(New Leaf) Canicular - Seirios Pt. 2 (Patreon)

AN: I said that I would add on to the previous chapter an extra scene or two when I post this one, but I ended up only adding one minor line of narration for Himitsu at the end because this first scene would have been the scene tacked on as well. Just makes more sense to post it whole here like this, while the other sites like SB get this scene at the end of the free chapter.

Western Kuoh, Residential District

“Show yourself,” the man called out.

Procyon hovered in the night sky a bit above one of the human’s gated communities, the name on the entrance sign matching the file his underlings had compiled on his suspect, courtesy of the currently "MIA" Kalawarner’s initial report from the early days of the operation.

He’d deal with that naughty little bird after this, but first, he had an interloper to deal with. He had come here to contact the boy, threatening the destruction and execution of his community if he didn’t return possession of the stolen-again Excalibur Transparency, but what he didn’t anticipate was the boy already being here, watching him from hiding like voyeuristic-

“I guess the cat’s out of the bag, nyahahaha!”

With poisonous yellow eyes, twin cat ears and tails sprouting from her body, and her black hair tied in a pair of wide loops, Kuroka the Black Cat– one of the Underworld’s most infamous Stray Devils– appeared before him from thin air.

Not the temporary wielder of Excalibur Transparency, as he had expected. No, the only thing in her hands was an open bottle of Japanese wine.

Procyon used his millennia of experience to smother his shock at the unexpected reveal before it could even begin affecting his aura, let alone his facial expression.

“Stray Devil, what business do you have here?”

Beings like this who practiced the natural arts were experts at spotting the slightest reactions, it wouldn’t do to let such a dangerous opponent gain the upper hand-

“Hm-hm-hmmm~, your aura is awfully still…” The youkai noted with a lazy smile, ignoring his demand. “Either you’re truly, utterly unsurprised to be facing me… or someone’s trying to hide a reaction, nyeh~? Nyaow why would you nyot knyow why I’m here if it was the first option? If you need to put on a poker face, it’s obvious you’re ‘playing poker’, you knyow?”

Procyon audibly sighed, allowing himself to vent some annoyance at himself. All these years and he still just couldn’t get the hang of the nuances of deception against a peer specialized in reading others. As he thought, it was a skill better suited for those not able or willing to achieve their goals through force.

“I’ll admit to some surprise.” His energy rose considerably, though still within the realm of his fellow captains. While it would be a shame to be forced to fully reveal his hand before the war truly kicked off again, he couldn’t help but feel that familiar thrill building up, the anticipation of finally fighting an enemy that would push him to his limits and beyond. Young she may be, and elemental advantage he may have, this was a woman more dangerous than any enemy he’d encountered in the last two hundred years, barring that man. “Now answer. What business does the Black Cat have interfering with me here?”

“Oh, that?” Kuroka’s head tilted with a sly smirk.

While she had a known relation to one of the Gremory girl’s servants, the SS-ranked criminal was a coldblooded murderer who abandoned her own blood to be executed. If her sibling was her reason for being here, then it stood to reason she had plans of her own for the estranged child; perhaps her potential was exceptional, or maybe the elder youkai simply felt territorial over being the one to decide the ultimate fate of her sibling.

Whatever the reason was, as interested in a fight as he was, enough had already gone wrong. The plan was far off of the rails as it was. He should be be able to offer uncontested passage out of Kuoh for the two, in exchange for the woman leaving their operation undisturbed-

“That’s simple. I live here.”

Procyon stared, not registering the meaning for a moment.

“Riiii~ght down there on the corner, in suite eleven,” she elaborated with a whimsical tone. “Miss Shimoda likes to feed me extra strips of bacon whenever she makes a western breakfast for her son on weekends.”

Kuroka leaned forward in mid air, all but letting her cleavage spill out of her loose yukata. “You wouldn’t happen to be planning anything objectionyable for my home, would you?” She asked innocuously.

‘Screw it.’ Procyon never broke eye contact with her narrowed, poisonous slitted orbs. “... And what if I was?”

