The deal, struck in the electrically charged air of the club room, had left a strange aftertaste. Jin felt neither triumph nor relief. He had gotten what he wanted — access to information — but the price was obvious: he had been drawn into their world. His quiet, detached life as an observer was over. Now he was a "special ally," a piece on the board, albeit one with the right to make his own move.
Rias Gremory, true to her word, did not keep him waiting long. A day after their conversation, Akeno passed Jin an invitation to visit the clan's library.
"Rias-buchou awaits you this evening," she said with her usual enigmatic smile. "I hope you find what you're looking for there, Izayoi-kun."
That evening, Jin found himself once again in the old club building. Aside from Rias, no one else was there. She stood by a massive bookcase, which, as it turned out, was not merely a piece of furniture. Murmuring a few words in the demonic tongue, Rias touched one of the books. The bookcase slid aside silently, revealing a dark passageway behind it, from which wafted cool air and the scent of old paper.
"After you," she nodded. "Our library is not simply a room. It is a small pocket dimension linked to our ancestral estate in the Underworld. It is safe here, and time flows somewhat differently."
Jin stepped into the passage. The world behind him vanished. He found himself in an enormous circular hall, its walls — from floor to the high, domed ceiling — lined with shelving packed with books. Thousands, tens of thousands of volumes in leather and cloth bindings, with gold and silver embossing, ancient scrolls, dusty tomes. In the center of the hall stood a large reading table, illuminated by soft, floating magical light.
Impressive. Not the magic — he had already begun to grow accustomed to that. But the sheer volume of information gathered here. Concentrated knowledge, accumulated over centuries by one of the greatest demonic houses.
"You may study everything that is here," Rias said, her voice echoing in the silence. "The history of our world, bestiaries, treatises on magic, studies of Sacred Gears. All at your disposal."
Jin walked slowly along one of the shelves, running his fingers over the spines of the books. His enhanced memory allowed him to absorb information at an incredible rate. He was searching for information about this world, its rules, its players, and their weaknesses. He pulled out one of the tomes — Chronicles of the Great War. Flipped through several pages. Angels, demons, fallen. Battles that shattered worlds. Names he knew from his past life were not myth here, but history.
"Interesting read," he remarked, snapping the book shut. "A lot of drama over ideological differences."
Rias smiled faintly at his cynical tone.
"It is our history. A history that continues to this day."
After spending about an hour in the library, Jin felt the information beginning to overload him. The knowledge was useful, but sitting in one place was exhausting.
"That's enough for today," he said, replacing the volume. "My head is buzzing. I'll take a walk."
"As you wish," Rias nodded. "The door will be open to you at any time."
Emerging from the pocket dimension back into the silence of the club, and then outside, Jin breathed in the cool evening air. Twilight was already deepening over Kuoh. Instead of heading home, he wandered aimlessly through the town, turning into quiet, deserted alleyways where the lamplight barely pierced the darkness. He needed to digest the information he'd received and simply be in silence.
On his way back toward his neighborhood, he decided to stop by the familiar convenience store for something cold. The street was nearly empty; only the occasional car passed, its headlights pulling his solitary figure from the darkness. Out of a side alley, a man stepped into his path. Tall, in a long, worn coat and a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his eyes. Jin cast a short, indifferent glance at him and kept walking. Something about the man's figure seemed vaguely familiar, but he paid it no mind. As they drew level, Jin caught a sharp, unpleasant smell emanating from the stranger — a mix of ozone and something cloyingly sweet. The man walked past without raising his head. He had already taken several dozen steps when he stopped. Then he slowly turned his head, and in the light of a distant streetlamp, a mad, predatory grin flickered across his face, revealing teeth that were far too sharp. He adjusted his hat, hiding his face, and vanished into the darkness.
Inside the convenience store, it was bright and quiet. Misaki was at the register again. Seeing him, she smiled politely, as she would any other customer, and a faint, barely noticeable blush colored her cheeks — the kind any girl might show at the sight of a handsome guy.
"Good evening," she said in an even, calm voice.
No recognition. No memory of the violet sky, the winged monsters, or the guy catching spears of light. Only polite detachment. Jin nodded silently, grabbed a bottle of water, and approached the register. He handed over the money; their fingers brushed for an instant once again. She didn't react. He studied her face, her eyes, which held not a shadow of recollection of that evening in the park. Only the ordinary curiosity toward a mysterious customer. Rias had kept her word. They had erased her memory.
He took his water and his change. A strange emptiness settled in his chest. Some part of him — the part that had felt something warm during their date — felt a slight but sharp pang of chagrin. To her, he was just another customer. A ghost with no past.
