Alex doesn't know what happens outside and doesn't know that more than a year has passed because he is sleeping. He only wakes up sometime after his friends move the giant red flower to the base of the Great Tenrou Tree.
Even so, he still can't see what happens outside the crystal. The only one that wakes up is his soul, after all, while his body is still in a comatose state. Alex can feel the connection with his body, but he can't do anything to control his body.
"Hmm, is my body still in a really bad shape? How long has it been since that battle?"
Alex looks around to find the Tailed Beasts, but he can't find any of them. Instead of the 9 Tailed Beast, what he sees is a glowing red eye hidden in the darkness of his soul realm. That eye gets closer to him and he has a really bad feeling about this.
"What?! I thought those Gods have erased your existence." Alex is really surprised because what he sees is the Ten Tails.
But the Ten Tails that appears in front of him now isn't just a floating eyeball like the one appearing in the past. It now has a body, the humanoid body that became its shape before it absorbed all the 9 Tailed Beasts.
However, it's not gigantic like the one that appeared in the Naruto world. It's as big as normal humans, equal to Alex. But the 10 Tails that look like flexible arms flailing around its back makes it look bigger.
Alex curses the Gods because they've actually duped him. They didn't remove Ten Tails' soul from his body and seemed to only weaken it. Now it used the moment when Alex is very weak to take over his body again.
What Alex doesn't know is, thanks to the 10 Tails, he can leave the ocean floor and even go to Tenrou Island. Ten Tails was the one that formed that giant red flower and controlled it to go to Tenrou Island.
Also luckily for Alex, all those efforts to create the giant red petals around the red crystal and move the flower to Tenrou Island used a lot of magic power, slowing down the 10 Tails' growth. Thanks to that, the 10 Tails hasn't become overly strong when Alex wakes up.
"Why didn't he kill me when I was asleep? It should have been a very great chance."
Well, it did try to attack him. After Alex fell into a deep slumber, the 10 Tails' soul was awakened and recovered its power slowly. When it finally could move, it tried to devour Alex's soul to take control of Alex's body.
But it awakened at the same time as the 9 Tailed Beasts. So they fought and it overwhelmed the Tailed Beasts easily because they hadn't recovered enough power.
It tried to absorb the Tailed Beasts to complete itself, but the Tailed Beasts split their souls in half just like when Minato split Kurama in half. Half of their souls got absorbed by the 10 Tails, while the other halves merged with Alex's soul.
As they united with Alex's soul, the Tailed Beasts created a powerful seal to protect Alex from the 10 Tails. They all will die once the 10 Tails kill Alex, so they need to protect him at all costs.
Fortunately, the 10 Tails was still very weak because it had just awakened. So the Tailed Beasts still could create a strong enough seal to protect Alex even with the little power they had. They also use their souls to strengthen the seal, making it much stronger at the cost of their longer recovery.
Unable to break the seal, the 10 Tails decided to strengthen itself. That's why it did all those things to absorb more magic power from the surroundings to increase its power so it can break the seal and kill Alex.
But the absorbed magic power mostly goes to Alex as the rightful owner of the body. The 10 Tails did everything it could to get as much magic power and it managed to equalize the portions of magic power that it and Alex received.
So now, just in terms of magic power alone, both Alex and the 10 Tails are equal. But Alex can't use any magical ability because the Tailed Beasts are still in deep slumber after giving their all to protect him, so he is just someone with magic power but no magic spell to use.
Of course, it doesn't mean he'll just give up. He has survived something that should've killed him, so he'll do everything to stay alive. There's also no way he'll hand over his body to a beast that only wants destruction.
"Come! Even without spells, I can still fight you with all my battle skills that I've polished for years."
The battle between Alex and the human-sized humanoid 10 Tails starts. Just as Alex says, even without the Tailed Beasts' abilities, he can still fight the 10 Tails using his own battle skills that have been polished through his years of training and battle experience.
