Hey all, it's me, the dude you already know from all the previous chapters! Usually this would be the part where I respond to reviews, but this time reviews were either criticisms (both positive and negative), assertions, or questions that either have already answered themselves, or ones that answering would spoil the plot further.
With that being said, we'll be hopping directly into the story!
~oOo~
"HAH!"
Issei dashed forward, planting his left foot in front of him hard, pushing up from his knees, twisting his waist and rolling his shoulder as he threw out a punch with his right hand. Xinthia barely managed to parry Issei's punch, causing it to graze her cheek and leave behind a small gash from the power within it.
She readied her feet to respond with a vertical kick, only for Issei's arm to wrap around the back of her neck, his right hand locking together with his gauntleted one and pulling Xinthia's upper body downwards while his own upper body rose in a short hop, his right knee extended to slam into her face.
Xinthia crossed her arms in front of her face, blocking Issei's knee before pushing it down hard, unbalacing the airborne brunette. She followed up on it by gripping one of his ankles, spinning him around before slamming him onto the ground, cratering it and causing Issei to cough out small flecks of blood.
The brunette responded by releasing a surge of electricity, forcing Xinthia to release him and hop back a few paces, before jumping back to his feet.
Issei instantly dashed towards his trainer, intending to shift the momentum of the fight to his advantage, aiming a hook towards her face, which Xinthia dodged. Gritting his teeth, Issei shifted the follow-through of his move into an elbow strike, hitting Xinthia on the temple and dazing her.
Taking advantage of this, Issei slid underneath her, taking hold of both her legs before lifting her off the ground, then slamming her onto it, creating a small crater underneath them, before mounting himself above her, his legs spreading hers to make her incapable of gaining purchase to swing him off of her.
Taking advantage of his position, Issei rained various punches onto Xinthia, most of them being blocked, others dodged. He was surprised, however, when she managed to lock one of his arms to the side of her head, forcing him to lean forward to keep it from breaking. Before he could raise his left hand to strike at her vulnerable face, Issei felt a pair of legs wrapping around his neck in a position that denoted an absurd level of flexibility, before they pulled back, trying to force him away from Xinthia.
Feeling the legs tugging him in the opposite direction of his arm, Issei reacted by leaning his body to the same side as his arm was trapped on, forcing Xinthia's body to turn to it's side, but before he could break free from the precarious position he was in, he was surprised by Xinthia using her free arm to give herself enough momentum to get them both into a roll, which resulted in her landing with her back to the ground, with Issei above her and on his back as well, her arms wrapped around his throat in a chokehold, which was supported by her legs being wrapped around his waist.
Issei struggled, trying his best to break free from Xinthia's tight grip, throwing various elbow blows to her side, yet the succubus did not ease up on her grip, tightening it instead. Feeling himself on the edge of losing his consciousness, Issei was forced to tap out, gasping for air as soon as his airways were unobstructed, while Xinthia rubbed at her bruised ribs, somewhat regretting making Issei aware of the viability of his elbows.
"You've improved again, maggot. That being said, you still did something pretty stupid. Can you tell me what that was?"
"...I engaged you in grappling, when my grappling is much weaker than my ability to fight on my feet."
"Good. You know how you fucked up. Now, how do you change that?"
"Do my best to keep the fight on my terms, set the pace of the battle to something that the opponent is hard-pressed to match, and either improve my grappling to the same level as my regular fighting, or find some way to bridge the gap between the two ways of fighting."
"...If all of my recruits were capable of thinking like this even after getting their asses kicked, instead of spending their time moaning about 'excessive use of force' and trying to make excuses for their own weaknesses, I would be a happy woman. That being said, be aware that you still suck. Less than before, but still.
Now get your ass out of my training field, I don't want to see you here until tomorrow."
"Hai, hai~"
Saying that, Issei left for the castle, rubbing at his slightly sore throat and rolling his stressed right shoulder.
'Jesus Christ, that woman does not know the meaning of mercy!'
Once again, Issei made the path back to his bedroom, showered and had a change of clothes, before heading to the dining room.
He entered the dining room expecting to find a table groaning with food as was the norm, but instead he found Laveria sitting there in full Queen mode, a green-eyed blonde-haired succubus, her age somewhere in the range of 'Absolute MILF', sitting across from her, with a variety of books and other sheafs of paper covering the table.
Blinking owlishly, the brunette spoke up.
"Is this a bad time? Because if it is, I'll just come back later..."
Turning her focus to Issei, Laveria spoke up.
"No, Issei, I was just about to send for you, so it is very fortunate that you came when you did."
Her hand opened, indicating the green-haired succubus as she spoke.
"This is Jade. She is the head of my information department, both for the fact that she developed an extremely aptitude for investigation and information management during her training in the Luxurian Military, and because she is currently the only Succubus alive with the gift of Psychokinesis, the ability to 'read' an object in the same manner someone gifted with telepathy can read a person."
Jade nodded towards Issei in greeting, with her unusually sharp gaze causing the brunette to feel as if he were being weighed down to his soul, before Laveria resumed.
"Jade is the person in charge of investigating Lilith's kidnapping and her current whereabouts."
She looked at Jade, before speaking.
"Tell him what you told me, Jade."
The woman nodded, a minimallistic action with no wasted motions or energy, before speaking up. Her tone was concise and explanatory, the tone one would expect from a high-ranking soldier such as herself.
"My team was sent to Bauxis to investigate everything related to the then-prince Travis Laucia, and to ensure that there was no possibility of his actions being a conspiracy from the Bauxian crown in order to ensure some sort of superior bargaining position over Luxuria.
We investigated the entirety of the Bauxian castle, with a special focus on the areas that the perpetrator frequented the most, these being the Royal Library, his quarters and a specific clearing within the castle's grounds.
The clearing showed signs of high-powered magic usage on an intermittent basis, and some some magical residue relating to coordenates or a location were detected, which makes it likely that that area was used for transportation spells, but leaves communication ones as a possibility as well. The magic residue had degraded for the most part, leaving behind only fragments of the initial information, fragments that were sent to analysis to work on.
The library was investigated with the aid of both the Custodian and the Royal Historian, and they reported the fact that a more than a few books were missing, books related to the history of Incubi, the history of Succubi, the combined origins of both species, and some lust-related spells and rituals.
We went to investigate his quarters, but most of it had been trashed by one of their maids under the effects of mind-control magic. She managed to destroy most of what was there, but a few journals were still half-usable, as were schematics and a few coded messages that our cryptography department worked on.
The messages, while able to tell us that there was a third party helping the perpetrator with his plans via money and literary materials, tells us nothing about their identity. However, through the use of my gift and the concentrated efforts of our investigation department, we managed to ascertain the location that the transport magic was used to and from.
It's located in Hungary, in a forest that is far away from any inhabited areas. Based on the schematics, we believe it to be an old castle belonging to a cult dedicated to the worship of Hadak Ura, the war god of native Hungarian folklore, which is believed to have been exterminated by Vatican-sent exorcists when Christianity first made itself present in Hungary, though the Vatican denies these claims to this day.
