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"Rias" – Speech
'Issei' – Thought
[BOOST!] - Sacred Gear Ability/ Ddraig and Albion Speech
Beta'd by BigCC
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"Not since the end of the Gigantomachy has a Divine Spark been used. It will not be allowed to happen again." - A quote from an unusually serious Zeus.
"The girl had bigger balls than most pantheons put together. To force her way to apotheosis using such a method…It's a shame what happened to her." – Odin.
"Mei Schwarzwald's ability to trust others, aside from those she considered her sisters, was utterly shattered by the betrayal of Amadeus Bael. Ultimately, her suffering was the fault of the Devils of the Bael Family, who did not see Amadeus for what he truly was, as well as we Maō, who she could not trust due to the failures of the Bael Family." - Sirzechs Lucifer.
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The Twenty-Fourth Move: Endgame Part 3
Throne Room, Garden of the Queen
Mei appeared in a flash of purple magic, Hyōdō Issei obediently standing alongside her. An idle snap of her fingers reassembled and repaired the destroyed doors, which slammed shut automatically.
"My dear one...Chiaki-chan...you are…still imprisoned..." the fledging demon goddess murmured. "No...I shall not permit it! You were present…when this nightmare began...you more than any other have a right…to be here when the final curtain falls!"
With a clawing slash of her arm, a purple portal formed in mid-air in front of her, out of which tumbled a confused and startled Amakusa Chiaki.
"Wha-?!" she spluttered as she immediately rolled to her feet, ready for whatever had summoned her...until she saw Mei.
"Mei-nee-sama!" Chiaki yelled in delight, immediately rushing forward and hugging her older sister tightly.
"Chiaki-chan...it's good to see you again." Mei smiled as she (very, very carefully) hugged her younger sister back. "I trust you were treated well while the Maō held you prisoner?"
"I was." she affirmed with a smile. "Azazel was keeping an eye on me, but you got me out from right under his nose."
Mei nodded, before her face hardened. "Little one, I must hurry. My godhead will not last forever." the former Stray Devil Queen said seriously. "Bring our sisters here so that I might begin the restoration ceremony."
"Hai, nee-sama." Chiaki affirmed, mood growing sombre to match her sister's. She stepped back, created a magic circle beneath her feet and vanished.
Mei meanwhile, summoned forth the Sacred Gears that held her sisters' souls, gazing longingly at each in turn for a brief moment. She had hated every moment she had been forced to wield them, feeling like she had stolen what rightfully belonged to her beloved sisters. Even though all of their spirits, locked inside of them, had begged her to use their Sacred Gears in order to carry out her plans, the guilt of using them like she had had gnawed at her for all of the past three years.
'Three years...such a short time, a blink in the eye almost, in the lifespan of a Devil, yet it has felt more like an eternity for me.' the Demon Goddess thought, melancholy tainting her thoughts. 'I can only hope that Sirzechs and the other Maō will prove worthy of the faith I am putting in them and look after my beloved sisters when I am no longer here.'
The glow of the souls of her sisters inside the Sacred Gears, once as faint as an overcast moon to her Devil eyes, now shone as bright as a bonfire to Mei's new divine sight.
Her original plan had been to gather at least two or three other Longinus users in addition to the wielder of [Boosted Gear] in order to create a distraction at Olympus, allowing her to break in and steal one of the few remaining [Divine Spark]s that that Zeus and his brood so jealously guarded. Unfortunately, the insight granted to her by drinking from the Well of Mímir had revealed a fault in her plan. Simply put, the [Divine Spark]s that the Olympians guarded, crafted by either the Gods or the Titans, would not have the power to finely manipulate souls like her wish required. In order to accomplish her goal, she needed a [Divine Spark] of even greater potency, one created by one of the Primordials, the ancient beings that had helped craft the world and created life, magic and the idea of godhood itself.
What had followed was even more research, nigh-endless and near-exhaustive research in the hopes of finding some lead or hint that such a [Spark] might still exist. It had been such a shock, a true show of the irony of the universe itself, that she'd found the clue that pointed to her own Sacred Gear as being the key. The old legend that had stated that Gaia had hidden her greatest treasure, a seed of her own divine essence, within a creation born of her and another ancient God, stored safely within a copy of Pandora's cursed puzzle box and then divided in twain by its two creators.
Her plan had quickly evolved to its current state from there. Using the current user of the [Boosted Gear] to rapidly become empowered to the level that she could easily make use of the Atonement Ritual System to ascend to the level needed for the [Divine Spark] to function on her, a hundred years ahead of schedule and without needing to compromise her morals as badly as she'd originally believed would be required.
