Dantega:Volume 6 Chapter 3

(PART 3)

The story of the False Prophet starts with a little girl at the age of 11.

The girl has light brown hair and bright gold eyes; she's dressed all in white and is standing on the plank on the starboard side of a large wooden ship sailing in the middle of the ocean. Her wrists are tied with a silk like cloth and her ankles are bound as well.

The long brown hair that falls all the way down past her waist waves as a cool ocean breeze gently makes its way past her. Though she is wearing a straight face and looks to be very calm, someone with sharp eyes can tell that her flushed little nose and cheeks indicate that she had been crying for quite some time before finding herself hovering dangerously above the ocean surface.

The calm demeanor she carries is due to the fact that she had resigned herself to her fate.

"You must stay strong, Holy Light. This is for the greater good of all of mankind." a woman's voice said from the safety of the boat.

The little girl turns her head to look at the woman and says, "I'm nothing more than your daughter. You won’t even call me by my name anymore?"

The woman on the boat is surrounded by a couple dozen people clad in white swinging censers expelling the smoke of pungent smelling incense. They chant an ominous hymn as they do so, and the billowing smoke rising up into the sails of the ship takes on the presence of some great monster pushing the bound girl towards the water.

The woman gazing upon the little girl from within the throes of smoke looks like a breathing cadaver, she is pock faced with brown hair and dead looking brown eyes that seemed to have completely lost their humanity.

"You were never my daughter, from the moment you were born you were always the vessel to the Holy Light, sent here to cure us of all our woes."

"No, mother! I'm just a normal girl, you and the others made me out to be something else!"

The woman's eyes widen as she shakes her head. "You don't understand, the voices have told us your future. You are to become the Holy Light and free us all from the darkness of this world!"

"Destroy the darkness!" came the crazed voice of a man from within the smoke.

"Fulfill your destiny!" shouted another.

It would appear that the smoke from the incense they're burning is making them crazed, they speak as though they are in the presence of a long awaited miracle. By now the whole boat deck is engulfed in the pungent gray smoke of the incense and their hymns pitch rises into an ununiformed mumble.

"What voice?? What darkness? You have gone mad mother! Please don't do this!"

"Be patient, Holy Light! You will soon hear the voice too, but first you must see the darkness! Only then can you ascend to your throne in the sky! Look, Holy Light, look at the darkness behind you!"

The woman and all the others point out to the sea behind her, prompting the girl to quizzically turn around. Upon doing so she is shocked to find that the ocean as far as her eyes can take her has gone pitch black. The feeling emitting from the water almost buckles her knees when her body is overwhelmed by great pressure.

Looking down at the water just below her feet, the girl is frightened when she sees faces in the black water, horridly pale faces that look tormented as though they want to escape. Then the white and water ravaged hands of the tormented faces writhe out and break the surface of the ocean, their pleading hands wish to grab her, their moans bubbling out in maddening desire.

"Mother! Let me back on the boat! Mother!!"

"Do you see it now? The darkness calls for you, it's pleading for your light! You must save them, and you will save our souls as well!"

"No it's not true, I can't do anything like that! I really can’t, please please please don’t make me do this!"

One of the men dressed in white comes from behind the woman with a wooden paddle and doesn't hesitate to push the girl away from the plank and send her falling into the ocean.

“!!”

With a light spash, the girl quickly resurfaces, but with her legs and hands bound it's only a matter of time until her awkward squirms fail to keep her afloat and she drowns.

"Mother! Gbfhhh---- Mo-!!"

Her desperate attempts at pleading for them to save her falls on deaf ears, and only quickens her path towards drowning. Every drop of seawater she swallows steadily steals her voice and her ability to cry out. If the desperation of beginning to drown wasn't enough, she can feel the slimy pale hands of those ghoulish creatures under the water begin to grab at her and try to pull her down.

"Only your soul can free us from the darkness!" The woman shouts, and then the men behind her join in when her expression turns cockeyed and they all simultaneously yell, "Thank you!!"

They smile and wave as though they had just dropped their child off for her first day of school. Their expressions are so amazingly twisted with insanity it almost seems like a joke, it's as though they are really bad actors in a low budget play.

