"Assoluto Argento Mondo."
At that command, it was as if a second Cocytus had been birthed within the heart of the Eighth Circle.
FWUOMM
A titanic burst of blizzard ice erupted from Lavinia, exploding outward in every direction with a frigid roar.
This was the Balance Breaker that legend claimed could freeze the entirety of Europe in its wake.
In a heartbeat, the scorched crimson ground was buried under several feet of pristine white absolute zero Ice.
The perpetual fires of the pits were extinguished as if they had never been, and the boiling lakes of blood scattered throughout Malebolge were instantly flash-frozen into solid rubies of ice.
The freezing wind rushed past Jay, swirling around his clothes without harming him, as if the absolute silver world itself recognized his presence as an ally.
The wave of absolute zero reached the Malebranche in a second.
Sensing the immediate danger, Ciriatto the Wild Hog threw himself to the front of the group.
And then a massive, jagged wheel made of pure demonic green energy manifested behind his hunched back. As the wheel began to rotate with a rhythmic, mechanical click, a grotesque barrier of light enveloped the entire remaining group of Malebranche.
The blizzard struck the shield, but instead of shattering or freezing the barrier, the frost was consumed.
The wide, hideous smile on Ciriatto's face stretched even further, his tusks dripping with anticipation. As his body is slowly getting bigger.
"Eat... everything..." he rasped.
Jay, watching the exchange from the frozen ground, narrowed his eyes as Avesta deconstructed the hideous looking green barrier that enveloped the Evil Claws.
"The shield didn't freeze, instead it got stronger every second it absorbed Lavi's ice... Interesting," Jay noted.
However, the primary target of Assoluto Argento Mondo had not been to freeze the living weapons.
The blizzard burst continued its path at an incredible velocity, slamming into the hundreds-of-meters-tall tsunami of cursed sea hundreds of meters behind the Evil Claws.
With a thunderous crack that sounded like the earth splitting, the entire sea was turned into a towering, jagged wall of ice, halting the deluge instantly.
And then, before the blizzard had even stopped, …
"Shield of whatever..." Jay muttered.
With his black hair fluttering in the gale of a freezing wind that was never cold to him, he gave a gentle swipe of his hand.
"Cleave."
SHIIING
A black tear in space manifested across the face of the green barrier.
"AUGHH!"
Ciriatto let out a sound of pure agony as he felt something tearing not just through his shield, but also ripping apart his very soul.
A burst of black flame enveloped the protective dome, burning with a darkness that devoured light itself. In an instant, the shield of gluttony was reduced to nothing.
"WHAT!" the hog screamed, his voice reaching a pitch of genuine terror for the first time.
Jay didn't give them a single second to register the attack as the freezing burst that had been blocked moments ago rushed in to fill the air around them, immediately encasing several of the Malebranche in blocks of transcendental ice.
Only the Veiled Woman seemed to stand unaffected, but the crimson dragon above them was not about to let them be taken so easily.
"ROARRR!!!"
FWUOOM
A massive surge of demonic crimson flames erupted from Draghignazzo.
The heat was so intense it acted as both a physical wall and a heater, melting the ice that had begun to claim the Sea Serpent and Ciriatto. Jay raised an eyebrow when he saw that even Alichino had been momentarily caught in the ice.
'Why didn't she just stop the ice with her ability?' Jay wondered.
'Ah... don't tell me the ability to inflict desire is only effective against one object at a time. Now that makes sense why it feels so broken..., it still has limits, though... it's still a pretty broken ability.'
As the initial blizzard subsided, leaving the world a silent, white wasteland, hundreds of portals manifested around Jay once more.
Obsidian chains lashed out, seeking to bind him.
Alichino and Cagnazzo rushed toward him again, their movements a blur of black and green violent flash.
Jay prepared to use his spatial magic to delete the incoming chains, but Alichino, her expression now etched with a rare seriousness, commanded in her gentle but haunting voice.
"Unbroken!"
As the tear in space attempted to erase the chains, something bizarre occurred.
The obsidian chains of envy did not vanish with the tear of Rupture. Instead, they burst through the spatial rift, completely unfazed by Jay's attempt to destroy them.
'Oh, was I wrong?' Jay thought. He quickly corrected himself.
'No, I'm right. In principle, all of these chains are considered a single object, the body of Calcabrina herself. By commanding them to be unbroken, she effectively made them immune to my Rupture for that moment.' He thought.
The hundreds of chains lunged at him, seeking to impale his body. But then,
FWUOOM
A burst of black flame erupted from beneath Jay's feet, exploding outward and covering his entire body in a protective shroud of the True Cross.
The obsidian chains that touched the flame were instantly incinerated into ash in a second. Calcabrina's eyes widened in shock from her position atop the serpent.
Alichino and Cagnazzo skidded to a halt.
