40 Carpe Diem

I awoke to flashing contortions of light and slaps to the face.

Never mind. Not slaps. I don't know. What? Stop. Slap.

Discombobulated. Dazed. Disoriented. Deluded. Dishonorable. Demented. Deranged. Destructive.

Demonic.

My blurry vision began to clear, as did my muddled mind, and awareness of my situation was restored, even through my pounding migraine.

While I was sprawled out on the ground, blinking rapidly and dully peeking at my surroundings, Arthur and Lotfi battled right above my bleary sphere of cognizance. Two… three… Magicians? No, three Devils let loose spell after spell and blow after blow, and the two Exorcists occasionally reciprocated while mostly attempting to defend my vulnerable figure.

A blinding, azure stream of numerous blue wisps flew from the hand of a Devil, lethargically floating towards my face, and I quickly leapt up and stumbled away from their slow path. I confusedly glanced around, taking in the battlefield while clutching my wet forehead. For whatever reason, my hand was red, but I don't see why that would matter.

Red is just a color. Isn't it? Or perhaps not. Who cares? Not me. The Devils in crimson robes might, though.

The contortions of light that so galled me were the blazing buildings all around us, demonic hellfire consuming everything and casting the few untouched buildings we stood atop with a hateful glow. Arthur, Lotfi, Marcelo and I still stood atop one of the larger ones. Absentmindedly, I pulled my Luger and fired a few poorly aimed shots at the three Devils accosting our trio, causing them to back away and give us three a moment of respite.

Marcelo was on the other side of the roof, dealing with two Devils on his lonesome with seemingly haphazard, short-ranged teleportation assisting him in combat. The ability - I didn't know the Gear's name - gave him the necessary edge to face doubled odds against difficult opponents, what with the abrupt repositionings' incredible boon for his dodging and counterattacking. His brass knuckles, likely imbued with the same Light Element as Light Swords are crafted with, crunched against devilish frames as I watched, causing one of the creatures to wince before increasing the intensity of his barrage.

On the asphalt below, Wilhelmine - presumably, I could not see her - was encased within a cocoon of steel and wire. The metallic swathe directed the various extensions of her Sacred Gear - named Prikkeldraad, or, literally, 'Barbed Wire' in Dutch, she had said - strewn across the street and buildings in an attack against the five fiends besetting her. Her role was most strenuous out of us all, having to multitask in fighting against so many foes simultaneously, dodging around in her defensive bubble all the while.

"-OAN! IOANN!"

"Huh?" My head snapped back to the three-versus-three battle I was apparently involved in. Arthur was trying to grab my attention while fending off punches and kicks from the one brawler Devil with his Light Sword, while the other two were peppering him and Lotfi with spells.

A searing impact on the left side of my lower chest, crumpling the Blessed steel and causing it to pierce the fringes of my abdomen, alerted me to the fact that they weren't the only ones being attacked. I merely groaned, unable to feel or process much through the throbbing that permeated every last inch of my head.

"BLAST AND PEPPER! BLAST AND PEPPER!" Arthur screeched.

What on earth is he talking about?

Oh. One of our strategies.

Unclipping a Holy Hand Grenade from my belt, I haphazardly tossed it near the edge of our half of the roof. Hopefully, it would curb and limit the Devils' maneuvers by cutting off a portion of the rooftop to them with the released Holy Energy.

Incidentally, the two pesky Devils cravenly lobbing spells were nearby the subsequent blast, and after realizing the danger the Blessed object presented with their beastly senses, they scrambled away.

In our direction. And the 'pepper' portion of the strategy involved shooting the Devils while they are preoccupied with escaping the source of their primal fear, which I did, using the Luger still clutched in my hand.

My accuracy was not the best in my mentally impaired state, likely caused by a concussion, but out of five shots, I still managed to shoot one of the Devils twice. The other escaped with nary a scratch, but his companion, the agonized, anguished Devil on the ground, convulsed as a cause of the pure, leaden Holiness coursing through his body, courtesy of the bullets lodged somewhere within him.

That one was down for the count. The other, the female, turned her ire onto me and began throwing around various spells of both a clearly elemental and more obscure nature. One hit me in the solar plexus, my chestplate blackening in a brief area before its ingrained Holy Energy buffeted the effects of the Demonic Energy-powered spell. The rest were avoided by falling on the ground and quickly scampering away, though not before firing the last round in my pistol's chamber.

