Every devil was special in their own way, but the ones of the 72 Pillars are especially noteworthy. Devils from a Pillar family would have a power unique to them and those of their blood.

A/N: I know that not every devil inherited a clan trait. Sairaorg is an example of that.

The Bael, and now Gremory had the Power of Destruction.

The Agares had the Power of Time.

The Belial had Worthless.

If not every, most Pillar families had their own special ability/trait.

It could be said that the Pillar Devils were privileged from birth. A special existence compared to the common low-class devils.

But even then, it was hard to bring out the true power of their clan trait. One must be able to become the very embodiment of it. Throughout the Devils' history, there have only been a handful who had achieved that very state.

One such existence was Sirzechs Lucifer. Through condensing his Power of Destruction into a human form, he was able to create a shockwave that spread throughout the entire Realm of the Dead. This ability—his true form, was able to land him a spot amongst the Top Ten Strongest Beings In The World, overwhelming even Hades himself.

And even then, Sirzechs wasn't able to control his Human-Shaped Aura of Destruction at will—No, it would spread even without his command, destroying everything around him. And that was with hundreds of years of training.

So how could Sekirai Agares, or rather Nathan, a mere newborn compared to the time that Sirzechs had been alive, achieve that state?

The truth was—he didn't.

Synchronization: Master Clock, at its core, was just a mere imitation of Sirzechs' powers, or rather, his embodiment of Destruction. It was something that Nathan had created to grant himself a boost of power. Something that wouldn't require too much time to do so, as the concept behind it was relatively simple.

Nathan applied the concept of Embodiment to his own Power of Time, but he realized that there were many flaws to it.

The first was the lack of demonic energy. Nathan's current reserves of demonic energy were—while impressive for his age—not enough for him to achieve that state, even with Kronos' help, as Kronos has not fully recovered yet. His amount of demonic energy was not enough for him to compress his power into one form.

The second was his own lack of control. The control he had over his Power of Time was extremely impressive—far surpassing most Agares that came before him due to the boost that he had received from Kronos, who was revered as the Titan of Time himself—was still not enough (albeit unfathomably close) to condense the Power of Time without having it (and his demonic energy) imploding on himself.

And finally, it was his own body that prevented him from doing that. His body was simply too weak to handle the massive amount of demonic energy that would be required of him to activate his Power of Time to its fullest extent. To become the Embodiment of Time.

It was ironic. Though he had control over time itself, he still lacked the time that he needed.

Therefore, Nathan could only find an alternative.

That alternative was Synchronization: Master Clock.

Befitting of the name, to activate Synchronization: Master Clock, Nathan needed to synchronize his body and demonic energy with Kronos' own godly energy to make up for all of his flaws. And even then, it barely made up for the problems he had, and due to that, every activation would cost him deeply, due to the fact that his demonic energy and Kronos' own godly energy wouldn't be able to coexist together in the same body.

It was truly a last resort for Nathan. One that he had used due to the current situation, where he was faced with a foe that he wouldn't be able to defeat without using it.

Nathan gripped Vindex as he felt his body overflow with a godly-demonic energy, a bright green glow was surrounding him, and the phantom of an antique clock was floating closely behind him, with its arms constantly moving, its pace and direction depended on Nathan's usage of his powers. If he slowed down time, the arms would tick slower, if he stopped time, it would stop moving. Theoretically, if he reversed time, the arms would move backward, and if he sped up time, the arms would move forward (Though he had never been able to achieve either).

Nathan dashed forward with an exponential increase in speed and swung his scythe at the figure wearing the classic dark grim reaper cloak, who retaliated with ease as he parried Nathan's own scythe and counterattacked.

When Nathan was inevitably flung black from the clash, Kilgore would pop in and trouble him as Nathan regained his balance, before disappearing in an instant without giving Nathan the chance to retaliate.

Nathan clicked his teeth as the arms of the clock behind him began ticking with a slower speed, something that both the figure and Kilgore failed to notice due to there being a green hue cloaking the clock.

The effect was instant; the area around Nathan was instantly slowed down, including the mysterious grim reaper and Kilgore. The mysterious grim reaper broke out of the slowed time fairly easily, though Kilgore was evidently struggling to do so.

Nathan enhanced his body and sped up towards Kilgore, leaving green trails behind him as he flew towards said grim reaper.

The mysterious grim reaper took note of this and flew over to reinforce Kilgore, who had just broken out of Nathan's slowed time, and was preparing to teleport away until he saw the mysterious grim reaper flying over. Kilgore changed his plans and decided to hold his ground for the reinforcement that would come not even a second later.

Nathan was once again flung back, with Kilgore also teleporting next to him and attempting to get a hit in, before teleporting away when he realized that he couldn't land a hit without being dealt serious damage.

The cycle repeated itself for what felt like hours to Nathan—perhaps because of the skewed perception granted from Master Clock, or because of the adrenaline that filled him—was only a few minutes in reality. There was no way that Nathan would be able to last that long while keeping Master Clock activated.

