Disclaimer: Black Clover is owned by Yūki Tabata, Studio Pierrot, and Shonen Jump.
Saga 48: Devil in Your Heart Part 3
Clover/Diamond Kingdom Borderlands, Neutral Territory, Late Night
"... Okay, anyone gravely injured?" asked Jericho.
"Miraculously, no," Cole replied, "but it doesn't make our situation being boxed inside FOUR FUCKING SWORDS SIZE OF ENTIRE LANDMASSES AROUND US!"
As stated by the neurotic Blue Rose Knight, the Magic Knights found themselves suddenly boxed in between giant swords the fell from the skies with no warning. They were all back-to-back inside the cramped entrapment, with sounds of crashing echoing across the horizon outside, seemingly causing wanton destruction at their notice.
"Shit, shit shit!" cursed Sol as she kicked the flat of the giant blade in rage, "it's too cramped in her to use my magic!"
"Can't even lift my arms up..." Vanessa grumbled as she squirmed her body around to reach for the sky, "... hey, Jericho, don't move so much!"
"... Wait," pointed out Jericho, "... where's Gordon?"
Outside, Gordon himself was elsewhere reliving himself before the rain of giant swords that nearly turned him into mulch upon impact. As the swords began to rain around him, he then ran back towards the direction of the encampment, only to find the whole place same as literally everywhere else.
... Oh my god, Gordon thought, swallowing his own throat in fear as he saw the ruined horizon, ... I see nothing but swords.
The borderlands and beyond were planted with nothing but giant swords. He looked back where he'd run from, and just like the front, he saw nothing else but swords.
The whole world around him transformed into a forest of swords in a matter of seconds, bewildering the Black Bull Magic Knight upon finding himself in the distorted surroundings.
It's happening everywhere as far as I can see... Gordon said to himself internally, ... who or what could've caused all this?
Clover Island (now in two), No Man's Waves, Late Night
"DIE! DIE! DIE!"
The hateful echoes of a Demon of [Hatred] roared out as Cain and Lucifer clashed above the ruined island. Cain's blades were stained with black from the cuts that it had landed, and Lucifer's fists were caked in deep red with each successful blow that made contact, neither side was giving the other an inch.
The other Fallen Angels flew in for support of Lucifer, but Cain simply cut them through with his attacks of his blades or one of the many swords that continued to rain from the sky.
"JUST GIVE IT UP AND DIE ALREADY!" Cain cursed as his blades collided against the Fallen Angel's fists, "YOU NO LONGER CAN ACCESS YOUR APOCRYPHA FORM WITHOUT AN ADAM, SO QUIT RESISTING AND JUST LET ME END YOU!"
Lucifer grabs one of Cain's blades mid-thrust before pulling him in towards himself to deliver a punch to its teeth.
However, Cain stops the punch by catching them between its numerous rows of silver cones that it calls "teeth", of which all of them begin to spin, drilling into the Fallen Angel's hand as each tooth bored through the flesh and bone.
From the corner of his right eye, Lucifer ducks under Cain's swing, only to be left open to Cain's swift kick to the gut, causing him to let go of the the blade in his left hand, and the freed blade staking across the Fallen Angel's ribs.
The blades inside of Lucifer began to worm between his cartilages, shifting and growing inside of the Fallen Angel's body.
"... This body of yours is on the verge of expiration," Cain murmured out in a throaty voice as his teeth continued to bore into the clasped fist, "... but I'll butcher you throughly just to guarantee your re-damnation."
Lucifer's whole body then exploded outwards into a burr of jagged blades, each spine growing outwards like a tree's branches and impaling through every Fallen Angel in the radius of the epicenter.
"[Weapon Augmentation Magic: Bramble Butcher]," Cain declared before he'd lifted the bramble over its head and hurled the mess of blades carrying bodies like slaughter on meat hooks onto the cleaved island below his foothold, dislodging its rightmost arm-blade last second during his throw.
As the tumbleweed of jagged blades rolled across the landscape, Cain jumps down from his sword's pommel and back onto the ground, his right arm growing back another blade.
The other Fallen Angels tried to escape from their bramble of blades, but even their [Anti-Magic] or their raw strength weren't enough to snap a single picket in two.
"Don't bother," Cain remarked as he'd approached the giant tumbleweed of swords, "my [Weapon Magic] coverts all surrounding mana into solid matter indistinguishable from any tangible object. Your pansy-ass [Anti-Magic] can't do shit to my [Bramble Butcher], and the object converted from mana is Hell's Wroughtnium, a refined version of the same black iron that your so-called Prince's [Anti-Magic] swords are made of. Once they manifest, they will never erode no matter how much of time's cruel machinations are inflicted upon it. Only Satan himself can break them. Not even Beelzebub's stomach bugs which can reduce this whole world into a wasteland in a matter of seconds can't even erode them!"
At Cain's gesture of flicking his finger up, the giant sword planted into the sea rises up from the waves, it's tip now pointed towards the Fallen Angels caught inside the [Bramble Butcher].
"... Not good enough."
The floating giant sword then duplicates itself, forming a circumference of the replicant blades around the whole island's perimeter.
"... Not good enough."
The perimeter then transforms into a dome around the ruined island, adding even more copies of the grimoire-tower-sized blades into Cain's command.
"NOT GOOD ENOUGH!"
More blades than appear around the island's surrounding perimeters, even a several dozen more appearing out of the surrounding waters, ready to fly towards the island at Cain's command.
In total sum, about 666 blades and an assortment of weapons eclipsed the view of the island from surrounding waters into complete obscurity. All whom saw outside of Clover Island saw nothing but a literal black dome.