It missed my target. It impacted a Devil from Marcelo's battle, though, judging by the yelps of shock and pain from their general direction.

"Lotfi and I will take this brute, here, Ioann!" Arthur shouted, fighting the Devil in a two-on-one with Lotfi, slowly trying to corral him into where he knew the cloud of Holy Energy was. "Eliminate the other! I know you can do it!"

Quickly getting back on my feet, I reached for a new pistol magazine on my belt, finding nothing after five seconds of fumbling around.

I holstered the weapon, raised the two superior munitions given to me by the Lord - my fists - and began my dash.

Seeing this, the despicable sorcerer with bright green hair unfurled her wings and took off into the sky, hovering two dozen or so meters above and beginning to launch her spells. Not one to be looked down upon by a vile succubus, I ran, dodging her strange spells - most of them hitting the concrete below me and either liquefying it, shattering it, scorching it, or freezing it - and leapt for my formerly discarded Karabiner rifle.

Turning around to aim, a particularly large fireball blocked my view, and my first instinct was to jump to the side, away from the blazing sphere of flames barreling towards my face. The Devil predicted such a move, though, judging by how a peculiar spell impacted my chestplate as soon as I escaped the range of the inferno. It turned the armor piece to molten metal, resisting its innate Holy Energy for long enough to liquefy the aegis.

Pain. Anguish. Torment.

The calefaction galled me. I could feel my robes beneath fusing with the smelted alloy, similarly heating up to whatever absurd temperature the sorcery created, then intertwining with my flesh in its hateful fervor. Whether or not the accompanying misery was expressed through any screams was up in the air, considering I had not the presence of mind through the pain to hear them.

Immediately, through my agony, I enhanced my entire torso with every ounce of Holy Energy I had within my Sacred Gear, dulling the affliction and staving off any more coalescence between skin, steel and fabric. The augmentation gave my body the capability to simply resist the heat, allowing the liquid to slide down before quickly getting wiped away by my gloves - I had tested them to be immune to any sort of damage I could possibly think of during my training - to sizzle on the concrete.

But the damage was already done, and my back especially felt stiff, unnatural, stretching with every movement uncomfortably, accompanied by a pulsing, incalescent ache. The enhancement could not banish the distinct feeling of wrongness, of being encased in a layer of irregular skin that simply felt aberrant.

I could tell that the reinforcement had cooled the materials, completing the fusion of much of my torso's flesh into a horrifying amalgamation. Whether or not it would be a permanent disfigurement, even with healing, was up in the air, and I was not a doctor.

Getting back on my feet for the nth time this fight, I was greeted by a mostly empty battlefield, the green-haired Devil's wings clipped from her torso and slumped on the ground, brains splattered across the shattered concrete roofing. Arthur, Marcelo and Lotfi, all noticeably less injured than I, were fighting the last Devil, the brawler that Arthur had been dealing with beforehand.

Knowing that my Holy Energy reserves are limited for what I end up doing, I used my pilgrimages on Mount Sinai to imbue perhaps a dozen objects with Holy Energy for use as emergency batteries - only enough to fully replenish my reserves twice, as ordinary objects can only handle so much energy of any kind before simply exploding, disintegrating or what have you. Mythril, especially known for its energy conductivity and retention, is expensive, and I do not possess any. [1]

Thus, instead, I use the multitude of necklaces with silver crosses and scapulars I wear, all glowing a mild orange in the strange sixth sense vision my Sacred Gear offers. Grabbing around five of them, I simply drain them of their Holiness, replenishing my reserves.

And in that time, the three Exorcists defeated their opponent, and while two of them began climbing down to assist Wilhelmine, Arthur ran over to me.

"Ioann," he panted, putting his hands on my shoulders, "you can fight, yes?"

I pushed his hands off and dumbly nodded.

"Good. We are going down to assist how we can; you stay up here and shoot the Devils whenever an opportunity presents itself. If there is any chance of friendly fire, do not take the shot. If the situation changes and you need to come down, I will yell your name as loud as I can. Yes?" he questioned, intensely staring at me.

I merely walked over to the edge of the roof with my rifle and pistol as an answer, not trusting my capability to speak. I could feel the smoke from all the nearby fires encroaching on my lungs, and I circulated a bit of Holy Energy into them - I am not sure of the exact mechanics, considering that there is still a lack of oxygen in the air, but it helps. I presume that everyone else is doing something similar with Mana.

