"Grr!!!"
The two-headed dog, standing over ten meters tall, let out a ferocious roar the moment it spotted the frail-looking creature.
"An Orthros? Yet Father mentioned nothing about such a beast lurking around the temple…" the child muttered in a quiet monologue, after quickly scanning the basic data stored in his mind.
'Maybe something drew it here,' he concluded mentally, but his calm demeanor only fanned the monster's rage further.
The beast didn't understand the unknown child's language, yet the boy felt himself being sized up and judged by the unfamiliar creature before him.
The Orthros roared once more and then charged at a speed that defied all logic for something its size.
"Five years…" he whispered in response to the monster.
The creature seemed confused again but kept charging wildly toward its target.
Unfortunately for the hellhound, it was far too focused on the weapon held by the tiny, frail-looking being standing in its path.
A perfectly natural reaction, since the short sword had only just materialized from the golden halo floating in mid-air.
A striking sight, yet utterly unusual in Hell.
Still, the monster chose to ignore the anomaly. It was a beast, not a tactician or a genius; instinct trumped reason.
So it dismissed the cruel lack of information about this new prey.
A mistake.
And, sadly, not its last.
The beast reacted the same way when it noticed another unusual light glowing in the boy's free hand.
One misjudgment after another, with no one around to correct its ignorance or explain its madness.
The underworld is a place where everyone fights for themselves.
"Grr…" The two-headed dog let out a pained whimper and staggered, blinded by a flash of holy power.
As it tried to right itself while maintaining its sprint, it suddenly felt an unfamiliar weight land on its back.
"Sorry… it's you or me."
The voice was calm, but a trace of sadness couldn't be hidden.
Even without human-level intelligence, the Orthros instantly understood it was in danger.
It thrashed wildly, both heads whipping around in a frantic attempt to shake off the stowaway.
But it was already too late.
The beast felt no pain, no cut from the sword's unnatural effect, and no scent of blood filled the air.
Its strength simply ebbed away, as though something had quietly stolen its very essence.
Its legs buckled, its body slumped to the ground, and its eyelids slowly closed.
A peaceful death.
A painless death.
A death of old age.
"Fifty years? He still had so much time left…" he said, sliding the short sword back into his floating golden halo.
One month had passed since Jacob awoke inside the temple, deep in the underworld.
During that time, not much had happened in his daily life in Hell.
Jacob had explored the area around the temple, found a lake, observed the local wildlife, and slowly turned the temple into something livable using primitive wooden tools.
The young boy had even started setting simple traps after properly analyzing his surroundings.
As for his father? He had never returned after leaving his egg in the underworld.
From what Jacob understood, his new name was Malik, and he was supposed to be a seraph-level angel.
At least, that had been the divine plan his father made in Heaven.
So why did he only have one pair of wings?
According to his own general knowledge, something had gone wrong during his formation inside the egg.
A problem caused by the incompatibility between his new body and the powers of the Angel Devil from Chainsaw Man.
Unconsciously, his body had burned through all the latent holy energy to fix the anomaly.
A pure reflex, a desperate bid for survival.
Unfortunately, the price was his current state: demoted from seraph to a mere angel.
'At least I kept the Angel Devil's power. That alone is worth sacrificing seraph rank,' he thought as he dragged the Orthros corpse behind him.
Many would call Jacob insane; a seraph is obviously stronger than the Angel Devil from Chainsaw Man.
The thought wasn't wrong.
But only in the short term, not in the grand scheme of things.
After all, how many seraphim are truly powerful? And more importantly, how do they stack up against the strongest devils in the Chainsaw Man universe?
From the knowledge Jacob had of his current world, his brother Michael was powerful.
Fact.
Yet even Michael would struggle against certain devils at their peak, like the Gun Devil or the War Devil.
The Gun Devil, at full power, had wiped out entire cities in an instant, effortlessly.
1.2 million people worldwide had died when the Gun Devil reached its zenith, and all of that in barely five minutes.
As for the War Devil, she had to be even more terrifying. After all, she was his mother.
Jacob had no precise estimate of the War Devil's true power at 100%, but he knew a peak Gun Devil would already be a tough opponent for Michael.
That was exactly why he found the Chainsaw Man devil power system so incredibly convenient.
All he had to do was instill fear in the hearts of Hell's creatures, and he would climb back to seraph-level strength, or even beyond.
Which also explained why he hadn't abandoned the Orthros carcass.
'Its bones will serve as a warning to the other demonic beasts, but its blood is worth far more,' he told himself inwardly.
Jacob dragged the monster's corpse to the entrance of his temple, hung it from a tree, and began preparing various tools.
Time passed slowly in the underworld, but the little angel barely noticed.
He was far too busy skinning the defeated beast and collecting its blood for his own consumption.
After a while, the wooden bowl placed beneath the hanging carcass finally filled with blood.
With a smooth motion, Jacob drank it without flinching.
As a devil from the Chainsaw Man universe, he immediately felt a surge of strength.
Still, he couldn't help feeling a little disgusted by what he was doing to the fallen creature.
"I don't really have the luxury of being picky. Especially since I need to get stronger, and fast," he muttered, staring at his warped reflection in another bowl of blood.
Every devil in Chainsaw Man is born with a name, a name that deeply shapes their existence.
Jacob had been renamed Malik by the Biblical God, but the supernatural power he wielded once belonged to the Angel Devil.
He was meant to embody the fear of angels in the minds of intelligent beings.
And like every devil in the Chainsaw Man universe, he grew stronger from the fear, blood, and flesh of those he defeated.
'Even if I am a devil now, my angelic nature is still clearly the strongest part of me. I don't like killing,'he thought, watching his hand tremble slightly.
Yet he forced himself to finish drinking the blood and keep eating the demonic flesh, all while carefully watching his surroundings.
He had to finish the meal; it was the least he could do to honor the fallen beast.
Jacob also knew he had to grow stronger to avoid being thrown back into the void between worlds after death.
This time he had landed in the High School DxD universe, but next time? He could be stuck there forever. Worse, he could end up nearly hollow, like the Angel Devil had been upon reincarnation.
'Yes, I need power… to escape death,' he thought, unaware of the tiny trauma the void had left behind.
The idea of dying was a hard no. He had to become a better version of himself and of the Angel Devil. A being so powerful that Hell itself would learn to fear and respect him, if possible.
That decision also explained why Jacob had never seriously tried to return to the Biblical God. Heaven simply wasn't for him right now.
"Grrr… f-food! Want food!" stammered a small creature after growling.
"Sniff-sniff… man? Not female?" added another, sounding confused after sniffing the air in Jacob's direction.
Judging by the tent in its pants, its intentions were anything but pure.
Barely ten minutes after Jacob finished drinking the blood and started roasting the meat, he found himself surrounded by a small group of goblins.
"So you're the reason the Orthros wandered all the way here from its territory," he said, tossing aside the fallen two-headed dog's paw.