“Gyahahaha, I knew you’d come running, this is great!” Standing in front of the gates leading up to the cathedral is the white-haired figure of Freed Selzen.
With him are six girls I’ve never seen before, lined up just behind him and glaring at us.
They’re all wearing cute looking white dresses, a bit more ornate than Nanael’s rather simple one, blue around the midsection and wearing elbow gloves and stockings, like it’s a uniform.
“Freed!
You traitor!
Why?” Raynare demands as the rest of us shift a bit, instinctively spreading out from how we’d all been clustered together for the teleport.
I only glance aside quickly to take in our surroundings and make sure there’s no one on our flanks.
It seems clear, the area looking rather bucolic with green fields and rolling hills, this structure the only thing for miles.
“Boost!” I hear a strange deep voice coming from Hyoudou, he’s looking at Freed with pure hate in his eyes, the magic red gauntlet covering his arm.
Did the voice come from that?
Some kind of intelligent device?
“Why?” Freed repeats, voice manic, swiping his sword through the air.
“Because you got fucking boring!” his voice rises.
“Why do you think I joined up with you fallen bitches anyway?
Because I wanted to kill people!
I wanted to fuck people up!
The world’s full of sinners, and I don’t want to hear shit about due process or collateral damage or innocent bystanders!
I’m doing the Lord’s work sending them all up there, and you were supposed to let me!” Spittle flies from his mouth as he yells, while the unknown girls behind him just stand there staring at us like statues, not even reacting to the crazy man in their midst.
There’s another sound of, “Boost!” from Hyoudou, his fists clenching as he leans forward.
“Then you got your wings clipped by this bimbo angel, and expect me to just sit on my hands and say my prayers like a good little boy?
Fuck that!” his free hand gestures back up at the bloated church behind him.
“So Diodora the Explorer here comes to me with a deal, hehehe, and you’re gonna love this.
He’s a devil of great taste!
See what he does is he goes around finding holy women, and then he turns them into his bitches!” Another boost, he’s definitely powering up something.
Meanwhile I can see a crack, a few of the girls’ expressions twitching as they redirect glares at the back of Freed’s head.
“He set things up to get that healer girl excommunicated by healing a devil like the bleeding heart she is, then when she’s at her lowest from dealing with you shitty crow-winged rejects, he swoops in like Prince Charming and turns her into his newest devil fucktoy!” I’m getting really pissed off listening to this guy talk, but Hyoudou’s clearly doing something with the way he’s powering up, so it’s probably to our benefit to let him go on.
“But you ruined his plans by being even more useless than anyone expected!
Turning your rickety base into a nice wholesome church with a real live angel, even a stupid one, for her to work for?
Her faith only got stronger, and that’s not how our boy likes them, he likes them desperate!” It definitely doesn’t look like the girls backing Freed up are fully on board with how he’s describing things, and it makes me feel a bit conflicted too.
Are they victims, same as Asia?
But also victims that’ve basically been brainwashed into helping him.
I’m pretty sure just joining a peerage doesn’t brainwash you – obviously if it did Rias and Sitri wouldn’t have said so, but it just doesn’t fit the vibe that I’ve seen in how they interact.
Akeno and Rias obviously love each other, but it’s the love of close friends who can give each other shit and smile about it, not any kind of enforced submission.
No, if these girls have been brainwashed, he’s done it by some other method.
I’ll try to avoid hurting them too badly, but if it’s a choice between them and Asia… well, she’s more my priority now.
“That’s why it’s great that you’ve come!” Freed at least does sound like he’s building towards his conclusion now.
“Because seeing an angel die trying to save her worthless ass?
That’s going to break her!” “That’s disgusting!” Nanael doesn’t really match his eloquence, but really what else can you say to a load of shit like that?
I don’t disagree at all.
“This Diodora Astaroth sounds like a pathetic excuse for a man who preys on women’s weakness instead of supporting them.
You who serve him, I can only pity you.” Saeko’s actually quite eloquent though, that’s a real burn coming from her!
“You bastards!
Asia-chan’s a good girl who only wants to help people, how dare you take advantage of her!
How dare you kill a cute girl like Mittelt-chan!
I won’t forgive you!” “Boost!” Hyoudou’s getting really fired up, I can practically feel energy pouring off of him in waves now from whatever he’s been doing to charge himself up.
I feel a little bit bad that Dohnaseek isn’t getting mentioned, but… I didn’t know the guy either, I don’t really have anything to say about him.
“Murderers.
Kidnappers.
You’re fucking scum!” I say my own piece now, everyone’s getting tense it’s clear the violence is about to start, but I need to vent a little bit first, and we listened to his whole spiel so it’s only fair we get to speak as well.
