Prabodhan

Why did it even matter at the end? Why did I worry when I could lose myself in the now? Why would the universe, and reality matter when now, I only felt bliss? Why did everything else matter when I could only feel disconnection?

I rushed at the approaching gigantic laser that Kagutsuchi had created. I let it burn me, consume me.

The agony felt different than what a normal agony should have felt. It felt like home, like a familiar pain. I could feel my skin melt, my inside rupture and explode because of the heat.

My power of destruction bubbled at the surface of my skin like a protective shield and began eating the light and the fire trying to consume me.

Things never changed. They just repeated again and again. This life, my escape, my salvation. I have wished for this, for this euphoria, for this pain.

I have wished and prayed for this strength, killed parts of myself just so that I could attain just a fragment of this dream.

My power of destruction extended around me like a bubble, like a wave and ate the heat, the pain, the flames and the reality around me separating me from all of it.

'I am fighting a star' I realized. This was absurd, something impossible, inconceivable yet I was doing it.

The body of Kagutsuchi was gigantic, in such a way that I didn't think that I could really put it In proper terms.

I had to admit that he was beautiful, beautiful like a peaceful death, like a volcano exploding, like a snow-swallowing storm.

I pointed One of my hands to the stars. This thing, this impossible beautiful thing. I wanted to grab it in my hands, to smother and extinguish its light. I prayed and my power of destruction answered to my pleas.

It began forming around me like a shell. From my imagination, it came. Obsidian ragged bones, scarlet flesh and tissues, veins filled with imaginary substances and dark red skin, the shade of the power I inherited from my mother. Dark demonic wings made of ether erupted from its back.

I was like an ant in it. It felt like a cover away from the world, away from everything, from reason, from reality and expectations.

It was a protector, a shell, a crystallization of loneliness, of fear of the world. At that moment, I think that I understood why the guardian of the members of the descendants of Kaguya was always present no matter the differences in the techniques available to them in their different eyes.

Calling it Susanoo would not be right even though a part of me wondered with curiosity how my adversary would have reacted.

I had something else in mind. "Ifrit," I whispered in the void and with my voice, the construct actualized and became more real.

Horns that bent grew from the head of the construct. Its face took a more animalistic, bestial, savage shape. Obisidan Fur began to grow on its members.

I was a devil after all. Who else was more appropriate as a protector than the one who refused to kneel even when the Presence asked him to?

Now, things were more equal. Kagutsuchi's was still towering over my form but it was different. It was now less like an ant and the sun and more like the difference between a hill and a mountain.

I watched how multiple orbs of fire began to materialize before the body of the god. 'They numbered to thousands' my mind whispered.

With what felt like a pulse of something, they twisted and changed as if they had been caved in from one side with something heavy, spherical.

They rushed at me taking the shape of blinding rays of light. Even light years away, I could feel their divinity, their anger toward my existence, toward the existence of something inherently dark as if they were alive.

The ifrit surrounding me felt like a second body. I knew that it would move more easily than my own body just at a mere thought.

A sword made of the power of destruction appeared in one of its hands. 'Let's see if stars can scream' I thought before rushing toward the incoming lasers.

I met them without faltering. I didn't know how to really use a sword. I wasn't trained like my knight who was so skilled with a sword that he would be considered divine by mortals.

It didn't matter because my sword moved as if it had a mind of its own. My ifrit pivoted to the side, dodging one of the lasers, my sword embedded in it to cut it in half while it continued flying at my side.

With a bat of my wings, I ascended. The rays as if they were missiles changed directions and followed after me.

The stars, I could reach them if I wished to do so. My grip on my sword loosened, leaving the grasp of the hand of Ifrit.

I closed my eyes and stopped the movement of my wings allowing myself to fall toward where I knew the incoming lasers were coming.

I rotated in the dark void of space like a professional swimmer and grabbed back my falling sword.

I fell toward the beams of lights. I placed my sword before me as if I wanted to nail something with it and stabbed through the first laser.

It disappeared in the devouring void of my sword being destroyed, erased. I continued moving. With a movement from the arms of my constructs, I slashed through incoming lasers.

I cut, dodged, pierced and stabbed my way through them. It felt like an endless dance that I had been invited into.

Everything made sense. There was no ambiguity, no deception or expectation. This was the truth, this was honesty, this was death in its purest form.

Living or dying, surviving or giving up. I could see the scales, the invisible threads that connected everything, that shaped everything and I found it disgusting, repulsive in both its complexity and simplicity.

