The next three possession cases, which took place over the following two days, only required one more impromptu therapy session. Which was a 50% ratio, but still! At least it wasn't a 100% one. Then again, I had said that the second one might be the only one that wasn't an actual proper possession. Which the young lady hadn't been, just deeply disturbed, and in need of not only a reality check, but also a shoulder to cry on. But Steliana understood that; she had deeply experienced the suffering of horribly losing her own parents, so that had been the case she was annoyed by the least. Even if she didn't remember her parents' names, she could still empathize and understand.
"Why isn't it working?!" Aah, right. This fifth and final case on the other hand? Was proving slightly problematic. Loosely holding up the cross at the possessed teenager, Steliana looked back and sent her best reassuring look to the panicked father.
"Don't worry, sometimes more unique methods are needed." Amusingly, in the two cases where she had to do a 'proper' exorcism, just cliche methods had in fact worked. The cross, blessing water, bible verses in Latin, the whole thing. Then again, I did lace my words and props with light magic. It was a bit like being a charlatan, honestly, even if she was actually helping these people.
But this case? It just wasn't working. The possessed teenager, tied down to the bed by a mixture of rope, manacles, and bike chains? Well, he decided now was the proper time for his head to rotate three-hundred sixty degrees, his muscles, tendons, and bones making a horrendous snapping sound throughout the quick five-second process. Steliana blinked. The parents screamed. Noah let out a heavy breath. Well. I guess that explains why the props aren't working anymore. She shoved the cross onto the teenager's forehead, if only to give some peace of mind to the parents before she inevitably had to get a bit serious and stop playing around with toys.
The teenager screamed for a brief moment, which made Steliana give him a blank stare. She could feel the magic burning him, but not doing any damage. A horrifying dual-layered laugh left him. "Just kidding~ HAHAHAHAHAHA!" But this wasn't the fake dual-layering the first spirit had done to impress, to put on a show. No, this was the real deal. She instantly re-evaluated exactly what she was dealing with, and immediately bit back a curse.
The most common answer when dealing with spirits is ones local to the region, the country, and the earth. They were young, sometimes just days or weeks, when they did their first possession. The one that had the standard supernaturals panicking, and the leaders rushing to fix for political reasons? Demonic spirits. The likes of which half of the Satans, and assuredly many unknown first-generation Devils were formed from. But the third option? The real problematic ones?
The spirits with names, with legends. The type that five thousand years ago was whispered about in fear and horror. That didn't just terrorize one house, but the entire countryside. Well, fuck. "You're not Japanese, are you?"
A wide grin split the teenager's face, pearly whites rapidly decaying as from nowhere a foreign and positively ancient magic began to build inside of them. "A smart one, aren't you?" The being tugged at the bindings, not even hissing as the light magic imbued in them flared a bright white. The being didn't care as skin seared, their magic was scorched, and their soul itself was attacked.
Steliana ignored the actions of the being and looked toward the panicking parents. "Before this happened, where did you visit? Somewhere old, it doesn't have to be recently. It could have been and probably was years ago."
"What does that matt—" The father, of course. She ignored him, turning toward the mother who, without prompting, answered in a hurry.
"Egypt! We went to Egypt and visited a tomb five years ago!" Fuck. Seeing the look on her face, the being started laughing. Then, she spotted it, underneath the teenager's clothes. Skin peeling off, but she saw more, her vision beyond any regular humans. There were inscriptions hidden on the underside of the skin, old inscriptions in a language almost forgotten by humanity. The type that only the most powerful of witches would learn, purely for the sake of invoking old power steeped in tradition and untapped power.
