It had been weeks since the harrowing meeting with Zekram. Since the truth of the ancient devil's schemes had been laid bare. What little he felt for so fully giving into his own weakness and humiliated so completely for it by his ancestor had faded. All that remained was the cold determination the encounter had given him. Being beaten didn't matter. All that mattered was an old parasite making the world more complicated, making peace more tenuous, purely for his own gratification. His existence might have done some good in the past but it was despite his nature, not because of it. The time for purging of that parasite would come. It was necessary for the great organism of devil society to heal from its own self-inflicted wounds.

But Lelouch wasn't ready for that kind of definitive action. Not yet. Not even soon. He wouldn't fool himself into believing it would be quick or clean. A work of years or decades at least. In the meantime, there was still his mother's condition to contend with. Zekram had more or less given up before he even started. The loss of his aid wasn't much loss at all. Even so, even if Lelouch wasn't entirely back to square one with what he had learned on his own about the sleeping sickness, the situation was far more dire than it had seemed. He couldn't leave it to chance. The survival rate of sleeping sickness according to all reported cases was forty percent. He wouldn't, couldn't leave his mother's life to odds worse than a coin flip. Lelouch was not a medical researcher, however. The best he could do was collate data, try to find patterns in those who succumbed. In the treatments that allowed for survival. Not a simple task but one his mind was suited to.

And in the time he wasn't doing that... Well, he was still a devil. And contracts were still a pillar of their society. This one though... Ana had told him about this one. She had seemed so invested in this one. It honestly hurt him to see it end this way.

Four girls in only open robes knelt at his feet as he wore his full regalia. The room wouldn't have looked too out of place as the dungeon of a medieval castle. Complete with candlelight, chains, corpses and blood. While there were four living girls fearing for their everything below him, there were also four dead ones. Three who had died before he had been summoned. One, their killer, Lelouch had put an end to by his own hand.

In short order he had cowed the survivors, summoned Ana who had looked horrorstruck on seeing the carnage.

In his hand, Lelouch held the object that had caused this mess. An ancient book now stained with blood. To think some idiot schoolgirls managed to find a treatise on the True Key of Solomon. Or rather, a magician's insights on it. The True Key itself destroyed during the great war for containing Solomon's secrets of binding the pillars into service. Something no devil alive would allow to exist, even if only one on the level of Solomon himself would be able to use them. Most magicians alive would sell their firstborn to read even a few pages. And here these girls were. Novices dealing with powers they barely understood, flaunting them for everyone around to see. Then again, to blame this debacle on the book was unfair. Ana had sealed the book specifically to prevent this kind of outcome, unknowing that one of them was skilled enough to undo the binding. That was the danger of dealing with the talented. They had a tendency to succeed their way into worse failures.

"So, let me see if I have the events right," he spoke aloud, his voice making the girls flinch after the extended silence. "You found this book and, being young and uninitiated in matters of the arcane, tried a minor ritualcraft curse on a girl who had wronged you to make her masturbate in public. Along with several other uses for personal vendettas and for cash." Luckily for them, despite the advanced nature of the tome, the actual methodology of the magic the girls had used was fairly straightforward. Though it was unlikely to have much effect unless the one casting it had a significant amount more spiritual potency than the target. In this case the redhead was a girl with some formerly latent magical talent while her targets all had none. Even as unimpressive in the grand scheme as the redhead was, she might as well have been a god to those who had nothing at all.

He glanced down at them, saw no argument in opposition. "You gained confidence enough to do something drastic. You summoned a devil, thinking it would be the devil." Amateur translation could be confusing like that. And the house of Bael sometimes were considered the devils.

"In doing so, you summoned Ana here." He gestured at the distraught princess at his side. "She offered to teach you. A very accomplished devil gave her time and energy to properly guide you in learning magic. But that wasn't good enough, was it? You decided the lessons were too slow. Too boring. Ignore the fact you were learning powers beyond your mortal comprehension. After your brush with power humiliating your classmates, you wanted more and you wanted it immediately."