This castle seems to have been modernized somewhat, with the adittion of electricity and satellite comunication access, based on what my gift got from the schematics. The security will likely be a mix of high-tech measures such as security cameras and motion sensors, and magical barriers and wards. The castle is at least 10 to 13 stories tall, and has an underground area, though I was unable to divine it's usage, no matter how much I tried to."
Issei's lighthearted mood changed instantly into a deadly serious one as he looked at Laveria.
"When am I leaving?"
~oOo~
Pulling a pair of binoculars on, Issei watched his goal, his left hand holding a piece of paper with a magical formula inscribed onto it, while remembering Laveria's explanations.
~A few hours earlier~
"Transporting you into the compound would be all but impossible as it is more than likely that wards have been erected to avoid something of the sort. The fact that a natural leyline runs underneath that area means that an absurd amount of magic would be required to even put a dent on their wards, which means that us attempting to bruteforce you in would result in an exploding magical circle, and with you in hundreds of thousands of pieces.
The preliminary plan is for you to land a few klicks away from the mission area itself and plant a few high-powered explosive formulas."
Laveria twirled her wrist, causing something akin to a 3d projection of the area to appear above the table, with the compound itself being for the most part a black blot due to the lack of information. She stretched her hand, pointing at a few spots of the area, before speaking up.
"You're to set up as many tags as possible on these red points, all of them around the south-southeast area from the castle, before circling over to the opposite side. Once there, you are to detonate all of them as both a distraction from your presence, a way to draw some of their people, making your insertion less difficult, and to weaken their security system, as the residual magic is to be released in the form of electromagnetic inferference, ensuring that their electronics will have at least a window of inactivity.
~Now~
Nodding to himself, the brunette sent a small pulse of magic into the 'detonator', his eyes widening in surprise at the massively loud BOOM that he heard from the opposite side of where he was, alongside with the fact that tremors followed even as far as he was.
Looking up, Issei noticed the fact that all of the lights in the castle suddenly turned off, and the massive cloud of smoke in the distance. From the elevated position that he had taken, he could also see many 'men', most of them possessing at least one or two visibly inhuman traits, running towards the source of the noise, armed with weapons ranging from knuckle dusters, swords and spears, all the way to pistols and assault rifles.
He could also notice the fact that they had to open an electronic gate by hand despite the fact that a few of the lamps had turned back on, meaning that they probably were working on some sort of emergency generators, which still meant that everything that was turned on when the explosion first occured was dead, including security cameras.
Storing his binoculars into his backpack, Issei slid down the massive tree that he had perched upon before dashing through the thick and heavy folliage, making his way closer and closer to the target site while staying outside of view of the few sentries he noticed positioned in improvised wooden towers, holding bows and scoped rifles.
Slowing down, Issei crouched, trying his best not to upset the large leaves of the pants around him to give even less of a warning despite the fact that his infiltration was being performed during the night time, before crawling ever slowly towards the compound.
A good 45 minutes later he was forced to halt mid-step as he felt a tag in his back pocket vibrating, reminding him of the next part of the infiltration plan.
~Earlier~
"The initial explosion will more than likely knock out any eletronic-based security, but you still need to deal with wards, both those centered solely on detection and alarm, and those that simply fry anything unidentified as soon as they cross within range."
Grabbing a stack of hand-sized papers with a massive amount of overly complicated geometric patterns inscribed on it, Laveria spoke.
"That is why you will use these. These are called 'Taps', and they function by siphoning the magical power present in an object or area and re-purposing into the task that they are programmed to perform. Most of the time these are used to remove harmful magics from objects that you wish to make usable, or to eliminate wards from a zone that one intends to vacate, but you will be using them to make a hole in the enemy's wards for you to slip through.
However, wardlines are generally made to be as difficult to detect as possible to avoid breaches. Entire sections of the formulae behind them are made with the intent to disguise the 'goal' of the magic being used, so that way of detection is out.
However, a workaround has been designed. Instead of focusing on function, this formula detects on area as a parameter, allowing you to know when you approach any sort of magic based on a specific amount of space by vibrating."
~Now~
Taking a step back, Issei reached into one of the outter pockets of his backpack, pulling a handful of pieces of paper. He set seven of them in a straight line before pushing a thread of magic into them, watching as images akin to circuit lines strated crawling from the papers, along the ground before crawling up wat seemed to be empty air. A few seconds afterwards, the circuit lines made a small arch that Issei could easily move through, before the air around said arch gained a bluish tint, revealing that the ward was sloped in what seemed to be a dome.
Shouldering his pack, Issei walked through the Arch without touching any of the papers he had set out, and once inside the wardline he watched the papers starting to burn themselves out from the excessive amount of magic flowing through them, causing the blue to rush back into that space, closing the ward.
Noticing the fact that he wasn't immediately called out, fried or sniped, Issei found it fair to assume that he bypassed the wards successfully, and crawled closer and closer to the castle, always mantaining the cover of the plantlife around him.
Looking up, Issei noticed the fact that there were two sentries periodically giving the area he was in sweeping looks, while the others had their own assigned zones.
'How do I get past the two of them without being seen?... Hmm, how about...'
He picked up a small rock, one that looked more like compacted dirt than anything else, weighing it by hand.
'Hard to see when moving fast, should disintegrate on impact... Perfect.'
Taking careful aim, Issei threw the 'rock' as hard as he could at the back wall of the sentry outpost at an equal distance for the two sentries, causing them to automatically look back at the source of the sound, only to notice nothing odd as the projectile shattered as soon as it hit wood, it's dark color causing it to blend into the ground.
They went back to their watch, giving their surveys renewed focus, but by that time Issei had already made it to the outer walls of the compound, outside view of the sentries.
Issei raised his right hand and spread his fingers in a claw-like manner before blades of lightning in the shape and size of the claws of a leopard or similar tree-climbing big cats emerged from the tips of his fingers, while his left hand had a natural sharpness to each of it's fingers.
He jumped, attaching himself to the castle's stone walls with his claws, both improvised and gauntlet-based, before allowing a similar set of curved claws to materialize on the outside of his booths, sinking into the stone as well and allowing him to climb up the stone in the same manner a leopard would climb a tree up until he found a window.
Peering in, he noticed the fact that the specific corridor was empty and dark, using one of his lightning claws to cut a hole into the glass and then sticking it to his hand with Tantric Energy before pushing it inwards, making sure that the glass circle did not shatter noisily and allow him to get detected.
Issei climbed through the hole he made in the glass, landing silently inside the re-purposed castle before leaning the glass circle onto the wall. With that out of the way, Issei searched for any electrical lines or cables in order to direct him to the generator or generators that had survived his distraction with the intent of killing those too and making things easier for himself.
He noticed a white cable running along the upper portion of a wall and followed it, slowly and silently moving along the somewhat lit castle, only to end up at a lamp.
Silently cursing, the brunette was about to backtrack in order to follow the cable in the opposite direction, only for the sound of various pairs of boots on the ground reaching his ears. Deciding that the conflict wasn't worth being detected over, Issei kept silently running down the corridor he was on until he reached a T-shaped intersection. Choosing to go right, Issei stuck to the walls and shied away from the sporadically-placed lamps and windows, until he reached a staircase.