‘I’ll die for Lord Kokabiel’s glory…’

Kuroka’s form shimmered.

He spun around, slashing a golden greatsword behind him at blinding speeds–

“Where are you looking?”

–Before a crushingly powerful blow slammed into his spine and sent him flying for nearly a mile, until he righted himself and was found hovering over uninhabited woodland.

“You knyow, they always think I’m gonna attack them from behind,” Kuroka commented with a fond sigh of exasperation. “It’s honestly pretty hilarious seeing you guys try so hard and think yourselves in circles. Please, keep doing it.”

Procyon wiped the corner of his lip with his thumb, removing the tiny dribble of blood.

He grinned widely.

‘... but this is the shit I live for!’

“Perv, hit me,” Koneko ordered the brown-haired [Pawn].

“!?” She felt his inflated aura recoil, multiplied a few times from his base power as the result of him silently [Boosting] a few times during the confrontation.

The tense soon-to-be-battlefield went quiet, everyone waiting for a move to be made.

Nothing happened.

The giant Fallen named Wezen coughed into his fist awkwardly, glancing between her and Issei.

She looked back at the boy, eyes narrowed. “What’s the holdup?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s the holdup’?! Why the hell would I hit you?!”

Koneko stared dully, and saw him awkwardly steal a glance at the obviously amused Kokabiel.

He couldn’t really believe the cadre hadn’t noticed what he was doing, right?

On second thought, Koneko could absolutely see that being the case.

“Whatever.” She scoffed, shaking her head and looking back at Wezen.

Kiba stepped up beside her, staring down at the man on the lawn. “I’ll join you.”

“Right! Me too!” Issei ran up next to them.

“Oh, a three on one?” The massive bald Fallen questioned, eyes narrowed at us while a meaty hand’s fingers stroked his chin as if he was in deep contemplation. He suddenly widened his stance and pointed at us with a big bloodthirsty grin.

“I’ll allow it!” He boomed boisterously. “Come at me one at a time or all at once as you please, it will all be the same in the end!”

Koneko glanced at the [Holy Eraser] in Kiba’s hands.

While Wezen’s Light didn’t feel very powerful compared to what Gomeisa’s had been at the same wing-tier, Koneko’s instincts were screaming at her that his muscles held a lot more power than he was losing out on in exchange. Much more power than just what his bigger size would suggest.

Koneko tapped into that pure, vital energy that hadn’t yet been pulled away with Naruto’s departure, and activated her Senjutsu.

Her eyes widened, before narrowing.

Wezen’s body was filled to the brim with physical energy, similar to something the tengu twins had shown her when they were still in town, except when they did it, it wrapped around their bodies as a solid aura.

“Use a different sword,” she told the [Knight]. “One that packs more punch. He doesn’t fight with his Light, that one will bounce right off his skin.”

Kiba nodded.

“Perv, [Knight] or [Queen],” Koneko continued. “He’s too strong for you to tank a hit, so use speed.”

“OkayyYYAAHHH?!”

She suddenly shoved Issei off the roof.

“STRATEGIZING ISN’T FREE, BRATS!”

Koneko and Kiba jumped away as Wezen smashed into the building where they’d been standing, collapsing the main hall entrance. At the same time, Koneko heard the roar of rushing water and high pitched whine of electricity as Sona and Akeno paired attacks on the silent Fallen woman Murzim.

A spear-like chakra projectile flew into the rubble and exploded, kicking up a cloud of dust for a moment, before the haze was blown away when the giant man came shooting out of it towards Koneko with a meaty fist cocked back, crossing the distance in a blink.

Koneko stood on the lawn where she’d landed, with her right foot back and her clawed hands held near her face and chest, eyes widening in shock at how quickly the man closed the distance. She had a split second to react  and hastily blasted chakra through her feet in an explosion, launching herself over the charge without bending her knees to jump. Wezen passed just beneath her with a gust of wind and slammed his foot into the ground with a boom, cratering the earth but halting his momentum.

