"I wonder if this is how a pipe feels." Leon was being crammed full of mana by virtue of the Shadow Element spread over by the shadow of Alzer and the naturally dense Mana of being at sea level, and on top of that was constantly releasing a concentrated stream of mana into four different directions, now only three. "There is no way that Luxion is going to be able to build a city down here. Even I'm struggling and I'm built for this." One of the four demons that Leon had empowered for the brawl had already been taken out, leaving only the Chimera, the twins and Vandal. Leon closed his eyes as he watched the battle through the eyes of his summons.

Vandel was moving at light speed, literally, carving short cuts through space as he attempted to carve the demonic angel off at its ankles. In the meantime the girls took the offence up above, transforming into whirling masses of death as they delivered jumping attacks even as the Sycophant blocked with his shield and parried with the spear. Last was the Chimera, bombarding with the usual combination of fire, ice and Lightning, in the mean time Celene and Louise had broken off to fight the rest of the forces loose in Alzer's streets, as had Dante and Vergil, maybe the half angels too it was hard to say for certain. Though he was fighting 4v1 the Bernhard/Sycophant combo wasn't going down without a fight.

That wasn't the only problem here though, and Leon was the root of it, all that Mana that was fuelling the Multiple Deadly Sin Rituals had to come from somewhere, the amount of mana underneath the floating continent was enough to support the entire country of Alzer, and now Leon was swallowing it whole and spitting it back out.

"I'm going to have a mountain of work I'll need to do when this is over aren't I?" Just imagining it was giving Leon a headache, and it got worse when he imagined that Celene would blame him for this mess. "Huu. It is your fault Leon." Bernhard was Leon's responsibility, he was the one who was careless enough to let the monster run wild despite Celene repeatedly telling him about the dangers that Bernhard represents, and she wasn't the only one to warn him as much. And while he was sitting down here like a coward the demons that had sworn themselves to him were fighting in his stead and dooming the country that he was trying to save. "Change of plans." Leon spoke through the link of all my summons. "Fall back and downgrade, focus on containing the demons from the castle and eliminating the Buddha things." I received a mix of confusion from my demons. Left and Right wanted to keep fighting, Vandal was concerned for my safety surprisingly Chimera was the only one doing as I told it to without question. "I wasn't giving you options." Leon bottle-necked the Mana that he was sending to the three demons above, enough to maintain their true forms but not enough to let them make use of the Deadly Sin forms that they were enjoying until now. Already they were backing off but Leon was already standing up.

"DO O IA BAYONETTA." Leon instead started a new ritual, to summon a new demon to the battlefield. "CNILA D COMESELHA ODO ANANAEL." He was planning on saving this for an emergency, and yet with the stakes being what they were he had few other options. "TABAN C ORS, ZILDAR C ADRAMAN!" And then Leon's body fell over with no soul to support it.


The Dark Lion King of Pride: Warlock turned Demon.

A Demon King Born of the Bloodline of the Dark Knight Sparda, and strengthened and reinforced to the limit using the Knowledge of the Umbran Clan.

A creature born of the Shadow Element in terms of raw power he has few rivals, in terms of experience he leaves much to be desired.

Still to earn such a creature's wrath is to court death.

Excerpt from Lemegeton's Guidebook of Demons


In the middle of the battlefield a new contender was making itself known. A demon who was towering in height, his bare chest displayed a mixture of red and blue while clothing made of a black shadowy material trailed off of his form, both hands and both feet held large caliber guns while the head had a pair of large crescent shaped horns and a long mane of black hair trailing down to the small of his back.

"If it isn't my quote unquote 'Master?'"Bernhard's voice was openly mocking Leon, gesturing around him indicating the ruins of Alzer.

"Stand down Bernhard"The New Demon spoke in a distorted voice, Leon's."Or I'm going to put you down!"

Bernhard actually laughed at that.

"Oh yes I was just thinking that I would like to use this opportunity to ruin months of planning in favour of resuming centuries of enslavement!"

