"I will kill you..." Armando growled, his voice a low snarl laced with deep, burning rage.
'We may have weakened him, but he still has plenty of fight left in him,' I thought grimly.
Then, without warning, he shot toward us like a launched missile, his rods slicing through the air in a blind, furious frenzy.
Azrael and I slipped past his strikes with ease, answering with counters of our own. The decay from the dark cloud was clearly working—Armando's speed had diminished, his movements were now slower. The corruption was eating away at him, gnawing at the very essence of his soul.
'His durability is still a nuisance… but he's far more vulnerable now,' I observed as we unleashed a relentless storm of attacks.
With his reflexes dulled and his senses flickering, he could do little to retaliate. His blows still carried monstrous power, but power meant nothing if it couldn't land.
We kept pressing, driving him back, draining him with every passing second. His limbs grew heavy, his swings sluggish.
Suddenly—he roared.
Desperate and overwhelmed, Armando called forth the purple lightning once more. It tore down from the heavens, wild and chaotic, forcing us to retreat. The energy danced across his battered frame, wrapping around him like a storm-forged armor. He screamed into the sky, the sound raw and primal.
Fractures now ran across his entire body—deep cracks spiderwebbing through his skeletal frame. He looked like a statue on the verge of collapse.
With a roar, from all directions, thousands of four-armed shadows surged toward him like a tide of nightmares.
And to our horror… he began to absorb them.
Like some twisted magic, his shattered body began to heal. The fractures smoothed. Even the two skeletal arms that were injured began to regenerate—bones reforming before our eyes.
"No!" I shouted, charging toward Armando with fury surging through me. I summoned my scythe from where I dropped it, and it immediately flew to my left hand, its blade pulsing with dark energy. At the same time, I opened a gate beneath Azrael.
Armando had seen this trick before.
His instincts kicked in immediately—he spun around, fully expecting Azrael to ambush him from behind. But there was nothing there.
That moment of hesitation cost him.
Realizing he'd been deceived, Armando turned his focus back to me and unleashed a barrage of purple lightning bolts from his fists. I gritted my teeth and pressed forward, dodging as best I could. The bolts streaked through the air, some grazing me, others slamming into my body, leaving behind fractures and scorched flesh.
My body weakened with every blow. But I couldn't stop. Not now. I had to keep Armando in the same position.
Unbeknownst to Armando, I had teleported Azrael to the very edge of the planet's atmosphere, where the tailed Lilith still waited in silence. Now, Azrael was descending at a blinding speed.
Like a god from myth, Azrael came crashing down from the heavens. The attack succeeded as both of Azrale's feet landed squarely on the back of Armando's neck. Armando had sensed Azrael's descent and managed to just barely dodge. The impact cracked his hyoid bone with a sickening crunch that echoed across the battlefield.
Armando staggered forward, a twisted gurgle erupting from his throat—wet, broken, unnatural. However, he did not fall.
He tried to speak… but nothing came out. No words, no roar, just a rattling rasp, as if his voice had been torn from him entirely.
Seeing this opportunity, I didn't hesitate.
After teleporting Armando, I began channeling almost all of my dark cloud's power into my scythe, concentrating its energy until the blade glowed with a fierce turquoise light. Using the momentum of Azrael's strike, I swung the weapon upward in a devastating arc as Armando stumbled.
The blade cleaved through his neck.
His head flew clean off, landing several meters away with a dull thud. I stood frozen, eyes locked on the fading purple glow in his skull. His face—skeletal and cracked—still bore that final expression of shock and horror.
"He's… he's dead!" I whispered.
"It seems so, Master," Azrael replied, his voice calm but watchful.
I finally dropped the scythe. It vanished before it even touched the ground.
Armando's skeletal form cracked and collapsed, bone by bone, until nothing remained but the blackened husk of what he once was. Smoke—black and purple—rose slowly from the remains, radiating a presence that lingered like a curse.
"What is that?" I asked, looking at the smoke rising from Armando's corpse.
The more I looked into the smoke, the more I felt like I was being drawn into an abyss. The feeling felt familiar, thus, I allowed myself to be drawn in.
Next thing I knew, it was dark everywhere, and there was nothing but emptiness all around me. Only darkness and faint screaming could be seen or heard in this abyss.
'This voice…' I thought to myself.
"Armando?" I called out, then as if he were waiting for his que, the screaming got louder. The sound was deafening, and I felt a familiar pressure coming from it.
I then released my own reaper energy to counter the pressure and called out loud, "Armando!"
The pressure then decreased, and the screams began to quiet down. After a moment had passed, I opened my eyes and found myself back in my body.
