Of Alliances & Assimilation

by W.Alderson21

You'd expect the life of Raylix Gremory, born in the middle of the Great War, the second son of Zeoticus and Venelana and the younger brother of Sirzechs to be... an interesting one, right? Well, you'd be right, but who would've guessed that it's turned out like THIS? Rated M for the usual stuff.

5. I-5: The End of Another

Please tell me Raylix is gonna kick Katerea's ass for what Tsufaame did to him.

I dunno about 'kick', but maybe a different word that ends with the letters 'c' and 'k'. That might be a better idea.

---

Sirzechs and Raylix remained stationary in mid-air as most of the troops that they'd brought with them flew towards the ruined Valefor city. The others, about five percent of the soldiers that they'd brought with them in all (with Sabemka and Tomosei counted amongst their number), remained with them: watching silently as the majority of soldiers descended on the city and engaged in battle with the Royals reinforcements alongside Serafall's troops.

Raylix cast his eyes above the city, where Serafall and Grayfia could be seen facing down against one another. From where he was in relation to the two of them, a normal human would barely be able to see anything other than two specks darting around, as well as small specks of lights flickering as the two strongest female Devils alive cast their attacks at one another. He saw Serafall thrusting her staff forward and sealing Grayfia inside what looked like a shell of ice, and Grayfia busting out of it a couple of seconds later before returning fire via a strong beam of dark energy that Serafall dodged, before pointing her staff at Grayfia and conjuring several dozen birds out of ice, all of whom either flew at or around her, in an attempt to distract her away from her main opponent.

"Hey, Raylix!" Sirzechs called, lightly flicking Raylix on the head. Jolted out of his distracted state, Raylix looked over at his crimson-haired older brother, who had cast his eyes over to the north-west, away from the city where the fighting seemed to be going on at.

"What's up?" Raylix replied, raising himself slightly higher so he was on a level with him.

"There's a base." Sirzechs answered, pointing in the direction he was looking. "That direction. Or at least, I'm quite sure there's a base. There's an exceptionally powerful presence coming from that direction, and I know for a fact that there's a town a few minutes' flight in that direction. If I'm right, then a high-up commander among the Royals- maybe one of their leaders- may have set up a base within said town."

"We going to check it out?" Raylix asked, adjusting his grip on Gaeneron, casting one last glance up at Serafall and Grayfia before looking back at Sirzechs, who had a very set look on his face. There wasn't exactly a need for words between the two brothers, but for the benefit of the troops...

"We are." Sirzechs replied, clearing his throat and casting a small spell to amplify his voice. "Onward, everyone!" he called to all the remaining troops around himself and Raylix. "For Hell!"

"FOR HELL!" All the Devil soldiers around Sirzechs and Raylix yelled out, in unison, as Sirzechs began flying in the direction that he'd previously been pointing in. Raylix was the first to follow, with Sabemka and Tomosei following close to him, and all the other Devil soldiers that had remained with Zeoticus and Venelana's two children (about 500 in all) bringing up the rear.

Sans Sabemka and Tomosei (who had INSISTED on coming with him as soon as they'd heard about the mission that they were now on), all the soldiers that currently tailed Raylix and Sirzechs as they made their way closer and closer to where the powerful demonic presence was coming from were subordinates of the crimson-haired older Gremory child in front of Raylix, rather than Raylix himself. There weren't many soldiers left alive from the brigade that Raylix had split up for the three battles that he'd tried to have fought at once two weeks ago, and the troops that Sirzechs had commanded, some since he- like Raylix- was made to start contributing to the war effort at sixteen years old, were far more experienced than any that he'd led. So of course, Raylix thought, they'd be the best choices to bring along for such an important mission, especially one that involved helping a fellow Anti-Royal win an important battle.

There was silence as Sirzechs, Raylix, Sabemka, Tomosei and Sirzechs' troops flew over the Underworld countryside. The sounds of battle from back at the destroyed Valefor capital quickly faded as they left that area, yet in turn, the demonic presence that they were flying towards grew stronger and stronger. After several minutes of quick flight, the sight of a semi-wrecked town appeared in the sight of everyone flying towards it.

So too, unfortunately, did many Royals soldiers. Some were on the ground standing outside the town, others were in the air floating above it, but all noticed the group of Anti-Royals bearing down on them.

"Alright, guys, incoming!" Sirzechs shouted, calling the Power of Destruction to his hands and tossing a ball of it in the direction of a group of Royals soldiers that were preparing to fire at him. The destructive ball split apart mid-flight, with the smaller balls that it now took the form of rushing into and striking the Royals who had fired at him, blowing their bodies apart and killing them all instantly. Half a second later, Sirzechs raised a barrier to block all the bolts of demonic energy that had been fired off at him by the Royals soldiers before he'd killed them, easily doing so before forming another ball of his mother's power, and sending it at a Royals soldier who'd made the mistake of coming too close to him and Raylix.

Raylix swung Gaeneron, meeting the sword of a Royals soldier who'd swung at him. It didn't even take two seconds for the young Devil to easily overpower his enemy and force them to disengage from the clash, nor did it even take one for Raylix to swing at the unguarded Royals soldier's neck, beheading him, flicking any blood that had landed on Gaeneron off of Gaeneron, and carrying on as if nothing happened, flying into the town alongside Sabemka, Tomosei and Sirzechs.

"So, where do you think this base is?" Sabemka asked, as they all descended towards the ground.

"I'm going to hazard a guess at the biggest building in this shitheap of what used to be a town." Tomosei replied, pointing her staff at the building in question. "As well as the only building that even looks remotely inhabitable."

"Yeah, good call, Tomo." Raylix replied, touching town alongside Sirzechs, and walking alongside him towards the large inhabitable-looking building, with Sabemka and Tomosei touching down a couple of seconds later. They jogged forward, catching up with Raylix as he and Sirzechs came within ten steps of entering the building, before the large double-doors of said building were suddenly blown off of them, and sent in the direction of the four Devils coming up towards it.

Sirzechs raised a hand to cast another barrier, but Raylix was quicker to react, flying forward and cutting the flying doors in half with Gaeneron, where they then dropped harmlessly to the ground, upon which he then landed. The dust-cloud that had been kicked up by the doors being blown off their hinges in such a violent fashion slowly cleared, revealing two male Devils standing in the doorway, looking out upon Raylix, Sabemka, Tomosei and Sirzechs.

One of the Devils was a thin, scrawny-looking young man with short dark-brown hair and matching eyes, dressed in extremely expensive-looking clothing that looked... wholly impractical for any kind of battle. He was also glaring down at Sirzechs with such intensity that Raylix was... mildly shocked by it. The other of the two Devils was a handsome-looking young man who looked to be about the same age as Sirzechs, with silver hair in a single back-length braid. He had blue eyes, wore a silver robe with detailed accessories, and also looked over at Sirzechs, but with an expression that more conveyed disdain than outright anger.

"YOU!" The scrawny-looking guy yelled, taking a step forward towards Sirzechs and pointing a dramatic finger towards him. "What the hell do you think you're doing here?!"

Sirzechs blinked a couple of times, as Raylix looked over at his older brother.

"You know this guy, Zechs?"

"'Know' is stretching it a little, Ray." Sirzechs replied, looking over at the man who had yelled at him with a confused expression on his face. Raylix looked between Sirzechs and the brunette who'd just yelled at him a couple of times before he caught Sirzechs' eye again, at which Sirzechs flashed Raylix a quick wink before looking back at the scrawny guy.

"Sorry, but who are you again?" he asked. "I'm wracking my brains here, but... I don't think we've met."

The scrawny young Devil let out a scream of anger, and upon spreading eight Devil wings, charged at Sirzechs. Sirzechs jumped backwards to dodge the screaming Devil's initial charge, and spread his own twelve Devil wings as he took to the skies, with his new opponent swinging his hand around in a wide arc, conjuring up a dozen magic-circles all at once before throwing them towards and around Sirzechs. After taking to the skies, he activated all the magic-circles, which sent out beams of demonic energy that Sirzechs had to either weave around in mid-air or conjure barriers to block entirely.

"Don't say you don't remember me Sirzechs, you Underworld-betraying bastard!" the scrawny Devil shouted, throwing a punch at Sirzechs from close-range "I'm a grandson of Beelzebub, damn it! You HAVE to remember me!"

"Okay, now that you mention it, that DOES ring a bell." Sirzechs replied, screwing his face up in a mock-attempt to remember as he raised a hand to block the scrawny Beelzebub descendant's punch. "Alright, don't tell me, don't tell me..." he muttered to himself as he threw a punch back at the Beelzebub descendant that had so foolishly challenged him.

However, as he dodged Sirzechs' punch, the Beelzebub descendant in question let out another yell of frustration and anger, opening his hand towards Sirzechs and unleashing countless flies, bees, wasps and other flying insects towards the crimson-haired Gremory descendant. Sirzechs was forced to back up and, again, unleash his Power of Destruction upon the new opponents that the Beelzebub descendant had either summoned or conjured. He guessed the latter, but either way, all the insects that flew at him were destroyed the same instant that they came into contact with his mother's power.

"You embarrassed me!" The scrawny Beelzebub descendant shouted. "In front of my family, and all the other Pillar families! In 1485! Does that ring any more bells, you disrespectful traitor?!"

"Aww, you ruined it." Sirzechs replied, ignoring the last three words that the Beelzebub descendant spoke. "But... oh, I think I remember that gathering! It was when I saw her for the first time..."

If the Beelzebub descendant in front of Sirzechs wasn't already about to blow a fuse at what his twelve-winged opponent had said, he sure as hell was about to now. The scrawny Devil in front of Sirzechs looked like he was about to burst a blood vessel in his head as he violently shook from the rage and embarrassment that had been boiling inside him for over half a century. He'd already suffered enough as a result of it over the years, but seeing the reason of that rage and embarrassment floating in front of him, seeming to care more about the fact that he'd met the Lucifuge girl (who was, admittedly, extremely attractive) than the fact that he'd committed such an egregious crime against HIM... it was too much.

Letting out another scream of rage, the Beelzebub descendant charged at Sirzechs again, conjuring up two spears of pure demonic energy and thrusting them both towards his chest. Sirzechs, having seen the attack coming from a mile away, casually flapped his wings to take him to the side, and unleashed his Power of Destruction upon the Beelzebub descendant from close-range. The red and black energy struck the descendant's left arm, rather than his chest- where Sirzechs was aiming- and blew it clean off of his body.

It took a couple of seconds for the Beelzebub descendant to fully register that one of his arms was gone, but once the realisation (and subsequent pain) fully set in, he let out another scream (it was a wonder that he hadn't wrecked his throat from all that shouting and screaming, Sirzechs thought), practically hyperventilating as blood practically poured from where his left arm used to be.

"It'd be better if you gave up now, you know." Sirzechs remarked, an uncharacteristically serious look on his face as he up another ball of his Power of Destruction, as a warning to the scrawny Beelzebub descendant. "Pride's great and all, yeah, but it won't do you any good if you're dead."

"NEVER!" The Beelzebub descendant screamed, lurching around erratically in mid-air as he attempted to adjust to the sudden loss of weight on his left side and re-balance himself in the air again. He wasn't doing all too great a job at it, Sirzechs would've sniggered had this not been an active war zone. "I won't... give up... against a traitor!"

After finally re-balancing himself in mid-air so he was floating in a somewhat stable state (the blood that continued to pour out of where his left side used to be notwithstanding), the Beelzebub descendant reached into his robes with his free hand, and pulled out what looked like a sealed bottle of some sort, that contained a dark-green liquid.

Sirzechs let out a small bolt of his Power of Destruction from one finger, aimed directly at the bottle in the Beelzebub descendant's hand, hoping to stop whatever he was likely about to do to himself in an attempt (likely a futile one) to beat and kill him. However, as the bolt of Venelana's power flew towards him, the Beelzebub descendant threw the bottle that he'd been holding up into the air, and ascended towards the bottle. The bolt of the Power of Destruction, meant for the bottle, ended up striking his right knee, removing it from existence and causing the rest of his right leg to drop down to the ground. Unlike when his left arm was removed, the Beelzebub descendant did not scream in pain... though the look on his face gave off the impression to Sirzechs that he was very much holding in the temptation to scream.

The scrawny Devil caught the bottle of liquid that he'd held in his right hand, held it up to his mouth and tore away the stopper on top of it with his teeth, spitting said stopper away a second later. The expression on his face was practically manic as he looked down at Sirzechs, still looking like he was forcing down the temptation to scream. Clearly, the pain of having both his left arm and the lower half of his right leg blown off still affected him greatly.

"For... for Hell!" the Beelzebub descendant shouted, before putting the bottle to his lips and downing all the dark liquid inside in one go.

The effects of swallowing whatever liquid had been inside that bottle was immediate... and disgusting to watch. The Beelzebub descendant's skin began to bubble like it was a liquid being boiled. The scrawny Devil descended to the ground, dispelling his Devil wings and dropping the now-empty bottle, dropping to his single knee and clutching at his stomach, groaning in pain. Sirzechs descended as well, but didn't fully descend to the ground, instead opting to float slightly above where the Beelzebub descendant was knelt and watch what seemed to be going on in front of him.

His eyes widened as the next stage (it seemed) of the transformation, as the Beelzebub descendant's pale skin began to slowly turn an unpleasant violet colour. The Beelzebub descendant stopped clutching at his stomach, and suddenly began clutching at his eyes, letting out yet more pained screams. After a few seconds of him clawing and clutching at his own eyes, the Beelzebub descendant lowered his hands (evidently the pain around his eyes had ceased), allowing Sirzechs to see what had become of them: his formerly-regular-looking brown eyes had become orange insect-like compound eyes... very creepy.

The Beelzebub descendant then dropped down again, screaming out again as his right arm, the remaining top half of his right leg, and ALL of his left leg suddenly fell off of him, all at the same time. The now-armless, now-legless Devil twitched around, rolling around in shock and agony at the transformation he was going through. He could only let out pained whimpers as, seemingly to replace his arms and legs, six legs quickly burst from his body to prop him up, similar to that of a fly's legs. However, unlike a fly's legs, the Beelzebub descendant's new legs had differing feet to go with them: two of them (the front two) were the most regular-looking, like that of a fly. The middle two were like that of paws that you'd see on a Wulf, and the back two feet were like a horse's hooves.

With a low grunt, the Beelzebub descendant then spread four wings, as opposed to the eight that he had before drinking whatever liquid had been in that bottle (which Sirzechs brought to himself with a quick transportation-circle cast underneath the bottle, which lay forgotten a few feet away from the transforming Beelzebub descendant). What was striking about his wing-spreading was that his four wings all looked different from each other, as opposed to literally every other Devil alive whose wings (however many they possessed) were uniform in their bat-like nature. Only one of the Beelzebub descendant's four wings looked anything like a regular Devil's wings, with another looking like the wings of a fly (which, similarities to other animals upon other parts of his body aside, the Beelzebub descendant was seriously beginning to resemble). One looked like a bird's wing, complete with feathers, and the last looked like the wing of a Dragon.

All four of those wings began to flap rapidly, like that of a fly's wings, and the Beelzebub descendent rose into the air. He jerked around rather erratically, rubbing his two front legs together as he looked up at Sirzechs, who could see himself reflected in his opponent's new compound eyes.

'Okay, that's... absolutely disgusting.' Sirzechs thought to himself, readying his Power of Destruction as the Devil... fly... THING that the Beelzebub descendant had transformed into, came flying at him, mouth agape and black drool oozing out of it. Sirzechs dodged to the side as the fly-thing came past where he'd been floating before, launching his Power of Destruction upon it and scoring a direct hit on its right side. The fly-thing span over and over in mid-air, letting out a screech of pain at a good part of its body being blown apart.

