The only thing that saved Azazel from the sudden execution was experience. centuries of surviving at the highest level of supernatural conflict, a life spent dodging the killing blows of gods, monsters, and rival leaders.
One moment, he was kneeling by the Takahashi girls, his hand reaching out to examine the wound on Ayaka's shoulder. Next, every hair on his body stood on end as alarms went off in his mind.
Danger, Danger, Danger.
He didn't think, he just reacted. He threw up dozens of multi-layered defensive barriers, pushing his mana to its absolute peak in a single burst.
It was the only thing that kept him from being erased in a single instant.
BOOM—!!
Large man sized Black, void-like spears, moving at the literal speed of light, descended from the sky. They moved like they were tearing reality itself, leaving trails of distorted space in their wake.
As they bombarded Azazel's position, a separate, soft purple barrier manifested around the two sisters nearby.
The spears rained down like an apocalypse on the fallen angel. Azazel watched in horror as his top-tier shields, capable of tanking city-leveling spells, began to spider-web and crack under the force of the void like spears.
"Shit—!"
The barriers were failing. With a guttural roar, he pulled out his sacred gear. "Balance Breaker!" the dagger called out, its mechanical voice echoing through the chaos. In an instant, the golden-black armor of the Down Fall Dragon Spear wrapped around his body, and his aura exploded outward in a shockwave of gold, clearing the remaining spears as he took to the sky.
He already knew who he would see. Floating in the air, framed by a swirling vortex of bruised clouds and crackling violet lightning, was Kenji Takahashi. His golden eyes were blank, devoid of any warmth, looking down at the Governor General as if he were a particularly annoying insect that needed to be crushed into the dirt.
"Hey now, that's no way to greet a friend," Azazel teased, though his voice was strained, his breath coming in short, sharp bursts. Every muscle in his body was coiled like a spring. He knew the man wasn't here to trade barbs.
His assumption was confirmed when Kenji's power spiked, the power suddenly surpassing even Azazel's own considerable reserves. It felt as though the very atmosphere had turned into tar just by being close to him.
'Shit,' Azazel muttered under his breath.
Hundreds of those pitch-black orbs he had seen during the battle with the Old Satan Faction began to form around Kenji. Azazel had spent the time since the meeting obsessing over kwnji's powers, trying to categorize the human's power through the lens of a researcher.
He had initially assumed it was gravity magic, but the more he analyzed the data, the more frightened he became.
This wasn't magic. Kenji was simply manipulating gravity through pure, unrestricted will. He was commanding one of the fundamental laws of the universe just like that.
It was terrifying if you really think about it.
The orbs accelerated toward him, trailing lines of distorted light. Azazel didn't wait, nor did he have the luxury of jesting like usual. He felt with absolute certainty that a single mistake here meant a closed casket.
He moved like a blur, weaving through the orbs, twisting and dodging. The gravitational pull of the passing orbs tugged at his armor, trying to peel the gold plating right off his body.
He was barely clear of the cluster when a surprise bolt of lightning crashed down from the heavens, slamming into his chest and sending him hurtling toward the earth like a fallen star.
He shrugged off the impact, the armor smoking, and burst back into the air, dodging another strike. He spun and twisted, calling forth dozens of light spears to finally mount a counter-attack.
But what he saw stopped his heart. His light spears were erased. The moment they touched the orbs, the light was consumed, vanishing into nothingness.
It was fascinating and terrifying. The researcher in him begged to study it, but he had taken his eyes off the man for a fraction of a second.
He felt a sudden, searing heat from his sides. Azazel summoned a heavy shield just in time to block a torrent of fire from a dragon made of living flame. Behind it, a giant bird made of wind shrieked, its wings cutting the air. A leviathan of water surged from the moisture in the air, and a massive golem of earth rose from the ground below. Lightning coiled around Kenji like a loyal hound as all five spirits launched themselves at the fallen angel.
"High-ranking spirits..." Azazel gasped in shock, coughing through the heat.
It had been millennia since high-ranking spirits had been seen in such numbers. One has to understand that spirits left the world long ago, back when the age of the gods ended, the era when people actually believed in magic, and so, after they left, it was rare for people to practice spirit magic and spirits and fae to be seen, yet...yet here was this human, commanding five of them simultaneously.
He blocked a wall of fire only for the earth golem to lash out. For something so massive, it moved with a terrifying, fluid grace. Azazel dodged, but as always with Kenji, there was a trap hidden in the movement. The golem's arms burst mid-motion, turning into thousands of stone projectiles that tore through his armor and drew blood as he was sent down to the earth.
Then, the ground itself betrayed him. The earth around his feet surged up, trapping him as the golem started to fix itself and tried to fuse him into the golem's mass.
He burst out with a massive light spear, vaporizing the construct, only for the wind bird to slam into him from above, blasting him across the wastelands far outside the Gremory estate.
The water leviathan erupted from the ground beneath him, swallowing him whole as the living lightning fused into the water. The pain of what was essentially power enough to wipe a city off the map was not a pleasant feeling, even with his armor, his nerves were screaming in agony.
