[Phenex Estates]
[Riser Phenex]
As it turns out, knowing that the whole world could potentially end at the hands of a beast of apocalypse so strong that even the Biblical God spent a great deal of his essence to seal it away is one hell of a training motivator.
I feel energized, I push, I pull, I study, I train, I struggle, and then I rest so that I can do it all over again.
Then I see the sheer differences between my power and that of my elder brothers, my mother, and my father... and then I get depressed.
It's normal, I think, to sink down to your knees and despair when it feels like the entire weight of the world is resting on your shoulders. Unfortunately, my mind was filled with anything other than boobs, so merely poking a titty and playing with a nipple wasn't going to give me a Super Saiyan power-up.
This moping lasted for a few hours, primarily during my recovery periods when I was too exhausted to continue training and my everything hurt from the strain. When I'm lying on a bed, too tired to move and even breathing makes my chest twinge there wasn't much else I could do but think about things. Why was I doing what I was doing? Would it even be enough? Could I possibly achieve the heights needed to even have a hope of making a difference? Was the training I was doing even effective?
I wasn't really an avid fan of DxD at all, and I mainly watched it because a few of my co-workers liked it enough to stream it in the break room when we weren't sweating our asses off on the rig. I was no stranger to fourteen-hour days of back-breaking labor- drilling, laying pipe, and pumping crude saw me fit enough to build a strong body (and an even stronger bank account), and the many years of hard work performing laborious but repetitive tasks ad nauseam gave me enough mental fortitude to keep on trucking despite the strain of the grind.
Though the difference was back then I wanted to have a house that was my own, a work truck and a commuter econobox, my motorcycle, my dirtbike, and a few other toys (read: my gun collection), and to have all of them paid off. Once I had all of that it was simply about stacking up my cash, padding out my investment accounts and 401k, and worrying about what I was going to do for two months while we waited to get the order to drill and tap into the next oil well on the list. Maybe even think about going back to college and getting a degree I could actually use; I didn't become a roughneck because it was what I wanted to do- I got sucked into getting a fancy degree that nobody cared about.
Here in this new life that I found myself in?
I wanted so much more- a loving wife who would give me beautiful children, a strong (positive) reputation, to own a few successful businesses, and just as a little extra maybe do a little bit of world-saving.
The problem was I had no idea how to go about doing that except 'get stronk', and considering my prophetic abilities have only been giving me slide-show visions of how cute my future little sister was going to be it led me to enter into a vicious cycle of terror-induced motivation with bouts of apathy and maudlin fueled self-pity parties.
To try and counteract this I'd shifted my focus into researching all of the shortcuts used by Low-Class and Mid-Class devils to get any sort of boost they could before their next Rank Up assessment.
Tonics- alchemical potions utilizing mana-rich ingredients found in the Underworld and on Earth- were a popular option, and given the bevy of research on them conducted by Ajuka Beelzebub himself, they have been proven to work. Though while they weren't snake oil that could cure everything from weak magical strength to horrible magical control, they did work at increasing a devil's overall strength by a small amount. The same was with rituals that harnessed ambient mana to force-feed a devil's form until they were just a touch over-full, and then maintaining that level for a few hours until the excess was allowed to be released; much like an elastic container the devil's body would hold onto a fair portion of that extra capacity permanently.
The issue with these methods was that they either required heavy investments in money or time.
As the saying goes, time is money.
I had been paying the alchemists to prepare my tonics out of pocket, so that wasn't much of an issue seeing that I was frugal with my funds, but paying my tutors to work with me on a schedule so that I could still venture into the Dungeon at least once a week had seen to it that I was barely at replacement levels; if I accrued any more expenditures or heaven forbid did something stupid like break something expensive it would see me wiped out. As far as the issue of time went, I kept eight hours to myself for sleep and had to cut into my leisure time heavily.
A year and a half ago I'd commissioned the family enchanters to create an enchanted circle that had been carved onto a stone slab and inlaid in blooded silver (my blood), and that slab rested on a wheeled dolly so I could move it under my bed and out of the way when it wasn't needed. Of course, my father had to be the one to tell them to do it because the mere thought of a High-Class devil such as myself utilizing the strengthening methods of the lower classes caused more than a few lips to sneer.
I feel like I had lost a lot of respect from the artificers asking for it, but fuck them; as long as we paid handsomely and they delivered what was asked for on time then it didn't matter if I was their friend or not. A third son I may be, but damnit I was a Phenex! You'd think that with the extreme fixation on strength, on 'Might Makes Right', that they would applaud their Young Master for not resting on his natural-born laurels and taking his growth and development into his own hands. Yet they all believed firmly that these strengthening methods were beneath me, and that only the weakest of the weak sought to use them simply because they did not have the unholy lineage of the Original Seventy-Two Demon Pillars running through my veins.
