With Azrael's sharp command, the sudden wave of explosive anger was instantly cut short. The fallen angels all took a step back, lowering their weapons and returning to their defensive posts. Even though they obeyed their Queen right away, the heavy hostility in the air did not vanish. Thousands of glowing eyes remained locked on Satanael, burning with pure hatred.
Azazel slowly lowered his golden light spear, though its intense light did not fade. He forced his breathing to slow down, his jaw tight as he kept his twelve black wings spread wide. Although he was furious, he forcefully calmed his emotions down. Their queen had given an order, and it was their duty to obey.
Fallen angels were angels who had fallen into sin. They could never be saved and were banished from Heaven forever. Compared to pure angels, fallen angels were deeply discriminated against by the very compatriots they once called family. They were viewed as filth, broken beings who had lost their grace and had no right to exist. For a long time, they wandered blindly in the dark, hated by Heaven and hunted by Devils, with no place to call home.
But Azrael changed all of that. She was the one who reached her hand down into the deep abyss, pulling them out of their misery. She gave them a true purpose, built them a safe home in Grigori, and protected them when the rest of the world wanted them dead. To the pure angels, they were just outcasts. But to Azrael, they were her people.
That was why their loyalty to her was absolute. If she told them to hold back, they would control their rage, even if the person standing right in front of them was the monster who had hurt her. This was the true respect Azrael had earned. As the strongest fallen angel, she conquered everyone with both her charisma and her absolute strength.
Looking at Satanael, who still had that arrogant smile, Azrael would be lying to say if she hadn't any desire to wipe him out himself. But as a leader, she knew how to separate her personal feelings from the battle. She kept her emotions completely locked away, her cold gaze cutting straight through his relaxed mask. She would never let this bastard have it easy. Learning from her daughter, she knew a trick or two on how to make a person very uncomfortable.
Down on the field, Satanael looked up at the thousands of glowing, angry eyes locked onto him. Instead of being scared, his arrogant smile only grew wider.
He casually rested the flat side of the legendary sword Arondight against his shoulder, openly mocking the army's self-control.
"My, my, look at all those terrifying faces," Satanael called out, his voice smooth and full of disrespect. "You all look like loyal little dogs choking on your own leashes."
"Tell me, does it burn? Knowing the man who put your precious Queen to sleep is standing right in front of you, and you can't do a single thing about it because she told you to sit?"
"My calculations predicted you wouldn't dare move without her permission, and as always, my data is flawless," he sneered.
A collective roar of pure fury rippled through the Grigori ranks, and their weapons shook, but Azrael's firm command kept them in place.
Satanael laughed softly at their rage, his brown eyes shifting directly up to Azrael. "And look at you, My Queen. Still playing the grand protector to these broken, worthless outcasts."
"I must thank you, really. While you were trapped in your pathetic slumber, I made excellent use of your resources. The fallen angels you care about so deeply? They make absolutely fascinating test subjects."
"Their despair yields such beautiful, quantifiable data when they are broken apart in a lab. Every experiment helped refine my calculations for the future."
He tapped his chin mockingly, his eyes gleaming with arrogance. "Though, I suppose I should apologize for the state I left you in centuries ago."
"Tell me, was your rest peaceful? Or did the lingering ache of my betrayal completely ruin your system? Either way, your reaction is just more predictable data for my research."
"You speak of data, Satanael," Azrael said, her voice smooth and chillingly calm. "But a real researcher knows when a variable is completely out of their control."
Satanael raised an eyebrow, his calm look staying exactly the same. "Oh? And what variable would that be, My Queen? Everything here is within my calculations."
Azrael smiled, but it was a cold, sharp expression that sent an instinctual shiver down the spines of the young squad watching from behind.
"You speak of calculations, yet here you are, standing on a messy battlefield," Azrael said, her voice dripping with soft, mocking amusement. "Let us look at your data logically, Satanael. You are the hidden founder of the Khaos Brigade. You created an entire global alliance just so you could hide in a dark room and do your little experiments in peace."
