Chapter 89: Georg
Cao Cao wasn't sure what to do, or rather, if he even should try to do anything at all. He was committed in his self-appointed mission to destroy all that wasn't human, but he wasn't blind enough not to recognize when an anomaly, an exceptionally dangerous one, was standing right before him in the form of a freshly transformed devil-dragon hybrid.
So far, he had only shown his opponent two abilities of the seven his spheres carried. Assaratana's teleportation, and Cakkaratana's weapon destruction. However, the question wasn't whether or not Cao Cao could catch him by surprise, it was how the effectiveness of True Longinus had been affected. At first, all Alduin had to defend himself with was Fafnir's Golden Aura.
Now, he had the help of Demonic Ki too, a power that clashed with Holy Power like oil and water. The Yin to Cao Cao's Yang. And it wasn't just coating and strengthening his form like the Dragon King's enhancement factor, it was a part of him. Symbiotic. One and whole.
"That stuff you spewed about wanting to seduce the Kyuubi," Cao Cao let out a low, knowing chuckle. "That was all complete nonsense, wasn't it?" He couldn't help but wonder what business such a creature could have with the West Yōkai Faction.
"Indeed," Alduin answered in a dreary, sedated tone. His lightless eyes gravitated towards the mist-polluted sky above. "Not that it matters, the lie has already served its purpose. I'm unable to connect with the world outside this sub-space your friend created, but I believe the information he's about to tell you should coincide with my assumption of what's transpired, in accordance to the amount of time we've spent here."
Cao Cao's brow furrowed as he peered over Alduin's shoulder, shooting his faction's tactician a questioning, expectant stare.
Momentarily, Georg closed his eyes. His fists clenched to the point of trembling as a wave of melancholy and mourning seemed to wash over him, emotions Alduin was more receptive to than ever by virtue of the sheer amount of negative lifeforce instilled within.
"Georg?" Cao Cao queried.
Georg didn't say anything, at least not verbally. He just made a few hand signs that only Cao Cao seemed to understand.
Siegfried. Jeanne. Heracles. Connla. All down.
'Down' didn't necessarily mean dead, but the belief they'd remain merely unconscious was a wishful one. They had infiltrated the West Yōkai Faction with the clear intent of capturing its leader, whose subordinates worshiped her as if she were a Shinto Goddess herself.
To them, only one punishment befitted such a grave offense.
"There's another Satan-Class Devil in the West's headquarters," Georg replied through ground teeth. Forget 'deviations'. This whole operation had proven itself to be a full-on nightmare. A series of ludicrous happenstances occurring in a single sequence. "They have more demonic power, but I'm not sure whether or not that makes them as strong as this one."
"Talking about me as if I'm not here, are we?" Alduin's eyes went half-lidded, his expression that of an unamused parent responding to their child's antics. "How uncourtly."
Another wave of ice-cold, demonic air washed over Georg. Magnitudes stronger than before. This wasn't just a passive explosion of power ushered by a transformation, it was a direct, targeted warning sent straight into Georg's brain. Warning him to handle the situation carefully if he wanted to make it out alive, if such an outcome were even still on the table.
"Hm. So that's how that works," Alduin mused, examining his own hand.
Georg pressed his lips together, biting down on his inner cheek to force himself into composure. As a strategist, he no longer saw any logic in continuing to try to confront the devil. His comrades had already failed to capture the Kyuubi, and the devil's current state was much too bizarre, and frankly, creepy, for him to hold any confidence about emerging victorious in a confrontation.
There were too many questions, and too many reasons to forsake the pointless battle that stood before them. Say they expended all their energy in order to successfully take him down, what then? There was still another Satan-Class Devil that awaited them.
Georg took a deep breath.
'As long as I keep Dimension Lost active, we'll always have a way ou—'
"Your emotions are telling, Magician."
Georg felt a pit form in his stomach, his gaze laser-focused onto Alduin as he carefully raised his hand upwards, his index finger pointed at the epicenter of the dimensional mist's ceiling.
"Fear. Hesitation. Anxiety. They all allude to the internal dilemma of knowing whether or not to make the logical choice of retreat, or abide by your leader's clear desire to strike me down with the holiest of relics he's been 'blessed' with." The darkness around Alduin started to stir, circling his frame like a whirlpool and gravitating towards the tip of his index finger. "Fret not, for I have decided to take the liberty of making the decision for you."
