Hannya stepped forward, rotating her wrists and stretching her neck. Her eyes stayed locked on the magic hero, ignoring the little ant now standing beside her.

  ‘What a lucky day, kikiki!’

  Baku told her she had thirty minutes to seal the deal and come back. A pity, who would have thought she would be completely cornered by the magic hero, unable to take a single step to the summoning circle directly behind her? The pink-haired devil was now helpless.

  I mean, what could the young devil do? Her hands were tied.

  On top of that, the hero had attacked her; she stained her honor. She had to defend herself, right? She needed to demand compensation, right? What devil would overlook such an egregious affront to the established hierarchy?

  ‘Kikiki Baku would surely see my point of view here. My fragile heart seeks honor!’

  She had to stand up for herself in this cold and ruthless world.

  …This had nothing to do with a particular revenge list of any sort; this was justice!

  “Kikiki! You dare raise your filthy hand against this devil? This one demands reparations for such an atrocity.” The young devil smiled mischievously.

  Abigail took a step closer, shielding her disciple from the young devil. She did not feel at ease after the display she just saw. This little girl seemed to have a special type of physique, a rare occurrence with devils, and was far trickier to deal with.

  ‘Calm down, she's still just a young devil. Far from the monster from back then.’ Thought the magic hero. She wasn’t facing something far beyond her reach.

  She decided to try her luck in making the devil retreat first. With her mana lowered so much and her circuits crippled, she wasn’t sure of her easy victory.

  She may be a young devil, given her age appearance, but from the looks of the kneeling men and exploded corpse beside her, this devil was a combat type, not the businessmen of the Avaritia lineage.

  “I think we should stop here. Your contractee has already fled, and more people will be here any second; you risk losing stars wasting time in a fight. You attacked my disciple, and I attacked you in retaliation; this makes us even.” The hero said calmly.

  But the devil only laughed at the words. “Kikiki! Even? You misunderstand.” She said, squatting from side to side to stretch her legs, tight hamstrings were no good in a tussle. “This isn’t a trade, human, this is a shakedown.” The small devil flashed her sharp canines as she stood up.

  “You think cutting off a devil's head grants you a treaty? kikiki!”

  Jingle - step

  “No. Like I said before…”

  Jingle - step

  “…You’ll pay this toll…”

  Jingle - step

  “...and you’ll pay it with blood.”

  Did this heart thief think she would get away from her so easily? Nonsense. This wizard was better off dead early in this timeline; she’ll pay for her crimes of the future, and Hannya would make sure of it.

  Jagged spirals could be seen in the devil's pupils.

  This wizard won’t take a single step towards her beloved.

  Abigail clenched her fists; of course they would run into a tyrannical devil. Abigail was well-read on the subject of devils. To defeat one's enemy, one must know them. Young devils with imbalanced natures are unforgiving and cruel. Whether it be feeding their core too quickly or letting their blood run wild for too long, the consequence for doing what they please when they please leads to devils like the one before them.

  ‘So, I have no choice.’ If she didn’t stop this devil here, there would be no telling the casualties the city would face before reinforcements arrived.

  Abigail could sense that this devil wanted her dead more than anyone else here. Strangely, that was fortunate. It meant that she could get Damien out of here to seek aid. The priests and guards were hesitant to enter the mist without a ‘hero’ present.

  Abigail wanted to scoff at the thought. None had faith in her any longer, not even her goddess. But that didn’t mean she would step aside for this girl to cause a massacre.

  She flung her long sleeve out to her side, and a black staff appeared, followed by a circular metal ring with a black jewel in the center, a focus.

  She gripped the black staff with her right hand as the focus hovered over her left shoulder.

  As the devil moved closer, her red eyes widened and spun in excitement at the wizard's magical treasures.

  “Kikiki, the gloves are coming off, huh? Kikiki! That will make it all the more devastating when I crush you.” The little devil flicked her wrist, and a small sword appeared in her hand. She unsheathed it, chucking the sheath to the ground a distance away.

  She held the short sword in a reverse grip, a strange practice for the type of weapon she had.

  As the devil grew closer to the edge of the alley and into the open area, Abigail and Damien stood. the wizard didn’t dare wait any longer and turned to Damien, about to tell her disciple to retreat and let the guards know the situation within the mist.

  But before she could speak. A righteous young voice shouted out.

  “Honorless monster, release the hostages!”