Regardless, I utilized them both because they were proven and effective.
Marginally effective.
The strength gains I made were there- they were provable and undeniable, but yet they were very underwhelming, and they only grew less impressive as time went on. Not that their effectiveness decreased, but as I grew older and my natural strength came into play they eneded up feeling lesser than they had at the start.
At best, I could liken it to two fledgling bodybuilders who had the same physiques, same metabolisms, same diets, same workout plans, same work ethics, but one of them added basic supplements like whey protein and creatine monohydrate to their nutritional plans. The strength and size gains of the latter over the former would be quantifiable, and observable, but ultimately if at the end of a study the latter only gained 2.5 kilograms of lean muscle mass and a 5% increase in functional lift capacity more than his counterpart... was all of the money spent on that protein and creatine worth it?
In the case of the bodybuilders? Probably not, because all of that extra muscle could be lost, but for devils? Our gains were for life. You didn't get weaker unless you got crippled. Every last smidgen of strength that I gained from kneeling on a cold stone slab with itchy skin and drinking foul-tasting tonics daily was strength that I would carry with me until the day I died. And while I lived in a world where one Satan-Class devil could be anywhere from fifty to one hundred times stronger than the entry level Ultimate-class... most battles I feel like I would be fighting are the ones where the inches mattered just as much as the yards.
Even still, I could see why the devils turned up their noses and ultimately thought of it as a waste of time because as I aged I could feel my body coming into its own with each year closer to adulthood. The gains I made year-over-year just from aging up made the gains I made with the tonics and meditation seem paltry in comparison. If I never worked a day in my life, then just from my lineage alone I'd be in the top 5% of Devils strength-wise by the time I turned twenty-five, and it was just that sort of arrogance that led to the creation of Riser Phenex.
Even the once-weekly training sessions in the Dungeon saw me improve by leaps and bounds. My ability to sense magical energies improved to the point where I could see the curses as they slithered toward me in the air, my control over my internal energies skyrocketed as I was forced to redirect or repel said curses, and my strength- particularly in bursts- grew many fold as the Dungeon wasn't keen to let me believe that I could defeat it and I had to break a lot of illusions. With the Dungeon being a seemingly living entity I could feel that the more I improved the more the Dungeon would raise its difficulty; it was smart, I was sure of that, and the Warden that I hadn't ever had the guts to meet with likely had something to do with it.
This brought me to my physical training, which mainly consisted of calisthenics until my brother Regen brought out his enchanted weight set (he used to body build for fun in California with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The man himself!) and set it up outside near the family training fields for me to use since they were just collecting dust in his extremely large closet. He even took time out of his busy partying schedule to show me the ropes- not that I needed them- but considering there weren't exactly books in the library about weight lifting I contented myself with letting him show me the various lifts and how to conduct them properly.
We never really did get as much time to spend together as a family given our schedules, so I felt a warmth settle into my chest as my elder brother went out of his way to help me out. So I took him up on his offer to help set up a devil-oriented lifting plan and forced myself to stick to it.
With my hands gripping the dumbells I lowered my torso down to the ground into an exaggerated push-up, and with a flex of my back and triceps, the circular weights spun freely until I was held a few inches off of the ground in a t-pose. I held it for a few seconds before I flexed my chest and biceps and returned them to the starting position. I repeated this for reps until I could do no more, and then I continued to the next exercise in my super set circuit- weighted lunges- without pausing.
Even if Devil physiology meant that I didn't have to worry about putting too much stress on my joints- and even less so with my Phenex regeneration- that didn't mean I wouldn't perform every exercise just so. I was far from skilled enough with the Phenex fire that was the source of our regeneration to be able to control its healing potential; it was either 'on' or it was 'off'. My brother Ruval was one of the most skilled users of it that the family had seen in generations, and that man could pick and choose which injuries were worth healing in real time.
So with my weaknesses in mind I made sure to practice the mantra of 'Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. Form is everything' because tearing a ligament or breaking something would be a surefire way of tossing all of the physical training that I'd done that session out of the window.
Once I hit the turn-around point, which was a bright orange plastic cone, I began my walking lunges back, my body moving as I willed it despite the screaming in my muscles.
