Leo had known for a long time that the Holy Spear, like the Sacred Gears of the Two Heavenly Dragons, possessed a power of Supremacy.
And unlike the Beast of Supremacy or the Dragon of Supremacy, it wasn't achieved by cursing oneself in exchange for power beyond one's limits. It was something far more unique.
Other Sacred Gears derived their Supremacy from sealed creatures. By releasing the being sealed within, the user gained its full living power at enormous cost.
The True Longinus was different. No creature was sealed inside it. What it held was the dying will of the Biblical God.
Yes. The dying will of the Biblical God himself.
As the first and strongest Longinus, the god-slaying spear's connection to the Biblical God ran impossibly deep. It possessed the power to pierce gods, yet was itself the highest-grade holy relic. That alone spoke to how intertwined it was with the divine.
So the Biblical God's dying will was sealed within this supreme relic. Truth Idea didn't unleash a sealed creature's power. It unleashed miracles that the deceased Biblical God had once performed.
Leo vaguely recalled that once Truth Idea was activated, the divine will inside the spear would absorb the wielder's ambition or desire, then produce effects that varied depending on the opponent.
In other words, what Truth Idea actually did upon activation was completely unpredictable.
Sometimes it produced overwhelming destructive force sufficient to defeat the enemy. Other times it blessed the opponent to win them over. Depending on the wielder's wishes and ambitions, depending on the opponent, depending on the situation, Truth Idea's effects changed entirely.
In the original story, Cao Cao had used Truth Idea twice.
Once against the protagonist, Hyoudou Issei. That time, the divine will inside the spear had actually sided with Issei, acknowledging his desire and deciding to observe him. Truth Idea produced no effect whatsoever. It backfired on Cao Cao.
The second time was during the Evil Dragon War. Truth Idea repelled armies of mass-produced evil dragons and Plate Mails, and left Apophis, the Eclipse Dragon, writhing in agony.
So while Truth Idea shared the same Supremacy classification as the Beast and Dragon versions, the actual effects were worlds apart.
Using it could yield tremendous power, or it could backfire spectacularly. Extremely unstable, easily spiraling out of control. Leo had remembered Cao Cao had this ability and maintained a degree of caution, but he hadn't dwelled on it too much.
Not because he thought Truth Idea wasn't a threat. Because even if he wanted to prepare for it, he couldn't.
If you couldn't even predict what it would do, how were you supposed to counter it?
The only countermeasure Leo could think of was to take Cao Cao down before he had a chance to use it.
He hadn't expected that at the last possible moment, Cao Cao would gamble on Truth Idea and escape.
"Using something that unstable in a situation like that... I don't know whether to be impressed or call you insane."
Leo didn't know what to think anymore.
Truth Idea's effects were random. If it hadn't produced the exact result of shattering all the bubbles, Cao Cao would have been finished.
Leo had actually expected Cao Cao to use Pearl Treasure to absorb the disasters, and had prepared to activate Nature's Hope in case they got redirected back at him. But Cao Cao didn't use Pearl Treasure. He went straight to Truth Idea.
"Pearl Treasure can only absorb attacks from a single direction. It can't cover every angle."
Cao Cao seemed to read Leo's mind. He spoke between ragged breaths, the corner of his mouth twitching upward.
"Against that kind of full three-sixty bombardment with no blind spots, using Pearl Treasure would have been actual suicide."
So Cao Cao had no choice but to take the gamble.
Fortunately, he'd bet right.
The divine will within the spear answered his desire and pulled him from the brink.
All Leo could do was lament that he didn't have protagonist luck. When Hyoudou Issei faced Truth Idea, the ability turned on Cao Cao and sided with Issei instead. Leo didn't get that kind of fortune.
At least it wasn't a total loss.
"Even if you won that bet, so what?" Leo narrowed his eyes at the gasping Cao Cao. "Being forced to use Supremacy means you're not in great shape anymore, are you?"
Truth Idea might be a different beast from Beast of Supremacy and Dragon of Supremacy, but all Supremacy powers shared one thing in common.
The cost of using them was enormous.
Ordinary users would lose years off their lifespan at minimum, potentially dying on the spot. Even Vali could only sustain his Supremacy for a few minutes thanks to his massive reserves of demonic power. Cao Cao didn't have anything close to Vali's level of power. There was no way he'd escaped without paying a price.
Of course, Truth Idea's cost was also variable. If the effect produced was powerful, the cost would be steep. If the effect was weak, the cost was minimal. In the original story, when it was used against Issei and produced no effect at all, there was zero cost.
But just now, shattering every bubble Leo had spread across the entire pocket dimension had required a tremendous display of power. The cost was significant, leaving Cao Cao visibly drained and gasping for air.
"You probably can't use it a second time."
Leo slowly extended his hand toward Cao Cao.
"So what's your plan now?"
Bubbles began forming around Leo once more, expanding outward.
It was easy to imagine what would come next. Once those bubbles spread across the sky, the entire world would be engulfed in natural disasters all over again.
"Like hell!"
