I sighed as I leaned back on the benches to stretch my back, absentmindedly waving back at the girls from track-and-field group as they ran past my spot. I tuned out their excited squeals and concentrated on the information I had gathered from Sona and Rias.
I was perhaps most surprised at the fact that there were FOUR SATANS running hell's affairs in this world, or that there was apparently a war between mythological creatures that came straight from the Bible. Oh, let's not forget, Devils apparently try to increase their numbers by means of converting the normal folk on their deathbeds.
And I could more or less guessed from her name, but Rias belonged to one of the 72 Demons based from Ars Goetia. But the fact that all of them were around and the amount of Prana leaking from them was quite substantial, that meant that my hypothesis was correct. This world was still at a time when the Age of Gods was still active.
It also compounded the fact that I was no longer in my home world, and that the craziness of this world has finally caught up with me. Oh joy.
With a sigh, I stood up and made my way to the gates just as someone grabbed my shoulder and forcefully turned me around. I immediately prepared the trigger in my head to project Kanshou in my hand, thinking that maybe the devils had resorted to option one after all. It was only seeing the offender's face did I stop short of cutting off the head.
"Shirou!" Issei shook my shoulders hard as he looked at me with very desperate eyes. "You remember Yuuma, right?!"
"Huh?" I could not help but stare at him blankly while trying to process the situation properly.
"Oh no, not you too! You gave me advice about my date with my girlfriend! And you fought her and the overcoat dude last night!" He demanded again while looking even more desperate.
"You mean the stripper lady who impaled you in the back on your first date?" I could only say the first thought that popped into my head after processing everything up to now. That definitely stopped the shaking of my shoulders, but it really shocked me when I saw his eyes starting to tear up uncontrollably.
"You do remember her! She is real!" He screamed in a Root be damned loud voice as he sobbed uncontrollably. I could only let out a light sigh and put a palm to my face.
This was going to be a long night.
...
"So all of that was not a dream?" Ise, as he had requested to be called, paled as he clutched the hot drink that I passed him. "I actually died last night."
"Sorry to break the news to you in that manner." I replied as I opened my can and chugged the contents down my throat. It took quite a while to get him out of the campus and calm him down considerably and it was really thirsty work.
"And you." He turned to me with an expression that clearly spoke of his confusion of his situation. "You are a wizard who saved my life?"
"Magus." I said again while wincing. Okay, I have to get that out of my system, it may not be helpful in this world. "And I only helped so much, my spells did not heal you the way I wanted them to."
"But magic can't be real." He said it a little forcefully as if to deny the abyss that was coming to him. With another wince, I brought up my finger and wrote something in the air. "Ansuz." A small flame appeared in my hand to illuminate the darkness around us.
"Holy Shit!" Ise jumped as he looked at the flame with wide eyes. It seemed that the final defenses of his sanity have been breached and he was now getting the actual situation.
"Yeah, magic is real. So are demons, devils, fallen angels, and other supernatural creatures." I extinguished the flame before looking at him straight in the eye. "Welcome to the Moonlit World."
"Moonlit World?" Ise asked as he sat back down heavily and looked at me unsteadily. It seemed the shock was too much for him and he was currently trying to grasp some lifeline to hold his sanity together.
"A nickname once used by my dad to describe the supernatural phenomenon normally hidden or kept hidden away from the normal people." I explained gently in the most detailed manner possible. "Typically it deals with creatures like ghosts, magus and other supernatural creatures, but also tends to include regular humans with unusual abilities or strengths."
"People like you and… her?" Ise asked with a hint of hesitation from the memory of his attack. That hesitation got my attention as I decided to get to the point. "This might seem unusual to ask, but what do you really remember about that night, and why were you asking me about my memories?"
Ise looked at his hands as if to check for feeling before closing them into fists. "It's just that no one seems to remember a thing about Yuuma! I even checked the school records, went to her classroom and asked everyone she bumped into, but all traces of her just disappeared, like she never existed in the first place. And something about me seems to be different. I mean I got stabbed, I should be dead in a pool of blood, yet I woke up in my bed with no wounds on me. I feel like I got sun-burn in the day, but I get stronger and faster when night comes. What is happening to me?!"
I frowned at his description of events as he took a few deep breaths to calm himself. This had espionage written all over it; back in my old world, the Enforcers or magus doing any work in any given area for an extended amount of time would first integrate themselves into the society, using magic and paperwork to ensure their activities were not discovered by the normal folk, then worked towards their target, be they Dead Apostles or Sealing Designates. Then after their target was captured or destroyed, they would simply destroy all records of them and employ memory wiping spells to clean up their tracks, occasionally removing other key personnel to ensure no loose ends.
That in turn would tie in what Ise had told me and the words that Raynare lady said to me. The fallen angel was targeting him specifically, and after killing him off, concluded her mission was complete and removed all traces of her existence to ensure she was not compromised. But considering I had interfered with that bit, chances were good that she may come after the both of us in the future, since I too was her target somehow.
But that did not help me in dealing with the second part of Ise's conversation.
It seemed that whatever this 'Peerage' was about, it involved converting a human into something similar to the undead, but with the mental state of a Dead Apostle. My stomach twisted at the idea while some of the swords in my reality marble started to get agitated at the prospect of taking down the possible creature in front of me. That meant that Ise was quite possibly turned into a devil without his consent or his knowledge, and he was now a damned soul who could potentially be called in to hunt others for similar reasons.
Maybe, just maybe, I would do him a service by ending his suffering right now. That way he would not be forced to enslave humanity and…
'Hmph, so for all your talk of heroism, in the end you cannot escape your fate.' A voice that I hated all too much echoed in the back of my head with that ever irritating tone of dismissal and smugness. Damn it, what should I do? I was supposed to be saving lives, but could I save one that was condemned in death?!
I looked at Ise again as he took another gulp of the canned drink that I handed him earlier. I got to think carefully about the choices I was about to make. This would determine how I would handle the situation from here on.
It was choices like this that made me suffer Rin's Gandrs and Luvia's extensive use of her wrestling moves, with the occasional wracking from Fuji-nee's Toraishinai.
"Ise." I called out to him, and he turned with a hopeful expression. My heart felt a little painful to see such an expression. "I am about to check your body, and I need you to keep still okay?"
"Uh, sure?" He replied uncertainly as I placed my hand on his chest where I remembered the wound was. "You might experience some momentary discomfort." I warned him before focusing my senses. "Trace On."
"Whoa?!" Ise shuddered slightly as I poured my Prana into his body and used Structural Analysis to check his body. Right there. The eight objects that I have detected earlier were still inside him, but they felt more 'complete', as if it had bonded with him over time. I also noted that a devil's body was apparently not too different from that of a human, apart from the increase in muscle mass and bone density. But one of the biggest differences was the presence of Prana Channels that started forming inside. He had a few poor-quality circuits inside, but that was still a jump from his old state of zero circuits.
But what really caught my attention was something that resided inside his left arm. I was not too sure what it was, but something about it felt both familiar and alien. What was it?
"Ba Bump."
Something stirred inside me, like a creature sleeping deeply inside me was stirring, traces of its drowsiness starting to disappear as it struggled to wake up from its slumber. That was an unusual feeling and it did not help my uneasiness when I detected the 'thing' in his left arm was seemingly reacting to me in a similar way, like it was starting to wake up. Best to end it now.
...
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