With the assumption that gas-based electricity generators wouldn't be kept indoors and on the upper floors of the villain's headquarters, due to the fact that they're noisy, generate high amounts of heat and dangerous fumes, Issei chose to hop over the banister and fall to the flow below, before going back to creeping along the place.
He was forced to stop and hug the wall as he heard voices around the corner.
"Hey Jim."
"Dave! It's been a long time, man!"
"Yeah, 6 months is a long time to go without having a drink with the guys."
"It is, isn't it? Things haven't been the same without Mr. 'Lightsaber Pool cue' around. We should go out some time soon, man! Ricardo, Marcus, Hans and Lee have already confirmed that they'll be going to the bar on the 20th, celebrating Frank's birthday. You should show up, give the boys a pleasant surprise!"
The Dave person sighed heavily, before responding.
"Can't, man. The wife's been sick for a while, and the medical costs are racking up. That, and the bills to take care of the boys and to pay for their schools, and their bitch aunt that lives off of government checks but can't take care of her nephews for a couple of hours every other week, meaning that I have to deal with babysitters and the sort... The bills just keep getting worse.
It's why I came into this line of work in the first place. No one goes to college dreaming of being an armed goon for some monster, but you have to find a way to make money, even if it costs you your sould and your sanity."
"I get you, man. Goons are the most likely to lose their lives in case of conflict, and then there's the fucked up shit that we have to see and say nothing about. I mean, have you seen that shitshow in the dungeons?"
"Don't remind me, man, just thinking of it makes me retch a little in my mouth!"
"I know, man. I just... Seeing those things, doing nothing against them, actually working for the people that make it happen... It's getting harder and harder to look myself in the mirror. I mean, I have a daughter... How do I look her in the eye after work? Whenever I see her, I don't know whether to hug her tight to protect her from the type of scum that I have to work for, or to get as far away from her as possible to make sure that the gunk in my soul doesn't touch her."
"Real fucked up, man, I feel you. But we gotta pay the bills somehow, right?"
"Yeah..."
The two went silent after that, before the sound of boots on stone signaled the fact that one of them moved away.
Leaning past the corner, Issei saw that one of them was standing in the middle of the corridor, his back turned towards Issei and a cigarette in hand, while the other one turned a corner and left hearing range completely.
Issei slowly stepped away from where he stood, slowly creeping closer and closer to the smoking guard. He surprised the man by covering his mouth with his gauntleted hand, ensuring that he couldn't utter a sound, before tearing away the belt that had his holstered pistol and his sheathed knife attached to it.
The guard blindly reached backwards in order to shove the lit cigarette tip onto his attacker, yet Issei didn't as much as grunt at the circular burn below his right eye, before slamming the guard head-first into the wall hard enough to knock him unconscious.
He reared his gauntleted hand back with the intent to finish a possible threat, only for the conversation that he heard to make him hesitate.
Issei ultimately ended up dragging the unconscious rock-skinned man into a cupboard, tying his limbs up in positions that didn't allow him to easily break free, before splashing a bucket of water onto his face, waking him up.
Issei watched the grogginess fade from the man's face, but he spoke up before the man could do anything, his claws a hair's breadth away from his throat.
"Tell me where the backup generator is and you may get out of here alive. Do something stupid, and your throat gets slashed open. Your choice. And do not lie to me, because I'll know if you do, and You won't like the consequences."
The dark tone, sharp claws and killer intent that he leveraged towards the man meant that he didn't even have a chance to resist, his tone nervous and halting as he spoke.
"T-t-the south quadrant! There're two primary generators and a secondary one, all of them industrial, at the southern quadrant of the compound, behind a blue tent!"
"Are you sure?"
"I am! I swear! My buddy Mark did most of the electrical work in this place, he told me himself about how difficult it was to modernize a place like this!"
"I will take your word for now, but if I discover that you lied to me..."
Issei punctuated by running an imperceptible amount of electricity along the edge of his Boosted Gear's claws before sliding them along the stone ground in full view of the man he had questioned, noticing how the man's eyes widened in fear at the fact that his claws split stone like a hot knife through butter. Ignoring the stain that appeared on the man's pants and the acrid smell that filled the cupboard, Issei punched the man unconscious with his gauntleted fist, before gagging him with a rag.
He slipped out of the tiny closet, looking both ways to ensure that no one was heading towards him, before heading towards the closest window, pocketing the stone-skinned man's knife and pistol in the process.
He saw a blue tent in the distance, meaning that that specific window happened to be facing South and that he knew where to head.
There was a stretch of highly-visible, well-lit ground between where Issei stood and the blue tent, with sentries in viewing range, meaning that he couldn't just sneak there, which gave him an Idea.
~oOo~
15 minutes later Issei was walking towards the blue tent, his body clad in the uniform of a guard that he had ambushed close to where he had been previously, as he didn't feel in the mood to dress in a pair of peed-on pants, with a hat tilted in order to keep his face from being seen by the high-up sentries.
He nodded towards some of the guards he walked past, his posture as tall and imposing as possible in order to make him seem less suspicious and as if he belonged, resulting in them responding in kind as if they even knew him, until he reached the blue tent.
Looking around him and noticing the fact that there were more than a few guards, Issei decided to shed the attention on him by lowering his zipper while walking around the tent as if he were going to take a piss, causing the other guards to automatically dismiss the fact that he was heading straight towards the emergency generators.
As soon as he was outside line of sight, Issei headed straight for the generator, only to be stopped by two guards armed with assault rifles, one of them bearing a canine face, with a snout and long ears and everything, and the other one with a scaly, fish-like face with two fins placed where ears would normally be on humans.
The fish-faced one spoke up.
"Halt! This area is interdicted to anyone other than the technician squad! Turn around and return to your post!"
A bead of sweat rolled down Issei's neck at this, though he managed to hide his nervousness as he kept walking towards the two other guards, scratching the back of his head while speaking in a friendly tone.
"Relax, man, I'm just here because I was told that an old drinking buddy of mine was stationed here and I wanted to catch up!"
He looked towards the dog-faced guard before speaking up.
"Hey Dale, it's me, Franklin!"
The dog-faced one spoke up next, his tone serious.
"You must have me confused, my name isn't Dale."
Still walking towards the two, Issei spoke in the same friendly tone.
"You sure? Don't you remember me from about five-ish years ago, Sudan? Nothing?"
"You have me mistaken, I never got stationed in Sudan."
Still moving closer, Issei responded.
"Really? Well, must've mistaken you for someone else."
By now Issei was less than 10 feet away from the two of them, causing the fish-faced one to start raising his rifle, but, before he could, Issei was already between the two guards, jumping into a split kick that knocked both of the instantly unconscious, no shots fired.
He walked past a steel fence into an area with many electric pylons and such, with two massive, yellow and black generators that seemed to be inactive. Following the noise, Issei ended up standing in front of the last active generator.
"Okay, what's the best way to do this silent-"
"I'VE GOT TWO GUYS DOWNED OVER HERE! GET ME SOME MEDICS OVER HERE TO TAKE CARE OF THEM, AND TWO SQUADS TO CHECK THE PERIMETER!"
