The alarm on Madoka phone rings loudly.

   ‘Mashiro!’ I say to Mashiro immediately.

   ‘Got it.’

   As planned, Mashiro summons Sogdrul and has him teleport us right outside Wilson’s room. Sakuya then escorts Kaoru outside the crypt. Mashiro and Yui are to guard Wilson’s room. Finally, Ichika, Madoka and I are to stop Morcos.

   ‘This way!’ Madoka goes forward while looking at her phone.

   The rest of us follow her to a certain location. There, a man that’s wearing a black hooded robe is rising out of the shadow on the ground. The hood is covering his head, but I could still see his face clearly enough.

   When Madoka said that Morcos sacrificed his eyes to get the power of a Destroyer, I was expecting him to cover his empty eye sockets with a cloth or something. Instead, he has two artificial eyes stuck to those sockets. Based on how they’re moving, I’m guessing that he can see through them as well, which to me kind of defeats the purpose of sacrificing his eyes in the first place.

   Morcos sets his eyes on Madoka.

   ‘Oh, hello there once again. What a small world we live in.’ he says.

   His voice is surprisingly jolly and not the usual cold, raspy voice I was expecting.

   Madoka merely unsheathes her knife and charges forward, her phone already inside her pocket. Ichika has her Masamune, while I have my Gáe Bulg out.

   Morcos goes to battle mode as well. Lots of javelins made of shadow appear on his body, all ready to skewer us faster than blinking.

   Madoka gives Ichika and I a signal and takes out a flash bang and takes out the pin with her teeth. She then tosses it at the floor right in front of Morcos. I manage to cover my eyes with my hand before the flash bang lands and explodes. Ichika and Madoka probably did the same.

   When I open my eyes, Morcos is still opening his eyes, probably because those fake eyes of his are light proof. And speaking of light proof, all those lights emitted from the flash bang are absorbed by a necklace on his neck.

   So that’s how he deals with the weakness of his power. Now we know and can find a way to counter it, hopefully before we and/or Wilson got killed.

   Morcos begins his attack at once, and boy is it ferocious. I have to be extra mindful to not move around too much and remind myself not to block his attacks while holding my spear horizontally. The corridor of the crypt isn’t that big, and my spear might get stuck.

   The three of us have some success in reaching Morcos with our weapon. Unfortunately, the attacks just passed through him.

   ‘Come on, come on. Is this the best you kids can do?’ Morcos taunts us while unleashing a full barrage of his attack.

   My skill has gotten better this past few months, so I can deflect those javelins quite successfully. A few still managed to wound me, but all of them merely gave me shallow wounds.

   Needless to say, both Ichika and Madoka have no problem in deflecting Morcos’s attacks. Unfortunately, they still can’t do a thing to him.

   Around 3 minutes later, Sakuya appears behind Morcos and tries to smash his head with her fan. Once again, her fan passed through him harmlessly, and he just swats her away with one of his javelins without looking. Sakuya manages to land on her feet without any issue.

   I have one question regarding that necklace of his. When it absorbs light, does it go solid, or will it remain untouchable?

   ‘Madoka.’ I whisper.

   She immediately knows what I want and nods at me. I hide behind Ichika so that Morcos can’t see me wearing a sunglasses. I’m also aiming some ultra thin needles made of water at his necklace.

   ‘Now.’ I say, once again in a low voice.

   Madoka takes out another flash bang in a flash and pulls out the pin before throwing it towards Morcos. Madoka, Ichika and Sakuya quickly closes their eyes. Neither Morcos or I do the same.

   The moment the necklace starts absorbing, I fire the needles at it. Morcos didn’t bother to guard it with his shadows, which made my job easier.

   As I had hoped, the necklace turns solid when it’s absorbing light. As a result, my needles manage to pierce it. Morcos looks down in surprise, his opponents completely forgotten. I seal the deal by charging forward with my spear and plunges it towards the necklace.

   It breaks open with a loud ‘CRACK!’ and falls into pieces. To avoid getting his chest pierced, Morcos instinctively jumps backwards and is about to ram into Sakuya. She still has her eyes closed, but she probably sensed that Morcos he heading towards her. She lifts her fan and slams it downwards once again. This time, it hits his head nicely, and he fells to the ground from the impact.

   Instead of just falling, however, Morcos dives into the ground and attempts his escape. Madoka quickly aims and throws a tiny tracking device on his robe.

