Chapter 77: Pride (III)
Before Alduin stood a strikingly tall, pale-skinned man with unusual faint bluish pulses crouching through his flesh. As if the very flow of his demonic power itself had become tangible. His eyes were an imposing, bright electric-blue that exuded thunderous ferocity. Not a shred of doubt was present in them like Alduin's last opponent, only discipline, focus, and determination.
His medium-length, windswept hair contained notes of cerulean, his locks continuing to swish and sway even though not even the slightest breeze could be felt in Ajuka's secluded dimension.
The devil's ensemble consisted of a long black coat with lightning-themed embroidery, a dark-gray shirt with subtle runic patterns, and black gloves that were enchanted with some form of specialized elemental reinforcement.
This was the form of the Underworld's #7. Fimmil Vassago.
"You are an odd one, Alduin Buné." His words were more the product of curiosity than they were arrogance. "Your exterior suggests inexperienced youth, yet your fighting style suggests the complete opposite. It's more refined than some of the rankers I've fought."
"I had good training." He answered plainly.
"I'd expect as much from Sebastian Buné's son." Fimmil rolled his shoulders. The verbal exchange was brief, but the top-ranker believed he had said all he needed to. This wasn't a friendly challenge after all, this was a test to see whether or not he was worthy of the piece that dwelled within him.
CRACK!
With a single step, Fimmil summoned a maelstrom of lightning that cut above the coliseum, polluting the battlefield with the smell of rain and ozone. His eyes narrowed at Alduin as he carefully studied the youngster like he would a proper opponent, uninterested in shaming himself as Dilra had.
His bloodline's Clan Trait, Storm Sovereignty, deserved a much better showing than that. A power that granted Fimmil dominion over demonic lightning, storms, and atmospheric pressure.
'Hm. It seems he's a destructive fighter. I've seen too little from him to risk going hand-to-hand. So it's best to gauge him from a distance for the time being.'
Alduin pressed his palm to the floor, conjuring a few dozen pillars and constructs of flexible wood that popped up all over the battlefield at random. Earth was the natural counter to lightning, and water allowed for conductivity, so the logical choice for this battle was to capitalize on Wood Manipulation as much as possible.
'Time to see how much of my mother's wit I've got in me.'
Fimmil paid the wooden formations no heed, raising his hand and pointing it towards Alduin.
"Heavenbreaker Bolt!"
The sky split apart as a spear-shaped bolt blitzed down from up above, completely eviscerating everything in a forty-meter radius, leaving nothing behind but charred bits of wood.
'Phew, that was a close one.'
Alduin wiped his brow behind one of his wooden pillars. He had used his tried and tested wood-clone-swap technique to escape, an ability that all the rankers were probably fully aware of by now after he used it against Tephos.
It was unlikely any of them had the necessary tools to directly counter his illusions, but they'd definitely be on the lookout for them—and that alone made it drastically less reliable. Granted, it still had plenty of use for helping Alduin make his escapes, he just had to be careful about trying to use it for direct counterattacks.
"I know you're there." Fimmil side-eyed Alduin, able to detect the Buné's presence through the air currents his body produced. Unless he could perform teleportation like Tephos could, he had no way of avoiding the Vassago's detection.
"Heavenbreaker bolt!"
Fimmil used the same strike for a second time.
And Alduin evaded it in the same way for a second time.
Fimmil was fully prepared to follow up with another bolt the instant he located his opponent's presence—only for his atmospheric detection to come up blank.
"Haha! You actually figured out how to counter it that quickly? I haven't even explained my ability yet, you're one terrifying kid, alright!" He breathed an amused chuckle. To counter the detection, Alduin had used Wind Manipulation to create erratic currents around the battlefield as he moved, matching their speed to his movements so Fimmil wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
But that wasn't what impressed the ranker, it was figuring out his atmospheric detection that earned Alduin the man's respect.
'It's actually a lot less impressive than it looks, I can just tell that your demonic power's passively blending into the air around you.'