I tore through them with my sword and my destruction. My wings reappeared to propel me toward the Star Kagutsuchi had become.

The star spits A beam of light bigger than a planet at me. I coated myself in even more destruction and flew to it.

My destruction and his divine light met. They ate at each other like hungry feral rabid dogs. The planets and the stars surrounding us were the ones to take the brunt of our two presences.

Around us, everything burnt and was swallowed in gold and dark scarlet. I felt satisfaction emanate from my soul where my destruction was coming from.

The monster in me was being fed for once, allowed to roam free in the physical and satiate itself on the components of reality. Shouldn't I be disgusted with myself?

Shouldn't I feel guilty for the destruction that we were creating? I knew that this world was a composite one made of two different cosmologies that had been conflated.

Billions of civilizations existed in the cosmology of the Sandman. Civilizations that were occupied by intelligent living beings like me, like the humans, like the supernatural races of the Earth existed.

I could feel every act of destruction, of blasphemy committed by my power of destruction. I could feel in my mouth the taste of the scared souls of those who had perished because of me.

It's not as if I wasn't aware of what I was doing. It's not as if I could not control this monster that had always been slumbering in me. After all, this monster, this destruction that I had wanted to tame since the beginning of this new life, this destruction that I had wanted to tame was none other than the true me, the true Rias Gremory.

I wonder if she had known this before I came to exist. Kindness, love and care were anathemas to my nature. I could see it. This is why the power of destruction had been hard to control. As long as I wouldn't be true to myself, it would fight with me, try to consume me.

Would you be proud of me now Grandpa if you could see me? Would you still look at me with love and pride?

My construct broke around me but it was okay. It did what I needed it to do destroying everything on my path and allowing me to finally reach Kagutsuchi.

I leapt using space itself as it was something solid toward the towering form of Kagutsuchi.

There was one thing that needed to be understood.

Bigger didn't always meant better. It only meant a bigger target! I cocked a fist, my power of destruction swallowing it in dark red. I thought about infinity, about the impossible encounter of attraction and repulsion.

I thought about the strongest. My power of destruction twisted taking an amethyst dark colour. I felt a grin split my face. I finally understood! "Hollow purple," I whispered.

My fist met the sun, an ant punched the sun and the sun was the one to scream. It screamed tearing with its agony through space.

The infernal noise rushed at me like a wave of destruction. I felt my skin being flayed, my bones breaking, my organs exploding from inside.

I continued punching forward. I continued going forward digging through the celestial body of Kagutsuchi until I exploded from the other side of the body of the god.

I turned to look at The wailing god. My skin grew back as if I was a lizard more sturdy, more fire resistant. I felt My insides heal and put themselves back in their proper places.

I felt as if I had just come out of a comfortable sleep. I felt light as if my body weighed less than a feather.

I looked into one of my hands as the skin finished to stitch and replace itself. I had taken something from the god while I had flown in his body.

It shone and pulsated softly in my right hand like a heart. It felt alive. This was light, divinity, this was a manifested dream. This was the hope, the despair, the longing of thousands that died, were dying and will die.

I opened my mouth and directed my hand toward it. I swallowed the star's fragment. I felt it burn through me as it fell into my body.

It fought recognizing my presence as something unmistakably evil. It fought from inside trying to immolate me, smite me from the inside. I was a devil. One of the favourite activities of my race had been the consumption of souls at least before it had been banned.

Maybe some devils were still doing it but it was probably in secret because the consequences of doing such things even for a pure-blood devil could be what pure-blood Devils would consider not worth it to endure.

It was said that it was forbidden to eat souls, more precisely human souls. Gods didn't really have souls? It was also the case for most supernatural beings. We had something different but so similar that it could be considered a soul. We had instead of a soul an essence.

It meant that I wasn't breaking the laws of the underworld as my body began to feed on the still-fighting piece of divinity crushing it, cutting it, absorbing it.

The fragment of divinity was swallowed whole and for an instant, I felt nothing. 'Is it all?' I wondered. 'At least, I would have tried,' I told myself before I felt it thrumming inside of me, inside my heart.

It propagated in the rest of my body like a deadly infection. With it came strength so much different and similar to the one I was used to.

With it, more importantly, came clarity and understanding. A god wasn't a being that just controlled or represented an aspect of the universe.

They were so much more than this. They were universal truths taken form that were shaped by themselves and the thoughts and realities of the world around them.

