Oblivion was stronger in Hungary than anywhere else. You could tell the second the sky went pitch black over Győr. They hit like a goddamn sledgehammer, with that kind of fury that seemed to scream "we're taking back our territory".
The city burned beneath us.
Orange flames reflected across shattered windows and flooded streets while the Rába tore through the center like it was possessed—black water twisting and rising in thick demonic coils. The river looked completely fucked, its torrents rising into the air like snakes.
And the vampires were getting massacred.
The devils hammered them across rooftops and church spires with brutal waves of water magic. Any idiot who tried to take off got crushed mid-air. Every miss ended the same: a body smashing through brick, a scream cut short, then gone—swallowed by the burning streets below.
Honestly, it was probably as powerful as the Sitri clan's ancestral ability. But unlike true water magic, this was fake.
Stitched it together with body mods and lab experiments instead of actual talent.
And yet—
It worked.
Hungarian vampires kept falling one after another, unable to even use the night properly under the pressure of the mist blanketing the city. The land didn't answer them the way Romania answered us back home.
It didn't resonate with me either.
Not because I was "less Hungarian."
But their bloodlines were never rooted as deep as the old Transylvanian and Wallachian ones. Vlad's soil still remembers the fear. Even now.
On the other hand, the Hungarian soil seemed to resonate with Oblivion.
Great.
Yapping aside—we were getting our asses kicked.
Hard.
Bencze and his girlfriend were already bleeding out on the rooftop nearby. And I wasn't doing much better. Icecalibur shattered like cheap glass after eating a direct water blast from some devil punk I'd been fighting earlier.
Frozen shards fell on the roof around me.
The bastard slowly approached through the rain.
"You're the Hero of Nagano?" He laughed, cracking his neck. "The one the Supreme Leader keeps jerking off about? Pathetic."
Before I could set my stance, his boot slammed into my stomach.
The kick folded me and launched me straight into a concrete wall. Ribs screamed. Pain exploded behind my eyes.
Suzuka flinched hard when she saw me crash. She was already kneeling next to Bencze and the girl, Astral Dress glowing soft blue while healing winds swirled around her hands.
Soft blue light.
Black smoke.
It looked almost ridiculous against the burning city.
Her eyes snapped to mine—wide, worried.
I pushed myself up against the rubble and gave her a look.
Handle them first.
She hesitated half a second, then nodded.
The healing winds kicked up stronger. Bencze coughed up blood and forced himself upright. The girl next to him gasped as the wounds on her side sealed shut.
Haruka dropped beside me right after, ice cracking under her feet as she threw up a frozen barrier. Water smashed into it instantly, spiderwebbing cracks across the surface.
"They're strong as hell if they even managed to beat you up like this," she muttered.
Then she flashed that stupid teasing grin of hers anyway, lifting one hand dramatically as snowflakes formed around her fingers.
"Don't worry, Kokonoe-kun. I'll protect you~".
I let out a tired groan.
"Thanks, shawty," I muttered, half sarcastic, half genuinely relieved.
Haruka blinked.
"…What the hell is a shawty?"
"No idea."
Beside us, Suzuka finished healing the other two and let out a tired breath. Bencze muttered something in Hungarian before switching.
"Kösz— I mean… thanks."
Guess Budapestians handled English better than the vidék crowd.
Barely.
The girl next to him gave Suzuka a weak smile.
"Really… thank you," she said. "My name is Zsuzsa. Nice to meet you… and you are?"
Suzuka smiled gently despite the explosions echoing through the city behind us.
"Claire," she answered softly, her French accent slipping naturally into the word. "You can call me Claire."
Then she hurried over to me, kneeling close.
"Kokonoe-kun… are you okay?" she asked quietly, hands already moving over my ribs.
"Been better," I replied.
Warm wind wrapped around us.
The pain dulled, cuts closing smoothly. Slowly, my strength was coming back.
Honestly, she was turning into an even better healer than Asia with her Twilight Healing.
With her Spirit power, it checks out. Really.
I looked around me, watching the battlefield with my bloodshot eyes.
The battle had just begun.
Haruka glanced over her crumbling barrier, consistently hammered down by those persistent water blasts. "So… what the hell do we do now? We can't just sit here and wait to get drowned."
I wiped blood from my mouth and looked at Suzuka.
I wasn't particularly hungry, but I felt like if I don't get a powerup now, we might as well get cooked. And, honestly, that fucking ass puppet calling me a weakling was starting to get on my nerves.
