The laboratory reeked of blood, ozone, and burnt mana.
Lavinia felt silence as her breath catching painfully in her throat. The arcane lights lining the ceiling flickered erratically, casting broken shadows across the room, but she barely noticed them.
She knelt on the cold, sterile floor as her hands hovering over the broken form of Glenda. Her master's purple hair usually kept in a regal and commanding style as she remembers from her distant memory, was now matted and draped across the floor in a devastating tangle.
The worst part was her body.
Glenda's robes were little more than rags, tattered and soaked with dried fluids. Several jagged cuts marred her skin, and though the bleeding had stopped, the flesh around them looked pale and sickly. Lavinia reached out, gently shaking her shoulder.
"Oshishou-sama…" she whispered.
She shook Glenda gently at first, then more urgently as her body trembling.
"Please. Wake up. It's me. Lavinia."
There was no response. Not a flicker of an eyelid, not a groan of pain. Lavinia gathered the woman into her arms, hugging her tightly.
The warmth that usually radiated from Glenda was gone. The immense energy and mana of her master, one of the greatest magicians in the world had vanished without a trace. As Lavinia checked her pulse and followed the flow of mana through her body, her heart slowly sank.
She was still alive.
Lavinia could feel her heart beating, steady and cruelly normal. But there was no response. Her eyes were empty, unfocused, and devoid of awareness.
Like a hollow vessel.
It was as if Glenda's soul had been scooped out entirely, leaving behind nothing but an empty biological shell, a body that stubbornly refused to stop breathing.
"I should… I should bring you to Illya-kun…" Lavinia muttered desperately, forcing herself to breathe. "He might know something. He has to..."
She began to scan Glenda's body for any lingering infections or cursed imprints that might caused some irreversible damage to her body. But before she could weave the formula to form a magical circle, a playful voice drifted through the room like a symphony of death.
"Isn't she beautiful? That little thief..."
Lavinia's blood turned to ice. She spun around and her eyes widening in shock.
Standing near the entrance, leaning against a worktable, was a man who looked to be in his forties.
He possessed an aristocratic air, dressed in extravagant, multi-layered clothes with armors that looked like they belonged to a king of a forgotten era.
His silver hair caught the dim light of the lab, and his hazel eyes held a playful, terrifying spark. Lavinia didn't need to see his identity to know what he was, the darkness inside his magical imprint and the magnitude itself was staggering.
He was a Devil, and by the sheer weight of his presence.
He wasn't just any random devil, a monster among monsters.
"Who are you!?" Lavinia demanded, her voice cracking.
The man only scoffed, waving a hand dismissively as if the question were beneath him. "It doesn't really matter who I am, little miss. "
It was the Son of Lucifer itself, Rizevim Livan Lucifer.
He pulled a chair from a nearby desk and sat down with a languid grace, crossing his legs and resting his chin on his palm.
Lavinia slowly stood up, shifting her weight to shield the unconscious Glenda behind her. Her fingers gripped her staff until her knuckles turned white.
"Why don't we talk a little bit instead?" Rizevim suggested, his tone jovial.
"What did you do to her!" Lavinia exclaimed, her killing intent beginning to manifest as frost on the surrounding vats.
The silver-haired devil didn't even care as he just casually raised his hand, and suddenly, a brilliant pulsating light engulfed the room. From the ether, a golden chalice materialized and floating just above his palm.
The sheer divinity radiating from the object was unmistakable.
The Sephiroth Graal.
Lavinia gasped. "How... how do you have that?"
Rizevim laughed a high-pitched mocking sound. "Did she never tell you why she came here? Why she tried to infiltrate the Tepes territory all by herself and involving herself in this messy war?"
Rizevim hazel eyes scanned Lavinia in an amused look.
" She's quite the little thief, your master. Did you know that she came here to steal the Vampire Girl, The Grail for herself?"
"Liar!" Lavinia yelled. "O-shishou-sama would never do that! She came to stop the chaos!"
"Oh, you sweet, naive child," he said, shaking his head. "She probably wanted to do her own little experiments on the girl. After all, the Grail is the ultimate shortcut. But I must admit, Glenda was quite a tough woman. Especially when she brought out that little friend of hers. But you know what? That's what made it so enjoyable when I finally got to beat her up! KUKUKU!"
"You... you bastard!"
"Bastard? No, no. I'm the devil little miss," he replied, his expression shifting to one of faux-sympathy. "But it's understandable, really. Imagine a binding contract with a spirit. It sounds so romantic, doesn't it? But the reality is much more... of a symbiotic parasitism than you think, especially for a human of low talent like her."
"What..." Lavinia speechless, she didn't what Rizevim was talking about. Spirits? Binding contract?
He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing.
"That spirit has been eating her soul slowly for years, hasn't it? She was desperate. She wanted to use the Grail to unbind the water spirit contract and save what was left of her pathetic humanity." Rizevim then laughed as he said that.
"Imagine selling your soul for a weak-ass power like a spirit magic. It's ironic, really. Humans sell their humanity for power, and then they realize they don't have enough humanity left to enjoy the power they bought. Pathetic little existence." Rizevim said with a wide grin.
"What would a monster like you even understand about humanity!?" Lavinia shouted.