“Not even Mittelt deserved to go out like that, and Asia deserves better than whatever you’ve got planned.
You all deserve better!” I sweep my finger to point over the girls backing up Freed, “However much he’s fucked with your heads, you have to know that none of this is right!” If any of them are harbouring doubts, it doesn’t stop them from shifting into fighting stances, everyone knows we’re seconds from things kicking off.
“Gyahahaha!
I wish I’d been the one to kill that bratty fallen angel myself, but your face is great!
Lets see if you make a better one when you’re bleeding out like her!” Freed laughs uproariously, rearing back and clutching the side of his head, but it’s a bluff.
The rest of his body is like a coiled spring ready to unload, and with a surge of explosive motion he moves.
It’s like when Kiba clashed with Mittelt, a swordsman propelling himself in a straight line at top speed to deliver a two-handed lethal slash.
I pour energy through myself, heightening every aspect with power garnered from a week’s worth of lewd conduct.
I’m not like Kaori, caught flat-footed by a fast but telegraphed punch, I can see him coming and I move in readiness to- Shing!
With a flash of silver, Saeko is there.
Taking full advantage of her own upgraded stats, she intercepts Freed’s charge and with a slice of her sword she proves that a man’s wrist or a pig’s skull it all makes no difference to Murata-tou.
Freed stumbles.
He stops.
He stares in mute shock at the blood geysering stumps where his wrists used to be.
His sword and the two hands still grasping it windmills up through the air before landing with a thunk in the distance, blade embedded in the grass with the attached appendages jutting out like a grisly flag on a pole.
Everyone’s momentarily stunned at the violence shown, I can see flickers of fear on the expressions of Diodora’s amazon brigade, while Freed falls to his knees with a howl, that maddened face of his a rictus of agony and despair just like he seems to enjoy seeing on others.
I can only imagine the suffering his sword-arm has inflicted the years just from what I’ve heard in our short meeting, but he’ll never wield a sword again.
Well, not unless he gets some really high quality cybernetics.
I sure as fuck wouldn’t be making them for him though.
Saeko has already dismissed him.
As thoroughly disarmed as it’s possible to be, she turns her icy gaze over the remaining combatants before a voice sounds from the air.
“The outside of the castle is enemy territory!” I recognise it.
Diodora must be watching, I don’t know why he felt the need to make that announcement, but the girls in front of the gate seem to take some heart from it.
“P-promotion to queen!” one of them blurts out, the others hurriedly following.
Each time a near visible flare of power surrounds them, like the shimmer of a heat haze.
Like what’s been pouring off of Hyoudou every time his gauntlet calls out another boost.
“He’s already conceded ground to us!” Kaori shouts on my shoulder, “Lets go!” I remember the chess metaphor now.
These must be the pawns of his peerage, now on our side of the board and so changing to queens.
Theoretically as powerful as Akeno or Shinra then.
But they’re not fighters.
Diodora didn’t seek out martial artist to create a combat capable squad.
He sought out nuns to fulfil his fetish.
Even as much as I hate him, I can respect his commitment to the bit.
But there’s no time to think on harem demographics vis a vis aesthetics and tactical flexibility, because those freshly promoted pawns are throwing themselves at us with deadly abandon and it’s time to pick a dance partner.
The one headed my way looks younger than me, maybe a high school first year.
Big green eyes, bright blonde hair in a short ponytail held together with a white bow that gives the impression of rabbit ears.
She’s absolutely adorable.
I was never getting through today without hitting a girl, was I?
Fist cocked back for a punch, her lips a thin line of concentration, she hurls herself at me and I easily slip under her guard.
It’s just like that guy in the alleyway from a week ago, someone fully confident in their strength hurling it at someone seen as weaker.
She’s daintier than that guy, but packing a lot more power.
The skill level’s exactly the same though, and I don’t have any trouble grabbing her by her outstretched limb and flipping her so all that momentum she’d thrown into attacking me can be put to work planting her in the ground.
She lands with a surprised, “Ooohf!” eyes bugging out and mouth wide open.
Before she can recover, before I can think to stamp on her or something unkind to keep her from getting up while not leaving myself wide open to others like I’d be if I tried a submission hold, Kaori drops off my shoulder and lands on the girl, who suddenly cries out louder and sinks into the ground, her own weight multiplied beyond what even her devil-enhanced strength can support.
See?
She actually can be useful in a fight!
Who knew?
I quickly take stock of how the rest of the fighting is going.
Hyoudou is swinging madly at a girl with short black hair and twin buns, each haymaker of his sending gusts of over-pressure that looks impressive but his opponent at least understands how to dodge.
