DMAW Chapter 95: The Kings in Sin Part 5 (Patreon)

Georg stepped out of the folds of space and instantly froze, one foot still resting within the pale light of the teleportation array as he stared across the land that awaited him.

Behind him, the spatial passage continued to hum, and the remainder of his handpicked strike force emerged in quick succession. Leonardo stepped out first, followed shortly by the sorcerers of Hexennacht, and then the leading ranks of the Old Satan Faction marched through in tightly ordered formations. Hundreds became thousands as Devils and unaffiliated magicians spilled into the region, their weapons already drawn and their magic prepared for battle, but Georg barely noticed the army gathering behind him.

According to every piece of intelligence they had received, there should have been a city before them: a sprawling mechanical metropolis that served as one of Ajuka Beelzebub’s principal laboratories. Numerous spies had reported that the Satan had spent most of the last several weeks there, and Georg had personally studied their findings before programming the location into the teleportation array.

Yet all he could see was a rocky brown wasteland covered by a thin layer of dirt and dust.

There were no towers cutting across the dim skies of the Underworld, nor were there roads, fortifications or mechanical structures anywhere upon the horizon. More importantly, Georg could sense no spatial displacement that suggested that the city had been hidden or abruptly transported elsewhere.

An entire metropolis could not simply disappear without leaving some impression upon the fabric of Space, but Dimension Lost found nothing beyond the unbroken desolation. Which could only mean they weren’t anywhere near the Crown Prince’s profane laboratory.

Leonardo cautiously stepped forward beside him, the twelve-year-old Hero narrowing his eyes as he put a hand to his forehead, peering out into the wild wasteland.

 As the descendant of the legendary inventor Leonardo da Vinci and the possessor of Annihilation Maker, Leonardo represented one of the greatest offensive forces available to the Hero Faction. His Longinus could spawn entire armies of monsters, each shaped by his imagination and capable of being specifically designed to easily contend against Ultimate-class Devils and match Satan-class ones.

“This… doesn’t look like the place described in the debriefings,” Leonardo said slowly.

Georg’s mouth tightened. That’s because it wasn’t, he thought to himself. He could not understand how the destination had been changed without his noticing. His prowess over spatial magic was second to none due to his possession of Dimension Lost. But before he could respond, a beautiful young woman emerged to his right; she looked particularly conspicuous against the barren landscape. She wore a frilly violet dress covered in ribbons, while her bright blonde hair fell around a youthful face that seemed almost bored by the apparent failure of their plans. However, despite her frivolous appearance, and oft crude manners, he knew that she was an exceptionally gifted sorceress.

Walburga - the leader of Hexennacht, a powerful coven of witches and magicians that obeyed no pantheon and served as an underground network for unaffiliated magical folk. More importantly, she possessed Incinerate Anthem, a Longinus capable of summoning an almost endless sea of Holy Fire. Its flames were exquisitely suited to killing Devils, instantly incinerating those beneath High-class while grievously harming even Ultimate-class and Satan-class beings.

She slowly examined the surrounding wasteland before placing one hand upon her hip.

“There was no interference with the magical relocation,” she said flatly. “The array sent us precisely where it was programmed to; which means these coordinates were already installed from the very beginning.”

Georg looked at her grimly, even as his thoughts turned to how quickly and easily Shalba had conquered the outpost in Malebolge. He had assumed that it was due to the surprise nature of their attack, but what if that had never been the case?

“It seems your grand plan has gone to shit, Dimension Lost.”

His jaw tightened at her crass language – despite her appearance, he knew that the witch was a cruel and selfish woman who had no sense of decency or decorum. Nonetheless, Georg restrained his irritation because Walburga’s assessment matched his own.

But the question remained: who orchestrated this?

They had been planning this strike for weeks, and in utter privacy. The location of Khaos Brigade’s fortress was under the direct protection of his Dimension Lost. There was no way someone could have entered without his notice. And though his thoughts did shift toward the Kurosaki and his very blatant incursion into their stronghold via his mythic presence, he knew for a fact there was no direct entry.

But then, a traitor? Shalba and Creuserey knew of the attack – but he highly doubted even the two of them would be stupid enough to throw away the chance to destroy Beelzebub once and for all. Those two hated the Evil Piece System as much as the Hero Faction did, albeit for different reasons. Vali? He thought on it briefly, but again, the answer came back negative. Vali was only ever loyal to himself; he cared nothing for the Devil Empire and its Dark Masters.

And it was certainly none of the Heroes; only the upper echelons knew, and they were all accounted for. Cao Cao had taken the team leaders to kill Satan, even as Georg had taken his own team to do the same with Beelzebub.

He glanced at the two other humans by his side.

Alongside Leonardo’s Annihilation Maker and Georg’s own Dimension Lost, Walburga's Incinerate Anthem gave them more than enough power to overwhelm Beelzebub.

As the plan intended, the combined forces of Hexennacht and the Old Satan Faction were supposed to assault the mechanical city, destroy its defenses and force the Satan into the open, where the three Longinus wielders could strike him simultaneously.

And that was the plan, kill Beelzebub once and for all. And yet, somehow, their entire army was deposited into an empty wasteland.

Heavy footsteps sounded from behind them, and Klevexia Bathin strode out of the teleportation array. The Ultimate-class Devil was among the few surviving descendants of the Pillar House Bathin, although the power bestowed upon her by Ophis had elevated her into the ranks of Satan-class Devils. She was a tall, heavily muscled woman with tanned skin and reddish-brown hair, and she carried herself with the brutal confidence Georg had come to expect from the champions of the Old Satan Faction.

He regarded her with quiet disdain as she approached. Klevexia fanatically espoused the beliefs of the Old Satan Faction, wrapping warmongering and wanton slaughter within grand declarations about tradition and the restoration of the old order. As far as Georg was concerned, the only meaningful difference between her faction and the current rulers of the Underworld was which collection of monsters believed itself entitled to control the Devil race.

But the Bathin noble stopped just as they had, her eyes narrowing as she examined the flat plain of brown and dusty rocks. But then, suddenly, her chin perked up and she let out a low growl.

“There,” Klevexia said as her eyes fixed upon something in the distance.

Georg followed her gaze, and only then did he notice the small table and chair sitting near the horizon. They looked utterly absurd against the empty wasteland, particularly because a lone man occupied the chair as though there were nothing unusual about enjoying an afternoon outdoors while an army materialized several miles away.

“Fuck,” Walburga quietly muttered.

Georg glanced toward her, as did Leonardo, but the witch only briefly acknowledged them before returning her attention to the distant figure. The fingers resting against her hip had curled into the violet fabric of her dress.

“Incinerate Anthem is reacting very strongly,” she said. “That’s a Demon… and a powerful one too.”

“Beelzebub,” Leonardo said through gritted teeth.

Georg clenched both hands, his nails slowly digging into his palms as he stared toward the seated figure. “It was a trap,” he said angrily. “We were deliberately brought here.”

“So what do we do?” Leonardo asked.

But before Georg could answer, Walburga raised her hands and carefully stepped backward.

“I signed up to trap a Demon Lord, not to be trapped by one.”

“You’re backing out?” Leonardo demanded indignantly.

Georg glared at the sorceress, unsurprised by how quickly her resolve had faltered. Walburga possessed no loyalty to the Hero Faction, humanity or any greater principle. She was only ever loyal to herself, and the moment their arrangement ceased to serve her interests, she would abandon them without the slightest hesitation.

“It matters not,” Klevexia said.

The Bathin noble walked past Georg and began crossing the wasteland toward the distant table, causing him to take an instinctive step after her.

“We are within the Demon’s presence,” she continued grimly. “We are already subject to its reality corroding miasma.”

“Klevexia, wait,” Georg called. “We need to investigate the region and formulate another plan before engaging him.”

She did not so much as glance back, and Georg exhaled sharply through his nose as he watched her continue onward. He wanted time to examine the relocation array, search for hidden enchantments and determine whether the wasteland itself concealed some unfamiliar danger. However, allowing one of their strongest combatants to approach Beelzebub alone would only divide their forces further.

Damn these Devils and their unthinking, brutish ways!

As such, Georg followed Klevexia across the rocky terrain, and Leonardo hurried after him while Walburga reluctantly brought up the rear. Their army moved behind them in loose formations, though its earlier discipline had steadily given way to uncertainty. Soldiers kept their weapons raised and spells gathered within their hands, but no one surged ahead to surround the solitary Demon.

Georg glanced toward the nearest ranks and found several Devils looking uneasily at one another. None seemed willing to retreat, but neither did they display the aggression he expected from warriors who had spent years demanding the destruction of the current Satans. He almost called for them to spread out and encircle their target, yet the command caught strangely behind his teeth, and he continued walking without giving it.

And as they approached the table, the sheer absurdity of the scene became increasingly apparent.

The Demon Lord Beelzebub sat comfortably upon a plain metal chair with a floral pattern made out of wire mesh. Even more surprising was the fact that the Demon Lord was reading a paperback book while a steaming cup of tea rested before him beside a small tray of orange muffins. The dry wind occasionally stirred his green hair that just barely touched his heavily robed shoulders.

The Satan did not look up as the four of them approached, nor did his eyes flick toward the army gathering a short distance behind them. For several seconds, no one spoke, and the quiet turning of a page seemed impossibly loud against the barren expanse.

Georg stopped several paces from the table and stared down at him.

“Ajuka Beelzebub.”

