Heart Devil [OP Yandere Schizo Ramble LitRPG XD]

The battlefield that had once been an audience chamber now resembled a ruin torn from tragic legends.

Ramsus stood tall, though bloodied. His gold-trimmed, light artificer armor was battered and streaked with ash. Cracks lined the marble floors, splintered pillars leaned against the desperately standing walls.

His personal golems, towering constructs of obsidian and steel, stood at his side, smoking from wounds and glyphs flickering.

Around him, his retainers stood victorious but shaken. Many of the guards that came to assist lay still on the ground. The inquisitor did not bring only a small band with her; a group of soldiers lay in wait outside the chamber, a wide net prepared to ensure the house's compliance.

But the golems were not in their calculations.

Victory was achieved, but the price had been steep. The knights of the Inquisition had been relentless, but in the end, they bled like any other man.

Only one remained now.

The Inquisitor herself.

She did not move during the battle. Not once. She stood in the rear, watching silently, emotionlessly, as her knights fell one by one. Her hands folded calmly behind her back, her dead eyes never leaving Ramsus.

Now, surrounded by death and ash, she stepped forward.

She didn't look winded or afraid; she simply smiled. An empty, hollow display; none would believe it was anything more than trained action.

"You fought well, Lord Baphomet," she said. "It is… quaint. Your loyalty, your desperation. It shines like a glimmering candle."

Ramsus spat out a mouthful of blood. "I don't care for your poetry, and I am not interested in mannequins." He raised his sword. "You came here to murder my daughter and cast judgment on my house. Now speak clearly, before I end this."

The inquisitor's gaze didn't falter.

She nodded once. "You speak of clarity, yet your hands shake. Not from exhaustion, but from fear."

She slowly reached into her sleeve and retrieved a small glass vial, shining with a glow unlike any magic Ramsus had seen before. Inside, a golden liquid swirled, almost alive.

"A gift." she said, her eyes finally showing a hint of light. A light touched with loyal madness. "From the Goddess Aife herself and approved by the higher beings of the Upper Sky."

The chamber stirred with tension.

One of Ramsus' knights muttered. "Is that… divinity?"

Divinity. A concoction that grants a path directly to angelhood. So the populace assumes.

Since it's the blood of a willing angel. So the populace was told.

The inquisitor nodded, then looked to Ramsus, her emotions ground away through time, showing an edge rarely seen.

"I was chosen," she whispered reverently. "Chosen to light the path to a new dawn. Where no devils rule. No blood pacts stain this world, no nobles hide monsters beneath their children's beds."

Ramsus' hand tightened on the hilt of his sword, his jaw clenching at the words.

"You speak like a zealot."

"I speak like a messenger." she replied, uncorking the vial.

Then, she drank.

The golden liquid slid down her throat, and the moment it disappeared…

The transformation began.

The inquisitor's body convulsed once, then again. Her back arched, her bones beginning to crack and muscles beginning to tear beneath her robes. A glowing sigil of light erupted from her spine, searing the air around her. Her skin began to glow, her veins shining with divine energy.

From her back, a sickening rip was heard. And two massive wings burst forth.

Feathered. Golden. Terrifying.

Her eyes glowed with a white light, a searing, judgmental light.

Gasps echoed through the chamber. Even the golems, reacting to the influx of divine energy, began to reel from the force.

Ramsus took a single step back, his instincts screaming. That was not an angel; the change was radical, and no halo shone above her head.

She was becoming a…

"Principality…" one of the captains whispered.

An angelic being, the guards of the gate of Upper Sky.

And divine executioners.

The inquisitor, no, the thing she was becoming, floated just above the ground. Her robes billowing in the wind.

She turned her face towards Ramsus, her voice layered now with inhuman vibrations.

"Ragnarok will not tear this kingdom down." Her eyes glowed with righteous power.

"And your house," she added. "Will be the first to be purified."

Ramsus' laughter tore through the silence. It was harsh, sharp, unhinged.

"Good, good." He laughed. "I was getting bored of slaughtering mortals."

