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Jason's wound healed slowly, flesh knitting together bit by bit as he stood amidst the chaos. The Devastator's claw had left a hole in his torso, but reversed cursed energy was already closing it, muscle and skin weaving back into place. He used the recovery time to think—to truly think, not just react.
His mind reached back. Death's words, spoken in her quiet kitchen before all of this began.
Understand my essence. And only then can you truly delve into the unknown.
What did she mean by that?
"Switch," Jason said.
Dove didn't hesitate. She broke off from her aerial assault and dove toward Red Death, who had been zipping across the battlefield in lazy loops, taunting her with his speed. Her light blasts filled the air, forcing him to dodge, to weave, to actually work for his evasion.
Jason turned and launched himself at The Merciless.
The god-warrior raised his sword to block. Jason's Dimensional Cleave met the blade—and cut straight through it. The severed pieces of divine metal spun through the air as Jason's kick connected with The Merciless's face, snapping his head back. The god tumbled, but his hand was already moving, already summoning—another sword materialized in his grip, and he brought it up just in time to deflect Jason's follow-up slash.
Somehow, impossibly, he redirected the Dimensional Cleave away from his body.
"I'm a god, boy." The Merciless's voice dripped with contempt. "You think I wouldn't see that?"
The Devastator launched himself at Jason from behind, a massive gray missile of bone and rage. Jason sensed him coming....twisted in mid-air, dodged the ramming attack by inches, and drove his heel into the monster's face. The impact sent The Devastator crashing toward the ground, but Jason wasn't done. He placed his palm against the creature's chest as they fell together.
"Spiderweb."
The slashes that erupted from his hand weren't Dimensional Cleaves. They were simpler, cruder, just raw cutting force. The Devastator's body parted into a dozen pieces, each segment tumbling away in a spray of black blood.
"Guess normal slashes still work," Jason muttered.
He kicked off a chunk of the falling body, using it as a springboard to launch himself back toward The Merciless. His fists connected....not slashing, not cutting, just pure brute force pounding into the god's guard.
"You know," Jason growled between punches, "I don't have to slash to beat fools like you."
He landed on the ground, The Merciless skidding back from the impact. Jason didn't pursue. Instead, he raised his hand.
"Mahoraga. Agito. Come out."
The air tore open. Mahoraga emerged first...massive, wheel spinning above his head, his form radiating adaptability. Agito followed, leaner, faster, his multiple arms twitching with anticipation.
"Keep the regenerating fuck away from me," Jason said, jerking his head toward The Devastator's reforming pieces, "until I beat this god."
The Merciless spat blood onto the scorched earth and grinned. "Challenging a god of war to hand-to-hand combat? You must be more foolish than I thought."
The ground shook. Lava erupted from cracks in the earth, surging toward Jason in a wave of molten rock and superheated air. He didn't retreat. He raised his hand, slashed—and the lava parted, cut cleanly in half, flowing around him like water around a stone.
He smashed through the gap, fist aimed at The Merciless's face.
His fist hit lightning.
The god was gone—replaced by a crackling arc of divine energy that sent Jason tumbling through the air. He caught himself, landed in a crouch, and looked up at The Merciless hovering above him.
"You caught me off guard," The Merciless said, his voice echoing with the weight of stolen divinity. "And you thought I'd be an easy one to face? You're a fool. I'm not just the God of War. I am the God of all Olympus. I've killed them all, one by one." Lightning crackled around his fists. "And now I control all their domains."
He smashed his foot against the ground and dashed forward.
Jason dodged the first punch. The second. The third. Each one carried the weight of a different domain...speed from Hermes, strength from Hercules, precision from Athena. The Merciless was a composite of everything Olympus had ever been, and he fought like it.
"I may not look like it," Jason said, lowering his center of gravity, "but I'm a martial artist too."
He swept his leg out, catching The Merciless's ankle, tripping the god mid-combo. The Merciless grinned even as he fell...lightning arced from his body, curling toward Jason like a serpent.
Jason's eyes widened. His hand shot up, and the Vajra appeared in his grip...the divine thunderbolt he had claimed from another world. The lightning struck it, changed trajectory, and raced back toward The Merciless.
The god smiled. The lightning returned to him, circling his body like a loyal pet.
"You really are a fucking problem." Jason's grip tightened on the Vajra. "But I'll learn using you. In you... there's something I'd like to take."
"Oh? And what is that?"
"Your Death."
The words hung in the air.
Then Jason spoke again, and the world changed.
"Domain Expansion: Malevolent Shrine of the Devil."
The lava vanished. The scorched earth vanished. The darkness of the nightmare realm was replaced by something else...dark water stretching to every horizon, black and still, reflecting a sky that had no stars. The shrine emerged behind Jason, massive and ancient, bleeding cursed energy into the water.
The Merciless looked around, unimpressed. "Fool...I can already understand this place....You're about to implement a Sure hit effect on me....Something you created using your domain...Fool....I have tens of domains in me...It won't work"
"A sure hit doesn't seem to work on you," Jason agreed. "But have you ever fought a demon, dear Merciless?"
"Plenty." The grin returned.
"That so?" Jason smiled. "How about you fight their King?"
He raised his hand.
"Satan. Come out."
The voice came from nowhere and everywhere at once—smooth, amused, ancient beyond measure.
"As you wish, my Lord."
The tear in space appeared slowly, as if reality itself was hesitant to open. Two hands emerged first red, with black extended nails that seemed to drink the light. Then the face: two iconic horns curving back from a brow that had witnessed the fall of Heaven, the devilish smile that had tempted saints and kings alike.
Lucifer stepped into the domain.
He was tall...lanky, almost...his movements fluid and unhurried. His eyes found The Merciless immediately, and his smile widened.
