Zeph had never been the type to regret a decision he made himself. In the cutthroat hierarchy of the Underworld, he had lived by one simple, unshakeable belief, only power was an objective truth. Loyalty was a currency that devalued with every betrayal, and ideals were just pretty lies told by those too weak to take what they wanted. He had always been on his own side, and no one else's. To him, the concepts of "Good" and "Evil" were merely flavors of the same nectar, dominance.
Sure, he had been part of the Khaos Brigade, but that hadn't been an act of fanatical devotion. It was a calculated choice based on the assessment that Ophis or Rizevim offered a faster track to power than the stagnant bureaucracy of the Four Satans.
He had also been part of the Old Satan Faction during the Great Civil War, but he didn't harbor a burning hatred for the current Underworld just because they had lost. Truthfully, he didn't care who sat on the throne of Lucifer. Sirzechs, Ajuka, Falbium, names were irrelevant as long as the world kept turning and he kept breathing. To a devil, a crown was just a target.
Zeph was an old devil. He wasn't ancient, but he had seen enough centuries to remember the smell of the world before the red-haired "calamity" Sirzechs had born and ascended.
When the Civil War had broken out, Zeph had fought for the Old Satans simply because his family was there. It wasn't about the future of their race, it was about blood and the preservation of his own lineage.
But as life goes, every choice has its consequences, often written in the blood of those who chose poorly. His side lost, and they were left hiding in the cracks like rats. He joined the Khaos Brigade because they promised the one thing he craved, a way out of the suffocating stagnation that had long since gripped him for centuries.
And everything had worked out, it had all been going fine until it was not.
When the order came to attack the peace meeting between the Three Factions, Zeph had felt a cold weight in his gut. He wasn't a fool, he knew that challenging the monsters who led those factions, beings like Sirzechs Lucifer or the Governor General Azazel, was a suicide mission.
But in the Khaos Brigade, you didn't say "no" to the higher-ups unless you were prepared to die on the spot. He lacked the power to refuse, and thus, he marched toward his own obsolescence.
So he went. And they lost. Badly.
They were wiped out by a single fucking human.
In that moment of defeat, Zeph had expected his story to end. He felt the first real sting of regret, not for his morals, but for his poor judgment in believing the Brigade could actually make him strong. He realized then that he hadn't been climbing a mountain, he had been standing on a sandcastle while the tide came in.
Then, the true irony began. He survived, only to find himself enslaved by the very human who had crushed them. The strongest species in the Underworld is now bound by the will of the "weakest" race in the world.
He should have been raging like the others. Carlos, another devil in their group, had gone on a furious, spit-flecked rant, insulting their new master.
Zeph hadn't joined the shouting. He saw what Carlos and the others didn't seem to see, power. He saw the absolute, terrifying scale of Kenji's power.
This human, this thing, had removed them from the board as if they were nothing more than dust on a sleeve.
This was something else wearing a human skin, and that was proven true when it had done something he had never heard of any other being doing, going to other worlds, other Earths, other realities. This really shook them all.
When Kenji told them they were on another Earth, a world in the midst of a vampire apocalypse, Zeph's jaw had dropped along with the rest. But the proof was undeniable, and then, the master offered the final, irresistible hook, he could make them stronger. And he proved that too, not long after.
Kenji had ordered them to hunt. He had told them to slaughter the vampires running rampant, and Zeph felt the change immediately. With every kill, power flooded into his soul through the tether of the master.
It was a growth spurt he hadn't experienced in centuries. He had been stuck in the mid-tier of the Middle-Class for as long as he could remember. In less than a week under Kenji's "system," he had shattered his limits and ascended to the low-tier of High-Class.
Centuries of stagnation, erased in days. It was intoxicating. It was addictive.
Carlos hadn't shared that glory, sadly. When he had insulted the master's wife, Kenji hadn't killed him. Not at first. He had simply looked at Carlos with those empty, glowing eyes.
He stripped Carlos of the ability to gain power. While the rest of them grew, Carlos remained weak, desperate, and terrified as he was forced to continue fighting like that.
A few days later, a pack of vampires had cornered him. Kenji hadn't even looked back as the hungry undead tore the screaming devil apart as he begged for mercy and a second chance.
Since then, Zeph's loyalty was absolute. Not because of the enslavement, but because Kenji was clearly the only true path to the power Zeph had always craved.