This poor girl's fear hit the ultimate high before the inevitable doom awaiting her. She feels the pure hopelessness as she watches the wooden ship carrying her mother quickly move further and further away.

Even if she tried to scream out once more, her voice would never be heard; she can only grasp for desperate air and shrink in terror every time she feels a pruned hand slide across her face.

As soon as she resigns herself and stops resisting, all the sudden the hands tugging at her stop, and the moans of the voices disappear.

“!?”

Now bobbing alone in the sea, she doesn't feel the kind of relief one would expect at the sudden departure of things wishing to harm her, it's more of the feeling one gets when alone in the forest and the birds all collectively stop chirping.

There's an ominous danger looming in the form of some kind of predator that scares away even the most frightening of beasts.

And that very predator quickly swims right beneath her, it's scales so bright and blue that she can even see it from within the black water.

Whatever it is, it's massive.

Like a snake it continues to move past her and she knows that if she lets herself sink she'll land right atop it.

She watches it make its way past her and towards the wooden ship out in the distance until its blue scales can no longer be seen.

Then comes an eerie silence.

But that silence is quickly destroyed when the wooden boat is shredded by a massive dragon-like creature flying up from the sea at a great speed.

BOOOOOSHH!!

The entirety of the monster jumped a hundred meters up into the air, the sun glistens off its scales in brilliant displays of light as it twists its body and begins its descent back down towards the water before landing atop the survivors in a massive impact.

SPLAASSH!!

"Mother!!"

The little girl, even in her last moments cared for the safety of the mother that so mercilessly bound her and tossed her into the sea. She even feels pity as she watches those still left alive in the water get devoured one by one by the jagged mouth of the serpent.

Their screams of confusion and pain are rough on her ears as the waves from the beast’s movements lift her up and down.

The girl is still selfless enough to find herself caring for the wellbeing of those who had wished to harm her.

It didn’t take more than a few moments before all the screams came to an end and was replaced with the sound of waves gently breaking. The head of the serpent, now covered in the blood, clothes, and flesh of its victims twists and looks in her direction.

The girl and the monster lock eyes with each other.

Even the most selfless person becomes selfish if their life is in danger, any thoughts of the others are quickly forgotten and are replaced by pure fear. The serpent immediately starts swimming towards her at a speed so fast it won't be more than a second before she shares the same fate as her mother and the men in white.

"Aahhh--!!!"

She slams her eyes shut as she feels the giant monster's presence get closer, and that's when she feels a very sudden and sharp tug at her legs and she is pulled into the water so fast that she almost blacks out. She feels her insides rise into her chest as the intense pressure of the fall continues to pull on her.

It went on for a very long minute and then suddenly stopped on a dime.

She doesn't try to breathe in, but senses an odd emptiness as though there were nothing around her.

She opens her eyes and is shocked to find that she's alone in pure darkness, she can see herself but can't see anything else, her once bound hands and ankles are untied and her hair and clothes are completely dry. She takes a breath and can feel the sensation of air enter her throat; she knows she's not in the water anymore.

But if not there, then where?

"...Am I dead?" she asks herself, her voice echoing in the darkness.

This is a very valid thought. The last thing she remembers is a dragon-like monster coming to eat her and that was immediately followed by the unmistakable sensation of falling.

"If I really am dead... Then why do I only see black?"

The girl starts crying, never has she felt more alone than from within this darkness. There's something maddening about this place, and she doesn't know what to do.

Thoughts like, (What if I'm stuck here? What if this is Hell? What should I do!?) begin plaguing her mind, sending her into despair.

Her tears don't stop until she feels someone's hand gently touch her shoulder.

"!!?"

She quickly jumps forward and turns around to see a boy standing there. The unclothed boy has silver hair and looks to be the same age as the girl.

By all accounts he looks normal, if not for his eyes.

They are purely black, both the sclera and irises.

"Yaaaaah!!!"

As a natural reaction to his appearance, the girl covers herself and cowers in fear.

The boy walks to her, he tilts his head, leans to her level and asks, "Who are you?"

