Arad was still on the island, leaning on a boulder and glaring into the horizon with burning purple eyes. In his hand, he held a clear glass ball that he was almost crushing.
"How is the link?" Gojo asked in the back. He had just cut his link with Lucy because he went to take a bath and sleep. He was empty now, so he came to check on his little brother.
"Good, but I can't send anything to Yuwaku. She is currently fighting twenty devils... eighteen, two are already dead." Arad looked at the glass ball with a frown, then sighed.
"Of course, you can't send anything. You've got nothing to give." Gojo sat beside him. "We don't have any power to give. We can communicate, but not interfere directly."
Arad knew that, so he was already trying to find another way to help. The only thing he can give is knowledge, but unlike Gojo, he couldn't communicate directly with his agents.
Gojo only has one agent, but he can communicate directly through dreams. Arad had three agents, but couldn't speak with them, only send feelings and emotions.
As the fight between Yuwaku and the devils was about to heat up, Arad felt the need to give her one piece of information. He doesn't know if she is aware of that fact or not, but archdevils and devils aren't the same.
When a devil dies outside hell, they are sent right back to it.
Archdevils don't get sent back to hell necessarily; they can choose to resurrect right where they died, fueled by the power of hell. The pitfiend and the archdevil who were killed by Yuwaku might wake up soon.
Yuwaku was getting ready to attack the third devil when she got a strange tingling in her spine, a surge of shivers that drew her eyes toward the two dead devils.
Urgency, danger, a threat... she knew, Arad was telling her that those two devils were still a deadly threat. She understood and kept that in the back of her mind, immediately engaging the other devils.
This time, they weren't surprised by her speed or teleportation, so all of them, the whole eighteen hellspawns, were waiting for her.
Out of those eighteen, one seemed to approach her at a constant speed, flapping his wings, one, two, three, then he suddenly appeared just an inch away from her face.
"Nowhere to run!" His spear flew right at her face, the sharp, burning, red-hot tip only a hair away from her eye. She wanted to dodge, jump back, or teleport away, but it was already too late for that. Nine more of those hellspawns had surrounded her.
A spear to her chest from the right, another from the left. A ball of hellish flames rushed at her back, followed by two spears. Two were dropping at her head with halbards, and the remaining two had tunneled underground, trying to attack her from below. Those were a total of ten; the other eight were staying a bit back, ready to attack Yuwaku if she ever managed to escape.
All of the attacks hit, ripping several holes into Yuwaku's delicate body, splashing a cloud of black mist everywhere.
It was the end -for the devils.
Yuwaku took a step forward, walking right into the devil who stabbed her in the eye and through her skull. But, she didn't bump into him; her body passed right through him like a ghost of dark flames.
"PIIIIIIKYAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!" The devil howled, screaming so loud that blood gushed out of his throat. He was sinking deep into the darkness. Painful cold gripped his soul by the legs, dragging him into the lightless abyss.
It felt like quicksand, if that sand were alive and ate his skin piece by piece. Standing at his face, he could see a face he never expected to see. A maid, emotionless, cold, and glaring at him with indifference. She was a bit short, her silky black hair reached her shoulders, and her outfit looked modest. He couldn't feel either hatred or compassion in her cold, black eyes.
That was death, staring him right in the eyes. It was his time; whatever the Nymph did, it was now crushing and consuming his soul. It was painful, agonizing, but there was hope in death. She'll harvest his soul, take it away to the land of the dead, and from there, he will be picked back up into the armies of hell.
But death didn't do anything. She turned around and started walking away.
The devil didn't know how this was supposed to go, but he could feel that something was off. He screamed. "Wait! Please! Where are you going, won't you take my soul!"
He then chuckled, "Wait... her attack failed to kill me. The others are resurrecting me, or is it hell calling me back?"
Death stopped walking and looked back at him. "Neither, I can't take your soul." She then disappeared into the darkness.
The pain grew stronger; the devil could feel his very being getting crushed and consumed, violently and mercilessly. The darkness reached his hips, then his chest, then his neck.
"NYMPH! PLEASE! LET ME GO!" He screamed, crying, but no one replied. He lived in hell, he knew pain and suffering, but this was just too much; the agony itself was torn into his very soul, surpassing anything that was possible even by hell's standards. It felt like he was getting grilled, electrocuted, chewed, and violated, heartbroken, devastated, cursed, disappointed, and humiliated all at once.
"NOOOOO!" His screams grew louder as the darkness engulfed him whole. Outside, the devils flew back in horror as they watched the comrade scream his lungs out, literally, his eyes exploded out, his guts burst, and his skin blistered with blood, growing bark from his charred hide.
The devil's corpse turned into a dark, burned tree with his screaming face etched into its horrid bark.
The devils watched in horror, their faces contorting as the senses wavered over where Yuwaku was. They could sense her turn toward, waving and weaving around like a drunkard, then moving at a constant speed in their direction.
One of the devils got ready to unleash his curse on this whole place; he'll release all of his hellfire at once and burn this damned Nymph and the forest to ash, orders be damned.
But then, Yuwaku's body suddenly disappeared, and she was right in front of the devil. The devil froze.
"Abagor's curse?!" As he gasped, she flew right through him like a ghost, and his screams filled the forest with a bone-chilling cry for help.
The trees shuddered, and the devils had just seen true horror. But this was the end of playing around.
"She can directly attack souls and steal our curses! Beware!" One of the devils figured it out and warned the rest moments before Yuwaku's body flared into a crimson burst of hellfire.
"Since when could Nymphs possess such power?!" One of the devils cried in frustration. But he didn't understand the true nature of Nymphs.
Nymphs are creatures born from extreme natural beauty, which is what most people learn since it's easier to explain and understand. If you found a forest that's so pure and beautiful that it can steal your gaze for hours, a Nymph was probably born from it.
From those explanations, Nymphs are creatures that wield the power of that beauty, often compressing it to the point it can overwhelm people's senses and blind, or even kill them. So even if Nymphs are the most beautiful women in existence, the price of looking at them is grave, but it varies.
Some Nymphs, you need to see them nude to die. Looking at them clothed would just blind you. But some, just seeing an eye is enough to send a man to the grave. Yuwaku was of the latter; hearing her voice alone can drive people mad, seeing a finger could blind a man, and one glance at her radiant eyes is a death sentence.
But besides their beauty powers, Nymphs usually control powers related to the nature of their birth. People always glance over the fact that a Nymph controls the animals and trees of the forest it was born from. But that was also a power they could use, the power that their origin of beauty held.
Yuwaku was born from Arad and Zephyr, an obsidian dragon sleeping beneath an ancient tree, under the soothing spirit magic of the everlasting Wind Spirit Queen Zephyr.
Another one of the devils died, consumed by Yuwaku's raging hellfire, and turned into a crying tree.
With the third archdevil chained to her, Yuwaku could feel the burden on her soul growing near its limit. His curse wasn't that useful for now, but it could be helpful later, so she decided to keep him.
Having reached her limit, she finally pulled her sword. A clean, dull, straight, mirror saber that reflected the world back on itself. The sword itself was mundane, but its power was one that even Zephyr was surprised at.
"You'd better open your eyes and look at me. Otherwise, you'll die." The sword flashed through the air. With one strike, she cleaved one of the devils in two before they could even more.