Disclaimer: Black Clover is owned by Yūki Tabata, Studio Pierrot, and Shonen Jump.
Saga 35: The Anthem Part 2
Quatre Refugee-State, Noble Realm, Clover Kingdom, Noon
Now Playing: "Twister -NEO MIX-" (Takeharu Ishimoto)
There was a powerful Demon right in front of them. Those willing to move should've moved.
But they cannot. Or at the very least, not in the way they liked to.
Everyone's hearts were placed with a curse that can be best described as being taken hostage. The requirements for their hearts to keep beating is to move with the beat played by the Demon's alien contraption.
Several people, from the lowliest peasant to the strongest of Thaumaturges, fell dead on the simple account of being unable to dance.
No one can go back to help them. And those who did, joined them.
"... I hate this," growled Charlotte as she and the remaining survivors were forced to dance to the beat as they made their paltry attempts to approach Yetzer, leaving those couldn't keep up to rot behind them.
Julius tried to use his [Time Magic] to do something, but the moment he tried to do anything...
"DID I SEE YOU SOMETHING HIDING SOME SHIT?!" the bat-Demon shrieked, pointing towards the Wizard King in accusation while the music and its involuntary dancers kept moving in rhythm.
Reluctantly, Julius withdraws, knowing full and well that he's as vulnerable as everyone else is right now.
"That's better," Yetzer mocked Julius' sheer powerlessness. "Now that everyone has gotten used to how the dance floor works, provided if you're still breathing, in which case, congrats..."
The Demon then takes out another black disc before swapping it with the one on his device.
"Then's it time to pick up the tempo!"
Now Playing: "Someday -NEO MIX-" (Takeharu Ishimoto)
Another song begins to play, this time, more energetic and thumping with is heavy percussion and strings akin to thunder.
Everyone instinctively played along as the new rhythm was established, keeping up with the hectic melody.
"Just what kind of music is this?!" Augustus pointed out as he kept up with his experience on the ballroom dance floor.
"Just another one of Hell's many forbidden delights," growled Damnatio as he was forced to participate in this ridiculous farce lest he dies.
"It's rock-n-roll, dumbass," Yetzer remarked as he dug his finger into one of his ears. "Although I'm surprised, given how none of you have... I dunno, trip over each other."
Kaiser's eyes widened at the implications of the Demon's remark. "... You cur!" he growled as he kept dancing to the beat. "You will not beguile us with mere words!"
"Too many of us died to even think of turning on each other now!" Rill pointed out.
"A typical trick of the Demon and Devil-kin," Saiga scoffed. "We've grown too wise of your tricks to fall for them, Evil One."
The bat-Demon snorts. "You're missing one thing, Wotan," taunted the Demon. "... I didn't come alone."
He then scratches on one of the disc's surfaces, scratching the rhythm to create a distortion that pierced everyone's ears upon hearing it, causing their sight to blur as if they were seeing through a grainy sandstorm.
"What is happening?!" Grey cried out as she and everyone else struggled to see clearly.
Through the sandy veil then emerged vaguely bestial silhouettes, ranging from lupine, ursine, and even invertebrate in appearance.
As soon as the distortion cleared, the creatures then emerged from the veil, now attacking anyone caught off-guard and making them mess up their rhythm.
"[Sound Creation Magic: Chaos Mosh Pit]!" cackled Yetzer as the Demon's constructs attacked the rattled survivors. "Don't think of messing up the beat! Step out of line, and my crowd of Chaos shall make messes of you!"
Panic was then introduced to the dance floor of death that was once Quatre.
Wastelands, Formerly-Diamond Kingdom, Noon
"... I freaking hate this place," panted Cleopatra as she slithered through the northern part of the wastelands that made up the lion's share of the Diamond Kingdom. "... Hell is hotter than this but why is it even worse here?!"
She looked up towards the sky, the sun's rays beating down her head mercilessly during her travel.
"... Must be the light," she grimaced.
Natural light wasn't something that she hasn't gotten used to. Warm-to-hot temperatures was something that all denizens of Hell had to learn how to adapt to, but even then, wasn't harmful. Just unpleasant.
"Suddenly, a dip in lava doesn't sound so bad," she snarked to herself as she then pulled out her poorly-drawn map of her desired location. "... I should be able to get there by the end of today."
Cleopatra then soldiers on, driven by her vague hopes of undoing her greatest mistake: making Yama strong as he is.
Quatre Refugee-State, Noble Realm, Clover Kingdom, Noon
The whole city now descended into complete pandemonium as creatures known as Chaos rampaged throughout the city while subscribing to the beats played by the song.
More people began to die, their afflicted curses taking them before the Chaos that spawned from the distortion could. And those who fell at these creatures' hands died an equally agonizing death, their flesh and blood warping into abstract sculptures of meat and bone upon being swiped before freezing in place, monumenting their last moments without a shred of dignity.
It didn't matter to Yetzer as long as they fell all the same.
"SHIT!" cursed Zora as he and everyone else were forcibly rendered helpless as the margin for error has shrunk significantly. "THERE'S GOTTA BE A LEEWAY WE CAN EXPLOIT!"
"Right, because you're the expert," taunted Yetzer as he kept playing his device. "... Guess there's one advantage being born weak. It makes you learn how to fight smarter than others."
Upon hearing that, Zora then begins to hypothesize while maintaining his beat and dodging the Chaos attempting to jump him.
Okay, so first of all, literally everyone has to follow the beat, he analyzed as he saw Charlotte dodge a wolf Chaos' pounce by limboing under its arc. Even Yetzer's rendered immobile since he's the one maintaining the music with his weird contraption. I think... I heard something about how traveling musicians don't get too crazy with their movements while they perform...
"Perform." That was the word he was looking for.
"... Maybe... just maybe!" within the right interval of the beat as a bear Chaos attempted to pound him flat with its claws, Zora then shoves one of his improvised magic bombs into the bear's mouth, jumping away at the next beat, right at the same time as it exploded, killing the Chaos. "... I FUCKING CALLED IT! HEY GUYS!"
Everyone then sees what Zora had accomplished. They knew that they can fight while not breaking from the rhythm.
"... He played his hand too soon," Gordon remarked. "... Let's go!"
Armed with this knowledge, everyone splits up to retaliate against the spreading tide of Chaos.
Now Playing: "Your Ocean" (Takeharu Ishimoto)
Julius first activates his [Chronostasis] spell, but rather than activating it immediately, he first primes it, then aims, then throws it at an area, before it then expands into a dome of stillness, trapping the Chaos into a statsis while not affecting the people who were inside, allowing them to regain distance from their pursuers long enough for the Chaos to break their own rhythm, thus the [Law of Slander] disqualifying them out of existence.
"What do you know?" the Wizard King snickered. "... Guess playing by the rules isn't so bad."
As Julius adjusts to his new circumstances regarding his [Time Magic], he then evades a frog Chaos that leapt at him before manifesting a clock-hand sword in his hand before slashing the Chaos that jumped over him in two.
