The Darkness Devil lowered its massive torso.
It had absolutely no intention of fleeing. Hell was only so vast, and besides, this domain was supposed to be its home turf.
The viscous, impenetrable dark enveloped it once more, finally stabilizing the deep ruptures splintering across its body.
"It seems to be repairing its wounds within the darkness?" Kobeni mused, resting her chin in her hand. A faint look of surprise crossed her face.
The next instant, she flicked her wrist, sending a barrage of invisible, razor-sharp slashes tearing through the air.
The unseen blades vanished into the gloom, completely soundless.
The Darkness Devil possessed the innate ability, or rather, a passive trait, to instantaneously heal any injury while cloaked in absolute darkness. Yet, surprisingly, it was the devil who felt far more astonished than Kobeni at this exact moment.
The grievous wounds that should have mended in the blink of an eye were actually being actively suppressed. It had to expend a massive amount of its core power just to restore its body back to normal.
But even so, that was enough. It had already seen right through the capabilities of the three humans before it.
The only true threat was the innocent, sweet-looking girl and the mystical, reality-bending power she manipulated. As for the other two? They weren't even worth its concern.
Kobeni's basic slashes weren't exceptionally powerful on their own, and the terrifying force she used to drag the moon from the cosmos had already been spent. Hell would not produce a second moon.
With its aura surging violently, the darkness rolled in like a catastrophic tidal wave, causing the Darkness Devil's silhouette to tower even higher. It looked down from its supreme height, glaring with absolute disdain as it pointed a single finger downward.
An endless onslaught of invisible slashes swept across the battlefield.
Shielded by the protective shroud of the Moon Demon Chi, Kobeni remained entirely unscathed. Denji, however, threw himself desperately in front of Reze, only to be brutally bisected by the attack.
His severed upper torso tumbled to the ground, a look of sheer dazed confusion frozen in his eyes.
"Denji!" Reze screamed in gut-wrenching anguish.
She lunged forward to catch his falling upper half, cradling him tightly against her chest as low, choked sobs escaped her throat.
The Darkness Devil's strike had achieved its purpose. Even with the staggering power of a Primal Fear, a tiny sigh of relief leaked into its ancient mind. Fortunately, not every human was a freak of nature like the girl. For a moment, it had actually begun to question its own absolute supremacy.
Shifting its focus back to Kobeni, the Darkness Devil ceased its slashing attacks. Instead, it upturned its palms, pulling the infinite void of darkness into a dense, swirling vortex at its fingertips.
Kobeni was blessed with the absolute ward of the Moon Demon Chi; her defense was so infuriatingly durable that it sickened the devil. It needed to change its tactics to bypass it.
Right then, the weeping Reze, still clutching the top half of Denji, suddenly shifted her tone entirely.
"Denji... sniff... go get 'em!"
In a flash, she transformed into the Bomb Devil. Her voice blared with fiery adrenaline as a massive detonation shook the ground. Using the sheer kinetic back-blast of the explosion, she forcefully launched Denji's upper torso straight at the Darkness Devil like a human missile.
Smoking and charred, Denji's half-body traced a perfect, arc-like trajectory through the air, heading right for the space directly above the demon's head.
While airborne, right over the Darkness Devil, the starter cord on Denji's chest pulled itself back as if moved by an invisible hand. Not far away, Kobeni subtly twitched her fingers in the air.
VROOOOOOM!
The roar of a chainsaw tore through the silence.
"Haha! The great Denji is back from the dead!" Denji roared mid-air, manifesting fully into the Chainsaw Man as he laughed like a maniac. "This is our ultimate tactic!"
Completely revitalized in a split second, he slammed heavily onto the Darkness Devil's back, wrapping his arms and legs around the monster in a ruthless death grip.
The Darkness Devil froze in momentary confusion.
"Pochita! It's time to fulfill our promise, Pochita!"
With wild, frantic eyes, Denji fired up his chainsaws, violently sawing back and forth across the Darkness Devil's flesh.
Back when the moon had plummeted to the earth, the three of them had already whispered and finalized this exact strategy. Now, he was finally close enough to stick to the Darkness Devil like glue.
The chainsaws did minimal raw damage to a being of this scale. With a violent shudder of the devil's body, Denji was instantly pulverized into a dozen shattered pieces, his limbs and torso scattering across the floor.
"Damn it! But the great me still has a mouth!"
Opening his grotesque, razor-toothed jaws, he clamped down hard on the Darkness Devil's flesh. He brutally ripped away a chunk of the devil's body, the white, calcified bone structure crunching loudly as he chewed.
Crunch, crunch, crunch—
"Mmm, tastes great!" Denji cheered, even though he was currently reduced to just a head and half a ribcage dangling from the demon's side, casually reviewing his meal.