It all happened in an instant.
Demonic Ki erupted out of Alduin's finger like a tsunami, the horrific, pained cries of voices imprisoned within the energy audible to all. "Traitor!" "Thief!" "You took it!" "Give it back!" "Unworthy!" The same desperate howls Alduin heard when he first connected with his mother's 'gift' had now made their way into the real world, terrifying just as they were pitiful to hear.
In a matter of seconds, the already colorless sub-space's atmosphere was drowned in pitch-blackness. Cao Cao himself remained protected by his spear's natural resistance, but the look of sheer, unadulterated panic on his tactician's face didn't reassure him. He couldn't remember the last thing he had seen Georg look so uncomfortable in his own skin.
Probably because he had never seen such a thing.
Black miasma and deep-purple mist started to clash with one another. Mixing. Contaminating. Trying to hold dominance over the other in a contest to determine who was worthy of existing, and who would bear the ill fate of vanishing right then and there.
And if Georg's reaction was anything to go off, the inevitable victor was clear.
Dimension Lost's mist started to clear, ripped apart, torn to passing wind by the immense corruptive properties of Alduin's Demonic Ki. Try as it did, expecting it to maintain its structural integrity against a force of nature like that was asking too much.
The sub-space had been dismantled.
With that, Alduin was once again capable of connecting the unfathomable quantity of Ki stored in Urakyoto's atmosphere. Lifeforce rushed back into his meridians, filling them with lifeforce's positive side alongside its negative. Not that it did anything to mitigate the sensation of raw malice his presence offered.
"Ah~. Much better~." Alduin breathed a relieved exhale, at last, the phantom pain of being cut off from Ki had vanished. Demonic Ki aside, he was back at full strength. He was a container for both 'life' and 'death'. A vessel made whole.
"You…" Georg's voice, which he intended to sound interrogative, came out as a mere, hushed whisper. "Just who the hell are you?"
As a Magician, a member of the Hero Faction, and a part of its parent organization, he was deeply familiar with the devil race and its figureheads. The 72 Pillars. The Four Great Satans. The traditionalists of the Great King Faction. The defectors. He knew all the faces he needed to.
Yet, he couldn't even think back of rumors that mentioned a figure with such abilities. The dots didn't connect, his mind remained barren and a wasteland devoid of comprehension.
"I doubt my name would be of much help, I'm not a particularly public figure."
In preparation, Alduin rolled his shoulders, then proceeded to crack his neck. His intent to fight clearer than Urakyoto's freshly revealed sky, it was simply a question of who'd he go after first. Georg and Leonardo on one side of the bridge, or Cao Cao on the other?
"But who knows? Maybe if you're somehow able to survive this, you'll be able to change that when you back and conglomerate with whatever friends you may or may not have—"
Cao Cao blinked. A motion that only lasted 0.1 - 0.4 seconds. His eyelids closed to lubricate the organ that rested underneath them.
"—or perhaps not. I'm no fortune teller."
And when they opened, Alduin was standing right in front of him. He hadn't teleported, he had no such ability. His speed had simply reached newfound territory. His natural attributes all boosted both by Touki and Demonic Ki. Multiplication atop multiplication.
He opened his palm, and held it right up to Cao Cao's face.
WHOOSH!
A burst of air slammed straight into Cao Cao's figure, a detonation of wind sending him flying through the air like a helpless ragdoll. The whiplash he experienced alone almost snapped his neckbone backwards like a twig, potentially ending him right then and there, if not for the grace of Holy Power holding the binds of his skeletal structure together like glue.
Alduin raised his hand and clenched into a tight, wound fist, causing a wall of earth to form up a few meters behind the airborne hero. His spine crashed into the hardened structure with a brutal CRACK. His vertebrae trembling against the vicious vibrations, and the wind forced out of his abdomen. Leaving his breathless and fully open, regardless of the spear's influence.
Yet, he chose not to pursue Cao Cao, despite the clear opportunity his stunned state provided. Instead, he twisted his head to the side, mechanically shifting his attention to Georg, who he could sense gathering a staggering amount of mana at his fingertips in preparation to come to his leader's rescue.