"Now I can fight properly!" Julius nodded before he resumed confronting the Chaos surrounding.
As those still alive began fighting back, Damnatio and Augustus were still struggling to adapt, with the former's [Scale Magic] unable to adjust properly to the rhythmic beats of the [Law of Slander], while the latter couldn't fight (directly) at all, leaving them with no other options but to evade the Chaos.
"Blast it all!" roared Damnatio as he ducked under a giant scorpion's stinger as its beat gave the signal to do so. "This game of dead man's rally is not ideal for my magic!"
"EEEKKK! STAY AWAY!" screeched Augustus as he spotted several hornet and spider Chaos steadily swarming towards their direction.
However, just as the Chaos could drown them, Zora jumps between them and the swarm, places his hand on the ground, activating a hidden magic circle on the ground, and then grabs both the Judge and King before jumping into the air, grabbing a ride onto a raven Chaos (whose wingbeats were flapping with the beat while remaining airborne) as the whole alleyway exploded.
"Hey! Guess the curse doesn't work when our feet aren't on the ground!" Zora snickered. "Pretty neat, right?!"
"What the hell was that contraption?!" asked Damnatio. "I don't recall approving of such thing!"
"Oh, that was one of my many, many hidden traps that I placed throughout the city," explained Zora, causing both high-ranking nobles to raise into alarm. "Don't worry! They ain't going off unless I directly arm em myself. Now that we got the element of controlled chaos on our side..."
He then jerks the raven Chaos (on beat) to fly towards another certain direction, swooping towards where Cole and Sol were at, fending off several rhino and shark Chaos (latter was swimming in the ground as if it were water) all at once with their own methods.
"... LET'S RAISE SOME HELL!" Zora then jumps off of the raven Chaos with the two nobles in tow before manually activating one of his hidden traps on his way down, triggering a snare trap that caught several of the rhino and shark Chaos, slowing them down and let their creator's own laws kill them all without further outside intervention.
Augustus moans dazedly (while in beat, somehow), as Damnatio gets up with Zora's assistance while Sol and Cole looked at the trio with puzzled looks (maintaining their beats by bobbing their heads with the rhythm).
"... I'll overlook this if we live," the Judge remarked, causing Zora to smirk.
At another part of the city, Charlotte, Kaiser, Kahono, Kiato, and Mago were surrounded by a circle of Chaos swarming towards them from all directions.
"Remember! They're bound by the same rules as we are!" Charlotte remarked.
"Right," following the beat, Kaiser then readies his [Vortex Magic]. "On me!"
The Purple Orca's Captain then unleashes a spiral of wind, drawing inward the various monsters into its center, allowing others to converge towards the trapped Chaos with their own attacks, all the while, maintaining the beat.
"[Thorn Magic: Tower Knight's Lance]!" the Blue Rose Knight Captain then thrusts her giant spire of thorns into a singular point.
"[Dance Magic: Rushing Tide]!" Kiato then manifests blades of air with his swords as he spun around into a rhythmic spiral.
"[Song Magic: Destruction Beat]!" Kahono then lets out a sonorous cry that shatters the earth before it.
"L-[Lyric Magic]!" Mago stuttered out as a quill pen was manifested in his hands. "... F-[First Verse-Vanguard March]!"
As the seaweed-haired mage then pens the lyrics, the scriptures then turns into a cavalry of [Hippocampus]-riding warriors wielding tridents before riding upon a wave that swept over the gathered chaos.
In harmonic succession, the ambush was naturalized, allowing the gathered group to proceed, still forced to move to the beat, but are now slowly becoming accustom to this bizarre circumstances.
"... You know! If it weren't...! For the fact... that we'll die... then this...! Is kinda fun!" Kiato pointed out.
"Yes indeed. It is amusing," Kaiser replied sternly. "Focus so that we'll live to have fun later on!"
Then the others heard screams coming from the other streets throughout the city before silence quickly followed.
"Aw, what's wrong?" mocked Yetzer as the group kept moving, leaving those who can't keep up to die lest they join them. "... You can still try and save them."
"We're not falling for it!" Kahono snarled as she tried not to cry. "... How dare assume us as cowards when you're the one pulling the strings!"
"Just being real here, sweetie," snickered the bat-Demon as his voice echoed throughout the Chaos-infested city, screams of the dying filling the air in tandem with the music being played by the Demon's harmonium. "You meatbags are cursed with the idea of 'empathy.' It's not a bad thing, it's just akin to a vestigial limb or an old childhood pet peeve. Sooner or later, you'll get used to it... after about a few hundred more crap out as modern art."
Kahono and Kiato tried to protest, but Mago stops them, grabbing their shoulders before shaking his head.
"... He's a Demon," he pointed out. "... Don't question him. Just focus on stopping him."
"You say that, but you're really hurting inside, aren't you?" taunted Yetzer. "... But then again, all you're good at is sitting on the sidelines, letting the others do the work for you until I dragged your lazy ass out of here."
"Mago's our friend, you jackass!" Kiato rebuked. "Nothing will ever change that!"
Yetzer snickers before going silent as he begins to come up with his next track.
... They're more savvy then I thought, the Demon thought. ... Their mental armor is strong, but not invincible. Gotta find a weak point to get the next track rolling.
He then perks up his ears over the sounds of battle and of his own music generated by his [Sound Magic], picking up different heartbeats, breathing rhythms, and muscle spasms, able to differentiate individual sounds from the sea of cacophony of his own making.
The Demon's ears perk up at two distinct sounds. One whimpering and impotent. The other being irrelevant and jaded.
Both were weak in spite of their power.
Yetzer smiles. "... Oh, I am going to enjoy this."
Wastelands, Formerly-Diamond Kingdom, Noon
Yama didn't think it through when it came to traversing through the wastes, pursuing his treacherous herald towards North.
Granted, as a Demon Prince of Death, he didn't need any substance like a regular human, so dying of starvation or dehydration wasn't an issue.
The main issue was that Cleopatra had neglected to teach him where the direction North was, much to his frustration. The only thing leading him on was the ever-fainter scent left behind by the Lilith, slowly being drowned out by the ambient heat and the wastes' dusty winds.
"... This is starting to get out of hand," he growled as he kept advancing towards where his senses are telling him to go. "... This feeling... of weakness... of uselessness... how dare you!"
Frustration. Doubt. Vulnerability.
He had worked painstakingly with that traitor to remove such encumbrances for the past ten years, all of that labor undone within some one, bizarre twist of fate by an outside force that he failed to see it coming.
The power to rewrite the laws of reality. The will to strip away all earned knowledge with a single desire to feed upon blindly.
... He wanted it. The power to rewrite all of the world's laws itself.
This sensation gnawed away at his mind slowly but surely.
He hated it. He hated every second of it. He even hated the fact that he could feel "hate" again.
