Chapter 167: Reunion

I stand in the pure white space and turn to face the figure wearing my previous life's skin, staring at my old clothes. Oh, how this brings back memories. It's like being reunited with an old friend.

Mari-chan's spirit stands beside me as my minion and my hostage. With her at my side, he will never make any reckless move. Her soul is crying out internally but under my control, she is nothing but an obedient doll and a good shield.

"Judging from how you're choosing that form, I assume you're identifying yourself as my… our previous self, Miyazaki Tetsuya. Such a shame. After I've kindly and graciously gave you the name of the god of death." I say to the figure, who did not reply and instead removes his plastic skull mask. I remove my own metal skull mask in response, letting him see my new face as I gaze upon the old face we used to wear.

I grin as I try to get a response from him, who stays emotionless and expressionless, like a monster trying to be human in front of a human who is a monster inside.

"Don't you think it's foolish to identify yourself as that when you're already so far gone from that identity? You've been warped into something so inhuman that even I am still closer to what we were… and I don't even identify myself as that. Why don't you accept the name I've so graciously granted you if you crave identity so much?" I keep talking but he does not respond, preferring to stare at the soul of our former sister instead.

"Though… impressive move back there. Resurrecting her, even without her soul, shouldn't require the souls of an entire world. You did that just to spite me, didn't you?" It is only at this moment that he turns at me with a glare.

You're wrong…

He replies in a disembodied voice that sounds like how I… we did in our previous life.

"Wrong am I? Then, pray tell!"

I had intended… to restore this world… to its former glory…

"What did you say?" I reply as if offended by the nonsense that he's saying.

You heard me. I want to restore this world… undo everything we've done to it… bring back not just her… but everyone who was killed…

"Heh… heh heh heh… Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!" I laugh. I laugh as if I'm going crazy at the absurdity of his words. He, however, does not find it funny and continues being expressionless.

Suddenly, I stop laughing and take a deep breath. In that same instant, my emotion changes to pure rage.

"WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN SAYING!? WHAT ABSURDITY IS THAT!? YOU WANT TO RETURN TO BEING MIYAZAKI TETSUYA SO MUCH AND YET YOU'VE FORGOTTEN THE VERY THING THAT DEFINES MIYAZAKI TETSUYA!?" I shout in pure rage at the monster pretending to be human… pretending to be Miyazaki Tetsuya… who is so bad at it due to only possessing partial memories of the human once known as Miyazaki Tetsuya.

I want the old days returned… those happy days… together with my family…

"DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER OUR FAMILY!? BESIDES MARI-CHAN HERE! DO YOU EVEN REMEMBER ABOUT OUR TRAGIC MOTHER!? OUR ABSENT FATHER!? WERE WE TRULY A HAPPY FAMILY LIKE YOU THOUGHT!?" I ask a question that I know he wouldn't be able to answer as even I barely remember our parents, especially my father.

As I predicted. He cannot answer. He does not know what he wants. He does not know whether we were a functional and happy family or not.

"Do you not remember our wish? Our aspirations?" Once again, he does not answer. He remains expressionless and does not properly emote like a human does but I bet he's totally confused right now.

"WE are the Occult Killer! The villain! The monster! The mass murderer! The god of evil! We wish to be a villain for the sake of it! No higher goals! No justifications! No logical reason whatsoever! We, Miyazaki Tetsuya, just wish to be evil! And we aspire to be a villain! The greatest villain of all! And to do that… I… WE NEED MORE POWER!" I clench my fist in front of my face as I deliver my monologue. He still does not emote but I can feel a horrified emotion from Mari-chan's soul. Heh heh heh… This is… intoxicating... just like when I crossed the line the first time… which is the first time I killed someone…

The horrified reaction from everyone… was so sweet and satisfying. So intoxicating that I feel like I'm at the top of the world.

And this day… I've crossed another line… a line I was previously not ready to cross. But I crossed it anyway...

"Just face it, my dear Thanatos. We are meant to be evil. Don't pretend to be the good guy here because you're not. We're not good guys. At his very roots, Miyazaki Tetsuya, is an evil person. If you want to become Miyazaki Tetsuya, then you should stop playing hero and embrace the villainy."

Then why did you feel sad when you stabbed her?

Ah… He made a comeback that left me speechless for the first time. I stop grinning and look at Mari-chan's spirit and she turns to look at me in return.

Yes… I was sad… But I've tasted the intoxicating drug… and I cannot stop anymore.

I grin once more while locking my eyes with her, which horrifies her even more. Yes… that's the emotion I want. Like a certain eldritch creature who disguised itself as a clown… I'm now devouring the tasty tasty beautiful fear.