Somehow, Dubravka had joined back up with us and had been assisting Wilhelmine while we were fighting. She was facing two Devils in the middle of the street with the assistance of Wilhelmine's occasional barbed wire attacks, Marcelo and Lotfi were just now joining in the fight, while Arthur was climbing down the building at a blistering pace.

I could guess that one Devil had already been felled, given the crimson-robed young man with a hole in his chest collapsed further down the road - presumably, Dubravka had been fighting three at once, got a lucky shot in on a brittle-boned Knight, and then continued retreating while fending the others off. The last two Devils were besieging Wilhelmine's steel cocoon with their sorcery - and were succeeding, judging by how the formerly solid ball was now thin and patchy, with corroded holes littering the top, revealing Wilhelmine's panting, coughing form. She likely no longer had the energy to spare moving around the entire egg and was instead only telekinetically controlling wire whips to lash out at the flying Devils, disrupting some of their spells.

I took careful aim at the black-haired, gangly Devil in baggy robes flying around, waiting until he paused to cast a spell. Around twenty meters up in the air, he halted his maneuvers, and I pulled the trigger, aiming for his torso as anyone with common sense would. The bullet missed where I was exactly aiming, but it still connected with one of his pinions, shocking him and causing him to spiral down. Quickly cycling the bolt while the demon was still rolling around in pain, the old round was ejected, a new one - enchanted with an explosive spell this time - took its place, and I fired.

The other Devil swooped down and dragged his comrade out of the bullet's path, though he paid for it with how numerous strings of barbed wire wrapped around him, holding him in place for my last round. It exploded against his torso - though the combustion didn't do much damage to him relative to the Holy Energy - and carved through his chest. Wilhelmine let him go to take care of the other Devil, who had gotten his bearings and stood up.

His expression of fury was replaced with surprise and fear when barbed wire wrapped around his neck, choking him. He grabbed the steel and ripped it off. The dumb beast had forgotten about the barbs and tore through some of his nape's flesh, but it wasn't enough, and so Wilhelmine simply used more.

I turned my attention to the other side of the street, where… six Devils touched down? There were three devilish bodies littering the street, rather than the original one, so the two Devils were defeated before…

Assuming the worst, considering what had already happened on this accursed day, I leapt to the side and covered my head, dodging a lance that speared through the concrete where my torso had been.

"Those are some freaky scarrings on your back," the brunette in purple robes offhandedly commented, placing the butt of her spear on the ground next to her. It demonstrated how the weapon was whole feet taller than her. She scrunched up her nose in a sneer seeing the bodies strewn across the roof. "All of them? I didn't think they were that weak. Ah, well, it's to be expected, considering that they faced a Miracle Child like you. You're our natural enemy."

A Miracle Child? As in, the once-in-a-century children born from the union of Angels and humans? I am flattered that my augmentations apparently appear to such a degree in their senses, but I won't accept such blasphemy.

I am as normal as a man could be.

"Not a talker? That's okay, my little Angel. There have been too many words exchanged already, anyway. Markus!" she yelled, placing one hand on her hip and squinting her brown eyes.

A boot crashed into my upper back before I could react, and to avoid getting slammed into the concrete and shoved into a disadvantageous position, I used the momentum to elbow my way through the roof. It caved under my and the Devil's strength, and my assailant and I crashed down into the third-floor office space, with desks, maps and other assorted tools of administrative war littered throughout the space.

I rolled away, ducking behind a desk and morosely gazing upon the splintered remains of the rifle in my hands. I threw it away and unholstered my Luger, before holstering it again, remembering that I had no more rounds for it.

My deliberation cost me - I had to redirect a fist away from my face, the Devil wincing after my vambrace contacted his forearm and pushed him away.

He jumped back, shaking his right arm around, "Ouch, ouch, Satan, why?" He glared at me with milky eyes, rubbing the side of his arm. "Didn't your mother teach you not to harm the disabled? There's no way you have Angelic parentage with those kinds of manners."

Hm. He is blind. A fitting affliction to curse a filthy Devil with, for they are blind to the light of truth. His opaque pupils symbolize that he is despised by God, a disability known to everyone he ever comes across.