"Perfect," Cain grimaced, "NOW DIE-"
Before he could signal his command to rain down 666 tower-sized swords unto the ruined island, out of the freshly-torn fissure of Cain's own design, Astraoth bursts out of the gap with unholy fury hot enough to set the heavens ablaze, belching out a battle cry so bloody that blood might rain from clear skies at the bellowing howl of resolve, runs Ravager through Cain's whole torso, pushing him with all of his might into one of the surrounding swords, running Cain's body through in opposite directions.
"You die instead," Astaroth heaved out as he wiped the black blood off of his brows.
Cain than coughs out a wad of red blood onto Astaroth's face, the latter keeping a firm grip around his Ravager while reaching for his other swords in his stashed grimoire, pulling Reprisal to behead the Demon as a coup de grâce.
Astaroth then swings the blade with all of his might while keeping the other Demon of [Hatred] pinned down between Ravager and one of his 666 creations, only for Cain to bite down at the blade with his drill-like mandibles, letting sparks fly as the the Demon of [Hatred] continues to resist.
"... I am not losing to some half-dicked, two-bit-upstart Prince without his own Sin like you!" Cain declared as all of his teeth spiraled fiercely between the edge of Astaroth's Reprisal.
Between the mandibles, Astaroth spots something small gleaming inside Cain's mouth.
Then suddenly, his left eye goes completely dark. It takes only a few seconds to realize that Astaroth's left eye was pierced by an awl that grew from inside of Cain's mouth.
"If you can do sneak attacks, then I can do much better!" Cain boasted, "INVOKE THE LAW OF [HATRED]!"
All of the blades summoned by Cain then begin to glow in an alluring shade of warm red. Everywhere the blades were planted throughout the continent were now emitting the warm hue of rouge like blood moon-lit fireflies across the night sky.
"What the hell are you doing!?" asked Astaroth while he'd tried to pull himself out of the awl that was pierced through his left eye, only for it not to budge and inch.
"... Doing the worst possible thing could ever do," answered Cain with a sneer of contempt, "... calling for help."
Libratium, Spade Kingdom, Midnight
It all happened too fast. For both Fanas, it felt as if the whole world itself was to kill them.
One minute, they were returning back to the border customs office after receiving a revelation that should Elf!Fana and Human!Fana fail to reconcile with each others' existences, they'll both merge into a Demon of their own design, and in the next, giant swords burst through the hall's ceilings, getting themselves nearly killed several times over, and weren't it not for Mari's intervention ala carrying their body in a piggyback while performing acrobatic maneuvers that would be impossible for anyone who's considered a human.
Apparently, Hanafudans weren't normal humans by their continent's standards. They're practically freaks of nature that even Elf!Fana's High Elf elders wouldn't even think of crossing them. For all the elven guest knew, the village elders can move mountains with their magic, but the two Mitsurugi sisters can probably do the same with their bare hands.
"Alright, you two still not dead?" asked Mari as she continued to weave around the entangled hallway choked by an overgrowth of giant swords.
"I'm fine..." Fana weakly replied, "... but I think my elf half's pride is slowly crumbling."
"If learning were easy, then there would be no idiots left in the world to teach," Mari cooly replied as her feet skipped from edge to edge ala Libratium's physical art of Parkour "consider the first lesson to be humility. No one willingly show it, so life will do you a favor by breaking you both in."
What are we, fucking dogs!? Elf!Fana remarked in an indignant tone.
"Sorry, mongrels," Mari backhandedly replied, "if you think that's cruel, my own parents were worse in the disciplinary department. Beat our buttocks bloody red with dry reeds if we so much as sneeze at the wrong time."
The two (three counting the elven soul) arrive in front of the registry door, kick it down, and find the Whomalt family trembling on the ground, with Fanzell, Dominante, and Mariella in high alert.
"You folks alright?" asked Mari, "... wait, one of you missing."
"Heracles ran off with the staff member chasing after him after the former got too frustrated from signing too many forms," Fanzell remarked.
"Alright, all of you, follow me," ordered Mari, "we'll have to reconvene with my sister outside."
As the group scrambled through the mangled hallway of swords and rubble, the former then begin to all glow in a warm shade of red.
"What's going on?" asked Daisy, "and why are things glowing?"
"Whatever you do, don't touch them," Mari ordered, "don't ask why, just do as I say as I do."
The others than proceed to maneuver through the halls while avoiding the glowing swords that obstructed their way through, eventually, making their way towards the exit, and finding something else even more harrowing.
"... Oh my god," Iris gasped in horror as she fell to her knees.
What they've all witnessed were the entirety of the plains and beyond turned into a forest of swords, each blade large as a building, its shadows casting over the people below it like ants. Numerous faint spots of red glowed from a distance, closing in unto the fields around them before they all started glowing like a swarm of fireflies.
"The hell's going on!?" Mari asked before being approached by Akane, who herself was covered in numerous fresh cuts and bruises, "elder sister!"
"I'm fine," Akane replied with a strained tone, looking around semi-dazedly around her glowing surroundings, "... although I get the feeling that our weekly report is going to be a fucking nightmare."
"Since when it wasn't?" Mari replied nonchalantly.
"Masochist," Akane grimaced as she lightly jabbed her sister's shoulder.
"So, nothing bad's happening for now..." Fanzell remarked as he instinctually reaches for his broken estoc sheathed beneath his coat, ... yet my instincts are telling me someone's going to do something stupid. ... Just in case.
Despite the calm within the eerie surroundings of the faint red lights glowing around them, almost no one could stand the tension laid before them.
"Hey guys!" Heracles' voice shouted out ahead of them, "you guys done with the paperwork!? I easily had the greatest late-night jog when the swords started raining from the sky! I really wished that my master would've done the same during his training-"
"Wait wait wait, don't touch it-" Mari and Akane cried out in unison as Heracles laid his hand onto the glowing red blade, only for him to not be affected by the glow.
