Game of Monsters - 64 (Patreon)

Disclaimer: I don’t own Highschool DxD.

I Wanna Start by Letting You Know This

Daggers met swords, as was usual.

‘Jeanne is entirely too good for someone that doesn’t have a system,’ Joshua thought to himself, trading blows with his sister. Their dance of blades almost practiced choreography at that point. There were upsets, new approaches and ideas being thrown into the mix and reacted to with varying degrees of ease.

That thought was something that Joshua often had in his mind. However, it was an amusing one, all things considered. His sister was a known Hero Descendant at that point, or so he supposed. After all, the Hero Faction of Khaos Brigade had been sure that she was one.

Thus, he wondered what people thought about him. He wasn’t a Hero Descendant. As far as the world knew, he was just a normal human. Normal humans, however, couldn’t keep up with a Hero Descendant though. Especially when they weren’t Sacred Gear holders. Hell, Joshua had to wonder how bewildered people were that he could even fight close combat as well as he did while actually being mainly a warder.

A frown on Jeanne’s face told him that he’d spaced out a little too much there, which was further confirmed by the stronger than normal blow that came from her blade. He blocked it, but he had to grimace slightly at the strain in his arms. Moreover, soon followed the second of his sister’s blades, even if it had less power behind it. He barely got out of the way before the hit landed.

The cold winter air did its best to freeze its way to Joshua’s lungs, which he wasn’t sure if it was actually bad. Fighting had a way to make him burn inside and plead for some coolness. The way his Cold Resistance rose, however, belied how bad the thing actually was. Although, that might have been the just as cold air that hit his bare chest as the spar went on.

Over their heads was Margalo, flying and singing. Joshua had been actually pretty surprised when his bird familiar had succeeded in making a skill to use her magic besides Agility. Although, in hindsight, it shouldn’t have been much of a shock, really.

[Courageous Song – Lvl 7

Defines the user’s ability to boost others with their voice.

Consumption - F]

What the skill boosted, he wasn’t very sure, but he suspected that it gave a small nudge to everything. He’d tested with some wards to sense the changes and Joshua was reasonably sure of his guess. So far, everything he’d checked was boosted, at least regarding stats. Strength, Speed and so on, all of them were increased by the skill, if only slightly.

Small, the boost might be, but it was still nice to have in their favor. On top of that, there was the possibility of the skill getting much better with time. Although, the bird herself wasn’t all that happy with her new skill. She really wanted something to use for offense, after all.

Bringing his focus back to the fight, Jeanne’s electric blade did its job as he blocked it with a dagger, sending a shock to his arm.

[Electric Resistance has gone up a level.]

The fire sword sent an arc of flames at him that washed diagonally over his chest. It burnt, but not enough to make him shift his stance or anything. It hurt, of course, but his Restorative wards were already working to diminish the effect. He’d made those so that they’d focus on making the wounds hurt less before anything else. He could fully heal them after the spars were over if the wards weren’t done yet.

And so the training fight continued.

That didn’t mean that the only one to get some hits in was Jeanne. It was just that Joshua needed to actually get hurt for his resistances to raise. Thus, he had his sister hold back less than he did. It was a difficult thing for the girl, but she’d accepted the logic behind it. It was better for her to hit him then so he could improve than for an enemy to hit him later.

He was fairly sure that the voices had supported him on that argument.

So, whenever he could sneak past her guard, he stopped his knives before actually cutting her. The good thing was that even if his attacks never actually landed, they worked to frustrate her. Everytime she should be getting hit, she got annoyed, and that meant her stance always slowly crumbled to dust.

Stopping both of her swords with his own daggers, Joshua paused.

“I think that’s enough,” he decided. He’d pushed for a longer session, but Jeanne wasn’t benefitting all that much from it by that point. She was getting in her head too much and the voices seemed to not be helping her all that much now. At his call, her arms sagged and she let out a sigh before taking a deep breath in.