They refused to touch the black flames. Every instinct in their artificial bodies screamed that to touch that fire was to invite non-existence.
Their soul is screaming.
But as the black flames subsided, Jay was already gone. Alichino's eyes darted around frantically before she whipped her body around to look behind her.
Calcabrina, who was unable to detect his movement, suddenly felt the world in front of her eyes tilt at an impossible angle.
"Eh?"
Before she could process the sensation, her head was severed. It spun through the air in a dizzying rotation before dropping heavily to the frozen ground from the height of the Sea Serpent's back.
Before her body could even begin the process of regeneration, Jay placed his hand on her slumped shoulders.
In the same fashion he had dealt with Barbariccia, he invoked the Grail.
Her soul was violently wrenched from the vessel of her body and absorbed into the black grail. After a couple of seconds, the physical body of the Grace Stomper, Leviathan's Chains of Envy decomposed into dust, leaving only a small, triangular pendant in Jay's hand.
"Hm?" Jay looked at the trinket.
Suddenly, the pendant was engulfed in a sharp purple light.
Before Jay could react, the object was absorbed directly into his palm, engraving itself into his skin as a dark triangle mark.
Avesta scanned the mark, and reading it's structure.
'This is weird...' Jay thought.
He could clearly feel Calcabrina's soul completely sealed inside the Grail, yet there was a residual consciousness, her essence flickering within the mark on his palm.
His musing was cut short as a burst of black, cursed water erupted from the Sea Serpent's body.
Sensing his boots beginning to deteriorate at the mere touch of the liquid, Jay instantly teleported into the sky, hovering far above the rising flood.
He summoned Murakumo back into his hand, the silver blade gleaming against the grey sky.
The flood of cursed water began to drown the icy ground, creating a dark, frozen sea of filth.
"Now that you've brought water to the fight..." Jay muttered.
He cast a glance toward Lavinia, who was levitating fifty meters away.
The Ice Princess met his eyes and gave him a playful wink, her hair and eyes still glowing with the radiant white of her Balance Breaker.
He then turned his dark hazel eyes back to them.
"Let's go band for band..."
GROWLLL
As Jay raised the pale silver blade in his left hand, the crimson sky of the Eighth Circle turned a heavy gray. Clouds of Judgment began to swirl and coil, looming over the frozen battlefield like the eye of a god.
The lightning Qilin emerged from the storm clouds, its body crackling with divine energy, while the Storm Dragon coiled around it in a dance of wind and thunder.
Seeing the godlike power gathering above them, the crimson dragon roared in defiance, flaring its wings to block the incoming lightning.
Ciriatto hunkered down, trying to steel himself against the pain to come.
But then, suddenly-
KRIIIING
The sharp, rhythmic clenching of metal echoed across the frozen battlefield as obsidian chains erupted from dark purple portals, manifesting in the air around the remaining Malebranche.
In a sudden reversal of roles, the very chains that had sought to bind Jay just moments earlier now lashed out at them, tying them in place with metallic certainty.
Their demonic power then began to drain their energy, siphoned into the void of the portals.
"What the fuck! How is he able to use it already?" Scarmiglione shouted, his insect wings buzzing frantically as he struggled against the spectral links.
Jay felt a sudden, exhilarating rush of vitality filling his limbs. It was as if his very cells were being recharged by a high-voltage current.
'So this is how it feels... this ability is truly something else,' Jay thought.
He couldn't help but recall the silent little girl he had met in Romania.
The Ouroboros Dragon, Ophis.
If he used this chain, did that mean he could have an infinite amount of energy to refill his body if he wrapped it around her? That was a thought for another day.
Before the living weapons could coordinate a response, destruction descended from the heavens.
He who judged humans, evils, and gods alike.
Those dark hazel eyes looked down upon the Evil Claws.
A whisper.
"Skyfall."
SHIIIING
"Disappear!" Alichino screamed. Despite being wrapped in the Chains of Envy, she forced her authority over reality to manifest.
The effort was immense.
She coughed a spray of black blood onto the icy ground, her knees buckling.
Above, the lightning Qilin was instantly reduced to nothingness before its hooves could touch the earth.
However, as Jay had predicted it. While the lightning Qilin vanished, the coiling storm Dragon born from the same storm remained.
BOOM
An explosion of atmospheric pressure detonated against the ground.
The shockwave was so violent that it shattered the continental-shelf-thick ice Lavinia had created, sending jagged shards flying like shrapnel.
The impact also pulverized the chains of envy binding the living weapons.
"ROARRRR!!!"
The Sea Serpent, Graffiacane, let out a piteous roar. The storm dragon struck its massive frame with the force of a falling star, splattering dark purple blood across the white snow.
To Jay's surprise, the veiled woman, Libicocco, remained standing in the center of the carnage.
