Chapter Text
3rd Person POV
Then, barely three seconds later, a low, resonant click echoed from the entrance to the basement of the clubhouse, and when it opened, the figure appeared, one everyone has been expecting.
"Arto!" Rias was the first to call his name as she lunged herself at him, hugging the man in a mechanic outfit covered in dirt, soot, and machine oil without single care about how dirty he is.
Her arms formed a circle around his neck, quickly closing in, the impact almost made Arto fall on his butt, but he steadied the situation almost instantly and hugged his princess back.
"I've only been gone for a week, Rias, not 10 years, but anyway, I'm home" he whispered, leaning his head towards Rias', enjoying the fragrance of her hair.
After a quiet moment, he looked at Akeno and Robin who were standing idly, partly surprised because of Rias' action, partly letting the princess having her moment with her innovator. "Good morning, Robin, Akeno, hug?"
And while Robin declined gently with a smile, Akeno took that invitation immediately "Darling~" She hugged him around his waist from behind "Our bed has been lacking your warmth for 7 days, take responsibility for use having to sleeping without our favorite cuddle pillow"
Arto couldn't help but let out a low, breathless laugh as he found himself pinned between the fiery embrace of his King and the warm, clinging press of his Queen. The distinct scent of burnt soot, heavy machine oil, and conductive magic grease clung to his heavy mechanic coveralls, but neither Rias nor Akeno seemed to mind in the slightest.
"I see my status as a strategic asset has officially been downgraded to a body pillow," Arto murmured, his deep voice vibrating softly against Rias's shoulder as he tightened his arm around her waist, keeping them both balanced.
"You brought this upon yourself, darling," Akeno cooed, resting her chin snugly on his shoulder from behind, her arms locked securely around his waist. "Leaving us to endure cold sheets while you were down there cuddling with mana reactors and steel chassis. It's only fair we claim back our compound interest."
Rias pulled back just enough to look into his eyes, her crimson gaze taking in the faint dark circles under his eyes and the streak of grease across his cheekbone. Despite his exhaustion, the sheer clarity and presence in his eyes were undeniable. A proud, breathtaking smile broke across her face.
"Welcome back, Arto," Rias said softly, her fingers gently brushing a bit of metallic dust from his collar before she finally released her grip, allowing him to stand fully upright. "Though I must say, your timing is impeccably dramatic. Nami just walked out the door five minutes ago to go make you money
"I see, then I'll let her take the stage, now" He nudged at the girls holding onto him "Can you let me go a bit? I need a shower, I know you don't mind me being dirty, but it's really itchy, even for me" Arto replied while gently taking the hugging koalas off him "I'll be back in a moment, then you can hear me rambling about the completion of Phase 1 of Simulation Room Construction"
[Timeskip: Brought to you by Arto humming with horrible singing voice in the shower, causing chibi Nami to laugh her ass off hearing]
Arto sat down with them in the living room, and started telling them about Phase 1 of Simulation Room, Power Layer. He projected a map of Kuoh's underground structure, specifically area underneath the building they are staying in at the moment.
And stood out in that projection is a massive river of blue energy looking like an underground river, that's the mana leyline running under Kuoh.
Rias, Robin and Akeno leaned into the marvelous projection, their eyes narrowed, searching for the reactors. Arto asked what Robin and Rias are asking in their mind "Darling, I know this leyline and it's beautiful, but where exactly are our reactors?"
To answer that question, Arto put a filter into the projection and near the curves of the mana river, 3 golden dots of light appeared "Here are our mana reactors, built near the curves of the leyline to prevent detections, the work of theirs will only create tiny curves on the overall leyline, making it really hard to spot"
Robin's eyes didn't seem to focus on the location of the reactors, but its core "You're using which model of Stabilizer Mana Reactor, REA-4?"
Arto didn't deny it, instead, he showed her the projection of the blueprints "More like, REA-4+, it's one I modified myself when being down there, the fundamentals are the same, drawing wild mana from the leyline in, filtering it via Stabilizer before converting them into 2 parts, one is electricity to run the facility, one is stable mana flow to generate simulations, but that's the task of Phase 2: Operational Layer. When the power is done using, they are churned back down the reactors to give it back to the leyline, completing a circle. What stood out about model 4+ is the cooling method I installed due to a small surprise I found when digging underground"
He put the next filter into the projection, and it appeared, an actual underground water stream running under Kuoh, and right over the reactors' chambers "The river will act as our 2nd camouflage, and a cooling factor as the heat will be transferred into the water via the additions that made REA-4 REA-4+"
"Which make these chambers almost impossible to spot unless digging them up directly" Rias pointed out while being amazed by what Arto built in just a week underground
"Precisely, Rias," Arto said with a sharp nod, tapping the edge of the data slate to magnify the subterranean water stream. "Even if an elder or a stray surveyor casts a deep-earth detection pulse, all they will read is a natural geothermal shift beneath a standard underground river. The heat signature is masked by the water, and the mana draw is disguised by the natural curves of the leyline."
Arto turned off the projection and leaned back against his chair with a sip of tea into his mouth "That's my working report, it's your turn now" And Robin's report almost made Arto spit his own drink hearing "In the past 7 days, the students have finished Chapter 1: Intention of Spellcrafting Formulas with high mastery"
Coughing to recover, Arto wiped his mouth while looking at Robin with stunned eyes "What did you just say, Robin?" The substitute teacher leaned her face into her hand, with their elbow planted on the table, creating a teasing face "You heard me"
Arto's eyes narrowed into a serious gaze "It's not a joke, Robin, mastering Chapter 1 is not just knowing how to imagine spells, it's being able to understand most of material world's operational laws and being able to apply them into make workable and efficient spell visualizations. They are just high school students and you said they mastered it in.....a week?" Two last words were pressed extra heavily to signify the absurdity of what Robin claimed.
The only reply Robin had for him is her own smile widened, her head tilted slightly towards the tablet, one she used to monitor the homework the student submitted, and apparently, with the master authority of the system....
Arto snatched the tablet of his, opening it to check the studying result of his class, which seemed to went steroid under Robin's tutelage, something even Arto couldn't pull off.
"This.... makes no gocmin (f*cking) sense" Arto muttered, his brow furrowing while checking the submitted assigned with nothing but awe, the result was something..... beyond what he thought a high school student, even top-tier ones like Sona could do.
And it's not even numbers on papers, it's visualizations in their head matching exactly the indexes set out in the problems, following precise material laws, resulted in '.vis' files.
Arto scratched his head in confusion "Are you sure they didn't cheat or you're helping them too much with their homework or something? Because what I am seeing is not something a high-schooler can do without their heads exploding"
His fingers keep scrolling through the results of Rias, Akeno, Koneko, Kiba, then to Sona's peerages members like Tsubaki, Tomoe, Tsubasa, Reya and Momo, the Bishops duo stood out the most with complicated visualizations that made Arto's eyes almost fell out of its sockets seeing.
"Whatever method you used for them, I want to see how legitimate it can be, so..." Arto settled down his tablet before looking at Robin straight in her eyes "I hereby announce a suprise test that spans on all Chapter 1 by 1 P.M this afternoon. I want to see if they can do what they did under unprepared situation"
The second people to almost spit their drink out are Rias and Akeno hearing the sudden announcement from the initial teacher of the class, after a grueling week of learning Systematic Magic, training, translating magic-tech documents, and lastly, an intense meeting with Gremory clan's people, the last thing they could expect was a test came due to their own competence when performing beyond his calculation
"Wait—what?!" Rias choked, her royal composure completely shattering as she set her teacup down so hard the porcelain clattered against the saucer. "Arto, you can't be serious! A surprise test? Today?!"
"A test?" Akeno's usual sultry smirk evaporated, her eyes widening as she looked from Arto's utterly deadpan face to the tablet resting on the coffee table. "Darling, please tell me this is your idea of a playful welcome-back joke... We've been awake for 2 days straight preparing for the clan audits!"
"Do I look like I'm joking?" Arto replied dryly, crossing his arms over his chest, his dark gaze unyielding. "I leave for seven days to construct a subterranean nuclear-grade mana reactor, and I come back to find my high school student class producing graduate-level material physics formulas in their sleep. That isn't progress, that's a biological anomaly."