“I don’t know how you do this while like that and getting hit with my swords’ magic. I can barely keep up like I am,” Jeanne commented, accepting the water bottle he threw at her after taking two from his Storage Spell. “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Joshua replied, taking a gulp of his own drink. “And I’ve been training for longer than you. Besides, there’s a reason why I’m training like this to begin with. My resistances go up, which makes it easier to actually go on. ”

“If you say so. I just think you are a freak of nature or something,” Jeanne said, clearly joking. She wasn’t entirely wrong though, Joshua supposed. “Sooo~”

‘Oh, God, here we go again,’ he thought, sighing to himself.

“About this date I heard about-”

Margalo chose that moment to land on his shoulder and chirp something. That was quickly followed by Cheshire letting out a roar in her tiger form. ‘Something happening?’ Joshua wondered, blinking as he checked on the wards.

“Josh?” Jeanne called then, evidently surprised by the shift. He didn’t answer her though, taking off in a dash towards the trees to the side. There was Morag, almost waiting for him, who welcomed him by jumping on his chest and then crawling on his hands when he brought them up.

Immediately, a familiar process happened as the spider’s magic connected with his and the Charm of Shed. For a moment, before his focus shifted fully towards his familiar, Joshua felt the deity giddily “watch” as the process started. Immediately afterwards, his attention was pulled almost forcefully towards Morag, who started twitching and shifting.

His wards fed him magic energy then, helping him keep his reserves up even as his familiar fed off of him to evolve. This, together with Cheshire’s and Nagini’s presences through their bond, helped Joshua keep his mind from becoming a confused, dizzy mess. This, in turn, made it so that he was almost aware of the change that was going on with Morag.

The black spider started growing more and more, from roughly the size of his hands to his forearm. It didn’t stop there though, Morag just kept on increasing in size as the seconds passed. Soon, she was the size of his torso and she still didn’t stop. Eventually, she did, however.

“Carrying you around will be kinda difficult, it seems,” Joshua commented, tiredly sitting on the ground and leaning against a tree trunk. In front of him, Morag shifted slightly, clicking her mandibles. Through their new bond, Joshua felt her send him a slightly dejected feeling, even through the excitement and contentment of the evolution.

[Morag

Title: Familiar of Joshua Davis

Race: Giant Spider

Gender: Female

Strength: C

Speed: C+

Dexterity: B-

Vitality: C

Perception: C

Magic: C+

Perks: 2

Skills: 8]

‘No new perks or anything, it seems,’ Joshua mused as his spider familiar crawled over him and sort of “sat”, half covering him with her legs. ‘Giant Spider sounds about right,’ he noted idly as he looked at her huge body. She’d certainly grown quite a bit with that last change, it seemed. Maybe she’d felt a little bad about being so small compared to Nagini and Cheshire? Could that kind of thing affect the evolution? He wasn’t sure, but regardless, he was happy for his familiar.

Margalo, still on his shoulder, chirped something to him.

“You’ll get your turn soon, I’m sure. Just gotta work on your magic and you should be there soon,” he reassured the bird with a slight smile. “For now, I guess we gotta organize a party, huh?”

“Guess so,” Jeanne commented from the side with a smile. “At least she wasn’t a meanie, waiting to evolve when I wasn’t around,” she added. Joshua laughed out loud at that, especially when he felt the offense that came to him through his bond with Cheshire and Nagini. Morag, meanwhile, seemed pretty happy, all things considered.

“You’ve got no idea the conversation you saved me from, by the way,” he whispered to the spider. “You are the best, Morag,” he added, receiving a very amused feeling through their new bond.

[}-o-{]

“I hope things are to your liking?” the girl sitting next to him asked, pushing her glasses up before taking the cup that was placed in front of her. Joshua considered the question while looking around, bringing his own tea up to his lips.

“Yeah. This is great. Better than what I expected, actually,” he admitted, a smile tugging at his lips. Especially when he looked at Jeanne, off to the side carrying a tray with drinks. “You’ve done an excellent job, Sona. Especially from what I saw regarding the people that’ll work here.”

“Considering the wards you’ve been placing around Kuoh, this is the least Rias and I could do,” Sona replied, smiling wryly at him.

