Chapter 27
POV: Naburazad
There had been an age when the world itself seemed to move in accordance with his will and the will of his brethren, when kingdoms rose because they permitted it and vanished because they desired it, when the seas bore their fleets and the mountains surrendered their stone to their mastery, and all the races of the earth understood the proper order of creation.
They call it tyranny now because they did not understand. He remembered a world advancing with every passing century, a world where knowledge flowed like rivers and cities expanded across continents, where mankind stood at the threshold of dominion over creation itself. Men had prospered beneath them.
Men speak now of freedom and destiny and self determination because they have forgotten what greatness looks like. Had they seen Babel in its glory they would have understood. Had they walked beneath towers whose summits vanished into clouds stained crimson by the setting sun and heard ten thousand nations speaking with one tongue beneath banners bearing the sigils of the Nephilim, they would have known what mankind was meant to become.
The gods looked down upon a world remade according to Nephilim design and trembled at what they saw. And so they drowned it. The hypocrisy of it still burned within him after thousands of years. Gods who waged endless wars against one another suddenly discovered unity when faced with a rival. Gods who demanded blood sacrifices condemned bloodshed. Gods who ruled through fear accused others of tyranny.
The greatest civilization mankind had ever produced was reduced to scattered bones buried beneath oceans. A race that had once ruled the world became a cautionary tale. He alone knew the truth.
A creature dies once. People die twice. The second death comes when nobody remembers they ever lived. He alone carried within himself the memory of an age the world had conspired to erase. And that, more than anything, filled him with dread. Even he would die eventually.
Perhaps not for another thousand years. But death came for all things in the end. What then? What would remain when the last true Nephilim finally vanished? Who would remember Babel? Who would remember the princes who ruled before the Flood? Who would remember the dreams that once shook the foundations of heaven itself?
No one.
If extinction awaited his people, then he would make the heavens remember them first. If history intended to bury their names, then he would carve those names across the face of creation so deeply that neither god nor man could ever erase them. Let the divine bells ring and their choirs sing.
He had once ruled the world. Before this age ended, the world would remember why.
“Lord Naburazad, the perimeter is secure,” Norelia, one of the younger generation of Nephilim, reported as she knelt before him. “We searched everywhere for the corpse of the Beleth boy and for that strange child who attacked you, my lord, but we could not find even the slightest trace of either of them.”
“They have most likely already left the pocket dimension,” Naburazad replied thoughtfully as his gaze wandered across the immense underground prison, carefully examining the shattered stone and fractured pillars left behind when he had dragged the young Beleth through the portal. Little of importance appeared damaged beyond repair. It could have been worse.
He had already attempted to locate the boy through a scrying magic using the blood he had torn from his body, but the spell had yielded only useless confusion. Meruem’s presence appeared everywhere throughout the pocket dimension at once, scattered across the battlefield in countless overlapping traces of demonic energy until every direction resembled every other. Whoever had spirited him away had enough understanding of magical detection to obscure any meaningful trail.
“W-what were those creatures, my lord, if I may be permitted to ask?” Norelia said, unable to completely conceal the unease in her voice. “They came from nowhere. The magicians believe our researchers and soldiers were somehow transformed through magic into those mindless creatures that attacked us. How is such a thing even possible?”
“Soul manipulation,” Naburazad answered simply. “The girl reshaped the souls of our personnel through nothing more than physical contact. I observed enough of the surveillance recordings to confirm it myself. I also caught a brief glimpse of her during the battle. She is a reincarnated devil who was formerly a Dhampir.”
The [Evil Pieces]. An elegant work of alchemy, he admitted privately, and an inconvenience that ought never to have existed. Humanity’s greatest talents had once belonged to humanity. Now devils harvested promising souls like farmers gathering grain, stealing gifted mortals from the race that had produced them and incorporating them into Hell’s hierarchy.
It was another example of the hypocrisy preached by the so called God of the Covenant, who proclaimed mankind His most beloved creation while first exterminating the Nephilim, humanity’s rightful shepherds, and then allowing Lucifer’s descendants to gather the finest among them beneath infernal banners. The heavens always had an astonishing gift for contradicting themselves.
“A Dhampir?” Norelia repeated in disbelief. “How could a mere Dhampir accomplish something like that? She transformed nearly two thousand members of our staff in only a few minutes. All it required was a single touch of her hand. Even if she were already a master of the soul arts, she would still need power at the level of an Ultimate-class to perform something on that scale.”
Soul magic was among the least understood of all mystical disciplines. Naburazad himself had watched entire magical traditions flourish and disappear beneath the tides of history, and even after all those millennia he would never claim complete mastery over an art that dealt with something so fundamentally intangible.
Fire burned. Lightning struck. Those obeyed principles that could eventually be understood. Souls wandered through unseen territories where certainty dissolved into instinct and intuition. The greatest practitioners throughout history had almost always been gods, primordial spirits, or beings whose existence bordered upon the divine.
“She was a Dhampir,” Naburazad repeated calmly.
Norelia looked at him in confusion, evidently uncertain why he had repeated that particular detail, and Naburazad answered her bewilderment with a quiet sigh. She failed to perceive the implication because she could not extrapolate from a single piece of information toward the inevitable conclusion that followed from it.