"... Whatever it takes!" growled Yama as he then off-handedly draws his [Fushigiri] from its scabbard before cutting down a withered tree to release his unwanted rage. "... I will...! I shall...! Make it right!"
Acknowledging that this paradoxical sensation was hindering him the more he resisted, he opts to find a shelter in order to rest and collect his turbulent thoughts, intending to weed them out.
He then comes across a cave carved into a canyon wall. Upon entering it, the sensation of the sun's rays no longer beating him over his head felt... good.
"... I don't like this," Yama growled, his grip around his [Fushigiri] trembling like his own erratic heartbeats.
Trying to take his mind off of what can best be described as a mental prison of his own making, Yama ventures deeper into the cave to calm himself down.
No matter how much he tried to fight against his impulses, to feel frustrated and lost, to feel the sting of betrayal and his own stupidity being exposed to the rest of the world that he was supposedly detached from...
... To feel being human again, a weak, insignificant human when he's the Demon Prince of Death, superior of all mortals that crawl upon this disgusting world, he couldn't escape. Or rather, his enfeebled mind was now slowly coming to the conclusion that he never escaped his weakness to begin with, only instead casting a illusory veil over it, letting him live in bliss to develop his own sin of [Misanthropy].
"... Damn you," Yama growled as he then balled his right hand into a fist. "... DAMN YOU! DAMN YOU TO THE DEEPEST RECESSES OF HELL AND OBLIVION, CLEOPATRA MARA BODHISATTVA!"
Blinded by his tide of indescribable fury, Yama then punches through the wall erected before his visage, revealing a hidden room beyond the shattered edifice.
"... What the?!" he remarked as he was compelled to enter it.
Upon taking a step beyond the broken wall's borders, Yama then chances upon a room full of broken clay tablets laid scattered around the floor, its pieces flicked across the faded stone floors by the Prince's feet.
... Save for one.
"... How did this one alone survive when the rest didn't?" Yama asked out loud as he then approached the clay tablet, squinting his eyes as he then looked at it closer.
It was an ancient text, each formation of triangles resembling modern-day text.
"This isn't Dwarven text or Elven..." he grumbled as he kept gleaning at the tablet's contents. "... An ancient precursor text?"
Working off of his assumptions, Yama begins translating the contents of the tablet.
"... Sephria's knowledge... gathered from all races... human... elf... dwarf... jotun... angels... gathering... of world's... knowledge?!" he read the text he could translate. "... Book of Knowledge... 'grimoire'... the [Akashic Records]!"
A spark then blitzed past Yama's mind, clearing the chaos within as he then now knows what to do next.
"... The whole world's knowledge... shall be mine...!" Yama snickers to himself with this new knowledge seeded into mind, welcoming the sensation with open arms. "... And once I learn everything... once I understand everything... I WILL DESTROY IT ALL!"
Yama, the Demon Prince of Death, accepted his humanity if it means getting the rest of them, including himself. With renewed vigor, he then sets off with the clay tablet in hand.
Leaving behind the room, he'd missed out on the mural depicting a blazing colossus trampling over entire cities and its people within the backdrop of a burning world.
Quatre Refugee-State, Noble Realm, Clover Kingdom, Noon
"We're almost there!" Sergei cried out as he and the remaining Thaumaterges along with their Witch compatriots made their through the cursed settlement-city through the tide of Chaos besieging them.
"To think we're forced to abide by a Demon's rules to have a chance of sending it back to Hell..." bemoaned another. "... Great Sephira, forgive us of our transgressions as we are to slay this foul creature!"
"Quit whining and keep running!" one Witch pointed out as she moved with the rest of them on the beat of this alien, yet energizing music.
As they kept traversing through the maze littered with bodies of those who couldn't keep up with the rhythm, unable to stop without running into the risk of joining them due to the Chaos following them even to this point of the invasion, the group then chance upon High Inquisitor Saiga, who he himself was moving erratically and freely, vomiting blood with each staggering step.
"VICE-INQUISITOR?!" Sergei remarked.
"Back, you fool!" the old Inquisitor chided as he stepped away from them. "... Leave me. I will manage!"
Reluctantly, the group then passes the old man, the latter now hacking up a ruptured heart with his next cough.
Saiga catches his breath, heaving as a new heart grew from within his body before the same curse was placed upon it.
"To think I'd run into a fucking Highlander here of all places," taunted Yetzer as Saiga noticed his voice. "Yeah that's right, I know enough about them, how they literally cannot die. Although given that they're effectively immortal champions of Sephira, I wonder, why continue like this when your very reason for fighting is long gone?"
Saiga growls. "... Does it matter if she's here or not?" the old Inquisitor answered. "... I'm here because her work must be upheld!"
"Yeah yeah, and look how that turned out," Yetzer shot back while the curse kills the Inquisitor's heart again, only for it to be revitalized by his immortality. "... Look, if it ain't gonna be me or my kin from the basement ripping this world a fresh new one, then its gonna be you guys doing all of the work in our stead."
"... So what?!" Saiga roared back as he kept hacking up blood and pieces of his undying heart. "... Does the desire for perfection count as a non-purpose?! For me personally, I see death... as stagnation! Our pursuit to the impossible... is reason enough to keep going!"
"You're only saying that because you know that without that lie keeping you going, you're nothing more than husk pretending to be alive," Yetzer pointed out. "... Sephira lost. Accept it. You know that deep down this fight ain't gonna end no matter who 'wins'. No one's gonna 'win' or 'lose' this great conflict. Just lay down and die. It's good to retire early."
Saiga tried to come up with a defense to the Demon's claim, but he couldn't.
If he did, the only thing he would say was the same thing that fell deaf to the Demon's omnipresent ears.
His words began ringing like a deafening echo.
For the first time in the Highlander's life, he began to doubt.
Yetzer snickers at his state of vulnerability as he then pivots his attention to another one of his targets. The weak link.
Trailing behind Damnatio Kira and Zora, King Augustus Kira Clover XIII followed the Judge and trapper as the two then linked up with rest of the Black Bulls, Gordon and Grey, the two groups joining into a single-file march.
"Hey, you two," Zora greeted the pair. "How are the others doing?"
"... They're getting by," Gordon nodded.
"Y-yeah," Grey stuttered. "... I think... we can do this! We can beat this Demon because it gave us a chance-!"
Grey then trips over something, only for her to be caught by Gordon as he himself was being pulled along by Zora, thus preventing them from losing their rhythm and triggering the curse.
"W-WE'RE OKAY!" Grey cried out as she and Gordon resumed moving to the beat.
"Don't look back," ordered Damnatio.
Everyone follows as they then come across Anastasia, Grey's surviving stepsister, who's currently hanging from a window's ledge as she was being pecked by a flock raven Chaos' beaks, each pick directed on the beat to the music that was playing.
"H-HOLD ON!" Grey then moved as she used her [Transformation Magic] to turn the house next to her into a flight of stairs reaching towards her. "I-I'M COMING-!"