"Smells like a phony is here." Lucifer's voice was silk wrapped around a blade. "Calling yourself a god. I met a real god once. He could instantly erase his enemies." He paused. "No need for all this show."
He took a step forward.
"Yet even he... I survived."
Lucifer moved.
The Merciless raised his sword, called on his stolen domains, summoned lightning and fire and the strength of fallen titans. His attacks passed through Lucifer like smoke. His blade cut nothing. His lightning grounded itself on empty air.
Lucifer's claws raked across The Merciless's chest, drawing divine blood.
"I am primordial fire," Lucifer said, almost conversationally. "Before your Olympus was a thought, I burned. Before your gods drew breath, I fell." He struck again, and again, each blow carrying the weight of something older than divinity. "You cannot hurt what was never alive."
The Merciless stumbled back, his armor cracked, his blood painting the dark water.
Jason watched for a moment. Then he sat down.
Lotus position. Eyes closed. Breath steady.
He entered his mind.
'Understanding Death'
The thought echoed through the emptiness of his consciousness.
'That's not something easy to do'
Jason sat in the void of his own thoughts, turning the problem over and over. What was death? The common understanding was simple—ending a life. Ceasing a heartbeat. Silencing a breath. That was what his slashes did. That was what Azrael's scythe did. That was what every reaper, every assassin, every god of death had done since the beginning.
But Death herself didn't work that way.
She didn't need a conduit. She didn't need to slash or strike or cut. She simply... decided. And it was done. Effortless. Absolute.
'She said she attends every birth too'
The thought surfaced unbidden.
'She's not just death. She's the opposite as well. Life.'
Jason's eyes remained closed, but his mind raced. Dream had said the same thing....that he was his own opposite. Reality and imagination. Waking and sleeping. They were contradictions made manifest.
'So what does that mean for me? Should I be life as well?'
He didn't know how to do that. Creating life wasn't something he could learn in a battlefield. Getting a woman pregnant was easy....that wasn't what Death meant. She attended births, yes, but she didn't cause them. She was present. She witnessed.
'Maybe that's not what I need'
The thought crystallized.
'Maybe I've been thinking about this wrong'
Jason opened his eyes.
....
Lucifer was getting smashed.
The Merciless had adapted—not to Lucifer's attacks, but to the realization that Lucifer couldn't be hurt. So he stopped trying. Instead, he used his stolen domains to bind, to trap, to immobilize. Chains of lightning wrapped around Lucifer's limbs. A dome of divine force pressed down on him from above.
The Merciless's sword plunged through Lucifer's chest.
The devil smiled as he dissolved into pieces.
"You can go now, Luci," Jason said.
Lucifer's voice echoed from everywhere at once, amused even in defeat. "As you wish, my Lord." The pieces scattered, dissolved, vanished.
The Merciless spun to face Jason, his chest heaving, his eyes wild. "What...?"
"I am the Devil," Jason said quietly. "I don't fight my battles. I trick fools like you."
Realization dawned on The Merciless's face. Lucifer had never been there. Not really. The entire battle...the claws, the taunts, the feeling of divine flesh tearing beneath primordial fire—had been fiction. His imagination. His mind, tricked into believing it was fighting something that didn't exist.
And while he was lost in that fiction, Jason had been sitting. Watching. Learning.
The Merciless stared at Jason with something that might have been fear.
Jason grinned.
"I told you, didn't I? I'd learn something using you." He raised his hand. "I think I got it now. So hand it over." His voice dropped. "That Death of yours."
The Ankh appeared in the air above him....not a slash, not a construct, but something else. A symbol. A conduit. A declaration.
"The lives of all that serve their lord... Jason... Anderson..."
Behind him, beyond the domain, beyond the nightmare realm, beyond space and time itself...the demons of Hell felt their king's call. Billions of souls, bound to him through Satan's submission, through Mazikeen's rule, through the Key that had opened Hell's throne.
They answered.
Tiny fragments of soul energy drifted through the void, gathering above the Ankh. A billion points of light, each one a life, each one a connection. The Ankh drank them in, its colorless outline slowly filling with darkness...not the darkness of absence, but the darkness of absolute presence.
When it was full, Jason smiled.
"Destined Death."
The Ankh moved. Not fast...not slow. It simply appeared above The Merciless, hovering for a single breath, and then fell.
The god raised his hands. Summoned every domain. Called on the strength of Olympus, the speed of Hermes, the wisdom of Athena, the power of Zeus himself.
The Ankh passed through all of it.
It impaled him where he stood.
The Merciless's eyes went wide. His mouth opened not to scream, but to ask. To understand. His hands reached for the Ankh embedded in his chest, but they passed through it. It wasn't physical. It wasn't even conceptual.
It was simply... his time.
And now it was over.
The Merciless collapsed. His body hit the dark water and did not move.
Jason stood over him, feeling the weight of what he had done. He hadn't killed with a slash. He hadn't used a conduit. He had simply... decided. And because billions of demons had lent their lives to that decision, because Hell itself had backed his will, the universe had listened.
So that's what she meant.
Not becoming life. Not creating anything.
Just understanding that death isn't an ending. It's a transfer. A transition. A door that swings both ways.
Jason looked up.
"Now," he said softly, "let's deliver destined death to those who deserve it."
He raised his hand. The domain began to crumble, the dark water receding, the shrine fading. The nightmare realm rushed back in....but Jason was ready now.
He understood.
And understanding changed everything.
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If you Like this story! Check out my other story ! Shadow Monarch in Danmachi!
AND
If you wish to read more or simply support me just because ? than check out my patréon at
"https://www.patréon.com/Riadooo"
You can Get Access to 3 More Chapters OR 7 More Chapters if you want !