Author's Notes: Chapter edited and corrected by Scott Fellman.
Serena Pov.
"Wow, Valper too?" Kokabiel asked mockingly. I smirked at him.
"I had to get him out of the way. His voice was annoying me," I said simply.
"Fufufu, how ruthless for a succubus." Kokabiel laughed. "I can see you rescued your subjects," Kokabiel said mockingly.
"It was easy. I'm still furious, though. However, I still have a question. What was the plan with the succubus?" I asked, more curious than anything else. All the anger and rage had mostly disappeared after torturing Sellzen. I was still slightly annoyed with Kokabiel, but I was much calmer now.
"You've angered powerful people, Lady Prince." Kokabiel said mockingly. I snorted.
"I wouldn't call Honest powerful." I replied amusedly. Kokabiel's eyebrow rose slightly.
"Oh, so you came to the conclusion that it was him?" Kokabiel asked amusedly. I shrugged.
"He's the only one who hates me enough to do something. Besides, you and Sellzen knew about something that only he and his family could have found out." I said simply. Kokabiel just laughed lightly.
"Well, unfortunately, I have to tell you that you're only partially correct." Kokabiel laughed mockingly. I narrowed my eyes. "When I meant angering powerful people, I didn't mean that third-rate devil. No. It's something much bigger… You have Harpe," Kokabiel said with a covetous look.
"Harpe? That's your goal?" I narrowed my eyes dangerously.
"A weapon capable of killing the divine? Everyone wants it, Lady Prince. You've leaped several degrees of danger to every pantheon. And most importantly, you can create an infinite number of Harpes whenever you want. You could equip every devil below you with Harpe whenever you wanted." Kokabiel said gleefully.
"Is that your plan? To do what? To kidnap me and force me to produce Harps to threaten or fight against the other pantheons? Why would you even think you could get me to cooperate?" I asked flatly. Kokabiel burst out laughing.
"Why do you think you have a choice?" Kokabiel asked mockingly. "You came to massacre Sellzen for just two succubi. What else would you do for your beloved Peerage? For your pawns? Your fiancées?" Kokabiel mocked.
"What?" I asked, confused. Wait, so that means Honest's kidnapping of Narcissa was more than just trying to get onto my island?
"It would seem so." Lucius said, humming unconcernedly. " They believed that Narcissa was the easiest way to get to Bella, and all of us. It seems they're more allied than we think, even sharing the loot. The island would be Honest's to do with as he pleased, while all of us would be Kokabiel's to use as hostages to make you work for him." Lucius mocked.
"You don't know?" Kokabiel laughed sadistically. "The succubi weren't the only ones we took. Your dear seamstress was our target." Kokabiel laughed. I almost wanted to sigh in boredom.
"What?!" I ignored the others' cries. In fact, they had been exclaiming for a while, but I had chosen to ignore them, just like now.
"That was your plan? To distract me with my succubi so someone else could kidnap my Peerage." I mocked him.
"And it was pretty easy to find someone who would. That's where Honest comes into play. Right now, he should have your seamstress in his possession. And if the rest of your Peerage manages to figure it out and track her down, well, they'll be in Honest's power too. Surrender, Prince of Succubi." Kokabiel mocked grandiloquently. I raised an eyebrow.
I took out my phone and dialed Narcissa's number. Her phone was something she'd gotten used to using, mainly for work assignments, so it was only natural that she'd have it on her, or in her inventory.
It wasn't necessary between us thanks to the mental link, but I felt like annoying Kokabiel. So once the call connected, I put him on speakerphone.
"Hello, dear." Narcissa's voice sounded completely safe and sound. I raised an eyebrow at Kokabiel, very unimpressed.
"Cissy, I see you're safe." I said playfully. Cissy snorted, and we could hear some screams and explosions.
"Of course, Bella's taking care of everything. Although she's taking her time cleaning up the mess. She's having fun," Cissy complained, and I snorted in amusement.
"That's good. She was getting quite bored at home. Let her keep playing," I said with a smile. Cissy sighed.
"You spoil her too much. She's not a child. " Cissy snorted amusedly.
"Well, I have to go. See you at home." I chirped as I hung up and put my phone away. I then looked at Kokabiel amusedly. "So… looks like you're out of hostages." I said mockingly. Kokabiel just sighed.
