29 King? Bishop? Rook? Just Kill Them

Kicking the last bits of dirt into the grave for the unfortunate priest who'd stumbled upon us, I then got to the task of covering the patch of soil in a bit of twigs and fauna as a disguise.

Of which there were not many around here, I noticed. There were bushes and trees, yes, but in fairly sparse amounts - the ground was relatively clean, with nothing but grass and dirt littering the area.

Good thing we had chosen to bury him beneath a tree, then, as otherwise, the twigs on top would have done the opposite of their intended purpose.

Such an inefficient method. Cremation would reduce him to a pile of ash that I could simply allow to be carried away by the winds, but the noxious stench and smoke produced by the incineration process would be extremely noticeable.

Not to mention the probable forest fire that would result.

"We are done here. Let us go," Priska said, hefting her sword onto her shoulder and casting a wayward glance at the grave before walking away.

It truly is in her nature to be so callous and indifferent to the death of her fellow man - a priest, no less. In my heart of hearts, I deeply mourn his untimely demise, but grief has no place in a professional environment. How am I to fulfill my duties to the Lord while racked by guilt?

Thus, after stomping on the site one last time to compact any especially inconspicuous soil, I turned heel and began walking toward the overbearing abode.

…

"So. What is the plan, Sir Tactician?" Priska asked, leaning on a tree while looking at the large building.

It was no castle, what with the variety of materials other than stone used in its construction - it was more similar to a mansion, if anything. Fortunately, the excessive use of wood, plaster and small bricks to fashion some sort of backsteingotik-esque structure worked in our favor, because as of now, my plan would initiate with a hail of makeshift artillery.

"The plan is quite simple. I have approximately six magazines of explosive ammunition, four of which are chambered for my rapid-fire submachine gun. I will rain fire and brimstone down upon that bastion of depravity, and you shall assist me in that regard by unleashing your, what did you call them, Smoldering Sickles?" She nodded, cringing and grumbling at the name. "Yes, those. Unleash them at the same time. We shall purge that demonic abode wholly, so that no modicum of cover exists in its entire vicinity, and then we pick off the shocked stragglers who have been stunned by Holy Energy. If they escape, they escape, I suppose - but the mission will be accomplished."

Taking both out from the recesses of my cloak, I loaded a full magazine into the submachine gun.

"Your attacks will be more devastating. You fire them off first, then I shall follow suit with this." I jolted the gun around.

"Being spoken of as if I am absent from the premises is quite demeaning," an unknown voice mused.

Last time I checked, Priska did not sound like a greasy butcher shop owner.

Oh. Devil.

My eyes widened as I immediately strengthened myself with Holy Energy - just in time, for a sudden impact smashed me into a nearby tree.

Devil scum. They alerted us to their location because they had already set a snare to trap us unsuspecting faithful.

Quickly, I got up, noting that the back of my armor had been dented, before turning my gaze unto Priska. She had activated her Sacred Gear, as evidenced by the temperature distortions surrounding her, and was nursing her head - with a bruise quickly forming on her cheek - while stumbling up from a kneeling position

Only a Knight has the speed required to attack both of us so quickly. The question is, where is he?

My question was answered by a blow to my helmet, which dented into my face and began rattling.

"That quite stings, you know. I see your battle strategies have taken inspiration from porcupines. One surrounds themselves with an aura of Holy Energy, while the other is clad in Holy Armor. You know -"

Faster than any man - except perhaps Leonidas and Vasco - I whipped my gun arm around to where the torturous utterings of pride originate and sprayed the entire godforsaken area with a hail of Holy Bullets, a shrill scream of surprise informing me that I had caught my opponent off guard and hit my mark.

Quickly, before he could acclimate to the Holy Energy coursing through his very being and escape, I caught sight of his pitiful, spasming condition on the dirt and took aim again. Firing three additional bullets into his head, I was met with blissful silence.

Thankfully, all of the trees that had been impacted by my bullets and subsequent explosive enchantments had fallen away from me, and my armor defended against the shrapnel.

Truly the armor of God.

"A Knight, methinks," Priska murmured, walking over to gaze upon the man's corpse by my side. He was definitely asiatic in appearance, though of which ethnicity I could not be sure, and he was dressed in, unsurprisingly, a black and white suit. That seems to be a trend among this Peerage. I took note of the club lying next to his carcass, likely what he used to attack us without being harmed by our Holy Energy defenses. "From what I remember, they tend to be overconfident in their blinding speed when facing anyone they do not recognize as being infamous. Did you use your enhancements to execute that maneuver?"

"Yes, but that is unimportant." I looked around, trying to see whether or not there was a better place to be situated now that the enemy knew our location. We were in a forest facing the mansion, with a decent bit of empty land separating the latter from the former, and the same line of forest stretched for as far as I could see - meaning that our best bet was to continue with the original plan instead of wasting more time. "What is important is that we continue our assault before they can mount another counterattack. And I have a… fitting way to initiate the plan, now." I cracked my knuckles in anticipation. "Cut his head off."