It was on the way back my eyes tracked away from the pavilion where the weights were stored to my mother and her Queen, Soo Young Kim- or as she liked to be called 'Veranda'- sat on a picnic blanket with one of the maids standing by behind them with a large parasol held in her hand. Soo Young, if my mother was to be believed, which I did because there was no reason to doubt her word, was once a runaway Korean princess of some kind who had been betrothed to a greedy lord who was giving the then ruler some problems. My mother rotted his mind by exposing him to the depths of her prophetic powers- his human brain meats unable to comprehend the vastness of her aura- and then he became much more docile and easy to lead; Soo Young Kim married the man afterward and took control of his vast holdings and when he died a few years later of a brain hemorrhage she folded herself back into her Lord Father's family with great honor.
Then once she grew old and grey- the woman on her deathbed- my mother returned to collect what was due, and thus the Queen of my mother's peerage was her very first piece.
Such a thing wasn't too far outside the norm given that most of the older generations of devils never really used theirs at all; even then the devils of my parent's peer group were more interested in collecting politically powerful humans, such as princes, princesses, generals, or popular statesmen. They were generally more baubles to be shown off to their friends while the younger generation had begun to focus highly on recruiting powerful beings, such as monsters, yokai, or humans with Sacred Gears.
Long, perfectly straight light brown hair framed her heart-shaped face, where two large watery blue eyes seemed to drink in the world around her; they gave her an air of naivety and youthful exuberance but I knew for a fact that she was as smart as they came. Full, pouty lips drew everything together and acted to funnel attention away from her curvaceous body; she had breasts, hips, and a bottom that had no business fitting onto a slim Korean woman's frame, but it was all by design. She was beautiful and attractive, but her features made her appear more innocent and gullible; a boon given her line of work.
While my mother was in her usual resplendent dress, Veranda was relaxing in a white turtleneck sweater and some crisp blue jeans; she seemed to pick up some of America's fashion sense, which I shouldn't have been surprised about given her role as the 'Senior Liason' between the Korean and American branches of some of family businesses. Though that in truth was only her cover because she was actually the Chief of the Phoenix Group's Corporate Counter-Espionage division; when she wasn't taking a vacation here in the Underworld to attend to my mother as her Queen, she was traveling around the world to the businesses we had in search of would-be thieves and plants- both mundane and supernatural alike.
Given that the umbrella corporation where all of our holdings were consolidated had only a thin veneer of separability from the mundane world it made us a frequent target for infiltration from the other factions, it was sort of a joke for the various families to play around with their corporate names- Shitori Medical Solutions, Gremori Holdings Group, etc, etc.
"Look at him go, Veranda!" My mother cooed, the woman waving a handkerchief at me as though I was a horse at a race track.
I set the weights down next to the others and hopped up onto a short set of parallel bars that had been lowered to take into account my height. My legs protested but they still coiled and let me hop up, and I gripped the bars tightly. I slowly lowered myself into a dip before I returned to the starting position, and then from there I levered myself up into a handstand and lowered myself until my head passed the bars before pushing myself back up and lowering down to perform another dip.
Such a thing was possible for a mortal gymnast, but they had to lean a great deal into their balance as well as know where and how to apply leverage to manipulate themselves. Even for my six-and-a-half-year-old body I was so far beyond them it wasn't even funny; I could push myself through everything with strength alone, and it was only my current level of exhaustion that gave these exercises any degree of difficulty.
Still, it took me over two hours to reach the point where I was struggling, and I needed to find a way to cut that down if at all possible.
"Doesn't he remind you of little Regenald, Veranda?"
"Yes he does, M'lady."
"So cute!"
Mother, please.
I had to struggle to not laugh because the movements I were doing required a large amount of concentration given how tired I currently was, but still, seeing my beautiful and regal mother acting like a soccer mom was just almost too much for me. I was lucky that there was no one else but family who would give me any grief, and thankfully dad was working, Ruval was preparing for a rating game, and Regen was off at some afternoon brunch-bash to schmooze up some up-and-coming High-Class devils who were looking for possible sponsorship.
"You can do it, Riser! Push! Up! Down! Up! Down! Give it all you got, my little feather~!"
That was when my maid helpfully threw me a lifeline.
"Young Master?" From the handstand I could see Lirianne tap her fingers against her wrist, and I let out a sigh as I dismounted the bars. The moment I had enough space around me for her to work the maid swept up with a pair of sopping wet towels in her hands and let I her wipe me down; I had tried to do it myself, once, but after that I never attempted it again.
Maids could be quite scary even if she was nowhere near me in strength; she handled my schedule, menial work, linens, my underwear, and delivered my meals when I was busy catching up on my school work and couldn't attend dinner with the family. And I had come to adore my sweet maid, and not allowing her to handle her chosen duties seemed to make her incredibly despondent; it was all an act, I'm sure of it, but her blank stares and sad eyes seemed so real to me...