He pointed a finger at the screen, where the complex .vis spatial rendering files submitted by Momo and Reya were still shimmering with pristine, mathematically perfect indexes. "It's you overperformance got me suspicious, but I will play it fair, if you 10 past the test, I will treat you to a meal at any restaurant you desire with no budget cap."
He raised another finger "And I will personally make you custom magic-tech gears for your coming missions, how does that sound? But be warned, if any of you fails, that proves Robin's claim wrong, she will have to spend the next week teaching you Intention again, and I will get a free meal my choosing from her" His eyes met Robin's, a challenge not with the students, but with their teacher
Robin's smile didn't waver for a single second. Instead, her eyes narrowed slightly with a spark of genuine, playful amusement, the calm water of her demeanor meeting his burning challenge head-on.
"Fufu... A wager, then?" Robin said softly, leaning her chin back into her palm, her gaze locked onto Arto's deadpan expression. "An all-you-can-eat feast of their choosing, custom high-tier gear for their coming operations... against a week of remedial lectures and a dinner on my tab. You truly know how to raise the stakes, Master Architect."
"It's only fair," Arto said neutrally, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed. "You claim you turned ten devil high-schoolers into intuitive magic-physics prodigies in seven days without breaking their minds. I claim that's mathematically improbable. At 1:00 PM, the test paper will speak for itself."
"Deal," Robin accepted without a moment's hesitation. She turned her head toward Rias and Akeno, her voice carrying a smooth, utterly confident warmth. "You heard your Sensei, girls. It seems your Sunday lunch and your future tactical upgrades depend entirely on proving that your hard work this week was no fluke."
"A blank check for a luxury dinner and custom gear..." Rias murmured, a confident, sharp grin breaking across her face. She looked over at Akeno. "Akeno, call Sona immediately. Tell her to wrap up whatever small talk she has left with the elders, gather Tsubaki and the rest of the Sitri peerage, and get their heads into their formula notes. We have three hours."
"On it, Buchou~" Akeno giggled, already pulling out her smartphone, her previous nervousness entirely replaced by electric enthusiasm. "Fufu... I can already taste the three-star Michelin steak. And I certainly won't let Robin lose a wager on our account."
While Akeno is texting the message on her tablet to other students of the class, Arto tapped something on his tablet, and a smirk is displayed on his face when the tablets of students received a ping.
Robin noticed that right away and opened the thick tome of Spellcrafting Formulas, and as expected, all she saw was distorted symbols running around like an army of ants moving in chaos 'Of course' She thought while looking at Arto.
The author of the book cleared his throat "And tell them all that I have locked all access to Spellcrafting Formulas book, both physical and digital versions, meaning until the test ended at 4 P.M, you have nothing to lean on other than what's already inside your heads."
[Timeskip: Brought to you by Sona trying to read her notebooks, but they are at the same state at the book]
By 4 P.M, the door of the clubhouse swung open, revealing Nami coming home with an over-the-top triumphant smile resting on her make, making the CFO looking like a moving sun.
And that sun met the silent, intense atmosphere of the room as she stepped into the living room now a classroom like how it usually becomes every day by this hour.
But instead of Robin standing on the lectern like what has been going on the past week, it's Arto, her Boss, he has come home, but his face is not of any relief, but heavy tension.
Down the class, no one noticed she has returned, all senses focused on the teacher who is holding the tablet at his face, waiting for something. She can see the room has become a powder keg, ready to explode at any moment.
"Nami, you're home" Robin's voice rung behind her, making the financier of Arto almost plunged her head at the ceiling "You're back at the right moment, sit"
Robin led Nami to the seat at the end of the class and sat down with the confused CFO "Here it comes, the announcement"
On the lectern, Arto hold the master tablet like a court verdict, which is true to some extensa, his face serious like a military general "The submitted tests has been graded, the result is currently in my hand"
Nami turned to Robin, whispering "What test? Robin, what's going on?" Robin leaned closer to Nami "I'll tell you later, just know it will decide dinner. Now shush" She put a finger over her lips, gesturing Nami to look at the board.
At the front, ten devils sat straight-backed in their chairs. Rias's hands were folded tight on her desk, her crimson hair framing an expression of sharp, rigid anticipation. Beside her, Sona sat with her glasses pushed high up her nose, her knuckles pale against her lap.
Akeno has left behind her teasing normalcy, her face matches the seriously of Tsubaki sitting next to her, whose hands were shaking to the point the stylus she used to do the test fell.
Sweat glistened on Kiba's jaw, Koneko sat completely unmoving, and the Sitri peerage members, Tomoe, Tsubasa, Reya, and Momo—looked as though they were awaiting an executioner's final decree.
Arto took a deep breath, and Robin caught a moment his lips moved up from behind the tablet "The result of Chapter 1's Overrall Test IS...." he raised his voice
".....You don't know how much I was hoping to lose this bet, students!" Arto lowered the tablet, the result showed itself in 3D projection, his voice was the igniter for the explosion "Now, REJOICE!"
The digital holographic projection burst to life above Arto's master tablet, filling the tense air of the classroom with glowing, golden numbers that shimmered like victory banners.
Floating at the very top, in large, unmistakable letters, was the final class score: 10/10 PASS — AVERAGE SCORE: 93.4%.
For two seconds, absolute silence hung in the air as the ten devils stared at the glowing numbers, their minds struggling to process that the executioner's decree was actually a total, undeniable victory.
Then, the power keg blew. "WE DID IT!" Rias shouted, slamming her hands onto her desk as she stood up, completely dropping her royal composure in a rare explosion of pure, unadulterated joy.
Beside her, Sona let out a long, ragged breath, her shoulders sagging as the crushing tension finally broke. She removed her glasses, wiping away a faint bead of sweat from her brow, though a rare, brilliant smile broke across her usually stern face.
"Fufu... Ahaha!" Akeno burst into delighted laughter, throwing her arms around Tsubaki, who looked so relieved she nearly collapsed back into her chair, her stylus rolling onto the floor forgotten. "Three-star Michelin steak! Custom gear! We survived, Tsubaki, we survived!"
Kiba slumped back into his seat with a breathless laugh, running a hand through his damp blond hair, while Koneko quietly let out a long puff of air. Over on the Sitri side, Momo, Reya, Tomoe, and Tsubasa were practically hugging each other, cheering like they had just won a war.
Nami sat at the back of the room, her eyes wide as saucers as she looked from the chaotic, cheering classroom to the floating gold holograms, and finally to Robin, who was sitting beside her with a serene, completely triumphant smile.
"Wait... custom gear? Three-star Michelin steak?" Nami blinked, her financial mind instantly calculating the absurd cost. She gasped, turning to Robin. "What's going on around here, Robin?" She asked.
"It will be discussed over dinner, Nami, now, don't you have a report to send to your Boss? You know, that profitable one" Her eyes laid on the briefcase Nami was having by her side.
Slapping her forehead, Nami stood up "Right, almost forgot, oh BOSS! I brought victory news home" She came to Arto running with the briefcase containing the papers regarding her negotiation with Gremory's Financial Department about the license fee for the production line of the artifact of Bael clan's urgent order.
Only now Arto noticed Nami's presence in the room "Nami, when did you arrive?" he asked with genuine surprise "Just in time to watch you sign away half our operational margin to a three-star Michelin restaurant," Nami deadpanned, setting her heavy leather briefcase onto the lectern with a loud, satisfying thud.
Arto blinked, looking down at the briefcase and then up at Nami and understood what she was meaning "I see, so it went well?" He asked, and Nami opened it as the answer. Papers are laid before the innovator "I've reached the license fee for the production line design, and after my research on the market, it's quite impressive"
Arto immediately got interested "Impressive you say? I'll read your market research later to grasp the position of my products on it, but for now, just tell me the general price Gremory was willing to pay to buy the production line design to complete Bael's urgent order"
Nami sat down next to Arto "That's the problem, Boss, it lies in the complexity of the production line, it's too hard and time consuming to construct this in reality as many of it components don't exist. But, when Simulation Room comes into the play..."
Arto cupped his chin "The building price dropped to 0 due to the room simulating them all into reality, so the clan was negotiating to put the license price into my tab for the materials to build Simulation Room, correct?"
Nami nodded "Correct, geez, would you need me anymore after you read that market research, genius?" She turned away, fabricating her own sulking, making Arto chuckle.
"Alright, alright, Nami, the stage is yours, continue with how you deal with that point of argument" He gesture her to continue.
