The giant gates on the stone walls of the Carmilla territory loomed behind the fleeing army, but they were no longer an escape for them.
Because of one man.
Jay descended from the ramparts with a rhythmic heavy gait that seemed to pulse in time with the flickering shadows of the black chalice.
As his boots met the blood-stained earth, he began to walk toward the five hundred stunned Tepes vampires. His presence was not that of a warrior, but of a quiet inevitable end.
"What the fuck is this?" one noble hissed, baring fangs that still dripped with blood. "It's just a human! Out of the way!"
"Kill him! Tear him apart!"
The collective desperation of the remaining five hundreds Tepes vampires boiled over into a frantic suicidal charge. They moved with the enhanced speed of the Grail's blessing, a blur of black cloaks and jagged claws.
But as they closed the distance, the more observant among them faltered.
They recognized the man. They recognized the cold, empty hazel eyes that had stared down at the earth as the disastrous lightning qilin and storm dragons descended from the sky.
"Wait... isn't that the guy who-"
The sentence was never finished.
The black flames dancing around the rim of the Holy Grail of The Last Supper flickered with a sudden predatory intensity. The air around Jay seemed to warp, turning into a vacuum that drank the light from the space.
As the vampires lunged at him, they suddenly jerked mid-air, their momentum dying as if they had run into a wall of viscous liquid.
The golden aura of the Sephiroth Graal that had sustained them, the artificial strength that had turned them into more than a creature of darkness was stripped away in a single heartbeat.
"My power..." one vampire gasped, looking at his hands as they began to tremble. "The strength Marius gave us... it's gone!"
"What... what am I even doing here?" another muttered, his eyes clearing of the Grail's madness only to be filled with the sudden, crushing weight of his own situation.
Confusion and powerlessness rippled through the ranks.
Some stood paralyzed by the sudden void in their souls, while others dropped their weapons, realizing they were no longer the predators they had been minutes ago.
Jay continued to walk. He looked at the faces of the Tepes Faction. The lineage that had butchered families, raped the innocent, and turned children into cattle.
Jay walked slow and unhurried, toward the stunned hundreds of Tepes vampires.
He had killed their parents.
He had killed their children.
He had killed their brothers and sisters.
And then at last,
The Tepes Faction would be no more.
And with another flicker of black flame around its rim, the blazing black chalice whispered silence.
Jay then raised his left hand and a small concentrated sphere of light manifested above his palm.
It was no larger than a baseball, appearing almost harmless in its simplicity. But as the sphere erupted with a sudden, blinding radiance, the screams began.
"ARGHHH!!"
"No! Please! Stop it!"
It was not an explosion. It was just light.
A simple, almost harmless glow.
But with the Grail amplifying the deepest weaknesses of their beings, even that gentle radiance became as burning as the sun to the remaining Tepes vampires.
Before they could take a single step to flee, their feet began to melt.
The light reached out and targeted the fundamental weakness of their species. Their flesh began to run like heated wax, melting into the stones of the courtyard. They were literally being consumed by a harmless light.
As their screams echoed through the roads, Jay stared at the burning vampires with an empty gaze.
Then he looked at the flickering Black Chalice.
'It seems the Grail's power… Valerie's Grail… the ability to add or remove strength and weakness, to amplify strength or deepen weakness… is still here in my Grail,' Jay thought.
Within seconds, the five hundred remaining Tepes vampires were reduced to puddles of cooling tallow and drifting ash.
The Twilight March of the Tepes army, led by the self-proclaimed God-King of the Vampire World, ended not with a grand clash of magic and steel, but with the quiet, agonizing sizzle of candles being snuffed out.
The battlefield fell into a vacuum of silence.
The surviving Carmilla vampires and the weary Church exorcists stood frozen, watching the lone human who had just executed an army without breaking his stride.
As the Carmilla vampires and the Church exorcists watched Jay, their expressions were a tangled mix of emotions. There was curiosity in their eyes, a quiet sense of awe, a trace of reluctant appreciation… but above all, there was fear.
Fear of unknown.
Jay ignored them all. He walked past the obsidian stone road, his eyes fixed on a single figure descending from the sky.
Lavinia Reni was drifting downward, her purple robes tattered and her face as pale as the snow she had conjured.
As her Balance Breaker deactivated, the frost on her blonde hair began to sparkle in the dim light. Her legs buckled the moment her boots touched the uneven ground.
"Ah..."
Before she could hit the earth, Jay was there.
