The unknown pocket dimension. High above.
When Leo, Ravel, and Rem spread their wings and took to the skies, they finally got a clear look at the entire space.
It was a replica of Kuoh Town.
Skyscrapers stood in rows, roads stretched in every direction through the city blocks, and details like cars, streetlights, signs, and trash cans were all perfectly recreated. It was identical to the real Kuoh Town in every way, with one difference: there were no people. Only black monsters.
"Graaah..."
"Roar..."
Groups of black monsters shambled out from building shadows and alleyways, taking the place of the residents who should have been living here, wandering the streets and lurking in structures.
The moment they spotted Leo's group flying overhead, they let out piercing howls and fired beams of light upward.
"Annoying."
Leo saw nothing but empty streets and monsters in every direction. He had no patience to deal with them one by one, so he opened with everything he had.
In an instant, dark clouds blanketed the sky over the entire replica of Kuoh Town. Lightning flashed in rapid, dense bursts.
The sky turned black. Only the strobing glow of lightning remained.
The air grew heavy, as if a catastrophic storm was about to break.
Then countless bolts of lightning rained down from the clouds, striking across the entirety of Kuoh Town.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Thunder shook the heavens. Bolt after bolt struck the monsters roaming the streets, charring them to cinders on impact.
Lightning poured from the sky in an endless, suffocating deluge, turning the entire replica town into a sea of electricity. The sight was nothing short of terrifying.
If this had happened in the real world, it would have been an apocalyptic disaster.
Everywhere the eye could see, lightning hammered the ground. Countless bolts linked sky to earth, forming a dense web of crackling light that illuminated the entire world. Anyone witnessing this would have thought the end of days had come.
Leo had used Zenith Tempest's power to completely alter the weather across the entire pocket dimension, turning clear skies into a thunderstorm of biblical proportions and raining lightning down on all of Kuoh Town.
Under that relentless barrage, the black monsters didn't stand a chance. The town itself was caught in the devastation, ravaged by endless lightning.
Streets were pockmarked with charred craters. Buildings were either scorched black or blasted apart. Arcs of electricity slithered through the wreckage, destroying everything they touched. Kuoh Town crumbled by the second. Several skyscrapers toppled entirely, crashing to the ground with tremors that shook both earth and air.
"Wh-what incredible power!"
Ravel swallowed hard as she watched.
"Leo-sama's power... it's so much stronger than Sister's."
Even Rem's cute face showed awe.
They knew Leo was powerful, but this was the first time they'd witnessed destruction on this scale. It left them genuinely shaken.
The top-tier Longinus earned that distinction because each possessed the power to influence nations, even the world itself.
Dimension Lost could instantly generate fog covering an entire city and forcibly teleport everything within it. If used without restraint in the human world, the chaos and casualties would be unimaginable.
Annihilation Maker could produce an endless army of monsters and deploy them anywhere, easily possessing the power to topple a country and reshape global affairs.
And Zenith Tempest, ranked second among all Longinus, stood above both Annihilation Maker and Dimension Lost. Its potential impact on nations and the world was at least as great, if not greater.
The ability to instantly transform the climate of an entire city or country... that alone could wipe a city or nation off the map.
Compared to man-made threats, natural disasters were the true terror. If not for the fact that the True Longinus was the highest-grade holy relic, a legendary god-slaying spear said to be capable of killing even gods, it might not actually rank above Zenith Tempest at all.
In terms of raw power alone, Zenith Tempest, which could manufacture natural disasters at will, definitely surpassed the True Longinus.
The True Longinus's real strength lay not in destructive force, but in its nature as a sacred, divine artifact. That special quality gave it limitless potential. For any being of demonic nature, that spear was the most terrifying thing in existence.
Still, after several rounds of power-up feedback, Zenith Tempest had climbed several tiers in strength. Even the True Longinus, special as it was, could no longer claim absolute superiority.
Leo was confident that the current Zenith Tempest was in no way inferior to the True Longinus. His victories proved it. He'd easily defeated Kokabiel, a ten-wing fallen angel cadre, without even activating Balance Breaker. And Vali, who'd achieved Maou-class power in Balance Breaker, had fallen to him as well.
In the past, Leo had always held back, not daring to expand Zenith Tempest's attack range for fear of causing too much destruction in the real world. But in this pocket dimension, he had no such concerns.
So he cut loose. He blanketed the entire town within Zenith Tempest's range, transformed the weather across the pocket dimension in an instant, and let the thunderstorm descend.
Under that relentless bombardment, the black monsters howled and died. Many were vaporized entirely, not even leaving a corpse behind.
"Hm?"
Just as Leo was unleashing his full power, acting as the living embodiment of a natural disaster and ravaging the pocket dimension, the magic detection he'd kept active picked up a familiar energy signature.
BOOM!
To the east of Kuoh Town, a terrifying wave of cold erupted, freezing everything within several kilometers solid. Buildings, streets, and black monsters alike were all encased in ice, creating an instant frozen wasteland.
CRASH!
At the same time, from another direction, an equally terrifying gale appeared. It tore through the roads, ripped apart surrounding buildings, and hurled debris skyward, shredding countless black monsters in its wake. The violence was absolute.