As it twisted around in mid-air, continuing to screech at Sirzechs (and letting out copious amounts of some black substance from its mouth. The same black substance was dropping from where Sirzechs had hit it with his Power of Destruction, leading him to believe that the fly-thing was spitting up its own blood), the older son of Zeoticus and Venelana noticed that the area of its body that he'd hit with his destructive power was... slowly regenerating.

Well, that wouldn't do, Sirzechs thought as he raised his right hand again, summoning another ball of his Power of Destruction. Dodging to the side of the fly-thing as it charged at him again, Sirzechs elected to not throw the ball of Destruction that he'd conjured at the fly-thing, instead pouring more destructive energy into the ball, causing it to grow in size. The fly-thing took a couple of seconds to realise that it had both missed Sirzechs in its lunge, and that Sirzechs hadn't taken another chance to blow away more of its body. By this point, the wound caused by Sirzechs' prior blast of the Power of Destruction had fully regenerated, and the fly-thing turned around to let out a noise that vaguely sounded like a laugh, as it launched itself at Sirzechs again. However, again, it missed as Sirzechs dodged to the side, continuing to charge up the destructive orb in his hand, which was now about a meter wide in diameter and still growing.

Letting out a hiss of what Sirzechs suspected was frustration as it turned around again, the fly-thing took in a deep breath and spat out a huge gob of its black blood at Sirzechs, which he threw up a barrier with his free left hand to block. Rather than dissipating against his barrier, however, the fly-thing's black blood began to corrode the shield as soon as it landed on it, which forced Sirzechs to dispel the shield entirely (allowing the acidic blood that had hit the shield to drop down to the ground, which it began dissolving. Better the ground than him, Sirzechs thought).

The fly-thing then let out another gob of black blood at Sirzechs, who rather than throw up another shield with his free left hand, instead opened up an Amalgamation-hole with his free right hand, which the fly-thing's blood-gob flew into. Using his demonic power to open a second Amalgamation-hole and pooling it with fire magic, Sirzechs fused the two holes together, combining the fly-thing's blood with his fire-magic. He threw the resulting product back at the fly-thing (which went in the form of a fireball), scoring a direct hit on its face and covering it, plus its eyes, eyes with the burning blood. The fly-thing let out an ear-splitting screech of pain and fury from the Sirzechs-created substance that stuck to his face, and span wildly around in mid-air, blindly shooting its acid-like blood in all directions in an attempt to hit and kill something, ANYTHING.

Sirzechs simply backed up, out of the fly-thing's range, and raised his right hand above his head. The orb of the Power of Destruction that he'd been charging up the entire time was now large enough to completely envelop the fly-thing, but it wasn't quite enough to unleash on it... yet. Sirzechs continued to pool more and more of his destructive power into the large orb above his head, which had stopped growing and was now emanating an increasingly-intense crimson glow.

'Nearly ready.' Sirzechs thought to himself. 'Just a bit more...'

He looked up at the giant orb of destruction, now beginning to feel the waves of power it gave off. Thanks to his immense reserves of demonic power, inherited via (as far as he was aware) a mutation of a dominating gene of Venelana's that was passed down to him, he had no problem simultaneously keeping the destructive orb he was currently holding under control, and continuing to charge it up while watching the fly-thing spinning and buzzing around, continuing to spit out more and more of its blood.

A moment later, the fly-thing seemed to have shaken the burning blood that Sirzechs had fired back on it out of its eyes, and had its sights fully set on the crimson-haired young man yet again. Letting out the loudest screech of fury that it had done yet, it charged at Sirzechs at record speed. And at that moment... Sirzechs let fly the gigantic orb of Destruction that he'd been charging up, throwing it upon the charging fly-thing.

If it had the ability, the fly-thing would have surely widened its eyes in shock at Sirzechs' destruction-orb flying towards it. But it hadn't the ability, so it didn't widen its eyes, therefore it flew straight into Sirzechs' orb without making any change in expression, not even slowing down. The instant that the fly-thing's body touched the destruction-orb, it began to disintegrate before Sirzechs' very eyes. It was dead the second that its whole head was enveloped in destruction, but momentum kept its headless corpse going until the entirety of its body was fully enveloped into the orb that Sirzechs had created. And at that point, the fly-thing that the Beelzebub descendant had transformed into was gone in less than a second, leaving nothing behind.

Sirzechs descended to the ground, lightly touching down as he looked upon the lack of remains of the fly-thing that the Beelzebub descendant had turned into. What he'd done to it, the whole charging-up-a-giant-orb-of-Destruction business, was an enhanced form of the Power of Destruction that he'd theorized, with Ajuka's help. To explain it in terms that he himself could understand, it was done by compressing his mother's power, to the point that anything it touched would be overwhelmed by such a concentration of destructive energy, and be eliminated without a trace.

He could shape such compressed Destruction into smaller balls for smaller opponents, of course, but he'd needed to get rid of the fly-thing that the Beelzebub descendant had transformed into, without any chance of it regenerating. That necessitated a ball of compressed Destruction large enough to completely fit him into it. Though being able to eliminate large opponents with smaller balls of his mother's power did sound nice, it would require more work. He was sure that Ajuka would be willing to help him out with that, once the Civil War was over.

He'd need to come up with a name for this technique, too. Vanishing Ruin? Ultimate Extinction?

…

'Nah,' Sirzechs thought. Neither of those potential names had quite good enough of a ring to them.

Shrugging, Sirzechs pulled the bottle that the Beelzebub descendant had chugged from out of his pocket, and examined it. There were still a few drops of the dark liquid that had turned him into that fly-thing at the bottom of it, and a quick sniff of said drops almost immediately made him want to throw up. How in Lucifer's name had that screaming, scrawny Royal prick managed to chug a whole bottle of that stuff without immediately puking up... well, everything?

Sirzechs immediately cast a quick sealing spell over the bottle's opening and slipped it back into his pocket. This was definitely something that Ajuka would be interested in looking at, as well.

---

At around the time that Sirzechs and the Beelzebub descendant flew away from the base that he and Raylix had arrived at, Raylix adjusted his grip on Gaeneron and slowly shifted into a fighting-stance, locking eyes with the silver-haired Devil who now stood alone against him, Sabemka and Tomosei. As Sirzechs and the Beelzebub descendant faded from sight, the silver-haired Devil let out a sigh, shaking his head.

"Branyx, you idiot!" he muttered. "You've condemned yourself to death, rather than give yourself a chance against that traitor! And I'd have a chance to kill him for taking what's rightfully mine!"

The silver-haired Devil was forced to throw up a shield as Raylix made the first move of their fight, dashing forward and swinging Gaeneron at him. Raylix's sword clashed with the barrier just before it could make contact with the other Devil's neck, with said other Devil forcing a pulse of demonic energy through the barrier that forced Raylix to jump backwards.

"Rightfully yours?" Raylix asked. "Let me guess: the Underworld as a whole? Because you were part of a family of Lucifer's chief servants, you deserve to take over now that he and his family are gone?"

"Hardly!" his silver-haired opponent replied, throwing his hand out in a wide arc and triggering explosive spells underneath the feet of Raylix and his two friends, forcing them all to evade. Sabemka rolled backwards, jumping back up in a prepared stance; Tomosei jumped backwards, spreading her wings to get further air before landing beside Sabemka, staff out; and Raylix jumped straight up, floating in the air on his eight wings as he readied a ball of the Power of Destruction in his free right hand, and kept his grip on Gaeneron firm in his left.

"Don't get me wrong, I fully support the goals of the Royals." the silver-haired Devil explained, spreading his own Devil wings- all eight of them- and ascending into the air. "But... Raylix, was it?"

Raylix didn't answer.

"My problem with your older, better brother is a lot more... personal, than that." the silver-haired Devil continued, summoning an enormous fireball in one hand and throwing it at Raylix, who cancelled his Power of Destruction and threw up a shield to block the fireball. However, the fireball split into multiple, smaller fireballs before it could hit the barrier, where they then were guided around the barrier that Raylix had thrown up.

Raylix then flew downwards, underneath the barrier that he'd thrown up (which faded from existence a second later), allowing the fireballs to hit each other and dissipate from existence. He then flew at the silver-haired Devil, re-summoning a ball of the Power of Destruction and firing it at him from close-range. His opponent threw up a barrier himself, blocking Raylix's thrown attack. It didn't go unnoticed that, as he blocked Raylix's attack, the silver-haired Devil's whole body seemed to glow a bright silver for a second or two, before the glow faded.

"Oh, yeah?" Raylix asked, twirling Gaeneron around in his hand. "And what would that be?"

"...My sister." the silver-haired Devil replied, raising his hand towards Raylix. "That red, goody-two shoes, traitorous FREAK has eyes for MY sister Grayfia, when she's clearly out of his league!"

Raylix raised an eyebrow, while Sabemka and Tomosei (who had both risen into the air on their wings behind their leader and friend) looked at each other, each sharing rather surprised faces. Those surprised faces instantly morphed into those of shock and worry as the silver-haired Devil summoned a ball of the POWER OF DESTRUCTION, and fired it straight at Raylix. However, Raylix had already seen the attack coming, and a quick flick of Gaeneron was able to bat the destructive ball away from him, out of harm's way.

"He should just stay with all the filthy Pillars and their descendants," the silver-haired Devil muttered to himself. "And leave Grayfia to Euclid... yeah, that's best for everyone!"

Seeing that he was distracted by his own inner ramblings, Raylix dashed through the air towards Euclid. He crashed his fist against his face, sending him spiralling over and over in mid-air until he crashed into the base that he'd come out of with Branyx a couple of minutes ago. Shaken from his earlier ramblings about his older sister, Euclid spat up blood and fired back at Raylix, this time sending spears of ice-magic in his direction, which were sliced apart by Gaeneron as Raylix closed the distance.

'Is that the Lucifuge ability?' Raylix thought, grabbing Euclid, floating backwards a few meters while holding him by the neck, spinning around a couple of times to build up momentum and throwing him downwards into the ground. 'Or a technique of his own?' He followed Euclid- who had gotten to his feet- down to the ground, but Sabemka got to him first, punching the already-dazed-looking Euclid in the face to daze him a bit more, before following up with a kick to the stomach to send him staggering backwards. Tomosei followed up on Sabemka's following-up with a bolt of magical energy, aimed squarely at Euclid's face. Euclid was able to dodge the bolt of energy, which would have hit Raylix had he not ducked down in anticipation of the energy-bolt missing, but the young Lucifuge wasn't able to dodge Raylix delivering a sweep-kick to him from behind, which knocked him down to the ground again.

Before Euclid was able to tell what had happened, Raylix, Sabemka and Tomosei were all on him. Raylix had levelled Ganeron at his throat, Tomosei had levelled her magical staff (which was glowing with energy) about a foot away from his face. At both sword and staffpoint, even Euclid wasn't stupid enough to try anything, practically allowing Sabemka to grab him by his silver robe, pull him up a little and punch him in the face again, knocking him clean out.

"Alright, take him back to HQ." Raylix ordered of his friends. "I'll investigate the base, here. Come back once you're done, okay?"

"Got it!" Sabemka replied, pulling the unconscious Euclid up and hoisting him over his shoulder as Tomosei cast a transportation-circle. "See you soon, Raylix!"

Raylix nodded as the transportation-circle activated, and his two friends disappeared along with Euclid, leaving him alone in the ruined town. Taking a couple of seconds to stretch, he turned around to look back at the base that Branyx and Euclid had come out of minutes before, which now had a dent in one of its walls: where he'd thrown Euclid into. Adjusting his grip on Gaeneron, he walked into the base, now fully on-guard for any hostile forces that might come his way.

He elected to travel through the base to its top, rather than venture to its depths, given how much easier it would be for Raylix to escape if things went south. With this in mind, he continued moving forward, checking around every corner in case a Royals soldier was stood guard and could see him. He came to some stairs, leading further up the base, and heard the sound of movement coming from the top of them.

"Hey, did Lords Branyx and Euclid ever come back?" he heard one male voice. "You seen them?"

"Not since they went out to take care of those Gremory kids." another, deeper, male voice replied. "Don't worry about it, they'll be back soon. Then Lord Damaidosu can move on and finish taking the city!"

The pair of Royals soldiers shared a laugh, which was suddenly replaced by surprised shouts and the sound of loud, hurried footsteps down the stairs, as the sound of a blast of magic hitting a nearby wall could be heard. Raylix didn't know what had caused that, and frankly, he didn't care: he took the opportunity and dashed for the stairs, making his way up and almost instantly coming into contact with the two Royals soldiers that he'd heard talking.

The second one that he'd heard talking (a large man with black hair done in a buzz-cut) barely had time to yell out "RAY-" before Raylix ran him through with Gaeneron, driving the breath out of him. A second later, he finished the large Devil off by blowing his head up with a close-range bolt of the Power of Destruction, with the outpouring of blood and guts drenching both him and the other soldier, who didn't even have time to yell out before Raylix flicked Gaeneron to the side, horizontally bisecting him.

Shaking some of the blood that he'd gotten on himself from the first soldier out of his eyes, Raylix prepared to keep going, but froze slightly as he heard quick movement from below, as well as the sound of voices.

"What was that?! You heard that shout, right?"

"Of course I heard it! You think I'm deaf, or something?!"

"If yesterday was any marker, who knows?! You might actually be deaf!"

"Shut the hell up, both of you! Come on!"

Raylix had to force down a snigger as the sound of hurried steps became louder and louder. He carefully moved down a couple of steps, doing his best to not slip on all the blood that had landed on the ground as he looked out of the nearest doorway, preparing another bolt of the Power of Destruction for any Royals Devil that would come for him. He let fly the INSTANT that he noticed any kind of movement on the other side of the door, scoring a direct hit on the Devil that had come into his field of vision and destroying the top half of his head.

The standing corpse of the Royals Devil that Raylix had just killed dropped to the floor like a sack of heavy stones, and Raylix heard two shouts of surprise and anger come from the right of the door's opening. He prepared another bolt of the Power of Destruction for whoever would be next to come through the door, and let fly as soon as he saw movement again. However, the Devil that had provoked him into firing ducked as he did came in, allowing the destructive bolt to fly harmlessly past him. Straightening up again, he smirked and fired a powerful bolt of demonic energy at Raylix's position, but ended up hitting his own dead comrade as Raylix bodily picked up the upper half of the Royals soldier that he'd cut in half earlier, and flung it in between himself and the bolt of energy, using it as an impromptu shield that he immediately dropped after the energy-bolt hit the dead half-Devil, instantly blowing it up.

Raylix then spread his wings and flew upstairs, narrowly dodging another bolt of energy that the Royals Devil fired at him and- rather than going through the door at the top of the stairs, crashed through the wall right next to it and landed in a roll on the ground, groaning slightly. He had many strengths, but flying in tight spaces was, unfortunately, not one of them.

Picking himself up, Raylix span around and fired another bolt of his Power of Destruction through the hole in the wall that he'd just made, rather than wait for a target to show up for him to fire at. His destructive bolt blew out a hole in the wall past the one he aimed through, but hit no Royals, least of all the one who'd forced him to retreat up the stairs, who now came up with a dark-looking grin on his face. Summoning a sword made out of demonic energy, the Royals Devil in question dashed at Raylix with surprising speed, and Raylix held up Gaeneron out of reflex to clash with him for a couple of seconds.

