It was the morning of the fifth day of the eighth month, exactly 305 years after the formation of the last Vanguard of Death and in spite of the imminent threat of the final trial, Sooyoung decided that the occasion should still be celebrated as the hooded figures should not be allowed to disrupt their annual celebration. However, she and the other two goddesses were nowhere to be seen and their weapon partners were missing as well.

Nevertheless, the boys were not worried, as they trusted their umma and aunts to be able to take care of themselves and their partners, thus they happily continued setting up the decorations around the throne room for the lunchtime celebration that was about to start. Meanwhile, Taeyeon and Sunny were preparing the food for the celebration in the kitchen.

“Wonder where the rest of the girls are? The last time I could sense their souls in the vicinity was at dawn. Maybe it is the time for the final trial.” Taeyeon wondered aloud. “They’re probably just performing their godly duties. No need to worry~” Sunny reassured her wife.

“Didn’t Sooyoung rearrange their godly duties such that they all didn’t need to perform any of them today? Also, although I could sense their souls at dawn, there was a moment where I felt a small disturbance before I could not sense any of their souls anymore.” Taeyeon replied. “Hmm… Good point, maybe you’re right.” Sunny agreed with Taeyeon.

“Let’s quickly finish up the cooking and go check on the boys then.” Taeyeon decided. The couple then finished up the cooking before heading over to the throne room just in time to witness the unwelcomed arrival of the three hooded figures, who once again sat on the thrones of the three goddesses. What was more shocking was that this time they were wielding the weapon partners of each of the three goddesses, while the whereabouts of the three goddesses was still unknown.

X was wielding Hyoyeon, The Hypnotic Scythe, Y was wielding Jessica, Screech of the Chilling Spear and Z was wielding Yoona and Yuri, Twin Blades of Eternal Slumber. “We’re back.” X sneered at the boys and the Sunyeon couple. “And we have managed to overpower those meddlesome goddesses, trap them in another realm, steal their powers and take control over their weapons.” Y stated offhandedly. Concurrently, Z snapped her fingers and trapped both Taeyeon and Sunny in a powerful illusion that was extremely difficult to break even for a powerful archangel like Taeyeon.

“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO OUR UMMA AND AUNTS?!!” Jo Kwon shouted in anger. “AND RELEASE MY SUNNY NOONA AND TAEYEON NOONA FROM THE ILLUSION!!!” Sungmin shouted as well. Meanwhile, Onew was trying to break the illusion by himself but to no avail. He then shouted: “RELEASE CONTROL OF MY JESSICA NOONA AND THE OTHER WEAPONS RIGHT NOW OR YOU’LL ALL GET IT FROM ME!!!”

X, Y and Z just laughed evilly at the question and demands from the three boys before X spoke up: “The final trial is a fight to the death with us. Defeat us and the answers to your questions will be revealed. Your loved ones will also return to your side… Maybe.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN MAYBE?!!” Jo Kwon screamed back at X. With a snigger, X replied: “Like I said, all will be revealed IF you three can defeat us.” “Don’t worry. WE. WILL.” Sungmin said firmly as he stared defiantly back at the three hooded figures. “That’s good to hear. It wouldn’t be fun if you three kids don’t even try. Not that anything the three of you can try will be of any use though.” Z replied condescendingly.

Following, without any warning, the three hooded figures raised their hands towards the boys and simultaneously shouted: “XYZ COMBINATION ATTACK! FLAMING BLOOD DEMON OF DEATH!” Once the incantation was complete, a demon made of blood and covered from head to toe with black hell flames, rose from each of the boys’ shadows. The three demons all radiated auras of death that drained away the spiritual energy of any living beings nearby.

Thankfully, Jo Kwon, with his quick reflexes, summoned a gust of wind to bring the boys to a safe distance away from the demons, thus the demons did not manage to drain too much of the boys’ spiritual energy or land any attacks on them. However, the demons were fast approaching them, with the three hooded figures quickly closing on them as well.

