"Come forth… Malebranche."
From the swirling, viscous darkness of the Black Grail, four distinct silhouettes began to coagulate as their forms knit together from liquid souls and raw demonic essence, gradually taking on humanoid shape.
They stood atop the obsidian expanse of Draghignazzo's back.
Libicocco stood at the front, her veil no longer obscuring her beautiful elf-face, revealing a cascade of light purple hair that whipped violently in the high-altitude gales.
Beside her, the hunched, cloaked figure of Cagnazzo remained a shadow within a shadow of his black cloak.
Barbariccia, the long-haired archer, shook his head as his eyes darted around in genuine confusion at the modern Underworld sky.
Finally, Ciriatto materialized, though his artificial form bore the jagged, translucent scars of his previous encounter with Jay, his massive hog-like frame hunched under the weight of his own hunger.
Before the confusion could settle, five tears opened in the fabric of space behind Jay.
From his pocket dimension, the physical forms of the Malabranche appeared one by one, from the Black Veil of Jealousy, the Black Bow of Lust, the dark green Claws of Chaos, and the cracked emerald Shield of Gluttony.
Like magnets finding their poles, the weapons flew toward their respective soul manifestations, merging with the artificial bodies to grant them a semblance of their complete existence.
"Hmmm?" Barbariccia muttered, his voice a gravelly rumble.
He spun around, searching for the one who had sent his soul into the Grail after decapitating him.
Jay slowly descended through the air, his boots clicking softly as he landed on the dragon's spine.
A suffocating presence began to bleed from his body, the terrifying aura of the Black Flame.
The last object, the jagged black Sword of Desire hummed with a melodic, haunting frequency before expanding into the form of a woman.
She possessed striking white hair and pale skin, encased in a suit of full black plate armor that seemed to drink the light.
A jagged, pulsing core sat at the center of her breastplate. Alichino reached out, catching the physical Sword of Desire as it reformed in her hand, and took her place a half-step behind Jay.
"Alichino, tell them to hold off the Satans for a couple of seconds," Jay said, his voice low.
"Yes, master."
Alichino stepped past him, her armored greaves clanking against the dragon's scales. She approached the four newly summoned Malebranche with an expressionless, doll-like mask.
She could feel the mixed emotions radiating from them.
As Alichino stepped forward, walking toward the four Malebranche. She could see the confusion in the eyes of Barbariccia and Ciriatto, while Cagnazzo seemed indifferent. Meanwhile, Libicocco fixed her with a deadly stare that felt as if it could pierce straight through her body.
"Hm?" Alichino tilted her head, meeting Libicocco's gaze for a fleeting second before deciding that the woman's spite was a non-issue.
"What is this, Alichino? Why are you betraying our leader?" Barbariccia demanded, his voice rising with a mixture of anger and confusion.
"Our leader has been defeated by my new master, and all of you will be serving him too," Alichino replied, her voice flat, devoid of any room for negotiation.
"What... I never-"
Barbariccia's protest died in his throat.
He caught sight of Jay staring at him from the center of the dragon's back. Those dark hazel eyes, ignited with the golden X of Avesta, felt like an executioner's blade.
The long-haired man felt the phantom sensation of his head being severed once again, a memory of his instant defeat playing on loop in his mind.
"Tsk... Alright," Barbariccia finally conceded, his shoulders slumping as he turned his gaze toward the Satans.
Ciriatto offered a wet, guttural scoff.
"Whatever... As long... as I... eat, I don't... really care...," he grunted. There was no trace of fear in his voice, despite having been literally carved into pieces by the man he now served.
Cagnazzo let out a wet hiss from beneath his hood, while Libicocco remained a silent statue.
Alichino interpreted their lack of direct confrontation as an unspoken agreement. She realized that being defeated and subdued single-handedly by Jay had likely unsettled them deeply.
"Then, let us hold off the Devil Kings of this generation. And also that man who sealed us the last time... Ajuka Beelzebub."
Jay monitored their whole interaction.
Alichino was reliable, she was the only one whose soul was intact and unsealed, having followed him of her own volition.
Meanwhile, the rest of them are still technically sealed within the Grail, since they exist as souls while their physical forms serve as the weapons themselves.
Their current bodies are more like artificial constructs created by the Grail, and their souls remain bound to it. Therefore, even if their bodies are destroyed, the Grail should be able to retrieve their souls almost immediately.
