Chapter 45

Arriving in the underworld dimension of Hades, Naruto saw a magical sight of spirits wandering the glowing fields. It was a world created by Hades where the spirits of the people that died while believing in him would reside.

The souls would have his imprint, dragging them to his underworld which was growing in size. It didn't mean that Hades owned the real afterlife and he wouldn't dare interfere with the natural order. The souls had chosen to live in his realm, and Hades gained power from each citizen of his world.

As far as the eyes could see, the world was filled with mythical nature and beings. It was not an advanced world, as it was very much medieval. Other than the normal and ideal looking region, there was also the area of the damned where the souls were tortured for their evil.

"What do you think? Isn't it peaceful here, away from all the negativity of the world?"

Taking in the atmosphere, Naruto couldn't deny it. He felt at peace as all the souls were filled with positivity, it was the ideal world.

Though, that was only so when you ignored the torture region.

"How are they like this?"

"That is very simple. They have no worries anymore, and no evil thought can enter their mind. This is a place for the victorious souls that deserve praise, and here they will live in peace until the great end comes for all of us."

"Great End?"

"It is the day when Death will take all of us, and nothing can stop it from happening. It is unknown when it will happen, so don't focus on it since it will be a pointless distraction."

"I understand. So, how do we do the contract?"

"It is very simple, but first I want to see your limits. I want you to see where we stand to give you a better idea of your allies." Hades started walking and the region around them changed to an empty void.

Naruto didn't have a problem with it, and it made sense that Hades wanted to experience his skills before planning his course.

Going full power, Naruto used the full body enhancement and attacked with his body to see what it felt like.

His speed along with the rest of his stats was beyond his dreams, with just pure strength Naruto held the ability to annihilate a Jupiter sized planet and his speed was at least 10 times light speed.

Sage Arts: Ultimate Combo

With his fists and feet shining with golden light, Naruto appeared in front of Hades while another Naruto used the adamantine chains to hold him in place from the back.

Naruto's fist had the power to bypass defences and annihilate the inner body of the foe, but it never hit. The chains were reflected while Hades countered the punch with ghost hands that tried to rip Naruto's limbs.

Chakra hands stopped the spirit hands before Naruto teleported a mini-bijuudama made by his clone directly into Hades.

However, the attack never went inside the foe as Hades cancelled it with his spatial mastery. It was clear that spatial attacks wouldn't work on Hades at this moment.

Using the Golden Mandala barrier, Naruto blocked the blue spirit fire that covered his vision. The barrier would normally absorb the attack, but instead it was being burnt while the flames were increasing in power.

Both attacks fed on power to increase their power, so the result was decided by skill level.

Ignoring the blue flames, Naruto had his clones attack Hades while he charged the Bijuu beam along with the elemental rasenshuriken using the TSB.

This was his strongest move and this time Naruto used the cellular technique on his jutsu as well. Forming the attack with high levels of Senjutsu chakra, it was like trillion of cells gathered together to form a single one of those attacks and each cell contained the power to destroy a city.

Using the concept learned from the Sage about using his energy as the guide instead of the full source of his attacks, Naruto managed to form an attack that would leave him no chance of survival if it hit him.

Hades glanced at the attack with casual grace as a black barrier appeared to stop it. The explosion from the collision was large enough to cover the whole planet and even reach the moon, erasing everything in its path.

However, nothing like that happened and all of it was erased instead.

Seeing that his strongest move was pointless, Naruto decided to use a conceptual attack.

Ultimate Sacrifice

With the start of the move a three-dimensional magic circle appeared as a glowing orb of Yin and Yang, within which it confined the opponent. When shut within this magic circle, it was a 50/50 decision whether the opponent was either completely annihilated or suffered great damage.

However, just like the other move it was also erased and Naruto found his senses shutting down. First, he went blind then he lost his taste. Smell followed, touch soon after, hearing and then even his special senses disappeared leaving him completely blind to the world.

Naruto never experienced such a thing, and it left him powerless as even his mind started shutting down along with his cells.

He couldn't feel a thing and suddenly it all returned but his body had become weak like a normal human.

"You have achieved a lot in a short time, Naruto. However, you are still lacking a lot. I hope you can see that with us on your side, your journey into this new field of power will become easier." Hades cancelled his attacks and Naruto returned to normal.

Just with his aura, Hades had defeated Naruto. Though, it was one of his main skills called the Aura of Immortal King.

