"Let's kill them all."
As those words left Jay's lips, the static atmosphere inside of Malebolge shattered.
Suddenly, hundreds of dark purple, vortex-like portals manifested in the air, surrounding both Jay and Lavinia. In a synchronized burst of motion, obsidian chains erupted from each portal like striking cobras.
KRRRRING!
The metallic shriek of the chains echoed across the desolate plains.
Curiously, the weapons completely ignored Lavinia, as if their malevolent intent was solely calibrated to Jay's presence. With incredible speed, the hundreds of links wrapped around Jay, binding his arms, torso, and legs until he was encased in a cocoon of dark metal.
Jay widened his eyes, though not out of fear of the physical restraint.
'Oh... it absorbs my energy,' Jay thought.
Avesta ignited within his pupils, allowing him to see a faint black aura bleeding out of his body. The energy coiled around the obsidian links, being hungrily siphoned into the chains of envy, Calcabrina.
However, Jay did not struggle.
He watched as two figures rushed toward him from opposite directions with blinding speed.
Just as their claws and blades were about to connect with his bound form, Jay activated Phantasmagoria.
Like a ghost slipping through a sieve, his physical form turned intangible. The Chain of Envy, losing its grip on a target that was no longer occupied the same space with it, crumbled and fell away as Jay stepped through the metal rings.
CLANKKK!
The echoing sound of metal on metal erupted across the battlefield.
The pale silver blade of Ame-no-Murakumo flashed through the air, parrying an incoming black strike from Alichino.
The white-haired, expressionless woman pressed her pitch-black sword against Jay's silver edge. Their eyes met for a fraction of a second, sharing a moment of absolute silence amidst the chaos of their brief exchange.
Before the stalemate could continue, a blast of green demonic energy surged toward Jay's chest from the front.
But Jay simply maintained his intangible state and allowing the projectile to pass through his torso as if he were nothing more than a shadow.
BOOOM!
The attack struck like a blast of nuke, the impact so violent that Jay noticed a visible tear in the space he had just occupied. It was a terrifying power that could seemingly rend the fabric of reality itself.
'That was a dangerous one...' He thought.
Cagnazzo unleashed another attack, hissing from beneath his cloak. Five green flashes slashed toward Jay at incredible speed, threatening to tear him apart. Avesta ignited as Jay realized the next strike could truly rip through his Phantasmagoria.
Jay jumped and dodged it with relative ease.
'Interesting… It can tear through anything as long as it understands what it is,' Jay thought while in the air, as Avesta scanned every single line that formed the Claws of Chaos on Cagnazzo's hand.
But, without providing a single window for an opening, Alichino's obsidian blade erupted in an enormous black aura. The pressure was so intense it pulverized the ground beneath them into a fine dust in an instant.
And with a voice that was nothing more than a chilling whisper, she commanded.
"Stop moving."
Jay, who was still suspended in the air after his jump, felt a sudden, unnatural weight lock all over his body. His momentum died instantly, leaving him hanging like a puppet with cut strings in the air.
"Hm?" Jay's eyes widened in surprise, but the last thing he saw was a towering slash of a black blade.
And a fraction of a second later, the ground beneath him vanished.
BOOM!
A thunderous explosion shook the realm of Malebolge. A blast of dark demonic energy vaporized thousands of meters of land, creating a massive crater that transformed the crimson earth into withered, black charcoal.
Alichino's grey eyes remained expressionless as she stared into the smoke, waiting to confirm the fate of her opponent. However, her pupils suddenly contracted as she sensed a sharp, lethal presence directly behind her.
SPLURRT!
A clean tear appeared in the center of her chest before she could even register a movement. The jet-black blade of Ame-no-Habakiri pierced through her back and impaled her through the heart.
"What..." she muttered. Her voice was still devoid of emotion, even as thick, black blood began to drip from the blade and onto the scorched ground.
"All that demonic energy just to shift your attention in the middle of a battle. How foolish...," Jay muttered into her ear.
Beside them, the black flames on the rim of the Grail flickered like a hurricane. Alichino gasped as she felt her very soul being gripped by an invisible force, pulled and ripped apart by the Grail.
But before the soul consuming process could be completed, a high-pitched, mocking voice rang out.
"Not that easy! KAKAKAKA!"
Jay felt a sudden, invasive pressure against his temples. A wave of psychic energy attempted to burrow into his mind, seeking to rewrite his thoughts and turn him into a thrall.
'Mind control?' Jay thought, his eyes shifting toward the source.
The hideous goblin, Farfarello was crouching in the distance, his fingers twitching as he channeled the mental intrusion. Simultaneously, the sound of tearing air warned Jay that Cagnazzo's claws were closing in from behind.
Jay didn't even move an inch, trusting entirely in his companion.
FWUOOM!