Had one of his brothers or sisters stood beside him instead, they would have understood his meaning before he had even finished speaking. Such leaps of thought had once been effortless among his kind. Unfortunately, none of them remained. He therefore resigned himself to explaining what ought to have been obvious. Norelia was one of the few servants in this place whose loyalty belonged entirely to him rather than to Satanael, and that alone warranted a measure of patience he rarely extended to others.
“It means she is half human,” he explained. “Just like Vali Lucifer."
Understanding immediately spread across her face. “Oh! Then you mean she possesses a Sacred Gear as well. That would explain her affinity for soul manipulation. Though to wield it with such speed and such ease…”
“A Longinus,” Naburazad finished without particular interest. “Yes. A halfbreed born carrying one would have been inconceivable a thousand years ago. He would never have permitted such a thing. With Him gone, however, the world has become… considerably more malleable.”
“A Longinus capable of manipulating souls.” Norelia lowered her voice thoughtfully. “Then it must be the [Sephiroth Graal]. No other Longinus possesses such complete dominion over the soul.”
“Most likely,” he agreed. “What of Hanezou? Have you found any trace of him?”
“We have not, my lord.” Norelia lowered her head in visible shame. “The attack upon the base descended into complete chaos, and whoever took him understood exactly what they were doing. We can’t perform any scrying rituals because Hanezou deliberately left behind no blood, hair, or other suitable medium.”
“A pity,” Naburazad replied, sounding only mildly disappointed. “He spent years ensuring that no trace of himself could be used against him. Every precaution was taken because he feared someone might acquire it and turn it into a weapon against him. It would seem all that caution merely ensured his downfall arrived through a different avenue.”
Naburazad had advised against such excessive paranoia on more than one occasion, though Hanezou had never listened. The man possessed a deeply ingrained distrust of others that bordered on obsession.
He regarded her quietly. “And don’t call him Himejima. He abandoned that name long ago. He has no wish to be associated with those obedient bootlickers of the Shinto, and the courtesy costs us nothing.”
The loss of Hanezou would undoubtedly delay several ongoing projects, particularly those concerning Independent Avatar Sacred Gears. The man had been both the heart and the brain of the operation, a rare combination that was difficult to replace. Even so, Naburazad found himself less concerned than he perhaps should have been. Replicating the miracle of God had never been his true objective.
It was merely a stepping stone toward something far greater, and Hanezou had already contributed everything he was capable of contributing toward that goal. All that remained now was to find suitable soil in which to plant the seed of that ancient design and, when the time was right, reap its harvest.
“Well, no matter,” Naburazad mused thoughtfully. “Hanezou has done all that could reasonably be expected of him, and his sacrifice will not be in vain. Have you brought what I requested?”
“Yes, my lord,” Norelia replied, her earlier disappointment vanishing beneath obvious pride. “We have gathered five hundred women of magical lineage, and every one of them is a virgin, just as you commanded.”
“Good,” Naburazad replied. “Inform the research division that they are to begin identifying the individual with the greatest compatibility as a vessel for the ritual. Bring another five hundred candidates as well.
Norelia blinked. “Another five hundred, my lord?”
“Indeed,” Naburazad replied calmly. “Perfection is exceedingly rare, and mediocrity is the natural state of most living things. If we wish to find a suitable vessel among an ocean of inadequacy, then we must cast a sufficiently wide net. A sample size of five hundred may prove inadequate. One thousand is a more reasonable beginning.”
Norelia bowed deeply. “At once, my lord.”
With a respectful bow, she departed to carry out his orders, leaving Naburazad alone with his thoughts and the faint sense that events were finally beginning to move in the proper direction.
“Another necessary evil to add to your ledger?” a feminine voice echoed softly through the vast chamber.
Naburazad turned toward the source of the voice and regarded the chained figure of the once mighty Seraph. Azrael, the Angel of Death, remained suspended within the center of the immense prison, her limbs restrained by countless divine chains engraved with ancient runes whose light pulsed faintly against the surrounding darkness.
Even with a Seraph imprisoned within the chamber, Norelia had remained entirely unaware of her presence, for the invisibility spell Naburazad had woven over both Azrael and her prison admitted no flaw through which lesser beings' perception might pass. The fewer who knew of the Seraph’s captivity, the better.
“I see no evil in it,” he replied calmly. “It’s only their flesh, which merely serves as a house for the spirit, that I intend to make use of. Their souls, which alone possess true value, shall remain unharmed if such knowledge brings you any measure of peace, my lady.”
Lately, Azrael had made something of a pastime out of questioning the morality of everything he did. She still entertained the quaint belief that reasoned discussion might persuade him toward mercy or convince him to abandon a purpose that had endured for millennia. Naburazad found the effort strangely admirable, though ultimately futile.
“Still, they will die screaming in agony no mortal should ever endure, all for the sake of your vengeance.” Azrael answered quietly. Her ruined face remained turned toward him despite the absence of the eyes that had long ago been torn from their sockets.