"Heh heh heh heh… Mwa ha ha ha ha! Do you remember? The time we killed someone for the first time?" I ask him. He may or may not have a semblance of memory about that time but I press on anyway.

"It was horrible at first… but afterwards… that drug… that drug called fear… It was intoxicating. So addicting. And now, Thanatos… now I AM BASKING IN IT!" I declare as I snap my fingers to release my hold on Mari-chan's spirit, specifically the part that restrains her emotions, in order to let her freely express her fear and horror of me.

"Agh…!" She gasps as she fell to her knees. She didn't rise back up and continue staring at me with horrified expression, a face not of someone who discovered something horrifying but of someone who confirmed it. She must've read my diary. That's why she knew…

"Onii…-chan…" She mutters quietly, calling out to me. Her voice shaking.

"Yes… like that." I grin as I continue to bask in her fear and despair.

"Can you feel it? The intoxicating feeling of power? Holding power over others?" I say as I look back at my counterpart. He does not reply and remains silent in that permanently expressionless face.

It seems that you cannot be reasoned with…

"Ha ha ha. You're the one who refused to listen to reason, you failure of a villain."

Then… I shall just kill you and use you and myself as fuel for my spell.

He says as he changes his stance and forms the ring of light at his back, ready to cast spells.

"Heh… Absurd. You want to commit suicide while also killing me… just to restore earth? How disgustingly heroic. Like I'll let you do that. I'll devour you instead."

Resistance is futile.

"Yes. For you that is. I am, after all, better than you." I respond by forming the half ring of light behind me while also putting my hold on Mari-chan back, commanding her to stand in front of me like the good shield that she is.

You bastard…

Finally I hear a word with emotion put into it coming out of his mouth. Heh heh heh. That's the reaction I wanted!

He opens up by shooting a beam out of his ring of light and I position Mari-chan right in front of the beam, forcing him to redirect the beam elsewhere.

I shoot a mini Armageddon at him and it hits him while he's distracted, engulfing him in a huge explosion.

When the smoke clears from the explosion, he emerges with no damage as he was protected by his ring of light. Realizing that he can do nothing to me as long as I have my beautiful hostage at my command, he casts a spell breaker spell on her, which is intercepted by the anti-spell breaker function I placed on her spirit beforehand as I anticipated this move since the beginning.

"Heh heh heh. My former sister. Give him a little pain, will you?" I order Mari-chan to attack and like the obedient puppet she is, she obeys and shoots a bluish beam from her wand on him, which easily hits him as he didn't bother dodging or defending himself, not even with the ring of light. With her power level, she cannot truly harm a being of his magnitude… but it certainly hurts his heart, which is what I'm going for in this moment. Heh heh heh.

Once again he attempts to cast spell breaker. Trying to copy my brute force method, eh? You poor fool. You're still a novice in the magic arts. You are merely copying my spells while struggling to keep up with me. Your brute force method won't work as long as I keep repairing the damage your spellbreaker does on the anti-spellbreaker that I put on her.

I point my palm at him and activate my soul devouring glove to start the extraction process, which he resists instantly after being forced to abandon his attempts at breaking my hold on my cute little shield.

"Agh…!" This time it's my turn to be distracted as memories of my last kill on earth before being reincarnated flashes in my brain due to absorbing parts of Thanatos' soul, completing the puzzle on my own soul bit by bit.

I'm forced to recall the moment when the profane ritual with human sacrifice I performed that time finally worked… or at least it looked like it did (but I know better now) because a dark portal coincidentally opened where I was and devoured me. The chaotic force of that portal split my soul into two, something I see from Thanatos' perspective as he was immediately sent to an alien world that I assume is the 1st realm.

That confirms my hypothesis about my chaotic reincarnation at least.

But my distraction costs me as he manages to shoot a beam from his ring of light, blowing a hole in my chest where my heart was. Too bad for you, I can heal this just fine… while what I did to you must've hurt a lot because I can hear you screeching like a Nazgul!

"SCREEEEECH!"

He screeches as he suffers another soul wound while I heal my own. He tries to get it back by casting his own soul devouring spell. This time, I cannot use Mari-chan as a shield as her soul would be taken away by the spell, which would result in me losing my precious shield and with it my advantage over him, and thus I choose to dodge to spell, though the beam from his spell seems to follow me around as I fly through the vast expanse of this white void with Mari-chan in tow.

Come to think of it… he's a novice at sanctuary creation too, isn't he? He went as far as to create this space but does nothing to fill it… even though this sanctuary is his domain that he should be able to weaponize against me. How foolish. Let me take it away from you and turn it into MY domain then!

