Issei
Promoting didn’t fix my body.
That was the first unfair thing about it.
The second was that it gave me just enough more power to understand how badly my body wanted to quit.
I dragged myself up the corridor anyway.
The new school building felt too long and too narrow and too empty at once. Every step echoed. Every breath came hot and wrong. My chest hurt. My arms hurt. My face still felt like Isabella had signed it with her fists. My stamina was still a disaster even after becoming a [Queen]. Promotion had changed my output, my trait, my scale. It hadn’t magically made me fresh.
Still—
I was stronger.
I could feel it in the way my body answered the Boosted Gear now. In the way my balance came back faster after stumbling. In the way the power sitting in my body felt deeper, more full.
As I climbed to the roof I recalled something.
Riser’s sister stopped me shortly after I left Kusari-san behind. She had survived Yuuto-san’s boosted attack.
She told me she wasn’t going to fight and explained how Riser’s peerage had Phoenix tears on top of his own immortality.
Both she and their [Queen] had a vail of them. I thought that must have been how Akeno-san was defeated. She would’ve had to beat her opponent twice.
She tried to get me to surrender until I threatened to strip her with dress break as I left. She backed up to protect herself and I moved passed her towards the school building.
I hit the stairwell landing hard enough that my shoulder slammed into the wall.
Didn’t matter.
Rooftop.
Buchou.
That was all that mattered.
I shoved off the wall and started climbing again, half-running, half-hauling myself upward, the stairs blurring into one long act of refusal.
Then Grayfia-san’s voice rang across the battlefield.
“Riser Phenex-sama’s [Queen] retires.”
I stopped dead.
For one second I thought I’d heard wrong.
The air in the stairwell went cold around me. My heart kicked hard enough to hurt.
Yubelluna.
Kusari-san.
She won.
Really won.
Not delayed.
Not escaped.
Not held off for a few seconds.
Won.
The thought hit like a second promotion inside my ribs. The exhaustion didn’t vanish. The pain didn’t vanish. But something ugly and clenched inside me eased just enough to let the next breath in fully.
Kusari-san was still here.
The plan she’d stayed behind to hold had worked, and she was still here
I laughed once under my breath, half from relief and half from how insane this whole night had become.
Then I moved again.
Faster.
Not because my body had become fresh.
Because the staircase suddenly felt less like a crawl toward a last desperate chance and more like a path toward a fight I might actually be able to change.
By the time I hit the final corridor leading to the roof door, my vision had started narrowing at the edges again. My lungs burned. My legs threatened to fold every time I leaned too hard into the next stride.
Didn’t matter.
I shoved the door open and came out into fire.
The rooftop looked like a battlefield should look after everyone involved had already gone too far.
The night over the replica school was still false, but the flames were real enough.
Whole sections of rooftop had blackened.
Railings bent inward.
Broken concrete and scorched fragments of tile littered the edges.
Heat shimmered in waves around the center, where Riser stood with fire curling around his body like a second skin.
Buchou was still standing.
That was the first thing that mattered.
The second was that she looked awful.
Her hair had come half loose, crimson and wild around a face too pale beneath the soot and sweat. Her uniform was torn and burned in multiple places. Her breathing was visible even from the doorway.
Asia stood near her side, also disheveled, green healing light already fading around her hands.
Asia was still standing too.
Riser looked toward the roof door the moment I stepped through it.
His eyes narrowed.
Then his mouth curled.
“So the dragon brat made it after all.”
Buchou turned too.
The relief on her face when she saw me nearly undid me.
“Ise!”
“Issei-san!”
I straightened on pure stubbornness and raised one arm even though the pose would’ve looked cooler if I weren’t covered in blood and one bad step from collapsing.
“Buchooou! Hyoudou Issei, here at your service!”
If you finally reach the last fight after half the battlefield tries to kill you, you don’t enter quietly.
That would be against the spirit of it all..
Buchou smiled.
Only a little.
Asia looked like she wanted to cry and heal me at the same time.
Riser clicked his tongue.
“So Yubelluna failed too. And Ravel must have let you pass.” His eyes moved over me once, properly this time, taking in the changed pressure of promotion. “You promoted.”
I grinned despite the pain. “Yeah. Took me long enough.”
He looked amused by that.
I hated him instantly again.
Not just because he was handsome.
Though that didn’t help.
Because he stood there like the whole world was already his and the rest of us were performing in it for his entertainment.
Because he could still do that after everything we’d thrown at him.
Buchou didn’t wait for more conversation.
Of course she didn’t.
Her demonic power gathered in a crimson mass and she hurled it straight at his face. The blast hit him head-on and swallowed half his upper body in a roar of destruction.