And now...all of her work was on the very cusp of being completed. She was a nascent Demon Goddess born directly of the line of Gaea, All Knowing and Ever-Present Primordial Goddess of the Earth. She had her sisters' Sacred Gears and physical bodies present, and she still had the Sekiryūtei under her control and ready to lend his power to her cause. She had the same divine knowledge of things and godly wisdom granted to Odin Allfather to aid her, and she had the will and determination to carry out her plan.
Idly, she reached out and reconnected with the magical defences of the Garden of the Queen, raising them to full siege status and automatically teleporting any intruders left within the Garden to a random point in the Underworld, as well as sealing the deliberate hole in the defences she had created to give the Gremory Group a way in.
The thought of Hyōdō Issei's little group of friends and haremettes made her sigh again. She had, perhaps, been a bit too cruel to the Gremory Heiress and her Peerage, given how she had seen (thanks to the little spy golems she'd had monitoring the group for so long) how Rias Gremory had literally collapsed in on herself when she thought that he had been killed by Shalba Beelzebub.
As much as she might deny it, Mei owed the Crimson-Haired Ruin Princess a debt because of that, and it would be bad karma for her to leave such a thing unpaid before she marched unafraid into that final night.
"I truly am too soft-hearted by far." the former Stray Devil grumbled as she weaved a spell that would latch onto her life force when she reverted to a Devil. It would activate when she truly died...that being, when her life force ran out.
She had just finished and dismissed the spell when several carefully concealed mechanisms in the floor opened, each disgorging a sealed capsule containing the body of one of her sisters. The same sharp lance of pure existential agony stabbed through her heart, metaphorical as it was, as it always did when she was forced to gaze on the dead bodies of her Peerage, her family.
'Just one last hurdle. One final trial.' Mei reiterated to herself; one fist clenched tightly at her side. 'Then I can be with my family once again.'
Even through the existential high her godhead was granting her, she could still feel her mortal form's sheer exhaustion beginning to seep through. Her mortal soul had been ripped and damaged beyond repair by Amadeus's final trick and her mortal body was echoing the damage of her mortal soul, breaking down slowly but surely. It was almost ready to give up the ghost.
She didn't have much time left, even less than she had originally planned for.
She would have to make it enough.
As Chiaki reappeared in the room, and immediately moved out of the way to allow her sister full reign to cast her spell, the older woman prepared herself for the casting of the single most important spell of her life. Before she could begin, however, a ripple in the defences of the Garden made her pause.
"Someone just attacked the boundary barrier of the Garden with a spell." she noted aloud, puzzlement in her voice. "That would mean that someone is right outside of the physical location's boundary fields."
The Garden of the Queen was in one of the most isolated areas of the Underworld, where no Devil had set foot since the end of the Devil Civil War. Not because of toxic magic, but simply because there was literally nothing of interest there to be found, just an almost-endless desert of red dirt not too dissimilar to that found on Mars.
On top of that, the Garden was concealed behind innumerable magical arrays of confusion, misdirection, illusion, spatial severance, counter-scrying and shielding. Even if someone knew the location, no one should be able to find it in the first place. So how was this remotely possible?
With the wave of one hand, the location of the disturbance appeared via a view-screen. Standing there, looking absolutely rabid, was Arbitrage Asmodeus, the last of the rebellious members of the Old Maō Faction. As Mei and Chiaki watched in confusion, he hurled another bolt of green magic at the barrier, doing roughly the equivalent of ringing a bell.
"He'll be at that all day, without managing to accomplish anything." Chiaki said smugly, her confidence in the defences arranged by her sister absolute.
"Agreed. Still, it is better to eliminate pests before they can cause any trouble." Mei stated. "That ringing noise will get distracting if nothing else and I can't afford to lose my concentration during the final lap. Chiaki-chan, go to my room, take the second copy of the [Dragon's Tooth] Artificial Sacred Gear and head to the Storehouse. Rebuild my golem forces and kill that idiot outside with them."
"Hai, Nee-sama!" the younger girl looked determined as she vanished via another teleportation circle.
Smiling briefly at how industrious her younger sister was being, Mei became serious again as she once again concentrated on her new divine power. The art of manipulating souls was a delicate task, according to what little she could find written by gods and goddesses who had the ability to manipulate souls. A mortal soul, whether it be human, Yōkai, Devil or whatever other kind you were talking about, was incredibly frail in its purest form, and needed to be 'tethered' to a shell or anchor, whether that was a flesh and blood body or a Sacred Gear, in order to not simply disperse and go wherever it was that souls went upon death.