Cursing silently, Issei decided to completely forgo stealth and pointed his index finger at the electrical generator, before releasing a bolt of electricity straight towards it that caused the entire thing to explode, throwing him quite a few feet away and causing a his ears to ring tremendously, the fact that he reinforced himself at the last second being the only reason as to why he wasn't instantly debilitated.
"SQUAD ONE, ON ME, SQUAD TWO, FOLLOW KAZEEM! WE HAVE NIGHT VISION, SO WE CAN TRACK THIS FUCKER!"
Issei shook his head, thanking all of his stars for the enemy calling out their greatest strength at that moment.
'Jesus fucking Christ, could he try to broadcast shit any louder? At least I can make use of this.'
Issei got back to his feet, listening to the sound of a dozen firearms being hefted towards him as the soldiers surrounded him, before the same voice from earlier barked out.
"HANDS IN THE AIR! ONE WRONG MOVE AND YOU'RE SWISS CHEESE, MOTHERFUCKER!"
Raising his hands up, Issei spoke up.
"Can I say one thing?"
The voice that responded came from a different direction, with an undertone of smugness.
"It would be cruel to deny you last words, no?"
"It's good that you see things this way, man, because you see... SURGE!"
A massive flash of yellow light bombarded the eyes of all armed guards, causing them to instinctively flinch, their hands leaving their weapons to protect their eyes.
Before any of them could correct their mistake, Issei vanished into a yellow blur of motion, dashing from enemy to enemy and defeating them with blows aimed for debilitating areas, such as the temples, the backs of their heads, kidneys, livers and groins. Sometimes he struck all of these simultaneously.
Having finished knocking all of those enemies out, Issei focused Tantric Energy into his eyes, enhancing them to the point that he too could see in the dark.
"Nocturnal!"
He dashed away from the area he was previously in, avoiding the areas from which he could hear large amounts of noise, which meant a concentration of guards and soldiers, instead bolting directly for the castle.
Issei saw two guards, confused and panicking from the lack of light, standing one to each side of the castle's main gates. He blitzed past them, kicking the main gates down with a single kick before streaking into the castle proper.
'Okay, this wasn't part of the plan at all... I was supposed to still be anonymous under the guise of a guard to allow me to move freely... But I can still work with this! Few of them can see in the dark, which means that I have an advantage over a majority of them, and I just have to target the ones that do in order to keep them running around aimlessly. As long as I don't stay too long at the same place and keep moving, then I can get as loud as I can.
This way may actually be better. If I manage to make loud noise in different places within a very short time period, they may think there's more than a single enemy and spread themselves thinner. It'll allow me to get underground more easily.'
With his new plan made, Issei pointed his hand towards a wall before releasing a powerful lightning blast, causing it to blow outwards, dust, bricks and many other types of debris falling on top of earthbound soldiers, before hopping out of the hole and sprinting up the wall towards a window. He blasted said window with a bolt of electricity before hopping inside, still at full sprint. He started crossing corridors, hallways, staircases, setting up various of the remaining explosive tags that he had been given by Laveria, detonating them as soon as he was outside of range, spreading more and more chaos around the compound, resulting in higher and more noticeable panic and disarray amongst the enemy.
He contributed even more to the chaos by rapidly taking down any soldier that he came across as he traversed the castle.
"TO ME, MEN! I CAN STILL SEE, I SHALL ORGANIZE US!"
Issei's eyes widened at the ralying cry that he heard from where he was heading next. He stopped mid-run, turning around with the intent to backtrack, only for the sound of heavy footfals to echo from that direction, more than likely following the pattern of explosions and exclamations of pain.
The brunette saw himself in a connundrum. After running so deeply through the castle without bothering to keep track of where he went, he had completely lost any point of reference he had, meaning that he didn't know how many walls he would have to bust through in order to go outside, if he had any time to even waste before the actually better trained of the goons managed to re-organize, and if his time window for reaching the dungeon where Lilith was more than likely to be held, however much trepidation that thought caused him after the conversation he had overheard earlier.
He looked around, trying to find some way out of this mess, only to spot a door. Having nothing to lose, Issei entered said room, instantly turning around and closing the door behind him as silently as possible.
He pressed his ear to the door, hearing as two very large sets of boots moving from different sides stopped in front of one another, before someone spoke.
"IDENTIFY YOURSELVES!"
"Lt. Col. James Hayter here, head of squad Omega-4-6. Now you ID yourselves before my boys turn you into swiss cheese."
The other voice responded in a lower volume, though the intensity did not get reduced.
"Cpt. Hans Gustaff, Bravo-2."
"Callsign?"
"Brave Boys. Countersign?"
"Outer Rim. We were tracking the tango by following the noise he made, one of mine caught a flash of yellow from him and he was dressed in T-1-3 Garb. Our chase led to here, you boys see him?"
"Nein. I possess night vision, and Herrman's whiskers are very sensitive to shifts in air pressure, which means that anyone moving fast enough for me not to see them would be detected by him."
The two paused mid-talk, with Issei feeling a sense of nervousness at this pause, leaning away from the door right before a hand slammed hard into the door, with the voice belonging to Hans speaking up.
"Fraulein Stevenson, are you alright?"
Issei's eyes widened further at this, prompting him to turn around only to spot a large bed with a young woman laying on it, and the fact that a light green glow emanated from the walls, likely magical in origin, enough for her to definitely have noticed him. Their gazes met, and he noticed that she was as taken aback as him, if not more. After all, she was the one whose sleep was interrupted by explosions and chaos, only for some strange guy to invade her room.
The door was banged on again, with Hans speaking again.
"Fraulein [Miss] Stevenson? Are you gut?"
Issei gave the woman a pleading look, before Hayter spoke up.
"Surround this door, we're breaking in!"
~oOo~
"All set, lads?"
Hayter looked towards Jameson, that stood to the left of the door, seeing him nod before, before shifting his gaze to the right of the door and to Gunter, one of Hans' best, who responded with a nod as well.
Removing the safety on his pistol and chambering a round, Hayter reared his foot back, in preparation to slam through the door, only for it to be opened just before he could kick, with a head of black hair, olive-toned skin and green eyes, with a generally mediterranean facial structure to peer out. She spoke up in a soft, reserved tone.
"I'm sorry for taking so long to respond, Mr. Hayter, Mr. Gustaff, I had been asleep until you called for me, and it took me a while to actually get responsive."
Noddind at that, James spoke up.
"Understandeable, miss. Since you have just awoken, it is best for you to be warned, there seems to be a person, or persons, within the compound. They have been taking down our boys and sabotaging the entire operation."
"Oh my, that sounds very dangerous! Thank the heavens for you men and your work!"
While some of the men preened under the praise of an admitedly beautiful woman, Hans's gaze did not become any less severe, prompting him to speak up.
"Fraulein Stevenson, in the effort to ensure your security, I believe it would be best to effectuate a search of your quarters. After all, with you sleeping until just recently, it is a possibility that our saboteur, or saboteurs, having hidden within them, without your knowledge."
Blinking at that, the young woman spoke, her face in a frown and her tone noticeably colder than before.
"You wish to intrude upon the privacy of a maiden's quarters?"
"T'is simply to cast off the worry of you being targetted by this bad element, Fraulein Stevenson. You may understand why we believe this to be needed."