"... What's [Hatred]?" asked Heracles to befuddlement of everyone present, "... is it something you eat?"
Everyone witnessing the unexpected turn of events let out a collective sigh of relief, diffusing the tensions that constricted their hearts in an ironclad knot.
"... Okay, so we were worried for nothing," Dominante sighed out as she and Fanzell fell onto each others' backs in relaxation, "... worst is over, I guess-"
"*Huff* wait, *huff* dammit..." groaned out the staff member who ran after Heracles prior, "... goddammit, *huff* I hate... *huff*... runners..."
The exhausted staff member then lays his hand against the glowing blade for a moment of respite, but contrary to Heracles' experience, something happens to the staff member when he touches the blade.
He then lets out a pained yell as red bolts of electricity shock the man before leaving him in a lopped-standing state.
"... Hey, uh, you okay?" asked Heracles.
The staff member raises his head, and all were there to witness his eyes now reduced burning coal pits. He then rakes his fingers across Heracles' chest, ripping his clothes open.
"You..." the staff's voice echoed out in a menacing reverb, "... will it KILL YOU TO HOLD STILL AND DO YOUR FUCKING PAPERWORK!?"
His hands then projects a crucifix-like object, which he then brandishes it like a sword.
"... If you can't hold still for even a second... all that twitching... all of that FUCKING FIDGETING..." the staff member snarled out, foaming at the seams of his mouth like a rabid animal, "... THEN I'LL MAKE YOU STILL, AS A CORPSE!"
"Finally, another sparring session!" Heracles cheered as he'd blocked the swing of the energy sword swung by the staff member with his bare forearm, "... I dunno what this [Hatred] is all about, but if it makes you this perked up for a scrap, then bring it on!"
"I FUCKING HATE YOU!" roared out the maddened staff member as he continued attacking the muscular stranger in vain.
As the others watched the sudden clash, several other instances begin instigating around the place, with Akane and Mari drawing their kamitsurugi Relics from their scabbards upon noticing several more maddened Chevaliers coming towards them, all of them brandishing red swords in their hands.
"... I take it that we spoke too soon, unless this is Libratium's welcoming committee," deadpanned Fanzell as he drew his broken estoc and formed [Slashing Wind Emperor - Gale] around the half-blade.
"They're not themselves," Mari pointed out as her [Shien] burned in a bright azure hue, "their souls... have been overwhelmed with titanic amounts of hatred! Their inner senses of resentment has grown to cancerous rates into something else entirely!"
"So don't kill them?" asked Akane as her [Murasame] begin dripping with corrosive venom from her innate magic, "if so, I'll stick to swallow cuts with fast-acting paralytics from my [Poison Magic]."
"Dommie, keep the kids safe," asked Fanzell, "this is the last push before we finally sleep in a warm bed with a roof over our heads!"
"Die on me, I'll kill you," Dominante replied as she used her [Cloth Magic] to form an encasement around the Whomalt family, "the same goes for you, missy," the witch remarked to Mariella, brandishing her [Crystal Kris] in her hands.
"Alright everyone..." Fanzell declared as he brushed his hair up with his free hand and locked his eyes towards the charging horde of madmen, "ONE MORE NIGHT! NO ONE ELSE DIES!"
As the night reached its apex, the clash for their lives began as Heracles still can't wrap the meaning of the word "Hatred" around his head while being assaulted by the maddened staff member lashing out all of his unleashed resentment at him, and regarding Dune...
"ARGHH!" the Demonologist cried out from the top of his lungs while sprinting like a man possessed across the forest of swords, "SOMEONE SAVE ME!"
... He himself was being chased by Bizon, the latter hot behind his heels with none of his prior ire tempered even the slightest.
"YOU WILL DIE HERE, DEMON-WORSHIPPER!" roared out the rampaging Inquisitor coming back for more, bulldozing through the maddened horde like a runaway Minotaur plowing through a herd of sheep, catching them by his head before tossing them aside into the air, "I'LL ADD YOU HERETICS TO MY BUCKET LIST AFTER I DRIVE MY [LABRYS] INTO HIS SKULL!"
"I assumed that the poison would've at least knocked him out for a full day," Wadjet pointed out.
"ASSUME NOTHING! YOUR MACHINATIONS WILL NEVER WORK AGAINST MY FAITH!" Bizon's bellowing voice tremors out as he continued with his reckless pursuit across the metal forest, "NAUGHT TOXIC NOR TOOLS, NONE SHALL BREAK ME!"
... The night itself continues to degrade further down into the spiral of chaos that has been opened before them all throughout the visible world.
Clover Island (now in two), No Man's Waves, Midnight
As Astaroth tries to escape from his deadlock, his instincts begin to signal that Cain himself was starting to get stronger before him.
"... Would it kill them to just LET ME TAKE THEIR [HATRED] AS MY OWN!?" Cain barked out in a mini-tirade before letting out a disgruntled sigh of disappointment, "... you know what?"
The edges of his blades then morph into serrated blades.
"I'll take it out ON YOU!" Cain roared out as his blades began to spin, the teeth clashing against the edge of Ravager that was impaled into his chest before scraping it across in a fluid cross-motion, blinding Astaroth's sole eye with a rain of sparks, allowing Cain to kick the Prince off of himself and back onto the dry land once again.
Cain then pulls himself out of his own giant sword pierced through his back, using the spinning teeth's motion as recoil to pull himself out of his own creation. He then uses the floating sword as a foothold to spring himself towards Astaroth, now the two Demons clashing against each others' blades at first contact.
Astaroth dual-wields his [Anti-Magic] swords against Cain's triple spinning saws mounted on his palms and forehead.
