Dungeons and Devils (Chapter 6) (Patreon)

It has been a while since I have been placed in this world. Roughly a year and a half in fact.

In that time, I have become decent friends with Rias and have made some form of headway with her friends.

Riser never showed up to Rias' birthday party... luckily for me.

The person just behind Rias in friendship would have to be Sona. My deal with her family's hospital makes us meet fairly often. Then there's Seekvaira Agares, whom I am definitely on friendly speaking terms with, at the very least, after I gave her a miniature animated object that looks like a Gundam ripoff, the final one is Latia Astaroth, whomst I have rarely spoken with.

I frown as I skim over the news on my tablet.

"Glasya-Labolas Heir slain in freak accident."

"What are you looking at?" The red haired beauty in front of me asks.

"An Heir died..." I frown.

"Hn?"

I turn the tablet around towards Rias. "The Glasya-Labolas Heir was killed yesterday in a freak accident."

"I- well, I didn't know him, but that's horrible!"

"It really is." I frown as I cup my chin.

Something about that doesn't sit right with me.

A tea set is placed between us.

""Thank you, Akeno."" We state at the same time.

"I'm happy to help." The girl smiles.

I calmly take a sip of tea as Rias fidgets slightly.

Rias suddenly looks at me entirely serious, a hopeful gleam in her eye.

"D-Did you find anything?"

During our last meeting I had promised to look at her marriage contract with Riser.

"A couple thing, not all of them things you'll like to hear."

She winces. "That means... there's some good, right?"

"Alright... I guess I should get the bad out of the way first." I sigh.

"Firstly, there is nothing saying your father cannot just walk out here right now and say that you are getting married to Riser tomorrow."

"I- W-What?"

"Yep. He's being polite in this, giving you time to do your own thing, but I have a feeling that sooner or later he may just push to get you married before the time he said. And reasonably, he'll be doing nothing wrong because there's not a clause in the contract, nor do you have a contract with him... That being said, if you turn around now and go ask for a contract, he may just lessen the time he said he was going to give you anyways."

"I-I... wh-" she mutters, she looks a little lost.

"Now for a good thing... there is a way to get out of your marriage contract."

Her blue eyes lock with my own.

"If either of the two participants are unsatisfied with this engagement contract, it may be nullified by their mutual agreement of disbandment. Otherwise, the two may face each other in a rating game, the victor deciding the status of the marriage contract." I quote.

"So to put it simply, you need to beat him in a rating game... with your lack of pieces... and your sealed bishop."

Her shoulder slump as she lets out a quiet groan. "D- Dang it! Ugh! At least I have some hope now."

"Reasonably, Rias... if you started training yourself and your peerage this second, yet keep that fact secret, you'll absolutely obliterate him when the time comes to hash out your contract. My advice is to train like your father is going to walk in at any moment and declare that your marriage will be in one month... but the crucial part here, Rias is that you keep it secret. Riser is lazy, arrogant, and honestly his mere existence angers me slightly. But the second he sees that he might lose to you? He'd buckle down. Put his peerage through the ringer just to fight you."

"I'd need to best Riser's entire peerage with just Akeno, Koneko, and Kiba." The red haired girl mutters as she cups her chin. "That doesn't seem very possible."

"Yeah." I nod. "You're sort of screwed... if you were to fight him, you'd each need to defeat about four each, deal with Riser's healing nonsense, AND with the phoenix tears which he will absolutely be using? Regeneration is annoying, so that'll probably be your largest hurdle."

"Do you have any suggestions." She pleads.

"Train." I deadpan. "Stop being lazy and legitimately train. Your cousin, Sairaorg could probably obliterate Riser's entire peerage and Riser himself on his own. If you think about it, he has probably only been training, what, seven or eight years? Your largest hurdle would be Riser's regeneration... but immortal doesn't mean infallible. Kiba will be your largest asset."

"Kiba?" Rias whispers. "What do you mean?"

"Sword birth is all about creation... Phenex regeneration will continue to heal Riser as long as he has demonic power. But one thing it doesn't heal is mental fortitude... so reasonably, if you have Kiba create a sword that leaves wounds so utterly painful that it causes him to lose the will to fight, well, there you go. You cut him enough times then bam, he's going to lose the will to fight and surrender."

