I want to thank Alan Romero for joining my Patreon. I would have liked to upload a chapter of the fic he follows, but since I don't know how, all I can do is thank him through this spam.
----
(Perspective of the Underworld VIP Room)
The immense projection hall of the Underworld, built from black marble and decorated with ancient tapestries, had been designed to house the elite of the Seventy-Two Pillars. It was a place where demonic aristocrats gathered to drink dragon-blood wine, laugh softly, and evaluate Rating Games as if they were simple chess matches played by disposable pawns.
But tonight, the chessboard had been thrown out the window, replaced by a horror movie of planetary-scale destruction.
The silence in the hall was sepulchral when the main screen showed the replica of Kuoh Academy trembling. It was not a magical tremor; it was massive structural stress.
When the Occult Research Club building exploded into a thousand pieces of wood and rubble, several nobles jumped in their velvet seats. Crystal glasses chimed dangerously.
From the cloud of dust, the colossal eighteen-meter figure of Humungousaur rose, blocking the dimensional moon.
"By all the Magi Kings...!" gasped an elderly Lord, dropping his golden monocle onto the carpet. "What kind of abomination is that? It's the size of a King-class dragon!"
"It is not a dragon..." murmured another noble, pale as wax. "Look at its energy. It has no demonic aura. That thing is pure biological mass!"
Sirzechs Lucifer, the Crimson Demon King, sat on his elevated throne in the center of the hall. Beside him, Grayfia Lucifuge maintained her perfect maid posture, but her silver eyes were slightly wider than usual. Sirzechs leaned forward, resting his chin on his interlaced hands. A smile of pure fascination crossed his face.
On the screen, the titan of scales extended his gigantic palms. The entire hall held its breath upon seeing Akeno Himejima and Asia Argento descend onto them as if they were sacred pedestals, while Rias Gremory landed majestically atop the beast's armored head.
They looked like dark deities riding a primitive god of destruction.
When Rias's voice echoed through the magical speakers, declaring her independence and breaking the contract in front of all the nobility, a murmur of outrage erupted.
"What insolence!" shouted a demonic matriarch. "To reject her pure-blood duties in such a way!"
"Lord Phenex, your son must punish this heresy!"
Lord Phenex, seated in the front row, clenched his fists until his knuckles turned white. "Do not worry," he growled, though cold sweat pearled on his forehead. "Riser is immortal. No beast, no matter how large, can extinguish the flames of my bloodline."
But the beast did not try to extinguish the flames. It became them.
The emerald flash forced half the room to look away. When the magical camera managed to refocus the image, the colossus of volcanic rock and plasma, Heatblast, stood before Riser.
What followed was not a high-level magical battle. It was a massacre.
The aristocrats, accustomed to elegant exchanges of spells and tactical formations, watched in pure horror as Sitri's Pawn proceeded to give Riser Phenex the most brutal, humiliating, and merciless physical beating the Underworld had witnessed in centuries.
BAM!
A right hook shattered Riser's jaw on the screen. Demonic ladies screamed and covered their eyes with their fans.
CRACK!
A magma knee strike caved in the Phenex heir's ribs.
"STOP THIS!" Lord Phenex bellowed, shooting to his feet, his face disfigured by the panic of a father watching his son being tortured. "Sirzechs, I demand it! That creature is killing him again and again! The pain must be driving him insane!"
Sirzechs did not take his eyes off the screen. His smile had disappeared, replaced by the coldness of a Demon King who perfectly understood the message being sent.
"The rules of the Rating Game are clear, Lord Phenex," Sirzechs replied with terrifying calm. "Your son accepted that Pawn onto the board. And Riser still has not surrendered. If I stop the game now, your House will admit defeat to a low-class devil. Is that what you desire?"
Lord Phenex opened his mouth to reply, but the words died in his throat when he saw his son on the screen. Riser, bleeding and desperate, flew into the sky and began invoking the "Phoenix Star of Annihilation."
A collective sigh of relief swept through the VIP room.
"There it is! Riser is using his ultimate technique!" celebrated one noble. "That thing won't be able to survive that level of heat!"
But Sona Sitri, seated a few rows farther back, did not celebrate. In fact, she adjusted her glasses with clinical calm.