"I AM NOT DYING TO ANOTHER SPINNING BLADE EVER AGAIN!" Astaroth roared out defiantly as his residual memories of his human death in the hands of a rouge Magic Knight flared back to life for a brief moment, "ESPECIALLY TO SOME ROIDS-ADDICTED MEATHEAD LIKE YOU!"
"LIKEWISE, SHITHEEL!"
In a spur of a moment, Astaroth kicks up his own grimoire into the air, and from its opened pages, the tip of Reject is revealed, flying out of the pages towards Cain.
Cain parries the sneak attack with his own head-blade, but the shifting of the Demon's line of sight allows Astaroth to thrust his Reprisal into Cain's face, jamming the blade's rotary functions, with Astaroth's attempts to push it in deeper causing Cain to struggle to choose between either continuing with his assault against the upstart Prince, or refocus on getting his third blade back in working order.
Cain chooses both by simply torquing his whole body around violently, thrashing Astaroth off of him before ripping out the sword embedded in his skull. The sawblade on the head moves once more, the sounds of its grinding and whirring signifying it reverberating back to life.
Astaroth charges towards Cain once again, locking blades once more before knocking each other back, which than Cain commands several of the surrounding blades to fly towards Astaroth from all directions.
As the blades flew towards the Prince, Astaroth tries to parry the coming projectiles that individually large enough to deforestation several times over, but upon the weight of one nearly knocking him back into the sea, he then opts to run across the blades flats as platforms to maneuver around the deadlock coming towards him, with Cain eventually taking the same idea from the Prince and deploys one of his swords as a ride towards Astaroth's own maneuver path in a pincer maneuver, catching the Prince between several giant swords that were deployed from the island's perimeter and himself riding atop of one.
"LIKE I'D FALL FOR THAT AMATEUR MOVE!"
Astaroth then ditches both of his blades, jumps off of his own sword that he was running on before landing on Cain's, grabs Cain by his spinning and boring teeth of numerous drill bits with his bare hands, which he then proceeds to instead throw Cain into a collision course of his own several swords meant for him.
Cain was then bombarded by his own creations, causing him to be dogpiled back to the shores of Clover Island as numerous swords size of bastions staked unto the Demon's back in an explosion of gravel and brine.
"... You insinuated that even you can't break your own weapons," Astaroth boasted as his legs crumpled onto the sand, the damages and the stress sustained causing to take his toll on his old mortal body, "... you can die from your own creations then. The irony."
However, the pile of weapons buried atop of the seemingly-killed Demon scatters like leaves in the wind, and from the emergence came forth Cain, now driving both of his chainsaw-blades into Astaroth's shoulders, severing off both of his arms before delivering a headbutt that slashed across the Prince's chest, opening the body up to expose and spill out its long-expired and rotting organs from the incision.
"THE ONLY IRONIC THING IS THAT YOU THINKING THAT YOU HAVE EVEN A MODICUM CHANCE OF BEATING ME, YOU DIPSHIT!"
Cain then propels himself forth using the perpetual motion of his sawtooth blades to act as a propellant force, turning his whole body into a projectile that rams the Prince through the [Bramble Butcher], mutilating them both through the trip across the island buried under tumbleweed of blades, eventually crashing through the first grimoire tower, with Astaroth laid on his back against the destroyed masonry.
The Prince's vision was fading, his own [Anti-Magic] couldn't keep up with the rate of speed that which Cain's engine of destruction was unleashing upon him. Astaroth wishes to continue to the fight, but his broken body refused to listen.
His fading vision sees the Demon's right arm transform into a massive block of cogs and pipes shooting steam, getting bigger and more intricate as it continued to build itself up into a more imposing silhouette.
"Like I said..." the Prince's ears heard Cain's voice reverberating in his wrecked eardrums, "... the only irony spoused is that you thinking that you have even a modicum of a chance defeating me."
His fading eyes were about to shut themselves for good, but spots something rather interesting between his crumpled legs.
The curved L-shape, the rear point above the handle. It was the stranger's Big Iron. How did it end up here, were it for fate or happenstance, wasn't relevant.
Astaroth then moved his toes towards the hammer's point, and pulls it back with what little remaining strength he had left. He faintly hears a click, meaning that the device was ready to discharge.
"Let's see how they glue your ass back together..." Cain remarked as he dragged his massive right arm across the pavement of cobblestone, "... WHEN I REDUCE IT TO PASTE AND MAIL IT BACK TO HELL!"
Cain then raises the giant hand above his head as it grew another size bigger by adding more armor and contraptions, which then Astaroth uses the opening to pull Big Iron's trigger with his toes, the barrel pointed towards Cain's ankle.
Big Iron lets out a loud crack, the projectile ripping across Cain's flesh and bone, causing him to lose balance, and his right arm crashing next to where Astaroth was laid, and upon impact, everything explodes into a cloud of burning rubble.
Cain himself was again, blown across the whole island and landing through one of his own creations yet again, and Astaroth falling into the same ravine that he'd involuntarily carved out of the island, no thanks to Cain.
"GOD FUCKING DAMMIT! AGAIN!?" roared out Cain as he tried to pull himself out of the same sword that he'd impaled himself in the back prior, this time, his body was now staked all the way down the giant blade's rain guard, "AS SOON AS I GET MYSELF OUT, I'M SHOVING THIS SAME SWORD UP YOUR FUCKING ASS AND MORE!"
Inside the depths, Astaroth's body kept sinking into the trenches, his eyes now seeing nothing but the darkness.
Heh... who was I kidding? the Prince thought, I'm just an upstart. I don't stand a chance against someone who can literally turn mana into solid objects, and I'm pretty sure all of the blows I inflicted upon him were just lucky cheap shots...
A sinking feeling weighed into his hollow chest like lead.