The young woman frowned further, causing Hans' eyes to tighten almost imperceptibly, his grip moving towards the grip of his rifle, only for the young woman to let out a frustrated huff, pulling her terrycloth robe tighter together before moving away from the door.
"Very well. If I must suffer this indignity, then at least make it quick."
Hans nodded at his men, causing them to pour into the room, while Hayter's stood guard outside.
There were very few places to hide in within the room, with the men easily pulling back curtains to look behind, opening windows and looking both below and above, since they were trained agents and wouldn't fall for that hollywood drivel of not looking above/below only for the 'hero' to be there.
After all of the usual places were checked, the men set up a formation around the bed, before Hans himself slowly, ever so slowly, stepped towards it. Crouching besides it, the german poked the tip of his rifle under the bed - his entire squad readying up for contact - before he flipped the covers up as hard as he could, with the entirety of the room's weapons aiming down at the bed.
The man lied down stomach-first on the floor, peering under the bed, before getting up, satisfied.
"It seems that everything checks out, Fraulein Stevenson. Es tut mir sehr leid [It does me sorrow], Fraulein, but it was our prerrogative to ensure that you were not under threat."
"Well you have ensured that by completely violating my privacy and putting my room in disarray! I shall be reporting your misbehavior and breach of etiquette to your superiors!"
The man nodded, before calling out.
"Kader [Squad] , move out!"
His squad responded by saluting, before filing out of the room and going out in a search for the dangerous element, with Hayter's squad following the opposite direction, sure of the fact that he was not within that room.
Having closed her door and waited more than a few minutes to ensure that the men truly left, the woman approached her book shelf, before speaking up.
"They're gone, you're free to come out."
The bookshelf moved aside with barely any noise, revealing Issei, and a corridor lit up by an oil candle behind him, leading to parts unknown.
Leaving the tight corridor, Issei spoke up.
"Thanks for the help, miss..."
"Jacqueline. Jacqueline Stevenson, but my friends call me Jackie. And it's no problem, Mister..."
"...Issei. That is all I can tell you, even after your aid. Sorry. What made you help me in the first place, if you don't mind me asking? Not that I'm not grateful, or anything!"
"...Your eyes were asking for help. I... have a hard time refusing others help, when their need is so genuine. Your eyes... they're so clear, so expressive... It's as if they're untainted..."
With each word she said, Jackie leaned closer towards Issei, her gaze always meeting his. She seemed to lose track of herself, leaning forward even further, only for Issei to look down and comment.
"That's a very interesting collar you're wearing."
These words seemed to awaken Jackie, causing her to turn her face away from Issei, her hands instinctively covering her neck as if she were embarassed of the choker-like steel collar she wore, while her cheeks burned with a bright blush.
Cursing himself internally for making the air awkward, Issei spoke up.
"Uh... Well, as much as I'd like to stay and talk, I have something important to do."
This seemed to arouse Jackie's interest, prompting her to face Issei again and ask.
"W...what is your goal here?"
"...My girlfriend was abducted, and the evidence points towards here. I heard a conversation about a dungeon of some kind, so I intend to go there in order to verify whether she's present or not."
Jackie seemed to think something through for a bit, struggling internally, before nodding to herself as she reached a conclusion.
"Follow me, I can lead you to the Dungeons."
Issei perked up at that, watching as Jackie, slid the bookcase aside and walked in, heading towards the sconce and picking up a lit torch, before she started walking down the darkened tunnel. He pulled the bookcase shut behind him, before following after her.
They took various twists and turns, walking for minutes on end, occasionally hearing the sounds of boots above them, or voices barking orders below them, yet they did not stop. After a while of so many winding tunnels Jackie finally stopped, placing the torch on another sconce before placing both hands on a part that seemed seamlessly connected to the rest of the stone and dirt before pushing lightly, causing it to dislodge itself and siled away, leading to the customary empty space between two flights of stairs.
Jackie slid the wall closed after Issei stepped out, before speaking.
"We're already below ground, if we go down this last flight of stairs we'll reach the Dungeons."
Nodding at that, Issei responded.
"Thanks for your help, I'll be able to make do from here on my own."
"What? No! I want to go with you! I want to help!"
"This is very dangerous, most of these people are armed and on edge from my earlier actions, they won't hesitate to shoot at the tiniest motion."
"Well, another reason for me to stay with you! If you took the normal paths it's likely you'd meet a lot of them, and you don't know the compound's secret tunnels as well as I do! You need me to guide you!"
Issei bit his lip at that, knowing that she had a point. Even if he managed to get Lilith, without guidance it would end up with both of them turned into swiss cheese. He had no other option.
"Fine, you can come, but stay behind me at all times."
"O-okay!"
They started slowly and steadily walking down the stairs, neither of them having a single misstep despite the fact that the stairs were very old, uneven and worn-out, something that caused Issei's eyes to narrow lightly, however he disregarded this for now.
As they reached the end of the stairs, they head guard chatter, with some chuckles added into the mix.
Jumping down the rest of the stairs and landing silently, Issei didn't give the two guards any time to react before he was already within their guards, the first one incapacitated with a kick to the groin followed by a blow to the head, while the second one got a punch to the gut, knocking the wind out of him, followed by a punch to the throat, closing off his airways temporarily.
Kicking the door down, Issei walked into the dungeon only to witness a horrifying scene.
Various barred-off cells with women in them, their eyes glazed and lifeless, their clothes nothing but shreds, and their bodies covered in copious amounts of bodily fluids. Some of them were nothing more than skin and bones, and more than a few seemed to have an IV Drip connected to their arm, a purple-glowing liquid flowing into them and causing them to pant madly, their mouths frothing, while they muttered a whole bunch of gibberish, most of it relating to sex.
"H-hey, who the hell are you? What the hell are you doing here?"
This call caused Issei's head to snap towards it's source, a tall, muscular guard that seemed to be hurriedly standing up and doing up his pants, with many of his fellow soldiers following suit. However, everything changed when Issei's eyes fell onto the girl that the guard had been violating.
A little girl. She couldn't even be elementary-school aged.
Jackie gasped as soon as she saw the scene, her eyes welling up with tears, as the guards tried to shake off their arousal and, for a few of them, their post-orgasmic lethargia in order to arm themselves, but it was much too late for them.
His eyes gaining a green glow, his pupils lengthening into slits and his hair raising into disarrayed spikes in the manner of a bristling cat's, Issei saw the world gradually tinting red, before his body moved.
~oOo~
"-sei! Stop, Mr. Issei! They're already... They can't hurt anyone anymore!"
These cries caused Issei to snap back into awareness, his eyes and hair returning to normal. He looked around where he stood, seeing puddles and bits of red arrayed around him, with his stolen uniform's jacked being copiously stained. He looked down at his hands, just now noticing the fact that his right hand was holding a skull and spine, with some bits of flesh still attached.
He threw it away in disgust, reeling back, before speaking up shakingly.
"W-w-what h-happened he-here? Wh-what the hell?"
He turned towards Jackie, his eyes asking, no, begging her for an explanation. The raven-haired girl swallowed down any trepidation, before responding.