   Sakuya opens her eyes.

   ‘Was it my imagination, or did I hit him just now?’ she asks.

   ‘You did hit him, president.’ Ichika assures her.

   ‘He still got away though.’ Madoka adds while looking at her phone.

   Meanwhile, I call Mashiro with my phone and tells her to get us out of here ASAP with Sogdrul and Yui. In the blink of an eye, the three of them appear right beside us.

   Ichika volunteers to stay back and guard Wilson, just in case Morcos comes back. While she’s heading to his room, Sogdrul snaps his finger, and the rest of us are outside the crypt right away.

   While still looking at her phone, Madoka points toward a direction.

   ‘He went that way.’ she says.

   Mashiro unlocks her choker and uses Itachimaru’s power to lift us up in the air. She then have us flying through the air to pursuit Morcos.

   It only took us a few minutes to catch up to Morcos. Unfortunately, there’s too many people around, and they might get caught up in the fight if we try to stop him from escaping now.

   ‘Where do you think he’s going?’ I ask no one in particular.

   ‘Based on the direction he’s moving, I deduce that he’s heading for Vatican Gardens.’ Madoka answers.

   ‘I’m not familiar with that place. What’s he planning to do there?’

   ‘I said it’s a garden, but there’s a small forest as well.’

   ‘...Oh.’

   ‘On a side note, the Pope owns it.’

   ‘Double oh.’

   This is bad. A forest is the perfect place for someone who can manipulate shadows like Morcos. Besides, if we accidentally wreck the place, the Pope would probably have us burned for supper.

   We reach a road where for some reason, there isn’t a single vehicle driving through or some random people passing by.

   ‘Yui, please tell me your barrier talismans can reach all the way to the underground.’ I plead.

   She nods. ‘It can be done.’

   ‘That’s great to hear.’

   Yui takes out some talismans from her vest while with her index and middle fingers. She then tosses them out after chanting silently for a few seconds.

   The talismans fly to all the cardinal points and form a huge circular barrier. I look at Madoka’s phone. When Morcos reaches the end of the barrier, he suddenly stops. After a few seconds, he comes out of the ground and looks at us.

   ‘Mind clearing this barrier?’ he asks us.

   ‘Only if you surrender.’ I tell him.

   He shrugs. ‘I guess only one of us will have our wish granted today.’

   Mashiro gets us down to the ground gently. We can’t have the barrier being taken down at all cost, so Yui is standing way behind us.

   ‘The thing is, I always prefer to do my job like an assassin.’ he starts all of a sudden. ‘ You know, going in, find my target, start killing, get out. Nice, quick, and easy. But I guess I need to improvise every once in a while.’

   Suddenly, he’s being covered by a thick, black mist. When it clears, he no longer looks human.

   He looks exactly like the Destroyer Mashiro summoned, with a few notable differences. His Destroyer form has eyes. Real, blue eyes instead of the black, mechanical-looking peepers of his human form had. Furthermore, it’s much larger, around 2 to 3 times larger than the one Mashiro summoned. And he has teeth besides his two fangs, something a normal snake definitely don’t have.

   ‘Do you reckon we can do the same?’ I ask Mashiro in a small voice.

   ‘Probably. Mashiro isn’t anxious to try, though. She doesn’t want to look like Itachimaru.’

   ‘As for me, I’ll most likely turn into a sea monster. That needs to breath while being submerged under water.’

   ‘The last part is still remains to be seen.’

   ‘True.’

   We cut down on our chit-chat as Morcos is ready to kill us all. Once again, shadow javelins appear from his body. Only this time, they’re much bigger and come in higher quantity as his size has grown considerably.

   ‘Mashiro, the bee Destroyer, please.’ I request to her.

   ‘Got it.’

   A few seconds later, the bee Destroyer she had summoned back in the underground cavern appears. It sac opens up and lots of fireflies come out, surrounding Morcos and illuminating his shadowy, serpentine body.

   Except for Yui and Mashiro, the rest of us charge forward to attack Morcos. He doesn’t bother wasting his time on killing those fireflies. Instead, he focuses on us, the ones who might actually kill him.

   Madoka kept her knife and brings out her scythe. Again, I try to avoid looking at it or I might turn tail and run, except that I can’t get out of the barrier. Sakuya has opened up her fan so that it’s easier for her to block and deflect incoming attacks.

