Of Alliances & Assimilation

by W.Alderson21

You'd expect the life of Raylix Gremory, born in the middle of the Great War, the second son of Zeoticus and Venelana and the younger brother of Sirzechs to be... an interesting one, right? Well, you'd be right, but who would've guessed that it's turned out like THIS? Rated M for the usual stuff.

25. VI-4: The Underworld Reformation Faction

Uhhh...

Hey.

Yeah, I know, I know, it's been FOREVER since I updated this damn thing. I know I usually keep to updating my fics once a month, and that just came to a screeching halt with no seeming rhyme or reason. After 24 left off on such a massive cliffhanger too. For that, I don't think I'll ever be able to apologize enough.

SO I'M NOT GOING TO TRY. I think just an attempt at an explanation of why this chapter, above all others, took such a long-ass time. Apart from how long it is: I mean, it's half as long as the first Harry Potter book BY ITSELF. I feel like that part of why it's taken so long should go without saying... even if that phrase has no meaning now that I've, you know, said all that.

BUTT N-EE-WAY! Next, there's the simple fact that as the 25th chapter, a silver anniversary of sorts, and the fact that this chapter's kinda the climax of this entire first saga of OA , I'd felt since the beginning that this chapter was gonna need a bit more time in the proverbial oven than those that came before. But just HOW much... I underestimated. VASTLY.

As development of 25 began, I quickly came to the realisation that what I had in mind for this chapter was smaller in terms of scale than a milestone like this really called for. A LOT smaller. Like three episodes of Bluey vs. the Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended editions, of course). THAT kind of difference in scale. Luckily for me, one of the people that I talk to a lot and bounce ideas off of regarding this fic stepped in and has been helping me a LOT with the chapter's development, both with expanding my ideas for what this chapter was originally going to be, suggesting some of their own, and even helping me with writing it all out/making sure it all fit together as well as it possibly could. They've asked to remain anonymous, but they know who they are and they have my eternal gratitude. They're the fucking best, they've BEEN the fucking best throughout all the shit, this entire fic wouldn't be close to what it is, never mind what it's GOING to be, without them.

However... life happened.

I don't know if we racked up a shitton of bad karma in our past lives, or if whatever God or Devil up/down there that we can't see (and if they even exist, won't just fucking reveal themselves already? IF YOU'RE SO ALL-KNOWING, YOU'LL KNOW WHAT YOU NEED TO DO TO GET THE ENTIRE WORLD TO BELIEVE IN YOU, SO WHY THE FUCK WON'T- ahem) felt like playing a cruel joke on us, but throughout this entire development, stuff that I can only describe as 'shitty poopoo life shit' kept happening and happening with both of us, pushing development of this chapter further and further back. When one thing was dealt with, another would crop up, and so would another once THAT was dealt with, rince and repeat until... well, today. I don't know if I can guarantee to be able to keep up my unofficial 'once a month' fic updating schedule. The most I feel comfortable doing is amending that to an official but less restrictive 'WHEN THE CHAPTER'S READY'. Same goes for my other fic, And Then There Were Quirks, if anyone here is also reading that. If you're not, and you like Ben 10 and/or My Hero Academia... give it a look... please?

But now, after nearly half a year... it's ready. Not just my, but I think OUR magnum opus, it's ready.

So here it is.

...

Enjoy.

---

Raylix felt a sense of tension tickle his skin as he scanned the crowd currently forming over the area.

It made sense that so many Devils had come into the scene, considering Katerea, Shalba and Creuserey hadn't exactly been quiet when they started their outdoors fight… but the sight of Lilith showing up in Hebeth for the second time in only two days, this time along with both her daughters and Raylix's own gathered companions? That likely attracted whoever's attention hadn't been caught by all the noise of the fight and left him feeling he was seeing the damn near entirety of Hebeth's population right now!

Katerea's focus was also aimed at the huge crowd of her faction's servicemen, scanning the looks on their faces as a majority stood outside, none daring to venture in or make a run for it. A small minority, however…

"What the heck is going on here?"

"Did someone attack us just now? I thought this location was well hidden!"

"Hold up, is that Lady Lilith?"

"What happened to Lord Creuserey and Lord Shalba?"

"Is Lady Katerea alright!?"

"Did she do this to them?"

Those words rang across her ears as she moved her gaze across the crowd, spotting expressions of shock, fear, uncertainty, sometimes a combination of the three, and a few others on those she could directly see… and presumably across everyone she couldn't directly see.

Though, who could blame them? Nothing about the current situation was able to be explained by the scene alone. Shalba and Creuserey were battered, bloodied, and had just dropped unconscious after Lilith had done… something, to them. She was fine, yet both her and Raylix were standing over the pair of them, along with the Vanishing Dragon, some creepy-looking Gothic-Lolita girl that Katerea had never seen before, a pair of Magicians (one of whom Katerea was sure some of her servicemen recognised as a Platinum like she had), a bluenette who looked like she was holding back a grin at the sight of Shalba and Creuserey's ravaged forms, and… wait, was that Tamamo-no-Mae? Wasn't she supposed to be dead?

Either way, the overall sight had to be a pretty paralyzing one, to say the least.

'Keep calm.' Katerea quickly told herself, 'Yes, there's quite a shocking sight before them and a lot of people you've never seen before, but if I take time to explain everything…'

She moved to look at Raylix, who did the same as they shared a glance and breath over their current circumstances. However, before either of them could indicate or speak to the other about any potential next steps, Lilith's voice cut through the silence that had been stretching out for the last several seconds, ever since Hikari had dropped Shalba and Creuserey's bodies to the ground.

"Katerea, are there any servicemen currently operating outside of Hebeth?" she inquired. "And if so, can you get them to return here immediately?"

Katerea immediately turned to Lilith, shocked out of the silence by the Lilim Queen's return to an even tone, before nodding in confirmation.

"Good." Lilith continued. "Then you know what to do."

Katerea took a couple of steps away from Raylix and Lilith, opening a comms-circle by her ear and waiting for a couple of seconds, before addressing whoever it was on the other side and ordering them and anyone who served under them that they needed to return to Hebeth immediately. Raylix wasn't exactly paying attention to that, he was more occupied by Lilith opening a comms-circle of her own by her own ear, also waiting for a couple of seconds as she waited for whoever it was on the other end to reply.

"Yes, hi." Lilith spoke, as whoever it was seemingly replied. "Did you just get up?"

There was a pause for a few seconds as whoever it was on the other end replied. Whatever they said prompted a smile out of Lilith for a moment.

"Get him to make something for you, it's what he's there for." she replied, seemingly holding back a giggle. "Listen, things in Hebeth are going well right now. The rest, though, might take a little bit longer than I was initially anticipating. I'm still coming back, just a bit later than I thought I was going to. Thought I'd give you the heads-up."

Another pause, this one slightly longer. This time, Lilith couldn't hold back a small giggle into the comms-circle at whatever whoever it was on the other side made their reply. Even though it wasn't him she was giggling specifically towards, Raylix couldn't help but feel his stomach turning in circles at the sight and sound of Lilith doing something like that.

"Who do you think you're talking to?" she asked, as she recomposed herself. "See you soon."

