Cooled Passions Chapter 70: ...From Tic Tac Toe

Chapter 70: ...From Tic Tac Toe

The match started and the Sagans already made their move. The Bishop shot up into the air, clearing the dense foliage easily and quickly gaining altitude. Her height advantage would allow her to easily aim that Railgun attack of hers, something that Seekvaira could not allow. Thankfully, when they had discussed the strategy for this match, such a thing had been considered. Without even having to be ordered, Alivian burst into motion from her side, quickly closing in on the glowing form of the small girl.

The Agares Heiress narrowed her eyes, watching as the white haired Sagan easily dodged her loyal Queen’s sword, responding immediately with a glowing blade of lightning. Seekvaira narrowed her eyes at the response, watching as the Sagan Bishop continued to glow, encircled by magic, yet no signs of that strange blue magic were at all present.

It was clear that her opponents had planned extensively for this demonstration of theirs. Such a thing was obvious, especially with the intricate rule set that they had placed upon it, but their preparation went deeper than that. For each of the possible layouts of the Rating Game Arena, they had clearly created a specific plan of action.

More than that, the level of preparation and training that Shiro herself had undergone shone through. Alivian was Queen Piece and one of the strongest combatants of his age group. The fact that a Bishop, even younger than he, was able to keep up and retaliate against him in close combat… it was as if the Sagan were training for war.

Still, she had to trust her plan. Perhaps the team she had put together could take down the girl, perhaps they couldn’t but that was not her primary goal anyway. She left the aerial battle behind, making her way through the dense foliage Forest Terrain towards her own target. She had dissected the way the Sagan operated in the previous matches and thought through the rules that the challenge had been given.

She had come to the conclusion that there was a trap concealed within. With the little sister being the only one that was allowed to act offensively, it isolated her and tempted people to focus on overwhelming the Bishop. After all, she was only magically powerful, surely engaging her in close quarters combat with multiple opponents would be the easiest way of neutralizing her?

The issue is that this same focus allowed the Sagan to plan ahead. If people were going after the sister, the brother was freely able to assist whenever she became overwhelmed. In the first two matches, such a thing had not happened, but that was likely due to the Sagan’s first plans working out with no need for improvisation. In fact, the underestimation of Shiro was what made those games so dominating and their opponents so predictable.

The fifteen minute time limit was meant to force even more focus on Shiro, creating a sense of urgency to eliminate her quickly. Said plan was logical, but put all the points of failure into a single area. If you were unable to defeat the Sagan Bishop, a harder prospect than it appeared before her recent performances, then it left you exposed.

No, the correct way to navigate the Sagan trap was to go for the head of the snake. After all, he may be strong in defensive magic, but without the capability to strike back, he would be easier to overwhelm. Thus, with Alivian, Remus, Etienne and Leanne focusing on keeping Shiro busy, Seekvaira led the rest of her Peerage for this match towards the Sagan’s position. He hadn’t bothered to try and hide his Demonic Power, standing exactly where he was when the match had started, arms crossed and relaxed.

She had similarly made no moves to hide herself, her own power declaring her approach with full transparency. After all, if he could not attack, then she had no need to fear him striking at her.

“Lord Sagan.” She spoke, watching as he merely stared up at the conflict happening above.

“Agares.” Was his reply, relaxed.

She waited, expecting more from him, but was disappointed.

She continued to attempt to tempt him into conversation, while focusing on the spell circle she was weaving in her mind, “I saw through your trick. Using the rules to focus attention was clever.”

The words tasted of ashes in her mouth, but she knew how Devils thought, how their Pride functioned. After all, her own was driving her to act in this situation.

“Hmm.” Damocles Sagan hummed, still seeming to completely ignore her, stinging her aforementioned Pride even further and causing her to grit her teeth, “One out of three is a rather poor showing. Just what is the underworld coming to?”

“Your disdain is dangerous, my Lord.” Seekvaira spoke, the circle finishing forming, “Underestimating others can lead to embarrassment.”

A gleaming, polished lance of earth shot from beneath her towards the white-haired Lord, who only sighed.