The girl doesn't answer, she just sits on her knees and covers herself with her eyes tightly shut.

"She was a girl worshiped as a goddess in a small country up on Earth." replied a voice from out of nowhere.

"That doesn't mean anything to me, Leviathan."

"Her appearance here should mean something to you.” the echoing voice of Leviathan smoothly replies. “Didn't I tell you that you're going to need someone to share your power with? Well here she is. Satan manipulated this girl's followers and forced them into committing horrendous atrocities in her name."

The boy stays straight faced and keeps his black glare pointed at the girl when he asks, "And what makes this one special?"

"If you knew how many thousands of people we've tried to send to you, you wouldn't find the need to ask that." Leviathan pauses for a moment and then continues, "Satan had this girl's followers commit terrible sins in her name just to darken her soul, but she was resilient enough to not be tainted. Anyone or anything humans worship is susceptible to corruption, yet his girl's soul stayed pure despite all that. We've tried to send someone with a pure soul here many times, only to have Dantega devour their darkness and rip them apart. This is the first person to make it, we’ve finally found your perfect partner."

"Listen Leviathan..." The boy says as though talking down to the demon speaking to him. "I understand what you and your leader are trying to do. All this effort is going to do you any good, I'm not going to be swayed by gifts like a child."

"This girl is more than a gift. She's the only person with a soul pure enough to carry the weight of Dantega without being consumed by it, she's your ticket to the surface. You do want to go don't you?"

"....."

"We've told you what you need to do in order to get there, now you have the key to do it. It's your choice how you want to use this key, though I’m sure you already know what to do with it."

Right after saying that, the presence of the voice disappears and leaves the two alone in the darkness.

The boy once again turns to the girl, it's obvious she heard that conversation and looks very confused, the two's eyes lock and once again she quickly shrinks and turns away.

"Don't come any closer!"

“So what they’ve been telling me is true, there really are people up in the world who aren't corrupted. That would mean that you’re someone I’m not made up of…”

The boy takes a step closer and reaches out to her.

“I said stay away!”

The boy ignores her distress and places his hand on her shoulder, turning her towards him in the process. He gazes upon her like someone who had never seen an airplane in the sky; to him she is the rarest and most impossible of things, he can’t believe he’s touching something like this.

“Do you fear me?”

Her eyes start to water and she reveals an expression similar to a scared kitten when she replies, "Of course I do! I don’t know what's going on! Who are you?? Who was that voice!? What about my followers!? What am I---!"

The boy interrupts her by resting his free hand on her other shoulder and says, “You no longer need to worry about any of those things.”

"But!"

Trying to calm her down, he gently grips her quivering shoulders a little bit tighter.

"You’ve reached a place where the world exists outside of you, anything that has troubled you in the past will never trouble you again.”

The girl is still dreadfully confused, there is no way for her to find comfort in what this nightmare of a person grabbing on her shoulders has to say. Looking into his pitch black eyes only serves to exacerbate her anxieties, he looks more like an alien preparing to operate on her against her will than someone with her safety in mind.

All she can do is look away from the terrifying boy and hope he doesn’t devour her with his darkness after delivering those deceptively sugary words.

Sensing her unease, the boy tilts his head and asks, "What's wrong?"

"Please don't hurt me!"

"What makes you think I'm going to hurt you?"

She pauses for a couple seconds, and as though troubled by the thought of angering him she coyly answers, "Y-You're eyes."

"My eyes?"

"Yes... they're evil and frightening."

"Just because my eyes are evil doesn't mean I am going to do anything to harm you."

"....."

"How about I do this..."

The boy shuts his eyes and covers them with his palm, after a second or so he moves his hand away and shows her a pair of green eyes that look no different from any other human.

"Better?"

Now that the boy's eyes aren't jet black, she can actually see expression in his face. No longer looking like an emotionless statue, she's taken aback by how different his appearance is. She's never seen anyone like him before, and now he doesn't seem like the monster she had thought would devour her.

"Y-Yeah..."

"Good..." He stands her up to her feet and says, "You are mine and I am yours. The outside world is ours to share. So believe me now, you no longer need to fear anything.”

"...Okay."