The Demon did not deign to answer.

Georg’s lips drew into a thin line as he studied the seated man. Everything he had learned about Demons described them as aberrations that corrupted reality merely by existing within it. Their power bled into their surroundings, twisting matter, energy and even thought according to their natures, and a Demon who had attained the rank of Crown Prince should have imposed such corruption on an altogether greater scale.

However, Georg could not sense so much as an iota of power leaking from the Demon’s being.

Through Dimension Lost, he perceived Space more intimately than nearly any other living sorcerer. He could detect the smallest fold in distance, the faintest hidden subspace and the lingering impressions left by displaced structures, but the Demon sitting directly before him scarcely registered at all. If Sin had not been plainly visible, Georg might have believed the chair was empty.

He extended his senses across the wasteland once more, searching for whatever possible armies Beelzebub may have concealed, but surprisingly he found no reinforcements waiting within pocket dimensions and no fortifications hidden beyond any sort of spatial barriers. The Sin appeared to be entirely alone, and the contradiction made Georg press his nails more firmly into his palms.

“I don’t know what delusion or arrogance caused you to sit here by yourself,” he said balefully, “but you’ve delivered yourself directly into our hands. You are utterly defenseless, and we have no issue taking advantage of that.”

Beelzebub casually turned another page, his icy gaze remaining fixed upon the book.

“You are even more remarkably stupid than I imagined,” he said. “Which, in and of itself, is quite the accomplishment. At the very least, congratulations on that much.”

Leonardo immediately bristled beside Georg, his narrow shoulders drawing upward as he glared at the Demon. “Don’t talk down to us like that! We’re Heroes! We’re going to defeat you and put an end to the Evil Pieces that steal the souls of humanity!”

Despite the boy’s childish and petulant tone, which was hardly surprising given that Leonardo was only twelve, Georg agreed with every word. Stopping the Evil Piece system and ridding Creation of Beelzebub’s blasphemous intellect were paramount objectives. Nobody should have possessed the power to transmute and mutate living and dead souls into those of another race; twisting them into servants and slaves.

Especially not the vile and decadent Devil race that was near-universally abhorred.

Yet despite the accusation thrown at him, the Demon only paused his reading to reach for his tea. He gingerly lifted the cup, took a small sip and returned it to the saucer before calmly finding his place upon the page again.

Georg watched the precise movement of his hand, and the pressure of his fingernails against his palms slowly loosened. There was something… wrong here. Something that did not sit well inside of him. And with that realization, a sudden cold began growing inside of Georg.

Walburga released a quiet chuckle and placed one hand against her cheek, though Georg noticed that her other arm remained stiff against her side.

“Still, I have to admit that I admire a man with this much confidence. Surrounded by an army, and he’s sitting here enjoying afternoon tea. You would think we were here to invite him to dinner.”

“Which does beg the question,” Beelzebub said as he closed his book and carefully placed it upon the table.

He conjured a knife and fork with a small movement of his fingers, selected one of the orange muffins and cut away a neat piece. Several seconds passed as he chewed, and only after swallowing did he finish his question.

“What are you doing here?”

Georg blinked and exchanged a confused glance with Leonardo. The younger Hero frowned deeply before planting both hands upon his hips.

“Are you not paying attention? We’re here to destroy you!”

“And yet, you have not done a thing,” the Demon Lord replied as he set down his utensils and picked up his book again. “Three Longinus wielders, one Ultimate-class Devil blessed by Ophis into the ranks of Satan-class, and an army of Devils and sorcerous strays stand within striking distance of me. Nonetheless, you are content to make conversation rather than attack. Do you not find that strange in the least?”

Georg’s mouth opened, but his tongue remained motionless behind his teeth.

Leonardo’s hands slowly slipped from his hips, while Walburga’s hand slid away from her cheek, a look of uncertainty passing through her eyes. Klevexia remained silent, her broad shoulders becoming rigid as she looked back toward the army behind them.

Georg followed her gaze.

Thousands of soldiers stood scattered across the wasteland with weapons drawn and magical power gathered around them, but not one made the slightest effort to advance. Their formations had gradually loosened, and numerous Devils and sorcerers looked uneasily toward their commanders as though awaiting an order they felt no urgency to obey.

Georg turned back toward the Demon, and that pervasive sensation of something being wrong grew even stronger as the Demon flipped through the pages of his book until he found the place where he had left off.

“I am the Sin of Greed,” Beelzebub said. “Klevexia, do tell them what that entails.”

The Bathin noble looked caught off-guard at the sudden command coming from her enemy. Her brow creased as she looked between the Demon and her motionless army, nonetheless, he answered, “The Demon Lord Mammon was said to be able to steal any weapon from the hands of his enemies. Some accounts claimed that he could even steal thoughts from their minds.”

Georg’s lips twisted acerbically. Thoughts from their minds? Had Beelzebub somehow read their intentions and rearranged their plans before they arrived? Was that how they had been sent to the wasteland?

“Very good,” the Demon Lord responded. “And I am certain that you all understand the advantage of taking even the immaterial from your enemies and how it pertains to your dilemma.”

The fine hairs along Georg’s neck lifted as he studied the impassive Demon. Something had been taken from them, but he was certain he had everything he possessed just as they had departed from Malebolge. And he could still feel Dimension Lost resting within his soul.

The Sin finally looked up from his book, and one fine eyebrow rose as his ice blue eyes fell judging onto them.

“No? You still have not understood?” he asked, a small frown crossing his lips. If Georg didn’t know better, he would say the Demon Lord looked disappointed. “I stole your hostility. Your very desire to harm me.”

Georg’s face went slack as Leonardo stepped back sharply enough for his heel to scrape across the dirt.

“No! That’s impossible!” the boy shouted. “I just told you that we’re here to destroy you!”

The Demon Lord regarded him impassively. “A mere memory. You remember being hostile toward me, yes, but you no longer have such vitriol or sentiment.”

Georg searched within himself and found every reason he despised the monster sitting before him. He remembered the centuries of anecdotes of human souls being stolen away by the Evil Pieces and the absolute necessity of destroying Beelzebub as one of the Seven Deadly Sins… but try as he might, those convictions carried no heat his mind.

His loathing for the Demon Lord was a like a phantom echo within his mind – recognizable, but entirely beyond his reach.

“That changes nothing,” Georg insisted, though the words emerged weakly and he was forced to wet his lips before continuing. “We will still defeat you.”

“Is that so?” the Sin replied nonchalantly. “Very well, let’s us see what you can do. I shall return your desire to do me harm, descendant of Faust.”

Murderous fury immediately surged through Georg’s heart, and the sudden force of it snapped his hands upward. Every thought within his mind converged upon the necessity of erasing Ajuka Beelzebub from existence and he reached instinctively into the wellspring of Dimension Lost.

But his fingers faltered halfway through the familiar movement.

The Longinus remained within his soul, Georg could feel its vast presence as clearly as ever, but when he attempted to invoke its power, his thoughts simply stopped. He flexed his fingers, brought them back into position and tried again, only for the sequence to dissolve from his mind before he could complete it.

Wait…what had he been trying to do?

Beelzebub watched him repeat the abortive gesture, and Georg looked at him with the first hint of fear since he came to this accursed world.

“What did you do to me?” he asked through bated breath.

 “I took your memories,” the Demon Lord said casually. “You no longer remember how to wield your Sacred Gear. Like a child who owns a bicycle but does not know how to ride it.”

Georg’s hands remained suspended before him, even as his mouth hung slightly ajar.

He pressed his tongue against the roof of his suddenly dry mouth and tried once more, straining until tremors passed through his fingers. Dimension Lost stirred within his soul, close enough that he could almost grasp it, but the knowledge connecting his thoughts to its power hit an invisible wall… he just… he couldn’t.

I don’t know… I know it’s there but… I can’t remember how to use it!

It was simply gone. His ability to wield the world-rendering powers of Dimension Lost were simply gone. He… he was powerless!

Georg sucked in a cold breath of air, feeling a stark lance of fear as helplessness creeped into his mind. From beside him, both Walburga and Leonardo shifted uncomfortably. Even the stoic Klevexia grimaced with uncertainty.

But suddenly, a thunderous crack ripped across the wasteland, violently tearing Georg’s attention toward the sky as the entire Underworld convulsed around them.

A vast dimensional chasm opened across the fractured sky, revealing the lightless expanse of the Void beyond the boundaries of existence. Georg squinted against the violent currents of power pouring through the breach, and as two gargantuan presences began forcing their way into reality, the constriction around his chest finally loosened.

Vali had told them that Ophis would personally provide reinforcements while the Hero Faction confronted the Demon Lords and given the immense power he was sensing through the Void, these could only be said reinforcement. Still, a shudder passed through his spine as the mythic weight of their arrival was already deforming the surrounding landscape, causing the skies to ripple and the earth to buckle before they even emerged.

But as they did so, Georg’s face fell just slightly.

The first being to cross through was an enormous purple wyvern whose outstretched wings spanned the length of mountains. Violet fire burned within its eyes, while golden horns adorned its head and rows of gilded spikes extended down the length of its back. The second Dragon was equally immense, a titanic green-brown serpent crowned by two tremendous horns, and the movement of its coils sent powerful shockwaves rolling through the ground.

And behind Georg, the assembled armies staggered as the wasteland violently heaved beneath their feet. Several soldiers were thrown onto their sides, and others hastily took flight as fractures raced through the dirt, but Georg reinforced his body with conventional magic and remained standing. His hands continued trembling from his inability to command Dimension Lost, although his attention had shifted entirely toward the reinforcements descending from the Void.