Koneko flapped her wings hard, launching back down with her leg shooting out towards the bald head of the topless man who was turning to face her.

Boom!

Her foot connected with a fist the size of her head, the loose soil and grass beneath them blasting away at the force. Even so, Wezen just looked up at her, the quick jab he had thrown from a weak stance being enough to match her kick without even showing any strain at holding back her attack.

“Was that all you’ve got, little miss?” He asked with a smirk.

Koneko stared back down at him coldly. “No.”

Koneko jumped off his fist right as it opened to try to grab her ankle, flipping in mid air and charging her leg with so much power it left a glowing trail around her in its wake. His smirk widened into a mad grin as he brought his arms up to block.

“HAHH!” His muscles locked in place and his physical energy surged an instant before she made contact.

BOOOOM!

Koneko’s heel slammed down onto the Fallen’s crossed arms in an axe kick that shattered and deeply cratered the earth below for dozens of meters, rock and dirt spraying up in a cloud twice as tall as the trees around them that obscured them from view.

Kiba blurred behind Wezen, [Destruction Sword] mid swing towards his exposed back where his wings emerged.

“[Dragon Shot]!”

Simultaneously, an explosive beam of emerald energy came shooting into his unguarded chest from near the school, blowing the Fallen back towards Kiba’s approaching blade.

An explosion of destructive force blasted Wezen’s form a dozen yards away where he slammed into the edge of the crater and bounced, the sloped wall deflecting him upwards. Before he was flung fully into the sky, he plunged his hand into the edge and let his momentum right himself, feet slamming down into a three-point stance at the rim as he looked down into the haze at Kiba and Koneko.

Five piercing chakra claws sliced through the dust towards his eyes, causing them to widen for an instant before they slammed shut, his aura rising to the surface again right the claws slammed into his eyes and exploded in a flash, dispersing a good amount of the lingering cloud.

Wezen’s stiffened body relaxed and he stood to his full height– a whopping seven feet tall– rolling his shoulders and blinking with a grin.

“Good! GOOD! More of that, bring it on you brats!”

His torso and wings were slightly scuffed with dirt stains from his impact, but otherwise completely unmarred. His eyes were unharmed entirely. Instead of gouging them out, the claws had shattered on contact.

‘So he can use the aura.’ Koneko’s eyes narrowed as she jumped back to the other side of the crater, her pupils becoming slitted as she drew on more natural energy. She recalled how when she was kicking him the second time, he didn’t attempt to move with the blow or try to get in a counter attack while blocking, he just stood still and took it. ‘He can’t move while using it. All defense, no offense.’

“Did we get him?” Issei asked as he jogged up to her squinting through the remaining dust. Kiba blurred into place on her other side, shaking his head.

“No. I made contact with his skin, but my blade stopped. It was like trying to slice through rubber with a baseball bat; the force you use can compress it, but the force I used threw him before his body gave in.”

“Mm,” Koneko confirmed. “He’s using ki to buff his defense, but he can’t move while doing it. It’s like a shock-absorbing shell. Only pierce damage and hax will work, so-”

Wezen took a step forward onto the sloped crater wall and bent his knees, angling toward them.

“-Move!”

He slammed fist-first into the ground where they had stood, an explosion of dirt flying up once more.

The moment the others engaged in battle, the mute Fallen Angel’s hand froze in its lunge about three meters away from Sona, outstretched towards the devil’s face in a knife-hand while tendrils of water stronger than steel coiled around her legs to hold her back.

Extending from her hand was a sharp, thrumming blue blade of her raging Light aura solidified, stopped centimeters from Sona’s glasses by a large swirling wall of the clear liquid.

Sona flicked her wrist and the water shield blasted towards the Fallen in a churning vortex. At the same time a few feet away, Akeno swept her arms ahead of her, sending a sea of crackling electricity at the woman named after a star.