Astaroth had deep down, knew that he himself was weak in a world of magic. Deep down, he'd cursed himself for his own weakness, and that all of his hard work of building his body up, before and after his divorce from the mortal coil, he'd felt as if as long as he'd worked hard enough, he could've overcome anything.
However, what he'd witnessed was a true Demon. An embodiment of humanity's collective [Hatred]. A Demon without a Sin is like a bird without wings, and a Prince without purpose is naught but a fool.
There was nothing that propelled Astaroth forward sans but the now-meaningless desire to become the next Demon King to spite his past naive self's dream.
... I guess my journey ends here... thought Astaroth as he'd begun to accept his defeat, ... hopefully, Hell's warmer than this cold world that I deluded myself into tolerating-wait, warm? This deep?
However, in the depths of the abyss, a faint blue light flickers from the corner of his eye.
In amidst the suffocating darkness, Astaroth sees a blue flame. He'd then recalled a certain whale's words in the back of his mind when observing the flame.
... Let's just say that angel wings burn really well... what Hell can't do, Heaven can. If hellfire isn't hot enough, an angel's flame would suffice as the ultimate smithery's furnace.
This was it. A lit angel's wings, its blue flames still burning brightly while still submerged underwater.
... Can it work? thought the desperate Prince, ... is this my last chance to strike back?
Seeing the opportunity in his hands, Astaroth bites his tongue in defiance against his own despair.
"SCREW PEACEFUL DEATH!" Astaroth gargled out in the waters as he kicked his legs to propel his body closer to the blue flame, "I CHOOSE LIFE!"
He then reaches for the blue flame, kicks up the sand below it's tinder, and catches the whole thing between his teeth. Even as his head lit on fire, the flames were cold compared to his reignited flame of determination that was burning in his very soul.
If he dies, he'll take Cain down with him. It's just no longer about being a Prince anymore. It's about avenging his violated pride.
With an intense screech of bloodlust echoing through the ripples, Astaroth bursts out of the waters on fire at the exact same moment when Cain frees himself from his own impalement.
Like a scorching meteor screaming bloody murder as it hurdled from the midnight sky, Astaroth crashes down into Cain, the blue flames breaking through the Wroughtnium cage of [Bramble Butcher], snapping the blades like dry twigs stepped underfoot. As the titanic tin tumbleweed caught on fire and begins to fray at the seams around Clover Island, Cain looks at Astaroth in complete disbelief at the latter's suicidal attempt to strike him down.
"... You've got to be fucking kidding me," Cain uttered out in subdued ire before said ire explodes into an unholy conflagration, "HOLY FLAMES, HERE, OF ALL FUCKING PLACES FLOATING IN THIS BACKWATER CESSPOOL!?"
Astaroth then recklessly charges towards the Demon as the latter resumes lashing out at the Prince covered in flames of heavenly blue with all of his [Hatred].
"FOR THAT, I'LL FUCKING KILL YOUR ASS A THOUSAND TIMES OVER!"
Clover/Diamond Kingdom Borderlands, Neutral Territory, Midnight
"Okay, this is starting to look really bad," Jericho remarked as the four of their eyes were being subjected to the withering glare of the red glow around them.
"I think I'm gonna hurl," Vanessa remarked in a groggy tone, "... alcohol and flashing lights are a match made in Hell."
"And that's why drinking on the job isn't the greatest idea in the world," Cole deadpanned.
"Oi, it's not like you said it yourself, jackass," Sol pointed out, "maybe instead move your ass so I can actually take out my grimoire and get us out of here! Your butt is pressing it down!"
"Then get your butt off of mine!" Cole retorted, "your [Earth Magic] will crush us like paste if you use it in this confined space!"
"Well, your [Wind Magic] is just as impotent as-"
"ENOUGH!" Jericho cut in on the two Blue Rose Knights' bickering, "... any of you have any shit to work out, do it later. Right now, we need to get out of here with the methods we can use right now."
"What methods!?" Cole bemoaned, "we can't even use our magic like this to get out of here!"
"Then use your body," Cole answered as he linked both of his arms around Sol's and Cole's, "just shut up and follow me. Everyone, link your arms together. Questions later, just do it."
All four Magic Knights then link their arms around each others'.
"Okay, now what?" asked Sol, still skeptical of what was Jericho planning.
"On my mark, all four of us will have to jump, and land our feet on the walls around us," Jericho stated, "we'll have to turn the confined space that we're in into an advantage."
"What kind of cryptic bullshit are you on about!?" asked Cole.
"JUST SHUT UP AND DO AS HE SAYS!" Vanessa snapped, "THE SOONER WE'RE OUT OF HERE, THE LESS I HAVE TO DEAL WITH MY HANGOVER!"
"Ready!?" stated Jericho, bracing his legs, hoping that the others are doing the same, "one, two, three!"
The four then jump up, landing their feet against the walls facing them, and not one of them hitting the ground due to their backs pressing against each other acting as their collective support to keep their butts hitting the ground.
"... Holy shit, it worked," stammered out Cole in disbelief, "okay... I'll bite. Now what?"
"Keep going, until we reach the top," answered Jericho, "on my count, one, two, three!"
All four shift their bodies upwards, going ever slightly higher up.
"One, two, three!"
Again, they jostle their feet up to go higher than their prior position. No one dares to speak or complain about Jericho's plan, mostly due to the plan actually working.
As they continued towards greater heights towards freedom, even as their legs began to grow sore from the strain of pushing themselves against each others' backs, as their breaths became more berthed from the mounting exhaustion, the four Magic Knights persisted onwards towards their freedom.
"We made it!" Cole cried out jubilantly as he and the other saw starlight, only for their immediate enthusiasm to curbed back to the ground when realizing their current predicament, "... okay, how the fuck do we go down from here?"
"We undo our link, we fall to our deaths. Which way? Pick either," Jericho pointed out.