Nami's radiating smile appeared again "As you wish, Boss. I agreed to their argument, you are indeed indebted to the clan via the materials they bought for you to build Simulation Room, and that debt will be repaid partly by the license fee of the production line, and you will continue to repaid that debt by future licensing when you solve other urgent orders of Underworld, provided you keep delivering it this flawlessly, along with the usage fee of Simulation Room.
But this is the important part, the price, it will dictate how much of your debt going away and how much the clan will have to pay you for your effort after the commission with Bael is done"
She pulled another stack of paper out of the briefcase "The argument came regarding the profit margin of the commission, which as you can see" She pointed at the chart, making Arto's eyes go wide.
Not waiting for Arto to recover, Nami continued "I know it's huge, Boss, got me almost faint last time I saw it. The production cost was cut so hard by Simulation Room, along with the high price Bael clan was willing to pay for the goods due to their own lacking reserve, makes the margin ridiculous, that 'cake' is where the clan and I fought over"
Clearing her throat, Nami started the explanation by laying out the promised payment for the urgent commission of Bael clan "This is the price they set out for whoever could complete the order and deliver them the load of their lacking artifacts, it has been sitting around for 500 years, price rose every decade in desperation to find the one being able to do it, only until you stepped into the game"
Arto looked at the detailed information of the urgent order, his first time seeing it, he doesn't even know if this price is high or not, he just knows from Nami's words that this has been sitting idly for 500 years and Bael was desperate to find solution, so this price should be the one representing their situation "How much of the margin does the clan want for their own?"
"They wanted a staggering 80% of the net margin," Nami said, tapping her finger sharply against the peak of the chart. "Their financial council argued that since the Gremory clan is the one providing you with most of the materials required to build Simulation Room, protecting your identity and works against probing attempts, they deserved the lion's share of the windfall."
Arto's face didn't change at all hearing the settlement Gremory side wanted, he expected it, only gestured Nami to continue.
And she did "That's when I had to remind them about the value of your intelligence, about if it's not for you coming up with this production line, they would never have a chance to touch that commission, or any future urgent orders, and the materials will just be meaningless ores sitting in warehouse somewhere instead of an era-changing revolution"
Nami then dropped the hammer "That's why I suggested this settlement, Arto will take 40% of the net margin, divided into 2 channels of payments, raw money flowing into Arto's account as payment for his effort. the other half will be used to pay up the material debt he is having with the clan"
Arto then asked "So I am receiving 20% of this commission?" Nami nodded "Indeed, with your debt depleting after each other. About the 60% the clan receives, 20% will be in the form of Gremory clan's bonds, which by this point, is at a low price due to their ruin state post-war, but will pop up the moment magic-tech hit the market. In other words, you get 60% of the comission, a third of it will be a loan you give to the clan to recover, and a sign of your commitment to the clan's growth."
She continued after a sip of drink "But that's not all, the debt will also be paid by usage fee of Simulation Room, and since the facility is not online yet so I'll negotiate that later. And when it's done, the money will by default be yours. But it will require your Simulation Room to work as intended and you to perform this flawlessly in future urgent orders after this one of Bael. Can you do it, Boss?"
Arto's face remained stern before he turned to Rias, who was still staying in relieved state after the test "Rias, can you answer me something?"
The heiress of Gremory clan snapped out of her levitating spirit and came to the lectern "What is it, Arto?" He looked at her in the eyes, asking calmly "I want to ask you the difficulty rate of the artifact I just helped restore, where does it stand on the urgent orders list?"
Rias thought for a moment before answering with positive voice "The artifact of Bael clan is among the hardest relics requiring restoration, so much so that when R&D Department presented the renewed blueprints of the artifact and the production line document, my uncle, or my mother's older brother, the current head of Bael clan, immediately sent Gremory a security deposit and promised a steep sum of reward if the commission is completed"
Hearing that, Arto turned to Nami "Did they mention it in the meeting with you, Nami?"
The accountant nodded "Yes, they did, and they accepted to let you take most the rewarding sum when the commission is completed, the clan would only need the deposit for input materials expenses, and a small amount to cover the wages for the supervision on the production process, Lady Venelana's direct order, no one would oppose that"
Arto held Nami's gaze for a long moment, the stern lines of his face finally breaking as a low, resonant chuckle vibrated in his chest. He tapped his fingers rhythmically against the edge of the lectern, the pieces of his grander strategy locking perfectly into place.
"If the Bael artifact is widely considered the absolute pinnacle of restoration difficulty," Arto said, his voice dropping into a smooth, unshakeable cadence as he looked between Rias and Nami, "and they are willingly surrendering the bulk of the final completion reward just to see it done... then the rest of the Underworld's backlogged urgent orders aren't actual challenges, Nami. They are simply a waiting list for our assembly line."
He picked up his tablet, shutting off the screen with a decisive click. "To answer your question, Nami: Yes. I can do it," Arto stated, the absolute certainty in his tone leaving zero room for doubt.
[Timeskip: Brought to you by the group enjoying the meal together at a high-end restaurant ]
[ORC Clubhouse]
2 more weeks has passed from the that day, members of 2 peerages have gone on different paths training to hone their specialized skills for their roles in the joint squad.
Now, they are different people carrying the old names, their power spiked at a rate no one could imagine, but with them being able to absorb Chapter 1 in 1 week, it's not a surprise any longer.
Now, on a Friday night, they are sitting inside the ORC clubhouse, the lectern is once again taken by Robin but she is not here as the teacher.
"Students" Robin started, her voice stern and calm "your progress in the past 2 weeks on both training your body, and your magic prowess, you've moved on different paths towards betterment and I have nothing but proud to describe my feelings seeing you grow in the past 3 weeks teaching and training you"
Her eyes moved along the desks, towards the King, Rias and Sona have becom exceptional Macro-Micro Leaders duo with perfect combinations in adaptation, and over strategy.
Then towards Akeno and Tsubaki, the Queens, the Hybrid Main Forces of the squad, their synergy is battle is the best out of everyone, skillsets made not only to operate as competence individuals, close-range with naginatas, range with magic, but also to cover each other perfectly when fighting alongside.
After the Queens is the Bishops duo Momo and Reya, the Magic Administrators of the team, their knowledge over Spellcrafting Formulas is the sharpest, being able to cast spells to orders at insane pace and fixing flaws in their teammates' spellcrafts mid battle.
Next is the Flank Specialists, Tomoe and Kiba, Knights duo, their speed and swordplay will be able to disrupt any formation, and they are even more dangerous when being with each other, Kiba's Sword Birth combined with Systematic Magic made him a moving arsenal of magic swords, Tomoe on the other hand has learned to read and use Kiba's sword along with their combined spellcasting, making them an unpredictable storm of blades.
Lastly, the Tank and Burst, Rooks duo Tsubasa and Koneko, their physical power along with their speed can break any defense, their defense could take any attack, making them unmoveable walls of the squad, their weighing spells are getting lighter and lighter as they adapt to their speed to make them true 'guided missiles'
Robin's eyes completed their sweep of the room, her gaze lingering on the Rooks before she offered a soft, deeply satisfied smile. The raw, unrefined magical signatures that had once bled erratically from the ten teenagers were gone. In their place sat a squad of tightly coiled springs, their mana flows perfectly stabilized and internalized through their intense physical and mental conditioning.
"You are no longer just pieces on a chessboard relying on innate demonic talent," Robin continued, her voice echoing clearly in the quiet clubhouse. "You have become a fully integrated tactical unit. Kings who command the battlefield down to the millimeter. Queens who strike with flawless hybrid lethality. Bishops who rewrite the laws of physics on the fly. Knights who control the tempest, and Rooks who shatter the earth."
She paused, letting the weight of her words settle over them. "Tonight, I'm not here as your teacher, but a delivery person giving you the first mission that will require you all to work as a team. Nami"
The CFO stepped into the room with a file in her hand "I've got it, a stray hunting pact from Sitri Stray Hunting Agency. Everyone, especially the Kings, get closer, you're moving out on the field this time"
Everyone stood up in sync as they move towards the board where Nami laid out the mission information "A group of stray devils—estimated twelve to fifteen, all A-rank or above—broke into a secure vault two days ago and stole a relic classified as 'high-risk containment breach potential.'
The relic is a sealed demonic artifact capable of amplifying negative emotions into physical manifestations—rage storms, fear-induced paralysis fields, despair curses. In the wrong hands, it can turn a quiet suburb into a war zone in minutes."