Then the purple wyvern threw back its head and roared, and the very fabric of Space rippled and warped from the sheer ferocity of the sound.

Georg had never been comfortable relying upon nonhuman allies, particularly creatures whose motives he could neither predict nor control, but the sight of the two ancient Dragons allowed him to release a breath.

That the current Beelzebub could effortlessly cripple Georg without even rising from his chair was something beyond their wildest imaginations. Nonetheless, the dragons emerging from the Void carried enough power to distort reality merely through their presence, and their immense mythic weight should provide them with enough protection from whatever theft the Sin of Greed was capable of.

However, not even sending a glance at the two dragons, the Demon reached for his tea.

The Demon Lord gingerly lifted the cup toward his lips, and midway through another earth-shaking roar, the purple wyvern abruptly went silent. Its tremendous jaws remained open even as its eyes lost focus, while the rumbling serpent’s coils stiffened against the broken earth.

For a brief moment, both Dragons remained unnaturally motionless.

Then their eyes rolled backward and their immense bodies collapsed to the ground.

The resulting impacts sent a thunderous shockwave across the wasteland, hurling Devils and sorcerers through the air as mountainous clouds of dirt surged outward. Georg threw up both arms and used basic spells to cast himself a protective barrier, barely maintaining his footing while dust and fragments of stone battered against his magic.

And even before the clouds began to settle, two enormous masses of glistening pink flesh fell from the sky behind the Demon’s chair and struck the ground with a pair of heavy, wet thuds.

Blood splashed around the table and stained the surrounding dirt, while several large globs struck Georg and his companions. Something warm spread across his forehead before slowly trickling down the side of his face, and Georg raised one unsteady hand to touch it. His fingertips came away scarlet, but he continued staring at the gigantic, blood-soaked masses towering behind the seated Demon.

The Demon Lord’s icy blue eyes regarded him over the rim of his teacup.

“If it isn’t obvious,” he said, “I stole their brains.”

Walburga’s breath caught so sharply that Georg heard it above the settling debris. Her face had gone pale, and the hand pressed against her cheek slowly slipped downward as every ribbon upon her dress began trembling.

“N-no,” she whispered while taking a small step backward, her eyes wide and borderline manic.

Then her shoulders abruptly jerked, and she spun toward Georg before grabbing him hard enough for her fingernails to press through his clothing.

“This isn’t what I signed up for!” she screamed as she shook him. “This isn’t what you and Cao Cao promised me!”

Georg caught her wrists and attempted to wrench her hands away, but Walburga clung to him with frantic strength. Her pupils had narrowed almost to pinpricks, and flecks of saliva escaped her lips as she continued looking between him and the two Dragons sprawled lifelessly across the wasteland.

“W-we can still defeat him,” Leonardo stammered from behind them.

Walburga twisted around without releasing Georg.

“Defeat!?”  she shrieked. “Are you retarded, you prepubescent midget?! He just slaughtered two ancient Dragons without even moving a muscle!”

“W-we have three Longinus!” the boy insisted, though his voice cracked and his clenched fists remained tightly pressed against his sides. “If we attack together, we can still - ”

His words faded as the Crown Prince quietly turned another page and Leonardo gave a heavy flinch of terror.

Georg then finally tore Walburga’s hands from his shoulders, but he could offer neither of them an answer. He tried to consider their options, rapidly searching through every contingency they had prepared, yet his thoughts repeatedly returned to the impenetrable wall separating him from Dimension Lost.

Retreat should have been their most sensible option, although Georg could not imagine where they might go. The Demon had removed the hostility from thousands of people without any of them noticing, and then he had reached into two ancient Dragons and stolen their brains immediately after they emerged from the Void. Even without his Longinus, he was a gifted enough sorcerer to recognize when an enemy’s magic went well beyond what the eye could perceive. He was quite certain that spatial barriers were meaningless against this monstrous creature.

Because even after how effortlessly the Demon Lord had killed the two Dragons, Georg still couldn’t fully perceive his presence through the infinite folds of space.

And that remained the most disturbing part of all. The corpses of the Dragons pressed against reality with enough weight to distort the surrounding landscape, while the army behind Georg filled his senses with thousands of magical signatures. Ajuka Beelzebub, however, continued sitting directly before them like a gap in the world.

Which left him with a horrifying question – to what heights had Beelzebub reached that his power sat above even the idea of Space?

And as if to answer his question, the Demon tilted its head – a small and barely noticeable motion, but one that carried such inhuman weight that Georg felt something stab into his eyes, and it caused him to blink rapidly and take several steps back.

“I am the Sin of Greed,” the Crown Prince repeated, and Georg’s fingers instinctively pressed against his chest as the words alone caused his heart to beat painfully. “I do not return what I take. But I shall make an exception, I shall allow you your hostility, and I shall return to you your daring and your murderous desires, and even the knowing of how to wield your Sacred Gear, child of Faust. But do not misunderstand, this is not pity. This is not mercy. It is an invitation to despair.”

Just like that, the fog smothering Georg’s thoughts abruptly disappeared, and his mind reconnected with Dimension Lost so violently that he nearly stumbled. Its immense authority over Space rushed through his soul, bringing with it every technique, method and finely practiced movement that the Sin had stolen from his memories.

Beside him, Leonardo released a frantic cry as Annihilation Maker responded to its wielder once more. Power rippled outward from the young Hero and spread through the ground, causing thousands of shadows to emerge across the wasteland. Each represented a monster taking shape within the depths of his imagination, and Georg could feel Leonardo frantically feeding the Longinus every characteristic that might prove useful against a Demon.

But when the first shadow opened, instead of some great anti-Demon beast, a small orange object fell out of it and landed softly upon the dirt.

Georg’s brow furrowed as another followed, and then all the summoned shadows began spilling from Leonardo’s Annihilation Maker.

They were… muffins? Orange Muffins?

He blinked utterly baffled. Thousands of them tumbled across the wasteland in rolling waves, bumping against one another and gathering around the feet of the dumbfounded soldiers.

Leonardo stared down at them, his mouth repeatedly opening and closing before he finally managed to speak.

“Muffins?”

Walburga blinked once and immediately thrust out her arm. She slashed her hand downward with an angry scream, summoning enough power through Incinerate Anthem to drown the seated Demon beneath a sea of purple Holy Fire.

Yet no flames emerged.

Instead, another wave of orange muffins materialized above the battlefield and clattered uselessly against the ground. One landed upon its side and rolled toward Beelzebub, wobbling slightly before coming to rest against the side of his shoe.

The Crown Prince looked down at it, carefully marked his place within his book and then leaned over to pick it up. He turned the sweetbread between his fingers with an appraising glance before placing it beside the others upon his tray.

“I have always been fond of orange muffins,” Beelzebub murmured.

A chilled wind swept over the wasteland and sent several of the pastries rolling across the rocky earth, while Georg remained perfectly still with both hands raised before him. Dimension Lost churned eagerly within his soul, its power fully connected with his mind once more and awaiting his command, but he could not bring himself to complete its activation.

As he glanced at the countless muffins rolling over dirt and rock, he knew exactly what would happen if he activated his Longinus.

And it caused him to feel sick, as if bile was creeping through his throat and pooling in his mouth. He felt lightheaded and nauseous, and the world above started spinning in his eyes. They were being toyed with – three Longinus users, an Ultimate-class Devil blessed by a Divine Dragon into Satan-class, two ancient Dragons and an entire army also blessed by Ophis… and they were utterly at Beelzebub’s mercy.

But… how?

Walburga’s arm remained extended toward the Demon, though tremors now traveled from her fingers into her shoulder.

“What did you do?” she whispered horrified. “What did you do to my Longinus!?”

 “I was Dread long before I claimed the title of Sin or Satan,” the Demon Lord said calmly as he returned his attention to the open book resting within his hands. “Few mortals know this, for I do not often enter the human sphere, but the very nature of my magic allows me to mathematically express, define and direct all phenomena and noumena within the reach of my power.”

His eyes briefly rose from the page and he looked toward the Void and the two slain Dragons.

“And my reach is far.”

Walburga’s outstretched arm gradually fell to her side as she stared at him, and then her lips parted around a single breathless word.

“Ontology?”

Beelzebub lifted one fine eyebrow.

“You dictate ontology?” she asked.

The Demon cast her a mildly appreciative glance. “Very good. At least one of you possesses a learned mind.”

A strangled noise escaped Walburga’s throat, somewhere between a laugh and a sob, and soon she threw back her head and began laughing uncontrollably. Tears spilled from the corners of her eyes and streamed down her cheeks, but she made no effort to wipe them away.

“I-I don’t understand,” Leonardo said.

The young Hero took another step toward Georg while maintaining his fragile posture of defiance. His fists remained clenched, although his eyes repeatedly dropped toward the muffins surrounding his boots as though he expected them to attack him at any notice.

Georg swallowed several times before enough moisture returned to his mouth for him to answer.

“He… he can change what things are, Leo,” he said quietly. “He can define what exists and determine how it functions through his magic. He didn’t block your Annihilation Maker or transform your monsters after you created them. He changed its very power, so instead of its ability to create monsters…”

Leonardo looked down at the scattered pastries, and his knuckles slowly lost their color.

“…it makes muffins,” Leonardo finished.

