The sudden upheaval in the distant battlefield did nothing to disturb the other side of the Netherworld.
Shendu was in relentless pursuit of Hades, launching wave after wave of unbroken attacks.
From start to finish, neither of them had bothered to summon their Nebula Bodies; this was a pure, unadulterated clash of raw power.
Although their position had carried them far away from the main hall, the immense might of the Nebula Bodies had still allowed both men to acutely sense the sudden shift on Zoran's side.
A faint sigh welled up deep within Hades's heart.
The Snow Empress.
That adversary of one hundred thousand years had, at this very moment, fallen from grace.
No matter how powerful one might be, no one could withstand a traitor's cold calculations.
This supreme cosmic titan from one hundred thousand years ago was now struggling on the very precipice of destruction.
"Love?" Hades murmured softly, a note of melancholy in his voice. "Of what use is love? To cling to the creed of love, yet find oneself powerless to reform the darkness close at hand, only to ultimately fall to that very darkness on the verge of death, how pitiful, how laughable!"
Lost in a wave of profound emotion, Hades managed to break away from Shendu's ferocious offensive, catching his breath, though his energy remained unstable.
This bastard simply had far too many abilities.
Power, speed, hetero-energy, every single dimension of his capability sat unquestionably at the absolute peak.
More importantly, his Netherworld Black Hole had yielded virtually negligible results against Shendu.
That was a trump card that should never have been revealed prematurely, but having been laid bare so early against an adversary of Shendu's caliber, it had effectively lost its maximum utility.
To be frank, being able to carve out even a split second amidst this combat to lament a longtime rival's tragic end was already the absolute limit of what Hades could manage.
Across from him, Shendu's menacing, heavily muscled form stood bare, radiating an aura far more chilling than any Armor form.
Time and again, Hades had attempted to meet him head-on, but the outcomes had been far from ideal; Shendu possessed a monstrous capacity for recovery.
The ultimate result was that Hades's own hetero-energy slowly dwindled with every exchange, while Shendu remained locked at his absolute peak.
"No matter how formidable a recovery ability may be, it still requires hetero-energy to function," Hades said, addressing Shendu directly. "Yet you seem to use yours without paying any price at all."
He simply could not comprehend it.
Attack, defense, recovery, every single action demanded a consumption of hetero-energy to execute. Yet Shendu had been fighting him this entire time, deploying that miraculous regenerative power on numerous occasions.
And yet, his hetero-energy remained forever anchored at its zenith.
It defied all logic.
"An interesting question," Shendu slowed his pace slightly, his presence surging with vitality as he countered with a question of his own:
"If I've already recovered everything, why would I still consume hetero-energy?"
He offered a casual elaboration: "Once every external force is expelled, I return entirely to my peak. Naturally, my hetero-energy returns to its peak as well."
Hades fell into a rare, heavy silence.
He finally understood completely.
The Shendu standing before him was a thorough, absolute monster, an existence utterly beyond the limits of mortal might to overcome.
Through combat alone, it was simply impossible to destroy such a monstrosity.
Hades let out a low sigh.
He had finally awakened to reality.
There had to be a way to deal with Shendu, just as every complex problem possessed a hidden solution, it was simply that he could not find it.
Shendu was quite literally a rule-breaking anomaly.
Those weaker than him were no match for him, while peers of his caliber, like Hades himself, would be slowly ground down and worn to death by Shendu's absurd mechanics.
And those stronger than him, much like the Whale Shark King, whose fleeting appearance before Shendu had absorbed his hetero-energy, simply could not kill him.
Admittedly, Shendu did possess methods capable of counteracting him.
Yet those methods did not belong to this world.
Just like Zoran on the other side, who had already achieved total victory, he simply lacked Shendu's flamboyant showmanship.
Immortality was a demon's passive trait; Shendu wielded that very same power while keeping his single, fatal weakness locked securely in the palm of his hand.