Quickly realising that his new opponent held the advantage in physical strength, Raylix disengaged from the clash and jumped backwards, bouncing off the wall behind him and retreating down a hallway, firing off bolts of destructive energy out of his free hand as he went. The Royals Devil dodged all the energy-bolts that he could, and blocked those that he couldn't with quickly-made barriers, and pursued Raylix quickly enough to catch up to him and force another couple of clashes.

Raylix was on the defensive now, bouncing off of the walls and ceiling to launch attacks at his current opponent from different angles, as opposed to just from right in front of him, in hopes that one of them would catch him and make an opening for him to deliver a more decisive blow. He landed on the ground again, fractions of a second before realising that his opponent was aiming a strike right at where he had landed, forcing him to raise his sword and clash with him again.

"You're quick, for a little traitor to the Underworld, you know." his opponent remarked, easily pushing back and holding the advantage in the clash. "I'm sure we could use a fighter like-"

Raylix didn't even allow his Royals opponent to finish his one (it was probably a bullshit one, anyway), and replied by letting out a concentrated blast of the Power of Destruction from his free right hand, from point-blank range. There was no way that he'd be able to dodge an attack like that from such short range... and he didn't. Not fully, at least. He attempted to lean to the side and dodge Raylix's magical attack, but it still caught him on the chin, blowing away the entirety of his lower jaw and rendering speech impossible for him.

The Royals Devil, more out of numb shock than anything, raised a hand to where his chin had used to be, and he barely had half a second to comprehend the fact that he had no way of speaking anymore, before Raylix thrust forward with Gaeneron, impaling him. A quick flick upwards of his sword was enough to end the sword-wielding Royals Devil for good, and another bolt of the Power of Destruction was all it took to snipe the third Royals Devil (who had just come running up the stairs, and through the hole in the wall that Raylix had made when he crashed through earlier), with him falling dead as well.

As soon as the last Royals Devil fell, Raylix turned around and ran through the corridor, skidding around corners and dashing up any stairs he could find. There was no way that anyone else in the base didn't hear the fight he'd just had, and he'd rather not remain where he was and end up a sitting duck for any Royals Devils who might happen upon him.

Raylix rounded another corner, and as he saw a group of four Royals Devils- who all turned around as they heard him coming- he threw up a barrier in anticipation for any shots of demonic energy that would come his way. Of course, shots DID come his way, which were all blocked by the barrier he'd thrown up as Raylix came closer and closer to the quartet. Once he was close enough to the group, he cancelled the shield he'd put up and swung Gaeneron at the legs of the nearest Devil to him, cleanly cutting through both legs and following up with a kick that sent the now-legless Devil skidding and rolling away.

Raylix leant backwards to dodge a punch from the next-nearest Royal, and returned in kind with a punch of his own followed up by impaling him with Gaeneron, before swinging the sword around and using the second Royals Devil's body as a bludgeon against the third Royals Devil, knocking him down. The fourth Royals Devil out of the group fired a shot of demonic energy at Raylix from point-blank range, and actually managed to hit him with said shot full-on in the face. Raylix staggered, and was forced to dodge a couple of punches from the fourth Royals Devil before catching one of them and kicking him in the crotch, opening him up to an easy decapitation.

By this point, the third Royals Devil was up on his feet again. He made a dash for Raylix, but slipped on the blood that had poured on the ground as a result of the fourth's decapitation, opening him up to a simple stab in the chest, ending his life as well. The second Royals Devil had propped himself up a nearby wall, clutching at his wound and wearing an expression that plainly begged Raylix to spare his life. And Raylix... didn't.

Stepping over the legless, unmoving body of the first Royals Devil once he made his way over to it (Raylix suspected that he'd simply bled out), he continued his quick journey up the tower, killing every Royals Devil that crossed his path until he reached the second-from-the-top floor. Kicking down the first door he saw, he rushed into what looked like a large living room-type space: a far bigger one than what he'd experienced back at his own house.

There was a large fireplace that took up a good portion of the wall-space on one side of the room, to the right of where Raylix had come in. Directly opposite that, there was a large magically-projected screen that seemed to show off the battle that was going on back at the ruined Valefor city, the battle that Raylix had come from before arriving at the base. A glance at it told him that the Royals soldiers that had been there were being chased away from the city by Anti-Royals soldiers, with Sirzechs leading the charge against them. Grayfia, the woman who Serafall had been fighting earlier, was nowhere to be seen.

Directly across from Raylix was a large table, behind which a sole Devil sat, watching the magical screen with a bored expression on his face. Said sole Devil was a male who, by human standards, looked to be in their late-thirties/early-forties. He had long black hair that was slicked back and done up in a ponytail that went down to his back, and downturned violet eyes. He wore extremely expensive-looking noble attire, mainly coloured blue and black, and was leant back in a chair that looked more like a throne than anything else.

He didn't even look away from the screen after Raylix kicked in the door, power flared up and ready for a fight, until a good few seconds after said door-kicking had occurred.

"So, you're the one who was making such noise downstairs." he spoke, in a smooth, oily tone. "Damaidosu, son of the Great Satan Asmodeus, is surprised that you made it past all his men. You must be quite a strong Devil, to get all the way to Damaidosu."

'I already don't like this guy.' Raylix thought, taking a breath as he took a step into the room, adjusting his grip on Gaeneron as he did so. Damaidosu raised an eyebrow at the sword, which glinted in the light of the fire, and turned slightly towards Raylix, an expression of VERY mild interest on his face.

"Damaidosu sees that you possess Gaeneron." he remarked. "You must be a descendent of the Pillar Gremory." A very slight sneer formed on his face as he looked down his nose at Raylix. "Don't take another step forward, servant. Kneel, and Damaidosu may allow you live."

Raylix took another step forward, getting into a battle-stance as he did so. A second later, the fire to his right roared up, and seemed to come to life. It took the shape of a large man, about twice Raylix's own size, and jumped out of the fireplace, landing between Raylix and Damaidosu. Getting up from his throne-like chair, Damaidosu walked calmly away from Raylix and the fire-man of his creation, out of the room through a door behind where he'd been sitting. Raylix attempted to give chase, easily making it past the fire-man and cutting through the table and chair rather than going over or around them, but the door burst into flames just as he was about to put his hand on the handle, making him recoil by reflex. Turning around, he saw the fire-man had a hand out, pointed towards the door. Evidently, he had done that to stop Raylix from leaving.

'Alright, fine.' Raylix thought, sheathing Gaeneron and fully turning to face the fire-man that Damaidosu had conjured. 'Let's mosey, asshole.'

The fire-man threw a punch from his position twenty feet away from Raylix, sending a large fireball out of his hand towards him. Raylix rolled out of the way and thrust his own hand forward, firing a shot of his Power of Destruction towards it. The fire-man made no attempt to dodge Raylix's destructive shot, which flew... straight through him, without even destroying anything. There was a loud BANG as Raylix's shot flew into the wall directly behind the fire-man, blowing a hole into the base and allowing Raylix a sight of outside.

Not that Raylix would have even looked outside, as the fire-man took another couple of steps towards him, quickly closing the distance between them.

'Alright, that's that theory nipped in the bud.' Raylix (who had initially suspected that the fire-man was comprised of a body that was covered in fire. As awful as the implications of something like that would be, he REALLY didn't put it past any of the Royals' leadership to try something like that) thought, ducking down and dashing between the fire-man's legs as it took another slow step towards him.

Turning back around to face the fire-man, who turned around to face him in turn, Raylix wiped the rapidly-forming sweat off of his face and gritted his teeth.

'Water puts out fire...' he thought to himself. 'Destruction's out, time for Plan B. Or Plan W...? Eh, whatever.'

The fire-man began walking towards Raylix, who spread his wings and floated backwards several feet, holding up one hand and summoning a decently large magic-circle in it. A second later, a wave of water gushed out of the circle and landed mainly on the fire-man's right leg. It had the exact effect that Raylix was hoping for, putting out every lick of fire that the water made contact with. The fire-man instantly lurched to the right and dropped to the ground, igniting the dry parts of the Wulf-fur carpet that it fell onto, and causing just about as much new fire to flare up as Raylix had put out with his water.

Almost instantly, the fire that the fire-man had started began to rise away from the carpet, and swirl around the area that Raylix had obliterated with the water, regenerating its right leg. When the leg was fully regenerated, the fire-man got back to its feet, with more fire flaring up from where it put its hands on the ground, to push it back to its feet. Not even a couple of seconds later, the newly-flared up fire rose up and into the fire-man, causing it to swell in size from around ten feet in size to twelve feet, at least.

"Well... alright, then." Raylix remarked. "Thanks for showing me how to beat you." He jumped up and flipped over in mid-air, bouncing off the ceiling and away from the next fireball that the fire-man sent his way with another thrown punch. Spreading his eight wings again, he glided over the fire-man and cast another large magic-circle, dumping a huge amount of water onto the fire-man from above.

Raylix landed on the ground and whirled around, throwing up a barrier for himself to keep himself dry as the water he'd conjured up seconds later splashed up and around everywhere in the room, before coming to settle on the ground as water often did. The fire-man, however... was completely gone. Evidently Raylix's water-dump had done the job.

Taking a breath to recompose himself after the short fight he'd just been in, Raylix destroyed the door that Damaidosu had gone through (which was no longer on fire, thankfully) with a bolt of the Power of Destruction, Raylix dashed forward, immediately going up the stairs that were right in front of him after going out the door. At the top of the stairs stood another door, which Raylix kicked open as he rushed onto the roof, seeing Damaidosu standing there, his back to him.

"Was that fiery guy the best you could do?" Raylix asked, re-summoning Gaeneron and shifting himself into a battle-stance. "Because Raylix doesn't think so!" he added, a slightly mocking edge to his voice. Damaidosu looked around, a similarly bored expression on his face to when Raylix had first met him downstairs, as he looked Raylix up and down.

"No, it wasn't." he replied. "But Damaidosu thanks you for asking."

He didn't move as Raylix rushed towards him, ready to carve him up with Gaeneron. Raylix reached him within seconds and swung, but just as his sword was about to make contact with Damaidosu's neck, it clashed with an invisible, yet powerful, barrier. The young Gremory barely had a second to process this before Damaidosu lazily flicked his hand, outputting a powerful pulse of demonic energy from whatever barrier he'd conjured up, sending Raylix backwards off his feet. Gaeneron slipped from his hand as Raylix crashed into the cold, hard roof of Damaidosu's base.

Raylix grimaced from the temporary pain as he picked himself back up, and summoned Gaeneron back to his hand a moment later. Gathering up a good amount of his demonic energy, he fired a powerful bolt of the Power of Destruction at the barrier that stood between him and Damaidosu. The destructive bolt struck the barrier, leaving little more than a scuff-mark on it. Raylix followed up the miniscule (if any) amount of damage that his previous attack had done by rushing towards Damaidosu again, closing the range between the two combatants and swinging at the barrier again.

The sword struck the barrier again, same as Raylix had done last time, but rather than disengage, Raylix persevered, sure that if the barrier could be damaged, it could be broken, and then he'd be able to have a chance against Damaidosu. Or at the very least... survive for long enough that someone would come to his aid. Raylix's eyes were caught by a part of the barrier beginning to become visible, around the area that he had struck with Gaeneron, but he could barely mentally acknowledge that he was MAYBE doing something right in this encounter before a spike of demonic energy flew out from where the barrier had become visible.

Raylix let out a shout of surprise and jumped backwards, the spike actually making its mark of his chest, but barely grazing him rather than impaling him like he was sure Damaidosu had intended. Taking half a second to look down and see that the spike had drawn blood, Raylix took a couple more jumps backwards, readjusting his grip on Gaeneron as he did so.

Now fully turned around to face him, Damaidosu lazily swung his hand around in a wide arc, casting many magic-circles all over the roof that he and Raylix were fighting on. A quick scan over the roof with his eyes told Raylix that Damaidosu had cast a hundred magic-circles in all, each with Asmodeus' family crest: that of a crown with an 'A' in front of it.

However, nothing seemed to be coming from the magic-circles, even though Raylix was literally standing on one of them. However, a whizzing sound from above caught Raylix's attention, and no sooner did he look up than did he see a hundred bolts of demonic energy, all directly above where the magic-circles were all situated.

Raylix broke into a dodge-roll just as the first bolt of energy, the one that was right above the magic-circle that he'd been standing on, flew downwards and hit the magic-circle in question, causing a large explosion of energy that Raylix was sure would have done great damage to him had he not evaded it. The other ninety-nine energy-bolts above Raylix began to drop as well, forcing Raylix to essentially duck, dodge, dive, dip and dodge out of the way of the explosions around him.

In retaliation, Raylix fired a powerful beam of the Power of Destruction at Damaidosu, but it had just about as much effect as the first bolt he'd sent... next to nothing.

Damaidosu didn't initially seem to move a muscle in reaction to Raylix seemingly dodging his most wide-reaching attack so far. He simply raised his hand, forming another large magic-circle within his hand and pointing it at Raylix. The magic-circle glowed, and a large flaming boulder was flung out of the magic-circle directly at Raylix.

Raylix saw the boulder coming, and threw up a barrier to block it. However, when the boulder hit the barrier... it was deflected out of harm's way, sure, but it came at the cost of shattering the barrier entirely, and sending Raylix staggering. He hadn't the time to throw up a barrier to stop the second flaming boulder from flying his way, so he simply dived out of the way as it bounced harmlessly past him, and jumped back to his feet.

Raylix was forced to start moving quickly again as Damaidosu lazily conjured up another magic-circle in front of him, that began glowing an ominous purple colour. Common sense told Raylix to get out of the way, which he did just as an enormously powerful beam of energy was fired out of the magic-circle, directly at where Raylix had been seconds earlier. As he spread his wings and flew above the rooftop, firing another bolt of destructive energy down from above at Damaidosu, Raylix was certain that the demonic power-beam would have vaporized him instantly, had he been hit.

Raylix's destructive bolt missed Damaidosu, whizzed past the edge of the roof, and landed on the ground just outside the main doors to the base, which caught Raylix's attention as he twisted himself around in mid-air to evade the laser, which was still firing. Did the barrier that Damaidosu had conjured only apply to in front of him. Well, it would definitely be easier to approach him from upon the roof rather than from the air behind him, but... it was worth a shot, right?

After performing a barrel-roll in mid-air to dodge the angled laser again, which soon dissipated, Raylix disengaged from Damaidosu entirely and flew towards the edge of the roof, preparing to dive all the day down and around in order to attack from a new angle, but he didn't even get off the roof before crashing into another invisible barrier. He fell for a couple of seconds, dazed, but righted and caught himself in mid-air before dodging another blast of demonic energy from Asmodeus' son.

"Did you really think that Damaidosu didn't guess you'd try attacking him like that?" Damaidosu asked, a derisive smirk forming on his face as Raylix made his way back to the ground, gritting his teeth as he felt the rapidly-forming bruise on his normally-gorgeous face. "Damaidosu laughs at your idiocy, peon."

Raylix gritted his teeth, and wiped some more sweat from his head, shaking some of his hair out of his eyes as he did so. Damaidosu was SERIOUSLY beginning to annoy him with his whole 'referring to himself by his own name' shtick. As he tensed up, preparing to attack again, he felt the roof beneath him beginning to rumble. Instincts told him to GET OFF THE SATAN-DAMN ROOF, which he did milliseconds before another explosion, like the ones that had formed all over the roof earlier in the fight formed directly under where his feet had been.

But this explosion was FAR more powerful than any of the hundred explosions that Damaidosu had formed earlier, and loud enough to make Raylix's ears ring. Unfortunately, paltry milliseconds weren't nearly enough for Raylix to get away from the explosion that Damaidosu had formed under him, and he was sent flying up into the air, knocked temporarily unconscious by the force of the explosion. He didn't come to until he felt himself slamming back onto the cold, hard roof, and groaned in pain as he slowly picked himself up. Raylix shook slightly as he balanced himself on his feet, the beginnings of anger coming in as he glanced at himself, beaten and slightly wounded, in comparison to Damaidosu's immaculate state.

