Chapter 175: Look, mom, without a hand!

–

After having his first so easily blocked by Erik, Kokabiel retreated a few steps. Gripping the incomplete Excalibur's handle with more strength, Kokabiel pumps more of his magic energy in it and it thrums in response. Taking that as a good sign, Kokabiel, again, jumps and tries to strike Erik down.

Seeing what is really happening to the structure of the incomplete Excalibur, Erik sighs at it and decides to finish things quickly before the sword becomes too unstable and ends up crumbling. Erik, again, raises his sword and blocks Kokabiel's strike effortlessly.

"You know, Kokabiel. There is a reason why I didn't end you in the previous times that you attacked me or my home."

Erik says while looking deadly in the eyes of the Fallen Angel. He then exerts some of his strength in his sword arm and pushes back the incomplete Excalibur up, and with it, Kokabiel.

"The reason is that Azazel is my friend. And since you work for him, I didn't want to get rid of one of his people."

Erik says again while Kokabiel manages to straighten himself with the use of his wings. The Fallen Angel was looking hatefully at Erik but didn't attack again. He wanted to know where Erik was getting on with the monologue.

"But you made things really easy for me by effing up so much that Grigori had no choice but to brand you as a rogue Fallen Angel."

Erik said again to Kokabiel while sporting a small smile on his face. Kokabiel, seeing that, got the chills through his back.

"But don't worry too much. I will not kill you. Azazel would want to ask you his own questions, after all, and you can only answer them while alive. Well, not really, but it would be too much trouble. I will just beat you very, very badly. You can trust me about not killing you, after all, I am a Doctor."

Erik finished saying and disappeared from Kokabiel and most of the others' sights with a burst of immense speed. Joan, who could follow Erik with her eyes, just rolled them after hearing how cringing had been her husband's monologue. Definitely some good material for some teasing later.

Kokabiel didn't see a thing of what happened next. He only saw Erik again when the man appeared by his side. Kokabiel wanted to take the opportunity and attack Erik, but when he ordered his arm, which was tightly holding the incomplete Excalibur, to move and attack, the only answer that he received was pain, pain, and more pain. When he looked at his arm to try and identify what was happening, he saw nothing. In the place where his forearm should have been, there was nothing but a bleeding stump. Not computing what was happening, Kokabiel looked down and saw, in slow motion while forgetting the pain, the other half of his forearm, with his hand still gripping at the incomplete Excalibur's handle tightly, falling to the ground. The Fallen Angel blinked slowly, and it was then that it hit him together with the pain coming back. His arm had just been cut out!

"Arrrrrgh! My arm!"

Kokabiel yelled in pain and held his bloody stump with his other hand. While the Fallen Angel lamented and yelled about the loss of his arm, Erik raised his free hand and summoned the severed forearm to it and together with the forearm, the incomplete Excalibur. He had to do it this way because the magic nature of the sword would not let it be summoned with magic. Catching the severed limb by the wrist, Erik gave a more close look at the sword and confirmed his initial findings. The sword was very unstable. The hasty and poor alchemical work done by Valper Galilei to fuse the five pieces of the original Excalibur together had affected the structure of the swords individually. Even after undoing the alchemical work and separating them back into five individual pieces, they would never be the same again. They would only be able to be called swords because of their shapes, and that aside, they would only be pieces of magical steel. Heaven would need to reforge the five swords again.

Applying a little of his magic to the severed limb, Erik made the hand's grip on the sword loosen, making it start to fall in the direction of the ground. When the sword was at the height of his foot, Erik kicked it, sending the sword flying while spinning like a shuriken in the direction of his wife. Joan did not even blink after seeing the sword flying in her direction like a deadly projectile. The woman simply raised her hand at the right moment and caught the sword by its handle, generating a muted 'thud' sound from the impact of it with her hand. Joan looked at the sword and raised an eyebrow at that. She had been a Knight since her teens and she could say that she knew a little about swords. At the moment the incomplete Excalibur touched her hand, it just felt wrong. It was like she was holding some patchworked sculpture made of magic steel and not a proper sword. Joan then looked at her husband with her eyebrow still raised.

Erik saw that and understood what he wanted to know.

"Can you safely store it for now? We will give it back to Gabi later."

Erik said while smiling at Joan, who nodded her head and made the sword disappear from her hands in a flash of white light, storing the patchworked sword inside her 'Armory'.

Xenovia watched everything with wide eyes, not knowing where to begin or to finish her questions while doing a very good impression of a fish. But when she saw the incomplete Excalibur disappearing in the hands of Joan, Xenovia found her voice.

"Hey, give it back! I have to bring that sword back to the Vatican."