A blast of absolute frost erupted from the side, a wall of white ice catching Cagnazzo mid-lunge and sealing his body within a massive glacier.
And with a swift, gentle movement, Jay wrenched Habakiri sideways. Black blood sprayed into the air as he carved his way out of Alichino's body. As she fell to her knees, her eyes widened in realization.
FWHUOM!
A pillar of black flame erupted from beneath her feet, consuming half of her body in an instant.
"Unburnt!" Alichino commanded.
The erupting flames instantly froze and died out. Jay's Avesta ignited further, scanning the phenomenon. He was deconstructing the logic that constructed the ability of the Sword of Desire in real-time, learning how her ability to command the state of reality actually functioned.
Sensing the immediate danger, Alichino desperately retreated. Her body, charred by the violet embers of the Incinerate Anthem, began to slowly knit itself back together with the help of some sort of viscous obsidian demonic energy.
Jay didn't bother chasing her. His focus was now entirely on the hideous goblin. When their eyes met, Farfarello screamed in a mixture of terror and ecstasy.
"KAKAKAKA! Be my-"
The sentence died in the goblin's throat as Jay's figure simply vanished.
Every Malebranche present tensed, their senses screaming, but Jay was already gone. He reappeared instantly behind the goblin. Barbariccia, who had been preparing another obsidian arrow just a few meters away, widened his eyes in horror as Jay materialized at his side.
Before the archer could even raise his bow, Jay reached out with a gentle, almost casual swipe of his hand in front of his face.
"Rupture."
SPLURRRT!
In a horrifying display of gruesome, Barbariccia's entire head was deleted from space. There was no struggle and no defense. A fountain of black blood geysered into the air as the headless body of the Curly Beard collapsed into the red dust.
Jay's expression remained flat and emotionless. In his current state, even high-tier Ultimate-Class beings like Barbariccia were little more than fodder.
He also realized then that while these living weapons possessed immense raw power, their actual combat ability was disappointing.
They were a far cry from a monster like Azi Dahaka, who despite possessing thousands of broken abilities, still used every trick and bit of wisdom to snatch victory, or Susanoo, who wielded the very hax Jay now commanded.
Compared to those legendary beings, these artificial living weapons were more than a bunch of kids with godly power.
In the end, Jay had always believed that what made someone strong was not the power they wielded, but how they chose to use it.
Raw power was only one aspect of a real battle.
But despite that, Jay found the nature of their abilities interesting nonetheless, Alichino's capability to inflict desire into something and Calcabrina's energy absorption had a very high potential.
He mused on how useful those concepts would be if integrated into his own arsenal. But in the hands of artificial souls who had spent eons sealed away, these powers were being wasted.
At least that's what he thought.
"HEH!"
The goblin yelped, trying to scramble away on its four limbs. But before it could retreat, Jay's hand was already there. He let Habakiri vanish into thin air as he gripped Farfarello's head.
He squeezed with such force that black blood began to seep between his fingers.
"ARGHHHH! WHY? WHY DOES MY MIND CONTROL NOT WORK?" the goblin shrieked in agony.
Jay looked down at the creature with cold, dead eyes. A whisper echoed through the sudden silence of the battlefield, reaching the ears of the remaining Malebranche.
"Burn Everlasting Sins."
A surge of black flames engulfed the goblin's body in terrifying silence. Farfarello's screams of ecstasy turned into a high-pitched wail of pure torment that echoed across the crimson ground. A second later, the sound was cut short as his body crumbled into drifting ash.
All that remained in Jay's hand was a simple black ring.
"Hm… so this isn't working," Jay thought, looking at the ring in his palm with knowing eyes.
"It seems that burning the soul bound to the weapon isn't the right approach if I actually intend to use it."
Avesta ignited as he scanned the ring. The lines of runes and magics that had constructed the living weapon had vanished, probably erased along the way by the black flame of the True Cross as it burn the Goblin's soul.
'But I don't need this anyway,' Jay decided.
He had always hated mind control and memory manipulation.
He hated it when it was used against him, and he refused to use it on others. It was the same reason he had never used such methods to interrogate Kuroka or even any of his opponent.
To Jay, a person's mind and memories were the most precious things they possessed.
To alter or occupy someone else's memory was an act that went against everything he stood for.
Whether a memory was good or bad, no matter how much pain it carried, it was the only proof that a being truly existed.
If he were to forget the pain, the choices, and the losses that had brought him to this point, then nothing would remain of his reason to live.
He turned his gaze toward the rest of the Evil Claws.
They were staring at him in absolute terror.
They had witnessed one of their supposedly immortal kin be annihilated with the same effort one might use to swat a fly. To these ancient entities, the realization that they could be permanently erased triggered something profound and primal in their minds.
Fear.
"Who... is that guy?"
The handsome man with the insect wings frowned as he hovered in the sulfurous air, staring down at the black-haired young man from a distance.