The comms-circle around her ear disappeared, and Lilith took a breath, looking over at Raylix as he spoke up.

"Who were you talking to?" he asked. "Can't be someone I know, since…" he trailed off slightly, his eyes shifting over to Hikari (who had dispelled her White Dragon armour) and Kurumi, who were quietly chatting with each other off to the side, and back to Lilith.

"Oh, have you not…?" Lilith replied, giving a look of surprise for a couple of seconds, before shaking her head. "Never mind. I'll introduce you after we've taken care of this." she assured, her eyes flicking to the gathered crowd of TSF servicemen that were still outside Shalba's mansion gates, before back to Raylix. "They can be trusted, Raylix, I promise you."

Turning on her heel, Lilith looked over at both her daughters and Raylix's companions, who had fallen silent and were looking over at them.

"If you want to head back to the house, you're all free to do so." Lilith spoke. "For what's about to happen next, I only really need Raylix and Katerea here with me. The rest, you can stay or go, it's your choice."

"We'll be staying." Hikari immediately replied, closing the distance between herself and her adoptive mother half a step. Kurumi nodded in agreement, imitating her sister.

Irene, Cinder, Esdeath and Tamamo on the other hand, looked between each other for a couple of seconds, remaining in place before all collectively shaking their heads.

"We'll head back." Irene replied, waving a hand to open a transportation-circle large enough for herself and the other three women to step into. "See you back at the house, Raylix."

Raylix nodded to Irene and the other three women, with Tamamo letting out a loud yawn as the circle activated, warping the four of them away in an instant and leaving Raylix, Lilith, Hikari and Kurumi alone. After a second or two, Katerea approached them.

"It's done." She informed the four of them. "All operatives outside Hebeth will be returning, as soon as they possibly can." The tan-skinned Devil let out a small sigh, shifting her weight from one foot to the other as she looked from Raylix to Lilith. "But I don't know how long all of them are going to be. I told them to get back here ASAP, but that could still be at any time… and we still need to address the rest of the faction." She gestured to the gates of Shalba's mansion, outside which the crowd of TSF servicemen continued to watch what was going on, though all their prior discussions had ceased the moment Lilith began talking. Raylix could tell, at a glance, that they- at large- were clearly starting to get restless.

Katerea wasn't wrong in her remark that they needed to be addressed, and Lilith seemed to think the same as her eyes flicked to the gathered crowd, before looking back to Katerea and nodding.

"Go ahead." She spoke, taking half a step back as Katerea stepped forward, reaching up with one hand and firing off a loud bang out of it. That caught the crowd's immediate attention and caused those who had since been distracted by their personal thoughts to either jump or flinch as the bang shot through the air.

"Thank you." The granddaughter of Leviathan began. "I'm sure you're all wondering what has happened here, and rest assured, any questions you might have will be answered. Though I feel it's best to share the most important point first," she pointed down at the ravaged, still-unconscious forms of Shalba and Creuserey, that laid a few feet to her right. "Which is that, as of today, Shalba and Creuserey's tenures as co-leaders of the True Satan Faction… are over!"

Instant uproar erupted from the crowd. Raylix almost winced from how quickly the noise level jumped from relative quiet to a pure cacophony of yells, with everyone outside shouting over each other in a frenzy of disbelief and confusion, all giving their simultaneous thoughts on what Katerea had just declared. No singular voice could be heard above another, and so he prepared himself to take half a step forward, intending to draw Rubilacxe as a warning to the crowd to quiet down so Katerea could keep talking without any danger from the crowd before her.

But, before Raylix could even summon the First Devil King's sword to his open hand, he caught the look on Lilith's face aimed squarely at him. She didn't even need to speak, or use the telepathic communication she'd established with him yesterday for him to tell what she was asking- no, ordering- of him with that look:

'Don't.'

After a second of consideration, Raylix closed his hand, and watched as Katerea, to quell the raging crowd, fired off an even louder bang from her hand than the one she'd set off prior. It didn't completely quell the din that had broken out as a result of her declaration, but it was now noticeably much quieter than before.

"I told you any questions you might have would be answered, and I believe it's time to make good on that." Katerea continued, magically enhancing her voice a little bit. "By explaining what led to what you see before you this morning." Taking a second to swallow and lubricate her rapidly drying throat, Katerea began. "Some time ago, while out on a long-term mission in the human world in service of the True Satan Faction, my… then-ward, Raylix Gremory, encountered Lady Lilith on his travels."

Whatever noise the crowd was still making after Katerea's declaration about Shalba and Creuserey had died completely, as she looked back at Raylix and Lilith for a moment before turning back to the crowd and resuming.

"During that time, the Mother of Hell made a proposal to Raylix," she informed the crowd. "One for a potential collaboration between us, the True Satan Faction, and a growing power in the wider world known as the Khaos Brigade, whose goals are quite similar to ours. After hearing the proposal myself, delivered personally by Lady Lilith herself yesterday, and after considering every angle, I truly believed it to be the way forward for this faction, and deemed it the best path to achieving our goals of deposing the fraudulent noble-run and New Satan-led Devil government."

Silence followed for a moment, and then a few heads turned as a new wave of murmurs began to break out.

"Lady Lilith was willing to help us?"

"Amazing!"

"Wait, didn't she refuse to help us back when Bidleid asked for her aid?"

"Maybe the problem was how he asked her?"

"I remember him having a mark on his neck at Lucifaad…"

After a few more seconds of murmurs passed by, they eventually settled back into silence, a signal which prompted Katerea to continue.

"Shalba and Creuserey, however, didn't see it that way." She spoke. "In fact, they didn't see it at all, or even try to for that matter! Too blinded by their own self-pride, or focused on personal, petty past grudges against Lady Lilith, to even properly consider her proposal, they turned it down on those grounds. Had their reasons been more legitimate, I might have been willing to respect my then-co-leaders' decision to turn down Lady Lilith's proposal, but their actions yesterday made it clear to me that they care more for their own interests than the interests of the faction that we had formed nearly half a millennium ago!"

A new wave of murmurs followed, all more reactionary than the ones that had broken out moments prior.

"They refused her?"

"I can see why Lord Shalba might refuse, but…"

"Wait, was that really what happened!?"

Unlike last time, Katerea chose to continue on without waiting for another round of silence or having to let out another magical bang of any kind.

"This, obviously, wasn't something I could stand for with clear conscience, so I had to take action. With the help of Raylix, his allies, Lady Lilith, and her own powerful allies, one of which is this generation's host of the Vanishing Dragon- yes, the SAME Vanishing Dragon that she herself destroyed at the end of the Great War- we were able to make sure that Shalba and Creuserey's narrow-minded vision for Hell's future will shackle us no longer!"

An almost unanimous gasp of shock left the mouths of the crowd, though that was near immediately by expressions of rage and betrayal as the crowd's unity seemed to splinter in real-time.

"This was your doing?"

"I should have known that this was a power play!"

"You just wanted to be in charge, didn't you?"

"How dare you!"