"No, but my father taught me to punish evil wherever I see it, vermin," I replied, reaching down to grab my Blessed knife from my boot.

I aborted the motion at the last second, as a lance came from above to nearly skewer my skull. Holding onto its tip with all my strength to keep it from piercing through my head, the blind Devil took advantage of my limited position to rush at me. I kicked a globe on the floor at his face, which he only barely dodged before briefly pausing in his dash to watch out for any more attacks, likely not realizing its true nature because of his blindness.

He would've simply kept running, otherwise.

"Markus, you imbec-" the girl began, but I had already been given enough time to pivot on my feet and drag the lance - and subsequently the Devil - through the hole in the ceiling she had created, using her own strength's leverage against her, to attack me from. She landed ungracefully, but I had no opportunity to press my advantage. The other Devil had already slammed his fist into my sternum, propelling me into the opposite wall, right into a large map, and banishing any trace of air from my lungs.

I think I heard a crack, and not from the wall.

"He is obnoxious to fight," Markus complained with a slight hiss of pain, kissing his slightly red fist. "The Holy Energy bites you back for every successful blow, and his constitution is practically as tough as a low-class."

The girl ignored him, rushing at my slumped form with her lance.

A misdirection on my part. I had only drawn to this pitiful position so I could grab the knife from my boot. Drawing it right as the Devil pulled her arm back to thrust the spear, I leaned out of the way and sliced the knife at the shaft of her weapon, using its momentum against it.

I had angled the blade parallel enough to the shaft that it actually had some traction, and adding that onto how this girl apparently infuses her Demonic Energy into it, the Holy Energy-infused blade had well enough circumstances to cleave through the steel.

The girl stared, horrified at the desecration of her weapon.

"Do you know how much this cost?!"

She pulled the remaining half of her pike back to attempt to stab me again, as the angle it had been sheared off at left a pointy enough stick of Mythril to use as a weapon, but I simply dug my fingers into the concrete below and dragged myself away. Her makeshift weapon sliced into the top of my shoulder, but the damage was meager compared to how her stick would've thrust into my heart if I hadn't maneuvered so strangely.

It left me at a good enough position, though, and I kicked her legs out from underneath her. With a stunned cry, her face slammed into the ground, cracking it, and I thrust my dagger into the back of her skull as soon as it did.

"CYNTHIA!" the Devil yelled, bounding over to me in an instant and stomping on my chest.

Perhaps placing myself fully on the ground wasn't the best choice.

The floor caved in beneath me, again, and we were sent tumbling down into a small dining room. I coughed blood and remained on the tiled ground for a few seconds, long enough for the Devil to kick me in the sternum once again.

To the first floor, in a storage room filled with grains, we went.

I was having trouble breathing, my back was in blistering pain once again, the slice on my shoulder ached, various bones felt pulverized, and my dull, pounding headache resurfaced.

I flooded my body with Holiness, sighing in satisfaction, the torment lessening.

"You're happy, huh?" the Devil sneered, grabbing my collar and tossing me into a shelf stacked with canned food. "Get up and fight."

I unclipped a Holy Hand Grenade and threw it to him.

"Catch, demon," I rasped.

His cloudy eyes widened, but I detonated the munition before he could even think to escape. The blast merely pushed me further into the steel shelf, but as for my foe?

He was obliterated. Red painted the floor and some parts of the walls, but much of his torso was gone - presumably vaporized by the Holy Energy. Absentmindedly, I picked up the hilt portion of the girl's spear, which had fallen down with us through it all.

With a slight limp in my step, I began crashing through the walls of the building until I ended up in an alleyway. Walking to the street with less fire, I encountered around half of the team ganging up on the last Devil a few dozen meters away from me.

I slowly trudged over to their position, apathetically watching the Devil get a lucky shot in on Wilhelmine before taking his chance to fly away.

Arriving to see Arthur and Marcelo fussing over Wilhelmine's collapsed form, the former turned his eyes to me.

"Ioann! I'll assume that you've bested your opponents - now, quickly, you said you're good with Light Magic; see what you can do to heal her!"

Not bothering to speed up my pace, I walked over to the girl's pained form. She was panting and coughing, clutching a gouge in her left hip with blood streaming down her right arm from a separate cut. Running my Light Element through her with a diagnostic spell showed me a minorly broken rib, just a hairline fracture.