"That's why devils can't be trusted. They can't do even the most basic job," Kokabiel sighed in disappointment. "But that doesn't change anything. You're still here. You'll learn to follow my orders, one way or another." Kokabiel said dangerously, his eyes flashing dangerously.
"I wouldn't count on it," I replied playfully. "But before we continue, why don't I take care of this pesky circle?" I said, looking at the ground. "I am the bones of my sword." In my hand, I projected Rule Breaker.
"A ceremonial dagger?" Kokabiel asked, frowning. I laughed lightly.
"Magical providence, O natural master of this world, return everything to its origins! Rule Breaker!" I exclaimed forcefully, invoking the name of the Noble Phantasm before lightly throwing the dagger towards the ground. The instant the tip of the dagger touched the ground, the enormous magic circle was instantly destroyed.
The particles of holy power vanished instantly, without any interference.
"What did you do, you miserable succubus?!" Kokabiel exclaimed, furious for the first time, his holy power fully on full display. I smiled widely at him as I ducked down and grabbed Rule Breaker once more.
"Rule Breaker: All Spells Must Be Broken. It's one of the first weapons I chose to replicate. It's a weapon that materializes and embodies the divinity of the witch of treachery, Medea." I began to explain with a smile as I played with the dagger. "I won't go into Medea's entire story, but the dagger, the dagger is something truly fascinating."
"It is an ultimate anti-magic weapon, it is capable of dispelling and destroying any type of sorcery and magic, it is a dagger capable of nullifying all effects created by magic, once it comes into contact with the target, all magic involved will be returned to their original components to a state 'before they were made'" I explained happily.
Kokabiel's gaze went from furious to looking at the dagger with greed.
"Everyone, you say?" Kokabiel asked, a smile beginning to form on his face. I sighed as I deprojected Rule Breaker. "You're becoming more and more indispensable, Lady Prince." Kokabiel smiled sadistically.
"And you, getting more and more annoying." I sighed tiredly. I looked at Rias. "Back off, I'll take care of him." Rias felt like retorting, but I just narrowed my eyes at her and she closed her mouth. With a grimace, she stepped back while signaling her Peerage to do the same.
"You seem overconfident in your words," Kokabiel said mockingly. "Do you have any other tricks up your sleeve? The more you show, the more interesting you become," he added, amused.
"I have several, but you won't get to see them," I said simply.
I quickly began manipulating the harmonium cube, and once I finished, I threw it into a portal.
The cube was sent into Kuoh Academy and activated. A huge time bubble enveloped us. I could sense the bubble immediately, but I looked around, and neither Kokabiel nor Rias and her group noticed anything out of the ordinary.
Now I had time for my confrontation with Kokabiel, and Vali didn't interrupt before I finished with him.
I was too close to use anything extreme. I snapped my fingers and tried to set him on fire, but Kokabiel merely waved his hand and looked at me boredly. I sighed. It was a shame my fire alchemy wasn't practical against people strong enough.
"Is that all?" Kokabiel asked boredly. I sighed, clapped, and huge tattoos formed on my arms, but I didn't use them yet. I just projected Kanshou and Bakuya. And I got into position. "Is that supposed to intimidate me? You have so many open holes it's not fun. The poor Gremory knight was a better swordsman than you." Kokabiel snorted, almost looking offended.
Even so, he formed two lightsabers and mimicked my pose. Arms down as he held the swords lazily. Kokabiel smirked at me. I sneered. I swallowed metals and began burning them while decanting my metallic minds.
I took a step forward and appeared in front of Kokabiel at high speed. Kokabiel's eyes widened slightly at my speed, but he reacted quickly. My right arm came down forcefully as Kokabiel tried to defend himself.
My sword clashed with his, and Kokabiel gritted his teeth at the force behind my blow. I didn't let him recover; I immediately began attacking in rapid succession. My blows continued to land, fast and hard.
It took Kokabiel a few exchanges before he adjusted and became serious. He began receiving and returning attacks with the same ferocity as expected from a Cadre, yet I didn't stop. His lightsabers were truly durable, made of pure holy energy.
Emiya's fighting style was quite distinctive, he had no traditional training whatsoever, his fighting style was almost purely self-taught and experience based, as he stole, imitated and adapted everything he had in UBW, and most importantly he fought dirty, there was nothing honorable about Emiya's fighting style so he was really hard to keep up with.