The redhead looked away. With a flex of his hand he used magically induced force to turn her chin up again. Forced her to look at him. "Look at me when I am speaking to you." He stared. She stared back, fear and doubt in her eyes.

"In a search for greater power, you turned back to the book that got you started. The one Ana had sealed. The one she sealed specifically so you couldn't pull a foolish stunt like this. And now look where we are. Four fools and four corpses. Was this the outcome you were hoping for?"

"The ritual was perfect! We did exactly as the book directed!" The purple-haired one. The one who hadn't lost the anger in her glare despite her circumstances.

That same force that forced the girls to look at him lifted the shameless girl. Her robe dropped, only hanging on her forearms as she was lifted into the air. He turned her to show her the carnage of the room again. "You don't have any room to talk back to me, to try to justify this!"

"We did, though!" The redhead, the one Ana had spoken to him of for having talent. Hiroko he thought her name was. She cringed as his attention returned fully to her. "I'm sorry but we did! I don't understand what went wrong!"

"You disobeyed your teacher's instructions for a start," he reminded her. "Then on top of that you decided to engage in a ritual of virgin blood sacrifice." He shook his head in disbelief. "Did it not even cross your mind for an instant that you were perhaps biting off more than you could chew? Even if it had all gone exactly as you intended you wouldn't have liked the results. As for what went wrong..." He considered for a moment dropping the unrepentant purplette but thought better of being so brutish even in these circumstances, placing her back on her knees. "Well, you might consider this your final lesson."

He made a show of flipping through pages, to find the one most soaked in blood. The ritual they had used. Even as it should have been ruined the ink was still entirely legible. "The ritual you used had a particular purpose. To imbue the casters with demonic power. In short, it was a ritual to imbue human magicians with the power to cast the same way devils do. No incantations. No complex spellwork or mandala. Just using raw will to enforce your reality on the world. But, demonic power is demonic power. It encourages and clings to the covetous, the lustful, the desirous urges and scorns the pious, pure and chaste. So tell me class, in this ritual virgin sacrifice, what might have been the fatal flaw of your efforts?"

If they couldn't figure it out after he spelled it out almost completely, Lelouch would have just abandoned all of them to their fate then and there. Fortunately for at least one of them, the redhead seemed to realise the problem. She looked to the haughty girl beside her. "Kozono!"

"What? You think this is my fault?"

"You said she was a virgin!"

"She was in the way that mattered!"

"What do you mean in the way that mattered?" Ana cut in.

The girl stubbornly shut her mouth, refusing to answer as though that would make this situation end better for her.

It wouldn't. The Bael heir's patience for this nonsense was running thin. He knelt, forced her to look at him. "I'm going to suggest," a section of his helmet slid open, "you answer any questions we ask you." On a human, there was no need to go beyond ordinary hypnosis. "What do you mean by 'in the way that mattered'?"

Her reluctant expression dropped to neutrality. "I paid the men who delivered her using her body. I told them they could do what they liked as long as they didn't use her pussy."

The two other girls still seemed unaware of the implications. "Wait, that's fine though, right?" one of them asked, "She was still a virgin so..."

"You idiot!" the redhead hissed. "You complete idiot! You were the one that insisted on doing this ritual and you literally had her defiled right before a ritual that needed purity?! You can't play technicalities with magic!"

At the very least, and Lelouch was admittedly lowering his standards for conduct in this situation, they weren't angry about the morality. It wasn't as though the others hadn't done reprehensible things before Ana had gotten involved. As people, every single one of them were rotten. Thankfully they had given him a way to get rid of them through their own actions. All it would take would be a conversation with the real Rosenkreuz and this little group of imitators would be disposed of one way or another. As reagents, he imagined. He didn't like dealing with that magician's guild for personal reasons, but they would owe him a small favour for letting them nip this in the bud before it could harm their name. Earning a favour and dealing with a group of murdering, sex trafficking, ambitious novice magicians? That sounded like a fine arrangement to him.