Amadeus had (crudely) severed the connection between the souls of her sisters and their bodies and then (very crudely) tethered them to their respective Sacred Gears, before using the [Scythe of Kronus] to extract their Sacred Gears from them. Her memory of exactly how he accomplished the severing and attachment part was very fuzzy due to how much trauma she had received during that horrible night.
"Hyōdō, start charging the [Boosted Gear] in case I need a power boost." she ordered as she cupped the [Fangs of the Blue Dragon] between her hands. She could sense the soul of her dear sister Arisu inside of it, and the wounds left on her soul, so faint to her Devil's senses, stood out like weeping sores to her vision. Amadeus' hack-job of a tether was also glaringly obvious.
The fact that her sisters had been suffering like this for more than three years made Mei feel dreadfully ill. What had she been doing?!
"I am so terribly sorry that I have not helped you long before this, my sisters." she whispered tenderly, almost maternally. "Rest assured, your torment shall be over soon. Your ten-thousand year lives were cut far too short, like stars fallen from the sky. With all I have gained and wrought over these past three years, I shall defy the natural order and return what was stolen from you. No matter the cost."
Carefully walking over to the tube that held the time-frozen body of Arisu, a slight exertion of her will had the tube dissolve and the body within floating in mid-air, suspended by a small antigravity spell she cast the instant enough of the tube vanished.
With trembling hands, Mei replaced the necklace around the neck of its original wielder, before summoning up her power, the smallest amount she could. Delicately, like a surgeon, she severed the connection between Arisu's soul and the [Fangs of the Blue Dragon], immediately enclosing both the Sacred Gear and the soul in her power.
With the care of a master craftsman, Mei infused her newborn divine power into Arisu's soul, more specifically, she guided it to soothe and mend the obvious wounds she could now sense marring her precious sister's soul. At the same time, she sent a small jolt into her body, enough to smash the time spell holding it in suspension, kick-start the body's life functions and revitalize the original soul-tethers in her body.
The thing about souls is that they were malleable by nature; change came naturally to them once they were severed from an anchor. Amadeus had at least placed a small containment field around his victims' souls before messing around with them, although for malicious reasons; he'd wanted her sisters to suffer while still remembering who they had been, so keeping their souls largely intact had been a priority of the sadistic bastard.
One at a time, Mei carefully weaved the severed tethers that should have naturally connected her sister's soul to its body back together as she eased Arisu's soul back into its proper place. Slowly and meticulously at first, but with growing confidence as she grew in skill and she realized that her sister's soul and body were actually working with her, their natural instincts trying to heal the unnatural damage done to it. With a final surge of divinity, the former Stray Devil breathed life into her sister once more as her soul was reattached.
The most beautiful sound that she had ever heard was when Arisu drew in a single shuddering breath, the first she had taken in over three years, and her beautiful eyes fluttered open, locking onto her own.
"…" her mouth worked.
"Don't speak, Arisu-chan." Mei said gently. "You haven't spoken in three years. I'm going to teleport you to the infirmary now, where the Medical Golems will help you. Rest now; your fight is over."
With a gentle kiss on her forehead, Mei sent Arisu to the infirmary via a transportation circle.
While Mei's throne room, and several bedrooms, lay within the tower, most of the rest were hidden beneath the maze that took up the rest of the Garden, including the magic power reactor, several storerooms for materials and equipment, and an isolated infirmary designed to not let the occupants out until they were fully healed.
"I have a lot to do. But I will finish it before my godhead is used up." Mei swore as she gazed at the floating group of Sacred Gears around her. She reached out and Maya's [Twilight Healing] flew towards her. "You next, Maya-chan. You have to help your sisters once you've recovered."
Gently pulsing her power, Mei Schwarzwald began her last task with a renewed vigour.
Outside the Barrier Arrays of the Garden of the Queen
Breaths coming out in harsh pants due to a mix of exhaustion and sheer frustration, Arbitrage Asmodeus glared at the ridiculously resilient barrier that stood between himself and that never-to-be-sufficiently-cursed reincarnated disgrace to his race.
All of their plans, nearly half-a-millennia of work from him, his predecessors and their followers to finally rid the Underworld of those simpering disgraces to their proud species using the Atonement Ritual System…all turned to dust because of a single, lowly former human bitch!