Xenovia said to Joan. Not her brightest moment, for sure, but she had a mission that she needed to complete and for that, she would need Excalibur. Joan didn't look at Xenovia and continued to watch her husband and Kokabiel. Feeling that she had been ignored, Xenovia was going to start to talk again but was interrupted by Joan.

"Your mission was over the moment that Kokabiel appeared on the battlefield, kid. So, don't worry about the sword. It will be delivered directly to Heaven's hands. Gabriel's hands to be more precise."

Joan replied to Xenovia, stunning the girl with the casual way that she spoke about Gabriel. If Xenovia was not wrong, and she doubted that she was, there was only one person named Gabriel in Heaven, and it was one of the four great Seraphins. Even so, Xenovia was not convinced.

"But-"

Xenovia started but was interrupted by Joan before starting.

"Let it go, kid. If they ask you why you did not bring back Excalibur, just tell them what exactly happened here, and that the sword would be given back directly to Gabriel."

Joan said to Xenovia, who dumbly nodded her head. Seeing that the 'conversation' was over, Joan started to mumble about the church.

"Not that they will care much. Frankly, sending two greenhorns to investigate a person who managed to steal three Excalibur pieces. And knowing that there was a very good chance that the person behind it was Kokabiel… This is not a job for two kids. They should have sent someone like Dulio Gesualdo or Griselda Quarta the moment that Kokabiel's name appeared. Or even Vasco Strada himself. But no, they had to send two greenhorns that had just finished their training. It was like they were delivering two Excaliburs to the enemy. Five hundred years and those morons don't seem to have changed even a little."

Joan mumbled. And it was the truth.

"Hey. Only an Excalibur can defeat an Excalibur!"

Xenovia said in a heated way. She didn't want to admit it, but she had her doubts since the beginning about this mission, Xenovia just didn't want it to be voiced so openly.

"Hmph. That is just a bunch of bullcrap, kid. A sword is a tool. A weapon at that. And, like any other tool, it is only as good as its user's skill allows it to be. If what you had just said was true, then you and the avenger-boy over there would never be able to defeat Freed Sellzen earlier, since he was holding five Excaliburs and you were holding none."

Joan replied to the girl while watching the one-sided fight between Erik and Kokabiel that had just restarted.

"But Durandal-"

Xenovia started saying but was interrupted by Joan's words.

"Yes, I know that Durandal is as powerful as the original Excalibur, but you didn't defeat him alone, and the avenger-boy was not wielding an Excalibur-like sword. You both defeated Freed Sellzen because you two outsmarted and out-skilled him. Take Tsubaki Shinra as an example. She was not wielding any magically powerful sword but managed to injure and hold her own against Kokabiel. It was only because she had the help of all of you, but, even so, her skills allowed her to diminish the gap of power that existed between both of them."

Joan said to Xenovia and then clicked her tongue in a 'tsc' sound.

"Musashi got a really good seedling with that girl…"

Joan said with a little envy of the talent shown by her rival's pupil.

"You know the strongest sword of the Underworld, Musashi Miyamoto?"

Xenovia asked with wide eyes.

"If I know Musashi? Of course, I know her, kid. She is my rival, friend, and sister."

Joan replied to the girl with some fondness in her voice. She remembered like it had been yesterday that Musashi boldly challenged her to a spar, just to have her sword cut in half like it was a twig.

"Sister?"

Xenovia asked Joan while cocking her head to the side. From what she knew, Musashi Miyamoto was Japanese, and Joan looked like a European woman. So there was no way for the two of them to be sisters.

"Yes. Sister-wife to be more exact. She, like me, is one of Erik's seven wives."

Joan replied to Xenovia while continuing to watch Erik treat Kokabiel like a pinball ball.

–

Back to Erik, just after he kicked the incomplete Excalibur to Joan and asked her to store it, he looked back at Kokabiel, who continued to yell in pain while holding his bloody stump.

"Shut up, you big baby. Whoever sees you now will think that you never had a wound of that degree before. So quit it, you big low-budget vampire baby."

Erik said to Kokabiel after rolling his eyes. He then eyed the severed limb that he was still holding.

"Here."

Erik said and threw the severed limb to Kokabiel, who was still in shock and didn't notice or heard anything that Erik had said.

*thump*

Kokabiel's severed limb hit its owner in the face with a muted 'thump' sound, making him get out of the shock state. Just realizing that something had hit him in the face, Kokabiel looked for the guilty part, ready to administer some punishment, and found his severed limb floating a dozen centimeters in front of his face. Erik had applied a floating charm to it, predicting that something like that would happen before he threw the severed limb to its owner. Honestly, it was a comical situation for Erik. To get some more laughs from it, the only thing that he needed to do was to enchant the arm to keep hitting Kokabiel in the face while asking 'Why are you hitting yourself?' repeatedly. Just the image of it happening in his head was enough to get some chuckles from Erik.

-------------