"Is this all that a wielder of Gaeneron can do?" Damaidosu asked, conjuring up a chair for himself and sitting down upon it, looking bored by what he saw in front of him. "Damaidosu is greatly disappointed."

'Time,' Raylix thought. 'To make a hasty retreat.' He cast a transportation-circle underneath it, figuring that if he couldn't beat this ASSHOLE on his own, then he'd leave, escape with his own life rather than throw it away in a battle that he knew he couldn't win. Either that or find someone who COULD win... like Serafall, or even Sirzechs. Shit, maybe even both of them.

When Raylix activated the transportation-circle, however, it didn't light up and take him away from the top of the Royals base. It, to his horror, did nothing at all. He was still standing, tired, hurt and pretty pissed-off, in front of Damaidosu, composed, unhurt and looking even more bored than ever by what he was seeing. Though Raylix did see another smirk pulling at his lips.

"You cannot escape Damaidosu, peon." he spoke, his voice now a full-on sneer as he looked over at Raylix. "But Damaidosu has to admit, he is impressed with the show you've put on for him in the past few minutes. Fall to your knees and BEG for Damaidosu's forgiveness, and he may spare your life. He may even find a place for you in the new Underworld that he and Bidleid will create."

"Oh, SHUT THE HELL UP!" Raylix shouted, a new wave of anger washing over him and giving him the energy needed to stand up straight, and prepare Gaeneron again. "You want Raylix to kneel? Get off your ass and make him!"

Damaidosu merely sneered further at Raylix, but didn't move a muscle beyond that. However, a large magic-circle appeared in front of Damaidosu, that began glowing a familiarly ominous purple. Raylix was prepared this time, and was long by the time Damaidosu's energy-beam was let loose. While in the air, he swung his hand in a wide arc at Damaidosu and sent hundreds of tiny darts of his Power of Destruction at him. A single one of them likely wouldn't be enough to hurt him, let alone kill him, but if Raylix was right, he'd probably be able to blind the son of Asmodeus, at least for a moment... which was a moment's more time for him to figure out how to win this fight.

As Raylix quickly dived down to dodge the beam, which was being angled upwards to aim at where he was currently at, he noticed Damaidosu doing something for the first time... moving.

Rather than hit the seemingly omnipresent barrier that he'd formed in front of himself, some of the destructive bullets that Raylix had fired came dangerously close to hitting Damaidosu in the face, forcing him to jump out of his chair, dissipate it with an uncharacteristically quick movement of his hand (almost so quick that Raylix didn't even notice it happening) and jump aside. No sooner had he done all that had he re-summoned his chair and sat back down in it, putting on a face that tried to convey that he was just as bored as before at what was going on... but Raylix was CERTAIN that the truth was quite different.

'His barrier's down!' Raylix thought, preparing Gaeneron as Damaidosu's laser dissipated. 'Now's my chance!' Twisting himself around in mid-air, Raylix flew at Damaidosu faster than a speeding bullet, his sword pointed forward in a thrust that he was certain would sink into the older Devil's throat. However, it was not to be for the young Gremory-descendent as, just as Gaeneron's tip came fractions of a foot away from Damaidosu's flesh, it came into contact with the same invisible barrier that had been plaguing Raylix since the start of the fight.

Raylix could only get out "Oh, you've got to be shitting-!" before a surge of demonic power from Damaidosu sent him flying backwards, and re-acquainting him with the hard surface of his base's roof. However, fortunately, Gaeneron did not slip from his hand this time, and he was back on his feet in an instant, adrenaline and anger at Damaidosu playing a pretty big part in his actions now. In spite of said adrenaline and anger occupying most of his mind (he figured about... eighty to ninety percent was the most accurate estimate), there was still a niggling ten to twenty percent in the back of his mind that had a suspicion of what was going on with Damaidosu and his infuriating barrier.

And given the situation he was in, it wouldn't hurt to test that suspicion, right?

As soon as Raylix felt the beginnings of rumbling beneath his feet, he was in the air, and out of range of the explosion that Damaidosu had thrown up directly beneath where his feet had been a second or two earlier. As soon as the explosion went off, Raylix extended his open hand towards Damaidosu and fired a large, concentrated bolt of the Power of Destruction, directly at him. He had a clean shot and his aim was true: that bolt was GOING to hit Damaidosu right in his Lilith-damn face! Either that, or...

Damaidosu's eyes widened, if only for half a second, at the destructive bolt bound for his head, and stood up from his chair again, hurriedly forming the very same shield out of a magic-circle that most other Devils often did. Raylix's destructive bolt hit the shield that he'd cast between it and himself at around the same time that Raylix dropped down and landed on the roof again, a grin on his face: his suspicions were right.

A scowl formed on Damaidosu's face at the sight of Raylix's grin, and he swung one of his hands in a wide arc, forming twenty-five magic-circles beneath Raylix's feet, rather than his previous one hundred.

'I already know this routine.' Raylix thought, a smirk of his own on his face as he looked up and, as he figured, twenty-five bolts of demonic energy had formed a good way above the magic-circles on the floor. He looked back at Damaidosu-

just in time to be smacked in the... everywhere, by another of his large boulders.

Raylix let out just out every curse he knew as the force of being smacked in the face sent him flying backwards, right as the above bolts of energy came flying down, triggering explosions that he inevitably flew into, causing him to drop the curses in lieu of a scream of pain. He was flung into the ground, and barely had time to look up before another boulder, conjured up by Damaidosu and flung at him, forced him to break into another dodge-roll (in spite of how every part of his body screamed in protest) in order to evade the attack.

As the boulder bounced away, and Raylix's ears stopped ringing from all the explosions (he inwardly thanked his Devil physiology that they hadn't permanently ruptured from everything he'd experienced today), another magic-circle formed in front of Damaidosu... another glowing one.

Raylix waited a couple of seconds, glaring at Damaidosu with an intensity that even he didn't know he had... before launching into an action that was both monumentally brave... and incredibly stupid. As the third powerful beam was let fly, Raylix launched directly at it, dodging out of the way and flying right at Damaidosu, only realising mid-flight that this idea was probably not well-formed, and could potentially result in death.

But oh well. This was his best chance at doing ANYTHING to damage Damaidosu's annoyingly-perfect-looking self, he'd launched into it, and there was no taking it back now. No second chances, this was his only shot.

Damaidosu's eyes widened as he vaguely process Raylix flying at him, Gaeneron out and ready to be swung. He cancelled the beam, but he realised that he was fractions of a second two late to prevent the inevitable.

Raylix let out an ecstatic scream as his sword made contact with Damaidosu's face. However, he was slightly off-target, and rather than pierce his head, which would have instantly ended the fight, he was only able to lightly gash Damaidosu's right cheek. His ecstatic- almost orgasmic- scream was forcefully cut off as Damaidosu sent him away with another wave of demonic power, but Raylix was able to cleanly land on his feet and notice that blood was oozing from the wound that he'd dealt to Damaidosu.

"About time I landed something." Raylix chuckled. His body ached from all the shit that Damaidosu had put him through while on the roof, but he found it pretty hard to care at the moment. Damaidosu didn't seem to move at first: Raylix initially thought that he'd been struck dumb by his face being slashed, before he rose a hand to his face and ran a finger across the gash that Raylix had inflicted on him. Even from where Raylix was standing, he could see the blood on Damaidosu's finger, as well as his expression shifting to one of boredom to one of calm rage.

"You struck me..." he spoke, his voice barely above a whisper, as he looked over at Raylix. "YOU struck ME?!" he shouted, fixing Raylix with such an intense glare that the young Devil was sure that, had he been any lesser, his ass wouldn't have been the only thing occupying the inside of his pants.

"I guess that whole 'finding a place for me in the new Underworld that you'll create' thing is off the table, now?" Raylix asked, taking a couple of breaths. Damaidosu's face contorted as his rage became more obvious, and he extended his hand towards Raylix, with a magic-circle appearing out of it and glowing a bright purple. Raylix didn't even move before it was unleashed, and Damaidosu let out a shout of laughter as Raylix was seemingly obliterated...

…

Except he wasn't.

Damaidosu's laughter was quickly stifled when he saw Raylix, still standing, very much not obliterated, his own hand out and having formed a single Amalgamation-hole out of his hand, which seemed to be catching the laser that he was firing at him. He cancelled the laser upon reflex and could only look on in dumb shock as Raylix took a couple of breaths, giving off a shit-eating grin as he held Damaidosu's laser- or rather, the energy that Damaidosu had expended to make up his laser- in the Amalgamation-hole within his hand.

A couple of seconds later, Raylix closed his hand, and the Amalgamation-hole along with it, and took a couple of relieved breaths as his body glowed a bright crimson for a couple of seconds.

"Ahh..." he sighed. "That's what I really needed... thanks for that." he addressed Damaidosu. "It was just what I needed!"

FLASHBACK:

"Alcina?" Raylix asked, stretching as he came downstairs.

It was a couple of days since he'd come out of hospital, in the aftermath of the disaster (as far as Raylix himself was concerned) that was his attempt to retake all the important points of Gusion territory. Sabemka and Tomosei... were alive, but injured in their own ways. Tomosei had lost an eye during her battle, and Sabemka had both lost a few fingers and nearly bled to death. It was a miracle that both of Raylix's friends had come out of their respective battles alive.

And, as it just so happened, Raylix and Sirzechs' grandmother Alcina- Zeoticus' mother and daughter of the original Gremory- had come to visit... it was just one of the things she tended to do with her free time.

Currently, she was sitting at the dining room table, drinking a cup of tea while dressed in one of her many flowing crimson-red dresses that seemingly strained against her bust, which was even bigger than Venelana's.

Raylix's grandmother put her teacup down and looked over at her grandson, a smile coming to her face.

"Raylix." Alcina greeted him, putting a hand on Raylix's head and rubbing affectionately. "Nice to see you out of hospital. Are you well?"

"I'm fine, thanks." Raylix replied, as Alcina took her hand off of him. "While you're here, I actually wanted to talk to you about something... about your power. Or, I guess, my use of your power."

"Oh?" Alcina spoke, raising an eyebrow and taking another sip of her tea. "Well, sit down. You've got my attention, boy, don't waste it."

Raylix internally bristled slightly at being called 'boy', but forced the feeling down as he took a seat opposite his grandmother, who looked over at him with an expectant expression on her face, while taking another sip of tea.

"It's... Amalgamation." Raylix began, holding up a hand and summoning a single Amalgamation-hole for a second or two, before dispelling it and putting his hand down. "It's... kind of hard to put into words, actually."

"Well, take your time." Alcina replied. "I might be old, but I've still got time." She let out a small laugh at her own joke, as Raylix swallowed.

"Right..." he spoke, looking down at his hands. "You know how our- your power combines multiple kinds of attacks together, to make something new?"

Alcina nodded.

"And how it can take the attacks of enemies, as well?"

Another nod.

"Well, I was thinking about a... different way of using Amalgamation." Raylix continued, looking up for a couple of seconds at Alcina before back down at himself. "A way of, uhh... combining the power behind attacks fired at me, with my own reserves of demonic power?"

Alcina put her teacup down, an eyebrow slightly raised in a non-verbal invitation for Raylix to continue, to elaborate.

"You know, in case I ever ended up in a really long battle, and my reserves ended up running low." Raylix continued, obeying his grandmother's non-verbal request. "I think it'd just be- uhh- a good way of being able to keep fighting?"

Alcina picked up her teacup again, and finished whatever was left in it in a single gulp. After putting the cup down on the table that seperated her from Raylix, she stood up, silently walking to the door. Raylix stood up as well, but didn't move beyond that.

"It was just an idea." he spoke, his voice quieter as Alcina made her way towards the door. "Probably not one of my better ones. Honestly, not even worth bothering with. F-forget I said anything."

"No." Alcina replied, turning around on her heel to look back at Raylix. "It's a good idea, Raylix." She waved her hand at the door that led to the garden, causing it to spring open, with a smile forming on her face. "Let's see if we can get this potential technique of yours working, shall we?"

END OF FLASHBACK:

"Why does it matter what you need, filth," Damaidosu spoke, his voice practically a hiss as he began walking towards Raylix. "When you're about to SUFFER and DIE for your TREASON?!"

"Alright, I'll take that as a no." Raylix replied, forcing down the wave of fear that had washed over his entire being. "As far as the previous question goes... oh, shit." he whispered to himself, as Damaidosu spread his Devil wings... all TWELVE of them... and rose into the air, calling a great amount of demonic energy to one hand. Raylix tensed up, preparing to leap to the side to dodge the attack that Damaidosu would surely fire at him, though he had a distinct feeling that the son of Asmodeus was about to get VERY serious with him... meaning that his time was most certainly shortened.

Damaidosu finished charging up his attack, and with a yell, prepared to fire it at Raylix, but just as the power was about to leave his fingertips, the son of Asmodeus was suddenly engulfed inside a large shell of ice, freezing him and the attack he was about to fire solid. Almost instantly upon this happening, the shell (with Damaidosu inside it) began to shake, with Raylix choosing to move out of the way now and question what was going on later. One dive out of the frozen Damaidosu's line of fire later, he looked up to see...

"Serafall!" Raylix grinned. "Nice to see you again."

Her staff out and pointed squarely at Damaidosu, Serafall looked down and spared Raylix a smile before looking back at Damaidosu. However, she wasn't the only one who had seemingly shown up to aid Raylix, as the sound of two pairs of feet touching down on either side of him indicated, with the two Devils said pairs of feet belonged to-

"Emka, Tomo!" Raylix remarked, a short breath of relief escaping him. "What took you so long?"

"Got held up back at the HQ." Tomosei replied. "Apparently that Euclid Lucifuge guy we kicked the ass of was a pretty high-profile target for the Anti-Royals, and Zekram had a hard time believing that we were able to kick his ass."

"Sorry we were so long, Raylix." Sabemka added. "You must've been struggling really hard against that guy- wait, does he have-?! How did you-?!"

"Twelve wings, same as Sirzechs, yes he does, fight first, talk later." Raylix replied, quickly. He looked back up at Serafall, who hung in place on her ten wings. "Where's Sirzechs?"

"Took over with chasing the Royals out of Valefor territory." Serafall replied. "He seemed pretty eager to get to it, so I let him. Satan knows that's what he's good at." She gritted her teeth as the icy shell she had conjured around Damaidosu began to crack. "Anyway, if you and your friends are done talking, you ready to help take down Damaidosu?"

"You know it!" Raylix replied, giving off an adrenaline-filled, slightly maniacal grin as he did so, before turning to Sabemka and Tomosei. "And you?"

"Of course I'm ready!" Sabemka cried, slamming one fist into his hand and giving off a similar grin to Raylix. "Let's do this shit!"

"Likewise." Tomosei replied, summoning her staff and twirling it for a second in her hand before pointing it at Damaidosu and the shell that encased him, which was looking ready to shatter at any second. She and Sabemka got into battle-stances as the icy shell surrounding Damaidosu shattered completely. Damaidosu immediately fired the huge shot of energy he'd intended for Raylix at Serafall instead, which she blocked with a rapidly-formed barrier.

