"Zayyn Illya Kovalenko."
The name hung in the high-altitude air.
Sirzechs Lucifer and Grayfia Lucifuge remained suspended in shock, their eyes fixed on the young man whose face had finally emerged from the shroud of the destroyed cloak.
Though from Ravel's words about the man, K, as she said, he and Grayfia already have their own suspicions. Seeing the truth manifest was a different thing.
Ajuka Beelzebub, however, found his shock rooted in a different source, which was the all-burning black flame.
But hearing the weight in his best friend's voice, Ajuka turned his head.
"You know this guy?" Ajuka asked, his gaze shifting back and forth between Sirzechs and the silent figure atop the dragon.
Sirzechs nodded slowly.
"You must have heard of the human who killed Susanoo, the Shinto God of Thunder and Storms, just a couple of months ago, right?" Sirzechs asked.
Ajuka nodded. The news was quite well known among the upper echelons of various pantheons and factions in the Supernatural World. After all, the death of a god is not something common, let alone when the one responsible is a human.
"That human is the man you see in front of your eyes right now... Zayyn Illya Kovalenko, also known as the Godslayer. And the wielder of one of the thirteen Longinus, Incinerate Anthem, the Scorch Magician."
Ajuka's face clouded over.
He leaned forward slightly, his green aura fluctuating as he examined Jay's physical form. He shook his head in confusion.
"Wait... wait. He clearly is not human. The energy signatures I am seeing are demonic in nature. Perhaps you are mistaking him for someone else, Sirzechs," Ajuka argued. He turned his gaze back to Jay, who remained standing with an unnerving, statuesque stillness.
"No, he is a half-devil."
As if responding to the Maou's confusion, Jay made a deliberate move.
The Black Grail manifested at his side, its dark flames dancing along the rim with darkness that seemed to swallow the afternoon sunlight.
The sight of the black chalice sent a fresh wave of unease through the three observers.
Then, Jay performed an action that defied their understanding of science or magic as he pressed his hand against the center of his chest.
And with a sickening, squelching sound, a dark crimson, viscous substance began to seep out from his chest.
A soul, a devil's soul filled with demonic essence. As the substance emerged, it was drawn into the Black Grail, which absorbed it with a low, vibrating hum.
The transformation was immediate, and Ajuka's eyes slowly widened.
"A human..." Ajuka muttered, his voice trailing off as he struggled to comprehend how Jay had managed to deceive their sensors for so long.
Sirzechs floated forward, closing a portion of the distance between them.
He stared at Jay with a mixture of sadness and a lingering sense of disbelief. The fire of his earlier anger had begun to subside.
"Zayyn-kun... why did you do all of this?" Sirzechs asked.
Jay offered no answer, simply staring at the Crimson Satan, his dark hazel eyes reflecting the vast, empty expanse of the horizon.
"Gasper-kun... he always said that he was going to get stronger. He wanted to be just like you," Sirzechs continued, his voice softening with a genuine ache.
"He told Rias and the others, even me, that you are a kind person. He called you the one who saved him, his hero. But you... you killed thousands, destroyed countless lives, and nearly slaughtered hundreds of thousands during your attack in the stadium."
Sirzechs' gaze sharpened, staring into Jay's unreadable eyes.
"You are not a hero."
The mention of the dhampir boy caused a momentary flicker in Jay's expression.
He allowed the silence to stretch, the sound of the wind whipping against Draghignazzo's scales the only noise between them.
When he finally spoke, his voice was devoid of emotion, his eyes fixed on the Crimson Satan.
"And you, who killed thousands of your own kin during the Devil Civil War, are a hero, Sirzechs?"
The question struck Sirzechs like a hammer to the chest, leaving a weighty silence that pressed on his every thought.
Grayfia and Ajuka froze.
The weight of the past, the bloodshed that forged the current government of the Underworld was a subject rarely addressed with such bluntness.
"And what does that make your wife then? A traitor?" Jay's gaze drifted past Sirzechs, landing on the silver-haired maid who stood like a silent sentinel.
Grayfia's eyes narrowed into dangerous slits, her hands tightening at her sides.
The history of the Lucifuge clan was a sore point, a legacy that she had forsaken for the man she loved. Sirzechs, however, found himself unable to refute any of Jay's words.
"You do not know the whole story," Sirzechs said in a low, dangerous tone.
"Exactly," Jay agreed, his voice a chilling monotone.
