes were faster and his hand rushed up with a blazing grip, catching the white-armored Saint's wrists and burning them up! "NOT THIS TIME!" the maddened Specter roared as Cygnus' move fired off to nowhere.

Resisting the pain, the Cygnus attempt to struggle against Kagaho's grips, burning his icy aura. The Specter was visibly bloodied and injured from his battle with Dohko, yet he had a strength matching that of Andromeda's older brother, which just furthered Cygnus' suspicions about it.

The white-armored Saint tried to counter. "FROZEN G-GRIP!" However, as much as he tried to channel Saint Crystal's ice grip move, though, the black flames of the Bennu Specter burned harder than he could freeze and the Godslayer began feeling his body weakening. "AGH!"

The Specter laughed, seeing the one-eyed Bronze scream in pain at being burned, canceling his ice powers and weakening him until he was on his knees.

"What's wrong, Cygnus?! Are you outside your element?! I happen to find this place's heat quite invigorating!" He then bashed the Saint with the back of his fist, flooring him. Pinning the Cygnus on the chest with his foot, Kagaho then eyed his real target, who stood at the edge of the rock overlook. "Now you…!"

Haisaku beheld her foe with gritting teeth, knowing he sought revenge from their previous battle.

Andromeda got up. "S-Saint Haisaku, don't worry, we'll battle him! Summon the armor!"

"Armor?! What armor?!" the Specter demanded to know. It was then that he looked around and saw the glow deep below, in the lava. His eyes widened. "That… golden shine?! What the hell do you think you're doing?!"

The Sage confronted him. "Kagaho… No, Bennu Kagaho, the Celestial Violence Star. I remember you well."

The Specter held his chest, which had been burned by her. "Likewise! And it's time I return your fav-"

"I don't mean our encounter in Greece. I mean the Underworld." Haisaku clarified. "When I was known as Selina, one of the countless faceless Skeletons that served under you."

There was a surprised pause from the Bennu, whose eyes surveyed the woman once more, but he recalled what he was told before the mission. "Ha, ha, ha… that's right, I almost forgot! I was told by Prince Lucifer you used to be one of us!... All the more reason to annihilate you, is it not?!" he swore, translating his anger into more weight stepping down on Hyoga. Being able to see her face now only maddened him further, creating a stronger identity to this living affront to Hades. "So why are you without your mask, Amazon?! Do you regret betraying Alone now?!"

But her face saddened. "You were one of the younger Specters, one of the few that joined Hades after I did. You were so strong and dedicated… I truly and deeply admired you. Before you entered the Underworld… I was just a piece of trash, serving cruel lowly Specters that believed in nothing…so I believed in nothing, too." She recalled, surprising him. "But you were different. You were so dedicated to Hades that I followed you everywhere, like a moon dancing around the Earth."

Lowering his chin contemplatively, Kagaho's mind tried to think about when this could have been, but he's literally had hundreds of Skeletons over the decades to do his dirty work. "Is that so?... You'll have to forgive me for not recalling one single Skeleton, witch. Especially one that fled from her ranks! Also…" and he then chuckled maleficently at the sight of her soft wrinkles. "…trading away your immortality hasn't done you any favors!"

But her next words froze the cackling Specter's soul. "I remember the sadness in you back then…You had just lost Sui."

Kagaho's very aura flickered for a second, reflecting his shock. "You…" but the mention of his younger brother's name then made a dangerous heat form from the bottom of his stomach up to his mouth, which lashed out in fury. "You keep his name off your filthy tongue!"

Andromeda stood up, looking for an angle from which to attack, but found himself before a dazzled foe. "What is Saint Haisaku saying?"

But Saint Haisaku was firm before the Bennu's anger. "When I found out about him, I suddenly understood so much about you. It made me wish so hard I could comfort you… that it drove me insane." Her look tensed once more to punctuate her speech. "So insane that I suddenly remembered my reasons for joining Hades, reasons I forgot about ages before…Hopes and wishes that I noticed were never fulfilled by him, nor that I cared anymore about. So I left and found Athena. I owe you a lot, Bennu Kagaho, Celestial Star of Violence. Thanks to you, I was able to awaken from my dark stupor."

His fist tensed with a surge of black fire around it. "What are you trying to say… that I'm the reason you backstabbed Alone?! That I created one of his most dangerous enemies?!"

She smiled, ignoring his anger. "I remember when you called Hades by his other vessel's name… and the vessel before… and vessel before that. You must have loved Sui so much. Don't you wish Hades' lies would stop? Don't you wish… you even remembered why you joined him to begin with?"

This time, Kagaho's entire body blazed with fiery Cosmos. "YOU… BLASPHEMOUS, INSULTING TRAITOR!" he roared, shaking, stepping off Cygnus to approach her.

Andromeda quickly rushed to his white armored friend. "Hyoga, are you okay?"

The blonde Saint nodded. "Y-yeah… Just a bit embarrassed." He saw the worried look on the Andromeda's eyes. "Say, Shun… do you still think our theory on Kagaho is wrong?"

The green-haired boy watched the Specter dangerously approach the woman. "I… I don't know. He can't be Ikki, can he?" he gasped.

Haisaku anxiously awaited for her foe at the edge of cauldron rock. Kagaho was surrounded by the visage of a demonic bird around him while her orange energy burned, summoning the power of the Phoenix.

Her hand rested on her sword handle in preparation. The first step to her strategy was done; she had presented to Kagaho his one light in the dark tunnel, giving him the opportunity to decide if he would stick to what was important to him or keep drinking from Hades' numbing chalice. Now he reacted as anyone would predict, with denial, anger and a desire to snuff it out to stay in the comfort of darkness. Already his Cosmos was getting off balance…

If this was going to work, however, her most dangerous attribute would require her foe to be absolutely committed to his folly, tipping his energies over entirely. "Kagaho,… Please, stop. Is this what Sui would want? Did he die so that you'd spend your life shackled by Hades' chains? Drop that Surplice, Kagaho. Athena will forgive your sins and Sui deserves to be in peace. But, if you keep hurting us… You'll be raising your hand not at me, but at the memory of your brother…"

Suddenly, there was some hesitation from the Specter, whose burning march faltered. For a brief second, it seemed as if Haisaku's words got to him, stirring memories of the small boy who threw himself down the well so he wouldn't take more food off his beloved older brother's mouth.

However, before long, the hate in the Celestial Violence Star spoke louder, filling Kagaho's heart with hate! Feeling the pain in himself that he feared the most being drowned once more, the Violence Star only roared his aura higher, resembling a balrog more than a man. He readied his ultimate technique, knowing the Saint to be more than capable of countering Corona Blast and Crucify Ankh by now.

"My Master is Hades… and he controls death itself! Sui and I will be reunited one day, by His grace, but as for you… For mentioning Sui's name, for daring to use him against me, I will drag you across hell personally until you're at Judge Wyvern's feet! And he'll condemn you for betraying Hades just like you deserve! YOUR BODY WILL WRITHE IN THE ICE OF COCYTUS FOR ALL ETERNITY!"

She felt his Evil Star shine at its brightest, encompassing the flaws through which he was controlled by Hades, igniting his strength while at the same time exposing what made him the most vulnerable to the Cosmos' universal reach. It was done. Kagaho had made his choice. His Karma now swung so one-sidedly it might as well have dropped an elephant on a scale, and nothing would stop him from killing her and everyone else in that island.

He formed the sun of black fire in his hand. "FEEL THE SCORCH OF THE DESERT SANDS! RISING DARKNESS!" He thrust it at the speed of light at her face, intending to kill her instantly!

The black-burning blow penetrated the premises of her aura and the Cosmos of Phoenix and Bennu collided, screeching!

Time came to a halt, freezing even the burning embers in the furnace's air!

In an instantaneous flash, as Cygnus and Andromeda reached out to their ally, Haisaku felt the energy of the clash between their forces flooding her, causing her red eyes to flash with the Phoenix's rapine irises and her hand to tense around the Yondo no Yaiba like the firebird's claw, igniting its edge with the explosive power of the Cosmos!

Then the cry of the Phoenix was heard!

Time rapidly sped back up as her body executed the step-in and the flawless iaijutsu movement, powered by the violence of Kagaho's own move, completely overwhelming the Specter's senses and counter-attacking with the traversing rising draw slash, striking past him! It sliced the Celestial Violence Star over and over from multiple angles with black and orange cosmos, leaving behind in it bright orange linear marks like scalding cuts, finishing with a final upward slash so powerful that it splashed a wave of fire across the cauldron with Haisaku reappearing past the Specter!

With her mind returned to reality and free from the power that flooded her, the Phoenix Saint landed from her instantaneous lunge by Hyoga with complete unawareness, panting heavily.

The two Godslayers were agape! All they saw was the Rising Darkness about to smash the woman's face in, then an orange flash, and now they saw Haisaku by them and the Rising Darkness was gone from Kagaho's hand!

She sheathed her weapon respectfully and used it as a cane to get up, suddenly exhausted. "I w-warned you… I'm sorry…"

The bright orange lines on the Bennu Surplice shone once more and the entire armor broke apart by them, sending the Specter into a screaming fit of pain and horror at what had just happened!

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The Present

The False Holy War (November 1976)

Stairs to Leo

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The Saints of Andromeda and Cancer rushed up the stairs to the Fifth Temple, seeing the glow of green in its innards from afar, as they shared what they experienced since they split their ways back in China. Lance and Shinta spoke of their separate runs through Sanctuary Town and Green Valley, then of encountering the Skeletons guarding the Aries Temple. What Shinta told him actually happened with his Triangle End made Lance feel a bit sillier still for having lost his cool at the sight of it in the hands of a Skeleton. But still, Lance chose not to share the graphic lies the enemy told him about what they did to Shinta.

"So you got help on your way here?" Shinta asked.

Lance nodded. "Yeah. Someone I know got me through all the scouts and moths that the Papillion spread around town. She left after I took Aries, though, since she's not a fighter."

"Maybe that's why the Skeletons ambushed me and Saga so easily there." Shinta realized. "They were probably warned of the two of us coming, while you snuck right through."

Lance then talked about a detail that shocked the Andromeda. "When I cast the Underworld Wave on them, they would go absolutely nuts. There was a consistent reaction of fear about it as if these guys absolutely did not want to see their bosses again."

The green-haired teenager wasn't sure what to make of this. "Maybe it's hard for them to get back here? Lady Yuzuriha did say their castles in Germany and Romania are being besieged by Master Daniel and the other Gold Saints. They're probably afraid that if you send them to the Well they won't be able to rejoin the fighting?"

While this made sense to Lance tactically, there was a human terror in their faces that made him think there was more to it than suffering a setback. "If that's the case, why would that soldier, that I captured, literally kill himself to avoid it? He'd just land back there anyway. Shinta, I really think there's something strange going on."

The Andromeda recalled a few things from when he arrived at Aries. "Saga and I noticed their equipment was different from regular Specters, too. It's not like those we met at Arcadia. It looked as if someone went through the trouble of rearming them entirely in preparation for this invasion… Are these people… impostors? Some Black Saints pretending to be them, wearing Surplice armor that they took from someone? Didn't you say Papillion confirmed an alliance with Priam?"

This sounded far-fetched to Lance, who had experienced the power of three of their elites already, plus Lucifer himself. "I find it hard to believe some murderous Black Saints would get to wear real Surplices, even if Daemon smuggled them. Master Dohko often goes on and on about how evil and soul-stealing these things are to elevate how important his job guarding the se-"

"SHINTA, LANCE, YOU'RE BACK!" Aiolia screamed, rushing out of his hiding spot and hugging Shinta. "I was so s-scared. Where's Saga?"

Shinta held him. "He went to get his armor back, don't worry, he'll be back up here, soon."

The Papal Guard hoplites with Aiolia approached the Gold Saint. "Lord Cancer, you're finally back!"

Lance greeted them with a nod, self-conscious about how his absence must have risked so many lives.

He then moved a bit away from Aiolia so he wouldn't hear what he had to tell them. "I came back as fast as I could…I'm sorry about the Aries Temple." he apologized, referring to the men massacred there. Their expectant eyes on him made him feel worse and his golden fist tightened angrily. "I made sure to avenge them. Every single black-armored Skeleton I found down there is dead now. I know that doesn't change anything, though…"

The guards shared somber looks. A lot of them had been present at the Temple and happened to have just been lucky enough to have either retreated quickly or were assigned something else.

Although their relationship with Lance wasn't the best and many wished the Gold Saints had gotten back sooner, they still nodded in acknowledgment. "Thank you. Athena is with them, now."

Lance pretended that this line didn't make him want to frown awkwardly. "I want you to take Aiolia down your passageway to the forest. He isn't safe here."

"Of course, Lord Cancer, but just one thing." their more vocal one asked. After sharing some worried glances with his brethren, he made his question. "We took a look at the enemy leader and we're worried about what might happen past the Leo Temple now. He is very strong and moving his men up fast. We evacuated everyone up the stairs instead of the pass because we thought they'd never make it past the 6th or 8th, but-"

"I'll take care of it, don't worry." Lance interrupted. He indeed wished these guys hadn't been stubborn about some weird protocol that made them think the 5th Temple shortcut was meant for soldiers only. However, he wasn't in a position to judge them, as Lance himself had underestimated the situation when Alraune Lemon showed up at Rozan.

A whizzing sound was heard and the Saints turned up to see Aiolos' arrows raining down on the stairs just beyond them, likely targeting Specters and Skeletons.

Aiolia pointed up. "That's my brother! He's been fighting them from his House this whole time!" he exclaimed, proud.

Lance saw how close they were impacting the ground. "Then we are catching up! We can still help Shaka!"