Rizevim tilted his head, genuinely amused.
"And what shouldn't I understand about humanity?" he replied. "Weak. Greedy. Power-hungry. Pathetic. Weak... Oh i said it two times already."
His smile sharpened.
"I've studied them far more closely than they've ever studied themselves."
Lavinia stared at him, stunned. She hadn't known about the spirit eating Glenda's soul. But the mocking way he spoke of her master snapped the last thread of her restraint.
"I'll kill you," she whispered.
"Try it," he dared, grinning.
"Absolute Demise!"
Lavinia unleashed everything. The air in the lab shattered as her Longinus activated, summoning the towering spectral ice princess of six eyes and four slender hands. The temperature plummeted to absolute zero instantly, intending to freeze the man, the chair, and every atoms in his body into a block of eternal ice.
But as the ice reached him, the man didn't move. He simply extended a hand.
"Sacred Gear Canceller." He whispered.
The moment his fingers touched the encroaching frost, the spell didn't just break, it vanished.
The spectral princess flickered and disappeared into nothingness. The Absolute Zero wind died down into a mild breeze. Lavinia felt the connection to her Sacred Gear go completely dark, as if the power had been ripped out of her soul.
'What!?' She widened her eyes in an absolute shock.
"W-what did you do?" she stammered, falling back against Glenda.
"I told you, the power your so proudly wield is just a mere toy in front of me," the silver-haired man said, standing up and walking toward her.
"This is a unique demonic power. The only irregular ability among all Devils. No matter the Sacred Gear, no matter the divine instrument. All of them become ineffective."
He lifted his hand slightly, utterly unconcerned that he was laying bare his power to an enemy. It was not a warning or a boast. It was a statement. As if he were telling Lavinia that even knowing the truth changed nothing, that no matter what she understood, there was nothing she could do about it.
"Low-tier toys or High-tier toys such as yours, it makes no difference. The moment I touch them, they are gone."
Rizevim's smile widened, cold and indulgent.
"You humans take such pride in these trinkets. But before the True Lucifer, you are nothing more than toddlers playing with sticks."
He reached out a hand, his fingers curling as he prepared to grab Lavinia by the throat. "Now, why don't you join your master in the basement? I think I have a few more experiments I'd like to try with that ice power of yours."
Lavinia clenched her hands tighter, forcing mana to surge as she tried to activate her magic before Rizevim could come any closer.
Suddenly, the space behind her rippled violently.
A jagged tear in reality opened, and a flash of dark purple light cut through the air. Jay emerged from the thin air with a roar of displaced air, Ame-no-Habakiri already in mid-swing. The black blade hissed as it sought the man's neck.
Rizevim's eyes widened as his devilish instincts flared. In the same instant, he hurled himself backward with blinding speed.
The violet slash missed by a hair's breadth, cleaving through empty air as it tore across space itself, warping the dimension in its wake.
Rizevim skidded to a halt fifty feet away. His playful demeanor did not waver in the slightest, even after narrowly evading a world cutting slash of Ame-no-Habakiri and Incinerate Anthem Flame.
But Jay didn't give him a moment to breathe. He raised his left hand, and a torrential blast of Incinerate Anthem flames erupted toward the silver-haired man. The violet fire roared like a hungry beast, intending to turn the Devil into cinders.
But Rizevim didn't dodge this time.
He simply raised his hand, palm out.
The moment the holy flames made contact with his skin, they blinked out of existence. There was no smoke, no embers, just a sudden absolute absence of fire.
Jay's eyes widened slightly.
'Hm...? What kinda power is that?'
He had never seen someone negate the Anthem's Flame so effortlessly.
Rizevim let out a low, amused chuckle as his composure fully returned. He straightened his clothes with deliberate care, then turned his gaze toward Jay, a new spark of curiosity glinting in his hazel eyes.
Only then did memory stir. After witnessing the Incinerate Anthem firsthand, Euclid's words earlier surfaced in his mind.
"So," Rizevim said, a slow smirk spreading across his face. "You are the human Euclid was talking about."
His gaze lingered on the blade, eyes gleaming with interest. "Now I understand how you managed to injure him. The divine properties that sword emits are quite dangerous."
He chuckled softly. "I do wonder where a human like you even found something like that."
Jay didn't even bother to answer the man in front of him.
After all he already know who it was, the man that Azazel had warned him about.
"Rizevim Livan Lucifer," Jay said, his voice a low empty hum. His expression unreadable, as his dark hazel eyes scanned the man in front of him.
His relaxed posture, careless demeanor, and a smug smirk in his face.
Jay did not know the man standing before him was even here. He only knew that Lavinia's mana had shifted violently and twisted in a way that screamed danger. He had not hesitated. The moment he felt it, he latched onto the strand of mana he had planted within her and tore his way through space after teleporting Gasper and Valerie to the safer place.
And to think the one he had been searching for was already here.
With Lavinia and Glenda.
Jay stepped forward without a word, placing himself between them and the Devil. His stance was firm. Ame-no-Habakiri was clenched tightly in his hand, its jet-black blade wreathed in a blazing purple flame that licked along its edge illuminating the whole dim lab with a purple hue.
Rizevim's smile grew wider as he licked his lips.
"I think I'm going to enjoy this episode much more than the last one."