Nathan realized the inevitable—he would eventually lose within a few more minutes.

Faced with this realization, Nathan didn't tremble. Instead, he closed his eyes as he thought, 'Kronos… how much longer can I last?'

[Five minutes at most. And that's considering the minimal expenditure of the godly-demonic energy that's in your body.]

Nathan took the information he was provided with as he grew more tired due to the large expenditure of godly-demonic energy that was placing stress on his body.

Nathan eventually slipped up during the almost-monotone process of getting flung back by the grim reaper and the hit-and-run from Kilgore.

Like the routine that they had built up over the battle, Nathan clashed against the mysterious grim reaper, but this time, the clash was broken almost instantly as the grim reaper overpowered Nathan, taking advantage of Nathan's evident fatigue. Kilgore saw this and took the opportunity to teleport behind Nathan, and with him being cornered from both front and back, Nathan had nowhere to run.

Nathan clenched his teeth and released his godly-demonic energy in a sudden outburst, simultaneously repelling and stopping the time of all things in the area around him, before he flew straight up as he gripped the gem that was fitted in the heel of his scythe.

He pulled it out of place from the scythe's heel as he stared at it intensely while channeling his energy into it as he recalled his memories about the owner of the gem. As he recalled the owner's last actions.

Balher, Sekezer's Rook. The descendent of a giant. And…his mentor, with who he had built some sort of bond. Who started him on the path of a…monotonous revenge.

Though Nathan was ashamed to admit it, his intense anger from Balher's death had already faded away with time. Now all he felt was a sense of duty. A sense of duty that compelled him to take revenge for Balher.

Nathan self-deprecatingly smiled as he closed his eyes and thought to himself, 'How fitting that I'm going to die in the same manner that Balher did. Like mentor, like student.'

Nathan channeled his chaotic energy into the gem, disrupting the demonic energy that he had already stored inside it in advance.

The effects were obvious—the gem instantly cracked as dark red and gold lines tainted its surface. The cracks spread in an instant, covering the entire surface of the gem in a mere second.

Nathan took a deep breath before looking down at the two grim reapers. Kilgore had a grim expression on his face as he realized what was about to happen, preparing to teleport away.

Nathan wasn't going to let that happen. He clenched his fist and threw the gem as hard as he possibly could towards Kilgore, before releasing his mixed energy in an outburst that stopped time in the area around him.

Though the stopped time only lasted for a mere second, that mere second was enough. That mere second stopped Kilgore's teleportation and stopped the mysterious grim reaper's attempt to stop the imminent explosion.

The gem was then inflated in an unnatural manner before it exploded like a balloon that was filled with too much air.

Nathan could only see a brief, intense flash of light that blinded him before he felt a burn on his body. A burn which scorched the area that he was fighting in just a minute earlier.

The godly and demonic energy intertwined with each other in a spiral of dark red and gold, each struggling to overpower each other as they ravaged their surroundings.

The explosion disintegrated anything that was within its range on a molecular level, leaving almost no chance for survival.

Almost no chance.

Nathan, Kilgore, and the mysterious grim reaper were unsurprisingly caught in the explosion that followed, and only two were left.

Kilgore, who couldn't teleport away, was unable to handle the heat and resulting energy from the explosion.

The mysterious grim reaper survived, but his cloak was torn off, revealing jet black hair and eyes that had no pupil.

Nathan's injuries were the most severe. The mixed energy that was kept in his body boiled up and destroyed his insides, while the explosion scorched his outsides, making him an unrecognizable heap of charred skin.

Nathan could barely breathe, let alone move around. None of his five senses were working at the moment.

The grim reaper walked over to Nathan as he held his scythe with a grim look.

"You're dangerous." The grim reaper talked to someone that couldn't even hear his words.

But still—Nathan could roughly infer what he was talking about as he attempted to twitch his face into a smile, before internally grimacing at the pain that resulted from that.

The grim reaper didn't spare any more words as he lifted his scythe, before bringing it straight down into Nathan's chest.

There was no blood that came out of the wound. Rather, there was no blood to come out.

The grim reaper then turned around before unfurling his wings and flying away from the battle.

Nathan's consciousness was slowly fading away, and his last thoughts were apologies.

'I'm sorry, Kronos. I guess that you'll die here today… At least you won't die alone.' Nathan joked as he felt his own breathing become fainter.

[...I always have to clean up after your mess, Sekirai Agares.]

There was no response. Nathan was already 'dead'.

There was a sigh, one that seemed to echo throughout the cavern, before a golden light covered Nathan's body, and when that was gone, his body was nowhere to be found.

A/N: I took inspiration from both Rosenkreutz' Anomaly, which you can probably guess from the "Embodiment", or rather, "True Form", and the original material with Sirzechs' Human-Shaped Aura of Destruction.