“Quite,” the Demon said distractedly, already having resumed his reading.

Leonardo looked from the Demon Lord to his own hands, and the anger pinching his youthful features gradually gave way to something lost and wounded.

“But… but that’s not fair.”

And Georg could only stare flabbergasted at the Demon Lord as he silently agreed with Leonardo.

Power like that should have belonged to the highest orders of True Immortals, beings capable of imposing their divinity upon Creation and directing the flow of causality. Even then, the Longinus were supposed to provide their bearers with some protection against such overwhelming authorities, which was what made them capable of threatening the Divine.

However, the Sin had effortlessly bypassed the innate defenses of three Longinus and rewritten their essential functions according to a passing preference for orange muffins.

And as Georg stared at the Demon calmly reading before them, he abruptly remembered Vali’s reaction when Cao Cao first revealed their intention to assassinate Ajuka Beelzebub. The Devil-Human hybrid had looked at them with such open surprise that Georg had dismissed it as another expression of his customary arrogance. Vali regarded nearly everyone around him with contempt.

Though he knew well enough that Vali was only loyal to himself and those directly under him, Georg still assumed a touch of his Devlish conceit made him incapable of believing that Humans could defeat the Demon Lords.

Only now did he understand that it hadn’t been Vali who was blinded by pride.

Even worse, Beelzebub was but one of three said to be just as powerful and dangerous.

Somewhere within the Underworld, Shalba and his armies were confronting the Crimson Lucifer, and probably two more ancient Dragons.

And Cao Cao…

His breath froze in his lungs.  

Cao Cao who insisted on confronting Kurosaki Ichigo. According to all intel they possessed; Beelzebub, Lucifer and Satan were close to each other in strength. Even if it was the strongest amongst them, the Spear of Destiny was one Longinus. What could one Longinus do against Satan when three were utterly useless against Beelzebub?

Georg’s stomach tightened and he felt dangerously close to vomiting on the spot. Cao Cao and the others were as good as dead then… they had vastly underestimated the powers of the Crown Princes of Hell.

His gaze then drifted past the Demon and toward the armies waiting across the wasteland. The Old Satan Faction had gathered its remaining forces for this invasion, while the Hero Faction had committed its two strongest Sacred Gears, and Hexennacht had brought an army of magical strays. ..for what?

Because even that seemed to have been a trap.

Georg’s breath left him slowly as the significance of that simple detail settled over his thoughts. They had believed themselves clever enough to exploit a moment of vulnerability, but the Demon Lord before them had sat ready and easy for their arrival. But the opportunities they had discovered were never truly opportunities at all.

How much… how much of what he had planned had been known? How much of it had been stolen from his head? Or, worse, how much of it was planted there for the benefit of the Sins and their Empire?

Georg let out a bark of laughter.

Oh, I get it. No wonder, Walburga went so quiet after her outburst of mad laughter. How much of that had even been her? How much of any of this is us?

To define what is and isn’t, to script the very condition of being and existing.

He let out another laugh, what fucking bullshit.

Even now, these thoughts in his head, these feelings of hopelessness and despondence, how much of it was his own misery and how much of it was the Demon warping reality inside of him?

His hands dropped lifelessly to his side… he just might be going insane.

The Demon then lifted one hand from his book and curled a single finger toward himself, performing the first deliberate physical action Georg had seen him against any member of their strike force.

And Klevexia Bathin immediately began to glow.

The stoic Devil’s eyes widened, but no scream escaped her as her muscular body silently dissolved into thousands of motes of verdant light. They drifted toward Beelzebub in luminous streams and coalesced above his raised hand, forming a sphere encircled by numerous rotating rings and gears of magical energy.

Leonardo attempted to back away, but his heel caught upon a rock, and he fell to the ground and onto his rear.

“Wh-what is that!?” he asked as he stared terrified from the ground. “Wh-what did you do to her!?”

“Temporal particles,” the Demon responded tonelessly. “As for what I did, I stole her future. Everything she could and would have become has been converted into pure potential energy.”

The rings surrounding the verdant sphere began rotating more rapidly before steadily contracting, and within seconds, the entirety of Klevexia Bathin had diminished into a single point of green light. Beelzebub closed his fingers around it, and when he opened his hand again, nothing remained.

As the last remnants of Klevexia’s potential existence dissipated from the Sin’s hand, that same hand moved almost absently in Leonardo’s direction.

The boy immediately convulsed where he stood, his back arching violently as every muscle in his body contracted at once. His heels scraped against the rocky ground, and then his eyes rolled backward until only the whites remained before his legs buckled beneath him. A strangled breath escaped through his clenched teeth as he collapsed heavily onto his side.

“Leonardo!”

Georg moved on instinct, dropping to his knees and quickly turning the boy onto his back. He pressed one hand against Leonardo’s chest and felt a faint, erratic heartbeat beneath his palm, while shallow breaths continued to slip through the foam gathering at the corner of his mouth. Although Leonardo was still alive, he remained completely unresponsive, and every few seconds another spasm passed through his slight body and caused his limbs to jerk against the dirt.

Georg tightened one hand around the boy’s shoulder before sending a furious glare toward the Demon Lord.

“What did you do to him?” he seethed.

Maddeningly, Beelzebub did not immediately answer him. Instead, he reached down with one hand and softly turned the page. He then turned the same hand, revealing a softly glowing orb suspended above his palm. Innumerable colors shifted across its multifaceted surface, every hue folding into another while complex patterns moved within its depths.

“While inconsequential to me personally, it would prove cumbersome to the Empire at large if your three Longinus managed to find their way into equally foolish human hands,” the Demon explained. “Better to take them out of circulation and give them to more capable minds.”

Georg swallowed heavily as his gaze dropped toward Leonardo. The boy’s features had gone slack beneath his disordered hair, and another thin stream of foam ran down his cheek while his body weakly twitched. He kept his palm against Leonardo’s chest, feeling the increasingly uneven rhythm beneath it, but he already knew there was nothing he could do.

The Sin had taken Annihilation Maker.

A Sacred Gear was not merely a weapon carried by its possessor. It developed alongside the human soul and became inextricably entwined with its wielder’s life force, which meant forcibly extracting one was near-guaranteed fatal. Leonardo might continue breathing for several more minutes, perhaps slightly longer if his body proved unusually resilient, but the child lying beneath Georg’s hands was already as good as dead.

Not that a few additional minutes would make any meaningful difference, not when Beelzebub plainly had no intention of allowing the rest of them to live.

His fingers then curled into the fabric over Leonardo’s chest as his eyes moved toward the two dead Dragons and then swept across the armies standing uselessly throughout the wasteland. The Demon would undoubtedly take Incinerate Anthem from Walburga and Dimension Lost from Georg just as effortlessly, leaving three of humanity’s most powerful Sacred Gears in the possession of the Devil Empire.

His eyelids gradually fell shut, but doing so could not silence the weak rasp of Leonardo’s breathing or the occasional scrape of the boy’s boots against the dirt as he twitched.

It had been a mistake, a complete mistake to conflate the current Sins with the Demon Lords of legends. They knew this generation was stronger... but never in his wildest dreams did he imagine them to be this stronger. The Longinus-class Sacred Gears were wildly said to have powers capable of killing a Satan... just not these ones... they had been so strupid, so blinded by arrogance that their powers gave them an absolute victory.

And because of that arrogance, they had delivered three Longinus directly into Beelzebub’s waiting hands.

They had not merely failed to destroy the architect of the Evil Pieces or bring an end to the system he had created; they had also armed the Devil Empire with powers that might otherwise have passed from one human wielder to another for countless generations to come.

They had utterly failed Humanity.

Walburga then released a strangled sob and collapsed onto her knees.

She struck the dirt hard enough to tear one of the ribbons from her dress, and then she leaned forward until both her hands and her forehead were slammed against the rocky ground. Her shoulders shook violently as she prostrated herself before the Demon Lord, abandoning every trace of the amused confidence with which she had entered the wasteland.

“Please!” she begged. “Have mercy! I-I’ll do anything! I’ll be your slave! I’ll work like a dog! I-I’ll –” and she paused, searching for whatever desperate words she could throw at him. “I’ll be your bitch! I’ll live for your cock if that’s what you want! Just please! Please don’t kill me!”

Beelzebub slowly lowered his book and looked at her with a frown.

Although Georg understood the terror that had driven her to the ground, he could not prevent his upper lip from curling. Walburga had attempted to abandon them the moment she realized they had been trapped, and now she eagerly offered every part of herself for the slightest possibility that the Sin might spare her. She truly was a wretched creature.

And at long last, the Demon rose to his feet. And though he was not unbelievably tall, he still seemed to tower over them both. For a single brief second, Georg could sense a flicker of the Demon’s presence – and before he knew it, blood gushed from his nose and ears and even tears of blood flowed down his cheeks as he felt such a tremendous pain in his skull, he thought it was about to split. He fell to his knees and promptly vomited on the spot.

But the Demon Lord ignored him, and it promptly reached out and pinched Walburga’s chin, raising her gaze to meet its cold and cruel, glacial blue eyes. And for a brief moment, she stared at him with such hope and anticipation one would think her a reverent worshiper before a holy spirit.

“Tell me,” the Demon said. “Do you understand what will happen when all the matter comprising your body is turned into antimatter?”

The fragile hope disappeared from Walburga’s expression, and as her mouth fell wordlessly open, Georg allowed his bleeding eyes to close.