It had been sheer luck when one of their sympathizers ensconced within the False Maō's government had managed to discover the sealed records of that infernal device, one who had been 'appropriately rewarded' for their service and to hide any hint that the True Maō now knew of it.
Truly, the so-called 'Redeemers' were disgusting heretics of the highest order, but the device they'd built to implement their heresy would prove to be the perfect tool to truly cleanse the Devil Race of those unfit to stand as a part of it.
It had taken them nearly three centuries just to gain access to the System itself. There were safe ways of containing and repulsing toxic magic like the substance that fuelled the storm surrounding Old Lilith, but any attempt to create a 'tunnel' would be too risky with how heavily the False Maō monitored the former capital's borders under the guise of ensuring the toxic miasma couldn't spread. The solution had actually been rather clever in the younger Asmodeus' opinion. They had created a series of magical artefacts that would remotely expand a safe boundary to repel the toxic magic before activating a beacon for a powerful teleportation circle to allow their agents to simply teleport into the maelstrom itself.
It had taken several attempts to work perfectly. The first had been due to a failure in the artefact's construction, the teleportation beacon had activated before the safe zone had been fully erected and the initial agents sent through had died gruesomely to the toxic magic. The fool who'd made the mistake in the artefacts' construction had been 'punished' and the new head of the project had deployed a second attempt that worked perfectly…only for the beacon to activate nearly halfway across the city from where their target was located.
Apparently, the currents of toxic magic surrounding the former capital were stronger than they'd anticipated and had knocked the artefact off-course. An annoyance, but a relatively minor and easily fixable one. It had only taken two more attempts to get another copy of the artefact to within a few blocks of the target location and it was decided that it would be far simpler to simply expand the safe zone from there and that they were deep enough in the toxic magic that it would be all but impossible to notice their efforts from the outside.
Then it had simply been a waiting game as they gathered the keys. They hadn't been able to start earlier because the False Maō hadn't included what Sacred Gears were required to unlock the barrier in their files (likely because the Valefor fool hadn't told them herself). [Twice Critical] and [Twilight Healing] on their own weren't all that difficult to find, but all of the others had had their own issues that made acquiring them difficult. Holders of [Blood of the Berserker] tended to be the type that would sooner kill themselves fighting rather than let themselves be captured, while [Fatal Attraction] only appeared erratically in a specific line of powerful female witches, nearly all of whom were members of powerful mage cabals and thus nearly impossible to gain access to.
'This all that bedamned Valefor woman's fault, using such an electric collection of Sacred Gears as a key.' Arbitrage growled to himself, venting his spleen against anyone and everyone he could fault for his faction's downturn. 'Even in her final moments, she managed to betray her race yet again!'
It had actually been a novel idea to use the False Beelzebub's own [Evil Piece] system to gather the needed Sacred Gears in secret. A few young-enough sympathizers and disposable cats' paws hidden among the mainstream of Devil Society could easily gather the Sacred Gears they needed far more openly and with far less fear of discovery than the rest of True Maō Faction's agents, and having them assembled in one or two Peerages meant they could easily be gathered in a single location and extracted as soon as all the preparations had been set and the time to cleanse the Devil Race came at last.
Amadeus Bael had seemed to be the perfect choice. Young, and from a well-respected family connected to the False Maō, but with sympathies far closer to that of the True Maō Factions. His own research had even earned him the favour of the False Beelzebub and he had even been gifted with the most difficult piece of the puzzle on a whim! Recruiting the prideful young devil had been child's play and then their own informants had easily led him to the rest of the needed pieces. Everything seemed to have been falling into place like a well-played line of dominoes. All that was left was a simple extraction of the needed Sacred Gears and the new age of the Devil Race would begin…!
…or so they had thought.
Silently, Arbitrage cursed them all. He cursed Amadeus for his arrogance and foolishness in toying with the damned brats rather than just doing as he been told. He cursed his former compatriots for their failure to track the worthless Reincarnated bitch and retrieving the keys they'd needed. He cursed Shalba Beelzebub, Katerea Leviathan and even his own elder brother Creuserey Asmodeus for abandoning all their work and instead focusing on allying with the so-called Khaos Brigade to pursue their goals, allowing that pathetic bitch to bide her time and prepare her revenge. He cursed them again for daring to fall to the likes of the False Lucifer, Azazel and even a pathetic former human like the Sekiryūtei, allowing that bitch to hunt down all the other member of their faction with impunity as she reaped a bloody revenge.
But most of all, he cursed HER. That worthless, human-born BITCH that had ruined everything they had been working for and just…refused…to…die!