Shinta then guided Lance over to the raging green flames in the interior of the entrance to the House of Leo. "We don't know what prompted it, but the Specters decided to do something terrible to this place before moving to the next. Even Saga couldn't get through it." Andromeda looked at him expectantly. "Can you and the Cancer Cloth do something?"

The red-eyed Gold Saint stared at the flames, amazed. They didn't seem to be burning down anything inside, not even the wooden furniture. The flames just seemed to be present there, like an enormous curse. They also lacked any real warmth to them, even when he raised his hand at the air of the gateway to try to feel it, yet they covered the ground of the Hall of Hercules from one side to the other as if feeding on the corpses of thousands, if not millions of dead combustible bodies not visible to the Saints. They looked the most intensely green at the core of the crater left behind by the Golem Specter's dive-bombing, as Shinta described to him up the stairs, making it seem all the more like a crack to hell had been opened and these flames came from it.

It reminded him of the pale blue will-o-wisps he'd encounter at the valleys of Mount Rozan when he trained to first get the Praesepe Underworld Wave. No wonder Mephisto was able to immediately identify them to Shinta and Saga as the flames of Pandora's Earthly castle as, unlike Lance, the Sicilian boy would sink his nose into all the creepy books of the temple that Karkinos recommended like he was reading fun comic books.

Lance began burning his cosmos in preparation to work on this giant problem, but he did click his tongue at wishing he had practiced his technique more. He would do his best, but he hoped his stubbornness against Karkinos' creepy methods wouldn't now come back to bite the entire Zodiac in the ass.

"If only someone had nagged you about it, right?"

Lance got to work right away, focusing cosmos into his hands that burned like blue fire, reacting to the forces of death. "PRESAEPE UNDERWORLD WAVE!" and his palms emanated the mystical waves opening the star portal to the Underworld over the fires.

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Chapter 57

Episode 19

The One Closest to God

Part 2

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Sanctuary,

Virgo Temple

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Murmurs of awe and admiration filled the Halls of Innocence as the newly-arrived party of False Specters headed by Daemon Lucifer walked in, confronting the scene of Alraune Lemon utterly defeated by who appeared to be Shaka of Virgo.

The Prince was joined by his entourage of False Specters, namely Golem Treble, Dullahan Hedron, Cait Sith Palug, and Mandrake Nevil. These four men stood confident where their brothers stood in horror, ignorant of the terror the child represented.

The sight of Alraune on the ground spoke books, though. Regardless of their opinion of him, he was one of the five False Specter Elites. Now he looked clearly defeated, drooling on the floor like a comatose patient while the Hall of Innocence displayed all but superficial ruinous damage from his futile efforts to defeat Shaka, who sat unharmed.

"Lord… Lucifer…" Sphinx Neferti called, not sure if she should feel relief or dread that their often-punitive master had arrived.

The power level sensed off the newly-arrived enemy was stunning, putting a frown on Shaka's face. It was palpable in the air, like a stormy cloud just rolled inside his House. Shaka had a pretty good idea of the difference between Daemon and his men from sensing their cosmos throughout the invasion, but with the Pride Star now in front of him he got a much more detailed reading and the results concerned him.

His clasped fingers on his lap tensed discretely. "Mm, this is more serious than I realized. I'm feeling from this one a cosmos darker and more powerful than a Judge's. I cannot allow these Specters to defile Sanctuary's inner sanctum. If it comes to it, I must be ready to put more of myself on the line to stop them!" he then faked a smile of absolute confidence. "So this the mighty 'Prince' of the phantoms?"

Cait Sith Palug skipped ahead and held Lemon's head up to check him. The Alraune just stared off at the walls with no reaction. "Oof, what happened to you?"

Golem Treble folded his massive arms. "I think it's fairly obvious. He lost a fight to a child!"

"Don't judge Alraune too poorly, phantom." Shaka kindly advised. "After all… you will all join him soon."

The multitude of Skeletons that had followed Neferti and Lemon were quiet as graves, none daring to begin explaining why they were still stuck at the Sixth House. They exchanged a lot of guilty looks and turned to Neferti, their remaining leader, for representation. Lucifer noticed all of this, knowing by then the frustrating results of Skeletons and Specters biting off more than they could chew when sent to kill a Gold. It's why he and Michael always made sure to involve their own hand more heavily than the Judges.

Still, experienced as he was, the Celestial Pride Star knew well not to underestimate the adversary before them just because of his size and youth. The blonde child in the damaged lotus throne appeared small and frail, but the Specter's 7th sense told a whole different story. It spoke to Lucifer of a brilliant, brimming shine on his aura that only few could perceive, created by a battery of immense spiritual and cosmic power not seen since the days of Virgo Asmita. This was also clearly the person who almost cast them down to the infinite depths of Buddha's shadow from the coziness of his Temple, as the Prince could tell by remembering this distinct energy from back then now emanating off the boy.

Fate would have it that Lucifer would never have encountered a Virgo Saint in battle until now. Facing them was the prerogative of Michael, who was better suited to face off mental opponents. While there had been a Virgo Saint in the era of Priam, supposedly the son of Taurus Daniel, Lucifer never knew much about the subject before his tragic death at the hands of his Cancer contemporary.

"So this is the Gold Saint who threatened me with 'utter decimation' if I entered the Zodiac? A young boy who barely looks like he fills his armor?" he called out, shaming his men for their failure even further.

"The threat maintains, lord of phantoms, and it shall be enforced," Shaka casually confirmed. Lucifer squinted at this term. It was not common for Specters to be called this. "You have all made a catastrophic mistake; you violated the sanctity of Athena's mountain, murdered her faithful with abandon, displayed multiple insults at Sanctuary, and now you dirty the floor of the Hall of Innocence with your blood-stained boots. For these sins… you will pay with your souls."

The Prince was unmoved by the Virgo's threat. "That's a lot of bark from such a small li-"

Shaka's golden aura shined out, illuminating Daemon and engulfing his widening red eyes instantaneously! The ringing of a single bell was heard, the one hundred and eight beads lashed out into gigantic forms shining with the Kanji of the evil stars and the Daemon suddenly felt his feet off the ground!

The light dissipated, leaving Lucifer behind in a strange new world!

He blinked, feeling himself inside a murky maroon sea where his body floated above an abyss of darkness.

"I commend you from reaching this far, Daemon, but unfortunately, I never had any intention of entertaining your pathetic bloodlust," Shaka's voice sounded, alerting him. Eventually, the Virgo Saint's silhouette emerged with a shining brim before him in that liquid. "It is time you obey the fate reserved to you by my predecessors, to lie sleeping in the Underworld until the return of Athena."

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The Underworld

4th Circle, 7th Prison

The Evil Ditches (Malebolge)

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The pits of hell raged with blood-red fire throughout the landscape of the 7th Prison and shook with the ferocity of the battle raging there. The Lord of Ptolomea, Wyvern Rhadamanthys, lunged through the starred sky with an ear-piercing roar, his fury manifested in blazing currents of bright cosmos throughout his armor that trailed in the air.

"GLIDING ROAR!" he called, approaching his target, raising a hand that was more like a dragon claw encased in the dark fire of the Cosmos and hammering it down with a hecatomb of a swipe. It collided with the Lemurian's black-encased arm, which took the blow's force like a dense piece of lead, releasing shockwaves that blew apart the ground ramparts beneath them, cratering the Prison.

The intruder tried to capitalize on this, leaping at the stunned, pained Wyvern with his darkness cosmos descending unto his foot, which arched back in preparation for a mighty attack! He then swung and slammed it right on the Judge's exposed stomach, blasting it with the force of a huge wrecking ball and seemingly securing victory for the Lemurian as the Judge screamed and felt his cuirass compress.

With an earth-shaking roar, the maddened Judge suddenly recovered from the blow he took with monstrous speed and swung his large fist right back at the leaping Lemurian, striking him right in the side of the head and hammering him down to the ground in one fluid, angry motion, smashing the man into the dirty, rocky rubble of the evil ditches so hard that he sunk into the cratering, rumbling ground pieces, spreading clouds of dust everywhere!

The Judge wasn't done! Pressing his hand down on the fallen intruder, his whole body ignited with the elements of Darkness and Wind of the mighty wyverns, his mouth released a screech so high-pitched that his Specter allies covered their ears in pain and his energy whirred around him in charging so hotly that the evil ditches erupted their torturing flames in response.

The illusion of an evil wyvern roaring above him appeared and his hand was set alight by the attack he was about to fire. "GREATEST CAUTION!" and an explosion of purple light swallowed everything around the hand as Rhadamanthys' mightiest attack blasted the ground, swelling largely in a dome of power which then burst in every direction, bombarding the Prison with earth-quaking force.

The Specters took cover even deeper, guarding themselves against the noise and dusty currents released by the attack. They waited until the shockwave subsided before raising their heads, seeing a vanishing screen of dust revealing a triumphant Judge stepping over the seemingly unconscious intruder.

Minotaur Gordon breathed a sigh of relief. "F-Finally! He's done it, Sylphid!"

The Basilisk smirked. "I t-told you!"

Zelos leaped off his hiding place and bowed before the Judge. "Oh, Lord Judge, you've done it! You crushed this Lemurian insect-like he deserves! I knew you'd do it! Lord Hades' domains are safe under the winged serpent's vigilant gaze!"

Rhadamanthys panted as he beheld the fallen foe. With his blood rushing slower at the threat being eliminated, the sharp teenager began processing the event more thoroughly. The fight had raged on longer than the Judge expected and he had to resort to a tremendous effort on his part to catch the Lemurian in an off-guard moment with a decisive blow before he could adapt once more.

He, therefore, concluded this threat should not be allowed back up again. "Rotate the guard in this Circle and keep extra eyes on the Well! Now, will someone explain what the hell happened here?!"

Sylphid and Gordon exchanged guilty looks until the Basilisk poked the Minotaur's elbow to push him for an answer. "W-Well, your honor, the Malebolge was being dutifully guarded, as you ordered-"

"DUTIFULLY?! You call this bomb site a well-guarded Prison?!" Wyvern roared, pointing at the battle craters and the fallen Specters. I noticed, in particular, the gigantic Genbu Specter hanging from the tree of the Waterfall of Blood and his blood boiled so hot that his eyes shone gold with cosmos. "WHY IS GREGOR PLAYING AT CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS?!"

The three Specter panicked. "AAHH! LORD WYVERN, he was the first attacked!" Zelos screamed, raising his arms in a mercy plea. "I saw it happen! The Celestial Retreat Star was patrolling the Malebolge when that filthy Lemurian ambushed him!"

The Judge paused, narrowing his eyes in suspicion. Gregor was ambushed first? Why him? The heavily-armored Specter wasn't exactly the softest target to try to blow your cover to get a drop on, which implied the intruder at Rhadamanthys' foot targeted him purposefully after successfully sneaking into the Underworld without dying, but he was also not a noteworthy Celestial. The most he contributed to the previous war was getting himself killed against El Cid of Capricorn, according to the records.

"I'm taking this intruder to the Giudecca cells!" he announced, grabbing the unconscious man by the scarfed nape. "When he wakes up, we'll find out what the big idea was, whether he wants to talk or not!"

Zelos' eyes brightened up at the chance of snooping around the Underworld God's castle once the Judge got distracted. "Ooh, let me assist you, your Honor! Here, I'll carry the intruder!" Then, with much effort, the hunch-backed goblin of a man took the blue-haired intruder from the Judge's hand unto his flat-armored back. "U-ugh… Why is he so heavy?! Damn muscle heads!"

Leading the servant out of the battlefield, the Judge picked up his helmet and took the road to Giudecca while Skeletons all around him assembled to repair the damage the battle just caused. This is just what he needed; someone taking advantage of the chaos left by Daemon and the treacherous replacements to take a vacation to the 7th Prison, where the Underworld Well of Yomotsu Hirasaka landed you on. What was the fucking Cancer Gold Saint doing? Snoozing around?! Or did he send this guy himself to play a prank on Specters?!

Still, as he watched Frog Zelos struggle to carry the intruder up a slope, he contemplated how strange an occurrence this was. What kind of person, Lemurian or not, had access to the Yomotsu Hirasaka? And with the intent of coming down to hell, too? The Lemurian had even somehow escaped death, which would befall anyone else who fell down the well, either as if he had the 8th sense or some blessing on him shielded the intruder from losing his soul when transitioning from one world to the next.

This all suggested something outside of Sanctuary's knowledge. Rhadamanthys assumed all the dotted freaks were penned up in Tibetan villages under Sanctuary's protection, like the frightened sheep that they had become after the Fall of Mu, but perhaps either the Lemurians were still capable of some foolish initiative against their enemies in these dwindling days of their species…

…or there was some tribe that even Sanctuary did not account for.

Rhadamanthys smiled; perhaps all this would blossom into an opportunity to lend the Emperor a great service!

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Daemon Lucifer floated for who knows how long.

Observing him from his meditating seat, Shaka felt the power of the technique wrapping his adversary in a telekinetic grip, ready to seal him in. It was better to finish this quickly by calling upon the beads of Asmita, considering how strong this one was. Sanctuary would be better off this way than prolonging the fight for the sake of judging a broken karma. "Go to sleep, Daemon. It is not your time yet. Rejoin your 107 brothers and return only when the time for war truly comes."

However, while he struggled to perceive the world around him, Lucifer realized what was going on. The color of this world, after all, matched that of the jewels forged from the Underworld Tree's fruits.

The Daemon began to laugh. "Ah, ah, ah! Do you think it will be that simple? Go ahead, Virgo. Do your worst!"

This was said with such confidence that it triggered an impressed hum in Shaka. "Very well, Pride Star." And he pulled for his beads "BEGONE!"