Positioned at Fimmil's flank, Alduin puffed up his chest until his lungs were filled to the brim and unleashed a torrent of Draconic Breath at the electric ranker. His neon-green flames were ten times stronger than they were before he had consumed Tiamat's blood.
"It's about time you used that! Buné!" Fimmil held his arms up together in a cross guard, generating a Lightning Cloak to shield himself from the incoming inferno.
Unbeknownst to him, Alduin never expected his fire to cause the ranker any damage in the first place. Its main purpose was to kick up an enormous cloud of smoke around Fimmil's position, virtually diminishing his visibility to absolute nothingness.
'All you piece-using rankers have the same problem. Your tendency to overcommit is a product of crossing the ocean between Ultimate-Class and Satan-Class without ever experiencing the journey yourself. You're all self-proclaimed captains who've yet to ever set foot on a boat.'
It was impossible to truly acclimate to a power gained artificially, as a result, it was just as difficult to properly develop the perfect style to fit that artificially gained strength.
Alduin cut through the smoke, lunging at Fimmil with his body kept low to the ground.
"Too slow!" With Lightning Cloak active, there was no way for Alduin to match the ranker's speed without enhancing himself. The latter's fist hammered down into Alduin's spine, the real Alduin, and sent him hurling stomach-first into the ground, presumably knocking the wind out of the Buné's abdomen and leaving him completely open.
But Fimmil could tell something was off, the impact didn't feel nearly as destructive as it should. Instead, it felt… blunt. Lacking even.
Alduin grinned, somehow absorbing the Satan-Class Devil's strike like it was nothing, and clasping his fingers around his ankle and encasing the entirety of Fimmil's body in wood within a fraction of a second. Essentially trapping him in a Wood Coffin.
'You should've prioritized your attack over speed, for an Ultimate-Class Devil, I'm way better at taking blows than you'd think.'
Right before Fimmil's fist connected, Alduin had activated Partial Dragonification on his back, his ultra-tough scales granting him absolute protection from the hit.
Taking full advantage of the window of opportunity he had created, Alduin balanced himself with both hands on the ground, and wrapped his leg in Touki, his foot shooting upwards and hitting Fimmel square in the jaw and hurling him into the sky, leaving him airborne and vulnerable.
'This probably won't take you down, but it should do a good chunk of damage.'
Reflexively, Fimmel opened his wings in preparation to evade, but his instincts couldn't keep up with the follow-up attack Alduin had planned.
In total, there were 27 wooden pillars present on the battlefield.
And in an instant, all 27 extended and slammed straight into the ranker like an onslaught of enraged freight trains. Enormous bursts of sound and wind resounded through the coliseum with each collision.
"I know you've still got something up your sleeve, #7, now would be the time to use—"
"Tempest Domain!"
"Called it," Alduin deadpanned.
A semi-translucent, semi-electric barrier exploded through the dozens of wooden constructs attempting to grind Fimmil into a pulp, its perimeter encompassing the battlefield whole within a fraction of a second.
Like Tephos, Fimmil appeared to possess a domain-type ability as well.
Alduin clicked his tongue, immediately feeling one of the domain's side effects: speed reduction. A product of the affected area's atmospheric pressure increasing for everyone but Fimmil himself.
But Alduin wasn't worried, from the moment Fimmil revealed himself as a lightning user, he already realized speed would be one of, if not the most crucial, deciding factors in the battle. It was a basic principle for all users of the element, his half-fallen student included.
"You truly are a shrewd one, Alduin Buné." This time, the ranker's voice didn't seem particularly amused. His tone now carried a distinct note of genuine bitterness.
Why?
His left leg was completely battered.
The first half of Alduin's pillar barrage had been completely random, the constructs targeting random points of Fimmil's body, and making him believe that his opponent wasn't going for any particular part of him, merely trying to cause as much general damage as possible.
Only for the second half to focus on one singular point of his lower body out of nowhere. Thanks to Fimmil's reflexes being a touch too late, he ended up sustaining at least three direct unguarded blows to his kneecap, instilling his left leg with an overwhelming sense of numbness.
