High School DxD: The Lucifer's Devil Trigger — Chapter 44

Chapter 44: The Light of Excalibur

Even if the two Transcendents, Sirzechs and Ajuka, refused to intervene, the sheer scale of the battlefield painted a grim reality. Even if the rest of the spectators banded together, and even if the other two Satans joined the fray to oppose Levi, victory remained an impossible illusion.

Grayfia and Tiamat alone possessed enough raw power to stall two Satans indefinitely. As for the surrounding High-Class and Ultimate-Class Devils, Levi had already demonstrated how effortlessly he could dismantle them. He hadn’t even broken a sweat., if a genuine all-out war erupted, the remnants of the Old Satan Faction would never just stand by and watch their nominal leader be attacked.

Faced with this crushing disparity, several ambitious nobles quietly swallowed their ulterior motives.

But for the ancient devils who had survived the Great War, and for figures like the Phoenix Clan Head who knew the bloody history of the Underworld intimately, the shock ran far deeper. Other devils might have been too young or too blind to recognize it, but the veterans saw the truth.

The dense, suffocating blue demonic power surging around Levi, the absolute tyrannical pressure he released the moment he stopped holding back—it was the exact same aura the Original Lucifer had wielded.

If someone had stood up right then and declared Levi to be the literal reincarnation of the Original Lucifer, the veterans would have believed it without hesitation.

In stark contrast to their earlier arrogance, the Bael and Phoenix Clan Heads shrank back into the shadows, entirely abandoning any thought of causing trouble for the young devil. The Phoenix Clan Head’s mind was already spinning in a completely different direction, rapidly calculating whether his youngest, unmarried daughter might catch Levi’s eye.

Down in the ruined venue, Levi’s thumb pressed against the tsuba of Yamato. He sheathed the blade before it had even fully cleared the scabbard.

Click.

The moment the hilt met the scabbard, the air shattered. A storm of crisscrossing dimensional slashes erupted from the void, instantly locking down every conceivable escape route around Serafall.

Levi hadn’t mastered this technique overnight. His icy gaze tracked the only possible gap in the spatial distortion. The tip of his foot tapped the cracked earth, propelling his body forward as he swept the blade in a lightning-fast, horizontal arc aimed directly at that singular blind spot.

This explosive, decapitating strike was his specialty.

But Serafall Leviathan was not a Satan just for show. The very instant Levi’s thumb shifted on the scabbard, her instincts screamed. Rather than attempt to dodge the lethal blade aimed at her neck, she threw herself backward, deliberately colliding with the lingering spatial tears to escape the fatal blow. Blood sprayed from three fresh lacerations across her body, but she survived.

Watching her desperate evasion, Levi gained a deep new understanding of Vergil’s Judgment Cut.

If Vergil himself had executed that move, could it have been dodged by trading minor wounds for survival? Absolutely not. Vergil’s speed was pushed to the absolute limit, but more, every single spatial tear he manifested was perfectly aimed at a vital point. He left his enemies no room for clumsy, desperate sacrifices.

Ultimately, Levi’s own strike simply hadn’t been clean enough.

‘Serafall, I intended to stop that blade a fraction of an inch from your neck,’Levi thought, his grip loosening slightly on Yamato.’I wasn’t actually trying to take your life. Was it really necessary to go this far?’

Serafall looked utterly ragged. The defensive demonic power she had layered over her skin had offered zero resistance against Yamato’s absolute sharpness. Had Levi not deliberately pulled his swing at the last microsecond, she would have been missing a limb.

Now, the trap was fully sprung. Grayfia hovered silently behind her, Kuroka’s golden eyes tracked her every twitch from the flank, and Levi blocked her front.

Surrounded by three monsters, her defeat was only a matter of seconds. Yet, despite the blood dripping from her torn magical girl outfit, the smile on Serafall’s face only grew brighter.

“This is a battle that determines the future of Sona and me,” she breathed, her voice trembling with manic determination. “If I don’t give it my absolute all, my entire life will be ruined. How could I ever let that happen?”

The moment the last word left her lips, Grayfia struck.

A concentrated beam of silver-blue demonic power pierced through the distorted space, slamming directly into Serafall’s head.

Crack.

The sound of shattering ice echoed across the crater. Serafall had swapped herself with an ice clone at the exact moment of impact.

Simultaneously, a blur of motion passed over Levi’s head, rocketing straight toward the distant Ingvild.