The two of them then beheld the power of Asmita's seal being summoned, causing the 108 Kanji letters to shine in the maroon, unleashing its unlimited power over its prisoners! The jewels danced in the air, searching for the one among themselves with authority over Lucian, and the singing of the Buddhist spirits was heard all around the Specter in preparation to crush him from every direction into a Damascus cube.

However, to Shaka's sudden shock, the necklace finished combing itself in its entirety, and no jewel matched Lucifer's Evil Star.

The world around them began to crack, losing its technique's pertinence and power.

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Returned to reality with a shattering of telekinetic forces, Lucifer gasped, seeing the lighting around him change from the murky maroon back to green-tint of the Hall of Innocence. He stumbled back in alarm, mildly startled, but got his bearing together as he understood that Shaka's powers had truly failed.

The boy beheld the beads in his hands, confused.

"Ah, did Dohko and Shion teach you to be that theatrical? I'm not impressed by Saint boasts, child. They tend to not match their real strength," Lucifer bragged.

The Virgo Saint tensed his closed eyes, concerned. "So it is true… you are not among the 108 souls sealed by my ancestor."

"I'm afraid he failed to account for two of us. That coward Hakurei should have had Pegasus Tenma gather 110 fruits, instead." This revelation alone made the False Specters regain even more morale, feeling that their leader was invincible. The red-eyed Prince tensed his expression. "It looks like that for once, you do not hold absolute power over your foe…Now what will you do, Virgo?"

A happy murmur filled the crowds of False Skeletons and Specters. "Oh, the Prince is untouched! Virgo has no power over him!"

"He is INVINCIBLE!" one bragged.

"MAKE HIM PAY!" another cheered.

Shaka scoffed out of his little nose. One little victory and they thought the war was won? It's like they forgot about all the other cards he still had in his hand which he showed to Alraune and Sphinx. However, it was true that the beads having no power over Daemon complicated things. Shaka would have preferred to eliminate this more powerful adversary peacefully, but since push has come to shove, it was time to take things to the next level and give these murderous monsters a taste of the Virgo Saint's power.

Yes, by Athena and all her faithful that these phantoms had murdered, he would show them how much they still had to learn about his true power.

Lucifer then turned to his men. "Move on ahead to Libra, I'll take care of this."

They all widened their eyes. "Lord Daemon?!"

The Sphinx Specter offered the loudest protest. "Prince, he's far more dangerous than he looks! Lemon and I were powerless against him no matter what we tried! He even deflected my Balance of Curse. We should combine our powers to defeat him!"

The notion of this made the Prince laugh out loud. "HA, HA, HA! What?! Are you fools?! You say you're too weak to defeat his powers and you offer me your help?! Besides…" he then eyed the boy. "After what happened at Aries, I want to see this Gold Saint's powers undone by my hand."

Shaka felt all their spirits straightened by these words and raised a brow in realization. "Oh, how interesting… I was wondering how a single pathetic Specter came to command such a large force of death worshippers."

Many of the loyalist Skeletons raised their weapons at this alone. "Watch what you say, you brat! The Pride Star is not for you to mock!"

Shaka just ignored the worthless grunt. "I sensed a powerful cult of admiration focusing on you, Pride Star. I was intrigued by its nature, as it's not often for even Judges to command such extensive respect." The Virgo Saint continued, letting out a light chuckle. "Hm, hm, hm. Now I see how you've reached it… These decadent ghouls' spirits have been broken by despair to such a low point that they practically gravitate around your personality. Are you some sort of Underworld hero to them?"

The child's cocky little laughter was irritating to their ears. "What do you even know about the Judges, boy?" Daemon Lucifer asked.

"All I could ever need," Shaka revealed. "Yes, it did surprise me that you have escaped the beads' capture,… but from the moment I've ascended to this role, I've come to understand its most pertinent responsibilities and the intimate relationship that the Gold Saint of Virgo has with the important seal in Rozan. It was my distant predecessor, Asmita, who fashioned the beads after all. I, therefore, know everything I could ever need to know about the 108 Specters of Hades, from their Stars to their Surplices, to their cruel personalities."

The pale Daemon snorted, impressed. The child spoke with unnatural clarity and eloquence of an adult and Sanctuary had ruthlessly indoctrinated into everything he needed to know and be able to do for his armor. "Alright, that may very well be true… but what good that knowledge will that do to you in battle, I wonder? You haven't forgotten that crucial step, have you?"

Another display of Specter ignorance. "Do not worry, the rest that I do not know yet… I can easily see it from your karma."

A smug snicker came off the quincentenarian Specter's lips. "My karma?"

The Gold Saint nodded, and the room was filled with light, alarming the Specters. Said light shifted the background from the shadowed pillars of the Hall of Innocence to a dark world where the cards of everyone's fates flew around them like shooting stars, aweing the lesser warriors of Daemon. "Correct. Through it, your very soul is bare."

Lucifer stepped back, alarmed by these illusions. He burned his energy defensively, but soon he came to realize there was a hidden threat in what Shaka was doing. He saw in these cards what looked like images of humans committing sins, from violence to laziness, and came to understand this was another attempt at a Gold Saint tirade.

"You are creatures who have fled from suffering, phantoms," began Shaka, pinpointing the nature of how they first came to serve Hades. "In your immature fear of death, you've all chosen to take on a foolish, darker path where you sold your souls to the Surplices, believing this to be a promise of Elysium. Through this action, you've all casted away virtue, the most important shield of the soul. Your lifetimes of sins are therefore painfully and pitifully visible to me."

Lucifer scoffed at the sight of their sins being reflected on these ridiculous cards as if lambasting them. "And what are you saying, that you do not fear death?"

Shaka chuckled. Of course they'd bring this up. "Death?... I am the reincarnation of the Enlightened one, Daemon. So no, Specter, I do not fear it… because there is no such thing, not as the dreadful finality that you all perceive it to be. Why should I fear something that is only a small turn in the Wheel of Time?"

The Gold Saint stood up from his throne, an action that in and of itself was enough to silence the already intimidated Skeletons who had witnessed him defeat Lemon from his seat.

Shaka smirked, sensing their fear. All he did was get up. "Oh? The arrogant chanting has stopped."

Lucifer commanded his men to calm down with a gesture of his arm. "Pay them no mind; They think that your triumph over that Alraune failure proves you unstoppable."

"Mm—mm. And do you not?"

The prince's eyes squinted. He beheld Lemon's fallen body and walked up to it. "For beating this rat? Don't make me laugh."

The added proximity between him and the Gold Saint alarmed his subordinates. "Prince, be careful!" Neferti appealed.

Cait Sith Palug, who had been standing by Lemon, turned the Alraune over, who just laid there drooling. "He's still not responding, Prince. Perhaps he will recover afterward?"

"Recovering? Are you a fool?" Lucifer instantly concluded. "He's been driven insane by his own desires. There's no recovering from that." His armored foot stomped hard on Alraune's head, smashing it to the ground in a splatter of blood and brains!

Cait Sith screamed and the Specters gasped in horror and shock! "AHH! LEMON!"

The Skeletons and Specters reeled at the sight of the caved-in skull while the Prince chillingly dragged his foot on the marble floor to scrape off the bits of brain matter. Their throats were so shut that a water drop could be heard amidst the crowd then.

Even the loyalist Sphinx was shaking. "He… he was still a-alive!"

But the Prince was merciless. "Alraune Lemon was a scheming snake! He attempted to undermine my authority and conspired against my interests, seeking to take the Cloth of Hope to himself! His last mumbling words were proof of it! Failure or weakness will already face little to no tolerance, but worst of all, I will not suffer betrayal and lies! When that happens, know that I will deal out your miserable sentence PERSONALLY!" he warned, eyeing each and every one of them.

They collectively shook their heads, frozen to their very souls.

"Good! As for you, Virgo-" Lucifer then turned to Shaka and tensed his body in a battle pose, clenching fists by his sides and bending his legs slightly. His dark cosmos aura emerged, charging his energy. "-I should thank you for ridding me of this subversive element, but I have a mountain to conquer! Prepare to see true terror!"

Cait Sith Palug backed away from Alraune's corpse. While it was true that Nasu Erika had a method in preparation to resurrect fallen False Specters, the bluntness with which Lucifer put an end to Lemon made it clear that it marked the first true execution among them by the Prince.

Shaka still felt the tense cruelty in the air that his adversaries just witnessed from their leader. "What a pity… Had he spent a few decades in the Realm of Beasts, perhaps Lemon of Alraune would have evened his karma, and I would consider restoring his sanity."

Lucifer chuckled. "Isn't a simple, direct execution such a more efficient justice, though?"

The Gold Saint was not impressed. "Perhaps to those taught by Hades that the fear of death is absolute, yes."

Little by little, Lucifer began to understand why Virgo casts such terror among the Specters, historically. He presented himself as a mockery of everything they believed in, after all. "Oh, so your Buddhist teachings have taught you to not fear Thanatos?"

The Gold Saint nodded and raised his hand softly at him. "Correct, death is merely the beginning, and now you will see how hiding in Thanatos' shadow has only made you more vulnerable to him."

Before the Specter could wonder what the boy meant with this, an intense force came over him, arresting his body like a constricting snake. Gasping for breath, the Prince felt seized from top to bottom at the mere emanation of Shaka's power, as if the boy had his finger on some sort of button that just gave him control over the quincentenarian warrior's body. As this happened, Lucifer began feeling the most vertiginous of sensations, as if he was being forced to be face-to-face with a great height. Yet, the memory that sprung to mind was not that of a precipice or high floor, but of himself dangling over every moment of his life where he's come close to dying!

"Do you feel that, Specter?" Shaka asked. "That is the fear of death gripping you!"

The Prince struggled, but his very body seemed to disobey him. Flashes of his life were forcefully brought to mind, especially the day his family's house burned. "Y-you…!"

"You chose to sign Hades' contract… because you feared death. You sought immortality, and that has robbed you of your ability to accept your demise. The weakness it has created in you is as glaring as a rusty link in an otherwise powerful chain! A mere touch -" Shaka lectured, and he pointed his finger slowly as if about to press it on something. "And it will snap!"

A massive force then assailed Lucifer, tightening his Surplice around his body like a noose around his neck! The warrior Prince roared in pain, hearing a maddingly loud humming from thousands of Buddhist chants all around him. Soon, even his mighty Surplice, worthy of a Prince, would become nothing more than dust at the hands of this one child Gold Saint! Already his feet fell in the omnipotent palm of Buddha, being judged by the Enlightened One!

How pathetic! Did this tree-sitter think such a thing was enough to crush his will?! He was Daemon Lucifer, the Celestial Star of Pride, and he was meant for far more than losing to this esoteric nonsense!

As he roared, a powerful Cosmos aura of very dark purple formed around his body, manifested by his insulted ego! It robbed the room of noise, causing some of the candles held up in the holes to even go out with a mere whispering flick of it! It was a power brought forth not by brutish resistance, but by an absolute refusal to acknowledge someone as unworthy as Buddha as his supreme judge! This was no Specter who wished to subvert Death, but one who would shape the very foundations of the world!

The powerful Specter's fist began crackling with electrical cosmos and his mouth became free of its invisible gag. "That's where you're wrong, child. As a Specter, I can tell you that the fear of death is still well within your soul, as it is in the soul of every pathetic living creature on this planet that deserves to grovel beneath my foot! The destruction of what one has built for all their lives still strikes terror in the hearts of all who draw breath and by the end of this battle, you will feel that terror again." He then raised it like an evil torch. "LIGHTNING FANG!"

The shower of blue lightning shot off in all directions, disrupting the energy that manifested the illusion cast by Shaka and shattering it to pieces like glass, returning all of them to the Hall of Innocence.

The Skeletons patted themselves. "Another illusion?"

Shaka scoffed unpleasantly. "I was offering you a peaceful respite…but you will not be content until your violence is duly answered for?!"

The Celestial Star of Pride stepped up to him in the challenge! "You will not break my will with such basic techniques! The time for parlor tricks is over, Virgo. You and your predecessors have been contenting yourselves for ages by feeding off the pathetic spirits of lower Specters, but now a real champion of the Underworld has come before you! There will be no Buddhist chant that will lull me, nor the sense that you can rob me, nor the barrier you can put between me and my DESTINY! This night will end with the second Virgo Saint in a millennium's quarter to fall to a Dark Prince of Hades, or my name isn't Daemon Lucifer, the Celestial Star of Pride!"

The Skeletons and Specters rose their fists and arms in delight, roaring for the fall of the House of Virgo! In the background, the constellation of the goddess Astraea faced off against the Evil Star of Daemon, promising an unprecedented clash.

This outburst was offensive to the Virgo Saint, especially considering the evil of their intent and of what they've done so far. "How dare you all act with such bravado?… The weight of the sins you've committed is not at all felt on your shoulders, is it?! Very well. I mock the very notion that any of you could ever think you'd ever set foot past me, but I'll be happy to make this House your collective grave."

The darkness intensified and the Specters stood back from their leader in alarm, frightened by the energy he began summoning from within. Faint flashes from outside were suddenly seen, before the sound of thunder caught up and began to be heard from outside the temple, reacting to the forces being concentrated inside the building.

With sludge-like energy coming off his pores, the Specter Prince roared, calling forth the power of the Daemon Surplice. The red markings on his armor shined and the Temple of Virgo began to slightly shake in response to this evil power. Before long, his aura gained life, rising around his body like a geyser of energy, dressing him in a veil of purple shadows that bulged his muscles beneath the Damascus of his Surplice and gave a sharper shine to his red eyes.

While his eyes were closed, Shaka could easily perceive the rise in power through the cosmos. His mouth dropped slightly, surprised by the depth of it, added to the fact that this Specter had already broken through two of his techniques before all this power was even summoned forth.