“Okay. Time for Plan R.” Jo Kwon whispered. “What’s Plan R?” Onew whispered back. “RUN!!!” Jo Kwon shouted, before he dragged the other two boys towards the exit of the throne room. Galvanised into action, Sungmin and Onew started running as well, with Jo Kwon once again summoning the winds to aid in their escape.

“Hmpf. Cowards. Stay and fight like real men!” Y shouted after them as she and the other two hooded figures chased after the boys with the three demons leading the charge. “We’re not cowards. We’re just performing a tactical retreat. Catch us if you can!” Jo Kwon shouted back. He then directed the boys to run out of the building and into the nearby forest in hope of shaking off their pursuers.

“Let them go. The demons should be able to keep them busy for now. Once they are exhausted from dealing with the demons, we can easily swoop in and kill them.” X told Y and Z. Y and Z concurred with X’s suggestion and they decided to go back to the throne room to relax for the moment. The demons, on the other hand, continued chasing the boys.

[Back in the throne room]

“I’m impressed. Didn’t expect you to break out of my illusion that fast.” Z commented. “Are you sure you even trapped me in an illusion?” Taeyeon retorted with a smirk. “Let’s not waste time and just defeat them before going to save the boys.” Sunny told Taeyeon as she transformed into her weapon form and landed in her partner’s hand.

“My lovely Sunny Bunny~ Always the impatient one.” Taeyeon commented sweetly, before turning her attention to the three hooded figures and asked: “Since the boys aren’t here and the rest already know, I guess there’s no harm letting Sunny know right?” “Let me know what?” Sunny questioned, feeling very puzzled.

“Yeah sure. Just make sure she doesn’t go tell Sungmin about it.” X replied. “Okay sure.” Taeyeon agreed and asked Sunny to transform back to her human form. Sunny was still confused, but she trusted Taeyeon and did as she was asked. The couple then continued with setting up the food meant of the celebration, while Taeyeon filled Sunny in about the secret. Needless to say, Sunny was shocked by the revelation and her expression gave Taeyeon and the hooded figures a good laugh before the hooded figures decided to go ambush the boys.

[Back to the boys]

Just as they were about to disappear into the forest, the demons breathed streams of black hell flames at them. Luckily, Jo Kwon was able to summon the winds to carry them into the sky and they barely managed to avoid getting incinerated. The forest, however, was now an empty piece of burnt land as all the vegetation was burnt to crisp by the sheer intensity and power of the flames. “Well… I guess running into the forest isn’t an option anymore.” Onew quipped with a slight chuckle, as he cast an illusion on the demons to make them think that the boys ran off in the opposite direction.

“Why didn’t you do that earlier. We wouldn’t have needed to waste energy running.” Jo Kwon complained with a frown. “Z would have dispelled my illusion if I did it earlier when she was still around.” Onew replied. “It was just short run, don’t whine.” Sungmin added on, to which Jo Kwon pouted in annoyance. Jo Kwon then recomposed himself and started thinking of a plan to defeat the demons and the hooded figures.

“Let’s fight back, but if possible, save our resonating state powers for when the hooded figures reappear.” Jo Kwon suggested. Once his brothers nodded their heads in agreement, he continued explaining the plan in more detail. By the time Jo Kwon had finished briefing his brothers, the demons had already broken out of Onew’s illusion and were back. “Let’s end this.” Sungmin said with determination as he turned to face the demons with his brothers by his side.

With Onew’s innate power, he could replenish the spiritual energy drained by the demons’ death auras, so they had at least one less thing to worry about. However, as the demons had nothing to fear, they immune to Sungmin’s innate power. “Remember not to touch the demons or the hell flames will burn you to death.” Sungmin reminded Jo Kwon, who gave him a thumbs up in response.