The cocky, manic smile that usually defined his face had vanished, replaced by a twitching lip.
"Isn't he even scarier than those four bastards who created us?" Scarmiglione muttered, his teeth gritting together as he began nervously grinding his nails against one another.
"Are... you... scared?"
It was the giant hog, Ciriatto, who spoke. His voice was a low, guttural rasp that seemed to screech and grate against the air every time he forced a word out of his misshapen throat.
"Huh? No way... I'm just curious," the Troublemaker snapped, though his frantic wingbeats betrayed his denial.
High above them, the crimson dragon erupted in a fresh wave of demonic flames.
Its slitted reptilian eyes were fixed solely on Jay, tracking his every breath. Sensing the weight of that gaze, Jay shifted his eyes upward, meeting the dragon's stare with a chilling indifference.
As their eyes locked, a bizarre shiver raced down the dragon's spine. In that human gaze, it saw something far more ancient and infinitely more malevolent than its own existence. The feeling deepened as it stared into his left eye.
"KRUGHHH!" The dragon growled, shaking its massive head to scoff the feeling off, though its flames flickered unsteadily.
Nearby, the veiled woman in the black wedding dress watched the exchange.
Her face was strangely flustered, her chest heaving as she looked at Jay with a twisted, burgeoning obsession, particularly after witnessing the black flame he wielded.
However, her expression shifted instantly when her gaze drifted toward Lavinia. Her eyes turned so cold and filled with such vitriol that even the blonde woman could feel the shift in the atmosphere.
"Huh?" Lavinia tilted her head in confusion. She didn't understand why this ancient living weapon was suddenly projecting such personal hostility toward her.
Before she could dwell on it, the sound of shattering ice rang out.
Cagnazzo had finally succeeded in breaking free from the glacier Lavinia had encased him in. He didn't press the attack, however. He immediately retreated, leaping back to join the side of Scarmiglione and Ciriatto, his breathing heavy and his claws cracked.
Jay ignored the regrouping enemies for a moment.
He stored the black ring taken from the goblin into his pocket dimension before turning his attention to the headless physical form of Barbariccia.
As the blazing Black Grail flickered with a hungry light, a dark, viscous energy began to seep out of the archer's remains. Within seconds, the headless body decomposed into a fine, grey dust that was swallowed by the crimson ground of Malebolge as it souls is being sealed inside the Holy Grail.
All that remained was the black bearded bow, its ornate carvings pulsing with an enormous Demonic Energy. Jay reached down and picked it up. He didn't know the first thing about archery, but he tucked the weapon into his pocket dimension to inspect later.
'If the Satans really created these weapons with Sacred Gears in mind, then it's highly probable that they possess something akin to a Balance Breaker state,' Jay thought.
However, neither Farfarello nor Barbariccia even had a chance to show him that, because of how quickly they were defeated.
Ame-no-Habakiri manifested once more in his right hand as Jay took a slow, deliberate step forward, his boots crunching on the scorched earth.
"Two down... nine left," he said, his voice cutting through the wind.
A wave of black energy erupted from his body, expanding outward like a physical weight. It sent a crushing pressure toward every remaining member of the Malebranche, forcing them to brace themselves.
"ROARGHHHH"
Sensing the terminal danger, the dark obsidian sea serpent let out a roar that tore through the sky.
The ground began to heave and buckle, catching Jay and Lavinia by surprise. From the horizon, after an earthquake, suddenly a colossal tsunami of a dark, cursed liquid rose.
It stood hundreds of meters tall, a towering wall of demonic sea that threatened to drown the entire world in its wake.
Jay glanced at Lavinia. She met his gaze and gave a short, confident nod. As the cursed sea loomed over them, Lavinia closed her eyes, and a brilliant, whitish-blue aura began to envelop her slender frame.
She slowly ascended into the air, her hair fluttering in the freezing gale she was generating.
Jay remained on the ground, his focus narrowing on the primary threats.
Alichino, the Dragon, the Sea Serpent, and Cagnazzo.
These four possessed the greatest raw power in the group. Three of them possessed demonic energy levels that reached the Satan-Class. While they might not have been as formidable as a High-Class Satan like Serafall, and certainly not on the level of Sirzechs or Ajuka, their power was likely comparable that of someone in Grayfia's caliber.
As Lavinia floated hundreds of meters toward the heavens, the Longinus she wielded, Absolute Demise began to resonate. Carved by the God of the Bible using the eternal ice of Cocytus itself, the weapon erupted with a magnificent, silverish-blue energy.
Suddenly, it began to snow in the heart of Hell.
Lavinia slowly opened her eyes, her sapphire pupils having turned a blinding, transcendent white.
"Balance Breaker..."
Her voice was calm, yet it carried the weight of an absolute law as she spoke the words of her ultimate form.
"Assoluto Argento Mondo."