She’s dancing around him but seemingly unable to commit to a serious attack of her own without being struck by his surging but poorly controlled power, the two left in a dramatic but unproductive stalemate.
Nanael is hanging back a bit, but her sword’s in the thick of it, floating around and striking at the corrupted nuns from unpredictable angles.
Between that and Saeko’s sword, they can’t move as freely as they’d like, which saves Kalawarner’s ass when a kick sends her reeling but her attacker has to back off rather than press her advantage.
It does look like neither Saeko nor Nanael want to do as much damage as what Freed suffered, so they’re pulling their attacks but neither of them seems remotely threatened by these foes.
I go to back up Kalawarner while Kaori flies in the other direction to help Hyoudou.
I hear her shout, “I abjure you!” which results in a strangled sounding noise coming from the black-haired devil followed by a thunderous crack of impact that has me glance back just in time to see Hyoudou connect with a strike that sends the nun rocketing through the air, clear over the wall surrounding the cathedral and smashing through a stained glass window several storeys up.
Okay, his skills are a little rough, but when he hits he fucking hits.
I refocus on my own issues though, the girl with her purple hair in braided twintails that’s fighting Kalawarner.
She’s more mature looking than my previous opponent, but she’s got nothing on the fallen angel.
Just like with Meguri though, Kalawarner’s on the back foot at least until I come in.
She’s just… not that good at high level supernatural combat, I’m sorry to say.
My interruption gives her a reprieve though, the cute looking girl who was probably once a kind and gentle sister but is now a devil sex slave glaring at me as her fists whip out fast enough to make the air crack, even if it’s not quite as dramatic as the after-effects of Hyoudou’s punches.
My own chubby arms come up in retaliation, sweeping movements mostly parrying aside her punches but throwing out a few to keep her honest, building up the momentum for ice to gather on the end of my strikes.
She manages to land a few grazing hits, but nothing substantial while my own strikes put her on the back foot, what technically proficient form she has as a fighter slipping under pressure.
Then Kalawarner reminds us both that she exists, golden spear punching through the devil’s leg and she goes down screaming, completely taken out of the fight by the holy power forced into a body that is now anathema to it.
It’s like when Kalawarner got a hit in on Meguri back at the tournament but far more dramatic, I guess showing the difference between Sitri’s peerage and Diodora’s.
There’s a look of flushed satisfaction on the older fallen angel’s face, and I want to just say yeah she probably needed a win and that’s making her feel better, but no.
I’ve seen that face on Saeko before.
I know what’s going on there.
Not that I’d say masochists are any better than sadists of course.
Fucking Mittelt.
Why’d you have to die like that?
The fight’s over now though, I can see looking around.
Our welcoming committee are either out cold, moaning on the ground, or reverse-defenestrated from the battlefield.
Oh, and even if she couldn’t take part in the fighting directly, it looks like her wounds didn’t stop Raynare from stabbing Freed through the chest with her own glowing red spear while everyone was busy and he was dealing with the issue of not having hands anymore.
You know what?
I’m not gonna judge her.
Mittelt and Dohnaseek must have been her friends.
Freed absolutely deserves to be pinned like a bug to the floor with a scowling fallen angel standing over him.
Our eyes meet and there’s a defiant look in hers like she expects me to criticise her or something.
Yeah, not happening.
Fully deserved.
I just give a little nod back and her expression turns into a satisfied smirk.
“Uooogh…” a deathly noise comes from Hyoudou and he sinks to his knees, shivering in place.
I don’t think he got hit, some kind of backlash from his powering up?
“You okay over there, Hyoudou buddy?” I call, turning away from my third dead body of the day to look at his pale and miserable face.
“Doing great senpai,” he gives me a shaky thumbs up.
“Boosted Gear just takes a lot out of my stamina to use.” About what I figured.
“Cool.
And just call me Jiro,” I say.
We’re fighting for our lives in literal Hell, I think that calls for first name terms.
He returns the sentiment telling me to call him Issei, while Nanael floats over and looks down first at Freed and then at Raynare and then back again.
“He was going to die from blood loss anyway, I’ll let it slide,” she says, which causes the dark-haired fallen angel covered in wounds inflicted by Nanael herself to relax a little bit more.
“And Dragon King, we need to work more on your cardio!” she rounds on Issei who straightens up, “The Half-Orc Bandit’s making you look out of shape!” Come on!
We’re attacking Hell together!
“Do you have to call me that?” I ask, annoyed.
“I’m not going to call you Demon King of whatever like you asked,” she scoffs, folding her arms and looking away from me.
“Just call me Jiro!” I snap at her, and she huffs without either agreeing or disagreeing.