At the same time, Onew started firing at the demons to see if the demons could be damaged his energy cannonballs. Unfortunately, minimal damage was inflicted on the demons as their regenerative capabilities were too great, which was well within the boys’ expectations anyways. “Mark of Death. Death by a thousand cuts.” Sungmin chanted as he made eye contact with one of the demons. Immediately, a skull-shaped mark appeared on that demon’s chest and a thousand cuts opened from various parts of the demon’s body, splitting it into a thousand pieces of blood and hell flames.

To the boys’ horror, each of the thousand pieces started growing into an additional demon, causing them to be surrounded by a thousand and two flaming blood demons of death. The tremendous increase in death auras started to cause the boys’ spiritual energies to be drained at a noticeable rate. Onew tried his best to strengthen the power of his innate power to replenish their spiritual energy, but the death auras were simply too overwhelming.

Jo Kwon, after getting over the initial shock, summoned a huge gust of wind to blow all the demons away so that the death auras would not affect them as much. He then tried to trap them in a vacuum bubble to suffocate them but the demons took less than a second to break out of the bubble and continued their advance towards the boys, while occasionally breathing black hell flames at them. Thankfully, Jo Kwon was able to manipulate the winds to deflect the hell flames away from the boys, as well as keep the demons far enough so that they would not be too affected by the demons’ death auras.

As for Onew, he decided to use his aligned state power to make the demons fall asleep, so he signalled his hyungs to put on their ear plugs and fired off the lullaby shot once they did so. This time, the attack worked, and the demons stopped advancing and fell asleep where they stood. This allowed the boys to take stock of the situation and figure out what to do next.

“I think one of us needs to use our resonating state power now to get rid of the demons before the hooded figures get here.” Sungmin suggested. “The question is whose power will work against the demons?” Jo Kwon responded with his eyebrows knitted in frustration. Meanwhile, Onew was focused on maintaining his aligned state power to ensure that the demons remained asleep.

“Since they aren’t affected by my innate power, I doubt they will be affected by my resonating state power.” Sungmin stated dejectedly. “Hmm… That’s true. I doubt mine will work either, since the skeletons I can summon will just get burnt by the demons’ hell flames and even if I make them explode at the demons that will just create more demons…” Jo Kwon replied before he continued: “That leaves Onew’s resonating state power… Maybe his will work since his aligned state power worked on the demons.” “Let’s try it then.” Onew chipped in and his brothers nodded in agreement.

It was at this point that X stepped out of Jo Kwon’s shadow and attempted to swing her white scythe through Jo Kwon, while whispering the command: “Hypnosis”. Thankfully, Sungmin managed to sense her presence as she was stepping out of Jo Kwon’s shadow and immediately swung his scythe arm at the emerging X, while whispering the command: “Rot”. In response, X halted her attack and disappeared back into the shadows, before emerging from the shadow of one of the demons.

At the same time, Y and Z appeared in burst of black hell flames and Y created a black hell flame tornado and sent it towards the boys. Z simply raised her weapon and unleashed its resonating state power, RIP. The demons slashed their claws at the boys, sending spikes made of blood and black hell flames towards them.

“Not bad. I am impressed, Onew. Being able to put us under a decent illusion in such a small window of opportunity without us noticing immediately.” Z commended Onew, genuinely impressed. Onew blushed slightly at the praise before raising his cannon arm to launch his next attack. Onew had managed to manipulate the hooded figures and the demons into launching their attacks at each other by putting the demons under the illusion that the hooded figures were the boys and by putting the hooded figures under the illusion that the demons were the boys.

While the black hell flame tornado did not affect the demons, the RIP attack killed off all the demons that were hit by only the white lightning and turned those that were hit by both black and white lightning into sweet potatoes. The demons which were hit by only the black lightning had their bodies split into an immensely large number of parts and as before, each of these parts regenerated back into a full demon, so now the boys were surrounded by even more demons. On the other hand, Z managed to dispel the illusion before the hooded figures were hit by the spikes of blood and black hell flames, which allowed her and Y to dissipate the spikes with a wave of their hands.