If I wished to save her, I would need to either cast a spell that would buffet the smoke away and supply us with oxygen or get her away from this burning place, as the coughing is likely from smoke inhalation and isn't at all assisting her recovery from overexerting her Sacred Gear, hence the panting. Then, I would dedicate all my efforts to patching up the gouge in her hip with my Light Magic, while having someone else stitch up or bandage the cut on her arm. The rib is unimportant for the moment and can be healed up later.

But did I want to heal her?

I knew the answer.

"Don't fret, Mientje," I said, placing my hands over her solar plexus. "I will absolve you of this pain."

I was not a liar.

Glancing around, I saw the brutalized, bloody form of Dubravka further down the street - likely overwhelmed in close quarters combat by a stronger Devil - as well as a charred corpse that likely belonged to Lotfi, going by process of elimination. The rest were unfamiliar demons.

Good riddance.

I began to circulate my Light Element through her lungs, creating a faux sense of healing, easing up on her panting and coughing without actually doing anything for her real injuries. It only took a minor amount of energy to do it, too. She sighed in contentment, easing up on her convulsions. Keeping one hand on the girl's chest, I unholstered my final Holy Hand Grenade with the other, pulling the pin and holding it out to Marcelo.

Good thing I invested in conditional enchantments. I placed a few on my grenades, keeping them from blowing up until I willed them to.

"WHOA!" Arthur yelped, stumbling back at the sight of it. "What on earth are you doing?!"

"Quiet!" I commanded. "We need something more potent for the healing process. Much of her hip's flesh has been carved out, and Holy Energy is required, my remaining dregs of which are in this grenade," I intoned with as much gravitas as possible, glancing up at my 'assistant'. "Arthur, you must back away to the opposite side of the street. Marcelo, take this and stand on the other side of Mientje, a few paces away. Hold it up a little above your head."

He followed my commands, not gracing me with a reply through his own exhaustion. Arthur followed suit.

I leaned down further, placing my ear on Wilhelmine's chest, looking as if I was listening for the quality of her heartbeat. A more accurate view of my actions would state that I was distancing myself, trying to minimize any damage I would receive from the blast.

The last embers of Holy Energy in my Sacred Gear enhanced my body, and I drained the last 'batteries' around my neck to replenish my reserves, augmenting myself with a bit of them as well.

Wilhelmine giggled with a small cough at the end, attempting to lighten the mood. "Thank you for the assistance, my fair knight."

I simply smiled.

The Holy Hand Grenade detonated, painting me with Marcelo's blood and viscera. Wilhelmine was shocked and dazed by the nearby explosion, yelping at the sudden eruption, while my enhancements largely minimized its effect. They also allowed me the strength to punch the girl in the neck with enough force as to cleave her head from her shoulders, everything from her windpipe to her nape practically evaporating under my fist.

I got up from my knees and dodged away from Arthur's sword attempting to split my spine in two. Turning around graced me with his furious visage, a rictus of rage splitting his face in two.

"Lotfi was right about you, wasn't he?" he murmured, a cold rage steadying his hand. "Didn't you claim to be a holy man? Haven't you read the Book of Proverbs? 'A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will not escape.' Or does it all mean nothing to you, you snake?"

A frown overtook my expression.

"The Lord is a God of both unmeasurable grace and great wrath," I replied, raising my fists. "I simply did not allow evil to walk with impunity."

"Does Psalms not say, 'No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house; no one who utters lies shall continue before my eyes'?" he questioned, beginning to circle around with his sword up. "You're like a tomb. Seemingly beautiful and unblemished on the outside, but filled with corpses and uncleanliness within, hypocrite."

My frown deepened, a hint of righteous anger filtering through.

"And who are you to judge me so?" I asked backing up to a destroyed wall, chunks of concrete littering the road. "You would never understand the ways of a man of God, a Chosen One."

I began picking up the torso-sized chunks of rock and hurling them at the man. He was forced to back up and dodge them, though he acclimated and began striding towards me even through them.

"You're even more deluded than I thought," he stated with a sneer, his cracked spectacles glowing with a reflection of the flames all around us.

My frown was infused with a mixture of malice and wrath.

"How so, then?" I asked.