Levi didn’t even flinch. He stood perfectly still, his hands resting at his sides, completely ignoring the incoming threat.

High above, Tiamat spread her massive wings. Her tail whipped through the air with the force of a hurricane, obliterating the rushing figure into a cloud of sparkling ice shards.

It was all a feint.

The real Serafall was hiding within the dense, freezing mist left behind by her shattered clone. Deep within the white fog, she held two glowing blue magic circles in her palms, pouring every last drop of her remaining demonic power into them. Her target was locked entirely on Levi.

She had realized the harsh truth: she couldn’t defeat his peerage. Her only chance at turning the tables was to bypass Grayfia and Tiamat entirely and take out the King.

“This move is going to hurt a bit,” Serafall whispered into the frost. “Sorry!”

She forced the volatile energy to her fingertips, manipulating the mist to constantly shift and obscure her exact coordinates. She knew Grayfia’s spatial magic was lethal, and she fully expected the silver-haired maid to intercept her.

Instead, nothing happened. Grayfia didn’t move. Levi didn’t move. Tiamat simply hovered in the sky, staring down at the fog.

A cold spike of dread pierced Serafall’s chest. Through a gap in the mist, she caught sight of Kuroka. The Nekomata’s glowing, slit-pupil eyes hadn’t blinked once.

Kuroka was a master of Senjutsu. Her perception of natural energy and life force was terrifyingly precise. Serafall’s desperate attempt to hide her accumulating demonic power had been completely transparent from the very beginning.

“Don’t look down on me!” Serafall screamed, throwing her hands forward.

The freezing air erupted, instantly solidifying the surrounding mist into hundreds of mirror-like ice crystals. She fired her massive, concentrated blast of demonic power directly into the mirrors, causing the beam to refract and multiply from a dozen different angles before converging into a blinding pillar of destruction aimed straight at Levi.

The entire venue was illuminated in a harsh, freezing light.

But the light didn’t come from Serafall’s attack.

Grayfia snapped her fingers.

Space warped. Levi vanished from his position. In his place stood Artoria Pendragon, her emerald eyes locked onto the incoming blast, both hands gripping the hilt of her holy sword.

The swirling winds of Invisible Air violently dispersed, revealing the flawless golden blade. Endless, pure light surged from the steel, pushing back the demonic chill in an instant.

Artoria planted her boots into the earth and called out the true name of her weapon.

“Excalibur!”

A towering torrent of golden holy light tore through the sky. For the devils watching from the safety of their dimensional barriers, the sheer purity of the energy was suffocating—a deadly, burning poison to their very existence.

Outside the arena, the observing nobles fell into a dead silence. The spectators were almost entirely comprised of Ultimate-Class Devils, the supposed elite of the Underworld. Yet, looking at Levi’s lineup, a deep sense of insignificance washed over them.

A Satan-class Leviathan. The Silver-Haired Slayer. The strongest Dragon King. A wielder of the ultimate Holy Sword. Even the stray cat demon casually flanking him possessed the raw output of an Ultimate-Class Devil.

The Reformist Faction watched the Old Satan Faction’s young master with absolute, unadulterated terror.

“That’s enough,” Artoria declared.

The golden beam of Excalibur collided head-on with Serafall’s refracted magic cannon. The clash shook the foundations of the arena, but Artoria was in peak condition and perfectly positioned. The holy light effortlessly chewed through the ice, suppressing the Satan’s desperate final strike.

Serafall gritted her teeth, throwing up a thick wall of absolute zero ice to block the residual blast of holy energy. She managed to survive the shockwave, but the moment the light faded, she felt a cold, dense pressure against her temple.

Grayfia stood beside her, a condensed bullet of spatial demonic power pressed directly against Serafall’s head.

Serafall slowly raised her hands, a sheepish, defeated laugh escaping her lips. She had lost.

Yet, as the dust settled, the frantic panic over her sister’s marriage contract seemed to vanish from her expression. She was smiling, but the depth in her eyes belonged entirely to a ruler of the Underworld.

She played the role of a hyperactive, easygoing magical girl, but she was far from stupid. She was the Satan in charge of foreign diplomacy. She handled the treacherous political waters of the Yokai factions and the other mythologies. A devil didn’t survive in that position by relying on whims and temper tantrums.

Right now, Serafall was looking past the immediate defeat.

“Oh my… little Levi, your subordinates are truly terrifying,” she sighed, letting her hands drop. “If I had known you were hiding this much firepower, I never would have challenged you to a match, hahaha.”

