Chapter 133: Thanatos

Am I dreaming? I probably am. Never in my wildest dreams would I even think that this day would come… the day when Shadow would… work together with that monster.

The two of them faced the eldritch abomination summoned by the Black Rose, which shares some similarities to Necromancer, head on. I bet that abomination was part of his experiments too. Why else would it possess the same sickening green magic as him?

And he actually created an abomination … whose power surpasses even his own and Shadow's. And Shadow had to join forces with him to clean up his own mess. What a joke. But... we, who have proven ourselves to be helpless against him… can only stand back and watch as they fight the monster.

"Lady Alpha… What should we do…?" Beta muttered whilst enduring the pain of the Possession, a very familiar pain for all of us.

"I don't know… At our current condition…" I answered whilst enduring pains of my own.

Suddenly Necromancer raised his staff high and it flashes green… and we feel his sickening magic envelop us once more… and cured us of our possession. The warped and rotten flesh that grows in several parts of our bodies are cured instantly.

"What…?" Epsilon muttered, absolutely surprised as to why the monster would heal us.

"Why would he…?" Beta said, confused. The rest of the Shades also have the same question… but I know why he did that.

"It's because he made a deal with Shadow. In exchange for Shadow to help him with that monster, he released us of our condition. We were… hostages…" I answered their question, which horrifies them.

"It can't be…! I thought we're… stronger now." Gamma stated in frustration.

"Delta… is not weak…!" Even Delta expresses her frustration by punching a hole at the ground.

"Lord Shadow… I…" Zeta is beginning to show the same face she used to wear when we first met her… the face of someone who hated the entire world.

"…" Eta… merely observes the two of them with curiosity. Sometimes I wish I could be as carefree as her.

But now that we're free from Possession, we can help him, even if it costs us our lives. I stood up first in order to draw the attention of the other Shades.

"You girls… get ready. There's no way we can leave Shadow alone. We should-"

"Go." My words are cut by Shadow, who's glancing at our direction with a smile that seems to say "Leave it to me!"

"But Shadow! We can help!" I shouted desperately.

"You should listen to your master, No. 001. You have proven your uselessness already this day with your disgraceful defeat. No need to add more to the pile of failures in the same day." Necromancer says in his dreadful and taunting voice. After he said that, both of them turned back to face the skull head of the gigantic abomination.

"Lady Alpha… You heard him. Let us retreat." Zeta said with a blank expression. I may be wearing the same expression right now though.

"Yes…" I said in response with subdued voice, trying my best to stop my tears from flowing. All seven of us retreated after that, leaving Shadow to face the abomination with his greatest enemy.

Shadow… Please… Don't die.

Tetsuya…

I face the creature that has been whispering my name for the past few days with my nemesis at my side. The creature is an enormous lump of flesh with several skeletal hands, scythes and various bone parts and skulls protruding out of his body, with the big skull at the bottom which seems to serve as his head considering how he's glaring at us through its eye sockets, which glows red much like the eye sockets on my own skull mask.

The lump of flesh above him (which is probably his neck) is surrounded by a ring of light that glows a very familiar shade of green and is connected to his neck through sparks of green electricity. A grotesque and alien creature, though with familiar parts unlike what I would've expected out of such an interdimensional alien. I mean… why would the skulls look so much like human skulls?

And that ring of light that surrounds his neck… What enormous power it contains. I must study it before taking it for myself. More power for me. Heh heh heh.

I cured the Seven Shades of the Possession I caused as an incentive to make Shadow join me in fighting this creature. He seemed eager enough to join me even without me doing that but I still did it in order to prevent him from being distracted from the fight just because his subordinates got hurt.

I am confident in taking on this creature myself even if he's stronger than me by a large margin but his powers are still largely unknown to me, not to mention I am surrounded by enemies from all sides without allies in sight, which means that even if I managed to defeat this creature, my enemies could've taken the opportunity to attack me while I'm at my weakest… and thus the best course of action is to make use of my nemesis to test out this creature's power.

