DxD : Actually Satan..?

Four figures slowly emerged from the cracked-open pathway.

Shirou climbed out first, behind him was Sakura, her eyes red and puffy, hand clutching his sleeve like a lifeline.

Artoria followed next, silent as ever, her eyes flickering briefly toward Leo and Bazett before falling to Sakura.

She said nothing, but the slight furrow in her brow made her concern known.

Medusa walked last, her long hair flowing in coils behind her, posture protective.

The silence that followed was loud.

And awkward.

Bazett glanced at Leo, expecting him to say something..

But nothing came.

He stood quietly, his coat slightly wind-rustled, hands in his pockets.

He didn't even look at her.

Bazett, who had so vehemently refused to walk away, felt a flicker of irritation.

Was that it?

Was he just going to ghost her emotionally after she decided to oppose him?

She knew it was a long shot given his lack of interest in anything and everything, which he made clear very much.

They'd stood like that for a minute. Maybe more.

Neither speaking.

Finally, Leo turned slightly, his voice calm.

"Should we leave?"

Bazett exhaled sharply, her tone accusatory as she snapped, "I don't know, should we?"

Leo blinked, the barest twitch in his eye betraying his annoyance. What the hell do you want from me, woman? he thought. But he didn't speak it.

And he didn't pry into her thoughts with the Truth Layer either, even if it was tempting.

Instead, he stared ahead toward the group of broken teens and tired servants.

"Well..." he said at last, "I think you should stay with them for a while."

Bazett frowned. "Me?"

Leo nodded once. "They're fragile right now. You're... not."

She narrowed her eyes. "And what are you going to do?"

Leo looked upward for a second. "I have somewhere to be."

Bazett opened her mouth, maybe to protest, but then she looked back at the group. .

And when she turned back—

Leo was gone.

---

In an empty white space.

There was nothing.

No walls, no ceiling, no floor—just an endless, blinding, sterile void that stretched in every direction without boundary or mercy.

And lying in the middle of it all… was Zouken Matou.

He was crumpled awkwardly, his half-decayed body twitching as he stirred awake.

Most of his wounds were already gone except his tounge.

He groaned, low and wet, then looked up with murky eyes.

A figure stood several feet away, cloaked in shadows that had no business existing in a place without light.

Leo.

Arms folded.

Expression neutral.

"Hello there, Zouken," Leo said with casual amusement, voice echoing despite the lack of space. "About time you woke up."

Zouken blinked. His cracked lips twitched.

"I'm not… dead?" he boarded out the best he could without a tounge but leo understood him just fine.

Leo's smile widened just slightly. "No. You're not."

He stepped forward slowly, hands in his pockets, the silence around them reacting to his movement like reality was holding its breath.

"I wasn't lying when I said you deserved worse than death."

Zouken tried to move, but something was off—his limbs responded sluggishly, and there was a weight in his chest that had nothing to do with gravity.

"You know," Leo continued, as if they were chatting over tea, "I spent some time thinking of every possible reason and way to leave you alive and make you suffer."

He tilted his head, thoughtful.

"And then I remembered your life. And just like that—boom. The perfect answer hit me."

Leo's smile sharpened, teeth white against the void.

"Immortality."

Zouken's eyes widened slightly.

"You spent centuries chasing the Third Magic… trying to grasp that final, desperate thread that would let you escape death by materializing your soul."

Leo crouched down so that his eyes were level with the old man's.

"Tragic thing is—I already know how to do that. Kind of."

He paused, then gave a mock-confiding shrug.

"But if Wukong has taught me anything, it's this: there is never a limit to how many times you should achieve immortality."

Zouken shuddered.

"And you want to know something good…?"

" You'll get it. You'll get your wish...it will just not be the way you wishes to spend it."

He rose again, arms outstretched briefly, as if presenting the void like a host on a game show.

" if you're wondering where this is…"

His smile vanished.

"This is your personal Hell."

Zouken tried to speak—but again, only a guttural hiss came out of his ruined mouth.

Leo's eyes glowed faintly, something cosmic dancing behind them.

