An Unexpected... Uh, Person?

Sonia let out a roar when she saw the man, though it was unclear whether she was angry that someone had blocked her path or wanted to devour his blood to regain her strength.

She immediately regenerated both arms, turning them into two frenzied man-eating flowers that tried to devour him.

The savage maws lunged at the man, but he had no intention of dodging. An elegant smile remained on his face as he raised a hand and gave his fingers a slight twist. Both frenzied man-eating flowers and the rampaging Sonia stopped right in front of him.

"Attacking me with my own power? After all these years, you're still as brainless as ever, you idiot," the man remarked softly, as if recalling the past.

"You?"

Yuri couldn't help raising an eyebrow at the man before him, showing a rare hint of surprise.

"Mr. Yuri, we meet again." The man greeted him quite politely. "I hope we can spend a little more time together this—"

"Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!"

Before the man could finish, six flashes of fire burst forth. Yuri drew Blue Rose without hesitation and emptied the magazine, delivering a round of American-style law enforcement.

Bloody holes appeared all over the man's body, and his elegant smile froze on his face.

Yuri wiped the nonexistent cold sweat from his forehead and let out a long breath. "You scared me to death. So you're not a ghost! I thought you'd come back to kill me."

At those words, the man's stiff face began to twitch. He was silent for quite a while before saying, "You really are a free spirit, Mr. Yuri."

"Thanks. A lot of people say that." Yuri shamelessly took it as a compliment, then asked, "More importantly, I'm curious how you survived."

"Are you surprised? I thought you would never feel that way, Mr. Yuri," the man joked.

"What are you talking about? I'm human too. What's so strange about me being surprised?"

"No, you're not human," the man said, dropping a bombshell. "At least, not entirely human."

Yuri narrowed his eyes, a dangerous look on his face. "You're saying I'm not human? Then what do you think I am?"

"A devil, of course, just like us."

With a single sentence, the man revealed Yuri's unknown identity.

At the same time, as if to answer Yuri's earlier question, the bullets lodged in his body were pushed out one by one, and his wounds slowly healed at a speed visible to the naked eye. Not a single drop of blood had been shed from beginning to end.

"I see. A devil's body and the ability to control blood. No wonder you survived being shot in the head by Blue Rose at the theater."

Yuri's words also revealed the man's identity. He was the priest who had already "died."

Blue Rose had been specially designed as an anti-devil weapon. A direct hit to the head would kill not only a human but an ordinary devil in a single shot.

The priest had survived two bullets to the head partly because of his devil's terrifying body, but his blood manipulation magic had also played a major role.

The bullets had been stopped by blood after entering his head. Though he was still alive, the priest had used magic to stop the blood flowing throughout his body, even making his heart stop beating.

On top of that, Erza had arrived fairly quickly, so Yuri had only checked him briefly. He hadn't expected the guy to fool him.

In fact, a closer look would reveal that the things binding Sonia and the two frenzied man-eating flowers were threads of blood flowing from between his fingers.

He had used his blood manipulation magic to weave the threads into a large net that was almost impossible to see under cover of night.

That raised a question. Even if the priest had concealed his strength, how could he have subdued Sonia, who had devoured Qliphoth, so easily, even if she was out of her mind and had used up a great deal of magic power?

"So, should I call you Father, or the Blood Devil, Cain?" Yuri directly exposed the identity the priest had hidden beneath his "black robe."

The man clearly had no intention of denying it. He smiled and said, "As expected of you, Mr. Yuri. I thought I could keep it hidden a little longer."

"No wonder. I was wondering why those attacks seemed so deliberate. You were directing them in secret," Yuri said. "Just as I thought, there was something wrong with that curse. That so-called magic awakening seven years ago was your doing too, wasn't it?"

"That's right," Cain said with a nod. "The blessing I left them could help them seal that idiot Qliphoth, but its true purpose was as magic to bring me back to life."

"When I was dying back then, I wanted to leave myself a way out, so I condensed my Demon Heart into a blessing. If an inheritor managed to awaken magic through their own power someday, I could use the blessing to make a comeback years later and gain a body with tremendous talent."

"But I never expected that idiot to awaken before me. Its aura stimulated me into waking early too, and I came back to life in a body with almost no magical talent."

"And after sensing my aura, that idiot chose to retreat for the time being."

"I knew my strength would never recover as quickly as its, so I came up with the idea of devouring mages to make up the gap between us."

"It was around then that I discovered that girl Sonia was secretly planning something behind my back."

"I originally kept her around back then to train her as an assistant, but I never expected her magical talent to be even worse than this body's. After six months of training, she still couldn't control the devil power inside her, so I simply kept her around as a scapegoat."

"Who would have thought she'd be bold enough to take a gamble, ready to die together with her enemy?"

"But I also knew my method wasn't a long-term solution. Without a complete Demon Heart, even though I kept drinking human blood, that idiot gradually caught up to and surpassed me over the years. So I decided to go along with her plan and bring in some outside help that could break the deadlock. That was you."

A Demon Heart was the core of a devil's power, equivalent to a mage's Magic Source. The core of the hive that Erza had destroyed earlier was actually Qliphoth's Demon Heart.

Yuri rubbed his chin and said, "No wonder. You always targeted independent mages and low-ranking mages from small guilds, yet you chose to send a request to Fairy Tail."

Unlike before, when his goal had been to drink blood, Cain's plan this time was to defeat Qliphoth, so he naturally needed a fairly powerful mage.

But the mage couldn't be too powerful, or they would interfere with his subsequent plans. So he chose Fairy Tail.

His investigation had shown that Fairy Tail was a mage guild with a long history in the Kingdom of Fiore. It was best known for its guild master, who had been acknowledged by the Magic Council itself as one of the Ten Wizard Saints.

Aside from him, there seemed to be only one S-Class Mage, who was away all year round.

Among the rest, the strongest were only ordinary A-Class Mages. As long as the plan went smoothly, they would be well within his ability to handle.

That was how Erza had come to accept the escort request in the first place.

Note: Aside from the native devils in the Galuna Island arc, the only devils that appear in Fairy Tail are the artificial devils Zeref made himself. As for their setting, there's nothing beyond "Curse." (The devils Mirajane receives through her magic might also be native devils, but there's too little information.)

So the author will borrow the devil setting from Devil May Cry. I hope you understand.