There was nothing left for him to do but accept the inevitable.

And to think, he had the gall to call this monster defenseless.

=======

Diodora Astaroth sat petrified at the edge of the colossal crater, his hands buried within the scorched earth as tremors wracked his entire body. The hole behind him was large enough to swallow entire cities, a seemingly bottomless pit carved into the wasteland where Walburga and the combined armies of the Old Satan Faction and Hexennacht had stood only moments before.

There were no bodies scattered across the ground, nor even ash left drifting in the air. The blast had consumed everything before it, leaving Diodora alone upon a narrow shelf of vitrified stone that extended from the crater’s sheer edge.

He had no idea how he had survived the monstrous explosion of power that had swallowed entire cities worth of land. No, that wasn’t true. He knew exactly how and why he was the only one who had remained untouched.

His uncle came floating toward him.

Ajuka Beelzebub looked utterly out of place amid the devastation, his robed figure gliding several feet above the ruined ground with both hands clasped behind his back. Not a speck of dust stained his clothing, nor had the apocalyptic explosion disturbed a single strand of his green hair. His expression remained as coldly apathetic as ever, as though the death of an entire army had been nothing more than a mildly tedious interruption to his afternoon.

Diodora tried desperately to push himself away, but his legs refused to answer him. His heels scraped uselessly across the ground while every instinct screamed at him to flee, even though there was nowhere left to run.

The Demon Lord stopped near where the broken shelf ended and the crater began, floating over the sheer black, and then those frigid eyes lowered toward him.

“U-uncle, I’m s-sorry!” Diodora stammered, his tongue almost refusing to form the words. “Th-they tricked me! I didn’t mean to… I-I swear, I didn’t know - ”

“Even now, you insist upon spouting your inane stupidity,” his uncle said tonelessly, raising a single eyebrow.

And despite the abject horror smothering Diodora’s thoughts, a familiar spark of resentment flared within his chest.

Stupid.

It was always that same damned word, always spoken with that same detached contempt. His uncle had called him stupid for as long as Diodora could remember, yet never once had the bastard explained what he was doing wrong. Every mistake, every failure and every decision Ajuka disliked had been dismissed beneath that single word, as though Diodora were too worthless to deserve anything more substantial.

“I-I am not stupid.”

He had intended to yell the words, to throw them into his uncle’s face with all the indignation that had accumulated over the course of his life, but they escaped as little more than a frightened squeak. No matter how fiercely he resented the elder Astaroth, Diodora remained utterly terrified of him.

“You are,” his uncle answered without the faintest trace of pity. “The entirety of your life is the sum of mostly incorrect choices, and the vast majority of your futures are much the same.”

“Th-that isn’t true!” Diodora said through gritted teeth. His hands curled more deeply into the dirt as he desperately forced strength into his voice. “I’ve done my best at every turn, and -”

“You have done nothing but fail,” Uncle Ajuka interrupted. “Nor could you have accomplished much else, ground as you were beneath the insecurities born from living within my shadow.”

And just like that, Diodora’s fear momentarily vanished.

He stared at the elder Astaroth, his mouth falling open as the accusation he had prepared died soundlessly upon his lips. For the first time since the crater had opened before him, he forgot about the armies that had disappeared and the monstrous power capable of reducing him to nothing with the slightest impulse.

“You knew?” he whispered.

His uncle’s eyebrow rose another fraction. “How could I not?”

The Demon Lord regarded him for several long seconds before continuing, his voice as cold and impassive as ever.

“Of the present generation, you are the oldest heir belonging to one of the Pillars that produced we Sins. You were born decades before Zephyrdor, Sona and Rias, and consequently bore the expectations of the Upper Nobility alone for many years. Those expectations minced your self-confidence into dust long before you possessed the maturity to understand their absurdity. Why else would you have devoted yourself to pointless sadism rather than self-improvement?”

Diodora’s eyes widened with each word.

Because it was true. It was all so painfully, infuriatingly true.

He had spent his formative years drowning beneath the endless expectations of his family and Imperial society. Whenever he failed, there had always been someone waiting to whisper that he was nothing like his uncle, while every success had been diminished beneath the inevitable insistence that Ajuka Astaroth would have done better. It had not mattered what Diodora achieved, nor how much effort he expended, because there had never been any escape from that enormous shadow.

And it had been unfair. Completely, monstrously unfair.

What had they expected from him? Did they imagine he would awaken one morning and magically become the equal of a Satan? And honestly, he doubted that magic itself was capable of producing another abomination like the current Beelzebub! Yet everyone had looked upon Diodora as though his inability to match the Invariant Evil represented some personal failing.

So yes, he had turned to the old traditions to alleviate his stress and anxiety, but what of it? Corrupting holy maidens and breaking their faith had been a time-honored pastime among Devil nobility. Countless members of the Pillars had indulged in far worse over the centuries, yet Diodora alone was treated as though his pleasures made him uniquely contemptible.

But none of that mattered besides the realization that now stared him in the face.

“You knew?” he repeated, but this time the words carried more accusation than disbelief.

His uncle had known. He had understood everything Diodora had endured and recognized exactly what those expectations had done to him, yet he had stood aside and watched it happen.

And then the outrage came pouring out.

“You knew, and you never tried to help me!?” Diodora shouted, his fingernails clawing furrows through the dirt as he dragged himself forward. “All you ever did was call me stupid! You belittled me and brought me down my entire life!”

Those ice-cold eyes did not so much as waver.

“I told you to stop being stupid,” his uncle replied. “Had you listened, you might have risen to considerable heights.”

“That isn’t how encouragement works!” Diodora yelled. “You cannot simply insult someone and expect them to become a different person!”

The Demon Lord tilted his head, the movement strangely precise and unnatural. “Expect? What makes you think I expected you to change?”

Diodora’s anger faltered as a coldness pervaded through him.

And as his uncle continued to regard him with that coldly inquisitive stare, something inside his chest began to clench.

“What makes you think,” Ajuka asked, “that I wanted to encourage you?”

Diodora froze as the words settled into him, their cruelty cutting more deeply than any accusation or insult could have managed. His heart throbbed painfully, and for several seconds he could do nothing but stare into the face of the man who had watched his entire life unfold without ever once considering him worth a damn word beyond stupid.

“You son of a - ”

The words died within his throat when his uncle raised a lone eyebrow.

“Do not speak ill of your grandmother.”

Diodora swallowed the tumultuous emotions rising inside him, although his ears burned and his chest continued to ache beneath the pressure. His jaw clenched hard enough to make his teeth hurt, and his eyes searched the blasted earth between them as though he might find some explanation written among the cracks.

Finally, he forced the question through his teeth.

“Why?” Diodora demanded, the single word carrying all the venom he could summon. “What did I do to deserve this?”

“Deserve?” his uncle repeated impassively. “Again, you bring up these nonsensical notions.”

The Demon Lord drifted closer to the edge of the crater, and Diodora’s body instinctively recoiled even though his eyes remained fixed upon him.

“Everything was done in the name of purpose and efficiency,” his uncle continued. “Your mounting insecurities churned naturally into resentment and anger, which you then indulged through the sadistic breaking of whichever maiden happened to satisfy your fetish. That behavioral progression made inevitable the day you would target Asia Argento.”

Diodora’s eyes widened as he never expected to hear that name from his uncle.

Asia Argento… the former Holy Maiden whose excommunication and exile he had so carefully orchestrated. She should have been his greatest prize, an innocent soul cast away by her own Church and left vulnerable to his influence, but that incompetent Fallen, Raynare, had ruined everything by drawing unwanted attention to herself. Then Rias Gremory had stolen Asia away and reincarnated her before Diodora could claim what should rightfully have been his.

“What does she have to do with -”

“I have taken account of every cause and effect upon Earth,” his uncle said over him. “I calculated every possibility and foresaw every branch of Time. Your desire for Asia Argento was necessary because it provided the impetus that drove Raynare and her small band of Fallen to Kuoh. Their presence, in turn, became the deciding factor in Issei Hyoudou and the Boosted Gear being reincarnated by Sirzechs’ sister. The boy’s position within her peerage was paramount to the future of the Empire.”

Diodora’s mouth slowly fell open, although the explanation continued to spiral beyond his comprehension.

“Sadly, even I cannot quantify the Divine Pair,” the Demon Lord continued, the first trace of distaste slipping into his otherwise dispassionate voice. “Their interference, especially Ichigo’s resurrection by Sirzechs, shifted the hub of Destiny completely. Entire narratives were undone, and all that had existed before was rendered moot.”

“I…what?” Diodora stared at him in utter confusion. “What is that even supposed to mean? You traumatized my childhood so that moron Rias could get her hands on a Longinus!?”

For the first time, his uncle looked almost rueful.

“Still you insist upon being obtuse?” And there was something infuriatingly close to a sigh in his uncle’s eyes. “Well, at the very least, you served a secondary purpose by passing false information to the Old Satan Faction. After all these centuries, we can finally put that cumbersome drivel to rest.”

Diodora’s head jerked back as though the Demon Lord had struck him.

For one baffled moment, he could not understand what his uncle meant. But then his gaze drifted toward the colossal crater behind him, toward the emptiness where Klevexia, Walburga and an entire army had ceased to exist, and the pieces finally came together.

“You knew,” he whispered.

A strange laugh clawed its way out of Diodora’s throat as he stared up at his uncle.

