Chapter 599: Mephisto’s Gambit

Velvet POV

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The sky turned black.

Velvet’s wings snapped wide, the wind shrieking against her armour as she twisted midair, eyes following the monstrous spear of shadow that tore through the barrier like parchment. For one heartbeat, she thought it would impale her directly.

Instead, it punched into the inner wall.

The explosion drowned her world in darkness and the screams of her allies.

Her ears rang, the shockwave throwing her across the sky, and the heat gouged her back. Chunks of stone and shards of steel screamed past her as the impact ripped the wall apart, swallowing dozens of demon knights in fire and smoke.

“Velvet!” someone screamed below. Yumiko? Vinea? She couldn’t tell. Her vision blurred, the air trembling with divine pressure.

She tried to respond, but only hot air came from her cracked lips.

Damn it!

She beat her wings furiously, forcing herself upright, a deep gash oozing from her abdomen as she looked at the cityscape. “W-What!?” The world below had changed in the blink of an eye.

The proud lines of their defence walls, barricades, and archers on the parapets vanished. Collapsed into a blackened ruin. Where the spear had struck, only a smoking crater several metres deep remained, and the streets became unbridled chaos.

Adventurers and demon knights staggered from the rubble, some screaming, others already dead. Fires spread unchecked. The faint hum of the barrier was gone.

The fleet’s cannons roared again.

Velvet’s heart hammered as she dove, wings straining. She landed atop the fractured wall, boots skidding across bloodstained loose rubble. Her eyes swept the chaos, desperate to find survivors.

“Renya! Report!”

“RENYA!”

Her voice cracked like a whip, and the surviving captain pushed herself upright from the wreckage, blood running down her brow. Half her squad was gone, vaporised by the divine blast. The rest struggled to regroup, coughing through the smoke.

“Ugh… My Lady, the wall is damaged, our barrier and wards have collapsed and the city is exposed.” Her voice was hoarse, breaking as blood dripped from her nose. “We’ve lost… too many.”

Velvet’s stomach twisted, but she bit it down. Now wasn’t the time.

The sudden rising pressure from the port told her that Asmodeus was alive… but his anger and emotions exploded.

Yumiko landed beside her in a blur of white tails and torn kimono, her lips pulled back in a snarl. “The bastards are pouring fire into us, and if we don’t close that breach now, the fleet will turn the whole port to ash!”

Her eyes darted to Velvet’s face, sharp and accusing. “Where’s Asmodeus!?”

Velvet’s mouth went dry.

She couldn’t remember well, but the dry scream lingered in her mind, more vivid than the spear exploding.

His rage, his sorrow… Asmodeus was angrier than she had ever seen him before.

A heavy thud drew her gaze.

Vinea dropped from above, her black armour torn, wings streaked with soot. Despite her dishevelled appearance, her eyes remained sharp. “What are you gathering here for, we need to prepare to conter attack… to fight them off!”

“Second wall’s half finished!” Yumiko snapped.

“Then we fight in the streets if we must!” Velvet roared, surprising even herself with the ferocity of her tone.

The three women locked eyes — fury, fear, and determination burning all at once. Behind them, the fires spread higher, and another wave of cannon fire shook the docks.

Velvet drew a blade embedded in the wall, its edge gleaming purple in the firelight. “Asmodeus entrusted us with this city, then no one passes.”

She spread her wings, lifting herself above the rabble, covered in wounds, scales cracked and missing in places. “Knights of Asmodeus – TO ME!”

From the broken walls, crushed buildings and burning streets, the surviving demon knights raised their weapons and took flight.

Shaken, wounded, but still alive.

With the fleet looming, prepared to board the port, the women could do nothing but fight.

Yumiko took another path.

She rushed to the area close to where Asmodeus fought the Grand Duke.

***

Yumiko POV

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The sea burned with unholy fire.

“What kind of Holy Knights could do this to a city with their fellow humans?”

Yumiko’s tails whipped behind her as she cut through the smoke-choked sky, her claws slicing another holy knight in half before he could slaughter another group of knights. Her kimono was scorched, her hair plastered to her cheek with blood and sweat, but her eyes were sharp, cruel, and gleaming with fire.

“Lady Yumiko!”