“Well, if you don’t mind, I’ll keep you in mind next time I need a job like this one done,” Joshua commented, still taking in his new cafe, located in Kuoh. It looked, as he said, much better than he’d expected it to be. “Sairaorg is great and all but… He’s not much for logistics. Kuisha does what she can, but… Well, I’d prefer to give those jobs to someone more… proficient with such.”

“Don’t worry, they are unlikely to hold that against you. Such jobs are not exactly their favorites, so they’ll probably appreciate those being pawned off to me,” Sona told him, with an amused smile. She’d evidently picked up on his discomfort with his own statement, it seemed.

“Good to know.”

“On that note, I’ll admit Rias did most of the decoration, the uniforms and ultimately most of what has to do with looks,” Sona admitted, and he considered that. The Gremory heiress had done a good job on that front too. The uniforms weren’t as bad as he’d half had expected, considering Kuoh’s, for one. They were tasteful, which was as much as he could hope for, he supposed.

“Hm, she has a good eye for this kind of thing then? Something to keep in mind too, I guess,” Joshua noted to himself. As a particular group of people became just a bit too loud for a moment, his eye twitched. “I so want to put a knife in between their eyes,” he growled.

“Rias and I would appreciate it if you didn’t,” Sona calmly told him, even if there was a touch of wryness in her tone. “Hiding deaths is a little more bothersome than other things.”

Silently, Joshua turned to the side, giving the trio of perverts a glare. They didn’t notice, of course. That is, until he added a little something. ‘Bloodlust,’ he activated, making the three boys straighten where they sat. Immediately, they turned to fearfully look at him. They started sweating when he stood up and calmly walked up to them.

“Jeanne has mentioned you three. The Perverted Trio, I think her words were,” Joshua commented, taking the empty fourth chair in their table and sitting on it as he regarded the three wary boys. “I’m Joshua Davis, her brother. Or Davis Joshua, I guess it would be for you,” He introduced himself.

“Ah, brother-in-law- Ugh,” the bald one was also a bold one, it seemed. It wouldn’t go well for him, that was for sure, because Joshua turned up his skill as much as his glare.

“I don’t like you,” he told them bluntly. “So you’ll stop being little shits and behave like decent, well adjusted people, or I’ll make sure you regret it. Was I clear? Same if you do anything stupid in here.”

“You can’t just do that. That has to be some kind of crime or abuse or-”

“And being a disgusting sexual harrasser has to be to,” Joshua shot back before the one with glasses finished. “I’m the owner of this place, so I can keep you out of it if I want. As for the school… Well, I’m more important than I look. You don’t want to cross me. A pleasure meeting you, Bald-kun, Glasses-kun, Plain-kun,” he finished with, nodding at them and leaving.

“Was that necessary?”

“They make Jeanne uncomfortable and I bet they’d do the same with any female staff we get here,” Joshua countered to Sona once he returned to their table. “So, keep them in check, or I swear I’ll do something drastic. There’s only so much annoyance I can put up with.”

“I know that, but as things stand-”

“If you are gonna make excuses, save it,” he interrupted, clearly catching her off guard. “My mother raised me better than to have me stand and do nothing when shit like that is going on. You will be doing something about that, Sona. It wasn’t a question. You’ve repeatedly said that you owe me for all the wards I’m placing over Kuoh. So, I’ll add this as payment. Keep those three and any other pervert in check or just outright deal with them. Because I’ll take Jeanne and my wards far, far away from here if not.”

The previous calm and controlled Sona now looked pale, almost sweating bullets. He’d have felt bad about that, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. It was already unacceptable that they just accepted things like that as it was, but when they involved Jeanne and his new business? Not just no, but hell no. Apparently, the Japanese didn’t like punishments at schools or something of the sort, even when they were deserved. Something like that was what he’d heard, and it honestly made him really angry.

Fuck their culture, if it allowed those three to continue as they were. Like he was going to stand there and let strangers perv on his sister or anyone else just because they could. Jeanne was liking Kuoh well enough, aforementioned perverts notwithstanding, so he was unlikely to actually pull her out. However, he would call whoever he had to and force Sona’s and Rias’s hands if he had to. Sirzech and Serafall would surely do that much for him. If not… Well, they were in Yasaka’s territory, if he remembered right.