Everyone listens without a sound made, all senses focus on the urgent mission at hand. Nami continued "The strays scattered immediately after the theft. Some are heading deeper into the forest. A large number of them are moving toward the nearest city outskirts. A few are drifting toward the port. The location of the true carrier of the relic hasn't been identified yet. The agency wants them all eliminated and the relic recovered before civilian casualties occur."
Robin's gaze moved between Rias and Sona—calm, expectant. "This is your operation now. Rias—micro command. Sona—macro command. I want to hear your solution. How would you deploy the formation for this campaign?"
Rias and Sona looked at each other, then at their members, the cards are in their hands, 3 divided packs of stray devils, time ticking down before they either escape or cause massive destruction in residential area, and the one holding the relic.....could be anywhere
Sona moved first, stepping up to the tactical map with an absolute, crystal-clear focus, her fingers tracing the three divergent escape vectors—the dense northern forest, the sprawling city outskirts, and the southern port district.
"Twelve to fifteen A-rank strays split across three fronts means direct linear pursuit is a trap," Sona began, her tone measured and authoritative. "If we chase one group blindly, the carrier escapes through another sector or triggers the relic in a high-density zone. Macro command prioritizes containment, intelligence isolation, and simultaneous neutralization."
Sona tapped the three key zones on the board, her eyes sweeping over the squad.
"Phase 1: Macro Network & Sector Isolation. Momo and Reya will establish a wide-area spatial monitoring perimeter anchored to Arto's local leyline nodes. Any sudden anomaly in atmospheric negative emotions or localized mana spikes will be instantly flagged, pin-pointing the exact location of the relic carrier regardless of which path they chose."
Rias stepped beside Sona, her crimson eyes burning with sharp, tactical precision as she picked up the micro deployment.
"Phase 2: Micro Execution & Tri-Vector Striking. We deploy in three synchronized, self-sustaining strike cells," Rias commanded, her voice ringing across the silent room.
"Cell Alpha — Forest Sector: Koneko, Kiba, and Momo. Dense forest terrain favors ambushes. Kiba, your Systematic Sword Birth will alter the terrain with localized barrier blades to force them into tight corridors. Koneko, you are the guided heavy impact—use your adjusted weight spells to flush them out. Momo provides real-time vector correction and barrier support."
"Cell Beta — Port District: Tsubasa, Tomoe, and Reya. Open shipping docks and metallic structures mean high mobility is required. Tomoe and Tsubasa will operate as a high-speed Flank and Tank pair, using the shipping containers to bottleneck the strays. Reya will manage spellcraft calculations to neutralize any water-based concealment spells."
Rias's gaze swept to the remaining members, her posture unyielding.
"Cell Gamma — City Outskirts & Relic Recovery: Akeno, Tsubaki, and myself. The city outskirts present the highest risk of civilian casualties. Akeno and Tsubaki will take the vanguard, using their hybrid naginata and long-range systematic spells to neutralize high-threat A-ranks instantly. Sona and I will maintain overall command, ready to redirect cell assets the moment Momo and Reya lock onto the relic's emotional vector."
Sona pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, looking over at Arto and Robin. "Total operational window: forty-five minutes. Zero civilian exposure. Zero containment breaches."
[Timeskip: Brought to you by Robin setting up the monitors to watch the team at work]
[City Outskirts]
Rias is standing at the with Sona, Tsubaki and Akeno, waiting for the marching bunch of stray devils to come at them. Rias took down the telescope from her eyes "Sona, you're seeing this, right?"
The Macro leader narrowed her eyes "Yes, there are more than we expected, more than the amount the document said, there are already 20 heading here, they must have somehow picked up some strays on their way. But what's bugging me is how they are moving"
She projected images of the hoard of stray devils "Highly coordinated, all A-rank and above, 2 S-ranks leading the pack" She pointed at their darkened eyes, widened mouth with lines of saliva dripping off their bodies covered in some kind of black tar, but their formation is visible like a trained task force squad.
"They have lost all sentient of a living being, but their movements are so well formed, I suspect the effect of the relic spans further than just amplifying negative emotions" Sona pointed out
"S-rank leaders operating as unit commanders..." Akeno cooed softly, though the ambient temperature around her dropped several degrees as arcs of purple thunder danced across her shoulders. "And here I thought this was just a simple pest control assignment."
"They aren't acting on instinct anymore," Rias said, her voice dropping into a cold, commanding tone as she raised her right hand. Crimson Destruction mana began to swirl around her fingers, not in its usual chaotic, wild shape, but locked into a tight, dense vector sphere—the direct result of her Systematic Magic integration. "The relic isn't just amplifying negative emotions, Sona. It's hive-minding them. It stripped away their sanity and replaced it with a single, overriding tactical directive."
Sona's fingers moved across her tactical slate at blinding speed, re-calibrating the macro battle grid in real time.
"Rias is correct," Sona stated crisply, her blue eyes sharp behind her reflective lenses. "The black substance coating their skin is acting as a conductive physical medium for the relic's signal. The two S-ranks at the front aren't just vanguard heavy hitters—they are local relay nodes. As long as those two are operational, the twenty A-ranks behind them will move with absolute, synchronized perfection."
"Which means if we sever the relay nodes," Tsubaki deduced, her grip tightening on her naginata as she shifted into a low vanguard stance, "the entire formation collapses into mindless, chaotic strays."
"Precisely," Sona confirmed, tapping her slate to ping Cell Gamma's tactical link. "Momo, Reya—do you copy? Cell Gamma has engaged an amplified horde at the City Outskirts. Twenty A-ranks, two S-rank relay nodes. We need a localized interference field deployed immediately to suppress their signal connection."
"Copy, Sona-sama!" Momo's clear voice rang through the ear comms from their elevated monitoring point. "Reya and I are locking onto the black tar's mana frequency right now. Systematic spatial anchor initializing in three... two... one!"
A faint, translucent silver array flashed across the night sky, expanding over the approaching horde like a massive, shimmering web. The moment the array settled, the perfectly marching stray devils faltered mid-step, several of the A-ranks stumbling and letting out unnatural, gurgling shrieks as their hive synchronization stuttered.
"Target disruption confirmed," Sona announced smoothly. "Micro command is yours, Rias."
A fierce, breathtaking smile broke across Rias's face as she stepped forward, her new custom magic-tech gauntlets pulsing with concentrated crimson light.
"Cell Gamma, engage!" Rias commanded, her voice ringing out across the quiet outskirts. "Akeno, Tsubaki—take the flanks and sever the S-rank relay nodes! Sona and I will hold the center line!"
[Port]
As Reya was doing the task Sona assigned from the City Outskirts, Tomoe and Tsubasa moved carefully into the port where the strays were heading towards in the report.
The place is under utter quietness, as expected, the atmosphere is heavy as lead and the light....gone. Tomoe and Tsubasa moved forwards together, not making a sound, their senses are at their sharpest, scanning everything with terrifying precision, leaving no places for blindspots.
"Where are they?" Tomoe asked quietly, her sword ready to be draw at any moment, but to her surprise, nothing. "Did they escape?" Tsubasa tiightened her fist, but their sensors around the port didn't pick up anything.
Until a moment when their eyes are set one one single target, a large warehouse reeking of deathly aura, but their spells picked up no living signs from inside.
"Reya," Tsubasa whispered into her tactical comms, her voice barely a breath. "Once you're done with Kaichou's side, come take a look, this place is not normal at all, we'll set up a protection dome outside of it to prevent anything from escaping"
Tomoe agreed with the measure as she formed a magic circle in her hands, and directed it at the warehouse, and in a moment, that place is a covered in a white dome of mana, giving them a bit of light of the exterior of the place
The silence inside was absolute—not the calm quiet of an empty harbor, but a heavy, suffocating stillness that made the air feel like thick liquid. No ocean breeze filtered through the white barrier, and the usual hum of distant city traffic was completely choked out.
"Protection dome anchored," Tomoe murmured, her right hand resting lightly on the hilt of her sword, her posture low and spring-loaded. "Spatial perimeter is locked down. Whatever is in there isn't getting out to the city streets."
Tsubasa stepped slightly in front of her, her custom magic-tech gauntlets clicking into a high-density defensive guard. The glowing power meters along her forearms pulsed with a steady, rhythmic blue light, ready to deploy her modified weight-manipulation barriers at a millisecond's notice.