"Suzuka… No, Claire. I need your blood. Just enough to push through this shit, te rog, mersi."
She didn't even hesitate. Her cheeks flushed a little, but she tilted her head and pulled her collar aside. "Take as much as you need, Kokonoe-kun. I trust you."
I sank my fangs into her neck carefully. The aroma hit my taste buds like a piece of Airways chewing gum, a chilling wind running through my spine. Her Spirit powers.
I pulled back after a few solid seconds, licking the wound closed.
"Alright. New plan," I said, voice steadier now. "We stop playing defense. Suzuka, I need your wind for this. Haruka, we're going full blizzard. I'll cloak us in mist and spam missiles from above. We punch straight through their lines and make them regret showing up."
Suzuka stood up, the winds gently wrapping around her. For the first time since I'd known her, she called it properly. "Aliziel… come forth."
A tall, vertical harp materialized behind her, shimmering with pale-blue wind currents. Carved of translucent glass, her Spirit Angel—as I've come to know it's named—made the air around us shift with the weight of its presence alone.
Haruka grinned wide. "Now we're talking. Let's freeze these bastards."
I summoned Nelu to my side with a sharp whistle. The crystalline ice bird moved from the sidelines where it was struggling to dodge Oblivion's water magic, frost wings spreading as it screamed. I jumped on its back, feeling the cold power link with my vampire blood. "Let's move."
We launched.
Nelu shot upward through the rain, spamming ice missiles. This time I went for the Shahab-1, the Iranian SRBM—older, heavier, and far more volatile in its liquid-fuel core. Which made it perfect for what I was aiming for, fueling the reactor with the poison I used against Riser. With the wind power borrowed from Suzuka, I began coordinating them, guiding each launch so they would hit their targets with maximum precision.
Haruka unleashed a torrent blizzard below, driving razor snow and ice spikes across the rooftops, forcing the devils into tight clusters.
Suzuka followed with Aliziel, blasting into the enemy lines. Pale blue tsunamis erupted from her harp, and the devils caught in the storm were either torn apart outright or left with wounds that refused to close.
I pushed deeper, spreading thick vampire mist from my body—dark, heavy Romanian fog that swallowed light and sound. It made us damn near invisible to their water mages. They swung blindly while we carved through.
For a few brutal minutes we actually turned the tide. Devils fell in chunks. Frozen bodies hit the flooded streets. Mist and blizzard mixed into a white-green hell that the artificial water magic couldn't fight back against.
I smirked from Nelu's back, fangs still out. "Not bad for a half-breed, huh?"
But I knew it was temporary. We'd bought breathing room. The real question was how long it would last before the big ones showed up.
The answer? Not long. The sky cracked open wider with that same fucking red rain spell they used in Brașov came back, way more effective now. It was twice as thick now. And what's worse? The red rain mixed straight into the devils' river control like the two things were made for each other. The Rába turned into a boiling red-black nightmare — every serpent and wave now carried that acidic burn, melting anything it touched.
"Fuck, not this bullshit again" I growled from Nelu's back.
Our little winning streak died in seconds.
The bloody rain slammed straight into Haruka's blizzard like a truck. Her razor snow and ice spikes started melting mid-air, turning into useless steam. A massive tainted wave blew up and caught her from the side. She screamed as the red-black water burned across her shoulder and ribs, eating through her ice armor.
"Haruka!" I barked.
She tried to freeze the wound shut but the corrosion fought her. Blood mixed with red rain as she dropped lower, barely staying airborne.
I caught her. Barely.
Below us, Bencze and Zsuzsa got hammered. A red-tainted serpent smashed right into their position. Bencze took a brutal hit across his chest, the acid burning deep. Zsuzsa got splashed across her legs and screamed as it started melting skin.
Same thing happened to the vampires, their ranks falling left and right.
Suzuka's Aliziel harp glowed desperately behind her, pale-blue winds whipping out in every direction. She was playing double duty — she was our only remaining attacking force, blasting tsunamis into the devils while trying to throw healing pulses over all of us at once. I could see the strain on her face. The harp strings were vibrating hard, but the red rain kept pushing back against her gales.
A heavy sheet of the shit clipped Nelu's left wing. The crystalline frost sizzled and cracked. Pain shot back through our link like fire in my nerves. I gritted my teeth and kept launching the Shahab-1 missiles, bigger and meaner, laced with the cocktail poison and Suzuka's wind guidance. A couple still hit clean, blowing devils apart, but most were losing power too fast in the corrosive downpour.