"Well." Her voice was dry, devoid of any of the wit and ease she had taken not only the Chapel, but the other cases with. "This just got very problematic." Her tail appeared, and with a single wag of it, a teleportation circle with no sigil inside of it formed underneath Noah and the planets. The being continued to laugh, flesh around its wrists burning black as it continued to struggle, the bindings on it pulling taut and creaking. "I'm afraid I'll have to ask you three to leave." Before they could respond, the circle flashed, and they were gone, leaving just her and it. Leaving her, a mere low-class Youkai/Dhampire hybrid, to face off a thousands of a year old spirit. The odds seem to be in my favor as always
She rolled her neck and stretched out her wrists, a prideful smirk already formed. The bindings snapped on the being snapped, the light magic imbued into them fizzling out as the spirit's magic reached a new peak. "I take it you're not an Egyptian Demon by the fact that I wasn't blasted out of existence just by being near you?" After all, an Egyptian Demon was usually just an evil God worshipped not in temples. Steliana had her pride, but she was no God-class being. Not anymore.
Skin on the poor teenager's flesh started to rot away as well, and the being floated off the bed. The text is Late Egyptian, that's good. If it were Old Egyptian, I'd just be fucked. What wasn't great was the fact that with each bit of flesh that peeled off or decayed, the being's power rose faster than before. "I am not one of the Great Ones… But great enough for you, do you want to play? I oh so enjoy playing." Unlike many spirits, or likely what it had planned before she came here, this one didn't put on an act. She was staring in the face of an unmasked ancient evil.
"Oh great, I had to get the pedophile spirit." Without a thought, Steliana quipped back at it, her hands flexing and forming Youjutsu seals as she did so, completely undisturbed. Let alone ancient evil spirits, she had faced down 'Gods', entire pantheons. She had slain the greatest and darkest evil her world had ever known, faced the scorn and hatred of all of humanity, and suffered the loss of everything. A slightly unsettling old spirit was nothing to her, not anymore.
The being's smile somehow got larger. "Come to me! You'll make a wonderful vessel!" Didn't really deny the pedophile accusation. Then again, basically any ancient anything was a pedophile. It was just a sad reality of changing standards. Such things from long-lived or even immortal species didn't even bother her that much anymore. Besides a natural low-grade disgust and hatred. The being lunged, uncaring about her thoughts, perhaps even capitalizing on her seemingly being distracted, and Steliana? She smirked.
Her hands stopped forming those seals, and she threw a punch. Flesh met flesh as she made impact, and the being flew toward the window, face rippling and skin tearing from the force of her blow. Steliana dived after him, and in a flash of purple, they reappeared in her apartment.
She was the first to recover, jumping over the body lying on her floor and grabbing her sword off the wall. "Where is this?!" For the first time, the beings' smiles dropped, and as Steliana turned back around to face them, she could see their eyes flickering about. "How could someone like you have something like this?! How could such a weakling teleport here?!"
"I don't know who in canon dealt with an Ultimate-class being like you…" Her swords began to shine a black light with a tiny single fleck of white light shining through. "But lucky for me, I chose now to deal with you, and not even a few days later." The being's eyes widened.
"Impossible! YOU'RE DEAD! GOD KILLED YOU!" They stood up in a scramble, launching themselves toward the door in a scramble, their entire possessed body glowing as they began to manually peel off their skin in desperation. Their magic skyrocketed once more, absolutely shattering past the barrier of Middle-class and soaring toward High-class.
"Strangely enough, for entirely different reasons, I've heard that a lot. People tend to think they killed me." Steliana's lips curled into a smile as she slashed down her sword, not caring to get close enough to actually hit the spirit with the blade itself. "Corrupted Erasure." She muttered the name of her technique, yet just the mutterance had the air vibrating, and unabsorbed lust all across her apartment simply… disappeared, conceptually erased from existence for merely existing in front of an inheritor of sin.
Her sword swiped through the air, and an arc of black light left its edge and swiped through the air toward the being.
"NO! THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE!" The black light seeped into the body. The apartment fell silent for a fraction of a second. The body dropped to the ground: no more screams, no hisses of agony, no pain. No explosion. Nothing. Such was the might of the Lucifer clan Trait. Such was the power of the creator of Devils, The One Who Rebelled, and one of the two Archangels to have ever existed.