Gasping on the ground as he caught his breath, Naruto experienced a new terrifying thought of completely losing all his power. Just the short instance had almost driven him into despair as all his work was reduced to nothing.

'Calm down Naruto, even if we lose all our powers we still have our knowledge and with it we can always return to our peak. Don't get to attached to the physical existence, only your soul and mind is necessary for us to continue on our path.' Kurama spoke to him and gave him an answer to his dilemma.

It clicked and Naruto realized he needed to focus on the knowledge even more. There was always a possibility of losing power in some way.

"Thank you for the battle, I have learned a lot from this experience." Naruto stood up and looked at Hades, his expression still wasn't normal but he was trying to get back in form.

"It is my pleasure. And, you don't have to worry too much since Ishiki isn't above my level. He might be even weaker at this point because we actually continued to improve since the day we lost to him in battle.

When Ishiki and Kaguya came to this world, Ishiki was around my current strength level and he defeated all of the immortals. However, he didn't kill us. He wished for us to improve the human beings with blessings, so the harvest would be better.

Fortunately, Kaguya took him out and we were allowed freedom again. However, we couldn't fight Kaguya at that point since our bodies had been damaged greatly.

By the time we had recovered completely, Kaguya had been sealed away by her sons and we didn't care to fight them.

Though we did act arrogant and improperly which caused our future battle and we were sealed away by Hagoromo. At that time he was around 50 years old, his power was greater than all of us combined. I don't for sure where it stood but he had the equivalent power of 100 Stars at that point. His mastery of reality warping was very high to the point we were in a similar state to you when we fought him.

I am unsure what level he achieved by the end of his life, but replacing him is a very difficult task."

"Then how did he die, it doesn't make sense once you look at his power." Naruto had already started questioning the incident since it felt odd, and it only got worse with time.

"I doubt he died, he is probably travelling the universe while keeping this place safe from the stronger Otsutsuki. His blood connection to the Otsutsuki might have attracted the real ones, so he might have created this convoluted plan to keep them from finding out. This is all assumptions, as I am unable to actually locate his soul or existence."

The revelation of the possibility of the Sage's survival shook Kurama and Naruto to the core, and gave them a boost of positivity. They didn't even consider his survival since his ghost hadn't mentioned a thing.

'I knew it was impossible for him to die, father was invincible.'

"Okay, okay, let's focus." Naruto took deep breathes to put his mind in place.

"Before we start the procedure, have you noticed the difference in our energies?"

"Yes, it felt similar to Senjutsu without the connection to the world. It also felt like there were constant explosions inside your bodies to form the energy. Is it utilizing the concept of creating a stronger energy by exploding what is already present? How does that work and isn't it dangerous?" Naruto's senses were sharp and he had seen everything inside Phobos and Ares while they fought.

He had felt everything within their bodies.

"Very good, it is as you said. Unlike chakra our energy feels natural to the world because we utilize the concept of the Big Bang. Our energy is called the cosmos and everyone in our world has it.

By burning our cosmos we create an explosion like the Big Bang in the hope of creating a universe within ourselves. That is the end goal of our method, but most of us haven't gone beyond a star sized universe.

I believe you can use our method to completely surpass our realm. However, before that you need to break down all the gates inside your body since such limitations would cause an adverse affect when using this method.

It means you need to upgrade your physical stats to endure all of your energy. With our contract, your body should go through a minor change but that won't be enough. Naruto, are you willing to go through an inhumane training regime for power?" Hades explained his powers and even showed the inside of his body where small stars exploded to create huge amounts of power.

"I understand, but how will this work with my Sage mode. This method is entirely based on your personal power and not a combination of two or more."

"It is a new territory and it is for you to explore."

His words were similar to the Sage who had asked him to explore the powers of Sage Arts focusing on reality manipulation.

Hearing the promise of torture in the training proposal, Naruto had to consider it for a moment. By agreeing, he was about to walk away from his physical existence as a human.

"The body is not what makes me human, it is my soul. And it matters not whether I am human, I only desire to be a force of good no matter what I am…..I am ready to do anything that doesn't ask of me acts of evil." Naruto spoke with conviction as he let go of his attachment towards his humanity.

"I will never guide you towards evil, Naruto. I will lead you towards becoming the ideal King of your world."

"Can you not do that, I only desire to become the Hokage and help all people. I don't desire to rule over them."

"I see, you have still to realize the importance of a single leader. Regardless, skills are skills so there is no need to ignore this point." Hades didn't force him, just gave him another way of approaching new things.