"Hey, Ryuk."
Odette suddenly called out, as Ryuk hummed slightly.
"You wish to defeat me, don’t you?" she asked, and he nodded.
"Can you explain to me what exactly defeat means to you?"
"Is there any other definition for defeat?" Ryuk asked, as Odette looked at him silently before she muttered.
"So... you wish to... kill me?" she whispered, and he replied,
"Yes."
A giggle left her lips, soon erupting into a full-blown laughter that made her hug her stomach, but when she turned to look at him, there was no change.
He wasn’t smiling, nor was he laughing.
His eyes were focused, his expression dead serious.
It led her to a single realization that gave her the feeling of something slowly stabbing into her heart.
"You really want to kill me?" she asked once more.
He didn’t reply with words.
Just silently, she watched as his hands shifted into sickle-like claws covered in white scales, their mere flicker enough to slice space asunder.
The sight of them made Odette step back in disbelief.
"You... you really still held onto that thought?"
"I do."
"Even... even after all that?"
"I thought you felt..." She paused slightly, her teeth grinding harder.
"Did you not feel anything!?" Odette roared out in pain.
"I spared your life when I could have ended it. I could have killed you and brought an end to everything you ever dreamed of."
"But I didn’t."
"And you also saved me from certain death. When I was at my weakest, you were the only thing I confided in. In my most vulnerable, you were my safest."
"I thought..."
"I paid back your kindness..." Ryuk said, firmly cutting her off.
"You spared my life, and I spared yours."
"That makes us even."
"Even?" Odette asked.
"What do you see this as? What happened to all those words of starting things anew? The second chances?"
"I’m sorry," he whispered, and Odette’s lips quivered for a moment before she eventually gave in to silence.
A silence that continued only to be broken by the sound of something trickling down.
From both her eyes, a trail of dark blood could be seen, continuing down until it merged between her jaw and fell onto the dark Void, turning to ashes just after a few meters of fall.
All of a sudden, the powerful wave of aura rippling off Odette completely disappeared, and Ryuk felt her vanish from his sensory range.
It was like she didn’t exist any longer, yet he could see her standing before him.
A sudden shadow rippled out from the Void behind her, so dark it could be seen even on the dark Void, and that shadow soon congealed, looming behind Odette.
It formed something Ryuk found familiar:
A towering phantom, one thousand meters tall in height.
It was coated in dark, surrounded by pitch-black abyssal energy with dots of purple all around.
Its skeletal hands clutched a pitch-black scythe, and from the depths of its face, two pitch-black eyes remained eerily fixated on him.
"She finally released her bloodline phantom," Ryuk muttered, remembering the phantom, but the transformation didn’t stop there.
The phantom all of a sudden began to shrink and shrink, until it was at the same height as Odette.
It was almost like a second person had appeared, but instead of attacking Ryuk, it stepped forward and entered Odette herself.
The moment the fusion occurred, an eerie black light flared from Odette’s eyes as a dark cloak wound around her figure, tattoos spreading across her exposed skin until her body turned pitch black.
Her claws twisted to the side, and the runic tattoos continued, lurking in the space around her arms.
They shone a subtle light onto the space, and it began congealing from the light:
A pitch-black scythe as long as four meters, with its edges covered in a dark purple aura.
The hood over her head was blown back, sending her hair thrashing wildly as it whipped behind her.
Her face rose, and even though the tears continuously dripped now even faster, a feral, menacing grin covered her lips.
A grin of the deepest insanity.
It was immediately clear that this wasn’t Odette.
[She had allowed her bloodline manifestation’s consciousness to replace hers. Evil bloodline manifestations like hers only have a single will.]
The system panel flashed, and Odette spoke up.
Her voice was grating and shrill to the ear, like a banshee screaming and metallic thorns grinding into each other all at the same time.
"Tell Me. How Do You Wish To Die!?"
In response to the question, Ryuk’s eyes widened and he hurriedly dodged to the side, but then—
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP
BUUUUUUUUURRSSTTT
Purple-pink blood splashed into the air, as right from Ryuk’s left shoulder down to his waist was instantly split apart, hanging 5 centimeters from his torso
"Grrh!"
A faint groan of pain escaped his lips as he watched dark tattoos roil and trail across the gaping wound that had nearly split him in two.
What’s more, even as his nano-particles tried to fix things, they were incredibly slow; some of them erased out of existence by the tattoo that the slash had left behind.
But then, the painful expression on his face slowly melted away, giving rise to a grin as Ryuk whispered,
"Nice..."
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP
BUUUUUUUURRSSSSTTT
A phantom flashed past once more, as the second half of his body was also divided into nothing, making him appear cut into three parts.
"Really nice..."
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP
BUUUUUUUURRSSSSTTT
"This is just what I want!"
A grin, like that of an accursed devil, spread across his face even as the scythe ripped away entire chunks of his body, reducing him to nothing more than a head adrift in the Void.
Yet even that did not last, for the scythe cleaved through it as well, shattering it into motes of purple light that scattered into the air.
Odette stopped after having Ryuk destroyed, but then she turned back, witnessing as the space behind her suddenly splintered into a gigantic chasm about ten thousand meters in height.
She watched in silence as two massive claws burst from the chasm, wrenching it wider, before a colossal head forced its way through.
A head whose eyes were burning with furious, fiery, and revengeful rage!
"COME ODETTE!"
"SHOW ME YOUR WORST!"
"AND AFTER, I SHALL LET YOU TASTE THE PAIN OF DEFEAT!"