“Anyway!
Lets go and rescue Asia-chan,” she gestures ahead at Diodora’s castle.
“Issei-kun, you stay back with Spiked Shoulders and Turtleneck until your energy’s back up.
Team Jiro can take the lead with me.” At least she’s got some confidence in our abilities.
I look towards Saeko as we walk past the battered and beaten pawns of Diodora’s peerage, and she looks pretty calm and collected, but we’ve had a moment to cool down from the battle.
I don’t doubt she was enjoying herself thoroughly back there, and there’s still more ahead.
She notices my gaze on her and our eyes meet.
She doesn’t say anything but she tilts her head a little and her lips turn upwards in a very gentle looking smile considering all the recent violence.
I don’t know if that’s her masking or if she’s just trying to show me some support considering everything going on, but I appreciate it and give her a little smile back.
The gates leading towards the cathedral were wide open for us to walk through the grounds, just a straight path with a pretty boring looking lawn on either side before we reach the imposing wooden doors.
Do we knock politely?
Just turn the handle and let ourselves in?
Kick them open like badasses?
Chop them down like slasher movie villains?
No, I really want to fuck this place up.
I want to make a statement.
“Kaori-chan, you wanna put a black hole through the door?” Her expression lights up as she flies alongside me.
“Sometimes you’re pretty smart, Jiro-kun!” she says, holding her hands out ahead of her to form one of her virtual black holes.
It’s not like a real black hole.
I don’t feel myself being pulled towards it, there’s no suction like you’d expect.
Basically it does nothing unless you touch it, at which point things get ker-splunched like you’d imagine from a black hole.
The one she makes now is a lot bigger than the one she first demonstrated on that broken desk last week, swelling up in a terrifying swirl of purple energy that everyone understandably keeps themselves well back from before Kaori gives it a little push and it starts drifting towards the door.
As soon as the leading edge makes contact there’s a horrendous noise of shattering wood and shearing metal as everything that makes up the door gets ripped apart and dragged into the centre of the singularity, shards seen whipping around inside it before they condense into a ball at the centre while the thing just keeps moving without slowing down, devouring the door and drifting into the building’s interior.
Which results in immediate sounds of panic and alarm from what must be the second line of defence.
“What is that?!” “It broke the magic circle, what do we do now?!” Oh, this was a good idea!
“Wow!
Where was that in the tournament?” Nanael asks, seemingly impressed even as her sword goes flying through the now broken apart door to add to the chaos inside.
“Shut up!
I had a whole plan worked out!” Kaori says, all pouty defensiveness before we leap into the fray.
Despite the exterior looking like a church, the interior is like a mansion, in fact it reminds me of the abandoned one where we fought that stray devil, if obviously better kept.
The black hole is continuing inwards, churning up carpet and flooring and clearly there was some kind of big magic circle here that was probably meant to help with the defence, but having a big gouge torn through it has rendered that moot.
All that’s left are a bunch of cute girls, the rest of Diodora’s nun-fetish peerage no doubt.
Their outfits are a little customised from what the pawns outside had, no doubt reflecting their higher rank, but it’s basically the same template.
There’s a girl with long blonde hair and a bigger poofier skirt now running away from Kaori’s black hole, there’s a pair that give off ‘sporty tomboy’ vibes at the far back wearing armoured bracers over their forearms, and lastly standing just up the stairs is a girl who’s skirt is transparent at the front but to avoid indecency she’s wearing black spats underneath.
I don’t understand the tactical implications, but it is kind of cute I guess.
Everyone picks a target and we rush into melee, the devil nuns coming to meet us.
I’m going towards the left to handle one of the tomboys, a serious looking girl with dark red hair in a short side-ponytail.
She seems like she knows how to fight better than the ones outside, but she’s actually slower.
They had all been promoted into queens after all, I’m guessing she’s a rook since knights are the speed-focused ones.
Not that Toujou’s any kind of slouch when she gets motivated.
I’m pretty sure she could hand this girl her ass with a hand behind her back.
“Disgusting brute, how dare you defile Diodora-sama’s home!” she yells at me, coming in with a solid straight punch which I angle my body around and feed her my elbow.
She takes it like a champ though, head rocked back but staying on her feet, a knee coming up in response.
I don’t want to be called a brute by someone who had a tangential hand in Mittelt’s death.
When she called me one it was… it was kind of cute, like she meant it almost positively.
She had a type and I was it, unorthodox as it may have been.
This girl though, she means it all negatively, like I’m the bad guy invading her happy home with her handsome psychopath devil master.
I bet she must have been a real hardass around the convent before he got his hooks into her.
