AN
Felt happy to be writing again, combined with making fresh soup and bread had me feeling happy. Take chapter 3 and enjoy it. Just don't expect chapter 4 to come out as quickly as this one did.
Chapter 3
Rias Gremory and Sona Sitri were not having a good night. Just as the sun had finished going down all hell had broken loose. A fallen angel, that really shouldn't have been in their territory, to begin with, had been brutally murdered in broad daylight in full view of the public. Not just murdered, but obliterated. They, and their peerage members, were forced to run around the city hunting down every witness and wiping out their memories. It wouldn't have been so bad if the fallen's wings hadn't been visible and scattered around the place.
While Sona and most of Rias's peerage were taking care of the memory issues, Rias was with her rook Koneko at the scene of the crime. Koneko, a petite girl with white hair and golden eyes, was delicately sniffing around the area. Her heritage as a nekoshou, a rare subspecies of nekomata cat yokai, gave her an enhanced sense of smell. She was currently trying to differentiate the scents in the area to try and find the perpetrator of the murder.
Rias, a tall buxom woman with blood-red hair down to her thighs, stood calmly to the side watching her precious rook sniff around before asking, "Any luck?"
Koneko wrinkled her nose but nodded, "Inhuman scent... fake? Artificial? Not right."
"Can you follow it?"
Koneko nodded and immediately did so. Her face showed little expression as she continued to sniff the air and follow the trail. The not-quite-right human scent was so odd to her, but that just made it stick out easily. She managed to follow the scent for a short distance but the further she got from the scene of the crime, the more the scent seemed to expand and thin out. Just a block away and the scent was too thin to follow. She frowned a little at that. It was like the wind had scattered the scent but the night had been rather calm. She turned to Rias and shook her head, "Gone."
Rias frowned, that wasn't good. She didn't so much care that the fallen angel had been brutally blown to shreds, just that it happened in her territory without her knowledge. There was also a part of her hoping that she could recruit whomever it was that so easily killed the fallen into her peerage. The deadline for her marriage to Riser Phenex was growing closer by the day. He'd started putting more and more pressure on her and her family to get the marriage over with. She was getting desperate and looking for any possible recruits that would let her beat him in a Rating Game and earn her freedom.
"If you smell that scent again, let me know right away Koneko."
The two of them joined with the others and helped out in fixing the witness problem. Everyone would be keeping an eye out for any suspicious activity. The last thing they needed was more issues with the fallen faction. Luckily, the dead fallen angel was in their territory without asking for permission from either Rias or Sona. This meant the fallen faction couldn't complain about one of theirs being killed. The fallen was trespassing and knew that a single toe out of line would mean death. Clearly, the dead fallen had picked a fight and lost horribly. Served it right.
Junichiro woke up the following morning feeling tons better. His head no longer hurt at all and his armor had protected his body from any injuries. He was in perfect health and went through his morning ablutions before deciding what to do for the day.
Last night he learned a valuable lesson. He was no shonen protagonist who could enter a fight with zero experience and fight against the bad guys like a pro. He got lucky in an odd way last night and he couldn't count on that happening again. Hell, he didn't want that to happen again. His defense was good against mooks and would get better over time, he just needed a good offense and some experience now.
He could take care of offense easily enough. Hell, with scraps of metal and plenty of mana he could make swords far more powerful than Excalibur. He could make guns that only existed in fiction and could obliterate anything. Again, if he had enough mana. Thanks to his infinite mana regeneration long-term projects were his cup of tea. The more mana he had to pump into something, the better. His instant regeneration meant that he was exercising his mana core almost constantly, which just happened to be the most standard way to expand it. If his maximum mana when he woke up yesterday was at ten, it was now closer to one thousand.
Growing a mana core by one hundred times was a wonderful thing and he expected his early growth would continue to be beyond all reason. However, once his mana core got to a certain point, he expected that growth to slow significantly since it would be much harder for him to run out of mana. Well, more like more annoying since he could always turn off the generator to empty his core and then turn it back on to refill it. He smiled at that but returned his focus to offensive power.
First up, elemental powers. Standard, basic, not uncommon, and therefore not unexpected and easily used in the supernatural public. There was a big difference in people's reaction between sending out a blast of fire or pulling out a disintegration raygun. The supernatural world would never balk at the fire. He could learn how to do magic himself, but human magic was annoying and he wasn't a Devil yet, so making an item was faster, easier, and something he could have instant perfect control over.