“The women shall either prove suitable vessels,” Naburazad replied with an indifferent shrug, “in which case they shall receive every care necessary for the task before them, or they shall prove unsuitable and perish. If the latter comes to pass, I am certain your Father’s kingdom shall welcome their departed souls with open arms. Isn’t that the promise Heaven has always offered? Endure suffering for the reward of eternal life.”
“I would rather they endured no suffering at all,” Azrael said. “But the world is imperfect. Humanity chose freedom over the safety of Eden, and so suffering became inevitable. But that doesn’t grant you, nor anyone else, the right to inflict suffering upon those incapable of resisting you.”
“I wonder if you hear the irony in your own words,” Naburazad said, allowing himself a quiet laugh. “You who took the firstborn children from their mothers' breasts for the sole crime of being born in Egypt. What of their suffering? Was that not inflicted deliberately?”
Azrael offered no answer.
“The road you now walk will never restore what you have lost,” she said after a long silence. “Listen to me, Naburazad. Even in those ancient days you were the most reasonable and wisest among your brethren. You know Satanael doesn’t hold your interests at heart. He merely uses you as another weapon in his endless war against Heaven.”
“It is my war as well,” Naburazad replied with a dark chuckle. “What manner of general permits others to fight his war in his place? I am fully aware that he uses me for his own ambitions, just as he is aware that I use him for mine. That arrangement is called compromise. I understand the concept is somewhat foreign to Heaven.”
“You’re not this kind of man.” Azrael insisted stubbornly. “Satanael has devoted himself to becoming everything the Lord is not because he believes himself the perfect adversary. He would burn the rest of creation merely to prove he is right.”
“Perhaps I would enjoy seeing it burn as well,” Naburazad replied without the slightest trace of concern.
“You are a king, Naburazad.” For the first time, there was something almost mournful in her voice. “If he destroys everything, what exactly will remain for you to rule? A king without a kingdom is no king at all. Eventually you will be forced to choose. You must stand with the spark of life or with the darkness that seeks to consume it.”
“I see no reason to do either. I have no opinion on the subject,” Naburazad replied, the first genuine trace of irritation entering his otherwise measured voice. “The world has never been as black and white as you angels insist upon believing. You divide existence into convenient absolutes of light and darkness, salvation and damnation, because it spares you the burden of thinking beyond the limits of your doctrine. I have listened to Heaven’s absolutist morality for thousands of years, and I have grown thoroughly weary of it. Now be silent.”
Before Azrael could answer, the air behind him shimmered violently as Norelia emerged from in flash of light and dropped immediately to one knee.
“My Lord! We’re under attack!” she cried urgently.
Naburazad did not hesitate. A teleportation circle blossomed beneath his feet, enveloping both himself and Norelia before the chamber vanished around them. An instant later they stood atop the central platform overlooking the facility as alarms echoed through the underground complex.
He turned toward Norelia. “Send the guards to secure the test vessels immediately. I shall deal with the attacker.”
“Ye–” The reply died within her throat.
Something grotesque began unfolding before his eyes. Her face stretched unnaturally as her features twisted into an expression of impossible agony. Her scream deepened into something inhuman while her eyes multiplied across flesh that swelled and folded in impossible directions. Her skull expanded, bones cracking audibly beneath rapidly distorting skin. Six black wings erupted violently from her back as additional limbs forced themselves from her body with wet, sickening sounds that no Fallen Angel should ever produce.
Without the slightest hesitation, the thing that had once been Norelia lunged directly toward him.
The same soul transfiguration as before, Naburazad concluded with quiet annoyance. Before the transformed body could reach him, he calmly extended a hand and rested his palm against its chest. A tiny thread of magical power flowed from his fingertips.
The creature detonated instantly. Blood, bone, and fragments of ruined flesh burst outward in every direction before splattering harmlessly across the stone floor.
A pity. Norelia had been a loyal servant, he reflected without much emotion. Even so, there was little value in dwelling upon the dead. It seemed someone had returned for a second attempt, and this time Naburazad intended to ensure they remained dead permanently.
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Ladies and gentlemen, if such a term still applies in the absence of an audience, this is His Infernal Majesty, King Meruem of House Beleth.
If you are reading this, then it follows with regrettable certainty that I have failed in my designated objective and have perished alongside my servants, without prospect of return or resurrection. There is something strangely satisfying about writing one’s own obituary. Every great emperor deserves the privilege of delivering his own eulogy, and if history refuses to grant me the empire, it shall at least permit me the final word.
A final toast, then, to an unfulfilled second life.
It has often been remarked (usually by those too dull to recognize it as such) that I possess a certain… inclination toward grandiloquence. I prefer to call it clarity of expression under pressure. In either case, you may consider this document an exercise in both.
I should state, at the outset, that I am not afraid of death. Why should I be? This would merely be the third time I have died. By now death and I are acquainted well enough that introductions have become unnecessary. I have no doubt I will die again, and again be reborn elsewhere and elsewhen, each iteration leaving behind records such as this, as proof that I was ever present at all. Memory is, after all, the closest thing existence has to permanence.
The cause of my present failure (my third death, should it be confirmed) lies in confrontation with one of the so-called True Nephilim, remnants of a fabled lineage now approaching extinction. To fall before such a creature is no disgrace. One ought to lose only to legends whenever possible. It makes for far better stories.
