Capítulo 247: Showdown
While Alex and Noint were starting their showdown, a solitary figure was slowly walking up the long line of steps that led to the headquarters of the church, the Holy Mountain. Though at first Alex planned to send someone with her, Kuroka had told him to leave this job to her alone since she wanted to truly cut loose for once, something Alex agreed to as long as she didn't kill every single person at the Holy Mountain. To pass the next labyrinth that sat inside the mountain itself, they needed to either go through a series of tests to prove that they weren't under Ehito's control, or they could take a shortcut by defeating one of his followers. Alex had sent Kuroka to clear the way on the mountain, as well as secure some possible candidates to bypass the labyrinths trials if the members of the church qualified as well. As she neared the end of the steps up the mountain a horn sounded out through the silent night as a small flood of soldiers gathered at the entrance of the church's headquarters to confront her. While that happened a dome of light also flickered into existence as if to keep her out, an attempt that made Kuroka laugh in contempt. Suddenly a voice boomed over them all,
"The enemy is upon us! Do not falter as we have the protection of God on our side, we shall smite them down in his great name! They who are incapable of knowing his mercy! His grace! His majesty!-"
"Bla bla bla, can't we just get to the fight already~Nyan?" Kuroka muttered under her breath as the pope of the church, Ishtar, continued his great speech to rally his troops before she slaughtered them like the cattle they were, after all she only needed to leave some alive. By this point several dozen temple Knights were gathered in front of her from behind the barrier as if to charge out to meet her once the order was given. Kuroka walked up to the barrier surrounding the church and started tapping it as if to test it while saying to the Knights,
"This looks like a strong barrier~Nya. Plenty of power put into it, large enough to cover your entire church. But it seems kinda wasteful, so much power put into such a simple barrier. It's not that hard to get through~Nya." The knights in front of her glared as she criticized their barrier before one sneered,
"Talk all you want you filthy animal, you'll never get inside and once we get the command you'll be slaughtered." The moment the words 'filthy animal' left the mans mouth Kuroka's expression changed, as she was getting tired of the way people treated those like her in this world. Even though she was a youkai and not a demihuman, no one bothered trying to figure out the difference and simply treated her horribly just because they felt like it. Though it never bothered her too much, she was really starting to get annoyed with how she was looked at and so she said to the man,
"I'll take my time killing you, after all a cat likes to play with its food." Her verbal tick gone, Kuroka's eyes changed from their normal human appearance to her slit-like cat eyes before she herself suddenly vanished. The Knights were shocked when their enemy disappeared, until a voice said from behind them,
"Interesting ability right? I call it 'Blink' since when the enemies blink I already disappeared. Sadly the range is pretty limited, though it was all I needed to get past your barrier." The Knights slowly turned around and saw Kuroka standing behind them with claws slowly extending from each of her fingers. The first knight reacted by swinging his sword at her head in an attempt to decapitate her, but Kuroka's arm blurred and his sword was suddenly sliced in several pieces from her claws, before they tore through his armor as if it was warm butter. At that second another knight tried to attack Kuroka, and swung his sword were she was as the first knight was dying by her claws. The sword only hit empty air though as Kuroka's claws approached him from the side where there was nothing a moment before. This was how the fight went as Kuroka evaded their attacks by using 'Blink' continuously before tearing them apart with her claws in twos and threes. In less than two minutes several dozen Knights were dead, and the only survivor was the same one who had called her an animal. Kuroka turned towards him with a smile on her face as she said,
"Now then, I did promise I would take my time killing you, didn't I? Maybe I'll use you as my labyrinth candidate~Nya." Before the knight could reply she used magic to bind him and dragged him behind her as she continued her slaughter throughout the church's headquarters. Against most groups she tried out different types of poison mists she'd been working on, one paralyzed it's victims while another simply knocked them out. The more vicious poisons however would slowly kill their victims in truly painful and horrifying ways, one causing them to hallucinate and kill each other while another caused them to almost instantly start vomiting blood for several minutes before dying. It was the "lucky" few that survived from only suffered the paralysis or being knocked out that Kuroka collected for the sake of using for the labyrinth, the rest she simply slaughtered without mercy with different methods once she finished trying out her new poisons. While she was in the middle of tearing apart a group of soldiers with her bare hands, Kuroka suddenly felt as if her strength had started draining from her body. When she looked around to determine the cause she noticed a melody drifting in the air, and started slowly making her way towards its origin.