I was about to cheer.
Then the flames parted.
Riser stood there smiling.
His face, blasted from existence a second earlier, already knitting itself back together in living fire.
Phoenix.
Immortal bastard.
I felt the answer hit my chest before thought did.
Then I’d just have to keep breaking him.
I ran forward.
Buchou and I hit him from opposite angles at once.
She came with demonic power and raw fury.
I came with Boosted Gear, my promotion, every awful thing the mountain and this match had hammered into my body.
Riser caught my first strike on one arm and Buchou’s blast with the other hand, flames bursting outward from him in a ring of heat that forced both of us back.
The arm he blocked Buchou’s power of destruction with was already reforming in flames.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “A promoted [Pawn] and an exhausted [King]? Do you really think this changes anything?”
“Shut up, Yakitori!” I said, and drove back in before he could retort.
Boosted Gear flared.
[Boost!]
The power hit hot and immediate.
[Queen] promotion had changed the way I moved.
Not enough to turn me into Yuuto-san.
Nothing short of a miracle could do that.
But enough that I didn’t feel like a blunt instrument strapped to rocket fuel anymore.
Faster transitions.
Better all-around response.
More fluidity between rushing, striking, blocking, and not dying.
I ducked under his first flame-coated swing and drove my gauntlet into his ribs.
Buchou hit him from the side with another blast at the exact same instant.
For one glorious second, it worked.
He flew.
A chunk of his side and an arm were missing from Buchou’s attack.
He landed across the roof, into the broken remains of a ventilation structure, which exploded under the impact.
There we go!
Then flame surged out of the wreckage and Riser stood up again.
No limp.
No pause.
No blood.
He flexed one hand as though checking whether the joints still moved correctly.
“Better,” he said. “So that 10 day grace wasn’t a waste.”
He stepped forward casually.
“You should Resogn, Rias. Dragging this out longer will make Sirzechs-sama and your Otou-sama look bad. You never had a chance in the first place. It’s checkmate, Rias.”
I wanted to tear his smug face off.
“Be quiet, Riser! I still have servants that will fight with me, and I won’t give up! As long as I, the [King], am still left the game isn’t over.”
Rias glared at him, standing defiant even in her bagtered state.
Buchou is right. We will turn this around and win. Kusari-san is still out there, heading to us now.
Asia’s voice came from behind us. “Please hold still!”
Green light hit Buchou’s shoulder and side first, then mine a second later. The healing eased the sharpest edges of pain, took the swelling out of some of the bruising, cleared the cut at my lip and the ache in my nose where Isabella had done her work.
But it didn’t touch the real problem.
Stamina.
No healing spell in the world gave that back.
Riser knew it too.
I saw the exact instant in his smile.
He didn’t need to beat us cleanly.
He only needed to make us spend ourselves until we ran out of fight.
Buchou knew it.
Asia knew it.
I knew it.
Didn’t matter.
We kept going.
The next exchange was uglier even with my strength growing through my boosts.
Buchou and I tried to press him together again, but Riser’s fire punished proximity too well.
Every time I stepped in deep, flames sheathed his body in a way that made even solid hits expensive.
The burns and wounds we received were building up already and we would need Asia to treat them again.
Every time Buchou blasted him back, he regenerated through the damage before she could capitalize fully on it.
Still, I was more use than I would’ve been before training.
I could stay with Buchou’s rhythm.
The training had taught me when to pull back instead of eating the full answer.
Promotion had made my body capable of living inside those decisions.
I used that.
She fired high.
I came low.
He blocked me.
She hit his flank.
He burst into fire and forced distance.
I circled right.
She came straight.
He took her blast, smiled through half a ruined face, and kicked me in the chest hard enough to throw me across the rooftop.
I hit the ground, rolled, and came up on one knee coughing smoke filled air out of my lungs.
That was the third time he’d launched me like that since I arrived.
Maybe fourth.
I was beginning to lose count.
Buchou didn’t give him room.
That was my [King].
She pressed him with blast after blast, crimson power of destruction hitting so hard the whole roof shook with it.
I almost believed she could simply overpower the immortality if she kept the pressure high enough.
Then her next shot came a fraction slower.
And Riser saw it.
He smiled, stepped through the blast, took the damage, regenerated through it mid-motion, and slammed a jet of fire into her guard hard enough to drive her backward almost to Asia.
“Buchou!”
I was moving again before my body could protest.
Riser turned to meet me, fire wrapped around his arm.
He actually looked pleased now.
Not because he was winning.
Because he was still entertained while winning.
That made me hate him in new ways.