"You're correct," he acknowledged the answer. "Demonic power for the lot of you, intended to be a channel for the malevolent energies. Flowing through her to be rejected by her and thus move into you all. But, with her not being as pure as the ritual required, all that power was accepted by her soul. It brought her back from the brink of death, maddened by the energies she was never meant to wield." That was also the reason they would have disliked the outcome of a successful ritual. They would have suffered the same symptoms he had through adolescence. A rampaging id. Emotions and desires so much stronger than normal. Devils however, had biology and souls designed to contain that power. Humans did not. Horrible people as they were, they would have only gotten worse. Become true monsters that would make their current crimes seem paltry by comparison.

"You were the one who summoned me," he told the redhead. He didn't need to ask. She was the only one in the room who even vaguely knew what she was doing. "I have saved your lives and so the contract is fulfilled. I'll be taking this," he held up the book, "as payment."

He looked at the girls in turn. The two hanger-ons were rightly fearful. The redhead cowed, ready to submit to her fate, whatever that may be. The purplette... She was smirking at him. His eyes narrowed. He knew very little about her, but studying her bearing he came to a few conclusions. Ambitious needn't be mentioned for how obvious it was. But also moneyed. Perhaps even connected. She thought she would get out of this and simply move on. Find some other source from which she could learn real magic. Having at least some idea what to look for, she might even succeed.

How unfortunate for her. "As for what happens next. You will be kept here until the relevant authorities arrive."

"A devil is going to call the police?" the rich girl asked, raising a well-manicured eyebrow.

"Hardly. Were you aware there is in fact a real magician's guild named Rosenkreuz? Using their name for your money-making scheme indulging your schoolmates' sexual fantasies, they'll be none too happy about that." The rich girl leapt to her feet. Lunged for the door. He caught her in an arm and once again forced her to look him in the eye. "Sleep..." Her eyes drifted closed, her body gone limp as he lowered her to the ground. The other two backed away in fear, only to receive the same treatment.

"As for you..." he looked to the last remaining member of this little cabal. "You, Hiroko..." He glanced to his Bishop.

"Takashiro," Ana supplied.

"Hiroko Takashiro. Despite being a rotten excuse for a human, you have the luck of being mildly useful. As such, you get out of this mess alive."

"Really?" He could hear the hope in her voice.

"Devils rarely find cause to lie," Lelouch assured her. After all, more often the truth was far more sinister. "You'll live, so long as you give your eternal loyalty to me."

The redhead blinked, a shine of red appearing in her eyes, only visible to Lelouch himself. She smiled. "Of course! I'll do whatever you say, Master!"

"Good." One Pawn. One measly Pawn. But he needed to start using them at some point. Uniquely strong or strength in numbers. There were arguments for both. But this was perhaps a worthwhile use if only for a mildly talented magician and the experiment he could conduct. He laid the Pawn on her bare chest and watched it sink into her body.

Hiroko Takashiro died. And was reborn.

"Ana?"

He felt the unsettling energy of Viy spread throughout the room, then recede. "Viy doesn't see the vulnerability of control. But you are still her weakness. Your command, it isn't a control element any longer. It's a fact of her soul. A part of her being."

The pillar devil sighed. Not in satisfaction. The answer was interesting but he wasn't satisfied by this. None of it. "For her numerous crimes, an eternity of service. Honestly, it's better than she deserves."

"I'm sorry, Master Lelouch."

"Don't be, Ana. Her failings are hers alone." As he spoke, he moved toward the corpse of his own making. The blonde girl who had done nothing but get caught up in this horror show. Tormented, defiled, murdered, saddled with a power she couldn't control.

Once again he reached into a pocket. Fingered a chess piece held there. Another single pawn. A girl with nothing but raw power to her. Nothing but the power that was forced upon her.

He took another breath.

King and Bishop returned once again to Bael Castle with two more. A foolish monster with unquestionable loyalty. And a victim given an absolute command. To forget the horror of her final days. Reika Kitami would be given a fresh start as a servant, a Pawn of Lelouch Bael.