Having my secretary in a maid's uniform out for the count for just a few days after I insisted that I was "grown up enough" to bathe myself and get dressed on my own... was just an experience too painful for me to ignore; both my heart and my carefully curated schedules cried.
So she got to do with me as she wished. It is terrible. Woe is me.
Shaking my head I focused back to the present as I gratefully took the water bottle she offered me.
"How much time do I have until I need to attend Lady Frostwhite's lessons?" I asked as I took a long draw from the water bottle she handed me.
"Hmm, half an hour. Enough time to spend with your Lady Mother before heading back to the estate," She spoke demurely as she took the towel and water bottle from me.
You don't need to prod me of all people to spend time with my own mother!
Still, I gave her a small smile, "It appears as though you've read my mind. Tell me, is that a skill all maids learn? Or is it something of a specialty of yours?"
Her lips quirked as she bowed her head, "It is the responsibility of a maid to anticipate the tasks of her chosen Lord. A true maid is said to be almost prophetic in her ability to see to her Lord's needs and desires; while I still have a long way yet to travel on my journey, it does aid me greatly that my Lord is a straightforward individual."
My blue eyes narrowed, "My dear Lirianne, are you implying that I'm simple?"
Her lips twitched, "My dear Young Master, I would never be so bold as to imply such a thing. You are a young man who has a strict schedule, and you carefully plot out your days in advance with few deviancies or outliers. Your needs are few as you are a self-sufficient individual, and your wants are even fewer; as such I have little to account for."
I sighed and scrubbed my fingers through my damp hair, "A picture-perfect response from my ever-perfect maid."
"I aim to please, Young Master," She curtsied even deeper, and I could have sworn I saw her hips shake but it must have been a trick of the light. I complimented her a fair amount, but never had I actually complimented her directly about her skills as a maid.
Still, I only had half an hour before a four-hour block of politics and etiquette with Lady Frostwhite and I needed to recharge my batteries at my designated Mom-onium depository.
Though before I could step away a fresh towel was draped over my shoulder, and I gave Lirianne a nod of thanks as I strode over to my mother.
I folded the towel up at my mother's invitation and I laid it across her lap before I laid down on the picnic blanket and rested my head on her pillowy thighs.
A heaving sigh escaped my lips as I felt my mother's manicured nails slither into the sweat-damp golden locks on my head. I'd once asked her why she fiddled with my hair even if it was nasty, but she simply told me that after having handled my 'nappies' a little bit of sweat wasn't going to stop her from toying with it. I wasn't going to stop her, my mother gave the best nail massages.
'Mom-onium intake protocols initiated... 1% charged'.
Already I could feel my flesh pebble as her fingers expertly quested through my hair and lightly scratched at my scalp.
Ah, why does the world have to be stupid and end? Why can't I just turn into a dog and sit on my mother's lap all day?
"Fuufuufuu~, you seem a bit troubled, my little feather. Why not tell your mother all about it, hmm?"
There was little need to conceal my feelings from my mother of all people; she was my biggest supporter after all.
"I feel like I'm going to start stagnating soon," I kept my eyes closed as I simply luxuriated in her touch, "In the beginning when I started this adjusted routine it was easy to get tired, to know that I've done all I could do. However, as time goes on and I grow stronger I am finding myself very crunched for time; between my studies with my tutors, looking over the state of my businesses with Father's representatives, and my supplemental regimens I am having a hard time finding the hours in the day."
I pointed toward the weights and equipment that I could feel Lirianne putting away while I basked in my mother's presence, "Just two months ago that same routine would have smoked me. But now? I'm having to try and compress that routine and more into the same time span. I need something that could help me exhaust myself further. It's not just with my physical training, it's my magical training as well- I have to create dozens of fireballs and sustain them for hours in order to start to feel the strain... and Father, Ruval, and Regen are leery about letting me push myself more."
I could feel the vibrations from my mother's hum in the slight bulge of her pregnant belly; little Ravel was on the way, and I was stoked beyond belief, yet I was also lamenting the time-sink she was sure to become. Something was going to have to give, but I hoped that soon enough I would be released from my studies so that I could put my sole focus into training.
"And the worst part is that the Dungeon is by far the best training I can get," I muttered as I interlaced my fingers over the abused muscles of my belly, "I can only go once a week and sustain the ludicrous costs of shuffling everything with my tutors but... I'll be a chicken painted gold if it hasn't been worth every penny. Every time I go down there there are always great leaps in my abilities, be it my magical capacity, throughput, or control. I could grow so much stronger if I could get in there two days a week, and I could be High-Class by the time I'm ten if I could get three days a week!"
