The church doors groaned on rusted hinges, a sound like bones of mammoth breaking in slow motion.
I stepped into the main sanctuary of Church's underground area, boots echoing against cracked stone floors. Candlelight flickered across rows of rotting pews, casting shadows that danced along walls stained with decades of neglect. The air reeked of dust and decay.
At the far end, past the skeletal remains of what might've once been an altar, a ritual circle blazed with unholy light, triangular patterns drawn in what looked disturbingly like blood, pulsing with energy that made my skin crawl.
Asia Argento was nailed on a giant cross in the circle's center, wrists bound behind her back with glowing chains. White ceremonial robes draped her small frame against the filth surrounding her.
Three figures stood facing Asia like vultures looking at the prey.
WHOOSH
Raynare's head snapped toward me first, her eyes widening. The raven-haired Fallen Angel stood closest to Asia, one hand still raised mid-gesture over a ceremonial beginning that looked far too eager to act. Her school uniform from the time of being Issei's lover had been replaced with straps and buckles. Two black wings spread from her back.
"You?!" Her voice cracked with disbelief "How did you?! Where's Freed?!"
Kalawarner stood to Raynare's left, tensed the moment I entered. Her eyes narrowed, assessing me with the cold calculation of someone who'd survived by reading threats correctly.
Mittelt with Gothic Lolita aesthetic clashed violently with the casual murder in her violet eyes, frills and lace mixed with barely restrained bloodlust. The shortest of the three Fallen Angels shifted, her hand ready for light spear summoning.
"Did that psycho fail?!!" Her voice carried genuine surprise beneath the hostility
Twenty figures quickly turned to me holding light weapons which glinted in their hands, swords, guns. Their faces ranged from zealous to dead-eyed, but all shared the same eager anticipation of sanctioned violence. The closest one to me, a scarred man with burn marks crawling up his neck, grinned with teeth too white against damaged flesh.
Asia's green eyes found mine as recognition hit her "Motohama-san?" Her voice barely carried over the distance.
"Don't worry, Asia. They won't be able to lay a scratch on you, as long as I am here"
To think, I'd be one to give her directions to this place, leading her straight to the cage where she'd become a sacrifice. But tonight, the one who will be sacrificed will not be her.
"Well, well" Raynare's shock turned into dawned realization "You've been closer to our plans than we thought, haven't you?" She stepped away from Asia, those black wings spreading wider. Light energy crackled along her fingertips "But it doesn't matter now. You came here willingly. That's even better!"
"We were planning to extract just the nun's Sacred Gear tonight along with you" Those purple eyes raked over me with hunger that had nothing to do with lust "But it seems yours is even better, if you managed to kill that psycho. Whatever you have inside you, I want it!"
Kalawarner's expression remained neutral, but her posture shifted to face Raynare.
"Don't forget you promised me that I will be the one to get his Sacred Gear" she said glaring at Raynare "Perhaps I should—"
"Should what?" Raynare walked to her and leaned closer "Report back to Azazel? No. This is our chance, Kalawarner. Our chance to prove we're more than errand girls. You can still have Twilight Healing, Kalawarner. Don't be a fool when we are so close to achieving our goal!"
"But, we don't know if he really killed Freed?" Mittelt pointing at me with a mocking smile "He couldn't have killed so easily. Maybe Freed just got lost? Or found some human to torture on the way?" She twirled a light spear between her fingers like a knife.
The stray exorcists along the walls shifted with anticipation, weapons ready, eyes locked on me like I was tonight's entertainment. Burn-scar guy licked his lips, probably already imagining whatever creative torture techniques Freed had injected within them.
"Well, if you're talking about that foul mouth bastard, then yes he's dead. He is locked up in my basement" I said nonchalantly.
CRACK
The light spear in Mittelt's hand flared brighter "You're lying!"
"Am I?"
I pulled Freed's gun as I crushed it with my Haki coated fist.
