"Now, let's go to Neró..." I said, opening a gate beneath our feet.
A moment later, we stood suspended above an endless ocean. Nothing but water stretched in every direction. I looked above and saw a bright blue sky and a relatively small sun shining brightly. Looking around, there wasn't much of anything else apart from water.
'I sense the presence of life around, but where is everyone?' I wondered.
This place was the exact opposite of Asími, where water was precious.
I moved to advance only to feel something latch onto my arm.
'A... tail?' I thought.
I followed it with my eyes. At the other end, clinging awkwardly, was Kitsune. She wrapped her tail tightly around my arm to hold herself upright.
"Explain yourself," I said, irritation creeping into my voice.
"I never learned how to swim!" she admitted, looking everywhere but my eyes. "As long as I have my speed, things like that are beneath me."
She said it with pride, but her eyes betrayed her. She was scared.
"How can you lack so much, yet still be proud?" I asked flatly.
I uncoiled her tail from my arm, but she immediately grabbed on again.
"Can't you just fly?" I asked her.
"I don't have much practice with that either. I can only manage to do so back in Asími. The gravity is different there," Kitsune said shyly.
"Tailed Lilith, hold this one," I said, trying to hand Kitsune to her.
"Why should I?" Lilith replied lazily. "Let's just leave her here. It's not like she'll drown."
"Hey! I may not drown..." Kitsune snapped, scrambling to grab Lilith's arm. "but I can't swim! I'll end up sinking. We don't know what's down there!"
Lilith smirked, eyes glinting. "You have your speed, remember? Nothing to be scared of."
"Just hold her," I interrupted. "Unless... you want to fight that."
I pointed ahead. Both the tailed Lilith and Kitsune fell silent.
Not far from us, a towering reaper stood mid-battle with Azrael. It was nearly twelve feet tall. Its entire body shimmered in the light, as it was made entirely of shifting water. It seemed like it hadn't noticed us yet.
Lilith's expression turned sour in annoyance. "Fine. I'll hold her."
Azrael was struggling. His entire head was encased in a sphere of dark blue water. It was dense and almost looked solid. Unlike the ocean beneath us, this water was darker like the reaper's body. The reaper's body was made of water, but it didn't merge with the planet's surface as it stood on it. It's like he wasn't he wasn't physically touching the water.
'Is it trying to drown Azrael?' I wondered.
I knew neither I nor my shadows could drown. We didn't need oxygen to survive. But water drawn from a reaper's body... perhaps that changed things.
Azrael's movements slowed. The water sphere clung tighter around his skull.
Nonetheless, even while suffocating, he kept moving. His body weaved between Neró's attacks. Its long, fluid arms lashed out like tentacles at a blinding speed. Azrael dodged each strike, his greatsword flashing in rippling purple arcs of lightning, landing several slashes. Unfortunately, they did nothing. Each cut passed straight through Neró's body, as if he were striking pure water.
'Azrael seems already adept to Armando's power,' I thought curiously.
Suddenly Neró shifted. More tentacles sprouted from its body, coiling and twisting midair. Caught off-guard one tentacle managed to wrap around Azrael's leg, then another. Eventually, there was dark water spreading over his feet and creeping higher.
Azrael's blade lashed down, severing the tentacles and buying himself a few seconds. But Neró didn't slow down. Six more limbs formed, attacking without pause.
"Actually…" tailed Lilith murmured beside me, watching eagerly. "I wouldn't mind being caught—I mean, fighting that one. Tentacle monsters. I've read about them and might have an advantage."
I glanced at her, disgusted. "You're revolting. Stay here and hang on to Kitsune."
Before she could reply, I surged forward, flying toward Azrael and the reaper. The moment I was within range, Neró halted his assault on Azrael. His focus locked onto me.
"Reaper… you dare send your slave after me!" Neró roared, his voice warping with fury.
"Yes... I dare," I said simply, landing atop the water.
Beneath my feet, a layer of my dark cloud spread thin, creating the illusion of standing on the ocean's surface. I preferred fighting where I could stand rather than in the air. I then began walking forward.
"Leave now, before I end all of you! Thanatos wouldn't punish me if you are the one trespassing," Neró threatened.
Azrael wanted to move to strike him once more, but I raised my hand, stopping him in his tracks.
"Don't make threats you can't enforce," I replied.
Purple lightning surged around me, wrapping my body in arcs of raw energy, crackling like armor. This was a skill I had seen Armando using against me. After absorbing his source the purple lightning became like second nature to me, allowing me to replicate Armando's techniques.