Sona internally scoffed even as the woman’s external aura pulsed outward like an EMP, blowing away her watery shackles and the lightning both in a wave of blue Light.

‘How unexpectedly pretentious, for such a bloodthirsty group of warmongers.’

Gomeisa and Procyon, “Bleary-eyed one” and “Before the dog”. The two stars of the Canis Minor constellation. 

Wezen and Mirzam– or rather Al-Wazn and Al-Murzim, the traditional names meaning “The Weight” and “The Herald” respectively– were two of the seven major stars in the Canis Major constellation. The most important of which was Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, and the one for which Mirzam acts as the “herald” by virtue of rising shortly beforehand, some time after Procyon.

Putting aside the fact that it implies Kokabiel may have at least four or five more subordinates of a similarly high level to these four– which wouldn’t be surprising in the least for a cadre of the Grigori– Sona recalled learning in her freshman year astronomy course that the human scientific communities had only settled on and codified the individual names of many of those stars and others that very year.

So, either these Fallen were so vain as to guide humanity into naming said stars after themselves, or they had adopted the names as titles after humanity had solidified them, as some sort of homage to their cadre leader’s history as a teacher to humanity.

Sona jumped back and into the air with a flap of her wings as Murzim’s aura lashed out at her with whip-like motions, tendrils of Light slashing through the space she’d occupied and sending blue crescent blades slicing towards her and Akeno.

Even as the two dodged to the sides, the blades curved through the air to chase them. Her longtime friend countered the projectiles with pure white Light of her own, shooting pinpoint bolts of condensed lightning to intercept and destabilize the enemy’s attack, while Sona summoned a spherical shell of water around her that she used to refract and disperse the light-based attacks around and behind her. Her brows furrowed in discomfort as the inner surface of the orb flashed brightly like a giant blue LED multiple times, the greatly reduced concentration of Light still mildly irritating her exposed skin and eyes even as she continued falling back to make distance, now hovering over the main school field.

Meanwhile, Murzim had launched high into the sky, rising far above the old school building while leaving a blazing blue trail of energy below her like a reverse-comet, a trail that coalesced into hundreds of bright star-like pinpricks, before they surged in brightness in sequence. Right as Akeno shot down the last of the homing Light blades, from the bottom to top, the shining starlights began rapidly discharging by the dozens in the form of thin beams of cutting Light that lanced towards Akeno like a laser light show.

Following a similar course as the Sitri heir, a large magic circle instantly appeared in the air below Akeno while she frantically did her best to weave through the beginning of the unexpected barrage, and a crystal-clear Asian dragon dozens of meters long and two meters thick shot out of it. The conjured ice serpent rose up and wound protectively around the [Queen], absorbing all the beams and any to come after, trapping the laser-type attacks to endlessly bounce around inside of its crystalline structure like the world’s most intimidating and epileptic disco light.

Akeno hadn’t made it out entirely unscathed, having taken multiple hits that left scorched rips and tears across the edges of her robes, though she had managed to use her own Light at the last second to mitigate the damage and limit it to just her limbs, only mild burns rather than wholly melted flesh.

Up in the sky, the Fallen’s holy aura expanded and flexed, bulging in multiple directions before bursting into the shape of a giant translucent falcon with its wings stretched wide.

‘It seems she’s an expert at externally manipulating her aura as her primary means of combat,’ Sona deduced in an instant, recalling that Murzim’s first move was to try impaling her with it, forgoing the process of forming a standard Light spear. ‘Impressive, but not unexpected given what we’ve been told about her.’

Maintaining complex control of your emitted energy, without a dedicated spell or elemental medium to help contain and give it form, was a skill that took immense effort and concentration for usually minimal advantage. ‘She likely excels at making the most of her energy pool, only using ranged attacks that deplete her reserves to complement her skill.’

The big advantage to it was, as Sona mentally alluded to, that high-level users of the skill could fight without wasting the slightest amount of energy, freely altering and re-using the power they maintain control of without spending more resources for each and every attack. Why create a spear that will dissipate when it breaks, forcing you to make another, when you can create one and simply reform it freely as you need? Or change its shape into a sword? A mace? A shield?

