- Hey guys, so, I have decided, and, based on the voting in Chapter 2, and it will be Ingvild Leviathan the official girl of Issei. Thanks for reading. Authors Out. -
The corridors of Kuoh breathed out the last of the day—lockers clapped shut like exhausted mouths, clubs unfurled their banners, and the sun dipped low enough to turn windows into sheets of molten glass. Students poured off campus in laughing streams. I moved against the tide, quiet, steady, toward the old Gothic lump at the far edge—the Occult Research Club's building, all ivy and secrets and smug rooflines.
Inside, the air had that tea-and-tension blend devils think is hospitality. Akeno poured with the grace of a ceremony and the eyes of a storm that had decided to be polite. Kiba stood near the wall like an apology sharpened into something useful. Koneko perched on the couch munching sweets, face placid, gaze feral. And Rias sat behind her desk like a queen in a room pretending not to be court, elegance so clean even her worry had edges.
The door clicked closed behind me. Four sets of supernatural attention pressed a welcome into my skin that felt like a note slid under a door: Entertain us; don't get blood on the rug.
"Hyoudou-kun," Rias said, crossing one leg over the other, the tension of the move smoothed by practice. "I accepted your offer. You'll help me against Riser. What's the favor you intend to demand in return?"
Even Akeno's smile flickered. The room lifted its chin.
I leaned against the door, arms folded, picked my words up with both hands. "It's simple. I want unrestricted entry to the Familiar Forest. The one under Underworld jurisdiction."
Rias blinked. "The Familiar Forest is restricted to devils and certain licensed magi. 'Common' humans are not allowed without explicit permission from the Maou's office."
"Which," I said, calm and boring as an invoice, "is why I'm taking it in trade. Not money, not clout. Access."
Kiba's voice was careful. "May I ask why?"
"You can," I said. "I won't answer."
A muscle in Rias's jaw did a small, elegant thing. "Even if I were inclined to authorize it—which I can't—it requires clearance from…" She trailed off, because her mouth did not enjoy admitting constraints. "…the highest office."
"Then we'll ask nicely," I said.
The air answered before she could. A soft glow blossomed above the desk, a red magic communication circle blooming out of geometry and authority. The voice that came through had weight—not the heavy, tired weight of bureaucracy, but the effortless gravity of someone who had never once needed to raise his tone to be obeyed.
"Rias. I heard about your disagreement with Riser Phenex. Care to explain why the Phenex are complaining to my office?"
Every spine in the room straightened. Akeno's smile tidied itself away. Kiba's hand eased an inch toward his sword hilt by reflex and then stopped by discipline. Koneko's eyes shifted; the cookie paused.
Sirzechs Lucifer.
Rias rose fast, composure armoring the flinch. "Onii-sama! I was just—"
"—about to let someone else talk," I said, stepping forward. My pupils narrowed into reptilian slits, a soft green thrum waking along my iris. The room widened by half an inch.
Sirzechs chuckled, the sound of a lake deciding to ripple. "And who might you be, young man?"
"Hyoudou Issei," I said. "Independent. Not part of any peerage."
"I see. And you think you have the right to interrupt a Maou's family discussion?"
"I'm not interrupting," I said. "I'm resolving it."
"Hyoudou-kun—" Rias half-whispered, horror and a little awe playing tug-of-war.
"The marriage issue between Rias Gremory and Riser Phenex," I said. "I'll settle it. One-on-one. A duel."
The room forgot how to breathe. Even Ddraig shifted his weight inside me.
[Now you're talking like a dragon, boy.]
Sirzechs was quiet long enough for the floorboards to ask whether they ought to be worried. Then: "A human challenging a Phenex devil to a duel? That's bold. What will you demand if you win?"
"My condition is simple," I said. "When I defeat him, I get official authorization to enter the Familiar Forest. No red tape, no chaperones, full freedom of movement."
"And if you lose?"
"I won't."
It wasn't a boast. It was a weather report.