Another red-black wave came roaring up. I tried to dodge but it clipped me hard across the back and left arm. The burn was immediate — like someone poured molten acid mixed with holy water on vampire skin. My regeneration fought it, but the Hungarian soil wasn't helping worth a damn. Blood ran hot down my side.
Suzuka's tsunamis ripped through a cluster of devils, but right after she had to switch and throw a wide healing aura over us. The effort made her stumble in the air. She was getting overstretched bad — healing four injured people while still trying to stay on the offensive. Her winds were starting to drown.
Haruka took another splash across her thigh and cursed loudly, her usual dramatism cracking under the pain. "These fuckers… my leg—!"
I felt another missile destabilize mid-flight and explode uselessly against the rain that was pretty much becoming an air defence system. The poison wasn't spreading like it should. My mist was boiling away in huge patches now, leaving us more exposed by the second.
We'd gone from carving through their lines to barely holding together. Bencze was coughing blood on a half-melted rooftop. Zsuzsa couldn't even stand. Haruka was limping through the air on damaged ice. And I was burning while Suzuka looked like she was about to collapse from mana drain.
This wasn't a fight anymore.
It was a slow drowning in acid.
"Fuck this country," I muttered through clenched fangs, wiping red-black sludge from my eyes. "We need to pull back before one of us actually dies here."
Easier said than done.
The red-black slurry kept rising. Another tainted wave slammed into us and I felt Nelu's wing crack harder. My back and arm were on fire, regeneration barely keeping up. Haruka was cursing through gritted teeth as she tried to freeze a wound on her thigh shut. Bencze and Zsuzsa were both down, barely conscious. Suzuka's harp glowed desperately, as she was starting to look pale from exhaustion.
"This is getting pathetic," I muttered, spitting blood.
I hadn't felt much of that fucking spell the last time, but the circumstances were different. I was fighting on Romanian soil. My wounds healed faster than they could make them.
But not here. Not in Hungary.
The Hungarian branch seemed genuinely fueled by nationalism, like the land itself was craving expansion.
For a moment, I stared at the blood-red sky, unsure what to make of it.
And suddenly, the sky split once again — not with blood, but with that familiar crimson-and-black aura of Gremory teleportation circles.
Rias and her peerage dropped in, right above the worst of the fighting. Sona and her group appeared right after them, water constructs already forming around the Sitri peerage.
Real water magic, not the modified joke the Oblivion puppets were flaring.
And, damn, you guys always take your fucking time, don't you?
Rias's eyes widened as she took in the burning city, the flooded streets turned into corrosive red-black hell, and the Hungarian vampires getting melted alive below. "What… the hell is this? This isn't a skirmish, this is a massacre!"
"Yeah, welcome to real war," Haruka and I muttered at the same time before exchanging a brief look.
Hyoudou floated beside her in Scale Mail, jaw dropped. "Buchou… the whole river is moving like it's alive. And that red rain— it's eating through buildings!"
Akeno smiled dangerously, though her eyes were cold. "Ara ara… they really went all out. How unpleasant."
Kiba gripped his swords tighter, scanning the chaos. "This scale of destruction… they're not holding back at all."
Xenovia whistled low. "Looks like we showed up just in time. Asia, stay behind me."
Asia looked horrified, hands already glowing with Twilight Healing. "So many injured… I'll start healing them right away!"
Koneko looked us over, and her gaze landed on me. "Senpai…," she muttered, voice barely audible.
Sona adjusted her glasses, her expression calm but sharp as she observed the artificial water serpents and the red rain feeding into them. "Kokonoe-kun… leveraging the promise of future support and aid for this entire campaign is downright blackmail, you know that?"
I laughed hoarsely from Nelu's back, fangs out, blood dripping down my side. "Call it what you want, Kaichou. We're still trying to hold the goddamn line here."
Haruka, limping through the air on cracked ice, flashed a pained but theatrical grin. "Took you long enough, outsiders. We've been freezing our asses off keeping these bastards busy."
Bencze pushed himself up on one elbow, coughing blood, and glared at the devils still laughing from their positions. "These devils… they're arrogant as hell. Treating my city like their playground."
Yeah, I feel you, bro. But everyone else decided it's better to just ignore him. Thankfully.
