The monkey and the fish

Anyone standing close to the blue giant would think they were facing the darkness and pressure of the deep ocean.

He stared at the shadow thoughtfully.

His face was covered by a deep blue helmet, that resembled a Leviathan's maw.

Inside the giant, ferocious fangs, one could discern a muscular human jaw.

The Leviathan's eyes were glistering yellow while looking at the shadow.

"Akimi mi nohte", he said in a masculine, harsh voice.

"I mean… not again. I keep forgetting that you do not speak abyssal, Nimbus.

Now come out before I drag you out myself." He said, snarling at the colourful light, that illuminated the castle's walls.

"How about you shut your ignorant little mouth, before I force you into submission, you abyssal ape?!", said a playful, but angry voice.

Suddenly, one more rift of the same colours and proportions as the one the Leviathan appeared from, opened next to the armoured giant. From within, a figure in majestic silver armour, whose facial features resembled a monkey, emerged.

He was wearing red, leather gloves, that only covered his palm; each glove had a hole on top, like some kind of jewellery was missing from them.

On his forehead, a tightly-wrapped, golden headband. It seemed to be as sturdy as a mountain.

Scarlet pants, seemingly dyed red by the blood of giants, covered his lower body.

"Aren't you a little hypocritical for calling me an ape, you monstrous oaf?", the Leviathan retorted.

Nimbus let out a loud laugh, similar to the laugh monkeys use, when they play pranks on absent-minded travellers.

"This has to stop Nimbus.

This guy has stolen Kyomu so many times, I can't even remember the first. My memory capacity is the biggest in this universe." Said the Leviathan to the now smiling, monkey man.

"It's okay Orca, he only succeeded…Wait how many times makes this one?" he said looking puzzled.

"That's the problem, even I cannot remember, it has been THAT long. If only we could move the dagger…".

"What are you talking about? You know that moving it is impossible, since you, like a moron, let him imprint it in the first place." Said Nimbus while laughing his ass off.

"He imprinted it, so only he can touch it.

To think that the great Orca, ruler of the depths, and terror of the oceans, managed to get fooled by a goblin! MukikiHAHAHA!".

Nimbus was having the time of his life, holding his stomach and rolling on the floor, laughing.

Remembering Orca's face when the goblin managed to imprint the dagger and Orca could only sit idly by and watch, made him laugh so hard, tears fell down his cheeks.

*DOOM*

Orca's eyes suddenly turned deep blue.

He crossed his arms on his chest, and the ground started shaking.

The strange light in his eyes felt so heavy, that it forced Nimbus to stop laughing.

The pressure that the Leviathan was exerting was unbelievable. At some point, his presence released a pressure so thick it solidified.

His presence was literally weighing on Nimbus.

Nimbus's eyes turned into golden lights; suddenly-, from inside a dazzling light,

a scarlet quarterstaff, whose top and bottom ends were covered in golden symbols, around which two torn, red scarfs wrapped themselves, appeared in his hand.

Standing tall, with a crazy smile on his face,

"Wanna go?!"

He provocatively asks.

The moment the staff appeared Nimbus's pressure exploded like a volcano.

It not only resisted Orca's but it was slightly stronger.

The two monsters glared at each other, while the world around them was trembling, just from the clash of their wills.

First one to calm down was Orca. With a sigh, he turned to glance at the goblin.

"Nimbus this is serious. The celestial realm has enough to deal with. It's about time we end this.", he said in a serious tone.

The glint in his eyes made it obvious that his grave mistake had cost him far too much for far too long.

The monkey man also calmed down, finding truth in the Leviathan's words.

It was time for this to end.

"Memory erasure can only happen so many times, and reconstructing his body takes a lot out of all of us. It's a miracle it kept working all these millennia. It's a matter of time before it stops."

"You are right Orca, it's enough.

This time even ------ paid attention to the goblin." Nimbus said while his mind spun at top gear, trying to come up with a solution.

"-------? This is bad. If ------ is interested in the goblin then this might not bite only us in the ass, but the celestial realm as a whole."