Alduin shrugged. "Can you blame me? I don't have enough energy to go all out against the five of you, you should've expected me to use a sneaky tactic here and there."
Fimmil clicked his tongue, remaining airborne. Unlike Alduin, he couldn't just heal himself on the go, and his natural regeneration was nowhere near quick enough to repair the damage during the battle.
The ranker breathed a deep, resigned exhale. "Fair enough."
If he were in Alduin's position, he'd probably do the same.
Fimmel deactivated his Lightning Domain, its main boon was taking its caster's speed to even greater heights than Lightning Cloak could, but in Fimmel's current state, he'd only be able to attack through the air. Without a foothold, Alduin's ability to predict his movements would grow stronger than they already were.
Much to his dismay, he needed to keep a distance from Alduin. A fighting style he was deeply uncomfortable with and unfamiliar with.
Fimmel let out a preparatory breath, weaving hand signs in the forms of various animals.
"Storm Legion."
Beasts forged from thunder started to form to life around Fimmil: wolves, serpents, birds, each one of them sentient and capable of hunting Alduin down without their creator's commands.
'Good grief, why even bother continuing with an injury like that? In a fight like this, having a bum leg's pretty much an automatic loss.'
Alduin's solution was simple.
Wood Clones. Their element countered Fimmil's, allowing them to effortlessly dispatch each of his minions. It was basic math.
"Can't we just end this here, Mr. #7? You're clearly not suited for fighting at a range. I mean, you could throw a few more bolts at me if you want, if you think that'll accomplish anything." Alduin spread his arms. "Imagine if you achieved this strength on your own instead of using the piece? Wouldn't you rather see what that version of you would be capable of?"
Fimmil simply snickered in return, not a hint of understanding on his face.
"A battle's not over until it's over. If you think I should live without the piece, force me to." He voiced the Underworld's most primitive ideal.
Alduin sighed, rubbing his nape.
"Have it your way then."
SHHK!
The Buné's words didn't come from in front of Fimmil, but from behind him, coupled with the harrowing sensation of a sharp object ramming its way clean through the ranker's abdomen.
Fimmil's pupils dilated, his body trembling with shock as a trail of blood trickled down from his mouth. The burning sensation in his stomach was infecting every crevice of his figure with anguish.
"Sorry, but my words just then were just a distraction to creep up on you with an illusion. It's hard to focus with a bum leg, isn't it?" Alduin withdrew his wooden spear, not a shred of remorse in his eyes as he spoke. "If it's any consolation, it's for your own good that you leave Zekram's service."
Fimmil coughed weakly. "How did you…?"
"How did I sneak up on you without your atmospheric pressure detecting me?" He continued. "It wasn't particularly difficult. I just used Wind Manipulation to create a thin vacuum around my body. That way, the air wouldn't push back against my body, and no drag would be produced. It was the easiest way I could think of to perform frictionless movement."
An extremely simple spell. Yet an effective one against Fimmil's method of detection.
"It was… that easy?"
"Pretty much, but if you found a way to change your passive atmospheric detection to active, that probably wouldn't be the case." Alduin watched as Fimmil's body started to vanish into particles of blue light, transporting him back to Ajuka to get him healed. "All the more reason to start training properly again, don't you think?"
///
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"'I know what I'm doing' MY ASS!" Bedeze kicked the observation room. His face was red as a tomato.
Fimmil was supposed to be one of the component ones! Yet he still got beaten by some flimsy party trick! And to make matters worse, the only unused ability that Alduin had shown that match was his Draconic Breath, the one everyone knew he had from the start as a Buné!
"Worthless! Worthless! Worthless! Sorry excuses for top-rankers!" The Abaddon was effectively throwing a tantrum from the spectator booth, his only company being the #6 anglerfish-headed ranker, Gragg Forneus.
"Bedeze," Gragg addressed him casually.
"WHAT?"
"Don't cha think it's all a little suspicious? For a mere Ultimate-Class Devil not to only have taken out three Satan-Class rankers, but to have done so consecutively, without any breaks?" It was clear what he was suggesting through his half-lidded gaze.