"Plus, there's always the utility... a sword that eats demonic power to grow stronger, a sword that eats fire, a sword that absorbs wind every time he swings it eventually building up to a slash that can cleave mountains in half, realistically, his biggest limit is just his creativity."

Rias is silent for a moment. "I see."

Akeno pours us some tea as Rias gives me a small frown. "Gaius... I have to ask... why are you helping me so much?"

"Well, do I need a reason to help out a friend?" I ask as I take a sip of the tea. "But yeah, there's another reason. Let's just say... that the Phenexes have slighted me in the past and I hold grudges."

"What did they do?" She asks with a slow blink.

"Ehhh, that's a little personal... you know how the Decarabia family disappeared for like... five hundred years, we lost a lot of our land and stuff."

"They took your land?" She blinks.

"twenty five percent of their land, the part where they have all their farms, should be mine, yes." I nod. "Buuuut I have no real need for it, so I haven't made any form of complaint... yet it does annoy me about how they still haven't reached out to me about that. So yes, I will help you as long as it annoys them... but because of politics, I'm not able to legitimately intervene."

"Politics." She pouts. "I hate that word."

"Oh, believe me, I do as well. It's why I don't get out much. I've got much better things to do than suck up to arrogant assholes like a good seventy five percent of our race is." I sigh and scratch the back of my head. "Thinking back, that maaaay be the reason why I only have like... less than ten friends."

Could Serafall be counted as a friend? Or is it just her babying a random kid.

She lets out a quiet snort.

I glance over to Akeno. "Hey, Akeno. If she ever starts to return to her old ways, or just doesn't start training, could you please remind her in pain staking detail of what her life would be like with Riser? What your and Koneko's life would be like with Riser"

The half fallen smirks and bows her head. "My my, for you to want me to torment my master so~ you're a dirty boy, hm. Perhaps. It pains me to do so, but if a friend asks it of me I guess I must-"

"Wait." Rias cuts in, finally snapping out of her irked daze and realizing what I said in the final sentence of my last statement. "What do you mean by 'What Your and Koneko's life would be like with Riser'."

"Oh. Another part of the contract... your peerage... is his peerage. He'd probably use them as an extended harem and force you to reincarnate women just so he could fuck them. Hell, he might even tell you to get rid of Kiba to make space for another girl."

Her hands shake as her eyes widen.

"Also. Damn it. Tell Kiba to be more creative. Making only swords is stupid. What's a set of brass knuckles but a strangely shaped extremely blunt sword, what's an amulet but a really small blunt sword. Realistically, he could make sword-amulets to strengthen your speed, strength and magic power. A sword that can dematerialize the blade at will, slipping past defenses, a sword that can shoot magical attacks, a sword that maximizes the potential of an evil piece!"

I sigh as I shake my head. "Well, I hope you get strong enough to get out of your marriage, Rias... come find me if you ever get into that situation and I might be able to make you something to turn the battle even more to your favor. But for now, I've actually got a couple of things to work on at home."

Rias nods her head slowly. "Thank you for looking at my contract for me... you have given me new hope, I wish you great success on all of your endeavors Lord Decarabia."

I smile and return her nod. "You as well, Heiress Gremory, I wish you luck on your current goal... and please tell Kiba and Koneko that I'm sorry for not seeing them and that I said hello."

I hold up a hand, waving briefly, then teleport away.

I reappear in the middle of my foyer and let out a long groan and flop down into a nearby couch.

"Ugh. Social interactions are exhausting."

I raise my arms and stretch, letting out a small yawn.

I see a camcorder sat upon a nearby table and let out a low hum.

Well, I need to download that...

The other one should be running out of time soon as well. It should be back in... four hours or so?

I stand up slowly, grabbing the recording device with a hum.

I walk it up to my room and begin the process of downloading its contents to my new computer.

I should have enough to get Serafall to imprison this guy. I've been fairly thorough, but he hasn't actually been to the human world much this year. At least until recently when he got a new pawn. Most of the footage is just him torturing his servants into broken husks that follow his orders without question.

The whole 'getting a nun to fall in love with him so she gets excommunicated' thing is a much larger issue.

