Belgrano had committed to the trade—her thorns for his life, pain for pain, ending for ending. She poured everything into the volley of Light Thorns, each one aimed to pierce him through, and watched Kai charge toward her without slowing.
The hatred on her face was absolute. Pure.
"Die!!"
The thorns were a breath from his skin—
—and then something appeared between them.
The silver shield materialized from nothing, and in the instant it solidified, it detonated outward with a surge of force that shattered the Light Thorns before a single one could land. Every last one fragmented and dissolved against the invisible wall it projected.
The sword finished its arc.
Kai came to a stop behind her.
Belgrano didn't move. She was standing exactly where she had been standing, expression still locked in the shape of the scream she'd been mid-way through. A curtain of blood fell from a wound that opened from her shoulder down to her lower ribs, long and precise and total. Her upper body began to separate from its own momentum.
She fell.
Kai turned and looked at her, and delivered his verdict in two words:
"Stupid move."
He had never intended to die with her. She wasn't a worthy enough adversary to make mutual destruction a meaningful outcome. Trading his life for hers, at her level, would have been embarrassing—something to be ashamed of in whatever came after.
From the moment he'd first summoned it, he had kept the shield in reserve. The Sword and Shield of the Benevolent King had two components, and he had understood even in that first chaotic fight that the sword was not the more dangerous half. The silver blade amplified his attack far beyond what his current rank should have allowed.
But the shield—the one that moved on its own, that positioned itself between him and harm without being told—was something else entirely.
Its true name was God-Cry.
On the ground, Belgrano was dying slowly, held together by the stubborn residual vitality of a high-tier being that refused to process what was happening to it. She stared up at the boy standing over her with an expression that was no longer fury but something closer to disbelief.
Killed. By a Lowest-class Devil.
Kai looked down at her and raised the Sword of the King. There was no ceremony in it, and no cruelty—just the clean, necessary conclusion to a threat that had not finished dying on its own. The demonic power in the blade completed what the wound had started, and what remained of Belgrano came apart in ash and scattered on the night air.
Only then did Kai's body decide it was finished cooperating.
His legs gave. He went down to one knee, caught himself with the sword, and stayed there—breathing, recalibrating, taking stock of the damage. He looked up. The barrier Belgrano had set over the area was unraveling with its owner's death, the edges fraying and dissolving back into ordinary dark air.
He raised his hand and found the Devil Crest—the dark-red seal in his palm—was accessible again. The barrier had been blocking it throughout the fight. He pressed it and sent the signal.
I need contracts, he thought, still looking up at the now-open sky. I need to get stronger. That Fallen Angel wasn't even particularly powerful, and it nearly ended me.
The thought was not self-pity. It was a clean, honest assessment of where he stood and how much distance remained between that point and somewhere acceptable.
The magic circle manifested—dark red, crisp at the edges—and Rias arrived with Akeno and Koneko half a step behind her. The moment Rias took in the scene—Kai on one knee, sword as a crutch, clothes soaked through with cold sweat—her expression shifted.
"Kai—!"
She crossed to him quickly, eyes already tracking the wound, and when she found the puncture in his calf and read what had caused it, something moved behind her eyes that was sharp and cold and not at all composed.
"A wound from Light. Who did this."
It wasn't a question. The killing intent that came off her in that moment was quiet and absolute—the wrath of someone who regards harm done to what is hers as a personal matter requiring a personal answer.
Kai looked up at her. Something in the sight of her—the genuine fury, the undisguised concern underneath it—moved something in him that he usually kept still.
"Don't worry, President. Whoever did it is ash now." He pushed himself upright, using the sword for leverage, and couldn't fully suppress the hiss of pain that came with it. "Though I'll admit—" he said through gritted teeth, sweat cold on his face, "—Light contamination is no small thing. I'd appreciate some help with that."
"Holy Power of Light," Rias corrected, already moving to support him, letting him lean his weight against her without comment. "For a low-tier Devil, it's effectively a poison. We're going back now." She turned to Akeno and Koneko. "Handle the cleanup. Find out where she came from and who sent her."
"Ara ara." Akeno's smile was still warm and unhurried, but there was something behind it now—a particular quality that hadn't been there before. "Leave it to us."
Koneko nodded once, already scanning the area.
Rias activated the circle without further delay, and the street vanished.
When the warmth of Rias's body settled against his back and her arms came around him, Kai finally understood, with a certain retrospective clarity, exactly what the first night had looked like.
This is how she heals. Skin contact. Demonic power transfer.
And I was unconscious for all of it last time.
He chose not to pursue that line of thought too aggressively.
What he could feel, clearly and without ambiguity, was the demonic power moving through the contact—dense and clean and remarkably pure, flowing from her into him, finding the places where the Holy Light contamination had taken root and systematically dismantling it. The pain, which had been a constant companion since the thorn had hit him, unwound slowly and then all at once, leaving a deep, quiet exhaustion in its place.
He let out a slow breath.
"Your heart is going quickly," Rias observed quietly, her palm resting over the center of his chest. There was a smile in her voice. "I can feel it."
"I didn't expect the treatment to work this way," Kai said.
"Hmm? Does it bother you? Being close like this?" She tilted toward his ear slightly. "Or is it something about me specifically that's the problem~?"
"If you're not bothered by it," Kai said, "then there's no problem on my end. As for your second question—" he paused briefly, "—I think you already know the answer to that."
Rias laughed—soft, genuinely pleased. She patted his back twice in the manner of someone satisfied with a response. "Treatment complete. You're soaked through; go clean up."
Kai noted, with some honesty, that losing the warmth at his back so abruptly was not entirely welcome. He didn't say so.
"Oh?" Rias caught something in his stillness and leaned in, her expression warm and edged with a particular kind of playfulness—the teasing confidence of someone who has nothing to hide and knows it. "Would you like to stay like this a little longer? Or something more?" She lifted a hand and touched his face lightly, her fingertips cool against his skin. "I don't mind, Kai. If it's you—anything is fine. Whatever you want~"
He looked at her.
She was beautiful in a way that made the word feel insufficient. The demonic warmth of her, the complete and unself-conscious openness of the offer—it was a genuinely extraordinary thing to be on the receiving end of.
A faint smile settled on his face.
"Those might be the most generous words anyone has ever said to me," he said. "And I mean that." He held her gaze for a moment, then looked away. "But I think I still have too much of the human in me. I'd rather it meant something first."
The room was quiet for a moment.
Rias studied him, and the teasing edge in her expression softened into something more considered. More genuine.
"You're an unusual person, Kai," she said at last.
"So I've been told."
He stood, picked up the sword, and headed for the bathroom—leaving Rias sitting on the edge of the bed, watching after him with an expression that was difficult to interpret and made no effort to be otherwise.