SmilinKujo
patreon
Marvel MK: CH 117 – The Weight of a God-Slaying Sword
🕑 Added 2025-07-12 13:28:03 +0000 UTCA/N: I'm trying for a new thing, it's a first POV. Tell me what you think, should I sprinkle in more this type of POV, or should I stick with the usual POV
The world was a deafening ring.
The sound of the Kusanagi no Tsurugi striking his golden staff was not just a clang of metal, it was a physical blow that shuddered up my arms and rattled the teeth in my skull. My hands, still slick with the sweat of a life I'd just been ripped from, trembled around the hilt. The sword felt impossibly heavy, an anchor of legend dragging me down.
I had died. I remembered the screech of tires, the crunch of metal, the final, fleeting thought of "oh." Then, nothing. Then… Yomi. A place of gray twilight and whispering shadows. And him. The being of chaos, the imprisoned god, Amatsu-Mikaboshi.
Now, I was here. Alive again. In a ruined temple, holding a mythical weapon, facing a man with a monkey's tail and the eyes of a fallen sun.
'He sees you, child,' a voice hissed in the back of my mind, cold and ancient. It was Mikaboshi's voice, a constant, coiling presence that had become my only guide in this new, terrifying reality.
The man in front of me was grinning. A wild, unhinged grin that held no fear, only a terrifying, exhilarating joy. He saw me, and he was not afraid.
'He sees more than just you,' the voice continued, its tone a venomous whisper. 'He sees me within you. He smells the scent of the old gods on your soul. He is a guardian of the cosmic order, a jailer for beings like me… and now, for beings like you.'
A jolt of pure, cold fear shot through me. A jailer? I had just escaped death. I had just been given a second chance, a life that wasn't defined by office deadlines and the quiet desperation of being an outsider. Was I to be imprisoned again, so soon after being reborn?
'Do you want to go back, Alexander?' Mikaboshi's voice was a silken thread, weaving through my panic. 'Do you want to return to that pathetic, unfulfilled life? To be the foreign girl, the outcast, the one who was never enough? He represents the very balance that allowed you to die in the first place. He is a keeper of the cage you just broke free from.'
My grip on the Kusanagi tightened. The memories of my childhood, the taunts, the feeling of being perpetually on the outside looking in—it all came rushing back, sharp and painful. I had spent my life trying to be small, to be quiet, to not make waves. My mother had taught me to quell my anger, to be rational. But where had that gotten me? Dead on a Tokyo street.
'They all looked down on you,' the voice purred, twisting my own memories against me. 'The other children. Your coworkers. The world itself. They saw you as lesser. And he…' Mikaboshi's voice dripped with contempt. 'He looks at you the same way. Another mortal insect to be crushed under the heel of divine order.'
I looked at the tailed man. He was still grinning, his golden eyes dancing with an amusement that felt like a personal insult. He saw me, and he saw a joke.
'But you are not that helpless girl anymore,' Mikaboshi whispered, his voice now a seductive promise of power. 'You hold in your hands the Kusanagi no Tsurugi. A blade that can kill gods. A blade that can kill him. This is your test, Alexander. Your first step to becoming what you were always meant to be. Not a victim. Not an outcast. A goddess.'
The word echoed in my soul. Goddess.
The fear in my heart didn't vanish. But something else rose to meet it. The same fierce, defiant fire I had felt as a child, the one I had been taught to smother. This time, I would not put it out.
If I lose this fight, I die again. Or worse, I am erased, my second chance stolen from me by this laughing madman who guards a cosmic prison.
But if I win… If I win, I secure my new life. I prove my worth. I take my first step toward freedom, toward power, toward becoming someone who will never be looked down on again.
My knuckles went white around the hilt of the sword. My breathing steadied. The fear was still there, a cold knot in my stomach, but now it was fuel.
This was no longer just a fight for my life. It was a fight for my soul.
The hatred I had bottled up my entire life finally had a target. The rage I was told to suppress now had a purpose. Fueled by Mikaboshi's words, I swung the Kusanagi. The motion was clumsy, a desperate, raw slash driven by nothing but fury. The god-killing sword felt alien in my hands, its weight both a burden and a promise. It hummed, a low, hungry vibration that traveled up my arms and settled in my chest.
The tailed man sidestepped with an almost lazy grace, the blade cutting through empty air. "Oof, careful with that," he said, his voice dripping with condescending amusement. "You could take an eye out. Probably your own, with a swing like that."
'Left! Block left, you fool! He's testing you!' Mikaboshi's voice screamed in my mind.
My body moved before I could think, a marionette on divine strings. I brought the sword up just in time. CLANG! His golden staff met my blade, the impact a jarring shock that shot pain through my wrists. The sound was deafening. My ears rang.
'Again! Downward strike! Use your rage!'
I roared, bringing the sword down in a heavy, cleaving arc. He parried it with his staff, the force of the blow sending sparks showering onto the cracked stone floor. The smell of ozone and old dust filled my nostrils.
He laughed. A wild, joyous cackle. "Ooh, getting spicy now, are we? I love it when they fight back. It's so much more fun than just beating up a sad sack of meat."