Unlike the opponent Akeno had faced last night, Sona came to the conclusion that what this enemy possibly lacked in raw power, they made up for in economy of energy, and likely excelled in a close-to-medium range that balances endurance and efficient ranged attacks with potent constructs for diverse and powerful melee options.

Analysis complete, that still didn’t necessarily give Sona the answer on how to best defeat this woman and her giant bird armor. It did mean though, that the way forward would be to try setting up an unavoidable, overwhelming attack to defeat her in an instant, because as long as she had Holy power, Murzim would be able to fight at near-one hundred percent.

With a sigh, Sona summoned an object to her hand from her emergency vault, a.k.a. the back of her closet in a box that she hadn’t opened since she was twelve.

With a swipe of the [Queen]’s arm, Akeno pointed two fingers up at the falcon construct, and her dragon sculpture followed the motion, twisting its head around to look up. It opened its maw wide, and if it were a living being with a mind and vocal chords of its own, it might have roared in challenge as the Light beams contained within raced out of its mouth in rapid-fire to return to sender.

“Tch.” Sona clicked her tongue as she saw the result.

Unfortunately, the machine-gun barrage barely rippled the surface of the falcon. The beams sunk into the blue bird and were near-instantly unmade, dissipating back into raw holy energy that the construct assimilated.

‘So she can reabsorb at least some of the energy from her ranged attacks, as long as they re-enter her zone of control before fully dispersing into the environment.’

A hassle for sure, but ultimately didn’t change much. She already knew they wouldn’t be able to beat Murzim in a contest of endurance. Sona herself also had excellent control of her power, but she used that talent to expand her versatility and repertoire of spells, rather than push that singular skill as far as possible to the exclusion of everything else.

The falcon tucked its wings and dove with a narrow profile, swooping down at ridiculous speeds like a limousine-sized bullet.

Sona let her water dome drop, and made a dramatic pose in the air. With her free hand making a sideways peace-sign in front of one of her eyes, she waved her limited edition Miracle☆Levia-tan magic wand in a star pattern and pointed it up at the giant raptor shooting towards her.

“Miracle Justice Timeout Zone!”

With her face burning red from embarrassment, her Demonic Power surged through the top-quality magical focus, and the Fallen’s aura construct slammed into an invisible barrier beak-first with a sonic boom, instantly ‘splattering’ against the wall and contouring to the transparent box containing it, if the word splatter could even be used to describe the behavior of discorporating energy.

The Fallen instantly began shaping her aura again, morphing it into a giant hammer that immediately swung at the spot she’d impacted.

Sona’s hand shook as she held her pose, hastily repairing the crack that appeared on her timeout box. “Akeno!”

“Hai!”

The ice dragon melted into water as its head circled around the [Queen] once, the miko charging it full of electricity that lit up the night, before sending it surging up toward the currently contained Fallen woman.

This time when it opened it’s maw, it roared with thunder.

Kokabiel looked down on Rias from his place lounging in the air.

“So this is the so-called Ruin Princess. You would let your servants face their deaths without their King by their sides, while even the weaker Sitri heiress has entered battle?”

As if to punctuate his inquiry, another explosion of kinetic force in one direction tossed a few trees in the air, while the sky flashed brightly with the boom of lightning in the other.

“Quite unexpected, given the Gremory clan’s reputation.”

As the two battles raged on around the massive school property, Rias stood firm with her hand outstretched towards the Star of God, a red-tinged void of annihilation at her fingertips.

“On the contrary, I’m exactly where I need to be to protect them,” she denied with a fierce glare, “I trust in my friends' strength. I know they can defeat your men without my help, but someone has to make sure you don’t tip the scales against them, so that’s what I’ll do.”

Kokabiel burst out into deep, booming laughter.