The two of us exchange blows, I’m not seriously hurting her with mine but similarly she’s not really able to do much to me.
Sure my arms ache a bit when I have to block her hits, but nothing’s getting through properly, I can deal with it.
She’s hard to move though, resisting my own hits with impressive toughness while yelling and other sounds of violence fill the hall.
I’m too locked into this fight to pay much attention, I can only hope the rest of our team is doing well.
But it’s fine.
I’ve taken the time I needed.
Practicing with Saeko paid off in a way that simply doing katas against empty air never could.
Sometimes you have to give ground, and there’s no real way to prepare for that if you’re just punching the air and imagining the easiest possible opponent who lets you have things your own way.
This dance works just as well if I have to let my partner lead, and my flowing legwork and distracting punches have built up enough for me to do what I need to do.
It reminds me of something from an old martial arts comedy anime, a technique based around luring a hot-blooded foe into pursuing you while you radiate cold ki, draw them into a spiral and then blow them away with a sudden whirlwind.
This isn’t quite the same thing, but I do wonder if it’s something I might be able to develop based on what I do know.
I don’t need a spiral here, I just need to give a little ground while keeping up my flowing movements enough for the ‘dance’ to start.
The air around us abruptly chills, and I can see her pupils dilate in recognition that something’s just turned against her.
She blocks the punch I throw at her chest, and the sweeping icicles carried in by the surrounding gale stab against her unguarded flank.
A blue rime coats her body, spreading rapidly from each impact, glittering white flakes beading across skin and clothes, her expression trapped in that look of frozen shock, her limbs unmoving.
This doesn’t take her right out of the fight, she’ll thaw in a few seconds.
So I’m not gentle with her during those seconds.
With no need to worry about my own defence, I shove her down, pinning her and hammering her attractive and serious-looking face with heavy blows from my ham-handed fists.
If any of her friends are free to move I’d be an easy target like this too, but I’m trusting everyone else as I put my back into overcoming this sturdy devil’s resistance in a way I’d dreaded having to do to Kusaka back during our match.
I don’t have pity in my heart for this girl though, even if I can acknowledge she’s a victim too.
Right now she’s my victim though, her head rocking back from the boosted strength and leverage I throw into my blows, the floor cracking underneath her head.
Even when the freeze wears off, she’s stunned and disoriented from the abuse I’m delivering, grotesque shattering impacts sounding as her body struggles but fails to move me before she falls limp and unresisting.
Asia can heal her later.
Or she can get some devil skinship.
Whatever.
I had to do it.
The fact she’s a girl doesn’t change the fact she’s helping a murderer and a kidnapper.
Blood drips off my knuckles as I stand up and take stock, the other defenders having fared just as badly.
A bloodied figure lays sprawled on the stairs near Saeko, and the other presumed rook has been literally planted into the floor like a tree by Nanael, her legs sticking up all that we can see of her.
There’s also a compacted sphere of ‘stuff’ near the foot of the stairs, the end result of everything Kaori’s black hole sucked up.
The last one who’d been panicked by that gravitational anomaly has fallen victim to the fairy again, flat on the ground in a crater of her own making, struggling under enhanced gravity like the first one who’d attacked me outside.
The other three near the door come in more now it’s safe and everyone converges over the gravity-pinned blonde girl who looks to be the only enemy still conscious right now.
Kalawarner of all people sidles up close to me and says, “I always thought Mittelt had terrible taste, but I can see it,” which just makes me stare at her not actually knowing how to deal with it.
Is she flirting with me?
Now?
Seriously?
I mean, she’s hot, she’s a total dommy mommy type, but I don’t want to immediately trade out my mentally fucked up fallen angel for another before her body’s even in the ground.
I just grunt back at her, mentally shoving that all far back to instead loom over the fallen nun-turned-devil.
“Where’s Diodora and Asia?” I demand of her so we don’t have to search this whole mansion.
“Nnngh…!” she pants down on the ground from the effort of even breathing while under this much gravity.
We’d done some testing ourselves seeing how far Kaori can push it in terms of finding a good level to train at, and I’ve experienced being put right in the ground by it.
It’s not fun.
But despite it she still glares defiance and squeaks out, “I’ll never betray Diodora-sama!” “I’ve got this,” Kaori interrupts, flying directly above her and proceeding to generate another swirling purple vortex of intense gravity above the girl’s face, which fortunately changes her tune in an instant.
“Third floor, west wing master bedroom, that way!” she can’t point but her eyes flicker in the given direction and that’s good enough for me.
The bedroom.
That fucker better not have touched her.
“Lets go,” I say coldly, looking up the stairs.
“We’re going to finish this.”