Sirzechs didn't laugh. He didn't scold. The smile in his voice deepened, old and knowing—someone who had watched arrogant men die and certain ones win. "Very well. I'll officiate personally. You'll have your duel. If you win, the authorization is yours."
The sigil folded into itself and went, leaving the room in a silence so full it should have counted as furniture.
Rias stared at me like I'd thrown a chair through her life and spelled "you're welcome" with the glass. "You just… challenged Riser to a duel. In front of Lucifer."
"Yeah," I said. "You're welcome."
Akeno laughed, light and edged. "You are interesting, Hyoudou-kun. Most humans faint in front of devils. You negotiate."
"I make progress," I said.
Koneko chewed, unimpressed and attentive. "Puny human."
"Maybe," I said, letting a grin cut through. "But I'm the only one who offered a solution."
Rias exhaled, shaking her head, red hair catching light like a promise she didn't want to make. "You're insane."
"Correct," I said, pushing off the wall. "But I'll win."
I left before the room could remember objections. Outside, the campus had that late-day glow that makes trees look like they believe in themselves again. The duel felt like a stone in my shoe and a horizon at once. Good. I prefer busy shoes.
Night made the warehouse hum with our history. I'd repainted the floor so many times it had learned forgiveness. Chalk lines split the concrete into drills; the pillars had scuff marks that made their own constellations. I unwrapped the practice spear and moved until my blood stopped pretending to be human, my shoulders stopped lying, my breath caught its metronome.
"Tell me you didn't actually pick a fight with House Phenex," Kalawarna called from a steel beam, arms crossed, silhouette all angles and competence. "Third son at that."
"Gremory needs the win," I said, rolling my wrists. "I need access. Everyone eats."
She dropped, light pinned under her boots, wings fanning once before tucking away. "You sure you're not just showing off?"
"Oh, I am," I said, grinning. "But, it's also good practice."
"You're close," she said, eyes narrowing. "The air around you's thicker. Like a storm pretending not to know its name."
"High Mid-class won't cut it," I admitted. "I need that one more step without dragging out the obvious. If I want to win without opening my whole deck, I have to evolve. Tonight's the line."
Kalawarna conjured a spear of light like a thought sharpening. "Then let's make you cross it."
We started small—rhythm drills, footwork patterns that make floors tell you things, the turnover of blocks that cut power without cutting motion. Then we let the power out an inch. Then another. Heat built slow, honest—no theater. I met her blade with mine and felt the frameworks lock: her wingwork anchoring her turns; my weight sinking into the earth and throwing it back up through my hips; our auras rubbing like flint until sparks decided to be a plan.
[Breath long. Root the heel. Let fire coil, not jump. Again.]
"Again," Kalawarna echoed, and we collided. Light bit my guard; I trimmed it and returned a line of heat that forced her angle. She cut overhead; I stepped inside and wrote a short, sharp sentence with the butt of the spear into her side that would have been a cracked rib if we weren't us. She smiled like it stung good. I swallowed the urge to directly chop her head and apologize at the same time. Real training does not come from politeness, but I can't kill my training partner either.
"Phenex regen," she said between clashes, matter-of-fact and mean. "He won't stay hurt. You need something that turns his ability into a liability. Heat's his friend."
"I know," I said. "But so is mine."
"You going to throw him in a freezer?" She smirked. "Be sure to label your leftovers."
"Oh, no, I have more training controlling heat and fire than him, this I am certain," I said. "Heat the air around him, then drop it hard—make his own flame bite him. Or… ash glaze—turn the ground into molten crust, force his footing to betray him, keep him regenerating skin he can't use."
"Dirty."
"Necessary. And I have one more card without using too much if common abilities overtrained and raw strenght aren't enough."
She came low; I went lower, swept her ankle, pulled as she leapt, turned her flight into a stumble she rescued with a wingbeat and a curse. I pressed, two strikes, one feint, a twist, and we reset, breath loud and even.
[Do not forget earth,] Ddraig murmured. [Fire is hunger; earth is teeth. Encircle the bird. Make the air his only friend and then steal it.]
