Chapter 143 – Thanatos’ Game and Naruto’s Enlightenment
Thanatos scoffs at their silence and says in his usual dry monotone, “I, for one, think you’re just running away from yourself and your identity as the Prince, and now you’ve dragged Nuwa along with you. Do you have what it takes to do whatever you want? Let’s see.. with a contest on who can kill more shades. You two vs me. If you guys win, I’ll give you this Centaur Heart I found. If you lose, I’ll send you both back home.”
Without waiting for them to agree, Thanatos expressionlessly turns around and floats into the chamber proper to trigger the shades to spawn. He also sets up a magic circle that keeps count of their respective kill counts. The siblings turn away from looking at their big brother and look at each other. Nuwa gushes telepathically, ‘Kyaa! He’s so serious and kuudere!!’
Zagreus replies, ‘If that means he’s a big softie inside, then you’re right. Hahaha!’
Nuwa pulls her bow out and asks, ‘Will he really kill us if we lose?’
‘Pfft, fat chance. He must have been wanting to play this game for years! Since Father is more lenient on things when you’re around, he has his chance now.’ snickers Zagreus as he throws his Eternal Spear at a recently summoned shade for some decent damage and wills it back to his hand.
Meanwhile, Thanatos gets to work as well. He says, “There is no escape.” as he slashes a shade with his scythe. Due to the sudden intangibility of the scythe, the shade appears to take no damage besides a status effect. A curse appears atop the shade’s head, resembling a fully black and white hourglass with purple sand, which appears to be crushed Darkness, draining out of the upper bulb. The surrounding shades and the cursed shade attack Thanatos, but a white barrier appears around him to nullify every attack that approaches him.
When the hourglass runs out of time five seconds later, the cursed shade instantly falls dead on the ground despite having no visible injuries on its body. Zagreus and Nuwa jump at the horrific power of that single slash. Even though these are weak shades, they have no doubt they would also be one-shotted by that Curse of Death from their older brother if he so chooses to use it on them.
They return to killing shades with renewed vigor. Thanatos occasionally says scary lines like, “You are next.” and “Wither and die.” to the shades he targets. His attack speed is casual and much slower than the weaker duo, perhaps to purposefully give them a chance or perhaps this is the usual pace with which he reaps lives. He swings in a sweep, occasionally landing the curse on multiple shades at once. He only has to land a single hit for them to die seconds later..
Zagreus is more of a grunter when in battle. He goes, “Hmph! Ha! Hoh!” or “Take that!” each time he thrusts his spear. He is by far the fastest attacker of the three. Nuwa is used to stealth from all her experiences peeping and sneak attacking, so her combat style is habitually silent.
Since it is a contest of kills, Nuwa Casts twice with her bow, then fires a normal arrow to finish off each enemy without bothering to order around the enslaved ones. She cannot allow other shades or Thanatos to finish off those she has enslaved, lest her kills do not count. With her older brothers drawing all the aggro, she can focus on picking off enemies one by one leisurely. One time, Thanatos and Nuwa target the same wretched witch. She does not realize the hourglass above the witch’s head until she fires her third arrow. The arrow handily kill-steals the witch that Thanatos attacked first. Nuwa shouts, “Sorry, big bro Than!”
Thanatos grunts and says, “Reckless..” before going back to fighting more shades. The spawn rate of shades seems to have compensated for the increased number of people, because there are more than usual. Still, this is a noob chamber, so the trio makes quick work of the minions of Hades. Finally, the results are out. Thanatos - 40. Zagreus - 25. Nuwa - 14.
The siblings group up and watch Thanatos float over with a ghost of a smile. He obviously had fun, and even though they lost, they had fun too. Thanatos had kill-stolen several shades that Zagreus had damaged to near death, so Nuwa was not the only one who accidentally played dirty. It could have gone either way in the chaos of the battle.
Thanatos says monotonously, “I win. Looks like you two cannot deal death faster than me. Maybe you’ll win the Centaur Heart next time.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a purple Butterfly trinket. “This is a small token I made to commemorate you two finding love in each other. For the wearer, each run, it will give you +1% damage for every chamber you clear without taking damage.”
He chucks it to Zagreus, who catches it and after a closer look, recognizes it as a hairpin. Zagreus looks up and says, “Than, I don’t know how to thank you..”