"After you saw the little girl, Mr. Issei, you just... Moved. I... I looked away, so I didn't see most of what happened, but they screamed. And they kept screaming. I peeked once, and you were... Moving... and they started disappearing by limbs and pieces."
Issei looked down at the mangled state of the bodies, horrified at the fact that he was the one who did this, before his gaze fell back on all of the women trapped in that place, all of them broken in one way or another.
And then, it struck.
Issei was deeply connected to his own lust, as connected to it as anyone other than a succubus could be, in fact, so he could feel the energy that was hanging in the room.
It was a thick lust, but not the normal, sweet, light and heady feeling that he usually detected in Luxuria. It was a heavy feeling, pressing down on him, with hints of bitterness, rage, despair and hatred. It was a lust that just felt perverse, wrong, Putrid. That, together with the awareness of what he had done, and the scent of blood, guts and semen pervading the dungeons had only one end result. Issei moved away from where he had regained awareness, leaning onto the wall furthest away from the blood, guts and women, before...
"BLEHGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Jackie averted her gaze as Issei vomitted, the burning sensation filling his nostrils, while pains of a mix of anger, despair, sorrow, sadness and Absolute Hatred rolled down his face, which could not decide whether it frowned, scowled, snarled or sneered.
Wiping his mouth clean, Issei managed to stand straight, ignoring the fire that started burning on the left side of his chest and that started pumping through his veins with all the heat and thickness of magma, Issei walked back towards the cells of the trapped women, looking each over closer than before, simultaneously hoping that he'd find Lilith already, and that she was as far away from here as possible, meaning that she didn't suffer any of this.
His heart all but stopped when he saw a head of familiar, butt-length purple hair from behind.
He dashed into the cell, grabbing the girl's shoulder and turning her around...
The face that met him was unfamilliar, a pair of brown eyes looking past him, with a pair of long, feather-covered ears protruding from her head, and her lower body looking distinctly avian, covered in feathers as well.
Leaning back away from the broken woman, Issei sighed in relief that it wasn't Lilith, before a massive spike of guilt followed for even having this thought, as if the fact that it was someone that he didn't know made it any less wicked.
He swallowed all of these emotions, his tone bland and emotionless as he spoke.
"Jackie... What's the path most likely to take us to the head of this operation?"
The girl shivered at Issei's tone, her shiver intensifying at the emptiness of the clearest, most expressive pair of eyes she had seen to date. Pushing that away, she spoke up.
"Well, if we go back into the tunnels, we should-"
"No. I'm through hiding. I am very, very angry, and I am going to show everybody that allowed this to happen. I won't touch anyone that stands aside, but if anyone gets in my way, I'll erase them, just like I'll erase that shit Travis. So, please tell me the most direct path from here to the boss's room."
Gulping, Jackie walked out of the dungeon and started climbing up the stairs, with Issei calmly and methodically walking behind her. The two walked mostly in silence, only the sounds of steps on the stairs and their breathing filling the air. They ended up at a wooden door, which Issei punched through easily, only to be met with a full squadron of armed men, both supernatural and human-looking, including the Hayter and Gustaff.
Hayter was the one to take initiative.
"FREEZE! RELEASE MISS STEVENSON AND YOU HAVE YOUR EXECUTION POSTPONED! ANY SUDDEN MOVES AND YOU'RE DEAD!"
"...Did any of you know about what was happening in the dungeons?"
More than a few of the soldiers started squirming at that question, while Hayter and his squad showed visible surprise, with Hayter voicing it.
"There were dungeons to this place?"
He looked at Hans through the corners of his eyes, keeping his peripheral vision on Issei as he spoke.
"We were never told about dungeons. You know that extra space to protect means a higher bill, including any materials that could be stashed down there!"
Hans did not answer, a few of the men actually looking away shamefully now, as Issei spoke up.
"You didn't know about the dungeons, truly?"
He looked at the crowd of men, his gaze moving from one to another, rapidly assessing more than a handful, before speaking up.
"Quite a few of you knew, but I will explain it anyways."
Issei's eyes met Hayter directly, conveying just how hollowsorrowfulangryLIVID he was, even as he spoke in his emotionless tone.
"Sex slaves. Women, taken from their homes, and their families, and anyone they loved, locked within a dank dungeon, pumped full of aphrodisiacs and then abused by the guards. Raped."
Hayter recoiled at that, before speaking up.
"What the fuck?"
His gaze moved to Hans as he asked.
"Is this true?"
Hans didn't respond, forcing Hayter to actually look around, his gaze swinging along the various men arrayed there and completely forgetting Issei as he spoke.
"TELL ME THIS ISN'T FUCKING TRUE!"
He noticed that one of his own did not seem to be as flabbergasted as the rest of his lads, his face showing shame and self-disgust.
"Danvers, tell me that you didn't know about this."
The man grit his teeth, his fists tightening.
"Danvers. Tell me you didn't know about this."
"..."
"DANVERS!"
"I'M SORRY, BOSS! IT'S BEEN SO LONG SINCE I'VE BEEN WITH A WO-"
BANG!
Many of the soldiers looked at Hayter in surprise, their gazes locked on the smoking barrel that had just put a shot into Danvers' head being held by his own captain, before the man spoke up.
"Fake parameters were given to us, boys. After a reassessment of the situation, I have considered this an unacceptable change and a blatant and malicious act of misinformation. We're breaking the agreement, and never taking any more contracts from the bastard that pointed us to this endeavor."
Hayter's squad seemed to be as angry as him, none of them speaking in disagreement of their leader, neither in words, nor in body language, and they gave him space to walk out of the group, as did every other hired gun present. He stopped besides Danver's still warm corpse, spitting on it, before calling out.
"Someone pick up that body. Us Outer Rim lads take care of our own rubbish."
Two of the soldiers picked up Danvers' corpse after spitting on it, neither of them particularly minding the fact that they might be touching their own or eachother's spit, as they had waded through much worse running ops, before moving away.
Issei's focus shifted to the rest of the soldies, before speaking up.
"It seems that the rest of you either knew about the situation, abused the situation, or simply do not care about it as much as you care about a paycheck. I guess I know whom to take care of first."
At these words, Hans shouted out.
"ALL MEN, OPEN FI-"
"SURGE! REINFORCE! SHINING DRAGON'S COAT!"
A massive surge of electricity pulsed outwards from Issei, causing more than a handful soldier's bullets to explode either within the chamber or the magazine, rendering their weapons unusable, and even taking away a few limbs.
Then, he Vanished.
Spurts of red started splashing around the room, covering the chest of a soldier right before he had his own throat slashed open, or another before sharp claws stabbed into his spine. In-between his rampage, the words "SPARKING DRAGON'S TALONS" could be heard, before the bodies started dropping at double the speed.
Now, instead of simply slashing into spines, Issei was cutting straight through bodies. Instead of slitting throats, he was decapitating. Each punch shattered bones, each kick ruptured organs.
Some shots were fired by those wil still functioning firearms, though they were more counterproductive than anything else as no one present could even track Issei at the speed he was moving, more often than not felling a fellow soldier and spreading more chaos.
After 5 minutes of pure carnage, all of the soldies present were dead, with the last one having been Hans, whose head had been split open.
