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The wind blew fiercely through the pocket dimension, swirling around the colossal figure of the Vaxasaurian. From the stands of the VIP room in the Underworld to the last corner of the battlefield, every eye was fixed on the small crimson figure crowning the titan's head.
Rias Gremory looked down at the heir of House Phenex. Riser was wrapped in his orange flames, his face twisted by a mixture of humiliation and fury at seeing his "fiancée" using him as nothing more than a spectator to her greatness.
Rias took a deep breath. Her voice, amplified by her own demonic magic, echoed across the entire school campus and through the screens of the Underworld.
"Riser Phenex," Rias began, her tone distilling absolute authority. "All my life, my destiny was dictated by a piece of paper. I was treated as a mere incubator to preserve the purity of the blood of the Seventy-Two Pillars. They called me princess, but in truth, they were only building me a golden cage."
Riser gritted his teeth, pointing at her. "Shut up, Rias! That is your duty! You are my woman!"
"I am no one's property!" Rias roared, and her Power of Destruction burst around her in the form of a crimson-and-black aura that danced alongside the dinosaur's scales. "You called my peerage 'trash.' You mocked my Pawn, underestimated my Knight, and scorned my Rook. But look at me now, Riser. Look at your board. Your 'invincible' high-class entourage has just been massacred by the devils you spat on."
The Princess of Ruin spread her bat wings to their full span.
"I will not be your trophy, Riser. And I will not hide behind my brother's name. Today, House Gremory claims its own strength. Today... I break this engagement."
The silence that followed her declaration was deafening. Rias had challenged not only Riser, but the very tradition of the Underworld itself. And she had done so mounted atop a monster that defied all logic.
The immense Vaxasaurian released a hoarse growl of approval.
"You heard her," Yugo's titanic voice buzzed. "Now, all of you... get the hell out of here."
Rias nodded. She spread her wings and rose into the air, joining Akeno and Asia.
"Ise, Kiba! Retreat to the perimeter!" Rias ordered.
The brown-haired boy and the blond swordsman nodded, using the last of their energy reserves to run at dizzying speed toward the limits of the dimensional barrier, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the center of the athletic track. Rias, Akeno, and Asia flew after them, landing beside the magical wall and raising every protective shield they had at their disposal.
They knew the world was about to burn.
When the one-kilometer radius was completely clear, Humungousaur lowered his gaze toward Riser Phenex. The blond noble was trembling with rage, his immortal flames spreading across the grass.
"Get down from there, you damn monster!" Riser bellowed. "I'll turn you to ash for daring to humiliate House Phenex!"
The eighteen-meter colossus did not roar back. He simply raised his massive left hand and placed a single scaly finger over the Omnitrix dial embedded in his chest.
FLASH!
The immense shadow covering the moon vanished in an explosion of emerald light that blinded Riser for a few seconds. The overwhelming physical mass condensed instantly.
When the light dispersed, the gravitational pressure had been replaced by a thermal pressure so absurd that the ground beneath the new creature's feet turned into molten glass.
Standing there before Riser was the colossus of magma and dark volcanic rock. The cracks in his body burned with fire that was not normal. It was pure plasma, vibrating in white and blue tones.
Riser's eyes opened wide. The thermal memory of the clash at the Occult Club immediately assaulted his brain.
"YOU!" the Phenex shouted, pointing at him with a trembling finger. "The talking lump of coal! The Pawn of House Sitri!"
Heatblast tilted his flaming head slightly.
"I told you we'd see each other in the Rating Game, flammable bird," Yugo replied, his crackling and monotonous voice resonating in the overheated air.
The fire alien took one step forward. The heat around him began to rise exponentially. The grass of the athletic track withered and turned to ash within a fifty-meter radius just from his presence. Oxygen began to grow scarce, and Riser's orange flames began to flicker, intimidated by the Pyronite's thermal superiority.
Yugo crossed his thick rocky arms over his chest and looked up at the invisible magical cameras transmitting the event to the entire Underworld.
"From this moment on, let it be engraved into the minds of every arrogant aristocrat in your society," Heatblast announced, his voice gaining a dark, threatening, and brutally territorial tone. "If anyone, regardless of clan, blood, or title, dares to covet the virginity and freedom of the Gremory heiress..."
