Chapter Text
It’s about fifteen minutes to noon when Malice enters the old conference room in the Admin building that was now filled to the brim with magisters.
The entire High Council of the MLF. Fourteen people in total, including thirteen magisters and a Demi-Power. They were all sitting around a single, lengthy table, with a spot left for Malice at the top of it.
The silence in the room is deafening. All the eyes are on him. The tension is palpable.
Despite that, Malice calmly walks over to his chair and sits down, letting his hands rest on the table in front of him. Overhaul is the first person to his left, with Decay right behind him. Invincible and Eclipse mirror them to his right.
The rest of the magisters are behind those two, on both sides of the table. All of them are as quiet and tense as those four troublemakers, all of them staring at Malice.
He can feel the defensive and sensory magic, he can feel the artifacts and other baubles they’ve tried to hide from his eyes. He can feel the MLF soldiers - the best of the best the organization had left - taking position around the Admin building.
How foolish. Did they really think that he was blind to their preparations?
If it was going to be just him versus them, then in his current state it would be a problem. Halting Cogs’ rampage emptied his hand. He would win, but even without Overhaul’s secret weapon (he can see it at his side, still resembling a short spear, something in him trembling a little whenever he looks at it and remembers it’s there) he wouldn’t get out without some injuries.
“How awkward.” Malice says. “No witty one-liners, no screams of hatred, no accusations? Just silence? You’re making it harder for me. I can’t even laugh at you when you’re not giving me inspiration for it.”
“Well, what exactly do you expect us to say?” Overhaul speaks for the crowd, Malice giving him an emotionless stare. “You know why we are here. We know why you are here. The only questions to ask are who is going to start this fight and who will be the one to finish it?”
“Fight?” Malice chuckles. “You think that there’s going to be a fight here today? When I battled Cogs, yes, that was a battle. But do you truly think of yourselves as an equal of an Incarnation? Are you this delusional?”
“Remind me, Malice,” Invincible says, dragging the words carefully and staring daggers at him. “Why exactly are you here to begin with? Wasn’t it to become a Power once more? How exactly did you stop being one, huh?”
Silence in the room for about three seconds, which is when Malice finally responds.
“Your fate is going to make the others happy that I didn’t give them as much pain as what you’ll be going through.” Malice eventually replies. Despite the words he spoke, his tone is calm and his expression maintains a polite smile. “Except for Overhaul. He will suffer just as much for sticking their nose into things that are beyond your pitiful existence.”
“Hilarious.” Overhaul retorts dryly. “You and a random brat tearing legs off from a beetle behind their house have a lot in common. Including the fact that both of you look down on something smaller than you to avoid facing the fact that you’re worth even less than they are.”
Each word they spoke would simply make their fate even worse, and his own ascension even more set in stone. Due to that, he was willing to let them speak for a moment more. It would simply make their pain a bit sweeter.
Besides, Midoriya has only just started his doomed rush towards the Chemistry building, the series of explosions audible in the distance, making everyone in the room flinch for a split second.
Malice had time.
“Did insulting me make you feel better?” Malice tilts his head a bit, his eyes drilling a hole in Overhaul’s face. “All that hatred towards me certainly makes me feel better. That glorious moment of catharsis you’re all having right now only pushes me further and further towards my goal. Because the more malice, fear, hatred, and pain in the proximity of my rebirth, the more finished my ritual is.”
The flinch on his face is delicious to watch. For now, Malice turns his head towards Invincible.
In the distance, the demons that he ordered to hide in the cracks, in reality, surrounding the wall of the compound emerge, dozens of them emerging from angles and edges of reality behind Midoriya’s group, before starting to chase them towards the Chemistry building.
They weren’t supposed to catch them, mind you. Just… chase them. Make them feel fear. Make them waver in their conviction, make them realize that Malice knew their plan all along and that he had so many demons left to spare. Make them realize that their mission was hopeless .
Of course, if they could catch up one or two and tear them to pieces while letting the rest hear their frantic screams as they kept running for their life, that would be great.