Slowly, a smile grew across his face, he was immediately covered by his armor. It was a partial inspiration, specifically its source material, combined with another source that gave him the idea. He barely noticed that there was no blood on the armor. He quickly pulled off the right-hand gauntlet of the armor and began his work. The green glow and red sparks surrounded the metal and began to change it to his desires. Slots opened up on the knuckles, the back of the hand, and the palm.
It was a small visible change, but the inner workings were vastly modified. The glove could now connect directly with his mana core. He was tempted to connect it directly to his supply of infinite mana, but doing it this way would allow him to work out his mana core and increase his own personal power. In the end, personal power is what mattered most, that's why he was going to steal the Boosted Gear from Issei, soon.
Once he finished modifying the glove, he slipped it back on. There was no real change that he could notice. That would change soon as he dumped a small amount of glass out of his storage ring onto his desk. He activate his sacred gear and melded the glass together to look like a small ice-blue gem perfectly sized to fit in a slot on his new glove. The gem began to glow gently as he started dumping mana into it as fast as he could. The more mana he poured into it, the brighter the gem began to glow until it reached a critical mass. With a brilliant flash of light, the process was complete after some ten minutes.
He'd drained and filled his mana pool many hundreds of times in the approximately ten minutes he spent pouring all of his mana into the gem to get just a single effect. The most powerful ice magic in existence. Something that would put Serafall Leviathan to shame and make Esdeath proud. Looking closely at the gem, one could see a small shimmering star at its core. The gem would transform the mana provided to it into ice spells while simultaneously massively amplifying that mana and preventing wasted potential.
With his examination complete, Junichiro carefully slotted the gem into the glove using the spot over his index finger knuckle. The glove easily accepted the gem and bound it in place. It would now be impossible for anyone but him to remove it without completely destroying the glove.
He chose ice as his first element since his Incursio-inspired armor reminded him of the badass power of Esdeath's ice magic. Freezing time? Too OP! Of course, it would take a huge burst of power to trigger the time stop which he didn't currently have. Still, conjuring ice walls for defense or icicles for offense, along with other sharp and/or hard things, would help him out a lot. On the downside, he was currently feeling a light throbbing in his skull. Making something with the potential to stop time would do that, he supposed.
With the ice magic gem in place and secured, he dismissed his armor back into its amulet form and went on to his next project. He dropped some electronic pieces of scrap from his ring onto his desk and pulled his laptop toward himself. It was time for an upgrade and while he could use pieces of wood to upgrade his laptop, using scrap electronics felt... well it just felt proper.
His laptop was surrounded by the green glow and red sparks of his sacred gear and began to change. It became thicker, a little larger, and distinctly more sci-fi-looking. His simple binary processor was upgraded to a full-on quantum processor. A processor so powerful it could simply ignore the firewalls and protections offered by simple binary systems. Of course, such a thing would be made even easier by the programs he loaded onto the computer that would allow him to do such a thing completely undetected. He didn't mess with making artificial intelligence though. Not yet at least.
Once he finished upgrading his computer, he decided it was time for a break from making things. The computer took hardly any energy or effort but his burgeoning headache had gotten slightly worse during the process. Using his newly loaded software it could do things that he really barely understood but had a firm concept of, that's why he created a Virtual Intelligence or VI. VI's were somewhat intelligent programs that were a couple of rungs below actual artificial intelligence.
The VI had a single 'simple' job that it was fully qualified to do. It used the laptop's internet connection to stroll onto the backbone servers of the largest bank in Japan. The VI's job was to use its unfettered access to the servers and the bank's network to skim a single yen off of every transaction that went through the system. That yen would then be transferred to his account. The VI would make the transfers and then hide them and prevent anyone from figuring it out by altering all records. No one would ever be able to tell where a single individual yen was transferred if they even noticed they were missing. Who would notice or care about a single yen?
With his money situation taken care of, Junichiro decided to spend some time around town to enjoy himself. A quick check of his bank account showed that it had already increased by tens of thousands of yen. He could afford to have a little fun and relax.
Raynare's day was going from bad to worse. It started with the unexpected and problematic death of that fedora and trench coat-wearing douchebag Dohnaseek. That idiot was supposed to keep out of sight and keep a look out for the devils and spy on them. Nothing else! She was convinced the idiot had picked a fight with someone, as he was known to do, and got more than he bargained for. Given the presence of that clearly fake aura at the scene, she wasn't completely surprised. Though she would expect someone strong enough to kill Dohnaseek to be good enough to hide their aura properly.