Rias's crimson hair flashed in the wind as her Power of Destruction formed around her. "Everyone! Form up! We're not letting them drown this city!"
Hyoudou boosted hard. "Alright! Let's do this!"
The ORC charged forward. Rias hurled spheres of Destruction that erased chunks of the red-tainted water serpents on contact. Issei pulled ahead with Boosted Gear, smashing through enemy lines while Akeno rained Holy Lightning down on clusters of water mages.
Kiba, Xenovia and Koneko carved through the devils on the rooftops, Asia throwing healing light wherever she could.
Sona's peerage moved with precision — Tsubaki's mirrors reflecting corrosive waves while Sona herself started contesting the river's artificial flow with her own water technique.
For the first time since the red rain started, the pressure eased just a little.
I smirked despite the burning pain across my back.
"About fucking time."
However, the red-black acid kept pouring down like the world itself wanted us dead. Suzuka was fading fast behind her harp, pale-blue winds growing thinner with every pulse. Haruka was limping hard on cracked ice platforms.
Bencze and Zsuzsa looked half-melted on the rooftop. My back and arm burned like someone poured lava on them, and Nelu's wing was cracking louder with every beat.
We were done.
I sighed, glaring up at the rain. "We've gotta get rid of that thing."
Sona looked me over, a silent question hanging in her eyes. "What do you suggest, Kokonoe-kun?"
"No idea. Last time, I managed to break it, but the spell was weaker back then," I replied. "And Elmenhilde somehow knew what to do, despite Brașov being the first real battle she'd ever fought in."
"I have an idea…," Rias muttered, before raising her voice as if she could cut through the storm with her tone alone.
"Issei! Transfer everything you have into me! We're ending that cursed rain right now!"
Hyoudou grinned through the pain of the corrosion eating at his Scale Mail. "You got it, President!
**BOOST! BOOST! BOOST!**"
The red gauntlet roared. Power surged. Hyoudou slammed his hand on Rias's back and transferred the massive buildup straight into her.
Rias's crimson aura exploded outward, eyes glowing with raw Power of Destruction. "This spell is anchored in the clouds and the river. If we hit the core layer hard enough… we break both at once!"
She rocketed upward, Hyoudou right beside her in full flight. Rias gathered a massive sphere of Destruction between her hands — swirling, erasing reality itself — while Issei kept boosting and feeding her more.
"**Explosion!**"
The blast ripped into the crimson sky like a goddamn nuke. The red rain cloud layer shattered in a deafening crack. Chunks of corrupted magic rained down as harmless vapor. The corrosive downpour stuttered, then began to thin dramatically. The black-red serpents in the Rába thrashed wildly as their power source destabilized.
The battlefield actually went quiet for a second.
Rias dropped back down, breathing hard but smirking triumphantly. "That should buy us time!"
Issei landed heavily, Scale Mail smoking. "Heh… not bad, right?"
For a brief moment, the battlefield breathed. The red rain thinned dramatically. The black-red serpents in the Rába thrashed and began collapsing.
I allowed myself a single ragged breath of relief.
Then the sky punished us for it.
A final, massive surge of residual red-black acid erupted from the dying river like a dying beast's last strike. A colossal tainted serpent exploded upward — bigger than anything we'd seen before — and slammed straight into me and Nelu.
The impact was catastrophic.
Nelu's wing shattered with a sickening crack. I was ripped off his back and sent crashing through two rooftops, the corrosive acid eating deep into my chest, left shoulder, and side. My vampire regeneration burned white-hot trying to fight it, but the damage was too severe, too fast. Blood poured from my mouth as I slammed into the final rooftop, barely conscious.
My vision was dulling until I could barelt see anything anymore. I felt my body failing down the sky in slow motion.
"TAKASHI!"
Haruka's voice reached me first. Takashi. Not Kokonoe. Haha…
"No way… Michel—!"
Suzuka. Her shocked shriek tore my eardrums like a thud dropping.
I heard something crack nearby.
"…Senpai," Koneko muttered. Quietly. Too quietly.
But I feel lighter…
Am I dying?... Haha, what a joke…
Not here… Not like this…
My life flashed before my eyes like a broken
Brașov. Mihai's Brașov. My family. My school life. My return. The struggle to do the jobs, my fall into drugs, the content moderation. Diana.
Then Kokonoe's Brașov. Grandma's shocked, frozen eyes. The purple Twingo pulling away with little me crying in the back seat. My father's trembling arms as I handed her over.
