The being raised its hand, and the air trembled.
It was subtle at first. A hum, like the whisper of insects growing in volume.
Then they appeared.
Thousands. Perhaps millions.
Black flies, the size of clenched fists, tore through the space in dense swarms, filling the dead sky with a living mass. Their bodies were marked with tiny magical circles, and the aura emanating from them was suffocating, as if death itself were breathing over the world.
"What the hell is this…?" Jalter growled, twirling her sword.
"Damn…" Salter muttered, narrowing her eyes. "This is going to be a problem."
The swarm advanced.
Too fast.
Salter shot forward, carving a path of destruction through the swarm, her blade slicing through as the flies exploded into clouds of poisonous energy. But for every one destroyed, ten more took its place. Jalter didn't lag behind, conjuring walls of fire around herself, incinerating the swarm in chaotic whirlwinds, but even that wasn't enough to stem the living tide.
They were everywhere.
And worse, the magical circles began to glow.
"Damn it! Jalter, get back!"
But it was too late.
The flies unleashed a wave of demonic aura, absorption spells draining the vital energy (magical energy) of the two while simultaneously releasing corrosive poison. Jalter felt her skin burn beneath her armor, her muscles locking under the impact.
"These bastards are sucking me dry!" she shouted, gritting her teeth.
Salter slashed through another wave, but even she felt her strength ebbing away bit by bit. Each strike she landed was less sharp, less swift. The flies were draining their reserves.
And then… it was as if the world spun.
A purple miasma spread, silent and treacherous.
"Shit…!" Salter growled.
The reality around them warped, colors blending into kaleidoscopic streaks. The ground lost its texture, the sky lost its depth. The world turned into a liquid mirror.
Jalter blinked and found herself in an open field.
It was… perfect.
Warmth, blue skies, the smell of freshly cooked food.
Kazuya was in front of her, laughing with their children. People she loved, all there. Laughing. Calling her.
"What the hell—! No, this is fake!" She roared, clenching her fists. But each word felt harder to utter. Her mind fought against the illusion, but the miasma pulled her back, trying to numb her will.
Trapped in an illusion of Camelot's fall, Salter screamed, her energy exploding in a black mist around her. But… no matter how much she fought, her body was starting to give in. The flies drained her strength, the miasma dulled her mind.
And then came the blow.
The space tore open, and he appeared in front of Jalter.
The Super Demon's fist struck Jalter in the stomach with brutal force.
She vomited blood before being hurled like a projectile, crashing through the ground and slamming into a half-destroyed building, creating a crater of rubble.
"JALTER!" Salter shouted.
But the being didn't stop.
The space around him twisted, and suddenly he was in front of her.
No time to react.
Salter tried to raise Excalibur Morgan, but the Super Demon seized her throat with unrelenting force, lifting her off the ground.
The miasma condensed around his hand.
It was like being drowned in molten iron. The pain in her nerves surged to absurd levels, amplified to a point where even breathing felt like conscious torture.
"Kh…!" Salter drove her sword into his arm, but… nothing.
The blade didn't even scratch.
She saw it.
In the invisible eyes of that being, there was nothing.
No emotion. No haste. He was just… doing.
The time around her began to collapse.
She felt it.
Her body aging a thousand years in milliseconds. If she weren't a Servant, not exactly a living being but a Spirit, she would have died instantly.
Salter let out a visceral scream, her mana surging in a final attempt to resist.
But then—
"LET HER GO, YOU SON OF A BITCH!!"
A spear of fire pierced the Super Demon's shoulder.
Jalter appeared, wiping the blood from her lips.
She had broken the illusion.
"Stay… away… from her."
The Super Demon turned his head slightly.
And smiled.
He snapped his fingers.
The flies changed their behavior, forming a shield around him.
Jalter charged, hand-to-hand, her flaming sword spinning with savagery, but each strike was intercepted by the flies, which exploded in micro-detonations to cushion her attacks.
And yet… she pressed on.
Then, Salter moved.
She raised Excalibur Morgan with her free hand, even with her throat crushed, and forced him to release her with a well-placed attack. She spun her body, landing a lateral kick directly into the arm holding her. The sound of the impact reverberated like a sledgehammer on steel.
He released her.
The Super Demon vanished and reappeared ten meters away from Salter. He raised his hands, spheres of energy spinning like dying stars, about to collapse toward the two.
But before he could unleash the blow—
A laugh cut through the battlefield.
"You thought that was all?"
Jeanne d'Arc Alter's voice reverberated, laced with hatred polished into a blade.
In the next instant, she raised her banner, spun it in a wide arc, and, with a sudden motion, drove it into the ground beside her. Then, with solemn grace, she pointed her sword straight at the enemy.
The black flies advanced, like a tide of shapeless bodies trying to crush the existence of Jalter and Salter.
