The atmosphere within the Four Satans' private meeting room was thick with a suffocating tension.
A heavy silence enveloped the four strongest Devils of the current era. The opulent furniture and regal decor of the chamber seemed small and insignificant compared to the gravity of the failure and embarassment they had just endured.
"So, everything was just a distraction to create chaos, and we didn't even catch the person who caused it?" Sirzechs Lucifer finally spoke, his voice weary.
He shook his head slowly, pressing his fingers against his temples as if trying to massage away a migraine.
"The disappearance of Bedeze Abaddon... was that scale of an attack orchestrated solely for that purpose?" Ajuka Beelzebub added.
He was slumping in his seat, his head resting heavily on his chin as his mind raced through countless algorithms and possibilities.
"But my question is..." Serafall Leviathan turned her head sharply toward the green-haired man. "Ajuka-chan..."
"What?" Ajuka asked, his eyes remaining fixed on the table.
"Did you not say that your barrier was strong enough? That it could not be broken by even an Ultimate-class attack?" Serafall's face was twisted in a rare expression of genuine annoyance.
"I already told you, he deconstructed the barrier, not destroyed it. Those are two completely different things," Ajuka retorted.
'Though, not that the barrier wouldn't have been destroyed by that attack anyway,' He thought.
"It's the same thing! And also, how could the person I met on the roof even be able to infiltrate the stadium when there is absolutely no record of him entering?"
She narrowed her eyes, her gaze piercing through Ajuka's defensive posture.
"It is clear that he somehow bypassed the guards, which would have created a massive commotion if it had happened by force. Or worse... he teleported inside the stadium without you even noticing."
"Hey, spare me, okay?" Ajuka replied, waving a hand dismissively as he defended his work.
"Believe me when I say that if there is someone capable of doing that, then that person must be some sort of Dragon God or an entity of that caliber. A teleportation circle of sufficient power to bypass my barrier would be detected easily."
"Then how do you explain this, Ajuka-chan!" Serafall snapped, leaning forward.
"I clearly met that person, and worse... I couldn't even feel his power level, despite the fact that he was a half-devil!"
"That person might have just entered the stadium like everybody else, through the main entrance gate," Ajuka suggested, though even he sounded unconvinced.
To confirm this, they would need to check the ticket records of every single person in attendance. It was a tedious tasks, the Rating Games were a massive, open event, drawing hundreds of thousands of spectators from every corner of the Underworld.
"But the only way to access the roof is by entering through the VVIP floor." Ajuka continued.
"You said you met him there, so it stands to reason he entered through the VVIP gate," Ajuka said to Serafall, who nodded in agreement.
"Sirzechs, as the one in charge of internal affairs, are you able to track every guest from the noble families?"
"I'm not sure, you know it isn't easy to demand audience records and guest lists from every noble family that entered through the VVIP floors," Sirzechs replied with a sigh.
"These matters are delicate to handle, especially now."
"You are Sirzechs Lucifer," Serafall countered, her voice firm. "And besides, we have no other choice."
Sirzechs let out another tired sigh, the weight of the his status as the Crimson Satan feeling heavier than ever.
"But, a half-devil, huh... Does he perhaps have some deep-seated vendetta against us?" he muttered, his mind wandering through the possible motives for such a theatrical and violent display.
"I don't know," Serafall explained, her tone growing somber.
"But you said it yourself, he used that attack to distract all of us. The moment the barrier disappeared was exactly when Bedeze Abaddon and his entire peerage vanished. It was all planned."
"This is going nowhere..." Sirzechs muttered, his voice trailing off as the sheer exhaustion of the last few hours began to take its toll.
Suddenly, the heavy door of the meeting room clicked and groaned as it opened. The sound immediately drew the attention of the four Satans.
"Sirzechs-sama, Lord Phenex wishes to have an audience with you. He says it is personal." It was Grayfia's voice, calm and professional as always, yet there was a soft edge of sympathy in her tone.
Hearing the request, Sirzechs glanced at his colleagues before standing up.
He smoothed his regal clothing and opened the door.
He was met by the grieving figure of Lord Phenex. The man tried to maintain a firm, noble posture, but his eyes betrayed the hollow loss within him. Just twelve hours earlier, his son, his heir, and the next head of the Phenex Clan had been killed.
Worse, no one knew who the killer was.
"Sirzechs..." the man began, his voice raspy.
"Lord Phenex."
"Has the killer been found yet?"
Hearing the broken voice of a man he had known and respected since his own childhood, Sirzechs could only slowly shake his head.
"I am sorry, Lord Phenex, but we are still in the middle of a deep investigation. We are doing everything in our power."
