Hello again and welcome back to another chapter. Now I have to say this may be the chapter I've had the most difficulty with when I was first writing it before I decided to change a few things but I'm still satisfied with the final product. WARNING this chapter is the start of the more serious gore of the story not the worst but this is where is kinda starts.

Comments:

Guest: You are right when you said that he wasn't from Japan. Alex was born in San Francisco but more clues about Alex's past connection to Touma will be explored in later chapters.

SaSaltyDog: Yeah Alex kinda keeps tabs on Touma (not as much as other characters like Seria for example) and he saw what was happening and thought to intervene plus he did get something that could benefit him in the future.

Okay now on to the show.

A man wearing a yellow suit with white outlines, a blue undershirt, and a dark blue tie with blonde hair and blue eyes smirked while he stood over some unconscious men wearing some armor.

"Sorry guys but I did tell you that you should've not stood in my way or I would've had to go through you."

The man was inside a large circular room that would've been from a catacomb with a pedestal in the middle and pieces of broken glass underneath. Glass that had a charm on it but was broken when up against a higher spell.

The man looked at the staff in his hands. The staff had a long brown handle piece and the end had three sharp blades sticking out with a middle part that looked like it would hold something and on the other end was a silver making of a snake.

"Ah, The Staff of Montgomery. I've been looking for this for so long. But unfortunately without The Orb of Montgomery, it is not at its full power. No matter I shall enchant it to give it a boost until I obtain The Orb."

The man once more turned to the men lying dead on the ground.

"I must say that I respect your resolve but never the less it will not stop me from my quest."

The man walked away and with him a very powerful staff.

"What's the situation?" A familiar nun with braided red hair said as she just arrived at the scene. She and several other nuns were currently in an alleyway that had a secret door in one of the walls that were held by a spell and the door was blasted apart.

Another nun who was tall with blonde hair and orange eyes on the scene looked at her clipboard detaining everything about what transpired in the secret catacomb.

"We have 35 guards dead and 2 nearly dead. Only one thing was stolen. The Staff of Montgomery." The nun said.

Agnese looked at the nun with a raised eyebrow. "I was fairly convinced that was just a story."

The nun looked up and merely shook her head.

"Afraid not these secret catacombs were made to safeguard some of the most powerful artifacts of magical origins from long ago."

Agnese turned to face the other direction and a wave of her hand.

"I don't see why some staff is so important. If it is Montgomery's Staff then wouldn't it be almost powerless without the Orb?" Agnese retorted.

"Well actually even without The Orb it still has some magic properties by itself but it's still not as powerful with The Orb. So even the staff alone is still considered a dangerous tool." The nun said.

"Well looks like we have some work to do. Say what's the suspect's name?"

The nun flipped to another page.

"Gabriel Oswald. A very powerful magician who served under the English church for a while before going rouge."

Gabriel was leaning on a wall in an alleyway and was reading some pages of a dark blue book with a golden circle at the center of the cover.

"I don't have all of Montgomery's notes so I can't find the location of The Orb or where I could find some of his other pages."

'There's only so much my enchantment can do compared to the real thing.'

The man closed the book and signed.

But then his eyes widened in realization.

'What if it's inside a display case or secretly hidden inside one of those secret sections of a library. It would only make sense if a book or pages would be kept in a library and to keep them hidden.'

Gabriel then smirked evilly.

Gabriel walked through the door of a small book store.

An older man with strands of white in his black hair looked to see the customer that just wanted into his store and walked up to the counter.

"Hello. How can I help you?" The man greeted with a warm smile.

Gabriel smiled warmly in kind.

"Yes, I'm looking for something a little magical," Gabriel said as he held up a yellow card.

Magicians had a yellow card that was supposed to signal to the keeper of a book store that secretly housed books of magical origin that they were from the magic side and wanted to go to the secret section.

"Oh, of course." The man said as he walked to the door behind him and his hand glowed a light blue color with the door showing words in Latin glowing blue as well when he touched the handle before he motioned to Gabriel to follow him.

Gabriel walked in to find a large space that was too large than what you would see outside the building.

It had shelves and shelves of books and even an upper level with even more books that could be accessed by a staircase found in the middle of the room on the left side and to the right.

"Is there anything you need help with finding sir?" The man said as he turned towards him.

"No. Leave me be," Gabriel said as the older man walked to the door where they came in from.

Gabriel looked around for a second before walking to his left to start searching.

Gabriel looked and looked but couldn't find what he was looking for.

He looked to the lower parts of the walls and noticed that it had a black book design all around. To test a hypothesis he kicked one of the books to find it hollow.

"Hmm, interesting."

Gabriel started from the beginning of the first floor on the left side and began breaking apart the book designs one by one. He found several secret pages and books some from writers such as Lovecraft and Shakespeare but he couldn't find what he was looking for until he reached the second floor.

He broke the 7th design and reached inside to pull out the contents.

It was the missing pages he was looking for wrapped together and put in a glass case.

Gabriel smirked and brought out the pages and put them inside his suit where a pocket could fit them.

He proceeded to walk down the stairs and he looked up to see the man from earlier facing him with a not-so-happy expression.