It was impossible, as far as she knew, to truly hide one's aura completely. Those in the know would always be able to sense something about other supernatural beings. They might be able to suppress their strength to seem weaker but you could always tell when someone was a devil, or another fallen angel, or an angel. There was always something there, a sixth sense as it were.
Whoever had tried to hide their aura had instead turned themselves into a beacon that would instead draw more attention. Dohnaseek would have been drawn to it like a moth to a flame in order to provoke a confrontation. She wanted to hunt down whoever had done it, along with her companions and some excommunicated exorcists, and kill them. Except, those devils had gotten there first and by the time she could examine the scene, all traces had become too old to lead anywhere.
If that hadn't been bad enough, just a few hours later there was a massive surge of power in the city. It was too massive to pinpoint down to a specific address which left her having to scour several blocks filled with hundreds of apartments and homes. Any of which could house the being responsible for the burst of power that every supernatural being in the city would have felt.
Case in point, the reason for her most recent annoyance. Devils were all over the place looking for the same thing she was. She could see both the Gremory and Sitri heiresses along with their peerages scouring the area. She wanted to stay but she couldn't risk them thinking Dohnaseek was part of a group. They had to think he was just a random fallen passing through, so she was forced to blend into the crowd and make her escape.
The whole situation stank and she was not looking forward to reporting about everything that had happened in less than twenty-four hours.
Rias was... annoyed. First that dead fallen and now this! Someone had done some serious form of magic in the middle of her territory without so much as a 'by your leave!' Worse, the spike of magic was so massive that neither she nor Sona could pinpoint exactly where it had happened. They were left with several blocks of the area to search. Normally, not so bad, but several blocks of a residential area filled with apartment complexes? It was now a needle in a haystack. They would need to keep an eye on the entire area and look for someone with a large amount of magic.
She also couldn't help wondering if this was the same person that had killed the fallen angel. She doubted it though. The feeling between this huge spike and the one left near the fallen was vastly different. Still, two incidents in two days were annoying and not what she wanted to deal with. She had her own issues to deal with and didn't need this added to her plate! Though... She now potentially had two recruits for her peerage, if she could just find them!
She grumbled to herself as she did her part of the search, looking for anyone who had magical talent that was even slightly above the human average. The other devils and all of their combined familiars doing the same all along the area. Hopefully, she would find who she was looking for and get them to join her peerage.
Junichiro rubbed his stomach as it growled. It was time for some lunch and he wanted to go to a nice place. He dug through his closet and smiled at his selection of clothing. His parents weren't super rich or even regular rich, but they were well off and they provided him with a nice variety of clothing. He slipped on a pair of black jeans, a white long-sleeved button-up shirt, a thin red tie, a black vest, and converse style sneakers. A nice mix of casual and high class. He figured that since he had average looks for a Japanese male his age, he could spruce himself up in the clothing department. He definitely didn't look like any sort of shonen protagonist with odd colored hair, eyes, weird haircut, or over-exaggerated trait.
As he turned around from locking his apartment's door, he froze in shock. Cold sweat instantly broke out on his brow as he saw something he'd hoped not to see until tomorrow at the earliest, longer if possible. Rias Gremory, sister of Sirzechs Lucifer the strongest devil, a red-headed, lazy, and spoiled young woman. Seeing her walking the street with her head swinging around as if she was looking for something made him want to punch himself in the face.
He instantly knew her presence so close to his home was entirely his fault. He'd specifically made his items at the scrapyard yesterday to avoid using magic so close to her and Sona. He knew this was all that stupid fallen angel's fault! If that dick hadn't scared the piss out of him, he wouldn't have been desperate to make something he could use to fight and make something as powerful as he had. He originally planned to make something small to block all emissions from his apartment but that had completely slipped his mind.
Making something small was highly unlikely to draw their attention. Small acts of magic probably happened all the time. Making something like his ice magic gem probably set off every alarm they had monitoring the city. He silently cursed himself and almost ran back into his apartment to hide. He realized that would be odd behavior and a bad thing to do. So, he straightened his shoulders and ignored Rias to the best of his ability. Considering the way her chest bounced with every step she took, it was a difficult task to try and ignore her.
Once she was out of sight, he made his way directly to a modest restaurant to enjoy his lunch. He had planned to make that signal blocker for his apartment, but his plans had changed. He was going to head back to that scrapyard to make some more items and gather some more materials into his storage ring. His first priority would be that signal blocker then some more offensively inclined options. He didn't want to have to leave town every time he felt like making something, after all. Yes, that was his plan... right after lunch!