[Caterpillar] Chapter 38 - Tartarus (I) (Patreon)

Numbering in the thousands, humanoid, with pitch-black skin, faces and wings like those of a bat, and with vicious claws on each of their forelimbs - it was a horde of lesser demons. Souls of the damned which, after millennia of torture and punishment, had become insane and turned into bloodthirsty demons.

A massive crimson fox with nine equally enormous tails was wreaking havoc in the demon horde's ranks. Each tail would reduce the dozens of demons to a bloody paste with every sweep. Though they had become insane, it was not as though they no longer had any intelligence left. Seeing their kin being obliterated so easily, the horde gave the behemoth a wide berth. From a distance, hundreds of them opened their maws and hundreds of fire bolts were shot at the bijuu.

"Using fire against ME? Imbeciles!" Kyuubi roared with laughter.

His enormous mouth opened and a massive torrent of fire covered the entire plateau. Nearly 500 demons were annihilated with a single attack. Not even ash was left behind them. Flames hotter than the sun erased them from existence. As they were souls and this was Tartarus, they would eventually be regenerated to suffer more torture but that was not going to happen in the immediate future.

Naruto and Wonder Woman were not watching idly either. He went through a short sequence of hand seals and the air distorted as a ball of pressurized wind was shot from his mouth.

"Wind Release: Vacuum Sphere!"

As the ball of wind travelled through the air, its size continued to increase to the point where it was as large as a car. Then, it exploded. All demons in a 50 feet radius from the centre of the explosion were reduced to mincemeat.

"Show off." Wonder Woman said, almost pouting.

One-on-one, she had been able to fight on equal grounds even against an enraged Kryptonian; her strength was not questionable. However, she did not have many means of causing mass destruction, area of effect spells or techniques. From the corner of her eyes, she was looking in slight envy at how easily Naruto dispatched tens of demons with any random attack. In contrast, with her god-slaying sword in her right hand and her golden lasso in her left, she could only kill 2-3 of them at a time.

"I'm not showing off. I'm actually being lazy," he said.

His hands went through another short sequence of hand seals and dozens of feet-long rock spikes burst from the ground, impaling the unsuspecting demons charging at him.

"If I was to get serious, I'd make a few hundred clones and blast them all with a barrage of Rasengan. Or go into my chakra mode and nuke them all with a bijuudama."

As he was speaking, his hands stayed busy, continuing to form hand seals and casting various wind, lightning, and earth techniques. He stood in one place leisurely as wind blades, lightning bolts and earth spikes caused a massacre amidst the demons' ranks.

Wonder Woman flicked the blood off her sword and sheathed it. She felt as if she was riding a bus. Kyuubi was killing hundreds of demons per minute without breaking a sweat and Naruto was lazily killing dozens at a time too. With or without her number of kills it was pretty much the same. Instead of wasting her energy fruitlessly, she came next to Naruto to chat with him.

'I used to be terrified at the thought of Tartarus before.' she thought inwardly amused.

While most people on Earth did not care or believe that hell existed, the Amazons had solid proof it existed. After all, they were guarding its very gates. Having the certainty that there was an inescapable place of eternal suffering and damnation in the afterlife was enough to instil fear into anyone's heart.

'To think that one day I would come to Tartarus, not as a departed spirit but to kill Hades, the God of Underworld...'

She was marvelling at how much her situation changed ever since Naruto and Kyuubi came into her life.

"Giving up already?" Naruto asked with a chuckle when he saw her coming by his side.

"You're killing everything alone. Especially Kurama, look at him." Diana said.

The two of them took a look at Kyuubi who seemed like he was in the ninth heaven as he killed demons wantonly. Every time he killed a few hundreds of demons at once, he would burst into laughter. He was filled with glee.

"I tend to forget how dangerous he is when all he does is to purr and cuddle in my lap," she remarked. "But the way he delights in slaughter and the way he killed Cerberus a while ago..."

Naruto shrugged his shoulders.

"He's always been like that. Back in our homeworld, he wreaked havoc for nearly one thousand years. Before two incredibly powerful shinobi came into the world, the reincarnations of the two sons of the God of Shinobi, nobody had been able to subdue him. The Nine-Tailed Demon Fox was considered the embodiment of rage, a force of nature bent on destruction."

His hands became covered in lightning and a beast of lightning similar to a wolf was launched forth. It lunged at the closest demon and passed through it like a ghost, leaving only a charred corpse in its wake. It zapped through a group of demons at a speed faster than the naked eye could follow, making them all collapse at the same time. The beast of lightning reduced in size every time it passed through a demon's body but it managed to kill over 20 of them by the time it finally dissipated completely.