"I don't know if this place aligns with any scripture," he continued. "But being locked in a dimension stripped of all meaning… where you can neither die nor escape nor even leave a mark?"

"Cursed to scream without a mouth, to exist without a reason with no goals left to strive for because I will grant you your biggest desire."

He looked around with mock admiration.

"Seems fitting, doesn't it?"

Leo took a final step back, and the space around him rippled.

"Have fun..."

Zouken only responded with a roar and meaningless ramblings without his tounge.

---

Leo arrived at the Einzbern estate with zero subtlety.

He'd used a magical circle of his own making using modified runes he'd copied from Bazett's mind.

Rune magic wasn't his specialty, but it didn't need to be—his mind was a forge.

Knowledge entered, and when it left, it was refined and sharpened.

The circle shimmered behind him as he stepped through the front gate, every step deliberate and stylized.

Leo was doing a jojo walk.

Long strides. Arrogant posture.

A big grin that could challenge entire pantheons.

Leo didn't sneak.

That was for protagonists worried about detection or death.

Leo wanted to be detected.

He wanted whoever was watching—be it homunculus, servant, or angry child aunty—to see him coming and have time to panic.

Which, evidently, they did.

The moment his foot crossed the threshold of the estate, a pair of battle-designed homunculi leapt at him like white-haired missiles.

They were fast—surprisingly so for artificial constructs.

But speed meant nothing when your opponent was Satan.

With a flick of his wrist, blood slithered out from their bodies.

They twitched, shimmered with that eerie liquid gleam—

Snap.

Both homunculi dropped mid-air, unconscious before they even realized their limbs had stopped responding due to lack of blood.

"Sleep," Leo whispered, as if casting a bedtime spell.

It took only a thought to induce unconsciousness.

It was gentle.

For both him and then.

He stepped over their bodies, noting their construction.

Not all of them had souls.

Some were empty vessels—bodies with no spark... Others had faint, flickering souls clinging to the biological scaffold.

Fascinating.

In the DxD world, life was almost too easy. Create a body, give it mana, and boom—soul. Selfhood.

Sentience.

The world accommodated existence with near-reckless generosity.

But this world?

This world fought back.

Here, the soul was elusive. Precious. Artificial life had to be just right—conditioned, structured, awakened through trial and purpose. ..

It gave the Einzbern estate a ghostly quality.

Some of these beings moved and breathed, but they were as empty as shadow puppets.

Others, though… had potential.

A quiet hum of thought formed in Leo's mind, a blueprint for future Echoforges already drawing itself.

But now wasn't the time for crafting.

No, this was the time for confrontation.

He could already sense him—Heracles, the Berserker, moving in the estate like a storm given form.

And just behind that, the bright-hot presence of a little girl filled with too much power and too much rage.

Illyasviel von Einzbern.

She would not greet him with words that easily.

She would throw a mountain of muscle at his head first.

And then, maybe, they'd talk.

Leo rolled his shoulders once.

"Alright," he said, mostly to himself. "Time to punch a demi-god in the face...."

And lo, behold—like a panel from a manga blessed by madness and muscle—the foundations of the Einzbern estate trembled.

Through a shattered archway emerged the unstoppable force of a myth reborn.

Berserker.

Heracles, the not-so-gentle mountain of rage and sinew, thundered into view.

Clad in cracked metal and raw fury, the ground fractured under his weight, every step a promise of pulverization.

Balanced effortlessly on his shoulder like a crown was Illyasviel von Einzbern—a pale-haired girl with crimson eyes.

She blinked at Leo.

Expression unreadable. Thoughts indecipherable.

But something was wrong—off. There was no instant command to crush.

No telepathic spike of malice.

She was... hesitating?

Heracles growled low, shoulders rising, muscles twitching—instinctively reacting to Leo's presence.

But he didn't move.

Leo tilted his head. "Well, that's new," he said aloud, hands still casually in his pockets.

Illya's voice, when it came, was sharp and suspicious—but not aggressive.

"Who are you?"

Leo blinked once. He almost laughed. Almost.