The epilogue of their mission was going to happen in the Chemistry building. Midoriya had to get there. Everyone else was optional.
“So, the way I see it, you and all your lackeys have two options to choose from.” Malice says, savoring the frozen expression on Invincible’s face. “You can try to fight me… and suffer a terrible fate. Or, you can lay down your arms and suffer a terrible fate. Both options end the same way - with me growing stronger and moving a step closer to my ascension. So, which option is it?”
Silence for a few more seconds. Gunfire can be heard in the distance as demons flood out of the Chemistry building on the opposite side of Midoriya’s little zoo and encounter the MLF soldiers that Overhaul and Invincible wanted to storm the building.
This massacre was going to be brief. And Malice could taste the suffering of those humans from here. Limbs torn off, eyes plucked out, fingers broken, bodies flayed alive - the symphony of pain and fear that he loved so much.
“You think that we would just let you walk over us when we suffer the same fate regardless of whether we fight you or not?” Invincible asks. “You truly must not understand humans at all.”
“Quite the opposite.” Malice grins. “I understand you perfectly. In fact, I know that you will fight. This will only make me enjoy putting you down in your place even more. Speaking of…”
He snaps his fingers. In an instant, demons flood the room, dozens if not hundreds of them stepping over each other just to be the ones to cross over into the Material Plane and deliver their master the pain and suffering of mortals as the first ones.
The room erupts in pandaemonium, the gaunt figures of demons emerging from the walls and what’s beyond them, the magisters immediately retaliating with every single piece of magical lore they’ve gathered up during the years they’ve spent in Hosu.
Malice wastes no time. His hands swing in both directions, Overhaul and Invincible are immediately sent flying backwards into the wall, and the Ascendant of Change loses grasp of his secret weapon as it fell to the ground.
Decay tries to lunge for it, but a demon emerges from behind him, their claw piercing the magister's back. He screams before (during and after) retaliating, his entropy spell unmaking the demon within a moment, but more are coming.
So much more.
The demons he gathered for this massacre outnumbered the magisters a hundred to one. Even if ninety nine of them died due to only so many of them possibly fitting in the conference room, so would the magisters.
He stands up while leaning backwards just to dodge the massive rock spike that Overhaul conjured out of the wall. He will eliminate the Ascendant first, securing his weapon. Malice can’t directly touch it, but if he just steps on it, there’s no chance of any of those people making him move.
The simplest solution to the problem.
Except that’s when a new sun is born in Hosu.
***
Being able to blow up the wall of the campus and then rush in was a part of the plan. Uncountable tides of demons emerged from what was left of the wall once they passed by it wasn’t.
Army. An army of them waited in the same infernal dimension that they were hiding in back in Malice’s dungeon. In the same damn place where they pulled Oracle in and tore him to shreds.
It was a mad dash towards the distant building. After maybe a hundred meters, the Worst Todoroki realizes that it’s time. And that he and Demiurge can’t hope to outrun the demons. They can’t hope to reach Chemistry. And if they keep trying, the others will be in danger.
The others could run much faster without the two magister deadweights.
“RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN!!” The Worst Todoroki yells as he turns around. Demiurge does the same thing unprompted. They discussed this eventuality. They prepared for it for a long, long time. “USE EVERY PROTECTION FROM FLAME MAGIC YOU CAN ON YOURSELF!”
The stalker would still almost certainly die. They had no spells to protect them from flames, and the distance likely wouldn’t be enough to save her on its own. Will she survive Todoroki’s secret plan? Perhaps it would be enough to kill her off permanently.
Oh, well.
Todoroki invokes the strongest spell of the Lore of Winter that he learned from the files he got from Midoriya’s mother. Time itself around them freezes, and the effect spreads in the direction that they are facing, influencing the crowd of demons following them.
It’s going to be the last spell he ever cast. He goes all out. He can feel the cold seeping into his bones and into his mind, undoing every second of character development towards the emotional normalcy that he went through ever since he met Midoriya.
