The silence that had gripped the Lucifer Stadium was a heavy one born from the display of Roygun Belphegor's overwhelming power against Ruval's ultimate attack.
Thousands of spectators sat paralyzed, their focus entirely locked onto the images flickering within the quad-screens. They were witnessing the peak of Rating Game match, a clash between a Phenex prodigy, an underdog against the unmovable Big Three.
But the silence broke as the world above them began to splinter.
A sharp, violent cracking sound rang out, echoing like a gunshot across the vast arena.
It was a sound that did not belong to the Rating Game, nor did it originate from the magical broadcast. One child in the stands, her neck craning upward in pure awe, watched as the very fabric of the sky began to web with glowing fissures.
Her eyes widened, reflecting a light that shouldn't have been there.
"Mom, is the sky shattering?" she asked, her small voice lost in the sudden groan of the atmosphere.
The answer came with a cataclysmic failure of Ajuka Beelzebub's magic.
The spatial magic that maintained the Game Field within the Dimensional Gap were forcibly terminated.
And in an instant, the projection vanished. Ruval Phenex, Roygun Belphegor, and every remaining member of their peerages were violently spat back into the physical reality of the center of the Lucifer Stadium.
They reappeared confused and disoriented, but they were given no time to recover.
CRACK
As suddenly, the massive barrier that had enveloped the entire stadium, a masterpiece of Ajuka Beelzebub's design, finally gave way.
It broke, shattering like a trillion shards of broken glass.
Shimmering white particles of spent mana drifted down like a lethal snow, revealing a horror that not even the Satans had anticipated.
High above, nestled within a swirling vortex of thunderclouds, the enormous divine forms of a lightning Qilin and a coiling storm dragon looked down upon the Underworld, and the colosseum of the devils.
The mythical beasts were composed of pure concentrated divine energy, their eyes burning with the cold judgment of the high heavens.
The audience looked up. Their feet failed to move. Their minds struggled to register the sheer scale of the doom that's about to happen.
In that split second, they realized that they were staring into their death. But realization was a luxury they could no longer afford, it was already too late.
A flash of absolute white illuminated the world, bleaching the colors from the mountains, the city, and the grey sky of Lucifaad.
For a single, terrifying second, the world went silent. There was no thunder, no screams, and no roarm.
Only the visual of a reality being rewritten by a blinding, holy light.
As the doom descended.
SHIIING
"Ruin the Extinct!"
"Kankara Formula!"
"Absolute Defense!"
Three simultaneous voices echoed through the stadium, a desperate voice of the Four Satans.
Yet, even the combined effort of the world's most powerful Devils was not fast enough to completely negate the heavenly judgment falling from the clouds.
Sirzechs acted first, unleashing a gargantuan ball of concentrated Power of Destruction. The crimson sphere soared upward, colliding with the descending Storm Dragon.
The impact was instantaneous as the mythical beast of thunderous wind and rain was unmade, its divine structure unraveling into nothingness under the touch of pure elimination.
FWUOSHH
However, the destruction of the dragon was not enough. Sirzechs' eyes snapped wide as he realized the Lightning Qilin was already past his first line of defense. He desperately began to charge another sphere of crimson energy, his heart hammering against his ribs.
'No, these people... Rias!'
On another side, Ajuka Beelzebub was fighting a battle of his own.
His Kankara Formula surged forth, attempting to intercept the Qilin by manipulating its electric charge, intending to turn the divine beast into harmless light. But he failed.
Even his monstrous calculation speed was insufficient, he was attempting to deconstruct a strike that moved at the speed of light. Realizing his failure in that microsecond, Ajuka scrapped his initial plan and shifted the formula.
He projected an invisible barrier designed to alter the vectors of anything that touched it, desperately trying to divert the strike away from the densely packed stands.
In the southern section, Falbium Asmodeus didn't move. He stood like a mountain, his body glowing with a dark green aura as he projected his Absolute Defense over the tens thousands of devils behind him.
He took the brunt of the atmospheric pressure, his face contorting under the strain of holding back the literal weight of the sky.
And then-
BOOM
A deafening shockwave tore through the old capital of Lucifaad.
The ground at the center of the stadium cracked before being instantly scorched and hollowed out by the Lightning Qilin that Sirzechs and the other Satans had failed to intercept.
The impact was a physical force, a wall of heat and wind that pulverized stone into dust. Despite the protection of the Satans, the sheer overflow of energy and the flying debris claimed the lives of several devils in the stands near the impact zone.
The center of the stadium went silent once more, though this time it was the silence of a graveyard.
"Did we succeed?"
Sirzechs raised his trembling hands.