Suffocation's ugly.
[War is an auction of ugly. Bid wisely.]
We built the barrier up and then slammed against it. My skin prickled—familiar and new. The crimson aura I keep drowned swelled, tidy until it wasn't, and then the scales rolled across my forearms in a shimmer that made the concrete decide to stop being brave. My heart—the heart of Karyan, strated to pump more diluted draconic blood into my veins. I struck, feeling the old dragon-lilt vibrate down the spear into the floor; light and heat joined like a handshake that had become a pact.
Kalawarna staggered back, laughing, surprised and delighted and slightly offended by physics. "Congratulations," she panted. "You just kissed Low High-class."
I grinned and wiped sweat with the back of my wrist. The grin stuck. "Good. I'll need it."
She landed, wings folding, eyes bright. "You're going to win."
"I don't plan for other outcomes," I said.
We cooled down like professionals. She wrapped my knuckles tight and checked a bruise with a healer's grumble. I taped her wrist when she pretended it wasn't sore. We drank water and exchanged insults we didn't mean. The warehouse settled around us like a dog heeling—content, alert.
Outside, lightning stitched yellow veins through low cloud, the air charged enough to make hair think about standing up. A storm with manners. A herald that didn't care about titles.
I showered quick and hot. At home, the house was mid-evening: Dad arguing with a panel show no one else could see, Mom reading recipes and calculating the cost of hope, Asia quietly humming as she folded laundry into shapes that made the dresser forgive us. It was the ordinary that makes war worth it.
Later, when the door clicked and the neighborhood tucked itself in, I sat with the lance wrapped across my lap, hands on cloth, eyes on nothing. Ashdod thrummed, a mountain's pulse felt through a cave wall.
[You will not draw it tomorrow,] Ddraig said, not a question.
No. Not unless he brings gods or maous to the table. I'll win with less, or it isn't a win that teaches the right lesson.
[Good. The saint's blaze is a name you cannot keep secret twice.]
I breathed, slow. "I can beat a phoenix without being an arsonist."
[You will be tempted to burn his pride. Do not. Break it with craft.]
"Understood."
I lay back on the floor and stared at the ceiling until it remembered stars. Plans wrote themselves behind my eyes like chalk on a board you never erase: thermal gradients and pressure drops, earth shells and air vacuums, seals learned from Grigori bind-work disguised as devil tricks because politics likes its lies symmetrical. Boost timing: ten seconds between the nineteenth and twentieth or my ligaments sing dirty songs; twenty first if I'm rude to myself. Regeneration and fire counters: deny oxygen, deny leverage, deny closed systems, use holy fire if necessary. Phoenix fire eats fuel; I'll feed it lies.
Sleep came like a contract you read and signed and filed. It would have to.
Morning acted like nothing was wrong. It made breakfast, put a show on for Dad's running commentary, let Asia turn eggs into a moral lesson about patience and heat. I laughed when I should and meant it. Mom made shores like it was a life and death situation.
At Kuoh, rumors sprouted mid-hallway and bloomed by lunch. "Did you hear—" "Issei—" "ORC—" "That guy—" The building ate gossip like bread and exhaled it as gospel. Sona's gaze found me once—glasses glint angled to a question mark—and moved on. Rias didn't look at me when she passed, which meant of course she saw me and filed me as a new column in a ledger she didn't admit to keeping. Akeno smiled a "be careful" that sounded like a storm warning you couldn't read.
After school, the message came down through the polite channels: the duel would be that night, Underworld-side arena, officiated by Sirzechs; Grayfia present as the kind of secretary who could end civilizations with a calendar; rules standard: no outside interference, incapacitation or concession, fatalities strongly discouraged by etiquette and enforced by wards, property damage within reason (devil reason), no extradimensional weapons whose spirits predate recorded history (that line had Azazel's aftershave on it). Phenex regen not considered cheating because bloodline laws are written with winks.