The two of them can move. Barely. If they move too far, they’ll get frozen by this spell. The rest are outside of its range, and that’s what matters.
“So, this is how it ends,” Demiurge says, Todoroki giving her an expressionless (unfortunately) look. “Shame that Saiko couldn’t be here with us. I think she would enjoy dying like this.”
“She probably would.” Todoroki agrees with her. Despite the potency of the spell he casted, the demons seem to be moving forward, but at a snail's pace. “It was one hell of an adventure, wasn’t it?”
“This trip?” Demiurge asks.
“No.” Todoroki shakes his head. “The madness that my life, and then yours, devolved into ever since Midoriya was Initiated. When I decided to stick around to find out why Toga didn’t eat him, I didn’t expect to end up giving up my life to ensure that a Power that should be dead stays dead.”
He expected to eventually die to some rowdy Disaster. But to a Power? While hopefully taking it down? He didn’t even know that they could be defeated back then. Hell, he didn’t even know that they could be fought .
“Well, when I listened to his tip about you feeling bad about your emotional damage and dodging our attempts to seduce you due to that, I also didn’t expect to end up here.” Demiurge replies, before sighing loudly. “I wish I could come back to my family as a magister. And I wish that Saiko could become one with us. Can you imagine what sort of powerhouse a throuple of magisters would become?”
“Yes, yes.” Todoroki sighs. “Because it was all about power dynamics and influence, wasn’t it?”
Demiurge smiles at him faintly.
“At the beginning.” She then says. “But if it makes you feel better, I’ll say it openly now. I love you. And I’m sure that Saiko loved you as well. Even your questionable sense of humor grew on us.” She smirks a bit. “Like a particularly nasty tumor, I guess.”
Todoroki stares at her for a few subjective seconds before answering. He wishes that he could laugh right now.
“Well, better late than never, I guess.” He settles up on saying. “And yeah, all the jokes and involuntary emotional coldness aside, I love you too. If I were to go on a suicide mission again, it’d be you two that I’d trust my back to.”
“Doubt that will ever happen, but I appreciate the intent.” Demiurge smiles faintly once more. “So, you think they’re far enough? The demons are slowly getting close. And we can’t be sure that they can’t asspull some trick to go around the spell once they’re close enough.”
Todoroki turned his head to see where the others were, and it seemed that they disappeared behind one of the buildings that were between them and the Chemistry building. Unfortunately, he could see more demons emerging from cracks, in reality, close to them, clearly planning to charge at them from behind in hopes of deactivating the Winter spell.
“Well, far enough I guess,” Todoroki replies as he turns his head back towards Demiurge and shrugs. Before extending his hand towards her. “Do it whenever you’re ready.”
She holds his hand, the two looking at each other's eyes for a few seconds. And then, Demiurge uses her power.
One of her spells allowed her to copy objects she touched and then materialize their copies out of her body… all while activating them at will. Normally it was a low-level spell used for various tricks, like manifesting something that could create a loud noise to draw attention to yourself.
It could also be used as a suicide spell. Just summon an explosive and see it explode in your hands, killing you and whoever was close to you. A fine way to go, according to some. Especially those sent out to fight something nasty.
That was the limit of it… in the past. Because Demiurge was now a magister. And one that recently - and around her ascension to the status of a magister - was surrounded by a lot of crazy things.
The phrase ‘Suicide attack spell’ simply didn’t cut it to describe the result of a copy of the god-killer shell taken from Malice’s armory detonating and creating a short-lived sun, a raging ball of sanctified plasma with a temperature reaching several million degrees.
Everything in their vicinity simply ceased to exist. Everything further away from them got third or fourth degree burns merely from the heat exuded by the explosion.
And unfortunately for Malice, there were a lot of his demons in the vicinity. And even more unfortunately to him, there were also the cracks in reality that led to the space where the majority of his legions were waiting for their time to pounce on mortals… including every single one of the Horrors he prepared for the day.
Right before he could deploy them to overwhelm the cordon around the Admin building.