He had successfully enveloped the entire western and northern stands with his destruction energy, creating a shimmering red dome that had shielded the thousands of souls behind him from the lightning Qilin. That's all he can do in the split second.
His first thought was of his sister.
'Rias! How about Rias!'
He looked toward the eastern section and let out a long, ragged sigh of relief.
Ajuka stood there, his coat singed but his barrier intact, having successfully protected that side of the arena. Sirzechs then turned his gaze to the southern section.
Falbium remained in his position, his dark green aura flickering out as he slumped slightly, looking utterly exhausted from the effort of maintaining his Absolute Defense against such a divine force.
As the thick, acrid smoke began to clear from the center of the stadium, the true horror of the attack was revealed to the world.
In the massive, glass-lined crater at the center of the arena, only two figures remained.
Roygun Belphegor was still standing, though she was a shadow of the woman who had dominated the Rating Game just minutes prior.
She had lost her right hand, her arm ending in a cauterized stump after a desperate attempt to use her Crack ability against the Qilin's descending figure.
It was that same desperate resilience that kept her alive, her breath coming in ragged, painful gasps.
But the true horror lay beside her.
The scorched body of Ruval Phenex lay in the dirt.
Almost his entire form had been turned to a blackened husk.
It was a sight that bordered on the impossible, an irony that struck at the very heart of every single soul present.
The House of Phenex was known for its immortality, possessing flames that allowed its members to regenerate from almost any injury instantly.
But now, their heir had been burned to death.
Even the legendary Phenex flames could not withstand a direct hit of pure concentrated divine energy delivered at a Maou-level output.
There is no one around them, the remaining members of both peerages were gone.
They had been evaporated instantly, leaving nothing behind but lingering echoes of their mana. High-class devils and even a couple ultimate-class had been wiped from existence in the blink of an eye by god knows who.
Roygun's eyes widened as she looked at the husk of her opponent.
She gasped, trying to catch a breath that tasted of sulfur and ash.
"No..."
She could not believe what had just transpired. It had happened in an instant. One moment she was in the Game Field, and the next, the world had collapsed into a blinding white light that forced her to fight for her life.
The horror, however, was most acute inside a certain VVIP box.
Ravel Phenex stood frozen, her beautiful blue eyes wide with a mixture of shock and absolute terror.
She was paralyzed, her body refusing to obey her. She could not even move her lips to form the simple words that were screaming in her mind.
"Nii... sama."
Beside her, Lord Phenex had closed his eyes, his face contorting in a mask of unbearable pain.
Riser, for all his bravado and arrogance, had grabbed his head with both hands, his face pale as he stared at the crater in silent, wide-eyed terror.
The silence of the box was finally shattered by Ravel's scream.
"RUVAL NII-SAMA!!!"
In a frantic burst of energy, she threw herself against the glass window of the suite. The reinforced pane shattered under the pressure of her aura, the sharp pieces cutting into her slender, fair hands, but she didn't even flinch.
With the fire wings of the Phenex flaring violently on her back, her blonde curls fluttering in the wind, she took flight. She dove from the VVIP floor toward the center of the crater, her face drenched in desperate tears.
When she landed, the sight of Ruval's scorched body nearly stopped her heart. He looked like a statue made of ash, something that might crumble if the wind blew too hard.
Ravel's cries died in her throat, replaced by a hollow, empty stare. She crouched beside him in total denial, her hands hovering over the blackened remains as she searched for any sign of life.
"Wake up! Ruval nii-sama! Please, wake up!"
The realization finally hit her.
The tears began to flow again, a silent, heavy stream as she collapsed in the middle of the smoking crater.
Though the scorched earth burned her legs, and though her cries were being watched by hundreds of thousands of people through the remaining cameras, Ravel did not care. She simply sat there in the ash, crying for her dead brother.
Until finally, the medical teams began to materialize in the arena, followed shortly by the rest of the devastated Phenex family.
***
In a certain VVIP box suite, a blonde-haired gentleman wearing stereotypical nobleman's attire sat paralyzed.
He stared at the destruction unfolding inside the stadium with raw terror in his eyes.
He knew deep down that if not for Sirzechs Lucifer protecting him and the thousands of people in the stands below, he wouldn't even know what would have happened to him.
He appeared to be around thirty years old, possessing the polished look of an aristocrat who had never known true fear until this moment.
"What the fuck just happened..." the man muttered, his voice trembling as he wiped a bead of cold sweat from his brow.
This man was none other than one of the Unmovable Big Three of the Rating Games, Bedeze Abaddon.