"What kind of adversary is before me? This Cosmos isn't normal!..." Alarmed by this, Shaka reanalyzed the threat before him, feeling its power rise. At this moment, the singeing sensation in his hand from earlier returned. Initially, he thought the Goddess of Innocence was referring to the duality of elements, as thunder crackled around the Specter's dark aura, the power before him was clearly one of Darkness and Electricity. Yet, with Shaka's instincts telling him there was a subtlety in it connected to the pain in his hand, was the Virgo Cloth implying that whoever was responsible for the flaming power that cut through Sati earlier was nearby?

His hand raised, brimming with golden energy, and Shaka attempted a direct reading of Daemon's karma as the layers limiting his energy reserves were being peeled off.

Suddenly, Shaka felt his mind sucked into a vortex of sensations, pulled in by the weight of five centuries of experience and actions in a single soul. In a realm of the spirit, the boy was immediately struck by powerful explosions of tragedy, then the dark seductions of Hades' whispering promises, followed by years of punishment and painful growth that put this Specter's resolve to the test time and time again.

Having expected a far simpler karma from a Specter, filled with self-excuses, egomania, baseless cruelty, and unrepentant selfishness, Shaka instead found himself reading a thread of sins and suffering befitting that of a character in a Greek play. It was that of one who walked the two sides of the road of life and death in pursuit of a clearly-defined ambition, only to suffer setback after setback that was only coincidentally tied to his condition of being a Specter. Such a life had forged a spirit uniquely strong, that was truly more capable of resisting powers like his. He faced not the corrupted spirit of a Specter, but also the intense willpower of a true warrior.

Then, with a flash of red, a wash of blood from all the violence the Specter had caused came over Shaka, filling him with the screams of all his victims over the centuries. There didn't even seem to be any people that the Specter reserved any kindness towards, which at least was familiar territory to the Virgo Saint as far as Specters went, at least in the first few ages of his unexpectedly long life. Through this evil in the Specter's heart, Shaka would surely defeat him.

At this moment, however, Shaka sensed a small shine in the karma. His hand reached out to it, intrigued, as this was usually the sign of a redeeming aspect in a person. However, just as he began perceiving images of good deeds towards a very small set of good people, a pair of glowing red eyes emerged, casting him out of the person's karma!

Shaka found himself back in the physical world, blocked out from the Specter's inner secrets.

His body was now immersed in a swamp of darkness cosmos which viciously interacted with his surroundings, making marble pebbles shake and the air rumble lowly. He viciously eyed the Gold Saint. "It won't be that easy for you to read my secrets, Virgo!"

Shaka rubbed his hand as if it had been slapped off the Specter. "I saw enough… a lifetime of violence and massacre, just like every other killer. Just like what I could expect of someone who so mercilessly finished off one of his own."

Great, more Sanctuary moralism. "Oh, would Athena have requested remorse for crushing the head of a traitor? How kind of her."

Shaka's head lowered. "Hypocrisy…"

Red eyes narrowed indignantly. "What did you say?!"

"You speak of treason, yet you're a traitor yourself!" Shaka accused, pointing a finger at the Prince and startling the Specter collective. "You've led this pack of phantoms into our lands against Hades' wishes have you not? What right do you have of condemning the lies and subversion of others?"

Seeing their Prince widen his eyes in alarm, Neferti spoke up through a shielded message. "(Lord Lucifer, he accused us of being falsehoods earlier! He keeps calling us phantoms. Somehow… he knows!)"

The Gold Saint snickered, easily detecting the blocked transmission in the cosmos. "I take it for your discreet whispering, you know that you're at a disadvantage?"

The Daemon's mind rushed, recalculating what was at stake. A Saint knew about False Specters? He did not expect their secret to be uncovered so soon, especially by a mere child. How could this have happened? He had to find out!

He refrained from immediately admitting it, though. "Entertain the Devil, would you? What do you think you know about us?"

"I know these phantoms wear Surplices not belonging to them. I can even explain how I do." Shaka calmly claimed. He then pressed his hands together in a clap and, to their shock, he then made his hand go into his other palm!

Cait Sith hissed in disgust. "EEGH! What is he doing?!"

In a continued offense to their senses and reason, Shaka literally pulled an object out of his hand! It flushed out like a bouquet, spreading through the air exactly one hundred and eight beads made from the fruits of the only tree that lived in the Underworld connected by a string. Each of them was inscribed with a Kanji letter referring to a star of the Underworld.

"Behold! The seal of Athena on the Specters!" Shaka declared, waving the rosary in the air. "Within each of these 108 beads lies an evil passion of mankind's heart. Each, in turn, corresponds to the 108 Evil Stars of the Underworld Sky; Fury, Nobility, Demon, Victory, and many others!"

Lucifer immediately recognized it. The sight of it alone brought memories of hatred. He saw it many times during the Lost Canvas War in the hands of Aspros, Tenma, and others. Shaka had just employed it against him in that maroon world when he failed to find his Evil Star, which he deduced now was actually the mystical innards of the beads' seal.

His eyes made sure to detect a particular bead among the 108, the one corresponding to the Absolute Star, and his dominant arm clenched.

"During the past twenty-four hours, nine phantoms have perished in various battles," Shaka counted, further stunning the Specters at his apparent omniscience. In reality, he was reading off their deaths through a very precise method that he was about to explain. "Lycaon, Worm, Deadly Beetle, Deep, Sylph, Bat, Cyclops, and Alraune. Their evil Surplices have passed through Hades' twisted rebirth process, reviving in the Underworld, allowing me to count them like the shooting of stars."

Just as he was saying this, the Specters beheld Lemon's Surplice fall off his body in pieces, as if it had been cut apart. In reality, the evil in the metal left it as soon as Lemon died, robbing it of its integrity. It now slowly crumbled to black dust before their eyes, taken away by a mysterious gust.

Lucifer was all too familiar with this. What Shaka wasn't aware of was that one of them had already successfully been reanimated, namely Coronis. "…So what?"

Shaka held the beads close and his closed eyes perused them as if open. "Nine have died… yet none of their beads have turned to signal the sealing of their souls once more. This means that the true Specter of each unchanged bead that was sealed by my ancestral predecessor Virgo Asmita remains alive and well in this era. Alraune Lemon has fallen… but Alraune Queen, the Celestial Demonic Star, is alive and well." A cocky smile then filled his young lips. "So… dear phantoms… who are you supposed to be?"

A series of separate reactions of revolt, fear, surprise, and confusion went through the eyes and faces of various Specters and Skeletons. However, they all understood that one of their greatest advantages was the combination of their freedom from Hades as well as Sanctuary not realizing they were independent from the God of the Underworld.

The Prince remained collected. "Let's say you're onto something with this musing of yours; why does that make me a traitor?"

"That is the interesting part, is it not? I can sense perfectly well, after all, the difference between you and the others. Your Star, even if not included in my beads, is real," confessed Shaka. "The others may be phantoms, but I sense the cold, moon-like shine of a star in you, Daemon… You are a True Specter indeed. So, by which twist of fate have you escaped Asmita's prison?"

The red eyes tensed; by the blessings of Hermes it seemed as if despite the Virgo Saint's apparent omniscience about their karmas, he was not aware of all of the Prince's secrets, but it was important to find out the extent of the boy's ignorance. For example, was Shaka aware that Acheron Charon, the Celestial Spatial Star, was not sealed to give place in the 108 beads to Michael? (*) Lucifer imagined that among the beads, the Absolute Star was present, but not Spatial. Shaka had no way to guess this fact.

The question was, was Shaka capable of adding the Pride Star to his collection or determine if the Star was still loyal to Hades? As things stood, Hades theoretically could still revive him over and over in battle if he so wished. Given the current tense state between them, to say the least, Daemon doubted that the Underworld God would revive him for anything more than punishing him all over again for his blatant treason. Determining the limits of Shaka's knowledge, however, would make the difference between being able to continue using Pandora's castle as a decoy or not.

(*) Chapter 36

"Yet, the time for war between Hades and Athena has not arrived yet," Shaka continued. "The seal of Asmita is weakening, but it lives on, keeping the full power of the Specters locked away in Mount Rozan. I am therefore forced to conclude this is some sort of adventurous betrayal on your part, Daemon. Do you think perhaps Hades will forgive you for making use of what is obviously a group of his servant thralls?"

"Thralls?!" Golem Treble roared. "Do you think we're slaves?!"

Elf Rossalier joined the outrage. "Wipe him out, Prince! He knows too much anyway!"

"QUIET!" Lucifer roared, silencing them. He then faced Shaka as he focused his cosmos into his left hand, making it crackle with purple sparks. "You know nothing, Virgo. You're not but a child tampering with powers you do not understand. Arles has clearly lost his mind in putting a child in Asmita's shoes, so I will rip that armor off your body before the arrogance it taught you cuts your naïve existence short. I'm sure Hades will then be happy to answer all your questions about me in the Underworld."

The confidence in the child was brimming. "You're welcome to try. I've been waiting for an encounter like this."

This legitimately surprised Lucian. "What?"

"Your willpower… it is quite powerful for a Specter, Pride Star," Shaka confessed. "You even defeated a couple of my basic techniques. As this battle progresses, I'm sure you will show me the limits of my power… or my patience. It is so wonderful that I'll grow closer to Buddha thanks to this encounter." He then spread his arms out. "So show me your power!"

The purple aura swelled all of a sudden, projecting the image of a cackling devil, and the sparks in Lucifer's hand sizzled loudly as they condensed into a long javelin of pure energy. His red eyes took aim at the beads and launched the missile!

The blast coursed across the Hall of Innocence at the speed of light with the crash of a thunderbolt. In the brief nanoseconds in-between, Shaka's hair flowed with the surge of cosmos at play and he gathered his hands in prayer. "KHA!"

A thunderous sound resounded like the shattering of a great glass layer between two worlds! Not in the physical world they inhabited, but in the realm of the Cosmos, as two mighty galaxies collided with one another, one dark and another clear. The clear galaxy, however, completely rejected the advance of its antagonist, putting between itself and any hostilities towards it an abject distance of countless light-years.

Daemon Lucifer widened his eyes, sensing this cosmic event and seeing his sizzling javelin stuck in mid-air, trying to travel towards Shaka yet seemingly unable to cross any inch closer to its target.

The boy beheld the halted attack with his 7th sense. It was a javelin brimming with electrical cosmos fine-tuned by half a millennium of battle experience. It resembled the sharpness of Aiolos' arrows more closely than the rude brutish cracking of little Aiolia's thunderbolts.

"How wonderful… already a more refined attack than Alraune's Sorrow of Souls…I can feel the undying will to shoot across the stars of the Cosmos in it. This attack would surely pierce many powerful walls." He then made the javelin explode in an electromagnetic pulse, which failed to harm anyone. "…But I'm afraid this is not enough."

A groan was heard from the Prince and his aura reignited. "DARK SPEAR BARRAGE!" Lucifer roared, this time firing off a whole array of javelins at a machine-gun rate!

Each and every one, despite angling towards Shaka differently, was all stopped just before converging unto the Gold Saint, equally frozen. He beheld each one hanging in the air. He sensed a wonderful wealth of intent behind them, emotions of ambition mixed with the understanding necessary to mix two elements as volatile with one another as Darkness and Electricity, but he also felt the thoughts of one whose spirit had been tormented by being in the Underworld for so long. Still, to him, it was a simple matter of detecting the murderous motives behind them to nullify their aggression with his barrier.

"Begone!" Shaka commanded, and with a flicker of his hand, the barrier around his body shone for a brief second, causing the energy of the Dark Spear Barrage javelins to explode outwards in several electromagnetic pulses which bashed back the False Specter army.

The servants of Lucifer were agape. "No way, even the Prince's attacks?!... What kind of barrier is that?!"

More perceptive, Neferti gritted her teeth in the realization of what happened. "No cosmos is even being burned…It's like he's putting himself in some bubble we can't even perceive in this world!"

The Prince narrowed his eyes. "I see… it's just like that witch, Haisaku."

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

The Past

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Cygnus and Andromeda stood agape at the sight of Kagaho falling in battle, defeated by Phoenix Haisaku in seemingly one attack even though he had just fought past both of them to strike her. Haisaku herself collapsed to her hand and sheath, sweating, and the two Bronze Saints rushed to her.

Andromeda helped her up, gasping her name. "Saint Phoenix!"

The woman panted, feeling the rush of Rising Darkness' cosmos in her body subside and leave behind a powerless flesh vessel of someone who couldn't stand up even to a bunch of Skeletons. "I'm… I'm alright, thank you."

Cygnus beheld the frail warrior, his one eye shifting between her and the fallen Bennu. "What… did you do to him?"

Phoenix turned to the dark-haired Specter, whose body was seemingly untouched, but whose Surplice had been ripped apart while scars of bright orange energy scalded his skin from her slashing combo, his eyes whitened. Her heart sank. None of what she had told Kagaho was a lie; she had indeed served under him before her awakening from Hades' thralldom and she had truly learned about the suicide of his brother, Sui, being at the root of his Specter transformation. There was no way for her to simply divine all that, after all. That just made it all the more painful that her attack had worked, for it meant that not even evoking Sui's memory got Kagaho to not choose self-destruction over salvation.

Unfortunately, this was the reality of the Specters and Skeletons, including herself. They would never have fallen under Hades' control if they were not the kind of people to prefer the cowardly safety of the shadow over the bright, scalding shine of Athena. Her escape had been nothing short of a miracle; the exception rather than the norm.

Yet, despite this difficult battle in their souls as well as all the cruel decadence she subjected herself to at their hands, a side of her always hoped she could get more to follow, especially the ones that had marked her the most.

She breathed heavily. "Nothing… he did this to himself…I just gave him a choice." she sadly answered.