"Leave this to me," Vanessa remarked as she'd opened her grimoire before her remotely, unleashing her [Thread Magic] to tie everyone's waists around to the four posts that were before them, "alright, keep your feet on solid ledge, and pull!"
As soon as they unlinked their arms, the four Magic Knights pulled themselves up towards the posts that stood before them.
Upon reaching the very top on their feet, the four of them saw a horrifying scenery of an endless forest of swords that extended beyond the horizons of four cardinal directions.
"... Holy shit," Sol gasped out in disbelief, "all of this damage in one night?"
"It's endless!" Cole cried out despairingly, "the capital and the kingdom are fine, right!? I mean, the former has a magical barrier around it!"
"... I am not wasted enough for me to deal with this crap," Vanessa groaned as she reached for her flask, only to find it empty, "... son of a bitch, this night is just getting fucking better..."
"Well, can't do anything to solve it as long as we're stuck up here," Jericho pointed out as he turned his back towards the outer rim, "Miss Enoteca, can you make the strings around me longer? I'm going to rappel my way down from here."
"You do that, less weight for me," Cole remarked as he summoned his [Nimbus Platform] while carrying Sol and Vanessa.
"Hey now, are insinuating that Sol is fat?" teased Vanessa.
"Nah, he's clearly thinking that you're fat, old hag," taunted Sol.
"Excuse me!? I'm still young!" snapped the witch, "it's not my fault that I'm too much of a woman compared to you!"
"The only woman who I want looking at me is Big Sis Captain Charlotte!" Sol retorted, "even with that scar across her face, she's so rugged and gutsy, and I want her to carry me in her arms like a princess! Not like that a desperate bar wench like you can understand."
"Huh!?" Vanessa glared at Sol, the latter giving her a raspberry, "you picking a fight, ya punk-ass bitch!?"
"I'll toss your wrinkly ass off the cloud, you bitch!" Sol snapped back as the two then began pulling on each others' hair and clothes, but while Cole himself would've rather tossed the two off of his [Nimbus Platform] and be done with it, the last thing on his mind was extending his parole into additional sentences on the charges of deliberate friendly fire.
He's simply accepted reality as it was, and proceeded to ignore the two's mini-catfight as he'd slowly descended back onto solid ground.
"You made it," Jericho greeted Cole as the latter let Vanessa and Sol duke it out by themselves, "... you're gonna stop them?"
"Not in my place man," Cole grumbled out apathetically, "Sol would probably make up some random shit to accuse me for and no one would even bother to defend me-GET DOWN!"
Cole tackles Jericho down from a sneak attack from behind the latter, something tearing into the back of Jericho's Magic Knight robe.
Jericho looks behind himself, only to see Gordon, but his eyes burning bloody-red and wielding a sword made of red light similar to that of the glowing monoliths surrounding them.
"... Gordon?" asked Jericho.
"... You... bastard..." Gordon's voice reverberated out in a metallic drone, "... I thought you were my friend..."
Gordon then stabs his crimson blade into the earth in an attempt to stab Jericho, only to miss and plant the weapon into the wasteland and begin to continue stabbing the ground as if reaching out to kill a vermin scampering on the floor.
"SO WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU BEING SO CUDDLY WITH HIM!?" the maddened Black Bull's pale face contorted into a hideous visage of hate, accusing Cole of stealing Jericho from him.
"... Uhh, what?" Cole confusedly remarked.
"DIE!" screeched Gordon as he leapt up with his sword raised over his head before swinging it down towards Jericho, only for the latter to block the strike with his forearms encased in [Stardust Knuckles], the silver gauntlets emitting sparks from the friction.
"GORDON! CALM THE HELL DOWN!" Jericho plead, "WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS!?"
"BECAUSE I HATE YOUR BETRAYAL!" screamed Gordon as he'd exerted a surprising amount of hysterical strength from his blows that caused Jericho's feet to slide back a few inches with each concussive strike to the burly Magic Knight's arms, "AT LEAST WHEN PEOPLE USUALLY IGNORE ME, THEY'RE HONEST WITH THEIR INTENTIONS! BUT YOU HAD TO CALL ME YOUR FRIEND, ONLY FOR ME TO SEE YOU WITH ANOTHER GUY!"
Before Gordon can swing his granted blade once again, Vanessa's [Thread Magic] then binds around his whole body, rendering him immobile, and allowing Jericho to pin him down to the ground.
"GORDON!" Jericho pleaded at the flailing and thrashing Black Bull, "PLEASE! CALM THE HELL DOWN! YOU'RE NOT ACTING LIKE YOURSELF!"
"What the hell's going on?" Sol remarked as she'd laid her hand on the red monolith unconsciously.
"NO!" cried out Jericho as he'd witnessed Sol screaming in pain as her whole body was assaulted with red shocks before her whole body goes limp, right before she then pounces unto Jericho with her own red blade in her hand...
"CALM THE FUCK DOWN, HOTPANTS!"
... Only for Cole to dropkick the maddened Sol out of the way.
"Cole!?" Jericho remarked in surprise.
"You keep him down, I'll deal with my own squad," Cole reassured before facing Sol.
"I never liked men, those dickless, hypocritical, greedy, perverted bastards who are good for nothing other than be under our feet!" Sol verbally lashes out as her eyes glowed blood-red as her blade gifted to her, "YOU'RE FIRST UP ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK, COLE EVENS-"
Sol's speech was then cut off as Cole delivers a [Wind Magic]-enhanced punch to her teeth that sent the female Blue Rose Knight flying towards another monolith, her back hitting against the monolith's glowing flat upon collision.
"Can't get in trouble if I'm not the one starting it," Cole deadpanned as he took up a fighting stance, "now shut up and fight. I've got a shitload of grievances that I need to vent."