Bedeze's eyes widened with delusional enlightenment. "Y-Yeah! You're right! It's suspicious!" He pointed an accusatory finger at Sirzechs. "Do you honestly expect us to believe he's Ultimate-Class?! I know what's going on! Your moss-headed friend over there's hiding that brat's true strength from us, isn't he?! You damn—"
"Just who do you think you're talking to, Bedeze Abaddon?"Ajuka's low, yet dread-inducing tone cut through the ranker's ramblings like a Damascus knife.
Reality hit Abaddon like a truck. His body was paralyzed in fear simply from receiving a few words of admonishment from the Beelzebub. Ajuka wasn't a peer Bedeze could talk to however he pleased, he was his superior by light years in both rank and power. He was a Satan who could extinguish his life with naught but a single thought.
In what universe did someone like Bedeze have the right to raise his voice at him?
That said, Ajuka's irritation wasn't really the product of Bedeze's baseless accusations, it was the fact that this whole fiasco still hadn't ended that bothered him. All he wanted was to get back to his lab to continue his personal scientific pursuits. Why did he have to stand here and watch a group of sub-par devils get their teeth kicked in by someone not even a fraction of their age?
In short, the Satan had a case of the grumps.
Made aware of his place, Bedeze could only lower his head and grind his teeth together, glaring at Gragg with held-back animosity.
"What are you standing around for? You're next."
///
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"Man, you've got to be the ugliest devil I've ever seen. Honestly, I had no idea a devil was biologically capable of being that ugly until I saw you." Alduin crossed his arms, disbelief written all over his face. "That's fucked up what your genetics did to you. I mean, seriously, did your ancestor piss Lilith off or something? Because I see no other way for your bloodline to be the only one that didn't get the handsome gene."
There was really no other way to describe Gragg, his head was literally just that of a straight-up anglerfish. Slimy scales. White beady eyes. A lantern protruded from his forehead. Everything was there in all its unmistakable hideous glory.
And for whatever reason, he was wearing a pirate's outfit, which Alduin could barely notice thanks to how strikingly repulsive his face was.
"Do you honestly expect me to fall for such low-hanging provocations?" Gragg snickered. "It sounds to me like someone's gettin' desperate."
Alduin wore a wry grin. "Nah, I'm just doing the same thing I did to Fimmil by getting you to talk more so I can sneak up on you with an illusion."
Startled, Gragg snapped around and conjured a water-shield, refusing to let himself fall in the same pathetic manner.
But no one was there.
"Hah! Made ya' look!" Alduin tossed a spear constructed of Golden Aura at the fishman's back, inwardly surprised that his mind games were working so well against the top-rankers, except Tephos, of course. Who would've thought devils that had centuries upon centuries over him could be so gullible?
Granted, they were witnessing straight-up fantasy unfold before their very eyes as Alduin took out Satan-Class after Satan-Class. It'd be odd for them not to be mentally shaken.
"I'm not in the mood for yer' games." Gragg snapped his fingers, causing the water shield to bend and reform at his rear, protecting himself from the gilded projectile.
Alduin tilted his head. "You're awfully stuck up for someone dressed in a kid's Halloween costume."
He raised his hand, causing the earth beneath Gragg's feet to rise and form around him in a circular dome. A completely useless move that even an Ultimate-Class Devil would have no trouble breaking through
Much less a Satan-Class Devil, wielding a water-based Clan Trait: Abyssal Water Control. House Forneus' signature bloodline ability that granted them authority over currents and oceanic pressure.
"You're planning somethin', aren't ya'?" Gragg smashed through the dome with his fist, scrutinizing Alduin with paranoia coursing through his veins. "Whatever it is, it ain't gonna work on me."
"Really? I don't know, man, you fell for that first little stunt of mine pretty easily." Alduin sucked his teeth. "And besides, if you're so confident I'm not going to get the jump on you, why even bring it up at all?"
