Lubelius burned in gold with light so pure it erased shadow itself.
High above the capital of Lune, the angel hovered, robes of white and gold flowing as if stirred by a wind no one else could feel. Six radiant wings formed from compressed light fanned out behind him, each feather a blade, each glow an executioner's promise.
Below him stood the might of the Holy Empire.
And they did not kneel.
The Blade of the Church
At the forefront, coat snapping in the wind, stood Hinata Sakaguchi.
Her expression was not fearful.
It was irritated.
"Enemy confirmed," she said evenly. "Angel-class entity. Unknown origin. Intent: hostile."
Her blade cleared its sheath with a metallic whisper.
Behind her, the Ten Great Saints formed ranks. Leonard, Arnaud, Fritz, Garde, Litus, Saare and the others. Holy auras igniting in layered formation. Sacred sigils spun around their bodies as barrier after barrier stacked into a cathedral of light.
Three thousand Holy Knights locked shields.
The Rook Geniuses began a synchronized chant, glyphs expanding across the sky like an inverted constellation.
Hinata raised her sword.
"Begin."
Heaven Descends
They struck first.
A cathedral-sized magic circle flared beneath the angel. Binding chains of faith launching upward. Lances of consecrated light pierced the sky, each one capable of vaporizing calamity-class monsters.
The sky detonated.
Light collided with light.
The shockwave flattened the outer districts of Lune.
When the radiance cleared—
The angel hadn't moved.
He tilted his head slightly.
"…Is that it?"
His voice rippled across the battlefield like silk dragged over steel.
With a lazy motion of his fingers—
The holy lances reversed direction.
The Saints barely reacted in time.
Leonard screamed an order. Barriers layered. Sacred walls stacked twelve deep.
The reflected spears struck.
The first six barriers disintegrated.
The next four cracked.
The last two shattered like stained glass.
The explosion carved a trench through the plaza, hurling knights through stone and cathedral columns alike.
Loki exhaled softly.
"You wield light like children clutching candles."
Golden rings formed behind him.
Hundreds.
No.
Thousands.
Each ring birthed a blade of condensed photons.
They hovered for a heartbeat.
Then descended.
The sky became a guillotine.
Holy Knights were forced into full defensive formations. Sacred Arts erupted everywhere. Purification fields, absolute defense constructs, anti-angel domains.
It didn't matter.
Each blade struck with surgical precision.
Armor melted without heat.
Shields dissolved into harmless dust.
Men and women were blasted into the earth by blunt force shockwaves of concentrated luminescence.
Hinata moved.
She blurred forward, crossing hundreds of meters in a single breath. Her blade glowed with Holy energy, aimed directly at the angel's core.
There was not hesitation.
This was execution.
Her strike connected—
And passed through an afterimage.
She pivoted instantly.
The angel stood behind her now.
"You are fast," he admitted.
A single finger pressed gently against the flat of her blade.
The sword vibrated violently.
Cracks spiderwebbed along its holy enchantments.
Hinata's eyes widened—
A pulse.
She was sent crashing through three buildings, stone erupting skyward in her wake.
Dust rose.
Silence fell.
The Saints roared and charged as one.
Arnaud's absolute defense field enveloped the battlefield. Fritz invoked multi-layered offensive sorcery. Leonard enhanced every knight simultaneously.
They were fighting at one hundred percent.
Loki drifted lazily through their combined assault, stepping between beams, redirecting spells, letting explosions bloom harmlessly against his radiance.
"You fight beautifully," he said almost fondly.
A wave of light burst outward.
Every Saint was blown backward.
The Holy Knights collapsed en masse.
Even Hinata, emerging bloodied from rubble, dropped to one knee.
Their full force was being overwhelmed.
But suddenly.
A new presence split the air.
"That's enough."
The battlefield stilled.
From a ripple in space emerged Luminous Valentine.
Her heterochromatic eyes shimmered, one crimson, one sapphire. Divine power rolled off her in dignified waves.
