To be honest, the divine techniques and battle intent Skaha displayed were nothing like the Aesir gods Thanatos had heard about.
Among the Greek gods, tales painted the Aesir as crude and rude, wild and violent by nature, worshippers of plunder and destruction.
None of those stereotypes appeared in Skaha.
However, the instant Skaha's two awe-inspiring spears whipped up the underworld's gale and the crimson spearpoint pierced the gray mists, Thanatos felt a flicker of regret.
One look and you could tell this wasn't the typical fighting style of a native-born god! Native gods tend to rely more on their divine bodies; their powerful forms are enough to bully enemies—especially those with Titan blood. Their hide is so thick it could drive mortals to despair.
Skaha's movements were full of technique—honed to fight extraordinary beings whose bodies far surpassed those of mortals.
And yet this goddess of death seemed utterly unaware of her own strength.
Even setting aside her greatly enhanced divine physique, her power over death itself was among the rarest and purest in this chaotic universe.
For the first time, Thanatos had encountered a death god on his own level.
"Good! Come on!"
With a single gesture, seven phantoms of death's heralds swung sharp scythes wrapped in black silk, cleaving seven crescent arcs.
These were no ordinary shockwaves.
They carried the soul-annihilating property of \[Soul Extinction], enough to inflict terrible damage on a True God at the level of the soul.
Yet the purple-haired goddess of death twisted in a beautiful spin, slipping narrowly between two nearly intersecting scythe arcs. At the same time, the Runas runes coiled along her left-hand spear shaft flared like daylight; with the roaring souls of ancient heroes wrapped around it, a single throw ripped a massive gap straight through Thanatos's death domain.
"This…"
A black vortex burst from the golden sigil on the black-robed god's brow; thirteen dark-gold lines condensed along the path of his reaper's scythe, instantly forming a large, three-dimensional death array.
What appeared before her was nothing short of a complete fortress of death.
In that moment, legions of wailing dead poured from the bastion. Under Thanatos's guidance, they became a gray-white tide of souls, weaving together in midair into a god-devouring net that rushed Skaha's way.
And leading the tsunami of souls was a fallen True God.
Perhaps he had once been a god-king, perhaps he had a glorious past and countless believers.
Now he had only one identity—Thanatos's prisoner!
His soul's face had blurred beyond recognition, only a mouth stretched to its utmost loosing muffled howls. His ten-story-tall spirit body was bound by countless black soul-chains and shackles of every size.
Even so, he still swung a massive anchor and charged Skaha.
In Thanatos's mind, this would be a contest of divine power and technique.
Both were gods of death—so let's see who commands more vengeful spirits, whose dominion over souls is stronger!
This fallen god-king was merely one of his high cards; his true trump he still kept hidden.
Sure enough—as he'd predicted—
Skaha hurled her first spear.
\[Penetrating Death-Flight Spear]!
The strange purple spear traced an uncanny arc through the air and then slammed into the spirit body of that fallen god-king.
In the instant the spear touched the former god-king who'd been clawing and raging moments ago, the Runas runes flowing across its surface evaporated him into a plume of blue smoke.
The goddess, toes on the void, threw her spear and triggered a massive detonation. Startled, the scattered waves of the underworld sea and the panicked, vengeful spirits fled in every direction.
Skaha's display was indeed imposing, yet it still didn't exceed Thanatos's expectations or preparations.
A fresh three-dimensional underworld array bloomed around the Greek death god, each soul that emerged having once slain dragons and demons in their original worlds.
They were Thanatos's cannon fodder!
Thanatos's slender fingers pointed from afar, and those dead spirits instantly became a gray-white torrent, surging to kill Skaha.
Originally, this should have turned into a drawn-out slugfest!
Unexpectedly, Skaha seemed ready to ignore "honor."
She switched on.
No—she'd never switched off from the start.
It looked like she was using her divine sense to recall the \[Penetrating Death-Thorn Spear] she'd just thrown, but in truth, the spear in her right hand—the one she had never yet used—vanished from her grip with a whisper.
"Huh?" Thanatos was stunned.
Instinctively he wanted to know where the vanished spear had gone, but Skaha had already thrown the spear in her left hand again.
The sharp weapon split into one hundred and eight shades of black light, like black meteors symbolizing death, easily blasting Thanatos's army of the dead into the air, sending them tumbling across the sky and ground.
Thanatos's black robe flared, revealing a pale hand. His five fingers clenched on emptiness and dragged in nine burning divine souls—he meant to use these powerful offerings as a primer to unleash a god-tier soul maelstrom.
And just as the seemingly hard-fought battle was about to reach a white-hot phase—
Thanatos stared in shock as a razor spearhead sprouted from his chest.
"Ah?"
He knew the spear came from Skaha's right hand, but he hadn't seen—or sensed—its flight path at all!
Even now, he clung to a sliver of hope, assuming this was only a spear of ordinary rank.
If so, he could still suppress it with vast divine power, preventing the spear's divine might from tearing his soul to shreds.
He did exactly that, even going so far as to grip the sharpened tip, letting it pierce his palm.
Thanatos was trying to siphon off the spear's power that way.
And then came the horror.
Ancient battlefields flooded his pupils: countless chaotic giants, world-high monstrous beasts, and a death match between a god-king of chaos and a god-king of order.
He inexplicably knew the name of that epochal war—\[Ragnarök]!
And he understood the spear's origin!
He even recognized its previous master: the god-king Odin had once wielded this divine spear—Gungnir!
Only then did he sense the exceptionally rare power woven into the spear—\[Space]!
"No wonder! No wonder!"
Only this could explain why he couldn't see the spear's bizarre trajectory.
But it was too late!
Three pairs of bone wings unfurled behind the black-robed death god and suddenly ignited with azure ghost-flame—the sign of a soul losing control.
There was nothing to be done.
The terrible rending force of space was not something a mere secondary god like him could withstand!
What burst from the black-robed deity's body was not divine blood but boiling shards of space, mixed with the underworld river—chaotic matter intertwined.
In the next instant, the Greek death god Thanatos fell.
(End of Chapter)
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