The blue-and-white flames crowning Yugo's head shot several meters into the sky, hissing with the intensity of the core of a newborn star.
"...they will first have to defeat the being who had the absolute right to take it, and who decided it was more entertaining to use it as bait to hunt poultry."
In the VIP room of the Underworld, Sona Sitri nearly choked on her own saliva, while several Lords paled before the brutal and cynical declaration. Rias, at the edge of the barrier, covered her face, red all the way to her ears, feeling as if she was going to die of embarrassment and pride at the same time.
But for Riser Phenex, those words were the final drop that overflowed the glass of his sanity.
"I'M GOING TO KILL YOU! I'M GOING TO ERASE YOUR EXISTENCE FROM THE UNDERWORLD!" Riser roared, losing all elegance. His wings of immortal fire burst from his back, creating a tornado of orange flames around him.
The two beings of fire stared each other down at the center of the hell they had just created.
In Riser Phenex's eyes, there was only blind arrogance, the wounded pride of a noble who believed himself touched by the divinity of his own immortality.
But in the empty eyes of the Pyronite, in that mask of molten rock and bluish plasma, there was no fury. No effort.
There was only pure, sadistic, genuine amusement.
The air on the dimensional battlefield was no longer oxygen; it was a suffocating breath that burned the lungs.
The moment Riser Phenex lost his temper, the entire space seemed to collapse under the pressure of two diametrically opposed thermal auras. On one side, the demonic fire of the Phoenix, proud, uncontrollable, and vividly orange-red, designed to consume and regenerate. On the other, the silent, controlled, and monstrously lethal aura of the Pyronite, a white-and-blue plasma that did not seek to burn, but to disintegrate matter at the molecular level.
"DON'T UNDERESTIMATE ME, TRASH!" Riser roared, breaking the static tension.
The blond noble launched himself forward, leaving a crater of fire behind him. His flaming wings granted him supersonic speed. In his right hand, he condensed his immortal flames until they formed an immense sword of pure, volatile fire. His goal was to decapitate the audacious rock colossus in a single slash.
Heatblast did not retreat. He did not adopt a defensive stance. He simply raised his heavy left arm.
CLANG!
The impact of Riser's fire sword against Yugo's volcanic-rock forearm did not sound like fire against fire. It sounded like steel striking absolute titanium. Riser's sword stopped dead, its orange flames licking uselessly at the alien's dark arm.
Riser's eyes opened wide, stunned. The heat of his strongest magical attack had not even warmed the monster's skin.
"Your technique is garbage," Heatblast's cavernous, crackling voice judged.
Before Riser could retreat, the Pyronite's enormous right hand closed into a fist. Yugo did not launch a fire blast; he applied ten years of survival in the most brutal streets of the supernatural world.
He twisted his hip and landed a right hook straight into the Phenex's ribs.
CRACK!
The sound of multiple bones breaking echoed across the entire athletic track. Riser spat blood that evaporated before touching the ground, and he was sent flying like a cannonball, bouncing three times against the scorched grass before crashing into the school's concrete stands.
From the distance, protected by multiple magical barriers, Issei and Kiba felt their jaws drop to the ground. He had just broken the ribs of a high-class devil with a simple physical punch!
However, Riser was immortal.
The noble rose from the rubble of the stands in less than two seconds. His ribs snapped back into place by themselves, while the phoenix fire instantly healed his wounds. But although the damage disappeared, his eyes showed something he had not felt in centuries: the echo of physical pain.
"Damn animal!" Riser spat, wiping the evaporated blood from his chin. "It doesn't matter how hard you hit! I am the heir of House Phenex! My body is eternal!"
Riser raised both hands toward the dark sky. An immense array of crimson-and-gold magic circles unfolded over the field.
"RAIN OF HELL!"
Hundreds, thousands of concentrated fire orbs fell from the sky like meteorites, an indiscriminate bombardment designed to wipe out the entire stage.
Yugo looked up. A sadistic smile spread across his magma face. Instead of dodging, the Pyronite extended both arms to the sides and opened his flaming mouth.
Riser's flames, which should have caused devastating explosions, began to curve in midair. They were sucked into a thermal vortex directly toward the professor's chest and palms. Heatblast was absorbing the attack.