Japan. Kuoh. Getting revived by Rias and meeting the ORC. My rivalry with Hyoudou and my friendship with Koneko. Saving Suzuka from Trash. Meeting Haruka. Nagano. Suzuka's awakening in Paris.
Pure, burning spite rose in me despite the agony.
Fuck you…
I REFUSE TO DIE HERE!
"Nelu…" I growled through clenched, bloodied teeth, forcing my broken body to move even as acid continued eating into my flesh.
The Sacred Gear screamed in response — a prehistoric, furious howl from the depths of my soul.
Balance Breaker.
A violent spiral of ice exploded outward from me. The temperature plummeted so hard I heard buildings crack. Nelu's form surged massively, transforming into a full spectral Archaeopteryx — an ancient, extinct predator reborn in glacial fury. Jagged wings made of layered ice feathers and fossilized bone spread wide across the sky. Ancient claws and serrated teeth gleamed under the moonlight. A cryonic halo pulsed above its head as freezing mist and tiny fossil shards swirled in a deadly aurora around us.
The Gear merged with me. Dense blackened ice armor erupted across my body — flexible, regenerative, and laced with Romanian poison. My bat wings fused and expanded into massive Archaeopteryx wings. My hair froze into sharp icy spikes. Fangs elongated into serrated daggers. My eyes burned blood-red.
Frozen Extinction - Archaeopteryx Glacialis.
The entire battlefield became my domain. An ancient, primal dread radiated outward, making even the devils instinctively flinch.
I raised one hand. Dozens of massive Shahab-1 style ice missiles materialized around Nelu mid-air, each one bigger, more volatile, and packed with poison.
With a flick, they launched in salvos, guided by faint emerald wind trails from Suzuka's fading support. They slammed into Oblivion formations like vengeance, exploding in toxic blizzards that froze and melted devils from the inside.
Haruka laughed through the pain, her dramatic flair returning as she pushed her own ice to the limit. "That's more like it, Kokonoe-kun! Now watch a real Yuki-onna work!"
She unleashed a full torrent blizzard across an entire street, turning a charging group of water mages into frozen statues that shattered under their own corrupted river waves.
Suzuka, breathing easier now that the rain was broken, smiled tiredly and struck Aliziel's harp strings harder. Pale-blue wind tsunamis rolled out in wide arcs, shredding devils while simultaneously flooding healing energy into all of us. "I've got your backs… everyone!"
Kiba flashed forward in Knight speed, Sword Birth creating a forest of demonic blades that impaled water constructs. "These artificial spells are impressive… but they lack soul."
Xenovia charged beside him like a holy wrecking ball, Durandal glowing. "Then we'll cut them down to size!" She cleaved straight through a massive red-black serpent, exploding it into harmless water.
Akeno rained Holy Lightning from above, her sadistic smile wide. "Ara ara~ You boys really thought you could play with weather like this?"
Asia moved between the injured, Twilight Healing glowing brightly. "Please hold on! I won't let anyone die here!"
Sona directed her peerage with cold precision. "Tsubaki, mirror the river flow back at them. We reclaim this water." Her own technique clashed directly with the remaining artificial magic, slowly wresting control of sections of the Rába.
Bencze forced himself up fully, fangs bared. "You arrogant puppet devils… thinking Hungary is yours to drown."
The Oblivion soldiers started falling back in disarray. Their perfect synergy broken, the red rain gone, and now facing coordinated High-class devils plus our battle-hardened bullshit, they clearly decided living to fight another day was smarter.
Then a new presence landed hard on a nearby rooftop.
I have just returned from engaging that madman LaVey himself. The bastard is even stronger than our reports suggested. We held him at bay… but only just."
He swept his gaze across the devastated city, then back to me atop the massive spectral Archaeopteryx, the cryonic halo still pulsing coldly above us.
"We cannot hold Győr in its current state. It is too exposed. We should withdraw the main base to Sopron. The defensive lines are superior there, and it sits closer to our ancestral borders. A more… tenable position from which to regroup and strike back."
I remained mounted on Nelu, ancient ice wings folded slightly, and gave him a tired nod.
"About damn time someone said something smart."
The Oblivion forces were in full retreat now. The burning city still smoldered, but for the first time that night, we weren't the ones drowning.
We survived.
Barely.
But Hungary was still bleeding.
And this war was far from over.