"Now this is just sad~Nya." Kuroka said when she found the source of the singing, which was the pope leading an entire group of priests in a hymn while another group of soldiers was waiting for her. She didn't even put up a guard against the attacking Knights as they rushed her, instead a magic circle appeared in front of her before pumping out a think cloud of gray gas that rushed over the attacking soldiers and towards the singing pope and priests, before being diverted by yet another barrier. As the gas dispersed the singing nearly stopped from the sheer shock the priests experienced when they saw the dozens of statues standing in place of the Knights, before Kuroka smiled widely and explained to no one in particular,
"It works wonderfully~Nyan! I got inspired when I saw that demon woman use this petrifaction spell, so I tried to make my own variation!" She then turned towards the priests who were now all sweating from nervousness under her gaze, before waltzing over slowly and slamming her touki covered hand against the barrier protecting them. With a sound similar to shattering glass the barrier shattered and those who were maintaining it started coughing up blood from the recoil, while the pope immediately fired off a powerful light element attack at her. Kuroka lazily blocked it with a magic circle barrier of her own before appearing behind the pope with 'Blink' and summoning more of the gray gas to turn him to stone. Even as his body started turning into stone the pope preached,
"God will not allow this blatant blasphemy to go unpunished! We will have the last laugh in the end animal when that day comes!" Leaving those words behind the petrifaction process ended and there was simply a statue standing there glaring at her. Kuroka sneered at the popes words before turning toward the remaining priests and saying,
"Now then, let's kill some time until everyone else joins us~Nya." What happened after that made even the phantom spirit of Laus Barn shiver as it patiently watched Kuroka from the side, waiting to show her the way to the secret room to acquire Spirit magic.
***
The moment Alex floated out of the portal he created into the open air above the city a pair of greatswords moved to bisect him, so he simply summoned Ascalon and a great metallic clang rang out as the swords met each other. He turned to see the surprised face of Noint to the side as she struggled with both her swords against his strength in one arm. She then seemed to give up overcoming his raw strength and separated from him, allowing Alex to see her with the two silver wings spread out behind her.
"It appeared I've underestimated you irregular, don't worry you'll still meet your end soon. Feel honored that the one to end you is the strongest among those who serve our great lord." Alex simply shook his head at her words, before blocking yet another attack from her as Noint started swiftly moving around him at high speeds trying to find a weak spot in his defense. As the deafening metallic clang echoed after each clash, it wasn't long before the people of the entire city was out on the streets with their gazes pointed upwards as they watched what they could of the seemingly intense battle. Meanwhile the silver haired woman grew increasingly frustrated as every blow she tried to deliver was parried or blocked with apparent ease as if her opponent was toying with her, until she finally shouted,
"Limit break!" As she did so the power coming off of her exploded as every one of her stats were multiplied. Limit Break was considered by most to be a last resort move that tripled the users stats, but it came at the cost of damaging the users body due to the fact that it was being pushed past its limits, similar to the 'Kaioken' used by Goku before attaining the super saiyan. Noint then glanced at Alex to see his reaction to her gaining more power, only to see a small smile on his face without any trace of concern or worry. Becoming even further infuriated, she resumed her attack on him with her swords.
"Hey, I might actually have to put in an effort now!" Alex declared tauntingly as he continued parrying her attacks. It only took another few clashes for Noint to realize a very annoying truth, that when it came to brute strength she wouldn't be Alex's match. As Ehito's strongest servant it made her annoyingly frustrated that she had to acknowledge such a fact, and drove her even more to defeat the opponent in front of her. Since physical attacks didn't seem to work, she swiftly took a distance and started preparing to cast a large scale magic attack. Even at this point Alex hadn't chased her or proactively tried to move against her, as he still hovered in the same spot with a small smile on his face. Noint smirked as she knew for a fact that her next attack would make her opponent start to sweat, as she drew on the crystal in her heart that supplied her with unlimited magic power.