"Stay on the move!" Raylix shouted to everyone (but mainly addressing his two friends), spreading his eight wings. He fired a bolt of destructive energy at Damaidosu and flew around to the back of him, reaching to his side to draw out the projection-blade that Sirzechs had given him so long ago. It had been damaged during Raylix's 'battle' against Tsufaame (who knew that being compressed from all sides by fathoms of water controlled by the very sexy daughter of Leviathan could damage even demonically-created machinery?), but was easily repaired and outfitted with a new thaumatium crystal, infused with ice-magic.

The length of the projected blade had also been customised, making it more functionally similar to a dagger than a sword and giving it a unique place in Raylix's arsenal as a backup- or secondary- weapon as opposed to his main melee weapon.

Just as his destructive energy-bolt hit Damaidosu in the lower-chest, causing him to stagger in mid-air and opening him up to a more powerful blast of demonic energy from Serafall straight to the face, Raylix ignited the projection-blade and drove it into Damaidosu's lower back, right between his left and right sets of wings, drawing out a gasp of surprise and pain from the Super-Class Devil. Raylix pulled the projection-blade (or was it now projection-dagger? …Yeah, that sounded more appropriate) out of Damaidosu's back and quickly floated backwards as Damaidosu whirled around, and with a growl of anger and contempt, extended a hand towards Raylix and released what looked like black smoke, that quickly wrapped itself around Raylix before disappearing.

Almost instantly, Raylix was able to tell that something was wrong. His rapid flying backwards was halted instantly, forcing him to float helplessly in mid-air.

"The hell?!" he cried, straining himself in an attempt to get moving again. "Why can't I move?!" He looked over at Damaidosu who, with a sinister grin on his face, turned away from him and focused his attention back to Serafall, Sabemka and Tomosei. He snapped his fingers and summoned multiple bolts of lightning from above that targeted the latter two, but they were able to dodge and block the bolts as best they could.

'I guess that rules out Damaidosu just having sealed my movement.' Raylix thought to himself, continuing to strain against... whatever Damaidosu had done to him. 'Else, he'd have just ended me already and moved on. So, what the-'

It was at that moment that Raylix, against his will, felt his left arm raising from its place at his side and pointing towards Sabemka and Tomosei, who had both dodged another bolt of demonic energy from Damaidosu, before he rose his hands to defend against a number of large icicles thrown at him by Serafall.

'Oh, shit.' Raylix thought as his arm continued to raise. 'Shit, shit, shit, no, no, no, shit, no, no, shit!' "HEY!" he screamed, in an attempt to get the attention of Sabemka, Tomosei and hopefully Serafall, who was dodging Damaidosu's returned-fire. "I can't control my body!"

"Shut up, worm!" Damaidosu shouted, firing a bolt of energy into Raylix's stomach that would have forced Raylix to double over in pain, had he not been controlled by Damaidosu right now. "End your boyfriend first, and then finish that one-eyed bitch!"

Against his will, Raylix's body began to charge up a powerful bolt of the Power of Destruction, aiming squarely at Sabemka. In spite of how he tried to turn off the charging power, in the same manner that he'd done with many cancelled shots throughout his life, his mother's power continued to charge up.

Not even bothering to hide his satisfied smirk, Damaidosu refocused his attention onto Serafall, now the sole threat to him, and as he noticed a powerful beam of demonic energy flying his way, he fired one right back at her in return, hoping to overpower and kill her. The two beams of energy clashed right in-between Damaidosu and Serafall, and didn't move for a couple of seconds. Damaidosu's beam began to move against Serafall's, however, as he poured more power into his attack, though it stopped moving as Serafall bgan to focus more power into her own beam, which then began moving back against Damaidosu's in turn as she began focusing more power still.

"FOOLS!" Damaidosu screamed, as he focused even more power into his fired beam of energy. "You are, all of you, beneath me! I am the son of Asmodeus, a GOD amongst you dull creatures! And you will not stand in the way of our salvation!"

Neither Serafall, Sabemka or Tomosei replied. Rather, Serafall disengaged from her fired energy-beam and simultaneously flew upwards, out of the way of the laser that Damaidosu had fired, which continued on through the area that Serafall had been at not even a second earlier. Scowling, Damaidosu disengaged his own laser and focused on Serafall in her new position, beginning to charge up again as he heard Raylix firing off a bolt of his Power of Destruction. Not even bothering to look around, Damaidosu prepared to fire at Serafall again, and hopefully end the young Sitri child this time. However, he was distracted from his preparations to fire at Serafall by the sound of two pairs of feet rapidly moving across the roof, and the sound of wings being spread.

Half a second later, a fist crashed against one side of Damaidosu's face, hard enough that the Super Devil span over in mid-air a couple of times, followed up by a powerful bolt of energy striking the Super-Class Devil in the back.

"LEAVE OUR FRIEND THE FUCK ALONE!" Sabemka and Tomosei screamed, in unison. Sabemka, who had jumped up into the air and been the one that punched Damaidosu as hard as he did, flew back to the roof as Raylix, now freed from whatever controlling stuff Damaidosu had done to him, flew over and delivered a brutal axe-kick to Damaidosu's head, sending him back to the rooftop as well, where Serafall followed up by impaling him with an extremely large icicle that pinned him to the rooftop.

Damaidosu let out a yell of pain upon being run through by an icicle, and attempted to move himself off of the icicle. A quick glance behind him and the sight of how huge the icicle in question was, however, told him that that wasn't going to be possible without enduring unacceptable amounts of pain. Grimacing, Damaidosu reached behind him and directed a cutting wave of demonic energy through the part of the icicle that had been sticking out of his back, splitting the offending weapon in two. He then pulled the part of the icicle that was still stuck inside him out of him with only a grunt of pain, and threw it at Sabemka. Raylix's male friend rolled to the side, grinning as he straightened back up. Damaidosu extended his hand towards Raylix again, with the same black-smoke-like substance appearing around his hand and beginning to fly towards Raylix, but Serafall distracted him enough with a bolt of ice that froze one of his feet to the ground that Damaidosu was forced to cancel the attempt to control Raylix's body again.

Seeing an easy opening, Raylix and Sabemka dashed forward, both of whom slammed their fists into Damaidosu's face at the exact same time, sending him rocketing backwards before he could free himself from the icy shell that had engulfed his leg. Serafall followed up with another powerful bolt of demonic energy from above, that flew right into the hole made by her earlier impalement of Damaidosu's stomach and detonated, forming a gigantic collection of medium-sized spiky icicles inside Damaidosu's body. Had Damaidosu not been a leader of the Royals Faction, the asshole who had come the second-closest to killing Raylix out of anyone in the world, just a general piece of shit, or even any one of the above rather than all of those at the same time, Raylix would have probably winced in empathy for the scream of absolute agony that Damaidosu let out at Serafall's attack.

But he wasn't, so he didn't.

Now most likely completely overtaken by the agony of being internally stabbed multiple times, Damaidosu began firing powerful shots of demonic energy in every direction, flying like a madman at Serafall out of a manic desire to get his own back, and tear one of the Anti-Royals' aces limb from limb as punishment for what she'd done.

"GET BEHIND ME!" Raylix yelled to Sabemka and Tomosei as he saw a couple of bolts of Damaidosu's energy headed their way. Both Devils immediately heard and obeyed, either flying or running behind Raylix as the two bolts of demonic energy that were meant for them only met the hard rooftop that they were all fighting on instead. However, a larger bolt of energy was fired towards Raylix's location a couple of moments later, which Raylix caught with a single Amalgamation-hole. Closing it and glowing red for a second, he cast a powerful barrier that covered himself and his two friends, both of whom looked at him in surprise.

"When the hell did you learn how to do that?" Tomosei asked, simultaneously looking surprised and impressed. "Was that a new form of Amalgamation?"

"You could say." Raylix replied, whirling around as he heard the barrier that he'd cast beginning to crack. Seeing that Damaidosu had turned his attention away from Serafall and onto him, he spread his wings and flew over the barrier, summoning a spear of his Power of Destruction and throwing it straight at Damaidosu... who realised far too late what was coming for him.

The spear of destruction was enough to blow Damaidosu's legs clean off his body, and stun him enough that he spiralled down to the rooftop, crashing into it and lying there motionless as Raylix and Serafall landed. Damaidosu opened his mouth again, most likely to let out another string of curses towards the supposedly-pitiful attempt by the treasonous Anti-Royals to usurp the rule of the Royals, which they obviously had every right to, but Serafall simply sent a cutting wave of ice at Damaidosu's neck, severing his head from his shoulders and not allowing him the dignity of final words.

There was quiet for a moment as Raylix, Sabemka, Serafall and Tomosei looked upon the headless, legless corpse of Damaidosu Zereikel Asmodeus, with the only sounds being that of Raylix dispelling the damaged barrier that he'd formed, and the panting breaths of all four Anti-Royals fighters.

Two Royals leaders down... and one left to go.

---

The death of Damaidosu Asmodeus, so soon after the death of Tsufaame Leviathan, had collectively dealt an incredible blow to the Royals Faction. With the loss of two of the three top leaders of the Royals Faction within... not even a month of each other, had shocked many within the Faction. Clans Wechuge, Namtar and Sargantanas had all instantly surrendered to the Anti-Royals as soon as the news of the death of their lord reached them, and were taken into custody.

The Mammon Clan had been the only Extra Demon Clan that served Asmodeus that hadn't surrendered to the Anti-Royals. Rumour had it was that they'd joined back up with Bidleid, son of the original Beelzebub, and would unfortunately continue to fight for the Royals.

Most of the grunt-soldiers on the Royals' side that had participated in the battle in the former capital of Valefor territory were either captured or dead, with some of the Royals-faithful even defecting from the Royals entirely to fight on the side of the Anti-Royals. The most notable of these defectors was Grayfia Lucifuge, who after the blessing of her dying father, Fenriad, was placed into Sirzechs' army, now the largest and most capable of all the armies that fought under the banner of the Anti-Royals Faction. It was said that, after he'd heard of what happened, Grayfia's brother Euclid had descended into what could only be called... insanity.

Serafall had received enormous praise for her part in the battle at what used to be Valefor territory, and the fact that she had been the one to kill one of the Royals' leaders was enough to instantly propel her name into the conversation for who would be chosen to take up the mantle of 'New Satan' when (as opposed to if. It would truly take the demonic equivalent of a miracle in the Royals' favour for their situation to be reversed) the Anti-Royals had defeated the Royals once and for all.

Like Serafall, Sirzechs' younger brother Raylix had also received strong acclaim for his role in the battle against Damaidosu as well, though UNlike Serafall, his name hadn't come up as often- if at all- in terms of potential New Satan candidacy.

"Does it bother you?"

"Huh?"

Raylix looked up from Sabemka's couch, which he was casually lying on, over at Tomosei, who was sat at a nearby table with a book in her hands. Sabemka was in his kitchen, working on lunch for the three of them. Fortunately, the loss of the majority of his fingers on his right hand hadn't impacted his ability to cook all that much, if at all.

"No-one's heard your name come up." Tomosei replied. "As far as candidacy for becoming one of the next Satans goes. Does that bother you, Raylix?"

"Hmm..." Raylix put on a concentrated face, as he seemed to think over Tomosei's question. However, for however concentrated he actually looked, he seemed to come to an answer rather quickly. "...Nah. Not really. Sirzechs would make a much better Satan than me, a blind Devil could see that. They'll obviously pick him over me."

"Good thing I'm only half-blind, then." Tomosei replied, putting her book down. "Though don't you think there's a chance that you might get picked alongside your brother?"

"Nope." Raylix remarked, pushing himself back up into a sitting position and turning around to fully face Tomosei. "No chance. You think the other thirty-three Pillar-descendant families would stand for two descendants of the same pillar both becoming Satans?" he let out a dry chuckle. "That'd probably start another Civil War. Best way to avoid that would just be to keep it to one descendant, and out of me and Sirzechs..." he shrugged. "Sirzechs is the logical choice, and I'm just fine with that. Besides, me? One of the leaders of the Devils?"

"I don't know why you're so confident you won't get chosen, Raylix." Sabemka's voice came from the kitchen, as he came out with two plates piled high with food for Raylix and Tomosei. "I think you'd make a pretty good Satan. Besides," he added, a sly smirk coming to his face as he put the plates down on the table. "If you were a Devil leader, you'd get to interact more with Li-"

"Sh-shut up!" Raylix cried, his face going slightly red. He turned away from Sabemka and Tomosei- both of whom burst out laughing- not wanting them to see his embarrassed face. "I told you I don't have a crush on Lilith! Just drop it, will you?!"

"Alright, alright, fine, fine." Sabemka replied, holding back further laughs. "Anyway, your food's here, so get it while it's hot. I'll be right back with mine." He walked off, leaving Raylix (who had gotten off the sofa and was heading towards the table) and Tomosei (who had already tucked into her meal) alone together for a moment or two, before he returned with his own plate. Taking a seat next to Tomosei, the three of them ate in relative silence for a few minutes before Tomosei spoke up again.

"So, what about that new technique of yours, Raylix?"

"Oh, that?" Raylix replied, his voice muffled thanks to his mouth being as full of food as it was. After swallowing, he was able to speak more clearly. "Yeah, I managed to make it work after some help from Grandmother. Really saved my ass, too."

"I can imagine." Tomosei replied. "You come up with a name for it, yet?"

Raylix blinked.

"Uh... no?" he replied. "Is that really important, though?"

"Not really, no." Tomosei replied. "At least not for anyone else, but for you... still not the most important thing in the world, but it wouldn't hurt to come up with SOME kind of title for your new Amalgamation-technique. If only to differentiate it from regular Amalgamation."

"You CAN still perform regular Amalgamation, right?" Sabemka asked, looking up from his own meal (which he'd hardly touched compared to Raylix and Tomosei. It was hardly a problem, he just took his time with his food compared to his two best friends). "Or has that new technique just replaced your ability to use-"

Raylix rose up both of his hands, and summoned a single Amalgamation-hole within each hand.

"Tomosei?" he asked, an eyebrow raised. Tomosei looked up from her own meal, and getting what Raylix was asking, pointed at one of the holes that Raylix had conjured, firing a bolt of icy energy into the one over his right hand. Raylix then infused a small amount of the element of darkness into the hole over his left hand, combined the two together, and fired the product (a black icicle no larger than Raylix's own hand) out of the open window. He then looked back at Sabemka, who shrugged.

"Well, that answers that." He remarked, going back to his meal. "Was just curious."

"And that's fine." Raylix replied. "Going back to the whole 'naming' thing, though, the only thing I can really come up with for the new ability is... Absorption? You know, since I'm absorbing power from attacks fired at me?"

Tomosei, who had gone back to eating, looked up at Raylix, paused for a second, and shrugged.

"Seems simple enough to me." she remarked, continuing to chow down through the meal that Sabemka had made for her until there was nothing left on her plate, in record time too. "Anyway, Absorption. Are there any limits to it? That you've encountered, at least?"

"Only one, as far as I know." Raylix replied. "Any power that I take thanks to Absorption fades away after I've recovered my power reserves. After the fight with Damaidosu, I distinctly remember having some of the power I got from his attacks left over, but that power seemed to... I don't know, dissipate, after I fully recovered? I didn't feel any more powerful than I usually do at full-power, at least. That, and I don't think taking in an Angel's power would go all too well, but I don't have much of a way of testing that, so..."

"So you can't use Absorption to increase your demonic power reserves?" Tomosei asked.

"No." Raylix replied. "At least, not right now. I'm sure that I'd be able to find a way to do it somehow. I mean, Ajuka didn't fully come up with Kankara Formula in a day, right?"

"Right." Tomosei replied. "I mean, I know he's smart, but a feat like that would just be going too far."

"Exactly my point." Raylix remarked, enjoying the last mouthful of his meal before swallowing. "So, at least for the time being, I'm limited to only temporarily adding to my reserves of demonic power during fights."