She had done nothing to defend herself, yet she remained completely unscratched. Her violet eyes remained fixed on Jay, staring with an intensity that bordered on obsession.
Meanwhile, the crimson dragon, Draghignazzo, had managed to weather the storm.
He had curled his wings into a protective sphere, reinforced by a dense core of crimson demonic flame that shielded both himself and Rubicante, who stood perched atop his head.
The most unfortunate was Ciriatto. The giant wild hog was still attempting to heal from his previous wounds when the storm dragon landed directly on his position. His upper body, from his bloated chest to his thick knees, was simply erased, reduced to a splattered of meat.
All that remained of the Shield of Gluttony were two severed, twitching feet.
"Ahhh, fuck... I really don't want to do this!" Scarmiglione yelled.
The insect winged man emerged from the protection of his own wings, floating high in the sky.
He extended his hands, and a surge of green demonic energy washed over the wounded Sea Serpent and Ciriatto's remains.
Their flesh began to knit back together with unnatural speed, but Lavinia was not about to allow a recovery.
A fresh burst of absolute zero erupted from her.
Cagnazzo whipped around, his jagged claws tearing through the freezing air to shred the ice aimed at him and Alichino.
But he couldn't stop the sheer scale of the Absolute Silver World.
The blizzard brutally encased Ciriatto's feet and regenerating tissue in a block of ice before the healing could take hold.
Graffiacane attempted to use its cursed waters to deteriorate the encroaching frost, while Draghignazzo fought back with his crimson fire.
Jay didn't let up.
Hundreds of portals manifested around the Sea Serpent again, binding its hundred-meter-long body in a grueling, metallic embrace.
A black aura began to envelope Ame-no-Habakiri, and it wasn't the usual black flame.
The jet-black blade was engulfed in a towering black aura as Jay unleashed the Susanoo Ultimate Move, the same attack that had once killed the legendary Evil Dragon, Yamata-no-Orochi.
And then Jay whispered.
"World Slasher,"
SHIIIING
In an instant, a horizontal line of absolute blackness bisected the horizon.
The hundred-meter-long Sea Serpent was split perfectly in two, a clean cut running the length of its entire body.
The sheer wind pressure from the impact sent the upper half of the beast flying through the air. Before it could land, Lavinia froze the severed mass into a mountain of ice and shattered it into a billion fragments.
The speed and lethality of the attack left the survivors stunned.
"Let's try something else," Jay muttered.
With a flick of his wrist, the Black Grail appeared once more.
Jay commanded the Chains of Envy to lash out at the frozen feet of Ciriatto.
He coated the chains in the Incinerate Anthem to bypass Lavinia's ice, but instead of siphoning energy, he try something different.
The black flame on the Grail flickered wildly.
And then, a Viscous purple and green energies from Graffiacane and Ciriatto were slowly drawn through the links and into the black chalice.
The chains absorbed souls.
'It works, but the absorption speed through the chains is significantly slower than direct contact,' Jay noted.
Sensing the potential loss of two more of the Evil Claws, Cagnazzo hissed from beneath his cloak and launched himself into the air, aiming for Jay's throat.
Lavinia, ever watchful, manifested an ice doll from her shadow to intercept him.
CLANKK
BOOM
The doll was reduced to glittering shards by the destructive power of the Claws of Chaos, but then-
CRACKLE
Suddenly an ice dragon erupted from the side, its jaws clamping down on Cagnazzo's body and driving him back down into the frozen earth with a thunderous crash.
BOOM
By the time the dust settled, the remains of the Sea Serpent had condensed into an obsidian-black scythe, its blade coiled with serpentine ornaments and pulsing with a foul purple aura.
While Ciriatto's remains had shrunk into a green, cracked wheel no thicker than a sheet of paper.
'Hm, did my black flame damage the shield?' Jay wondered.
He used his spatial magic to sweep both artifacts into his pocket dimension before turning his gaze back to the remaining Evil Claws.
"Three more down. Six left," Jay muttered.
What remained of the legendary Malebranche was a grim sight.
Alichino stood trembling, her eyes wide with a fear she had likely never known in her eons of existence.
Cagnazzo was clawing his way out of the ice that had pinned him.
Libicocco, the veiled woman, remained unfazed and eerily still.
Scarmiglione was gritting his teeth, his eyes darting around as he desperately searched for a strategy.
The last one is the Crimson Dragon, Draghignazzo, who was still hesitant to attack Jay, and the man with the crimson crown, who was still smiling.
While the Draconic Deus Slayer slowly descended from the sky as both Divine Swords crackled with divine aura in his hands.
If the battle no longer required any strategy, and when raw power was no longer enough…
If it was simply a matter of which side had the superior ability…
Hax for Hax.
Jay still had plenty of them up his sleeves.