Now then, having already suffered the profound embarrassment of being killed by this same Nephilim once before, I have arrived at what I believe to be the only rational course of action, namely to attempt the utterly irrational. I intend to kill him.
The odds are, by every measurable standard, impossible. At my present level of power I possess no legitimate business standing upon the same battlefield as such a being, much less imagining that I might prevail against him.
And yet, I find myself compelled by a most irrational impulse: wounded pride.
I have, in quieter moments, entertained the notion of myself as Emperor of Hell. One cannot reasonably harbor such aspirations without, at some point, confronting the inconvenient matter of competition. It is therefore necessary, if only for the sake of internal consistency, that I determine whether my ambition is delusion or merely premature. I intend to prove, first to myself and then, incidentally, to reality, that my ambition is justified.
For the past five days I have therefore devoted every waking moment to what any sane observer would classify as an elaborate method of committing suicide. I prefer to regard it as a rigorous examination of my own worth. There exist only two acceptable conclusions. Either I shall depart this battlefield laughing in the face of death, having slain one of the mightiest beings still walking creation, or I shall perish with the comforting certainty that my ambition exceeded my merit, which is an unpleasant truth perhaps, though infinitely preferable to living beneath an illusion.
With that melancholy preamble concluded, allow me to present the work to which I have devoted my final days.
A Practical Guide to Killing a True Nephilim.
Or, as I have elected to title it with considerably greater theatrical flair - The Five Exhibits Required to Kill a God.
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Exhibit I: The Principle of Attrition
From the broken galleries, ruptured corridors, and half-collapsed entrances of the facility; there poured a multitude of transfigured bodies that had once been workers of the Agency.
They came on all fours and on six legs and on limbs, with faces stretched open into eyeless masks and ribs split outward like the petals of corpse flowers, and the noise of them filled the great underground expanse with a wet thunder of feet and claws and dragging flesh.
Naburazad stood at the center of the ruined killing ground with Norelia’s blood still steaming across the stone at his feet. The creatures surged toward him from every angle, and every one of them carried within its malformed soul the same command - Kill him by all means.
The first dozen crossed the final distance in a blur, and Naburazad lifted the sword hilt in his foremost right hand as though greeting guests at court. From nothing there blossomed light. A thousand slender blades unfolded from the empty air, each smaller than a finger, and because their polished surfaces caught the fractured glow of the facility’s emergency wards they seemed at first glance like pale petals drifting through the gloom. Then the petals moved, and the front rank of Valerie’s transfigured army became mist and meat.
The [Astral Blade Manifestation] passed through the battlefield like a knife through butter. Naburazad flicked his wrist and the blades swarmed outward in spirals, each movement guided by the hilt in his grasp, each turn of his fingers sending death curving through the bodies rushing upon him.
One creature leapt from above with its mouth splitting down to its sternum, and the blades entered through the open throat and burst from its spine in a spray of bone powder.
A pack of swollen soldiers reached him together, their torsos pulsing with the unstable energy Valerie had woven into them, and before they could explode upon contact the blades formed a transparent wall of spinning edges that ground them apart at a distance, their detonations bursting harmlessly against the moving shield in flashes of blood.
The explosion wave tore stones from the walls and sent chains whipping wildly overhead, yet Naburazad remained untouched inside the shining storm. He stood there like a mountain while the horde spent itself against him, and whenever the transfigured mass seemed close to overrunning the space, his hand shifted and the petals became a sphere of annihilation that closed and opened again, leaving only fragments sliding across the floor.
….
Far from the battlefield, hidden behind layers of concealment, Valerie trembled with her hands pressed to the skull of a kneeling creature whose soul had long since ceased to resemble anything human. She could not see Naburazad directly, and she dared not seek him through any ordinary spell, yet through the army she had made she felt the shape of the battle as a blind woman might feel rain upon her skin.
The [Sephiroth Graal] pulsed within her and she used it now to reshape the souls of those unfortunate enough to go against her master. The plan was to distract the nephilim by overwhelming him with transfigured humans.
Across the field, Naburazad’s six eyes narrowed very slightly as the creatures continued to come in waves, and for the first time his gaze shifted from the bodies dying before him toward the darkness beyond them.
Exhibit II: The Inevitability of Decay
Kuroka Toujou came from that darkness, a black blur slipping between showers of astral blades as though she had been born from the spaces between them. Her senjutsu cloaked her presence until the last possible instant, and three mirage copies leapt with her from three different directions while wheels of black flame rolled across the floor and curved up toward Naburazad’s flanks.
The Nephilim turned with unsettling speed for a creature of such size. One hand swept the hilt, and the blades folded into a shield that swallowed the burning wheels in sparks. Another hand struck outward and crushed one illusion into drifting smoke. A third caught a root of living stone that had burst from the floor to bind his ankle and tore it apart with ease.
Kuroka landed upon his shoulder for less than a heartbeat, claws bright with concentrated [Touki], and raked them across the side of his neck. The strike would have opened any lesser being from ear to spine. Against Naburazad, it drew only four shallow lines across gray flesh like cracked marble.