Raynare's face went pale "How did you—"
"He came to my apartment all confident, waving his holy weapons around like he was God's child to bring judgement upon me. Then I dropped him in a hole he never coming back from. And now it's your turn"
"You see" I continued, taking a step forward "When one of you couldn't stand against me..." I met Raynare's eyes "Then what the fuck difference would a crazy exorcist make?"
Understanding dawned on her face like a sunrise nobody wanted to see.
"Dohnaseek." Her voice barely qualified as a whisper "You killed Dohnaseek?"
"Correct!" I confirmed cheerfully.
Raynare's wings exploded outward, black feathers filling the space like a murder of crows taking flight. She pointed at me with a sharp glare "KILL THAT FUCKING INSECT!"
"KILL HIM! KILL HIM NOW!"
The stray exorcists surged forward as one, a wave of black-clad zealots with murder in their eyes. Burn-scar led the charge, light sword blazing as he closed the distance with surprising speed. His battle cry mixed with nineteen others, creating a cacophony that should've been terrifying.
I smiled wider as Armament Haki coated both arms from shoulder to fingertips, turning flesh into something darker than midnight. The transformation happened in a second, black spreading across skin like living shadow. My fists ready to shatter and crush bones.
The first exorcist lunged at me swinging his light sword, which came down in an overhead strike meant to split me from crown to crotch but I caught the blade between Haki-coated palms, stopping it few inches from my face. Holy energy screamed against the hardened surface, trying desperately to burn through.
But, It failed.
SNAP
I twisted my wrists, shattering the light blade into fragments that dissolved into nothing. Burn-scar's eyes went wide with shock. That expression lasted exactly as long as it took me to drive my knee into his gut.
CRUNCH
His ribs caved under the impact, folding inward with sounds that reminded me of stepping on dry branches. Blood erupted from his mouth as he flew backward, crashing into three of his buddies hard enough to send all four sprawling across the floor.
The next three came at me from different angles with their light weapons blazing, faces twisted with righteous fury. They'd probably practiced this formation hundreds of times, but it's all going to waste.
I activated Eyes of Future on each one by one as they got close to me.
Ghost images overlaid my vision, prediction lines showing where each attack would land half a second before it happened. The high strike aimed for my throat, curving right to left. Low strike going for my knees, sweeping motion. Center thrust straight for my heart. So predictable.
I moved before they could even make their move. I dropped into a crouch that let the throat strike whistle over my head, rolled sideways to avoid the knee sweep, came up inside center-thrust's guard with my elbow already swinging. Haki-coated bone meeting the jaw with catastrophic force.
CRACK
The exorcist's head snapped back at an angle that made several watching zealots flinch. His body followed a moment later, crumpling like a puppet with cut strings. Dead before he hit the ground.
"GET BACK!" someone shouted from the back. "WE HAVE TO—"
I didn't let them finish.
The stone floor responded to my will with eager violence. It tore through foundations that had stood for decades, transforming stable ground into a deathtrap of erupting pillars and hungry gaps. Spikes of compressed stone burst upward in a circle around me, growing like sharp teeth from some buried predator's maw.
CRASHCRASHCRASH
Four exorcists got caught in the initial eruption.
One took a spike through the thigh, pinning him to the floor with a scream that echoed off the rafters. Another got clipped in the ribs, the impact spinning him like a top before gravity remembered he existed. The third and fourth managed to dodge, light weapons carving through stone in desperate defensive strikes.
They died anyway.
I flowed through the forest of stone pillars I'd created, Haki-coated fists finding targets with an ease. A throat strike that crushed windpipe. A temple blow that cracked skull. A heart punch that stopped heart rhythm. Each kill happened faster than the last, my new precognition ability showing me openings before they fully formed.
The Eyes of Future turned combat into a conversation I could read ahead in.
Mittelt's shriek cut through the carnage as I looked above "DIE!"