Even she doesn't know why she so readily accepted him. She has been completely swept into the power of the boy in front of her, all forms of anxiety had vanished solely because he told her that they don’t need to be felt.

She has just been sacrificed by her mother, she has just watched her and the others devoured by a giant sea serpent, she has just been taken to an unknown darkness, met a strange boy with black eyes, heard an ominous voice talking of things she cannot possibly understand, yet she now feels true calm.

“Thank you…”

"So tell me, girl with the purest soul… what's your name?"

She hasn't even said her name in so long that it's hard for her to allow it to leave her lips, she's been called the 'Holy Light' for as long as she can remember. She had longed for her mother to call her by her name just once more, if only to serve as proof that it was real, but she never was awarded the pleasure.

But here in this moment, a surge of pride in her true identity rises from deep within her, she finally feels capable of separating herself from the role of goddess she had been forced into. Feeling as though she can own her name for herself and no one else, strength wells up from within her chest at the thought of reclaiming her name and experiencing a new truth.

Her lips faintly rise when looks him square in the eye and replies,

"My name is Messor."

As soon as she spoke her name, her light brown hair began to brighten as a halo began swirling above her head. Taking on the color and texture of silk, her glistening white hair cascades over her now shining body; she stands there as a torch from within the darkness and the black world around the two begins taking on many different brilliant warm colors.

The boy can feel the warmth coming from the girl and the colors she’s brought into him, he can even smell the wonderful fragrance of Earth, something he had never experienced before. Caressing his senses are the blue sky, white clouds and green grass; a gentle breeze hits him and sends a surge of electricity dancing upon his skin.

He can truly sense life in the void he has been growing in for the very first time. He’s mesmerized by her and the energy she’s sharing with him.

What he sees in her is the living embodiment of the world he was born to own, and this fills his bosom with a grateful pleasure. The boy knows he has been gifted with the person he can share himself with, and what she offers him will be as mutually valuable as trading components for life itself.

“Messor…” The boy said with a little smile, he softly let out a bouyant sigh before saying, “Your name is Latin for harvester… My one and only Idol, Messor… a wonderful name.”

---

“Kill me you say?” Messor asks as she wipes the blood from her mouth with the black ribbon she wears on her wrist. “Hahaha, come and try it girl.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Trojia attacks.

Perhaps due to her telekinesis, she is able to cover the ten meter gap between the two so quickly it seemed like she was a blur. Before Messor even knew it, she’s face to face with the new, empty red eyes of Trojia.

“!!”

With a twist of her body, Trojia swings the twin blade in her right hand in an attempt to lop off the head of her target. Having no chance of physically avoiding this attack, Messor sends a couple of her butterflies to intercept the incoming blade.

The two collide and Messor does a quick hand gesture; the butterflies explode like a grenade and send Trojia flying back while guarding her core with her arms.

The sleeves of Trojia’s white shirt shred and char, but with a little shake of her arms the burning cloth flies off and leaves her skin unscathed. She then catches her footing and reestablishes her firm position as the aggressor.

Messor only had the time to put enough strength into the butterfly just to make some space with that explosion. Knowing that Trojia’s attacks are going to be relentless, Messor gets onto her feet and starts running to her left.

It’s a good thing she did too, Trojia instantly sent a heavy ax and longsword screaming off the surrounding walls and stabbed the stone wall where Messor’s head should’ve been.

Trojia doesn’t stop there, every single one of the hundreds of weapons posted like trophies in this rectangular room are flying off the hinges and hurling themselves towards Messor.

This level of telekinesis is not too dissimilar to the magnetic properties used in Jeffrey Durbin’s weapons. There is still a considerable amount of math needed to be calculated in order to have the desired effect; what is different between the two is that Jeffrey has to do it manually alongside a couple external devices, whereas Trojia’s brain is now working on an unfathomable level that is processing all of this automatically. All Trojia needs to do is imagine what she wants to move and it does so, the same thing applies to how much speed she wishes for the object to travel.