At next beat's interval, a gorilla Chaos intercepts Grey on the stairs at the same when Anastasia's grip loosened to the point where she then let go.
In the next beat, the gorilla Chaos winds up a punch right as the stepsister hit the ground. Following after, Grey gets punched aside as a shark Chaos devours her stepsister whole from below.
"Too slow, sister!" Yetzer then cackles as the Chaos began swarming towards the group.
"GET ON THE RAVENS!" Zora instructed as he then threw down his bombs on the beat, causing them to explode in the next, the blast propelling up towards the winged creatures to temporarily free themselves from the curse, allowing Gordon to rescue Grey before she herself hit the ground herself.
"... You're okay!" he remarked as Grey clung onto his back.
Grey nods as a storm of feelings well up within her heart. "... I thought we promised to not see each other again...!" she sobbed. "... Why did we break our promise like this?!"
Yetzer snickers as another target shown up next to his current one, the former doing most of his work for him, allowing him to close in on the latter.
"Hey King dude! How's it hanging?!" the bat-Demon greeted. "Man, it must suck balls to see the place you rule get torn apart several times in a row. Honestly, I'm surprised that you made it this far!"
"O-OF COURSE I MADE IT, YOU FOOL!" Augustus stammered. "IT IS EXPECTED OF A KING LIKE ME-!"
"Everyone knows that Julius should be King compared to you," Yetzer pointed out. "Expected? Tch, no one's expecting anything from you, you waste of space."
"... B-BUT I'M NOT A WASTE OF SPACE!" the King chided. "I HAVE GREAT MAGIC! I USED IT TO SAVE MY PEOPLE FROM THE INVASION BEFORE YOUR ARRIVAL-!"
"Yeah yeah yeah, good for you. You played bait while everyone else did the heavy lifting," mocked Yetzer. "Aside from that, what else have you accomplished in your life besides sitting on your ass all day, accompanied by women who only want your money and because of their families told them to get into your good graces?"
Augustus tried to answer, but he knew the truth.
He was never an active player in this world. Just a bystander with a crown on his head and some yul to his name. Julius was the Kingdom's hero, a Wizard King who can use his [Time Magic] to both save those who have fallen and to reduce their enemies to dust.
All he could do was simply emit light. He was just an overglorified firefly at best.
"Was there any doubt?" Yetzer snickers before erupting into a full-blown cackle. "NOW WITH PLENTY OF DOUBT IN YOUR HEARTS, I CAN NOW CLAIM YOUR SOULS!"
Gordon's eyes widened in realization as he then noticed Grey's body emitting dusty smoke from her shadow below where the flew. "... No!"
In the next instant, Grey's literal shadow, along with Augustus' and Saiga's, clutched them around their embraces before pulling them down into the black muck.
"GREY!" Zora cried out as he and Damnatio saw their charges drown into their own shadows. "NO!"
"... My sin is [Slander]," the bat-Demon declared to himself. "... No, it's more appropriate that I am [Slander] itself."
As the three were taken by their own inner darknesses, Saiga's patron god [Freki] tried to save him, but Yetzer's curse was placed onto the god's soul, paralyzing him where he emerged from, the shadow where he resided being appropriated by Yetzer as he stood helpless to even save his last worshipper.
"So, god," cackled Yetzer. "... Did you know that the best way to kill immortals is to seal them away forever? I wonder how long will you last when your worshipper is literally fighting his inner demon."
The bipedal wolf growls. "... DAMN YOU, ABERRANT!" he howled as he tried to use his [Creation Magic], only for them to disappear as they were also affected by the curse the moment they stepped in. "... JUST WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU?!"
"Eh, save your shit after I demoralize a few more of these schmucks," Yetzer dismissed the god's indignation as he the switched out the disc on his console. "Because my man, the whole world is built on lies and I'm one of em."
Now Playing: "The One Star" (Takeharu Ishimoto)
The changing of the discs then gave rise to new kinds of Chaos, now consisting of elephants and t-rexes, the latter banging their heads, almost enjoying the intoxicatingly vigorous beats sounding out.
Their roars then blasted the ones flying on the raven Chaos, causing the winged creatures to dissipate and force their passengers to land back down.
"Well shit," Zora grimaced as he, Gordon, and Damnatio were forced to go back to their previous routine.
At the other areas of the city in chaos, the presence of these new Chaos variants caused no shortage of headaches.
"ARE YOU FREAKING KIDDING ME?!" Sol cried out as her contingents saw the stampede of giant Chaos stampeding towards them (on the beat, no less).
Her [Raging Mother Earth] collided against the t-rex, but the latter counters with the swing of its mace-like tail, wrecking the golem that then caused Sol to be sent flying across the air.
"Hang on!" Cole, on the beat, propels himself with [Wind Magic] to slide into her rescue, catching her before she could hit the ground and mess up her beat.
"Thanks!" Sol replied as she reentered the beat without missing it, reengaging the enemy.
Within the World Beyond the Shadows...
Grey's eyes creak open as she now finds herself alone.
"... Guys?" she mumbled out as she picked herself back up to her feet. "... Everyone?"
She looked around. All she saw were blinding red and white crudely parodying Quatre's streets and buildings.
The skies were red, but there were no sun or clouds. The buildings and roads were white, but there were no seams or curves on its surface.
Just blank shapes and a monochromatic curtain cast over her head. Nothing more sans herself.
"Uwaaaa..." she shuddered as she backed away from where she rose from. "... I have to find a way out. Or a-at least... find the others-!"
She was then knocked back down onto the white floor upon her back bumping into something.
"OMIGOD, I'M SO SORRY-!"
"Sheesh, this is what I look and sound like?" Grey's own voice spoke back to her in a sneering tenor. "... No wonder why I adopted that burly facade in the first place."
Grey squeaks mutely as she turned around, seeing none other than herself standing over her, with the only thing differentiating them were the latter's glowing yellow irises.
"... M-Me?" Grey squeaked.
"No shit," sneered the other Grey. "... But if you really wanna know... I'm a version of you from this world, the [Echo Chamber]."
Grey looks around the monochromatic world where they were at.
"Speechless, I know," the other Grey deadpanned. "... So, yeah. I'm your Echo, birthed from my master, Yetzer."
Grey backs away from her Echo self, realizing that she's bad news. "... W-What do you want?!"
Echo!Grey smirks. "... Kill and replace you, but I'm sure you FIGURED THAT OUT, HUH?!"
The Echo's body begins to convulse and bloat.
"I ALWAYS, ALWAYS HATED YOUR GUTS!"
The morphing Echo then gets on all of her fours, her neck and head twitching like dying bug.
"ACTING SO FUCKING MEEK AGAINST THOSE WHO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOU! ACCEPTING THE OTHERS' PITY AS 'KINDNESS'! YOU MADE A CAREER ON BEING EVERYONE'S DOORMAT, HUH?!"