"Then how much longer!" Lord Phenex's voice rose, cracking with a mixture of grief and fury.
"How much longer until my son's killer is found and judged!"
Sirzechs fell silent. He had no answer that could satisfy a father's mourning. He could offer political promises, but he could not bring Ruval back.
"I... I can't..." Lord Phenex's figure suddenly slumped, his knees buckling.
Sirzechs moved quickly, catching the man's shoulders and holding him steady so he would not fall to the floor.
"Don't worry, Lord Phenex," Sirzechs said, his voice dropping to a low, sincere register.
"Ruval was my friend, too. I promise you, I will find the person responsible for his death. I will bring them to justice."
Lord Phenex's spirit was too low to offer a spirited response.
He merely nodded slowly, his eyes vacant. Sirzechs signaled to Grayfia, who stepped forward and gently began to lead the broken Lord away from the meeting room.
Sirzechs remained in the doorway, staring down the long, empty hallway, lost in thought.
***
Meanwhile, in a far more secluded part of the Underworld, within the darkened halls of the Bael estate, a different kind of tension was brewing.
Zekram Bael, the legendary Great King and the true power behind the Bael clan, sat at a massive mahogany table.
His fingers clicked rhythmically against the polished wood, the sound like a ticking clock in the silent room. He was worrying about something far more personal than a terrorist attack.
"Have you still not found where Bedeze is located?" Zekram asked, not looking up.
"No, Zekram-sama," a voice answered from the shadows. "He and his entire peerage have left no magical trace. It is as if they were erased from the map."
Zekram cursed silently in his mind. His expression, which was usually a mask of ancient tranquility and supreme confidence, was now clouded with uncertainty.
What he had witnessed at the stadium was not a random act of violence. An attack of those proportions required a level of power that only a handful of individuals in the entire Underworld possessed.
Despite his supreme confidence in his Power of Destruction and his own legendary status,
Zekram knew he was not quite as strong as the current four Satans in a direct confrontation. However, his concern was not for his own safety. A single question was burning in the back of his mind.
Why Bedeze?
Deep down, he already suspected the answer. His suspicions were all converged on a single truth. It had to be related to the existence of the King Piece.
Zekram reached into a hidden compartment and drew out a small object.
It was a King's piece from a chess set, painted a deep, visceral crimson. A surreal red glow emitted from its surface, pulsing like a heartbeat and casting long bloody shadows across the table.
If the attackers were truly after this, and if he was not merely being overly paranoid, then this might just become a massive headache for him and his side.
"Where is he..." he muttered, his eyes reflecting the eerie light of the crimson piece.
***
While Zekram Bael sat within the shadows of his estate wondering where Bedeze Abaddon had vanished to, the answer lay far to the west.
In the jagged, rural mountains of the Adramalech region, which served as the desolate border between the territory of the Grigori and the Devil World, a silent battle was screaming to life.
A mountain of jagged, translucent ice clashed violently against a surging tide of enormous crimson energy.
On the sky, an elegant Ice Dragon, carved from the absolute zero of Absolute Demise, rushed from the clouds with a roar that froze the moisture in the air. It dove toward a figure standing on a precipice below, a man whose body was entirely enveloped in a thick, pulsating crimson aura.
That man was none other than Bedeze Abaddon. Despite the sudden abduction and the isolation of the mountains, his arrogance remained unshaken.
"Do you think a mere human's magic would do anything against me!" Bedeze bellowed, his voice carrying the weight of a high-tier noble.
Hole
With a casual flick of his wrist, an obsidian, enormous black hole manifested in the air in front of him.
The gravity around the sphere distorted, creating a vacuum that instantly pulled Lavinia's Ice Dragon into its event horizon.
The ice dragon, a creature born from the absolute zero, was crushed and shredded into nothing but fine ice powder in a matter of seconds.
However, Lavinia's effort was far from over.
Suddenly, the figure of her Ice Princess Doll manifested behind Bedeze, swinging four of its massive crystalline swords in a coordinated strike aimed at his blind spot.
SHIIING
"It's futile!"
CRACK
Hole
In an instant, four smaller holes appeared behind Bedeze's back.
The gravitational pull within them was so immense that it caught the blades mid-swing, snapping the enchanted ice like brittle glass before pulling the fragments into the void.
"I told you..." Bedeze turned slightly, a wild, predatory grin stretching across his face. He raised his hand toward the sky where Lavinia was seen floating as her blonde hair shimmering in the moonlight.
"Don't underestimate me, you bitch!"
FWUOM
Dozens of gigantic black holes manifested simultaneously around Lavinia's position.