Orca looked distressed beyond explanation.

When both of them said -------'s name, no sound was actually produced. It was like their vocal cords had no knowledge of the name. It was like Heaven himself but a ban on even mentioning the name.

Meanwhile, the shadow was inside endless darkness. None of his senses worked. He had no self-awareness, nor consciousness. He was an empty husk with a beating heart.

"Do we kill him?", Orca asked while grabbing his gigantic, bastard sword, and inadvertently releasing some of his deep-blue aurae.

That little release almost brought the ruins falling to the ground, and made the surrounding wildlife hideaway, curled up in holes.

Nimbus turn to glare at him fiercely.

"NO!"

He released his own aura, pushing Orca's back.

The Leviathan let go of his sword and asked, with genuine concern,

"Then what do we do?"

"We can't kill him, because if he goes, Kyomu goes too. For some inexplicable reason, the dagger has taken a liking to the nuisance and that id-... I mean... Honourable blacksmith, made it so that only the dagger can stop the connection of their souls."

Nimbus said, inwardly cursing himself for almost insulting the celestial realm's blacksmith.

A being that can hand his ass to him easier than killing a chicken.

He stared at the shadow, wondering why the black dagger, the Bringer of Chaos, chose this little goblin.

"Orca, do you think that maybe... This is an opportunity?", asked the monkey-man with a playful grin hanging on his face, thinking he had the best idea of his lifetime.

"No!

Nimbus, please don't say what I think you are gonna say…"

Orca seemed a bit terrified, thinking about the consequences of Nimbus's idea.

"What if we used him against the idiots trying to take over the realm?

I bet he could even surpass you if his greed for the dagger was gone."

Nimbus hung a playful grin on his face, thinking of the future, while Orca sighed so hard, it made part of the ruin's ceiling collapse.

"It's settled. I am going to erase his memories and reconstruct his body, one last time. After that, it's all on him."

Nimbus bend down and put his hand on the goblin's head.

He used an electric art of extremely high tier, to fry the parts of the brain where the memories were stored, while at the same time healing the burns in the goblin's brain with healing arts.

He places numerous energy rings, runes, and formations with regenerative capabilities under the goblin's body.

He opened a gate to the celestial realm, in order to borrow life-force; something like erasing the memories of a soul that lived for millions of years and underwent constant destruction and reconstruction, made it so sturdy, that even gods need to pay a price to deconstruct it again.

Suddenly inside the darkness, a blinding light appeared in front of the goblin. He instinctively started walking towards it.

Nimbus used the life-force of the heavenly realm itself to finish the procedure, and moved on to reconstruct the goblin's body using similar methods.

The goblin's body broke down until only his clothes were left.

The particles it consisted of, became a swirling vortex that, under the monkey-man's guidance, expanded and retracted, forming a hovering ball.

A dark cocoon appeared right where the goblin was before, pulsating, and emitting a crimson light.

After the cocoon appeared, Nimbus picked it up and drew a teleportation rune, sending it to a random location.

"There. That should do it!".

Sweat was dripping down his cheek, and he was panting as if he just run a marathon.

"This time it took a lot of life-force. I think I weakened the stability of the realm doing it.", he exclaimed, in disbelief.

"Also, infinite as the worlds of the cosmos may be, I think we are running out of places to send him. Well, not that it matters now, Kikiki", he said with a playful laugh.

"I told you so. I think this was, either way, the last time we could do it."

Nimbus caught his breath and stood up.

"Orca, I'm going to return first. It's bad for the realm to be unstable while under attack. Are you coming with, or will you be stopping by your palace first?"

"Yeah, I have to take care of something and I'll be over as soon as possible. See you there, you unevolved idiot." Orca replied, laughing.

He opened a rift and stepped inside. His figure disappeared, as the rift closed behind him.

"That overpowered fish!" Nimbus yelled in frustration, and similarly returned to his palace.

What he did not know though, was that the instability of the heavenly realm was due to much more than just the sturdiness of the goblin's soul.

This incident marked the beginning of the end of the celestial realm.