"Now, let's see how much time they can give me," Jay whispered, lifting the obsidian scythe, Graffiacane, in his left hand.
A few hundred meters away, Sirzechs, Ajuka, and Grayfia narrowed their eyes.
Meanwhile, Sirzechs, Ajuka, and Grayfia narrowed their eyes as they looked at five of the twelve Malebranche that Jay had summoned.
Including Draghignazzo, which brought the total to six, that mean half of them had once again appeared in the Underworld after being sealed within the Eighth Circle of Hell for hundreds of years.
"What is he planning to do? He cannot possibly believe that the Evil Claws could stop us, right?," Sirzechs said, his hand already glowing with the crimson sparks of destruction.
Ajuka shook his head,
"I don't know... but my suspicion is that whatever he is trying to do is connected to that initial surge of mana I felt before this battle began."
Suddenly, as if confirming Ajuka's fears, an explosion of ominous dark purple demonic energy erupted from the dragon's back.
The obsidian scythe in Jay's hand began to thrum with a frequency that vibrated the very air, a towering pillar of mana shooting upward into the clouds.
Realization struck Ajuka.
As the only one present who had actually fought the full members of the Malebranche when he attempted to unseal Ars Goetia to create the Evil Pieces, he recognized this familiar presence and its appearance.
It was the Embodiment of Evil from the Sea Serpent of the End.
"No! Is he trying to use That!" Ajuka's body tensed, his green aura flaring with a desperate intensity as he turned to Sirzechs, his voice cracking with urgency.
7
"Sirzechs, don't let him use that! That spell... I am afraid that this whole region will be no more if he is able to complete it!"
6
Sirzechs did not hesitate.
Relying on his best friend judgment, his figure blurred out of existence.
And in the blink of an eye, he reappeared directly above Jay, his silhouette eclipsed by the dark purple towering pillar of demonic mana.
The Malebranche quickly looked up, caught off guard by the Satan's sheer speed.
5
Sirzechs raised his hand, and a massive sphere of condensed Power of Destruction expanded outward, a crimson sun designed to annihilate Jay, the demons, and the dragon in a single, all-encompassing erasure.
But Alichino moved quickly and raised the Sword of Desire on her hand, pointing it at the falling sphere.
"Disappeared!"
The massive sphere of destruction simply vanished, as if it had been erased from the space it once occupied in the sky, leaving only a faint ripple in the mana and the vacuum it had created.
4
Sirzechs widened his eyes in momentary surprise, but his resolve did not waver. He was a war veteran, if one sphere failed, he would drown them in a thousand.
And almost instantly, dozens of gigantic, sphere-shaped destruction blasts formed in an orbiting shell around him, launching toward Jay and the others at the speed of light.
Sensing the impending bombardment, Jay broke his concentration on the scythe and canceled the spell instantly.
His eyes flashed with a black streak of flame.
And then-
FWUOOOM
A burst of black flame erupted, instantly enveloping the group and rising like a wall of absolute end of all things to meet the incoming bombardment.
The spheres of destruction, each capable of erasing a mountain range, were utterly obliterated by the black flame. Their crimson energy flickered and died the moment they were consumed by the end of everything.
But the relief was short-lived.
Just a second later, the flame was swept away by an invisible wind that forced the black flame to bank sharply into the empty sky.
'Tsk.'
Jay sent a sharp glance toward Ajuka Beelzebub.
The Satan Blue was not attacking directly, but his control over the battlefield, especially over his black flame, was becoming a suffocating restraint.
Jay didn't get a single moment to breathe as Sirzechs, suspended in the air like a God of Destruction, had already prepared another city-busting attack.
Hundreds of spheres of destruction, each now as large as Draghignazzo's entire thirty-meter frame, materialized in the atmosphere behind him. The sky was no longer blue as it was painted in a sickening, pulsating red that cast long, bloody shadows over the floating city of Agreas.
As the absolute authority of the Underworld, Sirzechs commanded.
"Annihilation Ray Burst!"
SHUUUUNG
The spheres remained stationary, acting as focal points for gigantic beams of pure erasure, blasting toward Jay like lasers.
And then, hundreds of crimson beams tore through the air at a speed that defied mortal perception. The attack threatened to erase every atom of the Malebranche and the Draconic Deus Slayer in a single, perfectly synchronized strike.
But suddenly, a dark, shimmering veil manifested around them.