At this very moment, the only possible way for Hades to defeat Shendu was clear.
He would need to use power equivalent to a Nebula Body, travel to Shendu's native world, comprehend the specific spells designed to counter him, and seal Shendu away.
That was the sole solution.
Unless the disparity in power was vast enough to render all rules utterly meaningless, demons only fell to specific conceptual counters.
Yet such a scenario was practically impossible. Setting aside the fact that Hades had no inkling of where Shendu even came from…
Even if he could somehow pull it off, there was still Zoran, currently unoccupied on the sidelines.
Zoran would never stand by and watch his brother get sealed away once more, and besides, that individual was currently only vulnerable to specific specialized counters.
An unsolvable dead end.
A profound sense of powerlessness welled up from deep within Hades's heart. Armed with hetero-energy on par with a Nebula Body, he found himself utterly helpless against the reality before him.
With his breadth of vision, unlike hot-headed hotshots like the Whale Shark King or Bradley, he had already pierced through to Shendu's true nature.
Yet that understanding brought no comfort; it merely revealed the depth of the wall before him.
It was akin to a difficult math problem: Hades knew there had to be an answer, but if he didn't know how to solve it, knowing the answer existed changed nothing.
"The fledgling bird spreading its wings to take flight cannot withstand the howling gale that breaks its feathers, and ultimately falls in the tragic roar of the storm."
Hades brought his hands together, his voice ringing out across the field: "Netherworld Nebula!"
He summoned his Nebula Body, preparing to make one final attempt at a desperate, all-out dissolution.
The pitch-black Nebula Body soared directly into the firmament as he muttered, "The bird committed no wrong; it merely yearned for freedom. Nor did the wind commit any wrong; it merely followed the impulse of its heart..."
A trace of worldly exhaustion flickered within his eyes.
He looked genuinely tired.
Shendu stepped forward, his voice booming across the expanse: "Nebula of Burning Fire."
The two great Nebula Bodies were finally poised for their ultimate clash, precisely the scenario Hades had anticipated.
Since he could not exploit Shendu's mechanics, his only option was to test a desperate, all-out collision at maximum power.
This was his final approach to solving the equation.
The sky of the Netherworld was cleaved cleanly in two by blazing crimson and abyssal black. Standing at opposite ends, Hades manipulated his Nebula Body, erupting with the absolute peak of his hetero-energy.
Shendu similarly directed his Nebula Body to open its maw, launching a beam of Dragon Blast that crashed head-on against Hades's power in a mutual onslaught.
Under this state, both combatants' hetero-energy plummeted at a breathtaking pace.
Having finally forced his opponent into a familiar style and domain of combat, Hades felt a modest sense of reassurance settle within him.
Only during a pure, unadulterated clash of brute force could he feel certain that Shendu's hetero-energy was, at the very least, genuinely comparable to his own in scale.
Rather than constantly pulling out a mountain of absurd, never-before-seen tricks.
If worse came to worst, they would simply perish together.
He had never lacked the resolve for such an outcome.
Regrettably, what Hades could not possibly know was that mutual destruction was not a particularly daunting prospect to Shendu.
For from the beginning until now, Hades had never truly managed to kill Shendu even once, nor did he know that Shendu possessed the power of the Dog Talisman.
Even this desperate clash was nothing more than his own wishful thinking.
Hetero-energy erupted violently at the absolute center of their collision, filling more than half of the Netherworld with blinding radiance.
While one battle had just drawn to a close, another had only just reached its crescendo.
Every gaze remained locked onto this final theater of war.
Hades stared fixedly at his adversary, his nerves strung as tight as bowstrings.
Until, with startling abruptness, that taut tension snapped like a broken lute string. An unprecedented wave of bewilderment and confusion washed over him, sweeping every thought away.
Before his eyes…
Shendu's true physical form suddenly stepped out from beneath the towering canopy of the Nebula Body, offering a faint, enigmatic smile.
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