Saga finally committed suicide.
For Saga, feeling he had committed so many wrongs, perhaps death was the greatest relief.
Saga's suicide caused Saori Kido, who had originally thought this trip to the Sanctuary would be quite easy and was even somewhat happy, to suddenly become dejected.
Before dying, Saga used his Cosmo to broadcast his confession throughout the Sanctuary, effectively clearing the name of Goddess Athena, Saori Kido. The Gold Saint who had been defeated by Saori Kido in the Twelve Zodiac Temples soon came to pay their respects.
Shin silently retreated, as a group of Saints were kneeling there pledging their loyalty to Athena! Standing there all by himself seemed a bit awkward.
As for making him kneel to that Little girl Saori Kido? Forget it!
With a new official in office, Saori was busy... actually, not really busy. The Sanctuary was just a tiny place, technology wasn't advanced, and the Saints didn't even get paid; as long as they were fed, it was fine. There wasn't much going on in the whole Sanctuary.
Saori Kido was, after all, a wealthy heiress, and as the reincarnation of the Goddess of Wisdom, regardless of her emotional intelligence, her IQ was certainly high enough. Managing this small, broken place was definitely overkill; it didn't even have as much going on as a single department in her conglomerate!
This battle at the Sanctuary didn't result in many losses. Aside from Saga, who committed suicide at the end, the other Gold Saint remained intact, and even the Silver Saints suffered no damage.
To obtain the cloths he hadn't yet acquired, Shin had to bleed a little, bringing out a significant amount of nth metal to prepare for a major strengthening of all the cloths.
nth metal was certainly not the most powerful metal in terms of physical or magical properties in Shin's possession. However, it had the effect of directly strengthening the human body, possessed powerful vitality, and could also directly attack spirits. This was something completely absent in normal cloths.
Although Shin certainly wouldn't bring out the purest nth metal, even ordinary nth metal merely lacked the ability to grant immortality; it could still significantly strengthen the physique and recovery abilities of the Saints. From now on, these people could all be called cockroaches.
The technique of attacking spirits seemed ineffective, but it was actually very lethal to Specters. Compared to the Saints, who were replaced every 200+ years, the Specters never changed from beginning to end, simply because their souls were protected by Hades.
With cloths strengthened by nth metal, these Specters could be made to suffer heavy casualties. Perhaps it wouldn't be visible in this Holy War, but by the next Holy War, Hades would likely have no one left to use.
First, he strengthened the Gold Saint whose cloths had been damaged in the battle of the Twelve Zodiac Temples. At first, the average Gold Saint was dismissive of this.
One had to know that the self-healing ability of the gold cloth far exceeded that of ordinary cloths. Although it couldn't compare to the phoenix, which could recover even after being reduced to ashes, ordinary cracks would recover in a few days.
It wasn't until Camus, who had suffered the most serious injuries in the battle of the Twelve Zodiac Temples and should have been lying in a hospital bed for over ten days, put on the Aquarius cloth repaired by Shin. After just half an hour, he was almost completely recovered, and the group of Gold Saint was shocked.
After seeing such excellent strengthening results, Saori Kido gave the order, and the Saints handed over all their cloths, letting Shin research and strengthen them at will.
Although Saori Kido knew that Shin could absorb the Cosmo memories within the cloths, she clearly didn't care; in fact, she wished Shin's strength would be as great as possible. In this regard, this Goddess was much more magnanimous than Mu.
The 88 constellations in the sky were said to each possess a cloth, but over the years, many cloths had been lost outside the Sanctuary, just like Ikki's phoenix in the past.
Coupled with some other cloths that nominally belonged to the Sanctuary but were actually scattered in various places, the total number of cloths in the Sanctuary was around 60.
"The Great Roar of the Twelfth Zodiac... a single-target ultimate technique, with power even exceeding Athena Exclamation... The Leo of this generation is truly pathetic!"
"Titan's Nova... a super large-area coverage skill, compensating for the Taurus's clumsy body... Sigh~ The Taurus of this generation doesn't perform very well either!"
"Come to think of it, Sagittarius also has a move called Chiron's Light Pulse that even Aiolos didn't learn... So, can this only be considered a collective failure of the Gold Saint of this generation?"
It made sense. During the age when these Gold Saint should have been learning and growing the most, the Pope, who should have been teaching them combat techniques, had been killed by Saga. Naturally, all the Gold Saint had regressed quite a bit.
If one looked closely, one would find that among the Gold Saint, those who were good at telekinesis, such as Mu and Shaka, were relatively stronger. To a large extent, this was because their mental power was strong, allowing them to communicate clearly with their own cloths.
Those of the physical or special types could only rely on hard training themselves, and they had no way to clearly understand the resonance between them and their cloths. Their weakness couldn't be entirely blamed on them not trying hard enough.
First were the 12 gold cloth, followed by the Silver Saints and Bronze Saints' cloths. After absorbing a large amount of experience from the cloths, Shin's insights into Cosmo were strengthened quite a bit. If he really wanted to, he could probably sit in meditation for a few days now and successfully awaken his Cosmo.
However, Shin ultimately suppressed his thoughts. All the Cosmo insights he had absorbed came almost entirely from the Sanctuary. In other words, if he were to ignite his Cosmo, he would likely be suppressed by Athena's Cosmo.
After he had referenced the cloths of those Specters, Mariners, and the Heaven Saints, and hopefully learned from the experience of the god cloth, it wouldn't be too late to awaken his Cosmo then.
While thinking this, Shin had already reached out towards those few cloths belonging to the female Saints.
Shin had been absorbing the Cosmo experience from the cloths in the order of gold cloth to Silver Cloth to bronze cloth. However, he had set aside the few female cloths first.
After all... wearing women's clothing or something like that was definitely quite embarrassing.
Theoretically, the cloths of the Sanctuary possessed the ability to sense their owner's Cosmo and transform between male and female modes. However, the key problem was that Shin did not have Cosmo, nor was he considered the owner of the cloths.
Using the unorthodox Gulp-Gulp Fruit could certainly absorb the Cosmo experience within the cloths and stimulate the power of the cloths to the maximum, but at the same time, there were certainly some troubles different from the orthodox method. For example, he had no way to make the cloths change modes.
"Eagle... pretty good, there are a few Saints with the Seventh Sense... Crane? There's actually one who awakened the Eighth Sense?"
"This one is... that Shaina's Ophiuchus?"
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Now available - Chapter 698: Finale (ENDING)