Of course, there should be limits to this power, she can’t move a large unseen mass or shift mountain ranges with her mind. Her brain can literally explode if she tries. The human body can only use specific parts of the brain to operate specific things from within the body, most of which are done unconsciously like breathing or the beating of one’s heart. There is a reason for that, if it were to overuse one conscious or unconscious function over another, the body part of that said function would sap the energy of the many others operating simultaneously to keep the person alive. The organs would collapse because the brain would literally forget about sending proper energies into keeping the many bodily functions going, it’s because of this the human body has a set limiter on its operational output.

In theory, these limiters can be either inhibited or built upon to form psychic powers.

This is why what Trojia is doing should be absolutely impossible; there is nothing inside of her being sacrificed in order to pull off such incredible feats. She’s moving hundreds of objects simultaneously and hurling them at a specific target. She’s using at least ¾ of her brain's functional capabilities solely to focus on the movement of those objects right now, and doesn’t seem to be slowing down anytime soon.

Spears, shields, swords, axes, and even the occasional full bodied knight suit standing on platforms against the walls are now being levitated and shot forth as if they were blown from a cannon.

The crashing sound of all these objects hitting the wall so dangerously close behind Messor as she runs gets louder and louder in her ears, judging by this she knows that it’s only a matter of time before she is impaled or crushed by one of these projectiles.

“Tch! I guess I have no choice!”

She gets a steady piece of footing from underneath her and stops running, she claps her hands together and a gold light encircles her hands as she shouts,

“TERRA AMNIS!”

The ground below her splinters into thousands of pieces and begins swirling around her body in a torrent of brick and rock. The rotating mass of dirt, rock, and brick repel the oncoming projectiles and send them scattering across the room. It then expands and looks to engulf Trojia, picking up even more debris on the way.

“If you’re just going to fling shit at me, you’re in for a surprise!” Messor yelled loudly enough to reach her opponent’s ears.

Trojia starts jumping back with her eyes planted firmly on the approaching mass of certain death.

Seeing that her attention is stuck on one thing, Messor again claps her hands and the butterflies that surround her shoot out of her barrier of rock and multiply above Trojia’s head.

Just when Trojia looks up and notices this, Messor shouts,

“Now die!”

BBBBOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!

Over a dozen explosions, ten times more powerful than the earlier blast, concuss violently above Trojia’s head.

Within an instant she is engulfed by the inferno. The flames swirl about and the roof of the room over thirty feet above her shatters and falls into the fire.

There is without a doubt, nothing left of the young Princess after this, it’d be considered luck if her body even keeps its form once all the smoke clears. Messor is finding it difficult to hold back a triumphant laugh, she’s just killed what she knows to be her biggest threat. Her platinum golf eyes glow in anticipation as she stares at the carnage through the twister of sediment swirling in front of her.

That’s when she feels something strange...

It's the presence of someone directly in front of her.

Messor’s eyes instinctively stroll downwards and she spots that which has given her this strange tinge of tightness.

Crouched down at the level of Messor’s waist is Trojia; she is pressing one of her twin blades against Messor’s stomach and doesn’t hesitate to push forward with all her might. The blade skewers the False Prophet and the pressure of being pushed is painfully felt in the area just above her navel.

“!!??”

The swirling mass of brick and rock that Messor created falls helplessly to the floor as she is lifted upwards and pushed toward the wall by the strength of Trojia. She slams into it and is impaled all the way to the hilt of Trojia’s sword.

“Kuuuhhaahh!?” she moans, the last bit of air puffs out of her lungs as blood sprays from her mouth and onto Trojia’s face.

The blood from her stomach sprays as well, painting Trojia’s white one piece dress with the distinct color of red.

The young Princess pays no mind to this when she lets go of the twin blade impaling her enemy to the wall and readies the other one for another merciless strike.

Messor stares into the empty red eyes of her assailant and in the split second of realizing what has just happened, she tries to put together an explanation.

What could she have possibly done to avoid being caught in her butterfly’s explosion?

How could she have gotten from point A to point B so fast?

Not only that, just how was she able to get in between the torrent of sediment that was used as an impenetrable barrier?

There can only be one answer.

She teleported...