It was damn obvious, almost immediately, to Katerea that her declaration hadn't made the desired effect as soon as the words left Katerea's throat. Though the declaration in question was the kind of thing that, in the right context, would leave a crowd cheering for hours… those cheers would never come. Raylix looked from the crowd to Katerea, in a similarly nervous state from the newly formed chaos and not quite sure of what to do in this delicate situation… though his eyes widened slightly when he saw Lilith coming up from behind him, out of the corner of his eye. He noticed Katerea's eyes widening too when she walked past her, stopping a few steps in front of her and immediately attracting the attention of the entire gathered faction.

"I understand your concerns." She began, her volume silencing the crowd's outburst from the surprise. "Someone just walking into your faction and seemingly taking over, with your only remaining leader having thrown in her lot with them? I'd be suspicious too if I were standing in your shoes. Which is why I stand before you now, personally delivering my new proposition for this faction. During the times that I must continue to act as the Lilim's Queen, the very Devils that saved you all from Shalba and Creuserey's self-interest and shortsightedness," she revealed her horns and tails at that moment, using her tails to point at Raylix and Katerea in that moment "will work as your leaders going forward."

That didn't make the looks the crowd was giving lighten up at all. If anything, they had only doubled down in response to her words.

"Are you serious!?"

"Why should we listen to you at all?"

"I agree! Tell us, oh, great Queen!"

"You tyrant!"

Katerea and Raylix shared a look with each other, with Katerea noticing the neutral expression Raylix had been holding ever since the start of this entire conversation had gotten a little bit… tighter? It looked like he was attempting to hold it together yet was starting to struggle with it. Though, she supposed that made sense: having only been an HEIR, and not the real leader of one of the noble Clans up until he threw all of that away to join the True Satan Faction.

For him to suddenly be thrust into a position of greater leadership in front of the people he'd be leading, which was closer to how Lucifer and Lilith had led the entirety of their race, would be quite the daunting task for anyone.

'And all while it seems like Lady Lilith is…' she suddenly felt her thoughts pause, noticing the smile Lilith hadn't dropped since she began. 'Wait… a smile?' Katerea then let out a silent gasp as it clicked. She hoped she knew what Lilith was doing, because if she was right about what the Lilim Queen was intending… then she was playing with some SERIOUS fire, here.

And at that moment, Lilith's eyes tensed as a ripple of her demonic power shot out. It had an immediate effect as everyone felt a shiver bring them to a stilled silence.

"The lot of you I see before me," Lilith continued. "Is just the beginning. Under Raylix and Katerea's leadership, and my guidance, this is simply the first step down a path that will lead to a glorious future for Hell. One not shackled by the ways of old. The Underworld Reformation Faction," she spoke, magically enhancing the volume of those words a little, prompting loud gasps from the gathered servicemen. Even Katerea, Raylix noticed, widened her eyes in surprise at Lilith… changing the name of the faction, just like that. "a new force far greater, more powerful and more successful than one shackled by fools," she gestured with her eyes towards Shalba and Creuserey's still-unconscious forms for a fraction of a second, before returning her gaze to the crowd in front of her. "could ever hope to be. This, I personally guarantee to each and every one of you."

Those words lit the fire in the crowd that Katerea was presumably looking for with her own declaration, judging by the uproar that erupted as soon as the new name for the faction left Lilith's throat, and was kicked into overdrive as soon as she finished talking. But it wasn't a unified one either, as the operatives of the True Satan Faction now-turned Underworld Reformation Faction had broken into near-chaos, with voices shouting over one another and seeming to move, as a unit, closer to the fence that separated Shalba's mansion from the rest of the city. A barrage of questions was heard above the sudden racket, directed at the two Devils and one Succubus directly in front of them-

"What gives you the right to just change the name of our faction like it's nothing?! What else are you going to change on top of that?!"

"Was there really no other way to make things work with Shalba and Creuserey other than all of you beating the shit out of them?"

"Do you really care about our goals for the Underworld, or are you just planning to hand us over to the frauds in power among the Devils as soon as it's convenient for you?!"

"I bet Raylix just handed us over to Lilith on a silver platter because he gets a boner every time she looks at him!"

Unnoticed by anyone, Lilith's smile finally disappeared as she heard that remark. Her eyes focusing on the culprit as they shrunk and tightened with rage.

"What do the Khaos Brigade really-?!"

The questions (and general noise) vanished in an instant as Lilith threw out her hand, and a female Devil in the crowd- presumably the one that had made the comment directed at Raylix- found herself lifted into the air above the crowd by their neck. Almost immediately after the noise faltered did Lilith, whose outstretched hand told everyone with crystal clarity who was responsible for the act, slowly began to squeeze the air, and what looked like an invisible hand started to tighten and constrict the Devil's neck, slowly cutting off her air supply. The Devil struggled, her hands clawing at her throat in a vain attempt to remove the invisible force choking her out.

Even Raylix and Katerea were left paralyzed by the sight, despite having seen… whatever she had done to Creuserey and Shalba.

"Do you really think THAT little of ME?" Lilith asked, her tone now a deathly calm that cut through the silence like a hot blade slicing an arm off. "That I would be so shallow as to be easily swayed by the idea of taking over a faction just because one of its new leaders has the hots for me? And do you REALLY-" Her astral grip on the Devil's neck tightened, and her face began slowly turning from red to blue as she ran out of air. "Think that Raylix would be so weak-willed as to give up on a cause he abandoned EVERYTHING to join, for such a petty reason!?"

Before anyone could speak, or even react, Lilith reached out with her other hand and fired a bolt of dark demonic energy from it, seemingly aimed at the head of the Devil she was choking out. As soon as she saw Lilith's other hand raising up, the Devil had closed her eyes, bracing herself for a death that, after the bang that sounded as Lilith fired off the shot, she was surprised to find didn't come. She did, however, feel the shot whizzing by her head, purposefully missing her brain by centimetres at most and grazing the upper part of her right ear, before after a few seconds she opened her eyes. She found that Lilith's grip on her neck had slackened slightly, allowing her to finally breathe again.

Which she did, what breaths she could manage coming out of her mouth in shaky pants, along with a shout of pain. Her eyes widened with pure fear, and her face burned in humiliation as the pain of Lilith's shot slicing through her ear finally hit her, once the shot of adrenaline she'd gotten after her brush with death began to wear off.

"So, you DON'T want to die." Lilith remarked, the cold fury in her voice replaced by a more composed calm as she lowered the hand she had fired the shot with. "Could've fooled me. Pull a stunt like that again, and I won't miss next time."

The crowd immediately felt a sense of dread hit them as they realized Lilith could kill them all with ease at any time. Lilith fully released her grip, allowing the Devil to drop unceremoniously to the ground, and lowered her other hand and returned her focus to the crowd at large, from which murmurs immediately followed.

Murmurs immediately followed as the fear Lilith had cultivated leaked out.

"What the hell did she just do?"

"I think that was some kind of telekinesis, but I thought only the Marbas Clan was able to use such a power, and they were one of the houses that fell."

"But Lilith is the reason we Devils exist, right? Maybe… maybe she can use all our powers?"

The Devil who said that looked at her, and he saw Lilith tilt her head and grab her chin with her thumb and forefinger. Upon seeing her give a brief smile, the ambiguity left by the gesture was clear.

