Scorpio was another constellation Marco knew extremely well.
He had unlocked its signature technique, Scarlet Needle, long ago.
For a time, it had served as one of his strongest finishing moves and helped him survive the weaker stages of his journey.
Now that he had finally obtained the Scorpio Gold Cloth itself, the technique would receive the full enhancement it had always lacked.
More importantly, the awakening strengthened his Cosmo again.
Marco's Seventh Sense reached its absolute peak.
He had arrived at the threshold of the Eighth Sense.
"The Eighth Sense... What exactly is it?"
Marco sat cross-legged in midair, golden light flowing around his body.
The Eighth Sense was a mysterious state that existed between life and death.
It lay deeper within the human Cosmo than the Seventh Sense, and most people lived their entire lives without discovering that it existed.
When a person died, the first seven senses were severed. Only then did the Eighth Sense emerge for the first time.
For many, death was the only moment when they came close to recognizing it.
Most still felt nothing, just as they had never noticed their own Cosmo while alive.
Everyone possessed a Cosmo, but not everyone could perceive it.
Everyone possessed the Eighth Sense, but very few could awaken it.
Even among Saints, almost no one reached that realm without some form of external stimulus.
Marco, however, had a shortcut.
Blood of God.
At the peak of the Seventh Sense, even the slightest influence from divine blood should be enough to let him take that final step, if only briefly.
He did not hesitate.
Marco took out one portion of Blood of God, but he did not waste the entire thing. He merely touched a fingertip to it.
All he needed was one instant of divine blessing and stimulation.
That would be enough.
Boom!
The Eighth Sense.
Arayashiki.
Awakening it meant truly transcending the boundaries of time, space, life, and death!
Almost immediately, Marco crossed the barrier.
It was far easier than he had expected, as though the boundary had never truly been capable of stopping him.
Then again, he had already died once and returned to life.
Perhaps his understanding of life and death had always been different from that of ordinary people.
Maybe he had already glimpsed the world of the Eighth Sense without realizing it.
Buzz!
Marco's Cosmo expanded.
He felt himself merging with the world, then with the vast universe beyond it.
He could sense every change taking place across creation. He could see the roots of the world and understand the laws that governed all things.
Past and future unfolded before him.
He could hear the voices of forests, wind, rivers, earth, sky, and nature itself—and answer them.
His soul seemed to become one with heaven and earth, present everywhere at once.
"So this is... the Eighth Sense."
Marco drew a slow breath.
Compared with this realm, the Seventh Sense truly deserved to be called only the power of a god among mortals.
The difference was simply too vast.
The Marco who had entered Ankhseram's realm at the middle stage of the Seventh Sense would have been helpless against his current self.
Back then, even using every weapon and technique he possessed, he could at most wound a god or bully a weaker deity.
Now, even in the world of the Saints, Marco possessed enough power to defeat famous gods in direct battle.
With eleven Gold Cloths at his command, even the chief gods would need to take him seriously.
The Ophiuchus Gold Saint had merely dared to challenge their authority.
Marco might now be capable of actually killing them.
He rose to his feet.
The blessing of the Blood of God quickly faded, yet the Eighth Sense remained.
Marco held onto it through his own power.
He had already experienced death and resurrection, and the strange state of the Eighth Sense felt almost natural to him.
With unbreakable will, relentless fighting spirit, and absolute concentration, he seized the power as it began to recede and refused to let it go.
The Five Bronze Saints had once used Blood of God to leap from the Sixth Sense to the Eighth, but they could not sustain that state.
Marco had already been standing at the very edge of the Eighth Sense before receiving the divine stimulus. Maintaining it was far easier for him.
"Whew..."
Marco opened his eyes.
For an instant, endless ages seemed to pass within them. Then the light vanished, and his gaze returned to normal.
"I'll still need time to become familiar with this power."
A smile appeared on Marco's face.
He had entered a completely different realm.
With his current strength, killing the Ankhseram he had just fought would be no more difficult than crushing an insect.
...
Three years passed in the blink of an eye.
Those years were remarkably peaceful. Nothing particularly significant happened anywhere across Ishgar.
The trial of Grimoire Heart was probably the closest thing to a major event.
Marco had already announced that all three major dark guilds of the Balam Alliance had been destroyed, but until then, Oración Seis had been the only one whose members had actually faced a public trial.
The dark guilds had lost their leaders and were being wiped out in large numbers, so no one doubted that something had happened.
Even so, whether Grimoire Heart and Tartaros had truly been destroyed remained officially unconfirmed.
Once Grimoire Heart's members were brought before the Magic Council and judged, however, there was nothing left to debate.
Marco really had done exactly what he claimed.
Hades's true identity caused quite a stir throughout Ishgar as well.
After all, he had once been Precht, Fairy Tail's Second Guild Master.
As Fairy Tail's reputation continued to grow, the revelation naturally attracted even more attention.
It did not seriously affect the guild, though.
Precht belonged to another age.
Even Makarov, who had succeeded him as Guild Master, had already stepped down. The current era of Fairy Tail belonged to Marco.
Besides, Hades had committed all his crimes after leaving Fairy Tail and surrendering the position of Guild Master.
There was no reasonable way to hold the guild responsible for what he later became.
If anything, Marco had been the one to capture him and bring him to justice.
Rather than blaming Fairy Tail, many praised the guild for being willing to clean up its own past.
Arresting the leader of one of the Balam Alliance's three great dark guilds was difficult enough without that man also being a former Guild Master.
As expected, Hades was sentenced to death.
The verdict was not unjust.
Considering everything he had done over the years, one execution hardly felt sufficient.
Mavis and Warrod Sequen were deeply saddened by the judgment.
Precht had once been one of their closest companions, but neither asked the Council to spare him.
Hades was no longer the man they had known.
Marco accepted the verdict as well.
It was fair, and if the decision had been his, he would have reached the same conclusion.