"I know you took something you shouldn't have so I'm going to have to ask you to put it back and leave." The man said.

Gabriel smiled.

"Not a chance old man."

The man then signed.

"Then you leave me with no choice."

"Scientia101 - The One Who Protects Knowledge." The man said before he brought his two hands in front of him.

"FB-D." The man spoke as a ball of fire quickly formed in his hand and was blasted towards Gabriel.

Gabriel then took a couple of steps to his right leaving the fireball to miss its target.

Gabriel smiled once again. "All right then this will be interesting."

"Ascend157 - The Man Who Seeks To Ascend." Gabriel loudly called out.

Gabriel brought out his staff wanting to try it out.

"Strike of Zeus."

A blue lightning bolt fired from the middle of the staff with the blades.

The old man immediately casted a shield in front of him to deflect the lighting. After he casted a spell that blasted him from his standing point to rush at Gabriel and sent him to a wall.

Gabriel got himself out of the smashed wall and smiled again.

"Might of Mjolnir."

Gabriel ran in front of the storekeeper and slashed up the end of the staff forming the shape of a hammer made from blue lighting.

The man was lifted in the air after getting hit and crashed back down hard on the floor.

The man groaned and slowly got back up only to get his hand caught in a green rope.

Gabriel swung the rope pulling along the man behind him only to swing in the direction of the many bookshelves and he smashed into about two before Gabriel released him.

The older man groaned as he fell unconscious. Gabriel walked up to the man before he pointed the staff's blades at the man spear him.

The man screamed in pain as the younger man pulled the staff up with the man still impaled and walked towards the front of the room.

Gabriel still with the staff raised let out two deadly words.

"Spear of Chione."

The old man's eyes widened as an ice spear shot from the middle of the staff that stabbed him right through the chest.

Gabriel then swung the staff downwards towards the floor with a yell as the Store Keeper landed head first which completely smashed his head in a gory manner as blood wet the floor and pieces of what was once his head filled the splatter of red.

Gabriel pushed the body off his staff that still had a large ice spike and it fell to the ground.

The young man smirked and figuratively patted himself on the back for the gory kill.

A While later

Gabriel was on top of a roof and pulled out the recently obtained pages.

'Hmm almost have all of his notes. Together will tell me where The Orb is if the rumor is true.'

"Hold it right there." A feminine voice called out.

Gabriel turned around to find a small red-haired girl wearing nun attire and holding a staff.

"Gabriel Oswald you are under arrest by order of The Roman Catholic Church."

Gabriel stared at the small girl before he started to laugh.

"And do you believe you can stop me, little girl?" Gabriel said with a mocking tone with the last two words.

Agnese's face darkened.

She brought out her knife and started to drag it along her staff.

Gabriel felt an impact on his body after she scraped the staff.

Agnese did the action again and Gabriel felt another hit.

'Ah, I see you feel the damage of the spear.'

Gabriel quickly put the bottom of his staff to the ground and chanted.

"Yell of Earth."

Cracks emerged where the staff stood and they headed towards the girl which shock her and broke her concentration.

Gabriel shot towards her and hit her with his staff, knocking her down.

Just as Gabriel was about to go for the kill two more figures landed on the rooftop.

One was a tall nun and the other was a small girl wearing the same attire.

"Aghh Y-You girls?!" Agnese weakly said.

"Oh, so there's more? Well, I don't feel like fighting right now so I'll just take my leave." Gabriel spoke before he took his left hand to one of his pants pockets which had a small bag. He put his staff between his arm and side holding it in his armpit as he put his right hand inside the bag and cupped grey power and brought his hand out before clamping his hand and throwing the powder as it danced on the ground in front of his enemies and it ignited.

The flames were huge and blocked the nuns from the man.

Gabriel ran left and leaped off the edge but slammed the bottom end of the staff and quickly casted a spell that pushed him from the edge towards the building in front of him.

Gabriel turned to face his enemies before he heard the honk of a truck and turned right to see a gas truck with slow-moving cars on the road.

He also saw citizens standing and staring at the huge flames he produced and some looked at him.

Gabriel smirked and he had an evil thought.

'Maybe I'll give them a show.'

Gabriel leaped off the building and used a spell to cushion his landing.

He landed in front of a red car and threw it backwards with a spell before he brought the staff above his head.

The bottom end of the staff glowed a fiery orange and he slammed it on the ground which formed a glowing orange web-like design that covered a large portion of the area and flames violently burst from the orange that incinerated civilians and exploded some cars.

The gas truck was under an orange line of the web design which flames also erupted causing a big explosion.

Fire was everywhere and civilians were getting buried alive.

And Gabriel disappeared from the chaos.

Alex was cleaning his handgun in his room before he got a knock on his door and it opened.

"Sir everything's ready," Vanessa said as she peeked into the room.

"Okay, I'll be there in a minute," Alex responded before Venessa closed the door behind her.

Alex finished cleaning and looked at his gun.

"Time to go viral."

And that is the end of that thank you for reading this chapter I hope you enjoyed it and can't wait to see you in the next one.

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Have a good rest of your day and stay safe.