Sol then lets out a feral howl during her charge as Cole readies himself for a brutal melee.
Clover Island (now in two), No Man's Waves, Midnight
The two Demons were now at their final bout, with one burning out from the holy flames eating through his flesh and bone, while the other is too blinded by rage and hate to even notice the self-inflicted damages that were being caused onto its own vessel.
"WHY WON'T YOU JUST FUCKING DIE!?" screeched Cain as he continued to drum his chainsaws down onto Astaroth's immolating body, "WHY MUST YOU CONTINUE TO RESIST!? WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO DESERVE SUCH SPITE AGAINST ME!? WHY AM FORCED TO BE SUBJECTED TO THIS KIND OF TORMENT!? WHY AM I SOUNDING LIKE THAT WHINY BITCH LUCIFUGE AT THIS JUNCTURE!?"
Astaroth let out a bellowing cry as one of his flaming fists connected against Cain's lower jaw, melting his drill-teeth into mercurial slag, welding his own mouth together in crude cage-like bars between his blackened gums.
"YOU SHUT UP AND FUCKING DIE!" Astaroth retorted as he delivered another punch to Cain's face, but Cain uses his chainsaw to pierce though the Prince's crumbling arm, breaking both during their collision.
Cain rips out his now-useless chainsaw from his left arm while Astaroth resumed his charge towards the former.
The two collide head to head, Astaroth's head proving to the be the more sturdier of the two, Cain's chainsaw head caving into his own half-head.
"DON'T UNDERESTIMATE ME!" Astaroth roared out as he then stomped onto the downed Demon with his flaming foot, "MY HUMAN BODY IS STRONGER THAN ANY OTHERS'!"
Cain simply responds by delivering a kick towards Astaroth's stomach that sends him flying through the fraying [Bramble Butcher], the latter now catching fire as it began to crumble.
"Now's our chance! Cut loose!" ordered Lucifer as the trapped Fallen Angels began freeing themselves from their entanglement, the holy flames now melting their Wroughtnium cages like ice. Some had their vessels' limbs burnt to charcoal, but it was better than simply catching on fire and dying.
Lucifer himself had lost his left wing after catching holy fire, the other have lost a few more of their limbs, but alive is what they all care about.
"What do we do, cut and run!?" Belial suggested.
"No. Witness them," Lucifer answered as he took internal joy in seeing the Demon of [Hatred] reduced to such a disadvantageous state.
As he'd figured out while he'd watched the Demon in action, Lucifer surmises that Cain is a menace, but his fatal flaws were the following;
One, lack of self-preservation. Cain will always prioritize attacking above all else, and even for regular Demon standards, Cain is fragile in comparison in terms of general endurance, likely due to his stay in Hell being so one-sidedly advantageous to him that he didn't develop enough resistances to counter mundane causes of death like [Immolation for X Minutes] or [Blunt Trauma to the Head]. Cain strikes first, and will kill first. But by not letting others strike him in turn, Cain himself was only meant for quick sweeps rather than long, drawn-out battles.
Two, lack of necessary secondary powers. The ability to create weapons out of Wroughtnium, Hell's strongest refined metal, out of thin air/anywhere present with mana is indeed powerful, just as a few Demons who can create actual swords rather than magical constructs of swords/copies that can easily be canceled out by [Anti-Magic]. However, in spite of the opposition being unable to do anything about Cain's rain of grimoire tower-sized swords, neither can Cain. He's literally unable to recall his own powers, meaning that his own weapons can harm him if he isn't careful enough. Unfortunately for Cain, his insistence of always going for overkills rather than simple finishers leaves his back open not for any other Demons, but rather and usually, to his own attacks.
And finally, lack of awareness. Cain, as a Demon of [Hatred], has a really bad case of tunnel vision. If something sets him off, he'll go after the culprit while disregarding everything else. Granted, it's still foolish for others to jump on him during his rampage since they'll get themselves killed from the ensuing collateral damages, but to anyone wiser, it's easy for them to run away to fight another day, as cemented by the infamous relationship between Cain and Lucifuge, the latter taking the notion of "careful" past 11, and making it into an art form, to put it mildly.
In short, Cain is a grave danger to literally everything, including himself.
As the rest of the Fallen Angel sat back and watched their Prince fight the Demon, they saw the two crash back into the ruined grimoire tower, but now, the whole thing collapses on top of them, burying the two under a mountain of decayed timber and eroded mason.
However, the pile erupts out Cain's arm, with the Big Iron grasped around his fingers before the rest of the body dug himself back up.
He then digs his fingers into the fringes of his welded-together jawline, and rips the mouth-cage locking his mouth together out, leaving behind a bloodied and torn gums that left agape in strained heaved.
"... Your memories..." remarked Cain as he observed the Big Iron's workings, "...countless years of experimentation and failure... all culminating into the apex weapon..."
The Demon then stuffs the whole gun into his own mouth before swallowing it. Upon the device reaching his stomach and slowly being digested, all of the individual parts of the weapon begin to be ingrained into Cain's mind, slowly adding themselves into the lexicon of weapons that the Demon of [Hatred] can create.
A perfect weapon, one that anyone can operate proficiently with minimal amount of training, can be useful in both close and long range, maintenance was kept simple with standardized parts, and the general platform being extremely versatile that can cover various roles on the battlefield.
"... I will honor your memory of the object for your [Hatred]..." declared the Demon, "... and immortalize your work into my very essence."
Lucifer then tries to blindside him while the Demon was distracted in his eulogy, but the latter simply shot his remaining chainsaw blade from his right arm, the purged weapon staking Lucifer's chest back onto the earth.