Emerging from her back were fleshy facsimiles of Anastasia and Drizella, her stepsisters, and her stepmother, Tremaine, while her base body and appearance swelled in corpulence, turning that into a fusion of her original and "brute" disguise akin to a [Chimera] made of humans.
"NOW BE A GOOD DOORMAT...!" growled the Echo!Grey as her shadow completely eclipsed the original, becoming [Dissonance], Grey's hidden resentment made manifest. "... AND LET ME CRUSH YOU TO PASTE!"
Grey runs for her life as her evil copy chases her down through the blank cityscape, crashing through the white geometries as if they were mere toy blocks.
THANK GOD I CAN MOVE FREELY HERE WITHOUT THE CURSE KILLING ME! Grey thought as she kept pumping her legs away from approaching death. ... OR IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE CURSE KILLS SOMEONE?! AM I IN SOME KIND OF PURGATORY OR SOMETHING?! IS THIS WHAT HELL IS LIKE-!
"OH MY FUCKING GOD, EVEN YOUR THOUGHTS ARE ANNOYING!" [Dissonance] then scraped her hand across the blank geometry, flinging several pieces of rubble into the air before they rained down onto her derivative's head. "TRYING PANICKING YOUR WAY OUT OF THIS! [TRANSFORMATION MAGIC: HAZARD INCREASE-LEVEL 3]!"
Every single loose rocks flung towards Grey then turned into lit barrels of black powder, exploding midair and sending her flying across the street through the blasts' sheer power.
"What the hell was that noise?!" Augustus cried out as he was also running through this empty world as his ears picked up the sounds of explosions from a fair distance, his stubby legs struggling to keep moving through then endless expanse of the [Echo Chamber]. "... AND WHERE AM I-?!"
"You're scared," Augustus' own voice echoed before him, the King's own shadowy copy manifesting before him. "That much is obvious."
"M-ME?!" Augustus squawked as he fell onto his butt. "... What are you?!"
Echo!Augustus shook his head disapprovingly. "... You'll never understand. You'll never understand yourself."
The Echo then morphs into a black blob and reforms itself into a...
"... A pig?" gawked the King as he saw himself transform into a plush-like golden pig wearing royal regalia, the same exact ones he was currently wearing. "... ARE YOU MOCKING ME-?!"
The pig then rams a hole through the King's torso, boring his whole body through as his true self was reduced to nothing more than legs holding up nothing, a pair of arms that spun in the air like bloody streamers, and a head missing its entire lower jaw.
The golden pig, [Fear], looks back and cackles. "... At last...! AT LAST! I AM FREE!"
Back in the Real World...
"Curses!" Damnatio then dodges a t-rex's stamp before jumping from the elephant's quaking stomp that rocked the earth, intending to mess up his rhythm. "And no birds to escape with!"
Zora scowls as he sees the stampede of the giant Chaos bulldoze over his triggered magic traps. "Okay, I'm out of ideas."
"... We need to run," Gordon suggested. "... They're not the real enemy."
"Agreed," the Judge nodded. "This way! I know my ways towards the Royal Palace!"
But as the group can make a beeline towards their destination, King Augustus returns to the real world.
"Hey King! Come on!" Zora cried out.
But the King instead ran towards the Chaos instead, screaming and laughing as he done so, as if he'd lost his mind.
None could see that Augustus' eyes were that of his Echo's, who'd now freed himself from the very [Echo Chamber] that he was born in, and where he had left his original counterpart to rot.
"Freedom... freedom...! FREEDOM-!"
The King was then reduced to paste as he was crushed underneath the t-rex's heel.
"What the hell happened in there?!" Damnatio remarked.
"Whatever the case..." Gordon the looked down as his own shadow, worried about Grey, "... I hope she's alright."
The three then meet up with Charlotte, Kaiser, Rill, and the rest of Sergei's group, the group converging into a singular unit.
"Is it just me, or do we all need to plan out our groups better?" Zora remarked.
"I cannot think straight with all the chaos happening right now!" Charlotte barked back. "... Sorry, it's frustrating beyond belief."
"Don't we all," Kaiser shook his head. "... To the enemy commander, I presume?"
"Indeed," nodded Damnatio. "Remember, there's no established rule that we can't go straight to him."
"That was on purpose," Yetzer's voice announced. "Then again, even if I did 'lose,' I got what I wanted regardless: the loss of many, many innocent lives."
No one dared to ask for the "why," even going as far to quash their own natural curiosities to prevent themselves from playing into the Demon's hands more than they have.
"Good, you're all learning," Yetzer mocked as the road leading towards the Royal Palace was then suddenly blockaded by the spawning Chaos elephants and t-rexes. "Now get past this if you can."
Just as they were about to fight for their lives, a ball of [Time Magic] was thrown towards the mob of giant monsters, freezing them all in place within the modified [Chronostasis] before Julius appears.
"I'll leave the rest to you guys," nodded the Wizard King as he then gave the Magic Knight's salute. "I got your backs."
"YES SIR!" all of them then attacked the immobilized Chaos as they made their attempt at a breakthrough.
"[Thorn Magic: Tower Knight's Lance]!" Charlotte then thrusts a massive jousting lance made of spiraling briars.
"[Vortex Magic: Spiral Swords]!" Kaiser then unleashes a windmill of spinning windblades that was then cast towards the paralyzed mob.
"[Painting Magic: March of the 100 Beasts]!" Rill then summons a painting of stampeding animals of various species from his drawn canvas.
"[Fire Magic: Rubicon Spark]!" Sergei then blasts a ballista bolt made of explosive flames.
"[Poison Creation Magic]..." Gordon then draws his Relic dagger, [Caduceus, the Scalpe], from his belt to then form into a giant fountain pen the size of a spear, concentrating the poison's dosage into a pure concoction of death, "... [Giftiger Füllhalter]!"
"[Ash Creation Magic]!" Zora then pulls out a link of ash-crafted discs that was then slung towards the Chaos. "[Riot Chain of Rebellion]!"
"Can't afford to dawdle..." Damnatio then manifests a giant set of balancing scales before himself and jumping onto one end. "[Scale Magic: Scale Emulate]!"
With that spell, the Judge then donates his mana to the others' spells, enlarging them in size and increasing their overall potency, allowing them to easily plow through the wall of Chaos standing before them.
"Thanks for the help!" Sergei then pivoted his heel before pushing Damnatio into the Royal Palace. "Go! The others now need you!"
The Judge couldn't help but smile. "... Damned fool."
Sergei then joins Julius in their line of defense against the coming tide of Chaos marching towards them, keeping their footing to the beat to circumvent the curse. "... You know, I assume that you'd be joining them in slaying the Demon."
"Agreed," the Thaumaturge captain nodded. "... But I feel like they're the right people for the job. That and I need to clear the way for the High Inquisitor if he comes back."
"You don't say," Julius then manifests twelve clock hands around himself rhythmically. "Well then, shall we roll out the red carpet?"
Sergei then assembles a fiery ballista fed with a belt-chain of flaming bolts. "AND IT SHALL BE OF THEIR BLOOD!"
