Chapter 78: Pride (IV)
At long last, it was time.
Four of the Satan-Class rankers had been defeated by Alduin's hand. All that remained was Bedeze Abaddon, the Underworld's #4, who had the most time amongst his 'colleagues' to observe the Buné: his various fighting styles, his techniques, the hidden trump card that was Azazel's Artificial Sacred Gear.
He had seen it all from start to finish.
And it was terrifying.
Alduin Buné was terrifying.
He was a mere Ultimate-Class Devil. An upstart whose elapsed lifespan hadn't even crossed two decades, hardly even qualifying him as a toddler in the eyes of some devils.
But one after the other, he won. He bested Tephos Beur, the '#10' with hidden strength that could rival Bedeze himself, perhaps even best him under the right conditions. Then went on to defeat Dilra Marbas, Fimmil Vassago, and Gragg Forneus.
No breaks. No energy-recovering assistance from the Satans observing the battles. No time to plan and reorganize between fights.
Freak. Monster. Impossibility. Anomaly. The Abaddon couldn't find the right term to describe Alduin, no matter how hard he racked his brain.
He was about to face some unfathomable thing spawned by Sebastian Buné and Martha Sallos' genetics. The man the Underworld's #1 respected as his teacher, and the woman was closest to breaking the supposedly impenetrable ceiling between Satan-Class and Super-Class. Not through the natural blood-based right Ajuka and Sirzechs had obtained it through, but an earned one.
Bedeze was at a loss. A true, helpless loss.
Alduin wasn't supposed to make it this far, at some point during his self-inflicted gauntlet, his overzealousness was supposed to get the better of him.
But it hadn't.
Bedeze wasn't supposed to fight him at all.
But he had to.
He didn't want to let go of the King Piece, no matter what it took. The gift Zekram bestowed upon him transformed him from an Ultimate-Class Devil hopelessly piling on years without even experiencing a glimpse of the realm that soared above him, to a Satan-Class powerhouse occupying one of the most prestigious positions amongst his race.
If they lost the piece, he'd have to return to being nothing again, just like Roygun. His name wouldn't carry the weight it once did, in fact, it might as well not carry any weight at all.
The influence, the prestige, the access, the connections.
All of it would go.
He couldn't let that happen.
He wouldn't let it happen.
He refused to return to being a loser again.
Bedeze's expression morphed into a slow, tightening vice. His forehead wrinkled, and his eyes pointed in reluctant fury as he clenched his fists, his nails digging into his palm until blood was drawn.
"Isn't that a sight?" A dim, austere chuckle escaped Alduin's breath. "The 'strongest' among the five wearing the face of a cornered beast before the battle's even begun."
Out of all the rankers Alduin had faced, Bedeze's ego was without question the largest, and also the most fragile. Artificial arrogance fueled by artificial accomplishments and power.
"You're weakened," Bedeze concluded despite his eyes being utterly incapable of piercing through Alduin's veil of Ki. "You've already fought four Satan-Class Devils. You did well to conserve your stamina against Dilra and Gragg, but the other two, especially Tephos, cost you a huge chunk of your stamina."
"Yeah?" Alduin spread his arms out wide. "Do you see me sweating?"
"That's a bluff." The Abaddon's response was immediate, perhaps even desperate. Like he needed to believe that was the truth.
And in all fairness, who could blame him? If Alduin's reserves weren't depleted after going through the wringer like that, what hope was there for him?
"A bluff, he says." The Buné scoffed, the verdant shine of his irises packed to the brim with nothing but pure mocking. "How's this for a bluff?"
Startled, Bedeze took a measured step backwards.
He felt a shift in the atmosphere, its pressure bearing down on him not with air, but with temperature. Skin-drying, lip-cracking, sweltering temperature.
A faint, quickly brightening leafy glow started to emanate from Alduin's chest, a patterned symbol beginning from the base of his neck that extended towards his abdomen. A symbol he had only called on once before when he sparred with Halibel a short time after completing his awakening ceremony.
The apex of a Buné's strength, the culmination of every drop of draconic blood expressed through catastrophic destruction, was about to rear its menacing head on the battlefield.
The power of Dragonification.
Not its partial form.
The real thing.
Thick veins bulged out of Alduin's skin, some expected an expected bright-green shade, and others a newfound dark-purple. The result of Tiamat's blood coursing through his system, called to awaken by Alduin's summoning of his ultimate transformation.
Alduin exhaled slowly, smoke rolling out of the sides of his mouth.
"Good luck, Bedeze Abaddon."
