Apollo felt the strength drain out of his body, and spots of darkness clouded his vision.

The seals twisted and turned, slowly fading into only smudges on the walls. When the seal was at the last peg, it stopped spinning.

Apollo cringed and felt like crying. He added another five years of his own lifespan, and the dark seal completely faded.

He fell to his knees. 'Damn it! 15 years of my lifespan, gone just like that!'

But he didn't despair too hard, as he reasoned it was better to lose these fifteen years now than continue being an Exorcist where he could die any day. There wasn’t much change to his outward appearance besides some gray hair and wrinkles around his eyes.

As soon as the seal fully disappeared, a silver mist seeped out and coalesced into a small fox. In just a few seconds, the fox had reached the size of a wolf.

Tamae No Mae… the Ultimate Class Demon, and she was returning to her full power. She couldn’t be ordered to do something. They had to convince her to play along with Red Tail's goals.

Before anyone could utter a word, Tamae No Mae said. “Bow.”

There was a majestic aura around it that would make anyone want to pray to the fox demon as if she were a goddess.

Apollo didn't need to be told a second time and immediately got on one knee. "Honorable Tamae No Mae, we pitiful humans have a request to make to you!"

Seconds passed, and the fox didn't respond. Apollo glanced at the ultimate class demon and saw it wasn't even looking at him. She was staring at the only person insane enough to not have bowed.

Noxy had also bowed, so the only one left up was the Demonic Exorcist. The fox looked down at him; Tamae No Mae was now the size of a small house and stronger than any high-class demon that Apollo had ever seen.

'How much of her power is this?' He wondered. It felt like he was staring at a volcano, ready to erupt any second.

"Bow, human," the fox ordered.

An invisible pressure hit everyone’s shoulders. Apollo shook as he tried to keep his face from smashing onto the floor.

The Demonic Exorcist smirked challengingly, the rage in his eyes wasn't something that could be hidden. "Are you looking down on me?"

"BOW DOWN, HUMAN!!" Tamae No Mae roared, causing the pillars and the walls to crack, and a strong wind hit them all with enough force that it rattled their insides.

In response, the Demonic Exorcist released his Ord, which was nothing more than a speck of dust compared to Tamae No Mae.

But at that moment, a sudden wave of energy washed over them, and the seal that was only a smudge in the wall suddenly rewrote itself and became stronger.

Noxy was the first to react; she stood up and said. "Lady Tamae No Mae! Please enter a contract with me! If you lend me your power to clean all evils, this world won't be so ugly anymore! Why not make the world better when you have the power to?"

Tamae No Mae stared at her; her foxy eyes seemed cold. The Demonic Exorcist was the second to react, and he sprayed blood onto the fox.

"Human!" The fox screamed but stopped as each cell seemed to turn into a virus and attacked her. "Humph! You think some second-rate exorcist like you can control me?"

As Apollo had expected, the Demonic Exorcist had shot his own foot with this.

The Demonic Exorcist smiled in response. "No, I never thought of having someone like you under my control."

What?! Why the hell was the Demonic Exorcist even here then?

"Why would I want such an arrogant being as my servant? That just doesn't suit my style. Instead, I will take your power for myself!" The Demonic Exorcist exclaimed. With the seal weakening Tamae No Mae, he had the advantage, and his blood absorbed some remnants of her energy.

His red blood turned silver and flew back, forming a floating sphere beside him. It looked like a balloon connected to his wrist with a red string.

Tamae No Mae gathered energy but couldn't form an attack. She thrashed against the seal but could do nothing as her power and body were restricted behind the dark writings on the wall.

Apollo couldn't help but stare as the silver blood flew into the Demonic Exorcist's body. His dark hair turned gray, and his eyes turned red. "What a shame, I barely got 10% of her pow-"

The Demonic Exorcist coughed up a mouthful of blood and started bleeding from his eyes. "Wow, my organs feel like they're boiling. It seems like even my body can handle only so much Ord before it breaks down. This is a first for me."

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His hair returned to its natural black, and Apollo sensed he had locked the silver blood away just above his abdomen.

But the power of Tamae No Mae was still raging inside of him, and even though it was only part of her power, no human could defend against it like that.

The Demonic Exorcist was rotating the silver blood and using a gravity-like method to lock it down. Something like this had to be done manually.

It should be hard for a super skilled Master to do something like this, even when meditating. Even Ellen, the strongest Master, shouldn't be able to do something like this!