He placed a hand over his chest, mock-formal. "I am humbly known as Leo. Or, if you want to go with branding—'Satan.' You know, the big bad."

There was silence.

Berserker didn't move. Illya's expression didn't change.

But her eyes narrowed.

Leo, meanwhile, reached deeper—into the folds of time, into the new cannibalized curse—spreading threads forward.

Countless potential reactions unraveled like thin strings across a loom of causality.

And among them, the most likely scenario began playing out: She believed him.

And not just believed—but understood something.

Leo's deadpan flattened further.

Wtf where is my bloodlusted demented loli? he thought with irritation.

I had a whole banter planned.

But Illya just… watched him.

Not with fear—but with awareness. As if recognizing something.

Then she spoke again, her voice eerily calm.

"As the Lesser Grail… I could feel something. A change. A corruption in the summoning matrix. Someone overwrote the summoning. I assumed it was a caster interference, but…"

She studied Leo's eyes.

"You... summoned yourself, didn't you?"

Leo didn't answer with words. Just smiled faintly.

Illya's grip on Berserker's shoulder tightened, but she didn't give the order to attack. Not yet.

"I don't believe Heracles would be your match," she said flatly, crimson eyes narrowed. "Please… tell me why you're here."

That tone. So precise. So self-aware.

So un-Illya by the standards of Grail War bloodlust.

Leo folded his arms.

"Well, originally, I came here to slap around your big boy until he sat down and talked. But now…?" He squinted at her, intrigued.

"Now I'm even less happy."

Leo continued.

"I came here with the full intent to kill Heracles, take his immortality, and plunder the Lesser Grail from you."

He said it without shame. Without a twitch of guilt.

Illya didn't even blink.

"I was gonna end the war early. Fast-track the fallout. Take the Grail out of the equation and move straight on to what actually matters."

His tone darkened just slightly.

"Like beating Goldie Boy and Mudman before either of them get too comfortable."

He was, of course, referring to Gilgamesh and Angra Mainyu—the two most problematic stains on this whole Grail War canvas.

But then Leo sighed—long, frustrated, and full of the rare kind of bitterness that only came from inconvenient moral speedbumps.

"But now…" he muttered, gesturing at her vaguely, "you've got me all confused."

Illya raised a single, elegant eyebrow. "Confused?"

Leo nodded, visibly irritated with himself.

"Yeah. You're not what I expected. And that ruins the script I had in my head."

He paused, then added with a deadpan look:

"I hate it when people turn out to be people."

"I'm sorry for the inconvenience."

Leo snorted. "Don't be. I like complications. I just didn't expect to find conscience in an Einzbern-made soul jar."

They stared at each other in silence for a moment.

Illya didn't flinch at the insult. She simply tilted her head, like a doll trying to parse an unfamiliar language.

But there was no malice behind her expression. Only curiosity. And something... older. Wiser. Almost painful.

Heracles remained silent behind her, but his fists were clenched, ready to strike the moment she so much as blinked the wrong way.

Leo watched her carefully.

This was the girl who had threw Berserker at her enemies like a wrecking ball, who laughed in the face of bleeding limbs and broken hearts, who wore cruelty like perfume to mask the rotting loneliness beneath.

But this?

This was different.

That made her dangerous. Not because of strength, but because of clarity.

Leo hated clarity in people who were supposed to be tools.

"So then," Illya finally said, her voice even. "Now that you're confused… what are you going to do?"

Leo exhaled slowly through his nose, then chuckled to himself.

"Oh, isn't that the question?"

He paused.

"You're right, by the way. Heracles wouldn't be my match."

There was a pause as Illya prepared to respond.

=======================

For the people that want a fight, use your head the only good fights will be with Goldie boy and mudman.

It's the best if situations are over with a talk as a fight with any of the servants would be boring to write and read.

Like what do people expect leo to do against zouken other than kiddie gloves literal hydrogen bomb vs coughing baby situation.

Have some patience and let me cool the best gilagamesh fight you'll ever see.

It'll be a special chapter with double the length.

Power Stones and Reviews please