“Lock.”

As if someone had pressed pause on a screen, her attack stilled in mid-air. Immediately, Seekvaira felt what the tomes said she would when faced with the Sagan power. It was if a solid wall had appeared in the flow of her Demonic power, preventing it from feeding her attack further. She knew, just from feeling the force that was pressing against her, that she could not merely overpower it by feeding more energy into the attack.

Thankfully that was not her plan.

A bolt of lightning shot out from behind the Sagan, emanating from Fiore, the other Bishop she had acquired for this match. The lord raised a shield, blocking the lightning from impacting him, arms still crossed. At that point, Seekvaira felt the telltale sensation of pawns promoting, causing her to grin.

“Alphonse, now!” She commanded, the rapier using Knight following her order and thrusting into a deep lunge down at the Sagan from his position in a tree above him.

At the same time, her pawns arrived, each with their own weapon or spell, stats boosted to the level of a Queen, surrounding and assaulting the Sagan from all angles. Said Devil simply took a step backwards, appearing from a newly revealed glowing stone a few feet behind him. He had prepared a teleportation spell ahead of time, leaving it away from him for just such a situation.

Seekvaira threw her arm out, the still active spell circle flaring as several more spikes of earth speared towards the Sagan, who spoke out once more.

“Lock.”

The command did more than stop just her, as all her weapon wielding subordinates froze in place, struggling against the invisible force containing them. The spell users were still active, each of them attacking from a different direction attempting to pierce through his shields. Seekvaira narrowed her eyes, using the Power of Binding directly on them would be a violation of the rules, so unless the Sagan had just forfeited there must be a more esoteric application at play.

Alphonse was the first to figure it out, backpedalling to her side, “He Locked our ability to approach him. We can move in any direction except directly towards him.”

“I see.” She replied, “I will break the Lock, be ready to attack when that happens.”

The Italian Fencing Master nodded solemnly towards her in response. The Sagan was still watching the battle up above, his adopted sister still glowing brilliantly as she fought against the four that Seekvaira had sent against her. She furrowed her brow at the sight, why was the girl wasting energy like that? She had to have some sort of plan that the glow was a part of, but the Agares Heiress didn’t know what it could possibly be.

Regardless, she trusted that Alivian could handle it, whatever the scheme was. She had her own issue to deal with.

Raising her voice, she directed her spell users, “Fire!”

Their commands already described before the match even began, they reacted instantly, a great conflagration converging upon the Sagan, the temperature of the area around him spiking intensely. At the same time, Seekvaira focused inwards, applying her own Family magic upon the Lock she could feel grinding against her spells.

Imagining a digital clock face, the numbers rapidly ticking forward in time, she accelerated the relative time the Lock was under. Meaning that rather than fighting against it with her own Demonic Power, she massively increased the cost the Sagan had to pay to keep it active, many times over.

By the time she could feel it having an effect, the Sagan had already responded to the fire, a dark purple orb pulsing above him, sucking in the flames with every undulation of power. The fire swirled around the orb, resembling a black hole as it cleared away the obstruction, just in time for his Lock to break and her Earthen Spears to shoot forward once more.

Her Pawns and Knight acted as well, descending on him, only to be stymied as thick walls of ice rose from the ground to block their way. They could break through, but doing so cost them speed. As for her attack, the Sagan slapped the air in front of him, uncrossing his arms. As his hand passed in front of the tips of the spikes, her senses screamed at her. A distortion of some sort rippled from his fingers, that she could feel was linked to time somehow, and her spikes were slammed off course, violently impacting the ground in front of the young Lord.

The pillars of earth looked comical, extending from the ground in graceful curving arcs, only to be violently shunted off course at the end of their journey, forced into sharp right angles.

Alphonse struck at the moment, rapier aimed at the small of the Sagan’s back. Slipping in just as an ice wall broke, his body glowing with his signature Bodily Reinforcing magic, but the Sagan deflected the tip with a gleaming, dangerous feeling sword that he was not holding a moment ago.