"Indeed, you are." Tomosei replied, standing up from the table and summoning her staff to her hand. "Doesn't mean you can't at least try to push the limits of Absorption."

"Come again?" Raylix blinked, looking after Tomosei as she headed towards Sabemka's front door.

"You're unable to permanently add to your reserves of demonic power right now, right?" Tomosei asked, turning around and looking back at Raylix. "No time to start trying like the present, right?"

"Heh. Right." Raylix replied, sliding off of his chair and, after thanking Sabemka for the lunch that he'd cooked, followed Tomosei outside, leaving Sabemka alone. The scarred brawler let out a short chuckle as the sounds of Raylix and Tomosei's footsteps faded away from his ears, and he began to clean up his dining room.

It was a nice change of pace for Tomosei to be helping Raylix out with something training-related.

1530

Bidleid Bashalun Beelzebub... hadn't been having a great last few months.

After his two fellow leaders of the Royals Faction had been slain in battle against the Anti-Royals, in the span of two weeks, things just seemed to go from bad, to worse, to even worse, to horrible, to bottom-of-the-barrel-dreadful, to somehow-even-worse-than-bottom-of-the-barrel AWFUL. Any armies of soldiers that Bidleid would send, either to defend against territory that the Anti-Royals were advancing on or in an attempt to secure new territory for the Royals... would be summarily defeated, with the majority of soldiers that he sent either being captured or killed. Mostly the latter, thanks to their refusal to give those traitors, the Anti-Royals, anything.

The worst defeat since the battle at the abandoned Valefor territory, where Damaidosu had died, was one where troops led by Clans Mammon and Belphegor advanced on the Anti-Royals' HQ... all of them were defeated in a single stroke by Falbium, a descendent of Glasya-Labolas... the lazy bastard. Lilith only knew how he was able to pull that off.

However he was able to do it, that failed attack seemed to have opened the floodgates on a not-insignificant portion of the Royals' forces exposing themselves as the COWARDS that they truly were, and defecting/surrendering to the Anti-Royals in exchange for their personal safety, with the worst loss of all being that bitch Grayfia. Never mind that creep Euclid, once he'd fully taken the Underworld (alongside Tsufaame and Damaidosu, had they still been alive), he would certainly have made Grayfia his wife (whether or not she would be willing to marry the future King of Hell was irrelevant). That woman just had... SOMETHING about her that drew so many Devils, male and female, to her, and it was an incredible shame that she seemed to have thrown her lot in with the Anti-Royals, particularly a man named Sirzechs.

After everything, the Royals' numbers had dwindled to around fifteen percent of the numbers that they had had at the start of the Civil War, which was Bidleid's biggest concern right now. It was an undeniable fact that to have the best chances of securing his rule in the Underworld, Bidleid needed more forces at his disposal than the Anti-Royals... but he didn't, not right now at least.

But fortunately, Bidleid had a good idea as to where more forces could be secured. Which was why he'd travelled all the way to Gid, and why he was currently walking up the path to Lilith's (formerly Lucifer's) castle, the large doors of which were currently guarded by four Incubi. A glare at the Incubi in question and small flaring of his power was enough for them to all freeze out of abject fear of the son of Beelzebub, and allow him to pass without question. Bidleid strode past them and forced open the doors to Lilith's castle, striding into the entrance hall as if he owned the place.

"Halt!" an Incubus dressed in a butler's attire called, looking over at Bidleid the second that the Devil had made his entrance and hurrying over to him. "What do you... want?" he faltered and stopped in his tracks the second that he seemed to realise just who had come bursting through the door to his Queen's castle, the expression on his face going from conveying an unflinching determination to perform his duties no matter the cost... to conveying little more than pants-pissing-tier terror in the span of a couple of seconds. Something that Bidleid, inwardly, found quite amusing.

"I seek an audience with your Queen, Lilith." he replied, a dark smirk on his face as the butler looked up at him, looking like he was about to have a panic attack. "NOW." he added, flaring up his demonic power a little and spreading his twelve Devil wings. The Incubus-butler let out a squeak and left through a transportation-circle, leaving Bidleid alone. The son of Beelzebub was barely alone for more than a minute before the Incubus-butler returned, looking no more courageous than before he'd left.

"L-Lady L-Lilith will s-see you in h-her throne room n-now." he stammered, meekly opening a transportation-circle. "R-right this way, p-please."

Bidleid silently stepped into the transportation-circle that the butler had cast for the pair of them, and was warped to another location within Lilith's castle. A pair of double-doors, nearly as large as the ones that Bidleid had forced his way through a minute earlier, stood in front of him, doors that he'd recognised after walking through them so many times with his father. Without even waiting for the butler's direction, Beelzebub opened the doors and strode into the throne room.

It was almost the same as the last time Bidleid had seen it. The enormous room's walls and ceiling was dominantly coloured a light silver, there was a black and red carpet throughout the middle of the room leading directly up to the throne, there were several ornately-designed windows on one side of the room that gave view to the dark purple Underworld sky, and there were statues of various creatures- mostly dragons and snakes- arranged at all corners of the room. The throne itself was exactly where Bidleid remembered it being: at the far end, elevated above the rest of the room, with a small stairway leading up to it. The throne was situated within a small dome, and was the only object (sans the throne's occupant, obviously) within said dome, further emphasizing its importance.

The only thing that struck Bidleid as distinctly different from how he remembered the throne room being... was who sat upon the throne. Lilith was usually stood at the bottom of the staircase that led up to the throne upon which Lucifer sat, while he was alive, but now she sat upon it, legs crossed and casually leant to one side, looking down at Bidleid with slightly-narrowed eyes. The former Queen of the Underworld, now Queen of the Lilim, exuded the same calm regality that she always did while at Lucifer's side, now debatably even more so now that she was the one sat on a throne, and not the one standing off to the side.

She also exuded the same nigh-incomprehensible beauty as she did before. Even Bidleid, who'd lived for thousands of years and bedded many hundreds (potentially even thousands) of women in turn, felt something turning in his stomach as he looked upon Lilith: the sleek long hair, those blood-coloured eyes, the long dress that hugged her every curve, her legendarily large bust... she was perfect.

"Lady Lilith..." Bidleid began, dropping down to one knee out of respect for the Mother of All Devils. "It's lovely to see you in person again. I'm... humbled that you would accept my request of an audience with you, and-"

"What do you want?" Lilith replied, cutting straight through Bidleid's attempts at flattery. Truth be told, she wasn't in the best mood: she'd been in the middle of some REALLY important personal business, and Bidleid- the little demonic dickhead- had chosen NOW of all times to storm into HER castle and interrupt her. "My time is precious, Bidleid, don't waste it."

"V-very well." Bidleid, slightly taken aback by Lilith's sharp tone but still keeping his composure. "I'm sure you're aware of what's being going on in the Devils' territory of the Underworld, between the Royals and the Anti-Royals."

"I'm aware." Lilith replied, shifting a little bit on her throne and uncrossing her legs, before re-crossing them again. Bidleid's eyes flicked upwards, and momentarily widened at the sight of Lilith's enormous bouncing bust, as well as a seconds-long peak in-between Lilith's legs… she wasn't wearing any underwear.

Silence fell between the twelve-winged Devil and the six-tailed Succubus for a second, as Lilith looked expectantly down at Bidleid, expecting him to continue... which Bidleid did, when he realised that Lilith wasn't going to continue talking.

"I've come to request aid from you, the Lilim." Bidleid continued. "The Royals, the true future leaders of the Devils, are in a... bad place, right now, and to reclaim leadership of our species, the assistance of our longtime allies would be-"

"A terrible idea." Lilith cut across him again. "You're losing, badly, and you can't accept that, so you're gonna run to someone else in an attempt to get them to do the heavy-lifting for you. And I'm going to assume you were too busy attempting to claim your supposed birthright to notice that the Lilim are independent from the Devils now, and that's the most charitable version of what I think. Are you seriously stupid enough to think that any substantial number of my race would be willing to jump into another war, one that doesn't involve us in any way? Particularly one that solely involves the very race that we became independent from, not even a year ago?"

Lilith stood up, her crimson eyes boring straight into Bidleid's brown with an intensity that rooted him to the spot he knelt at, in very much the same way that he'd rooted the Incubus butler that he'd met a few minutes ago. Looking like she was holding back a sneer of contempt at the son of Beelzebub, she walked calmly down the steps that led from the rest of the throne room up to the dome that held her throne, and made her way past Bidleid without sparing him another look.

"Your request is denied." Lilith spoke, as she passed Bidleid and made her way towards the door of her throne room. "Leave."

Bidleid finally found the strength to stand up as Lilith prepared to open the throne room's door, and spoke up again, with the sound of his voice making Lilith stop, but not turn.

"So, that's it, is it?" he asked, an unpleasant look coming across his face as he glared at the back of Lilith's head. "You're just going to turn your back on the very race that crowned you a Queen in the first place? Leave us to fail and die while we continue what you and your husband started?!"

Lilith turned around, her eyes narrowing again. Bidleid had just touched a nerve that anyone who knew her well enough (the number of which could be counted on one hand, with fingers to spare) knew not to touch... EVER. Bidleid, who didn't see this, continued his tirade.

"What kind of wife are you?" he spoke, contempt clear in his words. "What would Lucifer think if-"

Bidleid let out a short cry of surprise as Lilith reached out and pulled him towards her, catching him by the neck and squeezing hard enough to stop Bidleid from talking. She was already tired of him, and he'd gone and pissed her off on top of that.

"Do I look like my husband to you?" Lilith asked, her voice coming out in a low, yet intense, hiss. "Do I?!"

Bidleid was unable to answer, thanks to Lilith squeezing his neck as hard as she was. He shook his head, hoping that it'd be enough for Lilith to stop attempting to strangle him. Super-Class Devil or not, he still needed to breathe. However, Lilith did not cease her grip on Bidleid's throat.

"That's right, I'm not!" Lilith replied, instead squeezing harder on Bidleid's neck, causing him to gasp and wheeze. "I'm not..." she took a breath to calm herself. "Lucifer. He's dead. Therefore, his opinion on what I do now matters about as much to me as yours. Don't EVER play that kind of card on me, or on ANYONE, particularly anyone who's quite capable of killing you. Got that?"

Bidleid, whose face was beginning to turn blue from lack of air, hurriedly nodded. Seemingly satisfied with this answer, Lilith released her grip on his neck and turned her back to him again, taking another breath to calm herself.

"Glad I was able to teach you something that your father couldn't." she remarked, pointing behind herself and casting a transportation-circle underneath Bidleid's feet. Without another word, she activated it, sending Bidleid out of her castle- out of the entire Lilim territory, rather- in a flash of light.

Bidleid landed on the ground just inside the Devils' territory of the Underworld, and had to take a moment to really realise what had just happened. His final chance of fully turning around the shitty situation he (and the Royals, overall) were in... was gone.

There was no possibility of the Royals coming out on top in the Devil Civil War. There was no way that he'd be King of the Devils, and be able to carry on the Great War like Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Leviathan and Lucifer had wanted to, before they died. Everything that Bidleid and the Royals, as well as Damaidosu and Tsufaame while they'd been alive, had done... had been for nothing.

Bidleid's body began to shake. His breathing became shaky as the last of his mind seemed to shatter. If the Underworld wouldn't accept him... then screw the Underworld.

He cast a transportation-circle and stepped through it, emerging in the Royals HQ- in a secret location within the Devils' territory of the Underworld- with his presence instantly being noticed by every other Devil in the room that he'd teleported into.

"Send everyone to Lucifaad!" Bidleid yelled. "Get the word out to every Royals Devil you can find! Send everyone to Lucifaad, RIGHT NOW!"

---

"Raylix? Raylix?" Sirzechs' voice could be heard as he hurried upstairs. "You awake?"

Immediately turning left and moving swiftly down a short hallway, Sirzechs knocked a couple of times on Raylix's door before pushing it open.

"Raylix!" Sirzechs called, slightly more urgently as he stepped into his younger brother's bedroom. As he stepped inside, Raylix was instantly awake, sat bolt-upright with eyes wide, and breathing heavily. His heavy breaths were quickly replaced by a coughing fit, which he instantly did his best to force down as Sirzechs looked upon him.

"You're awake, then? Good." he remarked. "We're all needed, as fast as you can. The entire Royals Faction's mounted an attack on Lucifaad, and Zekram wants the entirety of the Anti-Royals to bring them down, end the civil war once and for all."

"Wh-what?" Raylix, his coughing having past and his breathing steadily slowing back to normal. "Everyone?"

"Everyone." Sirzechs replied, using some of his demonic power to summon Raylix's combat-gear onto a nearby chair. "Be quick, we're heading out in a few minutes."

"Got it." Raylix answered, leaning back against the headboard of his bed and stifling a yawn. "I'll be... right out."

Sirzechs nodded and quickly withdrew from Raylix's room, shutting the door behind him. Raylix finally let the yawn come, before resting his head in one of his hands.

He'd been drowning, like he'd been against Tsufaame just over six months ago. Sirzechs' call had jolted him out of it so hard that, even though he knew he really shouldn't... he had to take a couple of moments to come down, calm himself in the aftermath of that nightmare.

Throwing off the covers of his bed, stripping out of his bedclothes and pulling on his combat gear, Raylix hurried out of his room and joined Sirzechs, rubbing the last remnants of sleep from his eyes. One transportation-circle later took them both out of Zeoticus' home, and onto a hill on the outskirts of Lucifaad, the second-largest city in the Underworld and the one that was designated the new 'capital' of the Devils' territory.

It didn't take long for many, MANY more Anti-Royals soldiers, also dressed in combat-gear, to arrive through their transportation-circles and greet their respective leaders, with Sabemka and Tomosei being among the first to arrive and meet with Raylix.

"Is this it?" Sabemka asked. "Are we really going to end the war? Right here?"

"Well, not 'right here' specifically," Sirzechs, who was standing a couple of paces away from Raylix, replied. "But if reports from the Anti-Royals HQ are correct," he turned around and looked over at the city of Lucifaad, where the faint sounds of a battle beginning could already be heard. "Then the entire Royals Faction descended, seemingly out of nowhere and with zero build-up, on Lucifaad a few minutes ago, and have just been wrecking shit."

"Weird of whoever's leading the Royals to have the entire faction in one place." Raylix remarked. "They must be crazy."

"Well, knowing Bidleid," Grayfia spoke up from her position next to Sirzechs. "That's probably not too far from the truth. He probably finally realised that he's on the losing side in this war, and he's clearly not taken it very well."

"Anyway." Sirzechs spoke up, as more and more Devils began arriving. "Our goal is simple: retake the city. I'm picking up some pretty heavy-duty anti-teleportation barriers around the, so we'll have to fly in. My army will move in and engage with the Royals directly, I'm told Serafall's and Ajuka's units will work on minimizing destruction of the city and evacuating citizens, and everyone else will prevent any stragglers from escaping. You encounter any Extra Demons, capture them alive if you can. The rest, kill. Got it?"

There was a general murmur of ascent from everyone around.

"Good!" Sirzechs replied, spreading his twelve Devil wings and ascending into the air. "Then let's go! Let's end this!"

The majority of Devils following Sirzechs let out various battle-cries (which Raylix even joined in on, to an extent), before spreading their respective wings and taking to the air themselves, following Sirzechs over the hills and towards Lucifaad, from which smoke was beginning to rise as parts of the city seemed to be burning.

"Raylix, spread your group out over a section of the city's border!" Sirzechs called down to his younger brother, as they came closer and closer to the city. "Other groups will cover the rest!"