-(-)-

Much as the library at Bael Castle had become more or less Lelouch's personal territory for how much time he spent there, he had effectively taken it over entirely in recent days. Medical texts. Magical texts. Reams upon reams of collected data arranged in a manner only Lelouch himself understood. It had been difficult work acquiring it all. First the publicly known information on sleeping sickness. Then the less publicly known information that required him to use his own connections among the devil elite.

There were patterns that had emerged the more data he gathered but not anything that could lead him to a definitive cause, let alone a cure. Historically, devil medicine had gone for the antiquated human methods. Methods that could be colourfully described as 'fling shit at the wall and see what sticks'. The cause was considered far less important than the cure. Only recently had they given any consideration to the idea of epidemiology. With how few maladies devils actually suffered from and how easily most could be treated and cured it made some sense. Even Zekram had fallen into that same old trap of just doing the thing that seemed to work without thought.

The most significant pattern Lelouch had found... The distribution of cases was surprisingly narrow. Not in terms of location or age. But in class. It wasn't entirely isolated to the high class devils. There were some anomalous cases that didn't match the pattern in middle class devils. One low class devil. But other than those? High or ultimate class. Two thousand years of recorded cases and the only ones affected seemed to be the most powerful. Or the richest. Which usually meant the most powerful. He still intended to gather data points from further back but records from before the Great War were harder to come by. For the time being there seemed to be something about the rich and powerful that was causing the sleeping sickness. Perhaps something they had access to? Or something they required.

The evil pieces were right out. The sickness predated them and their inventor by millennia. Phenex tears perhaps? Some unrealised side effect caused by the sudden rejuvenation of the body? It was plausible... It would explain the tears being utterly incapable of curing the sickness if it caused it in the first place.

He cursed internally as he felt the odd beckoning sensation of another summoning attempt. Another human looking to bargain, though this one was familiar... And yet also not. And whoever it was, they were rather desperate. He frowned, scribbled down his most recent suppositions in his personal shorthand to get back to later. Donned his mask, then followed the summon.

Once again he appeared in a glow of yellow and a sudden billowing of fog. "You have called for me and so I, the Prince of Bael, have answered." He frowned inside his mask. He was still thinking about work at home. His heart wasn't in the pomp and circumstance. He needed to try harder. His surroundings were woodland, not immediately recognisable. Especially in the dark of night.

"I... Is that Lelouch?" he heard his summoner ask. A teenage girl he recognised. He wasn't especially familiar, though with how he had been used by her and her friends for intimate experimentation he probably should have been. A friend of one of his past summoners, Emily Withers. A girl who summoned him for the desire to kiss a boy, which then turned to him teaching her and her friends about intimacy between boys and girls. Of course as good, devout Christian devil summoners they protected their virginity fiercely. Not that Lelouch had been particularly determined to take it. They hadn't summoned him for a fair while. He had put it out of his mind as them no longer needing his services.

"Yes, that would be me. And you're–"

"Please help!" she exclaimed, grabbing his gloved hands. "Emily's gone missing and I don't know what to do!"

-(-)-

A/N: ARC CHANGE!

So, that's the most recent of the already published chapters. Judging by the way the poll is going on my GREAT FORBIDDEN P-WORD account, there'll be another chapter there on Monday for a week of early access before it gets posted here.

And, err, there was a review that... For some reason found issue with me introducing characters so quickly? When half of those characters went directly into Lelouch's peerage? Yeah, okay. Closing on a hundred thousand words and Lelouch has just over half a full peerage. Ludicrous speed. Sure, whatever. Worth noting minor characters can be a thing, such as these two. Not everyone has to get a deep and complex character arc. Code Geass' Yoshida and Inoue lived through the whole first season and barely got speaking lines. Sugiyama survived the entire series and I couldn't pick him out of a line-up.

As for who these characters are... You got their most important backstory here. But they're from Bible Black, specifically the characters as they were in the prequel. So if you want to look them up, there you go. It's hentai, and their backstory here outlines the content of it. Fair warning.