"So this is the limit of your composure," he muttered under his breath, too quiet for Georg or Leonardo to hear. "Woeful. The care you feel for your leader and comrades is ten—perhaps a hundred times greater than what your leader seems to feel in turn."
His eyes alive with a fierce vengeance and the desire to keep Cao Cao from becoming the Hero Faction's fifth casualty of the day, Georg opened his mouth and began to spew out a series of incantations. "Mortal Infernum. Glacial Strike. Projectile Hurricane. Bedrock Spear. First Tide. Seventh Lightning. Suffocating Ash. Bloodlit Convergence. Spatial Supernova. Chain of Immediate Magical Binding. Bond of Immediate Magical Unison."
Alduin had seen it all before, the way Magic Circles blipped to life and trailed down Georg's arm in perfect sequence. But this time, the raw quantity of mana Faust's descendants were choosing to consume from his core was truly a thing to revere.
It was almost beautiful in a sense, the way colored lights of red, ice-blue, light-green, brown, deep-blue, bright-yellow, so and so forth merged together at Georg's fingertips. As someone who not only fought as a hand-to-hand brawler, but a careful spellcaster, Alduin felt obligated to respect the Magician's prowess.
Nonetheless, this was a through and through battle to the death, not a spar. Elegant or not, effectiveness and lethality were the only factors that counted.
Fatigued beads of sweat perspired against Georg's pores, the Magician fully intended to use all that he could to protect Cao Cao. He was the dream. The pillar that allowed a group like the Hero Faction to exist in the first place. A man who shared his forefather's talent for recruitment and leadership.
He had to live.
Alduin looked up, his abyssal optics graced with the sight of the clouds splitting apart from each other, forming a perfectly even, neat circle of a gap. An origin point that served as an exit zone for all the mana Georg was calling upon, the final destination of his spell.
"Go on then," Alduin said aloud, this time audible enough for Georg's ears to hear. "If you believe it'll work, then I have no business stopping you from trying." The way he spoke was off-putting, as if he already knew how the battle would proceed from start to finish.
But it was too late for Georg to pull back now, the spell was primed and ready, all that was left for him to do was call it down from the heavens.
"NINE PILLAR SMITE!"
Silence followed—
Then destruction.
A pillar descended onto Alduin from above, bright-red in color and made entirely from flames that scorched with the intensity of a thousand suns. The continuous, outward roll of smoke polluting the atmosphere with the smell of ash and char.
A second followed. A bright, icy-blue that overlapped with the flames. The sizzle of fire and frost turned into a pool of melted, boiling water audible to all. Counteracting the first pillar's heating effect and bringing the air to an even temperature.
Then a third. An invisible, tempest-like wind that oxygenated and fanned the fire a step further. Giving it the extra boost it needed to bring down as much destruction as its magical composition could onto its target.
The fourth came. Not in the form of a pillar, but more so an enormous, hardened spear of earth that formed in the sky. The kind you'd expect to be used to impale a giant or some gargantuan creature of myth, not a very much human-sized devil.
It dropped down with all its weight, the damage it did to Urakyoto's terrain crystal clear, but whether or not it actually had an effect on Alduin remained up in the air. It was nigh-impossible to follow its direct path with all the smoke obscuring everyone's vision.
The fifth arrived. A cylindrical, unimaginably heavy downpour of water with pressure that rivaled the deepest ends of the Mariana Trench. Its excess spilled over either side of the bridge and refilled the once barren river channel Alduin had emptied.
In preparation for the sixth. The parted clouds that loomed above started to darken, a gloomy, dark-gray sky replacing Urakyoto's typical sky blue. Georg's mana initiated a static charge through the clouds, ushering an ear-rupturing, shattering bolt of lightning that struck down with all its might, its force impressive enough to make Akeno's Holy Lightning look no more intimidating than a cheap taser.
The seventh came, it wasn't much of an attack, more so an effort to keep its target distracted. An instantaneous, bountiful eruption of magical ash that demanded one keep their respiratory system lest they wanted to succumb to a grotesque, suffocating death.
The eight reminded the spell's target of Thora, only far greater in scale. A piercing, breakneck stream of blood that shot forth like a bullet train. Compressed. Sharp. Deadly. An arrow headed force that could slice through even the toughest of armors. Natural or artificial.