"Now that you've all finally settled down," she continued, as if she HADN'T just nearly killed one of her own before the rest of the faction's very eyes "The Khaos Brigade is a new organization that operates the world over. They may not be much in terms of numbers against the rest of the world as of yet, but rest assured, it is RAPIDLY growing to meet that aim. As for the reason it's managing to grow that quickly?"

She paused for a second, taking a breath before continuing, the crowd now hanging onto her every word far more than they had been when Katerea was talking.

"It's quite simple." She continued. "Because the Khaos Brigade's members aren't bound by such simple things as race or creed, but by something greater and far more powerful than either: ideals. Their goal is a redefinition of this world, where boundaries that have caused nigh-unquantifiable harm over the millennia, are torn down for good. Boundaries that have led to little more than war, suffering and most recently, stagnation and decay… and if that means deposing the leadership of all factions the world over like what happened today, including the Devils in power that the Underworld Reformation Faction so despises and the Lilim monarchs that I've worked alongside for centuries…" she added, after a short pause. "Then so be it."

It took a couple of seconds for the weight behind Lilith's words, spoken with complete sincerity, to fully sink into the crowd.

"Sorry, but…" One Devil quickly said. "Did you just say you'd be willing to betray your fellow Archsuccubi?"

"Yes, I did." Lilith verified, not missing a beat.

But before anyone could make any noise that would distract the rest from her words, Lilith held up a hand for silence before continuing.

"For those of you who might not fully grasp what I'm saying," she began. "Allow me to spell it out for you all: the goals of the Khaos Brigade, and of the Underworld Reformation Faction, are one and the same. Both seek the end of the current systems that have held the world back, and the emergence of a new order free from the mistakes of the past, which led to the situation we find ourselves in today. The only difference between that faction and yours is the scale that the Khaos Brigade operates on, seeking this change worldwide rather than just in the Underworld."

The crowd remained silent, their attention on Lilith absolute. It was as if they'd completely forgotten about the female Devil she'd just lifted up and nearly choked out in front of the lot of them, as she continued.

"The new order that's coming," the Succubus Queen spoke, her voice a couple of tones softer than before, but no less intense. "I'm ready to do anything for it. Up to, including and beyond, making enemies of the very fellow Lilim monarchs that I've worked with for so long. Ever since the Lilim went independent from the Devils, we have stood together as comrades and fellow leaders, but I'll risk those bonds, potentially make enemies out of them forever, for the sake of a better world. Not just for myself, or for those I personally care for-" She glanced behind her, at Hikari, Kurumi and Raylix before turning to face the crowd again and continuing. "But for each and every one of you that stands before me right now… and for all that would join us in our campaign for a better, stronger world."

The crowd began to stir a little again, but immediately shut up when Lilith raised one of her hands again. It was damn clear that she had them in the palm of her hand after her scare and lack of hesitation in answering she would betray even the Lilim monarchs if need be.

"I now ask," she continued, her eyes sweeping across the crowd. "How many of those among you chose to join the True Satan Faction because you realised how weak the Devils had gotten after the wars you'd been through? How many of you recognised that after the farce of so-called 'noble' blood, the only way you become truly recognised in new Devil society is by how much destruction you're able to cause against whoever they deem an enemy, rather than the good you can do for the Devils as a whole?"

A few voices rose from the crowd, offering up positive answers to Lilith's question. Some who lacked the same courage merely raised their hands, while a small few were brave enough to yell out their past experiences, but quieted down when Lilith opened her mouth again.

"And how many of you here joined because you felt like the only thing that had changed, ever since the end of the Devil Civil War nearly half a millennium ago, was who was the one in charge to call the shots?" she asked. "Not the old Satans that built the very Underworld you all call home, but the less than half of the surviving Pillars bloodlines who took the title of nobility just because they thought it'd give them authority over what was left of the Devils?"

More voices joined in along with the few that had spoken up in response to Lilith's first question. They'd gotten louder, but immediately quietened down as Lilith opened her mouth again.

"Or, maybe even," she continued, in a slightly softer tone this time. "How many of you chose to make the leap from a life of relative peace to the True Satan Faction, not just for yourselves but for the sake of becoming part of something greater than yourself? Simply for a better future for Hell as a whole, for friends or loved ones, perhaps?"

Caught off-guard for a moment by Lilith's softer tone, the crowd took a couple of seconds to respond. One voice above the others, Raylix caught with his ears, mentioned how his wife and her entire home village had been ordered to fight alongside the Heir of the Zepar Clan against a giant Wulf, ended up dying in the fight, and he joined the TSF in their name. He remembered, all too well, the noble gathering he'd overhead the Zepar and Stolas Heads discussing that… and just how ANGRY that had made him that night.

He felt a flicker of anger at simply recalling that moment, but found that anger becoming a bit less focused as he noticed the crowd once again had scowls. However, time the scowls weren't out of anger towards Lilith or Katerea's words, but the former cacophony of chaos being turned into a united symphony. It was then that Lilith spoke up again.

"You've heard from Katerea that yesterday, I met with the True Satan Faction's leadership." Lucifer's former wife spoke, the softness of a moment ago gone from her voice. "Some of you might have seen me arriving in Hebeth yesterday for that very purpose. It was during that meeting that I, as Katerea did, realised Shalba and Creuserey's true nature and their true potential- or rather lack thereof- as leaders of such an important group of Devils. Rather than consider the proposal I had gone out of my way to personally deliver to them for a second, or even listen to it at all, they thought they could USE me as a sort of loyalty-test for the very Devil who set up that meeting in the first place."

One of her tails, which were still out along with her horns, lifted up and pointed directly at Raylix, prompting another small stir from the crowd.

"Loyalty test?"

"I know that Raylix might have been kind of suspicious at first, but he's proven himself by now, right?"

"Maybe we should wait for Katerea to say something?"

Katerea noticed some Devils looking at her, and she shook her head.

"I never doubted Raylix's loyalty, even from the start." She stated. "Any suspicions Shalba and Creuserey had about him were theirs alone."

That left the crowd feeling nervous, as they all returned their attention to Lilith.

"Using me…" Lilith continued, before pausing for half a second. Raylix could have sworn he heard her voice shaking a slight bit as the words came out. "That's bad enough. But after I learned of the reasons behind their actions, the stupid and petty reasons you've all heard… beyond the pale. Furthermore," she continued. "The fight you witnessed between Shalba, Creuserey, Katerea and Raylix did not come solely as a result of simple disagreement. If it had just been that, I'm sure things could have been easily resolved without the need for escalation… but no, the fight was started by Shalba and Creuserey as they attempted to kill not only Raylix, but Katerea too. The last survivor of Leviathan's bloodline, no less! How, I ask you, could someone do that and still claim that they act in Hell's best interests, or even in the interests of Hell's former leaders and their descendants?"

A new cacophony soon followed over such a- albeit understandably considering the claim in question, the murder attempt of a founder's sole descendant- blasphemous declaration.

"They did what!?"

"No… no way, that's… they couldn't have!"

"You have to be lying to us!"

As the discord from the servicemen grew more and more, Lilith prepared to cut through the noise as she had done so multiple times already.

"It's true!"

Everyone, including even Lilith, turned as they saw a single Devil coming up from behind a collection of rubble. Raylix vaguely recognised her as someone that worked as a domestic servant at Shalba's mansion. Over his years with the faction, he hadn't seen her very many times, and had exchanged words with her on even fewer occasions.