"Let's not pretend that what we are doing is something heroic, Sirzechs... Both you and Ajuka Beelzebub might be doing what you think is righteous for your people. Perhaps Grayfia Lucifuge betraying her family for you in the name of love is something to be praised and even made into movies, But do you know my reason?"
Jay opened his arms wide, the scythe and the sword held loosely in his grip, presenting himself to the Satans. The three of them fell into a heavy, expectant silence.
"We are all murderers. All three of you... and me," Jay said, his eyes emptier than they had ever been.
The silence was shattered by Sirzechs' voice.
"But what you did to Ravel... you used her, manipulated her, and then killed her brother." Sirzechs said,
"Is there any reason in this world that can justify your actions!?" Sirzechs shouted, his fists clenching until his knuckles turned white.
The memory of the broken Phenex girl was clearly the catalyst for his moral outrage.
Jay looked down at the crimson back of Draghignazzo for a long moment before raising his head to meet the Crimson Satan's eyes once more.
"Have you lost someone you love, Sirzechs?"
The question was so simple, yet so profound that it caused Sirzechs to stop mid-breath.
"Someone who meant everything to you. Someone for whom you would do anything. Have you lost someone like that in your long life?"
Grayfia glanced at her husband, sensing the shift in his energy.
Sirzechs remained silent, his mouth slightly agape as he searched for a response that wouldn't ring hollow.
In his long tenure as a Maou, he had witnessed much death, yet he and his family had enjoyed a life of relative safety and stability since the war's end. He couldn't answer that question with the raw honesty Jay demanded.
Sirzechs didn't need to mention Ravel at all, even if he tried to shake Jay's resolve. Jay already understood the depths of her suffering he had felt, in his own way, how excruciating it was to lose someone dear.
For her, the pain was likely even greater, since she couldn't avenge her brother and couldn't kill the one who had taken him, as he had. That helplessness alone was a torment few could endure.
Even worse, the weight of guilt might have pressed down on her, the haunting thought that she was somehow responsible for what had happened.
But-
"I never tried to justify any of my actions, Sirzechs."
Zayyn Illya Kovalenko is merely a boy from the outskirts of Romania, driven by his own selfish desires and unwavering creed.
A creed to kill every single devil.
Sirzechs, Ajuka, and Grayfia stood paralyzed for a moment, the weight of Jay's words settling into the air around them.
Ajuka was the first to break the stasis. He stepped forward, his green aura hummed with a renewed intensity.
"Let's just catch him, Sirzechs. It's pointless trying to argue and influence him on submitting himself," Ajuka said. He looked at Jay with a new, profound light in his eyes, finally grasping the young man's state of mind.
"It doesn't look like he is going to change his mind."
Sirzechs, whose gaze had been softened by a flicker of mixed feelings remained silent for a long beat.
Before finally, he nodded, his eyes hardening with a resolve that matched his title as the Satan Lucifer.
"Let's talk again later, Zayyn-kun... Gasper-kun is happy now, and I will promise you that I will let you have a chance to talk with him before we send you to Cocytus," Sirzechs said, his voice regaining its authoritative edge.
However, before the three of them could initiate a coordinated assault, the fabric of space behind Jay began to ripple violently.
Thousands of teleportation circles, shimmering with a crimson light, erupted into existence. The sudden surge of localized mana caused Sirzechs, Ajuka, and Grayfia to tense instinctively, their power flaring in anticipation of a massive reinforcement.
Jay sensed the intrusion as well.
He did not turn fully, merely sending a slight, indifferent glance over his shoulder at the blossoming spatial distortions.
From those thousands of teleportation circles, a small army of Devils emerged, their ranks composed primarily of high-class devils.
Standing at their front was an Ultimate-class Devil.
The Ultimate-class devil appeared as a striking man, dressed in the attire of a noble. His clothes were black, accented with dark red belts and intricate motifs, and a flowing cape draped over his shoulders.
He had black hair tied into a small ponytail, piercing violet eyes, pale skin, and pointed ears that hinted at his otherworldly nature.
Seeing the man, Sirzechs and Ajuka narrowed their eyes in unison. The Crimson Satan's voice was a low growl as he muttered the man's name.
"Creuserey Asmodeus."
The man was one of the leaders of the Old Satan Faction, a direct descendant of the original Asmodeus. Behind him, thousands of Devils stood in formation, a hovering wall of rebellion that both Sirzechs and Ajuka knew all too well.
'The Old Satan Faction... What are they doing here?' Sirzechs thought, his mind racing to find a connection between Jay and these zealots.