He, Arbitrage Asmodeus, was the last lineal member of the True Maō Faction who sought to return the true Devil Race to their positions as undisputed masters of the Underworld and restart the Great War in order to take Earth and Heaven itself as their own. That half-breed traitor Vali Lucifer to one side, there were rumours that there was one last member of the Leviathan Family living in the Underworld somewhere, but the rumour also stated that she was a filthy half-breed human-Devil hybrid, and had contracted Devil Sleeping Disease to boot, so she wasn't counted either.
There was also the son of the First Lucifer and Lilith, Adam's first wife, the first Super Devil to exist, Rizevim Livan Lucifer. Unfortunately, the man was an utter lazy bastard who couldn't give a damn about his duties to his people. The arrogant man-child was more concerned with following his own whims rather than fulfilling his duty to his people and his heritage!
No, Arbitrage was alone now. Most of his followers had been slaughtered by Mei, and he was left with an increasing certainty that even if he fled he would likely end up being hunted by the False Maō and their repugnant allies for the rest of eternity. Some called him a coward, but he had only ever fled to ensure that their cause and the bloodline of the True Maō lived on! Now, with nearly every other loyalist dead or captured by the False Maō, there was no hope of their cause ever being realized. The True Maō were dead. All that was left for him was revenge, ensuring that filthy, low-born Reincarnated bitch Mei Schwarzwald, the lynchpin (in his own mind) behind all of the ills that had befallen him, his comrades and his cause, died by his hands!
Had that petulant little harlot not defied them, then the Underworld would have been cleansed years ago, the False Maō would be long dead and the True Maō would be ruling in New Lilith as they moved and planned to restart their War and take the world that was rightfully theirs.
So yes. The Last True Asmodeus would do whatever it took to kill Mei Schwarzwald, even if it meant selling his life in order to do so. It was why he had abandoned his soldiers to their fate once he had seen Mei tearing through them like a scythe through a field of wheat. He had already marked the Garden of the Queen with a spell that allowed him to know where it was at all times, even in spite of the wards of confusion, disorientation and befuddlement that seemed to coat the entire edifice like a stench.
"Damn you, LET ME IN!" he roared, throwing more of his power at the impediment standing between him and his rightful vengeance. As with the previous attempts, it failed to so much as scuff the barriers surrounding his target. Just how damned paranoid was that bitch when she'd built this place?! He wasn't weak, dammit! In the time he'd been in voluntary exile, he'd trained his ass off, growing his skill at using demonic power to surpass even those of his brother, and he had a lot of demonic power to draw on as well, so why was this accursed shield not even flinching when he hit it?!
A sudden flicker of light out of the corner of his eye drew his attention, Arbitrage barely spared it a glance...then did a double take at the forty-odd of Mei's damned gargoyle golems which had just appeared in mid-air and were flying towards him!
"Shit! You think your pathetic little toys can stop me, Schwarzwald?!" the Asmodeus descendent roared. "I'm Arbitrage of the Asmodeus Family! Get yourself out here so I can kill you, you lowly Reincarnated trash!"
Suiting action to his words, he blasted at the damned things with his magic, but they all somehow managed to dodge! What the hell?! Determined to show these golems who was in charge around here, Arbitrage conjured a magic circle that fired hundreds of poison green blasts of demonic power at the golems. Surely no mere constructs could withstand such an attack!
But no, the front group of gargoyles sent out their own blasts of magic to knock several of his blasts off course or into each other before moving to dodge the rest as the remainder of their kin fired right back at him! The nerve!
Grinding his teeth, Arbitrage raised a multi-layer shield that blocked all of the blasts headed towards him, but his eyes widened at how the blasts made his arms strain to hold the shields in place. Just how much power had that bitch put into these blasted things?!
Then a wave of...something...roiled over the gargoyles, utterly annihilating them.
"What on...?!" Arbitrage was on guard immediately. How had someone snuck up on him?
"You seem to be in desperate need of aid, young Devil of Asmodeus." a voice spoke, one that left no doubt as to the identity of its originator.
"Indra!" the last of the Loyal Old Maō snarled. "What game are you playing?!"
"Now, now. Have I not given you and your allies aid in the past? I helped young Amadeus create that little fail-safe of his, the one that granted him a body with all of a Devil's advantages and none of the weaknesses." Indra's amused voice seemed to echo in his ear. "And because of that, I made this little show all the more interesting; entertainment like this is never as fun unless you include a few plot twists after all. Since your faction is mostly responsible for all of this coming to pass, I thought I'd offer you one last bit of aid. Call it a token of thanks for the entertainment."