“Noted,” Sona mumbled hesitantly, and he could see the gears turning in her head. Good, she was taking him seriously. As well she should. “We have been trying to curve their behavior but-”

“Sona,” he interrupted, sounding supremely unimpressed. “You can twist mundane minds however you like. There has to be a way for you to do it and I’m sure you can find it. So do it,” he told her and she gulped, nodding. “Good.” Sighing, he turned to look around his new cafe. “I’ll work for a bit, I suddenly need something to distract myself.”

[}-o-{]

[Griselda Quarta]

Things were getting out of hand and fast.

It was something that was, as she was starting to understand, the expected thing when it came to one Joshua Davis. The man, for all his calm personality, had a way to make things spiral out of control when he was involved. It was like dealing with a walking storm’s eye. He was perfectly fine, but everything around him was chaos.

Things had calmed down for a while, after the Youkai were secure and the entire mess had been dealt with, even if it had been more complicated than expected. Griselda had heard quite a bit about that and she’d thought things had gone well for her faction in particular. They got a good connection to the whole thing in Joshua, who had done a great job of helping everyone he was involved with and their relationship with the Youkai. This was further helped by the Church offering extra help when it came to Annihilation Maker.

However… That calm hadn’t lasted and the storm had come back shortly after. Apparently, Joshua had decided that he had personal business to attend to with Khaos Brigade. Even worse, the Youkai faction was backing him up, which made sense since they had been particularly affected by the group, but it complicated matters further.

And why, oh why had it been the Church’s territory the one that had to house a Khaos Brigade base. Griselda half wondered why Joshua and the Youkai hadn’t accused them of being accomplices, really. To make a bad situation even worse still, her superiors had refused to take the magician’s offered hand to deal with the terrorists.

She’d tried her best to explain the situation to them, some even understood, to some extent. However, most of them refused to see past the way this “normal magician” wanted them to work with devils and fallen angels. It frustrated Griselda to no end, especially since that mentality had poisoned even her ward, Xenovia, who she loved like a daughter.

Now, the woman was offered a chance to fix all the problems that had been caused for no good reason besides prejudices and old grudges. What did it say about the Church, her own faction, that devils were more reasonable to deal with than them? Regardless of that, she could only hope that things weren’t completely ruined already. Maybe there was a way she could talk her way into making things better.

With a deep breath in, she looked at the phone in her hands. Before she could lose her nerve, she pressed the call button and then placed the device on her ear. She didn’t have to wait more than a few seconds, but even just that felt like a hour. She was nervous, she’d admit, and she was very unsure of how things would go.

“Miss Quarta,” Joshua greeted her with as he picked up the call. “Or is it Mrs.?”

“Miss Quarta is fine, Mr. Davis,” she said, instantly picking up that she wasn’t “Griselda” anymore, it seemed. She mentally complained about her superiors. Or, at least, the previous ones. “I was calling to talk about the… agreement you spoke of before. The one with the other factions you’ve allied yourself with.”

“Calling it an alliance is a bit much,” Joshua told her then, although he sounded… dismissive, in a way. Or maybe just distracted. It was difficult to tell. “It’s as you said, we have agreements.”

Griselda would have been more inclined to believe that if she didn’t know as much as she did regarding his relationship with the youkai. As it was, she wasn’t really as informed about how deeply he was involved with the devils and fallen, so it was better to tread carefully in that aspect. Besides, she wasn’t doing all that just to antagonize him.

“Anyway,” Joshua continued then. “I’ll talk with them later, I guess. As it is, there’s not that much to work with at the moment. Last I heard, the problem I’d heard about involving your faction was dealt with, remember?”

By him, was the part that he was omitting. Literally everyone that knew anything about the event was aware that Joshua had been the one to do it. No way any of his allies had risked a war just to deal with a small base. An unaligned party unofficially backed by them though? That was a different thing.

The problem, at least for some, was that nobody could prove that it was him. There were no traces whatsoever that anyone at all had been there. Their investigators hadn’t even managed to find anything regarding the Khaos Brigade members that had been there. It was as if the whole place had been devoid of people since forever, which didn’t make sense, because there was evidence that the place had seen use and was a base of the terrorist group. They just couldn’t find any magical or mundane traces of people in specific.