***
The moment it happens, Malice recoils, the instantaneous (and, thanks to the power of Purity, permanent) extinguishment of thousands of demons and dozens of Horrors reading to him as a crippling physical blow.
He didn’t expect that. He didn’t plan for that. He saw Demiurge touching the artillery shell in his precious vault, but the spell she cast left no outward sign of being cast. He didn’t pay those two enough attention to listen to the details of their talks.
He focused on Midoriya and his contacts with the others. He expected trouble to come from there. But this…
The raging flames touched by the Lore of Purity vaporized both Shoto and Demiurge, and the majority of his army. They burned through the cracks of reality that said army was emerging from and went past it, the network of backdoors and under-tunnels he spent years making (he always planned to move the base here before the Final Day, Cogs just gave him the best justification of it he could ask for) going up in flames in an instant.
There were still hundreds of demons battling it out with the MLF in front of the Chemistry building, and dozens storming the room he was in right now. But the rest… just ceased to exist.
And he couldn’t even use the network as a shortcut to get back to Chemistry once he was done with the magisters!
He had to finish it up quickly and rush there.
The heat burst from all the corners, one still carrying enough power to set the closest demons aflame. The chaos in the room reaches a completely new level. Overhaul managed to stand up and grab his weapon while Malice was recoiling from the explosion and restrategizing.
The moment he tried to leap at Malice, the Incarnation immediately used a fraction of his power to inflict indescribable suffering on his arm, making him drop his weapon as he screamed in pain. Malice moves forward himself, grabbing the Ascendant’s shoulders and flooding his body with pure pain.
Overhaul screams. Invincible tears apart the two closest demons and tries to intervene, but a single outburst of Malice’s power (he can’t play around with them anymore, it has to end now ) kills him instantly.
One of his active Defiance spells makes his heart start beating again a second later, but by the time it happens, he has already fallen to his knees, a quick thought from Malice making even more of the remaining demons charge at him to keep him busy.
“I am…” Malice hisses at Overhaul that he was towering over now, the Ascendant screaming his lungs out in indescribable pain. The spear rolled over by the wall, Malice briefly losing track of it due to its damn enchantment making it vanish from his memory. “... tired of you, Overhaul. This is the end of your schemes. This is the start of your suffering.”
***
“When the time comes, stab Overhaul in the back.” The Speaker says, Decay’s eyes shooting wide as he…
***
If the attack came from his left, Malice would have spotted it in time. If the attack came from his right, Malice would have spotted it in time. If Overhaul wasn’t suffering at the time, he would have felt it, he would have made it visible in time, and Malice would have realized what was happening quickly enough to dodge.
But he didn’t.
Instead, the tip of the spear emerges from Overhaul’s chest and lunges forward.
Malice was standing right in front of the Ascendant, holding him by his shoulders, Overhaul’s feet hovering a bit above the floor. The distance between them was too small. The attack reached him too quickly for him to realize what was happening and dodge in time.
Decay follows the instructions that he suddenly remembered to the letter. The tip of the spear’s blade cuts through Malice’s suit and grazes his body as Malice tries to leap back to avoid the blow.
The enchantment flickers to life and for a split second, Malice’s existence is that of pure pain. Of pure horror. Of pure realization. He could feel the accursed poison of the spell flowing through his veins and through his soul alike, warping and corrupting everything it touched.
He staggers backward as dozens of his remaining demons cease to exist and the cultists and mages of Malice worldwide discover some of their gifts and spells suddenly disappearing from their minds and bodies, leaving emptiness behind.
Malice screams. The few unfortunate people present in the building that heard his scream going instantly insane, the magisters in front of him (the ones that were still alive that is) surviving only thanks to their increased resistance.
And then he does what he didn’t expect himself to do. He runs away, leaving the few remaining demons to occupy the attention of the surviving magisters. He could feel the clock ticking and he had to get to the Chemistry building before the spell of the Lore of Mankind that was just inflicted upon him would finish its work.
For now, with every passing heartbeat, he could feel another part of himself turning into one that was no longer his. That no longer belonged to an Incarnation of Malice.