A sharp, grotesque crack echoed throughout the battlefield. Alduin's bones shifted violently as pitch-black scales pushed through his skin, distinct hints of purple visible throughout their edges. The spread of the scales began from his chest, permeating outwards across his body like wildfire.
His nails elongated, sharpening into claws capable of shredding through titanium like paper mache, and his back hunched over, his spine extending.
The draconic devil's muscles swelled and tightened unnaturally, his frame growing larger, heavier, denser. The silhouette he cast over the colosseum blurred in the increasing heat waves his figure exuded.
Bedeze felt his heart thrum through his chest, an instinctual feeling of dread welling up within him.
Alduin's shoulders tore apart, his wings protruding in the form of massive, jagged draconic membranes that emitted a faint, searing glow as if they were burning coals.
WHOOSH!
They flexed once, instantaneously detonating the air with an outward blast of pressure and sweeping the Abaddon's blonde streaks backwards, forcing him to shift his weight forward to remain grounded.
Alduin's face was the last to shift. His jaw extended, teeth sharpening into draconic fangs. His sclera, once white, morphed into a fearsome black complemented by vertical slit bright green pupils. Both pairs of his curved horns grow exponentially, sitting atop his scalp like a regal crown.
50 meters.
That was the height of Alduin's complete form, five times greater than when he last demonstrated its luster. A size that forced Ajuka to snap his fingers and expand the colosseum's width to make room for the battle.
"Tephos' ultimate move was quite something." Alduin's voice echoed like an emperor's decree. "I hope yours can compare."
Despite all logic, Bedeze couldn't help but feel like he was the challenger here.
He had no words to describe the Buné's pressure. Alduin's every breath carried blistering heat. His every micromovement left behind trails of neon-green fire. The ground beneath his feet melted from his sheer internal temperature. The air itself burned from his very presence. Each one of Bedeze's inhalations was accompanied by a tinge of burning pain in his lungs.
This was what he needed to defeat to retain his King Piece. A creature of legend that stood at the apex of the supernatural world.
Alduin took a step, the ground quivering under his weight.
Then another.
And another.
"What's wrong? You're freezing."
Alduin swung, his claw moving at a speed that was completely unreasonable for a limb of that size.
BOOM!
The ground split apart from where Bedeze stood, molten debris flinging into the air.
But Bedeze himself was nowhere to be seen. Somehow, he had vanished without a trace.
"You apply your Clan Trait well." The draconic devil's words of praise were genuine, his reptilian eyes snapping onto the ranker standing a few meters away with him, his breath quickened as his forehead was dripping with beads of nervous, dreadful sweat.
The Abaddon had performed a move he liked to call "Abyss Step". A technique which made use of his family's Hole power to create a spatial void that he could step through to perform instantaneous short-range teleportation. Even the most adept sensors would struggle to sense him as he moved through 'nothingness'.
However, he had to demonstrate extreme caution when he used the movement technique. One wrong step, and Bedeze could damn himself to be eternally lost in the nothingness, hence why he limited himself to short-range teleportation to mitigate the chance of overextending himself.
Less space covered meant a smaller margin for error.
Bedeze clenched his teeth, he couldn't let himself be forced onto the defensive, not against a force of nature of this caliber.
He didn't have a precise plan in mind, but he knew he needed to do something, anything, to seize the initiative.
He performed another Abyss Step, blipping through space and reappearing at Alduin's rear. His hand raised in preparation to perform one of his most potent attack techni—
THWACK!
Like a whip, Alduin's scale-covered tail cracked against Bedeze's ribcage, a sonic boom ringing out from the point of impact.
"Word of advice. Don't look at the position you plan to teleport to, it's a dead giveaway."
Words that sounded like they belonged to a teacher's gentle scolding seeped through the joints of Bedeze's mind like a disease, the impression of how powerless he was before the anomalous disaster that was Alduin Buné intensifying. His glass-like ego is quickly losing its durability.
"Cough! Cough!" He wheezed, slowly unsticking himself from a Bedeze-shaped hole in the coliseum wall. His back keeled over as he scurried to regather the wind that had been knocked out of his lungs.
"Do you honestly expect me to sit here and let you catch your breath?"
Alduin released his maw, unleashing a tsunami of neon-green Draconic Breath onto the Abaddon. The spread of the flames was too wide for him to teleport to safety without risking technique failure.
Bedeze clicked his tongue, spreading both palms outward and creating a Null Field: a barrier that vacuumed the incoming blaze on contact. A technique that looked extremely effective against Alduin from an outside perspective, but was tremendously difficult for him to maintain.