I told my parents I had cram school; Mom believed me; Dad sighed in relief that I was a try-hard; Asia watched me tie my shoes with the intensity of someone who had learned the world is a thief. She hugged me at the door like she thought I might forget the motion.
"Come back," she said.
"I'll be back before your tea gets cold," I said. "And Kala will be nearby if you need help with something."
Kalawarna ruffled Asia's hair with the care of someone who has not yet practiced ruffling hair and does not want to hurt it. "We'll watch," she said to me under her breath, tone business. "No interference. Just moral support and several plans for if someone tries to break etiquette."
"Good," I said. "Bring a sweater."
I teleported to the Stadium with a sigil that Rias gave me in name of Maou Lucifer.
The arena existed in one of those Underworld districts designed by architects who think bloodlines need stadiums. Marble had opinions about itself; the sky wore a color not available in human catalogues; the stands filled with devils who pretended not to gossip and failed. Magic lights made everything taste like theater. Sirzechs stood where a referee shouldn't look comfortable and did. Grayfia stood behind him and made time a weapon.
Riser Phenex arrived like a billboard soliciting adoration. His peerage trailed like a train. He looked at me with a face that had been sending staff to buy fear from markets since childhood and smiled. "You must be brave. Or stupid, to offer a duel, human."
"Oui, chef," I said. "Let's start."
Sirzechs lifted a hand. The wards hummed, complex and old, an orchestra pit of intent. "By the authority vested—" He did the due, as politely as law can, and then: "Begin."
We stepped forward into the circle. The ground under my feet belonged to nobody; the air had not taken sides; the rules held like glass.
Riser ignited cleanly—a wash of yellow and orange flames that made the audience murmur. I smelt the vanity in it, the control. He was talented. He had trained a little. He had been allowed to believe talent and training always worked, even if he had not trained harder. The fire licked the air like a stray cat convinced it was a lion.
He threw the first volley. I let it pass a foot to my left, felt the heat slap the ward and hiss. He circled, lightfoot, testing. I matched, boring. He scowled.
"Hyoudou," he said, voice carrying so the stands could hear courage. "Kneel and I will make your end painless."
"I've already got plans," I said.
He surged. I stole the heat in front of my face an inch to the right—the air temperature plummeted; his flame hit it and stumbled; for half a second his control stuttered. I stepped through that half second and wrote a lesson with my palm against his ribs that the wards translated into "polite." He flew backward, landed hawk-clean, regen already unfurling. The crowd made the noise devils make when they see a novel trick.
Riser laughed, generous. "Interesting."
We danced. He built flame into lattice; I built absence into holes. He tried to smother; I denied fuel. He used elevation; I made the air above him heavier than it should be; he sank without understanding why. He regenerated a cut across his forearm three times; I made the fourth cut not quite cut but crush, then fed pressure along the bone so the regen argued with what the bone wanted. He snarled for the first time, tiny, an animal sound.
[Do not celebrate the small victories,] Ddraig said. [Stack them until they become the only kind.]
We kept stacking. He burned the floor until it glazed; I thanked him and slid on it into a position he hadn't considered legal. He got angry and interesting; I got quieter and meaner. At the edge of the wards, I tested one seal—Dragon weave disguised as overpriced devil filigree—and saw Sirzechs' eyes flick, approving that I'd learned to dress my sins.
I continued redirecting his close-range attacks and absorbing the heat from his fire magic, making him increasingly irritated, not to mention that my counterattacks targeted areas of great sensitivity, to inflict a lot of pain without actually hurting him, after all, I want to overload his brain first, and then attack his body, and for now, it's working well.
Riser's flames rose to visible performance. He was getting better, good. He'd earned "good." He'd never met "ruthless" shaped like "craft." Every time he reached for a narrative, I took it from his hand and put it back wrong.