The crimson beams that hit the translucent surface didn't go through. Instead, they got caught in a loop, bending and screeching as they were reflected back toward their source, Sirzechs Lucifer.
Jay glanced at Libicocco, whose purple hair was standing on end from the sheer output of demonic energy, her body enveloped in dark purple aura.
'So this is the Veil of Jealousy. It mirrors the intent of the attacker back upon them. But against a Super Devil's attack...'
Sirzechs widened his eyes in slight surprise as his own rays of destruction turned to hunt him.
But with a casual flick of his hand, the reflected bursts simply ceased to be, following his mental command to return to nothingness.
For Libicocco, however, the sheer volume of the remaining barrage of destruction from the strongest devil to ever exist was too much for the Veil of Jealousy to hold.
CRACK
The Veil of Jealousy shattered into a thousand jagged shards of black light. Jay and the Malebranche watched as the remaining crimson light illuminated them, the heatless glow of the end closing the final few meters.
But Jay was already swinging Habakiri in a violent, rapid slash.
"Turn to dust..."
SHIIING
"World Slasher."
FWUOOOM
A massive crescent of black flame slash erupted from the Habakiri, sweeping across the horizon with a roar that sounded like the universe tearing.
The slash overran Sirzechs' Annihilation Ray Burst.
And in an instant, the hundreds of crimson beams and spheres of destruction were extinguished and replaced by a blazing wave of black flame surging toward the Crimson Satan.
Ajuka narrowed his eyes, his brow furrowing as he calculated the output. The sheer amount of black flame in that single attack was staggering, even for his Kankara Formula to handle in such a short amount of time.
Sirzechs, seeing the incoming all-burning black flame retreated in a flash of crimson light, seeking a safer coordinate.
But he was not as prepared as he thought. Suddenly, a spatial slit opened behind his back, and a jagged blade hissed through the air.
SHING
Sirzechs managed to tilt his torso and easily dodge the incoming slash. He then spun, a blade-shaped aura of destruction enveloping his hand.
And in a blur of crimson flash, he twisted his body, attempting to sever Alichino's head with a counter-strike.
But she didn't flinch.
"Stop."
Instantly, Sirzechs' body was suspended in the air, his momentum killed by the weight of Desire.
However, Alichino's own neck had been caught by the edge of his strike as her head was tilted at a gruesome angle, half-severed as black, viscous blood spurted upward into the wind.
The wound did not kill her.
And as her neck began stitching itself back together with dark demonic energy. She flicked her wrist, sending another slash from the opposite direction toward the frozen Sirzechs.
7
A cloaked figure appeared near Sirzechs' flank. Cagnazzo emerged from the shadows, swinging his Claws of Chaos to tear the Crimson Satan's body apart while he was trapped by Alichino's Desire.
But Sirzechs was waiting for the proximity.
And almost instantly-
BOOM
His body exploded outward in a crimson flash, a pulse of destruction that annihilated everything within a fifty-meter radius.
Alichino's eyes widened, and she used the Sword of Desire to teleport herself to a higher coordinate just before the blast hit.
Cagnazzo was less fortunate. Before he could fully retreat into the shadows, his entire lower body was deleted by the crimson destruction, leaving him a torso floating in the air, hissing in agony.
6
Jay had already begun his count.
He stood atop the dragon, his hands locked onto the scythe that was enveloped in towering demonic energy.
Sirzechs ignored the regenerating Cagnazzo and the circling Alichino.
Because he had only one target.
5
Like a shooting star of pure carnage, Sirzechs burst toward Jay. Alichino reappeared in his path, her white hair flying as she braced her sword.
"Undestructible"
CLANK
The sound of the collision rang like a hammer on an anvil of gods.
Sirzechs' momentum was halted for a fraction of a second as Alichino used her entire existence to block his path.
4
"Get out of my way!" Sirzechs growled, his voice vibrating with the Power of Destruction.
With a brutal swipe of his hand, he simply erased her entire body.
SPLURTTT
Her armored form was torn apart, the upper half sent flying through the air as her body struggled to hold itself together.
3
Below them, Grayfia looked up. The once-bright afternoon sky over the Agares region was being swallowed.
A black tint was bleeding through the clouds, painting the atmosphere in a pitch-black shroud that looked like a darkness of the night.
"The sky..." Grayfia muttered, her heart sinking as she realized the scale of the magic being woven.
Meanwhile, Ajuka tried to rush toward Jay to support Sirzechs, but his attention was immediately drawn elsewhere as thousands of black demonic arrows, each trailing a wake of dark energy, shot toward him.
