Chapter 15: "Unveiling Thanatos: A Tale of Powers and Contracts"

Yash looked around while swimming but couldn't find anything to grab onto the ship. "What should I do? Think fast, Yash, otherwise the ship might sail."

"What are you doing? Didn't I tell you to use your skills?" asked Thanatos.

"I'm trying, but I can't do anything other than swim," Yash proclaimed, but Thanatos instantly refuted. "Don't give me that. You didn't even try to step on air."

"You make it sound so easy, but how am I supposed to do it?" Yash started to get irritated and slammed his foot on the water he was floating in. Surprisingly, the water underneath his foot was as hard as solid ground when he tried to slam on it.

"How did this happen?" asked Yash.

"Are you a fucking idiot? I just said all you had to do is step on it. And now you are asking again?" said Thanatos before disappearing into Yash's consciousness.

Yash tried to step on the water again, and surprisingly, he was standing on the water. How did this happen, though? Yash tried to talk with Thanatos, but there was no response.

Quickly climbing onto the water, Yash emerged out of the water and stepped onto the water surface.

"Is stepping on air this easy as well?" Yash thought. Without any hard work, he was able to step on the air easily. Climbing on the air, Yash quickly got under the cannon when a sudden thought popped into his mind. "Can I walk on walls as well?"

Yash stepped on the wall but wasn't able to stick to it as gravity pulled him at an acceleration of 9.8m/s² towards the ocean. With a splash, he fell into the water.

"Did you hear that? Is there a small sea king near the ship?" said one marine on the Battleship. With a pop, the other marine woke up from his sleep.

"It must be your imagination. I didn't hear anything," said the one who just woke up.

"But you were sleeping, how do you know I am wrong?"

With a startle, the other marine instantly refuted. "Are you accusing me of sleeping on duty?"

"That was close," thought Yash as he climbed on the air and stuck close to the marine warship. Walking around the warship, he found a floating tube to sit on.

Yash closed his eyes and tried to focus on the devil inside him. He entered his subconscious realm and walked around; his whole subconscious realm was pitch black. He could see nothing, feel nothing of the surroundings, but a sense of peace was there.

"You are here, right, Thanatos? Tell me everything like you said you will," Yash asked Thanatos, but received no reply.

"I have figured out that my consent is also needed for the contract to be upheld. If I will it, the contract will be terminated, and you will be banished from my body. You forced this contract on me, and I am going along with it till now. The least you can do is answer my questions."

Thanatos appeared once again. Yash couldn't see him, but he could sense his presence in the nothingness of his subconsciousness. It was kind of hard to miss it when there was nothing around.

"How did you figure those things out?" asked Thanatos.

"You told me yourself. I need to accept your power for the contract to take place," Yash said with pride.

"Very well. I will tell you my story, maybe you will stop giving me a hard time and let me rest. You see, I don't know how many years I have existed, so my story starts at my birth..."

"Wait, I don't want you to give me a long story," Yash refuted, but he was ignored.

"When my eyes were first opened, I saw myself standing in the depths of the sea. Being a baby, I was eaten by a sea king and couldn't do anything. But my power was realized as I traveled back in time because of that.

"Later, venturing into the world, I met the Devil who became my best friend later on. His name was Nika. Nika was a weird guy; nothing I did bothered him. He laughed off so many pranks I pulled on him.

"One day, I was with him, traveling, freeing slaves, and enjoying life when we were attacked by a Walk-Walk ability user. He could walk on anything.

"He wanted my power; he said his love was killed, and he wanted to go back to her, and consuming me would give him my powers. Nika was a compassionate guy. He told me to give him my ability. I refused, and he turned against me.

"Nika and that Walk-Walk guy attacked me. As the battle reached the end, I had redone my death 100,000 times, and the conclusion was I consumed the Walk-Walk devil and obtained part of his ability.

"After seeing me commit cannibalism, Nika was disheartened. He gave me an incurable disease which wasn't fatal but killed me somehow. Because the cause of death was a small disease, the leap in time was a long time in the future.

"When I woke up, every Devil was turned into their Devil fruit incarnation. But I didn't want to turn into a fruit and go into sleep until someone awakened my Devil ability. I tried to use my ability to go back to my fight with Nika.

"But something was blocking that century's time and space. I accidentally encountered your soul while traveling in space and time and crashed, so I got stuck on you for a while and decided to make you my incarnation and not some fruit.

"It works like this:

Death by Small wounds, travel long time in the past,

Death by big wounds, travel small time in the past.

Death by big disease, small time in the future.

Death by small disease, big time in the future.

"My ability, after killing the Walk-Walk devil, was increased to walking on air and water. There is a small chance if you perish a Devil's soul by touching its incarnation's user, then you will gain a part of their ability, and perishing their soul will let you control their time and space."