"Choice? More like brainwashing!" someone called.

The three of them gasped and took up arms in alarm in the voice's direction, finding none other than Daemon Lucifer, the Celestial Star of Pride, standing mightily before them, his teeth gritting in bloody fury. His magnificent Surplice was smudged from battle all over its otherwise resplendent surface, blood dripped from bruises found in his face and arms and his dark cape was ripped in several spots, indicating the hardships of battling Defteros and Dohko in a row.

The Libra Saint himself was held by his hand, unconscious, and was tossed at their feet, heavily injured.

She gasped and stepped towards him. "DOHKO!"

His cruel finger raised at her. "NOT ONE STEP FORWARD, TRAITOR, OR I'LL KICK HIM DOWN TO THIS LAVA BELCH THAT SPAWNED YOU!"

The three Bronze Saints held fast, not doubting for a second the Pride Star would do it. Andromeda and Cygnus exchanged complicit looks, coordinating their intentions and their thoughts of being glad that they had reserved their secret weapons for this moment.

Feeling completely in control, Lucifer made his next demand. "Give me Kagaho, NOW!"

Cygnus scoffed. "Suddenly we have a Specter worried about his underlings?!"

The prince clicked his tongue. "Not exactly." In reality, he simply liked having Bennu under his wing because he knew it drove Michael insane. It was one of the reasons he brought the rash loner into this mission to begin with. He also prided himself on being a successful leader among the Specters that didn't just rashly sacrifice his men.

Andromeda nodded at Cygnus, promising to back him up with his chains if Lucifer tried anything dirty.

Cygnus, however, had reservations, which he transmitted mentally. "Shun, are you sure?! After everything Haisaku said about him?! This guy could REALLY be your brother's former self like Tenma is Seiya's. Sending Kagaho back to the Specters isn't the best way to put that to rest!"

With some hesitation, though, Andromeda insisted. "Even if he is, I don't think it's our place to do anything about it in this time period, Hyoga. Me messing with his former life could have worse consequences…We could even be born apart back home. Besides… we need to get Roshi back."

Reluctantly, the white-armored Saint picked up and carried the unconscious Specter, gave Lucifer's smirking face a stern look from his one eye, and dumped Kagaho at his feet. "HERE! Now let us take Dohko!"

The Pride Star scoffed "By all means!" and blasted both of them back with an empty shockwave, pushing Dohko and Cygnus away from Kagaho.

"HYOGA!" Andromeda screamed, catching Cygnus and Dohko.

But the distraction was just enough for Lucifer to charge a large round of cosmos into his hand, aiming a sphere of darkness and lightning at them in the narrow volcanic overlook, backing them against the hot edge.

Haisaku and Andromeda gasped and stepped away, but their heels felt the edge of the basalt ground ending and the sounds of magma rumbling below.

Cygnus got up, dusting himself with a groan. "I knew it!"

The smirk on the Specter widened. "I honored my end of the deal. You gave me Bennu and I gave you that weak tiger back. Now I get to be rid of all four of you without triggering that witch's powers!" he bragged, aiming the ball slightly lower to the ground. "After all… I'll be sure to be quite aggressive to the ground you're standing on, instead of to you."

"… So you understand." Haisaku commented.

The Prince's red eyes squinted. "Saints of Athena need to learn they're not the only ones who can study techniques. Everyone has a pair of eyes on them, after all! I don't know what's the source of those powers, but I've deciphered enough; if I strike you, you'll somehow return all my mortal violence on me, correct?!"

The Andromeda Saint, hearing this, felt a familiarity with how Shaka's powers were used against him and his friends back at home until his brother saved them from him. Even the Phoenix Saint's Genma Ken had been nullified and reflected by Shaka somehow. He understood the Virgo Saint's powers rested on some sort of Buddhist principle that believed the cosmos could be used to make one be destroyed by their sins, but his knowledge was limited.

Haisaku nodded. "Correct." she acknowledged. "But, Prince, I must ask you, then,… If you understand that I have power over your evil, then you must understand your Star will ultimately destroy you,.. so why do you insist on this path?!"

Sensing an unusual revolt in her tone and the indifference in the Prince's eyes, Cygnus insisted on getting back on track. "Saint Haisaku, I don't think reasoning with him will work so well! Remember Kagaho?!"

Just as Cygnus predicted, Lucifer was unaffected. "My star? Destroy me?! Pah! The Star of Pride is the reason I bloom in this world, traitor, instead of having been stamped out by Sanctuary's Silver Saint assassins!" Lucifer retorted, referring to a moment he lived early in his life.

"What? But you must understand, Prince –" Haisaku insisted "- that Hades promised us all perfection and Elysium! But all Hades has done is taken our flaws and blinded us with them!"

But the Devil doubled down. "Only a pathetic self-loathing traitor, someone with no honor or pride, would see it that way! Of course, you would think us blind! Of course, you would walk out of Hades' gifts! You're just a miserable, weak Skeleton! You never understood how they were what made you strong, so you never moved up, and never were loyal to us! They are the reminders that we, Specters, have earned Hades' love!"

Haisaku paused, an expression of shock stamped on her unmasked face.

Cygnus groaned, disgusted at what he was hearing. "I told you it was pointless…" he voiced. "Saint Haisaku, I understand what you're doing, but these people aren't the self-aware types. Let me and Shun take care of this!"

But Haisaku just lowered her darkened face sadly, contemplating the words being thrown at her.

Lucifer laughed, looking down at Dohko. "That adopted son of yours fought well… you taught him an interesting ability,… but you forgot, Phoenix, how powerful the Princes of Hades are! Maybe Rhadamanthys and Aiacos would have fallen outside this cavern to him, but not ME!" the ball of cosmos in his hand then whirred loudly, ready to blast to pieces the only thing holding the four Saints of Athena from falling to their deaths. "Athena's era is over! Now is her turn to fall!"

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

The Present

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

With confidence firm in his spirit, the Daemon Specter faced off his child adversary, recognizing the threat of his kind of power for having seen very similar forms of it in the distant past. Greater warriors than Shaka have tried to stop him with them, though, and they have failed.

This boy would be no exception. Lucifer's power roared into a new aura, swelling around the man who defied Hades like a kingly mantle.

Shaka tensed his expression anxiously, wondering what dark trick or ugly words to Athena would be thrown at him next. "So you insist on your own destruction?... Hopefully, you have something better to show me than some spears of cosmos."

The Daemon laughed. "Yes, I do, and I am oh-so-happy. When I saw a mere child guarding this place, I was furious at another disappointing challenge to my triumph, but now that you can cast these incredible barriers I realized I had all this upside down! You're not a disappointment, you'll be vindication!"

The boy found this utterly foolish. "Vindication?... You poor fool. I suppose the act of putting so many of my lower neighbors in danger was not enough cruelty for you? Do you not realize that with every act of arrogance, you sink yourself further in one of the Six Realms?"

But Lucifer's aura kept swelling, making the Hall of Innocence tremble with his power, shaking down dust and pebbles from the ceiling, unleashing the cosmos of a warrior that surpassed the three Judges of the Underworld. The False Specters felt this and stood back, gasping at the sight of chilling demons and shadows casted on the walls by the purple light of Lucifer's power.

The devil cackled. "Yes, vindication… for you see, now my triumph will be all the more deserved… and all the more cathartic! I never got a chance to crush a Virgo under my foot! I have killed Taurus, tormented Aries, broken Libra, and humiliated so many others… but to shatter in front of Athena the Gold Saint called the mightiest of them all?! My rival denied me that pleasure! But now… your defeat will be another addition to my collection of symbolic victories over Sanctuary's pathetic myths!"

Surrounded by laughter supporting the Specter, the young Gold Saint paused in consideration of what he was hearing. None of the writings he had read at Virgo and none of the memories he had inherited through the Buddha recalled battles with anyone even resembling the foe now before him, but it was entirely possible it was amidst the many recollections he had not yet explored in his own Cosmos. Still, the ego in this man was clearly strong and his karma suggested a highly developed martial ability, not to mention he had already broken out of two techniques of his when others never have.

Shaka, therefore, thought strange his delight in defeating an army of children. "Do you feel no shame at all? You call defeating two young boys and three empty temples a triumph?"

Lucifer chuckled in realization, calculating who Shaka spoke of. "Two boys?! Oh, I see, so that's why Leo ran! I had a feeling the intel from Ainsel saying he was a toddler was true!" he gloated, shaking his head. "Perhaps it's the Pope whose shame you should question. He's putting the defense of these sacred Houses in the hands of prepubescent human beings! Isn't that embarrassing?..."

"He fled? How interesting…" Shaka mused to himself, feeling a sense of relief about it. He thought the lack of combat at the Halls of Herakles other than the Golem Specter's sacrilegious bombardment was strange. Not that he expected poor little Aiolia to put up a fight, but at least he had foreseen the Leo Cloth itself to mount some form of resistance, yet no violence in the karma was felt by Shaka coming from the 5th House.

If it were not for the jamming, the Virgo would have been able to tell more of what was going on other than who was committing karmic fouls and where. How frustrating.

This made the boy's thoughts turn to the 13th Temple, where the Pope resided. Arles had furiously denied the possibility of the foe being the so-acclaimed Daemon, but now that he had direct confrontational evidence, Shaka felt the need to confirm this somehow by relaying a message, yet the jamming barriers cast by the enemy were strong, thick and had already reached past his own Temple and perhaps Milo's. Considering the situation, Shaka was pretty sure he could take advantage of the Specter's rampant ignorance to transmit something of vital importance up the stairs.

However, he'd likely only get to do it once before they caught on, so he should pick something of importance, like the enemy boss's identity or some weakness he has noticed. After that, he needed to do his best to wipe out the enemy leader from the surface of the earth, as Shaka felt that the odds of stopping his underlings from sneaking past Virgo were gradually decreasing!

After some consideration, he discretely took a handful of lotus petals spread around his throne and burned cosmos in them to write two sets of letters, one set on each soft surface, in Japanese, a language he was sure the enemy would not understand.

レオ セーフ

Feeling the currents of fate blowing in the air, Shaka tossed the petals aside, and ignited his cosmos, pretending it all to be a gesture of battle theatrics.

"WELL, Specter, you now face a child who is more than capable of annihilating you! Since you see yourself as so deserving of a proper battle -" And his hair flowed up with the rise of golden energies around him as he raised his hand, which glowed especially strong. "- I will grant you the destruction appropriate to one of Hades' ghouls. Your very existence will be cleansed off this Earth, like a smudge wiped off a marble floor."

As the petals flew off the temple, Lucifer stood fast, gritting teeth anxiously. As Shaka's cosmos rose, he already felt a tingling sensation similar to when they were all trapped by Sati, whereas his grip on his surroundings seemed to be suddenly fading, like being inside a plane about to take off to the air.

The sound of a bell suddenly rang!

All of them felt their feet losing contact with the ground, transported into a celestial reality!

As they gasped at this, finding themselves in the heavens, Shaka's aura reddened into the tone of the petals of a lotus flower, forming fleshy layers of energy beneath his feet that rose up at him like a budding plant before collapsing outwards, blooming! Utter silence filled this reality as Shaka's palm extended to them, trapping them without them realizing in a space he could easily target them on, especially Lucifer.

"Now… be pacified, phantoms!" His other palm, the one that glowed and held the beads, rose to the hair, and Shaka's voice sounded out like a declaration of death. "TENMA KŌFUKU!"

Lucifer gasped, beholding Shaka's cosmos exploding as a shower of golden light, swallowing them up as the image of a girl riding the pale horse formed, sending out vicious forces of destruction in every direction that cleansed the evil tainting the Hall of Innocence!

Time slowed down considerably to his senses.

Then, his Surplice-armored body was assaulted by what felt like the force of a speeding, scalding train, seemingly running him over across a galactic distance with its monstrous power! His muscles reeled intensely, shaking with the tidal wave of power that just bashed against him as he tried to stonewall it with his armored body! For a moment, his senses were completely overwhelmed as his body was illuminated by the glowing gold, not having expected in a million years such power to be formable by a small child.

Furious screeching sounds were heard as Lucifer's heels dug into the marble ground, trailing across it as he got pushed back by the force of the golden blast, his arms reeling like machinery as they tried to stop the pacifying wave! He roared savagely, summoning every bit of his strength as his armor grew hotter and hotter on his skin, its sinful nature being preyed upon by the purity of Shaka's cosmos, but even his loudest shout was drowned out by the pacifying silence all around him, cutting the Specter off from the very universe.

The False Specters around them screamed, blinded by the light and bracing themselves, but the Celestial Star of Pride was then seemingly crushed by the attack, which smashed against the ground and flooded the entire edifice with light in the space of nano-seconds, threatening to blow up the entire temple.

And blow up it did, shining outwards its glaring beams over the body resisting it before loudly blasting straight across the Hall's pavement, ripping many of its pillars bases off their columns and meteoring a trailing crater all the way up to the doorway. Dust and smoke spread everywhere, obfuscating the results.

"PRINCE!" the skeletons screamed.

"It is done. The Daemon Specter has been turned to dust." Shaka declared, turning his closed eyes to the rest of them. Feeling the dread in their spirits, he pinned them on their folly. "Do you not see what awaits the impure? You have all stepped into a realm you should have not. By the glory of Athena, you will all be wiped out!"

The army of dark warriors shook in their feet, having never seen such a devastating blow be delivered to their leader. Lucifer didn't even look like he could do anything about it. It seemed that when it came to understanding the depth of the universal power that was the Cosmos, they were all but young children wearing mighty armors, not much more tempered than Aiolia himself. For when it came to tapping into the true abilities of it, more than just moving at the speed of light, the power of the Cosmos would make what you do resemble more a divine command than a powerful battle technique. The difference between what a warrior like Saga did with Galaxian Explosion and what Shaka has just done with Tenma Kofuku might as well be between a basic Meteor Fist and Athena's dreaded Thunder of Nike. It was therefore not so much that Shaka defeated Lucifer, but that any resistance he could have put up against it would be too simple and earthly, like comparing a circle to a sphere.

