The addition of Hellfire changed everything. Banishing the demon now seemed almost impossible.
Even while I used Timeless, slipping between burning seconds to avoid each strike, the wasteland had already drowned in those purple infernal flames. Every breath seared my lungs; every escape route turned to ash beneath my feet. The ground itself hissed and cracked like the skin of a dying world.
Then—something grey flashed past me. A silhouette tearing through the haze, charging straight for the demon who was still weaving his serpents of Hellfire in my direction.
The impact that followed shook the battlefield.
BOOM!
Caught completely off guard, the demon faltered. For the briefest moment, his strength vanished—as if something had stripped him bare. He barely had time to lift his gaze before a guttural growl rumbled above him, and a drop of hot saliva splashed against his cheek.
Johnathan.
The beast's claws dug into the earth, pinning the demon beneath him with bone-crushing force. The sheer weight of his fury made the ground splinter and sink. The demon writhed, snapping his flaming strings in every direction, but none of them could pierce that monstrous pressure.
That was when he saw it—why a mere C-rank werewolf could overpower him so completely.
Sigils. Glowing, intricate markings burned into Johnathan's grey fur, each one pulsing with restrained power. Every line of them hummed with runic energy, siphoning strength straight from the infernal flames that tried to consume him.
"These… damn… mortals!" the demon snarled, his voice strangled under the crushing weight. But none of us were listening.
Johnathan grabbed the demon by the skull—then slammed him into the ground.
Again and again, until the earth itself began to crater beneath the repeated blows.
Instead of focusing on the demon, I poured everything into Timeless, pushing it to its absolute limit as the world around me froze into eerie stillness. In an instant, I appeared beside Reinhardt.
Blood dripped from his lips as he struggled to stay upright, each breath shallow and ragged.
He had managed to draw the anti-demon sigils on Johnathan—no small feat for someone who carried a demon soul. The process must have felt like carving his own flesh from the inside, yet he endured it. His hatred for his kind was the only thing that kept his vessel from tearing apart.
I caught him before he could collapse, gripping his shoulder firmly. His skin was cold, trembling under my touch. With a sweep of my hand, healing energy rippled across his face, knitting together torn veins and ruptured vessels. The color slowly returned to him, if only barely.
"Young master..." he coughed, wiping the blood from his mouth. "The sigils on the demon... won't last long. We need to leave while we still can."
"The ritual's nearly complete," Moriarty interjected through my voice, his tone calm but laced with iron resolve. His eyes turned toward the battlefield, where Johnathan still grappled with the demon's flaming mass. "We can't afford to stop now. Not when we're this close."
He paused, glancing back at Reinhardt.
"But if things turn worse…" A faint, cold smile touched his lips. "You know what to do-"
All of a sudden, the world dimmed to near-black—the light around us devoured by the demon's growing power. Moriarty staggered forward, barely managing to stay on his feet. Every breath we took burned; every heartbeat felt heavier, slower.
We could feel it. The strain of clashing with a being two whole ranks above us was forcing our vessel to its breaking point—pushing us ever closer to Metamorphosis.
"Goodness… Mother… can't you give me a bit more time…" Moriarty groaned, voice rough and trembling. Yet even then, he refused to yield—his hand clenched into a fist, and he forcefully reactivated Timeless.
Reality shuddered. The air cracked. Emerald particles bled out of our vessel, rising toward the darkened sky like dying fireflies.
We were running out of time. Entering Metamorphosis here meant certain death—the demon would tear us apart before the transformation could stabilize. But holding it back… that would delay our evolution, maybe by months.
"Young master," Reinhardt's voice broke through the chaos. "Let us hold him back. Trust us… we won't fail you."
For a brief moment, I hesitated. The weight of his words hung heavy in the air.
Then—
"…Go."
The command left my lips softly, almost reverently.
And as I spoke, the green particles surged, swirling violently around me before solidifying into a translucent cocoon of living light. It pulsed faintly with every heartbeat—like a chrysalis.
—————————
Ryuk's perspective:
—————————
After a brutal struggle, the demon wrenched himself free from Johnathan's grasp. His head snapped toward the green cocoon behind the wolf, and a slow, predatory grin stretched across his charred face.
"So… your leader finally falls," he hissed, voice dripping with venomous delight. "Let's see how long you can last without him."
He raised his left arm toward the heavens.
"Hell's Descent."
The moment the words left his mouth, the strings that laced the wasteland rose as one, slithering upward until they pierced the storm clouds above.
Then the world cracked open.
A deafening rumble tore through the air, a sound so vast it felt like the sky itself was splitting apart. From the churning clouds poured millions of serpents, each forged from roaring hellfire — their scales hissing, their eyes molten and cruel.
They fell upon the earth like divine punishment, obliterating everything they touched. The wasteland shuddered under their impact; obsidian soil melted into rivers of flame, and the stench of scorched flesh filled the air. Each serpent struck like a meteor, tearing through stone, steel, and bone alike, until the battlefield itself was unrecognizable.
When the dust finally cleared, the demon froze — a clawed hand made of bone had raked across his face, leaving deep gashes that smoked faintly with dark energy.
Before him stood Johnathan.
The werewolf's body was a nightmare — most of his flesh had been burned away, revealing charred muscle and exposed bone still wreathed in dying flames. Through the gaps in his skeletal frame, the demon could see those eyes — feral, bloodshot, and utterly unhinged, locked onto him with predatory madness.
And behind Johnathan, the green cocoon lay protected beneath a spherical shield of black ink, pulsing faintly as it absorbed the infernal heat. Yet as the shield slowly dispersed into mist, the demon's grin faltered.
Reinhardt was gone.
Before he could even turn, something hooked violently around his throat — a curved blade, dragging him backward.
The demon's eyes widened. Behind him stood Reinhardt, his once-pristine armor shattered and his body nearly as ruined as Johnathan's. Every breath he took sounded like it scraped his lungs raw, yet he still forced his broken frame to move.
The scythe in his hands trembled with effort as he pulled with all his strength, trying to carve through the demon's neck.
A slow, wicked smile crept back onto the demon's face as Reinhardt and Johnathan's expressions darkened—the sigils carved across his right arm had finally vanished.
Both men released their grip, instinctively leaping back toward the green cocoon.
"I never thought I'd die beside a barbarian like you," Reinhardt said between ragged breaths, his voice carrying both fatigue and grim amusement.
"How about dying beside a brother?" Johnathan replied, a hopeless smile breaking through the soot and blood on his face.
For a fleeting moment, both of them laughed—a sound raw, defiant, and heartbreakingly human—before the heat of the hellfire surged, swallowing the air around them.
Then, from the infernal storm, a massive serpent woven from blackened strings and roaring flames surged toward them, devouring everything in its path.