Cagnazzo hissed as his thick, green blood splattered across the frozen landscape.
Although his jagged claws could easily rend the ice dragons Lavinia summoned, the sheer speed of the onslaught was becoming impossible to track. Behind the deep shadow of his hood, his eyes ignited with a predatory glow, fixed solely on the descending figure of Jay.
The moment Jay's boots touched the frosted hell ground, Cagnazzo's form vanished in a dark green flash. He reappeared instantly in Jay's blind spot, leaving a burst of displaced dust in his wake as he unleashed a double-swing of his claws with enough force to part the atmosphere.
"Rarghhhh!"
CLANK
BOOM
The impact detonated against the ground where Jay had stood a millisecond prior, pulverizing the permafrost into a massive crater. Jay, however, had sidestepped the strike with a fluidity that made the effort look casual.
'If this were me before the fight with Azi, that impact probably would have shattered my body,' Jay reflected.
But things were different now. When a physical body becomes as strong as that of an Archangel of Heaven, brute force alone loses its lethality. His current speed and agility allowed him to dodge it easily without relying too heavily on Phantasmagoria.
He had learned the hard way that relying too much on Phantasmagoria would come back to bite him.
And then, as his body still retreated in the air, with a violent, triple-swing of Ame-no-Habakiri, Jay countered.
SHIIING SHIIING SHIIING
SPLUURT
Three instantaneous black slashes carved through the air. In a heartbeat, they severed both of Cagnazzo's hands and bisected his upper torso.
Then, the freezing winds of the eighth circle caused by the Absolute Silver World caught the demon's heavy cloak, tearing it away to reveal a man whose flesh was a roadmap of a disgusting jagged ancient scars.
Cagnazzo's green eyes widened in shock, but his regenerative factor was relentless. A surge of liquid green demonic energy boiled from his wounds, stitching his severed limbs and torso back together in a grotesque display of immortality.
"RGGGHHHH!"
As Jay teleported a short distance away to regain his footing, Cagnazzo let out a guttural growl, his killing intent manifesting as a physical weight that pressed against the icy air.
Suddenly, his entire frame was enveloped in a dark green, almost blackish demonic shroud. Arcane lightning began to crackle across his skin, jumping between the scars on his chest.
'Oh, that's the Balance Breaker equivalent for the Evil Claws,' Jay observed.
A towering, ominous green aura erupted toward the grey sky, molding the demon's shape into something monstrous. From the light emerged a giant hound, nearly fifteen meters tall, with fur made of shifting shadows and fangs that dripped with corrosive essence of the green chaos energy.
As Jay stared down the beast, the Black Grail at his side flickered, feeding the analytical data directly into his consciousness.
Cagnazzo's Embodiment of Evil.
ExE
'So that is what they call it,' Jay mused.
His gaze swept across the remaining battlefield, scanning Alichino, Scarmiglione, Rubicante, and Libicocco.
Then his eyes stopped on the massive dragon on the sky and realization struck. It seems that Draghignazzo had been in his Embodiment of Evil from the very beginning.
Then he shifted his attention back as without warning, the giant hound unhinged its massive jaw. A titanic sphere of pure, compressed demonic energy manifested between its teeth, glowing with a sickly light before being unleashed.
BOOM
The blast roared toward Jay like a concentrated solar flare.
But Jay didn't even draw his sword to meet it, he simply swiped his hand through the air as if brushing away a mosquito.
FWUOOM
The terrifying mass of demonic energy was instantly reduced to harmless drifting ash before it could touch his sweatshirt.
As Cagnazzo tried to lung forward for a follow-up, the air rang with the sound of manifesting metal.
KRIIIING
Hundreds of dark purple portals spiraled into existence around the hound's massive body. And in a synchronized metallic chorus, hundreds of obsidian chains lashed out, wrapping around the beast's limbs and neck.
The links tightened with agonizing force, the jagged edges of the Chain of Envy gritting against and then piercing through the hound's supernatural hide.
"WUOOOO!" Cagnazzo howled in torment.
He flared his chaos energy, the destructive force vibrating through the chains in an attempt to shatter them.
But Jay wouldn't give him the chance.
Utilizing Avesta, he reverse-engineered the mechanism of the chains. Instead of absorbing energy, he used the links as a conductor for a different power. Purple flames suddenly erupted from every single obsidian link.
Jay carefully spread the Incinerate Anthem's purple flame across the hound's flesh. He could not risk using the all-burning black flame of True Cross, as he did not want to damage Cagnazzo's soul, the same way he had unintentionally damaged the Shield of Gluttony.
He needed its soul intact to be sealed within the Grail.
