He launched them diagonally, raising his arms from bottom to top as they grew, slicing through the air and devouring everything in their path. The intense heat wrapped around his face, and the embers—alive and ravenous—dispelled the surrounding darkness with a fiery dance.
Before the impressive sight, even the shadows around the entity recoiled, exposing it amid its torments under the looming spell.
And when it arrived—inevitable—an unrelenting eruption burst forth, striking with no room for escape: a violent tornado of fire that consumed him without mercy. Every flicker of flame, burning and vibrant, danced frenetically around him.
As the flames spread in apotheosis, the heat devouring his skin revealed the magnitude of the clash.
Who he was facing was one of the greatest prodigies.
The environment, once plunged into darkness, now blazed with the intense eruption of fire. The light from the flames pierced even the deepest corners, revealing once-hidden details and casting dancing shadows across the twisted expressions of the "victim" on the walls.
Under the ceaseless crackling, the demon's body became even more obscured, its eyes losing focus, swallowed by the overwhelming heat.
"It's hot, isn't it?" he joked, with a smile that teetered between confidence and cynicism.
Despite his apparent calm, his eyebrows arched slightly, betraying his discomfort at the unfolding scene.
The demonic beast should have already fallen...
Yet it persisted under his gaze, unmoving. Amid the terrifying scene—intensified by the flames hungry for victims—its furious contortions hurled droplets of acid, purple blood that ran along the floor, burning the ground at the exorcist's feet.
Still, he did not retreat, even as the floor beneath his shoes melted, dissolving into a corrosive mist.
The creature's screams, once soaked in the searing pain of its flesh burning, transformed into a roar of pure hatred. The sound reverberated in sonic waves that weakened the fire's searing claws, making everything around tremble. Its charred flesh released an acrid stench, and defying the blazing inferno, it seemed to overcome the relentless embers.
The darkness, like a living entity, responded to the call of its fury. It emerged—dense and merciless—closing in around it. With a precise movement, it carved a path through the fiery claws that imprisoned it, pushing them away. In the clash between the decadence of fire and the cunning of darkness, a chaotic and terrifying dance took shape, where each moment echoed the triumph of shadow over flame.
With a bold leap, the entity launched itself at him. A thunderous crash reverberated through the space, and a thick curtain of dust rose, momentarily obscuring the view.
However, with astounding speed, he escaped so swiftly that the beast only realized his absence once the dust had fully cleared.
What remained was only the destruction left in his wake, tracing a trail of chaos. The walls seemed on the verge of collapse, and the entrance had been reduced to a heap of rubble and wooden debris piled beneath the crater.
Amid the chaos, Yamasaki positioned himself behind him and, ironically, applauded his attempt to strike. Under the protagonist's watchful gaze, he sighed with resolve and, with a biting smile, delivered one last jab at the creature:
"Nice hit! But you missed—and that was fatal!"
Interrupting the theatrical gesture, he raised his right arm and, with fingers shaped like a gun, focused a slicing sphere of wind at the tip of his index finger.
Unlike the previous spell, this wasn't a simple release of energy.
He manipulated the air, channeling the energy of his spirit through the astral-elemental connection that united the world, its concepts, and its creatures. The synergy among these elements converged into an ethereal dance with nature, flowing as though each movement was predestined.
This energetic harmony culminated in the creation of a powerful yet efficient spell, as no transmutation took place—only the release of the accumulated energy.
His gaze reflected an intensity matching the embers he had conjured before, now consuming the scene behind him, turning everything around into a chaotic painting of fire and destruction.
The spectacle made the building quake, enveloping it in dust and smoke, creating visual and sensory chaos.
On the first floor, the pillars supporting the structure trembled, and cracks snaked through the concrete like the course of a river, as if the very architecture writhed in agony, shattered by the force of the impact.
The only other people present, aside from the combatants, rushed out of the rooms, desperately seeking safety amid the turmoil.
The director and his staff staggered through the hallway, trying to escape the smoke that invaded the space without mercy, feeling the pressure of chaos closing in on them like a deadly embrace.
While the battle raged below, each blow from the entity sent tremors through the building, making them believe the structure could collapse at any moment under the devastating force of the clash.