In the split second that the hooded figures and demons were under Onew’s illusion, Jo Kwon and Sungmin had managed to retreat to a safe distance out of the area of effect of Onew’s resonating state power. Thus, the moment Z finished commending Onew, he unleashed Crescendo, his resonating state power. The hooded figures instantly realised what Onew was doing and managed to get a safe distance away as well, but the demons were not as lucky and they immediately lost their sense of hearing before falling to the ground, dead. The hooded figures were once again impressed with Onew, who had managed to control his attack to be able to instantaneously rupture the souls of all the demons.

“How did you do that?” Jo Kwon asked Onew, surprise evident in his expression. “A few days back I asked Jessica noona for advice on how to strengthen my powers and she told me to first understand fully how my powers work. So, I reflected on what my powers were based on and came to the realization that they were based on spiritual energy and interaction with souls. Thus, I realised that my powers could either strengthen a soul or completely destroy it.” Onew replied and earned himself a pat on the back from each of his hyungs.

“I guess summoning the demons again won’t work.” Y sighed. “No matter. The three of us can still defeat them without extra help.” X stated confidently. “You sure? Onew has already surprised us twice. Who knows what the other two have up their sleeves as well?” Z questioned. At this, X just smirked and said: “Considering who their mother is, it’s not surprising after all.” Y and Z just rolled their eyes at their leader before turning back to face the boys again.

Wasting no time, Jo Kwon enclosed the hooded figures in a vacuum bubble in an attempt to suffocate them. The hooded figures simply held their breaths while X, who had stolen Sooyoung’s powers, transformed her arm into a black scythe and slammed it into Y’s shadow as she unleashed Sooyoung’s resonating state power, Shadowy Betrayal. This time, Z detected that Onew tried putting X in an illusion to attack her instead and managed to dispel it before X launched the attack. “The same trick won’t work twice, Onew.” Z sniggered, as three tendrils sprouted from Y’s shadow and connected with the boys’ shadows. Just as a shadow spike emerged from the shadow of each of the boys, Sungmin made eye contact with the hooded figures and whispered the words: “Sacrificial Exchange”, as his eyes turned crimson red.

Each shadow spike pierced each hooded figure and ripped their souls out of their bodies and back into the shadows, as once X’s soul was ripped from her, the Shadowy Betrayal power was terminated. “Are they really dead?” Sugmin asked, his eyes turned back to their normal colour as he saw the bodies of the three hooded figures collapse to the ground. “No. We are under Z’s illusion and we have been since before Jo Kwon enclosed them in the vacuum bubble. Sorry I didn’t realise earlier.” Onew replied as he dispelled the illusion to reveal the hooded figures still alive and well.

“No worries. We’ll just kill them again.” Jo Kwon consoled Onew as he unleashed his resonating state power, Revenge of the Dead. Sungmin immediately followed up by unleashing his resonating state power, Endless Sorrow, after Jo Kwon had brought Onew out of the effect radius of his power. The hooded figures, once again, managed to escape from the radius of Sungmin’s power, but the skeleton army was fast approaching them. Those wielding long range weapons had already started launching attacks at them.

The attacks had no effect whatsoever on the hooded figures since Y could easily conjure black hell flames to incinerate any attack that came too close for comfort. “Did you boys forget that I stole Sooyoung’s powers? That means I can make the dead souls to turn on you all.” X laughed as she commanded the vengeful spirits to attack the boys instead. Seeing this, Jo Kwon was about to stop his power to make the skeletons explode into projectiles, when Sungmin shouted at him: “DON’T! I got this.”

“You may have stolen my mother’s power, but I am her son and the power I inherited from her is much stronger than that fake version you possess.” Sungmin told X as his eyes turned crimson red. He then addressed the army of vengeful spirits: “I, Sungmin, Scythe of Doom, Knight of Death, next in the line of succession for the position of the God of Death, hereby command you to swear your allegiance to your future master and defeat the evil beings who dared harmed your current master! I hereby bless all of you with the flames of hell, so go forth and show no mercy to those in our way!”