Barbariccia stood on the crimson dragon's tail, his black bow drawn to the limit.
Despite this, Ajuka rushed forward, his Kankara Formula circles working overtime.
And just bypassing it like it doesn't even bother him, hundreds of the arrows seemed to magically curve in mid-air, evading Ajuka as if he were a ghost, continuing their flight toward the city below.
Grayfia saw the arrows bypassing Ajuka and narrowed her eyes.
Her body erupted with silver demonic energy.
A giant magic circle of frost ignited beneath her feet, and a wave of demonic frost surged upward, freezing Barbariccia's arrows in mid-air before they could rain death upon the innocent citizens below.
2
Sirzechs moved in a blur, almost at the speed of light.
But suddenly, a wild, humanoid hog-like creature appeared in his path.
Ciriatto planted his feet on the dragon's scales, the emerald Shield of Gluttony fully formed into a massive barrier of green energy to block the Crimson Satan.
But Sirzechs didn't slow down.
SHUUNG
SPLURTTT
The Crimson Satan's red aura tore through Ciriatto's body like paper.
His shield broke, and he turned into a spray of green mist, completely ignored by Sirzechs.
At that same moment, Draghignazzo opened its maw, preparing to unleash a torrent of dark crimson flame toward the incoming Ajuka.
But before the fire could leave the dragon's throat, Ajuka's fingers danced.
The equations of the flame were inverted as all of the fire was sucked back into Draghignazzo's mouth before exploding within its gullet.
FWOOOOM
The dragon shrieked as its flesh and obsidian scales were burned from the inside out.
1
The countdown reached its penultimate breath.
To an outside observer, the scene was a chaotic swirl of demonic energy, but to Jay, time seemed to slow.
It was all pointless.
From the front, a streak of crimson light, Sirzechs Lucifer flashed toward him with the weight of a falling star.
And from the flank, Ajuka Beelzebub surged forward, his green aura burning as he bypassed the dying embers of the dragon's breath.
They were only dozens of meters away, their hands outstretched to tear the Draconic Deus Slayer from his perch.
But the flood had already fully formed in the sky.
"Embodiment of Evil…"
Just a few meters before the two Super Devils could reach their target, their eyes widened in a shared, instinctive terror.
They stared at Jay, who stood perfectly still at the center of Draghignazzo's scarred back.
In that fleeting moment, the obsidian scythe of Graffiacane suddenly halted its frantic thrumming.
The dark purple aura that had stretched into the stratosphere began to fade, not from weakening power, but because the spell had reached its final completion.
Then, it began to rain black in the Underworld.
0
As he whispered.
"Drown the World in the Sea of the Damned."
WUUUUUUUUUUUUNG
The sky suddenly shook with a deep subsonic groan that vibrated through the marrow of every living being in the Agreas region.
At the exact moment Sirzechs and Ajuka prepared to make contact and killed Jay on the spot,
FWUOOOOM
Suddenly, a violent surge of black flame erupted beneath his feet, erupting into an unyielding wall of annihilation that stopped the two Satans in their tracks.
Ajuka quickly flicked his wrist with desperate speed.
He rewove the air that carried the flame, sweeping the flame aside and clearing his vision in a fraction of a second. But as the black wall of annihilation vanished, so did Jay's presence.
The dragon's back was empty. The young man, the Grail, and his weapons had vanished into the folds of space, leaving nothing but silence in their wake.
"Fuck!" Ajuka cursed, a rare flash of frustration from the Underworld's greatest mind.
Sirzechs did not curse.
He slowly looked up toward the zenith of the sky.
The pitch-black clouds that had swallowed the horizon were weeping.
Suddenly, a droplet of dark, cursed water fell. One stray bead touched Sirzechs' cheek, and his skin hissed instantly, melting into foul-smelling black sludge as the curse consumed his flesh.
"This water…" Sirzechs whispered, his voice trembling with the realization of what he was witnessing.
Ajuka frantically scanned the area for Jay's signature and finally spotted him several dozen kilometers below the floating island surface. Jay hovered in the air, his dark hazel eyes locked on the Satans above.
They stared at each other across the void created by the first drops of the cursed rain.
'Don't tell me… He is going to destroy the Island!? No… Is it the crystals?' Ajuka's mind raced through the possibilities.