One of his favorite things to do was deliberately leave gaps in his defense for people to try to exploit. Since they couldn't tell he had a fighting style, people would try to uselessly exploit those gaps, only to lose.
And that's precisely what I was doing against Kokabiel. Once Kokabiel started gaining ground, he began to notice the multiple gaps in my defense that I had purposely left, and Kokabiel didn't even hesitate to pounce on them.
One of Kokabiel's swords was mercilessly trying to stab towards my waist. My arms were far enough away that I couldn't reach it in time. I smiled as a small portal was created.
Kokabiel's eyes widened as his sword pierced through the portal. The other side of the portal appeared behind Kokabiel, causing him to stab himself in the back. Kokabiel groaned in pain. He tried to pull out his sword, but I took advantage of the gap and immediately attacked. Kokabiel tried to defend himself with a single sword, but he quickly became helpless.
I cut his forearm the moment his arm finally pulled out of the portal. I thought he'd seen me fight Riser, but people kept falling into portals.
"Damn it!" Kokabiel growled as his wings sprouted from his back and attacked immediately. My swords broke almost instantly. They had already taken quite a bit of damage from the lightsabers, and Kanshou and Bakuya weren't known for their durability. I smiled slightly when I saw the wings coming in my direction. I reached out.
My disintegration tattoo activated instantly. Kokabiel's wings exploded into a bloody mess, causing him to scream. As he sped away, he was trying to grab his back with his hands.
"I'll kill you, you miserable creature!" Kokabiel shouted, truly furious. I smiled widely. Most of Kokabiel's wings had been torn off. Out of the 10 total wings, 7 had been destroyed in a pool of blood.
Still, the remaining ones were enough to fly away. Now I was far enough away to utilize other combat options. I projected a massive black arc and pulled two small marbles from my inventory, holding them in my free hand.
"That again?" Kokabiel growled angrily.
"I am the bones of my sword." I muttered the chant as demonic power gushed out of me. Hrunting began to form around the marbles, absorbing them as if they were part of him from the beginning.
Unlimited Blade Works was truly versatile and malleable. It wasn't as rigid as creating an exact copy like I'd seen. In fact, you could modify anything about a specific Noble Phantasm and register it as a new weapon. Materials, history, creation, experience, everything. You could even fuse them together if you wanted.
But that had several contradictions.
A Noble Phantasm embodies the ultimate mysteries, the embodiment of heroes and their legends. Changing what a Noble Phantasm does—well, a Noble Phantasm—can be detrimental.
Changing anything wouldn't necessarily be a good thing; merging them would, in fact, be almost an exercise in futility, as everything could and almost certainly would conflict, so it's quite possible to get a result that's even lower in quality than the foundations on which it was formed.
Trying to piece it all together was a tedious exercise and something Emiya would never do. Not because he didn't want to, but because it was practically useless. Emiya tracked thousands of weapons, thousands of Noble Phantasms, throughout his life as a Counter-Guardian.
If Emiya needed a specific ability for a given situation, he would simply look for an inherently powerful Noble Phantasm that fit the problem, the end of it.
It would be different if UBW were limited in some way, but not him, so Emiya didn't even bother trying. But I had a reason to modify them slightly.
The marbles were small containers of Harmonium, harmonium cubes, along with corresponding metals for burning.
Hrunting remained completely intact, both in its materials and in its legend. There was only one small addendum added. The marbles were part of it; they always were, they were always part of it, they were part of what made Hrunting.
Once Hrunting was completed and modified, it was ready for use. The moment I finished creating it, the connection it formed with the harmonium marbles was instant and intimate, so any skills stored within the marbles could be tapped into by Hrunting.
One of them had feruchemical steel, had stored speed, and a metal mind with large amounts of stored speed.
"Hunt, Hrunting." I released Hrunting, and it shot off. Hrunting had an initial speed of Mach 10, chasing the enemy. The feruchemical steel activated instantly, and the arrow doubled its speed. Hrunting reached a speed of Mach 20.
A red flash flew in Kokabiel's direction. I could see Kokabiel tense up, shooting into the sky and trying to get away from the arrow, but his acceleration was too slow, and the arrow quickly caught him. He raised his hand and tried to defend himself.
Hrunting was a Broken Phantasm, meaning it was overloaded to the limit with magic, to the point where it exploded upon impact. But that obviously had a limit; there was only so much magic an NP could absorb before it broke, and that limited the resulting explosion.