I threw everything I had into the next rush.
[Boost!]
Another surge.
Pain answered through the gauntlet immediately, but not enough to stop me.
[Queen] promotion widened what I could hold.
Not forever. Not for free.
But longer than before.
I hit him twice in the body before he could reset fully.
Once in the jaw.
Then with a demonic-power shot to the sternum that drove him back.
He flew back and into a wall.
He burned and healed and laughed softly through both as he pulled himself free.
“You will still lose,” he said. "This resistance amounts to nothing.”
I spat blood onto the rooftop.
“Shut it! I won’t let you treat Rias however you want!.”
“Confident for a boy who can barely stand.”
I wanted to answer with another Dragon Shot, something huge, something stupidly satisfying that would blast him off the roof and maybe through half the school if luck loved me.
I moved straight at him while readying another attack.
Buchou’s voice cut in first.
“Don’t get reckless, Ise!”
Too late for the warning.
I changed the attack, turned the gathering force smaller, tighter, drove in instead of out, and smashed my dragon shot into him at point-blank range.
The blast blew his torso apart.
For one bright, savage instant I could see straight through fire and ruin.
Then he reformed again.
I snarled in frustration.
Behind me, Asia rushed to me and healing light hit my back and shoulder again.
I owed her my life at least three times tonight.
But even through the healing, I could feel my body wearing out.
My legs had started that dangerous shake just before the point of failure.
I couldn’t catch my breath.
The exhilaration of promotion and battle kept rising to cover it all, but only because I was refusing to examine it too closely.
Buchou was worse.
I could see it now between exchanges.
The slight delay before she gathered the next blast.
The way she held one shoulder.
The fact that her breathing stayed high even after Asia’s healing touched her.
Riser saw it too.
He didn’t say anything immediately.
He didn’t need to.
He just kept forcing us to answer, and answer, and answer again until every answer cost more than the last one had.
That was the real terror of him.
Not that he was stronger.
Though he was.
That he could afford to make battle a contest of exhaustion because exhaustion barely meant anything to his body compared to ours.
At one point Buchou actually knocked him to his knees with a demonic blast so powerful it cracked the roof beneath him and sent fire spraying sideways in a hot wave.
I thought—
for one stupid, desperate second—
that that might be it.
Then he rose through the flames again.
Slower than before.
But still smiling.
Asia made a sound that was almost a sob and pressed more healing light toward us, but I could see the strain in her too now.
Healing the damage over and over without being able to restore stamina was like bailing water out of a ship with a cup while the hull stayed broken.
We were losing.
Not dramatically.
Not all at once.
By inches.
By cost.
By time.
Riser’s next gout of flame took Buchou full in the side and sent her skidding across the rooftop hard enough that I heard the breath tear out of her.
“Buchou!”
I launched myself at him again and this time he caught me by the arm.
The flames around his hand bit deep through the sleeve and into the skin underneath, making me scream before I could stop it.
He grinned and threw me.
I hit the roof near the stair structure so hard my vision went white.
For a second I stayed down.
Not because I chose to.
Because standing had become an act of faith and my body was busy informing me it had become an atheist.
Somewhere farther off, Buchou was trying to rise and not quite making it.
Asia was calling out.
Riser’s footsteps were slow again.
I rolled, coughed, spat, planted one hand, then forced myself upright because if he reached them before I did then none of the rest of this had mattered.
My legs almost failed.
I got them under me by raw effort.
Riser looked at me, then at Buchou, then at Asia.
“It’s over,” he said.
Buchou’s head snapped up at once, fury all over her face even through the exhaustion.
“No,” she said.
I laughed.
Couldn’t help it.
Couldn’t stop it.
It came out half broken and blood-edged and stubborn.
“What Buchou said,” I said, swaying where I stood.
Riser sighed as if we were embarrassing him in front of invisible guests.
Then the rooftop door opened.
The sound was small.
Almost lost under the fire and breath and ruin.
But every eye on the roof went to it.
Kusari-san stood there.
No glamour.
No attempt to hide the three white tails behind her.
No attempt to pretend she had arrived in anything less than catastrophic condition.
She was leaning against the doorframe as if it were the only thing still making uprightness possible. One arm hung wrong at her side.
Blood marked the edge of her mouth and one shoulder.
Her breathing was shallow, uneven. Her face had gone pale enough that her eyes looked too dark under the strain.
But she was here.
Still in the fight.
And her gaze, when it lifted from the floor to the roof and finally to Riser, was still sharp enough to cut.
For one impossible second, the whole battlefield held.
Then I smiled—bloody, exhausted, half broken and all the more dangerous for it.