A flash of light appeared in front of Arbitrage, leaving a familiar sight in front of him. "This is...! How did you get this?!"
"I did a favour for Ophis a few centuries ago and she gave me one of her Snakes in thanks...though Ophis was male at that point for some reason." the arrogant deity replied absently. "For one such as me, who is already supremely powerful, a Snake is merely a decoration. As it is of no value to me other than that, you may have it, free of charge. Do entertain me in the future, Arbitrage Asmodeus. I am always watching..."
As the voice faded, Arbitrage glared at the Snake. His brother, he knew, had absorbed the power of one, and had risen to the same level of strength as the original Asmodeus, which STILL hadn't been enough to defeat that False Lucifer Sirzechs. Still, Mei Schwarzwald was most assuredly NOT Sirzechs; even after all these years she would be Ultimate Devil-Class at best, not Maō-Class, so taking this Snake SHOULD allow him to easily overpower the bitch once he blasted through these barriers.
Nevertheless, the fact that INDRA had given it to him made the ever-cautious Devil pause. The Hindu God of War was one of the Top Ten Powers in the world, rumoured to be so powerful that it would take all four Maō, False or True, to confront him, and he was well known to stir the pot for his own amusement, so he could watch the conflicts that followed as entertainment.
The Supreme War God always enjoyed watching a good fight.
The fact that his own subordinate, Sun Wukong, the Victorious Fighting Buddha and Great Sage Equalling Heaven, despised the True (Old) Maō Faction did explain why the deity had lowered himself to contacting Arbitrage directly.
"To hell with it!" the Pureblooded Devil growled and grabbed the Snake, the black energy immediately crawling inside of him and making him feel more powerful than he had ever felt in his entire life. He started cackling as he pooled demonic energy in his hands before blasting it at the barrier, this time managing to create a large fissuring crack in the massive dome of energy.
"Ooh...I'm going to enjoy shredding your pride, you Reincarnated bitch!" Arbitrage snarled before immediately starting to design a new spell to make best use of his new levels of power.
Minutes Later...
Inside the throne room, Mei Schwarzwald smiled in triumph as the last of her sisters was teleported away, newly resurrected and restored to life once again. She looked around sharply as an alarm started blaring, one she had designed for one reason, and one reason only.
The barrier around her Garden had been breached. No...worse than that, whatever idiot had done it had shattered the entirety of the barrier across the Garden, opening her safe haven to invasion by all and sundry.
"Well then...it appears that the last act is upon us." she said aloud as she clicked her fingers, an exact replica of the now-destroyed [Throne of Power] appearing atop the now-useless teleportation circle.
Why yes, she had created multiple copies of the same Artificial Sacred Gear and forced them to unlock the same Balance Breaker. Redundancy was never a bad idea, especially when was plotting something as perilous as apotheosis. The destruction of her first [Throne of Power] was proof enough of that.
Waltzing over to the throne and sitting it in, she gauged her current level of power. After meticulously reinserting the Sacred Gears, reattaching the souls to the bodies and thus reviving her sisters, she had barely a tenth of her godhead remaining, and it was dwindling fast. She would likely only remain a goddess for a handful of minutes.
Deciding to make the best use for her time, she began to cast. Each spell would have been enough to leave her drained and exhausted in her prior state; now casting them all in a matter of moments was as simple as child's play. All of them were focused inward, towards the mortal body that she would soon be inhabiting once again.
Spells of pain suppression and negation, spells of strengthening, spells of every medical category that she knew that might be helpful. Finally, she infused some divine energy into her mortal soul, at last halting the steady degradation of it, but her soul was already too badly damaged. Her patchworks would give her a day, and likely less if she was strained, before it finally gave up the ghost and it would shed its tethers and depart the mortal coil.
"Alea iacta est." Mei Schwarzwald whispered. The die was indeed cast. The point of no return had come the moment Amadeus ripped himself out of her body. Now all that was left was the accounting.
As the time ticked forward to her return to mortality, Mei converted as much divine power into her reserves of demonic energy as she could. Whoever had shattered her Garden's barrier had been at least Maō-Class, and she was just a bit too weak to manage that as a mortal.
"Sadly for you, Arbitrage, if that is who you are, you are unworthy to be my last opponent." the Stray Queen said, a small, knowing smile crossing her face as her eyes flicked over to where Hyōdō Issei stood, the collar around his neck glinting in the light.
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Next Chapter: The Final Move: Checkmate
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