"Because," he panted, arching his back to avoid a well-thrown boulder, "you spout such bold-faced lies. Anyone with a brain could critically recognize the true meanings behind scripture relating to their context, or even simply acknowledge the truths of Christ. Never heard 'thou shall not kill'? Or 'blessed be the peacemakers', or 'blessed be the merciful'?" he sneered. "You're lying to yourself - for whatever reasons you have. What God of ours would condemn faithful men and women to death for no reason?"

"I am no liar, and it was not for no reason," I narrowed my eyes. The words of scripture were wasted on him, and so I didn't bother refuting him with them.

"Oh? Pray tell, then, why did you eviscerate Marcelo and Mientje?"

"For they would have impeded my heavenly duties. I cannot, in good conscience, cast aside God's commands to establish His Kingdom on earth!"

Stomping over the pile of miniscule rocks - I had utilized the large ones - I personally tore a chunk of concrete out of the wall, one the size of the average man's entire body, and hurled it at Arthur with every upper body muscle available.

He simply cut it in half, twisted his body to the side to avoid the two halves, and stared me down with an intense glare. "Have you no shame? Read scripture. 'Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.' The Lord Messiah's sermons themselves condemn you. These ill-begotten fantasies of yours are blasphemous! I will strike you down and decry your name, demon!"

I clenched my fists to such a degree that my gloves, for the first time, were stretching taut.

I've empowered myself to the degree that his Light Sword is unable to fell me, at least when being swung with his meager power. The only reason they're effective against Devils even stronger than I is because Light and Holiness are their species' weakness.

For me, they are my strengths.

Kicking off the ground, I dashed towards Arthur, his sword glancing off my collarbone with only a minor flesh wound, and punched him in the stomach. He retched, falling on the ground and curling up into a ball.

I crouched beside his pathetic form, wrapping my hands around his neck and squeezing. He gagged and pawed at one of my arms, trying to wrench it away.

At least, that was what I thought. Then my left arm was covered in blistering flames that prevailed even against my enhancements.

Arthur's glasses gleamed with hellfire once again.

I fell backwards, smacking my arm and trying to stamp out the flames. It burned too hot, too quick, and with so much vigor that my armor melted to slag in an instant, unable to disperse Mana as it would Demonic Energy, unable to resist the heat's intensity. My skin charred and turned to ash, my muscles roasted as if on a barbecue, blackening and flaking off, and the cartilage in my joints boiled and bubbled, flaring up and evaporating. Everything was seared and scalded, overwhelming me with a form of torment I had never experienced. After a few seconds, the arm simply detached from my torso, its joints undone. The bones burned to cinders before my eyes, scorching the asphalt.

There wasn't even any time to use my Holy Energy. And I wasn't sure if it would have done enough, if I could've.

This time, at least I knew that I screamed.

I dumped the rest of my Holy Energy into my already cauterized shoulder, dulling its singing throb. But Holy Energy could not enhance what was already incinerated. Everywhere that I used to have a left arm ached and blistered - the phantom pains were still there, and I had trouble standing up. A hacking cough tinged with a coppery tang escaped my lips.

Arthur cackled through his own rasps, monologuing some useless blabber that I could barely process. He ranted on with some drivel, jabbering about how he commanded his Sacred Gear to push all of the knowledge he had about flames and heat into his head so that when casting a spell with all of his Mana, it created an incredibly hot flame - or about how this was an ultimate move he saved for the final moment of a desperate battle - or about how he learned Magic because of the boons his Sacred Gear gave him, whatever the fool decided to prattle about in his final moments.

I stumbled over, falling onto him with my knees, straddling him and pulling back my still-augmented, singular fist. It crunched against bone and splattered against brain matter, propelling itself all the way through to crack the earth. Pummeling his torso brought about more cracks and squelches, dribbling crimson and viscera across the ground.

Pitiful. Pathetic. I would've laughed in contempt at my wretched condition if I were of a clear mind. Each punch took entire seconds to wind back up without my left arm's counterweight and subsequent attack from an opposing appendage. The weight imbalance with each twist and punch nearly bowled me over a few times, an appalling weakness enfeebling my capabilities with the loss of an integral tool of mine.

I, the newly christened cripple, kept thrashing the body regardless. My fighting form and punching motions were equivalent to watching a decrepit grandfather, sixty years past his prime, hobble along in a mockery of a natural gait. Leaning too far to one side, overcommitting to a blow, falsely trusting in a function that failed me… trying to punch with a nonexistent arm.