To Shaka, however, this was the obvious result of such an encounter and he let out a soft sigh of relief in that, in the end, he was indeed able to stop the enemy. For a brief moment, as he sensed the enemy's power climb and climb, Shaka had indeed felt a bit of doubt about whether he would be able to defeat him as easily as the others. He prayed for Athena to forgive the enemies' foolishness and lay the souls of those they murdered to rest.

How foolish of himself; he should have not lost faith in his abilities and Buddha's creeds so easily. Holding his hands in prayer, Shaka's body shone with a golden outline and he casted away the Doubt in his mind. Instantly his spirit felt reinvigorated by-

"D-Don't count me out just yet, Virgo!" a poisonous growl sounded.

Shaka and the crowd of Specters turned to the voice, stunned!

The dust cleared up, revealing a panting, but living Lucifer, whose tense arms slowly lowered as it became clear to him that the blast had been taken completely. He stepped out of the rubble, amazed but healthy, causing an eruption of cheers from the Skeletons and False Specters! His magnificent surplice of purple metal and red gems had taken barely any damage, with only his cape ripped a bit and some marks on his upper chest and shoulders, where the brunt of the attack hit.

"Demon Pacifier?!" Lucifer loosely translated, having been around Saints long enough to know their strange affinity for the Japanese language. "Don't make me laugh! What did you think, uh?! That you could exorcise me like a lowly Skeleton?! …I'm not some poltergeist, Virgo! I AM A WARRIOR! NOW BATTLE ME!"

Despite the Prince's resurgence, none of his supporters dared to voice a cheer in Shaka's presence, who merely beheld the Specter like a smudge on his table that he hadn't wiped thoroughly enough.

As such, he clasped his hands in prayer for Lucifer, for Shaka would yet have to do more ugly battling to safeguard Sanctuary.

Lucifer inhaled sharply as he felt two new waves of golden, demon-pacifying light come at him from both sides! His hands spread out and he roared, taking in the crushing, steel-pressing Cosmos blasts unto his frame, which shook painfully as the burning walls of light tried to violently crush him like a pair of gigantic golden hands! Rarely in his life, he had felt such incredible forces being enacted upon them, comparing them to the pain of suffering his former teacher Thanatos' Terrible Providence, yet coming from the Cosmos of a mere child! The harder they crushed him, the more revolted the Daemon felt!

At this small instant in time, as if Shaka's praying hands truly held Lucian in them, the boy felt the thorny, dark existence of the Specter in his soft palms, armored as they were. It was like holding something incredibly toxic which burned at him in that silent world, yet Shaka's pitying cosmos attempted to cleanse it for the Specter's own good, showing him the loving silence of Buddha. His evil would be evened into a nice, neutral balance and his Surplice would burn to a cinder.

Yet, though his body initially relented and his arms were pushed in, the silver-haired Prince refused to surrender and, with a sudden loud bang that ended the silence caused by the technique's power, the Specter pushed off the blasts to the side, which fired away over the cowering Specters to the walls, blasting right through them to the outside world and leaving burning new corridors of charred marble behind.

The Specter exhaled painfully, feeling his body released from the shockingly strong pressure he was subjected to. He looked at his hands and saw the surface of his gauntlets smoking. Growling like a mad beast, he beheld Shaka's peaceful visage with a look that promised vengeance. "I said… battle me!"

For the first time, Shaka was beholding something truly new. "… Very well, Specter…. Then a warrior's death you shall have!"

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

House of Sagittarius

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

"NO, they're going to DIE!" Aiolos screamed, rushing out of his House with a bow in hand!

"AIOLOS, STOP!" the Pope commanded, his voice carried through the cosmos.

The tenth guardian of Sanctuary bit his tongue and screeched to a halt, obedient. His body shook in frustration and his fingers squeezed the grip of the Sagittarius Bow tensely, wishing he could toss it down at the enemies storming the 6th Temple. While the enemy jamming barrier had now enveloped everything past even the Scorpio Temple, his keen eyes had seen very clearly the crowd of dark-armored enemies walking inside the Hall of Innocence from his elevated position. He had spent all this time trying to stop it with his arrows, after all.

The enemy, however, was quick to adapt. Even early on as they walked through the Aries Temple, they knew to keep their shields up and their cosmos united to brave Aiolos' hail of shooting stars. Even with the assistance of Camus' Aurora Veil slowing their pace and his missiles growing stronger and more furious the further they got up, the Specters gradually adopted quicker marching up the stairs, tighter defenses and more determined charges.

Now even Aiolia's Temple has been taken and the flame of Virgo is dying. "I…I can't just stay here! My brother's DOWN THERE!" he roared. This was not to mention Aldebaran, Mephisto and Shaka. "His house is burning! I can see green fire coming out of its broken roof! What did those bastards DO?!"

"I know, my boy… I know."

His blue eyes looked up at the distant 13th Temple. "Then let me save him! Let me save Shaka! These murderers will do the unspeakable if I don't!"

But greater concerns plagued the Pope. "I can't have you leave your House, Aiolos. Not yet." The Pope said. He had no choice but to tell the truth. "If you do, another armor will be out of their Temple-"

Aiolos gulped, having feared this. "-and the defenses will go down, correct?" he guessed, surprising the Pope. "You can just say it, your Holiness. Saga and I figured it out from what happened at the Festival…We just didn't have proof."

The Pope could neither confirm nor deny this. No matter how much he trusted his appointed Gold Saints, it was equally dangerous to let them know how the defenses could be subverted as it was to let the door open to a real enemy. The Civil War had taught him this, and Priam's assassination attempt only reinforced this. In his position, Arles had to think about the long-term consequences of the decisions he made. If he could defeat this invasion without weakening Sanctuary for later problems, he would do everything in his power to do so.

At least until Athena was reborn.

"Battle rages in the lower Temples, Aiolos, and the Leo Cloth has evaded capture somehow. We can both feel that in the cosmos, can't we? I believe it's safe to say your friends have returned." Shion reminded him, referring to the noises and flashes that came off the Cancer Temple and the brief collapse of the jamming barrier they detected, which unfortunately took them by such surprise that they failed to capitalize on it. "Aiolia is safe. I'm sure of it. If the stubborn Lion of Nemea did, I'm sure your brother has. Either Saga or Lance or the Papal Guards must have certainly rescued him."

The archer calmed his breath, trying to think clearly. He didn't feel okay at all with relying on a feeling about whether or not Aiolia was safe. While Aiolos also believed in his heart that his Gemini best friend had indeed returned, he had less experience than the Pope to go by and felt the need to personally ensure the safety of his little brother.

Pressing a palm on his face in dread, he sat, trying to resist the strong impulse he had to rush down the stairs and personally shooting an arrow into each of these murderers. "Think about the others above, Aiolos… think about them." the Sagittarius told himself.

On his end, the Pope's heart broke. Not only was he demanding something terrible of Aiolos, but he was being forced to repeat the same mistake he did with Priam; demanding a Saint trained for virtue and heroism to accept compromise instead. It wasn't in Aiolos' nature to accept the unjust or leave his brother's fate in the hands of luck.

The strength that he showed in doing so, just because the Pope requested it, though, deeply impressed Shion. The winged archer clearly had the kindness of a Saintly Saint, but also the temperament of someone who realized difficult choices had to be made. He was also clearly interested in Sanctuary's safety and well-being, as he devised with Saga exactly how the mountain's defenses were powered when Athena was not around to directly project her blessings, just based on one incident.

Suddenly, Aiolos' keen sight caught something flying in the air, blown in the wind. He extended his hand, feeling himself called by it somehow. The pink petals landed on his hands gently. "…Lotus petals? Did Shaka… send this?"

Shion's attention was piqued. "A message? What do they say?"

Aiolos cringed at the bizarre Asian characters. One looked like a hill slope and the other like static on tv. "I don't know, your Holiness. It's five letters in an eastern language. It looks like those letters you sometimes see on his beads."

"It must be Kanji or Hiragana, then… Asmita, my old friend, burned the letters of the Evil Stars in that language in his seal. Aiolos, describe them to me."

The young Greek struggled a bit, but painstakingly managed to one-by-one describe each letter, using comparisons like calling the first a slanted L and the fourth a straight dash. He felt absolutely embarrassed at his ignorance, especially considering such an important seal made use of the language. The Pope made sure to repeat the descriptions at least twice to make sure he got it right.

He noticed the pause in the Pope. Did he describe them that poorly? "Your Holiness?... What did Shaka say?"

"Aiolos… (レオ) Leo…(セーフ) safe." Shion muttered, widening the Sagittarius eyes. "Your little brother is okay!"

Frozen by this, Aiolos felt his eyes tear up. "Shaka!"

Of all the things the seemingly uncaring boy risked his life to transmit, he picked this piece of knowledge?

Suddenly, the boy often called the paladin of the twelve felt absolutely crushed by the kindness in this attack from his downstairs comrade.

With a feeling of relief swelling his heart, he then turned his attention back to Aiolia's House, gripping his bow like he wished he had a 'fetching' arrow that would pick Aiolia and fly him back to his older brother. He didn't know exactly how Aiolia escaped the Specters with a Cloth he could not take with him, but there was still a war going on and things could still go terribly wrong. Aiolos searched for a way to somehow detect the cub from where he stood.

As he pondered a million possibilities as to how he could magically go down there and save his little lion cub without putting everyone else at risk, though, he squinted as he detected something odd. "The flames are… smaller?"

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

House of Leo

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

"Again! PRESAEPE UNDERWORLD WAVE!" the Cancer Gold Saint shouted, pointing his finger at the second wall of fire, deeper inside the house. It sizzled and cut down the middle, beginning to form an opening like the parted seas, but it was slow and shy to form. "Fucking fires, just GO AWAY ALREADY!"

"Patience, you fool. The path to the Underworld is not a straight one. Or do you want them to ignite you again?"

Lance groaned, impatient, and tried to stay cool-headed. He tried rushing this process earlier and his arm suddenly caught fire, but the teenager still felt the emergency of the situation pressing on his head.

Andromeda Shinta sat down by the Leo's temple broken gateway to watch Lance hold up his hands at the green flames burning the innards of Aiolia's House. The Cancer was doing good work, but the fires reached so high that he felt that even if he tried to climb up the Temple to skip it, provided there weren't any defenses built in for that anyway, something terrible could happen to him anyway as a result of the Golem Specter's technique.

Little by little, it seemed the fires receded, giving charred ground to the Cancer Saint and allowing him to take one step at a time into the Hall of Herakles, but it was obvious it would still take a while before a path to Virgo was open.

This allowed Shinta to cool down his anxiety and recollect everything that had happened so far. Tucking his legs into his chest in reflection, he recalled waking up at Andromeda Island to save Elda and Albiore. He looked out to the starry sky and wished he could contact Saint Kastiel to check up on them, but wherever he was the Papillion Specter was still clearly blocking mental messaging. It was quite despairing. He resisted the urge to ask Lance if he thought they were okay since it would force him to mention the Kerberos Saint.

Suddenly, he heard a far-off sizzling sound and looked at the Fire Clock. His green eyes widened at the sixth fire dwindling out. "The Virgo flame! It's getting smaller!"

Lance's teeth gritted as he peeked over his shoulder. He couldn't make it out well from where he stood. "…We have to get to Shaka, then."

The danger in Shinta's head being imagined around the small Indian boy made him panic. With a breath coming out his nose, though, he took in how jarring their situation was. "Did you ever think this would happen to us?"

Lance stayed focused but answered Shinta's questions as best as he could. "A Specter invasion? No, not really," he confessed. The worst he had dealt with in his life until then was his mission to Death Queen Island and the events of the 88 Knights Festival.

"Do you think we will be okay?"

The Cancer Saint narrowed his eyes tensely. "… Yeah. Shaka is not normal, you know? He has all these weird techniques and powers that flip you upside down before you can even shout your move out. I don't think the Specters know what they've gotten themselves into." he lied. Deep inside he felt that a six-year-old boy had no chance against a group of warriors including Daemon Lucifer, but what could he do from there but hope that the boy had made it out of his House?

Shinta perked up when he saw Lance's exorcism wavering for a bit. "Uh? Are you okay?"

The Cancer Gold Saint shook his head and refocused on what he was doing, casting out more waves at the fires. "Yeah. It's that damn Papillion Specter…"

Worried, the Andromeda got up. "You were wincing earlier when you tried to capture him and said he did something to you. What was it?"

Lance snorted out, feeling ridiculous. "It's… nothing. He…" His jaw clenched, recalling the battle. He gradually took more steps into the Leo House as he mused to keep working while he talked, since his red eyes glanced at Shinta and saw his friend would not easily back down from this. "It was one of his shitty mind tricks. He awakened some stuff from my childhood in an attempt to disrupt my focus with the Cosmos, stuff that I usually keep… locked away."

The Bronze Saint gasped. "OH, a memory seal? I see!" he realized. He had learned about these in class with Master Guardnia. Some teachers employed them as a method to heal psychological scars in recruits since Sanctuary relied on getting mostly orphans to bolster its ranks and a lot of them had traumas. "What were those memories about, can you tell?"

Lance scoffed. "No, I can't. That's the point, dummy! Don't you get it?"

Shinta's face went red. "Oh, right…"

"I do think I had my seal done for a reason." Lance rationalized. "And if that fight with that butterfly freak was anything to go by, whatever I sent away is so worthless and painful that it gets in the way of me using cosmos, so I assume the reason stands…I'm already enough of a pansy when around the cold, I don't need more reasons to be weak in times like these."