I'm going to finish compiling my observations tonight and show it to Serafall tomorrow.

I sit down, boredly skimming through the twelve-hour video that was recorded from the magical device.

More torture. Bleh. I've already got a couple hours of clips from that in the compilation.

Skip.

Oh? Now he's leaving.

I skip ahead a little more to see him stood atop a ledge.

"Hm? That's... strange."

The next five minutes of the clip is just him standing there, his bishop, a petite girl with a single large blue bow on her head stands beside him

He looks over to the bishop.

"Now."

A magic arrow appears in front of the girl, and she shoots it downwards, the camera moves slightly to see that the arrow had shot through the shoulder of a man down below, he is fighting off dozens of large hell beasts.

In his brief lapse of concentration, a large mutt lunges for him and wraps its teeth around his throat.

Diodora killed the Glasya-Labolas heir... holy shit, Diodora. Just. Fucking. Killed. The Glasya-Labolas Heir.

A second figure walks up as the man is being torn to shreds.

Oh... I see.

It's Zephyrdor... it seems like he came together with Diodora to murder the previous heir.

I see. It's all becoming clear now! With this I can take down not only one but two potential problems!

Glorious!

I blink as my alarm spell triggers.

Hm? Is that Serafall?

What could she possibly need right now.

I get up and make my way slowly to the foyer, I hear the door knocker gently pounding against the wood.

The door opens as I calmly make my way down the stairs.

Standing there is a teen, a pleasant smile on his face as he slowly looks around, he has short blue hair and wears a blue suit and pants combo, he is roughly eighteen years old from the looks of it.

'fucking wh-'

There's no way he could know I have been spying on him...

I slowly walk up to him.

"Ah. Lord Decarabia." He smiles as he closes his eyes.

"Diodora Astaroth." I nod as I slowly crack my knuckles. "What can I do for you?"

He nods outside. "I was hoping to purchase some of your land, may I show you the part I was talking about?"

"Sure." I shrug as I watch him turn around.

'System, purchase one level please.'

Affirmative.

Was it Zephyrdor again?

I slowly fold my hands behind myself as I slowly walk behind him.

"You see, there was a fairly nice spot just over here." He states.

With the basic 'Detect Fiend' spell I detect some devils ahead of us.

A quest has been received-

I mentally minimize the quest.

"Is this the part where you try to murder me like you did the Glasya-Labolas heir?"

He freezes mid-step as my smile grows. "You're not very good at lying, Astaroth... what sort of madman would want to buy even a square foot of my shitty land?"

My hand snaps up and snags an arrow of demonic power out of the air and hurl it aside. "You're gonna have to try a little harder than that"

"KILL HIM!" The teen roars.

A sword flashes from my dimensional storage, I parry and deflect a downwards slash from a broadsword and duck around another arrow of magic.

'is that a-'

The hairs on the back of my neck raise briefly. Holy sword. How the fuck?!

A massive fiery explosion smashes into me, doing absolutely nothing due to my fire immunity.

I simply smirk in the massive blaze and use its vision-breaking smoke cloud to cast a summoning spell and dimension door a short distance away. 'a bunch of level four horses and fuse.'

I reappear behind a blonde girl who is sat in a tree, arrow of magic in her hand.

My blade cleaves through her neck, hopefully killing her painlessly.

The ground shakes as a very... classic noise makes itself known.

I wordlessly cast my generic buff spells on myself, Shield, Mage Armor, the Cat's Grace family, and finally Haste.

As the body of the girl falls from the tree, I look out to see an absolutely gargantuan lizard with reddish black scales, two brilliant orange eyes that look as if they are on fire as smoke clings to its form. It is roughly forty feet long from snout to the tip of its tail, it balances on two powerful legs, bulging with muscle, its mouth absolutely packed with vicious teeth.

Compared to the rest of its body, the arms frankly look sad, they are extremely tiny, each tipped with two fingers.

It lets out a second ground shuddering roar as fire spells strike its body, some winking out on contact and others doing no damage to the beast's fire-resistant hide.

The king of the dinosaurs... Tyrannosaurus. A fiendish Tyrannosaurus.

Recently I had gotten enough to level up to level seven, I was going to just keep on saving it, but I decided to use it when this dickhead showed up purely because I'll probably get more from killing him myself.