Kagutsuchi wasn't fire. Calling him such would be such a monumental error. He was the flame that powered the Japanese civilization, that existed in the heart of each Japanese person.

He was the fire that gave light and understanding to the dark surrounding world. Kagutsuchi was enlightenment. Kagutschi was clarity.

Killing his physical change would change nothing. As long as Japan existed as a concept, as long as people still believed in it, he would exist.

Killing him completely at every level would reciprocally affect all of Japan. It would be like inflicting a curse on all those who called it their home.

I felt the formation of a headache. It was as if there was something inside my brain, my head twisting and growing from the inside.

The headache became an annoyance and bloomed into pain. My essence that should have been acting wasn't. Pain like I had never felt since being reincarnated split and turned my mind white.

I bit my tongue to not scream as the thing inside me continued to grow and grow and grow until I felt it explode from my head in a shower of bones and gore.

I could feel a weight on my head. I touched where I could feel the disturbance and touched something bony, that felt like a rugged piece of metal.

My eyes lifted to see what it was. It was a horn, the type of horn you would see in biblical representations of devils. It twisted and bent like the horn of a goat.

I touched it with one of my fingers the tips. It pierced through my reinforced flesh. I picked up the blood in my mouth. 'I hope it's not a permanent fixture, that it is something that I would be unable to hide. Sure I was a devil and I wasn't ashamed of it but this wasn't something I wanted to advertise everywhere I went.'

I'll deal with it later. I turned back my attention to Kagutsuchi. He had stopped screaming. In agony. His gigantic body was losing mass and volume. I guess that he finally understood that his size would not help against me.

The sun compressed, gathering itself in a little ball the size of a door. It looked like a vortex collapsing or swallowing itself.

The sun finished its compression taking the shape of a golden egg. Cracks appeared at its surface before an arm broke through it.

The form of Kagutsuchi came out of it changed. Gone was the scarlet hair. Instead, it had been replaced with colourless white. His skin shone softly illuminating space. His golden eyes looked different, more I would say.

His eyes were fixated on me. Our gazes crossed. His full of hatred and I would say fear and mine full of indifference.

I wasn't scared of him or worried about what was happening in Kuoh right now. I felt numb, impassive. Maybe later I would care but right now, the only thing that went excitement running through my heart was the idea of consuming the god before me whole.

I had a taste of the divine and I craved more of it with all of my soul. I wanted to replace this feeling of numbness with the euphoria I knew a taste of his flesh would make me feel.

We didn't say anything to each other. There was nothing to be said between us after all. He wanted for my end and I yearned for his flesh. Nothing more, nothing less.

We rushed at each other like two colliding stars in the darkness of the void. His fist met with the lower side of my face destroying and pulverizing my jaw in a bloody mist.

I answered his action by plunging one of my hands into the socket of his right eye and removing it in one swab.

Our injuries healed instantly as if time had been rewound and we flew at each other with violence etched in our bodies to begin the cycle anew.

Our fists met in a rain of hits making space tremble. My hand broke before regenerating stronger and breaking his hand.

The god sent a right jab at me. I dodged by moving my head to the side only for it to meet a hook that put a hole in both sides of my cheeks and broke my teeth.

In retaliation, I grabbed the arm and tore it from his body with a forceful tug. We disengaged refreshing from each other in my hand, a wave of destruction on the point of being released.

I released it at the god who met it with another.

Gold and dark red fought for nomination before consuming each other in a world-shattering explosion.

I moved, pushing my body to reappear behind him as if I had teleported an uppercut ready. My fist removed his head from his body as if I had opened the head of a wine bottle.

His body moved as if my action didn't even happen. A kick met my stomach and sent me flying away from the god.

My back met something solid that stopped my impromptu flight. I turned to see that a moon that had survived our clashes had been the reason for my stopping. I didn't have more time to think because Kagutsuchi reappeared over me with a sword of fire in his hand with a descending strike.

I pushed my arms over me in the shape of an X to block the attack. His blade met my flesh and sang it but found itself unable to penetrate it or tear through it like it had been able before.

The ground under me was unfortunately unable to stay unaffected. The strength of the strike travelled under my feet and broke the planetoid in two.

With my hands, I grabbed the arms of the god and threw it under me reversing our positions before firing a beam of destruction point blank.

He tried to use his sword as a shield but my destruction went through it and punched a hold in his chest.

I didn't give a moment to think. With with right leg, I sent an axe kick toward his neck beheading him.

His floating head turned toward me and released a ray of light from his mouth. I placed my right hand on the way of the attack.