Shinta reflected on this. "I always assumed your coldness problem was because of the time you spent in Mount Olympus? Why didn't you lock that away?"

Lance irked. "I thought about it, actually… but Mount Olympus is also where I unlocked my cosmos… I'm afraid that if I do it, I'll lose my ability to use it. Besides…I lost track of Noah, the person who originally helped me. Haven't seen him in years."

Shinta nodded, but something still left him confused. "So wait, if that Specter made you remember them, do you remember your memories now?"

Hoping this would put an end to the conversation, Lance made a genuine effort to entertain the question and tried to think back to those flashes he experienced. As hard as he tried to, though, he remembered getting the flashes, but their image was already gone from his memory, locked away behind Noah's triangular seal.

His armored shoulders shrugged. "Um… sorry, Shinta, but they're gone again. Trust me, though…, it's for the best."

"Perhaps we can go get that Specter to do it again… and I could take over your mind as you get those flashes. A front-row seat for whatever your 'crippling trauma' is." Karkinos mockingly emphasized. Deathtoll was a deviant, but never had any embarrassment of his memories. "Not that I'm particularly curious, but it would drastically reduce my frustration if I found out what exactly made you such a talentless Cancer Saint."

The idea revolted Lance. "Oh yeah, right, like having a talking armor on me all day at work isn't an invasion of my privacy enough as it is!"

Shinta chuckled at this sight. "Ah, ah, you don't get along with your armor, do you?"

Lance rolled his eyes and finished getting rid of another layer of green fire. "We're different types of Cancers…"

Shinta beheld his pink chained gauntlets. "I can relate a bit. Sometimes Andromeda will say something so inconsiderate and spoiled it makes me hard to imagine she sacrificed herself for her people. I suppose they're really complex personalities…" he imagined. "Still… it's really reassuring to see you back in your armor, considering what's going on."

This made Lance pause in sudden realization; he had Pegasus with him when he was being assaulted by Alraune and Daemon at Rozan, but the armor was 'killed', so after climbing Twin Peaks Mountain to train with Roshi, rushing back to storm the Aries Temple and then fighting through Behemoth Torak and Papillion Ainsel without any protection whatsoever form Cosmos attacks, the teenager did feel really comforted by having a top-notch Cloth back on his vulnerable body.

It was then that Agapethos, the Papal Soldier lieutenant stationed at the Leo Temple, showed up with the rest of his men from the soldier pass. "Lord Cancer, we've sent young Aiolia down the passage. My men will take him to Sanctuary Town."

The red-eyed Cancer was furious. "WHAT?! What the hell are you still doing back here?! Go with him!"

The lieutenant shook his head. "Forgive us, Lord Cancer, but we humbly refuse. It's our duty to defend the Zodiac, and young Lord Aiolia does not need an entire battalion of Papal hoplites to escort him. The Temple of Virgo is currently in danger when he should have died stopping the enemy from getting there… We are helping you take the Houses back."

Lance didn't have time or concentration to split between what he was doing and arguing with these grunts. "FINE! Then just sit there and wait! Once I'm done here we'll go save Shaka!" Speaking of undefended Gold Saints. "What is taking Saga so long to get his armor back, anyway?"

Shinta blinked and looked down the stairs. "He must be at Gemini already, right?"

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

House of Gemini

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Further down below, through the Third Temple's back entrance, Saga ventured into his House, wary of any enemies that may have eluded Lance on his way up. He had to go get his armor back, find out what happened to Kanon, and then decide how to help Aldebaran out, all while Lance got to work on the Leo Temple's blockage. Fortunately, Shinta was convinced to follow his friend upstairs and Deathmask preferred to nest up at the Cancer Temple, ruined by battle as it was. Besides, the last thing the third Gold Saint needed was someone looking over his shoulder right now as he tried to ascertain the status of his younger twin.

It wasn't long before he entered the labyrinthic halls to find all the battle damage the temple was subjected to. Not only the fighting Kanon got involved in was memorialized in the scars on the ground and pillars, but the Specters' attempts to get through the twin labyrinth illusion by busting down fake doors and rushing through looping corridors had now overlapped back into the real temple, doubling the wear and tear.

More alarmingly, there was a massive crater right in the middle of the Temple. Unbeknownst to Saga, it resulted from when the Galaxian Explosion clashed with Dark Revenge Blast, a combat between techniques that ended poorly for Kanon and had set the rest of the temple's innards on fire before Lance passed through it.

Using this to ascertain the exact location of the fighting, Saga encountered the dismantled parts of his armor at the center of the temple, with the writing on the ground that Lance talked about nearby. He walked over and picked up the golden dagger on the ground, which had shockingly survived the events taking place in the Temple.

Surprisingly to anyone but him, of course. He only wished getting rid of this thing was that easy.

Looking it over, he instantly determined what Kanon had done and clicked his tongue. "He got it out of its box again. I warned him about this!" Suddenly, the parts of the Gemini Cloth burned up with golden cosmos, lifted off the ground, and flew at Saga, placing themselves procedurally on his body. Feeling energized and empowered, Saga clenched his armored fists confidently, ready to do battle once more.

First things first, though, he waved his hand up at the air, opening up a whirlpool gate. Using the guidance in his armor's memory, it connected to the last person it warped out and pulled him back to the Gemini Temple, spitting out the dark-blue-haired twin from his hiding spot to the ground, wincing.

Kanon got up, rubbing his back. "Ow… be a little careful landing me next time, okay?!..." he complained, though his body sported several bruises from his battle.

Saga gritted teeth madly and added a new one to his face with a punch straight across it. He cornered Kanon against a pillar and roared. "What the HELL is wrong with you?!"

The younger twin held his hurt cheek and eyed his older brother angrily. "Good evening to you, too! Back from our vacation so soon, are we?!" he bit back, getting up. "I was doing your job, guarding this House, of course. What did you thin-"

"YOU COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED!"

Kanon irked. He hated getting interrupted, even by his twin. "…Well, I'm afraid you're not gonna get rid of me that easily, Saga."

This callousness just appalled the wide-eyed Saga. "You could have been found out, or worse! What do you think I'm going to have to tell the others when this is over and they start asking questions about the fighting they sensed here?!"

"Well, good! Maybe you'll then drop this charade and tell them about how you're keeping your dear old brother hidden in your House like the Man in the Iron Mask!" Kanon yelled back.

Saga held his collar. "You know that's not the point! We have to let as few more people know about my shadow as possible! What was your angle, huh?! Tell me!"

Kanon smirked and feigned ignorance. "What do you mean?"

"Why did you fight at all?!" Saga demanded to know. Kanon didn't care about the safety of the Golden Zodiac. Saga knew better than anyone that his brother disliked Shion immensely for supporting this concealment of Kanon, plus the younger twin just opposed most of what Sanctuary was about anyway. The idea that Kanon eureka-ed his values out of nowhere and risked his life to stand in the way of the powerful Dark Prince when he could have much more easily hid himself was nonsense.

Kanon shrugged his shoulders. "Maybe I felt like it." He then took Saga's hand off of him. "Maybe I wanted to trap some of those Skeletons in the Labyrinth for fun."

Unfortunately for Kanon, Saga had already learned more about what he has been doing. "Did you feel like tipping Sagittarius Priam at the festival, too?! How does that work into your playtime?!"

The younger twin widened his eyes, genuinely caught off guard. He glanced away viciously, wondering what snake ratted him out. It was likely that deformed freak guarding Star Hill.

"I was so horrified that I couldn't look the others in the face!" Saga confronted. "Do you know what I just found out through Lance?! These Specters and those Black Saints are allied! The Papillion spilled it out! I bet your terrorist friends are pretty angry at you right now, uh? You just tried to kill their comrades!"

Kanon looked back with even more venom. "Yeah, and you know what, Saga? I almost did it! I had that guy on the ropes!" he lied. The reality was Kanon felt terrified at how out of his depth he swam into in that fight. "I stood the ground in this house with your armor and almost cut off the head of this giant Specter snake while you were off crying about how you can't control me! Guess that makes me the real Gemini Saint, right?!"

Saga irked. "What?!… I can't believe how irresponsibly you think!"

Kanon laughed out loud at this. "Oh, I'm irresponsible?! What do you call being the third member of the vanguard and being out on a break during a Specter attack?! What about deciding to pretend your brother doesn't exist all because you want this stupid gold can to like you as much as the guy that came before you?!"

The older brother stepped back, frozen in shock at how psychotic his little brother was being, completely ignoring the danger he was putting both of them into. He felt rage boiling his face so hot that he felt his eyes could go red and his grip on the knife tightened.

"YES, YOU ARE IRRESPONSIBLE! LOOK AT WHAT YOU BROUGHT INTO THIS!" Saga exploded, throwing the golden knife at Kanon's feet. The sight of it alone made Kanon cringe like a cat caught in the act. "How many people saw it other than Lance and the Specters?! And what did you use it for; to show off you own a cursed object?! Like a child?! Do you know how lucky we are that our upstairs neighbor was never taught about it?!"

Kanon finally hesitated, his eyes darting left and right. "Well… yeah. Look! I had to make sure I had the upper hand in that fight! What did you want me to do? Plan for the armor switch to work on the first t-"

"I WANTED YOU TO STAY DOWN and not put the both of us in danger!" the older twin shouted, echoing it in the halls. Saga couldn't believe this! He paced around in sheer fury, racking his brain about how he would explain the situation. "It's fine… I can manage this. I'll explain myself to Aiolos and surely he'll help me keep this down."

Snorting, the younger twin leaned against a pillar with folded arms. It was so difficult to make Saga see he was doing this for the best of him. Instead of fuming around maintaining this dumb conspiracy so he could further his Path of the Cloth, Saga should be campaigning to take the Pope's place. He would need no Gemini armor then.

Having cooled down, Saga continued. "Just put your head down for the rest of the night… or I will come back down here to put it for you! You're lucky you're my brother and I'm not telling the Pope you conspired with the enemy! It's either that, or I'm locking you in the Labyrinth! Which is it going to be?!"

Eyes were rolled. "Nice! Back in the basement, I go. At least bring me some games tomorrow." He saw Saga pacing towards the front exit. "Hey, where are you going?!"

"What do you think?! I'm going to help Aldebaran!" Saga vowed.

"Really?! You're not gonna help your friends up at Virgo?!" Kanon asked, agape. "Wow! Pick the path of most resistance again, why don't you? Who needs more help, Saga? The Buddhist boy being ganged or a Gold Saint on a steroids diet going one on one with a Specter?"

The Gemini Gold Saint, however, was adamant. "Aldebaran needs help…"

Kanon stepped up in protest. "Do you know how strong their leader is?! I was wearing your armor and he destroyed me at my own game! His Dark Revenge Blast can override our techniques!" he pointed out. "We should be ganging up together to take him out! He's a threat to us in more ways than you can imagine! We shouldn't be wasting time, saving someone that shouldn't be down there!" During the battle with Daemon, he found out critically important things about what this invasion entailed, the most important two things being that the Specter was a Gemini and seemed to believe he was somehow entitled to Sanctuary's throne. While Kanon had skipped a lot of homework over the years, he wasn't dumb and recognized that this posed a unique threat to their particular ambitions. Lucifer even identified the golden dagger's importance correctly and hinted at knowing its connection to the Gemini Cloth's trials to an extent.

Saga squinted. Kanon was acting oddly preoccupied with being the good guy here. Even if he was telling the truth though, Saga still completely disagreed. "Shaka has allies heading towards him. Aldebaran does not. You're asking me to abandon my friend, Kanon!"

Kanon's eyes squinted. Again with the emotional arguments?

"I'm doing what's best for us…I always will." Saga argued.

"Yes, you and me both," Kanon stressed. "Now stick to your logic, make the obvious choice and go stop that maniac! Or is my brother a hypocrite?!"

Saga froze, not insensitive to what his brother was saying, despite knowing his motivations were likely dubious. His gaze moved between the Taurus House down below and the path leading to Cancer beyond Kanon.

Kanon was right. The choice was obvious.

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

House of Virgo

{======================/Ξ\.◊./Ξ\\======================}

Back at the House of Virgo, Lucifer stepped off the rubble he was almost dug into by Shaka's attack and once more stood before the mighty Gold Saint, ready for another challenge. His Surplice emanated small scalding fumes from Tenma Kofuku's cleansing heat, but was mostly unharmed. "Now… to get past that barrier of yours!"

The Virgo Gold Saint would be lying if he said he was not impressed. Tenma Kofuku was more than a simple cosmos blast; it was an attack manifesting the purity of Buddha's thinking, meant to turn temptation and evil into dust. It was just as mighty against Surplices and Specters as the use of Ki in Rozan teachings or, more famously, the employment of the Light Element, for it employed in its strength the very things Specters rejected in their condition; peace with death.

While a sufficiently powerful Specter could resist it, like a Judge, it was all that more difficult to do so than if Daemon had been struck with, for example, a Galaxian Explosion. Interestingly enough, based on the readings of the Specter's karma, he has apparently been indeed hit with Galaxian Explosion and very recently, too. Figuring the commotion at the Third Temple had something to do with it, Shaka put that thought aside for later investigation.

The Specter was very mistaken if he thought he had survived more than just the tip of the iceberg that was Shaka's abilities, though.

In fact, he put a halt to Lucifer's approach with a mere raise of his hand, creating a distance between himself and his foe that, though seemingly short, could not be crossed in 1000 years. "Getting past me? I, too, must ask not to be made to laugh."