It also seemed that the construction of the Evil Claws body overlapped their souls and their physical forms in certain areas. That likely explained how they were able to regenerate so easily from his normal attacks.
The black flame, on the other hand, would simply annihilate them completely.
"WUOOOO!"
The purple flames ate through the chaos energy after a bit of effort with the help of the Chains of Envy absorbing it, creeping slowly over Cagnazzo's flailing limbs.
Even though Jay personally disliked close-combat fighting as a magician, the Claws of Chaos might still be useful in the future. Besides, maybe he can summon it in it's Embodiment of Evil forms or even his human form.
Suddenly, a frantic buzzing sound filled Jay's ears from behind.
Hundreds of thousands of chimera flies, each the size of a small dog, erupted from behind him in a disgusting, swarming wave. They moved with a devastating, coordinated hunger.
'Those are poisonous,' Jay noted, his eyes narrowing.
He scanned the man behind the swarm. Scarmiglione, the handsome man, Troublemaker, as he was watching him with a volatile mixture of hatred and sheer terror. The Grail processed his essence in a split second.
'An ability to summon and turn people into flies while inflicting incurable poisons,' Jay thought.
"That is truly disgusting," Jay muttered.
With a gentle, almost bored swipe of Ame-no-Habakiri, he whispered.
"Cleave."
SHIIING
Scarmiglione felt a shift in the air and his eyes went wide.
"Huh?"
He looked down at his stomach, and his face instantly contorted into a mask of pure horror as a black slash appeared across his body, like a jagged tear in space itself.
"No... No... No... NOOOO!"
His scream was cut short as the Ultimate-Class living weapon was engulfed in a sudden, eruption of the all-burning black flame. His body, constructed from the special crystals of Agreas Island and Old Satan magic, offered no resistance. It was reduced to fine gray dust in less than a second.
Jay turned his cold gaze toward the swarming colony of flies. As they gathered into a giant sphere hundreds of meters wide, suddenly-
FWUOOOM
Jay unleashed a towering burst of black flame that swallowed the swarm whole. In an instant, the sky was cleared of the pests, leaving nothing but drifting ash.
Just like that, the Troublemaker Scarmiglione shared the same fate as The Goblin, Farfarello. Completely annihilated, erased from the face of the world.
The sight of the black flame sent a visible shiver through the remaining Evil Claws.
Alichino stood frozen, her legs seemingly unable to move, while the Crimson Dragon recoiled, realizing those flames operated on a level far beyond his own demonic crimson fire.
Jay teleported back to the giant, pinned body of Cagnazzo.
KRIIIING
The obsidian chains tightened one last time. The giant hound's body was now a canvas of burning scars and charred fur. As the purple flames of the Incinerate Anthem subsided, the hound slumped against the frozen ground, impaled and broken by the chains.
The Black Grail manifested in front of Jay, its dark flames dancing along the rim. A viscous, black-green energy began to bleed out of Cagnazzo's giant body and was pulled into the vessel.
After a few seconds of silent absorption, the giant hound vanished.
What remained on the icy ground was a pair of jagged, obsidian gauntlets. Jay casually picked them up and tossed them into his pocket dimension as if they were nothing more than a scrap.
"Two more down. Four left," Jay muttered.
His dark hazel eyes sent a cold piercing glance toward the remaining Evil Claws.
As Jay began his slow deliberate approach toward Alichino, the white-haired woman instinctively tightened her grip on the hilt of the Sword of Desire. The air between them crackled with unresolved tension, but before any of them could struck the first blow, a booming laugh echoed from above.
High atop the massive skull of the crimson dragon, Rubicante, the Crown of Lucifer, leaned forward.
His voice was deep and filled with a disturbing euphoria.
"HAHAHA! We meet again, the Go—"
The speech cut off abruptly.
Rubicante froze mid-sentence, his body jerking with a rhythmic spasms of a broken toy. And a string of guttural, incomprehensible nonsense spilled from his lips.
"KRAZTHULMORXQEVNASHIVORQETHZULMAKRIXONSHYRKALVOTHNEXIARAZRIVONTHQELDRAKGRYNTHOXULVARESHEKTHRALVONQISHADZHAKORVYNTHILQOS!"
Jay halted his advance.
He looked up at the man atop the dragon with analytical gaze as Avesta ignited within his dark hazel pupils.
But in front of the Dragon eye, the nonsense wasn't merely gibberish.
It was a sequence of ancient demonic commands.
Suddenly, a geyser of crimson demonic energy flared from Rubicante's body, towering toward the crimson sky of Malebolge.
At his silent command, the thick ice covering the ground began to groan and fracture. And slowly, from the fissures behind the dragon, thousands of figures began to crawl out of the depths of the Eighth Circle of hell.