Riser froze. His fire, the pride of his lineage, was being swallowed as if it were fresh water.
"Is that all?" Heatblast mocked, lowering his arms and exhaling a mouthful of bluish smoke. "It's lukewarm. Let me return the favor, aristocrat."
The rock colossus concentrated the absorbed energy and condensed his own plasma into his fists.
But Yugo did not fire from a distance. Using pyrokinesis as a means of propulsion, Heatblast fired two explosive bursts from the soles of his volcanic feet.
BOOM!
Yugo shot forward at absurd speed, breaking the sound barrier with a thermal boom. He appeared right in front of Riser in the blink of an eye.
Physical combat erupted with Dantesque brutality.
Riser tried to defend himself, covering his own fists with demonic fire and throwing a flurry of blows. But it was the fight of a spoiled child against a professional killer.
Yugo blocked one of Riser's punches with his forearm, caught the blond's wrist, and, with a violent pull, drove a knee of burning rock straight into the Phenex's stomach.
Riser vomited bile. Before he could heal, Yugo released his wrist and landed a spinning elbow against his jaw. The physical impact was accompanied by a point-blank micro-explosion of bluish plasma.
Half of Riser's face deformed, his jaw brutally dislocating as he flew backward.
"AAARGH!" Riser screamed in the air, while his flames hurried to reconstruct his face.
The moment his feet touched the ground to stop his fall, Yugo was already upon him. Heatblast grabbed him by the collar of his elegant red suit, lifting him off the ground with one arm. The extreme heat of Yugo's body began to melt the demon's clothing and burn the skin of his neck.
"Let go of me!" Riser growled, desperate. He brought both hands to Yugo's rocky arm, trying to burn it with his maximum temperature, but it was useless. It was like trying to burn the sun with a match.
"You pure-blooded devils confuse immortality with invulnerability," Heatblast whispered, bringing his pupil-less face close to the terrified Riser's. "Your body can heal any wound. Your fire can reconstruct your cells. But your nerve endings are still intact."
Yugo tightened his grip around Riser's neck, lifting him higher.
"You still feel pain, Riser. You have simply never met someone who hits you fast enough and hard enough that your brain cannot process the healing before the next blow arrives. Let's test that limit."
With a fluid movement, Yugo threw him against the crystallized ground. Before Riser could roll away to escape, Heatblast lunged over him, straddling the Phenex heir.
What followed was a physical slaughter wrapped in fire.
Yugo began raining punches onto Riser's face and chest. Left, right, left, right. Each impact was pure volcanic rock propelled by plasma engines.
BAM!
Riser's nasal bridge turned to dust.
The phoenix fire healed it instantly.
BAM!
His cheekbone fractured.
The fire healed it again.
BAM!
His ribs gave way once more, crushing the demon's lungs.
Riser screamed. His immortality had become his own prison. His body was healing at dizzying speed, but the Pyronite's brute force, combined with explosions of white heat that evaporated his own healing flames, kept Riser in a perpetual state of agonizing agony. He could not defend himself. He could not conjure. He could only receive a beating that defied all mercy.
In the Underworld's broadcast room, the absolute silence was broken by the sobs of some nobles and Lord Phenex's scream of pure horror.
"STOP THE GAME! HE'S KILLING HIM!" Riser's father demanded, pale and trembling.
"The game will not stop!" Sirzechs Lucifer's voice roared as he rose from his throne, watching the massacre with a mixture of surprise and cold understanding. "Riser has not surrendered. And the rules dictate that the immortality of the Phoenix permits this punishment."
On the battlefield, Riser, blinded by blood and pain, succumbed to panic. In an outburst of pure survival instinct, he detonated all the magical power stored in his body in a single omnidirectional explosion.
An immense and desperate tornado of orange fire managed to push Yugo a couple of meters backward, giving Riser the second he needed to escape.
The blond noble rose into the air, panting, coughing blood that gleamed like liquid gold. His clothes were in tatters. His face was stained with soot and terror. His chest rose and fell erratically.
Yugo slowly stood, rolling his neck. The fire from Riser's tornado had not left a single scratch on him; in fact, it seemed to have cleaned a bit of dust from his volcanic armor.