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Barlowe couldn't believe that Leo had such a powerful sacred gear. Not only was he the son of a powerful and world-renowned father who could

Barlowe couldn't believe that Leo had such a powerful sacred gear.

Not only was he the son of a powerful and world-renowned father who could shelter him from any threat, but he was extremely talented— a prodigy of the highest degree. And to top it all off, he had one of the most powerful gifts God had bestowed upon mankind. It was simply ridiculous.

“Is this what it means to be loved by God?” Barlowe muttered to himself.

Though he was bleeding heavily from the stump that was all that remained of his right arm and felt faint from blood loss, Barlowe cackled with insane glee at how unjust fate could be. Looking up, he saw Leo looking down on him with extremely cold eyes. 

He felt like a worm, struggling out the last dregs of its life after being squashed.

“Weren’t those Fallen Angels here because to search for someone with a powerful sacred gear?” Barlowe mumbled.

He immediately put two and two together and linked Leo to the Fallen Angel’s task. His eyes brightened with a new will to keep living. He now knew that he had a way not to die—at least not here.

Soon, the Fallen would come, drawn by the power of Leo’s sacred gear. All he had to do was to stall for time. But could he stall long enough for them to get here?

He bit his lip, hard, trying to focus. “Don’t think. You have another way. Just act,” he muttered to himself.

It was all or nothing.

“I-I have some information that would be pretty useful to you!”

Whoosh!

Barlowe’s heartrate spiked when the demonic sword swung down, only to stop a hairsbreadth before slicing through his throat. The blade even bit slightly into his skin. Though it hardly kissed his neck, it drew a line of blood.

Gulp 

“Th-That’s the g-greatest demonic sword — Tyrfing!” 

Barlowe knew he was babbling, but he couldn’t stop. He shouldn’t stop. As long as he was talking, he was still alive. Cold sweat covered his back and trickled down his neck as he reminisced on everything he knew about the damned weapon. 

No matter how he died, he could NOT let himself be killed by THAT sword.

“From your expression, I guess you know this sword’s ability,” Leo growled. “But that’s weird... Only higher-ups in the church should know that.”

“Hate it… Hate it… Hate it…!” Leo muttered under his breath. 

Leo hated this sword more than anything—even more than the sacred gear that had been forced upon his soul. Well, from his perspective it was an involuntary union. He had never asked to be born with the sacred gear. 

But even he had to admit that the weapon was extremely scary in its capabilities. The damned sword had the ability to absorb souls, digesting them before transferring the skills of the soul it shredded to its wielder.

As for the soul Tyrfing devoured? 

That soul was reduced to nothing. Damned never to enter into the Heavens, nor permitted to descend to the numerous Hells, it couldn’t even enter the cycle of rebirth to be reincarnated. The soul completely ceased to exist in all realities.

It was a demonic sword to its very core. 

“Talk!” Leo spat. “First… what are you doing here? Second… how did you know about my sword? And third… what is Asa doing working with your ilk?”

Barlowe knew that he had just escaped death by a hair’s breadth—literally. Even so, the cold blade positioned against his neck practically screamed at him. It hungered for his soul. 

He wasn’t off the hook yet. Could he keep his mouth shut? 

Never.

“I came under the orders of one of the cadres of Gregori; his name is Abaddon. My mission was to inspect Spartanburg and verify the presence of two princesses of the devil’s noble families — Rayne Mephisto and Sharon Sitrin. Once their presence and location were confirmed, I was to reunite with a higher-up of the church who was exiled like me.”

“Who!” Leo demanded. The sword thirstily drank Barlowe’s blood that dripped from the red line its shadow had left on his neck.

“His name is Valper Galilei!”

“What after that?”

“I don’t know. Abaddon must be preparing something big, but I was dispatched here with orders like any other grunt. I’m only here to do some recon work.”

“Then why are you hunting these people?” Leo nodded at the corpses on the floor.

“J-just following up on a t-tip!” Barlowe swallowed—very carefully. “I heard a Mephisto had contracted with some humans to hide away.” He offered Leo a weak grin. “And all work and no play makes Barty a sad boy… so… why not? Right?”

Leo scowled down at Barlowe, scrutinizing his body language in an attempt to discern the truth behind his statements. It seemed the man was telling the truth. That being the case, his mind went full throttle to organize and piece together the information he just acquired.

He knew of Abaddon, or rather, he had heard of him. After all, that was the Fallen Angel who’d fought his master, Nico Caputo. But why would a Fallen Angel care about the whereabouts of important devils in a human town? 

‘Does he want to start a new war?’

From what he had gathered, Rayne and Sharon were the heiresses of the Mephisto and Sitrin houses. Furthermore, they were the sisters of two Calamities—War and Famine. They were directly related to two of the four beings that effectively controlled the underworld.

If anything was to happen to even one of them in the human world… Leo shuddered at the thought. As things stood now, the best thing to do was to tell Lucia and have her report it through her house. She would know what to do with it and how best to handle the situation. 

Leo could leave it to the pros. There was something else that intrigued him, however.

“I guess you learned about Tyrfing because of that Valper character?”

“Right!” Barlowe couldn’t agree fast enough. “Before being exiled, Valper was the foremost expert in the Vatican on Holy Swords. He also delved deeply into Demonic Swords.”

‘Hmm…’

That was an interesting bit of information. Leo didn’t know all that much about his own sword. For one, the blade Tyrfing had forcibly contracted itself to him on that fateful day. And two, he never wished to wield it. 

He knew that his father had visited Asgard to ensure it was not the kind of demonic blade that would harm its wielder. But Leo knew next to nothing about how that meeting had gone. All he knew was that when Lane had returned from the Norse domain, he’d had assured Leo that nothing bad would happen simply from the weapon binding itself to him.

“Okay… What about Asa?”

Perspiration dripped in slick streaks from Barlowe’s forehead when he realized the interrogation was coming to an end. He knew he needed to buy some more time… somehow… anyhow.

“Wait!” Barlowe managed. “You didn’t say if you would spare me after I told you everything!”

Leo looked at Barlowe like he was a moron for asking that retarded question. The answer was as plain as day, for everyone to see.

“You think I don’t know that you are stalling… buying time?”

Barlowe’s face paled and he was about to beg for his life further when…

Woooo!

The wind stirred abruptly as a portal formed on the ceiling above their heads inside the small blood-soaked kitchen. Barlowe was immediately reinvigorated by the phenomenon.

“Hahahaha~! The Fallen Angels are coming. You should flee while you have the ch—”

“Idiot.”

He had rejoiced a bit too soon.

Whoosh!

‘Huh? Why is the room spinning?’ Barlowe thought as everything began to revolve in his eyes. The feeling of weightlessness did not last for long before gravity brought him down again to the ground. 

It was when he saw his still kneeling body, once everything stopped spinning, and the blood fountaining from its neck that he understood how events had played out.

‘Ah… he killed me after all… Well, that’s too bad… I wanted to have some more fun in this world…’

Those were the last thoughts of the deranged psychopathic lunatic known as Bartholemew Barlowe.