“You knew I had joined the Khaos Brigade. You knew from the beginning, didn’t you?”

His laughter grew louder, though there was no amusement within it. The sound was dark and brittle, the noise of something inside him splintering as he finally understood the shape of his own life.

“All of this,” Diodora said, sweeping one shaking hand toward the crater. “You planned all of it! The information, the invasion, bringing every enemy of the Satans together in one place; you used me to do it!”

His uncle neither confirmed nor denied the accusation. Instead, the Demon Lord merely regarded him with the same impenetrable expression he had worn throughout their conversation.

“That just it, isn’t? All my life, I was just your pawn, wasn’t I, Uncle Ajuka?”

“Diodora Astaroth,” the Crown Prince answered, “I have known you and everything you would become since the day your father was conceived.”

Diodora threw his head back and laughed.

His magic ripped wildly across his skin, answering the hatred and misery surging through his heart as he forced his unsteady legs beneath him. He almost slipped upon the loose dirt, but his fury gave him the strength to rise until he stood at the edge of the abyss, twisted laughter still etched across his face.

But then the laughter abruptly fell away, leaving him glaring at his uncle with pure, unadulterated hatred.

“Fuck you, Uncle Ajuka!” Diodora screamed, his voice breaking across the wasteland. “Fuck you for sitting so far above all of us and ruling over our lives like you’re the Heavenly Father himself! And fuck you for what you did to me and my parents!”

At last, he saw the faintest trace of emotion disturb his uncle’s face.

It was only the smallest of frowns, but Diodora knew the elder Astaroth well enough to understand that it was neither hurt nor regret. The bastard was not capable of either.

“Your choices have always been your own, Diodora,” his uncle said, “regardless of mine.”

And the last thing Diodora saw was his uncle’s finger move.

=======

Ajuka floated at the edge of the colossal crater, his cold gaze resting upon the soul flickering within his open hand.

Diodora Astaroth had been, quite genuinely, the stupidest child ever born into their Household.

Did his nephew truly believe that Creuserey and Shalba would have honored their agreement and granted him dominion over House Astaroth? The descendants of the Old Lords loathed the current Sins with every fiber of their beings, and even if their invasion had somehow succeeded, they would never have permitted the bloodlines of the reigning Satans to survive.

Diodora would have been stabbed in the back the moment his usefulness ended.

Ajuka curled his fingers around the soul, and its light disappeared soundlessly within his grasp.

The full nature of Diodora’s treachery—and Ajuka’s own hand in directing it—remained a secret he had kept even from the other Satans. Falbium had most likely deduced much of it on his own, but fortunately, the Sin of Sloth cared too little about the matter to form an opinion, much less an objection. Ichigo, Sirzechs and Sera, on the other hand, would have strongly disapproved.

They were far too sentimental when familial bonds were concerned.

Admittedly, that sentimentality was ultimately beneficial to the Empire. The strength of those attachments had contributed considerably to the survival of their species, as it gave his siblings the drive to protect and build, rather than wantonly destroy as all Demons were wont to do. Ajuka therefore had no desire to excise the trait merely because it occasionally inconvenienced him.

Speaking of survival, he lifted his gaze and fifteen Evil Pieces manifested in the air before him. Each remained entirely pristine and freshly detached from a reincarnated Devil.

There had been no reason to preserve Diodora’s peerage now that he was dead. They possessed no further purpose for him or anybody else. And the Pieces themselves would find more worthy bearers in the service of a significantly more capable King. He had ensured it would be so.

With another movement of Ajuka’s fingers, the fifteen Pieces disappeared into storage, and his gaze shifted beyond the enormous chasm of vaporized matter. More specifically, he looked toward the region where the corpses of the two Dragons should have been.

He had intended for both carcasses to be obliterated by the blast, but at the final instant, he had perceived the touch of Ophis curling around them. The Infinite Ouroboros had whisked away the Dragons’ corpses before Walburga’s unraveling could annihilate them. Which left a rather glaring question: why?

Ophis could have resurrected them easily. It could have even empowered the Dragons with its blessing until they rivaled the two ancient wyrms presently contending with Sirzechs, yet it had done neither.

Which suggested that their true purpose had never been to confront the Sins.

A distraction, perhaps? His brows furrowed just slightly; no, that wasn’t the reason for the Dracoic incursion into the Underworld, of that, he was certain.

A minor frown formed on his lips as he attempted to parse through the future, yet he found no answer. The shifting noumena in his mind kept concluding in question marks. The Shadow of the Void spread across the branches of the future and rendered his prescience muddled. He could predict some things, the small and in consequential things – like mother attempting to set him up on another blind date – but the greater future lay obscured to him.

And so, with much annoyance, his cosmic gaze fell back onto the present, passing across the entire breadth of the Underworld and penetrating countless neighboring dimensions as he examined the progress of the remaining battles.

Sirzechs was creating an unnecessary amount of noise in his confrontation with Crom Cruach and Aži Dahāka. As usual, his oldest friend’s damnable arrogance had led him to play with his opponents rather than immediately annihilating them, although Ajuka supposed this was one of those all too rare times in which Sirzechs could exercise his full strength without creating an unacceptable amount of collateral damage.

Falbium was at the very least, using his prodigious talents in barriers and sealing to keep the entirety of the Underworld safe.

And as for Sera…

Ajuka resisted the urge to sigh as another region of the Underworld disappeared beneath the excessive application of her power. He would have to restore all that she was obliterating with her magic and berserking peerage. He genuinely needed to convince her to acquire a superior Bishop.

Finally, his attention settled upon Ichigo, and the smallest trace of distaste touched his mouth as the ancient Will housed within the True Longinus turned its judgement gaze toward him. And to think, Ajuka was currently assisting Michael and Azazel in repairing and improving the Sacred Gear system.

Still, Cao Cao’s weapon had accomplished little beyond prolonging the inevitable. Ichigo continued to trounce and brutalize the core of the Hero Faction, even as the Spear desperately protected its wielder from a being who surpassed him in every conceivable way.

But as Ajuka examined the endless swarm of formulae surrounding their confrontation, he noticed something unusual.

A single line emerged from the otherwise incoherent mass, and then an equation briefly resolved itself before his gaze. Within its structure, the descendant of Cao Cao appeared wrapped around Ichigo like a serpent, his existence coiling tightly around the youngest Sin while baleful loathing gathered within him, ready to strike.

Before Ajuka could follow the equation toward its conclusion, the darkness of the Infinite Ouroboros descended across his calculations. Every dependent possibility disappeared beneath the Void, leaving the problem unsolvable.

Ajuka stared through the intervening dimensions, his gaze remaining fixed upon Ichigo and the human who should have possessed no future beyond the present battle.

How curious.

How very curious.

=======

Ichigo watched as Cao Cao twisted around and raised the True Longinus with both hands, barely managing to place the Spear between the oncoming Cero and the wounded Heroes behind him.

Golden light unfolded from the Sacred Gear an instant before the beam struck, forming a broad barrier around the Hero Faction. However, the Cero did not simply disappear against the Spear’s protection. The red beam erupted into a gargantuan explosion, and a towering column of Demonic energy climbed nearly a mile into the crimson sky as the earth was ripped away in enormous chunks. Fire spread out from the impact in great, tsunami-like waves, incinerating everything in its path until the entire region disappeared beneath a churning sea of flame.

Even with the battlefield drowning beneath the density of his power, Ichigo could still vaguely sense Cao Cao and the other members of the Hero Faction within the explosion. They had survived, although the vitality of everyone save Cao Cao had fallen considerably.

And as the dust slowly settled and the flames receded, the golden protection surrounding them became visible once more.

Cao Cao knelt with one knee pressed against the ground, his head bowed and the True Longinus held defensively before him. The earth immediately around him remained pristine, untouched by either the Cero or the fires it had unleashed, but the same could not be said for his companions. The other so-called Heroes looked as though they had been rag-dolled inside the explosion, their clothing torn and their bodies covered in burns. Blood poured freely from numerous wounds, and several of them could barely move beyond the occasional shudder of pain.

Though Ichigo was surprised at their survival, he had fully intended for them to die in the blast. He could only conclude that the True Longinus had managed to save them, though just barely. Through the magic in his eyes, he quickly determined that they would be dead within minutes.

Cao Cao then lifted his head and glared at him, his face drawn with exhaustion as he struggled to breathe.

“How dare you hurt my friends!” he snarled. “I’ll never forgive this, Kurosaki!”

The Spear of Destiny began to glow, its golden radiance swelling rapidly as the air around Cao Cao trembled beneath its Holy power. Ichigo felt the Longinus reach into depths it had yet to display, the pressure rising until it approached the ranks of an Archangel, and he immediately understood what Cao Cao intended to do.

Before the Chinese Hero could complete the release, Ichigo instantly closed the distance between them.

Zangetsu came down in a heavy two-handed strike, and Cao Cao barely managed to raise the True Longinus in time to block it. The collision shattered the ground beneath him and drove his knee several inches into the earth, while a violent shockwave ripped outward and scattered the remaining flames. Cao Cao’s arms buckled beneath the impact, and blood sprayed from his mouth as the force of the blow tore through his body.

Ichigo looked down at him and said dryly, “Did you really think I’d just stand there and let you use the most powerful Balance Breaker in existence?”

Even as he finished the words, he touched upon more of the immense power in his soul.