For a while, the vengeful spirit army froze in place as X and Sungmin struggled to exert their command over them. With a final push, Sungmin exerted the full force of his soul and with the sudden, unexpected outburst of spiritual energy, X lost control of the army. The army, now covered in armour made of black hell flames and attacks empowered by the same flames, continued their assault on the hooded figures. This time, Y could not simply incinerate the attacks and X could no longer regain control of the army, as they had sworn their allegiance to Sungmin.

Not letting their guards down, Onew consistently checked to ensure that they were not trapped in any illusion and Jo Kwon continued summoning winds to speed up the advance of the army. Jo Kwon also exerted the full force of his soul to strengthen the vengeful spirit army and replenish their ranks if any were struck down by the hooded figures.

The hooded figures, tried unleashing the resonating state powers of the weapons their currently wielded, but the combined power of both Sungmin and Jo Kwon, with the regenerative powers of Onew, rendered those powers ineffective as for each vengeful spirit defeated, two more would take their place. Any form of hell flames was useless against them, any illusion was quickly dispelled by Onew and eventually the hooded figures were surrounded with their energy depleted.

As a last-ditch effort, the three hooded figures transformed into the goddess form of the goddess they each stole the powers of. With this they exerted the full force of their souls to repel the attacks of the vengeful spirit army and the boys. X was still unable to take back control of the army, but she managed to stop the boys from replenishing the fallen spirits. Y successfully dispelled the black hell flames that protected the army and empowered the army’s attacks. Z then followed up by making the entire army fall asleep. This allowed Y to summon black hell flames to raze the army to ashes before Jo Kwon could stop his power and make the skeletons explode into projectiles.

“Give up already. We already defeated the three goddesses and now with their powers, you’ll join them shortly.” Y sneered at the boys, arrogantly. “We’ll make the three of you beg for death like they did.” X added on. “And we’ll end you all like we ended them.” Z smirked.

“YOU THREE KILLED OUR UMMA AND AUNTS?!!” Onew shouted in shock. “THAT’S IT! LET’S END THEM!!!” Jo Kwon raised his voice in anger. “FOR OUR UMMA AND AUNTS!” Sungmin bellowed, as he charged towards the hooded figures. Thinking that the three hooded figures had killed their loved ones, something in the three boys snapped, unleashing powers they never knew they possessed.

Onew fired off a blast of spiritual energy so powerful and so fast that the three hooded figures had no time to react before they got hit and were flung back a good few metres by the impact of the blast. Luckily for them, they managed to manipulate their spiritual energy in time to absorb most of the blast, but this left them without enough to maintain their stolen goddess forms.

Jo Kwon became a blur as he became one with the winds and sped around the three hooded figures mercilessly attacking them. The hooded figures could barely keep up with the speed of his attacks and as he managed to draw more and more blood, the speed of his attacks increased further and eventually they could not even heal fast enough before taking even more damage.

Sungmin’s scythe arm started glowing as his innate power increased tenfold and instilled terror in the hooded figures, causing their already ineffective defence to worsen further. With each passing second, his aura of fear increased in strength and soon the three hooded figures were clutching their weapons in fear and had stopped attempting to defend themselves. They were covered in injuries and were rapidly bleeding out as well.

Witnessing this, the three boys walked up to the three hooded figures to deal the killing blows. “You three really are so much more powerful than us.” Y muttered before Jo Kwon plunged his chainsaw arm into her chest. “You three will definitely be better gods than the three goddesses. The world will be in great hands when you three take over.” Z uttered with a smile as Onew fired a shot through her heart. Lastly, as Sungmin stabbed her in the chest with his scythe arm, X chuckled and whispered to the boys: “As expected of my three incredible children…”

Hearing the final words of X, Y and Z, the boys were woken from their bloodlust and took a good look at the three corpses in front of them. As they lay dead on the ground, their hoods had been uncovered and the boys were finally able to see who they actually were. To their utmost surprise and despair, they realised that X was Sooyoung, Y was Tiffany and Z was Seohyun all along. Hyoyeon, Jessica, Yoona and Yuri had all transformed back into their human forms and were cradling the dead bodies of their partners as they waited for their death to join their partners in the afterlife.