He raised his blade again, even as blood dripped down his chin. "Let's see how well your goddess built you."

~~~

The stone halls blurred past her as Corrine ran, spear gripped tightly in her hand, boots slamming against the marble floor. Her lungs burned, but she didn't slow.

Not now.

Not when every second could be the one that took her father from her.

'Please be alive.' She thought. Her father had means of defending himself here, but he was not a warrior. He was a businessman.

Her mind raced faster than her feet. The transformation was still fresh, her muscles stronger, her senses sharper, but her emotions were more chaotic than ever.

Her worry for her father was balanced by the string of information slamming into her mind.

Rules, people, places.

A mission. One from the devil she made a deal with.

But she chose not to focus on the future. She needed to focus on the present.

She turned the corner, sprinting past the stone statues of her old ancestors, when the ground rumbled.

Corrine staggered, catching herself on a column as the tremors deepened into a low roar.

She felt it in the air. Arcane tension vibrating the surrounding atmosphere.

"What is-"

Then, far ahead in the open courtyard, the ground split open with a mechanical screech. Corrine stopped short, staring wide-eyed.

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A massive structure was rising from a hidden chamber below, a tower of gears, glowing runes, and a central cylindrical barrel thrumming with unstable power and ominous laws.

"No…" she breathed, taking a step back.

The runes on the surface pulsed a deep purple. The barrel shifted, the runes rotating and locking into place.

It aimed in a particular direction.

Her eyes snapped to the distant structure in horror.

It was aiming… at the audience chamber.

Corrine felt her heart tremble. "No, no, no!"

And then…

KA-THOOOM

The cannon fired. A beam of condensed magic, thick as a siege tower and brighter than lightning, tore across the estate. The shockwave hit her a second later, throwing her onto her back as magic and plasma roared over her head.

She scrambled up, staring in horror as the beam struck the audience hall, a bloom of arcane fire erupting into the sky, a tower of smoke and rubble rising in its wake.

"FATHER!"

She ran.

~~~

3 minutes earlier.

The air shimmered with heat and divine pressure. The audience chamber was nothing more than a wasteland of rubble and ruins at this point. The ceiling was torn off, and the chandelier had long since fallen.

Marble columns lay in chunks. Craters dotted the floor where the inquisitor's holy blasts had melted through solid stone.

And at the center of it all…

She hovered.

Golden wings unfurled, robes torn and aflame with golden heat. Her skin glowed with holy magic and radiating touches of order laws.

Ramsus could barely hold his footing. His armor was cracked, his left pauldron gone, and small chestplate smoking. He glanced at the sword in his hand. Bent and nicked.

Around him, his personal guard lay scattered. The golems fared no better. One reduced to molten slag, another kneeling on one leg, arms ripped off. Only a few still stood, sparking and lumbering, their arcane batteries, the core converter the city lord took pride in, flickering dimly.

The Principality's voice echoed, melodic and terrifying. "I offer mercy, Lord Baphomet. Were it not for your daughter's crime, the holy blade of justice would not have fallen to your neck. Submit. The goddess Aife demands your repentance. Do so, and a place in the temple awaits you. Your mind is wasted in this camp of monsters."

Ramsus staggered forward, blood trailing from his mouth. "Repentance?" he spat. "For protecting my child?"

"For consorting with devils. For delaying divine justice. For clinging to heretical ideals."

"Hahaha, nonsense!"

The being tilted her head, genuinely confused. "You stand against the will of the goddess, Lord Baphomet. Even now you cling to pride, to love, to sin. Why?"

Ramsus coughed, blood dyeing his teeth. But the weary cough was soon comboed with a defiant snort.

"Because none of those things are sins," he growled. "And I don't answer to the self-righteous delusions of a winged corpse puppet."

The principality raised her hand. A spear of golden flame formed over her palm.

"Then die here."

The spear launched.

BOOM

Ramsus ducked, rolling as the projectile scorched past and obliterated a pillar behind him. Marble disintegrated into molten dust.

He panted, sweat dripping from his brow. He looked around at his men, half-dead, clutching weapons too heavy for their wounds. His golems sparked and groaned.

His eyes narrowed at the thought of his options. No one else could stop her.

He reached into his coat, pulling out a small bronze pendant; his thumb grazed the rune in the center. Hesitant, reluctant, unwilling. But a wild light soon flashed in his eye, followed by firm will.

Lose another?

Never.

"I didn't want to use it," he muttered. "But this is far too much for me." he sighed out a chuckle.

Click

A button clicked.

From the eastern wing of the estate, buried beneath three levels of stone and warding, a great vault unsealed.

A gear clicked.

A seal shattered.

A power core hummed awake.

A hidden, tightly sealed corridor shuddered and slid open with a seismic groan, revealing a black, metallic, rune-covered magical cannon.

It rose to ground level, large and devastating.

But it did not aim skyward but directly across the estate.

Its barrel aligned with surgical precision, straight through the manor's inner sanctums, its beam path terminating at the audience chamber.

One of Ramsus' retainers, watching the magical schematic hologram now hovering before the city lord, went pale.

"M-my lord, that's going to fire through the garden wing, the hall of arms, the crypt-"

"I know." Ramsus rasped, wiping the blood from his face.

"Lord Ramsus, what have you done? You've been hiding treason this whole time." The principality whispered, sensing it.

The power.

A weapon of mass destruction.

A tool of mutiny.

Ramsus straightened his back, adjusted his hair, and clasped his hands behind his back. He would take this risk with no issues.

He spoke calmly. "My family built this city. Fed it. Defended it. With all daggers poised in our direction… Did you honestly think we didn't prepare for the godsdamned angels as well?"

The earth rumbled.

A mechanical voice sounded from the pendant he held.

"Core warming. preparing-"

"Bypass warming and prep for immediate fire." he interrupted.

"Acknowledged."

The cannon's spell matrix began to spin; the air twisted and fluctuated with raw power.

"Firing sequence: complete." The voice informed from the ether.

