Akira Fudo is just an ordinary high school student until his childhood friend Ryo Asuka asks him to 'save the world.' Dragged to a demonic rave called a Sabbath, Akira fuses with the powerful demon Amon, becoming Devilman—a hero with a demon's body but a human heart. What follows is a story that explodes with forbidden love.
While Akira fights hidden battles, Ryo's suppressed feelings for him burn like a fever. Ryo has always loved Akira, not just as a friend. But he's forced to watch Akira's k
Devilman: Apocalypse of Love - Tokyo in flames — the night of Amon, Ryo nearly dies
Miki's scream still echoed deep within his ears.
"Monster!"
That single word repeated over and over in his head. On the cold concrete of the Tatsumi warehouse district, Akira was on all fours. His fingertips scraped against the ground. Blood seeped from beneath his nails, but he felt no pain. The only thing he felt was a hollow emptiness gaping in the center of his chest.
—You see now, boy?
A voice resounded from within. Amon's voice. Even its usual mockery sounded distant now.
—That is human love. It transforms into terror in an instant. The one you sought to protect called you a monster.
"[scared]Ugh... ah..."
A voiceless voice escaped him.
No. That's not it. Miki was just scared. Anyone would be, seeing a form like that right in front of them—
He tried to think that.
But deep in his heart, he knew.
Miki had called him a monster.
And that was the truth.
The edges of his vision began to stain red, slowly.
—It is enough now, surely.
Amon's voice resounded even deeper, even lower.
—Sleep, boy. I shall devour you, fragile heart and all.
"[angry]Stop... it...!"
He tried to resist. But it was already too late.
The gap in his heart left by Miki's rejection was more than wide enough for Amon's consciousness to pour through. His awareness sank, as if being dragged down to the bottom of deep mud.
Dark.
Cold.
Can't breathe.
(No, I'm still, I'm still—)
His final thought vanished, becoming bubbles.
Akira's body stood up on its own.
Awkwardly, like a broken marionette. In those eyes, there was no longer even a fragment of kindness. There was only a reptilian, golden gleam.
"[cold]...It has been a long time, this sensation."
Amon murmured, using Akira's mouth. Now, this body was completely Amon's.
His clothes tore. From his back, dark blue wings spread with a sound. Muscles bulged, and his skeletal structure groaned and deformed. In a matter of moments, what stood there was no longer the human, Fudo Akira. It was a demon, a Devilman, standing over two meters tall.
"[cold]Shall I go and greet the world of insects?"
Beating his wings, Amon took off into the darkness of the night.
His direction of travel was the eastern part of Tokyo.
A city where countless humans still slept.
* * *
Atop a hill in Higashimurayama, the underground laboratory of the Asuka estate was wrapped in a heavy silence.
Ryo sat before three monitors lined up in a row. His silver hair, lacking in pigment, reflected the pale light of the screens, appearing to waver like the deep sea. He was now scrolling through a social media timeline with an expressionless face. To ascertain what kind of reaction Miki had shown.
But his fingers suddenly stopped.
The screen was beginning to be buried under abnormal posts.
'A fire in eastern Tokyo!? My neighborhood is bright outside'
'What is this, I can see something like a human figure in the sky'
'I hear explosions. Is it terrorism?'
Links to live streams flowed in, one after another. Ryo tapped on one of them.
What appeared on the small screen of his smartphone was a familiar residential landscape. However, flames were bursting from every window, and cars parked on the street were charred black. And in the center of the screen, circling above the inferno, was a single shadow.
Bat-like wings.
Two curved horns.
A heat haze rising from its entire body, like shimmering air.
The strength drained from Ryo's body, all at once.
"[whispers]...Akira."
His voice trembled.
That was a Devilman. But it was different. That thing now was not Akira. Amon had completely hijacked Akira's consciousness.
His mind began to race at high speed.
(Why? According to my calculations, the erosion shouldn't have reached this stage yet. With Akira's mental fortitude, he should have had a few more days—)
Then Ryo suddenly realized.
Miki.
His own plan, cornering Miki, had accelerated Amon's erosion.
(It's all my fault, isn't it?)
Ryo's blue eyes sank, darker and deeper than the deep sea.
At first, he just wanted to keep Akira away from danger. Because Akira is mine. But everything he did backfired. Miki rejected Akira, and Amon bit through the gap in the rejected Akira's heart.
Nothing had gone according to plan.
Ryo gripped his smartphone.
So hard his bones creaked.
(I'm the only one who can stop this.)
But if he did, he would be killed. Amon loathed the existence called Ryo more than anyone. Because the bond between Akira and Ryo was the very symbol of human weakness. If he made contact with Amon now, the probability of death was nearly 100 percent.
And yet, Ryo's body was already moving.
His body moved before his conclusion did.
"[whispers]...I'm such a fool."
Muttering self-deprecatingly, Ryo stood up.
His eyes happened to fall on his father's mementos, piled in a corner of the room. An old protective suit. It seemed his father had used it when excavating demon fossils.
Ryo picked it up and tried to put his arms through the sleeves.
—It was baggy.
His father had a solid build. On the slender Ryo, the sleeves were a full thirty centimeters too long. He looked like a clumsy penguin, a child wearing adult's clothes.
Ryo flapped the protective suit once, then took it off with a blank expression.
(...What am I doing?)
He was going to his death, and this was his preparation. He had made a cool resolution, but it was utterly ungraceful. Faced with this hopelessly clumsy version of himself, he felt like crying, and like laughing. But he didn't even have the leeway for that now.
In the end, Ryo dashed out of the basement still wearing his usual school uniform.
* * *
The residential area of eastern Tokyo was like hell.
Houses were burning. Power lines had burned through and fallen, bouncing on the roads while scattering sparks. The screams of people who had failed to escape could be heard from everywhere.