It touched my hand and separated around me in multiple lesser beams before sizzling out. That had the time that the god had needed to reattach his head to his body.

"Bang," I whispered pointing one of my fingers to the god. Unlike the other times, my attack didn't land.

The flames of the god surged around his form like a shield to absorb the impact and protect him.

They did so but were unable to stop him from being sent careening through the middle of the destructed moon.

Kagutsuchi had been able to see if not to feel my attack. The same way I had grown in strength, the same way it was clear that he also had done so.

The god had been to stabilize himself by creating wings of fire. Things could not continue like this. At this rate, I would never be able to kill him, to win.

What was the point of dominating him, of having grown so much stronger than him at every level if I wasn't able to put him down?

My power of destruction could beat him but I needed to think, to shape it in a form that would surely make me win.

I watched how the god's flames began to change, how even light years away, I could feel their intensity.

I peered at the phenomenon with all my attention trying to understand the reason for the growth of the strength of the god.

His Flames were burning space itself. I knew that if he wished to, such a thing would not happen so why?

'Flames need fuel' I realized. He's using matter as a fuel for himself, for his flames. This must have been how he had been able to keep up with me all this time.

Daimons were considered Gods even if lesser for a reason. In this universe where every supernatural being existed, the name of our race didn't come from the fact that with time, the ancient Greek term for some deities encompassing only one concept was turned due to Christianization and many other factors in the designation of the adversary of god and his subjects.

In this universe, Daimons and Daemons, the ancestors of the devil race shared the same name because, at their basic, I realized that they were the same.

We all could gain strength through the power of human souls. Human souls could strengthen, and empower us. We were both beings vastly superior to most and were designated to be representations of universal concepts like with the first Bael and destruction and Kratos and strength.

I realized The god before I had gorged himself through his flames on billions of souls to keep with me. Souls that may be different, weaker, different than human ones but nonetheless souls.

Everything from every speck to the greatest cosmic body was alive and had a soul. I could see it with my eyes. The threads were connected to everything because everything was alive.

I watched how the flames of the god continued to feed growing brighter and brighter. I needed to shape my power of destruction so that my next action would ensure my victory.

I remembered a two-face spirit. The shape of the god before me lost coherence merging with the flames to rush at me.

I grabbed my power of destruction calming it and promising it a feast only if it waited. I let the god approach, his presence burning through space and leaving behind cracks.

Through those cracks in reality, I could see an endless void, where in every direction, there was a mix of iridescent colours. It was like looking into an infinite Kaleidoscope. I looked and felt something terrifying so much more than I look back. I felt veins explode in my nose as the attention and the existence of this being proved almost too much for my brain to understand.

I turned back toward Kagustchi. I have looked into the abyss and the abyss had looked back. I wasn't looking anymore but I knew that it was observing me. It made me scared. I tried to ignore it. Maybe As long as I would not acknowledge it, maybe it'll lose interest in me.

The presence of his attention retreated and I felt finally as if I could breathe, and exist. I wasn't sure of the limits of my essence and this wasn't something I wanted to test.

The flames of Kagutscuchi consumed everything like a cosmic storm. They consumed every direction, everything physical or supernatural.

I stood in the middle of them as they rushed at me. My hands touched each other and took the form of a mudra, my thumbs touching another standing, my two tucked pinkies in contact, the rest of the fingers unbent touching only at the tips.

Painting on the void directly. I was a devil, of course, I could do it. "Malevolent shrine," I whispered and with my words, my power of destruction expanded, becoming all-encompassing.

I let it grow covering billions of miles, all of the serpent one flame body of Kagutschi. I released my power of destruction that began cutting and cleaning through everything.

The flames that were rushing at me evaporated being cut to nothing by my power of destruction.

I watched how despairingly the god tried to escape. He stopped when he realized that everywhere he went, my power of destruction followed him.

He tried when he realised it to protect himself with his flames. They were eaten away as fast as they appeared by my destruction.

In less than a microsecond, his flames longer than a solar system were reduced to what seemed like a little spark. I chose at this moment to rush at the god.

He had been reduced to the shape of a toddler. His eyes widened when he saw me falling toward me. He tried to move, to escape.

I grabbed his head softly as if it was the more delicate thing in the world as if it was the more precious crystal. "It shouldn't be possible! This shouldn't be happening! I am justice! I am god!" he cried.

I directed my face toward his as if I wanted to kiss him on the face and opened my mouth. "And I am the devil," I whispered to him before I bit into his godly flesh.