Alduin's flames were just too damn formidable, in both quality and quantity. In terms of raw offense, they were easily the strongest thing he had in his arsenal.
And they could be taken a step further.
His virescent inferno took on a bright-gold shine, Fafnir's power of enchantment combining with his conflagration to overwhelm Bedeze's futile attempt to shield himself.
CRACK!
Like a sheet of ice, small tears started to appear on the surface of Null Field. Quickly expanding and threatening to dismantle the technique in its entirety, Alduin's raw power proving too much for it to bear.
This wasn't the strategic, debatably underhanded fighter he had seen battle the four rankers before him.
'SHIT!'
Panic nestled into Bedeze's figure through his pores, his brain quickly realizing he needed to find an alternative way to defend himself lest he wanted to be burned to a Satan-Class crisp.
He altered Null Field with a Spatial Bend, instead of having the barrier directly vacuum the flames, he redirected its flow so it would send them upwards. The dark-purple sky above was contaminated with the glaucous-tinted hue Alduin's fire produced.
"Not bad."
His maw snapped shut, a torrent of piping-hot smoke leaving his mouth as his Draconic Breath was put on cooldown. Overusing the ability would result in his lungs collapsing in on him, unable to hold the heat of his firestorm. An undoubtedly brutal, agonizing way to go, and a rather embarrassing one for a dragon.
Fortunately, Alduin had plenty of other ways to attack besides scorching.
He raised his front legs as high as he could and stomped down into the ground, crushing the earth and kicking up a dozen landfill's worth of soil, dust, and dirt into the air. The suspended sediment culminated in a sandstorm with a single beat of Alduin's colossal draconic membranes.
'What's he planning to do with—!'
Bedeze's pupils sank, all at once, tens of thousands of floating particles around him hardened into stone, molten cracks appearing in their exterior as they brimmed with overwhelming intensity, too much for the internal composition of the rock to bear.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Explosions followed.
Tens of thousands of them.
Simultaneously.
"Just because I'm in this form, doesn't mean I've forgotten how to use basic elemental manipulation."
A mere minute and some change had elapsed since the battle initiation, and Bedeze already looked like he had just emerged from a losing warfront: a shattered ribcage from Alduin's tail whip, searing lungs, and molten holes scattered all over his body as a result of being battered by the stone shrapnel.
"You're a mess, Bedeze Abaddon. Both mentally and physically speaking. You're barely hanging on to your composure, and after a mere three moves, you're leaking blood like a broken faucet."
Alduin wasn't treating this fight like the others: the snarky remarks, the taunts that served no other purpose than to rile up his opponent until they made a mistake. He wasn't using any of it. He was just fighting, plain and simple. Overwhelming the artificial Satan-Class with his paternal bloodline's apex.
"What point is there in clicking onto Zekram's strings? No matter how high he lets you climb, you'll only be able to achieve what he allows you to. Artificial achievements. Artificial power. Artificial confidence. What use is there in amassing such a vast quantity of fool's gold?"
Pity. That's all there was in his voice.
Bedeze Abaddon was pitiful.
"SO WHAT?!" The ranker roared, slamming his fist into the ground and creating a spatial tear. "So what if it's artificial?! Not everyone is blessed like you, son of Sebastian! Not everyone can sit back and coast on their genetics to get what they want! Some of us actually have to work for it!"
Alduin quietened, looking down on Bedeze's mangled figure from his 50-meter-tall perspective.
"Y-You think you did Roygun a favor by removing her piece?! Don't make me laugh!" He arched backwards, his arms flailing wildly as he erupted into a wild fit of laughter. "She was the same as me! She took the piece because there was no other way! All taking that from her did was damn her to mediocrity!"
"Mediciority?" Alduin let out a slow, bestial exhale. "Is mediocrity such a bad thing? Even if it's to maintain your own autonomy and agency?"
Bedeze ground his teeth, his face alight with unchecked fury. "Autonomy?! You naive brat! As long as there's someone stronger than us out there, we devils can never be free! That's how we were created! It's an inescapable part of our genome!"
"Why not?" Alduin raised his head, looking towards the spectating Satan Lucifer. "He's the strongest amongst us, yet not only did he refuse to attach any chains to me, he decided to break the ones that were already keeping me bound."
"Of course, there are other shackles beyond strength alone. Responsibility, for example. But if life were to exist without any shackles whatsoever, then only chaos would remain."
He lifted his claw, preparing to crush what remained of Bedeze.
