*CLUNG CLUNG*

 The sound of our swords clashing echoed through the darkness.

*Whoosh whoosh*

  I could hear the sound of the breeze that came every time he ran past me, revealing himself to attack and then once again shrouding himself with the darkness. It had been days...maybe months since we started our battle and I was finally starting to feel the stamina drain out of me, my hands were shaky, the stench of my sweat-filled clothes spread across the room and the blood red colours of my fatigued eyes shone like the eyes of a predator at night.

 I spent years preparing for this fight, forged a blade from the blood of several Gods, gained all the supernatural abilities humans could get [Mana, prana, Life force and aura] and even trained in both [alefjustu and Giga Arts] just for this battle.

For this battle I was prepared, or so I thought, this was undoubtedly the strongest I had ever been at any given point of my life, so why, why am I; the God killer; Angel slayer getting beaten up by this low-level gatekeeper who calls himself an Angel?

  He once again comes into my view and with my night vision I catch a glimpse of his face, his dark red eyes look like pure flames highlighting his dark hair, his cheeks were sunk, his lips crooked, and his face was covered in wrinkles which was his only trait that made him look old. The expression on his face was stiff or rather, he looked unbothered, no, he looked *very* unbothered like he wasn't interested in fighting with me, like I was not even worthy enough to serve as a form of entertainment to him, like I was nothing to him.

 Our battle had begun fiercely again, we rushed into each other with our swords as he carefully blocked all of my attacks only to return them to me with double the force, with the pressure from his intense blows strengthened by the force from mine rapidly pushing me backwards and forcing me into defence, gradually my legs were passing out from all the blunt force and just when my stamina had plummeted, and my energies were completely drained out, I felt something I did not notice from the begin of the battle till now, it was a radiating mist of energy that surrounded that man, a colourless mist that emitted a heat like nothing I have ever felt but somehow I recognised; this heat from was from the gates of hell.

 I had heard about 'transcendence' from my martial arts teacher when I was a little boy, he spoke of the process one needed to go through to transcend; First, one needed to achieve mastery of every energy man had access to [Mana, aura, prana and life force] and then master Alefjutsu [The original martial art where other martial arts were derived from, it consisted of techniques that only 'specials' could perform, although some of the techniques could be learnt by 'regulars'] or Giga-arts [ The art of shapes; better known as Fanu al'ashkal or Katashi no geijutsu}, all of which I had mastered.

 After completing the first requirement, one would become a God-slayer candidate and be granted the ability to jump through space and into the realm of the Gods where one was required to slay every Angel in existence; from the strongest of Gods(Zeus, Kratos, Persius, Orunmila, Quetzalcoatl, Izanagi, Amaterasu, Sango, The Jade Emperor, Sung Wu kong, Sang je, Mireuk, Amadioha, Osun, Adroa, Odin and so on) to the weakest of them( Achilles, The Carrigans, Zao Shen and so on) all of whom I successfully killed and whose blood I forged my blade [The Abomination] out of.

 The last requirement for transcendence after this was to battle with, the gate keeper, and be reborn as a celestial. Although all three requirements were generally known by all specials, we only had reliable information about the first two and this was because we only knew of humans becoming God-slayer candidates, venturing into the realm of Gods and dying at the hands of the Angels, no human was able to get past the blockade that is the second requirement, until me.

 And from my battles with the Angels, I came to understand why, we were expected to slay the Angels from the strongest to the weakest and not the other way around. Generally, angels like Achilles are nothing but regulars to even the weakest of God slayers, but the difference between a weak God and the strongest of them is far too vast to even believe that they are of the same species. How was an inexperienced God-slayer supposed to beat those demons who called themselves Angels? when the very first person you were to fight was the living definition of terror, the Ruler of the Underworld, lord of the moons and Monarch of the darkness; the darkness in black and the only thing darker than black, the mighty sovereign; Hades.

 In the unlikely circumstance that one did somehow manage to best him in combat, the next Angel to battle with was impossible to win against, a true giant in the form of a man is what he was, Heavens massacre they called him, One who shattered the earth, the Angel who puts fear into the hearts of other Angels, he was not the ruler of his [kingdom] but he was the most devastating weapon they had, the final singularity and an embodiment of chaos, the God who Gods feared and the beast who made beasts cower, my great ancestor; the arch Angel; Sango.

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These Angels were almost impossible to defeat, but somehow, after years of continuous battle I came out victorious, and that gave me hope, hope that the final requirement was going to be a breeze for me, but I was sorely mistaken.

