As the purple flames danced along the edge of Ame-no-Habakiri, Jay stood silhouetted against the dying light of the cloudy autumn morning of Romania.
The air around him distorted, humming with the frequency of spatial displacement.
As flocks of Tepes Reinforced Vampires lunged toward him, Jay tightened his grip.
With a single, fluid horizontal motion, he swung the jet-black blade.
SHIING
A crescent of violet energy erupted outward.
The Heaven-Severing Slash tore through space itself, carving a glowing arc across the sky as space split open before it.
The slash tore through the flocks, then engulfed them in violet fire, incinerating their bodies in holy flames and reducing them to drifting ash.
But the Tepes legion was driven by a madness of the grail that superseded fear.
Hundreds remained, and as the first rank crumbled, dozens more converged on Jay from every conceivable angle.
One noble, his eyes glowing with the golden haze of the Grail, launched himself with a speed that blurred the vision of the surviving onlookers.
He swung a jagged, blood-coated claw at Jay's throat.
But Jay didn't flinch.
He didn't even move his feet.
Phantasmagoria activated.
The air around Jay turned a spectral, translucent purple.
The vampire's claws passed through Jay's neck as if he were made of nothing but smoke.
And in the split second the attacker's momentum carried him past, Jay shifted back into tangibility.
He spun one hundred and eighty degrees as a silver streak of Ame-no-Murakumo following his rotation.
The silver blade, crackling with residue of the rhythmic lightning took the vampire's head in a clean strike.
And before the decapitated body could even hit the stone floor of the wals, a burst of purple flame erupted from the ground beneath it, consuming the remains in an incinerating anthem.
Dozens more vampires flooded the top of the wall, their wings beating a frantic rhythm of death.
They landed in a tight circle, intending to crush the human under the weight of their combined power.
"Die, human!" One screamed, thrusting a hand forward to unleash a torrent of dark mana.
Jay didn't look.
He merely stood there as a massive burst of purple flame erupted from his body like an expanding burst of solar flare.
The vampires caught in the radius were vaporized, their screams cut short as the violet fire fed on their very souls.
From the periphery, a piercing shadow spear whistled through the air, aimed at Jay's heart, while another Tepes Vampires swung a massive demonic greatsword from the opposite side. Jay stood motionless.
Once again, his body glowed with that eerie purple hue.
The shadow spear passed through his chest and impaled the swordsman on the other side.
Simultaneously, the greatsword swung through Jay's spectral form and buried itself in the head of the spear wielder, ultimately killing each other.
Jay flickered back into the space as his gaze remaining fixed on the sky where Marius hovered.
From both ends of the long battlement, hundreds of vampires were now sprinting toward him, their footsteps sounding like a drumroll of doom as their coat flapping through the air.
Jay crossed his arms, the black and silver blades forming an 'X' across his chest.
SHIIING
CRACKLE
He swung both of the Divine Swords simultaneously in a dual-directional release.
From the right, the Heaven Severing Slash roared down the length of the wall, a flat line of spatial destruction that bypassed all armor and ignored all distance.
And from the left, a Lightning Dragon erupted from the silver blade, coiling on top of the stone walls as its head snapping out of the air to swallow everything in its path.
"Arghhh!!"
The wall was cleared in an instant with the scream of the Tepes Vampires.
The stone was scorched black, and the air was filled with the smell of burnt meat.
High above, Marius Tepes watched the one by one of his elite guards is being slaughtered.
His knuckles were white as he gripped the Sephiroth Graal, the golden chalice pulsing with a frantic stuttering light.
He was trembling not just with rage, but with an incomprehensible fear.
He just didn't want to admit it.
"Why!?" Marius cursed, his voice a jagged roar of frustration. "That flame... it's holy energy! Then why can't the Grail remove their weakness of it!?"
He pressed his hand harder against the glowing chalice, pouring his mana into it.
Marius looked down at the lone human standing amidst the ash of his army,l.
Meanwhile, seeing as their comrades slaughtered in an instant, the remaining elite guards at Marius's side halted their charge.
Fear rooted them in place, breaking the will that had driven them forward.
It had begun with a single human standing atop the wall.
And it ended the same way.
With that same human still standing there.