Alarm bells screaming in his head, Cao Cao shouted and forced his exhausted body to activate Horse Treasure, teleporting behind Leo in an instant.
"General Treasure!"
He launched the last of the Seven Treasures. The final ability he'd been holding in reserve. His last trump card.
The black orb shot forward at blistering speed, like a bullet, reaching Leo in the blink of an eye.
Leo's reaction was swift. He spread all twelve devil wings and folded them in front of himself, wrapping his entire body, blocking the incoming orb.
The black orb struck the layered wall of devil wings, and then detonated with an incomprehensible surge of force, producing a deafening roar.
General Treasure. Its ability was simple: a sphere that produced extreme destructive force and impact upon contact.
At first glance, the orb seemed to drift in lazily. But the instant it hit its target, the destructive power and concussive force it unleashed were horrifying.
To Leo, it felt like being rammed by an entire mountain. The shockwave sent him hurtling backward, his body becoming a blur as he scraped through the air, the shriek of a sonic boom trailing behind him as he plummeted toward the ground.
A sickening crack. The sound of Leo's devil wings breaking.
Without question, General Treasure had snapped them.
Leo's response was instant. Even mid-fall, he fired one last attack at Cao Cao.
A bubble materialized around Cao Cao, trapping him before he could react. Natural disasters exploded into existence inside it.
Raging fire tornadoes, flesh-tearing gales, absolute-zero cold, lightning like divine wrath, blinding sandstorms, apocalyptic floods... every disaster imaginable descended on him like divine punishment, swallowing him whole.
At the same moment, Leo's body slammed into the ground, kicking up a dust cloud dozens of meters high. The earth shattered and collapsed, forming a massive crater as violent tremors shook everything.
Above, divine catastrophe raged inside the bubble. Below, the ground buckled with violent tremors and thunder.
Then, one last sound.
A strange cracking, like glass fracturing.
The pocket dimension itself had cracked under the strain of so much chaotic power.
The crack appeared fast and vanished fast.
But in that single instant, from within the bubble in the sky and from the massive crater in the ground, two battered figures were swallowed by the rift.
No one noticed. No one realized that Leo and Cao Cao, the leaders of their respective sides, were no longer in the pocket dimension.
The Eligos peerage and the Hero Faction members were still locked in their own fierce battles, with no attention to spare for what had happened here.
When Leo opened his eyes and consciousness returned from the haze, the first thing he felt was searing pain.
His body ached everywhere. He pieced together what had happened before he blacked out.
General Treasure had hit harder than expected. In the original story, Issei had taken a direct hit in full Balance Breaker armor and still been badly wounded, so Leo wasn't surprised he'd taken damage. But it didn't matter.
He'd launched his counterattack the instant he was hit. Cao Cao took the full force of every natural disaster Leo could throw. A fragile human body with no regeneration, no devil resilience. There was a real chance it had killed him outright.
"Where am I, though?"
Leo pushed down the pain and looked around.
Only then did he realize he was no longer inside the Kuoh Town replica. He'd arrived in a bizarre, alien world.
No up or down. No sky or earth. No buildings, no trees, no plants. Just a space suffused with clashing colors, warped and twisted and swaying, chaotic beyond description.
Leo was floating in this distorted space as if gravity didn't exist, and everything his eyes took in looked like the inside of a kaleidoscope. Staring too long made him nauseous.
The sight snapped him to full alertness immediately.
He recognized this place.
Not long ago, he'd brought his entire peerage aboard a train and passed through here on the way to the Underworld.
This was the Dimensional Gap.
Leo's eyes went wide.
How had he ended up here?
"The pocket dimension must have destabilized. The crack ejected me, but instead of returning to the real world, I ended up in the space between worlds?"
That was the only explanation.
The question was: had only he been thrown here, or was everyone else here too?
Yukino?
Asuna?
Utaha, Mahiru, Ravel, Ram, Rem?
And Cao Cao and the Hero Faction?
The thought made Leo anxious.
The Dimensional Gap was no safe haven. It was a void world, and scattered throughout it were dangerous objects that history had deemed too hazardous to deal with. One wrong encounter could mean permanent disappearance, with no way back to the real world.
Even without stumbling into danger, without the ability to breach dimensional walls, there was no way out. You'd drift here forever.
"This is bad..."
Leo's heart sank.
He didn't have any means to escape this place either. The space here was inherently unstable and warped. Standard methods like magic circle teleportation were useless. Only specially calibrated transfer formulas worked here.
Leo obviously didn't know any such formula. Nobody in the entire Eligos peerage did.
If any of his peerage had fallen into this place, they'd be just as trapped as he was.
"What now?"
Leo racked his brain but couldn't find an answer.
By the time he gave up thinking, he noticed that his injuries had already healed.
"Becoming a Perfect Devil really did boost the regeneration."
He tested his limbs, confirmed the pain was gone, then spread his devil wings and took flight.
"Might as well start moving."
Staying still and drifting aimlessly would never lead to an escape.
"Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll find something useful out here."
With that thought, Leo beat his devil wings and flew off in a direction.
Before long, his figure vanished into the warped expanse, destination unknown.