THE VILLAIN'S POV Chapter 762: Thanatos’ awakening
Previously on THE VILLAIN'S POV...
"This feeling... it's as if something viscous is slithering across my flesh.
Something not human..."
Frey shifted his gaze toward 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 back to the origin of those shadowy gusts.
Ada hovered perilously near that zone—
yet fortunately, the relic Frey had entrusted to her shielded her.
Frey refrained from advancing carelessly.
Amon, on the other hand, acted contrarily.
He dashed forward at once, pursuing the trail of the dark winds without a second thought.
The shocks continued unabated.
That eerie quietude didn't persist...
It broke with a piercing shriek.
A cry that plunged dread directly into Frey's soul.
Suddenly, Abraham Starlight wailed in torment,
his frame contorting savagely while he gripped his torso with desperate force.
The dark winds twisted about him,
as though attempting some foul deed upon him.
"Father!"
Frey bellowed, vanishing and reappearing in an instant beside Abraham.
Seizing hold of him, Frey scowled intensely as he observed his father writhing against that eerie obscurity.
"Gehrman!! What's the meaning of this madness?!"
Frey yelled furiously at the Engineer.
Gehrman regarded him briefly...
before directing his eyes once more to the dark winds' origin.
"The truth will reveal itself shortly."
"...What?"
Frey whipped his head around too...
and spotted something profoundly abnormal.
The dark winds gathered into one spot, eddying around it
until a shadowy whirlpool gradually took shape.
A whirlpool saturated with a cloying, tainted essence.
Frey felt bewildered...
until he scrutinized the exact site of the disturbance more intently.
"Hold on... isn't that location—"
That spot held no particular significance.
But Frey had slain someone right there.
As that thought hit him, the vortex 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 aura,
promptly grimacing the faces of all those around.
That ripple of shadow extended vastly... throughout the cosmos.
Somewhere in its midst...
a loathsome being advanced steadily,
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, noticing his Death Soul had abruptly quivered...
as if seeking to flee his grasp.
But the Sixth-Rank Demon swiftly quelled it,
then pivoted his head in a specific direction, peering into the emptiness via his frightful sockets.
In another place...
far off, in Helmond, the Demon Realm...
the Tower of the End continued to gleam as ever.
Atop it, the Great Demon King lounged on his seat.
Agaroth had perceived it too.
A broad grin gradually stretched over his features.
"Ah... so Geppetto has perished."
The King's resonant tone reverberated over the pinnacle
as he looked out at 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, consuming their might and seizing it for 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 found no way to eradicate him.
With no alternatives,
the Demon King bound him in seclusion.
To achieve this, he enlisted the aid of the cryptic Maskith...
a deranged force adept at twisting 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 emerged...
the Thirteenth-Rank High Demon.
From the outset, it defied logic.
A weakling like Geppetto wielding a formidable gift like resurrection seemed absurd.
For it was never truly his power.
It originated from another source altogether.
That primordial horror bore two reality-shattering gifts:
One that defied death...
the Death Soul.
And one that defied life...
the talent for reviving the dead, the very force Geppetto commanded,
and the one Agaroth couldn't consume.
Armed with these powers,
the original Death Soul bearer proved an utter apocalypse.
He led infinite legions,
and unleashed a ruinous conflict against the Demon King in epochs lost to time.
Ultimately, though...
defeat claimed him.
And he became ensnared within the rudimentary shell called Geppetto.
Maskith urged the Demon King to confine Geppetto forever,
to obliterate him from existence and recollection.
Yet Agaroth decided differently.
He elevated him to High Demon status,
utilizing his corpse-raising talent for personal gain.
For countless extended years,
Geppetto endured...
guarded by demons like Wesker.
But now... the tide had turned.
Geppetto lay slain.
Felled by Frey Starlight.
And through his demise,
the path to his resurgence unlocked.
......
......
......
Returning to the now...
The dark winds at last receded.
Revealing his shape.
His physique was hideous and warped,
cloaked in ashen-black hide.
A malevolent presence enveloped him, crafting a shadowy mantle that billowed at his rear,
while lengthy ebony locks whipped chaotically about his form.
Gradually...
he unveiled his eyes.
They weren't eyes in truth,
but empty abysses radiating a profound azure light... as though parting access to a separate inferno.
The inaugural bearer of the Death Soul.
Thanatos.
The figure deemed death incarnate.
For an instant—merely a heartbeat—
Thanatos gazed mutely.
Then insanity overtook him.
And he howled.
A howl evoking the summons of doomsday.
"AGAROOOOOOOOOOOTH!!!!!!"
He thundered the Demon King's title,
his cry soaked in boundless wrath and loathing.
Thanatos had plummeted eons prior.
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 obliteration of the Demon King.
But Agaroth lurked nowhere close.
Thus...
Thanatos' wrath veered toward the closest demon at hand.
That demon proved to be... Amon.
Shadowy essence burst ferociously from Thanatos
as he lunged directly at the Eleventh-Rank High Demon,
assailing him with savage, unbridled ire.
The Wheel of Death had at last started spinning.
And Gehrman's scheme had commenced its rollout.
Days remaining until The Shattering: 72 days.