“Big, ugly, and impossible to scratch,” Kuroka purred, her golden eyes gleaming with mischief. “You know, most girls like a little roughhousing. With a body like yours, where’s the fun? No wonder the True Nephilim are dying out.”
Naburazad’s blades snapped toward her in a cloud so thin and fast that the air seemed to glitter, and Kuroka twisted aside, one copy dying in her place, then another, and then the real body passed beneath the cutting storm by less than the width of a finger.
Poison mist spilled from her sleeves and mouth, thickening around his head and chest, a carefully prepared [Youjutsu] toxin adapted through desperate study to disrupt the flow of power inside his technique. His blades wavered for a fraction of a second, but no more.
Naburazad moved then with an annoyed gaze. His foremost left hand came through the mist faster than the eye could follow and struck Kuroka through the chest. Fingers large enough to crush her skull punched clean through the heart, emerging from her back wrapped in blood and torn flesh.
For a moment the entire battlefield seemed to pause around the image of her body hanging from his hand, her black hair spilling over her face, her lips parted as blood slid down her chin. The transfigured horde continued to die in the distance cut by the [astral blades].
Kuroka lifted her face slowly, and there was no fear in her eyes. There was pain, certainly, yet there was also triumph. “How pitiful for a creature of your age to make such a rookie mistake!” she whispered, and then she smiled with all her teeth. Her body exploded into blood.
The blood struck Naburazad’s chest and face in a dark wave, and the moment it touched his skin it clung with unnatural purpose, sinking through his skin before even his blades could scrape it free.
Naburazad's expression changed at last, his six eyes narrowing as they focused as one, their attention fixed entirely upon the foreign force invading his body. In that instant he understood exactly what Kuroka had done.
It was a suicide technique, one that used her own death as the catalyst to bypass defenses that should have been impossible to breach, allowing the curse to latch onto the perfect body of a Nephilim and burrow deep into both flesh and soul simultaneously, a hybrid venom born from ancient Nekomata arts and refined for a single purpose - to accelerate the age of its target.
Magical energy flared through him in defense, burning through the invading poison, but the poison fed upon that burning and spread along the channels of power that attempted to destroy it. Naburazad’s grip tightened around the remaining scraps of Kuroka’s corpse, and then his hand closed upon nothing.
“A sacrificial delivery mechanism,” he observed with calm approval. “How clever. That nekomata surrendered her life with remarkable ease, no doubt because she believes the Sephiroth Graal will simply hand it back to her afterward. Ah, youth and their egos, a tale as old as time.”
Exhibit III: The Tyranny of God killers
Twenty one monsters stepped out of darkness. Each stood nearly as tall as Naburazad himself, with plated hides, elongated jaws, hooked claws and jointed limbs.
“The Annihilation Maker,” Naburazad murmured, and his blades drew close around him.
One of the monsters opened its mouth, and Leonardo’s voice came from within it. “So, you’re not as dumb as you look. I designed them specially for you. You should feel honored, old man. Most extinct races don’t get custom executioners.”
Naburazad’s astral blades surged forward in a silver-white torrent and struck the first monster across the torso until the creature collapsed in two enormous halves. Another leapt over the corpse before it had even finished falling, a third came in low, and a fourth struck from behind.
The great Nephilim met them all at once, two hands guiding the sword storm, one hand catching a descending claw and tearing the arm from its socket, the last driving a fist through a monstrous jaw with enough force to blast the head apart.
One monster died beneath a cone of blades that drilled through its chest. Another was lifted bodily and smashed through two others with a sound like trees breaking beneath an avalanche.
Then the dead monsters melted. The nearest monster doubled in size across the shoulders. Another grew a second row of plated ribs over the place where Naburazad’s blades had cut its kin.
Naburazad observed the change as he destroyed the sixth, then the seventh, then the eighth, and his expression remained composed. He repeated a killing pattern that had worked moments before, sending a spiral of blades into the throat of a beast already staggered by a broken knee. The blades entered, shredded, and burst from the back of its neck, but the creature did not die.
Its torn flesh knitted around the cutting storm and sealed as the blades exited, leaving only smoking scars. It countered with a clawed backhand that struck Naburazad across the ribs and drove him one step sideways. A single step, perhaps, yet for a creature that had once terrified the gods, it was notable.
Leonardo’s voice laughed from another monster. “You noticed, didn’t you? Kill one, the others inherit what killed it and become immune against that particular attack. Behold, the power of the annihilation maker!”
Naburazad swept his arm and reduced that speaking monster to ruin from shoulder to hip, though even as it fell, the remaining shadows fed upon it and grew stronger.
The monsters answered by charging together, and around the true Nephilim the transfigured horde surged once more from the corridors, exploding against his defensive wall in red flashes while the surviving [Anti-Nephilim] creatures hammered the barrier with claws that learned with every impact.
Naburazad’s blades screamed around him, thousands of lights against twenty one shadows already reduced to fewer than half their number, yet each death narrowed the road to victory and each victory fed the things still trying to kill him.
Exhibit IV: Ice Age
The sky above the ruined facility darkened beneath gathering storm clouds that had not existed a heartbeat earlier, and the first snowflakes descended so gently that they almost appeared misplaced amidst such carnage. Then the temperature collapsed with terrifying suddenness.