The space around her became a minefield of black holes, yet she moved with a grace that bordered on the divine, dodging the portals with inches to spare.
Lavinia remained calm.
She had seen spatial magic that was faster and deadlier than this during her spars with Jay.
As she drifted upward, Lavinia looked down at Bedeze with a serious, calculating gaze.
'I don't know when Illya-kun will arrive,' she thought, her fingers tightening around her wand.
'But without activating my Balance Breaker, holding off someone who is likely in the upper-Ultimate class, or perhaps even low Satan-class, is an almost impossible task.'
"Where are you going, bitch!" Bedeze yelled.
He didn't wait for Lavinia to descend as he used one of his holes to bridge the distance, teleporting instantly to her flank.
But Lavinia had already predicted his movement.
"You are too slow," she said.
She sent a cold, piercing glance toward the Devil, and with a sharp burst of magic from her wand,
Instantly, a gigantic block of ice manifested in the sky.
Every particle of the surrounding air was hit by Absolute Zero in a fraction of a second, freezing the very molecules of the atmosphere. The flash-freeze caught Bedeze mid-stride, suspending his body within a massive crystalline diamond high above the mountain peaks.
But before Lavinia could follow up with a finishing strike, the ice began to groan. Tiny fissures appeared on the surface, glowing with an obsidian black, and then-
BOOM
The ice block prison exploded.
Every single shard of ice was not blown away, but rather absorbed into a gigantic black hole that Bedeze had manifested at the center of the blast. The shards began to orbit the dark sphere like a chaotic asteroid ring, accelerated by the crushing gravity.
"HAHAHA! There is no attack that I cannot absorb, not even your ice!" Bedeze laughed manically.
The hole in his palm was growing larger by the second, feeding on the ice he had just consumed.
"Then... bear witness to the power of Abaddon!"
SHIIING
The gigantic black hole, almost as big as twenty story building was hurled toward Lavinia while she was still suspended in the air.
The sheer size of the attack made dodging nearly impossible, and she braced herself, her mana beginning to swirl as she prepared to force her Balance Breaker into manifestation.
But suddenly, a familiar whisper reached her ears from behind.
"True Cross."
A sense of profound relief washed over Lavinia, and a small, knowing smile appeared on her face. She relaxed her posture a little bit.
Then-
FWUOOHM
A violent burst of black flames erupted from the space beside her, streaking toward the incoming gigantic black hole.
The black flames did not look particularly imposing compared to the massive void, yet the moment they touched the event horizon of the Abaddon's Hole, the laws of magic seemed to buckle.
The Hole, a technique that was supposed to absorb and reflect any attack, did not consume the fire. Instead, the obsidian portal itself began to wither.
The flames ate through the spatial distortion in split second, turning it into drifting ash that scattered in the wind.
Bedeze's eyes widened to their limits.
The unbelievable sight shattered his composure.
"WHAT!!!" he yelled, his voice cracking.
He unfurled his ten bat-like wings, flapping them hard to maintain his altitude as his body flared with a desperate crimson aura.
Bedeze could not comprehend what he had just seen.
The Hole was a legendary unique technique of the Abaddon clan, a source of immense pride and power. It allowed the user to control portals that expanded or retracted at will, capable of absorbing any projectile and reopening elsewhere to release the stored energy like a black hole.
It was supposed to be an absolute attack and defense.
But, in front of the black flame.
"It destroyed... my Hole," he whispered, his hands trembling.
He then focused his attention on the newly arrived figure.
A man in a black trenchcoat was now floating in the sky beside the ice-wielder.
'A half-devil? Is that flame from that man?' Bedeze thought, his mind racing to analyze the threat.
'But how! He seems ordinary.' He thought.
Compared to his own flaring crimson aura, the man looked almost like a normal human, though with a slight devil-energy inside of it.
Meanwhile, Jay, now able to float despite Lavinia's persistent efforts to make him rely on her.
Though he was still not as proficient as she was, but at least he had footing in the sky. He remembered how Azi Dahaka had once held the upper ground over him in the air.
Jay then looked toward the blonde woman beside him.
"I'm sorry for coming late, Lavi."
"No, you are just in time, Illya-kun. I almost used my Balance Breaker, you know," Lavinia replied, her voice returning to its usual gentle tone.
"Yeah, I wouldn't have blamed you if you did," Jay muttered.
His dark hazel eyes locked onto the blonde man hovering hundreds of meters in front of them.
The crimson aura flared from the man's body, its unnatural circulation and structure unraveling before Avesta and the Grail soul-reading.
Jay's gaze hardened as he stared at the crimson light pulsing within Bedeze's soul.
As he muttered.
"So, that is the King Piece's power,"