Seeing their cowardice, Marius erupted in rage.
"What the fuck are you doing?! Go! Kill him!" he roared.
But they did not obey.
Instead, their fear took hold.
They turned and fled.
"Run!"
"He's going to kill us!"
Marius stared in disbelief as his elite guards, the very ones he had empowered by the grail, broke formation and scattered in panic, fleeing in the opposite direction.
Rage twisted his doll-like face.
"You fucking cowards!" he screamed after them. "I'll kill every last one of you myself if you run! Come back here! HEY!!"
His voice echoed across the battlefield.
But none of them turned back.
But then Marius widened his eyes as Jay already dissapeared from his place, and then he sense the presence from behind, as he turned. Jay already in front of the fleed Vampires.
He didn't fly, he can't.
He just hovering in the air in that split second.
And then with a swing of his jet-black blade as he whispered.
"Cleave"
His voice devoid of emotion, calm and serene. But to the Vampires, it was the last bit of sound they could heard in their life.
SHIIING
Purple flame engulfed the last remainings guards of Marius Tepes, as the only thing remain is their soundless screams, and the drifting ash.
Marius silenced as all of his guards just annihilated by some random human.
A human that he didn't even know his name of.
Then Jay suddenly vanished from the battlement, reappearing directly in the blind spot behind Marius Tepes.
The transition was so seamless it bypassed the vampire's sensory range entirely.
With a casual flick of Ame-no-Murakumo, Jay sent a sikver slash toward Marius's neck.
Marius spun, his instincts screaming. He barely managed to conjure a shield of dense solidified shadow magic to meet the blade.
CLANK
The impact sent a shockwave through the sky, the silver lightning of the blade gnawing at the dark barrier.
"Filthy human!"
Marius roared, his face contorting with a mixture of shock and anger.
That a mortal dared to touch his shroud was a heresy he could not stomach.
He thrust his hand forward, the Sephiroth Graal glowing with a violent, rhythmic light.
His aura surged, doubling, then tripling, until the sky itself seemed to bow under his weight.
From the shadows beneath his cloak, dozens of massive, obsidian snake heads erupted, their fangs dripping with a corrosive darkness that hissed against the air.
Jay's expression didn't change. He merely swing his hand in a short vertical line as he activating Rupture and a jagged tear in the fabric of space opened before him, a tear that simply erased the snakes of darkness, deleting them from its space before they could even snap their jaws.
And before Marius could even process the loss of his spell, Jay followed through with a swing.
SHIIING
A purple slash manifested directly on Marius's hand.
There was no travel time, no warning.
As if the concept of distance is nonexistent.
SPLURRT
"ARGHHH!"
Marius's left hand, still clutching at the air, was severed cleanly.
The limb fell, blood spraying in a hot, crimson arc.
But the scream had barely left his throat when the his True Immortality that the Holy Grail gave to him took hold.
In a grotesque, supernatural display, white light surged from the stump, the hand magically knitted back together instantly as sinew, bone, and skin weaving back as if the cut had never happened.
Jay's eyes widened slightly.
The speed of the regeneration was reaching the level of a true anomaly.
But he didn't let that stop him.
Gravity began to pull at him, yet before his momentum could fail, he used Voidwalker as
he materialized behind Marius once again, his jet-black blade already mid-swing.
SPLURTTT
This time, the cut was deeper. It bypassed the spine, bisecting Marius's lower body.
The self proclaimed God-King let out a sound that wasn't human.
A high-pitched, agonizing shriek of a soul being flayed. But once again, the Grail flared in a golden hue.
Even as his lower half began to drift away, the golden light tethered the flesh back together, stitching him whole in a heartbeat.
But Jay didn't give him that heartbeat.
He pivoted in mid-air, channeling an Enhancement Magic into his leg that made the surrounding air explode.
Jay then delivered a brutal, downward kick to Marius's head.
BOOM
Marius was sent hurtling toward the earth like a falling star, crashing into the dirt just outside the fortress walls. Before the dust could even settle, Jay was already there, standing behind him in a flicker of violet embers.
Marius scrambled to find his footing, his regal armor cracked and his platinum hair matted with blood.