FWOOOOOM
Light spears rained from above, dozens of them, each one trailing burning light as they fell. The Gothic Lolita Fallen Angel hovered twenty feet up, eyes blazing with fury, those ridiculous frills and lace somehow making her look more dangerous.
Prediction lines painted their trajectories across my vision in ghostly white, eighteen spears in a spread pattern designed to saturate the area, eliminate escape routes, turn me into a pincushion. Mittelt had probably done this before and watched dozens of targets try to dodge and fail.
Too bad for her I wasn't one of those targets.
Stone erupted from the floor in a dome over my position with Haki coating them enough to stop tank rounds. Light spears hammered into it with holy energy searing away chunks of compressed earth.
BOOMBOOMBOOM
Each impact sending shockwaves through the stone that I felt in my bones. But the dome held against her madness
Mittelt's frustrated scream told me she'd noticed "STOP HIDING LIKE A COWARD! YOU FILTHY HUMAN!!"
More spears fell, dozens becoming hundreds. She was burning through energy like a wildfire, probably convinced that overwhelming force would crack my defense. The dome's surface glowed cherry-red in places where concentrated holy energy ate through layers of stone.
I waited.
Let her exhaust herself trying to break through, and waste power on a target she couldn't see. Meanwhile, I extended my earthbending awareness outward, feeling vibrations through the stone. Twenty exorcists had become thirteen. Four were injured badly enough to be combat ineffective. The remaining nine were regrouping near the ritual circle while they figured out what the fuck just happened to their easy night.
Mittelt's bombardment finally stopped.
Her breathing came in ragged gasps, audible even through the stone between us "Is he dead?" she panted. "Did I get him?"
I dropped the dome as stone collapsed inward, dissolving back into the floor like it had never existed. Mittelt's eyes went wide, hovering there in shocked silence as I stood unharmed in the center of cleared space. Dust settled around me in lazy swirls, catching candlelight.
"My turn" I said.
The floor beneath her shadow erupted. A pillar of compressed stone shot upward faster than she could process, growing like a tree in fast-forward. Mittelt tried to dodge, wings beating frantically, but she'd positioned herself directly above me. Rookie mistake.
SLAM
The pillar caught her in the ribs with the force of a freight train, driving her upward into the church's vaulted ceiling. Stone met the skull with a sound like a watermelon dropped from ten stories. Cracks spiderwebbed across ancient masonry as Mittelt's small body embedded itself in the ceiling.
She hung there for a moment, arms and legs dangling.
Then gravity remembered its job.
THUD
Mittelt hit the floor hard enough to bounce, violet eyes rolled back, blood trickling from her nose and mouth. Those ridiculous frills were stained red now, the Gothic Lolita aesthetic ruined by brutal reality. Her wings twitched once, twice, then went still.
Nine exorcists near the ritual circle exchanged panicked glances.
Their formation had dissolved into barely controlled chaos, light weapons trembling in hands that suddenly understood they were outmatched. Asia still behind their protective group, green eyes wide with shock and something that might've been horror. Watching me kill with the efficiency of someone who'd done this before.
I probably looked like a monster to her right now. But that's a concern for later.
"You better make your move" My voice echoed off blood-splattered walls, bouncing between broken pews "Because none of you going to be walking out alive"
Burn-scar, somehow still conscious despite his caved ribs, spat blood "Fuck... you... Devil scum..."
The floor beneath all nine became quicksand.
Stone liquefied without warning, transforming solid ground into hungry earth that grabbed legs and pulled. The exorcists' screams cut off as they sank to their waists, then chests, then necks. Light weapons fell from hands that couldn't maintain grip. Panic replaced training as nine zealots realized they were drowning in never ending abyss.
Asia's chains kept her suspended above the sinking floor, watching helplessly.
I solidified the stone at neck-height, trapping them in place. Nine heads protruded from the sanctuary floor like the world's most disturbing garden. Their eyes bulged with terror, mouths working soundlessly as they tried to scream through compressed lungs.