   Three javelins come at me. I place my spear diagonally and manage to block them without having my body skewered or being blown away.

   I decide to counter by using javelins of my own. I materialize some javelins made of sea water and have them fly at Morcos.

   Being a snake, Morcos has an extremely flexible body. He manages to dodge all those javelins with ease. Naturally, I anticipated that. The javelins were just diversions, anyway.

   While he’s still busy dodging the javelins, I adjusted my ring’s power to 50% and materialize a sphere of murky water right above him.

   Assaf-sensei had told me that the skeletons that swim inside the water will be based on the ring’s user. Instead of human skeletons, mine are skeletons of deep sea fishes, with long jaws, sharp teeth and weird overall shape. I guess using a bone made of sea monster as my weapon will affect the kind of skeletons that pop up.

   Anyway, I will the sphere to fall on top of Morcos and submerge him in it. The water of Styx are only harmful to living beings, so the fireflies that got caught up are unharmed, since they’re made of magic. Thanks to that, only Morcos is getting hurt by the water and the skeletons that are biting into his shadow flesh vigorously.

   He opens his mouth to cry out in pain, but it was mostly muffled by the water, so we could barely hear him.

   I’m glad that I got the ring’s power under control, and it’s actually hurting Morcos. However, I need to be careful. If I overdo it, I might end up killing him.

   Turns out I didn’t have to worry about him after all.

   He was stuck inside the sphere was about six seconds when he changes shape. He turns into a drill and got himself out of the sphere. After that, he resumes the shape of a snake and continue with his fierce onslaught, as if the Styx water didn’t hurt him at all.

   However, we’re not fooled. His movement got slightly sluggish, and his reactions are not as sharp as it used to be. As a result, we manage to wound him some more, and his attacks hardly reach us.

   That said, this is a bit too easy. Is he really weakened? Or is he just baiting us?

   We soon found out that it was the latter.

   Sakuya successfully blocks Morcos’s shadow javelins for the umpteenth time. Perhaps anxious to get this over with, she charges in to deliver the finishing blow without being alert.

   Morcos took advantage of her carelessness and bites her right shoulder with his teeth. Sakuya cries out in pain.

   My eyes immediately see nothing but red. Someone was screaming in fear. Maybe it was Yui. I don’t know. And it doesn’t matter. All I know is that Morcos hurt my one of my girlfriends.

   ‘CURRUID!’ I shout at the top of my lungs.

   Upon calling his name, Gáe Bulg starts to pulsate. Then, the whole spear minus the tip is covered with black, shiny fish scales. As for the tip, it’s being reinforced by a broad blade made of seawater.

   Just when I was thinking is that it, a whip of seawater appears from the butt of the spear. Its end is a cuff, and it latches on to my left wrist.

   I immediately feel much stronger, maybe it’s because Curruid is sharing the strength of his sea monster power with me. Either way, I waste no time and charge at Morcos while aiming my spear at him.

   He saw me coming and immediately let goes of Sakuya. He also launches lots of shadow javelins at me.

   Previously, I had some trouble with their speed and was injured by a few of them. Now that my sense has been heightened by a few times, they look like they’re coming at me in slow-mo. As a result, I could deflect them all with one swing of my spear.

   Morcos is quite surprised by my sudden increase in skills. He looked like he wants to dodge around to buy some time so that he could think of a countermeasure, but there’s no way we’re giving him that luxury.

   Madoka and I move around him and strikes whenver possible, while Mashiro and Yui make sure don’t suffer from further harm.

   After a few minutes of tag, I finally manage to knock Morcos out by slamming his head with the shaft of my spear. Madoka joins in with the flat side of her scythe for good measure. His falls to the ground with a thud while showing the white of his eyes.

   This time, we dare not lower our guard. While Madoka is checking for his consciousness, I’m pointing my spear at his throat. The moment I find out he was faking it, I’ll his throat, murder or no.

   ‘He’s out cold.’ Madoka reports.

   ‘That’s great and all, but how are we going to stop him from using his magic if he wakes up?’ I ask.

   Madoka takes out some thick coils of chains.

   ‘By using this.’

   ‘Fair enough.’

   Just as Madoka was about to get to work, the transformation of Morcos got undone, and he turns back into human form. Madoka keeps the chain and takes out a pair of handcuffs instead.

   ‘Hassle saved.’ she says.