I cast a grand spell to spread my magic all over the subspace, trying to take control over the whole thing, which forces him to abandon his attempts at devouring my soul in order to resist my taking over his sanctuary.

He resists with pure power alone, which is difficult to overwhelm… but I am far more proficient in spellcasting, and thus, I know how to get around it. There are plenty of cracks in his defences that I can exploit. And exploit it I did.

In no time at all, the white void disappears and is replaced by a scene of hell, where the sky is pitch black in contrast with the green colored inferno below. The burning land is made of flesh and various bone parts, which almost resembles Thanatos' own monstrous form, with several towering flesh pillars that stretch from the ground to the black sky above. Countless tortured souls are shackled by spine-like chains coming out of the fleshy ground, forever tormented by the heat from the green tinted hellfire.

To avoid being trapped in the raging inferno below, he flies upwards, with me and Mari-chan chasing him. The heat from the hellfire still damages him constantly though.

"Welcome to MY world." I bid him welcome as I let him bask in the horrors of my new domain, letting him admire the hellscape he helped create as I still use his own magic power as fuel to create this space.

His attempts to resist my taking over his domain, the domain absorbing his own magic power at an alarming rate and the hellfire constantly damaging him is extremely taxing for him… though it is still not enough to take down a monster of his level, and thus I need to harm him more and immobilize him so that I can easily extract his soul bit by bit with minimal resistance.

To do that, I command the domain to unleash several giant skeletal hands and giant scythes to attack him. He is forced to dodge and occasionally deflect the attacks with his ring of light, which is another thing that's taxing for him right now.

He could've broken free and even collapse the entire sanctuary with his level of strength if he actually try… but that may result in damaging poor little Mari-chan here, something even he knows very well, which is why he holds back his punches and still hesitates. That's what you get for playing hero, fool.

Though I'm one to talk considering I just saved the other world from his grand spell. Heh.

Still, I can't bet on him clinging to his wish to save her forever. I must proceed with the plan.

"Enjoying the taste of your own medicine?" I taunt him as I summon several skulls from the flesh pillars around us. The eye sockets of the skulls shines as they shoot several laser beams at him, who continues to dodge and deflect the attacks like before. Dodging them is hard because I occasionally redirect the trajectory of the laser beams to chase him whenever he dodges, forcing him to defend himself with his ring of light more often than he's comfortable with.

Let's push him a little further.

"Don't move." I say as I manipulate the entire domain to increase gravity for him and only him, dragging him to the burning inferno below. Of course he resists with all his might but that's what I'm waiting for.

"Got you." I say as I cast the soul absorbing spell from my glove at point blank range, draining so many of his essence in one sitting.

Due to that, his memory starts rushing into me again, raw and unfiltered, giving me massive headache and causes me to nosebleed.

From the memories, I confirm that when our souls were split apart, he took the body of Miyazaki Tetsuya with him whereas I went to reincarnate into a new body, which means that the body he currently inhabits is the real deal.

I see the way he adapted to the alien landscape that is the 1st realm, by unconsciously absorbing the massive amount of magic form the air of that realm and killing and devouring anything that gets in his way, no matter the size and shape, until he started noticing how he is losing more and more of both his humanity and memories, and therefore his identity as Miyazaki Tetsuya.

His body warped more and more as time goes on. By the time his form no longer resembles human, he forgot how he originally looked like and continued surviving until… a vision of a vampire standing on top of a skyscraper overlooking a red moon called out to him…

So that's how he found me.

"Aghh!" Distracted by the memories, I had my entire head blown away by his laser beam. Luckily my regenerative powers are broken at this point. I quickly regenerate my head and continue maintaining the gravity increase on him while summoning more skulls to shoot lasers at him.

Hesitating to use long ranged attack out of fear of harming Mari-chan and no longer wishing to be bullied by my laser beams, he charges forward to engage me in hand to hand combat.

"Ohh… you wanna play? Let's play then." I say as I block his punches and kicks while delivering my own counterattacks, most of which lands perfectly.

Hand to hand combat against me is a fatal error, as he quickly learns. I have massive advantage here because even if he possess the body of Miyazaki Tetsuya who trained in martial arts for years, he has lost most memories of being human and are more used to a monster body than a human body at this point. Not to mention his movements are shackled by the increased gravity which is applied only on him.

I, on the other hand, remained human after the split, possess a body which has trained with magic induced super human strength for years, and do not have any kind of restrictions or handicaps placed upon me… well, besides my soul wound that is slowly but surely being healed by absorbing his soul.

I deliver a right hook on his face, which sends him away where I once again send laser beams to overwhelm him.

Being trapped by the increased gravity, he can barely dodge the barrage of lasers and can only deflect them with his ring of light, which slowly crumbles from the constant barrage of laser beams. He struggles a lot from my merciless assault, which I stop briefly in order to indulge in my inner troll.