Frost raced across shattered stone, climbed broken pillars, swallowed rivers of blood beneath sheets of crystal, and within moments the battlefield had become a kingdom of winter. Behind Lavinia materialized the towering doll of [Absolute Demise], and the blizzard answered its silent command. Wind screamed through the collapsing complex carrying countless shards of razor ice until visibility shrank to mere dozens of yards.
“Balance Breaker: Assoluto Argento Mondo.”
Her voice barely rose above a whisper.
The first spear, the size of a cathedral spire, struck precisely where Naburazad had stood less than an instant before, burying itself half a mile into the earth with such force that the resulting shockwave flattened every ruined building nearby. Before the stone had finished collapsing, another spear followed, then another, then twenty more, each one falling from the heavens until the entire sky resembled an inverted forest whose trees sought the earth rather than the sun.
Naburazad flew. One enormous spear missed his head by inches as he banked sharply to the left. A second descended across his flight path, and he drove one foot into its side with such force that the colossal pillar shattered into glittering fragments. A third appeared beneath him, and he planted his hand against its frozen surface, twisting his body around it before propelling himself upward with explosive force.
The surviving shadow monsters gave him no moment to breathe. Three attacked simultaneously, one seizing his left shoulder, another raking its claws across his ribs, while the third wrapped itself around his lower body like some monstrous ape before slamming both fists into his spine.
Naburazad's upper right hand guided the [Astral Blades] through the shoulder of the first creature while his lower right hand seized the second by its throat and slammed it through an approaching ice pillar. His remaining arms hammered the third repeatedly until its armored chest collapsed inward beneath the relentless impacts. Its wounds regenerated before his eyes.
Interesting. His blades could still cut them but they can instantly heal it. And from the looks of it, the longer they’re exposed to his ability the faster that adaptation will be.
Above him another rain of glacial lances descended. Below him more transfigured humans poured endlessly from hidden tunnels, each one hurling itself toward him without the slightest regard for survival. They burst apart against his spinning wall of blades in deafening explosions, each detonation forcing him to devote another fraction of concentration toward maintaining his defense.
Each time Naburazad carved open one path through the swarm, another opened elsewhere. Thousands of transfigured soldiers continued charging through collapsing corridors, leaping from shattered rooftops, climbing over mountains of corpses only to explode the instant they touched the outer curtain of [Astral Blades].
Far above the blizzard another force entered the struggle. The clouds rotated. At first the motion seemed subtle, though within seconds entire banks of storm began spinning around invisible centers until colossal funnels descended from the heavens, each one stretching from cloud to earth across miles of frozen landscape.
Natsume floated within the eye of the central tempest upon enormous wings of compressed wind, her hair whipping wildly around her face as she guided the wind with sweeping motions of her arms.
Six enormous tornadoes crossed the battlefield. Each tower of rotating wind measured hundreds of feet across while carrying entire buildings within their spiraling embrace. Lavinia’s blizzard merged seamlessly into Natsume’s storms until every tornado transformed into a frozen cyclone whose outer walls consisted entirely of razor sharp ice moving faster than artillery shells.
For one brief instant Naburazad looked upward. The sight stirred memories buried beneath thousands of years - black skies, mountains vanishing beneath impossible waves, and lightning that never ceased… the Flood…It had looked very much like this.
Another monster struck. He pivoted instinctively, one fist obliterating its skull before its claws reached his throat, though two more replaced it immediately while enormous spears continued raining around him without pause.
His movements had slowed slightly. Only enough for someone who had watched him since the beginning to notice. The poison…
Kuroka’s final gift continued spreading. His magical energy burned through it ceaselessly, but every attempt to destroy the foreign substance merely accelerated its progress. He was aging a hundred years with every passing second, and though he was a proud Nephilim whose existence had once been so terrible that it compelled the gods themselves to drown the world, he was not truly immortal, for time would claim him as surely as it claimed all things, and so he had to end this battle before old age ended him first.
“He’s slowing down!” Leonardo shouted through one of his surviving monsters. “Keep pushing! Don’t give him room to breathe!”
Only four of the [Anti-Nephilim] monsters were alive now. Each towered nearly twice Naburazad’s height. Their bodies had changed beyond recognition. Where once they resembled monstrous beasts, they had become something closer to walking fortresses covered in layered armor whose surfaces shifted constantly as new adaptations emerged.
Astral Blades carved glowing trenches across one creature’s chest. The wounds sealed before the blades had even exited. Naburazad narrowed six golden eyes. They have completely adapted to his astral blades. His primary technique had become functionally useless against them.
“Old man!” Leonardo’s laughter echoed again. “Did nobody teach your generation how evolution works?”
One monster lunged and another attacked from above. The remaining two circled opposite directions searching for an opening while thousands of exploding transfigured creatures continued assaulting every gap within the spinning sword barrier.
Naburazad met the first creature head on. The impact resembled two mountains colliding. His uppercut shattered the monster’s jaw completely before continuing through its skull and erupting from the crown in a storm of black fragments. It still fought.