Demonic energy poured from Ichigo in a vast and continuous torrent, bearing down upon Cao Cao with the same crushing pressure he had unleashed during his spar with Sirzechs. The earth around them immediately blackened and began melting into glowing slag, while everything outside the Longinus’s protection disappeared beneath the oppressive heat of his presence. Had Gremory not wrapped its magic around the battlefield, Ichigo knew he would have scorched most of the Underworld’s surface merely by standing there.

And yet, as he continued to press Zangetsu against the shaft of the Spear, the True Longinus answered with an equal surge of Holy power.

Golden-white light erupted between the weapons and pressed back against the mythic darkness surrounding Ichigo. Nonetheless, Cao Cao remained trapped beneath him, his face twisted with strain and blood running down his chin, but the Spear continued to pour power through his body, strengthening his limbs and preserving him against Ichigo’s aura which should have burned him to cinders.

Ichigo’s brows lowered in irritation. Once again, Cao Cao himself was proving almost incidental to the battle. The young man was skilled, powerful and remarkably capable for his age, but the True Longinus was the one preventing Ichigo from simply ending this battle with ease.

He was suddenly very grateful that Rhongomyniad remained so fiercely loyal to Arthur. Ichigo did not even want to imagine how calamitous matters might have become if the Slaying Spear had genuinely obeyed that idiot Kokabiel.

However, as the True Longinus continued to reinforce Cao Cao, Ichigo felt the vitality of the other Heroes abruptly rise.

His gaze shifted toward them, and he watched their wounds begin closing at an unnatural rate. Burns peeled away from newly formed skin, torn muscles knitted themselves together and shattered bones dragged back into place beneath their flesh. Within seconds, the three dying Heroes had recovered everything they had lost to the Cero. A brief look of surprise passed through his eyes, because he recognized that kind of high-speed regeneration.

But where in the Underworld did these jerks get their hands on Phoenix Tears?

He’d have to talk with Bennuides about this later. Regardless, Ichigo pushed that thought away for later because the Heroes’ auras continued to rise. And not in a very human way.

Something hot and corrosive spread throughout their blood, mixing with the restorative power of Phoenix Tears before burrowing into their souls. Ichigo could feel it sinking into their Sacred Gears, forcing the ancient mechanisms to expand beyond the limits built into them.

And there was something intimately familiar within that power.

As the faint strands of golden radiance connecting the Heroes to the True Longinus began to flicker, Ichigo’s mouth settled into a grim line with recognition.

He renewed his assault before Cao Cao could finish gathering himself, and Zangetsu battered against the True Longinus in rapid succession of crushing blows. Cao Cao stumbled beneath the onslaught, barely turning aside each strike as the sheer density of Ichigo’s presence pressed against his body. The human’s hands split around the Spear’s shaft, and his arms shook violently whenever Zangetsu met the golden weapon, but the Longinus continued dragging him through defenses he should never have been fast enough to make.

Then, quite suddenly, several Holy Swords manifested above Ichigo.

Cao Cao immediately threw himself backward as the blades descended, hundreds of radiant points raining toward Ichigo from every direction. But with a flex of his power, they disintegrated the instant they touched his aura, their metal vaporizing into golden mist before a single sword could come anywhere near him.

Jeanne emerged through the drifting light, although little remained of the human woman she had been only moments before. Her lower body had transformed into the enormous, serpentine tail of a lamia, formed entirely from interlocking Holy Swords. Gleaming blades curved around her hips and extended down the length of her new body, scraping deep furrows through the earth as she slithered forward.

A severely mutated Siegfried landed beside her. His body had twisted into a hunchbacked, spider-like shape, with numerous limbs erupting from his back and each deformed hand gripping a powerful Demonic sword. His youthful face remained unchanged, making it appear as though his head had been crudely grafted onto the monstrous body beneath it.

And then Heracles dropped from the sky.

The impact cratered the ground and sent broken stone flying in every direction as the enormous Hero straightened to his full height. He had become a bright-red behemoth nearly three meters tall, his bulging muscles rippling beneath stretched skin while waves of steam poured from his body.

Ichigo’s eyes narrowed as he looked through their grotesque forms and examined the foreign power saturating their Sacred Gears.

“Demon blood,” he muttered with distaste, though the irony was not lost on him.

“Not merely Demon blood,” Jeanne said triumphantly. “Satan blood. Given to us by their own descendants. We used their diametric energies to evolve our Sacred Gears beyond what the system allows! We have broken our shackles and ascended to new heights, pushing the boundaries of human power!”

Ichigo stared at her baffled.

Human power?

Did she genuinely not realize that he looked more human than any of the three did? And Ichigo’s own human ancestry wasn’t exactly pure!

He briefly glanced toward Cao Cao, who remained several paces away, huffing as he leaned upon the True Longinus and tried to catch his breath. Then Ichigo looked back at the three malformed Heroes, his face twisting with disgust.

“Idiots.”

In the next instant, he stood directly before Heracles.

The transformed Hero’s eyes widened before he released a furious roar, the force of his voice sending winds whipping across the battlefield. His enormous arms rose above his head, and then he brought both fists down with enough strength to pulverize everything beneath them.

Ichigo almost lazily swung Zangetsu through a broad arc.

Heracles’s arms separated cleanly above the elbows and crashed into the earth on either side of them, their impact throwing up heavy clouds of dirt. For a single second, the giant stared dumbly at the bleeding stumps where his arms had been.

Then Zangetsu moved again, and Heracles’s head fell from his shoulders. The enormous body remained upright for a moment before collapsing, shaking the ground as it struck.

Cao Cao made a strangled noise far behind him before unleashing a throat-tearing scream. “Nooo! Heracles!”

Siegfried’s face twisted with rage, and all of his deformed limbs raised their Demonic swords at once.

“You bastard!!!” He roared.

He charged wildly, the numerous blades spreading around his body as he attempted to surround Ichigo beneath an onslaught from every direction. But Ichigo didn’t even look at him as he raised his free hand. Siegfried stopped in mid-stride as he was gripped tight in Ichigo’s telekinetic grasp.

His malformed limbs strained and jerked as an invisible force closed around him, while each Demonic sword trembled helplessly within his grasp. And before either Cao Cao or Jeanne could intervene, Ichigo swiftly closed his hand into a fist.

And Siegfried exploded.

Blood and gore burst across the battlefield, splashing over the blackened earth as the six Demonic swords slipped from shattered hands and pierced the ground around Ichigo. Ichigo threw a cold look in Cao Cao’s direction, his red eyes filled with merciless and ironclad resolve. A resolve that the self-proclaimed Hero easily read as he launched himself forward, his grief disappearing beneath panic as his hypersonic steps carried him toward the only surviving member of his faction.

“STOOOP!!!”

But if there was one thing Ichigo prided himself in, it was his unmatched speed in the Underworld.

Ichigo disappeared and reappeared directly behind Jeanne. And with little ceremony, Zangetsu melted through her armor of holy metal and pierced her heart, the heated blade emerging cleanly from the other side of her chest. The young woman did not even have the time to understand what had happened before her entire body combusted on the spot and she crumbled to burning ashes.

Cao Cao stopped mid-stride, his arm remained extended, the True Longinus still reaching toward the empty space left behind by his friend, while ash drifted over the weapon’s golden point. His stricken expression not moving as tears gathered within his eyes as his gaze moved helplessly from Jeanne’s embers to Demonic swords covered in Siegfried’s flesh and bones, and finally to the enormous corpse of the beheaded Heracles. And through it all, Ichigo felt not one shred of pity for him.

“What on earth made you idiots think,” Ichigo asked contemptuously, “that your Longinus would continue protecting them from me after they assimilated Satan blood?”

Cao Cao said nothing, though his shoulders began to shake, and the fingers wrapped around the Spear of Destiny tightened until blood ran between them. Ichigo could practically taste the hatred gathering within his heart as the human’s aura swelled, fed by grief, fury and the desperate need for revenge.

“Kurosaki,” Cao Cao whispered.

Then he lifted his tear-streaked face, and the True Longinus erupted with golden light.

“I’LL KILL YOU!”

Cao Cao launched himself forward and thrust the Spear of Destiny directly toward Ichigo’s heart.

But Ichigo reached into the depths of his existence, drawing upon the worlds’ worth of Demonic energy held within his soul and the nascent Divinity slowly taking root beside it. His brows narrowed in concentration, and then he reached out and caught the point of the True Longinus in his bare hand.

Holy power immediately tore against his palm but Ichigo paid it no mind. His face set fierce, he pushed back with his might, repelling the Holy power that sought to burn his existence away.

Cao Cao’s hatred briefly gave way to disbelief. “Impossible!” He cried breathlessly.

“You fucking asshole,” Ichigo snarled. His fingers tightened around the spearhead despite the Holy Fire burning against his very existence. “You come into my Empire, back some genocidal regime that wants to start a war that will kill billions, and then you dare throw a fuckin’ hissy fit when I kill your terrorist friends?”

The ground and sky warped around them as their opposing powers collided. Space bent into impossible angles, the earth curving and warping while the burning skies twisted down around them, and even the protection Gremory had wrapped around the dimensional walls groaned beneath the strain.

Cao Cao drove forward with both hands clenched around the shaft, while the True Longinus forced an endless tide of Holy power against Ichigo’s palm. Yet the physical struggle was only the smallest part of their contest. Ichigo could feel the Spear’s Will reaching beyond the immediate moment, searching through millions of possibilities and timelines in which its point pierced his hand and found his heart.

But Ichigo refused them all.