If Jay targeted all of Agreas Island, the loss of life would be catastrophic. But if he struck the Agreas Crystals, the future of the reincarnated devil and the Evil Piece system would vanish into history.
Even now, not even he, Ajuka Beelzebub knew how to recreate the crystals.
Ajuka looked back at the sky, his teeth clenched so hard they threatened to crack. His gaze swept down over the sprawling metropolis of Agreas Island, then to the Agares City beneath it.
'No… I can't let them die… No.'
Grayfia stood on a separate precipice of the battlefield, her silver magic flaring like a cold beacon.
Below her, tens of thousands of residents froze in the streets. Common devils, scientists, and families alike were paralyzed by the sight of the black rain.
'No…'
Far below, in the shadows of the suspended island, the people of Agares city looked at the sky like statues.
Some finally snapped, rushing toward their homes or public shelters in a frantic, useless scramble for safety.
It was all a hollow effort.
As the first heavy sheets of the dark cursed water began to fall in earnest, every drop that struck a building instantly dissolved the structure.
The grounds turned into black sludge, and anything the cursed water touched began to melt into a disgusting mud-like slushy.
"Is this… the doom?" a voice cried out from the streets, lost in the roar of the downpour.
Meanwhile, at the massive, rocky stem of the suspended island near its ground-level foundations, Jay hovered in the air.
The Black Grail hummed at his side, its dark maw slowly absorbing the shattered soul manifestations of the Malebranche back into the safety of the chalice.
One by one, the souls and their weapons were pulled back, vanishing into the black chalice and Jay's pocket dimensions. Even Alichino's severed body was reclaimed, slowly regenerating.
After retrieving the Malabrance Jay glanced up at Sirzechs and Ajuka, who were still suspended hundreds of meters above him, silhouetted against the weeping black sky.
Jay stopped for a moment.
He and Ajuka locked eyes once more.
The silence between them was heavy with the weight of the choice that was about to be made.
Jay's plan had succeeded perfectly.
He had forced the Satans into two choices, each carrying its own catastrophic consequences.
And the gamble of this plan was.
What choice would Sirzechs and Ajuka take?
Would they prioritize the future of the Devil race, the invaluable research and crystals stored deep beneath Agreas Island, the very source that allows them to replenish their numbers through reincarnation?
Or would they choose the lives of the hundreds of thousands currently threatened by the Sea of the Damned, souls doomed to drown and dissolved in the cursed water, the lowly beings the Satans should not even value?
Though Jay wouldn't even call it a gamble, because deep down he already knew the answer.
He knew what kind of man Sirzechs was, and precisely because of that, he had proceeded with this plan. He was slightly surprised, however, that Ajuka seemed to follow the same emotional path as his friend.
Truthfully, he hated that they took that choice.
A part of him had been hoping they would prove him right, that they would abandon their people to save their future and, in doing so, confirm his belief that all Devils were ultimately selfish monsters.
Jay closed his eyes for a second as he saw Sirzechs and Ajuka leap upward.
They didn't dive for him.
They didn't try to save the crystals.
Instead, they rushed toward the clouds, toward the very source of the flood pouring from the sky, expanding their auras to form a shield for the city below.
Meanwhile, Ajuka enveloped the entire Agreas metropolis in hundreds of gigantic magical circles, as if already preparing for the moment Jay's black flame might rise from the ground.
A Kankara Formula designed to redirect the fire, preventing it from consuming the city
Even after knowing that his next move would destroy the entire underground foundation of the Agreas region, did the crystals truly not matter to them?
Was the preservation of their kin more important than the power they had spent decades building?
The obsidian scythe, Graffiacane, disappeared from Jay's left hand, returning to the pocket dimension.
"What a stupid choice," Jay muttered.
There was no joy in his voice.
There was no triumph in his expression.
Only a deep, simmering frustration that he was being forced to witness a flicker of the heroism he so thoroughly despised.
With Ame-no-Habakiri held firmly in his right hand, its blade enveloped in a thick, roaring shroud of black flame, Jay prepared the final blow.
He focused all of his intent on the massive, suspended rock of the island above him.
His dark hazel eyes let out a sharp streak of black light, and for a fleeting moment, the manifestation of a True Cross appeared behind him, looming like a spectral judge over the scene.
And then, as the world fell silent, he whispered.
"Turn to dust..."
SHIIIING
"World Slasher."
***
The end of all flesh has come before Me, for the earth is filled with violence through them; and behold, I will destroy them with the earth.