She paused, tilting her head slightly, her narrow eyes scanning his lanky frame.
"But look at you now. Your grand plan failed so badly that you were forced to leave your safe little lab, pick up a sword, and play the role of a common foot soldier. If your calculations were truly so perfect, you wouldn't be standing in the dirt right now, breathing the same air as the 'test subjects' you look down on."
Satanael's brow twitched, his relaxed smile tightening by a fraction.
"A minor calculation error in the vanguard's defensive capabilities," Satanael replied, his voice still flat, though slightly sharper. "It is easily corrected."
"Is it?" Azrael chuckled, a sound completely devoid of warmth. "And that brings me to your actual research. You have spent hundreds of years hiding away, stealing secrets from Grigori, mining human resources, and dissecting whatever you could get your hands on. Centuries of work, Satanael. Yet, what do you actually have to show for it?"
She gestured dismissively toward him.
"Nothing. You haven't created anything new. You haven't advanced the world's knowledge by a single step. All you do is copy, steal, and tweak what others have already built. You are not a pioneer, Satanael. You are just a second-rate thief calling himself a scientist. A fake researcher who hoards data because you lack the actual talent to create anything original."
The words sliced right through his intellectual pride. For a man who viewed himself as a supreme, logical mastermind far above the emotional masses, being stripped down to a failing, unoriginal fraud was a psychological spike. The arrogant smirk completely vanished from his face, replaced by a cold, dangerous glare.
"A fake?" Satanael murmured, his voice dropping its flat tone entirely, replaced by a low, vibrating hiss. "You think I am merely copying? You think my research has yielded nothing original?"
He planted the tip of Arondight into the cracked earth, leaning his weight onto the hilt as he glared up at the Queen, his composure completely fracturing.
"God's system is flawed, limited, and bound by arbitrary rules," Satanael spat, his fingers gripping the dark sword so tightly his knuckles turned white. "He created the Sacred Gears as toys, balancing them to keep humanity weak but manageable. But I see the true framework beneath it all. My life's work isn't just about understanding His system—it is about surpassing it."
He gestured with a sharp, rigid hand toward the frozen field, toward Tobio and Lavinia, before locking his eyes back onto Azrael.
"I am constructing the ultimate weapon," Satanael declared, a fanatic gleam finally breaking through his dull exterior. "The strongest Longinus. A supreme artifact completely independent of the regular system, built from the aggregated data of the highest-tier souls, dragons, and fallen grace. It will be an absolute tool of destruction far stronger than anything God could have ever dreamed of creating!"
Azrael didn't flinch. Instead, the mocking amusement in her eyes only deepened, turning into a look of absolute pity.
"The strongest Longinus? A weapon that surpasses God?" Azrael shook her head, letting out a soft, mocking sigh. "You truly are a delusional child, Satanael. You talk about rewriting the laws of creation, but how are you planning to do it? By collecting data from tools He built?"
She took another slow, deliberate step down from the high sky, her massive wings casting a dark shadow over him.
"You want to create the ultimate weapon, yet you are completely dependent on the materials of the Creator you claim to look down on. You haven't made anything from scratch. If God's system is a house, you are just a termite chewing on the drywall, claiming you are rebuilding the architecture. A true creator doesn't need to steal someone else's blueprints to prove their genius."
Satanael's jaw tightened so hard the bone practically protruded through his thin cheeks. The dark aura around Arondight began to spike violently, reacting to the raw, suffocating humiliation bleeding from its master. He had spent centuries thinking he was a god among men, a visionary destined to surpass the heavens, only to be stripped bare and labeled a pathetic, unoriginal fraud in front of the very faction he had betrayed.
"I am no termite..." Satanael hissed, his voice trembling with a terrifying mix of wounded pride and explosive rage. "My calculations are flawless! My Longinus will—"
"Your Longinus is nothing but a fantasy to hide your own mediocrity; at the very least, you haven't even made a decent prototype even after all these years." Azrael cut him off smoothly, her voice dropping all amusement, leaving only a bone-chilling coldness. "And your time for talking is up."
******
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