   While she’s cuffing up Morcos, the rest of us are tending to Sakuya’s wound. As for my spear, it turned back into its normal form by the time I realized.

   ‘I’m sorry for being a useless big sister.’ Sakuya apologizes while forcing a smile. ‘I guess I was rushing too much.’

   ‘Please don’t mind it, president. More importantly, please show us your wound.’ Yui says.

   ‘Okay~.’

   Sakuya starts to unbutton her shirt. I immediately turn around.

   ‘Hmm? Why did you turn around, Akira-kun?’ Sakuya asks.

   ‘Why, you ask. You’re undressing, right? I shouldn’t be looking.’

   ‘Why not? I don’t mind if it’s you.’

   ‘Um, I don’t want to be be rude by interrupting, but shouldn’t we make this quick?’

  ‘You heard her, senpai.’

   ‘Alright, alright. Just keep in mind that my offer is always available.’

   …I can’t say that I’m not tempted.

   Anyway, everyone goes quiet for a few seconds, probably waiting for Sakuya to be done. Then, a few of them let out a soft gasp.

   ‘How is it? Is it bad?’ I ask anxiously.

   ‘Not really. The bite marks are a little deep, but there isn’t much blood.’ Yui says.

   ‘And his teeth wasn’t poisoned or anything.’ Madoka adds.

   I let out a sigh of relief.

   ‘That’s good to hear.’

   After Yui tells me that the bandaging is done, I could finally turn around. Sakuya looks a bit pale, but otherwise still fine.

   ‘Well then, let’s go back.’ I tell the girls.

   All of them nod.

   And so, I carry the unconscious Morcos over my shoulder, and Yui deactivates the barrier. Mashiro then flies us back to the church, where Albanese, Oliva and a few knights are already waiting outside. I hand over Morcos to two of the knights so that they can drag him into one of the rooms inside the crypt. Madoka hands one of them the chains she brought out earlier.

   ‘Excellent work, all of you.’ Albanese tells us. ‘Did anything bad happened while you’re out there?’

   ‘Well, I was bitten by him, but it’s nothing serious.’ Sakuya says.

   The two Inquisitors and the knights all look confused with her words, but didn’t press for an explanation.

   ‘Well, you should have it properly tended to after all this is over.’

   ‘Yes, sir. I will definitely do that.’

   ‘This is not a bad thing, but while we’re chasing Morcos, some of the roads had been empty. Do you know what’s the occasion?’ I ask.

   ‘Ah, that would be me.’ Oliva answers.

   ‘What did you do, sir?’

   ‘Nothing much. I just told the citizens via live stream that they are to clear the roads from vehicles, not questions asked. It would seem that they obliged obediently.’

   I don’t know which surprises me more: Oliva, a priest that looks like he is way out of touch from technology, is using the internet to warn people to clear off the road or the fact that he’s willing to do all this even though it doesn’t benefit him.

   ‘Now then, shall we go in? The knights are probably done with restraining the assassin.’ he asks.

   ‘Yes, sir.’

   The knights who brought Morcos inside guide us to the room that he’s being imprisoned. He was being placed on a chair and is currently tied to it by Madoka’s chains. The guy’s still unconscious, so they would need to wake him up. Someone went and called Ichika over, and now she’s joining us.

   ‘Before we start, shall I do the interrogation, Signore Albanese? Or shall I?’ Oliva asks Albanese.

   Albanese inclines his head at Oliva.

   ‘Please show me how it is done.’ Alnanese says in a humble way.

   ‘Very well.’

   Olive orders one of the knights to wake Morcos up by pouring some water on his face. That did the trick well, and he wakes up with a start..

   ‘...Huh? Where am I? Who are you people? I know some of you, but not all-’

   ‘I’ll be the one to ask the questions, heretic.’ Oliva interrupts.

   Morcos ignores him and looks at me.

   ‘Nice job knocking me out, by the way. I have to say though, do you people always do it by smacking the head? I might get bumps after this.’

   I shrug. ‘I’d say getting a bump is better than losing your life.’

   ‘True that.’

   Oliva clears his throat loudly. Morcos finally decides to look at the Inquisitor.

   ‘Yes?’

   ‘Answer me honestly or prepare to face the wrath of the Almighty. Why did you kill our priests? And who sent you?’

   ‘The first question will take some time to answer, so I’ll answer the second one first. Simple, your buddies did.’