Teleportation is a form of Psychokinesis, which is a blanket term for Telekinesis. Teleportation is such a small factor of Trojia’s new power that should be physically impossible to do, especially since doing both at once far exceeds the limits of the brain’s capability.

Teleportation uses a completely separate mathematical system than Telekinesis, it’s much more precise. She’s literally bending time and space and walking through to the other side which can only be seen through millions of random numbers floating about in a haze; one would need to pick the exact numbers out of the fray that signify the coordination of her desired destination. If she got it wrong, she could teleport herself directly into a wall, or arrive with half her body jammed into the floor. If she got stuck in any other object, inanimate or not, it would result in certain death.

One’s legs would still be on the other side of their body, but their organs would be crushed in at such a level it’d be considered pressed into another dimension.

Trojia has pulled this feat off while avoiding a high category explosion; it’s a miracle that she didn’t at least teleport herself into the brunt of Messor’s torrent of sediment. Instead she managed to execute this maneuver perfectly the first time she’s ever tried it, and in the process inflicted a fatal blow on her enemy.

Messor is in such a shock about this fact that it numbs the pain in her stomach; all she can do is stare down into the emotionless eyes of Trojia. That’s when Trojia lets go of her grip on the blade and the pain Messor was numb to just a moment earlier is felt growing, this time spreading upwards towards her chest.

“Ugguuah!”

She looks down at her wound and catches sight of the part of the blade that can still be seen in between her body and the hilt of the sword’s handle; the blade is upside-down so the sharp end is pointing upwards. Knowing that the laws of gravity itself will cause her to split in half, she grabs the grip in order to hold herself up, leaving her even more defenseless than before.

It would seem that’s exactly what Trojia was counting on, with her other hand she readied to swing the blade; this time aiming towards Messor’s arms. (Don’t tell me... she was planning this all along!?) she thinks to herself in a panic.

She has realized that Trojia did this to her on purpose as a sick way of making her death as slow as possible. Once Messor’s arms are severed, the weight of her body will slowly cause her mass to fall to the ground, the razor sharp end of the sword, which stands between her and the floor will eventually split her horizontally like a banana peel.

Revenge is best served with a side of torment, and Trojia has every intention of making Messor’s death as slow as possible for what she did to her precious friend Nyomio.

Trojia doesn’t hesitate to cut off her foe’s arms, but as soon as she makes her vicious move, her body is suddenly overcome with a thick pressure; her movement is stopped just inches before she could lop off Messor’s arms.

“Very good, very good!”

A familiar voice comes from behind; it’s without a doubt the voice of Lilith.

Trojia’s emotionless red eyes turn to the source of the voice and lands on the figure of the owner of this massive castle.

The Third Gatekeeper has made her arrival.

---

All Tsubiri saw was a flash, and the man who was attempting to lick the side of her face is no longer there.

Before she could even fathom to articulate what had happened, Ubica’s soft voice interrupts her train of thought.

“Tsubiri, close your eyes...”

She doesn’t hesitate to comply. Unlike earlier when he asked her to shut her eyes to surprise her with a birthday present, this time the request is to protect her from seeing something awful.

He doesn’t want her to see him undertake the violence he is about to unleash upon the men of the city, and she doesn’t want to see him do it either.

The thought of the promise he made to her out of love becoming a driving force to take human lives weighs heavy on the two of them. It’s a sad dilemma, but Ubica must power through the tragedy and take in the guilt later if he wishes for her to survive the day.

Tsubiri hears a couple more thunks and the sound of liquid spilling onto the ground floods her ears. As soon as she feels the grip of the men’s hands slide off her arms, she throws her hands over her ears to keep any more of these sounds from entering her head.

It only took a minute, and the claustrophobic atmosphere that looked to strangle her had been replaced by a feeling of space that swept the air out from her lungs. The presence of the thousands of men that once surrounded her seem to have completely disappeared.

Hearing her own breath as she covers her ears, she realizes that the outside noise has ceased to a dead silence; prompting her to slowly open her eyes to see just what had happened.

The first thing she notices is the distinct color of red, it’s literally everywhere. On the surrounding buildings stretching up over two stories; street lights soaked, cars painted, the ground has puddled in the red liquid like a lake that had overflowed. All of this red no matter where she looked, except one place; the area of about a ten foot radius in which she stands is untouched by blood, and looking closely at herself none of it has stained her clothes either.