"Thank you for your purchase," she said as he had already turned to leave. "Please come again."
Jin stopped. He did not turn around.
"Unlikely," he said quietly, and walked out of the store, leaving behind a girl puzzled by his strange behavior.
He walked through the dark streets, and the chagrin slowly hardened into a cold, dull anger. Not at Rias. Not at Misaki. At this world, at its rules, at himself. He decided to cut through a dark, abandoned square to shorten the route. Tall trees hid the moonlight, creating an almost absolute darkness.
"Hallelujah! Praise the Almighty, for He has mercifully sent yet another heathen into my path!"
A man stepped onto the gravel path. A long, filthy coat concealed a gaunt body; unkempt white locks straggled from under a wide-brimmed hat. A broad, pathological grin distorted his face, baring his teeth. Freed Zelzan, the wandering exorcist. A man whose faith had long since mutated into refined sadism. For him, exterminating devils and their minions was not a duty, but an art — an act of satisfying the darkest instincts.
"I was starting to think I'd have to search the whole town for you, little sinner," he licked his lips, his gaze hungry. "I followed the scent. You positively reek of that filthy demonic rot! You must be one of their lackeys, eh? Love rubbing shoulders with the spawn of hell?"
In his hands, as if from thin air, two objects appeared. In one — a long, serrated blade, glowing faintly with white light. In the other — a pistol of impressive size.
"But fret not! Father Freed is merciful!" he theatrically raised his eyes to the sky. "I shall deliver your wayward soul from suffering! I shall purify you with fire and steel! I shall grant you the great mercy of sending you straight to hell, to your beloved devils! Hallelujah!"
Jin stopped, regarding him with frank boredom. All his anger, all his chagrin, evaporated in an instant, replaced by cosmic weariness.
"Are you finished?" Jin said flatly, taking a sip from his can.
Freed's face twitched. The victim's indifference shattered his sadistic inclinations. Rage distorted his features.
"Die, trash!"
He raised the pistol. A volley of shots thundered. Bullets, pumped full of holy energy — capable of tearing a devil to shreds — streaked toward their target. Jin did not budge. The metal struck his face and chest with a clang, flattening into shapeless wads and clattering onto the gravel. Not a scratch. Not a torn thread on his clothing. The kinetic energy simply dissolved.
Freed's eyes widened, but psychosis proved stronger than logic. With a snarl, he lunged forward, raising the light blade for a slashing strike aimed straight at the neck.
But the blow never reached its target.
The world, for Freed, suddenly lost its definition. He saw no wind-up. Caught no movement from his opponent's muscles. One moment the blond was standing five meters away; the next split second, an unyielding, steel grip clamped around his face.
Jin's fingers, like a hydraulic press, dug into the exorcist's cheeks, crushing his jaw and blocking any sound.
Jin bent his knees slightly. The gravel beneath his feet turned to dust. A deafening roar erupted, like the explosion of an artillery shell. The shockwave uprooted the nearest bushes and shattered the glass in the closest lampposts.
They soared into the air. Jin, holding the thrashing Freed by the face, burst through the treetops, rising dozens of meters above the nighttime city. The wind howled in their ears. The exorcist's eyes flew wide in horror as he watched the rooftops of Kuoh rapidly recede. Panic pierced his consciousness like a cold needle.
After several seconds of weightlessness, they began to plummet. Ahead, a dense forest on the outskirts of town loomed darkly.
Jin made no effort to soften the landing. He drove Freed's back directly into the earth. The impact was monstrous. The ground shuddered. Trees within a ten-meter radius groaned and cracked, and a pillar of soil, dry branches, and dust shot into the sky. An elongated crater formed at the point of impact.
Freed lay at the bottom of the hollow, choking on his own blood. His lungs refused to work, his ribs had crunched, his spine had emitted a dangerous creak. The ringing in his ears drowned out all other sounds. He tried to inhale, but only a gurgling wheeze escaped his throat.
Through the settling dust, he saw Jin. The boy stood at the edge of the crater, brushing dirt from the sleeve of his blazer. His breathing was even, and not a drop of sweat had surfaced on his face.
With a trembling hand, Freed raised the light sword — miraculously still in his grip after the impact — and aimed it desperately at Jin.
As Jin approached, he simply lowered the sole of his shoe onto the blade, woven from pure light energy. A sharp crack rang out, like shattering glass. The light blade, capable of slicing through steel, burst into millions of glittering fragments under Jin's weight.
"My sword..." Freed rasped, staring at the empty hilt.