Tsubaki glanced at her from the corner of her eye. "Kaichou?"
"Watch, Tsubaki," Sona murmured, with an indecipherable half-smile. "They are about to learn why our Pawn complains that the summer sun makes him cold."
On the main screen, the monster of volcanic rock leapt onto the building's rooftop and raised his arms.
"Let's end this...! Everyone, lend me your energy!"
At first, the nobles did not understand. But when the thermodynamics of the dimension began registering such a massive increase that the VIP room's own scanners emitted overload alarms, panic returned.
The artificial sun of white-and-blue plasma grew above the anomaly's hands. The heat was so absurd that the holographic image in the broadcast room began to flicker from thermal interference.
And then, the colossus spoke again, looking directly toward the invisible camera, addressing every noble in that hall.
"I AM SONA SITRI'S PAWN! AND ANYONE WHO OPPOSES HER WILL HAVE TO GO THROUGH ME!"
The sound of the crystal glass shattering in Sona's hand was deafening in the silence.
Hundreds of gazes, from the leaders of the Seventy-Two Pillars to Sirzechs Lucifer himself, slowly turned toward the heiress of House Sitri. Sona's face was completely flushed, but she kept her chin high. A magical aura had leaked from her body from pure shock, and Tsubaki was offering her a handkerchief to dry the spilled wine with a knowing smile.
No one dared say a word against Sona. The message was crystal clear: House Sitri possessed a world-destroyer who was absolutely loyal to her. Any political move against her would mean facing the plasma monster.
On the screen, the fire titan invoked a gigantic and beautiful magic circle bearing the Sitri emblem behind his back, crowning the act with a theatricality that left Sirzechs laughing quietly at the brilliance of the political move.
"PHOENIX!"
"I HOPE WE CAN FIGHT AGAIN!"
The Spirit Bomb of heat descended.
The nobles watched as Riser Phenex's immortal fire, the millennia-old pride of his bloodline, was swallowed, disintegrated, and devoured by the plasma sun without offering any resistance. Riser disappeared inside the incandescent mass.
The impact against the ground generated a flash so immense that the VIP room's giant screen turned completely white. A dreadful buzz of static filled the chamber, and then the magical crystal of the projector cracked and burst into pieces, cutting the transmission completely.
The hall was plunged into semi-darkness, illuminated only by floating candles.
The silence lasted a full minute. No one breathed. No one moved. Lord Phenex had fallen to his knees on the floor, his eyes empty, absorbing that his son had been absolutely and completely humiliated.
Sirzechs Lucifer stood, applauding slowly. The solitary sound of his palms was the only noise in the vastness of the Underworld.
"I believe," said the Crimson Demon King, with a voice that radiated deep relief and newly born respect, "that the engagement has been officially canceled."
Sona Sitri, wiping the remaining wine from her fingers, adjusted her glasses and sighed deeply. Her Pawn had just shattered the balance of power in the Underworld, publicly embarrassed her by declaring absolute loyalty, and saved her best friend in the process.
Damn dramatic otaku..., Sona thought, though she could not erase the smile of pure pride from her face. I'm giving you a raise.
...
The blinding white radiance that had consumed the pocket dimension slowly began to dissipate, revealing the scars of a miniature apocalypse.
Where the athletic track and much of the academy's rear forest had once been, now there remained only an immense, smoking crater of molten glass and obsidian. The residual heat distorted the air, creating mirages over the scorched earth. Of Riser Phenex and his immortal flames, absolutely nothing remained on the field; the Rating Game's emergency system had teleported him to the Underworld's maximum-security medical room one microsecond before his existence was erased completely.
The silence that followed the destruction was absolute, until the crackle of magical static announced the final verdict.
Grayfia Lucifuge's voice, stripped of her usual neutrality and charged with undeniable reverence, echoed from the synthetic heavens:
"The King, Riser Phenex, has been eliminated. House Phenex has no pieces remaining on the board." There was a brief pause, as if the Underworld itself needed to catch its breath. "Absolute victory goes to Rias Gremory and her peerage!"
At the edge of the battlefield, behind the half-melted magical shields, Issei Hyoudou fell to his knees, releasing a choked cry that quickly became hysterical sobbing of pure joy. Kiba sheathed his sword, letting his head fall back as a smile of genuine relief crossed his face.