Steliana put her sword back on the wall and walked up to the body. Dropping to a knee, she sighed. "To think a being as old as you would be so unlucky. You truly did outmatch me, you know? Even with my clan trait and skill, if you had reached High-class again, it would have been a tough battle. If you hadn't panicked, you could have gotten a few blows in. You could have dodged that attack." She would have won, for she always did. But it would have been a tough battle nonetheless.
Looking over the body, a smile, this one different, appeared. It wasn't challenging, a taunt, or a stress response. It wasn't amusement or even satisfaction at killing a vile enemy. Instead, it was a happy smile. How lucky. I did it fast enough. Her smile only grew wider as her fingers pressed into the cold neck and felt a pulse slowly growing in strength.
Indeed, the reason she had teleported the observers away, the reason she had punched the spirit into a newly created door to her apartment, and why she had immediately pulled out the one ability she had never used, never even tested outside of the safety of her own mind?
It was all to save the teenager from being completely consumed. To save him before he died, and his soul was erased. It had worked even better than she had expected, far, far better than she had expected. Impossibly well, in fact. Staring at the unconscious teen, Steliana had a sinking feeling that the Lucifer clan trait was different compared to the other Devil clan traits. After all, it had never been inherited, and it was something 'granted' to a clan by Lucifer and Lilith.
I also have the feeling that this clan trait is going to be how the 'ROB' set up my mission to fix the System being possible. Or at least, how I got the foot in the door.
Nothing else made sense. The Lucifer clan trait had to be intrinsically linked to God and the System somehow, or else her link with the System made no sense in context. With a relieved smile still on her face even through her inner turmoil, she picked up the teenage boy who was far larger than her and stepped out of her apartment door back into his bedroom. Although this situation was far more dangerous than I had ever anticipated, at least it let me learn more about my clan trait. And that she had been underplaying how powerful it was.
After all, in a world run by Gods, where the strongest beings are Dragon Gods. How could the one clan trait that was never inherited, and directly targets them, be weak? How could it not be miraculous and world-shifting when even something as absurd as Time Manipulation and Conceptual Destruction exists?
The fact that even a random Egyptian spirit could recognize it, though? That was not only important information, but it was also quite frightening. It means I can assume that any God would be able to recognize it, let alone older Devils. I should assume that any Angel and Fallen Angel could recognize it as well.
It basically meant she'd never be able to use it, or at least not for many, many years to come. Now, I guess I just… wait? And get rid of my door, of course. Yeesh, this is awkward. Steliana sat down and pulled out her phone.
Saint Nekopire
Hey there! Sorry about teleporting you away, but I didn't want you all to get hurt! Spirit dealt with, and you can tell the worried parents their son is safe! He's going to need a lot of care, and his soul is depleted, but time, meditation, and lots of rest should help that.
Putting her phone away, Steliana looked around again and sighed. Well, this is going to be boring. She probably shouldn't have teleported them to the other side of Kuoh. Then again, she hadn't really expected the spirit not to block her first punch, or too panic so much. Poor bastard, probably was groggy, and instincts dulled. After all, the spirit had been possessing a regular old teenage boy with nothing special about them.
She paused at the thought, staring intensely. Wait. How did a regular teenage house what should be an Ultimate-class spirit for years? She stood up and poked his forehead, Youki surging into him. She blinked in shock. Holy shit, Kuoh. You really don't fuck around.
She had just met her first Sacred Gear user. Neat. Sitting back down with her curiosity abated, she looked at the ceiling once more in boredom. As for figuring out what Sacred Gear? Meh. Caring about the potential power they held? Whatever. Threatened by their existence? Hah! Just some toys for humanity to protect itself better. There's nothing to covet.
Yes, even the Longinus, weapons able to kill gods, Steliana was completley and utterly uninterested. Weapons that before canon DxD had never even really matched the power of Gods, let alone killed them… She laughed. Why, I think a toothpick I once picked up should count as a Longinus, right? What was a god-killing weapon to a butcher of Gods?
An arrogant, yet utterly satisfied smile once more appeared on her face, and she closed her eyes, head still tilted upward toward the ceiling.