"Good," Tsubasa whispered, her eyes never leaving the blackened double doors of the warehouse. "Because my physical sensors aren't picking up a heartbeat, but the ambient temperature inside just dropped six degrees in three seconds."
Over the tactical comms, Reya's voice broke through the static, crisp and focused despite the ongoing interference calculations she was maintaining for Sona's squad at the City Outskirts.
"Tomoe, Tsubasa—I've completed the signal suppression array for Cell Gamma," Reya reported, her fingers flying across her virtual spellcrafting board on her high-perched monitoring node. "I'm shifting my secondary sensor array to your coordinates now
Magical protections coated themselves around the Knights and the Rook of the Sona's peerage along with many nodes of lights acting as light source and fire power supports, signalling their Bishop is back in the game "You can head inside now, I've had everything out here secured, be careful, you two"
Hearing that, Tsubasa and Tomoe breached the dome, heading into the darkness of the place that seemingly empty from the outside
The moment Tomoe and Tsubasa stepped past the threshold of the white mana dome, the atmospheric pressure plunged as if they had dived into an ocean of freezing oil.
Inside, the vast warehouse was pitch black, saved only by the floating nodes of bright, golden light that Reya had cast alongside them. The light cut through the gloom, revealing towering rows of rusted shipping containers, twisted steel girders, and stagnant pools of black, tar-like sludge coating the concrete floor.
And suddenly, the tar substance shot at them a tentacles, their speed helped them evade as the light focused on the deep end of the warehouse, where a grotesque form was resting.
Tsubasa and Tomoe took a step back before that disgusting form, a giant spider monstrosity made by the bodies of the stray devils, torn, twisted and glued together by that dark tar, eyes painted crimson preying around 2 devils of Sitri clan, and yet, that thing exudes no living signals.
Around them, crimson dots start appearing, flicking up and down like eyes blinking, like that thing had children eyeing their dinner.
But soon, a more terrifying truth were revealed when the light nodes of Reya shined on them, they are not baby spider monsters, round shaped, blinking red dots "Bombs" Reya muttered, bombs made by that relic, sticking all over that black spider web, the relic holder is mad enough to use that thing to produce weapons on a mass.
Tsubasa looked at Tomoe and a nodded were given, the Knight will defuse the bombs while the Rook take on that spider monster.
"Reya, conduct me a spell to defuse these bombs" Tomoe ordered while slowly stepping back, giving Tsubasa the full stage to distract the monster.
The comms rung back immediately by the Bishop "On it, Tsubasa, Tomoe, be careful, that monster could easily be at rank S+ or SS- as it was a twisted combinations of many A-rank strays with many of their powers, I'll cast more supporting spells for you both! Start by weakening it, the defusing spell will be done and no time"
With that said, the Knight and Rook moved in opposite directions at Mach speed, pulling the attentions of the monster in opposite ways. The spider lived to its nature at it started spitting out more of that black tar to make a web both covering the bombs and trapping the high-speed preys.
The black web strings even merged together, creating a load of tentacles chasing Sitri's devils with a clear intention, keeping them away from the bomb and luring them into the web
Reya's widened to the situation inside while her fingers never stopped weaving the defusing spell into reality "Yep, this tactical cunningness is not of a wild beast, it's of a seasoned predator, no wonder this thing has no signal of life, it's not living, it's just a puppet like those monsters at Kaichou's side"
Inside, the closed environment is giving the intruders less and less moving space as the web started covering every inch of the warehouse. To deal with that, Tsubasa and Tomoe move with 2 clear missions, clearing the webs and halting the tentacles.
Tsubasa with her devastating fists created shockwaves to clear the web by large area while Tomoe cut down all chasing tendrils with her blade, opening their path to attack the monster.
The heavy thud of Tsubasa's custom gauntlets striking the air sent a localized kinetic shockwave tearing through the center of the warehouse. The pressurized air expanded outward like an invisible battering ram, shredding the thick, tar-coated web strings into black powder before they could attach to the walls.
Right behind the clearing wave, Tomoe moved like a silver phantom. Her blade whistled through the dark, cutting three incoming tendrils into liquid fragments before they could anchor into Tsubasa's blind spot.
"Vector path cleared, Tsubasa!" Tomoe shouted, her sword flickering in a fluid, high-speed arc. "Keep the shockwaves localized! Don't trigger the surrounding charges!"
"Got it!" Tsubasa barked back, her heavy boots pivoting on the slick concrete. She channeled her Systematic mana directly into her forearm dampeners, adjusting her weight-manipulation spell from broad-area impact to a dense, needle-point thrust. "Switching to piercing impact!"
The giant, grotesque spider-monstrosity let out a hollow, vibrating screech—a sound produced not by vocal cords, but by the frantic grinding of rusted iron and twisted bone. Its crimson eyes flashed in unison as the relic at its core pulsed a violent violet hue, instantly commanding hundreds of black tar tendrils to burst from the floorboards like a forest of spears.
Above them on her monitoring node, Reya's eyes reflected the dense streams of logic code running across her spellcrafting board.
"Tomoe, twelve seconds until the defusing matrix deploys!" Reya's voice rang crisp and unyielding through their ear comms. "The bombs on the web are linked in a series-parallel circuit! If you sever the primary anchor on the ceiling, the entire network drops into fail-safe mode!"
"Copy that!" Tomoe's eyes sharpened. She planted her foot, her Systematic Magic instantly calculating the atmospheric drag, kinetic momentum, and sword trajectory.
Instead of retreating from the advancing forest of tendrils, Tomoe vaulted straight toward the warehouse ceiling. Her body spun mid-air, her blade igniting with a sharp, high-density edge of mana into wind
A clean, shimmering crescent of compressed air sliced horizontally across the top of the dome. The primary black web suspended from the iron rafters was severed cleanly, causing dozens of floating, pulsating red bombs to lose their tension and sag downward, away from the monster's main body.
Outside the warehouse, Reya has completed the defusing array as she integrated it directly into the magic dome around the warehouse, making the blinking orbs inside the nest of the monsters started dying.
"Reya did it!" Tomoe declared, her sharp eyes catching the sudden, fatal drop in the monster's explosive network. "The web is harmless!"
"Then it's time to end this nightmarish existence!" Tsubasa roared. With zero hesitation, the Rook and Knight of the Sitri squad moved as one fluid, deadly vector.
[Forest]
Koneko, Kiba, and Momo are heading deeper into the forest following the traces of the stray devils, the place is not silent like the port, but it has a different kind of insecurity following them, it's the sound of wind blowing through the leaves, it's the feeling of each step being followed by something lurking in the dark.
The atmosphere is no less suffocating than the port "We are reaching the edge of the ward set up by Sona-sama to prevent them from escaping, but there has been no sign that they have escaped" Momo pointed out from above the tree branches "Where are they?"
Kiba and Koneko shared the same question, they have been scanning this forest countless times, yet no signals were found about the strays. "Kiba. Careful" Koneko said, her ears twitching while her eyes and nose turned up into the dark trees "Light"
She whispered, and from her hands, glowing orbs appeared, following her command towards the trees "Look out!" Kiba yells, fetching the Rook's small form, jumping onto a tree branch before the vines hidden in the ground could capture them, the black forms of those vines made them even more difficult to see.
And when the orbs of light Koneko summoned shined on the tree trunks, horrific truth was revealed.
The bodies of the strays, are bound into the trees by that black tar substance, sinking inch by inch, being eaten alive by their prisons.
No scream, no struggles, just eyes drown in terrors, looking at Kiba and Koneko in agony like begging for a rescue. And from the ground of where they were standing, stench of dead corpses started filling their noses like whatever this thing is has dropped their facade.
From above, Momo finally had a chance to look down after checking the wards "Unbelievable, the place you just stood is a mass grave of animals, the holder of the relic must have poured dead animals down here and corrupted them with that tar, making what you're seeing. Whoever holds the relic is trying to weaponize it"
The branch Kiba and Koneko started wobbling like it somehow turned into sticky tar.... Kiba can feel his shoes being stuck on by the tar as the tree branch slowly turned into another tendril to capture them to be their next meals.
"Koneko, jump!" Kiba barked, his voice cutting through the suffocating stench of rotting flesh that surged up from the forest floor.