The two Demons began their clash at that. Bernhard immediately worked to secure his advantage, the shield and spear combination was legendary for a reason, with the shield Bernhard could block the projectiles fired at Leon from range and keep him from moving in close to where he could smack the parasitic demon with his weapons thanks to the reach of the spear. But Bernhard wasn't the only one with a mid-range weapon. The guns were swapped out with long chains dangling off of the ends of Leon's arms which he soon began to use to launch swinging attacks at his enemy, tangling the weapons around his spear before he delivered a kick to the other demon's mid-section and fired his weapon at point blank range. In response to this Bernhard changed his grip on his spear and hurled it through the air like a javelin, dragging along Leon with and having him repeatedly slam into the building's of Alzer before the Spear in question slammed into a Holfortian ship. And then five more of the spears in question were all hurled through the air straight for Leon.

"Begone from these lands fiend!" With a loud Clanging sound all of the spears being hurled through the air was deflected, notably into more of Alzer's buildings.

"No..." Leon's look of horror on his features was obvious to see, even despite the fact that his features were warped by demonic features, what he was looking at horrified him that much.

"The Masked Knight of Holfort is here to vanquish you!" A heavily decorated armour wearing a cape and carrying a replica of the excalibur declared pointing the sword in question at Bernhard


The Holy Grail: Legendary Goblet of Ichor.

Among the great Seraphim arms few are matched in terms of fame than the Holy Grail, a simple goblet that was said to be used to catch the sacred blood of a demi God as he drew his final breath, as a result the grail possesses immeasurable life giving and healing power.

There have been many interpretations of the grail over the centuries, some say that the Grail is a symbol of motherhood, the grail's life giving properties referencing a woman's role in birthing a child, others have said that it was the act of bleeding into the goblet which grants immortality.

The general consensus is that whomsoever can find the legendary Holy grail and bend it's power to their will shall become invincible.

Except on Famous Seraphim Arms


Mylene stretched as she stood up from her desk, another sleepless night spent managing the flow of information that came into and went out of Holfort myriad of Noble territories. It has gotten easier to manage, for one thing the number of blatantly corrupt noblemen cramming her in-box full of redundant requests trying to squeeze more funds out of the royal family had been reduced, for another she had the AI Luxion and various people whose job was to help her that were no longer being deliberately withheld by her husband. Indeed it demonstrated the progress that their administrative work had made that Mylene had found time to sleep at all.

"Good morning." Luxion had come in floating above a serving trey full of Mylene's morning breakfast.

"I don't see the goblet I had here last night." Mylene noted with a tone of mild concern before she started eating her toast.

"Most likely the hired help took it to be washed when they came by after you fell asleep." Nothing too unusual mind you, that was part of their jobs.

"Well we better go find it." Mylene stated as she stood up. "It's a dungeon item that I'm rather fond of after all."

Something screeched to a halt in Luxion's mind as he heard the contents of what Mylene was saying.

"You brought an unknown drop item into the castle and didn't tell me!?" Luxion was not happy with the new revelation. "What does it do!?"

"It cured my stress ulcer when I drank the wine out of it." Mylene acted like her logic was infallible. "It's a healing item, what's the worst that can be done with it?" Then, as if Milo Murphy Jr himself was listening in on their conversation, the worst possible scenario occurred.

"The King is BACK!" Luxion diverted the nearest drone in the castle to go straight for Roland's room, he didn't normally keep a drone on the man, assuming that the threat that he represented had been neutralised, foolish him, because now he had made a full recovery, the goblet full of divine wine was on the floor spilling out a endless supply of the accursed liquid in question.

"THAT'S the worst that can be done with it!" Mylene just held her face as her stomach pains moved to her head. "I believe I will take advantage of the new situation." Luxion was already bringing up the file in question.

"My husband being back on is feet?" Mylene responded with mild confusion and full horror. "I received this message detailing an ongoing crisis in Alzer involving a demon invasion and a request for aide." Luxion projected a holographic image of the letter in question. "Fantastic, put Roland on the first ship to Alzer along with his Masked Knight Armour." If they were particularly lucky then they would actually be rid of him this time.