He wasn’t looking at the swordsman, though. He was staring directly at her, looking her way for the first time in the fight. She could feel her lips curving into a fanged grin at the long overdue acknowledgement.

“Heiress Agares.” He spoke, tilting his head to the side to avoid a curving bolt of lightning, twirling into the movement to dodge a dagger wielding Pawn, “I can’t help but feel that this is personal somehow.”

“I can’t imagine why that would be, Lord Sagan.” She responded, Orbs of Demonic Energy forming with a flick of her wrist that she weaved in between her attacking pieces to make dodging harder on him, “Making a mockery of my Debut Rating Game is surely nothing I would be upset about.”

Of course, she was aware that this more than made up for it. The man in front of her had annihilated two high ranking Peerages before this match, making them appear as if they were amateurs. The fact she was pushing him so hard, even if she was a bit annoyed by how easily he was avoiding actually taking damage, meant that she was gaining significant prestige from her actions here.

She took in a deep breath centring herself and dissecting the Sagan’s actions for any possible weakness. The air tasted strange somehow, a long forgotten part of her memory being stimulated by the sensation. Still she put it to the back of her mind for now, focused on the fight before her..

“I see.” He responded, slapping an axe with the flat of his blade into the ground and causing another assailant to almost trip over the weapon, “I forgot how much importance that Devils place on childish Games nowadays. If it helps, Heiress, you are not in any way special. I make a mockery of everyone equally.”

“It doesn’t.” She deadpanned, flexing her Power and slowing his perception of time, only to be instantly rebuffed by him flexing his own strength as he took to the air, avoiding a runic trap that had been laid in his path by her Bishop.

The flight as a whole became airborne, Devils twirling through the air as the group harried the Sagan Lord, who once more cast the orb like void above him, spells being drawn into it automatically to make their attempts to poke at him from range harder. She focused her Family Power once more, accelerating the time of the Spell and causing it to dissipate quickly, once more attempting to tag the Sagan with her arrow-like spells.

The fight paused however, as she heard an impossible statement from the commentator, the Satan Leviathan, “The Agares Queen has been retired!”

---XXX---

Remus frowned as he leant back, the glowing blade of light singing the fur on his chest as it passed over it. He had assumed his secondary job here would be the hard one to accomplish, not the cover story. At first, when his King had informed him of the opportunity to complete two jobs in one, he had been happy. After all, a little espionage and sabotage was expected in their circles, not even trying anything shady would just be downright disrespectful.

However, now that he was face to face with this scary little girl, he found himself wondering if he might not have been caught up in something a bit above his pay grade. He had been told to analyse the fighting style of the Littlest Sagan, see if there were some hints of insights he could glean from facing her and compile it all into a report to give to the client.

Easy enough, or so he thought. Beat up a kid in a Rating Game then tell some bigwig how it went? Simple stuff. Not so much in reality. No, in the present moment, all he was thinking was that he was very, very worried about what the Sagan was up to. The white haired girl raised a shield, blocking a bolt of light from the Fallen Angel Bishop, Leanne failing to harm her as Remus capitalized and attempted to swing his claws at the glowing child, only to curse and fly backwards as she grasped at the limb with sparking fingers.

The kid did not fight as if she had been trained for Rating Games. Those devils had all sorts of tics, things that showed they were only expecting to participate in play fights. They let inconsequential shit hit them, tanking small amounts of damage to focus on making their performances as flashy as possible.

Shiro Sagan had not let any of them hit her once.

She was trained for real battles. Not only that, she was trained for battles where she was hopelessly outmatched. Every single one of them was stronger and faster than her, yet she was still handling all of them. That could be partly attributed to their shit teamwork, but it spoke to another, more sinister conclusion.

This girl had been prepared for War.

He flew back into the fight, watching as Etienne struck madly at the girl with his great sword, laughing with delight as she methodically dodged and blew small chunks out of the mercenary. Remus took a deep sniff of the air, his enhanced sense of smell confirming what he had suspected throughout the fight but hadn’t had time to focus on. She was doing something to the area, the air around them changed somehow, that was why she hadn’t stopped glowing for a moment.