From the cavity of the purged arm and other ruined holes where the other two weapons were birthed from, from blades came out thin black-metal barrels, with each cylinder housing a stouter and larger cylinder behind it, rotating before stopping with a distinct click-sound, and behind the rotating chambers were the pointed rears of the hammers.
"... Time to test out your creation," Cain stated as he'd aimed down all three of his barrels towards the Fallen Angels, "[Weapon Manifestation Magic: Reichrevolver Verdreifachen - Wahllose Entladung]/[Imperial Revolver Triple - Indiscriminate Discharge]."
The rear cylinders being spinning wildly as the barrels flashed to life in incandescent flashes that have unleashed a choking volley of Wroughtium-made projectiles that simply tore through the remaining Fallen Angels like paper.
"DIE! DIE! DIIIIEEEEE!" howled Cain as the deafening echoes of gunfire drummed across the air, tearing apart the 70 vessels into still-alive mincemeat, now unable to regenerate due to their trauma threshold being broken through.
One of Cain's greatest strengths was that his [Weapon Magic] can bypass a Demon's immunities through sheer volume of destruction that he can dish out alone. The Fallen Angels had the dubious honor of being able to die being [Shot by Gunfire].
If he can't tame death, he'll create them.
"And now..." Cain declared as he walked up to Lucifer, pinning his foot down onto the latter's chest while pointing all three of his barrels towards the chief Fallen Angel's head, each chamber loaded with a Wroughtnium shell containing enough destructive force to completely sink the whole Clover Island (what's left of it) into the bottom of the ocean, "... SAY YOUR FUCKING PRAYERS-"
From his chest, it bursts out a flaming fist of blue.
Behind him, Astaroth, with the entire left side of his upper body now completely disintegrated, punched through Cain's body and rupturing through the ADAM inside his chest, the arm itself burning out like a candle's wax foundation.
"... I fucking hate you."
As soon as Astaroth pulls out his arm leaving behind a gaping, ashen hole punctured through Cain's chest, the two collapsed onto the ground, the shells from Cain's [Reichrevolvers] misfiring into random directions, two shells hitting the oceans causing an explosion of water that turned into a cascade of saltwater, the other flying towards the mainland, the latter of which, no longer being of the Demon's concern.
"... He did it," muttered Lucifer, "... the Eleven Elusive Evils... can be killed."
With a pained yell, the sole surviving Fallen Angel tries to pull himself out of the serrated blade that had nailed him to the ground, freeing himself and standing back up to his feet, looking down at the two fallen Demons before him.
He then looks around, the remaining Fallen Angels sans himself reduced to mincemeat, alive, but unresponsive. Lucifer then looks at the charred Prince's corpse, whose signs of life were ebbing and flowing away with each passing minute. He then sees Cain, whose soul was about to be cut off from this world, and simply be respawned in Hell.
Time was of the essence, and with no other impeding thoughts, he began collecting the remnants of his Fallen Angels of Ars Goetia and dragging Astaroth's nigh-expired vessel to where he can go on rebuilding back to normal.
Granted, it's a patch-job at best, but it will at least add an additional month for the now-two of them to find new bodies to take over.
With his own [Anti-Magic] acting as an adhesive agent, Lucifer had managed to somewhat piece back together a functioning body for the Prince of War.
Now, for a source... Lucifer thought as he now looked for a way to jumpstart Astaroth's soul, theoretically, the holy flames should be sufficient enough, but with the flame already inside of him, how can I wake him up-
The Fallen Angel then hears a dry cough from behind. Turning his head, he sees Cain, his soul still tethered to this world.
"... To the victor goes the spoils," remarked Lucifer as he'd ripped off Cain's head to retrieve his Stigmata.
"... I hate you..." Cain weakly muttered out as Lucifer sets him down like a fish about to be gutted alive, "... I hate you... I hate you-"
The Demon of [Hatred] finally goes silent, his ravings cut off as the proof of his contract has now relieved to another holder.
"... Time to wake up, Astaroth," declared Lucifer as he'd raised the point of the red crucifix above Astaroth's chest, "your work is nowhere near done."
With all his might, Lucifer drives the Stigmata of [Hatred] into Astaroth's chest.
To Be Continued...
Author's Notes: And with that, Cain is dead, Fire Punch-ed through his own Chainsaw Man (later Barrel Dragon from Yu-Gi-Oh) ass.
Finals are over, second semester is over, and I'm back to writing fics again, but I'm a little rusty due to being semi-inactive for a month straight due to the first reason.
So anyway, I decided to implement a Eleven Elusive Evils' prestige gimmick, [Law], which allows them to gather upon their assigned sin to grant themselves more power from the masses of humans, and Cain's [Law] is a simple Hate Plague that drives others to murder when they lay their hands on the glowing red blades (red as a glowing color is the most psychologically attractive for a human brain to react/touch it, hence why some people press the red button against all odds of logic).
However, there are two outliers for Cain's [Law]:
1) hands only; feet or body don't count since one can't wield a sword with toes or an open back (logically speaking)
2) you have to be able to comprehend the idea of hatred in order to be infected under the [Law]; exhibit A: Heracles being an utter buffoon (and possibly illiterate), the big lug can't even understand hatred, or rather, equate hatred to violence, like how primal human fight-or-flight instincts are triggered during times of distress
And for the record, Cain's powers being stronger than himself is why he kinda lost. The other part was Astaroth using flame burning on an Angel's wings that can melt Stigmatas to melt through Wroughtium helped at the cost of literally everything else of him.
The party of 72 Fallen Angels has now been cut down to just 2. We hardly knew ye? Eh, call it cleanup. If I'm gonna introduce a shitload of characters, I better kill em all quick just to make room.
And with that, there's the cleanup at the next Saga.
So, what do you guys think of this Saga?
Please leave a comment or a review, for I'd like to know what my audience are thinking!