"He's mellowed down a lot ever since we became friends. Nowadays he's not attacking any humans or innocent living beings indiscriminately. But there's nothing holding back his explosive temper or his appetite for destruction when it comes to his enemies. And I have nothing against that. Being kind to your enemy is cruelty towards yourself. It's not something that I could understand back in my homeworld when I was a naive kid, but a century of roaming the universe hammered that concept into me. This is a dog-eat-dog world."

Naruto and Diana kept chatting in a relaxed manner while he and Kyuubi were easily killing the waves of demons coming at them. However, after a while, his expression started to change.

"This isn't good."

"What's wrong?" she asked.

"I didn't notice it at first but my chakra isn't regenerating like always. I can't sense any natural energy either. These demons are weak but they're endless."

"Tartarus has hundreds of millions if not billions of souls imprisoned in it... You're going to run out of chakra long before the demons exhaust their numbers." Diana said, realizing the meaning of his words.

Naruto nodded and then yelled:

"Kurama, my chakra isn't regenerating. I can't absorb natural energy either. We have to pull back!"

Though Kyuubi had immersed himself in the pleasure of violently killing the demons, he had never lost his sense of reason. He understood immediately that the situation was not favourable to them at all. Due to how late Naruto unsealed him from his body - he had been in his mid-forties - a part of the bijuu was left behind forever. In his new body, the fox could no longer regenerate chakra by himself.

In the past, Kyuubi had acted like a chakra battery for Naruto but nowadays the roles were reversed. Nowadays, it was Naruto who was acting as the battery to offer the fox a level of power comparable to the ten-tailed beast of their homeworld, giving him the god-like strength that allowed him to even destroy a planet. However, without Naruto to resupply him with energy, his personal reserves of chakra were limited. He could not afford to waste his chakra on dealing with the small fry anymore.

A powerful roar roused a gale of wind that cleared the entire battlefield for half a mile in a fan shape in front of the fox. The bijuu's mere roar was enough to flatten entire forests to say nothing of the horde of lesser demons. Nonetheless, peace only lasted for a few moments. As if they knew not the meaning of fear, another wave of demons surged towards them like the tidal waves of the sea.

Kyuubi's gigantic silhouette abruptly shrunk until he became only a tiny fox cub and he ran towards Naruto and Wonder Woman, hopping on his favourite spot on his shoulder.

"If you can't regenerate your chakra we can't waste any time anymore. Any moment is precious. We have to find that god and kill it as fast as possible." Kyuubi said.

Naturally, Naruto agreed with him.

"But how are we going to find him? I can't enter Sage Mode here."

"My Negative Emotion Sensing is of no use either. This place is an ocean of negative emotions." the fox said.

"I can use my Lasso of Truth to mind control someone and lead us to Hades' hideout. But we need to find an intelligent being first." Wonder Woman said and took flight.

Air currents swirled around Naruto's body and he followed her, flying in the air.

However, the fact that they were flying did not mean they were safe from the horde of demons below. If that had been the case they would have not chosen to fight against them on the ground before. The thousands of demons below spread their wings and pursued them while letting out chilling shrieks.

"Naruto, Kurama, cover your ears!" Wonder Woman said and the two of them did not question her orders.

The Amazon princes suddenly slammed her forearms against each other, particularly her two Bracelets of Submission. It was like the air was ruptured. A sonic boom exploded and the shockwave cleared the dark sky around her group for almost half a mile. The demons dropped from the sky on the rocky and ashy ground below like flies, wailing and screeching in agony as their eardrums burst up and even some of their internal organs exploded because of the soundwave.

"Holy crap," Naruto muttered, having gotten a feeling of vertigo himself even after covering his ears and despite his superhuman body. He became dizzy for a brief moment.

"I got you." Wonder Woman said and grabbed him from behind, under his armpits. "Sorry, it was the only way to quickly get rid of them," she said apologetically. She would have not used that move if it had not been for how urgent the situation was because it was not wise to use a technique that harmed her allies.

The thousands of demons below learned their lesson and did not attempt to fly again after them. However, that still did not mean that the three of them were safe. The demons opened their jaws at the same time and the dark sky of Tartarus was lighted up like New Year's night sky on Earth by fireworks.

When thousands of fireballs were launched in the sky Diana's expression changed greatly at the sight of them. With Naruto in her arms and with Kyuubi on his shoulder, the princess left sonic booms in her wake as she broke the sound barrier with her flight, avoiding most of the fireballs.

However, there were just too many, there were thousands of them!