She laughed lightly, closing the distance between herself and Levi, acting as if they were the closest of childhood friends.

Then, her playful tone shifted, hovering dangerously between a joke and a serious interrogation. “Little Levi, you’ve exposed a terrifying amount of strength today. Whether you want to or not, the old nobles are definitely going to drag you into a massive pile of trouble.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Levi met her probing gaze, his expression completely flat. “You don’t need to worry about my intentions. I am quite satisfied with the current state of the Underworld. As long as our society continues to stabilize and improve, I have zero interest in the political throne. The reason I gathered this power is very simple.”

Levi wasn’t one to put on theatrical performances. He preferred the brutal efficiency of the truth.

“Rizevim must be plotting something in the shadows. If we leave that madman alone, sooner or later, he will bring irreparable destruction to the Underworld, to our race, and eventually to the entire world.”

Levi’s eyes narrowed slightly. “So I am going to kill him. That is my only objective.”

Serafall stared into his calm, unwavering eyes for a long, silent moment. She searched for any trace of deception, any flicker of hidden ambition. Finding none, her shoulders slumped, and she quietly let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.

This was the absolute best-case scenario. If Levi possessed even a fraction of Rizevim’s chaotic ambition, the sheer military might he commanded would plunge the devils straight into a second, apocalyptic civil war.

Instantly, the heavy atmosphere vanished. Serafall’s eyes welled up with dramatic, comical tears.

“Oh my, little Levi, how could I possibly worry about boring political things!” she wailed, throwing her hands in the air. “Compared to the fate of the Underworld, I’m way more worried about my precious, adorable Sona!”

She looked entirely devastated. Levi just stared at her, thoroughly unimpressed.

“If you truly didn’t take this seriously,” Levi said dryly, “with your terminal sister-complex, we would probably be standing at the funeral of the Sitri Clan Head right now.”

Leaving her to her theatrics, Levi turned his back and began walking toward the exit to find Sirzechs and Ajuka.

Serafall stood in the ruined crater, watching his retreating figure until he disappeared into the shadows of the corridor. The exaggerated, tearful smile on her face stiffened, slowly melting away until nothing remained but a deep, complicated sigh.

“This time, I really lost completely… in every single aspect.”

As Levi walked through the quiet halls, a familiar mechanical chime echoed in his mind.

[Check-in reward: Devil Arm – Beowulf.]

Levi paused, his brow furrowing slightly.

His first thought was the inherent nature of the weapon. Light was a deadly, corrosive poison to devils. This particular Devil Arm from the Devil May Cry universe was heavily aspected with the light attribute and carried a divine blessing. If handed to any normal devil in this world, it would be treated as a lethal, top-tier holy artifact that would burn their hands off.

It was a weapon far better suited for an angel.

Then, he remembered his own unique constitution. ‘Right. Holy light is completely useless against me. There’s no problem.’

Since Beowulf was now in his possession, it opened up an interesting avenue. Why not go back and browse through the angelic secret arts recorded within the Key of Solomon? Since holy magic couldn’t burn his demonic circuits, he could easily practice a few light-type martial arts to pair with the gauntlets.

Satisfied with the idea, Levi stored Beowulf into his system inventory and continued down the corridor to locate the other two Satans.

When he finally reached the designated observation room, Sirzechs was nowhere to be found. Instead, he only saw Ajuka Beelzebub, slumped against the stone wall, looking utterly drained of life.

“What happened to you?” Levi asked, raising an eyebrow.

Ajuka cracked an eye open. Seeing that Levi had left his terrifying peerage behind, the green-haired Satan let out a long, exhausted groan.

“It’s those old fossils,” Ajuka muttered, rubbing his temples. “After witnessing your absurd display of strength, they were too terrified to bother you directly. So, naturally, they swarmed the two of us to demand answers… I managed to slip away using a spatial formula, but Sirzechs wasn’t so lucky. He’s currently drowning in a sea of panicked aristocrats.”

Levi looked at Ajuka’s disheveled state, a faint, knowing smirk touching his lips. He shook his head gently.

“Don’t look so defeated,” Levi said smoothly, stepping past the exhausted Satan. “Everything that just happened—the panic, the swarm of nobles, the shift in political power—it’s probably exactly what Sirzechs predicted from the very beginning.”

Ajuka blinked, his exhaustion momentarily replaced by utter confusion. “Huh?”