He caught her with a strength that was far more solid than it had been hours ago, his arms acting as a steady anchor for her exhausted frame.
Lavinia looked up into his eyes and felt a wave of relief wash over her. She reached up, resting a cold, trembling hand against his cheek. A warm, tired smile touched her lips.
"It's finally over... Illya-kun," she whispered.
A thin, rare smile flickered across Jay's face, a momentary break in his icy mask. "Yeah. It's over."
"I am sorry I couldn't help you more," Lavinia said softly, her eyes reflecting the guilt and helplessnes of leaving him to face the horrors in the basement alone.
"Don't say sorry...," Jay replied, his voice uncharacteristically gentle. "You did amazing. Thank you for holding the line for me."
Lavinia's smile widened, and she leaned into him, using her remaining strength to pull him into a hug. She whispered something against his chest, a soft string of words meant only for him, but the sound was drowned out by the sudden sound of approaching footsteps.
Dulio Gesualdo and Griselda Quarta landed a few meters away. Both were covered in the soot and blood of the front lines, looking battered but alive.
"Uhm... I'm sorry for bothering both of you," Dulio said, clearing his throat with an awkward, sheepish grin.
Lavinia didn't move. She kept her head rested against Jay's shoulder, seemingly indifferent to the presence of both exorcists behind her.
"Illya-san..." Dulio's expression shifted, becoming solemn as he bowed his head deeply. "Thank you. Truly. I don't know what would have happened to me and my people if you hadn't arrived when you did. On behalf of the Church, I am grateful."
Jay's eyes narrowed, the warmth from moments ago vanishing. He scoffed, the sound sharp and cynical.
"Don't bother. I didn't do it for you."
"But still," Dulio insisted, straightening. "You ended this war. And you killed their King too, I presume."
His gaze drifted to the black chalice, curiosity flickering in his eyes.
"I killed your comrades too," Jay said flatly, his voice cutting through Dulio's gratitude like a blade.
Dulio fell silent, his eyes dropping to the scorched earth. It was a truth he couldn't deny. The Church had lost many today, some to the vampires, and some to the collateral damage of Jay's mass-destruction attack.
Meanwhile, Griselda's gaze was fixed on the obsidian object hovering at Jay's side. She had seen the golden Grail in the history books, and she knew what it was supposed to look like.
The thing beside Jay was something else entirely.
"Mr.Illya," she began, her voice hesitant. "Forgive me for asking... but is that the Sephiroth Graal?"
Jay glanced at the black chalice, its eternal flames flickering in a silent, mocking dance.
"Maybe," he answered vaguely, his tone making it clear that he had no intention of elaborating.
But as the two exorcists began to analyze the dark flame and energy radiating from the black chalice, a sudden violent tremor shook the ground.
A surge of mana, so enormous and malicious that it felt like the sky was being crushed erupted from the center of the Queen's Chamber.
The atmospheric pressure spiked instantly, and suddenly the air taste of sulfur and ash.
***
Inside the Queen's Chamber, the air was a turbulent sea of clashing energies of holy and demonic.
Twelve majestic golden wings unfurled with a resonant hum as Michael, the leader of the Heaven became a sun in the center of the room.
With a sharp, commanding gesture, he unleashed hundreds of spears of Divine Light.
They whistled through the air, leaving trails of shimmering gold in their wake.
BOOM
The chamber shook, but the smoke cleared to reveal Rizevim Livan Lucifer standing entirely unscathed.
A dark crimson barrier, crackling with demonic energy pulsed in front of him. He didn't even have his hands raised as he simply stood there with that insufferable, mocking smirk decorating his face.
"Is that the best the 'Strongest of the Heavens' can offer?" Rizevim taunted.
Before Michael could retort, the floor beneath Rizevim's feet dissolved into an abyss.
Thousands of obsidian thorns and black roses erupted from the shadows.
From the floor, the walls, and the high vaulted ceiling, coiling like snakes toward Rizevim and Euclid beside him.
"Kukuku! Now this is getting interesting," Rizevim laughed, his voice echoing with a slight sarcasm underneath it.
"Light and Shadows dancing together. Your Father must be so disappointed, Michael-chan. To think the Prince of Heaven is affiliating himself with a creature of the darkness. Truly, the standards of the Heaven's Grace have fallen."
Euclid Lucifuge stepped forward, his expression a mask of cold professionalism.
He raised a hand, and dozens of silverish-crimson magical circles manifested in a geometric ring around them.
With a sharp flick of his wrist, a large explosion detonated, shattering Queen Carmilla's shadow thorns into harmless particle of shadow.
