[Third Person POV]
[Month 3]
In the third month, aside from getting Kuchiro used to everything, Hajime spent most of it with Monet in the gardens and lab.
The two of them focused on the potential uses of their dozens of unique plant species.
Hajime had chosen the first 5 plants to sell based on their generally applicable properties,
Two were for healing, one for consumption, and the last two held significant fire or lightning energy, making them useful for rituals, artifacts, potions, and the like.
Now that Silent Echo was making a name for itself by selling rare plants, Hajime felt it was about time to start expanding its list of products.
Hajime brought lots of samples from Kinkow, but there was a major problem. A portion of those plants was dangerous.
Several had dangerous toxins that had strange side effects, and others were semi-sentient like the whomping willow and thus physically violent.
Most dangerous plants came from the dark side.
Of the rest of them, most were weird in some way, such as an herb that temporarily changes your voice as if it were helium.
While Hajime had collected all the information about these plants from the Great Book and even had a copy transcribed by a clone, he knew these plants had more uses. The magic of the Pair of Kings world was far inferior to that of DxD in both the number of practitioners and their power.
With potentially dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of mages working with any of these new materials, new uses would be found eventually. Honestly, Hajime was hoping for a Harry Potter character from the gacha soon. With so many ingredients from the worlds of DxD and Pair of Kings, the kinds of potions and artifacts that could be created would be interesting to see, though it would probably require access to Harry Potter ingredients, too.
As for why Monet was working with Hajime, the two were, in their spare time, genetically altering the plants.
Through selective breeding, grafting, and whatever else they could do, the duo were slightly altering the plants genetically to create different variants and species. Toxic plants with weakened poisons, edible plants with increased fruit and leaf production, and even elemental plants with higher magic concentrations. Luckily for Hajime, Monet's experience with genetic research, despite the dark uses she put them to, showed her talent in the subject.
Though she was no Caesar, who made the drug to grow children, or Chopper, who was able to create an antidote for Caesar's poisons and Queen's plagues on the spot, Monet was certainly a talented scientist.
If she were dropped in DC or Marvel, she'd be the equivalent of unnamed scientists for evil organizations or tech companies. She'd be on par with Einstein and Newton, but still behind the true geniuses of fiction.
Aside from helping Hajime develop new variants of his many plants, Monet also helped search for potential uses for them. However, she was less helpful, as her knowledge focused more on biology and chemistry, leaving her to focus on their potential medicinal uses.
One plant, a cattail-like species called the moonreed, produces highly toxic seeds if ingested; however, they contain a compound that, when cooled below freezing and then thawed, forms a potent coagulant.
Another plant that interested Monet was the hexbulb. The hexbulb was a 6-petaled flower, with each petal being a different color of the rainbow. Each petal was poisonous, yet each color produced a different poison.
Red gave minor hallucinations.
Orange burned the skin, creating an allergy-like rash.
Yellow caused someone to lose control over their bowels.
Green caused forced hair loss all over the body.
Blue caused swelling in the joints, literally blowing them up like balloons, though the bubbles were small.
Purple flipped your taste buds, making good taste bad and bad taste good.
When Monet learned about the hexbulb, which produced six distinct toxins, she immediately began testing them to see how the poisons reacted when applied to the same body.
For those tests, she abducted several bountied individuals.
Though somewhat disturbed, she wasn't kidnapping innocent people like Orochimaru or Caesar, so Hajime allowed Monet to continue.
For all he knew, one of the poisons had some niche scenario that they could be useful for something.
Hajime was sure that if he developed a variant with an enhanced red toxin, he could easily sell that to markets, human and supernatural alike. Everyone wanted drugs, and governments want drugs to be safe, so providing something that satisfied both could easily make Hajime rich.
Throughout the month, Hajime and Monet were incredibly busy planting, watering, harvesting, testing, and everything in between.
[Month 4]
The fourth month was relatively quiet compared to the first three.
Hajime and Monet were still working in the gardens. Pam was still busy organizing business deals with independent mages and clans, while also training with Kuchiro. Their magic skills were about even, so she figured training together would allow for some friendly competition.
Welf was in the forge, testing out the materials bought weeks ago, occasionally leaving the tower to test out his weapons on others.
Jenny had been busy learning magic. With her experience with takeover magic, most basic spells were rather easy to understand by comparison. She had also bought several machines totaling over $25,000, providing her Machina Soul with several new forms, raising her strength to the intermediate stage.
Akeno, likewise, had finally broken through into mid-class. Using Hajime's lightning dragon slayer magic as inspiration, Akeno created a move she called Angel Guard. Shaping lighting into a body that resembles herself, Akeno can control it similarly to a puppet, except it can move incredibly fast. The energy cost, however, is very high and increases the further the guard is from her. Still, it showed immense potential and was devastating at close range.
Blake and Tsubaki, meanwhile, had still been taking missions to hone their skills, with Blake's strength having grown to the advanced stage, having learned basic reinforcement magic.
The familiars had also been growing in strength, though much more slowly. Tsubaki's familiar, Kimiko, had finally reached the intermediate stage. Blue had also grown, though she was still some distance from the beginner stage.
Bunnicula's growth was the strangest, with him somehow learning the basics of shadow magic. Though it was currently limited to moving shadows around, he showed lots of talent for that branch of magic.