“Is that so!” He exclaimed with mirth. “The arrogance! Well then Sister of Sirzechs, I suppose I’ll find use for these after all!” He lifted his hand above his head, and a shining white light appeared in his hand, a faint tether of glimmering energy rising from it to reach into the sky. He crushed the light in his fist, and for half a second, the barrier around Kuoh cutting it off from the outside world shimmered into visible existence.

Then it shattered.

“What the- the barrier?!” Rias exclaimed in bewilderment.

“Is it that shocking to you?” Kokabiel chuckled. “It was only ever meant to be temporary, to ensure the correct timing. If my original plan had made it this far without too many pieces revealed, there would have never been a need in the first place. It was simply a backup to ensure you couldn’t go running to your brother too soon.”

“With it now out of the way-” He snapped his fingers and the darkness around the area coalesced into a pair of massive shadowy portals, out of which a giant paw stepped from each, to crash into the courtyard with earth-shaking force one after the other. “-if you believe yourself sufficient to halt me should I attempt to interfere, then surely this much isn’t beyond you? Go on, defeat these beasts if you can! Entertain me until the end!”

Rising nearly three stories with heavy breaths that set the air itself humming, three canine heads, each as big as Rias herself, emerged from each portal, their proportionally massive bodies following shortly with equally thunderous steps as their glowing opened maws dripped liquid fire.

Six sets of glowing red eyes locked onto Rias at eye level, and deep, rumbling growls filled the background as fire escaped from the gaps between their teeth.

Rias’s eyes narrowed.

A sonic boom cracked through the air and the leftmost head of the cerberus on that side jerked to the right with a dog-like yelp of pain, revealing a cloth-wrapped handle with a metal ring sticking out of its clenched-shut eye. 

“HEY, YOU MANGY MUTT! I CAN SMELL YOUR BREATHS FROM HERE!” A familiar voice rang out from within the trees.

‘Uzumaki-kun!’ Rias realized. ‘But why now of all times?’

“A newcomer?” Kokabiel questioned rhetorically with a quirked brow, not sounding like he minded much. “The human boy, I presume?”

The other two heads snapped in that direction to bark sharply at the woods, the cerberus twisting around into a pouncing stance faster than any creature that big seemed like it should be able to, while the second hellhound stiffened up, all three pairs of ears standing up and aimed in a different direction.

“I’ve met raccoons scarier than you!”

A hail of kunai accompanied the taunt, streaming out to pepper the first giant canine’s faces. They flinched slightly, shaking their heads violently to fling away the noticeably weaker barrage of knives, before charging forward with a trio of deafening roars that shattered the building’s windows. As the enraged beast bounded towards the wooded area, the familiar form of Uzumaki Naruto– 'What's with the guitar case strapped to his back?'– jumped high above the tree tops with his original sword in one hand and an almost invisible metal wire leading up to his other.

“That’s right, come fight me you dumbasses!”

Taking advantage of the second cerberus’ distraction, Rias lifted her second hand and pointed at its center head, another orb of Destruction swirling into existence at her fingertip and shooting forward faster than a bullet in half a second.

The hellhound unfortunately reacted in time, and managed to jump back just fast enough to turn the shot from a partial-kill into a flesh wound, only erasing one of its ears. Rias jumped into the air with a flap of her wings to follow, just to make sure it didn’t try to charge her and wind up destroying half of her clubhouse while Asia and Gasper were still inside. It was lucky enough that the other fights had naturally shifted away, no need to push it.

At the apex of Naruto’s jump and with the charging cerberus nearly underneath him while it snapped its jaws up at the teen with flaming spittle, Naruto suddenly jerked downward, curving unerringly towards the head he’d already taken an eye from. With his sword held above his head with two hands in a reverse grip, he crashed into the raised half-blind head like a meteor, slamming his sword through the other eye with all his momentum, receiving an ear-splitting howl of pain.

The blade must have pierced all the way back into parts of its brain, given the way the head suddenly began spasming.