He was a champion of the arena, a man who had faced countless of kings and their peerages and emerged victorious, yet he found himself utterly shaken.
Having stood up instinctively from his seat to do whatever he could to dodge the light-speed attack, he now slumped back into his luxurious chair, his legs feeling like lead.
"Huff... Who is crazy enough to pull something like that in front of the four Satans? That bastard is going to be dead for sure," Bedeze said, shaking his head.
He could not comprehend how anyone could be stupid enough to perform such a reckless terrorist attack in the heart of the Underworld. To him, it was a suicide mission that lacked any logical objective.
And, from what he could see, the attack hadn't even succeeded in killing any significant number of high-ranking Devils. Except for a bird.
"Fuck, just ruining my mood," Bedeze cursed under his breath. He was frustrated by the interruption of his entertainment.
He raised his hand, gesturing dismissively toward the back of the room. "All of you, bring me some water."
But no answer came from his peerage. A vein popped out of his head as his irritation flared.
"Are you guys deaf!" He stood up, ready to yell at them for their incompetence.
"Didn't I tell you to-"
Bedeze's words died in his throat. He widened his eyes as he looked around the room.
Every single member of his peerage, warriors who had fought by his side had been frozen solid in massive, jagged blocks of ice.
They stood like macabre statues, their expressions of confusion preserved forever behind the frost.
"What! Who are you!"
His demonic energy flared, red and black aura swirling around his body.
But before he could launch a counter-attack, frozen ice erupted from the floor at his feet. It moved with unnatural speed, encasing his lower body in a crystalline prison before he could even blink.
A figure clad in a black cloak stepped out from behind one of the frozen blocks.
"Let's save the chit-chat for later, shall we?" the figure said.
The voice was calm, feminine, and utterly devoid of hesitation.
Suddenly, a blinding light erupted from the ground beneath them.
A complex magic circle manifested, glowing with a brilliance that rivaled the earlier lightning strike. In a flash of light, Bedeze Abaddon and his entire frozen peerage disappeared.
They were gone in an instant, leaving nothing behind in the opulent suite but a single shattered glass of wine on the floor.
***
Meanwhile, high on top of the stadium roof, the chaos below felt like a distant memory.
Jay remained standing at the edge, his posture relaxed despite the carnage he had just unleashed.
Ame-no-Murakumo had already disappeared from his hand, returning to the void from which it was summoned.
Jay stood there in silence, his dark hazel gaze fixed on the flickering quad-screens. The monitors were still broadcasting, showing the heart-wrenching figure of the blonde girl, Ravel Phenex.
She was still on her knees, crying at the side of the scorched, blackened body of her brother, Ruval Phenex.
The same brother that he had just killed.
His expression remained unreadable, a mask of cold indifference that didn't betray a hint of satisfaction. He watched the girl's grief for a moment longer, waiting for his own teleportation sequence to begin.
But suddenly, a burst of ice erupted from the roof behind him.
The air temperature plummeted instantly as jagged frost spears sought to impale him.
Jay felt the presence of someone powerful manifesting at his back the very second the ice appeared.
However, the attack was far too slow for him.
Jay dodged the strike with a fluid, effortless movement, appearing a moment later standing calmly on top of the newly formed ice sculpture. His trenchcoat fluttered in the freezing wind as he looked down at the newcomer.
'Serafall Leviathan...' Jay thought, his eyes narrowing slightly.
'She followed me, huh? I thought I concealed my presence pretty well.'
The Satan of Leviathan stood before him, her usual playful demeanor completely replaced by a sharp, lethal seriousness.
Her mana flared around her in a brilliant, chilling aura that made the very air crackle with frost.
She stared at the mysterious hooded man, her eyes narrowed with suspicion and rage.
"Who are you!" she demanded.
Her voice carried the weight of her responsibility echoing across the roof.
Jay didn't offer a name.
Instead, he simply pointed his finger toward her. The air in front of his digit began to compress violently, forming a swirling, pitch-black void of distorted space. The ball of concentrated spatial magic launched toward Serafall in a flash of black and white.
BOOM
'No magic circle?' Serafall thought.
Serafall reacted with the reflexes of a Maou, leaping upward to dodge the projectile.
She watched with wide eyes as the ball of void energy struck the spot where she had been standing, completely deleting the section of the roof.
There was no rubble or debris, as it was simply erased from the space. By the time she realized the danger and looked back toward her opponent, Jay's figure had already vanished into thin air.
As Serafall landed back on the remaining portion of the roof, her brows furrowed in frustration.
She reached into her outfit and pulled out her magical communication device.
"Sirzechs-chan, Ajuka-chan, Falby... the culprit is gone."