"Got it!" Raylix replied, slowing down and descending a little bit as Sirzechs, Grayfia and the rest of Sirzechs' army proceeded forward, into the burning Lucifaad. The rest of Raylix's brigade, Sabemka and Tomosei included, followed their leader as they approached the city's border, and eventually slowed to a stop. As they stopped in mid-air, they could see other Devils and their respective groups of soldiers emulating their leader. Raylix in particular could pick out Ruvella and her own brigade of Devil soldiers, not too far away from where he himself was floating. She was easy enough to pick out, with her fiery wings being an easy enough indicator of her presence in the battle.

He also noticed Ruvella firing a flaming beam at what he could only assume was a Royals Devil attempting to escape, most likely vaporizing them in an instant. Looking back, he saw a Royals Devil closer to him and his brigade flying over the city borders, attempting to escape the Anti-Royals. Unfortunately for them, that DEFINITELY wouldn't be happening, not if Raylix- or any of the Devils he was commanding- had anything to say about it.

"I got him!" Sabemka called, flying upwards and pulling back his fist in preparation for a punch. The Royals Devil in question attempted to blast Sabemka from close-range with a powerful bolt of energy, but he was knocked off-balance by Tomosei's own energy-bolt fired at his chest, opening him up to a fist deep in the stomach courtesy of Sabemka, which dazed him to the point that he didn't resist (or possibly even process) getting his head blasted out of existence by a bolt of the Power of Destruction, courtesy of Raylix.

"Good shot, Raylix!" Tomosei called out, floating back a few dozen meters to put some distance between herself and the city's borders, so she could get a clearer shot at any more Royals soldiers that came close to them. Raylix did the same, though he didn't go back as far. As someone who fought both with close-range combat and longer-range magic, it made sense to be somewhere between Tomosei and Sabemka, who fought almost exclusively close-range.

As Raylix floated in mid-air, he could see further armies of Devils proceeding overhead into Lucifaad, led by Serafall and Ajuka, and hear the sounds of battle going on within the city as Sirzechs' army took on the last remaining Royals. Damn sure as he was that this would be the battle that the Royals Faction was defeated for good at, and happy as he was that this would finally mean peace (of some kind) for the Devils for the first time since before he was even born... what could he do in the aftermath?

Ever since the very beginning, all he'd heard of from everyone was the next battle, the latest victory, all the lives lost to the Angels, the Fallen Angels, the Royals, whatever enemy he happened to have been placed in front of at the time. It was what he'd been predominantly raised on, and now that things seemed to be ending... what would be next?

Raylix's internal musings were interrupted by a shot of energy that came whizzing close to his head. Raising one of his wings on instinct, he deflected it away from himself, and spotted a few Royals soldiers flying overhead, pursued by a small sect of his own soldiers, led by Sabemka. He instantly flew up to assist them, catching up and grabbing one of the three fleeing Royals by the leg, holding him up long enough to punch him through the face with a Power of Destruction-enhanced fist.

'Think about that later.' Raylix thought to himself, pulling his fist and arm back through the corpse of the latest Royals soldier he'd killed, and casting a quick spell to clean his arm and hand before firing several shots of the Power of Destruction at the other two Royals soldiers (who had bolted as fast as they could upon seeing what Raylix had done to their comrade). However, from the range that Raylix had fired at, his destructive shots missed their targets, who disappeared through transportation-circles as soon as they crossed the barrier's border.

Cursing under his breath, a wave of anger washing over him as a result of the imperfection, Raylix turned around in mid-air and spotted another Royals soldier- a female- attempting to flee. As soon as she saw Raylix, he'd dashed towards her, hands coated in the Power of Destruction, and brought them together on either side of her face, reducing it to bloody chunks. The Royals' soldier's headless corpse dropped to the ground as Raylix cast another cleaning spell on himself, and brought out Gaeneron to block a series of bolts of demonic energy, fired by a nearby fleeing Royals soldier... who was punched to death by Sabemka seconds later.

Raylix took another breath, which was then sharply driven out of him as he felt himself being forced downwards, towards the ground, by a foriegn force of some kind. Shouting out in surprise, he fought against the force by reflex, doing his best to fly back to the height that he had formerly been floating at. It took a few seconds of effort, but he was able to make it, after which point the force seemed to lift away from him. Once Raylix was back at said level, he looked around wildly, looking for the Devil responsible for him being mysteriously forced down: his eyes yielded no-one who might have been responsible, though Tomosei's yell of shock from several meters away prompted Raylix to whirl around and see his best friend being forced down to the ground by a male Devil, who looked about the same age as Zeoticus.

With black, slicked-back hair, similarly dark eyes and dressed in fine-looking combat gear, Raylix was able to instantly identify him as an Extra Demon, as who else would be dressed that well, especially on a battlefield? As he forced Tomosei further down, seemingly without the need for directly touching her, Raylix instantly guessed that he was one of two things: either a member of the Fleurety Clan (which possessed the Clan ability Crushing, allowing them to- as the name implied- crush things with an invisible force. It was the closest thing any living Devil- pillar descendant or otherwise, had left to inherited gravity magic. Descendants of Buer possessed more direct gravity manipulation abilities, but they were long-gone thanks to the Great War), or just someone particularly good at gravity magic.

Figuring that the first option seemed the more likely, Raylix flew forward, drawing Gaeneron in his left hand and firing several bolts of demonic energy at the Fleurety Devil with his free right hand. The Fleurety Devil instantly released his Crushing hold on Tomosei and refocused on Raylix, extending a hand towards him and forcing him downwards towards the ground at an alarming speed... that was quickly halted as Raylix heard a louch punching sound, as well as the sound of bones breaking.

Looking up, Raylix grinned at the sight of Sabemka having flown over and punched the Fleurety Devil in the face, sending him spinning over in mid-air. He flew up and grabbed the dazed Fleurety Devil by the leg, span him around a couple of times and threw him back into the ground, landing on top of him just as he landed on the ground so he didn't have any chance to escape. Not that he would have had any chance in the first place, considering that he'd been knocked out: whether by Raylix's throw or Sabemka's punch, it didn't matter.

Sabemka and Tomosei descended and landed on either side of their friend. Tomosei readied her staff, charging it up with demonic energy in preparation to blast the unconscious Fleurety Devil. Before she could fire, Raylix grabbed hold of the staff and steered it away from him, causing Tomosei to stop and look at him.

"Extra Demon, remember?"

"Right..." Tomosei replied, nodding and getting back to the air, Sabemka following. Shrugging, Raylix picked up the Fleurety Devil and flew towards the edge of the anti-transportation borders, casting a transportation-circle as soon as he could and flying through it, with full intention to deposit his capture in a safe location and return to the battle.

---

A group of Royals Devils, dishevelled and tired, charged as a single unit at the crimson-haired traitor before them, hoping against hope that their charge against him would count for something in this final stand. None of them knew what their leader- and future King- Bidleid was thinking with sending every Devil under his command into one place for a final stand of any kind... but orders were orders, and they believed in his goal.

Their conviction was rewarded by being blasted by a number of small shots of the Power of Destruction, courtesy of their opponent. The Royals Devils that had approached him didn't even see the shots coming, and were dead before they even had a chance to block or fire back. Not that it would've done any good against one of the two Super-Class Devils of the Anti-Royals, particularly the one that was the more powerful of the two.

Sirzechs turned around in mid-air and, after noticing a group of his own soldiers being born down upon by a large group of Royals soldiers, formed a barrier out of his demonic power and flung it towards his allies. The barrier wrapped around the group of weaker soldiers, protecting them from all damage as Sirzechs finished off the larger group of Royals soldiers who'd been attacking them. Before his soldiers could thank their commander for saving them, said commander turned around and continued his flight throughout the city, heading towards its centre. He conjured up vast amounts of water with his demonic power and dumped it onto a burning building that he passed, putting it out almost instantly.

It may have been Serafall and Ajuka's jobs to minimize the destruction that the Royals were causing, as well as evacuate civilians, but it wasn't like Sirzechs WASN'T going to help where he could. Particularly not when he hadn't found his main target yet. When said main target was found, and when said main target was killed... this would truly be over.

Sirzechs sighed, as he noticed another few Royals soldiers attempting to sneak up on him. A wave of his hand and a subconscious thought caused his mother's power to flare up around them, obliterating all of them in an instant and not even distracting him enough to shake him from his thoughts. Had he fully had his way, with nothing or no-one around to influence his opinion or actions, he wouldn't have gotten involved in this whole civil war at all.

He'd long-since had enough of all the death and destruction that all war brought by the time the Great War was halted, and though he was the most powerful Devil alive once everyone once all the fighting was done, he would've been more than happy to never raise a hand against anyone ever again. But then came the battle against Ddraig and Albion: a quick, but necessary battle for the sake of the Underworld... as well as somewhat heart-warming, in a way. All four factions come together and fight against a common enemy, so soon after they'd stopped fighting each other, seemed like the perfect time to fully put the war behind them and permanently unite, right?

…Wrong. The leaders of the Angels, Fallen Angels, Devils and Lilim all seemed to agree that rebuilding themselves from the brink of oblivion took priority over directly pursuing official peace of any kind. Hardly a decision that Sirzechs agreed with, but whatever. With the four original Satans- the symbols of Devilkind- gone, the last of Sirzechs' Hell-based patriotism (which had been greatly diminished as the Great War went on for longer and longer) was all but sapped from him, leaving the young wonder with only two things left that he had any loyalty to: his best (and only) friend Ajuka, and his family. Zeoticus and Venelana, his parents... Alcina, his grandmother... and Raylix, his wonderful little brother.

And it was that loyalty that had kept Sirzechs here, in Hell, fighting and killing (definitely more of the latter. Strongest Devil alive and all) his fellow Devils. It definitely wasn't a task that Sirzechs relished all too much... or really felt anything about, anymore. He'd long-since been numb to the act of killing others, internally justifying it as self-defence, both for himself and his family. After all, if the Royals took power, they would lead the rest of the Devils to extinction against the Angels and Fallen Angels, and if that wasn't bad enough, they'd straight-up tried to KILL everyone who had agreed to stand against them. THAT was unforgiveable, and absolutely warranted retribution in Sirzechs' eyes.

So here he was, probably having contributed the most out of any Devil still alive to the Anti-Royals' adgenda throughout the Civil War. But with who he was going to be killing now, and what that would mean, his status as the hero of the Devil Civil War would be without question. And he... had no idea how to feel about that. But, whatever. No changing what other Devils thought, and no way to back out of the current battle.

Sirzechs was finally driven out of his thoughts by a colossal flare-up in demonic power a few dozen meters away from him, followed by a scream and the sound of something being launched in his direction. Turning towards the source of what had come on instinct and after taking the half-second needed to process the numerous spears of demonic energy flying his way, the crimson-haired Anti-Royals ace flung up a barrier to block all the attacks fired his way, glaring through the barrier at the one who had fired at him... who just so happened to be the very Devil that he was meant to be killing.

"Come to die, along with the rest of the Underworld, have you?" Bidleid asked, one of his eyes twitching as he floated on his own twelve Devil wings, about on a level with Sirzechs. "I'm glad that you were able to make it here, along with the rest of your traitor friends... so you can all die, DIE, DIE! IF I'M GOING DOWN, I'M GOING TO TAKE EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU BASTARDS WITH ME!"

Sirzechs could only let out a sigh.

"I've got nothing to say to you, Bidleid." he remarked, his normally-blue eyes now turning a deep crimson. "You're clearly not going to surrender, so I won't waste my time."

Almost immediately, the whole area began to shake. Every Devil, both inside and outside of Lucifaad, felt the beginning of the shakes. Ajuka, who had been hanging on his own twelve Devil wings around the edge of Lucifaad's borders, looked up as he felt the shakes, which grew steadily more and more intense by the second. He didn't have to guess where they were coming from, as only one Devil alive that he knew could cause such an effect by releasing their demonic power.

Bidleid felt the shaking too. Crazed as he was, his eyes still widened in shock at the shaking going on all around him. It didn't take him long to figure out who was causing all the shaking to happen. Prideful to the very end as he was, that didn't stop a twinge of fear from beginning to set in.

As he looked back at Sirzechs, Bidleid noticed a dense crimson aura beginning to appear and surround his crimson-haired opponent, who simply looked back at him with a blank, neutral expression on his face. As outwardly calm as he looked, the twinge of fear that had entered Bidleid before, which he was trying his damndest to force out... just wouldn't go away. The aforementioned crimson aura, which was growing steadily denser and denser around Sirzechs, definitely wasn't helping matters.

"S-stop it!" Bidleid shouted, sweat beginning to form on his face. He couldn't look away from Sirzechs, nor the crimson aura that continued to surround him and get denser still by the second, to the point that it was about to envelop him entirely. "N-no Devil should be able to do that!" He received no response from Sirzechs, who had been completely enveloped by the crimson aura by this point. Almost hyperventilating at the sight in front of him, Bidleid extended his hand towards Sirzechs and formed all manner of horrific-looking insect-like abominations out of his considerable demonic power, sending them all at Sirzechs. However, once they were halfway between Bidleid and Sirzechs, they were simply... destroyed, vanishing from existence as if they'd never been there at all.

Letting out a scream of mixed anger and fear, Bidleid fired more powerful bolts of demonic energy out of his hands towards Sirzechs, with just one of them most likely being enough to kill an eight-winged Devil in one strike. But again, just like with the insects Bidleid had formed and flung at him, these powerful bolts of demonic energy didn't even get the chance to damage Sirzechs, as they too were destroyed by the dense aura that had enveloped him.

"MONSTER!" Bidleid screamed, beginning to back up and fling more and more attacks at Sirzechs, to about as much effect as all of the other attacks flung in his direction had had. "Y-YOU'RE A MON... A MON..." Evidently, Bidleid's fear had ascended to such a degree that he'd lost the capacity to form words. He was full-on hyperventilating at this point.

The shaking then stopped, and the crimson aura around Sirzechs faded away, leaving... a being comprised of only the Power of Destruction, which was shaped into the form of a human: Sirzechs' 'true' form.

One look at it was enough for Bidleid to let out a scream of pure terror at the THING in front of him, and begin firing everything that he could at it. However, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on one's perspective), nothing that he fired got even halfway towards Sirzechs, as it dissipated in mid-air. The destructive power surrounding Sirzechs' true form was such that nothing Bidleid could do would be able to touch him, let alone hurt him.

Sirzechs silently raised his hand towards Bidleid, and five small balls of the Power of Destruction flew out towards him. Before Bidleid could even react, the five balls had collided with him, blowing him apart. The first hit him in the stomach, with the powerful yet compressed explosion that resulted from it being enough to separate his upper from his lower body. The second and third struck his shoulders, blowing his arms clean off of the upper half of his body, leaving only his head and torso attached. The fourth and fifth hit his legs, rendering them non-existent in an instant.

Bidleid could only widen his eyes in shock and amazement at the strongest Devil alive, before said strongest Devil alive sent one final shot of his signature power at his head and torso, obliterating all of it in a single strike and ending the life of the final leader of the Royals Faction.

As Sirzechs slowly exited his 'true' form, cheers rose up among the Anti-Royals forces who'd immediately witnessed him killing Bidleid. Anti-Royals further out, who heard the original cheers, offered their own, with Anti-Royals even further out then beginning to cheer themselves soon after. From that point, the domino effect continued until just about every Anti-Royals Devil was cheering uproariously at the fact that Bidleid, the son of Beelzebub and the final Royals Faction leader, was now dead, and the Devil Civil War was at an end.