I made every mistake. I felt like an incompetent loser, a worthless imbecile. Such a simple thing to have averted, and yet, look at me: unable to throw a godforsaken punch.

Godforsaken. Forsaken by God. Had I failed? Had I fallen through the supple fingers of divine grace, cast again to earth as a filthy mongrel?

The punches rained down. The earth cracked. My brain throbbed with unimaginable severity.

There was nothing left of the doomsayer - the filthy cheat, the heinous naysayer, that misleading detractor, Arthur - from upper rib cage and higher, everything from chest cavity to shoulders to cranium turned to either a chunky paste or a coarse dust. My blows continued traveling downward, aiming to banish any trace of him and his lying fallacies from this mortal plane. His honeyed words, disguised behind an arrogant, condescending smirk, inspired nothing but doubt.

A blow against the middle of his ribcage revealed something I couldn't shatter apart, no matter how many times my fist rained down, and after embedding it into the concrete enough times to turn anything ordinary to powder, I reached down and grasped it.

It was a beautiful thing. The chain of silver filigree held a pendant to place around one's neck in the form of a classical necklace. It made every piece of machinery I had ever seen feel like a cheap toy, a mockery of true engineering.

How could a creation appear as an invaluable, transcendent piece of jewelry, like an heirloom that fell straight from Heaven, and a foreboding, powerful machine at the same time?

Its frame was made of wrought gold - shining with aurum just as resplendent as the embroideries on my own Sacred Gear even through the specks of blood staining it - formed into a flawless circle. Inside was a core of swirling, mechanical tapestries, a magnificent clockwork, light reflecting off of the delicate pieces in playful hues of luminescence. The gleaming luster and immaculate design made it appear as if the gears were constantly flowing and engaged despite being still as the grave. [2]

The blood and viscera staining its frame hardly retracted from its beauty.

With trembling hands, I delicately placed the piece of art wrought from the Lord's magnificence around my neck, hearing a Church bell tolling louder than anything I'd ever heard and sensing the formation of a connection. My ears rang, my migraine intensified, and I could feel a metaphysical golden wire wrapping around my psyche, constricting and caressing it. It was squeezing my very soul, yet it was comforting, in a way; it wormed its way into the cracks, yet it felt as if it had always belonged there; it looped its way through and around, forming its esoteric tapestry around and within my very essence, and then strangled my spirit.

I might have screamed, or I might have had no mouth. It was all patchily vague.

As soon as I stood up from Arthur's desecrated carcass and walked a few paces, I dropped to my knees and then collapsed, dragging my battered body to the ground with me and embracing slumber.

###

[1] Mythril is a real thing in DxD, used to make fancy supernatural technology:

"This is a sports car which uses demonic energy to run, and can reach up to three hundred and twenty kilometres per hour. Fufufu, it's as fast as the Shinkansen, and the exterior is also made from mythril silver, so it's pretty tough." — Rias' father.

Fun fact: That sports car transforms into a mech when he pumps it with Demonic Energy:

"Its appearance is incredibly ordinary. But!"

Rias' father sent his demonic energy into it, and the ordinary-looking car made various noises as it gradually transformed! —What stood there was a metal giant which had transformed from the car! It transformed just like a robot! Although I was slightly excited by it, what was it!? Rias' father proudly said

"This is an iron golem! It can operate as a car, and also in this giant form! It'll be a reassuring ally to have by your side in case of an emergency! Since the power comes from the golem itself moving, it's very environment friendly!"

Classic Ishibumi.

[2] In case you couldn't tell, this was Arthur's Sacred Gear, and no, not all Sacred Gears stay around after death. Most go back to God's systems right away, ready to be reincarnated into some other baby, but a few Sacred Gears in canon were known to stick around a little bit after death and get stolen (mostly Incinerate Anthem, one of the Longinus and a Holy Relic), so I just used that as a justification.

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This is my longest chapter ever, at around 6.1k words. Not surprising, because I actually liked this chapter. The fights were fun, and I haven't written any in a while. This was supposed to be released yesterday, but I forgot.

The title of this chapter, 'Carpe Diem', means 'seize the day' in Latin (it technically means 'pluck the day', but everyone translates it to 'seize'). It's an aphorism (a concise statement of a general truth/principle) from the Roman poet Horace.

And sorry, but no Balance Breaker just yet.

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