The marble? The harmonium marble possessed the Allomantic Pewter ability, and in abundance. Allomantic Pewter enhances all of the body's physical capabilities. Now, the question is, what physical abilities could it enhance in an item? Nothing exceptional, really.
It doesn't increase physical strength; it slightly increases speed. It can't improve the balance it lacks; it softens its movements, although for Hrunting, it's not necessary. It didn't have reaction speed either. So... there really wasn't much to improve.
But there was one thing it did have: strength, durability, the ability to hold together under more pressure than usual. And that was precisely what I wanted. All NP had a limit on the amount of magic they could store before breaking, but if pewter made it more durable? Then that limit would increase. That means more magic stored inside the NP.
And that was precisely what it had done.
Hrunting exploded. An explosion that completely engulfed Kokabiel, stronger than a simple Broken Phantasm. The explosion was so intense that it shook my bones, and I felt the shockwave with great force. So strong that it shook the barrier placed and held by Sona and her Peerage.
Once the smoke cleared, Kokabiel still had his arm raised, slightly trembling and covered in wounds and burns. I smiled slightly. The good thing was that, given how volatile harmonium was, it had also exploded and been destroyed in the blast, so I wasn't worried about leaving traces of a godly metal everywhere.
I took out two more marbles and created a second Hrunting around them. I needed 20 seconds to throw them consecutively and increase the power. 20 seconds for me.
I created a time bubble. The 20 seconds it took me to charge Hrunting were a fraction of a second for Kokabiel. When I broke the time bubble, the arrow flew again, its speed and destructive power explosively increasing once more.
Kokabiel raised both arms, and vast amounts of holy power surged into his hands. Hrunting collided with Kokabiel, and the explosion engulfed him once more. I didn't even wait to see if it had worked. I created another time bubble, prepared the launch, and broke the bubble once it was ready.
I saw Kokabiel practically unharmed, his hands out in front of him. Whatever he'd done to defend himself had been truly effective. I released the arrow, which passed through the rings once more. I created the time bubble, loaded the arrow, and fired it simultaneously, breaking the bubble.
As soon as the arrow was shot, I wrapped myself in the time bubble. Then I created a Hrunting once more, prepared my fifth arrow for a long 35 seconds, and shot it.
The three arrows shot out at high speed almost simultaneously. Kokabiel grunted, but braced himself for them. The third and fourth arrows collided almost immediately, the enhanced explosions staggering Kokabiel. Even through the smoke, I could see Kokabiel grit his teeth and brace himself for the fifth.
I smiled as I created a portal in front of the arrow, and the other side of the portal was quite far away, right above Kokabiel. Kokabiel looked confused when the arrow didn't hit. He looked up, still confused, but prepared to take the hit.
I pulled a stake from my inventory, without hesitation, created a portal, and drove the stake through it. The stake was another harmonium cube, replicating the Allomantic chrome, which had the ability to remove a target's magic reserves while in contact with it.
The stake pierced Kokabiel's back. Kokabiel groaned, but ignored it as he prepared to defend himself. He attempted to summon the holy power once more, only for his eyes to widen when nothing happened.
Hrunting finally reached his target and hit Kokabiel without any defense. The Broken Phantasm, enhanced by both the consecutive shots and the extra magic Hrunting maintained, exploded violently. The entire Kuoh Academy trembled violently due to the powerful explosion that engulfed Kokabiel and caused him a lot of damage.
Kokabiel fell from the sky. His body was completely mangled and burned all over. With a thud, he landed on the ground. He was still conscious. I'd give him that; he was a resilient bastard.
Although well, he was a cadre, he was definitely stronger than I expected even though he should be a step or two above Riser, he just never took me seriously, I caught him off guard and eliminated his magic, otherwise, he would have withstood that last Hrunting and I would be forced to use other tactics to fight him.
Now that I thought about it, it was almost the same thing Vali had done using his Divine Dividing, by restricting his holy power.
If it hadn't taken me any more effort to fight him. I approached Kokabiel, who was glaring at me with hatred and fury. He tried to growl. He was about to scream, but I moved quickly.
I threw a powerful, overcharged Stupify at him. A wounded Kokabiel couldn't resist, and Kokabiel finally fell unconscious.
I sighed happily with a smile. This had turned out better than I expected.