Leon didn't know what he found more deranged, the fact that Roland just waltzed up to this thing and started fighting or that someone, some where, actually thought it was a good idea to put him back into fighting shape. For now it wasn't important that Roland was up and fighting again, Leon just had to deal with Bernhard and his host Leon decided that why Roland was here was a question that could wait to be answered, instead he went back on the offensive.

"Back Fiend!" There was a rather annoying little pest caught up in the path of Leon's charge, but that too was something that could wait for later. "You have done enough-!"

Leon smacked Roland out of his way, to be more accurate Roland was pistol whipped as Leon pulled out one of the Hell Hound Shot guns as he trained his weapon on Bernhard and fired, the Sycophant moving into close quarters with Leon as he weaved past the first shot, and was met face first as Leon let off a bang with his leg weapon sending his knee straight into Bernhard's jaw and followed that up with another pistol whip.

Behind Bernhard Roland once again exploded onto scene, landing a slash to the back of the sycophant, before the mutated demon ducked out of the way of another shot gun blast sending a flaming dog skull past Bernhard and into Roland.

"You Dare strike the Greatest Her-!"

Bernhard abruptly grabbed Leon by his arm as he attempted to pistol whip him again and did an abrupt judo throw over his shoulder and landing on Roland.


Leos was doing all that he and his summons could do to keep up with the running battle, but he wasn't helped at all by the fact that neither of the combatants were afraid to reposition if it meant getting a leg up on their enemy, which also meant that these two were leaving a trail of wreckage in their wake that provided additional obstacles that Leos and his cohorts had to navigate through.

"Neither of them look like they're gonna run outta steam any time soon!" Leos noted bluntly, he had an awareness of Leon's affinities and knew about his own. Leon could draw magic from the shadow underneath Alzer, but the Sycophant was drawing energy from light: Neither of them were going to run out of steam any time soon.

"Trying to chase them down isn't working." Gladius made his own observations known. "We need a better way of handling these lunatics!"

It would be best if they could incapacitate Leo's worst half, though what they would do with it remains up for debate. No matter how you look at it Leos is screwed, say they do take down Leos's demon half, say that they can fuse them back together fantastic but so what? Bernhard is still the one in control of the half a demon's body, and if given such an opportunity he would be in control of Leos body as well. Either he dies, probably within the next few days and most likely in a hospital bed or he spends the rest of eternity as a meat suit to that deranged castle. Or he dies, here, today, making sure that monster cannot use him to bring harm to anyone else.

"Not great options." At this point it was looking like it would be none of the above, as Leos was thinking about that he thought back on some of the things that had been happening in the past year and then he was struck with a good dose of irony. "We need to Find Leon's women, one of them has what we need." Luckily Leos had a demonic camera drone that could fly into the air above any sort of dangerous creatures running rampant in the streets of Alzer, and from there watched as a trio of Girls were performing artillery based damage control from a Holfortian flying car.

"Ladies." Gladius perched himself on one of the mirrors of the car and Leos spoke through the demonic bird. "We haven't been formally introduced-"

"A talking bird?" Olivia moved to pick up the Gladius and watched as it turned into a sword in her hand. "A talking sword?"

"I am Leos, Leon's cousin." Real imaginative this family. "I am speaking to you through my familiar, it's not important." The sword turned back into a bird and perched itself on the windshield this time.

"Why are you speaking to us?" Angelica agreed with the need to break down to brass tacks.

"As you are aware that is a part of my body." The bird used a single wing to indicate the Sycophant that was fighting Leon for Bernhard. "If possible I would like to reclaim it but most likely we will have to kill it." It was unfortunate but necessary, Olivia wondered if they could find some exceptionally powerful Demon for a organ transplant like the ones that she had read about back in the library. "However while it is alive I would like the opportunity to try and salvage it." Yeah Olivia could sympathise with that feeling, she too was also exceptionally attached to her liver and would like to keep it.

"How?" Angelica asked in concern.