Inside the [Echo Chamber]...
"... My shadow must be a wonderful place to have two different inhabitants in its depths."
The two Saigas confronted each other, both of them irrelevant and apathetic to each other's presences.
"... Why are you continuing like this?" Echo!Saiga snarled. "... Why bother getting yourself involved when there's nothing to your name anymore?"
"You never understand how people live their lives, me," Saiga replied. "... I admit! We lived long. Too long in fact. So long that I've forgotten how to feel compassion! I've forgotten how to feel pain! I've forgotten how weakness felt! Much to my detriment, I've forgotten what made me a mortal and what it meant in the context of myself as a living being."
"Something tells me that you're taking it in stride," scoffed the old High Inquisitor's Echo. "... Don't you think it's better to have walked away and live out our eternity, watching the world rot into itself, rather than doing something about it, accomplishing nothing?"
"Pah! Where's the vigor in that?!" Saiga scoffed back. "... I can't just stand by and let the world pass me by. Not when Sephira's work is still left unfinished."
The Echo gnashes his teeth as he swells up to a larger size. "... 'Sephira'-this, 'Sephira'-that! That woman has done nothing but ruin us!" ranted the enlarging Echo. "HER PROMISES NEVER CAME TRUE! HER DISCIPLES AND THEIR DESCENDANTS FELL SHORT OF THEIR GOALS! THIS WORLD IS DEAD, AND BETTER OFF SO!"
The Echo's all-encompassing cloak then transforms into a pair of giant wings of black, his pointed hat and beard morphed into that of an owl's visage, and his cackling drone rose up into an ear-piercing screech.
Echo!Saiga then reveals himself as [Hermit], the High Inquisitor's long-lost desire for solitude.
"Hold still, me," [Hermit] hissed as he beat his wings. "Just let me end your prolonged pain and we'll finally be free."
Saiga scoffs as he then manifests his dual warpicks, [Huginn] and [Muninn], into his hands. "Go back into your cage, my inner shadow."
The avian and the Highlander clashed in the empty cityscape, clashing talons and picks against each other without intrusion.
[Hermit] beats its wings to shoot a flechette of black feathers like a volley of arrows. Saiga dodges most of the quill while parrying the rest, carving out a perfect circle around the old Highlander as the avian Echo then divebombs towards the opening.
A massive plume of dust is then kicked up upon impact, to which it was then breached by both Saiga and [Hermit] flying out of the smokescreen, the former catching a ride on the latter.
"JUST GIVE UP!" plead the Echo as he flew sporadically. "WE BOTH KNOW THAT WE'RE GETTING SICK OF THIS SHIT!"
"NEVER!" roared Saiga as he clung on like a tick. "I SWORE MYSELF THAT I'D SEE THIS THROUGH UNTIL THE BITTER END!"
"TOWARDS WHAT END?!" rebuked [Hermit], speeding up his flight. "TO THE END THAT WILL NEVER COME?!"
"THAT'S FINE WITH ME!" the High Inquisitor barked back. "I LIVED WELL THROUGHOUT ETERNITY! I CAN HANDLE ANOTHER ROUND!"
"WE BOTH KNOW THAT'S NOT TRUE!" the owl Echo then pitched Saiga up into the air before catching him with his talons and then proceed to drag and scrape the old Highlander against the floor. "OUR TETHER TO OUR OWN FORMER MORTALITY GROWS EVER THINNER WITH EACH PASSING YEAR! SOON ENOUGH, OUR HEARTS WILL BE NO DIFFERENT FROM THAT OF A DEVIL'S! PLEASE! JUST LET ME END YOU SO YOU CAN DIE A HUMAN!"
From within the trailing plume of dust, Saiga's roar bellowed followed up with an eruption of another dust explosion that sent [Hermit] off-course.
Both the old Highlander and his Echo counterpart separated, landing on opposite sides of the [Echo Chamber]'s barren cityscapes, with Saiga eating the blank pavement on his way down, while [Hermit] wrecked through several blank geometries before coming to a stop.
"... You're half-right," Saiga admitted as he got back up, coughing blood that stained his beard. "... Every passing day feels akin to torture. Every life I see growing old and withering away into nothing feels as if every piece of my former empathy decay like a fruit nested by maggots. And every time I see nothing change throughout my years of living... makes me wonder... 'Is this even worth it?' I asked that myself... so many times... that you can say that you were born... in my own [Echo Chamber]."
"... Yet despite everything... you continuously deny me," [Hermit] snarled as he got back up from the pile of rubble he was laying on. "... WHY?!"
"BECAUSE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE, I WANT TO BE WRONG!" the old Highlander cried out earnestly. "... I saw the people here. They were weak. They were sinners lacking in discipline provided by the whip called 'death'. They were indolent, arrogant, and above all else, intolerant. YET! Despite their faults... I can see why... I CAN SEE THAT WHY THEY CHOOSE TO FIGHT! THEY WANT TO LIVE BECAUSE SEPHIRA GAVE ALL OF US A CHANCE TO PROVE OURSELVES! TO PROVE THAT WE CAN BE BETTER!"
"SEPHIRA SHOULD'VE KILLED THOSE INDOLENT BASTARDS THE FIRST CHANCE SHE GOT!" the Echo then spread its wings before taking off. "PARADISE WAS WITHIN HER GRASP AND SHE LET IT SLIP THROUGH HER FINGERS BECAUSE HER COMPASSION FOR LIFE MADE HER WEAK!"
"THEN SHOW ME WHAT THIS 'PARADISE' OF YOURS TRUELY MEAN, MY INNER DEMON!" Saiga roared as he and his Echo then prepared their magics.
"[PROJECTION CREATION MAGIC]!" the avian Echo then flings its quills down that each turn into various projectiles of differencing elements. "[TRINITY RAIN-RAGNAROK]!"
"[PROJECTION MAGIC]!" the High Inquisitor then plants both of his warpicks into the empty road, giving it color and raising it upwards like a city setting off towards the heavens above. "[WORLD EDITOR-MIDGARD]!"
The built city raised to the skies was then bombarded by a rain of flames, ice, and lightning, destroying everything that it touched until only a platform shouldering nothing but blasted rubble.
In the middle of it, Saiga stood, feet firmly planted on the ruined earth, his robes burned to rags, his skin and meat shredded down to the point where bones were visible, and his hat no longer on his balding head, letting his silvery-white hair fall freely as the braid holding them together came loose.
"... So this is your idea of 'paradise'?" deadpanned the wounded Highlander, his injuries healing slowly. "Naught but ruin? ...How sad. It appears... that I've not appreciated... enough of life... to appreciate it fully."
"You know that the sole truth only lies only in ruin," [Hermit] hissed as he kept himself aloft in the air. "Erect all the monuments and citadels they want. It'll be destroyed, one way or the other."
"Good," Saiga smirked as the city around him began to rebuild itself. "... Gives us something to do in the meantime."