His rampage ended, and his clothes somehow managing to be untouched by the blood this time, Issei turned towards Jackie, before speaking up.
"We were heading towards the boss bastard?"
Jackie finally remembered to breathe, nodding shakily before moving, walking around the various corpses and pools of blood, and leading Issei through the castle, up a few sets of stairs and to an ornate door.
The brunette dispensed with invitations, kicking the door down and seeing the bastard himself sitting on his throne.
Many things wished to leave Issei at the same time, only a few of them in the form of words, even fewer of them coherent words, and less than a handful of them were unrelated to extremely violent acts. Instead, the brunette kept silent, rolling up his sleeeves as he walked into the room.
Travis was the one to break the silence.
" Hyoudou Issei, the human nobody that dared to get in the way of my greatness, of my destiny! Welcome to my humble abode! What can I get you, a snack, some beverage, anything?"
Issei seemed to be oblivious to Travis, cracking the knuckles of his right hand, his gaze seemingly thousands of miles away.
The lack of acknowledgement irritated the Incubus, prompting him to shift his focus to the female part of the equation.
"And, ah, Jacqueline herself, leading the enemy right to my secret lair! Naughty-naughty, I thought we were better friends than that~"
"YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A MONSTER! I COULD NEVER BEFRIEND SOMEONE LIKE YOU!"
Smiling cruelly, Travis responded.
"Ah, but surely it takes a monster, to know a monster, no?"
The girl went silent at that, gritting her teeth and looking away from Travis, her hands covering her choker, while Travis kept on talking.
"Speaking of that, I heard the comotion downstairs and then I felt the presence of people disappearing from the ward's detection capabilities. With so many deaths there surely must have been blood. How did you manage to control it?"
The girl turned a gaze full of silent hatred towards Travis, tears building up at the corners of her eyes, while the Incubus shifted his focus to Issei, who seemed to havev just finished stretching, warming up and limbering his body.
He shed the military jacket he had snatched completely, rolling up both legs of the camo-patterned pants, before raising both of his fists, his left one slightly ahead and pointing straight towards Travis. Having taken that position, Issei spoke up.
"I am going to beat you. You will ask me to stop. I will not. Then I will break you. You will ask me for mercy, I will have none to give you. Then, after I have everything I need from you, I will make you despair. You will beg for quarter, yet you will not have it. And when you finally beg me for death, I will deny you that pleasure as well."
"Ah, playing the tough guy routine instead of the cheery cripple, aren't you? Are you still mad that I took your girlfriend? Or was it fiancé? Regardless, it was so unimportant that I forgot what it was."
His eyes narrowing, Issei shot towards Travis, his right hand going for a devastating blow to the gut, only for the brunette to be surprised when Travis blocked the punch with his right forearm, a mocking grin on his face. He pushed Issei away, causing Issei to fly back a big distance before he managed to right himself middair to land back on his feet. Travis spoke up at that.
"Surprised, aren't you? Well, this is what the girls down there were for. They're constantly producing Tantric Energy, I keep absorbing it without the effort expended to seduce women, and I store it, and I become stronger."
Travis' eyes widened, before he flexed, causing his slim body to explode into a mass of twitching, builging, veiny muscle, tearing the clothes off of his upper body in the process, revealing a magical circle shining a sickly green right on top of his heart.
"This baby, right above my heart, is my key to power. It allows my to directly drain the power of Tantric Energy and infuse it into myself in a simile of the Succubi's Reinforcement, and with the girls still connected to me even as we speak, my power just keeps growing. You cannot defeat me, Hyoudou Iss-"
Travis was surprised by a hard kick to the face, causing his face to snap to the side and blood to spurt from his mouth, before a punch from the opposite direction did the same in the reverse sense, only for Issei to grip Travis' head with both hands, only to deliver as hard a headbutt as he could while Reinforcing his skull, a snarl on his face, causing Travis to fly backwards from the hard blow.
Issei cocked his legs back to chase after Travis, but the incubus obviously not used to fighting on the level of Issei called out in a panic.
"Bloody Mary!"
"NO!"
Issei turned towards the source of the squeak, watching first-hand how a squirt of red liquid spurted from Jackie's choker/collar straight onto her face, causing her face to shift from horrified to delighted, a blood-red color emerging at the roots of her hair and going all the way to the tips, while her irises too were taken up by the same shade of red.
Licking her lips clean of the blood that had been squirted onto her face, she spoke.
"Hello there, cutie, or should I say handsome? Gorgeous, maybe? An absolute stallion? I have no idea, but after seeing the beautiful carnage and bloodshed that you're capable of, I'm even more interested than before~"
"...Jackie?"
The girl giggled, a crazed, hysteric note to the giggle, before speaking in a typical "airheaded, valley-girl tone".
"Wro~ong, Jackie's not home at the moment, please leave a message after the beep!"
Watching Travis getting back to his feet from the corners of his eyes, Issei spoke.
"If you're not Jackie... Then who are you?"
"Hylda Stevenson, the other side of Jacqueline Stevenson, her alter, the Maid of Blood and Violence, and the holder of the Sacred Gear [Bloody Reign], at your service."
'Hylda' finished her introduction with a mocking bow, before standing back to her full height, and resuming her talking.
"Now that introductions are done, how about some foreplay? I'm very partial to rough and tumble play myself, with a little choking added to the mix~"
He words were punctuated by a pair of red daggers made literally of blood materializing in her hands.
Now Issei was forced to face both an empowered Travis, and the same bloody enemy that he fought before, but now with the knowledge that she is as much a villain as she is a victim of her own Sacred Gear, meaning that he didn't wish to fight her lethal, yet he wished to apply lethal force to Travis.
'Fuck it, I'll improvise!'
Issei's eyes narrowed as Hylda flew towards him, slower than their last conflict and allowing him to easily dodge and parry her blows, before retaliating with a punch aimed at the jaw in order to knock her out instantly, which was instead blocked by a barrier of blood made solid, before appeared within Issei's view, his foot extended in an exaggerated kicking motion.
Issei would've dodged and countered, if it were not for the tendril of blood that wrapped around his leg, surprising him and allowing him to take a hard kick to the chest, coughing out a few flecks of blood.
Issei rolled back to a standing position, setting his feet in order to block the next blow from Travis without being blown back, intercepting a punch in a cross guard, only for Hylda to appear next to him and swing a blade at his side, something that he barely managed to avoid receiving full damage from by spinning in the opposite direction that she had attacked from, ending up at Travis' unprotected side and retaliating with a hard kick to the ribs, feeling at least one shattering, enjoying the pained scream from Travis, before punching him straight in the nose, throwing him away.
His focus then shifted onto Hylda, except now she had a pair of circuit board-like lines on her left cheek, as she had last time. And this time, when she dashed towards Issei, her speed was significally higher, forcing him to move faster in order to avoid her attacks.
'She can control any blood around her, and cutting her enemy makes her stronger...'
Issei parried a right-handed swipe with his gauntlet, repositioning it to block a left thrust as well, keeping both of Hylda's hands occupied, allowing him to deliver a kick to her chin that sent her spinning backwards, yet a spurt of blood emerged from the floor, creating a blot that stopped her body before she could slam into the wall.