"Flimsy," Jin replied indifferently.
The exorcist, suffocating in pain and terror, reached his free hand into his coat. He snatched out a bundle of holy water vials and hurled them at Jin's feet, simultaneously drawing a backup revolver loaded with armor-piercing blessed rounds. The vials shattered, dousing Jin's legs in acrid steam that should have burned the flesh of any being from the Underworld to the bone.
Jin walked through the steam without slowing his stride. The holy water left not even a trace on his boots. He stretched out his hand.
Freed pulled the trigger. A shot. Another. Jin caught both bullets between his thumb and forefinger, right in the air. He squeezed his fingers, reducing the blessed lead to metallic dust that sifted to the ground.
Freed's terror swelled into absolute, paralyzing despair. His arsenal, his pride, his faith — all of it shattered against the bored indifference of this monster.
Freed screamed — not a battle cry, but the shriek of a cornered rat. He snatched a long ritual dagger from his boot, covered in venomous runes, and thrust upward.
Jin's hand flickered with imperceptible speed. He caught Freed's wrist. A dry, sickening crunch rang out. The bones of the exorcist's forearm snapped, piercing through the skin. The dagger fell from his limp fingers.
Freed howled, collapsing onto his back, cradling his mangled arm. Tears spurted from his eyes. All his arrogance, all his theatrical madness, evaporated, leaving only animal fear.
"Enough... stop..." he stammered, crawling backward, bracing his good hand against the loose earth.
In desperation, he shoved his hand into a secret pocket of his coat. His fingers brushed the cold facet of a teleportation crystal. A rarest artifact, his last chance at salvation. He only needed to infuse it with mana and shatter it.
Freed pulled out the crystal; a hysterical, relieved grin stretched across his lips.
"I... I'll be back..." he hissed.
Jin smoothly dropped into a crouch right in front of him. His movement was inhumanly swift. Freed didn't even have time to blink before two of Jin's fingers closed around the crystal protruding from the exorcist's hand.
Snap.
The spatial artifact, worth a fortune, crumbled into glittering dust.
The relieved smile on Freed's face froze, twisting into a grimace of absolute, broken horror. Hope died. At that moment, Jin hadn't just broken his weapon. He had broken his mind. The exorcist stared into the violet eyes and saw only an endless, icy void. No sadism, no pleasure in superiority. To this being, he was merely trash beneath his feet.
To prevent any further escape attempts, Jin delivered a short, precise strike with the edge of his palm to Freed's left knee. The joint shattered into splinters. The exorcist couldn't even scream — the pain shock knocked the remaining air from his lungs. He collapsed face-first into the dirt, convulsing, blowing bloody bubbles.
"Hurt?" Jin asked dispassionately.
"G-go... to hell..." Freed rasped, choking on blood.
"You know, I was just walking home," Jin said, looking down at him. "What was the point of all this? People like you are always crawling out of their holes, sowing chaos everywhere. Do you have any idea how tiresome that is?"
Freed, despite the pain, laughed madly.
"Hee-hee... think you've won? You don't know anything..." he bared his teeth, his eyes burning with hatred. "And I'll be sure to pay her a visit, too... Teach her a lesson about how dangerous it is to get involved with the likes of you..."
He didn't finish.
Jin rose to his full height. He surveyed the broken body at his feet. Killing this piece of meat made no sense whatsoever. A dead fanatic was just a corpse. A living, broken one was information, a resource, and, more importantly, an excellent tool for building connections.
"I told you," Jin's voice was quiet, almost a whisper, but it carried an absolute, immutable finality. "Did you think I'd let trash like you escape and cause problems? You're mistaken."
***
When, fifteen minutes later, Rias Gremory's group teleported into the clearing, guided by the powerful surge of holy energy, they beheld a sight that stopped them cold. In the center of the clearing, amidst craters from explosions and heaps of twisted metal and wood, lay Freed Zelzan. He was alive, but his arms and legs were bent at unnatural angles; his ribs, judging by the wheezes, were broken; and his face, coated in blood and dirt, expressed complete, absolute desolation. He was not looking at them. He was staring into the void, at the wreckage that had so recently been his weapons.
And on the trunk of an oak, in the light of magical flames, fresh, deeply carved letters stood out sharply, forming a short phrase:
"AS A TOKEN OF GOODWILL."
Meanwhile, along a deserted nighttime street in Kuoh, without looking back, walked a tall, fair-haired youth. In his pocket lay a bottle of water bought at the convenience store, and in his eyes — only a cold, calm emptiness that nothing could fill.