“It won’t be necessary.” Thanatos quickly replies, “Just don’t let down Mother when you reach your goal.”
Thanatos poofs away with a teleport. Zagreus shouts, “Wait!” but he’s already gone. The implication in that statement is that Thanatos knows something about Zagreus’ real mother and doesn’t want Zagreus to forget about the mother who raised him.
“He left just like that.. you were right!” Nuwa says, turning to look at her brother, “Maybe since he never gave himself a time limit on when he has to send us home, he means to escort us after we die. Haha!”
Neither of them took any damage in this chamber because Thanatos took most of the aggro. That big softie just wants to help them and pass it off as doing his job.
A Boon from Zeus appears following Thanatos’ departure. Zagreus distractedly opens the message and the divine projection of Zeus appears to say, “So you are son to Hades by that Nyx, the night goddess, is that correct, Nephew...? Well I suppose she's the closest to a queen as your lord father's like to find down there. I tried to match him up with some more wholesome types, but no, and here we are.”
Zagreus has heard many such similar messages before, but it is Nuwa’s first time getting a sense of how out-of-touch the House is with their extended family in Olympus. Nuwa remarks, “That’s a big misunderstanding, huh? I cannot imagine Father going to a matchmaking. Hah, absurd!”
“You think so?” says Zagreus, still wondering why everyone kept his real mother as such a big secret from him. Nuwa turns to look at him and holds his hand.
Zagreus feels her squeeze and smiles back at her. He selects the Electric Shot Boon from the screen, which turns his normally mediocre bloodstone single-target Cast attack into a chain-lightning strike that bounces up to four times between nearby enemies, quintupling the overall damage of his Cast among a mob of enemies. If he only had more bloodstones, he would be able to do massive damage to weak mobs.
Sensing that Zagreus’ mind is elsewhere, Nuwa wants to support him, but she’s not sure how different the Hades Record is from the Greek mythology she had read. There are so many different versions, many of which include Hades kidnapping Persephone to the Underworld, some with Persephone being Zeus’ daughter and therefore Hades’ niece, and some with her as the mother of Dionysus. All of the ambiguity makes her forget any idea of jumping the gun and telling Zagreus any potentially inaccurate information.
What she can do is to comfort him the way she knows best. Nuwa drops a trail of kisses on Zagreus’ chest as her snakes entwine them together.
+50k LEE, Total: 1575k LEE
~ ~ ~
Azula enters the Namikaze house and spots Kushina preparing breakfast in the kitchen. Kushina easily spots her too, due to the light show going on. “Hey Azula! People say I glow with positivity, but you are giving that phrase a whole new meaning. Come sit, the food is almost ready.”
Smiling slightly, Azula heads over and helps Kushina with the noodles instead of sitting. Azula finds Kushina to be a bit special in the head. She only has two moods: cute and bubbly or explosive rage. No one likes to see or hear Kushina while she’s in the latter mood, but with Naruto deep in puberty and taking after Jiraiya, the number of neighbors moving away on account of the ruckus is increasing. Overall though, she’s a genuinely nice person and her anger comes from good intentions.
There are plenty of ninjas in Konoha who have given up on life and waste away their life addicted to porn or drugs. Witnessing the terror and overwhelming force that tailed beasts are capable of through the surveillance seals has a way of emasculating those with weaker wills. For young and impressionable men, many are either motivated to the high heavens or curbstomped to the ground. Young women tend to be less extreme in their behavior for some reason, but problems are still there.
Kushina simply does not want to see Naruto lose his way. Minato is not so serious about it and believes it’s just a phase like Azula, but he doesn’t know how to reassure his wife. Sometimes, he considers just having another baby to distract her, but he dreads the possibility of Kushina raging twice as much as before.
The two ladies make small chat while Kushina directs Azula to pass her ingredients or chop up vegetables. Soon, four large pots of ramen are prepared and everyone sits down to eat. Shinobis consume a lot of food to power their bodies. Despite fields often being ruined by tailed beasts, widespread peace and free trade keeps food prices low and supply plentiful. There is a wide variety of propaganda encouraging citizens and shinobis to farm if they are not strong enough to be elites.