With its dying jerks swinging it around wildly in agony despite the other two heads trying to help remove their attacker, Naruto’s sword was dislodged from the eye with an audible squelch, and he was flung away through the air until he’d flown out of sight, his original kunai pulling free and trailing after him into the forest.

The living two heads of that cerberus took in big lungfulls of air and reared back, before spewing jets of orange flames in the last direction they’d seen him.

Rias considered the three-headed guardian of Hell in front of her as each of its own mouths began charging up their own pyrotechnics, and thought about what would be the quickest, most efficient way to kill or disable it without wasting the immense demonic power she’d already charged into the attack she was saving for Kokabiel himself.

In the end, she decided keeping it simple was best. While the cerberus was immensely strong and very agile for its size, it was still a massive target with less raw power than her, and its flames were significantly weaker than Risers.

The hellhound released multiple jets of flames in her direction, and Rias swept her free hand in front of her as the three napalm-like streams converged on her, unleashing a wave of Destruction that swept away the liquid fire as if it was less consequential than dust. She followed close behind the wave as it expanded and spent its energy, readying a mass of Destruction in her palm to annihilate the hellhound’s main body from point blank.

The moment her wave dissipated, it revealed the massive, inky black wall where the cerberus’ three heads were supposed to be, its hind legs just barely peeking out from the side of the shadow portal.

Her eyes widened in surprise and she spun around, annoyed at herself. ‘Ugh, I messed up!’

Sticking out of an identical shadow portal in front of the club house were the three heads positioned like a triangle, baleful maws already open and ready to fire on her. She got prepared to defend and try again, this time without letting the giant mutt out of her sight, when twin sprays of blood suddenly burst out of the lower two dog heads’ faces, splattering to the right as the flames in their throats died out.

The reason?

A single, long metal blade, whose tip poked a foot or two out the side of the furthest dog head, just below its ear.

A loooong metal blade, stretching back almost a kilometer away if her eyes were judging it right, disappearing into the canopy of a wooded hill’s slope. The blade retracted from the skulls at high speed, with literal fountains of blood as the heads drooped in brain death, the metal retreating to fully disappear in the distant foliage within seconds.

The remaining head howled, thrashing in pain and anger at the sudden loss of two thirds of its mind, and its flames sprayed wildly, lighting the entire surroundings in front of it on fire as it backpedaled from the portal.

‘Nice assist, whoever you are!’ Rias mentally thanked the unknown, as it saved her just that little bit extra energy that would’ve gone to shielding herself.

Rias turned once more and threw the loose ball of Destruction back at the distracted hellhound, and though it saw the attack coming and tried to dodge to the side– whether due to blood loss, or struggling to adapt to controlling its whole body with one head– it clumsily stumbled in the attempt, and the ball made contact with the beasts front-right leg, expanding suddenly on contact to envelop half of the giant dog’s torso before disappearing, along with everything within its border.

The cerberus collapsed into a pile of blood and gore moments later, fully dead, and Rias lowered herself nearly to the ground and summoned a wave of water to put out the fires nearest the clubhouse.

There was still the second hellhound that Naruto was dealing with, and the cacophony of multiple battles were still going strong, but the still left–

Clap, clap, clap.

–Kokabiel himself, who began lowering himself closer to the ground while slowly clapping.

“Very well done, Rias Gremory. Truly, you’ve shown your worth. To think, you were worried about my subordinates receiving assistance, yet you received it not just once, but twice yourself no less.”

Rias’s eyes narrowed, her pride stung despite logically knowing there was no reason for it.

Kokabiel’s expression was purely one of disdainful amusement, looking down on her with a faintly bored smirk while hovering a dozen feet above her.

“You’ve at least succeeded in maintaining control of that attack of yours,” he said, referencing the dense ball of Destruction still in her main hand and pointing at him once more. “Very well. I’ve begun losing interest in your power. Attack me with all you have, while you still hold my attention.” He spread his arms wide, his smirk twisting up into a malicious grin. “I’ll not even defend myself, then you will see the true gulf in our power, the hopelessness of your position.”