She looked around. The other Theas were ordinary humans. They wouldn't appreciate what creating a world actually took, or the difficulty involved.
But Black Thea could see the cracks. The place was genuinely crude—push it too hard and the world would collapse. Which was why Thea could only project a sliver of personal mental energy in, not bring people in physically.
The world was too small. Eclipso hadn't noticed something this dust-mote-sized.
"Eclipso will eventually be sealed away. Tangled up the way you two are now, when the seal goes down, you go in with him." Thea got to the point. She hadn't pulled this many counterparts together for a tea party.
"Oh? And what's the Goddess of Death's brilliant suggestion?" Black Thea still didn't enjoy talking to her—partly out of jealousy, but more out of pride. She didn't want to accept Thea's help. She also didn't want to throw away the last thread of hope.
As if reading her mind exactly, Thea cut to the chase. "I can't save your life. Or, put it another way—from the moment you took Eclipso as a host, your life form changed. As far as I can tell, that change is irreversible."
Black Thea's expression turned hostile. Thea cut her off. "Don't interrupt. Hear me out. We don't have much time."
"Drop the unrealistic hopes. You're already dead, and have been for a long time. What I can do for you is sever the soul. Eclipso wants your body—give him your body. That's the only way you walk away from him completely."
The atmosphere went heavy. Black Thea bit her lip, unable to decide.
"So this is where my story ends. After everything I worked for..." Black Thea murmured to herself.
None of the others paid her any attention. The woman was being theatrical—these seven counterparts she'd murdered hadn't said a word, and she was the one complaining?
"Where will I end up?"
This was Thea's territory. She shrugged. "Wherever you like. Want to go to Heaven? I can put in a referral. Hell? Sure. Reincarnation? Done. Don't want to go anywhere—stay in my Underworld. Or stay in this little world of mine. Any of it works."
"Hmph. Reincarnation, then." Stay in the Underworld, stay in the little world—Black Thea didn't even consider those. Reincarnation it was. Thea had no objection. Frankly, she didn't want this counterpart hovering around either. Some of it was natural friction between the two of them.
More of it was psychological discomfort. Modern psychology research showed that people's first impression of someone exactly like themselves was almost always hostile. No one wanted to look at a perfect copy of themselves.
"How will you do it?" Black Thea had made up her mind, and she was calm again.
"Our souls are essentially the same. The only difference is the universal vibrational frequency. Eclipso, on the other hand, is woven tightly into your soul. I'll need their help—they each still have a piece of soul anchored inside you. Combine the strength of all nine of us, and we can pull most of you out. Then sever the connection." She gestured at the counterparts.
The plan was crude and direct. Clearly thrown together fast.
Black Thea didn't have a choice. Anything that got Eclipso off her was a win. Damaged soul-essence was something she could live with—she nodded.
Her vision blurred. She returned to the real world. This time the coordination of multiple souls took a little longer. Eclipso finally noticed something wrong.
He still didn't expect her to commit this fully, though. He asked, almost curious, "Why are your spirit waves so erratic?"
"Because of this." Thea materialized behind him without warning, the Nightsword in her hand gathering enormous death divine power. The blade looked ready to kill him outright.
Eclipso flinched. An attack with the instant-death property—even he couldn't say for sure he could ignore it. There hadn't been a Goddess of Death in the entire prior eternity. He hadn't tested this. He didn't know if he could survive it. Thea didn't know if it would kill him, either.
Eclipso saw the danger. Black Thea was too dazed to coordinate. He forcibly seized control of the body and dodged left.
The control came easy this time. The body felt like his own. He blinked—at first he assumed Black Thea hadn't resisted. The answer arrived a tenth of a second later.
Black Thea's somewhat clouded soul was being pulled by seven black threads. More than half of the spirit body had already escaped.
"You're not running!" Without the host's original soul, controlling a body would be infinitely harder—otherwise corpses would walk the streets and no one would need hosts at all. Eclipso didn't hesitate. A massive hand reached out to grab.
Thea, who'd been waiting cold-eyed for the moment, saw her opening. She funneled a flood of death-energy from her domain into Eclipso, trying to buy time. Mortal souls, in front of the Spirit of Vengeance, were less than ants. They didn't slow him down at all.
Thea had to step in personally. He extends a claw, you cut it off.
The Nightsword carved out an arc and slashed downward in a vicious chop. The cut didn't damage Black Thea's body. It passed through it like a phantom, rippling across the surface, and connected with Eclipso's left hand on the soul layer.
In a peak-state head-on, the young miss was no match for him.
But this time she was the one fully prepared and going all out. Eclipso, on the other hand, was working through the Heart of Darkness seal and through Black Thea's body, hadn't been ready, and had grabbed at her in a rush. Hoping he could block this—that would have been a miracle.
The cut left Eclipso with mixed news. The good news: Thea's death divine power couldn't kill him. Her tier was still too low.
The bad news: he'd been intercepted, and most of Black Thea's soul was gone—most importantly, the core fragment. Gone.
Eclipso, furious, grabbed again. Knowing the gap between them, Thea didn't try to brute-force him. She flipped the Nightsword and severed the soul connection—actively cutting away a small portion of Black Thea's soul.
"Aaagh—!" "Aaaagh—!" Both screamed at once. Thea didn't waste a second—she grabbed Black Thea's soul and ran.
He was about to enter complete form. Now or never.
Eclipso wanted to chase. He also wanted to claim the body. Most of the host's soul was gone, but there was still a sliver—and a sliver was enough to seize the body.
He decided fast. Take the body first. Everything else later.
He'd been corrupting it for years. With resistance gone, the takeover was as natural as breathing.
Thea had been clear of the area for two seconds when she felt her Death Domain blow open at one massive seam. Less than a second later it shattered to pieces. The black clouds, the freezing rain—all of it gone. Sunlight returned to the world. And with it came an immense, suffocating wave of demonic aura.
"Fast work." She'd already opened a few thousand meters of distance in three seconds. She rejoined Diana. With a flick of her fingers, she traced two arcane glyphs in the air. Black Thea's soul and her sacred sword were dispatched to the Underworld.
No special treatment. No punishment. Truthfully, with the sacred sword to grow with her, Black Thea's next life would start from a position better than most.