The blood seemed to deliberately avoid her.

Her eyes then catch sight of the one other moving thing not covered in blood. It’s Ubica, and he is holding the face of a man and lifting him off the ground, with his free hand he points his sword directly at his heart.

The aggressive action looks natural to him, it’s just like he’s done this same thing on numerous occasions before and is acting out an unconscious motion implanted deep from within him.

It’s then that his eyes look to Tsubiri, he felt her gaze upon him and halted his assault on the man. The pain in those green eyes of his is more than evident to her. She can see the guilt eat at the shine of those eyes and the pain felt behind the scenes spewing from them as if he were bleeding.

Tears fell down her cheeks upon meeting his gaze; it’s hard enough for her to handle the fact that the carnage laid out in front of her was done to protect her, but what makes it unbearable is that it had to be by Ubica’s hands. She’s just seen his goals and dreams of doing good by others completely shattered by simply looking into his eyes. Everything he’s built up slowly has crumbled down around his feet and meshed into the red color of the blood surrounding him.

This has broken her heart.

Seeing Tsubiri cry obliterates the hyperfocus he allowed himself to fall into in order to commit this heinous act, he releases his grip on the man’s face and he drops the last living man to the ground.

It has all been too much to handle now that the horrible deed has been done.

To make things more cruel on Ubica and the poor men unfortunate enough to have been thrust into a conflict they had no control over, Asmodeus’s spell over them ended just before they were stricken down. All of the men showed no fear of death until their very last breaths when they finally realized what was happening.

This man who has been so mercifully spared is no different, he’s shown Ubica his weakest moment, and now that he’s free from the grasp of death he begins to flee on his hands and knees like an injured animal desperately trying to escape a predator.

Suddenly finding himself covered in the blood of thousands of other people and essentially crawling through corpses and bits and pieces of flesh, is enough nightmare fodder to induce a nervous breakdown. The way he squeals in fright and hyperventilates as he crawls away is evidence of his mental state.

The fleeing man has regained complete control in his body, that is, until the moment he catches sight of Tsubiri. As if that was a trigger that flipped a switch in his brain, he stands to his feet and sprints towards her, in zombie-like movements, he reaches his shaky hand out to grab hold of her.

The extent of Asmodeus’s words truly hit home at the sight of his desperate attempt, just like she said, they will never stop targeting Tsubiri unless they are killed.

Stunned by everything hitting her all at once, she’s frozen in place as the man inches closer.

He makes it a few feet away from her when...

SHLUNNKK!

His back is impaled by Ubica’s sword and his body is mercilessly skewered.

In a smooth motion, Ubica quickly pulls it out, sending a geyser of blood out of the man’s chest.

With that, the last of the many thousands of men has perished. Killing off unarmed humans, no matter how great the number is like child’s play to a monster like Ubica; the death of all these men was so unfair it could hardly be called something as simple as a massacre.

This fact just adds to the guilt that is weighing so heavily on Ubica’s shoulders, these were just regular people, even whilst under the control of Asmodeus, they were just frail humans that held no real threat to him. Yet he struck them down one by one, snuffed out their lives because he wasn’t strong enough to avoid it.

“Ubica...” Tsubiri softly says.

The distance between them is now separated by a corpse; she wants to reach out and touch him but the source of his pain can literally be stepped on. She just stands still hoping that he’ll lift his lowered head and look at her.

He doesn’t do that, however, and his body trembles as his eyes lay focused on the proof of his atrocities lying beneath him. He shivers at the thought of what she may now think of him after watching firsthand such an amazing form of brutality. He’s frightened at the prospect of her disgust.

If these fears of his are true, he’ll not only break, he’ll fall into a despair deeper than the lowest part of the ocean he was born in. Her tears alone make his stomach churn in nervousness, through his fear he could only see that as meaning the worst possible thing.

“Please...” she said softly, struggling to conjure up a word to follow that.

It would seem that what she said has reached him though; he takes a deep breath and raises his head.