At her side stood Roy Valentine, silent and watchful, and the stoic knight Louis Valentine.
Luminous surveyed the devastation.
Her beautiful face did not twitch.
"…You shine very brightly," she said coolly. "But you lack refinement."
Loki smiled down at her.
"You," he replied, "Are still alive. How persistent."
The air sharpened.
"You built a nation upon borrowed divinity," Loki continued, voice carrying mock sympathy. "How quaint. How fragile."
Luminous' smile turned razor thin.
"I do not need to shout my power to prove it."
She stepped forward.
The air behind her distorted, a pressure equal to Demon Lords, ancient and unyielding.
"You, however, scream insecurity."
Loki laughed.
Not loudly.
But the sound vibrated across the ruined city.
"We are heaven made manifest."
His wings expanded.
"You are a pale imitation."
Roy shifted slightly, ready to intercept.
Louis' grip tightened on his blade.
Hinata struggled upright behind them, furious but silent.
The air between angel and vampire queen burned with tension.
And then—
Another presence descended.
A man stepped from a distortion in space.
Eyes sharp with centuries of calculation.
Granbell Rosso.
His gaze locked onto Loki.
"…Absurd," he murmured quietly.
Even through his composed exterior, there was no hiding it.
The angel's magicule output was monstrous.
Beyond awakened Demon Lord.
Beyond measured scale.
Luminous didn't look at him.
"Only you?" she asked coldly.
Granbell did not answer immediately.
The silence said enough.
Her expression darkened.
"The other six couldn't be bothered?"
Her voice dropped to lethal softness.
"Replaceable."
The temperature around her plummeted despite the golden light.
"I will deal with them personally."
Granbell stepped forward slightly, eyes never leaving Loki.
"This being…" he said quietly, "is not simply an Angel."
His aura rose.
"It is something closer to a concept."
Loki spread his wings wider, bathing the broken empire in holy radiance.
"You may bring saints."
He looked at Luminous.
"You may bring false gods."
He looked at Granbell.
"You may bring relics of forgotten wars."
His smile sharpened.
"It changes nothing."
The ground cracked under the pressure of his descending aura.
Below him, Luminous Valentine stepped forward.
No more playful divinity.
No more composed goddess.
Her aura exploded outward in a storm of crimson and sapphire, divine-class magicules surging like a tidal wave of blood-soaked moonlight. The ground blackened beneath her heels as vampiric authority saturated the battlefield.
Beside her, Granbell Rosso closed his eyes briefly.
When he opened them
The air screamed.
An ancient Hero's light ignited around him, not warm and gentle like a Saint's.
But sharp and absolute.
Behind Luminous stood Roy Valentine and Louis Valentine, weapons drawn, silent and prepared to die if necessary.
Loki tilted his head.
"Oh?"
His smile curved lazily.
"So the props wish to move first."
Roy vanished.
Reappearing directly at Loki's flank, blade wrapped in condensed holy-vampiric fusion energy, a paradoxical art refined over centuries.
Louis followed half a heartbeat later from the opposite angle, thrust aimed at Loki's core.
Perfect synchronization.
Loki didn't look at them.
He simply raised one hand.
The air crystallized.
Roy's blade stopped a centimeter from Loki's throat, frozen in a lattice of refracted photons.
Louis' thrust shattered against a wall of light so thin it was nearly invisible.
Loki sighed softly.
"Your devotion is admirable."
His fingers closed.
The light lattice collapsed inward.
Roy was hurled downward like a comet, smashing into the plaza and carving a crater that swallowed marble and stained glass alike.
Louis tried to retreat—
A beam of concentrated radiance struck his shoulder, detonating in a blossom of white-gold brilliance.
He crashed beside Roy, armor melted, body smoking.
Two heartbeats.
That was all it took.
Loki finally glanced downward.
"Inconveniences removed."
Luminous' smile vanished completely.
The sky darkened.