"This is the howl of hatred polished with my soul—!!"
"LA GRONDEMENT DU HAINE—!!"
The flames, comparable to the fire of a first-class dragon, engulfed everything.
The air was set ablaze.
The ground melted.
The sky turned red, as if bleeding from the edges of the battlefield.
The flies, millions of them, had no chance.
The moment they tried to advance, they were consumed by the flames, reduced to ashes so fine they vanished before even touching the ground.
And that wasn't all.
Sharp stakes began to emerge from the ground.
First one. Then ten. Then hundreds. Each one sprouting with absurd violence, piercing the millions of flies… The stakes rose toward the sky, like fiery claws tearing through the world.
This was Jeanne d'Arc Alter's Noble Phantasm, [La Grondement Du Haine (Roar of Hatred): Roar, O My Fury], a corrupted and tattered banner, in contrast to the holy weapon she regularly used. Like Luminosité Eternelle, it forms a barrier that repels all damage, physical or magical, but unlike Luminosité Eternelle, La Grondement Du Haine reflects it back at Jeanne Alter's opponent. Regardless of the form of attack—be it a slash, a Noble Phantasm, or a curse—La Grondement Du Haine reflects it, converting it into physical power that grows stronger if one of her allies is killed.
Based on Jeanne's torturous death in life, the banner can also manifest flames by drawing grudges from Jeanne Alter's surroundings, transforming them into a roaring fire that burns her opponents to ashes with heat comparable to a first-class dragon. As they are reduced to ashes, her enemies are also impaled on countless stakes, one after another, lifting them into the fire.
She had just used the flames…
And now—
The Super Demon raised both hands, the black and green energy spheres fully charged, so dense they distorted the gravity around them.
With a slight gesture, he launched them.
The impact was inevitable.
Or it should have been.
The moment the energy spheres touched the barrier of La Grondement Du Haine, the world seemed to freeze.
Jalter gave a smile of pure disdain.
Before her Noble Phantasm, the energy of the singularities was twisted, compressed, and hurled back at absurd speed.
The Super Demon raised his hand, and the void around him shimmered with arithmetic patterns, pure mathematical formulas. The energy spheres Jalter had reflected froze in the air, distorted, deformed, and began to spin, as if an invisible force were shaping them into something… worse.
The spheres compressed to the size of grains, but their energy density increased to the point of making the space weep. Greenish lines, like mystic circuits, spread through the air.
And then, with a silent snap of his fingers, the energy spheres expanded violently.
They were now blades.
Blades of demonic energy, coated in equations. They sliced through the air like guillotines, tearing the dimension as they converged toward Salter.
"Damn…!" Salter gritted her teeth and raised Excalibur Morgan, unleashing a blast of dark energy that swept the field.
But the blades curved in the air.
It wasn't a matter of speed. It was absolute control over vectors.
They bypassed her defense.
Jalter shouted, throwing up a wall of flames to protect Salter, but it wasn't enough. A blade sliced through Salter's shoulder, opening a deep wound, blood spraying in crimson jets.
The black flies gave no respite.
They appeared from nowhere, clinging to both their bodies, sucking their vital energy with insatiable hunger. Though they were Servants with infinite energy due to their Master, the sensation was grotesque, as if their very existence were being eroded grain by grain.
"AGH!!" Jalter roared, spinning her banner to sweep away the swarms, burning tens of thousands.
The Super Demon raised his hand again.
The sky shattered in a whirlwind of elemental energy.
Ice, fire, water, and thunder crashed down like an apocalyptic deluge. Intertwined, the elements formed cyclones of curses and jet-black lightning. And at the center of it all, a flaming skull, molded from black flames, descended in free fall, like the harbinger of a final judgment.
Salter gritted her teeth.
"We won't survive if we keep playing defense!"
She charged.
Excalibur Morgan glowed with a purple light so dense the air around it seemed to dissolve. With a brutal motion, she sliced through one of the greenish blades coming her way, creating an opening.
Jalter understood the plan.
While Salter forced a path, Jalter spun her banner, summoning the flaming stakes of La Grondement Du Haine, forcing the Super Demon to retreat, even if just for a second.
That's when Salter leaped.
With an explosion of mana, she appeared beside the Super Demon, Excalibur Morgan spinning in a perfect arc. The blade sliced through space, striking the creature's flank.
There was resistance.
But she felt it.
The metal of the blade pierced the skin that, for a moment, seemed indestructible. A jet of black blood sprayed, evaporating into dense smoke.
The Super Demon didn't scream, only tried to pull away.
But it was too late.
Jalter was there.
She descended with her banner in a vertical strike, stakes emerging from the ground, piercing the monster's body from multiple angles.
The impact was enough to hurl the Super Demon to the ground like a meteor.