"The Nomicon, that demon possesses the power to erase people's minds." Leo's idea was actually pretty simple, inspired by the state that his own body has been in for the past decade, he would leave Bernhard brain dead, taking all of his malicious intentions with him.

"That could work, provided that we do get his host body." Nyar normally wouldn't be so keen to destroy a massive archive of knowledge like what Bernhard has. Not only has he accumulated the knowledge of the Dark Arts from all over the world but has also continued that research after the Umbran's fall. However If Bernhard should fall then that information will be lost and by extension absorbed by Nyar. The only issue here was making sure that they actually manage to do the body hopping parasite in.


As the girls were dealing with the Logistics of Bernhard Leon was continuing the fight against the entity in question, hammering away at the being in question with a version of the Shadow Boxer just as oversized as the rest of him was at the moment. By this point the army had finished the evacuations so now they had turned their attention to dealing with the main threat, that is to say Leon's opponent. The Warships opened up, Multiple BFG's were lowered from the underside of the hull and took aim at the monster who was still fighting Leon.

"Keep your aim sharp!" General Patton was leading the offensive in question. "If a single one of you hits the Demon Knight instead of that monster the only battlefield any of you will ever see again is the Latrines!"

The Blast Frequency Guns were highly effective anti-monster weapons, designed to disrupt the magic that makes up their physical form and causes them to break apart, so needless to say hitting Leon who was all demon at this point in time would be a bad thing. Luckily thanks to the initiative of a piece of Ancient tech this information could now make it to Leon.

"Is that all?" Idea had taken the liberty of carrying Noelle to the safety of Holfort's warships.

"Leave the rest to us!" Pulling out Idea's purse form Noelle had the ancient machine open up to a set of massive loud speakers. "Leon! They're going to open fire on the bastard hold him still!" Leon stomped his foot down on the ground, vines of Shadow and hair erupting from the ground to tie up the Sycophant.

"Fire away!" At Pattons command the ships all opened fire on the Sycophant at the same time, multiple balls of energy arcing off of one another as they collided with the Sycophant and concentrating the resulting offensive power into one spot. Then as they were in the middle of obliterating the demon in the middle of this madness...

"Stand down right now!" Angelica's voice suddenly came over the intercoms.

"Excuse me?" Patton didn't seem to think this was a very sound move, and many of his men were agreeing with him. "Do it right now!" A golden shield blew away all of the BFG shots, the Sycophant at the centre of the situation grinned while giving Leon a one finger salute.

"What're you so happy about!?"

"Why don't you go check on the state of your body?"

To Bernhard's taunt, Leon realised that he had been duped. At once Leon cancelled his own summon, his consciousness pulled back into his body, not only was he not on the iceberg now but he was in Alzer again, in a rather literally and figuratively messy situation.

"That Cheeky bastard!" Leon was covered in a pool of blood, something like black tar was visible in his veins as he struggled to get back up, the last thing he saw before he lost his newly regained consciousness was Angelica running up to him in a panic.


With Leon losing his consciousness the Sycophant also stopped its rampage, being stuck in the hunched over position that Leon had left it in when he was tied up and giving the opportunity to figure out what was happening.

"What's going on?" Angelica called the meeting in question, mostly between herself, the girls and Holfort's military.

"What happened to Leon?" Patton looked at Leon's unconscious form, being supported by Olivia, his veins had turned black and he was dripping with blood.

"Bernhard was laying the groundwork to hijack his body for months." Angelica explained as she held up the Nomicon. "Tell them."

"Gladly."Nyar emerged from the book in her full demon form."Leon has acquired forms from several of the Castle's inhabitants. Wolf from the Werewolfs, Snake from the Gorgons, and mist and bat from the Vampires."The Demoness gave a clinical breakdown of the explanation."When the castle's monsters turned people into monsters they would immediately be taken over by the castle itself."

"How long has Bernhard been planning to betray Leon!?" Leon gained these forms months ago.

"Were the Vampires and werewolves in on it too?" Noelle even pulled out the Hebi No Yomei. "What were you guys up to?"