Before the branch could fully liquefy into a living, black-tar trap, Kiba unleashed a burst of Systematic mana through his soles, creating a localized kinetic repulsor vector that launched both him and Koneko high into the air before they both spread their devil wings to be on the same height as Momo.
But since the forest has given up its cover, the tendrils shoot up from below like lizards' tongues catching flying insects. "Momo, spatial scan—now!" Kiba commanded, his body spinning in mid-air as his blade whistled through the night.
With a fluid, practiced motion incorporating his Systematic Magic, Kiba summoned three elemental magic swords simultaneously via Sword Birth. The blades hovered in a triangular formation behind him before shooting downward like guided missiles, planting themselves into the earth to form a localized kinetic barrier that deflected a massive cluster of rising tendrils.
"I'm on it!" Momo replied, her fingers moving across her floating holographic slate with frantic, absolute precision. Her Bishop training under Robin's curriculum kicked in instantly; instead of panicking at the horrific sight below, her mind analyzed the underlying mana vectors.
"The corruption isn't coming from the trees—it's anchored to a subterranean fluid leyline!" Momo reported, her eyes tracking glowing blue and purple grid lines on her display. "The relic holder buried something twenty meters below the mass grave, using the rotting animal carcasses as a biological protection to mask its presence! It's drawing wild mana straight from the ground!"
Koneko's ears twitched as she adjusted her position in the air, her glowing yellow eyes locked onto a specific spot near a giant, blackened oak tree where the stench of death was thickest. "Found the heart," Koneko said, her voice small, calm, and deadly.
She slammed her custom gauntlets together, activating her weight-manipulation drive. The glowing power meters along her forearms surged into a bright, blinding gold. "Kiba, Momo—clear the path. I'm going to dig it out."
"You got it!" Kiba grinned, his blond hair whipped by the rising updraft. He extended both hands, channeling Chapter 1's spatial physics to alter the momentum of his summoned blades. A dozen magic swords materialized in a broad circle around the giant oak, spinning at high speed to create a whirlwind of vacuum blades that shredded every incoming tar tendril into harmless liquid spray.
"Barrier suppression deployed!" Momo added, casting a high-density neutralizing array directly over the targeted coordinates. "Subterranean shield weakened by 80%! Go, Koneko!"
Koneko didn't waste a single millisecond. She folded her wings, shifting her weight parameters to maximum mass as she plummeted toward the earth like a solid tungsten projectile.
BOOM!
The impact was deafening. A massive, golden shockwave tore through the forest floor, shattering the black tar matrix and blasting away thousands of tons of corrupted earth and rotting soil in a single, terrifying explosion. The sheer kinetic force pulverized the subterranean chamber, driving straight through to the hidden vault below.
As the dust and black mist were blown away by Momo's wind spells, a screech of pure, unadulterated fury echoed from the newly formed crater. Buried in the exposed bedrock was the body of countless dead animals laying around the corpse of an S-rank stray devil, all covered in that monstrous black substance
"Not here" Kiba let out a frustrated sigh while planting his sword on the ground. "Could the holder be at other sites, I'll ask" He activated his comms towards other teams.
"Rias-sama, did you find the relic holder?" He asked, and the answer was not pleasant "No, the relic holder wasn't here" Rias answered with concern "We just defeated 20 strays marching towards the city, and when they died, theie bodies exploded, those black tar was trying to cover us, but Sona was able to fend them off"
Then came the voice of the Macro Leader "If it's not at your side, Tsubasa, did you find the holder?" Once again, the answer is the same "No, Kaichou, we just defeated a twisted arachnid monster and defused a bunch of bombs fueled by the relic, but the holder was nowhere to be found"
10 members of 2 peerages found themselves in disappointing silence, they just neutralized S-rank threats, but the mastermind of all these is still missing, that was the most bugging part for the leaders to figure out.
Sona let out an angry breath while recalling everything tonight before "Kiba, Koneko, Tsubasa, Tomoe, go back the path you took towards each site, reach the point where the path was reported to seperate. Reya, regroup with me and Cell Gamma, I have a bad feeling about this"
From Sona's side, a map was drawn out as Rias, Akeno and Tsubaki started to understand why Sona was concerning, the place where the stray splitted sat right on top of a major drainage pipe leading straight....towards the city
"The drainage main..." Rias breathed, her eyes narrowing as the realization hit her like a bucket of ice water. "They didn't split up to escape. The entire multi-pronged attack was a massive, loud diversion."
"A sacrificial vanguard," Sona said, her voice dropping into a razor-thin, dangerous register as her fingers tapped rapidly on her tablet. "The twenty A-ranks heading for the city, the mutated arachnid monster at the port, and the subterranean decoy buried in the mass grave... None of them were meant to win. They were sent out to draw our attention, lock our strike cells into isolated coordinates, and bleed off our initial momentum while the true carrier slipped beneath us through the municipal water grid."
Over the open channel, the rustle of leaves and heavy wind thrummed as Kiba and Koneko immediately altered their trajectory, sprinting back along their initial entry path at mach speed.
"Kaichou!" Kiba's voice cut through the comms, crisp despite the high-speed movement. "If the carrier is navigating through the central drainage pipe, they are using the subterranean water currents to completely damp their thermal and magical signatures! That's why Momo's initial perimeter scan couldn't lock onto the relic's emotional vector!"
"And the black tar..." Tomoe added, her voice ringing from Cell Beta's position as she and Tsubasa leapt across the harbor rooftops back toward the junction point. "It wasn't just a physical mutation weapon. It was an organic filter. The strays we fought were bleeding that substance into the environment to saturate the city's ambient mana grid, blinding our wide-area tracking array!"
"A remarkably clever plan for a group of stray devils," Akeno said, her eyes flashing with dangerous purple sparks as her fingers tightened around the shaft of her custom naginata. "Though I doubt those mindless beasts came up with a multi-layered strategic diversion like this on their own."
"The relic is guiding them," Rias stated firmly, her crimson Destruction mana surging along her gauntlets. "Or whoever is wielding it has retained enough calculating intellect to act as an actual commander. Sona, what's the carrier's destination?"
Sona zoomed in on the holographic grid "It's hard to say, this drainage system is large enough for them to move almost anywhere in the city, but with the bombs they made and the corruption power of the relic, it's likely they are aiming at the most crowded place, the central plaza"
Her comms is on again "Reya, come back quickly, I need your defusing array to cover the entire city, cutting off any explosion attempts" The answer came immediately "On it, Kaichou!"
The came the order for the moving pieces "Rooks, Knights, head into that drainage, following the line back into the city, anything or anyone blocking your path, eliminate without hesitation, I doubt the place is being covered in black tar right now. Momo, follow them to purify the tar and be their magic support" Sona said
Then Sona turned off the comms to turn her attention back to the main forces, Rias and 2 Queens "We head into the city to find that relic holder, stop them at any cost! That cunning bastard will use the crowded area to cover themselves and limit our movements, so we need to slip in quickly, isolate, and dismantle before anything could happen to normal civilians. All teams, do you have any questions?"
Over the comms, the crisp, synchronized response of the joint squad echoed without a single trace of hesitation: "No questions, Kaichou!"
[Drainage System]
Koneko, Kiba, Tsubasa, Tomoe and Momo headed down the hidden passage through the broken point on the main pipe the strays made to access the pipe that is carrying the waste water for an entire city.
Dozens of meters tall, the massive concrete conduit felt less like a city utility tunnel and more like the cavernous throat of a sleeping beast.
Everyone landed on sticky substance that they have grown to hate quite a lot after the mission tonight and weirdly, inside this main drainage pipe...."No water" Kiba pointed it out as he looked around his feet.
Tomoe agreed "You're right, this place should be where the waste gather, but it's weirdly dry here." Out of nowhere, a shield was raised to protect the Rooks and the Knights from Momo.
A shocking sound made them almost jumped at their place as something hit the shields with immense power, the light orbs started glowing brighter, revealing this place is no simple tar covered terrain, it's been turned into a kill zone where the waste water is being used by the substance as high-pressure water shooter
The high-pressure liquid stream slammed against Momo's barrier with the force of an industrial hydraulic cutter, the impact vibrating through the silver-blue array in a shower of brilliant, hiss-like sparks.
