Darkness Devil

A grotesque column of withered human bodies makes up the Darkness Devil, two of them forming its legs and four more stacked into a torso, each wearing a different ruined face beneath the neck, ranging from eyeless and vertically mouthed to stitched shut and sorrowful. Its head recalls a pteranodon, sweeping back into curved horns, while the uppermost body throws its arms wide to hold what looks like a mantle woven from darkness itself.

Almost nothing of its mind is documented, save that it lashes out at anything it reads as a danger. For all its silence, it reasons well enough to enter into contracts, which marks it as intelligent, and like its kind it bears fierce hostility toward Chainsaw Man and the threat he poses.

As a Primal Fear, the Darkness Devil ranks among the transcendent devils that have never once died, its concept so fundamental that it may be nearly as old as humanity, and simply earning its hostility is enough to kill an ordinary devil or person on the spot. The Falling Devil notes that mankind currently holds no weapon able to slay such a being. Its single known contract went to Santa Claus: in return for carrying Denji's heart down to Hell, the assassin gained a sliver of its flesh that let her bend her body within darkness and vastly multiplied her power.

The devil enters the story when the Hell Devil hurls Denji, a crowd of hunters, and rival assassins into Hell, where it slips from a door hanging in the sky and shears the arms off the whole group at once. It moves and strikes faster than seasoned hunters like Quanxi can track, and lifts or batters its targets with overwhelming strength. While shrouded in dark it regenerates almost instantly, shrugging off even Makima's blows. As the master of darkness it can dissolve into a black mass and drown an area in shadow, conjuring eleven bisected astronauts as it does, then summon a bell-hung blade that makes any victim hemorrhage violently the moment the bells chime.

It further wields an unseen force much like the Control Devil's, severing limbs, slicing bodies with a point of its finger, and triggering bleeding in those it watches, though Makima proves stronger still and wounds it merely by pointing back. Damage it deals can resist healing, leaving some victims like the Angel Devil permanently maimed, and it can even drag other devils into being and destroy them outright, which doomed the contracted Kusakabe along with the Stone Devil. Its one apparent vulnerability is light, since fire and brightness weaken the powers it lends out, though that alone would likely never finish a Primal Fear.