Neró didn't hesitate, however. One of his long tentacles whipped toward me, but I didn't move. The moment it touched the lightning, it evaporated—steam hissed and purple sparks scattered in the air.
Neró shrieked, growing six more tentacles, fourteen in total now. They rained down in a frenzied assault, but I just continued walking. None of them could reach me. Every strike sizzled out, disintegrating the instant it touched the lightning crackling around me.
Step by step, I closed the distance. Once I stood directly before him, Neró fused his tentacles into one massive arm, swinging it down like a hammer. The blow crashed into me. This time, the force broke through the lightning slightly, leaving a thin bruise on my forehead.
Neró recoiled, fear creeping into his voice. "This... this is Armando's power… how?!"
I touched my forehead, feeling the bruise. "That kinda hurt, asshole."
Desperation twisted his features. As a final gamble, he flicked a single drop of water at my head. It was small and dark blue, almost black. It struck where he broke my defense. Then as if possessed, the drop spread instantly, coating my entire head in a dense sphere of liquid. I suddenly felt a slow, steady drain of my energy, seeping into the water's mass.
Neró smiled. "You can't remove that. Not unless I choose to. It's only a matter of time now."
"That's fine. Your power's versatile... and you can't even take damage." I spoke without panic, eyeing Azrael's state. "I'll be taking advantage of that."
A scythe formed in my hands as I turned to Azrael. "Can you still keep going?"
Azrael nodded silently, resting his greatsword across his shoulders. Arcs of dark cloud and purple lightning crackled around us both, flickering. However, the water spheres around our heads continued to drain our energy, steadily.
Suddenly Neró shifted and expanded, his body stretching unnaturally wide before detonating into a thick, unnatural mist. Our dark cloud and lightning kept the fog at bay, but only barely. Visibility collapsed to five meters. Everything beyond that was swallowed by the dense, rolling mist.
"Do you sense anything?" I asked.
"Nothing, Master," Azrael replied his voice low. "If you hadn't spoken… I wouldn't even know you were here."
Suddenly, without warning, the ocean seized us. Dark tendrils erupted from below, dragging us under. The water underneath wasn't natural. It was darker and colder.
The pressure shifted instantly, slamming against our bodies, slowing every motion. I felt the weight of it pressing against my ribs, but that wasn't the worst of it.
From every direction, tentacles emerged, writhing through the darkness, lashing toward us without pause. I swung my scythe, arcs of lightning crackling through the water. The tentacles disintegrated on contact, but new ones replaced them immediately.
Azrael fought beside me, his greatsword carving shadows into the black. Our movements were dulled. Even the lightning's crackle dimmed.
In the pitch darkness, I smiled, thinking about my predicament.
"We're going to get so much training out of this," I said softly, amused.
I then dissipated my lightning armor. Instead, I spread my dark cloud into thin, delicate threads webbing outward through the water around us. They stretched into the black, sensing everything and tracing every ripple.
"Don't defend yourself." I said out loud.
Azrael paused.
"We're taking these hits head-on," I commanded.
Without question, Azrael let the lightning fade from his body and fought as commanded. Tentacles struck him causing small injuries at first. Then fewer. Then fewer still. He was adapting.
As I tracked the tentacles through my cloud threads, I began evading. Not perfectly, but enough to learn.
The water sphere around my head tightened. My energy continued to bleed. My movement slowed and strength waned.
After much thinking I chose not to end the battle too quickly, I began to match Neró's tentacles with my lightning. Neró's tentacles danced as he relentlessly attacked from all sides, and I sent arcs of lightning matching his speed.
I matched each strike with an arc of purple lightning. One for one, pace for pace, my lightning countered his tentacles like a mirror reflection. Eventually the lightning was also dancing around like tentacles.
The threads around sensed the strikes before they came. This made it much easier to counter. Seconds blurred into minutes. Minutes into an hour.
Neró's rhythm faltered.
"Why… why aren't they getting weaker?" he hissed into the darkness. "They're adapting to my attacks... better than before…"
He laughed suddenly, brittle and desperate. "You cannot keep this up! Your energy will drain, drop by drop, until nothing's left! Hahaha!"
I didn't reply. Instead, I spoke to Azrael calmly. "It's been long enough."
I compressed my dark cloud into a sphere, then detonated it in sharp, controlled bursts, creating vacuums that propelled me upward through the thick water. The dark cloud was strong enough to counter the dark waters around us, creating a vacuum.
Azrael followed. He infused his greatsword with condensed dark cloud, then slashed downward, using the recoil to hurl himself after me. We effortlessly broke to the surface.