High above, Gabriel drifted majestically, her own six pair of wings casting a soothing, golden radiance.
She closed her eyes in prayer, channeling her essence into Michael.
A sudden violent burst of golden aura erupted from the Seraph leader, his Sword of Light vibrating with such intensity that the stone walls began to crack.
"I will punish you for your transgressions, Rizevim Livan Lucifer," Michael declared, his eyes glowing with a terrifying light.
"You haven't been able to do that for thousands of years," Rizevim countered, his smirk widening. " What makes you think anything has changed today?"
Michael didn't answer with words. He vanished in a golden flash, appearing instantly in front of Rizevim. He brought his blade down in a devastating diagonal slash.
CLANK
The Sword of Light was parried, but not by Rizevim.
Euclid had intercepted the strike with a silver blade of his own, his eyes narrowed in focus.
He would not let the humiliation of his previous defeat by a human repeat itself, he would hold the line against the leader of the angels if he had to.
Sensing the stalemate, Michael manifested a second sword in his other hand, spinning to deliver a twin strike. Rizevim merely leaned back, his movements fluid and lazy, retreating toward the balcony.
"Where do you think you are going?"
Queen Carmilla resurfaced from the shadows directly behind Rizevim, her slender hand elongated into a lethal claw aimed at his heart.
But Rizevim's reaction was terrifyingly casual.
He didn't even look back. He swatted her hand away with the back of his palm before spinning and catching her by the throat.
"Ack!" Carmilla gasped, her feet danging above the floor.
"A bat should know her place," Rizevim whispered.
His victory was short-lived as Michael surged forward, sending a wave of golden light that forced Rizevim to release his grip and jump back.
As Rizevim retreated, his eyes locked onto Gabriel in the back.
She was in vulnarable state, as she is the one who keeping Michael's output at its peak with her power.
"Let's remove the annoyance," Rizevim muttered.
He raised a finger, and a demonic bullet of a condensed sphere of pure malice launched at supersonic speed toward the vulnerable Gabriel.
Gabriel's eyes widened, her wings curling instinctively to shield herself, but she knew she was too slow.
Then-
BOOM
A translucent golden barrier manifested in front of her just in time.
The impact of the bullet was absorbed, sending ripples of gold across the shield.
Michael stood before her, his back to her, but the move had cost him his momentum.
Rizevim seized the opening, launching a second demonic bullet. Michael raised a light barrier, and the resulting collision threw him back, forcing him to skid across the floor to maintain his position in front of Gabriel.
Queen Carmilla resurfaced from the shadows at Gabriel's side, her breathing ragged.
"Are you alright, Seraph Gabriel?"
"Yes... thank you," Gabriel replied, her voice steady despite the chaos.
Across the room, Rizevim began patting the dust from his pristine clothes, let out a dry, chilling laugh.
"Kukuku... Well, since the pleasantries are out of the way, I might as well try something I've been working on."
He raised his hand, and a crimson teleportation circle opened on the floor.
A limp, unconscious body of a vampire fell to the ground. Michael and Gabriel looked on in confusion, sensing no threat from the prone figure.
Then, Rizevim reached into his cloak and produced a golden chalice.
It pulsed with a rhythmic, golden hue that fought against the darkness of the chamber.
With a sudden wave of energy, the Grail emitted a pulse that wiped away every shadow in the room, forcing Carmilla back into a physical form.
"The Holy Grail..." Michael's voice was a low growl. "That is not a weapon for you to wield, Rizevim."
"Hooo? Then come and take it," Rizevim challenged, holding the cup aloft. "Isn't this the device your people created? Oh, my bad. I forgot. You can't remove it, can you? Because your God is dead. Kukuku!"
Michael's eyes narrowed, his grip on his swords tightening until his knuckles turned white.
Rizevim's laughter died down, replaced by a cold, clinical seriousness.
"Think yourselves lucky as you are about to bear witness to the fruit of my research."
The golden light of the Grail began to envelop the unconscious vampire on the floor.
Suddenly, the golden hue turned into a sickly, miasmic purple.
An enormous malicious energy erupted from the body as an aura so ancient and evil that it felt like a physical pressure on the hearts of everyone present.
Michael's wings flared in alarm.
He recognized this scent of sulfur and ash.
The world went silent as the very air turning stagnant as if welcoming an old friend back from the abyss.
Rizevim's face was lit by the hazel glow as he whispered into the silence.
"Welcome back~...
~Evil Dragon."