Flying next to Alivian, he decided to inform his temporary commander of the development, the Queen having been watching carefully as he formulated a plan, “She’s fucking with the air somehow. It smells like just after a lightning bolt has struck.”

“I know.” Came the response from the bespectacled man, “I’m trying to figure out why. It’s enhancing the effect of her lightning Magic, but it’s not a large enough boost to be the whole point.”

To illustrate his point, the Sagan Bishop had swerved away from Etienne’s chop and blasted a brilliant red bolt at Leanne, who used a simple shield to deflect it before cursing and dodging as her shield shattered from the blow. Remus squinted, his senses picking up something odd from that sequence. Did the Sagan’s reserves just…?

Shaking the crazy thought out of his head, he turned to Alivian, “So, glorious leader, have you got a plan?”

“Yes.” He nodded, touching his throat and activating his message spell, “Leanne, blast her with a sustained burst of your Light. We will keep her pinned down she is forced to block, then when her reserves are drained I should be able to end this.”

Remus tilted his head at that. Sure, it was a good plan, but weren’t they just supposed to stall? Sure, taking out the little shit had proven harder than he thought, but they were never meant to succeed quickly anyway. The Boss Lady wanted to claim the glory by taking the Sagan’s head for herself, something this plan would deny her.

Still, a win is a win, he supposed.

“Got it. I’ll enjoy unleashing on the brat.” Leanne replied.

Etienne only grunted, having too much fun keeping the girl occupied to reply verbally, but Remus supposed with regeneration powers as strong as his there were worse things to be enamoured with. Still, he knew La Hire was a battle maniac, the rumours did him justice.

“Etienne, we will be joining you now.” Alivian warned, his sword gleaming as he flew into the melee.

Remus followed, not actually attacking, instead focusing on cutting off the Sagan’s flight paths and forcing her to remain stationary while also making sure to not get in Leanne’s way. Shiro seemed to realise what they were doing and did her damnedest to prevent them from hemming her in, but it was only a matter of time until they succeeded.

Such success was signified by a brilliant blast of white light, the Bishop shielding just in time to block it from hitting her. The beam sustained itself, grinding against the defence until it faded away. Without even waiting for the light to completely vanish, Alivian swooped in, striking at the Sagan Bishop, whose reserves of Demonic Power had emptied out just as he predicted. At the same time, Remus felt the same thing he did before, crying out a warning.

“Alivian, wait, she’s-!” He was too late.

In an instant, the Sagan who had been running on empty was full again, almost bursting with magic. She whirled to meet the surprised Queen, hand encircling his wrist as his sword thrust past her. In a brilliant red flash, the Queen was reduced to ash, powdered remains floating to the forest floor as she once again emptied her reserves, this time into a concentrated burst of electricity.

Remus was stunned. How did she do that? He trusted his senses, he knew for a fact that she was on empty twice there. He felt it, sure as anything. Was she hiding her true reserves? No, he hadn’t felt a flicker of such from her. There was no way she would be able to keep it up through everything. Some sort of artefact or Sacred Gear? He didn’t know, but whatever it was it made their plan doomed to fail. If she could use her entire reserves in every single attack…

“Retreat.” He ordered, flying towards his nominal employer to inform her of the development.

There was no way they could overwhelm the Bishop with the forces they had been given for the task with this new information, the fight was lopsided from the start, just in the opposite direction it had seemed.

Leanne followed after him immediately, pale and shaking from expending the amount she did. Her fluttering black wings shook with the effort, but her skill at flying ensured she kept up. Etienne, on the other hand…

“I do not know the meaning of the word!” He declared proudly, charging the small girl before being blown back, his head reduced to mist from the red flash of her Railgun move, finally having the space needed to deploy it.

Alone in the skies above the Forest for now, she glowed brighter and brighter, the shining ominous red light casting a hue over the battlefield like a second sun. As she did so, she enclosed her hand around the gem of the necklace she wore, the motion being caught from the corner of his eyes.