"There was someone else here?" Katerea remarked, slightly shocked, exchanging a look with Raylix.

"She had to have been in the crossfire." Raylix replied, his eyes flicking from Katerea to the new Devil in question, who nodded at his guess.

"I was… I was nearly hit by one of the attacks Lord Creuserey launched at you. I'm not able to fight, so… I just hid like a coward," she admitted as her legs shook. "But… I was there. So, I heard everything they said word for word, and know the truth."

She closed her eyes and turned to the crowd of servicemen, tearing up.

"She said to Shalba that she didn't want to kill him, and… and what he said to her in response was," her voice shook as she struggled to convey his response. "'Of course a spineless slut wouldn't be able to do what's necessary!'"

Hebeth suddenly became so still and quiet, a pin could have been heard dropping if anyone had one. The blank stares of what the crowd heard setting in as walls of doubt slowly crumbled.

Raylix and Katerea looked across the crowd (with the servant that had just spoken immediately disappearing through a transportation-circle when the two leaders' attention left her), right as all of them began to stir a little harder in response to those words.

"How dare they say such a thing!"

"They're disgraces to their ancestors!"

"Bastards!"

Raylix soon turned his attention to some of the servicemen standing at the front of the crowd, some that he recognised to be among the more hardline supporters for the Old Satans and their descendants. If he had to guess, they were probably among the number that were in support of the old Royals Faction that Raylix had fought against so long ago. They'd looked pretty stoic throughout Katerea and Lilith's addressing of the faction at large so far, but when Lilith had said what she'd said about Shalba and Creuserey attempting to kill Katerea along with Raylix, along with the one brave non-combatant's claim of Shalba's words towards Katerea, their rock-hard faces had shattered in lieu of looks of shock and outrage, for not even they could accept what they tried to do.

'About time they started properly paying attention.' Raylix thought, letting out a small snort from his nose.

'I know, right?' the Succubus Queen's voice telepathically sounded off in Raylix's head, making use of the little balls of light they'd been using since yesterday to silently communicate with each other, which he'd actually forgotten about in all the excitement earlier. 'I think the people here deserve to hear an actually noble reason someone would fight for this faction, don't you? Particularly from one of this new faction's leaders.'

Lilith turned around, gesturing with her head for him to step forward. Nodding the slightest bit in Lilith's direction to let her know he knew what she was thinking, and agreed with it, the auburn-haired Devil stepped up, taking a breath as he faced the crowd. He hadn't had to speak in front of this many people since the Devil Civil War, he vaguely recalled as he opened his mouth.

"At first, I wasn't able to see how bad things were for the Devils in the post-War Underworld." He began. "I was born during the Great War, so the earliest things I can recall are chaos and battle. But once it all stopped, I found myself suddenly a noble Devil, in the top echelons of demonic society for no other reason than the fact that someone no-not many of us were even alive to see in person," he corrected himself quickly, before continuing smoothly. "was chosen to receive extra power from the original Lucifer for some reason. I was so close to the top of the ladder that I couldn't see what was at the bottom."

The crowd, who had felt another pulse from Lilith to regain their attention before Raylix had began speaking, went silent again, but he could tell they were listening intently to what he had to say. Katerea had almost lost their attention when they began, but Lilith had been the one to recover it. If she wanted them to hear what he had to say, this was definitely the best opportunity she could have created to make that happen… and Raylix wasn't about to put that opportunity to waste.

"That time of blindness, as a result of my sudden ascension to nobility, ended recently." Raylix continued. "In the aftermath of… seeing the lives of two of the bravest and best that Hell had to offer cut short in an attack, and the sheer APATHY from my fellow aristocrats in the aftermath of what happened… that woke me up to the true colours of Devil nobility, in a way that even my veiled eyes could see."

He paused for half a second, his eyes scanning the crowd again. He could see the many who were showing shock or starting to cry, while some of the hardliners' faces softened ever-so-slightly. Former noble or not, his words- and the sincerity behind them- had begun to resonate.

"And it was the shock of being woken up like I was, I personally believe," Raylix continued, after that half a second's pause. "that drove me to cast away the luxuries that came with aristocracy, to join the Underworld Reformation Faction, to endeavour for the same Hell that you all wish for! I was taught, from birth, to fight like Hell FOR Hell, and by joining you when I did, fighting for and still fighting for you, and now working as one of this faction's leaders- at both Lady Lilith's and Katerea Leviathan's behest… that's exactly what I'm continuing to do!"

The immediate response from the crowd was unexpectedly positive. The hardliners that Raylix had an eye on throughout his talk had begun to talk amongst themselves, and he spied a couple of them nodding- seemingly in approval- of what he'd said. From the wider crowd, he heard smatterings of cheers and applause. Tearing his eyes away from the crowd, he saw Lilith taking a couple of steps towards him, laying a hand on his shoulder once she was close enough.

'That was perfect. Thank you, Raylix.' She telepathically spoke, smiling down at him. 'I'll finish things from here, now.'

Raylix stepped back, allowing Lilith to take centre stage once again. With the crowd's attention back on her, he let out a slight breath out of relief that he hadn't made a mess of whatever Lilith was cooking up with his verbal input.

"That," she spoke up, pointing to Raylix with one of her hands this time, rather than just one of her tails. "is true nobility, right there. Acting in service of Hell as a greater force rather than just thinking about the benefit to him and his fellow aristocrats. And CERTAINLY rather than Shalba and Creuserey, whose shallow stupidity revolved purely around settling petty grudges against the New Satans, without a care in Hell for how many of their own kind they'd have to throw into a meat-grinder to achieve that goal. Precisely the line of thinking that the Old Satans themselves lived by, killing BILLIONS of their own kind as a result through the course of the Great War, and the exact same mentality of the Royals who were prepared to continue in their name, if they'd won the Devil Civil War. Something Shalba asked me during our talk is why I refused his father's proposal, asking me for that stupid alliance when he came to me in his last days."

Lilith suppressed a scoff at the memory of that day. Bidleid had interrupted her in the middle of a… training session, with Adam when he'd come to her that day. Prick, she recalled, that interruption had thrown her all out of focus for the rest of the day.

"Because his father was a maniac! All of the Old Satans brought Devilkind to the brink of extinction, and even after the Lilim went independent, the Royals wanted to drag all of us down with them!" Lilith remarked, her voice laced with contempt. "With that in mind, it wasn't a stretch to say that they were more a threat to Hell than Yahweh and Heaven ever were!"

Had Lilith just gone and said that without priming the gathered crowd to her side throughout the last twenty minutes or so, those words would probably have triggered outraged riots from the gathered True Satan Faction-turned Underworld Reformation Faction servicemen right there and then, Raylix thought to himself. Not that there was no outrage at all, Raylix heard some voices rising up in immediate- probably instinctual- disagreement with Lilith's words, but he could see a lot more servicemen that, judging by the looks on their faces and their more muted reactions to her insane-sounding declaration, had since come to realise her points and were listening.

"Yahweh is powerful, we all know this!" Lilith continued, cutting through the erupting noise. "Any sole deity presiding over the world's second-largest religion at the time would have been! But consider this, can any of you say that you know Yahweh as anything other than the head honcho for Heaven, or leader of the Angels? Because I can."