…

With the moderate weight of a Devil's skull in my hands - one enchanted with a particularly large, powerful explosive spell - I took aim at a window of the mansion. In the fashion of a morbid Olympic javelin thrower, I hurled the creature's cranium as hard as I could - and it streaked through the air, smashing through a second floor window right above the front door and detonating. The resulting boom must've reached every denizen of that nearby town.

The ungodly fortress' walls have been breached. It was of two floors, and practically the entire front of both had been annihilated.

"Commence firing!" I commanded before beginning to empty my magazine into the godforsaken abode, strengthening my arms to make the recoil of the gun nonexistent. It was an easy, convenient way of minimizing the inaccuracy of using a more close and personal weapon for distances of around seventy meters. With it, it was a bit hard to miss the huge, foreboding mansion across the little backyard they had commissioned for themselves.

Priska followed suit, swinging her sword in wide arcs that produced large, flaming, sanctifying crescents that cleaved through the building and ignited a blaze throughout its structure. A foolish Devil leapt out of a window to escape the Holy Fire before getting his torso turned to a fairly chunky paste after I took notice of his presence. In the moments before he turned into an unrecognizable carrion, I saw a striking resemblance between him and the Devil who'd apparently yelled 'Angel' and ran away before.

Three down, counting the one with the goat from before.

And yes, I said Holy Fire. Leonidas, it seems, has future-divining abilities - and if not, those he was parroting do. He mentioned that Priska's Sacred Gear ability - to make any blade she touches burn at incomprehensibly hot temperatures, albeit in the contained steel of the blade - could potentially complement or even fuse with the Holiness of a Holy Sword to create Holy Fire, a mystical thing wielded only by Lord Uriel himself through the virtue of God.

And that prediction was spot-on. Even the Holy Aura of her sword is akin to an oven, incinerating anything she wishes it to, and the arcs released by Caladbolg are the Holy Fire I mentioned. The heat imparts onto their pure Holy Energy and creates Holy Fire through some sort of mechanism.

I am no scientist.

Regardless of whether or not the 'how' is understood, the end result is the same; the flames engulfing the building are driving out the Devils - perhaps even killing them.

A group of four crashed through a wall on the eastern side of the mansion, but before I could focus the leaden brimstone unleashed by my gun onto them, they put up a wall through some manner of witchcraft.

Boiling anger rose to the surface when it reminded me of my last mission.

I am not falling for this again. Devil teleportation spells, according to the archives of the Church, are not all-powerful - they do not allow a Devil to simply apparate where they wish to, everything else be damned. No, two teleportation circles are linked, and only from one circle to another are they able to travel. The Devil I faced - that Lars scum, the one to cripple my useless partner - was an astoundingly talented Magician to have been able to set up and use a teleportation circle in the small period of time the earthen walls he raised had afforded him.

These Devils were undoubtedly trying the same thing, though likely at a less impressive speed.

"Pressure them! Cleave through their ranks! Bring down the walls!" I commanded, grabbing up my Karabiner rifle from the ground - I had dropped it when that lowly churl of a Knight accosted us - and unchambered the topmost round. Fueled with the desire to kill at least one Devil before they all escaped, I added on an additional enchantment to the explosive one - an enchantment that would pierce through a meter or two of material without slowing the bullet, draining my Mana reserves to the point where I had no spellcraft left in me.

I stuffed it back into the chamber, loaded it, and took aim at where I acutely remember a purple-haired wretch being situated, and pulled the trigger.

My last-minute enchantment must have done its work well, for the bullet's explosion was on the other side of the wall.

It is a good sign, and it should have connected - otherwise the explosion would have been much further behind them, impacting the mountain. With the recent freedom in Holy Energy the good Lord has provided me at Sinai, all of my bullets are now Blessed with Holy Energy. Now, when they hit, they hit to kill or debilitate.

I'm not sure which outcome this specific instance produced, but I heard a pained, feminine wail, so something was done right.

Priska had not been idle in the meantime, and three of her 'Smoldering Sickles' - I cannot take that name seriously - had reached the wall by now and cleaved through it, producing another scream of agony.

A man with yet another suit, an average frame and a bun of black hair came bounding out around the wall, intending to charge us.

Only a Rook would be so brazen, would they not? I suppose he did not get the memo that all of my bullets are Blessed. Or perhaps his mind is too clouded by rage to care.

Again, I took aim and fired, the bullet piercing his torso and bringing him to his knees. He was not yet dead, though. Racking back the bolt, I fired again, finding it humorous how the explosion produced by the first bullet had blasted away his clothing. The second pierced his skull.

The last Devil - who had no legs and was bleeding a mess onto the grass, likely having been the one to be cleaved through by Priska's attack - unfurled his wings and slowly began flying away in a pitiful manner, not getting very far before a shot of mine pierced through his wings. He had already looked like a dying bird before then, what with the constant ebbing and flowing of his flight pattern - likely due to the agony of losing both his feet to a purely Holy crescent of retribution.