Issei's focus forcefully changed at the familiar sound of something heavy being thrown, just barely allowing him to dodge the massive wooden table that had been thrown his way, which was followed by the stone throne.
Isse reacted by shattering the stone throne with a kick before dashing towards Travis, releasing a barrage of punches that he felt pulverize a few more ribs, but before he could take him down he was forced to jump back, the blade of a massive scythe cutting through the space that he had been previously occupying.
His focus shifted onto Hylda, watching the young woman gleefully twirling around the massive weapon made of blood, before she pointed her finger at Issei.
"I can't beat you right now, neither could the two of you beat you right now as we are, but... I still have a few tricks under my sleeve! Armored State!"
The blood around Hylda coalesced into the form of a massive armor as expected from a knight of old, giving extra defensive ability, while a massive claymore appeared on each of her hands.
A massive warhammer of blood appeared within Travis' grip, causing him to grin viciously at Issei, before the two attacked in tandem, moving faster than Issei thought they would with the added weight of armor + weapons for Hylda, and just the weapon for Travis.
He barely managed to parry both of the claymores being swung at the speed of daggers with his gauntleted hand, before he was forced to directly block the overhead warhammer blow, feeling a teeth-chattering shockwave traversion through his body, before the ground under him cratered, then broke completely, causing the three of them to fall to the floor below, the room full of blood that Issei had slaughtered the soldies in.
Hylda gave Issei a massive grin, causing the brunette's eyes to narrow, before he spoke up.
"SURGE! REINFORCE! SHINING DRAGON'S COAT! SPARKING DRAGON'S CLAW!"
Black and purple tribal tattoos climbed up Issei's body as a consequence of Reinforcement, even as electricity coalesced around him in the form of a second-skin, or a cloak of some sort, and created a set of short sword-length claw-shaped talons on his right hand.
While Travis still smile stupidly, not knowing what Issei was truly capable of, Hylda's eyes widened at the fact that he was willing to face her this seriously despite knowing of Jackie, something that she expected him to be unable to do.
She didn't even have the time to give a single warning before Issei appeared in front of Travis, the dragon talons already having sunk into his stomach.
Issei drew his arm back, but he watched as tendrils of blood started surrounding him, growing closer and closer with the intent to trap him...
Only for him to vanish.
He flickered out of existence for a bit, flickering back to existence beside Hylda, backhanding her with his gauntleted hand, which almost caused her to lose her consciousness.
He turned his back on Hylda, slowly walking towards a panicking Travis, who noticed that even with the Tantric Energy that he was siphoning at the moment his injury was taking too slow to recover.
"BLOODY REIGN!"
Issei's eyes widened at how much the Pressure being emitted by Hylda skyrocketted, turning his face to look at her only to recieve a stomp to the face, throwing him towards a wall and causing him to crash throught the solid stone.
Standing up after the impact, stretching out the kinks of the rough landing and flicking off the dust that had built up in his hair, Issei turned his gaze back towards Hylda, only to be surprised at the throbbing and bulging veins arrayed around her entire body, with many red, circuit board-like lines arrayed around her skin as well.
Her muscles seemed o be moving in a very odd and disturbing manner underneath her skin, as if each fiber were being individually controlled...
"Y-you didn't."
Issei's horrified tone caused Hylda to grin at him, an action that seemed even more terrifying due to the fact that some of her face muscles had not moved accordingly, before she turned into a blur of motion, forcing Issei to raise his hands to block her strike, only for a blade to materialize between the two of them mid-motion, which she grabbed and followed through with the slice at his chest.
"REINFORCE!"
Issei pushed more Tantric Energy towards his chest, causing the cut to be superficial, before kicking Hylda away from him and dashing after her, releasing a flurry of blows that she managed to avoid by moving, twisting and contorting in a completely inhuman manner.
The two kept moving back and forth, trading blows at a speed that left them less than blurs for Travis, whose mind could only say a single thing.
'Monsters! The two of them, monsters! Too powerful! I... I can't let it end like this!'
Ensuring that the other two were still embroiled in their intense battle, Travis slowly crawled away from them, back towards his throne room.
Meanwhile, both Issei and Hylda sped up, trading blows back and forth between fists, gauntlet, talons and blade-made swords, daggers and spears.
The two clashed, each of them sliding backwards, before dashing back towards eachother, engaging in another clash between sword and talons.
Hylda's body seemed to be at it's limit, the skin of her arm tearing lightly and causing a spurt of blood to fly out. She made use of this spurt, unable to do much more to it than direct it to land in Issei's eyes to blind him.
It worked, distracting him for a second, during which she managed to stab a few inches into his torso. Issei barely managed to avoid any damage to his guts or any other organs by gripping tightly onto the blade of the Nagitana that she had summoned, before releasing a surge of electricity that caused the blood to lose cohesion and pushed her away.
Hylda intended to initiate again, but her leg failed her, one of the muscles giving out, allowing Issei to close the distance between them and punch her in the face. Hard.
She managed to erect a shield behind her, but it still didn't change thef act that she felt most of the impact of breaking through a solid stone wall, causing her to barely manage to stand on her feet.
Issei started walking towards her, his eyes shaded, before Travis' voice got the attention of both.
"Y-you two think you're better than me just because of your freakish powers? You think us normals are below you? Always looking down on us, huh? Well newsflash, this normal can take down you monsters as easy as one... two... three!"
Issei and Hylda's eyes widened at the massive amount of magical circles that covered the entirety of the visible parts of the castle, floor, walls, ceiling, and all of them had a single purpose.
Travis gave the two of them a psychotic grin before a magical circle appeared underneath him, with him sinking into it with the emition of purple sparks, before disappearing completely.
The magical circles started flashing, the amount of energy they built up increasing as they tapped into the leylines that were feeding the wards.
In a last ditch effort, Isse dashed towards Hylda, hoisting her bloody and broken form over her shoulder, before pooling all of the different types of energy he had together, a single-minded idea of 'Get us out of here' coupled with a vague image of a magical circle, taken both from the one that he saw when he was first transported to this specific forest from Luxuria, and the bit that he managed to see from Travis'.
BOOM!
The massive explosion completely obliterated the compound, that forest and many miles of wilderness around it, luckily not getting anywhere close to inhabited territory. The authorities marked it as a particularly high-magnitude earthquake that completely erased one of Hungary's forests from the map, perhaps permanently. But that's not what we're interested in right now, is it?
~oOo~
Crack... Crackle... POP!
A flash of purple light deposited a battered and broken Hylda, and a tired, magically exhausted and somewhat scorched Issei in a very cold place. Underneath them was snow, around them was snow, everything was snow as far as the eye could see, and even the air around them whipped around harshly, the biting cold winds being a consequence of nothing other than a snowstorm.
In those conditions, wearing only a shirt, military pants and boots, and carrying Sadako's twice-removed cousin over his shoulder, the only thing that kept Issei moving was his will to survive.
He will not die.
He will survive.
He will save Lilith.
He will save Jackie.
But, most important of all.
HE WILL COMPLETELY ANNIHILATE TRAVIS LAUCIA.
With these thoughts in mind, Issei wandered away, following his instinct, disappearing with his tag-along into the heavy snowstorm.
~Chapter, End!~