Its remaining arm caught Naburazad across the chest hard enough to send the Nephilim crashing through three enormous ice pillars before he recovered midflight.
An ice spear descended and instead of avoiding the colossal projectile, Naburazad swung it like an enormous lance through the approaching monster, impaling the creature completely before hurling both corpse and spear into another tornado.
The cyclone swallowed them whole, only for the frozen missile to return seconds later after Natsume redirected it. Naburazad twisted aside but too slowly. The spear clipped his upper left arm. For the first time since the battle began genuine blood spilled from the ancient Nephilim.
The surviving shadow monsters pounced at once, one clamping enormous jaws around his injured arm, another burying its claws into his right shoulder, while the third charged forward like a battering ram aimed directly at his chest.
[Astral Blades] exploded outward in every direction. Thousands of glittering fragments tore through monsters, tornadoes, and descending ice alike, clearing the sky around him for nearly half a mile.
The monster's bodies regenerated almost instantaneously. The tornadoes merely swallowed the fragments before reforming. The effort had bought him only seconds.
Then Lavinia changed tactics. From beneath the frozen battlefield rose giants. Ice erupted across miles of ground before shaping itself into towering humanoid figures hundreds of feet tall. One after another they emerged carrying frozen axes, hammers, and swords whose edges shone blue beneath the blizzard.
The first giant swung and Naburazad avoided the blow, only for the second to intercept his escape and the third to strike across his left side, launching him completely through a tornado before he regained control.
One of the monsters seized the opening immediately, its claws descending as Naburazad raised a block, but he was too late. Three claws carved deeply across one of his four forearms before another monster tore completely through the weakened limb.
The arm separated. It spun downward through the blizzard trailing black blood before disappearing into the frozen chaos below. Naburazad watched it fall only for an instant. He had no time to retrieve it.
Another Ice giant attacked. The surviving shadow monsters of the [Annihilation Maker] closed again. The transfigured horde continued exploding endlessly. Within him Kuroka’s poison gnawed relentlessly through strength accumulated across millennia.
For the first time since the Flood, Naburazad found himself surrounded by enemies who understood that no single weapon would ever defeat him.
Exhibit V: No Part Can Escape the Fate of the Whole.
The severed arm vanished almost the moment it struck the frozen earth. Hidden within a pocket dimension no larger than a modest room, Meruem caught the immense limb before it could disappear beneath drifting snow.
Valerie knelt beside it immediately without waiting for instruction. Her hands rested upon the marble gray flesh, and the [Sephiroth Graal] answered her call with a pale radiance that spread across the arm in branching patterns.
The arm was spiritually connected to its owner through bonds that no distance could wholly sever, and Valerie intended to turn that connection into a road. Sweat already gathered across her brow as she closed her eyes and searched for the resonance between the severed limb and the original body.
Once she did, however, every alteration she imposed upon the severed limb echoed faintly across the greater whole. It resembled striking the smallest string upon a great harp and listening as the entire instrument trembled.
…
Far above, Naburazad’s body reacted instantly as his breath caught and blood unexpectedly rose into his throat before sheer will forced it back down, six golden eyes narrowing toward the distant horizon despite nothing there revealing Valerie’s location. His mind reached the conclusion before his instincts finished asking the question.
Someone had taken the arm, and someone capable of manipulating souls had established a sympathetic resonance through the severed flesh; the realization caused his heartbeat to quicken in genuine fear for the first time in millennia as he suddenly became aware of the long, looming corridor of death stretching before him.
It seemed he had severely underestimated this motley crew, never imagining they would devise such a method to kill him, and as he wondered how he had made such a mistake, the answer became painfully clear: though he was one of the mighty beings of old, he had not truly fought in a very long time, spending most of his existence in hibernation to evade the wrath of the gods, and that complacency had led him to commit the most fundamental and catastrophic error a warrior could make, failing to take his enemies seriously, and now it appeared he would pay dearly for it.
Another ice golem charged before the thought had fully settled, its enormous fist descending like the collapse of a mountain. Naburazad stepped inside the strike instead of retreating, drove one remaining fist through the construct’s chest, and the entire giant shattered into glittering fragments that the surrounding blizzard immediately swallowed.
Only two [Anti-Nephilim] monsters remained. Each carried within itself the accumulated adaptation of every fallen sibling.
Leonardo laughed through the nearest one. “You look like you’re on your last leg already, old man.”
Leonardo did not wait for his response. The monster attacked. Its claws swept downward while another lunged low and a third descended from above with impossible speed for something of its size. Naburazad met them with the grace that only endless battle could produce. One shoulder rolled beneath the first strike, a knee shattered the balance of the second creature, and his remaining hands guided the [Astral Blades] into a tightening spiral that bored directly through the chest of the third. The wound closed.
“I told you,” Leonardo’s voice echoed from somewhere inside the shadowed body. “You already taught them that trick.”
“That you did.”
Naburazad abandoned the blades entirely. The nearest monster expected another cutting storm. Instead, the Nephilim closed the distance faster than any giant should have been capable of moving. One hand seized the creature beneath its jaw while another locked around its shoulder. The monster body tore into two immense halves before dissolving into black currents that rushed toward the remaining monsters.
