DxD : Actually Satan..?

The group hadn't made it more than a few steps past the shattered Matou estate's entry before they encountered him.

A corpse.

Or rather, something pretending to be one.

The half-burnt body of an old man lay crumpled against the scorched stone, twisted unnaturally, blackened worms still twitching across his skin like dying nerves.

His eye sockets were hollow pits, and his lips, half-melted, peeled open like old paper.

Shirou tensed. Artoria raised her guard immediately.

Bazett didn't even care actually, she was feeling more than safe with the literal satan with her.

But Leo? Leo just tilted his head and offered a bright, theatrical smile.

"Well, if it isn't the rotting grandfather himself."

The body stirred.

Then lunged.

The movement was fast—unnatural for something so old—and its claw-like squirming arm came forward with murderous intent.

But Leo didn't even blink.

He simply stated at the "claw" and released a wave of mana—not a violent blast, but a harmless burst of pressure like a soft shockwave.

The would-be attacker skidded across the ground and slammed into a wall that was still burning.

"Zouken Matou, right?" Leo asked, dusting off his sleeve.

The corpse twisted, limbs reforming grotesquely from crawling worms that stitched themselves together.

An eye popped into place, milky and unblinking, locking onto Leo with something between hatred and confusion.

"I—"

"Shh," Leo cut in, holding a finger to his lips. "Just because you were asked a question doesn't mean you have to answer. Your existence is a blemish enough."

He turned slightly, hand raised like he was making a request at a fine restaurant.

"Hey, blonde lion," he called.

Artoria didn't even wait.

Excalibur ignited in a flash of blinding gold.

With a blur of motion, she was already upon Zouken before he could reform fully.

The sacred blade swung once—clean and precise—and the entire swarm of wriggling worms surrounding the old man was vaporized in holy light.

Zouken's half-formed body collapsed again, twitching.

Leo turned to Shirou, speaking over the carnage with a devilish smile like a teacher giving a live demo.

"This is the second step in the art of jumping, by the way."

Shirou stared at him, horrified and confused.

Leo nodded, satisfied.

"The Jumping itself."

Zouken tried to reconstitute, mouth twitching open again to deliver some half-baked curse—

But before he could say a word, Leo was already in front of him.

Evryone blinked collectively at the near instantaneous movement.

Zouken's tongue froze in place, stiff as iron.

His jaw unhinged with an audible pop as Leo's punch shattered it.

Worms spasmed from the old man's throat, but something was wrong—he wasn't healing.

Because Leo had channeled the same type of curse as the planetary curse that clung to his own hands some time ago—a rejection of form and repair, a curse that denied wholeness.

Although it has already been decided and repaired by leo with the new and improved ability to acces truth layer's deepest power to be in the plane or information.

For someone like Zouken, whose existence was held together by filth, insects, and pain—it was agony.

Mind-breaking agony.

Blood poured from the creature's mouth, worms screaming soundlessly as they shriveled.

Leo stepped back and kicked Zouken in the chest with the casual force of a professional athlete punting a ball.

The old man launched like a deflated sack of meat—straight toward Artoria.

Who didn't even hesitate.

Excalibur's light flared once more, and with a single clean arc, she severed his right arm from the corrupted stump of his shoulder.

The blessed sword of the planet burned as it passed through him its radiant loght mirroring the effect of Leo's curse.

Zouken shrieked.

And… he looked afraid.

Leo didn't need to read his mind to see it.

It was right there in his eyes.

They were wide and bloodshot, flickering erratically like an animal that had just realized the predator wasn't something it could run from—or understand.

For all his depravity and monstrosity, in this moment, Zouken felt human again.

Not in a redeemable way.

But in the truest sense.

In the fragility, in the confusion, in the panic that only mortals knew when they stood before something utterly beyond them.

Leo could tell—Zouken didn't understand what was happening.

He didn't understand why his worms, spread across the estate, had vanished without a trace.

(Ronan was to blame, of course. The raven had flitted through the shadowed corners of the property, cawing like a serial killer and sending the worms straight into the Shadow Realm— also dubbed Munchie Storage™.)

He didn't understand why his body wouldn't regenerate.

Why his tongue wouldn't move.

Why Excalibur burned him like he was nothing but dead paper in divine fire.

Why the world itself seemed to be folding in on him with a personal vendetta.

All that confusion—compounded by the very real fear of ceasing—made Zouken more "alive" than he had been in centuries.

It made him so…

"Human," he said softly, almost like an elegy. "Guess you're still a human in the end, huh?"

Then his tone shifted.

A low, reverent hum carried under his words.

"You should rejoice. You're about to be struck down by the light that helped forge creation."

From his hand, light began to gather.

It wasn't ordinary light.

It also wasn't holy light.

Not even divine light in the traditional sense.

This was the Light of Lucifer—the shard of divine essence of lucifer stolen by Veylith and left behind.

The ball was small, barely the size of a fingernail.

But its presence could be felt.

By evryone.

The light descended slowly—no flash, no eruption, no grand boom like Leo's previous firework display.

And when it touched Zouken—

He simply began disintegration and slowly all the worms connected to him disappeared tol.

