"As you wish!"
Beelzebub's roar unleashed a fury that shook the entire Land of the Dead, and upon opening his maw filled with fangs, a lethal frequency struck directly at the soul and forced everything into absolute silence.
However, that imposed stillness collapsed an instant later under a new and terrifying thunder: the frantic beating of millions of wings.
From every crack and fissure sprouted a thick, dark tide that eclipsed the light, revealing the plague flies, aberrant, oversized creatures armed with steel stingers and surrounded by a chilling aura.
"My children..." Beelzebub's voice resonated, charged with a sickly affection from the very heart of the black cloud. "Go enjoy your dinner. Devour flesh and blood, lick the bones until they are smooth."
The swarm obeyed as a single hive entity and transformed into a black tornado that swept in Lief's direction.
The tide voraciously consumed everything in its path, and the living dead who had the misfortune of even barely brushing against the cloud disintegrated instantly, the fire of their souls drained by the flies, leaving only a trail of pale dust and empty bones in the plaza.
From the sofa, Dorothy's gaze sharpened as she watched several flies impact against her barrier and burst into puddles of corrosive pus that perforated the magical barrier instantly.
She frowned slightly; this was already starting to disgust her.
And in the eye of the hurricane, Lief kept his cynical smile.
"Many against one, huh?" he murmured while opening his arms.
Instantly a halo of bluish light, warm like the winter sun, began to emanate from his body.
This light transmitted an absolute calm, but upon colliding with the black tide, the thousands of flies evaporated in absolute silence upon contact with the light.
The dark tornado stopped dead, consumed continuously by the purity of that light.
"IMPOSSIBLE!" Roared Beelzebub, exploding for the first time with genuine disbelief, fracturing his mask of arrogance before the incomprehensible. "W-what is that light? CRUSH HIM!"
Despair corrupted his judgment, driving him to madness, and he poured his own vital essence directly into the core of the swarm.
The reaction was immediate; upon receiving the blessing, the flies mutated, their bodies swelling until deforming their own limits, and complex dark engravings began to shine on the surface of their bodies as they launched themselves in a suicidal and fanatical charge against the glow.
Under the physical and spiritual pressure of the massive and constant sacrifice, the integrity of Lief's halo began to give way, compressing before the overwhelming numerical superiority.
Feeling the darkness closing in on him, Lief's smile widened in the midst of the danger.
"So they operate like a hive mind, right?"
Without wasting an instant, he raised both hands toward the tide and materialized Ebony & Ivory; charging them to the limit with his own essence, he pulled the triggers.
Bang Bang Bang Bang
The rhythmic thunder of the gunshots exploded, completely drowning out the maddening buzz of the flies.
Each bullet left the barrel turned into a miniature comet, dragging a trail of flames behind it that impacted with devastating violence into the core of the blackness. Producing detonations of golden light that incinerated vast swathes of flies in a matter of seconds, opening breaches.
And with each shot he took, he turned this into a dance, spinning, leaning to dodge the stingers, and rotating his torso while his eyes identified the nodes where the concentration of flies was densest, and directed the fire toward those critical points.
As the seconds passed and under that incessant siege, the tide lost its cohesion and inevitably fragmented under the storm of bullets.
With the path cleared, Lief understood it was time to put an end to this once and for all.
Spinning Ebony & Ivory one last time before holstering them, his right hand moved toward his back, closing firmly around the hilt of the Master Sword.
Swing
And without stopping the momentum, he raised the sword above his head in a pose of absolute power and immediately a concentrated pillar of golden light shot out from the tip, ascending like a beacon until tearing the sky of the Underworld.
Channeling his energy into the edge, he proclaimed:
"Excalibur"
Synchronized with his voice, he unleashed the sword in a devastating horizontal slash.
Boom
A colossal wave of light expanded from the blade, sweeping the space in front of him with unstoppable speed, reaching what remained of the swarm and the annihilation was total.
The eradication was instantaneous.
At the very moment of contact, millions of creatures were vaporized from existence before they could even try to flee.
"RAAAHR!!!"
Upon witnessing the instant annihilation of his swarm, Beelzebub's fury detonated.
Swish
His colossal body vibrated with explosive tension and, breaking the sound barrier with a sonic boom, he projected himself like a missile directly toward Lief.
In mid-trajectory, and without decreasing his speed, the air rippled in his right hand to materialize his personal weapon: "Crimson Rose"
The rapier appeared wrapped in tangible malevolence, a thin and cruel blade adorned with a black rose on the hilt that pulsated rhythmically with a reddish light.
But "Crimson Rose" was not a simple rapier, but a weapon designed for absolute torment, its mere presence promised a biological condemnation, for a single scratch from that blade was enough to inject millions of necrotic viruses capable of rotting the flesh of even a god.
!
A suffocating stench of decay hit Lief's face milliseconds before the blade, causing him to wipe any smile from his face, and raise his defense just in time.
Boom
The impact transcended the physics of a simple clash of metal against metal and exploded into a deafening detonation.
At the epicenter, the crimson aura of disease and the golden glow of holiness collided violently, locking in a struggle for dominance where both energies tried to devour each other.
The force released was such that a shockwave radiated from the point of contact, sweeping the plaza like a hurricane and tearing the ground until opening a trench several meters deep in the ground.
Tensing every muscle in his body, Lief resisted not only the demon's brute force, but a strange pressure emanating from the rapier that tried to corrode his stance.
However, he kept the block immovable.
"You are strong."
________
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