“...I thought I told you to close your eyes?”

His voice alone causes her tears to overflow, she’s genuinely hurting for him and the people who just had their lives so tragically cut short. She ignores the dead body between them and takes a giant step over the corpse; she grabs onto Ubica’s shoulders and throws her head in his chest.

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I’m... so, sorry...”

Ubica droops his head back and stares up at the sky. While keeping his glare up at the moving clouds, he replies,

“... You have nothing to apologize for.”

Breaking their dour reunion, a shrill laugh of pleasure is heard from above.

“Huuahahahahaha!”

Asmodeus is leisurely sitting atop a two story building, blood stains from the men reach just below her dangling feet.

“Ubica, my gosh that was all so touchinggg~!”

Ubica’s cold stare lands on her wretched face, he sends her a scowl filled with pure anger; if looks could kill, Asmodeus would have turned to ash. “Ahhhn~ if you look at me like that I just might melt from the beauty of it. But I still like the real you a lot more. I can’t believe that killing so many innocent people wasn’t enough to throw you overboard!”

Ubica gently removes himself from Tsubiri’s grasp and says, “I need you to get away from here, get as far away as you can and don’t look back.”

“B-But...”

“Please, if something happens to you now, I’d have done all of this for nothing.”

“.....”

He nudges her away from him; she struggles to get her legs working for a few moments before she starts to walk away. Her walk speeds into a run, and doing her best to dodge the carnage on the streets she starts sprinting.

Ubica takes another deep breath as the sound of her footsteps getting further away sends relief to his tense body.

But the sound of her footsteps suddenly stop, prompting him to turn in her direction.

He is met by her voice out in the distance shouting, “Ubica! I don’t know exactly what you’re feeling right now, and I don’t know how I can help you through it... But just know that when you’re done with all of this fighting and we’re together again, I promise you I’m going to find a way to make you feel better!”

Ubica’s shoulders jolted upon hearing that.

Seeing his reaction, Tsubiri knows that her words are reaching into the darkest depths of his hurting soul.

She puts her hands over her mouth to make sure her final words reach him. “No matter what happened; I still love you! No matter what happens in the future, I will always love you! So win and come back to me Ubica, I love you!”

Confident that he heard what she said clearly, she makes her exit and disappears down an adjacent city street.

It’s now just Ubica and Asmodeus, but this time he feels a sense of security that was missing until just this moment.

With a new wave of energy, he stares up at Asmodeus.

If she looks closely enough, she can see that the pain of what he’s done has receded a little in his eyes and has been replaced by strength. Though his face is straight and aligned with the intensity of the moment, his body is astute and almost looks fulfilled; it’s as though he realized that he can still do good despite the bad he had just done.

Asmodeus frowns, she hates that look, it serves as the exact opposite of the desired result she had in mind when she put him through this trial. He wasn’t supposed to come out of it looking more secure in his chosen path than he was going into it.

She’s infuriated by the version of the Antichrist who can use love to quell his true self, under her gritted teeth is the chain of her tongue piercing grinding away, making a metallic sound exit her mouth.

“That girl...” she grumbles through her teeth, “It looks like I’m just going to have to kill her in order to bring you back.”

Ubica points his bloody sword up at her when all of the sudden, an intense pressure is felt all around the street. It’s shaking the ground, rattling the windows and shaking the buildings to the point of them almost collapsing. These earthquake-like phenomena are coming from the power of Ubica.

An odd, bright aura begins to shine around Ubica, one that hasn’t been seen by anyone until now.

Surely this power is benevolent; this type of power shouldn’t be anywhere near a man like Ubica the Antichrist.

“What the fuck is that?” Asmodeus asks herself as this strange benevolent-like power of Ubica’s surges and grows into an even more imposing force. The black, reptilian-like pupils in Ubica’s eyes fade away and only a green ball of light shines through his now white aura.

He takes a deep breath, and in a flash he vanishes.

Faster than anything Asmodeus could comprehend, he appears directly behind her.

She doesn’t even have the time to turn around when Ubica speaks into her ear.

“I’m going to end this quickly...”

“!!!”

BOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMM!!!!!

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