"Please" one of them managed to wheeze "Please, we were just—"
I kept walking forward, boots clicking against the stone.
Raynare stood frozen near the altar, wide eyes locked on me with an expression I couldn't quite parse. Fear mixed with disbelief mixed with desperate calculation. Kalawarner had backed against the far wall, her eyes tracking my movement like a cornered animal watching a predator approach.
I reached the first trapped exorcist and placed my Haki-coated palm on his head.
"Wait—"
CRACK
His skull crumpled under five hundred pounds of pressure applied directly downward. Blood and brain matter squeezed out between compressed stone and destroyed bone. The sound was wet and final.
I moved to the next one.
"No, no, no—"
CRACK
Same result with unsettling permanent silence.
By the third one, they stopped begging and just whimpered. By the fifth, even the whimpers had died. I worked my way through all nine with precision, crushing each skull like overripe fruit. Blood pooled around my boots, mixing with stone dust to create a rust-colored paste.
When I finished, the sanctuary smelled like a slaughterhouse.
"M-Monster..." Raynare breathed. Her hands shook around the light spears, knuckles white with pressure "You're a fucking monster!"
"Says the Fallen Angel about to sacrifice a teenage girl" I kept walking toward her, each step measured "Based on what I saw in his memories about them, this was just 30 percent of unjustice they got. Lucky them"
FWOOOOM
She threw the first spear with everything she had. Magenta light traced a burning line across the sanctuary, aimed straight for my heart. Raynare's face twisted with fury and fear in equal measure, black wings spread wide. The spear moved faster than sound.
I saw it coming from a mile away. Eyes of Future painted its trajectory across my vision, I sidestepped.
The spear missed by inches, so close I felt the heat singe the fabric of my shirt. It embedded itself in the wall behind me with a BOOM that shook the entire structure. The wall exploded outward in a shower of debris.
Raynare was already throwing the second spear, this one aimed at my head. Then a third at my legs. A fourth at my gut. She'd gone full chaotic, summoning and hurling light spears as fast as her Fallen Angel physiology allowed.
Prediction lines filled my vision. Four trajectories, all timed to hit simultaneously from different angles.
Stone erupted around me with pillars rising and tilting to intercept each spear. Holy energy met compressed earth with thunderous impacts that shook the sanctuary's foundations. Chunks of stone exploded away from contact points, filling the air with deadly shrapnel.
I charged through the dust cloud before it settled, Haki-coated fists leading the way. Raynare's eyes went wide as I closed the distance faster than she could process, those black wings beating frantically to gain altitude.
"Too slow"
I caught her ankle mid-takeoff, fingers crushing delicate bones with overwhelming pressure. She screamed, twisting to stab downward with a freshly summoned light spear, but Eyes of Future showed me the attack path half a second early.
I jerked my head sideways, letting the spear pass close enough to graze my cheek. Then I yanked hard on her ankle, using her own momentum against her.
SLAM
Raynare hit the floor hard enough to crack stone, air exploding from her lungs. Those black wings crumpled beneath her with sounds like breaking glass. She tried to roll away, tried to summon another spear, tried to do anything that might save her.
I stomped on her chest. Haki-coated boot crushed her sternum with a sound like bubble wrap popping. Raynare's scream turned into a wet gurgle as broken ribs punctured lungs. Blood bubbled from her lips, staining perfect teeth red.
"Wait," she gasped, purple eyes finding mine through tears of agony "Wait, we can... we can make a deal..."
"Not interested"
I pressed down harder, feeling ribs collapse further. Her struggles grew weaker, more desperate. Those black wings beat uselessly against stone, feathers scattering like dark snow.
"Please... I can... information... Grigori... anything you want..."
Her eyes went wide with genuine shock, like she'd never actually considered this outcome possible. Raynare, the Fallen Angel who'd murdered Issei in canon, who'd tortured Asia, who'd treated human life like it was worthless, met the very same fate she wished upon them.