“W-What have we done?” Onew whimpered, tears flowing as he knelt on the ground beside the bodies of his umma and aunts. Jo Kwon was also on his knees and in tears, mumbling incoherently. Sungmin, on the other hand, asked: “Aren’t our umma and aunts goddesses? Goddesses are immortal right? They literally can’t die… And even if they did, they’ll probably end up in Paradise anyways, which is where we live, so it doesn’t make any difference, does it?”

Hearing Sungmin’s words, Hyoyeon started laughing and told Sooyoung: “Okay, I can’t take this anymore! Your eldest son already saw through your trick, so stop making your other two sons cry.” The other weapons stopped acting as well and started comforting the two boys who honestly thought they had killed their umma and aunts.

A moment later, Taeyeon and Sunny appeared and Sunny congratulated Sungmin for not falling for his mother’s devious trick. This made Sungmin blush a little and of course Taeyeon got jealous at the small exchange between the two. Simultaneously, Sooyoung stepped out of Taeyeon shadow, while her “dead body” transformed back into her shadow and returned to her side. The “dead bodies” of Tiffany and Seohyun both combusted into a column of pink flames and the remaining two goddesses materialised out of it.

“A great job well done for successfully completing all the trials of the three!” Sooyoung congratulated the boys, before she continued: “Just know that if you three were actually fighting the three of us goddesses instead of my shadow and the fire clones of Tiffany and Seohyun, we would have easily won.” “Sooyoung unni… Stop bragging. We imbued our respective fire clones with all our powers, and you did so with your shadow. They effectively defeated us at our full power. Just admit it.” Seohyun retorted, shaking her head at her shameless cousin. “Fine fine…” Sooyoung pouted in resignation.

“No wonder umma and X both had no shadows whenever they were in the same place and the last trial was a fight to the death and death is umma’s domain.” Sungmin reasoned. “So that’s why the first trial by Y was like a war, since that is Aunt Tiffany’s domain and why Y can control the black hell flames.” Jo Kwon added on. “I get why the second trial by Z was illusions and that Z had mastery of illusions, since that is Aunt Seohyun’s power as well, but why was Z a fire clone though?” Onew enquired, curiously. “That’s because I knew that you would realise that Z was an illusion if I just made an illusion in my place. Thus, I asked Tiffany unni to create a fire clone that looked like me to be Z.” Seohyun replied, earning an understanding nod from Onew.

“Anyways, now that the three of you have proven to be worthy of being our successors, we would like to formally hand over our positions to each of you, as we believe that the world will be in better hands with the three of you in charge.” Sooyoung informed her three sons. Sungmin, Jo Kwon and Onew were surprised but grateful for their umma’s confidence in their abilities and accepted their new responsibilities with pride.

After the announcement, the group returned to the throne room to celebrate the 305^th anniversary of the formation of the last Vanguard of Death, as well as the successful completion of the Trials of the Three. A simple ceremony was held at the end of the celebrations and Sungmin became the God of Death, Jo Kwon became the God of War and Onew became the God of Sleep.

Life continued as normal afterwards and with the three boys in charge, they all lived happily ever after.

~ ~ ~ THE END ~ ~ ~

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I'm back with the final chapter, after about 4.5 years. Not sure if anyone still remembers my story anymore... >.< Hope that whoever is still interested in it will enjoy this final chapter and I apologise for any plot holes, bad english and a kinda rushed ending. Let me know what you all think about this chapter and the entire story in the comment below! :D And as always, have an awesome day~ ^^