With Ria sharing her life force with Axel, technically paying the "dues" on his behalf, they managed to borrow a little time.

However, the situation itself hadn’t changed.

In a few minutes more, the two of them would run out of life force and most likely die together. Their lives were literally riding on Fenrir, Nina, and Beatrix cornering Envy.

But even with Fenrir pushing him to his limits, it was mostly a stalemate. He couldn’t attack, but Fenrir couldn’t land a deciding blow either. Nina and Beatrix joining in made things a little more complicated for him—but still not enough to finish it.

"...This can’t go on."

Axel whispered with a frown.

But given his and Ria’s current states, rushing to the frontlines wasn’t an option. That would only push the end of their lives much faster than it should be.

"Is there no way I can help out...?" He whispered, biting his lip while thinking.

At the same time, he was browsing the shop for anything useful. An item, a weapon—anything that could give the girls some kind of leverage against their enemy.

And with the mind of using everything in his disposal, Axel ended up buying a few things.

...

A short distance away, four figures were shuffling, fighting in a complicated manner.

Various attacks were sent flying, curses twisting, but none managed to actually land and decide the match. But even in that kind of situation, Fenrir found her chance.

"HAAAAP!"

Fenrir swung the God’s Mineral club once more, aiming for the enemy’s head. But as expected, Envy dodged it cleanly. It was the same kind of dodge he’d always did—twisting the law of cause and effect, and moving a meter away.

...Something that became easy to predict. Nina’s eyes narrowed as she snapped her fingers.

At the spot he’d dodged to, something sprouted from the ground and seized his legs.

"...!"

Envy’s shock was visible even through his mask.

What had caught him was a pair of black tentacles, weak, but still needs some effort to break. Just from the look of them, they were obviously cursed—Nina’s trap-type curse.

The curse itself didn’t work on Envy, of course. It wasn’t the type that could overwhelm a powerful demon like him. However, the slight delay it caused was all Fenrir needed.

She swung her club once more, landing a solid vertical blow directly over the top of his head.

BAM!

It was powerful enough that Envy’s vision faltered.

And right behind him, Beatrix moved in without missing a beat—thrusting forward with the sword in her hand. The timing was perfect. The Holy Sword pierced through the demon’s chest from the back, punching out the front, spraying purple blood across Fenrir’s face.

In the entire fight, Axel’s turn included, it was the first critical blow they’d landed.

"Don’t... LOOK DOWN ON ME...!!!"

But in the next instant, Envy released a powerful wave of mana—sending Fenrir, Beatrix, and Nina rolling back. Forced to distance themselves, they’d given him precious time instead. Time he could use to gather himself and recover.

"Ugh...!"

At the same time, Ria and Axel felt their bodies weaken further.

They already knew what it meant.

The sigil on Axel’s back was pulling even more life force from them both to fuel Envy’s recovery. At this rate, their time limit was getting shorter and shorter...

"Idiot...!"

Even so, Axel’s smile widened. As if victory was imminent.

The reason became clear in the next moment.

"Gah...! Hack...!"

Envy’s powerful mana pulse cut off abruptly. Almost as if a balloon that popped.

It vanished so suddenly that the three girls couldn’t react right away. They watched as the demon grabbed his supposedly-healed chest—as if in pain—and vomited purple blood that leaked out from the sides of his clown mask.

Fenrir was puzzled for only a moment before she moved. She tossed the club over to Nina, then activated her unique skill. She gathered tons of her energy, locking onto Envy. She opened her mouth wide and bit down hard.

"DEVOUR!"

CHOMP!

The upper half of Envy’s body vanished in an instant, as if erased clean.

She didn’t celebrate or lower her guard—she used her ability a second time, despite the toll it took on her body, and bit again.

Nothing remained.

In his place, a large smooth crater sat in the ground ahead of them. One with several ridges in the shape of a large mouth taking a rough bite.

"..."

Silence stretched for a few beats.

Fenrir sharpened her senses, reaching out for even the faintest trace of Envy. She picked up nothing.

"Is it... over?"

"We defeated him?"

Beatrix and Nina cautiously voiced what they were thinking, raising flags and bracing for a dramatic reappearance—but Envy didn’t show up.

"Master...!"