His words were like gasoline on the fire in my soul. 'Sad sack of meat.' That's what I had been. A disposable office worker. A foreign girl. Dead in an ambulance.
'Don't listen to his prattling! Strike his flank! He's open!'
I followed every command. My body became a vessel for a battle I didn't understand. A parry here. A thrust there. The Kusanagi, guided by the Chaos King's ancient knowledge, began to feel less like a burden and more like an extension of my own arm. And I started to land hits.
A shallow cut across his arm. A deeper slice that tore through the silk of his strange black robes. The sight of his blood, a dark crimson against his skin, was intoxicating. A thrill, sharp and exhilarating, shot through me. This was power. This was control. For the first time in my life—my two lives—I wasn't the one being pushed around. I was the one pushing. I was dominating this cocky, infuriating man.
But he was still smiling. In fact, his grin only widened with every scratch I gave him. "Yes! That's it! A little more to the left next time. Really put your hips into it. You fight like you're afraid to break a nail. Come on, I know you've got more chaos in you than that!"
My teeth ground together. He was an obstacle. Mikaboshi was right. This man, this gatekeeper, was the final wall between me and my new life, my freedom. He needed to be eliminated.
I gathered all my strength, all my rage, all the whispered promises of godhood, and prepared for a final, decisive strike. I would cut him down.
But then, he stopped smiling. His golden eyes, which had been dancing with manic amusement, suddenly focused. They began to glow.
I met his gaze, and the world fell away.
It wasn't just a look. It was an invasion. I felt stripped bare, my very soul flayed open and examined under a light that was too bright, too knowing. He saw everything. He saw my pathetic death. He saw my terror in the gray plains of Yomi. He saw my desperate bargain with the thing I now called my guide. He saw the scared, bullied little girl hiding behind the rage of a goddess.
He saw all of it. And in his eyes, I saw no judgment. No anger.
Just a vast, terrifying, and profound understanding. In that moment, I felt completely and utterly naked.
That golden gaze… it didn't just see me, it dissected me. It peeled back every layer of rage and defiance and found the terrified, broken girl I had been, holding her up for me to see.
'He knows!' Amatsu-Mikaboshi's voice suddenly screeched in my mind, a sound of pure, primordial panic. 'He sees the pact! He sees me! Give me more of you! Now!'
"My blood was already used to awaken this sword," I gasped out loud, the words feeling foreign in my own mouth.
'Not enough!' the Chaos King roared in my thoughts. 'Give me your blood, or that lunatic will kill us both! Your freedom, your godhood—he will take it all!'
Freedom. The word was a spark in the storm of my fear. Thinking of being erased, of returning to the gray nothingness of Yomi, was a terror beyond comprehension. Without another thought, I drew the edge of the Kusanagi's blade across my other palm.
The blood that welled up was not just red. It was a shimmering, impossible blend of crimson and liquid gold. For a split second, the sight was a shocking revelation, another piece of a puzzle I didn't know I was a part of. But there was no time for that now. The golden blood dripped onto the sword, and the weapon drank it greedily, humming with a new, dark power.
The tailed man across from me suddenly laughed. "Kekekekekeke! You seem to be in a hurry to get away from here." His golden eyes weren't looking at me anymore, but through me, at the ancient entity coiled around my soul. "Why don't you leave this lovely lady alone and fight me like the primordial force that you are?" His grin widened. "Oh, wait. I'm sorry. You're not a primordial force, are you? You're just a wannabe aspect of oblivion. Wop wop."
I could feel Mikaboshi's rage surge through me, a hot, black tide that was not my own.
And then the world exploded into monkeys.
With a flick of his wrist, the man multiplied. One became two, two became four, four became a dozen, then two dozen. An army of laughing madmen in black robes, all with the same golden eyes and mocking grins.
'Help me!' I screamed in my mind.
'Defend!' Mikaboshi commanded, his voice a sharp, focused order that cut through my panic. 'Block! Parry! Dodge! Do as I say!'
My body moved. A staff from the left. I parried. Another from the right. I ducked. Laughter, a chorus of it, echoed from every direction, a symphony of mockery. The air filled with the stench of ozone and the relentless clang, clang, clang of my sword meeting their staffs. I killed one clone, and it burst into a puff of smoke, only for two more to take its place. The fight raged on, a blur of motion and sound, a desperate dance of survival against a tide of infinite, cackling jesters.
Then, in the chaos, the real one—the one whose presence felt like a sun among candles—pointed his staff directly at me.
"Body Freezing Spell."
My muscles locked instantly. I was frozen mid-swing, my body an awkward statue of rage and desperation. I expected a final, decisive blow.
Instead, they just laughed at me. The man and his clones pointed, clutching their stomachs, howling with mirth at my fighting stance. It was the ultimate humiliation.
'Get ready,' Mikaboshi's voice whispered, cold and grim. 'This is going to hurt.'
In a sudden, blinding motion, from my own shadow on the ground, thin black tentacles and sharp, bony spikes erupted. They pierced my body from behind, not as an attack from an enemy, but as an invasion from within. An agonizing, searing pain ripped through me, but with it came a surge of power so immense, so chaotic, so utterly terrifying, that my own scream was lost in its roar.