They were devils of every rank, low, middle, and high-class devils clambering out of the frozen earth in a mindless, obsidian wave. However, Jay realized instantly that these were not living beings.
They were hollow husks, artificially crafted soldiers forged from pure, condensed demonic energy.
"This is quite a display of power," Jay muttered.
Nearly ten thousand of these artificial devils now stood upon the icy crimson ground, forming a sea of devil army.
'Now that i think about it... It is as if the original Lucifer created this weapon with the Longinus, Annihilation Maker, specifically in mind,' Jay thought.
'With this much artificially created Devils..., it could easily destroy an entire continent... Still, compared to this, a hundred copies of Azi Dahaka could literally destroy the world... So Lavinia should be able to handle it,' he thought, as Jay looked up at his girl.
Jay cast a brief glance upward at Lavinia.
Lavinia's frost aura flared violently before settled into a graceful radiance, her body glowing with pure white light as she drew in everything around her. The air itself seemed to bend toward her presence.
As she commanded.
"Un Momento nel Tempo!"
Suddenly, a blinding surge of white mist engulfed her form.
And in the next instant, a storm of fine white mist erupted forward, surging across the battlefield like a divine tidal wave. It crashed into the armies of artificially created Devils and swept through them without resistance.
Silence followed.
The entire army stood motionless, frozen in time itself, their forms locked in place as if they were nothing more than sculptures carved from eternal ice.
Lavinia gasped slightly, her chest heaving. It was an ultimate ability she had refined during their seven months of her Sacred Gear practice with Jay in Valeyra.
In principle, it is a far more effective and deadly way to use her Ice blizzard by reducing its mass while maintaining its effectiveness. This creates a burst of extremely fine white mist that travels at supersonic speed, easily freezing everything it touches. The mist even penetrates the bodies of every single Devil, freezing them from the inside out.
And it was all thanks to the inspiration she drew from Gasper's own Sacred Gear.
A rare, thin smile touched Jay's lips as he watched her.
Then, his attention shifted back to the white-haired expressionless woman standing before him.
Alichino watched Jay, her expressionless eyes hiding a deeply complicated emotion.
"You know, I find your ability the most interesting of them all," Jay said, shifting his weight to launch himself forward.
Alichino remained silent for a long moment. Then, she spoke.
"I... I have one desire."
Jay raised an eyebrow at the sudden statement from the expressionless swords woman.
"Desire?"
"I was created by and for this desire... It is a longing that has never been fulfilled because I was simply too strong... Not even my creator could bring me to the brink of death, because as you can see, we living weapons cannot be killed by conventional means... At least, not by the hands of our creator," Alichino said.
Her voice was soothing and melodic, yet entirely devoid of any emotion.
"I was disappointed when my creator deemed me too dangerous to bring to the Great War. That weak bastard," she added, an unexpected note of insults aimed at the Original Asmodeus.
"But when I saw you kill Farfarello and Scarmiglione... when you wielded that black flame... I felt it. I wanted it... I've been longing for it... That stinging sensation... my body is shaking with fear for the first time," Alichino said as raised her left hand.
"And that fear... That fear makes me feel alive for the first time. The struggle of a death match... it is all I have ever wanted...."
Then her gaze met Jay's dark hazel eyes.
"A desire to fight to the death... Please, grant it to me!" Alichino yelled, her expressionless face lighting up with a flicker of genuine fervor.
Jay stared at her, his gaze unwavering.
"No."
Alichino stopped, the light in her eyes dimming.
She paused, then slowly opened her mouth
"I see."
She lowered her head for a moment before looking back at him with a renewed, cold determination.
"If you don't want to fulfill my desire, then I will set the stage... I will force us to fight until the end... To our death."
"Embodiment of Evil."
Alichino's black demonic aura flared with an ominous intensity. It emanated from her in waves so dense that Jay realized she had been holding back her true power throughout the entire battle.
As she whispered an Overture.
"The Phantom Opera."
Instantly, the world around them dissolved as a black demonic energy expanded from Alichino, swallowing Jay and the surrounding frozen hell into a separate domain.
SHUUUT
The space folded, and then when his vision cleared, Jay found himself standing on a massive wooden stage.
The audience was a sea of absolute darkness, and the only light came from spectral spotlights that highlighted both him and Alichino.
"Then let the play begin," she said.
Alichino rushed toward Jay like a black flash.
"Stop moving."
Jay's body locked up instantly, but a burst of black energy surged from his core, overriding the command just enough for him to dodge the incoming slash of the obsidian blade.
SHING
But in a terrifying manner, suddenly Alichino already turned her body and send another slash towards Jay.