The angelic being's eyes narrowed in fury. "You would destroy your estate, your men, to strike me?"

The businessman grinned, meeting her gaze one final time. "You should have brought more than wings."

The men behind him, broken and beaten on the ground, let out hoarse chuckles at that. Fuck this glowing creature.

Ramsus spoke to the sky, to the unseen cannon across the estate.

"Fire."

A loud whine was heard in the distance. And then…

KA-THOOOOM

A colossal beam of energy tore across the Baphomet estate like a wrathful sun-lance, bursting through reinforced walls, gardens, and sacred chambers. A straight line of obliteration, hundreds of meters wide, incinerating everything in its path.

The audience chamber disappeared.

Stone vaporized.

Holy light met forged annihilation.

Ramsus, the principality, the entire battlefield, all engulfed in a cataclysm of manmade wrath.

~~~

Through the ruined corridor, a figure sprinted, cloak torn, spear in hand, eyes blazing with violet light.

Corrine.

Her boots crunched over debris and shattered glass as she burst into the scorched ruin, heart hammering in her chest.

"FATHER!?" she called out.

She scanned the rubble frantically, panic clawing in her mind. Everything was gone, scorched clean, as if the sun itself had passed through the room. And yet…

From the far side, motion.

A shimmer of obsidian moved; one of the golems, huddled with a couple of others, slowly retracted its arms from the group. It stepped back and collapsed, crumbling soon after, steaming and spent.

Within the rubble-looking heap it fell from, a hollow place was seen. Cradled in the shadow of protection, five figures lay.

Ramsus and his four retainers.

Corrine gasped and dropped to her knees, relief flooding her body. He was still alive.

The shock of it all making her fail to notice a rapidly dimming chalice slowly rolling away from the party, deeper into the shadows of the blackened golems.

Her father groaned as a retainer helped prop him up. His armor was nearly slag, his face lined with smoke and fatigue, but when his eyes met hers, they widened in stunned recognition.

"Corrine? You…your eyes…"

She stood, breathing hard. Her brown hair clung to her shoulders with sweat. Her once-green eyes now burned a vivid amethyst, and the whites of her eyes had turned to a faint silvery-gray. Her lips parted to speak, revealing her jet-black tongue.

But Ramsus only laughed, a ragged but hearty chuckle.

"To finish the transformation already. You are truly a talent!" He couldn't believe it. Even her features were touched with devildom.

A changeling. The achievement of her body's full compatibility. The full adaptation of accepting a devil's mana in a mortal body. His daughter was a warlock among warlocks. His weary body surged with pride.

Though he did not trust the devil providing the power, it seemed she was not shackled.

Not cursed to ensure submission, only blessed.

It brought the city lord a small bit of relief.

That was one issue resolved from the now long list of tasks to resolve in the coming days.

Hearing her father's proud words, she smiled and stepped forward.

Then froze.

The ground began to quake.

A distance away, marble was blasted aside with a shriek of divine power.

From beneath the wreckage, the Principality rose again.

Her once-shining wings were now twisted and burned, feathers torn out in chunks. One of her arms hung uselessly, but her eyes, seething with holy fury, still burned like suns.

"You insects!" She hissed out. "Resisting, Obstruction, and…" She stared at the transformed girl with wide eyes. "And harboring! You dare bring a changeling into this world!?"

She walked from the rubble, her mana flaring like a divine beacon of rage. With every step, the floor shattered beneath her feet.

"I will purify this blighted house. All of you will die here!"

Ramsus reached for his broken sword, but it slipped from his hand.

He was spent.

His minuscule mana used, and body drained of all energy.

His men too were barely conscious now.

His golems now broken beyond combat.

Only one stood tall in the ruin.

Corrine moved forward, planting her spear in the fractured stone between them and the principality. Her aura surged, a dense, violent chi spiraling around her.

She didn't flinch.

"You won't lay a single finger on my father." Her voice was calm, yet thundering with resolve.

A voice came from within her. Answering her words.

'Kikiki, ah, love! The emotion of the willful, the feelings of the strong! Fight! Win! And offer this glorious passion to your mistress Hannya and her Caged God!"

The principality snarled as Corrine clenched her spear tighter. Her aura pulsed, thin layers of mist swirled at her feet laced with violet sigils.

"Father," she said softly. "My contractor, high priestess, and divine wife, Supreme Devil Hannya has shown me the truth… and the Court of Gilded Woe has named us as agents."

Ramsus looked up, his vision blurry, as Corrine turned her head slightly back toward him.

Her expression was… composed. Serene. And deeply, irrevocably changed.

This was not the carefree child that skipped happily through the halls of his manor anymore.

But a young lady that has chosen her path.

A road leading to change.

She spoke once more. "This power… it comes with a price. A mission. One we cannot abandon."

She lowered her stance. The ground cracked under the pressure.

"We will not fall here."

The Principality screamed in fury, launching forward in a burst of golden fire.

And Corrine, eyes glowing, leapt to meet her.