With a loud gulp, he swallowed the torn bone. Statistically speaking, he didn't even have an esophagus left in his current state, yet the swallowed pieces of the Darkness Devil vanished completely into the ether.
Suddenly, a cold wave of pure terror washed over the Darkness Devil. It realized it had miscalculated. It had miscalculated catastrophically.
These three humans weren't just opponents, they were absolute lunatics!
What terrified the ancient entity the most was that the flesh eaten by Denji was truly, definitively dead. It was a concept of death that even the absolute darkness could not mend or restore. A permanent piece of the concept of the Darkness Devil had been erased from existence forever.
And this was precisely the binding deal Denji had struck with Zoran on that bright, moonlit night.
In this world, only the Chainsaw Devil possessed the unique conceptual power to truly execute another devil. Otherwise, they would simply reincarnate, never truly meeting an end. This was the sole reason every demon harbored a deep, primal dread of the Chainsaw Devil.
He was an existential glitch in the system.
Risking a direct confrontation with the Primal Fear of Darkness, putting his life entirely on the line in a bloody gamble, all to trade for a single chance to flee with the woman he loved. A chance to live out his days as a simple country mouse.
That was the bargain Denji made that night. And looking at it now, he thought it was worth it. It was worth every damn bit of it!
Gravity surged once more, tugging the starter cord on Denji's chest. Revived yet again, he latched onto the Darkness Devil with manic ferocity, biting and tearing without a care for whether the devil could take it. His simple, poorly functioning brain held onto only one singular directive:
Eat this bastard whole!
Feeling its essence bleeding away at an alarming velocity, and seeing that Denji had even casually ripped away one of the many heads lining its torso, stretching his maw wide to swallow it down, the Darkness Devil finally snapped.
It let out a low, incredibly furious roar. Universal darkness erupted violently from its back, shattering the local fabric of space. The dense, suffocating shadows coalesced into millions of razor-sharp needles, skewering everything in sight.
In a microsecond, Denji was turned into a human colander, a sieve continuously leaking torrents of fresh blood.
"Ah, crap! I'm a goner!" he yelled in shock, before immediately pivoting his tone. "Gotta eat a bunch more to make up for the blood loss!"
Before the words could fully leave his mouth, the condensed weight of the absolute dark slammed down like a cosmic sledgehammer, pinning all three of them deep into the dirt.
Having finally rid itself of the persistent, annoying pest sticking to its body, the Darkness Devil breathed a mental sigh of relief. It took a look at its own form.
In that incredibly brief window of time, nearly one-seventh of its total physical mass had been devoured by Denji. Which meant that one-seventh of its conceptual self had been permanently slaughtered.
Pure, unadulterated fury consumed the ancient being.
Within a heartbeat, Hell fell into a state of total, absolute blackness. Every single speck of light, color, and concept was swallowed by the dark. The world itself felt as though it had ceased to exist.
Melting away into the void, the Darkness Devil hid its form. Unleashing every ounce of its conceptual domain, it dragged the three mad humans deep into the Primal Dark. This was its absolute territory, a realm where nothing existed except the eternal void.
It was going to drown these three lunatics in the dark until nothing remained.
The physical form of the Darkness Devil was gone, yet within this space, it was omnipresent.
Kobeni kept her guard up, her face tense as she pulled Denji and Reze close under the protective bubble of her Moon Demon Chi. She realized with chilling clarity that the Darkness Devil was no longer holding back. This was the true, terrifying weight of a Primal Fear.
In every direction, there was nothing. Not even a path to step on.
She sent out a flurry of invisible slashes, but they were swallowed whole by the darkness, leaving no echo.
"The Ultimate Darkness?" Reze whispered, panic creeping into her voice. "We're trapped. We can't get out."
The three of them huddled close within the shimmering pale glow of the Moon Demon Chi. The universe around them offered no escape.
Kobeni remained quiet, her own heart hammering against her ribs. Their abilities relied heavily on physical targets, and right now, they couldn't even pinpoint the core body of the Darkness Devil. They were completely powerless against it.
But moments later, Denji and Reze watched in utter bewilderment as a bright, ecstatic smile suddenly broke across Kobeni's face. She looked so thrilled she practically wanted to skip on the spot.
"Hey, what the hell are you smiling at?" Denji grumbled, looking at her sideways.
"Mr. Demon... he's back!" Kobeni cheered happily.
As his contractor, the moment her bound devil crossed back into this realm, her soul instantly vibrated with the connection.
"Mr. Demon!" she cried out to the void.
"I am here," a calm, unhurried voice resonated through the space, carrying the exact composed grace that defined the ancient entity.
Simultaneously, a brilliant, piercing beam of pure moonlight sliced through the absolute void, driving itself straight into the heart of the darkness.
Up in the crimson sky of Hell...
A second "Moon" began its heavy descent.
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