The sudden arrival of the faction had caught the current administration off guard.
Creuserey scanned the scene with a sneer of arrogance. His gaze landed first on the two Satans, then drifted with visible disgust toward the silver-haired maid.
"Sirzechs and Ajuka... the usurpers of the throne," Creuserey spat, his voice carrying a shrill, entitled quality. He then looked at Grayfia, his lip curling. "And a whore that betrayed her lineage for that usurper."
Grayfia did not flinch, but her eyes narrowed into deadly slits.
The air around her temperature dropped significantly, a promise of the carnage she could unleash for such an insult.
"Creuserey Asmodeus... what are you doing here?" Sirzechs demanded.
"What do you mean? Of course, to take back my rightful place as a rightful ruler of the Underworld, the True Satan, unlike you and your cosplayer friends... And of course, i can go to where the fuck I want!" Creuserey shouted.
His eyes then drifted to Jay, who was standing atop the dragon, completely ignoring the newcomer's grand entrance.
Jay didn't even bother to look back at the descendant of Asmodeus.
"But I have heard there is someone using our glorious name to attack Agreas City, so I thought might as well we just do the same thing..." Creuserey said, his face twisting into pure mockery.
"But why is there a disgusting, filthy human here? And not only that... is that our rightful inherited weapons, the glorious Malebranche, in your hands, human?" Creuserey asked, his greed becoming as apparent as his arrogance.
He gestured toward the scythe and the sword Jay held.
"Those weapons aren't yours, so give them back to us, the rightful owners, as they were forged by our noble blood. And maybe, just maybe... I will let you live for another day and survive when we conquer this whole world, the new world of Devils."
Sirzechs and Ajuka exchanged a wary glance.
The current situation had shifted. If Jay sided with the Old Satan Faction, even for a moment, the battle of Agreas would escalate into something even greater.
"Ajuka, I will face Zayyn-kun, you handle the rest," Sirzechs commanded.
"Of course," Ajuka replied, his fingers already tracing a new set of containment formulas.
However, Jay remained silent.
The jagged black sword in his right hand dissolved into his pocket dimension, and in its place appeared a different blade.
It was a jet-black sword, thin as a sheet of parchment and twice as long as a standard rapier, its edge appearing to be a literal crack in the world.
Creuserey, seeing that he was still being ignored, felt his blood boil. His ego, inflated by centuries of delusional grandeur, could not fathom a mortal treating him with such indifference.
"Do you listen to me, you filthy hum-"
"Shut the fuck up."
Jay's voice was quiet, but it carried a terrifying pressure behind it.
And suddenly, a black aura enveloped the thin blade. The pressure radiating from the steel was so immense that the high-class Devils behind Creuserey began to shiver, their instincts screaming at them to flee.
But Creuserey's ego refused to let fear get the better of him, especially since he felt Jay had just insulted him in front of thousands of his people.
"You! I will kill you and take that-"
But Jay didn't wait for him to finish.
He casually turned his body to face the army of thousands from the Old Satan Faction.
He took a slow step across the dragon's back, the obsidian scales crunching softly beneath his boots.
And then he whispered.
"Turn to Dust..."
With a casual, almost bored flick of his hand, Jay swung the blade horizontally.
SHIIIING
A wide, black slit tore open in the space before him, like a wound in reality itself, expanding instantaneously across the entire formation of the Old Satan Faction. It was as if the sky itself had been sliced open.
Before-
"...World Slasher."
FWUOOOOOM
A gargantuan burst of black flames erupted from the spatial slit.
It moved like a turbulent wave of absolute annihilation. The flame swept over the thousands of devils and Creuserey Asmodeus before any of them could even raise a barrier. There were no screams, no cries of burning flesh, only silence, as every single one of their body and souls was reduced to nothingness.
When the flames subsided a second later, the sky was empty.
Thousands of high-class Devils and an Ultimate-class descendant of the original Satans had been reduced to drifting ash. The grey flakes began to rain down toward the city below like a morbid snow.
Jay then turned back to face Sirzechs, Ajuka, and Grayfia.
The three of them were frozen, their eyes wide with a shock that transcended anything they had felt before.
They looked at the empty space where an army had stood just moments ago, then back to the young man who had erased them with a flick of his wrist. The casualness of the slaughter was more terrifying than the power itself.
Jay looked at the Satans, his dark hazel eyes still unreadable as he adjusted his grip on the black sword.
"Let's continue."