However, their cheers were quickly interrupted by the sight of magic-circles appearing on every Royals Devil in the city, whether they were alive or dead. Said magic-circles, bearing Beelzebub's insignia (a capital "B" almost like an insect's wing that has an insect-like tail on top and a claw at the bottom), glowed momentarily, before every Devil that bore said Beelzebub magic-circles on their bodies... violently exploded.

"Shit!" Raylix, from his position outside the city, shouted, as a portion of Lucifaad's city walls came flying in his, Sabemka and Tomosei's direction as a result of the explosions. He threw up a barrier just in time for the chunks of stone and rock to bounce harmlessly off of it, rather than letting them fly straight into himself and his two best friends. From where he was floating in the air, he could see most of the buildings within Lucifaad being heavily damaged, or outright destroyed: either within the explosive blasts or by falling down as a result of the explosions taking out much of what the buildings needed to stand.

It wasn't a pretty sight, seeing the Devils' new capital practically blown up in an instant, with the joyful mood of seconds earlier being somewhat dampened as a result.

"Did Bidleid really implant all the Royals' Devils with explosive magic-circles?" Ajuka asked no-one in particular, as Sirzechs descended from where he had killed Bidleid at, looking around at the newfound destruction. "As a final... whatever this was?"

"Asshole." Serafall muttered.

---

1536

It had been six years since the Battle of Lucifaad, and the end of the Devil Civil War. The Royals Faction were essentially dead, though small pockets of sympathisers that had disobeyed Bidleid's call to attack Lucifaad during that climactic battle just over half a decade ago had survived, though they'd been chased to the furthest corners of Hell. There was no chance that the Royals could ever pose a serious chance of taking over ever again, with their numbers now so low and their powerful leaders all dead.

With the Devils now in their first period of peace (or, to be more accurate, first period without war) in over half a century, a more permanent Devil government was able to take power over the remaining Devils, led by the newly-chosen Four Great Satans, extraordinary Devils who took up the titles of their predecessors.

Falbium, a descendant of Glasya-Labolas, had been chosen for the title of Asmodeus, and was placed in charge of the Devil's military affairs. His tactical genius when it came to large-scale battles was second-to-none, and his might on the battlefield- when he could be bothered to get up off of his lazy ass and actually do some fighting- certainly didn't hurt either, so he was a natural pick for commander-in-chief of the Devil military.

Serafall, a descendant of Sitri, had been chosen for the title of Leviathan, and was placed in charge of the Devil's foreign affairs. Her affable nature and absolute desire to further the Devil race made her the best choice, above all others, for a position that would involve a lot of talks with the leaders of other faction-leaders. Her strength on the battlefield and the prestige that came with being the one who'd killed Damaidosu Asmodeus certainly helped her case, too.

Ajuka, a descendant of Astaroth, had been chosen for the title of Beelzebub, and was placed in charge of the Devil's technological development. His aptitude for innovation, super-genius mind and status gained as a result of being the one who brought down Tsufaame Leviathan made him a perfect fit for the title of Satan. And even if he didn't have all of that going for him, being one of the two remaining living Super-Class Devils elevated him to the point that there really was no other position worthy of him OTHER than that of a Satan.

Sirzechs, a descendant of Gremory, Raylix's older brother, and the only other remaining living Super-Class Devil, had been chosen for the title of Lucifer, and placed in charge of the Devil's domestic affairs. As far as the Devils were concerned, Sirzechs had everything: the power to get shit done when it was required of him, the charisma required to both endear an entire race to him as their foremost leader and potentially bring others to said race's side, the reputation as the ultimate hero who had ended the Devil Civil War, there was only one real choice for who would carry on the mantle of the closest thing that the Devils had had to a God.

Soon after Sirzechs, Ajuka, Serafall and Falbium were crowned as the new Satans, Ajuka's brilliant mind birthed a new invention, arguably the most important invention in the history of the Underworld: the Evil Pieces. The product of Ajuka working to find a feasible way to repopulate the Devils' depleted numbers in the aftermath of both the Great War and the Devil Civil War (mostly the former), they were devices designed to reincarnate other beings into Devils.

Knowledge publicly available to the remaining Devil populous told them that the Evil Pieces took the form of chess pieces, with different pieces boosting certain aspects of the beings that they were inserted into: Rooks (of which a Devil would get two of in their Evil Piece set, just like in the game that the Pieces were based off of) offered a substantial boost to only a Devil's physical strength and defence, making anyone chosen for the Rook position a valuable tank, who would be able to take lots of physical punishment and give it back just as hard. Bishops (of which a Devil would get two of, like with Rooks) offered a substantial boost to only a reincarnated Devil's capacity for magic, making anyone who was made into a Bishop a strong magical caster, who could offer attack, defence or support in any situation. The Knight (of which a Devil would, again, get two of) offered a substantial boost to only a reincarnated Devil's speed, making anyone who was made into a Knight a valued speedster, who could perform high-speed attacks and manoeuvres.

The Queen (of which a Devil would get only one of) gave a combination of the boosts offered by a Rook, Bishop and Knight, making them great overall all-around fighters. Pawns (of which a Devil would get eight of) were similar, but offered minimal boosts to all aspects of a reincarnated Devil's physiology in comparison to the other types of pieces. However, like in the game that the Pieces were based off of, Pawns could 'Promote' to either a Knight, a Bishop, a Rook or a Queen, and receive the appropriate boosts in physical strength/defence, magical power or speed that such a Promotion entailed, so long as they were in a place designated as 'enemy territory', or with the permission of the Devil who owned the Piece that had been used to perform the reincarnation in the first place, better known as their King.

After their introduction, the Evil Pieces were steadily rolled out to certain Devils, starting with the Four New Satans (with Grayfia Lucifuge, Sirzechs' Queen, holding the honour of the first being to have an Evil Piece slid into them) and then moving onto the remaining Pillar-descendants.

"You think he'll be back soon?" Sabemka asked, from a chair. Tomosei, who was lying on the sofa with a book in her hands, looked over at her childhood friend, and shrugged.

"Probably." She replied. "How long should it really take to get your hands on a set of chess-pieces, right? Another thing, why are those Evil Piece things even chess pieces, in the first place?"

Sabemka shrugged.

"Ajuka probably just likes the game of chess." He replied. "Wouldn't seem too out of character with what Raylix told us about him."

"Hm, fair." Tomosei replied, going back to her book. "You think he'll-"

A transportation-circle appeared in the doorway of Sabemka's house, with Raylix popping out of it a second late. Scratching at a random itch that formed on his head, he entered the living room, yawning and raising a hand to his two friends to acknowledge their respective greetings.

"Sorry I was gone so long." He remarked. "They had this whole thing set up where I had to go to New Lucifaad, stand up in front of all the Pillar-descendants while Father gave a speech, then touch a statue to register myself as a King."

"Did you at least get the Pieces, after all of that?" Tomosei asked, sitting up and setting her book aside.

"I sure did." Raylix replied, reaching into one of the pockets of his pants and pulling out a small box. It was about the length of his forearm, and had Gremory's crest engraved on the top of it. He opened the box and showed its contents to his two friends: fifteen chess pieces (a Queen, two Rooks, two Bishops, two Knights, eight Pawns) that were all coloured a bright red.

"Nice..." Sabemka offered his opinion once he'd given the pieces a once-over with his eyes, before heading back to the chair that he'd been occupying before Raylix arrived, and sat back down upon it.

"They weren't originally red." Raylix continued, shutting the box and returning it to his pocket. "They were originally transparent, but only became red after they got synced with my power."

"Right." Tomosei replied, yawning and stretching. "Are you... actually, no."

"What?" Raylix sat down in one of the other chairs, and looked over at Tomosei, who was sharing a look with Sabemka. "What's up?"

"Before you arrived, I think we were both wondering, Raylix..." Sabemka began. Tomosei nodded, knowing where he was about to go with what he was saying. "If, after you got your Pieces, you were thinking of giving me and Tomo some of them."

Raylix blinked a couple of times, looking from Sabemka to Tomosei and back again. There was silence between the three friends for a moment as Raylix looked like he was considering it, a neutral expression on his face. After the moment passed, Raylix opened his mouth, his answer on his lips.

"...No." he replied. "I wasn't considering it, actually. And I don't plan on it, either."

"Oh!" Tomosei blinked herself, looking over at Raylix. "Huh."

"Yeah, because... why would I?" Raylix asked, looking between Sabemka and Tomosei again. "I mean, you're both Devils, for starters, so I wouldn't be contributing to the whole 'replenish the Devil population' thing, that was the whole reason that the Pieces were inventd in the first place, by giving you Pieces, would I?"

"That's fair." Sabemka replied. "Got any other reasons?"

"Yea, actually." Raylix nodded. "I don't need to bind you to me as my servants via these Pieces to know that we're still friends. I mean, you've stuck around me for the past nearly three-and-a-half decades, even when you... almost died because of me."

Sabemka and Tomosei both remained silent, sharing another look with each other as Raylix took a breath.

"I mean, even without that, I think we're past the need of you guys being made to stick around me thanks to these," Raylix continued, partially pulling out his box of Evil Pieces to make a point, before dropping them back into his pocket. "You've done it of your own volition for long enough, I don't see that changing unless I MAJORLY fu-"

"Alright, alright." Sabemka stood up, walked over to Raylix, and pulled him into a tight, one-armed hug. "You've made your point, Raylix."

"Glad I could." Raylix replied, his voice slightly muffled. A pair of rather smaller arms, Tomosei's, wrapped around Rayilx and Sabemka for a moment, as the third of the three-way friendship group joined the hug. For however brief it lasted, Raylix smiled from within Sabemka's chest before the hug broke apart.

"Anyway, want something to eat?" Sabemka asked. "All that waiting must've made at least someone among the three of us hungry."

"Yea, I could go for something right now." Raylix replied. "Or, in however long it takes for you to make something."

"Heh, noted." Sabemka replied. "Tomo?"

"Do you even need an answer from me?" Tomosei asked, a smile coming to her own face.

"Duly noted." Sabemka replied, stepping past Raylix and Tomosei, before making his way to the kitchen. However, before he could make his way there, he stopped and turned towards the window, something having evidently caught his eye.

"What's up?" Tomosei asked.

"Is it just me..." Sabemka spoke, "Or is the sky lighter than it usually is?"

"Huh?" Raylix replied, as he and Tomosei both moved over to the window that Sabemka was standing at, and looked outside. The large brawler was right: the Underworld sky was usually a very dark purple, to the point that you'd be forgiven for thinking that it was black. However, the purple was definitely a few shades lighter than it usually was.

"That's... weird." Tomosei remarked. "What's going on?"

"Hell if I know." Raylix replied. He opened his mouth, but was interrupted by a comms-circle appearing by his ear. "Just a minute." Touching the circle by his ear, he answered the call. "Hello?"

"Raylix, are you outside right now?" Zeoticus' voice came through the comms-circle, by way of greeting.

"Uhh... no, I'm at Sabemka's right now." Raylix replied. "But I can see outside. The sky's a bit lighter than usual, what's going on?"

"Oh, so you can see it." Zeoticus replied. "That's something that Ajuka's decided to implement in the Underworld from now on... for the benefit of any Humans who have to move to the Underworld thanks to being reincarnated into Devils."

"Why would having the sky be lighter than it usually is benefit them?" Raylix asked.

"Not quite." Zeoticus replied. "I know you haven't been there in a while, but in the Human world, they have something called the Sun, that rises and sets in a 24-hour cycle every day. When the sun is up in the sky, the sky is bright, and they call it daytime. When the sun is down, the sky is dark- like here in Hell- and they call it nighttime."

"...Alright." Raylix replied. "And something like that's being implemented across the Underworld."

"Precisely." Zeoticus replied. "Frankly, I'm not sure whether or not this'll turn out to be a good idea, but, well... it is what it is."

"Right." Raylix nodded. "Thanks for telling me, I was worried that something was wrong."

A chuckle could be heard from Zeoticus' end of the call.

"No, nothing's wrong, don't worry about it." He replied. "Though telling you about the new state of Hell's sky isn't the only reason I'm calling."

"Oh?" Raylix asked. "What's up? Do I need to come back?"

"Yes, you do." Zeoticus replied, his voice now several tones more businesslike than seconds before. "I've been told that a group of surviving Royals Faction members have been sighted, on the border between our territory and what used to be Amy's territory. I'm... busy right now, and Sirzechs is obviously-"

"Yeah, I think I get the picture." Raylix replied. "I'm on my way."

The comms-circle around Raylix's ear disappeared, and Raylix looked over at Sabemka and Tomosei, both of whom looked like they'd heard everything that Raylix and Zeoticus had talked about on their call.

"Adjusting the sky of the entire Underworld for Humans-turned-Devils?" Tomosei remarked. "Considerate."

"Yeah, and it makes sense." Sabemka added. "There's obviously gonna be a lot of Humans-turned-Devils in the future. If enough Devils get Evil Pieces and reincarnate enough Humans, they might end up outnumbering those who're... you know, born as Devils."

"Not that that'd exactly be a hard feat to accomplish." Raylix remarked. "Given how many Humans there apparently are compared to us Devils."

"Yeah..." Sabemka replied, pausing for a second before shrugging. "Oh, well. Shall we get to kicking some Royals asses?"

Raylix smirked, strode over to the front door of Sabemka's house and pulled it open, before heading outside. Sabemka and Tomosei looked at each other, not even needing to exchange words before following Raylix out. By the time they'd gotten out, Raylix had already raised his hand to cast a transportation-circle for the three of them, but had taken a second to look up at the sky. In the few minutes between when Sabemka had noticed the brighter nature of the sky, and when they'd headed outside, the sky had gotten brighter still. Truth be told... Raylix kinda liked this brighter sky.

He could also notice a ball of light high up in the sky. It was the brightest area of the sky, and looked to be where the brightness of the Underworld's new sky seemed to originate from.

"Let's go!" Raylix shouted, spreading his wings and flying through the transportation-circle, disappearing from that area of the Underworld entirely. Sabemka and Tomosei, spreading their own wings, followed suit, with the transportation-circle closing behind them.

---

*looks at the record for 'longest chapter I've ever written' that I set two chapters ago...* Well, that didn't take long to break, now did it?

Anyway, that's the fifth chapter of Of Alliances and Assimilation completed, and the end of the Devil Civil War along with it! As well as the end of the opening 'volume' (yeah, I'm back to structuring these chapters like volumes, for the sake of making it similar to canon-DxD's light novel volumes, and just because I want to...). The Royals Faction have been defeated, Raylix's badass big brother is in charge of the Devils now, and Raylix himself... finally gets to chill out and be with his friends. Which is... I guess what we all want, given the shit that's been going down over the past nearly-two years.

Anyway, some of the more eagle-eyed among you will notice that I'm referring to the city of Lucifaad as the capital of the Devil's territory of the Underworld, while in canon there's a city called Lilith that's the (current) capital. Hopefully this is self-explanatory, but just in case anyone needs it spelled out, I'm not gonna have the new capital of DEVILS' territory share a name with someone who isn't even a Devil. That shit would just be dumb.

Also, hope you like the technique that Raylix has managed to make with Amalgamation. Just the idea of gaining power like that... I don't think I need to tell any of you readers the potential. As well as the first F-bomb that's been dropped. That's probably... actually, no probably about it, that's DEFINITELY the fucking longest I've gone without fucking dropping a fucking F-bomb in one of my fucking fanfics. Fuck, I really decided to go the Bojack Horseman (or at least something similar to it) route, didn't I?

Hope you readers enjoyed this chapter, and you have it in you to leave reviews to tell me your thoughts, or if you want to chat with me (about the fic, DxD in general or something else entirely), drop me a PM or look me up on Discord (name for it is on my profile). Either method works for me!

Seeya!