Frankly, I almost feel the need to applaud the scoundrel. The Devil that was hit by the relatively moderate amounts of Holy Energy in my bullet had yet to summon the energy to get up and keep fighting, and this one was capable of doing all that?

"Pursue that one," I said, taking steps toward the crumbling remnants of the earthen wall the Devils had raised. "He could be a threat."

"Giving orders must feel good, no?" was Priska's reply, already bounding off toward where the Devil had landed.

I paid no heed to such remarks and ran across the grassy expanse separating the forest from the mansion, getting a close-up look at what had occurred.

A half-formed, glowing, relatively complex Magic Circle littered the ground, the purple-haired wretch I had shot still desperately trying to complete it even with a bullet in her stomach. The wall they had raised had crumbled long ago, and the Holy Fire enveloping the mansion was beginning to spread to its surroundings - the Devils, it seemed, thought they would be able to complete the teleportation circle before it became an issue, as they had set themselves up hardly a few meters away from the mansion.

I had taken care to drag along the body of the Rook I had slain - after putting another bullet in his head as an assurance, of course - which I promptly threw into the inferno raging beside me.

The flames were a mix of gold and crimson. It was beautiful, in a way.

Quickly, though, I ducked, narrowly dodging a fireball spell aimed straight for my head. Its source was the pathetic surviving girl - she wore a light yet formal dress, one the same color as her hair, purple, with blue eyes that shone like diamonds even as she was curled up on the dirt next to the teleportation circle and clutching her midsection. The explosive enchantment seems to have torn away much of the cloth in that region as well.

"Templar, begone from my sight -"

I whipped out my submachine gun, as my pistol was out of ammunition at this point, and laid down a quick burst of five bullets into her head, my armor bearing the brunt of the shockwaves produced by the subsequent explosions.

Unfortunately, though, it seems the splatter produced by my enactment of her retribution had dirtied its steel and the surrounding grass.

No matter. The fire will spread here soon enough to clean up the evidence, and I can always clean the armor.

Just to be sure, though, I threw her headless corpse into a nearby window. I then moved to dismantle the teleportation circle via kicking up all of the dirt that they had tethered the magical energy to - it seems they were not skilled enough to make a pure construct all at once - and moved my hands through it afterward, pulsing some Holy Energy through the soil and making sure every last trace of Demonic Energy was eradicated from the area.

I then proceeded to cleanse the bodies of the pompous Knight and the fool who'd jumped out of the front window in the blaze of purifying flame, though I saved the Knight's bludgeon as a souvenir.

All that is left to take care of now, I believe, is the Devil who tried to fly away and the original Devil I killed - the one with the goat in the streets.

Gazing toward where Priska had run off, I saw that the former issue had resolved itself - Priska was already dragging the body of the would-be escapee in my direction, albeit with some difficulty.

That leaves me to take care of the original Devil.

Or should I? The body would be a good mark of provocation, at the very least. My end goal is war. Would the public, ignoble assassination of one of Satan's Devils - whose body had not even been spared the indignity of being autopsied and inspected by the ordinary populace - further that goal?

Yes.

And so, I resigned myself to watching Priska give up with dragging the apparently hefty weight of the Devil's body all at once and instead dismember all of his appendages, carrying them over one at a time.

How… creative. I applaud it.

Nonetheless, her performance today was pleasantly surprising. She uttered hardly any complaints and made no scathing remarks that I can remember once things became serious, acting as a true professional. It seems Cristaldi has been teaching her manners.

Or perhaps it was a fluke. Who knows. At the very least, I know I do not have to deal with annoying, outraged bouts of squeamishness from her, going by her lack of excoriation at the untimely disposal of that priest and willingness to dismember a Devil's corpse in order to make her job easier.

The future is looking bright, indeed, I thought, basking in the heat of the nearby flames. My first mission with no strange going-ons, and I completely cleaned house.

These vermin have been wholly exterminated. Expunged. Extirpated.

'And the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever.'

Revelations is a prophecy, is it not?

I shall fulfill it. I shall make it so.

For what else would be my purpose in this wretched world?

###

So, the way these Devils responded to the threat seems completely braindead - which it kind of was - but it's the understandable kind of incompetency. I doubt any of you want to read an additional chapter of these events from their perspective to justify everything, and I would write a little summary here, but, again, I doubt anyone cares. Just be assured that it wasn't 100% plot armor that let MC win without going through some more difficulties.

Regardless, the goal with this mission was to demonstrate that MC isn't completely trash-tier - he's just an ant compared to the scales that DxD made its main stage. For now, at least. Although, it's not like he's some completely defenseless runt. Last time, with Lars? I made Lars excessively competent on purpose. How was some wet-behind-the-ears newbie supposed to face up to a driven, old Devil Bishop Magician who dabbles in practically every branch of Magic, Devil and otherwise?

He wasn't, is the answer. Anyway, MC can slaughter nameless nobodies, so that's a plus, right?

###