He could feel himself slowly turning into a human. Not just his body, but more importantly, his mind and his very existence.
He still had the time to finish it off before the spell would overcome him, but he had to hurry.
***
Midoriya had no idea what was the Worst Todoroki’s plan. That jackass didn’t consider sharing that part of his preparations with anyone that wasn’t Demiurge. At most, he expected some of the most powerful fire magic spells fired in all directions.
What he got instead was Todoroki and Demiurge turning into a miniature sun and vaporizing half of the campus in an instant.
The word ‘heatwave’ didn’t quite describe the direct aftermath. The god-killer shell was definitely weaker than it should have been (due to the time it spent underground or because it was a copy of one?), but it was still more than enough for every flammable material around it to be instantly set aflame.
It was a firestorm. A firestorm that spread with a speed that made wildfires look sluggish. Buildings and trees were set aflame, the asphalt of the long-ruined roads of the campus melting under intense heat.
They poured every single spell and trick they had into surviving the blast.
They had a building between them and the blast. They had Fuyumi Todoroki and Moe Kamiji with them, the former casting multiple spells that lowered the temperature around them, the latter casting multiple spells that bestowed flame resistance to their targets. They had Bakugou cast every spell he had that increased the durability of himself or other people. They had Ochako cast gravity spells that should have altered the flow of superheated air to at least some degree. They all downed the cans of Flame Resistance that the Worst Todoroki for some reason insisted they should buy and carry with them during the final battle.
And they still barely survived. Every single one of them was severely burned, even through the high-tech combat suits that Ryukyu gave them for the mission, except for Bakugou who hid behind the knightly shield he carried with him which seemed to absorb a lot of the heat.
They had healing magic. They had regeneration spells. They cast all of them and, without any words spoken, run through the still raging firestorm towards the Chemistry building.
They had to make it there before Malice. The flames were going to weaken them further, and there was no telling how powerful he was right now. If they fought, the situation would be…
***
Before the clash started, they had thirteen magisters and one Demi-Power against an Incarnation of a dead Power, likely much weaker than it should have been if the Ancient of Malice still existed.
Now they had one Demi-Power and four magisters, most of them suffering from injuries that would never heal.
Decay was crying in pain on the floor, the earlier injury he got from the demon finally getting to him. Eclipse was dead. Invincible was uninjured, but the self-resurrection spell that kept him alive drained his strength. Overhaul could still feel the power of Malice flowing through his veins.
The suffering was indescribable. Switching off his feeling of pain didn’t make it stop. The only way to make it stop would be to kill himself, and seeing what sort of situation they were all in, he would likely be forced to do that before this day would end. But before that…
“... we have to pursue him.” Overhaul says through his clenched teeth, the Demi-Power leaning over the table that was supporting his now broken body. Decay unexpected but ingenious backstab did nothing to him, for it was an enchantment made to slay Incarnations and Incarnations alone. And the physical injury was negligible. “If he gets there before Midoriya, he…”
They had no idea where Midoriya was. But he still had to have a role to play in this all. He had to be somewhere close. The blast that staggered Malice and stopped the tide of demons flowing into the room was definitely his doing.
“We’ll try.” Invincible replies, trying not to look at what was left of his second-in-command and the remaining magisters. He then puts his finger on the commpiece in his ear. “Cordon unit, the Grand Commander is heading towards Chemistry. You have to slow him down. Slow him down at all costs.”
A quick response that Overhaul didn’t hear, the cries and screams in the background drowning it all down.
“You want to know what’s going on?” Invincible replies, staring into space. “Our Grand Commander isn’t an Ascendant of Humanity. He is and always was the Incarnation of Malice. He is the reason why we’re trapped in this place. If he gets to that building, we’ll all wish that we’re dead. Stop him at all costs , even if that’s your life.”
He then practically flies out of the room. Overhaul wishes that he could move as fast, but he will do his best.
And he had a feeling that after hearing what they were dealing with, the soldiers outside would do their best as well.
