The young man in silver armor dropped the lifeless body to the floor. He noticed how Kokabiel lost his life as soon as the green ray struck his body. Altair looked at him curiously, and the young man returned his gaze with enormous intensity. He wondered if there would be a fight right there, or if he would consider his objective unfulfilled and leave.
"You are... weak," said the young man, arrogance permeating every word. "But I have a feeling you won't explode with a single blow," he continued.
Altair barely had time to react before directing magic at his stomach. The fist struck like a missile and sent him flying several meters, expelling all the air from his lungs. His hands clenched around the golden staff.
"You protected yourself?" asked the young man, unimpressed.
He launched a second blow as devastating as the first, this time aimed at his head. Altair could see him moving, though with difficulty. Even though his body reacted a little late, it was his magic that told him where the strike came.
He ducked and blocked the man's knee with his staff.
After just three blows, Altair realized he was no match for him in the physical realm. However, he could detect him metaphysically. He was like a nuclear bomb of demonic magic. His presence was enormous.
Altair cast Pestis Incendium at his feet, and an intense flame burst from the ground. A millisecond later, he appeared far away. He heard an explosion; the man in white armor had struck the ground where the FiendFyre had appeared. Altair watched his arm fill with flames. He shook himself to extinguish the fire, but it would not yield.
The white armor began to corrode, as if the fire were poison to it. The curse swallowed everything, including magic.
"Is that the best you can do, wizard?" asked the young man.
His armor disappeared, and Altair got his first glimpse of him. He was a young man with dark silver hair and ice-blue eyes.
"Is that your sacred gear?" Altair asked curiously, wondering if the young man would speak. A little information could be very helpful in finding weaknesses.
"Divine Dividing... do you know it? I don't care if you do. I'm not interested in educating anyone," he said.
At that moment, Altair wished he had learned Protego Diabolica. He didn't learn it because he didn't want to; he couldn't find it anywhere, so he put it aside. Dumbledore would probably know it, even Lily, considering that Grindelwald was her father, too.
Altair used the fire from his Sacred Gear this time. The blue fire came out and formed a perimeter around him. The sacred fire should damage the devil in front of him. The silver-haired boy lunged into battle again. Altair watched eight bat wings sprout from his back. The more wings a devil had, the more powerful it was. Eight was an incredible number.
But Altair could see it now. Its speed was still incredible, but he could keep up. The attacker was no fool and threw himself directly into the flames. He flew up into the sky and tried to fall on top of Altair. With a thought, Altair directed the fire into the sky, seeking to attack him.
It turned out that the silver-haired devil moved faster than the flames could. Even so, he couldn't get close. Altair saw something more like respect in the devil's eyes. But it wasn't expressed vocally.
"You're Altair Asmodeus, right?" he asked from the sky. "Son of the original Maou, I've heard about you. I am Vali, although my last name doesn't really matter here. Even though you are weaker than me, I haven't been able to crush you... You are interesting," he introduced himself. "Tell me, can you become strong enough to be a worthy opponent?" he asked.
"Descendant of Lucifer, huh? And yet you have a Sacred Gear. Are you like me, then? A half-breed?" Altair asked, ignoring his question. It was one of the possible options; another was that his Sacred Gear had been stolen and inserted into his body, as Raynare planned to do with Asia's.
"We are not the same," said Vali.
Altair attacked him again. The guy's arrogance was annoying, but he couldn't say it was unfounded; after all, he was powerful. He didn't feel entirely displeased with the man either. The devil could have gone and attacked Rias and her group, but he didn't bother to do so, focusing all his attention on Altair, as if he didn't want to play dirty. More than that, he didn't care about fighting the other people.
Strands of blue fire chased Vali across the sky. He still hadn't summoned his armor again. Was he afraid the fire would consume it? Or did it have a cooldown time? Perhaps he was arrogant enough to believe he didn't need it to defeat Altair.
Altair summoned fire to the tip of his staff, then appeared behind Vali, who barely had time to turn around. A fireball struck him directly in the back.
Vali recoiled, frowning in pain. The sacred fire had damaged him, but not enough to knock him out of action.
Divide!
Altair heard a draconic voice coming from Vali. Then he felt his body grow weaker. He appeared on the ground immediately, and when he looked up, he saw Vali's body pass directly where he had been seconds before.
"I can't tell if you're a genius or a coward," Vali said.
Altair shrugged. He was a man who made the most of every resource he had. At that moment, he didn't care about his opponent's words, but rather what had happened to his own body. Altair felt his reflexes slow, his body heavier, and his magical core emptier.
Divide!
And it came again. That feeling of weakness appeared again. His power had been reduced. 'Isn't his sacred gear his armor?' he wondered. Altair attacked again. It was doubtful that he would be able to damage him again with the same trick, but he had to try again.
With a fireball in his hand, he appeared behind Vali. This time, the silver-haired man turned quickly, his hand deflecting the ball with little effort. The amount of magic Altair had put into it had been reduced to almost a quarter. Vali was quite resistant to the sacred element, and he was quickly becoming a nuisance.
Divide!
Vali's fist sank into his stomach. Altair heard a crack, quite possibly from his ribs breaking. He managed to stay conscious and appear in the sky. Inertia kept him flying, but now vertically; eventually, gravity would stop him, and he could appear on the ground.
He drank a potion with Phoenix Powder in record time. Each Divide reduced his power by half, and it seemed that the time between each one was about 10 seconds. It was a fucking broken power. And Altair couldn't help but compare it to Issei's, whose function was the opposite.
Another Crack! Came from his body as his ribs repaired themselves.
'Maybe I could make a slow-release potion?' he wondered, thinking about the advantages it would bring him.
Altair watched Vali fly closer, now looking bored.
"You seem pretty disappointed now," Vali said. "I was sent here to pick up Kokabiel, but you killed him. Aren't you afraid of the consequences?" He seemed more curious than angry, as if the death of the fallen angel was trivial to him.
"Your wings, do they hurt?" Altair asked, ignoring his question.
He watched him clench his teeth in slight anger at the provocation.
Divide!
The ability was activated again. Now it was one-sixteenth as strong as before. That would put it on par with a normal mage.
"Pestis Incendium," he said, his voice causing a somewhat amused grimace to appear on Vali's face.
Vali waited; the magic Altair summoned barely posed a threat to him. He couldn't say he was exposed, but he wasn't guarding himself enough to react to the danger. Altair waited, keeping the fire under control.
Divide!
Just as his energy became 1/32 of what it was initially, he activated another skill he hadn't had a chance to try before [Shared core].
He then appeared again. This time, right in front of Vali, the silver-haired men turned around, trying to predict the attack again.
"Bad luck", Altair said while his vision became covered in red.