The knights called her name, with worried looks as Yumiko bled for them.

Below, the crater from the shadow spear was a wound in the city. Streets torn apart, flames devouring the homes Asmodeus swore to protect. And beyond the smoke, the black sails of the Imperial fleet pushed ever closer, their cannons vomiting fire.

Her chest ached. She wanted to scream. But instead, she laughed. A shrill, wild sound as she dove into another pack of shadows.

“Do you bastards think you can kill my husband’s city?” Her tails lashed like whips, skewering shadow-soldiers and tearing them apart with bursts of foxfire. Their black ichor evaporated in the heat.

“Keep pushing them back!” she roared to the winged knights that struggled to follow her pace. “If they break the skies, the streets below are finished!”

Although Velvet took most of the aerial troops after the explosions, Yumiko tried to cover both to avoid as many deaths as possible.

The knights rushed at her command, blades flashing, wings beating through ash and smoke. But for every shadow they struck down, more rose from the ground, fed by the Duke’s divine power.

“What’s that…” Her eyes flicked up and there he was…

Two figures clashing on the shattered port, one wrapped in divine shadow and the other cloaked in a crimson blood-aura that seemed like fire.

Asmodeus. Even from here, she felt it. His presence throbbed in her veins, thick and violent, a call that made her tail bristle and her thighs clench. The sheer force of it set the air vibrating, thunderclaps rumbling with each swing of his axe.

“Ryuji…” she whispered, her lips curling in a wicked grin. “Don’t you dare lose.”

Even though she carried a divine shard, that wouldn’t help against that man, and instead served better to keep her and the others safe.

The Duke’s shadows formed multiple spears once again, and another wave of spears was prepared to shoot at the centre of the city—the place where the women and children hid for safety.

Yumiko shrieked, twisting through the sky, tails snapping one after another. Flame barriers burst into life midair, colliding with the divine projectiles. Each impact rattled her bones, stealing the breath from her lungs, but she forced herself onward, deflecting until her vision blurred.

The last spear slipped through.

Yumiko’s wings snapped, her body rolling into its path. With a scream, she met it head-on, claws raking across the black divine steel. The force hurled her backwards, her body skidding across a rooftop. Tiles shattered beneath her as her ribs screamed in agony.

She forced herself to her feet. Blood dripped from her mouth, but her tails still burned.

“Ha… is that all?” she spat, grinning through the blood. “You’ll need to do better to take me down.”

Another shockwave ripped through the sky, stronger than the last. Yumiko staggered, clutching her chest as her body felt Asmodeus’s power rising higher, burning hotter. His aura spread through the battlefield like a safety blanket, and a flood of bloodlust that drove the shadows back to the port.

The knights around her stopped, their faces lit with awe and fear.

Velvet’s voice echoed up from the streets. “That’s him… he’s pushing back!”

“We can’t stand around while he’s still fighting! Let’s crush them all.” Yumiko’s smile sharpened into a predator’s snarl. She spread her tails, foxfire roaring across the skyline like a second sun.

“Then we’ll hold until he crushes that bastard. Burn every last one of them!”

The knights roared, their morale surging.

And above them, two titans clashed — their power shaking the very bones of the city.

****

Mephisto’s POV

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“Hahahaha! Today must be my lucky day.”

While the city drowned in fire and steel, Mephisto walked unseen.

His body masked in the shadows of his creation, he managed to use the strong Grand Duk to avoid detection and slip into the city.

Not through courage, but through cunning.

Mephisto’s footsteps left no echo, his presence no scent. The clash of titans above Asmodeus and the Grand Duke was the perfect veil. Every shadow stretched long in the firelight, and in those shadows he hid.

He passed corpses, knights screaming as they burned, women clutching children in doorways. None saw him. None mattered. His eyes, twin embers of greed, locked onto the two men fighting as he sat atop a broken wall.

That power…. That core! It will be mine.

The Duke was bleeding it away in his struggle. And when the clash ended, when one or both lay broken, Mephisto would be there. Hands ready. Soul hungering.

He licked his lips as a fresh spear of shadow split the night sky.

“Burn yourselves out, you fools. And when you fall…” His voice was a whisper swallowed by the roar of war.

“…I will rise again.”