Tetsuya…

I can't afford to underestimate him. Despite this being our first meeting… we instinctively recognize each other… as evidenced by how he calls me by my previous name.

Miyazaki Tetsuya. How nostalgic… hearing my old name like that. I've been Claude Normann for so long that I almost forgot that name. Makes me think of my old world. I wonder how the legacy of the Occult Killer I've left there has grown. Do the people still remember me? Or have they forgotten about me? I have to make a point in researching the Black Rose in order to find a way to open a portal to return there.

I pointed my staff at the creature and try to communicate with him.

"Tell me. Do you have a name?"

Tetsuya…

"Hmph. No no no. That name has been left behind. I hereby dub thee… Thanatos!" I declared, naming the creature after the Greek god of death. Shadow seems to approve judging from his grin.

Tetsuya!

The eye sockets on the creature's head began glowing and we both moved out of the way to dodge the laser beam coming out of his eye sockets. I try to test his defences by launching a mini Armageddon at him.

With how big he is and how not all his body manages to cross the portal he forcefully created, he cannot dodge and will remain stationary there in the air, suspended by the portal as if stuck on a hole, and thus the black orb of my Armageddon hits him squarely in the face… or at least that's how it's supposed to be but instead, the Armageddon explodes midair before touching him. His ring of light seems to have protected him from my attack.

It's Shadow's turn and unlike what I expected of a battle junkie like him, he launches a long ranged slash instead of rushing to meet Thanatos in melee range. His attack, like my mini Armageddon, vanished mid air.

I have a theory to test out, and thus I launch a huge fireball at him… and the fireball vanishes as if blown by a huge wind.

"As I thought. That ring of light generates so much force that any attack would be pushed back."

"Is that so? How interesting!" Shadow declared as he launched arrows made of slime towards Thanatos in order to test out how strong and how dangerous the force generated by the ring of light by launching a physical object at him. The result? The slime arrow disintegrated completely before it could touch Thanatos. It's a good thing that Shadow is cautious enough not to rush towards him.

"SCREEEEECH!" The creature screeches like a Nazgul once again and sent its scythes towards us. Naturally we dodge the enormous scythes but I want to see how strong the scythe is, and thus I create a barrier mid air and launch it towards the trajectory of one of the scythes and allow it to be sliced by the scythe. The barrier is not only sliced in half but also disintegrates when it came in contact with the scythe. The amount of magic power I poured into that barrier is no joke and could've survived at least one mini Armageddon. For it to disintegrate completely…

"So… perfect offense and defense." I muttered as I watch Thanatos's ring of light glow brighter.

"Incoming!" I shouted as a warning to Shadow as Thanatos launches countless magic bullets out of his ring of light to all directions, which rains down destruction to wherever his bullets hits. So many bullets coming at us but we dodged them all, Shadow by using his superior speed, and me by occasionally using teleportation.

After Thanatos stopped his attack, I was able to observe the damage caused by that attack. The battlefield used to be Grand Canyon thanks to my Apocalypse. Now it's… still Grand Canyon but with several valleys that seemed bottomless. Just how deep did his magic penetrate the ground?

As much as I want to keep playing with him, I certainly can't let him destroy MY world even more than he already did.

"Shadow. Keep him contained for a bit, will you?" I requested my nemesis and he merely grins as he flew towards the creature and creates swords out of pure magic and launches them towards him to get his attention. Naturally the swords disintegrate before impact but Shadow launches more to distract the creature as I prepare my next attack. The creature responds by occasionally sending orbs of light or laser beams at him, which he dodged everytime.

"Let's see how you handle a curse, my dear Thanatos." I cast a magic control disruption curse towards the creature. Considering his enormous magic power, he should have problems with magic control like I did back when I took the Tears of Diablos and received enormous power boost. After all, his condition is similar to mine even if his magic control is still better than Ragnarok's. And naturally I amplified the curse a hundredfold in order to affect a creature of this magnitude.