Asia covered her mouth with both hands, crying tears of happiness, while Akeno released a long, trembling sigh, clutching the dress shirt she was wearing.
Rias Gremory, the Princess of Ruin, dropped to her knees on the burned grass. The tears of frustration, fear, and desperation she had accumulated for weeks finally poured out, but this time, they were tears of freedom.
They had won. Her golden cage had been destroyed.
At the top of the new building, or at least what remained of it, the figure of dark volcanic rock staggered.
Heatblast let his arms drop heavily to his sides. The white-and-blue plasma crowning his head crackled weakly, losing intensity until returning to a far more docile orange tone. His enormous magma chest rose and fell erratically.
He was exhausted.
Launching a hyper-concentrated plasma sphere of that size and maintaining the pressure to overpower the Phoenix's immortality had drained almost all the thermal and kinetic energy his alien body could generate at that moment.
Mental note... don't play Goku again unless I've slept eight hours, the colossus thought, feeling his rocky legs threaten to crumble.
He lifted his heavy, hot left hand and clumsily pressed the Omnitrix dial embedded in his chest.
FLASH!
The emerald light shone for the last time that night, taking the overwhelming thermal mass with it.
Yugo Hano fell to his knees on the melted rooftop, coughing and supporting himself with both hands on the scorched concrete. He was in his human form, shirtless and covered in a dense layer of sweat that shone beneath the pale moonlight. His muscles trembled from overexertion, and every scar on his body seemed to pulse in unison with his ragged breathing.
The sound of hurried wingbeats made him look up.
Rias, Akeno, and Asia landed on the rooftop, closely followed by Kiba, who was carrying Issei on his back to arrive faster. The five young devils ran toward him, ignoring the residual heat of the concrete.
"Yugo!" Rias shouted, completely forgetting honorifics and her own aristocratic composure. She dropped to her knees in front of him, her blue eyes full of tears, extending her hands without knowing whether to hug him or help him stand.
Asia reached his side in the blink of an eye, immediately activating Twilight Healing from her rings. A warm green aura enveloped the professor, soothing the burning in his muscles and regulating his breathing.
Akeno knelt at his other side, looking at him with a devotion that went far beyond her usual teasing.
Issei, who had just climbed down from Kiba's back, approached while limping, his face dirty with soil and tears.
"Sensei... you... you really crushed him..."
Yugo closed his eyes for a second, feeling the healing spring of Asia's magic flowing through his system. He wiped the sweat from his forehead with his left forearm and exhaled a long, deep sigh. The weight of ten years of solitary survival and constant paranoia seemed to lighten, if only for a moment, upon seeing those stupid and reckless teenagers safe and sound around him.
The retired killer, the "Demon of Discipline," the owner of the most destructive watch in the universe, opened his gray eyes. And for the first time since he had arrived in that twisted magical world, all the coldness, cynicism, and apathy disappeared from his face.
A genuine, broad smile, without a trace of malice, formed on his lips.
He straightened slightly, closed his right hand into a fist and, raising his arm toward them, extended his thumb upward in the most classic, unmistakable, and immortal gesture in history.
"We won," Yugo said.
Issei Hyoudou felt his heart burst from pure geek pride. Tears once again poured from his eyes like waterfalls.
"IT'S THE GOKU POSE! SENSEI, YOU'RE THE BEST HERO IN THE WORLD!" the brown-haired boy shrieked, falling to the floor and making a comical bow toward him.
Rias let out a crystal-clear laugh that mixed with her sobs of relief. Without caring about sweat, dirt, or her own noble status, she threw herself forward and wrapped her arms around Yugo's neck in a tight, desperate hug. Akeno quickly joined in, hugging him from behind, and Asia clung to his right arm, burying her face in his shoulder.
Even Kiba smiled, nodding toward him with a respect only warriors who have survived together can understand.
There, on the rooftop of the ruined building, beneath a false sky and surrounded by the peerage he had sworn to crush on his first day, Yugo Hano finally felt that, for the first time in his new life, he had done things right.
The chicken was fried. The engagement was broken. And the anomaly had just claimed his place in the history of the Underworld.