The few uproars and outraged cries died down a little, replaced by curiosity as Lilith, without missing a beat, ploughed on.

"Before I was rebuilt as what you see before you," the Succubus Queen continued. "During my days as a Human living in the Garden of Eden, before I was cast out, it wouldn't be wrong to call Yahweh my father. And I KNEW my father, probably more than he or my then-husband and brother Adam, even realised. For all his faults as a being and as a father, waging war with the goal to destroy the other factions that fell under his pantheon's umbrella, is NOT something he'd do. Not without a good reason, at least, but on the other hand? An aggressive war, to settle a petty grudge with the father of the Christian Pantheon? Now, who does that sound like the actions of?"

Now there was dead silence once again, as the crowd seemed to consider Lilith's logic. The unspoken answer to her rhetorical question hung in the air as she continued, the momentum behind her building.

"Let's not also forget that you could name a decent number of beings that, not that this will ever be his style, could singularly challenge Yahweh in a fight." Lilith remarked. "My late husband Lucifer at the peak of his power, Thor of the Norse Gods, Indra of the Hindu Gods, Hades of the Greek Gods, and the twin Heavenly Dragons: Ddraig and Albion, who if any of you remember, took the Angels, Fallen Angels, Devils and us, the Lilim, calling a truce on the Great War itself in order to take down. Some of you here before me might have even personally taken part in that operation."

"Didn't you kill Albion that day?!" a singular voice rung out from the crowd, somewhere around the middle. Raylix couldn't fully see into the crowd who, specifically, had asked that question, but now that the Devil in question mentioned it, he DID recall Lilith being the one to deal the final blow to Albion's body, before… whatever it was, had descended from above to smite Ddraig from existence a moment or two later.

"I sure did." Lilith replied, nodding towards where the voice had come from. "But even then, that operation still cost us many lives. On all sides, not just our own, and a lot more than I myself, Azazel, and Yahweh wanted. Speaking of Ddraig and Albion, if neither one of them had their souls sealed inside a Sacred Gear, it's nigh-universally agreed that they would currently be among the strongest beings in the world: right up there with Indra, Thor, Hades… in fact, they'd easily be among those in the Top 10 most powerful entities currently existing in the world today."

There was no stopping her now, Raylix thought, shifting his weight from one foot to another as Lilith continued. The momentum behind her was increasing with every word, to the point that she was more like a runaway train than anything else as she spoke… an extremely sexy runaway train.

"Now, let me ask you all… did any other Gods- not just any of the heavier hitters I mentioned a moment ago, but ANY God among the HUNDREDS across all Pantheons- who could have brought armies of their own- join in our fight against Ddraig and Albion?"

…

The silence that the crowd had been stuck in, ever since Lilith had elaborated on her claim of the Old Satans/Royals being worse for Hell than Yahweh/Heaven, continued to stretch out. Though rather than just rapt attention, curiosity and fear was re-added to the air as they anticipated her elaborating on whatever point she was about to make.

"Not. One." Lilith answered her own question, after a few seconds' silence. "Now, even if we- the Devils and the Lilim- were to somehow have gained ultimate victory and superiority over Heaven and the Grigori at the end of the Great War, what victory would it have been if, along with the Old Satans- EVERY Devil or Lilim who could have taken up the mantle of leading Hell into the future was gone, destroyed at the Old Satans' behest? A Hell without leadership, where the only beings left are what we refer to as Low-Class Devils and single-tail Lilim, who have little to no experience in governing a realm and even less power to defend it? A Hell resulting from Shalba and Creuserey's short-sighted thinking, the legacy of the Royals and the Old Satans… what Hell is that?"

Lilith paused again, her words clearly sinking into all presently gathered. Just as clearly as the mental picture she was painting in everyone's mind of what the future could have been like had Shalba and Creuserey's leadership, the Royals' leadership, and even the Old Satans' leadership, could have led to.

"And… this is without considering someone else could still us attack later on?" Someone asked, a clear shakiness in their voice. "A person or group who wants to eradicate those Low-class Devils to guarantee our extinction?"

"My best answer to that? You should know that, despite the examples I gave of those superior to Yahweh in strength, there is only a single being he has ever truly feared…" Lilith began as she closed her eyes. "the undisputed strongest being in this world, Ophis, the Infinite Dragon God." she opened her eyes as that reveal hammered into everyone's mind. "And this isn't even a secret to the current generation of Devils. Hell, it's even common knowledge every parent tells their children. Some of you might already know of them yourselves."

Raylix winced a little as he noticed many in the crowd end up pale in the face. Lucky for them, Lilith wasn't going to tell them Ophis was involved with the Khaos Brigade… at least not yet.

"Petty rivalries, misguided ambitions, pointless death…" Lilith continued. "That is all what our kind will be remembered for by whoever's left… if we, as a world, continue down the path we're currently on." The Succubus Queen took a breath. "But no more!"

Even from behind her, Raylix could see that the calmness she'd been exuding ever since letting that female Devil she was Force-choking (he had to wonder if Lilith had ever seen Star Wars) beginning to slip and crack a little. It was damn clear that even SHE was getting a little swept up in the hype generated by her words over the last twenty-five minutes. Though maybe even that was calculated, Raylix thought, as she'd clearly been building up to some kind of grand finale that she was about to unleash.

"I've lived in the worlds that make up our reality, walked longer across them than anyone still alive today," Lilith spoke. "Not even Adam and Eve, the supposed First Humans, can claim anything close to the distances I've gone. In all that time, across all that distance, I've come to see one thing: the problem that Hell faces right now? It's not something simply contained to our realm, but a problem faced the world over!"

There were a few smatterings of cheers of agreement, rising above the silence as Lilith continued.

"You all know how we now have Reincarnated Devils- mostly former Humans- in the picture. Hell, it's probably part of why some of you, at the very least, joined this faction in the first place. Devilish leadership might be at fault for relying on them so heavily thanks to all the lives that were lost, but Devils- not just Devils, in fact, but ALL species- have always relied on Humans long before they were a thing! Granting their desires for a cost, which is not only a transactional relationship… but a detrimental one, in the extremely long run. The pride and malice of not just the people, but the Gods and others that influenced them led to the war, along with the suffering and stagnation that broke not just this world, but broke everyone currently living in it and any chance of a bright future, unless we all do something about it!"

Lilith was full-on shouting now. And she had to, over the even louder cheers that were beginning to sound off. In spite of said cheers, though, her voice could still be heard above the din thanks to her magically enhancing her voice. It was definitely something, Raylix thought, seeing her take control like she was. Certainly different to how she usually took control of a situation… which Raylix quickly realized vaguely reminded him of how Lucifer would take control of all Devilkind with his speeches, usually before any massive battles during the Great War. Still, it wasn't any less enthralling to watch and hear.

"If we wish for the future we deserve," Lilith cried to the crowd. "Not just us, but all that walk the world as we do… then the world itself must be redefined for us to create that future ourselves, not simply conquer and try to reshape what already exists as those of the past did! What good is pride if a world and people in shambles is the result, with billions dead for naught?"