Azazel freed himself with a desperate burst of light, gasping for air, only to see the sky go dark once more.
A meteor. Or rather, a chunk of land the size of a city, ripped from the crust of the Underworld and tossed at him like a child throwing a rock. Azazel roared, gathering every ounce of his power into a spear the size of a three-story building, shattering the incoming mass in a blinding explosion of dust and light that could be seen from the devil capital.
Azazel was panting heavily now, his golden armor cracked and dull. He was trying to fight, he really was, but he wasn't even getting a chance to breathe, let alone strike back. He had always thought Kenji was roughly at his level, perhaps slightly above, but after Kyoto, he realized he hadn't even begun to see the man's ceiling, yet he didn't have a chance to truly calculate where the man stood.
He sensed danger and dove to the left. A blade descended, no magic involved, but a pure sword swing, yet the result was shocking.
The world split.
A trench, a thousand meters long and deep enough to reveal the jagged bedrock of the Underworld, was carved into the land instantly. Azazel stared at the scar in the earth, horrified. The Gremory territory was roughly four thousand meters across. This single swing had reached a quarter of the way across the entire domain, narrowly missing the main estate.
"What a monster..." he whispered, his voice cracking. What else could he call someone who could cut the world with nothing but skill.
Kenji vanished from the sky, appearing directly in front of Azazel. His eyes were cold, fixed on the Governor, and his tone was hollow.
"Third stance... Heavenly Impact."
Azazel barely had time to cross his arms in a desperate guard. The strike hit the side of his left arm, shattering the golden armor and snapping the bone like dry kindling.
But the true force wasn't only on his arm, it passed through him. Behind him, the shockwave continued, and every hill, mountain, and structure above a certain elevation for miles was cut clean in half in a perfect, horizontal line.
Azazel managed to push Kenji back with a desperate flare of magic and light spears, but he was already falling, his vision swimming with dark spots. How could he be this outclassed? Throughout the entire fight, he hadn't landed a single blow.
NO. He forced his broken body upright. He still had his pride, and he wasn't going to fall like this. He might not be the most prideful being compared to the likes of Zeus or Indra, but he was still a leader of a faction and still had his pride, to be suppressed like this was humiliating.
Kenji stood across from him. Just as Azazel prepared to make a move, what could be a final, suicidal move, Kenji was suddenly just a sword's tip away from him. His eyes widened in horror, barely able to react as Kenji raised his blade for the finishing blow. Azazel knew he was about to be cut in half.
BOOM—!!
Something came rushing towards Kenji from the side, forcing the human to dodge and skid back hundreds of feet.
"Sirzechs," Kenji finally spoke.
The Devil King stood between them, his red hair flowing in the violent winds. Grayfia stood by his side, her silver hair shimmering, her aura sharp and ready to fight.
"Why are you interfering?" Kenji asked flatly, his golden eyes flicking to the newcomer.
"You're on Gremory property," Sirzechs replied, his tone friendly, but the power releasing from his body making the very ground beneath them vibrate. "And I cannot allow you to come in and start a war in my backyard. Azazel is currently a guest of House Gremory. So, why don't we leave this to end here?"
It may sound like The Devil King was asking, but he wasn't, the crimson flares of the Power of Destruction dancing around his fingers were a clear demand. Kenji's grip on Yamato lowered slightly for a second before he gripped it tighter.
"NO."
He moved again, faster than the eye could follow, intending to finish off the crow. Sirzechs reacted with equal speed, rushing in to grab the arm that was raising the sword.
"Remove your hand, devil," Kenji growled, his voice dropping into a register that made the Gremory peerage in the distance collapse to their knees.
"I can't allow you to do this," Sirzechs said back, his expression hardening.
"Then I'll kill you too."
Before Sirzechs could process the sheer audacity of the threat, a punch slammed into his face. The blow sent the King of the Underworld flying into a mountain about 400meters back.
Grayfia took the attack on her King as a signal. She jumped into the fray, summoning a massive wave of ice that could have frozen a sea. But Kenji didn't even turn to face her. With a flick of his hand, the ice was suddenly blown away, shattered into fine mist.
"What—?" she gasped, just as a force blasted her in the face, launching her to the other side of the territory and out of the fight.
Sirzechs returned instantly, his power roaring, the very Underworld shaking under his feet. Kenji reached out with his hands, and Sirzechs froze mid-air, held by a gravitational grip.
The Devil King's aura flared the next millisecond, and a crimson supernova burned through the gravity holding him.
'Tsk, bullshit magic,' Kenji thought, his frustration mounting.
The power around Sirzechs grew until the sky itself seemed to bleed red. Kenji frowned. He could feel it. Sirzechs was still technically stronger in raw stats, his energy levels reaching into the 50s while Kenji hovered in the 30s.
But stats didn't account for a father's rage. And if the Devil King wanted to stand between him and the crow who hurt his daughter, then Kenji was perfectly willing to see if a Devil King could survive being compressed into a singularity.
The air trembled as the two powerful beings in the territory locked eyes.
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