Now, Zeph hovered above a ruined street, his bat-wings keeping him aloft in the stagnant air. Below, the battle was a chaotic mess of fire, ice, and blood. His master's order was etched into his mind.
'Wait for my signal. Do not miss.'
And there it was, a meteor coming down.
The sky screamed as Kenji descended, a blur of violet energy that slammed directly into the vampire woman clad in golden Amazonian armor. The impact pulverized the street, sending a shockwave that shattered the remaining windows for three blocks. Dust and asphalt erupted into a mushroom cloud of debris, momentarily blinding everyone on the field.
That was Zeph's cue.
He didn't focus on the heavy hitters. His master had been very specific,
'Target the shifter.' Everything else is secondary to the elimination of the elastic one
Zeph raised his arms, summoning eight overlapping magic circles that glowed with a frost-bitten, crystalline blue light. He didn't miss. He fired his specialized freezing magic at the snake-like, elastic creature that had been creeping toward the human witch survivor. Plastic Man, if he remembered correctly, was what his master had called him.
He didn't know why his master considered a "stretchy man" more dangerous than the other beings here, but he wasn't about to question the wisdom of a man who could no doubt kill even gods.
The magic hit home, and in an instant, the elastic abomination was encased in a block of absolute-zero ice, its shifting form frozen in a grotesque, mid-motion stretch.
Zeph immediately blasted upward, gaining altitude as instructed he should after fulfilling his goal. He dodged a stray blast of heat from a vampire with a flaming head, Firestorm, and felt the heat singe his wings.
"By Satan, this world is insane," Zeph muttered, clearing the immediate airspace and watching the carnage below with wide eyes.
Below, Kenji moved with terrifying speed. Seeing Zeph's success, he didn't wait. He didn't even look at the other vampires yet. He extended a hand toward the frozen Plastic Man and manipulated the local gravity with the casual flick of a wrist.
"Black Hole," he yelled out.
Space warped violently. A miniature black hole flared into existence within the center of the ice block. Plastic Man, even with his legendary durability and ability to survive being torn to shreds, would find no refuge here.
He was crushed at the molecular level. Every cell, every atom of the shifter was dragged into the dark void, erased from existence before the ice could even melt.
Kenji knew that if Plastic Man was left alive, he was the most likely to survive any physical damage. Now, there was nothing left to regenerate. No puddle, no scrap, no piece.
Only then did the Amazonian warrior force herself up from the crater, fling Kenji off her from where he was standing on her.
Diana snarled, not even trying to speak with him, her eyes glowing with a feral, undead hunger and anger as she launched herself at Kenji with a speed that blurred the air.
Kenji raised his fist, ready to fight, but just as she got close, he jumped back and summoned the full force of gravity and drove her into the earth.
what? Did anyone think he was stupid enough to fight diana hand to hand. He scoffed at the thought.
The gravity slammed her back into the crater so hard that her bones audibly cracked like dry kindling. Before she could recover, the Yamato appeared in Kenji's hand, the blade humming with spatial energy.
Dimension Slice
Reality screamed as the blade moved. Slashes of pure spatial energy tore through the air, moving so fast they left shimmering violet afterimages. In a fraction of a second, the fallen princess's left leg and left arm were severed cleanly.
She let out a harrowing, inhuman shriek that chilled the blood of everyone listening.
Kenji didn't give her a second to regenerate. He descended, the Yamato held in a reverse grip, and drove the blade straight through her skull and into the earth.
The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the crackle of distant fires.
With the two heaviest hitters gone, the remaining vampires, Firestorm and Heat Wave, realized the tide had turned from a feast to a slaughterhouse. Firestorm ignited his flames, attempting to bolt for the stratosphere.
He forgot about Kenji's "helper."
A bolt of lightning struck Firestorm mid-flight. The vampire tumbled toward the earth. Before he could hit the ground, Kenji was there. One clean motion. One head removed.
Heat Wave fared no better. He was busy trying to incinerate the survivors, trying to clear a path to make a run for it, only for Killer Frost to turn him into a popsicle.
Kenji stood amidst the smoldering ruins, his porcelain mask splattered with blood. He dusted his hands casually, the Yamato vanishing back into his inventory as if it had never been.
"Well," he said, his voice calm. "That's that."
Zeph lowered himself to the ground and knelt in the rubble. In all his centuries, he had followed others in search for power and nothing more. For the first time, he followed out of genuine awe.
This was him, this was the being that was worth serving.
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