An ear-shakingly loud cry of "NOTHING!" was the main reply from the crowd at large. Lilith grinned, raising a clenched fist to the sky before placing it down over her heart.

"Lend us your strength," Lilith's voice bellowed over the crowd, with her other hand sweeping backwards to Raylix, Katerea, Hikari and Kurumi. "And your lives will be in our care, this I vow to you all! I look forward to celebrating the dawn of the new world with as many of you as possible, when we've all made it to the end alive!"

Absolute bedlam erupted from the crowd after Lilith's words. Raylix couldn't see anyone NOT letting out some kind of noise: it was mostly cheers and applause, but he could hear some personal vows of loyalty rising above the football crowd-like roar, even from the hardliners at the very front. He even spied some people emulating the raised fist-to-fist-over-heart gesture that Lilith had done a minute ago, as a sort of uniting salute. Lilith seemed to spy it too, judging by how she performed the gesture again for the entire crowd to see… which got damn near the ENTIRE crowd doing it right back to her.

Letting out a couple of breaths to calm herself, Lilith turned around and took a couple of steps away from the crowd, back towards Raylix, Katerea, Hikari and Kurumi.

"You think you got them, Mom?" Kurumi asked, looking out across the crowd and then back to Lilith, genuine admiration masked by amusement in her eyes. "Some might call all of that overkill."

"I'm not 'some' people, Kurumi." Lilith replied, allowing herself a smile as she looked over at her daughter. "I'd call what I did necessary. You and Hikari can head back to the house, let everyone know what's happened. Raylix and I just need to go over a couple of things with Katerea, and then we'll be right behind you."

"Sure, Mom." Hikari replied, nodding and turning around to cast a transportation-circle in front of her and Kurumi, which the latter immediately stepped through and disappeared. "See you in a bit."

Lilith nodded, watching her silverette daughter step through the transportation-circle and disappear herself, with said transport-circle disappearing itself a second later.

"Now, Katerea." Lilith remarked, turning to look up at Shalba's mansion for a second before looking back at Katerea herself. "I don't think Shalba will be needing such an extravagant mansion anymore, not when he's no longer the leader of a faction that, technically, doesn't even exist anymore. Same goes for Creuserey, with whatever he's got for himself. However, I think the new faction's new leaders could do with a compound of their own, don't you? One large enough for not just them, but their direct subordinates to comfortably live in, with room for more if they should come."

Katerea blinked in immediate response to Lilith's remark, before she seemed to understand what the Lilim Queen was getting at and nodded.

"In direct place of Shalba's mansion, I'm guessing." she replied, looking up at the dwelling herself before facing Lilith. "Since, yeah, he definitely doesn't need it anymore."

"Indeed." Lilith nodded. "Can I ask you to remain in Hebeth for the time being, handle… them," she gestured to Shalba and Creuserey's unconscious forms with a dismissive wave of her hand "and initial preparations for the compound's construction? I'll return and finalize the details with you soon."

Katerea nodded in return, immediately walking over to Shalba and Creuserey's brutalized bodies. After picking them up and slinging them over her shoulders (looking like she was about to vomit at the amount of blood that dropped down from them onto her dress all the while), she disappeared through a transportation-circle of her own making, while Lilith turned to Raylix.

"Let's head back." she remarked to him, opening a transportation circle while casting an eye over the still-cheering crowd. "We've still got a lot to do, but for now, we should take a moment."

Raylix nodded, immediately following Lilith through the circle and returning to the outside of her human-world villa. As the sound of the crowd's cheering disappeared- the instant he passed through the transportation-circle- in favour of nothing more than a light wind and the occasional bird-chirping, Raylix let out a heavy breath. The kind one didn't even know they'd been holding for ages upon ages until it finally came out.

Upon hearing the breath, Lilith- who was heading towards the front door of her villa without even breaking stride- turned around and smiled over at Raylix, letting out a small giggle.

"Different from what you were preparing for as the Gremory Heir, I guess?" she remarked.

"Yup." Raylix replied, almost falling over from how drained he suddenly seemed to look. The last half an hour or so had clearly taken a lot out of him, Lilith mentally surmised, not to mention the fight that he'd been a part of before she'd even got there. "How the hell do you DO that?"

Lilith had been half-turned between Raylix and the front door of her villa, though at the Devil's question she turned fully towards him.

"Do what?"

"You know…" Raylix paused for a second, gesturing vaguely at nothing in particular with his hands as he looked over at her. "…That! What you did with the crowd back in Hebeth just now!"

Lilith let out a small snort from her nose, shifting her weight onto one foot and folding her arms under her breasts.

"You tend to pick up on how to command those listening to you when you're listening to Lucifer do it on a damn-near daily basis." She replied. "Lucifer was always preparing for something- usually related to the war- needing to get whoever he wanted to do it riled-up enough to follow through with his wishes or spouting off propaganda to the kids along with the other Old Satans." Her voice got steadily more annoyed sounding, to the point that she was barely holding her obvious anger in, doubtlessly brought on by whatever memories she was recalling.

'Definitely sounds like him.' Raylix thought to himself, holding back the urge to shudder from Lilith's tone as she took half a second to calm herself.

"That, and I've had more than enough practice, ever since the Lilim went independent at the end of the Great War." She added. "So yeah, I'd say I've got the whole 'what I did with the crowd back in Hebeth' thing, as you said, down pretty well."

"No need to say it, you've proved it." Raylix replied. "Not that I didn't believe you before."

"I appreciate the faith." Lilith remarked, nodding. "But still, at least if you didn't before, you get that ruling a domain- which you were preparing for- versus an entire faction… two completely different beasts. Granted, the scales of the factions in question- the Underworld Reformation Faction as they are now, the post-war Lilim, the united pre-war Devils and Lilim- vary greatly, but still." She took a breath, turning back around towards the house. "We've got a lot of work to do, so as I said earlier, we should take a moment before getting to it."

Raylix nodded in agreement, taking a breath of his own and beginning to follow Lilith towards the house. As Succubus and Devil walked, the front door of the house opened, and a woman that Raylix hadn't seen before poked her head out. She blinked, before pulling the door all the way open as her forest-green eyes latched onto Lilith and Raylix, revealing a figure that, despite being rather conservatively clad in a simple pink knee-length dress, he could tell was absolutely INCREDIBLE. Like, on a level that, going by first impressions alone, rivalled Lilith… something he never thought he'd catch himself thinking.

Now that he looked at the woman a little closer, her choice of clothing, the eye-colour and her hair (cream-coloured, almost looked beige under the shadow of the doorway she was standing in) were the only major differences he could tell between her and-

Wait a second… un-holy shit!

"Oh, did you just finish?" the woman asked, taking a couple of steps out into the sunlight. "I guess you took care of things earlier than expected?"

"That's right." Lilith replied, smiling as she approached the woman and leaned down slightly, planting a soft kiss on her lips. "Slightly overestimated the potential resistance that we'd end up dealing with, is all."

"Mmhmm." The woman nodded, before turning to Raylix. "Hello, Raylix. It's nice to finally meet you."

Raylix blinked, still occupied with looking the woman over, feeling himself slightly jolted by her addressing him directly. And doing his damndest to shove down the images that were beginning to formulate in his mind at the sight of her and Lilith kissing… good God…

"Uh, sorry." Raylix spoke, for the first time in a couple of minutes. "But I don't think we've met… are you who Lilith talked to about half an hour back?"