The moment she confirmed the enemy was gone, Fenrir rushed back to Axel’s side, basically teleporting.

She supported him alongside Ria and checked his back—the simplest way to confirm it.

If the sigil Envy had drawn on Axel’s back was gone, then so was he.

"N-No way..."

But the sigil was still there.

Fenrir’s face went pale. She pushed her senses further—twice the range, four times the sensitivity—and still found nothing.

"Did he escape to hell at the last moment...?" she muttered, puzzled and threatened.

"No... You got him good." Axel’s voice cut in, quiet but certain. "Envy was successfully defeated... but..."

"Huh?"

Fenrir turned to him—and froze.

Something had changed. Axel’s sharp, gentle brown eyes had turned sharper still, and taken on a golden tint. His pupils were no longer round. They were reptilian, a vertical slit down the middle.

"No way..." Fenrir’s guess came fast. "Did Envy...?!"

Axel nodded slowly. He pressed a hand over his chest, feeling something dark sitting deep within. Something foreign. Something that wasn’t his.

"Yeah." He said. "That bastard... took refuge in a corner of my soul."

Demons were parasitic beings by nature. Spiritual entities with no physical form of their own.

To exist in the material world, they needed flesh to host them. What Fenrir and the girls had destroyed was only Envy’s host.

The real Envy was still alive, slipping through the sigil on Axel’s back—the only connection between them—and taking shelter within his soul where they can’t touch him.

It was dangerous, of course. Envy could attempt to seize Axel’s body from the inside.

But Fenrir’s attack had forced him to flee in a weakened state. And even at full strength, taking over Axel’s body would’ve been impossible regardless.

...

"TSK!"

Inside a dark space, a familiar clown-masked demon clicked his tongue.

"Those bitches...! How dare they destroy my vessel...!" He seethed. "Especially that bitch Fenrir! To think she’d use her ability to erase it completely... My strength is now barely 10% of what it was!"

Anger rang through his voice.

Of course he was angry.

A fight he’d been convinced he’d win—and he’d fallen for a minor trick and crumbled under a swift combo.

"But that weakening I felt before that final blow..." Envy whispered, touching his empty chest. "That should only happen if I ingested high-grade Holy Water."

He had no idea what Axel had done.

In the moment Axel was browsing the shop, he’d figured out how to "poison" the life energy being siphoned through the sigil.

He and Ria had drunk Holy Waters like they were ordinary bottled water. Then he’d used a Holy Scroll buff to sanctify himself, and topped it off with a Purification Pill—something meant to cleanse the body of any impurity or evil.

Those effects should’ve stayed contained to the ones who ingested them. But the sigil changed that. When Envy had tried to accelerate his recovery by forcefully draining Axel’s life energy, the effects had traveled right back through the link.

It was like a demon doing penitence—drinking Holy Water, blessing himself with a Holy Scroll, and swallowing a Purification Pill all at once!

The only reason he was still breathing was because he was one of the Seven Sins. If he was any regular demon, he’d be obliterated already.

"No matter. As soon as I recover my strength, I’ll take over this bastard’s body and make those bitches pay!"

Envy growled to himself.

Convincing himself he hadn’t truly lost, making excuses in the dark, a thin smile crept onto his face. With more composure now, he began looking around—taking in Axel’s soulscape.

And then he stopped.

"Weird..."

Something was off.

A human soul shouldn’t look like this. It should be full of colors, mostly white. But Axel’s was the opposite—monochromatic, dark, stripped of everything. Almost like...

"This feels more like a..."

[You.]

"...!"

The voice came from right beside his ear.

It was so sudden that flinching would’ve been a natural response. But instead, Envy’s entire body locked up. The color drained from his face—even in his current state as a soul body.

A pitch-black hand reached over from behind and rested on his shoulder.

[How dare you enter my vessel. And you’re saying you’ll be taking over...?]

The voice was low. Playful. And threaded through with something that made the air feel threatening.

A pair of golden eyes floated into view, hovering just beside Envy’s face.

By then, his body was trembling like he stood at the center of a magnitude-8 earthquake. Fear almost equivalent to when the Demon King scolded him for his poor performance long ago.

Slowly, only his eyes moved—sliding sideways to meet that golden gaze.

"Y-You...!"

And before he could say anything else—