Lucifer gritted teeth in frustration, feeling each step he took seemingly failing to cross a single inch. He eyed the bewitcher venomously, planning how to get through these infuriating powers which resembled Akassius' and Kanon's so much and, yet, were based on an entirely different principle, one beyond his grasp. He could feel that Dark Revenge Blast wouldn't help him here.

He saw his men eyeing him anxiously, especially Sphinx Neferti. He had already proven stronger than Shaka's initial attacks, but he also had to prove this boy mortal and surmountable once and for all or their morale could drop dangerously. Thinking carefully about the nature of what he was up against, the experienced Specter calmed himself and calculated how to face it. Recalling everything he had observed so far, from Sati to Tenma Kofuku, Lucifer's mind likened his adversary to an eastern monk of sorts, one that operated entirely on the mental and spiritual level, attacking his adversary's ego and severing their ability to strike him through the cosmos, while maximizing their understanding of it.

The closest Specter he could think of to this was Atavaka, a pathetic Terrestrial Star drunk on Buddhism who faced off Virgo Asmita just before the Lost Canvas War began and had the habit of bragging he did not possess any desire in his heart, thus freeing him of Pandora's commands. This Specter battled his opponents by attacking their senses and Lucifer wouldn't be shocked if Shaka possessed similar abilities. From what Daemon understood, his abilities were very much dependent on the karma and ego of his adversaries, but unfortunately, the Pride Star did not witness exactly how the Terrestrial Chief Star met his end.

But despite this, the Prince's eyes narrowed in determination! If Michael defeated Asmita, then he was more than capable of crushing this newbie Virgo, too!

Suddenly Shaka laughed.

"What's so funny?!" the Daemon demanded to know.

The Gold Saint pointed at him. "Your sense of inferiority. It just came to the surface now and I can feel it burning in your heart from here. Your thoughts just turned to someone whose shadow you live in, didn't they?" he guessed. It wasn't that Shaka could read minds, obviously, but rather the shame and guilt that resulted from one-sided rivalries were very distinct. He often felt it off Saga, too. "I think it's very funny that such an outspoken champion has such a deep-seated embarrassment… because of course, he would."

Murmurs were heard across the False Specters, who had no image of the Prince being second to anyone.

The red-eyed devil squinted. "Those thoughts are not for you, boy… I advise you to stop before you force me to cut out your tongue!"

Shaka ignored his threat. "Perhaps I should land you in Jinkai, the realm of men? Not only would it suit your karma, but who knows, you could meet your rival once more and spend eternity being humiliated. Would that not be deli-"

The clear-white beam of electricity struck his barrier head-on! This time, it initially sunk into the surface of the barrier, inhabited by a feeling of protecting someone else's memory instead of personal pride, before Shaka adapted to it and deflected the blow right off, blasting pillars to the Virgo's right instead in a loud burst of cosmos! Blown off their support bases, they tumbled down and crashed loudly, spreading soot everywhere.

"-ghtful justice." Shaka completed, beginning to get annoyed. "Honestly, you are very rude."

Lucifer lowered his firing hand. He knew perfectly well the blast wouldn't work, but he wouldn't suffer Michael's memory being used as a weapon against him. Now he was angry. "Last chance, Virgo. Let my men through, and I will defeat you with grace!"

"Or what, you'll hit me with more of your silly lightning bolts? Why don't you show me something new, then?!" Shaka provoked. "I don't take orders from phantoms or deviants! By the light of Athena, you will all be DESTROYE-"

Lucifer's aura erupted with unprecedented force, startling the screaming False Specters and cutting Shaka's provocation short. He knew exactly how to silence this child! It was time to break the myth of the Virgo Saint! Roaring and tensing his body in a battle pose, he heightened his energy more, more, and more, raising his purple aura flow to the ceiling. Images of demons were projected onto the walls of the Hall of Innocence and sparks began to be seen in the air as it became increasingly electrified.

Then the temple began rumbling!

Shaka staggered, reading off startling levels of energy off the foe, but he collected himself, knowing no amount of brute strength could touch him. No matter what the Specter threw at him, it wouldn't work, for his barrier was not a matter of physical resistance, but a metaphysical one.

The Specters, on the other hand, were visibly frightened. Their wide eyes had seldom seen Lucifer going full power, the only real chance being back when Gryphon Minos and Garuda Aiacos battled the Prince across the Underworld's Prisons, and they only got a far-off impression of it, not being directly present. Now they saw the purple and blood-red of Lucifer's Surplice carrying into his aura, such as the union of cosmos he was calling forth with his armor. They knew something big was coming, but not exactly what.

The red in Lucifer's eyes sharpened. "Let me tell you a story, Virgo… A long time ago, a predecessor of yours battled an equal of mine. At the ceiling of the World, so that he could offer his pathetic Saint brothers a chance to run, this Virgo Saint foolishly took on the One Closest to God in the Underworld!"

While his hair fluttered with the force emanating from Lucifer's charging aura and his closed eyes tensed with these strange words, Shaka dismissed them. "In the Underworld? What a joke!... Are you saying there is one among the 108 Fools who relinquished suffering?!"

Lucifer laughed. His aura began burning differently, slowly losing its flowing swamp texture to gradually acquiring one more like a traditional flame.

Despite his closed eyes, this was not lost to Shaka, whose mouth dropped in alarm.

Lucifer saw the sudden preoccupation in the otherwise confident Saint. "Renouncing suffering isn't the only path to clarity, young Buddhist! You and your predecessors attained a high level of affinity with the Cosmos by saying goodbye to your vain desires,… which is commendable! But the demigod I speak of proved that a way much more worthy of a warrior exists! A way which acknowledges the flaws in oneself and makes them part of your greatness, rather than snuff them out! In the last Holy War, Virgo Asmita faced off the Underworld's champion with the same confidence you show… and he was utterly destroyed!"

Shaka refused to believe this. "LIES!...No fallen warrior like a Specter could do such a thing! Do you think it's so easy to break my concentration by spewing poiso-"

"I DO NOT LIE!" Lucifer roared as his aura erupted higher, close to achieving the form he needed for his next move.

"Shaka, be careful!"

"Lady Astraea?" the blonde boy recognized. It was relatively rare for the Virgo Cloth to pronounce itself. Usually, the one to speak to him was the Buddha. "Do not worry. This will be simple. I will lock away his brutish power just like every other troglody-"

"I sense two powers in him." The goddess warned. "This Specter is not alone!"

Focusing back on his adversary, Shaka then saw that what Astraea spoke of was true; a sudden, new energy was rising from deep within the Specter, in a very localized area of his body, like a carefully guarded weapon being unsheathed. He tracked the source with his 7th sense. "His left arm?!..."

The Prince of Hades' eyes took to the ceiling and he raised his left arm triumphantly as his cape fluttered high, and the cry of the Daemon was heard, calling forth the long-lost strength imparted to him on the fateful day of his one true friend's death. The sparks vanished off the air, and so did the deep darkness of his aura, and then to everyone's shock, a circle of black fire ignited on the ground, surrounding the Pride Star. These flames danced for a single second in it before rising high around the Specter, enveloping him like a burned demon!

"PRINCE!" the Specters called!

But the black fire did not consume its master, but rather dressed him and his left arm in the cosmos of the Celestial Absolute Star, Dark Angel Michael, who no one recognized! Lucifer was overlapped with the image of his lost friend opening his black wings high in the air, spread dark feathers everywhere that turned out to be embers, and aligning his right arm with Lucifer's, causing a burst of white light as their energies fused in that one spot!

With a battle screech from the cosmic projection of Daemon accompanying him, Daemon Lucifer let out a war-shout as the blade of evil, black fire birthed out of his hand, which he swiped down gallantly to his side in presentation, his entire left arm dressed in the rest of Dark Angel's aura!

"Behold… theFlaming Sword of the Absolute Star!" Lucifer called, letting the dense blade of terrifying, all-consuming cosmos sizzle to his side. "In my left-hand rests the last undying cosmos of Dark Angel Michael, the fallen Prince of Hades, who entrusted his greatest technique to me!"

Shaka reeled, feeling something he did not know terrifying him from the inside. A certain bead in Asmita's necklace also began shining, reacting to the power before him. His 7th sense tried to feel out the technique summoned by his adversary, but all it saw was a black inferno with no end to its depth, torturing the countless souls it had eaten in an endless cacophony of screams, an intrinsic evil worthy of the cruelest of Specters. He instinctively tried to exercise his powers unto it, trying to force the move to cancel itself out through the very aggression it exuded, but somehow he failed to grasp it in the cosmos as if the hands of his powers burned at the very touch of it!

"This move…! It's the one he broke out of Sati with!" Shaka thought. His hand held his armored chest, feeling as if, once upon a time, the very blade that was unsheathed in his Hall had pierced him there. His hand also tingled again, as if the burning of the blade had never actually left him from the start of the invasion. "Ridiculous…What kind of Specter entrusts his powers unto others?!"

"I told you… the One Closest to God… to Our God!" Lucifer specified. Michael had always made himself to be the best expression of everything Hades was supposed to be to every Specter so as to honor his Absolute Star. "… Or at least the closest to how we idealized him."

Golden cosmos brimmed from Shaka, though. "Fine… then show me the power of this technique, Specter!" he challenged. "Perhaps once your viciousness is turned against you through that move, you'll, at last, be laid to rest!"

Lucifer snickered in confidence. Tensing his armed hand, he leaned over and dash-leaped at Shaka!

The Gold Saint stepped back, feeling unable to stop his adversary's movements! "What?!" So he raised his hand with the 108 beads at the leaping demon. "BEGONE! KHA!"

The Daemon's left hand lunged downwards in a stab "DARK ANGEL FLAMING SWORD!" and the black cosmos sword pierced into the Gold Saint as he erupted his barrier in repulsing golden light, exploding it's all-rejecting cosmos in all directions!

A great clash of cosmic forces occurred at the speed of light, releasing an ear-piercing sound like a great drill sizzling into a thick wall of steel armor. Within a single instant, all of Shaka's powers were enacted unto the attack, striking the very corruption and violence it forged itself with. Lucifer's very karma was targeted, tapping into all the cruel crimes committed unto others by him.

Soon, the blade would shatter as its owner was destroyed by his own hand!

What Shaka failed to realize, though, was that it was no longer just Lucifer's spirit being put into the move.

With his casting hand shaking painfully, Shaka gasped as he felt the ego of the fallen Dark Angel being the one powering the blade, rather than the physical user that Shaka faced in battle! It was an ego that embraced its condition as a Specter differently from the others, recognizing the sins he committed and yet bravely marching through its black desert as if guided by a star. This in turn was felt off Daemon as well, whose memory of his best friend guided him through the darkness imposed upon his senses by Shaka's power!

Cut off from the source of the cosmos attacking him, Shaka was unable to simply cancel the move from its root, and the full piercing power of the Flaming Sword crossed through the transcendental layers of Buddha-like burning through mere scrolls of paper otherwise riddled with ancient wisdom.

Weighed down by the Specter, the tip of the Flaming Sword dug through the barrier, piercing into the other side like a sharp pin through a layer of glass, and Lucifer roared as he put his massive strength into a final push that deepened the blade thrust and stabbed the technique's entire width through Shaka's Kha, which cracked all over and shattered with a resounding sound of breaking glass.

The Specters gasped in awe! "HE DID IT!"

Time resumed its normal pace and Lucifer landed with a stumble, the blade digging into the ground from having its angle distorted by the barrier's resistance! He was quick to recover, though, and quickly swiped it back up, cutting through the ground like just air and aiming to rip the Virgo Cloth to shreds! "SAY GOODBYE, VIRGO!"

Shaka gasped, stepping back! This had never happened before!

This shouldn't happen ever!

And in those unprecedented nano-moments, where the battle occurred at the speed of light, Shaka felt an emotion that had been strange to him for years. Something that upon encountering and communing with Buddha, he should have surpassed entirely. A gripping, sinking sensation located in the pit of his stomach made his mouth want to scream and his feet step back!

And, in a reflex driven by this fear, as the black blade of cosmos swept up at him, the One Closest to God opened his clear blue eyes, filling the Hall of Innocence with light!

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Chapter End

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Next Chapter: Chapter 58 - Episode 19 – The One Closest to God – Part 3 of 3

Deadline: May 20th

Description: Startled by Lucifer's feat, Shaka of Virgo's eyes are now open and the full power of Sanctuary's strongest Gold Saint crash down upon the Daemon Specter. Meanwhile, Aldebaran's battle takes a turn for the worse…

Author's Notes:

Shaka is so hard to write! I think I already mentioned this last time. However, he is also one of the most rewarding characters. When you get it done right, there is a lot more to extract out of his character than the other Gold Saints, even with him so young, but I also cannot understate how much work had to go into each and every one of his lines, and even more had to go into Chapter 58, which is already finished at the time of this publishing. I'm pretty proud of how V3's take on this storyline is going.

I also wanted this battle between him and Daemon to be a battle of characters, instead of a battle of brawlers, something that I commented with my online buddy Kenshiro while writing this chapter. The advantage of that is that it respects the point of Shaka's character, as he's a spiritual person who presents a unique take on things that Mu, for example, cannot, so this style of confrontation is the best way to use him and I think my attitude towards it might be even coming off a bit through Lucifer, considering how much I have him talk about how he wants to beat Shaka at his own game.

Anyway, look forward to the next chapter, it will probably be posted next month, but will only be beta-read throughout May.

Make sure to check out the Saint Seiya Reddit Discord server, where I'm currently one of the co-admins. Other writers like Jenny DeVic also can be found in it. You can hang out with the rest of the English-speaking SS community and we host several weekly events, like episode streams, games and now a whole new Horror Let's Play themed after the Underworld.

And review, share, etc, I'm always open to conversations with my readers.

See ya O.O