 We all assumed that Arch Angels were the most powerful of angels, and so the gate keeper was going to be just as powerful as an arch angel, if not weaker but we were clearly mistaken. I had never heard of this man before but somehow, I know him, his existence is far greater than mine or even my [world], if Sango was an Arch Angel whose purpose was to fight the devil's army for the celestials, this man was the Angel tasked with guarding the devil himself, the fixer of chains and breather of flames.

 It all made sense why he was called the gate keeper now, he wasn't a gate keeper to the doors of heaven, he was the gate keeper of hell, a true Devil in disguise and an Angel capable of throwing other Angels into the pits of hell, whether to call him an arch angel, I do not know. Maalik, Raguel, Abaddon; he was called many names but the one thing I knew was that I was fucked because I was trying to win a fight against an extra-dimensional being, the Guardian of hell.

 I soon recovered from my epiphany and attacked the old man with a swing to his torso and he blocked it with an uncomfortable ease, not only parrying my sword but using sheer strength to redirect my own attack back at me.

The minute I saw my sword, guided by his blade heading down towards me to sentence me to my imminent death, I rolled over the floor to dodge it like a scared little boy fleeing for his life.

*clunggggggg*

The sound of my sword falling to the floor was suspicious. This wasn't the sound of one sword falling to the ground but two. I quickly looked back to confirm my suspicion and there they were, his sword and mine on the floor and the old man who had intentionally dropped them there, simply staring at me as he watched me cower in fear, mocking me.

'Why... why would this man who had gained advantage in this battle drop his sword the same time I did?'

'Is this man mad or is he just mocking me? so what if he was not of this world, how dare he mock me' these thoughts ate me up from the inside and I could no longer control my rage. I lunged myself to the barely six-foot-tall body of the old man, grappling him with the full force of my somewhat six-foot 3-inch frame.

While I was sure that if the old man wanted to dodge my attack he could have, he simply didn't, he stood there as I threw myself at him. my hand resting on his waist I could feel his frame; his muscles were perfectly built and still and his thighs were bulky as if tempered from years and years of training...

 This old man that donned a katana and a dark old robe that covered his entire frame might have had the face of an old person, but his body was even better than mine. Just barely a second after I had tackled the man unsuccessfully, I could feel my legs rising from the floor and with one swift movement I was thrown away like a bag or rice.

 I stood up, regaining some of my balance and squared up, ready for hand-to-hand combat I steadily bounced towards the old man in a boxing like fashion, swinging my arms back and forth and steadily bouncing on my toes.

 To this, the old man responded by adjusting his stance and putting both his arms behind his back, I lunged forward and threw an upper cut which he easily dodged and then a fake hook to his spleen to which I quickly pulled pack before throwing a combo; two uppercuts with both my hands, a hook to the spleen and a hook to the kidney, one jab to his jaw and finally a straight punch to his solar plexus, all of which the old man evaded without moving his arms.

 In an attempt to launch another attack at the old man I threw myself at him squared and ready to punch, but the instance my body began to move I felt a sudden force on my jaw...it felt like the pressure could rip apart an entire planet and just before I was blown away by the force I looked down, and my eyes met with the cause of the sudden force, it was the old man's fist.

 Just as I was about to regain my balance from the last attack, a sudden figure appeared in front of me and before I could react, I was overwhelmed by a multitude of attacks coming from everywhere, a barrage of fists aimed at every part of my body with the power to kill, destroying my flesh and breaking my bones, with every hit, but somehow with every blow I felt a refreshing energy slowly seep into my body.

 "Boy...you came here in an attempt to transcend didn't you...you were told that the more Gods you kill the more power you have and thus you can beat the gate keeper to transcend right?" The old man said as he finally halted his attacks.

"What do you think those 'Gods' that you killed are exactly?' He questioned me once again.

"Angels" I responded, looking up at the old man from the darkness of the ground to which I had fallen after unsuccessfully tanking the barrage of attacks the old man assaulted me with, the bevy of 'only God Knows' how fast attacks had my blood dripping out of my very skin, like a rag that was dipped into water and left to dry out on a clothing line.

"HAHAHA!!!!, and you truly believe that?" the old man mocked me "You truly believe that the Gods who were sealed in Olympus, Asgard, the underworld, Orun by 'the Six' are Angels? ' The continued to mock.

"If they aren't then what are they I said" I said while coughing out blood, an angry and confused expression on my face.

"They are fallen, those Angels you call Gods are fallen" The Guardian of hell simply said with a bright smile on his face as he watched my eyes grow wide, and my mouth fall agape in horror from what I had just heard.

"You humans have been killing cursed fallen Angels in hopes of transcendence".....