As I continue to watch the brats with disdain, they don't notice me. Or rather, they refuse to acknowledge my existence. Tutored in devil lineages, they immediately pin me as someone beneath them.
The noble devils fill the hall with chatter and laughter, voices arrogant, entitled. A group to my left boasts about their bloodlines, one particularly insufferable brat - blond, aristocratic, and unbearably smug - bragging about how his father personally trained him in combat, like nepotism was worthy of pride.
Kid, if I got even a smidgeon of that personalized attention over the years, I'd bend your Lucifer over the knee Bane style, right now. I think with derision.
Another, a young woman with violet eyes and a regal stance, smirks as she flexes her aura, allowing her demonic power to ripple through the air wastefully like a peacock spreading its feathers. Posturing. Measuring each other. Playing at strength, oblivious to what true power is.
If they knew real suffering, they'd be silent. Or dead.
One doesn't have to guess to suss out which I'd prefer.
I glance down at my hands. The gloves hide the slight trembling, but I can still feel the rage, the will to just wring their necks! The reminders of a life stolen from me centuries ago paraded in front of me.
Four hundred years.
Four centuries of hate, suffering, bitter endurance and rank humiliation.
Again, my thoughts return to Vienna…
I had another life before these monsters ruined it. A good one. My second one to boot. Reincarnation not being a wholly devil business, although I am unaware of how I was given the 'honor'.
I was reborn in Vienna in the sixteenth century. With the mind of a man centuries ahead of my time reborn into a noble's son, I had thrived. I had built a name for myself, used my understanding of the world to rise above the common rabble, to be respected and admired. A genius, they called me. A visionary.
I had brought the city a reputation of wondrous music and art long before the likes of Mozart would exist. Brought science forward long before its time…
I had thought myself simply a time traveler. Reborn in the mundane world. Happy to live out my life and enter the history books as one of the greatest ever born.
My life had been pleasant enough, albeit I had been annoyed to be missing some modern conveniences… Yet I had nothing else to complain about.
I was to marry a beautiful woman, my future set, riches galore given to me for my skills. I had accepted my new reality.
And then Aldovar Shax came for me. My star, just like Icarus, had risen too far, too quickly.
I'd drawn notice from a world I hadn't realized existed.
I remember the moment with perfect clarity. The way the world tilted on its axis as reality shattered before my eyes. A noble devil, exuding effortless arrogance, stepping into my world as if he owned it. Because, in his mind, he did.
My horror made me sick, when at that point I realized that far from being a time traveler in the mundane world - I was in the world of Highschool DxD.
And a devil wanted me.
Not for my mind, not for my accomplishments, but as a toy, as a pet. Another piece in his peerage of renowned humans. And when I refused, when I balked in horror at the mere thought of servitude for eternity, he simply took what he wanted anyway.
The Evil Pieces were new, and any restrictions on their use hardly followed if even put into place at the time. I had absolutely no way of protesting or stopping the monster before me.
The sheer ecstasy in his eyes as he strangled me to death, dry humping me all the while, would set the tone for the next four centuries.
Death was not the escape I had hoped it would be in that moment.
That night still haunts me at times four centuries later, making me wake up in a cold sweat, remembering my desperate attempts to draw breaths, those eyes meeting mine…
I was reborn in the darkness, my humanity stripped away, my soul branded with the cursed reality of being a reincarnated devil in the service of the House of Shax. A bishop piece spent on me.
Not so I could become a magician and take advantage of the Bishop piece, no…
I was a tool. A toy. A possession. A slave.
I clench my jaw, my gloved fingers curling into fists. The weight of that brand still burns, a phantom pain I will carry until the day I die again. That disgusting Bishop piece is still inside of me to this day.
The new Lord Shax had no interest in making me strong when he took me. He hadn't taken me for battle, hadn't molded me into a warrior or mage. I had been nothing to him but a convenience, an ornament, a thing to be used and discarded as he saw fit.
The fact I was and am a straight man, only furthered his amusement as he took what he wanted when he wanted.
I tried to kill myself thousands of times those first few years…
Unfortunately people that keep slaves and have magic, also quickly learn how to keep their slaves alive through anything…
And I do mean anything.
The strain of slavery in the end lay not simply in the work one does, or the pain and humiliation one suffers. It lies in the sheer helplessness. The knowledge that no matter how strong I became, no matter what I learned, I would never be free.
I was forbidden from training, my growth stunted at every turn. He made certain of it, watching with cold amusement as I wasted away in gilded servitude.
When I tried to break free, to claw my way toward something greater, I was punished.
I had snuck into the examination for Middle-Class Devils shortly after my first century, secretly bartering knowledge with one of the nobles who'd shown up to push their peerage through, for a sponsorship to enter.
I did after all have plenty of knowledge of things, even if the most important bits were far in the future.
I passed, of course.
My master had not been pleased.
Twenty years in isolation. Twenty years in a cell no larger than a walk in closet, the walls pressing in like a coffin, the silence absolute. No light. No sound. No escape.
Do you know what the mind does with that much time?
At first, it rebels. It screams. It rages.
And then, slowly, over time, it fractures.
Yet at the same time I extracted some benefit from it.
I had nothing in that place but my thoughts. My body constantly spent working out, for lack of anything better to do, and my mind - oh, my mind was never still either. I imagined battles, refined magical techniques I had never been allowed to practice, albeit refined only in theory… I dissected the limitations of my demonic power even though I could not touch it.
I took my first steps to the power of a High-Class devil those days…
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