Yet the Demonic Exorcist acted like something like this wasn't even that hard to do!

"Oh yeah, you're now useless," said the Demonic Exorcist.

Apollo felt a sharp pain in his chest. He looked down, and there was a hole where his heart should be.

He looked toward Noxy, and she had a charred palm. Her face didn’t show an ounce of pain or anything else, stating she had no difficulty stopping the sneak attack.

'I was never on their level, to begin with…' Apollo thought as his body slumped to the ground. He glared at his killer. "Curse you… you planned this all along…"

"Plan? Do I look like the kinda guy with a plan?" The Demonic Exorcist shrugged. "I just sensed the previous Sage's Ord and decided to take advantage of it. Planning is like trying to predict a game of chess before the first move is even made; that sounds boring.”

The Demonic Exorcist took a deep breath and continued. "Also, if you're curious how I sealed an Ultimate Class Demon's power, I just created a sphere of Ord around the power and locked it. Masters can control Ord in their bodies quite well, and this is a new technique I developed myself.”

'Nobody asked, you dipshit!' Apollo couldn't speak anymore, and he could barely breathe.

In theory, what the Demonic Exorcist explained was simple, but that was far from easy to execute in reality.

How many decades would a Master have to train only this thing in order to pull it off? Even then, it should take a lot of concentration. How could he talk while doing that?

To top it all off, he created something to seal the Nine Tails' powers as if it was nothing. No doubt Tamae No Mae’s power was rampaging in him.

Was this really the ability of someone with only 81% Master Affinity? Even with that talent, it would be impossible without being backed up with monstrous Ord and an unbreakable will and mind.

"You seem surprised. Why are people always surprised by what I do?" Asked the Demonic Exorcist. “This is some basic stuff, people. Get on with the times.”

"How can you be so strong?" Noxy inquired.

"Obviously, because I'm me," the Demonic Exorcist walked off whistling casually as if what he had done wasn’t unprecedented.

He paused and added. "Humans from now on will have to start a race to survival. They must get stronger, or they will be weak in the new chaotic world where everything depends on strength."

But Apollo would never experience those chaotic times, as everything around him darkened, and he died.

As darkness consumed him, he couldn't help but think he should have just done something instead of wasting his time becoming an exorcist. He should have at least found someone who would miss him…

***

The mummified corpse talked with Agon but didn't explicitly state to him who he was. By the end of his conversation, the corpse slumped down, and no longer moved.

So that was the man who started this whole thing, the previous Sage, also known as The Magician. He was the renowned Hero who saved the world from rampaging Ultimate Class Demons. But he was also Agon’s father.

"Were you a Special Exorcist by the time he was around?" I asked Ellen.

She nodded. "Yeah, he was always an arrogant asshole. But he became the Sage at only twenty years old. The undisputed strongest exorcist."

The main character's father being a badass, was a common trope. Naruto, Luffy, Ichigo, Gon, and many others had some overpowered fathers. Agon wasn't anything special in that regard.

Though what was surprising was how strong he was, and how his special ability also seemed quite simple.

With that special ability, he could empower seals to lock up Ultimate Class Demons. So it kind of made sense why weaker seals that should only be able to hold high-class demons could lock monsters like Yamata No Orochi.

I was dying to know what limitations a special power like that had.

While I had known that the Cursed Corpse technique could be canceled, I hadn’t thought of Ellen’s power being able to do so.

This ending wasn’t so bad; with Ellen healed up and all the demons in the city dead, this was a hell of a lot better than the alternative.

It seemed like my preparations to fight the Demonic Exorcist had been for nothing… and I loved it!

I'd been dreading the fight with that crazy bastard. No amount of preparation could help me against someone like that. I didn't want to be part of his mind games.

Relief washed over me at the thought of not having to fight, and I lay on the Colosseum floor. I couldn’t help but smile as relief washed over my body.

This whole exam had felt like a long shit that was finally out of my ass.

A gross analogy, but this had been like a dangerous shitshow. The worst thing was that with how the exam was interrupted, I wasn't even sure I could qualify to have passed the exam.

But whatever the results, at least Tamae No Mae wasn't unsealed. I could finally relax-

BOOOM!!!... Something fell from the sky.

It was a man; the ground below his feet cracked like a spiderweb.

Dread filled my heart.

"Hey there, my favorite exorcist. You ready for the second round of our fight?"

"Fuck no…" I answered truthfully.

"Well, I was just being polite by asking. You don't really have a choice."

That was what I thought too.

Damn it!