Kai had no interest in courtesy when someone was trying to kill him.
The moment he registered her killing intent, his mind had already shifted into a different mode—not panic, not flight instinct, but the cold, analytical clarity of someone running calculations. She was a threat. She needed to be removed. Those two facts were sufficient.
His words had clearly landed somewhere sensitive. The Fallen Angel's eyes went sharp and narrow, a flare of genuine fury burning through the contempt she'd been wearing.
"A Low-class Devil dares to speak to me like that?!"
She threw a barrier over the surrounding area—sealing the space, cutting off escape routes—and summoned a Light Spear in the same motion, hurling it at him without further preamble.
This time, Kai was ready.
He watched the spear's trajectory, read it in the half-second he had, and launched himself into a back-jump—legs driving hard off the ground, clearing a dozen meters and landing in a clean, controlled stance as the spear hit the street behind him and detonated. The shockwave tore through the roadside greenery, stripping branches and shredding leaves. The impact radius was substantial.
But he'd been outside it.
He filed the data away quickly. She was stronger than Raynare had been—meaningfully so—but the gap wasn't insurmountable. He had a Devil body now. He had the Sacred Gear. And critically, she was operating on an assumption—that something Low-class was something she didn't need to take seriously.
That assumption was a liability he intended to exploit.
Rias's words surfaced in the back of his mind, steady and clear:
"You are a Devil now—human rules no longer govern your choices. If someone shows killing intent toward you, respond in kind. Without hesitation. Our world does not reward mercy extended to those who offer you none."
She had meant it as a warning. He heard it as permission.
The silver sword materialized in his hand.
He moved.
The speed of a Knight-class Devil was the kind of thing that took opponents by surprise even when they'd been warned about it. Kai carried two Knight pieces, which made him something beyond the typical baseline—and the Fallen Angel, Belgrano, had not been warned at all.
One moment he was standing across from her. The next, he was at her throat.
Her combat instincts were good—sharp enough that she caught the cold kiss of the blade at her neck and bent backward in a fluid, desperate arc, her body reacting before her mind caught up. The sword grazed her throat and swung through empty space.
She landed in a back-roll and put distance between them, her breathing harder than she'd intended, a thin line of cold sweat tracking down the back of her neck.
She had almost died in the opening exchange.
The shock processed and converted immediately to rage—the particular, ugly fury of someone who has underestimated something and been nearly killed for it. Her wings spread, and another Light Spear formed in her hand.
Kai didn't give her time to throw it.
He closed the distance again in a burst, the Sword of the King trailing silver light in a slash aimed at her neck. Belgrano caught the strike on her spear.
Clang.
She held it—but just barely. They fell into rapid exchange, blades and spear crashing together, sparks scattering. She had the raw power advantage. What she didn't expect was the sword—every clash sent something through the contact point that was wrong, something that hit harder than it had any right to given the level of the person swinging it. The Light Spear showed hairline fractures forming along its length after only a few exchanges.
That sword is a Sacred Gear.
The realization arrived with the unpleasant weight of miscalculation. She was a former High-tier Angel-level Fallen Angel. She should not be struggling to hold her ground against the lowest tier of Devil. And yet the sword was erasing the gap between them with every passing second.
She disengaged—a sharp expenditure of power that knocked him back several steps—and opened up distance with a hard flap of her wings.
"Light Thorns!!"
The golden thorns materialized behind her in a dense cluster and launched forward in a wide spread, sealing every angle, closing off every path of movement she could track. Too many to dodge clean.
Kai pushed his speed to its ceiling. He cleared most of them. Not all.
One drove through his calf.
The pain was nothing like anything a physical wound should produce. It wasn't just the injury—it was something deeper, something that spread from the point of contact outward through his whole body like fire following a fuse. His leg buckled. His teeth locked together. Every nerve in his body screamed at once and he stood, shaking, fighting down the overwhelming impulse to simply stop.
One wound. Why does it feel like my entire body is burning from the inside?
Belgrano laughed—genuine, delighted cruelty.
"What's the matter? Too fast for me a moment ago—what happened to that?" She spread her arms in mock wonder. "Did you not know? Light is poison to creatures like you. Pure, refined, absolutely lethal. How does it feel?"
She was watching him shake and had already written the ending of this fight.
Kai raised the Sword of the King.
Charged.
Belgrano's laughter stopped.
His speed had dropped—not dramatically, but measurably. The wound was doing what it was supposed to do. And he was charging anyway, the sword leveled, his expression absolutely flat.
"How are you moving?!" she snapped, scrambling backward in a way that was not dignified. "You've been poisoned by Light—you should be incapacitated—"
He didn't answer.
He was incapacitated. Or close to it. The inside of his body felt like it was being taken apart piece by piece, and holding together through it required him to treat the pain as information rather than instruction. It told him he was hurt. He noted it. He kept moving.
The Sacred Gear and his Devil constitution were fighting the contamination—he could feel them working, metabolizing it, buying him time. Not much. Enough.
He made the only logical decision available: finish this before the clock runs out.
Every reserve of demonic power he had went into the sword at once.
The Sword of the King answered.
The majestic weight of it fell over the street like a change in atmospheric pressure—something vast and certain pressing down from above. Belgrano felt her feet lock to the ground. She strained against it and couldn't move.
The Sacred Gear. That's what this is. An unknown Sacred Gear and she's caught in its gravity.
Her eyes went wide and then went cold. She dug into her own reserves and flooded the air with Light Thorns, scattering them in every direction—a storm of golden needles, each one a needle of poison aimed at him.
Kai walked through them.
They hit him. Some of them. He didn't stop.
Belgrano stared, and something in her expression crossed the line from fury into something rawer.
He's going to take the hits. He's going to close the distance and end this even if it kills him.
Is he—
"Fine," she said, and her voice had gone strange—high and reckless, the sound of someone who has decided that surrender is a worse outcome than death. She stopped trying to move and summoned everything she had left. Her body could withstand more than his. It had to be able to. She was the higher order of being here.
"Let's find out who goes down first!!!"
The sword came down.