Dealing with every movement, he faced the demon's crushing attempts with unmatched agility, dodging each attack without even breaking a sweat. Every strike that tore through the air or smashed into the ground generated shockwaves that made the walls and floors quake, as if the very building teetered on the edge of collapse.
The skylight shattered, and shards rained down among them, catching reflections of their wide eyes in every splinter that broke midair.
Determined not to be caught off guard, he kept anticipating each strike, moving with subtlety—as though dancing to the rhythm of the destruction unfolding around him.
Maintaining the same mudra in his hand, he continued absorbing the swirling wind around him, compressing it. In his hands, energy was woven and shaped as if he were its master.
This spell should be enough…, he thought.
Meanwhile, the creature's skin slowly regenerated from its burns after each failed attempt to strike him, as though the demon's very nature adapted to pain, becoming increasingly relentless.
The exorcist felt a thrill at the thought of pushing every possibility within his grasp, as he gradually sensed his deeply crimson aura clashing with the entity's abyssal blackness—creating a collision of opposing forces.
The two energies merged into a unified symphony, as if dancing in perfect harmony: a collision between light and darkness, between the physical and the spiritual. Only in a moment like that did shadow and spiritual energy become indistinguishable, merging so intensely that the line between them disappeared completely.
That instinct…
A growing ferocity overtook his mind, breaking the icy monotony he had carried. His illness, once a burden, now fused with the intensity of his aura, creating a being as chaotic as a demon.
It broke his ties to reason. He became a wild force!
Is this me?
Interrupting the flow of strikes, he dictated the next steps of the dance, moving with precision and a certain coldness. He widened the distance between them with a swift slide backward, keeping his eyes locked, watching every twitch.
The entity, aware its life was at risk with each second he remained alive, lunged to grab him in blind fury—but he slipped away with a lightning-fast sidestep, becoming a shadow in motion.
Raising his arm once more to the level of its head, he watched the creature's claws rip through the air, spreading darkness—an expression of power so intense it seemed capable of tearing him apart.
Not giving the creature another chance, he channeled a burst of wind, propelled by the spiritual energy flowing from his aura. The movement was instantaneous. At point-blank range, he fired a tiny sphere of wind at blinding speed, slicing through the space with lethal precision.
The sphere struck the beast's head directly, shattering it into countless fragments. The impact triggered an inside-out explosion, disintegrating the creature's skull with such overwhelming velocity that no human eye could follow.
The purple blood, erupting like a waterfall, splashed across his uniform as the creature's body gave out, disintegrating in the same instant—as if made of fine sand. He watched silently as the rest of the beast collapsed, dissolving beneath his feet, like nothing more than an illusion torn apart by the force of his spell.
His clothes and skin remained untouched; the blood had no effect on beings or objects with spiritual auras, leaving him unharmed. The protection acted like an invisible shield, repelling the chaos the battle had unleashed.
The technique—surpassing the speed of sound multiple times—left behind a condensation cone, an indelible mark of its passage. The spell warped the space around it, unleashing winds that gradually faded, gently wiping away the last traces of the immense energy that had just been released.
Relief washed over him.
He allowed his mind to empty, at least of that evil, leaving behind the battle's anxiety. The fight was finally over.
The exorcist, relieved from the weight of the struggle, could at last take in the devastated scene left behind. Everything had been reduced to rubble—what was once the gymnasium was now unrecognizable. Cracked walls and shattered floors told the story of a building that had seemingly bowed to the sheer force of the confrontation. Every piece of debris seemed to carry the scars of the battle.
"Damn… what a rush, kid!" Azaael remarked, astonished.
Through his host's eyes, he had seen it all: the fierce battle, the devastating impact, and finally, the darkness that had engulfed the building disintegrating into fragments. They fell to the ground and, as if they had never existed, vanished instantly.
And in the final gleam of the horizon, night had already claimed its throne.
The light piercing the darkness revealed multiple soul traces ascending from the ground to the sky—the victims of the entity, or what remained of them.
Fragments of souls had finally turned into glimmers that dotted the heavens, freed from the torment caused by evil. It was the last trace of life still lingering in the physical world—but at the end of its journey, it too would reach its final destination.
Like the flames of a dying fire, his aura slowly faded.
The heat that once radiated from his skin gave way to the cold, which now embraced him once more.
The exorcism was, at last, complete.