Chapter 472

He raised both hands toward the sky.

"You gave me time to recognize I can’t beat you conventionally. Which means I need to stop fighting conventionally."

Valentine’s voice resonated with divine authority: "ANGELIC DESCENT - COME FORTH, WARRIOR OF HEAVEN!"

The sky above them tore open.

Not metaphorically. Literally tore, reality splitting like fabric to reveal something beyond—a dimension of pure golden light, a realm where physical laws didn’t apply the same way, where divine authority existed in its purest form.

And through that tear descended an angel.

Not the lesser angels the Four Heroes had summoned. Not messenger spirits or guardians. This was one of the actual combat angels, a being created specifically for war, a divine warrior whose existence was defined by battle.

The Angel of War.

Its form was humanoid but wrong—too perfect, too symmetrical, every feature mathematically ideal in a way that hurt human perception to process. Golden armor that seemed to be part of its body rather than worn. Six wings made of condensed light. Eyes that burned with divine fire. A greatsword forty feet long held casually in one hand.

The angel looked down at the battlefield, assessed the situation with perception that operated at speeds beyond mortal comprehension, then made its decision.

It descended into Valentine’s body.

The possession was immediate and overwhelming. Valentine’s form blazed with golden light so intense it turned night into day. His white robes dissolved, replaced by armor that matched the angel’s golden plates. His hands reshaped, fingers becoming more elongated, movements taking on an otherworldly grace.

Six wings of pure light manifested from his back, each one twenty feet across.

His eyes opened, and they were no longer human. Pure golden radiance shone from the sockets where eyes should be, divine fire that saw everything and judged all of it.

When he spoke, his voice carried harmonics—Valentine’s human tone overlaid with the angel’s divine resonance, creating sound that operated on multiple frequencies simultaneously:

"I AM VALENTINE, VESSEL OF THE ANGEL OF WAR. I AM ZARATHIEL THE UNDEFEATED, WARRIOR OF THE HIGHEST HEAVEN. I AM DIVINE JUDGMENT MADE MANIFEST."

The combined being raised one hand, and the forty-foot greatsword materialized, blazing with holy fire that made the air shimmer from heat.

"DEMON LORD SATOU. YOU HAVE BEEN ASSESSED. YOU HAVE BEEN JUDGED. YOU HAVE BEEN FOUND WANTING. PREPARE FOR DIVINE PUNISHMENT."

Satou stood thirty feet away, his crimson Berserk aura still blazing, and assessed the new threat with enhanced perception and Combat Transcendence.

Angelic possession. Valentine merged with a combat angel. Power output has increased dramatically—maybe five times his previous level. Speed increased. Strength increased. Durability increased. And that sword...

His enhanced perception analyzed the forty-foot blade.

Reality-cutting edge. The sword doesn’t just cut matter—it cuts space itself. One hit from that would be difficult to regenerate from even with my Legendary healing.

But there was something else his perception noticed. Something the angel and Valentine probably didn’t fully realize.

Angelic Descent has a limiter when manifesting in the mortal realm. Full divine power would destroy the physical plane’s stability, so angels operating here are restricted to perhaps... thirty percent? Forty percent of their true capability?

And Valentine’s human body, even reinforced by divine blessing, couldn’t contain full angelic power. The possession was burning through his mortal form, literally consuming his physical structure to fuel divine manifestation.

Satou could see it with his enhanced perception—see the microscopic cracks forming in Valentine’s skin, see how the flesh at his extremities was starting to turn crystalline as divine power overwhelmed biological matter.

In a prolonged fight, the possession will kill him. His body will turn to dust from channeling power it wasn’t designed to contain. Maybe ten minutes. Fifteen at most.

But ten minutes of fighting an angel-possessed Archbishop was still extremely dangerous.

Satou smiled. Finally. A real challenge.

"Let’s see what Heaven’s warrior can do," he said quietly.

Valentine-Zarathiel moved.

[DIVINE VELOCITY - BEYOND SOUND]

The angel-possessed form crossed thirty feet in zero perceptible time, the forty-foot greatsword sweeping in an arc that cut through space itself, reality splitting along the blade’s edge.

Satou activated[SHADOW ABSOLUTE MOVEMENT]and teleported, appearing fifty feet away as the reality-cutting sword carved through the space where he’d been standing.

The sword’s edge didn’t just cut air. It cut the underlying fabric of space, leaving a visible tear in reality that slowly sealed itself over several seconds.

Valentine-Zarathiel turned, six wings beating once, the force launching his armored form across the distance to Satou in an eyeblink.

The sword came down in an overhead smash aimed at Satou’s head.

[PERFECT COUNTER]

Satou’s Combat Transcendence read the attack perfectly—saw the trajectory, the timing, the force, calculated optimal response—and executed a sidestep combined with a redirecting palm strike that deflected the massive blade past his body by exactly the minimum required distance.

The sword hit the ground and the earth exploded, a crater forty feet across forming instantly from the divine power channeled through the impact.

Valentine-Zarathiel pulled the sword free and spun, blade sweeping horizontally at torso height.

Satou jumped,[TRUE FLIGHT]letting him hover above the sweep, then descended with a diving kick aimed at the angel-possessed form’s head.

Valentine-Zarathiel raised the flat of his massive blade like a shield, blocking the kick, then thrust upward with enough force to send Satou flying backward through the air.

They separated, both combatants reassessing.

This was different from the earlier one-sided beating. This was actual combat between relative equals.

—------------------

[ANGELIC COMBAT - TRUE BATTLE]

They clashed again, and this time the exchanges were too fast for normal perception to track.

Valentine-Zarathiel’s sword swept in patterns that cut space itself, each strike carving reality, the blade’s edge leaving visible distortions where dimensional fabric had been severed.

Satou weaved between the strikes, his enhanced agility combined with Time Dilation letting him perceive the attacks in slowed-down clarity, his body moving with precision that exploited every microscopic gap in the sword’s coverage.

[DRAGONFIRE MANIPULATION]

He countered with white-hot flames, draconic fire washing over the angel-possessed form.