"I don't think that was the case."Nyar voiced her own opinions on the matter."Bernhard is extremely intelligent. Even if it couldn't actively plot against Leon doesn't mean it can't do anything. It can for instance plant the idea of 'the power of Shape shifting will be useful to the young master' in the heads of the Castle's inhabitants, along with the idea of 'he's already a half demon stronger than us, so we can't turn him into a monster.'"Who thanks to Leon helping them they gave that power to him, perhaps individually they wouldn't do much, but combined they had a effect, and then for the clincher the part of him that was a demon suddenly disappeared."Bernhard doesn't need to do something like 'making a plan to advance his goals.' Plans are things that weaklings with limited Lifespans do to make effective use of a limited time span. Bernhard waits for opportunities to come to him, and then he takes advantage of those opportunities to create favourable situations for itself."Almost nothing happening here was a result of Bernhard's direct intervention, not getting a inexperienced master who trusted him, nor Leos's sycophant winding up inside of the tree, nor Pierre summoning a branch of the tree inside of the castle itself, nor Leon letting several of the Castle's demonic parasites into his body, he did however create several favourable situations for himself which now converged into a singular event.

"He did all of that while his hands were tied with the contract?" Nyar nodded her head in response.

"Everything that he did benefitted Leon after all, enhancing upon his natural shape shifting abilities and allowing him to more proficiently manipulate his demons. And until the moment he was physically capable of doing so Bernhard never betrayed him either."This was a new level of schemer.

And now the monster had broken free, it was even trying to take over Leon's and Leos's bodies.

"To what end?" Olivia asked looking at the group suspiciously.

"We have some ideas." The group looked around to a pair of familiar looking brothers, Dante and Vergil. "Right now this castle has two halfs of a demon that can play host body for it." Vergil held out his Katana as he emphasised his point. "Provided that it can separate them from the weak human parts, and then recombine them."

"Which makes these swords the perfect tools for the Job." As the two explained, a veritable horde of demons were emerging from the ruins and buildings that were around them. There weren't as many of the Vampires and Werewolves that Leon was more familiar with, there were however lots of undead, with ghostly figures floating above, disease ridden mutants and figures wearing primitive Armours.

"The Acolytes of Satan's forces." Angelica angrily gripped her spear recalling the description Leon gave before. A war was fought for control of the Castle for Hundreds of years, but in reality it was all under the Castle's control. For it's amusement? As sacrifices for something else? Or merely it was simply a Cauldron for generating more 'opportunities?' After all these horrors were now under Bernhard's control.

"First and final warning!" Angelica brought out multiple magic circles, each of them gathering flame to her side. "BACK OFF!"

Olivia appeared to come up with an idea.

"It's just negative emotions right?" Olivia questioned as she looked around the group. "I got an idea!"

"In the mean time, if you have that sword already I'd like you to use it." Leos stated looking at the Sycophant. "I know that I won't last long with my body like this. If I'm near death anyway, I'd like to support Leon at the very-ack!" Leos was stabbed through the back by Dante's sword, pinned to the body of his demonic half.

"Trust me dude, this is so much better when you don't see it coming." The organic looking sword glowed and Leos was sucked into the body of the Sycophant, the creature mutating and shrinking down as a result.


Leon found himself in a huge white space, ankle deep in the blood and the muck as he looked up at the monster responsible for this. A misshapen flesh golem made out of meat and bone and held together by blood, assembled together in a shape with no real rhyme or reason beyond a grotesquely hulking figure giving off the stench of rot.

"Hello Bernhard." Leon greeted the monster with a clear murderous blood-lust. "No more castle and no more puppet for you to hide behind. I guess this is what you really look like."

"How does it feel being a monster?"Already the demon was talking smack, not without good reason though, the only Devil Arm Leon felt within reach was his own, until a third part of this party made his presence known.

"Since when do you dress so nicely?" Leos was dressed in a white uniform with gold trim, like Leon who only had the Four Horsemen he too was with a single devil arm, a combination Shield and Sheath that was glowing with a mysterious light.

"It's the uniform of the Order of the Sword. I don't exactly have a lot of memories about combat capable clothes." For now the duo focused their attention on the creature that was in front of them.