And due to said level... I have made a discovery... I can use level four spells despite the fact that sorcerers cannot usually do that until next level... devil magic must work off Wizard spellcasting.

As I cast my final buff spell, the T-Rex lunges forwards, jaws clamping around the knight's upper half.

It flings the woman upwards, then snags her legs and smashes her into the ground.

It lets her go then takes a step forward, crushing the woman underneath a large clawed foot.

'bishop and knight down. All that's left is Rook, Queen, Diodora himself and four pawns.'

I dimension door up into the air, reappearing behind the flying queen. My blade cleaves through her neck as she begins to slowly turn around.

'Shame. I hate to kill you all, but at this point, it's you or me. I'll put you out of your misery... then make sure to send Diodora right after you.'

I watch a girl rush forwards and punch the tyrannosaurus in the jaw, snapping its head to the side and causing a tooth to fly from its mouth.

The dinosaur's tail snaps around as it turns and catches another girl in the chest, launching her through a nearby tree as her limbs twist and snap.

I let out a quiet sigh and blur downwards, plunging a blade into her throat and twisting, the sound of her spine snapping greets me as my blade goes all the way through.

I turn just in time to see Diodora blast my tyrannosaurus with demonic magic, his rook hanging from its mouth as it clamps down on her side and shakes, she is screaming quite a lot.

Two beams of fire arc from my hand as I point outwards, piercing through the chest of a nearby pawn as she drops like her strings had been cut.

'Queen, two pawns, knight, and rook down... three to-'

Another pawn lets out a small scream as she is crushed underfoot of my massive summon.

'Two enemies to go.' I mentally correct.

I reappear in front of the blue haired young adult with a frown as with a kick I knock him into a sitting position.

"Y-YOU!" He snarls as he gets back to his feet. "You damned NOBODY! You killed all of my servants!"

"Not all." I state.

A small girl shivers, back pressed to a tree as she stares up at the large carnivore in front of her.

Its jaws clamp around her top half as she lets out a scream of terror.

I flick my blood-stained blade around slightly, causing a few drops to stain the grass. "Alright. All."

"You won't kill me." He snarls. "You will be ruined if you kill me. Executed."

"Perhaps." I state with a small head tilt, the large dinosaur looming behind me.

He leaps to his feet, black smokey-like tendrils of power wafting off his body as he holds his hands towards me, a large magic circle appears in front of him-

I disappear just as he casts his spell, unleashing an absolutely titanic beam of power that absolutely vaporizes my summon and carves a path of destruction into the distance.

My sword pieces his back and goes completely through, stabbing out of his chest, he coughs blood as the wispy smoke seems to hiss at me.

"I don't do well with potential threats. The last ones I fought somehow sent me five hundred years into the future... and after I figured out what you did to your servants, I have been itching to kill you."

"You fool. You're gonna... die..." The devil gurgles as he falls forwards... dead.

A quest has been completed.

A quest has been completed.

Well. This is a problem, once more minimizing the quest as I'll deal with it later.

I snap my finger twice and open my hand as I hold it out above me.

I pull out my phone and Dial Serafall's number as an invisible creature floats down from a nearby tree, a camera falling into my grasp.

Luckily Serafall gave me her phone number. She talks and texts to me frequently, but I only ever respond... I never initiate conversation.

Hopefully that will allow her to understand just how important this is.

"Heeeey, Gai-tan! Uhhh I'm a little busy right now, so if it's not important please-"

"Diodora Astaroth tried to murder me under the orders of Zephyrdor Glasya-Labolas, so I killed him and his peerage of girls all of whom he got excommunicated from the many churches around the world, only to brutally murder and rape them, turning them into nothing more than emotionless slaves, and potentially straining the relationship between factions."

"…"

"Wha-"

"Oh, and I also have proof of him murdering the previous Glasya-Labolas heir."

"Shit." For the first time I have ever heard... she curses. "Sirzechs. We've got an international incident on our hands. Please come with me."

"Hn?" I hear someone hum off to the side.

"Where are you?" The girl hisses into her phone.

"Outside my house. Just follow the large trench in the ground that Diodora carved with... power close to that of an ultimate class... hn... that's unsettling."