"Everyone, hold your ground!" Momo yelled, her hands pressed firmly against her floating slate as she stabilized the barrier's kinetic vectors. "That's not just waste water—it's compressed graywater infused with black tar mana! The relic holder stripped the pipe dry to construct an automated hydraulic defense grid!"
In the sudden glare of Momo's intensified light orbs, the true horror of the cavernous concrete tunnel came into full view.
The dry, cracked floor wasn't concrete at all—it was a carpet of hardened black sludge that had completely lined the fifty-meter-wide pipe. Fused along the curved walls were dozens of grotesque, mutated strays, their lower bodies melted straight into the tar structure while their gaping, jawless mouths acted as living high-pressure nozzles, siphoning the city's rerouted water reserves to shoot lethal, black-tinted water jet streams.
"Hydraulic artillery anchored to the tunnel walls..." Tomoe observed, her eyes sharp and completely unfazed as she rested her hand on the hilt of her custom magic-tech sword. "A stationary kill zone designed to slow down any pursuers from behind."
"Which means we're directly on the carrier's tail," Kiba added, a sharp, confident grin breaking across his face. He stepped out from behind Momo's shield, his blade drawing a smooth, glowing arc through the damp air.
With lightning speed, Kiba summoned five localized spatial blades via Sword Birth, positioning them at calculated angle vectors in front of the team. Momo quickly coated the swords with purifying magic circle, along with Kiba's added wind slash spell.
The swords quickly spinned at insane speed like industrial wind fan, deflecting all the coming water rays, slashing purifying winds, purging the tars while keeping the team moving forwards.
As for others, Momo's spell seeped seamlessly into their spellcraft, Tomoe quickly made a spell to cover their backs, but with an interesting twist, the shield wasn't just a protection, it's a gong shooting waves of purifications.
With Momo maintaining the structural framework of the spell array and feeding purifying mana into the system, the five spinning spatial blades in front of Kiba acted as a massive, high-speed purging turbine. The roaring jets of tar-infused graywater didn't just get deflected—they were instantly atomized, purified into clean mist, and blasted back into the tunnel walls, stripping away the living hydraulic nozzles on impact.
Behind them, Tomoe's localized gong-shaped barrier chimed with a deep, reverberating pulse every time Koneko or Tsubasa's fist made contact.
CLANG—BOOM!
The heavy kinetic shockwaves blasted through the barrier, converting into pure, sweeping waves of silver-blue purification mana that surged down the dark tunnel behind them. Any lingering black tar attempting to crawl back up the floorboards was instantly vaporized by the sonic purging waves, leaving a pristine, sterile concrete path in their wake.
[City]
Reya landed on the highest radio tower overlooking Kuoh's central district. Her custom magic-tech visor whirred as she expanded the defusing array she had used at the port, scaling its logic parameters across the entire municipal grid using Arto's localized leyline nodes.
"Kaichou, the city-wide defusing net is 90% saturated!" Reya's voice rang through Sona's ear comms. "If the relic holder attempts to detonate any black-tar explosive charges within the central district, my suppression field will neutralize the volatile mana matrix before the chain reaction can start!"
"Flawless work, Reya," Sona praised smoothly, descending into the brightly lit, bustling perimeter of the central plaza alongside Rias, Akeno, and Tsubaki.
It was a Friday night, and the central plaza was teeming with hundreds of unsuspecting civilians—shoppers, teenagers, and families walking beneath the glowing streetlights and massive digital billboards.
Rias narrowed her eyes, scanning the dense crowd as her custom gauntlets pulsed softly beneath her long sleeves, suppressing her demonic signature so as not to cause panic.
"Akeno, Tsubaki, set up an invisible, high-altitude perimeter barrier around the plaza's perimeter," Rias instructed quietly, her voice cold and focused. "If the carrier is hiding among the crowd, we isolate the entire square in a spatial pocket the moment we spot them."
"Understood, Buchou~" Akeno whispered, slipping smoothly into the shadow of a commercial building alongside Tsubaki to weave the structural containment web.
Sona adjusted her glasses, her analytical gaze piercing through the ambient magic spectrum overlay on her lenses. "They are running out of time and avenues, Rias. With Reya neutralizing their explosives, Momo purging their subterranean escape route, and the vanguard closing in from below, the relic holder will be forced to reveal themselves within minutes."
Suddenly, at the center of the plaza's decorative fountain, the clear water began to turn a deep, murky, oily black. Sona's eyes sharpened as her tactical slate let out a violent ping. "Spatial anomaly detected at the central fountain! All units—the relic holder is breaking cover!"
[City - Central Plaza]
The central plaza was rapidly descending into chaos. As the water in the grand decorative fountain churned into a dark, viscous sludge, the ambient temperature plummeted, and a suffocating wave of unnatural dread swept across the square.
Civilians who had been enjoying their Friday evening began to scream, clutching their heads as the relic's residual negative-emotion field triggered sudden, unexplainable surges of panic. People rushed frantically in every direction, creating a moving sea of bodies that threatened to completely obscure any sight of the true culprit.
"Akeno, Tsubaki, step up the non-lethal spatial barriers around the perimeter! Don't let the crowd stampede into the main streets!" Sona commanded, her voice calm and absolute over the comms as she maintained macro oversight. "Isolate the inner plaza, but keep the civilian escape corridors open!"
"Understood!" Tsubaki called out, her custom naginata flashing as she channeled a soft, blue-hued Systematic barrier around the outer edges of the square, gently directing the panicked citizens away from the fountain without trapping them inside the killzone.
Beside her, Akeno wove delicate threads of lightning mana high above the streetlamps, creating a silent, invisible ceiling that prevented any airborne tar splash from raining down on the fleeing crowds. "Perimeter stabilized, Buchou. The civilians are clearing out of the immediate center!"
With the crowd thinning near the core of the plaza, Rias stepped toward the bubbling black fountain. Her crimson eyes scanned the area with blinding speed, her mind operating strictly as a high-level Micro Leader. She ignored the obvious distractions—the black water, the lingering dread, the shadows flickering beneath the lampposts—and focused purely on the underlying mana vectors.
"He isn't in the fountain," Rias declared softly, a sharp, dangerous grin touching her lips. "That's just an output drain. A real commander using an organic filter wouldn't sit in the open water where our Bishops could trace the leyline signal."
She looked straight up toward the top of the grand clock tower overlooking the plaza. "Look at the direction of the emotional pressure, Sona," Rias pointed out, raising her crimson-armored gauntlet toward the tower. "The tar is bubbling down here, but the vector origin is raining downward from above. He's standing on the clock tower, watching the chaos like a puppeteer!"
Right on cue, the giant glass face of the clock tower shattered inward. A single figure stepped out onto the narrow ledge sixty feet above the ground. It was an S-rank stray devil, but unlike the mutated, mindlessly ghoulish constructs at the port and the forest, this one wore a sleek, dark coat.
Its face was partially covered by hardened black tar, but its eyes glowed with an eerie, intelligent crimson light. Clasped in its right hand was the true relic—a jagged, pulsating obsidian skull leaking thick, black tendrils that wired directly into the stray's nervous system.
"Fools..." the stray commander rasped, his voice echoing across the clearing plaza through a distorted, amplified frequency. "You neutralized my vanguards... you defused my charges... but you are too late. The relic has already integrated with the city's emotional resonance!"
He raised the obsidian skull high into the night air, preparing to force a massive, localized surge of despair straight down into the square. "Not in our city," Rias spat, her wings bursting from her back in a brilliant flash of crimson power.
"Cell Gamma to all units!" Sona called through the comms, her voice ringing with finality. "Target located on the central clock tower! Underground vanguard, seal the drainage exits! Reya, focus full defusing power on the relic's core! Rias—take him down!"
Before the stray commander could complete the activation sequence, four silver magic swords shot straight out of the subterranean drainage grates at the base of the tower, planting themselves into the brickwork to form an instantaneous spatial lock—Kiba's precision timing from below. "Target trapped, Buchou!" Kiba's voice rang over the comms. "He's all yours!"
Rias didn't give the mastermind another second. She launched herself into the air, her custom magic-tech gauntlets flaring into a dazzling, sun-bright sphere of concentrated Destruction mana. The two weeks of grueling physics calculations, Robin's rigorous retention drills, and Arto's flawless engineering converged into a single, perfect strike.
A beam of dark crimson destruction, tight as a needle and devastating as a star, shot from Rias's palms, cutting through the night air straight toward the clock tower ledge. When Tsubaki and Akeno were able to follow Rias into the clock tower, they were able to catch Rias being pushed back by an overwhelming force.