"So you don't feel like wasting any time on this bloody puke either do you?" With that both of the Brothers from different Mothers zipped forward, propelled by their elements of Light and shadow, and nearly slammed into a block of spikes as Bernhard chose to porcupine himself to defend. The two stopped their charge, Leon opening fire and Leos pulling out spears from his shield as he hurled them against the giant mass of flesh. The monster slammed its fists into the blood in response, generating a wave of offensive power that forced the two half demons to take to the air in response, both young men turning into their demon forms in order to escape the wave of blood.

"I will feast upon your souls!"The flesh golem split over, a flayed torso attached to a head of long bloody hair emerged and started to whip through the air to slash at the two flying half demons who now had to navigate around the whips from multiple directions. Leos hurled another one of his spears through the air at the bloody head, and Leon followed up with a kick, slamming his foot into the butt of the spear and fired his weapon, driving the spear even deeper into Bernhard's form, before the mass burst apart spraying blades of blood in the duo's direction, Leon and Leos quickly moving away from the blood spray while Bernhard pulled himself back together again.

"We're wasting time!" Leon snapped as he glared at the demon angrily.

"Of course you are!"Every moment this fight goes on more of Bernhard's cursed blood pumps through the pair's veins and his grip on their bodies grow tighter, Leos was worst off, his human body was buying time but Bernhard's grip on his demonic side was quite firm."My victory is already assured, I'm merely taking the liberty of crushing the last of your resistance out of your worthless-!" Suddenly a huge beam of light slammed down on top of Bernhard.

"You misunderstand. The plan is to waste time!" Bernhard wasn't the only one who knew how to create favourable situations for himself.


Love: The Angel of Redemption.

A powerful Angel wielding a bow in battle, each of the six arrows contains the power of Abstinence, Civility, Faith, Intelligence, Patience and Humility.

Each arrow inspires feelings of their respective emotions in their targets when struck thus beginning their transformation into an angel.

For many a Love represents a final chance at redemption, should a soul about to be pulled into the abyss have the good fortune to encounter a Love then they bow their heads before the being and beg for the chance for redemption.

Of all Angels the Loves are the ones tasked with plunging through Inferno and using their power against demon kind, though the end result are Considered mere Sycophants following their new master's lead with time such beings may eventually ascend to become true angels.

Excerpt from the Hierarchy of Laguna


Olivia had a theory, or a gamble, but then she was up against a prolific gambler herself. Her first gamble was that there was some equivalent among the Angels to the Sloth, something whose job was to turn things into angels like the Sloth turned things into Demons, and that such a creature had a weapon she could use. Luckily Livia was also the most qualified person to enter the Adventurers guild warehouse and get the item in question, on account of the fact that she was also a master of barriers, and in the mean time Leon and Leos could be moved into place for the second part of the plan.

"People of Alzer!" Luckily what Olivia lacked in skill as a orator she could make up for by using her ability to manipulate minds to make people pay attention and directly shove her intentions into their skulls. "The monster that destroyed your nation is down but not out! With his final breath the abomination has infected the Champion Blackmore with its foul ichor!" Various gasps echoed out of the people gathered on the evacuation ships. "Help me gather your support! Focus your hopes here, and I will use them to purge this evil once and for all!"

And that was Hertrude's cue. At once the noirette played the Angel Flute, not to summon angels, but rather this song gathered all the positive feelings of the people in the air and pulled them into one place. Seizing on that ball of positivity, Olivia stabbed the arrows of Love into Leon and Leos.


Review Section:

RonaldM40196867: Danny Phantom would have to become relevant to Nickelodeon again for that to happen, Butch Hartman has been trying from what I hear but he has yet to succeed. I would prefer the second of the Devil May Cry games to receive the quality story/character writing and gameplay that it deserves the most, getting modern graphics and gaming resources to elevate it into a modern Triple A title, minus the predatory loot boxes of course, is just icing on the cake, Following that I would like the original Devil May Cry to receive expansion and similar improvements, followed by DMC 3.