"That's Yukino-senpai!"
Ravel immediately recognized who had created the frozen wasteland to the east.
"Sister!"
Rem's eyes lit up at the sight of the gale slaughtering monsters in the other direction.
Leo's expression finally eased, and he cracked a small smile.
"The two strongest fighters in the Eligos peerage, huh. Looks like they found those monsters just as annoying."
The words had barely left his mouth when two figures flew in from the directions of the ice field and the gale.
"I knew it. The weather turning into this had to be your doing."
Yukino's first words upon arrival. The three-meter-tall Frost Princess trailed behind her.
"Are you two alright?"
Ram's expression visibly softened when she spotted Rem, and only then did she speak.
"Just you two?" Leo waited for them to regroup before asking. "Where are the others?"
"No idea." Yukino shook her head. "When the fog sent me here, I was alone. No one else around."
"I got dropped straight into a swarm of those things." Ram said flatly. "Didn't expect them to use the power of light. Almost got caught off guard."
"So everyone was separated." Ravel concluded immediately. "If Leo-sama hadn't grabbed me and Rem right before the forced teleportation, we'd probably have been scattered too."
"The others should be okay, right?" Rem moved to Ram's side, confirmed her sister was uninjured, then said with obvious worry. "Those monsters can use the power of light. If you're caught off guard, you could get seriously hurt."
That was everyone's concern.
Yukino and Ram were powerful enough to handle it. Both were on par with Ultimate-Class Devils, so they'd gotten through fine. But the others might not be so lucky.
"They should be fine." Leo stayed calm. "Utaha's barrier skills are sharp enough that she could throw up a shield even if caught off guard. Asuna and Mahiru are both sensitive to holy power. One's a holy sword wielder, the other holds the Incinerate Anthem. The power of light from angels and fallen angels probably can't touch them."
That said, all three were still devils. Unlike Leo, they hadn't overcome their racial weakness. One slip and they really could be seriously injured.
"Let's find them and regroup as fast as we can."
No one disagreed.
Fortunately, Leo and Yukino both had excellent magic detection, and Ram possessed Clairvoyance. By sharing wavelengths with her summoned familiars, she could see across vast distances. Finding their companions in a town populated by nothing but monsters wasn't too difficult.
Three minutes later, a pillar of purple flame shooting into the sky caught their attention. They found Mahiru in the middle of a scorched battlefield, surrounded by the charred remains of black monsters.
"Senpai! And everyone!"
Mahiru was controlling a cross-shaped mass of purple flame, blasting wave after wave of black monsters to pieces. Her face lit up when she saw the group flying toward her.
She was completely unharmed. The black monsters near her were the ones screaming as the purple flames purified them. It was clearly a one-sided slaughter.
This made sense. No matter how much light power they had, these creatures were still magical beasts created by Annihilation Maker. As magical beings, they were inherently weak to holy and purification power. This matchup was mutual weakness on both sides, but Mahiru's purification was overwhelmingly stronger. She'd dominated them from start to finish.
Seeing this, Leo knew Asuna would be fine too.
Sure enough, after linking up with Mahiru, they quickly found Asuna on a nearby street, cutting through black monsters like a knife through butter.
"Are you all okay?"
Asuna held a holy sword in each hand, and both blades were black. Dark-attribute holy swords.
The light beams the black monsters fired were swallowed the instant they touched those dark-attribute blades, unable to reach Asuna at all.
Meanwhile, every swing of Asuna's swords sent monsters up in smoke as purification ate through them on contact. The power gap was obvious.
Asuna was not only unscathed, she'd been worried about Leo's group this whole time. Seeing everyone arrive in one piece, she finally let out a huge sigh of relief.
The last to join wasn't found by them. Utaha found them first.
"Finally!"
The literary beauty had zero intention of fighting the hideous monsters littering the streets. She'd simply wrapped herself in a barrier and drifted over from the horizon, ignoring every beam of light the monsters fired at her. They struck the barrier and bounced off harmlessly.
Utaha's strategy was straightforward: ignore the ugly creatures, find her allies first. With her barrier holding up perfectly, the monsters couldn't threaten her at all. She could afford to ignore them and search the town at her leisure.
You had to hand it to a light novelist. Quick thinking, zero interest in fighting, and always looking for the shortcut. Completely different from the battle-hungry types who charged headfirst at every enemy they saw.
With that approach, finding Leo's group was only a matter of time. Their trail of destruction was hard to miss.
Everyone gathered together. After confirming no one was injured, they finally relaxed.
"Did any of you see anyone else?"
Leo asked Asuna and the others.
The Eligos peerage was all accounted for, but there was still no sign of the Gremory peerage, the Sitri peerage, or the faction leaders.
Asuna and the others shook their heads. None of them had seen anyone else either.
That confirmed what Leo suspected.
"This pocket dimension was made specifically for us." Ravel had reached the same conclusion. "The others were probably sent to different pocket dimensions, or maybe they were left in the real world. Otherwise, we wouldn't have run into only our own people this entire time."
Everyone exchanged glances, then all eyes turned to Leo.
"Let's go." Leo had a good idea of what was going on. He narrowed his eyes and spoke.
"Time to meet the one behind all this."