'Judging by Azrael's position, it seems that no time had passed.' I thought to myself.
"Master, please allow me to collect the head of the defeated." Azrael humbly said to me whilst bowing my way.
"No." I simply answered.
'This one might have gotten stranger after his upgrade,' I thought to myself.
Suddenly, the black and purple smoke spiraled, forming a miniature tornado around Armando's shattered skeleton. Purple lightning sparked violently within it, like a storm had been born inside the vortex. The smoke twisted faster, then collapsed inward in an instant.
Armando reappeared, kneeling before me, but he was no longer the same. His dark cloud pulsed with life. Vein-like patterns moved within it, glowing with a soft, rhythmic purple light, as if the light within him was like breathing.
Azrael conjured his longsword, ready to strike.
I raised a hand—wait.
Azrael held his ground.
Armando slowly reached into his chest and pulled out a dark, steaming orb. Purple lightning sparked across its surface like living energy. With both hands, he offered it to me.
Azrael drove his blade into the ground and sat down in silence, watching.
I stepped forward and took the orb.
The moment I touched it, a surge of unimaginable power rushed into me. The orb looked solid, but it felt like… nothing. If I hadn't physically grabbed it, I wouldn't have even realized it was there.
Then came the mist.
It flowed from the orb into me, weaving itself into my soul. Within seconds, it was gone—absorbed entirely.
I felt it instantly.
A familiar power coursed through my body. My fractures mended. The pain vanished. My strength returned tenfold. I could feel myself changing—becoming something more.
Before I could even process the transformation, I felt it: every single life on the planet.
Just like Earth—when I first became a reaper.
"Asími," I whispered. "That's the name of this planet." I didn't read it—I heard it, spoken through thousands of voices scattered across the world.
And all of Armando's shadows… they were mine now.
This power… I thought, watching arcs of purple lightning dance between my fingers.
Through the eyes of my new shadows, I saw civilizations—vast, hidden, ancient.
Asími's surface was a nightmare. Unrelenting lightning storms above. Violent sandstorms below. A land that looked uninhabitable, cursed by nature itself.
But beneath the surface…
Tunnels. Networks. Endless labyrinths carved into the bones of the planet.
And within those labyrinths—cities.
Entire civilizations, buried deep beneath the chaos. Living. Thriving. Surviving in silence, hidden from the storms above.
Perhaps, the strangest thing about this civilization were it's cities' architecture. The buildings were built on all surfaces of the taverns, on it's ceilings, walls, and ground. They were made of an unknown white, glowing material that also served as light in this underworld, it looked sturdy.
The inhabitants of the planet were built like Armondo, just slightly smaller. Using their extra limbs, they could easily travers through the cities like there was almost no gravity down there.
"I've become the reaper of this planet!" I said out loud in shock.
"My king, whatever was once mine, now belongs to you, even my life." Armando said to me. "Why are you so obedient now?" I asked Armando not fully trusting what he is saying.
"You have pulled me out of the abyss, I shall forever be grateful for this my king. I feel like I have finally returned home. I now devote my entire life to your service." He said to me. "You were only there for a few seconds, why devote your life to me?" I asked, not buying this newfound devotion.
'Just a few minutes ago, this guy wanted nothing more than to kill me.' I thought to myself.
"For you it may have been a few seconds, but for me…it was an eternity…." He said with much pain in his voice. 'Is this abyss the fate of all reapers once they die?' I thought to myself.
I was now connected to him, so I could feel his sincerity as he spoke each word. He wasn't lying. To him, it really did feel like an eternity. Suddenly, I felt a growing pain within me. The power that I had taken from Armando was still rising within me to the point it felt like my body couldn't contain it. The pain got mildly intense so it was manageable.
It was at this point that purple lightning began to envelope my body and an extra pair of arms, like that of Armando's, grew. In that moment I felt a deeper connection with this planet. The storm in the sky grew even scarrier. This power was linked to it. The power was so great I felt like I could flatten the moon with the palms of my hands.
'So much power, my strength might have doubled after receiving that orb.' I thought to myself. "What was in that orb?" I asked Armando. "It was my soul, my king." Armando answered respectively. 'He gave me his actual soul!' I began to think as I looked at myself.
'These extra pair of arms almost feel like a burden, I'm not used to them. Am I stuck like this or can I get rid of them?' I thought to myself.
I then stopped circulating Armando's power within my body, halting it's growth. The extra arms then disappeared.
The pain also subsided, which gave me much more relief. "Perfect, now, I have a few more questions." I said to Armando.