His Will spread against the weapon’s, seizing each possible victory it attempted to create and crushing it ruthlessly beneath his own asserted existence. The Longinus answered by rejecting every future in which Cao Cao failed, forcing new paths into existence as quickly as Ichigo destroyed them. Their conflict moved through Time and Space, fought across countless outcomes that appeared and vanished before either could become real.

But Ichigo remained unrelenting, his fury and rage at Cao Cao’s childish hypocrisy driving his Will more forcefully against the ancient presence within the Spear. More than that, despite his own neophyte nature when it came to being Timeless, Ichigo’s Will was not about to lose to some fucking remnant.

“Newsflash, asswipe!” he shouted. “A Hero isn’t someone who goes around murdering and killing! A Hero is someone who protects!”

And just like that, the Will within the True Longinus flickered.

It lasted for less than a heartbeat, so brief that Cao Cao did not appear to notice, but Ichigo felt the hesitation pass through the True Longinus. The Spear’s Will faltered against his own, and the golden flames burning against his very being briefly weakened.

“And I’ll protect everyone under my name!”

Ichigo forced the spearhead aside and Cao Cao staggered as the True Longinus was wrenched away from its path, but Ichigo did not loosen his relentless grip. His burning hand remained closed around the golden point, denying Cao Cao the distance he needed to defend himself as Zangetsu exploded with black and golden energy.

“Getsuga.”

Cao Cao’s eyes widened and he desperately pulled against the Spear, straining with both arms as he tried to tear it free, but Ichigo only looked down at him with demonic ferocity. And he swung his Soul with all the murderous resolve he could muster – because he had been taught long ago: when you attack, you kill.

“Tenshō.”

=======

Gremory sat atop a literal mountain of corpses, their fresh blood staining her dress and gathering into a crimson pond that spread far around her. With her hands clasped together, she smiled delightedly as tens of thousands of Devils clashed across the battlefield below.

On one side were the deluded fools who continued to follow the Old Lords, and on the other were those who wisely bowed to her master and her grandson.

And Gremory watched ecstatically as they maimed, cursed and killed one another. Every time one Devil was wounded, a fresh bout of fear or anger slipped into the air. Every time a mortal blow landed, resentment toward death rose while pain and longing for loved ones coiled through the armies, and the cloying despair of entering the Darkness Beyond Death choked the battlefield.

All of it, all of it, fed her insatiable appetites.

With every inhale, she tasted the delectable misery and death, and with every exhale, she snaked more of her miasma through the battling armies. Her presence exacerbated the negative energies already saturating the air and amplified the frenzied emotions of the soldiers, sharpening their fear into panic and their anger into murderous rage.

Though Gremory was careful to ensure that the carnage did not go too far. Otherwise, the slaughter would end far too soon, and that would not do at all, now would it?

It was why she carefully emboldened one flank whenever the balance began to shift, ensuring that neither army held the advantage for too long. Occasionally, she crafted an atronach for her master’s soldiers before empowering one of the chimeras belonging to the Old Lords’ forces. Though she was not particularly fond of watching savage brutes batter one another with their fists, it was still amusing to see the common frontline soldiers scream and flee before their rampaging onslaught.

And sometimes, she encouraged a little friendly fire.

Gremory so enjoyed watching camaraderie fall apart. There were few things more satisfying than orchestrating the collapse of an alliance and sowing betrayal between those who had trusted one another only moments before. The confusion, disbelief and wounded outrage that followed always possessed such a delightful taste.

A wide smile touched her red lips; she had missed this.

For the last several centuries, Gremory had sealed herself away, content to watch as Sirzechs reigned supreme. She had only occasionally joined the waking world in recent times to celebrate the birth of another child within her bloodline; but her new master had become so thoroughly entrenched in the wars and conflicts of this modern age that she could revel in the chaos like the days of yore.

Of course, the best part was the shameless flirting that came afterward.

Her young master rather frequently threatened her with violence for her shameless coquetry, but he had yet to actually hurt her… much to Gremory’s disappointment. Such a tease, that handsome Sin was. But she was patient. In the old days, some of her seductions had taken literal centuries before they finally bore fruit, and the thrill was as much in the chase as it was in the inevitable conquest.

Speaking of her master, Gremory turned her gaze away from the battling armies and toward the center of the pocket dimension she had forged from the Underworld’s essence. Her handsome Sin was currently battering those annoying little mortals, though the sight earned a brief frown of distaste from her.

They would all have been dead  were it not for the True Longinus and the remnant Will of the Heavenly Father dwelling within it.

A small part of Gremory’s mind instinctively tempted her to flee. In the ancient days, retreat had always been the sensible response whenever their greatest enemy descended from the Immortal Plane, and that instinct was one of the reasons she had survived for so long. Gremory did not fight unless her victory was assured, unlike that blithering idiot Belial, who had thrown himself against the Heavenly Father without any thought for his own survival.

However, those ancient memories disappeared when her master’s aura surged and the True Longinus answered in kind.

For a brief moment, it was like watching Lucifer and Michael clash at the height of the Great War, so immense were the Demonic and Holy energies being unleashed. Gremory immediately called upon the bulk of her existence resting within her Inner Sanctum, for the power needed to sustain and reinforce the dimensional barriers was far beyond what she had given this body.

And then she saw her master’s Will triumph over the True Longinus as a spike of black and golden power erupted from Zangetsu and consumed the entire sub-realm.

“Oh dear,” she murmured.

Gremory rose from her mountain of corpses and pushed her magic to its heights, first and foremost to protect herself, then to reinforce the dimensional barriers, and finally to preserve the little soldiers she had commandeered. She supposed she owed them some chance of survival after they had entertained her so wonderfully.

However, as her master’s power became a hurricane of black and golden might that spanned the breadth of the sub-realm, his aura abruptly darkened. Hatred flooded through her pocket realm with such intensity that a shiver passed along Gremory’s spine, and she could feel his raw fury seeping into reality as spacetime began to twist beneath his rage-filled Will.

If he released the bulk of that rage, even she would have no chance of containing it.

But then, through the inherent and ever-present connection she possessed with the Gremory territory, she sensed a minor blemish within her realm. It was a small, insidious thing worming its way through the very heart of her kingdom, and it was decidedly not hers.

It took Gremory only a moment to recognize it, and when she did, her master’s rage became hers.

Gremory reached into the world suffused with his demonic presence and willingly allowed the Sin of Wrath into her being, using it as an infernal engine to empower the hatred rising from the depths of her existence. Her beautiful face twisted into something horrific as her fingers lengthened into claws and the darkness of her eyes became a pair of burning pits.

“Ba’al!”

He dared? He dared to enter her realm? To trespass in her own kingdom?

Gremory unleashed a furious screech, and the tens of thousands of soldiers serving the Old Lords immediately disintegrated into ash. Their bodies vanished so completely that the loyalist army stumbled forward through empty space, their weapons cutting through the drifting remains of enemies who had ceased to exist.

She sent her mind away from the body standing atop the mountain of corpses and pervaded the entirety of her kingdom. Rage-fuelled tremors shook the Gremory territory as her Will descended upon every inch of it, but the phantom of the Great King had already released its blood magic she could perceive upon her children.

And as the First Demon dissipated, its mocking laughter followed the storm-clad Old One from whom it had spawned.

Through her bond with her master, Gremory felt his volcanic fury spilling into hers as he watched through her eyes and mind. She knew that were it not for the two Dragons, her master would have torn his way into the Gremory territory himself and hunted the miserable old wretch across every realm in Creation.

But Ba’al had already retreated into his sanctum.

Gremory’s lips curled back from her blackened teeth. She would need to keep a close eye upon Venelana, Rias and Millicas from this moment onward, and powerful blood seals would need to be placed upon all three of them. Ba’al could not be permitted to use her children as a path into her kingdom again. That disgusting, foul, vile old relic! She would ensure he would never lay a finger on her children again!

Ba’al, you loathsome cur! You have earned the ire of four Demons: myself, Satan, Lucifer and Grayfia. What do you hope to gain by making enemies of us all?

Briefly, her attention flickered toward her bastion, where her children lay beneath the shadow of the Primordial. Torrents of desolation and heartbreak poured from the Old One’s soul, filling the palace so completely that Gremory could almost taste them from across the realm.

But she knew better than to feed upon those emotions; her master’s subsequent rage would not be the fun kind.

Begrudgingly, Gremory returned her attention to the pocket dimension as she felt her master’s fury turn toward the two Dragons still awaiting him.

They were in for a world of misery.

=======

A/N: Apologies to everyone for the delay of this chapter, and my appreciation and thanks for your patience.

Ajuka is the most broken Sin. He can steal virtually anything: powers, abilities, thoughts, memories, even your time. And he can rewrite it and change it all to whatever he wants. He is the Invariant Evil - for he is the one constant, the one absolute when his magic makes everything mercurial. If Sirzechs is absolute Destruction, Ajuka is absolute Change.

The next chapter will be final chapter of the Second Devil Civil War/Dragon Incursion Arc. After that there will be an interlude of a chapter or two, and then we will move onto the Shinto Civil War arc which will probably be another 5-7 chapters. And, as I promised on Discord, once the Shinto Civil War arc is over, we shall return to Karakura Town and Yasaka finally gets to meet her in-laws!

So you have much to look forward too!

Enjoy your weekend! P.S: Also, because of the week long delay, I decided not to do an early access for this chapter out of fairness.