Sensing Jay's presence behind him, he turned, raising both hands to unleash a desperate burst of darkness magic.
"Y-Youuuu-!"
SHIIING
In a singular, cold motion, the jet-black blade of Ame-no-Habakiri claimed both of Marius's hands.
SPLURTT
"Arghh!"
As both of his hand is severed by the heaven-severing slash, the Sephiroth Graal slipped from his hands and floating gracefully in the air for a brief suspended moment.
Marius's crimson eyes dilated to the size of pinpricks.
Time seemed to stop for him.
That cup was his power. His research. His immortality.
His divinity as a God!
He couldn't lose it.
But Jay snatched it in front of him, as his left hand closed around the golden chalice.
Then-
FWHUOM
A burst of Incinerate Anthem erupted from the ground beneath Marius.
The violet flames swirled like a cyclone, incinerating his clothes and searing his skin until it began to evaporate.
But the Grail's influence was a curse of its own as the flames burned him, the artifact's residual power forced his cells to stitch back together.
He was caught in a loop of eternal agony as his skin melting and reforming, his muscles turning to ash and then pulling themselves back onto charred bone.
Marius looked up from his knees, naked and trembling, his dignity stripped away along with his armor and all of his clothes.
He looked into Jay's dark hazel eyes.
A deep, terrifying eyes that utterly devoid of emotion.
"M-monster!!!" Marius screamed, his voice a broken rasp.
His instincts finally overcame his arrogance. Every fiber of his being screamed one thing.
Run.
The self proclaimed "God-King" turned and crawled.
He scrambled away from the silent human as he slowly but finally regaining his footing and sprinting toward the horizon of the Tepes territory.
He ran with the frantic energy of a cornered roach, his breath coming in jagged gasps.
He prepared to take flight, to vanish into the clouds.
But-
SHIIING
"… Huh?"
The world tilted. Marius slammed into the dirt as his legs were suddenly severed at the thighs.
"ARGHHHH!!!"
He screamed, his limbless body dragging itself through the mud. His legs tried to regenerate as the bone beginning to protrude.
But every time they formed, another black slash appeared and severed them back to the stump.
"H-help! Help me!!!"
He crawled so hard that the friction against the jagged stones tore the skin from his groins to his chest, only for the Grail to stitch the raw meat back together so he could feel the pain all over again.
Jay followed him.
He didn't run.
He didn't rush.
He walked with a steady, rhythmic pace while holding the golden chalice in his left hand.
The artifact felt strange in his grip. It hummed, a low, resonant vibration that felt like a
greeting to an old friend.
There was a sickening sense of familiarity to it that he can't quite put it.
Jay looked at the cup, then at the roach crawling before him.
SHIING
"Arghhhh!"
Another limb severed.
Marius was a moving torso trailing blood in the dirt.
Crawling desperately with both of his hand.
Jay walked slowly as he allowed the golden chalice to float in front of him.
A bright light suddenly engulfed the area.
And with a single thought,
The regeneration stopped.
Marius's eyes widened in pure terror.
"No… no… no!!" He whispered in denial before scream of fear filled his mouth.
"My immortality! My power! I am the God King of the Vampires! You can't do this to me! Give it back! Give it back!!"
His crawl slowed to a pathetic twitch. Jay stepped over him, looking down at the ruin of a man.
" So that's how the grail works,' Jay thought. But then his expression changes as he looking at the golden chalice.
'All this bloodbath... all these thousands of lives... just for this shallow, artificial immortality'
The solemness in Jay's chest turned into a cold, hard knot of disgust.
Marius tried to reach out, his stumps twitching as if to grab Jay's pants to beg for mercy.
"Please! Don't kill me! I-"
SHIING
Jay finally cut the both of his arms.
"ARGHHH!"
The God-King of the Vampires was now nothing more than a human nugget, as he lost his immortality.
Then, a low purple blaze began to lick at Marius's body as it burn himacross his flesh.
Slow.
Controlled.
Agonizing.
He screamed.
And screamed.
And screamed.
Jay stood in silence as the flames consumed him.
The man who had killed.
The man who had raped.
The man who had burned thousands alive for ambition and power.
Now reduced to nothing.
Only fire.
Only ash.
Only silence.