A blood-red moon manifested overhead, eclipsing the golden halo with suffocating divinity.
Luminous rose into the air, long hair flowing like a living shadow.
Her voice lost its mockery.
"Enough playing."
Space folded around her.
An ocean of crimson magicules surged outward, the Authority of a True Demon Lord unleashed without restraint. Every drop of blood within a kilometer answered her call.
Tendrils of scarlet energy coiled toward Loki, each one capable of draining life and corrupting spirit simultaneously.
Granbell moved.
He stepped forward into the storm, holy blade igniting with blinding brilliance.
"Heroic Oath — Manifest."
A pillar of ancient light erupted around him, carving through Luminous' blood tide and forming a counterbalance, sun against moon.
Together—
They attacked.
Luminous' crimson sea crashed upward.
Granbell's holy blade split reality itself as he lunged, strike aimed directly at Loki's chest.
The collision tore the sky apart.
Gold.
Red.
White.
Three colors devoured Lubelius.
Shockwaves vaporized what little remained of the cathedral district. Sacred statues dissolved into dust mid-air. Even the horizon fractured like cracked glass under pressure.
Granbell's blade met Loki's palm.
And stopped.
The hero's eyes widened slightly from disbelief.
Loki's fingers tightened around the blade's edge.
"You carry centuries of regret in this swing," Loki observed calmly.
A pulse of light surged through the blade.
Granbell was blasted backward, skidding across air itself before slamming into a ruined spire.
Luminous' blood tide engulfed Loki fully.
A crimson sphere swallowing him whole.
For a moment, the world saw only red.
Then—
A star ignited within it.
The sphere ruptured outward in a silent supernova of golden radiance.
Luminous shielded herself with layered divine barriers, twelve, twenty, fifty layers stacking in rapid succession.
They shattered one by one.
She was forced back, heels carving trenches through the sky.
Loki stepped out of the fading explosion as if emerging from mist.
"You call yourself a god of faith," he said softly.
His wings flared wider.
"Is this all a God is capable of?"
Granbell reappeared behind Loki mid-flight, blade descending in a strike that once felled Demon Lords.
Loki leaned slightly to the side.
The blade missed by inches.
A backhand of pure light caught Granbell across the torso.
The explosion of impact distorted the skyline. The elder Luminary crashed into the earth, coughing blood, holy aura flickering violently.
Luminous roared, composure gone.
Her eyes glowed violently as she invoked her full vampiric authority.
The red moon intensified.
Shadows thickened into blades.
"Die."
The command carried conceptual weight.
Thousands of shadow spears launched simultaneously, each guided by divine calculation.
Loki didn't dodge.
His body dissolved into photons.
The spears passed harmlessly through.
He reformed behind her instantly.
"You mistake brilliance for arrogance."
A single kick at Light-speed.
It struck Luminous squarely in the abdomen.
The impact detonated like a miniature sun.
Her body tore through layers of reinforced space before smashing into the distant capital wall, the entire structure collapsing around her.
Granbell forced himself up again, aura flaring one final time.
"Monster…"
He charged.
Loki appeared before him in a flicker.
A palm touched Granbell's chest.
A beam erupted point-blank.
The resulting blast split the battlefield in two.
Granbell fell from the sky, cloak torn, body broken, holy aura extinguished.
Silence.
The red moon flickered weakly before dissipating entirely.
Luminous dragged herself from rubble, blood trailing from her lips, divine aura unstable.
Granbell knelt amid shattered stone, breathing ragged.
Roy and Louis remained unconscious in their crater.
Above them—
Loki hovered.
Untouched.
Untested.
His wings folded slowly.
"We expected more."
His voice was not angry.
Simply… disappointed.
Luminous glared upward despite her condition.
Her pride burned brighter than her injuries.
"This is not over," she hissed.
Loki's smile returned.
"For you?"
His golden eyes gleamed.
"It already is."
The ruined capital of Lubelius lay silent beneath heaven's false sun.
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