Alex worked hard on polishing all his skills. He didn't just receive the Tailed Beasts' abilities and always worked hard to understand them. His refined movements, observant eyes, quick judgment, etc, are all the results of his own hard work, not things given to him for free.
Fortunately for him, the current 10 Tails also still can't use any magical abilities like its Beast Bomb because it hasn't gathered that much magic power. So it can only use physical attacks now, which is already very strong compared to Alex's physical strength.
Alex's physique is very strong for a human, but his opponent is the 10 Tails. Its physical power is already times stronger than him even though they are around the same size now. Furthermore, it has 10 Tails that can move freely and even stretch like rubber.
For now, Alex focuses on dodging its attacks that come from all angles. He might be weaker than the 10 Tails, but he is much more agile because he is lighter than the 10 Tails, which helps him dodge all of its attacks so he can learn its attack pattern.
It's very difficult to find out the attack pattern because of how it uses all its tails to attack. It doesn't use its arms or legs to attack, only using its tails that can move very flexibly and even stretch quite long.
Alex tries to attack its body, but its tails keep coming to block him. But after many tries, he finally manages to slip in and lands a direct hit at the 10 Tails' body. He punches with all he has right on where the solar plexus will be if the 10 Tails is a human.
His punch manages to push the 10 Tails back a bit. However, it doesn't seem to sustain any significant injury. Its skin is thick and hard which protects its internal organs very well. Also, Alex hasn't recovered that much of his peak power, so that punch wasn't as strong as he thought.
Unable to even damage the 10 Tails, Alex is forced to be defensive. He keeps dodging and running away from the 10 Tails' attacks. Blocking those attacks is out of question because his bones will break once he blocks even 1 attack.
He has tried blocking an attack and gets thrown very far. His arms were numb after blocking just 1 attack and receiving more will surely kill him. That's why he only dodges and runs away without trying to block anything now.
Of course, he still tries to attack whenever he finds chances. He attacks different spots to find the 10 Tails' weak spots and after trying many times, the only weak spot he finds is the eye that's unusually big for its body size.
The 10 Tails is very protective of its eye because it's the most vulnerable spot of its body. That's why when Alex tries to attack its eye, it moves all of its tails and both arms to block Alex's attack, which makes Alex know its weak spot.
Their battle continues with Alex still focuses on dodging the 10 Tails' attacks. He still can't attack its eye though because he rarely gets a chance to even get closer to the 10 Tails that keeps flailing its strong tails.
As the fight goes on, Alex becomes more familiar with the 10 Tails' attack pattern. So he can send more and more attacks. But when he tries to attack its eye, the 10 Tails will jump back to dodge his punch.
Their fight keeps going on and Alex doesn't even know how long they've fought. Magic power keeps pouring from the outside, which makes them get stronger instead of getting tired even though they keep fighting without any rest.
They don't even realize that they've fought nonstop for days, weeks, and even months. Everything looks the same all the time in the soul realm, so they can't track the change of time. They don't know day and night.
Though even if they know, they can't care about such a thing. Both of them are fighting for survival, after all. A moment of carelessness can lead to their death, especially for Alex.
Months passed and it's already time for year X786 S-Class exam. But Alex doesn't know anything that happens outside and keeps fighting the 10 Tails that now has grown much bigger. Its height is already 10 meters, so its tails have also grown much longer.
Fortunately, it's not just the 10 Tails that get stronger. Alex also has gotten stronger. Some of the Tailed Beasts' powers have been awakened. Now he can transform his limbs into the Tailed Beasts limbs and even manifest their tails.
It's not a perfect transformation, but at least he still gets some boosts from their abilities like sharp claws that can cut the 10 Tails' thick skin, hard shells that can block the 10 Tails' attacks, enhanced muscles that can break the 10 Tails' bones, etc.
Their battle has become fiercer and more deadly now that they've gotten stronger. But they still can't land fatal blows on each other even after fighting nonstop for months. It might still go on for even longer, but Alex doesn't have any intention to give up even if he has to fight for years because he wants to go home.
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Ch. 213. VS Tartaros