The two then clashed once again, this time, putting their all into their strikes, colliding against each other so violently that the flying city broke apart, causing the two of them to go into a state of free falling.
[Hermit] held the advantage, but Saiga close in the gap by hopping from rubble to rubble to keep up with his Echo-half. Thus began their exchange of blows during the rapid decent back to the earth below, beating each other to their few inches of their lives as if the end was nigh.
But as they continued to fight, their bodies twisting and spinning through the air, Saiga's eye then spots Grey fleeing from a grotesque [Chimera]-like abomination made of people.
"A moment of your time, if you must!" requested Saiga as he then hugged his whole body around [Hermit]'s neck as tight as he could, causing the latter to gag and lose control of its flight path and go into an involuntary dive-bomb.
As the two fell faster, Saiga then takes a deep breath before roaring the following words.
"INNNCOMINNNGGG!"
Grey's ears hears of the warning before turning back, spotting an old man piledriving a giant owl-like creature into her own Echo, the resulting impact triggering an eruption of dust that sent her flying off of her feet (again), causing her to eat the pavement upon landing (again).
"... Phleh," Grey spat out the dust that got into her mouth. "... Oh thank god I'm not alone-!"
Rolling out of the dust cloud came out Saiga, now ripping off the top of his robe to reveal a heavily-scarred body that surpassed Captain Yami's physique in terms of overall musculature.
"You there! Lass!" Saiga barked out.
"Y-YES?!" her back stiffened at the old man's call before the cloud of dust was cleared out by a shrieking roar that came from her Echo, [Dissonance]. "EEEEEK! THEY'RE STILL ALIVE?!"
"Then I suppose you know what we must do?!" the High Inquisitor asked, to which Grey nodded as the two malformed Echoes rose back up. "... Good."
The time for the exchange words was done. All that was left was to commit to action that will prove their existences.
Northernmost Border Wastes, Diamond Kingdom, Afternoon
The heat has now peaked to unbearable levels for the Lilith.
Hell was freezing compared to the blazing sun and the melting earth that Cleopatra was now wading through. Viscous as a swamp's mire, hot as molten lead, and heavy as a gravel of boulders, this place felt as if Hell itself has entered this mortal plane.
The most generous interpretation to describe this place was a pool of melted glass.
"Any hotter and I'll be sweating blood..." heaved the Lilith as she continued her trudge through this literal Hell on earth that was reaching to the northernmost border of this Kingdom. "... How is this not actual lava-?"
She then steps on a patch of mire that began to hiss on itself, causing her to recoil her feet out of the boiling muck.
Cleopatra recognized that feeling.
"... Lava."
Bracing herself, she then advanced further into the hellish heat, sinking further in until she was mired down to her knees.
She could feel her scales and meat be scorched off fiber by fiber, reaching into her very bones.
Then an incandescence glowed from further in, like a second sun that had crashed onto this world like a meteorite from days of yore.
Cleopatra chuckles, before bursting out into full-blow cackle as she then spots something within the searing light that caused the rest of her body to sizzle.
"At last...! AT FUCKING LAST! I HAVE ARRIVED!"
Curled up before her now barebone-feet was none other than Goliath, the legendary "Blazing Colossus," the source of all of Diamond Kingdom's woes, and the Demon of [Ignorance] of the Fallout Four.
It was a giant humanoid creature who was perpetually on fire, his entire skeleton acting as an eternal tinder that kept its inferno burning forevermore. Even as Cleopatra stood by, laughing at her discovery, the giant did not acknowledge even a figment of her presence, let alone, her existence.
Goliath simply sat here, in the ashen crater of his own making.
Hell. Yes, this was the giant's home.
[Gehenna], the Gateway to Hell. The place where the monster settled down after finishing its task given out by its master and creator, Lucifuge.
Cleopatra kept laughing even as her face and the rest of her body began melting off of her very bones. "Now... I CAN TAKE MY REVENGE!"
She then casts her magic onto herself.
"[Death Invocation Magic]!" the Lilith declared even as her body fell apart. "[Persona Destruction-Takeover]!"
Cleopatra melts into goo, with what's left of her slipping into the blazing maw of the crater, dissipating into mist.
The flames crackled and the bog bubbled as the Lilith's ravings were silenced.
Then a creak was heard.
It came from the pit.
The skull opened its eyes.
They were wisps of dark-green.
Royal Palace Grounds, Quatre Refugee-State, Noble Realm, Clover Kingdom, Afternoon
"Congrats," Yetzer spoke as Charlotte, Kaiser, Rill, Zora, Gordon, and Damnatio came to where he was situated. "You all have reached the main booth at last."
"Then you know what we're here for," Charlotte declared.
"We're wasting time," Damnatio pointed out as he and everyone opened their grimoires. "GET HIM!"
Everyone then charged forth, readying their spells...
... Before Yetzer snaps his fingers, taking away their ability to speak.
As a result, their spells weren't able to be cast, thus they then began to panic at their stripping of their main method of fighting.
"Before we begin..." the bat Demon then snaps his fingers, removing their curses on their hearts. "... And yes, I did what you're all thinking. And also, you may be asking, why?"
Hell if I know, Zora growled internally. It's showboating at this point.
"Well, to be honest, I already got what I came here for," Yetzer admitted. "But at the same time, I can't leave people alone. It's not in me to simply leave you all in a huff after what I have done to you all. So I figured, why not an afterparty, where you can dance freely? A battle of the bands, I propose."
Kaiser and Rill exchanged looks with each other, trying to communicate by reading each others' lips.
"My sin is [Slander]. I need people in order to function properly," Yetzer explained. "More specifically, I need them at each others' throats, whether overtly, or covertly. As long as there's friction, I have power. You all show unity, yet in the end, you're not wholly united. Culture, beliefs, walks of life, class disparity, all of them so irreconcilably different from each other... just how long that united front hold up even if you guys 'win' in the end? Or alternatively, do all of you want the world to be perpetually on the brink of total annihilation just to keep everyone on the same page? Tell me, am I wrong?"
None of them waver. Their eyes were firmly locked onto their common enemy.
"... I know," the bat-Demon shook his head. "... You can 'grow.' That much you can prove, but you all forget that 'growth' is often paired with 'decay.' Why bother? Are you all willing to delude yourselves to think that you all will have a common enemy to always unite against, when without Hell, without us Devils and Demons, that the only enemies you'll have left are each other?"
He's not wrong, Charlotte admitted. But that doesn't give anyone the right to be an asshole.
People can grow as they can decay, yes, acknowledged Gordon. ... Even so, I want to do good.
I've seen my old friends who I thought were good people fall into the traps of greed and privilege, Kaiser pointed out. Yes, by all accounts, we are our own worst enemies, but that gives me more of an incentive to be a gentleman.
Without ugliness, there can be no beauty, Rill confirmed. Even the mucky shades of brown and black are needed to paint the soil where vibrant flowers can grow! I can learn to love both the good and the bad!