My mother being my mother, she absorbed my complaints with a gentle hum, and I shivered as her fingers stroked over the shells of my ears before teasing the tips of my earlobes.
"That is very unfortunate, my dear," She sighed commiserateingly, "I've tried to tell your father not to hold you back but it seems that he has grown increasingly stubborn as the years go by."
"Just like a mule, it is the nature of men to dig their heels in when you try to lead them to where they should go," Veranda spoke as though she was dispensing some ancient Korean wisdom, "Yet there are times that such stubbornness is needed; as long as you hold tightly to the lead their dug-in heels just might keep you from making a poor decision and striding off a cliff."
I felt my curiosity pique a touch at the rather bold statement from my mother's Queen; they were as close as devils could get within a peerage. Sisters, friends, lovers, and sometimes she even watched over me when Clarissa could not, but to outright state that maybe my mother might be a touch enthusiastic in training me?
That would be immediate grounds for disciplinary action in any other family, but in the Phenex family, we valued the well-informed opinions of our members.
"I would never advocate for anything that would put my son at risk unduly," Her voice was cool but not chilly, "He wishes to train and grow stronger, and as his mother, I will advocate for him to do just that."
My blue eyes cracked open, "I'm not looking to rock the boat here, dear Mother. Just venting. If this is to be the limit of what I can do then... I will just have to make do."
"Fufufufu~, now, now, your momma loves you dearly my child, but she isn't about to run roughshod over her husband and sons! They are more knowledgeable than I about what is a safe level of progression for your magic, however, that doesn't mean that I don't have a few tricks up my sleeves that can help you achieve your goals!" I resisted the urge to run away the moment her thumbs and forefingers clasped onto my cheeks, but unlike most women, she had the decency to not see if she could make them burst; Phenex children always seemed to get abused more by others because 'we could heal from it'.
Not that I didn't understand because, in my last life, there were a few things so cute that I wanted to just grab them and squeeze the life out of them. Because they were so cute. I had a big Great Dane that my parents kept with them while I was out on the rig, and Charlie was the biggest damn dog ever, and she was so cute that I couldn't help but wrap my arms around her big barrel chest and give her a good squeeze. In return for the love I bestowed upon her, she sat on me. Great Danes are heavy.
Ah, I really miss having a pet.
"What do you have in mind, Mother?" I arched an eyebrow and she gave me a playful, mischievous smile as she tweaked my nose.
"Oh, don't you worry about that for now, my little feather! Let momma take care of it, but it will take some time so just... carry on as you have been and let yourself be pleasantly surprised!"
I closed my eyes and smiled, "Of course, mother. I will do just that."
"Such a good boy you are~" She cooed before she raised her thighs, thus raising my body up into the air a little bit, so that she could bend over and plant a kiss to my forehead, "Now off you go, Lady Frostwhite is going to be teaching you more formal dinner etiquette today!"
I laboriously climbed up to my feet before spreading my arms out, and the clean white shirt that I had been wearing prior to beginning my workout was slipped onto me by Lirianne, "How... is it going to be different from what she has already taught me?"
My mind was puzzled because I'd already learned dining room etiquette years ago, and I always made sure to be seen using it since Lady Frostwhite liked to eat her meals above us so that she could stare me down like a hawk.
"We're going to be visiting the Gremory and Sitiri families because their two babies are going to be born soon! Everything you've learned thus far has been for proper dining with the family, but her standards when interacting with fellow Pillars in a public setting are much higher!" Elise Phenex clasped her hands to her cheeks and squirmed on the picnic blanket before they dropped to her belly, "They'll be born a few months ahead of the new baby, but I have a feeling that they'll grow up to be great playmates!"
I tilted my head back a little bit to allow Lirianne to tie my necktie, "I'm sure the three girls will be very good together. Gremory, Phenex, and Sitiri..."
When Lirianne stepped away I could see my mother looking at me with a considering gaze, "Do you know?"
Seeing her stroke the bulge of her belly gave me pause.
"I... saw it. I think. I think she'll be my new little sister, so..." I gave a nervous chuckle, "I could be wrong, but..."
"Very good, I'm glad to see your prophecy is coming along quite nicely," Elise Phenex smiled and patted me on my bottom, "Now I think it is time you left, little feather. Wouldn't want to keep Lady Frostwhite waiting, would you?"
Sighing I gave my mother and her Queen a shallow bow before I started walking back to the estate with my ever-faithful maid hot on my heels.
Mah, my mom-onium levels were only at 33%; how am I supposed to make it through the rest of the day now?
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