"You see now? Just how much I am better than you?" I can't help but taunt him before sending another round of laser beams.

Shut up…!

He says with greater emotion than his earlier words as he continues to endure my relentless assaults.

I know I probably shouldn't taunt him… that angering him is a bad idea as it will make him more reckless… but I can't help it.

"You can't do anything. Whether it's keeping your own identity, or protecting dear Mari-chan. You know what I'm gonna do to her after this? I'm gonna smelt her soul, purify it into an empty soul and forge a weapon using it as an ingredient."

"SCREEEECH!"

Oops. He's angry. His anger combined with losing parts of himself causes him to mutate. Similar to how he adapted to the 1st realm's alien environment, his body is once again warping and bulging. His flesh and bones expands and splits into several grotesque appendages that he sends to attack me with.

I attempt to use my dear shield again but this time he barely cares and hits her anyway, sending her away. Looks like I don't need her anymore now that he lost whatever semblance of reason he has left.

He attacks again using appendages made of flesh and bones but dodge them all as I send skulls to attack him again with their laser beams. He once again deflects them with his ring of light.

He now tries to brute force his way out of my sanctuary. The amount of pressure I'm feeling is enormous! Despite every advantage I got, he can still overwhelm me! I must make this quick!

While he's still struggling with the sanctuary, I point my palm at him again and absorb chunks of his soul once again.

I didn't get much this time as he expands his ring of light, blowing me away while also causing the space around us to start cracking.

"Well. Might as well go all out. Apocalypse!" I shout as I create multiple black orbs around him. The orbs flashes green and explode outwards, pointing all the blasts at him. The force of Apocalypse clashes with his ring of light, completely shattering the dimension.

As the dimension shatters, we appear once again in the real world. The force of our clash shook the earth and destroys the land below, easily vaporizing the city of Akihabara and the surrounding area.

I hit him with all I've got. I even absorbed whatever energy I can from him while he is extremely taxed in several ways at once. But I finally did it. I defeated him.

What remains of him is merely a head, which is not yet warped. I absorb the rest of his soul and finish the job.

An overwhelming headache assaults me as his memory rushes into me, mainly his recent memories, including both encounters against me. I grip my head as not only my nose, my ears start leaking out blood as well from how much my brain is strained from the rush of memories. But I endure it all. Since this is a memory which is originally my own, coming from parts of my soul, I must not filter it in anyway. I must integrate his soul fully into mine! No matter the pain!

Oh? From the remaining memory I absorbed from him, I see that he has done something to Mari-chan before the end without my noticing. It seems that he didn't completely lose his mind back there, though his rage still overwhelms him. I grab his head before it falls to the ruined land below and bring it to my face.

"Farewell, Thanatos… You shall be remembered. Heh heh heh heh…. Mwa ha ha ha ha ha!" I laugh… I laugh but I'm not completely happy. Because due to how much I tormented him, the memory of what I did to him rushes into me like firsthand experience, as if it was done to me directly.

All the pain, sorrow and anger… I feel it all. I was an asshole to myself.

But above all… I am feeling… extremely liberated. Finally… no longer feeling the pain of the soul wounds… my growth no longer shackled by limitations of my spiritual body…

I am… finally whole again.

Author's Note:

You gotta be a special kind of evil if your monstrous counterpart is in a way a good guy compared to you who is still in human form.

Guest: Necro you aren't as evil as you think you are my guy. If you were, you wouldn't feel any regrets about killing your sister. I am starting to wonder if by the end, he'll be a pure evil villain or if he'll be like Darth Vader where he is undoubtedly evil but have a shred of goodness left in him. For his one act of kindness, he could bring Mari back to life with no strings attached and play it off in a tsundere way: "I only brought you back so that I can continue to torment you."

On another note, Necro gets to play the hero for once. Saving both worlds from destruction. This has got to be embarrassing for both sides. For Necro, he is undermining his own villainous persona. For the heroes, (Alpha especially) they just got their asses saved by their greatest enemy.

Answer: As you can see here, he's slowly descending deeper and deeper into the abyss. He has crossed another line and he can never turn back. This will change him forever.

DerTrap: Why do I have the feeling that this Sanctuary is more like Thanatos mental reality. I am so curious how this plotline will end. Also I'm impressed at the current pace of new Chapters.

Answer: This second encounter with Thanatos is something I've been meaning to write since I created him. "What if Claude has a monster counterpart but he is still more evil than said counterpart?" That's the idea.

borregodillon9: Stab stab

Huh thought she stay dead permanently

Answer: She still has some more role to play.