“But I am the war prince of Babel,” Naburazad observed quietly. “Did you think I would fall that easily?”
The last monster swelled even larger, and for the first time in ages Naburazad found himself imagining how lesser beings must have felt when standing before him, small and utterly insignificant, like prey staring up at a predator that existed on an entirely different scale.
…….
Far away, Valerie opened her eyes. “I have him,” she whispered.
Meruem nodded once. “Continue.”
She placed both palms firmly upon the severed arm and the Graal brightened.
…….
Miles away Naburazad staggered.
The muscles surrounding his remaining shoulder suddenly seized as though invisible hands had reached inside his body and grasped every tendon at once. One of his six eyes clouded briefly before recovering. Another cough escaped him despite every effort to suppress it.
He crashed back toward the frozen battlefield like a falling star, landing hard enough to send fractures racing across the ice for hundreds of meters. Before the debris settled, three enormous ice golems were already upon him. Their frozen weapons descended together.
Naburazad rose. The first axe shattered against his forearm. He struck once. Its entire upper body exploded into glittering snow. The surviving monsters arrived before the fragments finished falling.
Each exchange removed another, though every victory demanded greater effort than the last. Naburazad’s breathing had become audible now. His once lustrous black hair had begun fading toward pale gray at the temples. Fine lines spread across skin that had not known age since kingdoms still worshipped the sun from mud brick towers.
Leonardo watched through the eyes of the final surviving monster. Its silhouette merged almost seamlessly with the storm clouds overhead.
“You should have drowned with the rest of your kind,” Leonardo said, his voice rolling across the battlefield through the creature’s mouth. “There would have been more dignity in that death.”
The giant shadow descended and its fists crashed down like collapsing mountains, yet the Nephilim met them head-on, the resulting impact splitting the frozen plain apart. For several long seconds neither yielded.
Then brilliant light gathered around Naburazad’s remaining hands, pure holy radiance comparable to that wielded by angels before the Fall, for this was one of the unique gifts of the Nephilim: born from the corruption of the Sons of God and the daughters of mankind, yet still retaining a measure of the divine holiness from which they had descended.
He thrust both palms forward and the beam engulfed the monster completely, its immense body resisting longer than any of its predecessors before cracks spread across it and the darkness finally began to fracture. Finally the creature dissolved into countless fading motes that drifted upward before disappearing into the storm.
Final Exhibit: Divine Immobilization
Naburazad remained standing but barely. His shoulders rose and fell with every difficult breath. His posture remained proud, though age had settled visibly upon it. One wing drooped slightly lower than the others. Blood traced narrow paths across skin that no longer regenerated as swiftly as before.
Above him, the colossal falcon formed from Natsume’s sacred gear swept across the sky once more, dragging another succession of titanic tornadoes in its wake. And all around him, Valerie’s transfigured army continued advancing without fear.
He raised one hand to attack, only to stop as the ground beneath him suddenly erupted.
Great chains forged from overlapping layers of magic burst upward like living serpents. One seized his remaining arm. Another coiled around his waist. More wrapped around each leg, his wings, and finally his chest, binding him beneath dozens of intersecting restraints before anchoring themselves deep beneath the earth.
Naburazad did not…could not move, held fast like an animal ensnared in iron jaws.
AN: Hello everyone,
My deepest and most sincere apologies for this extraordinarily late post. This chapter was supposed to arrive on Friday, which means I have committed the unforgivable crime of being almost two entire days behind schedule. Frankly, I expect the international tribunal to contact me at any moment.
You see, I had every intention of finishing this chapter a few days ago. Unfortunately, I was suddenly abducted by one of my friends, who had apparently been possessed by the spirit of Dionysus and decided that sobriety was a personal insult to the gods. Resistance proved futile. Several drinks later, my evening concluded with me vomiting all over my own clothes and, more importantly, all over my friend’s car, which I maintain was a shared spiritual experience and therefore should not be held solely against me.
I had fully intended to finish the chapter yesterday as well. Sadly, my body had entered negotiations with death and refused to participate in any activity more intellectually demanding than staring blankly at a wall while questioning every life decision that had led me to that point. It turns out hangovers are a remarkably effective anti-productivity strategy.
In any case, I have finally wrestled my soul back into my body and managed to finish the chapter. As compensation for my grievous crimes against punctuality, the story that would normally be updated on Sunday or Monday will instead come out on Wednesday, so the overall schedule is only slightly delayed.
Thank you all for your patience, and please remember to drink responsibly, or at the very least, throw up in your own car.
Now, onto the chapter itself. I tried out a new writing style this time, something like a hybrid between an omniscient narrator and a limited third-person perspective. The reason is simple: the way the fight plays out made it pretty much impossible to stick to just one character’s POV, so I had to branch out a bit. It might feel a little jarring at times, but hopefully it still comes across as interesting rather than confusing.
Meruem couldn’t beat the Nephilim through raw strength alone. That’s exactly why he recruited multiple Longinus users in the first place. It also felt fitting taht he would win using his wits, since Meruem is meant to be the archetypal cunning devil.
Also I was heavily inspired by the Hisoka vs. Chrollo fight.