I pulled my fist back, coating it in the darkest Haki I could manage. Raynare's eyes tracked the movement, understanding dawning too late.
"No—"
CRUNCH
My fist went through her chest, ribs exploding outward, Haki-coated knuckles finding her heart and crushing it in a single convulsive squeeze. Blood erupted from the wound, coating my arm to the elbow.
Raynare's mouth opened in a silent scream.
Her body spasmed once, twice, then went completely still. Those eyes glazed over, staring at nothing. The light spears she'd been summoning dissolved into magenta motes that faded against blood-soaked stone.
I pulled my arm free, letting her corpse slump sideways.
Silence crashed over the area like an aftermath of madness in war.
Kalawarner stood frozen against the far wall, face drained of all color. Her eyes locked on Raynare's body, on the spreading pool of blood, on my dripping fist. When her gaze finally rose to meet mine, I saw something I recognized in the last moment of both Raynare and Freed.
Pure, unadulterated terror.
"You're next" I said.
She bolted.
Black wings exploded from her back as she dove for the nearest window, moving with the desperate speed of someone who knew death was three steps behind. Glass shattered as she crashed through, arms raised to protect her face.
A pillar shot upward, clipping her wings mid-flight and sending her tumbling through the air. She hit the ground hard, rolled, tried to get her feet under her.
My hand closed around her throat before she could scream, lifting her off the ground to meet my gaze. Kalawarner clawed at my arm, her eyes wide with panic, wings beating uselessly against my grip.
I pressed one of DISC against her forehead.
"What—"
The DISC activated as her eyes rolled back, body going rigid as the DISC interfaced directly with her mind.
All of it flooding into Kalawarner's consciousness like water into a drowning victim's lungs. Her mouth opened in a soundless scream, back arching as the DISC rewrote core personality subroutines. The process took maybe five seconds, five seconds where her entire sense of self got altered on a fundamental level.
When I pulled the DISC away, her eyes refocused, changed in ways she probably didn't even understand yet.
"What did you do to me?" Her voice came out small, confused "I feel... I can't..."
"Silence"
I set her down as she couldn't speak anything and just follow what I said. The commands I'd embedded would ensure her loyalty, make betrayal literally impossible. She'd serve me because her brain wouldn't let her do anything else.
Three minutes is enough to get Asia down here and explain the situation.
I turned back to the sanctuary, leaving Kalawarner to process her new reality. Asia still tied, her green eyes tracking my approach with undisguised fear. Her bound wrists trembled, white robes stained with blood splatter from the carnage surrounding her.
"M-Motohama-san" she whispered as I approached.
I dissolved the glowing chains binding her wrists with a basic binding magic spell, the magic dissipating like smoke "You okay?"
She nodded slowly, rubbing circulation back into her hands "I don't understand... you killed them all... but you saved me?"
"Don't think about it too much. Let's get out of here first"
Asia's gaze drifted to Raynare's and Mittelt's corpse, to the nine heads still protruding from the stone floor like macabre sculptures "Are you... are you a Devil?"
"Nope" I stood, offering her my hand "Just very good at violence, when it demands"
She took it hesitantly, letting me pull her to her feet. Her legs shook, nearly giving out before I steadied her "So...what will now, Motohama san?"
"Now?" I looked around the blood-soaked sanctuary, at the destruction I'd wrought, at Kalawarner standing motionless near the shattered window "Now I figure out what to do with you and my new pet Fallen Angel"
DING!
The familiar blue screen with text appeared in my vision.
```
[QUEST COMPLETED: The Fallen's Gambit]
Objective Complete: Put an end to the Fallen Angels' plan
Reward: Rank 7 Gacha Ticket
```
I dismissed the notification with a thought. The Rank 7 ticket can wait after I'd dealt with the immediate clusterfuck of having a traumatized nun and a mind-controlled Fallen Angel in my possession.
Sigh, I just wanted to have some nice dinner.
. . .
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