CLANK
Jay parried the sword with ease, Habakiri glinting under the dim light as it met the edge of Alichino's strike.
Sparks flew, and the reverberation of steel echoed through the battlefield, but Jay's calm stance betrayed no effort. Every movement was precise, deliberate, as if he were already anticipating the next attack.
But Alichino stepped closer, her expressionless face unreadable.
And then, leaning forward just enough for her whisper to reach him, she desired.
"Explosion!"
Before Jay could fully process the word, the tip of her sword ignited in a sudden burst of black energy.
BOOM
The darkness spread outward like a blast of nuclear bomb, twisting and curling around his form, consuming everything it touched with a deafening roar.
But Jay's figure had already disappeared.
As he leaped upward to create distance, two giant pale hands manifested from the darkness of the audience.
They were large enough to crush his entire frame and swung toward him with thunderous force.
Jay didn't flinch.
And with another burst of black aura, the giant hands were incinerated into ash before he landed perfectly back on the stage. The platform seemed to extend endlessly into the dark void.
Jay looked at Alichino, who stood twenty meters away. His Avesta was already busy deconstructing the metaphysical structure of the domain.
'So this domain is an extension of her own soul... That's pretty clever, since she cannot inflict a desire on more than one object at a time, she reshaped her own soul into the domain itself... By making the stage, this domain as the object, that way she can utilize an unlimited amount of desire within this space,' Jay analyzed.
It was an incredibly potent ability.
But it possessed a glaring, fatal weakness.
'Since she is using her own soul as the medium, any power capable of affecting the soul can tear this domain apart... My black flames could erase this entire stage in a second. Someone like Sirzechs, with his Power of Destruction, could likely nullify this and permanently damage her soul in process,' he thought.
Basically a suicide attack.
But another question lingered in Jay's mind.
'What are the rules of this power? Why hasn't she simply desired me to die, or summoned that same explosion inside my chest? She could make a Lightning Qilin disappear, so why the limitation here?'
As he pondered, thousands of black spears manifested in the air around him.
"Unbreakable. Unstoppable. Unburnable," Alichino commanded.
The spears launched toward Jay in a synchronized arrows.
But to her surprise, Jay completely ignored them and beginning a casual walk toward Alichino. The Black Grail manifested in front of him, acting as a shield as he closed the gap.
SRUUUUUT
The sound of the spears slicing through the air echoed across the opera stage-
They aimed for Jay's body, ready to impale him with unerring accuracy, but then-
FWUOOOM
In an instant,every single one of the spears were annihilated by the black flames True Cross, the desires she had inflicted upon the weapons failed.
As the black flame proved to be breakable, stoppable, and very much burnable.
"Impossible..." she whispered.
Jay stopped a few feet from her.
"You see, trapping me inside a domain made of your own soul when you know I can destroy it with a thought is borderline insanity... But you also know I won't do that."
He looked her in the eyes.
"Give it up... Your power doesn't work on me the way you want it to. And clearly you also won't be able to fulfill your desire fighting against me..."
If Jay's hypothesis is correct, then Alichino's power of desire works like desire in the real world, you can only obtain what you desire if you possess a price of equal value. This means that the stronger you are compared to your opponent, the more potent a desire you can impose upon them.
That's why the only thing she could make him do was to stop moving. Theoretically, this power of desire is a very strong power against weaker or at least equal opponents, but not against someone far above your level.
Alichino paused for a moment, looking down at the ground in disappointment.
"Why don't I make you an offer?" Jay asked.
She looked up at him, her grey eyes searching his face.
"Follow me and be my sword..."
Alichino stopped.
"Your... sword?"
"In the future..., I will fight against gods, devils, and dragons. While I cannot directly grant you the thrill of a death match against me, I can guarantee you will find opponents in the coming battle who will make you feel that sensation you crave," Jay said.
"So... will you accept my offer?"
He spoke with the cold certainty of a man who knew what was coming.
Even if she refused, he would simply seal her inside the black grail.
Alichino's eyes widened as she spoke up hesitantly.
"Do you... do you promise?"
"You have my word," Jay replied.
A heavy silence settled over the domain as Alichino looked at the floorboards of the stage for a long moment.
Then, slowly, the black domain began to dissolve, receding back into her body. The icy landscape of Malebolge returne as the grey sky hanging over them once more.
Alichino met Jay's dark hazel eyes for a moment,
And suddenly she sank to one knee on the frozen ground. She lowered her head in a gesture of total submission.
"Then I will follow you... to fight every one of your enemies, to the edge of the world, until I reach that promised fight of death."
On the frozen plains of Malebolge, the Sword of Desire forged her creed of loyalty.
"I, Alichino, will be your sword...
-Master."