Creatures of impulse like us can only bring naught but ruin, Damnatio thought. That's why all of the world's laws and regulations are written in the blood of our past failures in the first place, because that was our only way of learning how we can improve ourselves into something greater we call "society."
So shut your fucking trap and stop pretending that you can "understand" us, you jerk! raged Zora as he covertly reached into his sack tied around his back. THIS IS OUR LIFE! WE'LL DEAL WITH OUR FUCK-UPS WHEN WE CROSS THAT BRIDGE!
Zora then threw a rock inscribed with his primed [Trap Magic].
The stone cast towards the Demon then ends up into its mouth before it then exploded inside his gullet, disarming their enforced silence.
Yetzer coughs out a plume of smoke before recovering, wisps of its remains still spewing from his nailed eye sockets, earholes, nose, and mouth.
"... Alright, you schmucks made your point."
Yetzer then places his alien device onto his chest, of which it then reformulated itself around his body into an armor-like contraption.
"I acknowledge that you're stronger than the rest..."
The discs went over his expanding wings. The slithering metal reached into his neck and encased his head.
"... And even though I may be the weakest of the Eleven Elusive Evils, I must remind all of you that you're still human."
The black fur was now gone, encased in a silver with osculating lines of differing shades of neon thumping like a heartbeat.
The armored Demon then took off towards the sky for his final stand.
"So don't assume for even a second that any of you will get out of this unscathed."
To Be Continued...
Author's Notes: Okay, the summer heat is getting to me and I'm trying my best to wrap this fic up in a satisfying conclusion.
I'm learning of how to plan things out ever since I been working on my DxD reboot fic (from someone else) and I'm learning that I can't go back to my old way of making shit up as I go.
With that said, a few things to clarify:
Yama's character arc: He's kinda like my own high school emo phase gone haywire and coming to the conclusion that the most ideal way to live is to not have anything at all. So the concepts of "desire" and "fear" is akin to a harmful drug to his psyche. Him erasing his own "weaknesses" back at Book 1 didn't so much as make him mentally invincible but so much as reduced him to a self-aware blank slate that now takes anything "marring"/influencing it as a bad thing. So in essence, he can be best described as a prisoner of his Plato's Allegory of the Cave; he's forced to leave his own world that he let Cleopatra construct for him and he hates everything about it, including the fact that he can feel "hatred." In a way, his endgame is the polar opposite of Sephira's myth in my own fic: obtain the world's knowledge, understand it, and use his [Death Magic] to destroy everything.
Cleopatra: remember, her sin is [Abhorrence]. She may put up a front ("early character installment weirdness" is in play here), but ultimately, she's nothing more than a ball of resentment who wants to find a way out so she can be "herself," blind to the fact that she's ultimately bound by being Yama's caretaker, which she hates. In a way, she's a foil to Yama, in that she seeks the opposite of knowledge/the destruction of it, so she can be free from the fate placed upon her. Granted, this doesn't make her sympathetic, but really, she's so exasperated that those ten years spent making her pawn went to waste in a single night (through 1/4th of Beelzebub), so really, she's grasping at whatever straws she can reach.
Nerfing Julius' [Time Magic]: Rather than make his magic unusable by holding it hostage along with his heart, but I had him adapt to use [Time Magic] as potent debuffs, so rather than make him the "Juggernaut," he's now more akin to combat support-role.
I could add more things to it, but at the same time, this fic is moved to "low-priority" and more or less, I'm treating this as a testbed for my wilder ideas before I retire it somewhere around past this fic's "Chapter 50."
That's all I got to say. To those still reading this, see you all in the next chapter next month. I think I'm starting to get a feel on how I can work this fic's release schedule is going to pan out.
References:
- The [Chaos] spawned from Yetzer's music are based off RWBY's Creatures of Grimm and The World Ends With You's Noise.
- Julius' nerfed [Time Magic] (note: if he tries to pull ZA WARUDO with his magic, the curse placed on his heart will trigger, killing him instantly) now plays out a lot like NEO: The World Ends With You's Time-Element Pins. His [Chronostasis] is modified to work like [Topo the Beloved] Pin, and his clock hand swords are derived from Tatiana's attack from her boss fight in No Straight Roads.
- The letters described as "ancient precursor" text on the clay tablet is based off the Babylonian cuneiform.
- The world beyond Yetzer's [Echo Chamber] are based off the visuals from Persona 5's opening cutscene, which said aesthetic was also used in another fanfic that I followed and finishing reading back in the day, a Persona 5 X JoJo's Bizarre Adventure crossover-fic, "Vanishing Act," specifically, the finale of its semi-sequel/"expansion pack"-arc, "The Royal Chapters."
- Gordon's new spell, [Giftiger Füllhalter], means "poisonous fountain pen" in German, and named after the boss OST from Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth.
- The Echoes of each characters (Grey, Saiga, and Augustus) that are encountered in the [Echo Chamber] are their Persona-Shadow Selves, and each individual Echo's designations being derived from various Traumas/Regrets that the central characters had from The Caligula Effect 1 & 2, while having their names (and warped physiology) being styled how Fear & Hunger: Termina's Moonscorched Contestants.
- Grey's Echo, [Dissonance], takes general inspiration from The Evil Within's Monster designs along with Fear & Hunger 2's Cocoon, Marina's Moonscorched Form.
- Augustus' Echo, [Fear], is based off the Pig Mazurka Noise from The World Ends With You. Also, his pathetic nature brings into mind of Shadow Mitsuo from Persona 4.
- Saiga's Echo, [Hermit], a giant owl like being, bring in mind of Wan Shi Tong from Avatar: The Last Airbender and OFF's Japhet. Also, their initial encounter, I kinda had Fire Force's Kurono's encounter with his own Doppelgänger in mind, albeit very loosely (in that while both are 99.9% similar to each other, the original hates the copy since that .1% differentiation being that the original has a kernel of humanity keeping them grounded-relatively speaking). His [Projection Creation Magic: Trinity Rain-Ragnarok], is based off the Nordic apocalypse where all of the gods die in one final battle, and the former naming convention coming from the ultimate magick attack from Unicorn Overlord.
- Saga's [Projection Magic: World Editor-Midgard], is named after the one of the Nine Nordic Realms of which where mankind resides.
- Goliath of the Fallout Four, representing the sin of [Ignorance], is named after the giant Philistine warrior that King David slew in the story of the Bible, and is designed after the Berserk Gorilla Yu-Gi-Oh! monster, the Colossus Titan from Attack on Titan, and his appearance as a skeleton on fire may be a Ghost Rider reference, but conceptually/functionally, it's more Pyrogen from Mighty No.9 (he only looks buff with the flames on).
- Goliath's location, [Gehenna], the Gateway to Hell, is named after the Hebrew word for "Hell" and is based off the IRL Darvaza Gas Crater found in Turkmenistan.
- Yetzer's merged form with his own turntable is loosely based off Transformers' Soundwave.