  Abigail's shocked eyes shifted to her disciple standing next to her, a new sword drawn and his stance ready.

  ‘What was this fool doing?!’ Abigail thought.

  “Damien!” The wizard shouted, not considering the words that subconsciously surfaced in her mind.

  Why? Because she was bombarded with other anxieties soon after. The wizard had mostly ignored glancing at the hostages or talking about them to keep the young devil's focus singular.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Abigail was a seasoned hero; characters like this, especially when frenzied, would always…

  “Oh? How rude of me! Kikiki! Sure.” The devil chuckled, glancing back at the broken-willed men. She opened her mouth and spoke teasingly. “Kill yourselves.”

  A light wave of pink mana and chi flowed from her mouth, cascading down the darkened alley and crashing into the kneeling men.

  The men shook and, within a second, began to shakily pick up the swords lying around them, resting them on their necks.

  "N-no! Please! Have mercy!"

  "We were just following orders! We were just following orders!"

  "Young lordess! C-contract! Yes, I'll do a contract! Please!"

  "Gods help me! Dear gods help me!"

  They wept and begged, pleading for release to the devil. They forced all their might to stop the incoming execution as they did so, but all of them could feel their strength rapidly fading with each yelp of forgiveness.

  The pink-haired entity ignored their pleas, gazing back at the magic hero with ridicule. So this wizard was playing games with her too. She had almost forgotten about those ants.

  “No!” Damien shouted uselessly, gripping his sword tight, unable to figure out a solution to save them from the mind control.

  But the magic hero was different; she sprang into action, recognizing the skill the young devil was using.

  A will technique.

  Specialized skills constructed with mana and powered with chi. The closest the wizard could compare it to was the [Provoke] skill of the heavy warrior class.

  The one the devil cast seemed to work in the opposite way, but the solution to both techniques was the same.

  Her mana flow was currently too poor to cast such a complicated spell automatically; it would take too much time, so she opted to do it manually.

  Abigail’s finger glowed with a white light as she swiftly drew sigils in the air.

  ‘Non-element, balance, process, nullify, regulate, calm’

  Six sigils floated in the air, forming a complex array in an instant.

  “Buff Magic: [Equilibrium]” She swiped her staff at the completed array, sending it flying towards the group behind Hannya.

  But would Hannya let the hero do as she pleased?

  *Snort* “Showing off in front of me? Nice try, lil sis.”

  A glowing pink finger began to dance in the air.

  The wizard's eyes widened as something unheard of occurred within her vision.

  The devil before her… began to draw her own sigils in the air.

  But the shocking part wasn’t the technique and speed, though impressive; it was nothing new. Both chanting and writing were standard practices in Neel.

  Plenty of devils cast that way; devils had their own language of sigils for casting, and they were typically premade, all-encompassing, general arrays.

  What caused her eyes to widen and heart to tremble was the fact that this young devil was writing her sigils in both ancient devilish and the human language.

  The devilish was complicated, but from what Abigail could read, it wasn’t premade or general.

  She was writing a spell counter by hand… in real time.

  ‘Peek(Equilibrium) => return(results), Analyze(results), {Non-element, balance, process, nullify, regulate, calm} = results, results.Effect.ReplaceAll(nil), throw Error(‘lol’)’

  The little devil pointed to the spell rapidly approaching.

  “Kikiki! Hannya Magic: [Null Pointer]”

  A dense array was formed; the sigils within shifted slowly as they connected to each other. To the hero, the energy resonated and communicated to one another in a bizarre way; the sigils rotated like the hands of a clock within the array as it flew out and intercepted the incoming spell.

  Shatter

  The two collided. The magic heroes array barrelled through the complicated array like it was made of glass, leaving behind nothing but pink sparkles.

  The two humans sighed in relief at the sight. As the spell fell on the immobilized men, Abigail's confidence was bolstered. The devil may have some talent in spell crafting, but she still had much to-

  Splash

  Plop

  Plop

  Plop

  The sound of splashing blood and thudding skulls yanked the hero from her thoughts. She looked back to the men, now headless and cold on the ground. Her mind shook.

  ‘How?’

  Her spell had failed. No, it didn’t fail. The effects didn’t trigger! The magic hero's heartbeat increased; this was far more sinister than other types of countermagic. A spell that strips away the functions while leaving the array structure intact. The magician’s mind whirled with thoughts of the horrifying results, casting a protective ward just to die in a poisonous swamp anyways, or healing a party member during battle, only to find them bled out seconds later.

