- In Marvel: I Start by Marrying Scarlett Witch [Complete]
- MWM Chapter 345
“There’s always people like this wherever you go.”
Seeing the bald brute blocking his path, Leo raised an eyebrow.
In Karat’s memories, he never had any conflict of interest with his senior brother, nor had he ever done anything to anger him. Yet, his senior brother always bullied him.
Karat never understood why.
But Leo did. Some people are simply bullies by nature. They prey on those weaker than themselves to find a sense of validation and pride.
It doesn’t matter whether you’ve offended them or not—what matters is if you’re weak enough to not fight back.
In the entire pool of Saint aspirants at the Sanctuary, the strongest was Casios, the top disciple of Ophiuchus Shaina. The bald brute wasn’t even in the top ten.
It was only among the weakest, like Karat, that the brute could find his misplaced sense of superiority.
Just now, seeing Seiya—someone he had always looked down on—defeat Casios and win the coveted Pegasus Cloth, the brute’s jealousy had reached its peak.
But he didn’t dare trouble Seiya, so when he saw Karat—now replaced by Leo—he rushed over, eager to vent his frustration.
“Fine, let’s call this settling an old score for the original Karat,” Leo thought.
Without responding, he moved in a flash, swiftly crossing paths with the bald brute, then walking away without looking back.
Once Leo’s figure had disappeared from the plaza, the bald brute suddenly collapsed to his knees, vomiting blood uncontrollably.
During that brief moment when they crossed paths, Leo had struck the brute with a hidden technique—a powerful internal blow to the chest.
On the surface, it seemed as if nothing had happened to him, but his bones and organs were severely damaged. Even if he was resilient, he wouldn’t last more than two days before succumbing to his injuries.
The Sanctuary’s rules forbade internal conflict among Saints, but that only applied to those who had already earned their Cloths and become official Saints.
As for aspirants, no one really cared.
Back when Shion was the Pope, things were better. Cases of bullying and death were rare, and the training was simply rigorous.
Shion believed that Saints not only needed strength but also virtue, to properly aid Athena in the fight against evil.
But ever since Saga disguised himself as Shion and took over as Pope, the atmosphere in the Sanctuary had changed. To achieve his ambitions, the selection of Saints had become far more brutal.
In this current competition for the Pegasus Cloth, hundreds of aspirants had died, either directly or indirectly.
So, if another aspirant turned up dead in a couple of days, no one would bother investigating or coming after Leo. After all, no one had clearly seen him strike.
Besides, by then, he probably wouldn’t even be in the Sanctuary anymore.
Once he awakened his Cosmos, staying in the Sanctuary wouldn’t serve much purpose.
There were no spare Gold Cloths lying around, and as for the Gold Saints who could punch at the speed of light, Leo wasn’t confident he could take them on yet.
Back in his stone house, Leo set up a simple alarm array before sitting down to attempt constructing his own Cosmos for the first time.
The essence of Cosmos cultivation is compressing one’s spirit to the extreme—compressing it into a singularity, an infinitesimally small point. Once compressed, the spirit is ignited in a special way, simulating the Big Bang to form the Cosmos within the sea of consciousness.
Therefore, to construct a Cosmos, your spiritual power must be strong enough to compress it into that singularity. Without sufficient spiritual strength, compression is impossible, let alone creating the Big Bang.
The original Karat had failed to awaken his Cosmos because his spiritual power was too weak to compress.
This wasn’t surprising. Someone who constantly allowed themselves to be bullied without fighting back could hardly have a strong spirit.
The same applied to Casios, who, despite his powerful physical body, couldn’t awaken his Cosmos either.
His body was naturally too strong, and regular training couldn’t stimulate his spirit or willpower. He relied on his physical might to bully the weak but never faced any real challenges or hardship.
It’s like a healthy person easily running 100 meters without breaking a sweat—there’s no physical strain, and their willpower doesn’t improve either.
But for someone frail, for whom even walking is a challenge, running 100 meters leaves them utterly exhausted. Yet, if they grit their teeth and push through, both their willpower and physical strength improve dramatically.
Thus, while a strong body is important for a Saint, it’s not the most important factor—spirit and willpower are.
This is why Seiya was able to awaken his Cosmos.
Seiya and his sister were orphans, relying on each other for survival. After being adopted by Mitsumasa Kido, he endured grueling training and was forcibly separated from his sister, with the promise that he could reunite with her only after obtaining a Cloth.
When he arrived at the Sanctuary, he was constantly bullied and beaten for being an outsider, yet he never begged for mercy.
Even though his body was much weaker than Casios’s, the hardship and suffering he endured strengthened his spirit and willpower, allowing him to awaken his Cosmos.
Of course, not every Saint needs to go through such trials. Some are born with extraordinary spiritual power—natural prodigies. Most of the current Gold Saints are such individuals.
Those who wear the Gold Cloths didn’t work their way up from Bronze—they were chosen from the start as Gold Saint aspirants.
Sagittarius Aiolos was chosen by Shion to be the next Pope not only because of his strength but also because of his virtue. Yet, Aiolos was only fourteen years old at the time.
Other Gold Saints, like Leo Aiolia, Taurus Aldebaran, Aries Mu, Virgo Shaka, and Aquarius Camus, were only seven years old.
Pisces Aphrodite was nine, Scorpio Milo and Cancer Deathmask were ten, and the only one Aiolos’s age was Gemini Saga—also fourteen.
This meant that by the age of seven or eight, their spiritual power was already strong enough to construct a Cosmos, and they were selected as Gold Saints because of their immense talent.
Leo was similar. Thanks to his wizard bloodline and his cultivation of true essence, his spiritual power wasn’t weak either.
In fact, it was more than sufficient to meet the basic requirement for constructing a Cosmos.
So, when he began compressing his spiritual power, the process went smoothly. In less than a minute, he had compressed all his spiritual power into a tiny point.
He then followed the method taught in the Sanctuary to ignite the compressed spiritual point, triggering the creation of the Cosmos.
“Boom!”
A deafening explosion echoed in his mind as the spiritual point detonated.
In that moment, Leo felt as though his consciousness had completely lost control. It was as if countless galaxies were pouring out of that tiny spiritual point, black holes devouring planets, and stars bursting into radiant light.
…..