"I will kill you…" Armando said to us with deep rage. 'We may have weakened him, but he still has plenty of fight left in him.' I thought to myself. Armando then suddenly charged at us, like an explosive rocket, swinging his rods in a blind rage.
I and Azrael easily dodged his attacks and countered with our own. Armando had slowed down significantly due to the dark clouds decaying effect. Eat slowly began to erode Armando's very soul.
'His durability is still a big nuisance, he is much more vulnerable now though.' I thought to myself as I and Azrael showered a barrage of attacks on Armando.
With his speed being compromised, and his senses slowly drifting away, there was nothing he could do to retaliate from the attacks he received from the two of us. He may have packed a lot of power behind his attacks, but that power meant nothing if he couldn't land a hit.
We then slowly tired him down as his movements continued to become more sluggish.
Feeling like he was being overwhelmed, Armando once again summoned purple lightning from the clouds above and we were forced to retreat. His body was now coated with purple lightning everywhere as he let out a deafening roar. By now, almost his entire body was covered with fractures and looked as though it were falling apart.
The ground then began to shake as thousands of four armed shadows started rushing towards him from every direction. He began to take his shadows within himself then, like magic, his fractures slowly began to heal. His two skeletal arms, that he had recently lost, were slowly growing back as well.
"No!" I shouted out loud and charged towards Armando. I conjured a scythe into my left hand and open a gate, with my dark cloud, beneath Azrael. Armando had seen me do this before and as a result, was extremely on guard as he quickly turned back expecting Azrael to attack him from behind, but there was nothing there.
He then shifted his focus back on me once more and started to fire a barrage of purple lightning bolts towards me. With great effort, I tried my best to dodge the bolts of purple lightning being fired at me as I, slowly, but surely continued my advance.
As Armando continued to heal, the purple lightning bolts picked up speed and power. It soon became more and more difficult to evade the attacks, resulting in a few of them striking me. With each passing second, my situation became direr as fractures and scorch marks began to appear around my body.
Luckily, Armando was not aware that I had teleported Azrael to the edge of the planet's atmosphere, where the tailed Lilith was still waiting. Azrael was now flying down towards him at a tremendous speed.
Like a god from Greek Mythology, Azrael came descending from the heavens, and landed right behind Armando's neck with his feet, causing a significant amount of damage to his hyoid bone, but even that was not enough to take him down.
I then summoned almost all the dark cloud I could master and focused its power on my scythe. Using the force from Azrael's attack, alongside the buff my scythe got from my dark cloud, a turquoise glow came from the scythe's blade as I swung it from below and struck Armando's neck right before his body hit the floor.
His head went flying clean off from the attack and landed a few meters away from his body. I still wasn't sure if that was enough to kill a reaper, so I remained on guard and slowly watched the purple glow from Armando's eyes fade away.
His skull like face still had the same look of shock and horror it had right after taking Azrael's attack. "He's…he's dead!" I said. "It seems so master," Azrael answered.
I then dropped my scythe, it then disappeared before reaching the ground. Armando's skeleton broke apart, no longer able to keep its original form. A black and purple smoke continued to rise from Armando's corpse as it radiated a presence within it.
"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, 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 it were waiting for its 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 has 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 began to spin like a miniature tornado and carried Armando's skeleton with it. Purple lightning sparked off of it as if there was a lightning storm within it. The smoke then quickly disappeared and Armando could now be seen kneeling before me, but he looked different.
Patterns, like that of veins, could be seen within Armando's cloud moving around and pulsating with a purple glow as if breathing.
Azrael then conjured his long sword ready to attack once more, but I raised my hand, signaling him to stop.
Armando then reached into his chest and pulled out a dark, steaming orb surrounded with purple lightning sparking off of it. He then stretched both his arms towards me and offered it to me. After seeing this, Azrael drove his sword to the ground and sat down.
I then grabbed the glowing orb and immediately felt an incredible power coming from it. The orb looked solid, but it didn't feel like anything. If I hadn't grabbed the orb myself, I would't have even realized there was now something on my hand.
The power then started to flow into me in the form of a mist. In just a few seconds, I had absorbed the entire orb into my body. I felt a familiar power now circulating around my body as my fractures began to heal. I watched the changes taking place within myself and found myself rejuvenated and stronger thn I was a moment ago.
Before I could learn any more from the changes in my body, I suddenly felt every single life within the planet, just like I did on Earth when I first became a reaper.
"Asími, that's the name of this planet," I said after hearing conversations all around the planet. All of Armando's shadows were now under my control.
'This power…' I thought to myself as I watched purple lightning moving between my fingers. Through the eyes of my new shadows, I could see entire civilizations established on this planet.
The weather on Asimi had alwasy been horrid. With lightning storms above and deadly sand storms below, it did not seem like a place where a civilization could grow and thrive.
However, if you were to look below the surface, you would be met with a network of taverns and labrynths all around the surface. These labrynths would go down for miles, housed with entire cities.
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.