  An array like this was a terrifying encounter for a caster; it challenges their faith in their own spells. The faith in their own power.

  Hannya looked at the gruesome scene in ‘shock’. She turned and pointed an accusatory finger at the magic hero. “Murderer! Kikiki.”

  Though she didn’t like how the hero’s array just steamrolled her own, making her magic look soy, the results of her research were satisfactory. Her ‘Hannya magic’ formally known as ‘{Redacted} magic’ worked as smoothly in combat as it did for rituals.

  “Bullshit! You did this! What did you do to my master's magic?!” A now annoying voice bellowed through the night.

  Hannya scrunched up her face at the boy. Why was this guy still barking? Does he not know he’s useless yet? The little devil shook her head; it was time to shut that one up so she could crush the spirits and take the soul of his master. She ignored the boy as her mana surged.

  The devil grinned as her red eyes rotated faster. “Kikiki, now then. It’s my serve!” She swung her finger through the air; the devil spun and twisted, dancing in the dark alley as her glowing pink finger made sigil after sigil. Her hand flowed like a conductor, building her array for a grand finale.

  The wizard's mind raced as she gazed at the sigils stacking on top of one another.

  They were… too complicated.

  She didn’t have time to read and understand what the spell did with all the devilish and human sigils mashing together; forming a counterspell was impossible. But she knew it was nothing good.

  What was worse, the devil's eyes never left hers. She danced and swayed as the sigils increased, daring the magic hero to interrupt her performance.

  Abigail’s heart began to ignite with a twinge of fear, her past trauma affecting her judgment and processing speed. Her mind was stalling.

  She looked to Damien, who was shaking in shock and anger. She knew why he was feeling that way. He knew the difference in strength, so he dared not move thoughtlessly, but he did not want the devil to do as she pleased. He was stunlocked.

  ‘He has to leave.’ Abigail thought, she couldn’t tell if the young devils channeling was a bait to draw her in or the spell was the real deal, either way the best choice now was to get Damien out of here and handle the battle alone.

  Her disciple would only hinder her here.

  “Damien, listen to me!” The hero spoke urgently, grabbing the attention of the young warrior. “I’m going to teleport you to the outside of the mist. When that happens, go and inform the guards and priest outside about what's happening here. Also, try your best to find the elf we met earlier, Matilda; I need another caster here and quickly!” She grabbed his shoulder and began to draw sigils in the air as quickly as she could.

  The young hero was shocked to hear all this. He shook his head vehemently; he wasn’t going to leave his master here alone with that thing.

  He spoke bravely. “No way! I’m not leaving you here, Master! I can still-”

  “Damien!” Abigail shouted. They didn’t have time for this; the mana in the air was coalescing rapidly now. “You are not ready! It’s dangerous here, so do as your teacher asks!”

  The hero was dazed from the harsh words and tone, but the magic hero couldn’t afford to baby him. She completed her sigils and slapped his chest in a hurry, leaving a small white mark branded there.

  Damien’s body began to light up, a strange mana rotating within his circuits.

  “Kikiki, recognize the magnificence of supreme blood…” The red-eyed devil smiled wildly; with her mana now the size of a large lake, the little devil decided to show her superiority over these lower beings.

  As her reserves instantly fell to ten percent, she spread her hands out wide, the mana in the air solidifying, catering to the completed grand array.

  The magic hero lifted her staff, a ripple of mana spreading outwards. When the mana touched the sigil on the young warrior, his body began to slowly turn to light particles.

  Abigail looked to Damien as he began to disappear; she smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry, I’ll be fine here. Move swiftly, my disciple.”

  She brought her staff down and spoke. “Spatial Magic: [Leap]!”

  As she did, a bell-like voice laughed at the same time.

  “Kikiki! Chaos Magic: [Baleful Black Bog]!”

  As Damien's vision blurred, all he could make out was dense white mist covering the sky above and torrents of thick black liquid rapidly rushing towards him and his master from the ground below.

  His eyes widened in horror as the black substance began to quickly surround them, shielded only by a thin barrier erected by his master. As the barrier began to rapidly crack and rumble, Damien turned to his master…

  “Maste-”

  …before he vanished in a beam of light.