“Surely you don’t expect that to be the case forever,” Griselda replied, pushing those thoughts to the side.

“Hm, I don’t know,” Joshua shot back and she could practically see the man shrugging. “Things went well enough before. And besides, I remember you being distinctly against the idea. Hell, pretty sure you were accusing me of trying to stage attacks and shit.”

A politician, Joshua was not, that much was very obvious. Then again, Griselda had met quite a few of those that had less manners and decorum too, so… Maybe she was just letting her annoyance at the whole situation get to her, she supposed.

“You offered us the chance in the first place for a reason, surely,” Griselda tried then, growing increasingly more aware of how difficult things would be. It seemed that despite his calm and kind personality, Joshua could hold a grudge just as easily. That didn’t bode well for her mission.

“Yeah, because it looked like we could get things done. You know, have a working relationship where we both could get things we wanted. Kind of like I managed with the fallen and the devils, you know? Evidently, I was wrong,” Joshua explained to her. The jarring thing was that he did so in a casual manner, as if it were a normal thing to do, to just outright sever ties with a faction.

“Mr. Davis,” she started then. “Surely there’s a way we can… fix some of the damage our previous approach has done.”

“Hm, I don’t know,” Joshua replied, making her blink. “As it is, I’m kind of busy right now. Will be for a bit, actually. Maybe you can call later, Miss Quarta?”

“Mr. Davis? I know things went badly, but you yourself said that things were also good before-”

“Did you think that was an excuse? I actually have stuff to do, Miss Quarta,” Joshua interrupted, now sounding annoyed. “I have to teleport in a bit. House of Water contacted me to teach a class, as I’m sure you’ll figure out with your vast resources for information that you have no business knowing,” he added, sounding supremely annoyed. She’d already picked up that from before, the way he seemed uncomfortable with people knowing more about him than he expected them to.

She couldn’t help that, however. It was how the Church worked. How most people worked, really. You couldn’t just not know information about important people, the more important the more unacceptable ignorance was.

The mention of House of Water was… interesting. If it were up to her, it would be left at that, but Griselda was aware that the association had… quite the reputation when they’d started out. Back in the day, they’d barely skirted the line between a magician association and a criminal organization. However, those days seemed to have slowly but surely been left behind. People in high places loved living in the old days, however. Maybe because they were old themselves, she supposed.

The association was also strong. Not quite Golden Dawn level, let alone Grauzauberer, but they were a solid one. The only reason they weren’t in a better standing was because of the aforementioned reputation problems and nothing else. They were certainly not to be underestimated.

And now Joshua was apparently being asked to do stuff for them.

“So, yeah. I have people to teach,” Joshua said then, clicking his tongue. “Talk to you later, Miss Quarta.”

“When would be a good time to contact you, Mr. Davis?” she asked then, almost desperate for some sort of victory in the mess of a conversation she’d had to get through.

“In a few hours, I guess. If that’s not good, then I guess tomorrow should be fine,” Joshua replied. “Now, goodbye.”

Before Griselda could even begin saying her own farewells, the call was ended.

“It seems that things will be more complicated than expected,” the person in front of Griselda commented.

And wasn’t that an understatement? Their expectations had been low, but somehow things were even worse than that. Furthermore, Griselda noted something with some trepidation. Not only had Joshua called her Miss Quarta through the whole conversation, which was already very telling seeing as he’d always called her by her name. On top of that, he’d never once asked her to stop calling him Mr. Davis.

“It seems so, Seraph Gabriel,” she said in the end, deflating slightly where she sat.

[} Chapter End {]

Hey guys! How’s it going?

Some great doubts in my mind regarding the Griselda part, but everything else looks fine to me.

Hope you enjoyed the chapter.

Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ

Random Question: What do you prefer to see in Author Notes? I don’t generally read them (I apologize to any authors that might read this and authors I’ve read stuff from), but I prefer to see shorter notes. When I see a wall of text after a chapter I kinda roll my eyes and go “tl;dr”.

See you.