But even impaled, even with his chest torn open in a grotesque wound, he rose. Time seemed to rewind, and all his wounds healed.
Salter gripped Excalibur Morgan, panting. Jalter, beside her, wiped the blood from her mouth, the flames on her banner flickering.
"He's not going down easy, huh?" Jalter muttered.
The air trembled. The Super Demon raised a hand, and greenish symbols floated around his fingers. The black flies returned, covering the sky like a curtain.
The flies descended like an avalanche. Jalter charged first, spinning her banner in a wide arc and conjuring walls of fire to block the swarm. The flies burned, but others replaced them.
Salter flanked. She slashed through waves of insects with her sword.
The enemy moved his fingers, and magical circles appeared on the ground. From within them, pillars of ice and fire erupted. Black lightning sliced through the sky, striking the two Servants with surgical precision.
Salter screamed, raising Excalibur Morgan to defend herself, but the attacks came from all sides. Jalter, beside her, summoned flaming stakes, but the tide of the enemy's power didn't relent.
The Super Demon raised both hands. A skull of black flames appeared above him, crashing down like a falling star.
The two surged forward, their swords slicing through the air simultaneously. The impact split the skull in two, exploding into a gale of curses.
The Super Demon didn't stop. He teleported behind them, his fists wrapped in magical formulas. The first punch caught Salter in the abdomen, hurling her to the ground. Jalter tried to counterattack, but was grabbed by the throat and slammed into the rubble.
The magical circles around the Super Demon glowed. The energy around him condensed, and in an instant, he unleashed an explosion of black flames that engulfed both.
Salter, though wounded, raised Excalibur Morgan and unleashed a blast of dark energy to carve a path through the explosion. Jalter, gritting her teeth, spun her banner and created an opening with her flames.
"That won't work twice, bastard." Jalter charged, her eyes blazing.
She attacked head-on, dodging energy blades the enemy controlled as if they were extensions of his fingers. Salter, meanwhile, circled to the flank, waiting for an opening.
The Super Demon moved his hand, and a wall of water rose, trying to push Salter back. But Jalter saw it. She struck the wall with her banner, evaporating the water in a flash of steam.
Salter seized the moment. She leaped, spinning in the air, and delivered a diagonal slash with Excalibur Morgan. The blade cut deep into the Super Demon's shoulder, drawing a jet of black blood.
The enemy didn't retreat.
He grabbed the blade with his free hand, trying to crush it, but at that moment, Jalter drove her banner into his back. Flaming stakes emerged from the ground, piercing the Super Demon's body.
He fell to his knees but didn't release the sword.
"Stubborn, huh?" Salter forced the blade, her face twisted with effort.
Salter gritted her teeth and let out a primal scream. Excalibur Morgan glowed with a purple hue, the energy exploding around the blade.
"CUT!!" She roared, and with a horizontal arc, she severed both of the Super Demon's arms, the Mana Burst energy tearing through to the bones.
The Super Demon didn't scream. He merely retreated, teleporting to the sky. Up high, as black blood still fell like poisonous rain, his arms regenerated in an instant. Not even a millisecond.
Jalter and Salter looked up, gritting their teeth in pure frustration.
"That's cheating…" Jalter whispered.
But the worst was only beginning.
The Super Demon's body began to writhe, its human form dissolving as new structures emerged. Legs. Many legs. Some insect-like, others bestial with claws capable of shredding a mountain, and even legs with hooves, stomping the air with absurd weight.
Wings sprouted next. Countless, blending insect membranes, giant bird feathers, and dragon scales. Each flap created gusts of wind that tore the ground like invisible knives.
And then, his body extended.
Fifty meters.
A black mist began to spread from his body, covering the battlefield like a living disease. Trees withered at its touch. The ground rotted, turning into a poisonous swamp. Even the mana particles in the air trembled, as if refusing to exist in that environment.
The splashes of blood falling from the monster turned everything to death. Each drop that hit the ground created black pools that bubbled with toxins so lethal that not even end-class demons could survive.
"This is bad…" Salter murmured, her expression grave.
"Yeah…" Jalter gritted her teeth with disgust: "We've got to deal with one annoying fly… Fortunately, it seems the Master's done over there too and is coming to back us up…"
While fighting, she quickly contacted her Master through their mental link, urging him to at least use a Command Seal, but he said he'd come in person to help them…
Jalter clenched her fists tightly.
"Of course the idiot's coming in person…" she muttered, spitting blood and rage simultaneously. "Salter, we need to hold this thing off until he gets here. Even if it kills us."
Salter twirled Excalibur Morgan, her eyes narrowed at the monstrosity writhing above them.
"We're not dying. He is."
The Super Demon's laugh echoed, a distorted sound, like a chorus of voices screaming in agony.
At this point, he was undoubtedly one of the strongest beings in this world!
___________________________
(A/N: Author's Note
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