And finally—
The ninth. A spatial distortion, a form of magic that reminded Alduin of the battle he lost against Bedeze Abaddon. The one Georg created didn't seem to be any weaker than his, a Satan-Class Devil boosted by the King Piece. In fact, it wouldn't be a stretch to call it a touch stronger. It warped the space around its target, and crashed inwards on itself. A collapse-triggered implosion of spatial matter only someone with the enlightenment Dimension Lost provided could attain.
The spell was over.
"Phew… raw destruction like that really isn't my style," Georg huffed, staggering and tripping over himself in exhaustion. His mana reserves were completely depleted to the very last drop. Dried up. Finito. Empty. "Oh well, drastic situations require drastic measures and all. At least that damn freak's dea—"
"Dead?"
A casual interruption caused Georg to completely freeze up, inwardly and outwardly. The very mechanisms of his body locking up in despair.
Stiffly, he craned his head to the side. Every millimeter of rotation was more pained than the last, as if his brain was trying to shield him in some way by preventing him from looking.
"It's unfortunate, had your sub-space been deactivated beforehand, I might've shown you that ability of mine in advance. I imagine you would've had the necessary wit to figure out a counter."
Alduin was standing right beside him. Completely unharmed.
Georg refused to believe it, but there he was, safe and sound. It was like the godlike spell of destruction he had just cast hadn't even scratched the devil.
'Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible. Impossible.'
"You see, I have a certain illusion ability of sorts. I was unable to use it while your sub-space was still up since it shielded you from its mental disruption. However, once I managed to disperse the mist, I managed to bring it back up again. Thus, I decided to use it to manipulate your senses into thinking I was still standing in the middle of the bridge when I evidently—was not."
He offered a callous explanation. His eyes focused not on Georg's face, but something he appeared to be holding in his hand.
"I understand the strategy you tried to employ, Magician. Depleting your mana to nothingness to keep me occupied while you used your Sacred Gear to teleport your friends elsewhere, a noble demonstration of self-sacrifice." He continued to narrate. "And you half-succeeded, though I'm not sure whether to praise you directly for that achievement, or coincidental circumstance."
That phrase stuck with him.
Half-succeeded.
Georg's gaze trailed Alduin's, his nostrils twitching as the scent of thick, pungent iron trailing through his olfactory senses.
Then he saw it.
The Magician's mouth opened to speak, but no words came out. There was no damage to his vocal chords or anything physical keeping him. Only the pure mental inability to give life to words, or any intelligible sounds for that matter.
Leonardo's severed head was in the devil's clasp.
"I kept it painless, there was no despair to farm off him unless I went through the extra effort of ensuring there was. Which isn't convenient in this current situation." He exhaled a deep, almost regretful breath. "I wanted to go after the spear-wielder, but it wasn't possible to catch him off guard thanks to his Sacred Gear's considerable passive benefits. Thus, he managed to escape through your mist, whilst this one, failed to."
Finally, Alduin raised his head to meet Georg's eyes, his fully dilated, grief-ridden eyes that had yet to fully process what just transpired.
"You, on the other hand, are packed with a rich quantity of despair. Sustenance that will both aid me, and serve as learning material for this new state of mine I do not fully comprehend. I'm not sure if you understand the feeling, but discomfort in your own skin is not a pleasant one."
He didn't give Georg the time or opportunity to rationalize nor strategize, he simply positioned his hand like a blade—and chopped. The inward resentment he expressed upon looking at Leonardo, or what remained of the Sacred Gear wielder who was denied the opportunity to even show what he was made of, felt more than sufficient to him to absorb into his newfound demonic core.
His palm hovered over Georg's corpse, the same blackness he had weaponized floating into his pores and becoming one with him. The exact ritual Demonic Ki Practitioners would enact time and time again in order to add to their gluttonous powerbase.
"I suppose it's time for me to return," he hummed to himself. "I should prepare myself for the next confrontation with the spear wielder, he'll be stronger, but his resentment should be of an even greater caliber. I'd be a fool to let such an opportunity go to waste."
As he began his stroll back to the West Yōkai Faction's headquarters, a slow, upturned smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth.
"Isn't that right, Mother?"
///
Something was lost, but what was lost can sometimes be regained too. The question is, how?
If you want to support my work and get access to early chapters, go check me out on P@treon/Accel14!
There's also a discord if you want to communicate with me there or get updated on public chapter releases! (wNzT9AEsaz)