"HELLFIRE TSUNAMI!" She cried out as the entire sky was suddenly set aflame and a massive wall of fire started moving towards Alex, while engulfing the birds that had been flying around them since the fight started. Alex's expression changed to one of mild surprise, which brought more satisfaction to Noint than she'd ever admit as the giant wave of flames moved through the sky before swallowing him. A small smile adorned her face as her hated enemy burnt to ash, or so she thought. As Noint was sure of her victory, the flames started moving in a weird fashion as they began swirling around strangely before seemingly condensing into a specific form. All of the people watching gasped out loud when the flames that swallowed the champion of Gabriel condensed into what was very obviously a dragon, before it released an deafening roar towards the heavens and they saw the person still floating in the air beside its massive head.
"Fire is my specialty so I'll thank you for making this even easier for me. To repay your kindness I'll return this to you." As Alex finished speaking the dragon soared through the sky directly at the silver haired woman, who started to feel genuine concern for the first time. She then used her limitless magic to create as much ice in the surrounding atmosphere as possible before bombarding the flaming dragon with it, while also trying to form several barriers around herself before the hellfire reached her. Everyone watched as the dragon opened its maw and engulfed the woman before detonating in the sky, filling it with a seemingly endless sea of flames that raised the surrounding temperature by several tens of degrees.
It took several minutes before the sky started clearing of flames, and several more before the lone figure within them began to appear, with most of her hair turned to soot and several burn holes present in the cloth parts of her clothes. Her 'cool beauty' appearance marred by undisguised fury, Noint spread her silvery wings and hundreds of silver feathers suddenly shot forward like bladed bullets towards Alex, who genuinely had a look of surprise as he dodged the attack. With his observation Haki it was easy for him to to dodge the hailstorm of feathers, which carried the power of disintegration to destroy whatever they touched. What he didn't account for was the buildings and people below them that were caught by feathery destruction. Thankfully Grayfia, Anne, Rias, Yue, and Tio were all on standby and were able to move to help the population. Along with another job he had for some of them, they were waiting like Hajime for what Alex referred to as "unexpected situations", which was the demon race army attacking at that moment like they had in the novel. What Alex didn't know was that since Eri was unable to plan the attack with them through Cattleya's corpse, they hadn't made any movements except against Verbergen due to the labyrinth that was known to exist there. Looking down at the destruction that was just barely avoided, Alex couldn't help but exclaim,
"I know that your master doesn't care about their lives, but isn't random wide spread destruction a bit too much?" Noint looked as if she was about to spit fire as she instead spat out,
"It doesn't matter, as my masters playthings they should be happy to lay down their lives so that an irregular like you is removed and his game can continue!" Alex showed a look of genuine confusion and asked,
"What game?" If she had been thinking clearly several flags would have gone up in Noint's mind at his question, but she wasn't thinking clearly and instead practically shouted,
"The game where he uses the war between the races to amuse himself! The one you are actively trying to end!" Alex then asked in response to Noint's declaration,
"Is it alright to announce such a thing so loudly? If anyone heard you down below then wouldn't they turn against Ehito?" It seemed that by this point Noint was trying to collect herself as she then stated,
"It doesn't matter, only irregulars like yourself that want to throw my masters game out order are cause for concern. As for everyone else we could hypnotize them or use other means to control them as we always have, or we can simply purge them and start over once more, eliminating a single city is but a small matter." Alex smiled at Noint's declaration, and was immensely thankful for her blunt way of speaking as it made some things much easier, especially since the way she put things wasn't too different from story they spread. He then asked her one last thing,
"Can you repeat that into the camera one more time?" Noint tilted her head in confusion and repeated,
"Camera?" Before turning to face the direction Alex was looking at. Floating there at a distance was one of the birds that had been flying around them since the fight had started, a fact that Noint suddenly realized made no sense after she unleashed her 'Hellfire Tsunami'. As she looked closer she noticed that it had a sleek metallic body, and was simply floating there without flapping its wings as it seemingly stared at her. Before she could try to figure out what the bird was the night sky suddenly lit up with a giant projection of her face, that flinched at the same time she did. As her confusion grew Alex explained,
"I figured that only letting the Heiligh kingdom watch our fight wasn't fair, so I had it broadcasted live to every city we've been to since arriving in Tortus. Thank you for helping us spread the truth about Ehito to the masses Noint."
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