Neró then rose from the depths, water swirling around him, furious. "You may have escaped, but you will still die."
I floated toward him. Slow and unbothered. He recoiled instinctively, but I had already appeared next to him. He barely registered my movement as I extended a single finger, pressing it against his forehead.
"Y-you can't hurt me!" Neró screamed, voice cracking.
A thread of my dark cloud then slipped inside him.
From within the draining sphere of water still clinging to my head, my voice reached him like a death sentence. "Who decided that?"
Neró screamed as I watched his body stiffen. The red poison I had acquired at Herb Haven merged into my dark cloud and was now spreading throughout Neró's body. His liquid form thickened, solidifying from the inside out.
He thrashed, but it was futile. Half his body was already petrified. I tilted my head slightly, observing the effects of the poison.
"Damn… that probably hurts like a bitch." My voice echoed softly through the water cocoon still wrapped around my skull.
"You insect... you'll pay for this humiliation. Thanatos will not stay silent. My helper... my helper will see to your downfa—" Neró's voice faltered as the last of his body crystallized, locking him in place mid-sentence.
"Uh-huh," I said flatly.
The water spheres around Azrael's and my head collapsed, no longer able to maintain form. I finally drew in a deep breath, not because I needed it. Just because I could.
Then, without ceremony, I punched Neró's solidified body. It shattered instantly, splintering into countless shards of glass-like flesh that rained down into the ocean below.
Azrael then suddenly let out a genuine, frustrated cry. "Master! I didn't collect the head!"
I paused, looking at him expressionlessly. "Oh... right."
I remembered now. He'd asked me to collect the heads of the defeated for him. I watched as the shards sunk into the water beneath us.
'I'm not dealing with all that.' I thought shifting my focus.
Dark blue droplets of water began to rise up from where Neró fell, then dissipated into the air.
"Hey look, that's weird. Isn't that weird?" I said to Azrael whilst pointing towards the rising dark droplets of water, trying to change the subject.
I then stared deeply into the dark droplets and almost immediately, my conscious got transported into a dark abyss.
This abyss was similar, but slightly different from that of Armando's. It was completely dark and felt empty, but I could feel droplets of water all around me. Neró's screams were coming from every direction and it was deafening.
"Neró!" I called out. Surprisingly, my consciousness immediately went back to my body.
"Master, we must keep a memento for each one of your victories." Azrael said to me disappointedly, still not forgetting that I shattered Neró's body.
"It was made of water anyways. Where would you even keep it?" I said in my defense.
A dark blue liquid then began to rise from where Neró fell then twisted like a tornado. A 12-foot, liquid like, reaper then started to form from the dark liquid.
'Wow, after all that talk before he died…unlike Armando, there was no resistance with Neró when I called him out of the abyss,' I thought to myself.
Neró hovered before me having a similar appearance as he did before, excluding the vein like patterns in his liquid body. Like Armando's, his veins also pulsated like they were alive.
Neró reached into his own chest and pulled out a steaming orb. It was liquid yet solid, a dark blue mass that radiated faint pulses like a dying heartbeat. He then bowed and stretched both his hands to offer me the orb.
His hands trembled as he offered the orb to me. I took it without hesitation. The moment the orb touched my skin, it dissolved into my hand and I absorbed it.
I was instantly connected with the shadows of this planet and began to feel the lives within it. I heard multiple conversations all around the planet in a language I had never thought possible to speak. Nonetheless, I could understand it.
A hum of voices echoed in my head, not words but intentions, pulsing like sonar through the vast oceans.
The entire civilization was under water. They didn't exactly communicate words, rather they communicated intentions. Which sounded like a sonar echoing in the distance.
"Okeanós." I spoke the planet's name aloud. The knowledge simply... arrived.
"Okeanós of the Beta Region. Over thirty billion inhabitants," I said to myself.
The scale washed over me like a tide. I listened, absorbing the silent communication of this underwater civilization, letting their collective knowledge flow into my awareness.
120 years…
80 years…
150 years…
Deaths all around the planet continued to give me strength. Three planets now whispered to me; three worlds fueling my power. In time... there would be more. My power continued to rise. Then suddenly Neró's voice dragged me from the moment.
"Oh, great sovereign... command me. Anything you desire shall be done," Neró said respectfully.
I turned, glancing down at him as he remained prostrated.
"Ha... haha... Hahahaha." I couldn't help but laugh.
"Ah, Neró... you clown." I said. "You're so different from the Neró who kept threatening me moments ago."
I stepped closer, amused by the switch in his character.