He was met halfway to his destination by a visibly disturbed Seekvaira, who informed them immediately what happened, “She must have had a teleportation spell on her, Damocles disappeared after Alivian retired. What happened?”

“Some form of artefact of other enchantment.” Remus informed her, “She can use her entire reserves in one go and refill them instantly.”

“What could do such a thing… No, more important than that, do you know what she’s doing to the air?” She queried as he turned around, falling in beside her as she flew up towards the glowing figure.

“No, we couldn’t figure it out. It reminds me of the smell after a lightning strike, though.” He informed her, watching as her brows furrowed.

“After a lightning strike? Ozone? It smells of ozone, ozone in the air… Ionisation?!” Her eyes widened, “Stop! Shield, quickly! If you can summon argon, do it now! We need insulation!”

The two bishops of the Peerage looked at each other in confusion, “Argon? Why would-”

A crackle sounded out, arcing red bolts of lightning emanating from the Sagan bishop as the air around her ignited. Reaction spread quickly, soon consuming Remus’ entire view in a sea of arcing red lights that reached him in an instant.

The world turned RED.

---XXX---

He tapped his remote, closing the video player as he leaned back in his chair, steepling his hands as he looked over the linked digits towards the mercenary in his office.

“The explosion destroyed the arena. An entire biome, glassed from the impact, with even the wards partially damaged. The Sagan were fine of course, insulated from the effects somehow, but the rest of the dimension was not so lucky.” He informed the Rook, who shrugged.

“All I know is it wiped us in an instant. I doubt even if we managed to follow the Missy’s orders it would have helped much.” He replied.

Ajuka nodded, humming as he did so, “Indeed. A plasma explosion like the one she triggered gains energy as it travels through the ionised air, so it’s unlikely the shields would have held.”

“How big was the forest?” Remus inquired.

“About seven hectares.” He responded absently to the question, thinking through the problem he had just been presented with.

Remus sucked in some air, “And if it gains strength as it travels…”

“Yes, little Shiro just performed a feat that would put her squarely at high class. With what she displayed, destroying a city is not out of the question for her.” The Satan agreed, “Now, this behaviour of her Demonic Power reserves, I need to ask you to please be as accurate as possible. Are you absolutely certain they refilled instantly from nothing?”

“Multiple times.” Remus confirmed, causing the green haired scientist to sigh, “She used multiple times her max throughout the match. I am certain if it was merely an effect hiding her true reserves I would have noticed.”

“I see.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, “This complicates matters severely. On top of your other insights, this is most concerning.”

“...If I may?” Remus hesitantly asked, getting a nod from the Satan, “Is there a Sacred Gear or artefact capable of performing such a feat? I have never heard of one.”

“Not instantly, no. The only thing capable of doing such a thing at that speed… I cannot tell you. It is a matter of national security.” Ajuka spoke, getting a solemn nod from the werewolf.

“Got it, above my pay grade. Was just curious. Do you have any other questions?” He inquired.

“No, but a request if I may. Please keep your insights to yourself for now. Word that the Sagan is drilling his peerage to levels of that expected in wartime might inflame tensions, both internally and externally.” Ajuka smiled genially as he spoke, “Of course, I understand just how valuable such information is. Just as I understand exactly the number of people that have access to it.”

“Got it, keep my mouth shut. You don’t have to tell me. I don’t want to get involved anyway. If that’s the weakest member of the Sagan peerage, the rest of them must be absolute monsters.” The Rook chuckled, but Ajuka didn’t join him.

After he had dismissed the informant and sat back down, the Satan thought that the mercenary was mistaken. The true monster in the Sagan’s corner was not in his peerage, but what was behind them. Disregarding the new mysterious Goddess that had provided him her full backing, Remus had revealed there was another entity that was supporting him.

Infinitely refilling power without apparent limit?

There was only one being who could provide such a thing. But that of course begged the question, what exactly did Damocles Sagan have to offer the Infinite Dragon of the Void to get it to agree to bestow upon him such a boon?

Whatever it was, it made one thing clear. Whether they acted or not, the Sagan would only grow ever more powerful and influential. It was past time they decided what to do about it.