Naruto is eating distractedly, which Kushina is happy to see. He’s usually sneaking glances at Azula’s body, so this is a big improvement. Azula finds the taste of food much better than what she is used to back home. There’s not much time to speak while slurping such a large quantity of ramen before getting to daily tasks like school or training, so breakfasts are usually done in relative silence.
~ ~ ~
It is no mystery that Naruto is a pervert. What he has kept under wraps is that he never had any desire to become a powerful ninja to fight for Konoha like his father. Ever since he was young, he loved spending time with his father, but his father had Hokage work so he couldn’t spend time with him. Then his father was injured by a tailed beast, and had to retire, so now they spend plenty of time together.
So despite his mom and the entire town telling him of how the tailed beasts are the enemy and he has to become strong enough to protect everyone, he shrugs and secretly accepts them as natural disasters that someone else will take care of. Sure, it is lazy of him to do so, but that is just not where his passion is. He found his passion when he read one of his uncle Jiraiya’s books last year. That was when he was introduced to the glory of Icha Icha Paradise, a series of books based on Jiraiya’s sexcapades.
The characters have different names in the books, but everyone knows who they represent, especially with how realistically the protagonist describes the female lead’s 3 sizes, her prodigious strength, and each of her birthmarks. The disproportionate bust to waist ratio itself is enough to identify the current Hokage as the overly violent sex friend of the protagonist. That was clearly his super hot Granny Tsunade!
When Naruto’s imagination self-inserted itself in Jiraiya’s place and followed his sexual adventures, Naruto discovered his passion for the female body. After that wild ride, he found a new goal, learning from Jiraiya about the female body, specifically by peeping! Most citizens aren’t wealthy enough to have a private shower, so they go to bathhouses. Those were the most glorious times of his life, at least as long as he could get away with it.
His mom caught on fast. Eventually, Naruto found that his mom’s punishments when others told her about catching him peeping were too much to bear. Recently, she would spank him red and make him train harshly for 6 hours nonstop to earn his food every time she got a complaint! He ended up more dead than repentant. He wouldn’t even be able to do his beloved activity of fapping when he is that tired. These punishments have escalated over the past year. Finally, he feels like he is at a breaking point where he would either go crazy or have full-on erectile dysfunction.
Then he hears Azula’s statement this morning. Naruto’s thoughts run on overdrive ever since he had heard Azula say girls like men with goals. Naruto had never thought of doing anything other than existing and appreciating the female body! It may seem obvious that if he is attractive to girls, he can appreciate the female form to a closer degree and in a way that his mom will condone, but he was entirely too lazy to do that before.
Due to ruling it out long ago, his thoughts never backtracked to the idea that he could simply get a girlfriend. It also did not help that Icha Icha Paradise is not at all a book about a healthy relationship. The series is about how Tsunade uses and abuses Jiraiya as a living dildo, which he masochistically enjoys. There’s no love at all!
Finally, in the middle of slurping on some ramen, Naruto decides on a goal. It is an entirely different approach than Jiraiya’s teachings of peeping and passive masochism. Naruto wants all girls to like him, so he decides on the most ambitious goal that he can possibly think of which also aligns with his passion: To fuck all attractive women in the world!
The moment Naruto sets his goal, several things happen. Firstly, Naruto’s Crown Chakra opens widely to suck in the surrounding chakra, causing him to snort out noodles from his nose due to unlocking sections of his consciousness while unprepared. Secondly, while recovering from getting spice in his sinuses, Naruto feels a sense of validation from deep within, as if this goal is what he is meant to be doing. This is his destiny!
Thirdly, Li senses a sudden shift in the stars without even having to look up at the daytime sky. She rushes home to hop on her telescope to investigate. Whatever change has occurred, it is huge! When she puts her eye to the scope and charges it with chakra to tune out the Sun’s interference, she gasps in astonishment. Most of the stars in the sky are twinkling like an airplane runway. She follows the pattern of twinkles to find an otherwise nondescript star. The majority of the stars in the sky are all twinkling towards this one star. Li smiles widely and almost bursts into tears, ‘We have been waiting for you for so long.. The Shinobi World’s Will, after thousands of years, you have finally chosen a child of fate!’
(A/N: Eroninja vibes ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)? )