Looking at what sent Rias flying they saw that stray's head has been blown away, but the skull-like relic has taken the place on his head. Everything it has cultivated at the port, the city outskirts and the forest all drawn towards the clock tower, blackening the sky.
Rias didn't waste a second to recover, she turned towards the group outside, who was flying to them "Reya, Momo, isolate this place into the Mirror Zone, we need to contain this! Everyone, head inside the mirror pocket dimension with me" Rias shouted "Sona, you stay out here to deal with civilians who saw what happened, we'll take care of things in here"
"On it!" Reya and Momo shouted in absolute synchronization over the open comms. A shimmering, silver-line geometric array expanded instantly over the top of the clock tower. The sky—already blackened by the massive, swirling storm of concentrated black tar and accumulated negative-emotion vectors—seemed to shatter like a thin sheet of glass.
[Mirror Zone]
The Mirror Zone opened into a silent, monochrome replica of Kuoh's central plaza. Here, there were no civilians, no ambient city noise, and no risk of collateral damage. But what took its place was a nightmare of compressed, volatile mana.
At the center of the inverted clock tower, the decapitated body of the stray commander floated mid-air. Where its head had once been, the obsidian skull relic now sat directly atop its spine, its eye sockets burning with a blinding, violet-black inferno.
The dark tar that had been drawn from across the entire city—the residual mass from the port's spider-monstrosity, the forest's subterranean mass grave, and the outskirts' marchers—was swirling around the creature like a gargantuan, roaring typhoon.
The black liquid was rapidly condensing, forging massive, multi-layered plates of bio-organic skeletal armor around the stray's body until it stood nearly thirty feet tall, wielding a massive, tar-forged scythe dripping with raw despair mana.
Rias took a slow, deep breath, letting the chaotic roar of the thirty-foot tar monstrosity wash over her without moving an inch.
In this monochrome, sound-dampened Mirror Zone, the overwhelming burden of macro logistics—worrying about stray rubble hitting a civilian, media cover-ups, or structural property damage—completely evaporated. It was just her, her nine elite teammates, and an enemy that needed to be dismantled down to its atomic bonds.
Her mind, accelerated by the spatial processing techniques Arto had beaten into them over weeks of Chapter 1 calculations, spun into overdrive. She wasn't just seeing the towering construct of bones, tar, and dark scythe blades; she was seeing vectors, mana flow rates, structural load points, and kinetic trajectories.
For the first time, Rias truly understood what Arto felt when he orchestrated the battlefield during their training in the Dark Arena. It wasn't about raw, unbridled destruction—it was the pure, intoxicating art of absolute tactical dominance. Placing every piece of her squad where their specialized magic-tech gear and newly forged skills could shine at 100% efficiency.
"Listen up!" Rias's voice rang out across the Mirror Zone, razor-sharp, calm, and utterly commanding. "The body is just compressed biological armor powered by the residual leyline tar. The skull is the actual wielder now. We strip it layer by layer!"
She pointed her crimson-glowing gauntlet toward the beast, her eyes flashing with royal authority.
"Phase 1: Limb Immobilization & Armor Disruption. Rooks—Tsubasa, Koneko! Take the lower kinetic foundation! Use your weight-dampening drives to pin its legs to the concrete!"
"On it, Buchou!" Koneko and Tsubasa answered in unison. They dropped into low, high-density stances, launching forward like two golden meteors directly into the monster's colossal tar-plated knees.
"Phase 2: Aerial & Flank Suppression! Knights—Kiba, Tomoe! Cut the scythe arm off before it can finish drawing despair mana from the sky! Queens—Akeno, Tsubaki! Channel high-frequency lightning and space-binding chains directly through the Knights' blade trajectories!"
"Fufufu, understood~" Akeno giggled, her naginata surging with blinding purple thunder as she jumped into the air alongside Tsubaki, their magic weaving seamlessly behind Kiba and Tomoe's high-speed wind cuts.
"Phase 3: Core Isolation. Bishops—Momo, Reya! Keep the defusing array anchored over the obsidian skull! Burn away any regenerative tar attempting to seal the core!"
"Understood" Momo and Reya responded from the clock tower ledge, their fingers dancing across their slates as a massive silver-blue neutralizing array locked onto the beast's head.
The crimson pulse of Rias's Power of Destruction didn't just radiate—it condensed into a razor-thin, shimmering armor that hugged the contours of her body, locking her spatial vector into an absolute state of offensive dominance.
The air around her hissed as atoms were torn apart by her mere presence, the crimson light casting long, dramatic shadows across the monochrome, inverted plaza of the Mirror Zone. "EXECUTE!"
Her voice tore through the heavy, oppressive air like a battle horn. In a single microsecond, Rias vanished from her starting point, leaving behind a sonic boom that cracked the mirrored cobblestones beneath her boots.
She reappeared directly in front of the thirty-foot monstrosity's chest. The gargantuan creature swung its tar-forged scythe downward in a desperate, frantic effort to bisect her, but Rias didn't even flinch.
BOOM!
Rias drove her right fist straight into the central sternum of the bio-organic armor. The compressed Destruction mana surrounding her hand expanded upon contact into an atomic shockwave.
The outermost layer of hardened black sludge—a shell capable of tanking heavy artillery—was instantly vaporized into clean, empty air, leaving a gaping, smoking crater straight into the monster's midsection.
The beast let out a deafening, metallic shriek of pain, its focus entirely drawn to the crimson figure floating inches from its exposed core.
But before it could bring its colossal arms inward to crush her, the rest of the joint squad executed Rias's tactical sequence with terrifying, seamless synchronization.
Both Rooks slammed their gauntlets into the monster's massive knees. Utilizing their weight-dampening drives in reverse, they suddenly multiplied their physical mass by tenfold, pinning the creature's massive legs flat against the earth with hundreds of tons of kinetic force.
The monster's lower body buckled, its concrete-shattering stance completely neutralized. Above them, Kiba and Tomoe blurred through the sky as twin arcs of silver light. They passed each other in a high-speed 'X' formation directly over the creature's right shoulder.
Their custom blades, imbued with Chapter 1's localized wind physics, sliced cleanly through the tar-bound shoulder joint, severing the giant scythe arm mid-swing. The massive weapon dissolved into harmless mist before it could touch the ground.
Right behind the Knights, Akeno and Tsubaki completed the aerial lockdown. Akeno launched a localized, high-frequency bolt of purple lightning that fried the monster's inner nerve-conduits, while Tsubaki's spatial chains wrapped tightly around its remaining arm and torso, binding it into absolute immobility.
High on the clock tower ledge, Momo and Reya maintained the final lock. Their fingers flew across their slates, driving the silver-blue defusing array directly into the creature's head.
The obsidian skull relic, stripped of its tar armor, exposed to the elements, and deprived of its leyline energy, sputtered as its violent violet light was completely overwritten by pure, neutralizing mana.
"Core exposed! Relic completely suppressed, Micro Commander!" Reya called out over the comms, her voice echoing with absolute clarity. "All defensive vectors cleared!"
Floating mid-air directly in front of the shuddering, helpless monstrosity, Rias cocked her left arm back. The crimson armor surrounding her body flowed downward, concentrating entirely into her left palm until it transformed into a dense, marble-sized sphere of pure, unadulterated annihilation—the ultimate expression of her Micro Command mastery.
"You tried to turn our city into your playground," Rias said, her voice dropping into a cold, regal whisper as her crimson eyes locked onto the obsidian skull. "Consider your lease terminated." She thrust her palm forward into the exposed obsidian skull.
[City - Central Plaza]
Down on the plaza ground, Sona stood near the fountain, her tactical slate returning to idle status as the last of the slumbering civilians began to stir gently, completely uninjured and blissfully unaware of the apocalyptic threat that had just been erased above their heads.
Sona looked up at Rias, who landed gracefully on the cobblestones alongside her squad, their Arto-forged gear returning to standby mode with quiet mechanical hums.
Sona adjusted her glasses, a small, proud smile gracing her lips. "Perimeter secure. Memory dampeners fully deployed. Zero casualties, zero public exposure."
Rias turned to look at her team—Akeno, Tsubaki, Kiba, Koneko, Tomoe, Tsubasa, Momo, and Reya. "Good work, everyone!"