He overcommitted to a gorgeous, useless arc meant to stun an audience. I answered with ugliness—a small fire consuming oxygen inside the stadium's barrier, generating vaccum where his lungs expected air, and me being a dragonoid human technically, basically didn't nead oxygen from the air when I can absorb oxygen from the earth. He stumbled on oxygen, eyes going wide, regen useless against physics. I gave him the breath back before rules complained. He coughed out surprise and rage and something like fear. He masked it badly with contempt and slung a fireball he would later blame on impulse. I let it eat the space behind me and, in the wash of heat, stepped into his guard, two inches of theft, and whispered to the ground and it rose around his ankles like a lover and a jail.
It held for one second. That was all I needed. The butt of the earth spear I had made tapped his knee, the edge kissed his wrist, my palm took his sternum again. The wards sang their half-disapproval; Grayfia's eyes narrowed a micron. Sirzechs' smile warmed a degree.
We broke apart. The audience shifted from "spectacle" to "study."
Riser hissed through teeth. "You think tricks make you worthy?"
"I think discipline makes me dangerous," I said. "Your regen is a crutch."
"His regen is a birthright," someone in the stands muttered too loud. I filed the voice under "later" and replied "And your stupidity too, Mr. Demon-Nobody."
Riser built himself again. I shrank my aura until there was nothing for his preconceptions to grab. And then, quiet as a hand on a shoulder, I began to Boost.
[Boost.]
Soft. Hidden. Pressure built in bones and breath, not aura. One. Two. Three. I kept the red gauntlet hidden, used Ddraig's voice as metronome. The jewel in my hand hummed once and then fell silent like a monk deciding silence was a better sermon. By the fifth, my blood felt like a furnace I was babysitting; by the seventh, my muscles felt like they were wearing formal clothes. I smiled and made it look like a thought.
Riser charged. I increased the temperature in a column in front of him and he flinched without meaning to, not because the heat, but because I have imbued the fire with a little of holiness. The earth lance I was holding drew a line in front of him, and it began to melt at the surface. He stumbled. I didn't show pity or joy. I pressed.
A lance made of lava began to lunge toward him, continuously.
And somewhere under the press, the memory of ash and desert and a saint's lance stirred wanting and I told it No without words. Not today.
[Good,] Ddraig murmured. [Win without the loud name. You have others.]
We fought. We studied each other. I wrote on his body with gentle authority; he argued with answers the Phenex house teaches their children in gilded rooms. The stands leaned in. The wards sang under their breath. And when I saw it—when I saw the moment the phoenix fire hiccuped and the regen hesitated because his body had to choose between finishing one repair or starting the next—I took it.
I didn't end him. I ended his hope.
A short, ugly series: calf tap with the lava spear's butt which burned, heel crush in his midsection, elbow edge to the brachial plexus, and a breath stolen low then given back cooked. He fell graceful because noble boys like him are trained to fall in front of audiences when fighting someone like me. He rolled, rose, fire surging to cover humiliation. I denied oxygen, burnig it with my own fire, for half a heartbeat again and returned it with interest and watched him realize he hadn't been in a real fight before.
He showed me respect then, briefly and badly, by not saying anything.
We reset, breathing. The arena waited. Sirzechs looked pleased like a scientist at a breakthrough he hadn't paid for. Grayfia looked ready to file a report.
I let the next Boost happen and told my tendons they were loved.
This was going to be a long night. That was fine. I like work.
And somewhere, a forest I had not yet walked stirred at the edge of my future and seemed to say, If you come here, don't arrive small.
The duel would write its own chapter. Tonight was its first sentence.
We circled under a sky the Underworld had commissioned and paid for with bloodlines. I kept my promises small and precise. Riser kept his flames big and convinced. Somewhere behind my back teeth, a dragon grinned. Somewhere under my sternum, a saint watched with folded hands.
The storm above Kuoh painted the human clouds a darker gray and made fathers check windows and mothers check candles. Asia sat with Kalawarna and held a mug too big for her hands and whispered my name once like a spell she didn't want to waste.
[Push it, boy,] Ddraig said, soft thunder. [Let the dragon breathe without devouring. Eat enough to live. Leave enough to come home.]
"Aye," I whispered in a ring no one else could hear. And stepped in again, calm and cruel and kind, exactly in the measure the world had earned.