THE VILLAIN'S POV Chapter 762: Thanatos’ awakening
Previously on THE VILLAIN'S POV...
"This feeling... it's as if some viscous thing is slithering across my skin.
Something not of this world..."
Frey shifted his gaze to Gehrman.
The man appeared composed.
Next, Frey questioned the sole other entity who could possibly understand.
"Nameless... any idea what's going on?"
Nameless shook his head.
"I've never seen anything resembling this.
Yet if I must put it into words... it reminds me of the sensation from the Death Soul wielded by the Demon King."
"Death Soul?"
Frey whispered, turning his attention to the origin of those shadowy gusts.
Ada stood perilously near that zone—
but fortunately, the relic Frey had given her shielded her.
Frey refrained from advancing carelessly.
Amon, on the other hand, acted contrarily.
He dashed forward at once, pursuing the path of the shadowy winds without pause.
The shocks continued unabated.
That eerie quiet didn't persist...
It broke with a piercing cry.
A cry that plunged dread directly into Frey's core.
Suddenly, Abraham Starlight let out a wail of torment,
his frame contorting savagely as he gripped his torso with desperate force.
The shadowy winds twisted around him,
as though attempting to inflict some harm upon him.
"Father!"
Frey yelled, vanishing and reappearing in an instant beside Abraham.
Seizing him, Frey's brow furrowed intensely as he observed his father battle that strange obscurity.
"Gehrman!! What's the meaning of this madness?!"
Frey bellowed furiously at the Engineer.
Gehrman regarded him briefly...
then directed his eyes once more to the origin of the shadowy winds.
"The truth will reveal itself shortly."
"...What?"
Frey whipped his head around too...
and spotted something profoundly abnormal.
The shadowy winds gathered at one spot, rotating around it
until a shadowy whirlpool gradually took shape.
A whirlpool laced with a cloying, impure energy.
Frey felt bewildered...
until he examined the site of the disturbance more intently.
"Hold on... isn't that location—"
That spot held no particular significance.
But Frey had slain someone there.
As that thought hit him, the whirlpool started to settle, bit by bit...
while Abraham's anguish grew fiercer.
Then—
the blast erupted at last.
A blast that released a terrifying surge of energy,
immediately clouding the faces of all those there.
That wave of shadow extended vastly... throughout the cosmos.
Somewhere in its reach...
a loathsome being advanced slowly,
having just unleashed a disaster.
The Sixth-Rank High Demon...
Asmodeus, the Lord of Graves.
The bony demon halted briefly upon detecting an anomaly.
He reached out, sensing his Death Soul quiver abruptly...
as if seeking to flee his grasp.
But the Sixth-Rank Demon quelled it swiftly,
then pivoted his head toward a specific angle, peering into the emptiness via his horrifying sockets.
In another place...
distant, in Helmond, the Demon Realm...
the Tower of the End continued to gleam as ever.
At its summit, the Great Demon King occupied his seat.
Agaroth had perceived it too.
A broad grin gradually formed on his features.
"Ah... so Geppetto has perished."
The King's resonant tone resounded over the heights
as he looked to the blood-red heavens.
What had transpired...
remained a mystery to all
save the Demon King alone.
Not even Amon... positioned amid the chaos...
comprehended the full extent of events.
In the remote history...
Agaroth faced the six primal soul Bearers... and butchered them entirely, consuming their strengths and seizing them as his own.
However, among those six, one eluded the Demon King's lethal grasp.
For that entity embodied death in its purest form.
Though Agaroth vanquished him,
he couldn't eradicate him.
With no alternative,
the Demon King imprisoned him.
To achieve this, he enlisted the aid of the cryptic Maskith...
a deranged force able to twist the fundamental rules of life and death.
That insane architect of worlds prevailed.
Through forging life via him,
Maskith confined the primal holder of the Death Soul.
And so, Geppetto came into being...
the Thirteenth-Rank High Demon.
From the outset, it seemed odd.
A weak entity like Geppetto holding a mighty power like resurrection defied logic.
Since it was never truly his power.
It originated from another source.
That primordial horror wielded two reality-shattering gifts:
One that defied death...
the Death Soul.
And one that defied life...
the power to revive the dead, the very force Geppetto commanded,
and the one Agaroth failed to absorb.
Armed with these powers,
the primal holder of the Death Soul proved a genuine apocalypse.
He led infinite legions,
and launched a ruinous conflict against the Demon King in eras lost to time.
Ultimately, though...
he was defeated.
And confined within the rudimentary shell called Geppetto.
Maskith urged the Demon King to detain Geppetto forever,
to obliterate him from existence and recollection.
But Agaroth decided differently.
He elevated him to High Demon status,
harnessing his corpse-reviving power for his ambitions.
For countless extended years,
Geppetto endured...
guarded by demons like Wesker.
But now... all had transformed.
Geppetto lay dead.
Felled by Frey Starlight.
And through his demise,
the gateway to his resurgence unlocked.
......
......
......
Returning to the now...
The shadowy winds at last receded.
And his figure emerged.
His physique was hideous and warped,
encased in dusky gray hide.
A malevolent energy enveloped him, crafting a ebony mantle that billowed at his rear,
while lengthy ebony locks whipped ferociously about him.
Gradually...
he unveiled his eyes.
They weren't eyes,
but empty abysses radiating a profound azure light... as though unlocking a portal to a separate inferno.
The initial bearer of the Death Soul.
Thanatos.
The figure deemed death incarnate.
For an instant—merely a second—
Thanatos gazed mutely.
Then insanity overtook him.
And he howled.
A howl that evoked the doom of all creation.
"AGAROOOOOOOOOOOTH!!!!!!"
He thundered the Demon King’s name,
his cry soaked in boundless wrath and loathing.
Thanatos had tumbled into oblivion long before.
His final recollections were of clashing with Agaroth... and the torments imposed by Maskith.
In essence...
His fury had never dimmed.
His sanity had never mended.
His drives craved just one outcome:
The swift destruction of the Demon King.
Yet Agaroth was absent from the vicinity.
Thus...
Thanatos’ wrath targeted the closest demon at hand.
That demon proved to be... Amon.
Shadowy energy burst forth savagely from Thanatos
as he lunged directly at the Eleventh-Rank High Demon,
assailing him with ruthless, unbridled wrath.
The Wheel of Death had at last started its spin.
And Gehrman’s scheme had commenced its activation.
Days remaining until The Shattering: 72 days.