"SCREEEEECH!" The creature screeches again, but this time in pain as his magic control fails him, making him barely able to maintain his ring of light. Shadow took this chance to charge in with his sword in hand. With the ring of light failing, Shadow is neither blown away nor disintegrates but instead is able to slash through the ring of light, causing it to dissipate.

"Now you're vulnerable, my dear Thanatos." I said as I prepare my next spell… only for the creature to break out of my curse in an instant and try to form the ring of light back but Shadow didn't let him do it by slashing at his enormous body, causing green glowing liquid to come out of his wound. The color of his blood looks toxic and even Shadow instinctively dodges it.

Oh look. That enormous wound stitches and heals itself in an instant. The ring of light is even formed again. But this much is within prediction. Even I can regenerate wounds that fast as long as I have magic power.

Before I was able to cast the next curse, he starts creating several light orbs out of the ring of light, no doubt aiming to shoot those orbs at us. We of course are prepared to dodge, even as the light orbs change directions to chase us, similar to my bootleg Hellzone Grenade fireballs did. Coating my staff with my magic, I hit the orbs with my staff without causing it to explode upon impact, merely changing its direction in order to allow it to hit other orbs and explode in the air. Shadow lured the orbs to hit each other with his speed alone without touching them.

Then Shadow creates more floating magic swords but this time he poured more magic to it in order to add more penetrating power, and he shoots it at Thanatos' ring of light. Obviously it didn't work but both of us noticed that his swords managed to go farther than other spells we threw at him before dissipating. The swords almost reached him in fact. Hmm…

"Hmph. I know what to do now. Nemesis! Now it's your turn to distract him!" Shadow said.

"What do you plan to do, nemesis?"

"Playtime is over!" He said as he started channelling the purple glow of his signature magic. It seems that he realized that a prolonged fight is not advantageous for us due to how enormous the amount of magic power Thanatos has.

"A brute force method then. Very well." I said in agreement as I launched several fireballs towards Thanatos. That drew his attention far easier than I thought it would. As I drew Thanatos' attention by casting several elemental spells and curses at him, Shadow finishes his spell, which allows his purple magic to form a cone that targets Thanatos.

"I AM ATOMIC ARROW!" He whispered, although his voice still audible despite that.

His Atomic magic then bursts, though not in all direction like before but instead is concentrated towards the direction of Thanatos, engulfing the creature in his purple explosive magic.

We waited a few second for the light and the smoke to dissipate to behold the sight of a wounded Thanatos, who has a large hole in the center of its body now along with broken ring of light still surrounding him.

"Heh. All that power and only this much damage." Shadow mutters whilst grinning in excitement despite spending a huge amount of magic for that attack.

Naturally Thanatos starts to heal his wound but before he can close the wound completely, I launched an Armageddon towards it and when the wound closes with the black orb inside it, I let it burst.

"ARMAGEDDON!" I shouted and the black orb explodes inside him, making his green blood spread all around us. Both of us have to deploy barriers in order to shield ourselves from the flood of toxic blood splashing around.

Now his 'neck' is completely destroyed, only his severed head (still floating below us) and the pile of wounded flesh in the portal remains. In order to prevent it from regenerating, I raised my staff and casts a spell to close the portal, or more accurately the dimensional hole he forcefully created through brute force, separating his head from the main body completely.

When the portal is closed, his head, which is still alive and kicking despite being separated from the main body, floats above us and forms its own ring of light above his skull head, which looks like a halo.

"Heh. Time for the second phase it seems." I muttered as we prepared ourselves to face the head.

Author's Note:

First phase of the boss fight is over. Now entering the second phase.

Anime0CC0Manga: will they be friends when they go back to earth? Necro and Shad?

Answer: No plans for that.

TheAbyssWatcher: Prepare for trouble and make it double! Necro and Shad going co-op to beat this eldritch skel ass back to the ghetto! The strongest tag team ever is HERE!

Answer: Not gonna be that easy though.