BOOOOOOM!!
Every time Amon swung his arm, a shockwave that scorched the air raced out, mowing down buildings. Embers rained down mercilessly upon the fleeing people.
"[laughing]The insects bark well."
Amon raised his voice, sounding utterly delighted at the devastation unfolding before his eyes. It was an exhilaration he hadn't tasted in two hundred million years. Every time he destroyed a human, something screamed deep within Akira's consciousness. That agony was nothing but sweet pleasure to Amon.
—Is this all you amount to, boy? The world you tried to protect is this fragile.
He spoke in his mind to the sleeping Akira. There was no reply. But he could feel that a fragment of lingering consciousness was certainly still there. Tormenting it slowly to death from now on was his greatest pleasure.
That was when it happened.
At the edge of Amon's vision, a single small light flickered.
In the middle of the flame-engulfed street, a single human was desperately flashing a smartphone light. He must have run here, weaving through the burning rubble. His silver hair was disheveled, and soot smudged his refined face.
Amon stopped moving in mid-air, perfectly still.
"[cold]...Asuka Ryo."
He uttered that name in a low, freezing voice.
"[crying]Akira!!"
Ryo shouted, his face a mess of tears. His usual mask of cool composure had completely peeled away. There stood just a single seventeen-year-old boy, trembling with the fear of losing the person most precious to him.
"[crying]Please, stop! It's all my fault! Cornering Miki, all of it was something I calculated and did! I'm the one who turned you into this!"
His voice cracked. He couldn't catch his breath. Still, Ryo didn't stop shouting.
"[crying]I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, Akira! So please, come back! Without you, I'm, I'm—!"
Amon slowly descended to the ground.
The asphalt melted and bubbled from the heat of his feet.
"[sarcastic]Oh? So that is the crystallization of your so-called 'love.'"
His golden eyes looked down on Ryo. Contempt, and a certain kind of interest, surfaced within them.
"[sarcastic]How ugly. You monopolize, you destroy, and now you cry and cling. What a hopelessly wretched insect. So human love is, after all, only this much."
"[angry]I don't care!!"
Ryo didn't back down a single step.
"[crying]Even if it's ugly, even if it's wrong, I still want Akira to live! That's all it is!!"
Tears overflowed, unstoppable, streaming down. The usual calculating, cold Ryo was nowhere to be found.
Amon quietly raised his right arm.
His sharp claws reflected the firelight, gleaming like a reaper's scythe.
"[cold]Then show me this 'love' of yours. —This is the end."
It was an instant.
The swung-down arm pierced through Ryo's abdomen.
A dull, squelching sound.
"[scared]Gah... ha..."
A clot of blood spilled from Ryo's mouth. His breath stopped for a moment at the sensation of something tearing through his body. The claws had penetrated his stomach and were protruding from his back.
The pain was beyond imagination.
A searing heat, as if burning from inside his body, and a coldness that severed all sensation assaulted him simultaneously.
He collapsed to his knees.
When Amon pulled his arm out, fresh blood gushed endlessly from the wound, forming a dark stain on the asphalt.
(Ah, so I'm going to die in a place like this.)
His vision blurred white, and sounds grew distant.
Even so, Ryo desperately lifted his strengthless neck and looked at Amon's—no, at Akira's face.
"[whispers]...A... ki..."
A hoarse voice, barely breathing.
His blood-soaked lips definitely moved that way.
That was the moment.
Amon's movements stopped dead.
His golden eyes opened wide.
(Ryo... I...)
In the abyss of consciousness, Akira's ego surfaced for just an instant.
His heart, which should have been completely swept away, had definitely recognized the sight of Ryo collapsed in a pool of blood. He himself, his own hands, had killed his most precious friend. That unbearable fact created a faint, but definite, crack in Amon's control.
"[angry]Gu... ugh...!? You, boy!!"
Amon clutched his head in agony.
But that was only for a moment.
Amon forcefully suppressed Akira's ego, which had tried to surface from the depths of consciousness, and kicked it back down into the darkness.
—Sleep. For eternity.
Akira's consciousness sank once more to the bottom of the abyss.
"[cold]...Annoying."
Spat out, Amon turned his back on the fallen Ryo. This insect was as good as dead now. More than that, more destruction. To further gouge out Akira's heart.
He spread his wings and soared back up into the blazing sky.
On the street, Ryo was left behind alone.
The flames, like a living thing, crawled and spread from a nearby building towards the road. If he couldn't move like this, he would eventually burn to death.
(...Nothing went according to plan, did it?)
For some reason, Ryo laughed. Blood bubbled up like foam from the corner of his mouth.
Even after driving Miki away, he couldn't protect Akira. On top of that, he was being killed by Akira. What a zamaa.
The laughter soon broke off.
A violent pain shot through him, and his body jerked.
(But, at the very end, Akira—)
In that instant, Akira's eyes had definitely looked at him. Behind Amon's gold, there was a black light that recognized him.
He's still there.
Lying on the asphalt warmed by his own blood, Ryo quietly embraced that sensation.
That was when it happened.
CLUNK, CLATTER-CLATTER-CLATTER—!!
Suddenly, right beside him, a deafening mechanical noise resounded.
Right next to where Ryo lay, a vending machine, its power nearly cut by the heat of the flames, let out an error sound as if in a final death throe, and ejected all of its contents at once.
With a lively clatter and clang, cold cans of coffee and sports drinks scattered around the blood-soaked, collapsed Ryo.
"[whispers]...Haha."
At that utterly ridiculous sight, Ryo laughed a little, this time out loud.
Right next to the ultimate despair, there was always this kind of hopeless, irredeemably mundane stupidity lying around. He felt like he could no longer cry, nor laugh, no
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