He stared at him a moment longer, then tilted his head and said

"He deserved a worse end than tha"

Leo looked atthe place for a second then with a single breath and a flick of his eyes, Leo gave a silent command.

The ground responded.

Thin golden lines spiderwebbed outward from his feet, distributed once with ancient geometric symbols before cracking the concrete like eggshell.

Then, with a sound like stone groaning in relief, the debris parted.

A narrow spiral path formed—descending inwards through what remained of the ruined estate.

Leo turned slightly to Shirou and gestured casually to the opened path like he was showing him the entrance to a wine cellar.

"Your friend might not be in the best of conditions right now," Leo said, voice quieter than before—not out of compassion, but out of intention. "You should go help her."

Shirou did hesitate for even a moment and Artoria followed him with her hand already resting near her sword's hilt.

Leo watched them vanish down the glowing steps and exhaled slowly.

He knew what was waiting down there.

Sakura—folded in on herself, curled into the dark like a wound that forgot how to close. Her mana was fraying like old threads, emotions spiraling out of control, happiness, guilt, confusion all crashing into one another.

The death of Shinji… that was one of the key triggers.

The first crack.

But without Zouken and the physical core of the grail forcibly cracking open…

The transformation of Sakura didn't happen yet.

And neither was Angra Mainyu's corruption.

Still… Leo could feel it.

A presence of malevolent awareness—far, far beneath—hiding, watching.

Maybe even waiting.

Waiting for a chance to strike when no one expected it.

Or maybe it was hiding because it sensed him as a threat

That thought made Leo smile faintly with guilt.

yes, a part of him wanted her to fall.

It would make it so much easier to justify what he intended to do—Echoforge her, or a part of her, into himself. That broken, wounded potential, that Imaginary Number , the layered instability.

Corrupted Sakura would be perfect.

But he didn't voice that thought openly even to himself.

Life, emotions, people… such a hassle.

---

The cracked stone pathway wound deep into the belly of the Matou estate's ruined underground, lit only by the occasional sputtering charm light embedded in the walls.

Shirou stepped down carefully, Artoria close behind, her hand near her sword just in case.

He hadn't expected what he found.

The chamber opened into a dome-like basement, walls lined with strange glyphs, and in the center—

There she was.

Sakura.

Curled in on herself, trembling, shoulders heaving with silent sobs.

And wrapped protectively around her like a shadowy mother , was Rider—Medusa.

Her expression was blank, her eyes hidden beneath her visor.

The moment she saw them—especially Artoria—her mana surged with tension, fingers inching towards her scythe.

Like a beast ready to pounce.

Artoria instinctively tightened her stance—but Shirou quickly held a hand out. "Wait."

Medusa hesitated, pupils narrowing behind the visor.

Then she saw Sakura react.

Her sobbing hiccupped to a pause.

Her head lifted slightly, eyes wide and raw as she blinked through her tears and saw him.

"Shirou...?"

Her voice cracked like shattered glass.

Even Medusa flinched at the sound.

"What...what are you doing here?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

She looked between him and Artoria—confused, uncertain, scared. "You're not supposed to… you're…"

She tried to sit up, to rise to meet him—

But Shirou quietly, gently, extended his hand toward her.

A silent offering..

"…H-How?" she asked, stunned. "How are you here…with her…?"

Her gaze drifted to Saber, to the glow of her armor, to the fact that none of this made sense anymore.

Shirou gave a weak, lopsided smile.

"It's… a long story."

Sakura looked at his hand. Her own trembled slightly.

Behind her, Rider slowly stood. Not aggressively.

Just… observing.

She understood this was Sakura's moment now.

And Shirou—still holding out his hand—took a quiet step closer.

"I came because I heard you needed help," he said softly.

Sakura's lip quivered.

And finally, she reached for him.

---

"Bazett, give me your hand," Leo said without looking at her, his tone deceptively casual.

Bazett blinked, halfway through cleaning the dust off her coat, but obeyed without thinking—an unconscious reflex born of the strange rhythm they'd developed.

Her hand slid into his palm.

Leo looked down at the Command Seals glowing faintly across the back of her hand—symbols of her pact to the war.

He placed his other hand over them, fingers cool and steady.

There was a subtle pulse of mana. A sharp heat.

And then…

When he pulled away, the Command Seals were gone.

In their place, burned faintly into her skin, was a single stylized eye.

Open. Watching.

"What...?"

Leo met her gaze, his own unreadable. "You're no longer part of this Grail War."

Bazett stared at her hand, then back at him. "What the hell does that mean?"

"I should've cut you loose sooner," he said with a small shrug. "I just… wanted to have my fun."

Her eyebrows rose. "Are you kidding me?"

"You know I never lie, Bazett," Leo said, voice softer now. "You're free."

She looked down at her hand again. The eye didn't glow, but it felt present. Almost like a seal of observation rather than control.

A long silence passed.

Then Bazett exhaled, a laughless puff of breath.

"Yeah," she muttered. "No. I'm not leaving."

Leo tilted his head slightly.

"I'm emotionally invested in this partnership," she said flatly.

"Figures," he said laughing at her strange behaviour.

"Shut up."

"I didn't say anything."

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

Yeah Sakura is not part of the harem.

Power Stones and Reviews please