25: Chapter 24.1 The End of Kokabiel!
25: Chapter 24.1 The End of Kokabiel!
The suffocating despair in Xenovia’s chest rivaled Rias’s.
As a servant of God who had given everything, Xenovia felt betrayed—used like a blind dog taught to worship a lie.
If God was dead, what truth remained?
She could not accept dying here.
A face surfaced in her mind, the man whose words had echoed in the dark.
“I just want to help those who are deceived.” Then a light flared at the field’s center.
The figure she had thought existed only in memory stood before her.
The sky brightened when he arrived.
Rafsan felt that light first as pressure behind his ribs, a tightening that answered the battlefield’s roar.
He fished the crimson smartphone from his blue jacket.
Cyan lines flickered across the glass.
“SYSTEM READY.” He set his thumb to the panel.
“USER VERIFIED.” The phone folded out with metallic clicks.
A roar split the air.
Rafsan held the device beside his face.
“Transform.” He tapped.
“TRANSFER [Crimson Regalia]—” A cyan pulse washed outward.
Mechanical snaps announced the armor as it assembled: claws sheathing his toes, crimson plates rising along his legs, the black undersuit sealing around him.
Waist plates folded, chest armor snapped around a cyan core that bled light beneath the metal.
Pauldrons settled, guards clamped at his wrists.
Fingers extended into black talons.
The helmet sealed; the visor locked last.
A cyan gem burned on the forehead as twin horns unfolded.
Pneumatic hisses filled the gaps.
The phone dissolved into blue light and vanished into the chest.
“AUTHORIZATION…
COMPLETE.” Rafsan flexed; the suit answered with a quiet click.
Cyan flames licked between plates; thin arcs crawled along his horns.
The system announced, “HYPER TIME.” Kokabiel froze.
When Rafsan activated Hyper Time, the world split, and the split felt clean—an edge he could run along until nothing else mattered.
Time bent to his algorithms; motion became calculations and openings.
He tasted speed like adrenaline and righteous intent.
There was only one sound louder than his limbs moving: a frantic pulse at the edge of his awareness—Rias’s heartbeat, ragged and wrong.
He shoved it down.
Focus, he told himself.
The field held its breath.
“HYPER TIME,” the voice repeated.
Kokabiel’s head snapped.
Instinct screamed.
The enormous spear in his hand shivered and shrank into an ordinary lance.
In the last heartbeat before impact, he twisted and raised it across his chest.
Clang.
Rafsan hit him with motion alone—and the ground answered.
Kokabiel slammed into the earth, smashed through ruined walls, and skidded dozens of meters before stopping.
“Damn it…
WHO?!” he roared, wounded in pride more than flesh; the imprint across his face told the story.
Inside the accelerated domain, Rafsan had learned opponents at this level couldn’t truly perceive his speed, though instinct might save them from a killing blow.
To Kokabiel, Rafsan moved too fast for a devil.
Rafsan closed the distance.
He punched with both hands and drove the point toward Kokabiel’s heart.
Kokabiel couldn’t see the attacker, but he felt the killing intent bearing down.
A spear of holy light shot forward.
Rafsan didn’t dodge.
Guilt gnawed—he should have been there, heavier, more present.
That thought burned and made the vow inside him gather into something like iron.
There would be time for regret after the battle.
Kokabiel had to fall.
Seven translucent energy barriers blossomed.
The spear shredded six petals and stopped against the seventh.
Rafsan’s momentum never slowed.
He stayed relentless.
Kokabiel barely raised his lance in time; the impact numbed both arms.
Crimson eyes widened.
A cadre of the Grigori, his mastery of holy light legendary, yet after a single exchange he understood he was being outclassed.
Who in the world was this devil?
A Maou?
No—he’d recognized one.
A High-Class Devil…
impossible.
BOOM.
Rafsan’s knee slammed into Kokabiel’s chest like a battering ram, driving the Fallen Angel back into the ground; rubble and dust erupted.
Kokabiel snarled, half-buried.
A blinding holy burst flared from his body.
Rafsan backed away, expecting self-destruction.
Instead, a shockwave shattered outward; Kokabiel forced himself up, blood at his mouth.
Even his expression twisted with unease.
His blood-red eyes locked onto Rafsan.
He knew who had struck him—and that a mere young High-Class Devil had humiliated him stoked a fury he’d never felt, not even in the Great War.
“I’LL KILL YOU!” he screamed, charging like a comet.
A sword of holy light formed and slammed down; the pressure tore the earth before it landed.
Rias and the others were forced to retreat.
Rafsan was simply too fast.
Kokabiel’s perception blurred; only decades of combat kept him alive.
With every clash, his shock deepened.