"Nothing lasts forever, Bedeze Abaddon. That includes the Underworld's most basic rule, and Zekram's desperate cling to influence."
He swung downwards, the wind carrying his limb to provide a drastic boost in momentum.
"I KNOW THAT!"
But the ranker refused to give in, his desperation to hang onto his piece rivaling that of Zekram's to remain a person of importance. He evaded with an Abyss Step, planting both hands on the ground and preparing a different technique to regain the initiative.
Endless Pit.
A blanket of incomprehensible, void-like matter overcame the entirety of the coliseum's floor. A constant downward pull unleashed its full power on both the ranker and Alduin himself.
However, because of the latter's extreme weight increase thanks to his draconic transformation, the burden on him was a thousand times greater than it was on Bedeze.
"It seems you're #4 for a reason."
"YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT I AM!"
Bedeze felt his confidence surge. This was it, he had created an opening in the wall of Alduin's seemingly impenetrable pitch-black scales. A chance to turn things around.
"From the depths where light cannot reach."
He initiated the recital of an incantation.
"Where existence is but a fleeting illusion."
The matter, energy, and light around Alduin started to bend and twist unnaturally.
"I call the endless void. Devour creation, and erase all form."
The bends began to converge, focusing around a single point in space.
"And return this world to its origin."
Alduin had demonstrated the true power of a Buné through his Dragonification.
Now it was Bedeze's turn.
"Abyssal Cataclysm!"
The explosion that followed was silent. Completely silent. Not a peep could be heard.
But everything could be seen. The way space distorted around Alduin and collapsed in on his draconic form, the way his legs lost all strength and caved into the ground, the way the damage pierced through his natural armor, even while he was boosting it with Fafnir's Golden Aura.
In a matter of seconds, the coliseum was no more. Every last bit of the structure was sucked into Bedeze's distortion, as if the space around himself and Alduin were two different worlds. One of tranquil calm, and one of hopeless destruction.
"Did I… get him?" Bedeze staggered forward, his arms hanging loosely at either side as he attempted to see through the enormous cloud of smoke his ultimate move had created.
"You're… more…" A hoarse, fading voice pierced through the visual barrier. "...Stubborn… that I thought you'd be…"
Bedeze's eyes lit up in unparalleled euphoria.
Alduin's Dragonification had deactivated! The Buné had used up everything to just barely withstand the attack without being knocked out in one go, attempting to maintain his transformed state any longer would result in immediate deviation.
"What a shame… if you had devoted this willpower to something more… than being a pawn… You could've truly been something." A bleeding figure, sunken eyes, a voice no stronger than a passing breeze. This was Alduin's true appearance, the true state of his demonic power reserves no longer masked by his Senjutsu.
0%.
A mere 8% remained before his battle with Bedeze began, and his use of Dragonification had used up the entirety of that 8% until nothing was left.
The Buné truly did not have any trump cards left, no last-minute trump cards that he could pull like a rabbit out of a magician's hat.
"Hah… Haha… Hahahaha!" Bedeze burst out in a fit of maddened laughter. "Y-You lost! You lost! Son of Sebastian!"
"Yeah… I lost." He chuckled. "But so what? The other four pieces are gone… Roygun's pieces are gone… the three pieces Lord Beelzebub still had are gone…"
The Abaddon's expression froze, a slow, unsettling realization making its way through his brain.
"No more pieces will be made… no more rankers for Zekram to play with…" Alduin's laughter was staggeringly weaker than Bedeze's, yet it somehow carried more weight than his. "10 positions… 6 were in his favor… now only one is… do you honestly think he'll still be able to keep up the routine with merely one pawn? Don't be ridiculous… Bedeze… you're—"
Thud!
Before Alduin could get out his last word, he fell over. His body gave in to the exhaustion piled up over four consecutive battles against Satan-Class Devils.
However, deep in his heart, Bedeze knew what the next word to come out of his mouth would have been.
'Alone'.
He was alone.
The chessboard was just himself, the pawn, and Zekram, the King. There was no way for the Bael to replenish his puppets since there was no way to obtain the pieces for him to create those puppets in the first place.
After the news reached Zekram's ears of what had just transpired here, would he really still see Bedeze as a worthwhile investment to maintain? Or would he cut him off like a lizard's tail to save what he could?
No, there was a chance he wouldn't even do that. At this point, wouldn't he just give up on the Rating Games altogether? If he continued trying to manipulate it in such a condition, the Four Great Satans would have a field day making a mockery of him.
All color drained from the Abaddon's face.
After this, wouldn't Zekram Bael…
…discard him?
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