As he had done with Fimmil, Alduin decided to set up the coliseum. Gargantuan roots thicker than the structure's walls proceeded to burst up out of the ground and wrap themselves around the stadium, all packed to the brim with Alduin's limited reserve of demonic power.
Gragg scoffed. "Yer' just tryna' get in my head, that's all." The fishman pointed his finger at Alduin and used one of his signature techniques, Leviathan Wave, a tidal wave of demonic power that eclipsed the size of an entire building when he was Ultimate-Class.
But now?
It was more than enough to raze an entire district to the ground—with ease.
'Idiot.' Alduin couldn't help but smile inwardly. 'You actually believed I planned to use the roots against you the same way I used the pillars against the last guy.'
The titanic roots scattered around the area all moved to position, their ends stretching out and making contact with the tsunami threatening their creator.
SLURRRRP!
In a matter of seconds, 6,000,000 cubic meters of demonic water were absorbed into Alduin's roots, each of them bulging with a level of demonic power they weren't supposed to be capable of handling without shredding their internal composition to a million tiny pieces. The wood element already required Alduin to imbue them with water after all, it didn't make sense for them to the sheer volume of water Gragg had just thrown out without imploding.
"..."
This time, no smug retort came out of the anglerfish's head. Just deafening, stupefied silence.
"Confused?" Alduin's voice was drained of all previous humor, only plain indifference remaining. "All those roots I conjured up were duds, chock-full of earth, sure, but I didn't have enough demonic power to instill them with much water without draining myself completely. Heh. The ratio is so laughably unbalanced that you'd be able to destroy them with your pinky finger if you so wished."
Proper Wood Manipulation required Alduin to balance both water and earth perfectly, if he leaned too much or too little into one or the other, the entire construct would become useless. Or as he so aptly put it, a 'dud'.
"Or I suppose it'd be more accurate to say you could've destroyed them like that, past tense." He chuckled dryly. "Thanks to you providing your Satan-Class demonic water, they've become far stronger than I could ever make them. As a matter of fact, I think you might've made them a little too strong."
Alduin squeezed his fist, draining about a fifth of the roots' total water content and flooding the coliseum floor in the process.
"Much better." He nodded, content with the earth-to-water ratio.
Gragg remained mute, but he understood. He understood what had just transpired perfectly well.
Each super-sized root clinging to the coliseum's structure had become a Satan-Class weapon. A weapon Gragg had handed Alduin on a silver platter.
He could overpower Alduin's earth and Draconic Breath just fine with his demonic water, but these wooden roots? They could push right through anything the anglerfish threw at them.
"Ridiculous…" Gragg muttered under his breath.
As it would turn out, his opponent was capable of a lot more than just cheap party tricks and mind games. He even knew how to turn his enemy's strength against him. Quite literally a Satan-Class reversal.
"Ridiculous?" Alduin's enhanced hearing picked up on his words just fine. "What's ridiculous is that you somehow think aligning with Zekram means something for you, other than the elimination of your own autonomy."
The main reason Alduin had no doubts about being able to shatter the pride of the five top-rankers was that their obedience to Zekram already proved said pride was fragile from the get-go. Even if the fake Satan-Class Devils themselves hadn't realized that.
"If anything, you five should all be thankful to me." Alduin spread his arms wide. "I'm saving you all from a demise of your own doing. I'm cutting the strings he put on you free of charge. Can you think of any other devil willing to do such a thing for the likes of you?"
The Buné's verdant eyes gleamed in a way that, quite frankly, made Gragg nearly soil himself.
"You're insane…"
"Blame my mother's genetics."
Alduin smacked his palms together, commanding each of the roots to crash down on Gragg's position from all sides like behemothic serpents of myth.
SLAM!
He looked up to the spectator booth containing both Ajuka and Sirzechs, and received an affirmative nod from both of them.
'Phew, if that doesn't shatter his pride in two, then I don't know what will.'
Alduin shifted his attention to the booth that had once contained four other top-rankers, smirking proudly at its remaining occupant.
"Well?"
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