Content with being carried by the Amazon (he could not fly that fast regardless), Naruto's hands formed a Dog seal. Then, an absurd amount of water burst from his mouth. The princess herself was shocked when he spat out so much water that it looked as if the dam of a reservoir was broken. It was Water Release: Exploding Water Colliding Wave. Like the violent waves of a furious river, the water he released doused the thousands of fireballs coming from below and swept clean the entire plateau.

Momentarily, Wonder Woman looked at the scenery of destruction below in amazement.

"If you could do that, why didn't you do it from the start?"

Despite their temporary victory, Naruto did not show any signs of joy.

"Using a water technique of this magnitude in a place like this, amidst lava and burning flames, in hell... I wasted way too much chakra."

In a situation where he could not easily recover his chakra, he would not use such a technique of mass destruction unless it was absolutely necessary. He did not know what other trials and enemies lay ahead of them. He had to ration his chakra usage wisely.

The scenery below looked macabre. The entire ground had been covered by ashy-brown water, transforming it into a murky lake with thousands of corpses floating on its surface. Noticing the countless demons in the distance flying towards them, Wonder Woman flew away at a high speed with Naruto in her arms.

⁂

In a particular mountainside of Tartarus, the dark red sky was illuminated by an enormous wheel of fire. It was hundreds of feet in diameter and it was spinning slowly as it floated in the air. It was not a beautiful sight because bound to the enormous spinning wheel of fire was an equally enormous being. It looked like a normal human male dressed in rags if one was to disregard his size.

Rhythmically, every 3 minutes, the flames coating the wheel of fire surged and a savage scream of agony burst from the titanic being's mouth. The hundreds of chains tying his limbs and torso to the wheel would become red and melt his flesh and the flames themselves would char his body black. However, every time the spinning wheel completed a 360-degree spin, the giant's horrible wounds would magically heal. Then, the torture would commence again and his roars of agony would tear the sky again too.

Suddenly, a tiny cuckoo bird fluttered its wings as it flew in the sky graciously. It was an abnormal sight. There were no birds or any other type of living animals in Tartarus. There were no living beings. There were only the souls of the dead, demons, and eternal suffering.

The giant bound to the wheel struggled to contain his screams of pain when he noticed the seemingly strange cuckoo bird flying towards him. It was only for a moment though. His roars made the mountainside shake, and this time they weren't screams of pain but screams filled with anger, with rage.

"You! What are you doing here?!" the giant screamed and he started pulling at the chains binding him to the flaming wheel fiercely, making them dig into his flesh. "I'll kill you! I will rip you to shreds and feast on your blood when I'm out of here! You depraved bitch, I'll-"

But he choked on his words when the peak of one of the mountains nearby was broken off and slammed into his face.

"You will show me respect when you speak to me, mongrel." a royal-sounding female voice came from the bird.

The giant gnashed his teeth. Then, he screamed in pain again as the flames coating the wheel surged once more and burned him alive.

"You came here to gloat? Three thousand years of being burned alive were not enough torture?" he screamed.

The cuckoo bird was suddenly obscured by mist and, with a flash of golden light, a woman appeared in its stead. She looked like royalty, like a queen. There was a golden circular crown on her head, she wore elegant robes with golden ornaments and a lotus-tipped sceptre was in her hand, a symbol of purity.

"I do think three thousand years were enough. Even too much. However, I had no say in your sentence."

"Do not lie to my face, cow!" he shouted, gnashing his teeth to resist the pain from having his body incinerated again by the flaming wheel's surging fire. "You are the one who led me on! You conspired with Zeus against me!"

The woman scoffed.

"A casual smile was enough for you to become infatuated with me? How laughable! If nothing else, I thought that three thousand years in the pit of Tartarus would cure your foolishness but from the looks of it, I was hoping for too much."

The queen-like woman tucked a stray strand of her curly brown hair behind her ear and said:

"Enough with the chit-chat. I have a proposition for you. Do me a favour and I-"

"I'd rather die than do anything for you!" the giant screamed in rage.

"You are dead already." the woman pointed out in amusement. "Well, if you would rather spend the next few millennia in the same fashion, being burned by the heavenly wheel's fire, instead of roaming free, suit yourself."

As she said that, the woman turned around, seemingly about to leave.

"Wait." the titanic man's voice rumbled. "You have the power to release me from this hell?"

The woman sneered at him as if that question was an insult to her dignity.

"What do you think? Does the Queen of Olympus have the power to release you?"

Another series of screams came from the giant as the spinning wheel of fire burned him alive again.

"What do you want me to do in exchange for my freedom?" he said after he managed to recollect himself and suppress his pain.

The self-proclaimed Queen of Olympus said coldly:

"I need you to kill somebody."