[Month 5]
The fifth month was the most surprising for Hajime.
Near the start, he had finally finished assimilating Doflamingo, while Mother Carmel's had reached 94%.
Since he hadn't had any truly difficult fights since the gashadokuro, progress for Doflamingo continued at a snail's pace.
Mother Carmel's was much harder since part of her assimilation required human trafficking.
Ironically, his capture of criminals, which he brought back as test subjects, fit the bill.
With the Doflamingo assimilation complete, Hajime slotted in the Crystalsapien. Their ability to absorb all kinds of energy would make Hajime much stronger defensively.
Hajime's biggest threats were simply from people using magic he isn't familiar with or suicidal attacks, like how Katarea Leviathan blew herself up to try to kill Azazel.
Now, so long as energy was involved, he could absorb it.
To train, he had Akeno, Yasaka, and anyone else who primarily used energy attacks treat him as a training dummy, slowly increasing his percentage. Though since Ben 10 used Chromastone, a crystalsapien, to help absorb part of the Big Bang, assimilation was taking a while.
The bigger news came from someone who called them for a business deal, specifically Azazel.
Ironically, it was because he was looking for information on Hajime that he accidentally found him, though the Grigori leader didn't know.
[Flashback Start]
In the middle of Nagasaki, a mature man with short, blond hair, beard, and an eyepatch over his right eye sat in a diner.
This was the disguise Hajime had chosen for the 'leader' of Silent Echo. It would allow him to pretend to be a student, learning the 'man's' combat style because of his compatibility.
While Hajime could always go out as himself and claim to be a representative, this business deal was different. A few days ago, Pam received a call from Azazel, who claimed he wanted to buy their materials.
For a researcher like Azazel, finding new materials to work with was a fathersend, especially since new materials meant more things to add to sacred gears.
(A/N: Fathersend like godsend)
With Azazel himself as the prospective buyer, Silent Echo couldn't send just anyone. For all intents and purposes, this was a meeting between factions. Even with such a disparity in strength between the two, Azazel deserved respect as a leader. Normally, Hajime would either go himself or send Monet or Jenny, the strongest adults in their group.
However, with Azazel, it was better to go himself.
Not just because he knew how the fallen would react to those two, but to avoid insulting them. Michael knows what Kokabiel would do to them if he felt he could get away with it, and Hajime was not in the mood to find out.
Minutes passed until, eventually, a man in a maroon coat entered the building.
Azazel looked around until he saw the only person in the room with magic. Azazel walked over and sat down across from him.
"So you must be Ivan Wilson, from that new group I've been hearing about?" Azazel asked/
Hajime wasn't exactly proud of using Laxus' father and Slade's names for his disguise, but it was much easier for him to remember, which was what mattered.
"Silent Echo, yes. Azazel, correct?" The disguised Hajime knowingly asked.
"You'd be correct. Now, I've heard you discovered several new magical plants, right? I'd love to get my hands on those, you know," Azazel said with a light tone.
"Has anyone ever said you're a character?" Hajime asked, surprised by how unserious Azazel was being. He knew Azazel wasn't that serious, given his behavior in canon, but it was surprising to realize it was all but confirmed. "Anyway, I can sell you my current selection," Hajime paused to add some drama, "or you can buy from the expanded catalog."
Hajime handed a pamphlet showing the current selection, plus the added moonreed, hexbulb, and nine other plants.
Hajime and Monet had determined a list of plants that were safe and easy to harvest, without adding too much strain on him.
Since Hajime was still using sage mode to grow everything quickly, and he was basically the only one harvesting because of his clones, he had at least half his clones working in the garden to keep up with demand. If not for his constantly increasing energy reserves, Hajime was certain he'd die from exhaustion.
As Azazel looked through the list, his eyes twinkled with each new item.
'All these rare plants and one person managed to find them,' Azazel thought, looking up at Ivan.
"Where did you even find all these?" He asked with genuine admiration. It wasn't often that someone found something that interested him, but the man in front of him found not just one, but fourteen.
What's more, Azazel figured that if they were hiding eleven plants for this long, how many others were they hiding?
"I guess it doesn't matter if I tell you," Ivan sighed. "When I was younger, during my traveling days, I heard stories about how the Polynesians traveled across the Pacific and recklessly thought I'd try it myself.
I hopped on a boat and took to the seas, only to discover myself thrown into some random magic dimension after a kraken annihilated my boat.
The plants I found on an island that I washed ashore upon. I collected as many of those plant seeds as I could in a magical preservation bag I brought for my food.
After several months on the island, I built a raft from the magical trees to escape. There were other plants on that island, but I don't plan on risking my life to try and find that place again," Ivan explained his made-up backstory. The plants were from a Pacific island in another dimension, which was absolutely true.
Azazel cast a glance at Ivan, with something resembling pity in his eyes for less than a second, feeling like it was only an illusion.
"I'm willing to buy as much as you're willing to sell," Azazel said, trying to get off Ivan's somewhat depressing backstory. "However, would it be possible to get a bulk discount?"
"I do have an idea for something like that, if you're interested, of course."
[Flashback End]
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Author's Note:
Thanks for reading; I'll see you next time!