He raised his blade and barely intercepted another blow; the impact shoved him back and nearly stripped the weapon.
A heavy punch cracked his face.
If only I were faster…!
Kokabiel’s ten wings lashed.
Rafsan stepped behind him and swung down, deliberately missing vitals to sever a wing at the base.
Blood sprayed.
Arondight coalesced in Rafsan’s left hand.
He thrust toward Kokabiel’s heart, inviting the expected reaction—because the true target was elsewhere.
His palm met Kokabiel’s face.
“GAAH!!
IT’S HOT!
IT’S BURNING!!” Cyan flames clung to him like parasites, devouring clothing, feathers, and flesh.
The smell of burning flesh spread.
Rias and Sona watched, stunned.
Rias, who had always thought Rafsan strong but within reason, felt something shift—her last trace of doubt falling away.
Rafsan registered her widened eyes, the way her fingers curled as if around air.
For a breath, he let relief in, something soft inside unclenching.
Then a jagged shock cut through Hyper Time—an echo of impact from the real-time domain, distant but brutally clear.
Pain, sharp and immediate.
Not his, but hers.
He froze mid-strike.
Hyper Time kept him faster than sight, not untethered from consequence.
He hadn’t been touching her when the spear launched—yet the world didn’t respect compartments.
Rias had leaned forward to ground herself, trying to shield someone; the spear’s shock had swept the frontline while Rafsan had been a ghost.
A shard of holy light had clipped her side.
Blood bloomed along her dress, dark against crimson fabric.
No.
Not like this.
Guilt landed heavier than any blow.
He felt every second he’d chosen the finish over positioning, every instant he’d pushed forward instead of watching Rias’s flank.
Hyper Time gave him speed but not omniscience.
He had been ruthless—and in that ruthlessness, he’d let her take a wound meant for him.
Rage replaced calculus.
Rafsan’s breath hitched—not from exertion, but from a contracted, animal intent that focused into one motion.
The armor hummed; his vision narrowed until Kokabiel’s features were the only coordinates that mattered.
“I will make you pay,” he thought, unshared and absolute.
Kokabiel howled, “I’ll kill you all!!
I’ll drag every one of you into hell with me!!” Madness filled his eyes.
He poured every remaining ounce of holy power into a spear over thirty meters long—a weapon that could erase Kuoh Town.
Rias and Sona paled; they understood, at last, how little they had mattered.
“Rafsan!” Rias screamed.
The shout stabbed through Hyper Time like a beacon.
Rafsan stepped out of the accelerated domain.
He planted his feet, lowered his center, and raised both mechanical arms.
Rings of cyan light ignited in his palms; heat warped the air.
Steam vented from his shoulders; electricity arced.
“Incineration.” Twin torrents erupted, merging into a single beam.
Kokabiel poured all his remaining holy power into resisting it.
The two attacks collided with a sound like the world tearing—blasts of light carved the battlefield, shockwaves pulverized ruins, and for long seconds, both forces held, each devouring the other’s edge.
Rafsan felt the suit struggle; the cyan core flickered beneath his breast.
He overloaded the armor’s reactor, forcing the core to push beyond rated output.
Plates creaked, seals strained, arcs of energy cracked across his gauntlets.
The beam brightened, a white-hot column that screamed upward.
The collision tilted in his favor.
The beam finally overwhelmed Kokabiel.
Cyan flames and holy light collapsed inward, then detonated in a final blaze; when the radiance faded, there was nothing left—no wings, no spear, no shadow where the Fallen Angel had stood.
The victory was absolute and immediate—and absolute in its cost.
Cracks raced across the armor’s plates; the cyan core sputtered and dimmed; the horns shuddered and snapped.
The suit disengaged in spasms, panels peeling away as systems failed.
With a last coughing series of hisses, Hyper Time collapsed.
Rafsan let the armor drop like a mask.
He stood very still, systems ticking down, chest heaving.
Somewhere behind him, Rias coughed and sagged.
He crossed the rubble in a handful of strides and fell to one knee beside her.
Her wound wasn’t fatal, but it bled heavily; the holy shard had torn through muscle.
He pressed a trembling hand to the cut, eyes wide and wet.
Guilt and relief warred on his face, but his voice when he spoke was quiet and hard.
“You should’ve called for me ,” Rafsan said.
Rias gave a weak smile.
“I know I am an idiot.
You would’ve blamed yourself anyway.” He looked away.
“…Yeah.” The thought didn’t feel vengeful so much as exacting—Rafsan stood and helped Rias up.
The promise in his eyes was clear: he wouldn’t let this happen to her again.
Her hand found his arm, a small grip that made something inside him unclench.
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