"The very same." The woman replied. "And there's no need to be sorry. Lily's just told me a lot about you is all." Bending her right leg, she grabbed the ends of her dress and sunk into a cute curtsy. "I'm Eve, third of the Primordial Human race… and one of Lilith's pets."

Raylix blinked as Eve straightened up, what she'd just said hitting him. Eve… Primordial Human… one of Lilith's pets…

He had to mentally shake that last bit out of his mind for the time being, he'd come back to that, but the first two bits linked together surely pointed in the direction of- and then it clicked. He had already made the connection, somewhat, after seeing her nearly on Lilith's level figure, but hearing it had finally broken the dam.

"Eve!?" he asked, shifting his eyes from Eve to Lilith and back again? "Like the first human woman Yahweh made? That one!?"

"Well, second human woman." Eve replied, her eyes flicking to Lilith and back to Raylix. "And how many other Eves do you know?"

"A few, actually." Raylix remarked. "But still…" his eyes, again, flicked to Lilith. "How'd that happen?"

"That's a long story." Eve replied, re-drawing Raylix's attention back to her as she shifted closer to Lilith. "Probably as interesting as what Lily's told me about you."

Raylix let out a snort as he looked over at Lilith again.

"Interesting, huh?" he remarked, scratching a random itch that formed on his cheek at that moment, while trying to hold down his surprise at THE Eve… being right there in front of him. Of all the people among all the factions in all the world, he never would've expected one of Yahweh's prized creations to be shacking up with the widow of His mortal enemy. Suffice it to say, he definitely believed Eve when she said the story of however THAT happened was interesting, indeed.

"Very." Lilith replied, flashing Raylix a smile as she did so. "Might tell you about it sometime."

"Right…" Raylix nodded, his eyes flicking between Lilith and Eve once again, the idea of the latter as the former's 'pet' worming its way back into his mind, along with all the mental images that came with such a thought. Someone that looked that close to Lilith, albeit was cuter and more wholesome when compared to Lilith's pure sensuality, submitting in such a way to the real thing? It was all he could do to not burst out into a nosebleed that would IMMEDIATELY force him into unconsciousness, or maybe even death, from sheer blood loss.

Whatever expression formed on his face as a result of the mental struggle, Lilith seemed to pick up on it immediately, as well as the reason behind it.

"Thinking of something a little… naughty, Raylix?" she asked, a couple of her tails (which were still out, along with her horns) sneaking around Eve's back. "Wonder what you think of THIS, then?"

Said tails quickly wrapped themselves around Eve's body, dragging the human towards Lilith. All she could do was let out an "Eep!" as Lilith glomped her from the side, easily shoving her head in-between her humungous breasts with one of her tails while her hands snaked down towards her rear. Covered by the dress though it was, it didn't stop Eve from moaning when Lilith laid her hands on it, squeezing on both cheeks a little bit as she played with her, grinning at Raylix all the while.

"L-Lily, not here!" Eve whimpered; her voice slightly muffled by virtue of her face being smooshed into Lilith's legendary chest. "Raylix is watching!"

"Why do you think I'm trying to put on a show, Evie?" Lilith replied, grinning for a couple of seconds and keeping Eve held in place, before letting out a sigh and relinquishing her hold on the cream-haired human. "But yeah, I know. Too much important stuff on my plate today to worry about a good time. Not right now, at least."

Raylix audibly gulped as Eve took a half-step away from Lilith, breaths escaping her in the aftermath of being stuck where she was (shit, did he wish he was her in that moment…). He was quick to notice what looked like a tattoo of a red choker with a heart-charm on it glowing on and around her neck, but before he could get a better look at it, it faded away. Within a couple of seconds, it was as if it had never been there in the first place.

'Probably a marker of whatever special relationship they have with each other.' He thought to himself. 'But still, wasn't expecting… that.'

"Yeah, I bet you weren't." Lilith remarked, out loud, in response to the auburn-haired Devil's thoughts. "Thought that makes me wonder what you'll think of this?"

Raylix raised an eyebrow as Lilith raised her hands and clapped twice, calling out.

"Adam!"

Within the moment or so it took Raylix to mentally berate himself for not at the very least suspecting that if THE Eve was here with Lilith, THE Adam probably wasn't too far away, he heard the sound of scurrying behind the closed door of Lilith's villa, before the sound of it being ran into was heard by all three beings standing outside. A second or two later, it was pushed open, with the sight that met Raylix's eyes…

A rather effeminate-looking… man(?), who looked only slightly older than Eve, with long black hair tied back into a tight ponytail. Though that was hardly shocking in comparison to the fact that after opening the door, he'd dropped to his knees and crawled towards Lilith and Eve, looking more like a dog than a human. Or the fact that he was in his birthday-suit, and his face carried a look that Raylix could only describe as… broken. Plain and simple.

"D-did you call for me, Ma'am?" he asked, his eyes facing the ground as he addressed Lilith, who smirked a little in response.

"Nah." She lied, using one of her tails to force Adam's chin up so he looked her in the eye for a second, before she let it go. "Just rolled out a use of the word 'and'. But since I've got you here, make yourself useful and go prepare some snacks for everyone. After this morning, I think we all deserve some."

"Understood, ma'am…" Adam replied, turning around before making his way back into the house, as pathetic looking as when he'd come out. Raylix followed him with his eyes until he was out of sight, raising an eyebrow when the sight of Adam's asshole, stretched-out and abused, met his vision. Once Adam was gone, he turned his eyes over to Lilith and Eve.

"THAT was Adam?" he asked. "That guy is Eve's hu-"

It was at that second Raylix heard the sound of knuckles cracking, a sound he found came from the act of Eve tightly clenching one of her hands.

"Uuuuuuu…" he held out the sound as he looked up, noticing Eve's expression- while unchanged- had become noticeably more hardened. His eyes flicked over to Lilith, and he noticed the sharp look she was giving him as his mind raced to find a plausible course-correct… though he couldn't come up with anything good so quickly, so the first thing that came to mind that sounded at least semi-feasible was what left his mouth instead.

"-uuumiliated pack horse?" he offered. "You know, since he crawls?"

Eve and Lilith both blinked and turned to each other. After a couple of seconds' silence between the two women, they offered their summation on Raylix's course-correction in relative unison.

""Six out of ten?/Four."" "Okay, four."

Well, at least Raylix had tried.

"I'm gonna go let everyone know you're back." Eve remarked, moving back towards the door and pulling it open before turning back and waving. "Nice meeting you, Raylix!"

With that, Eve moved into the house, shutting the door behind her and leaving Raylix and Lilith alone outside again. A couple of seconds of silence passed between Devil and Succubus before the Devil spoke up, his eyes flicking to the door and back to Lilith, who opened her mouth before he could even think about opening his.

"Before you say anything, whatever you were expecting him to look like when I called?" Lilith remarked. "That's pretty much exactly what he used to look like, before I got my hands on him. Prick didn't stay that way for long, though, I saw to that. Eve helped too, once I got her on board."

"Say what?" Raylix replied, an eyebrow raising again. By way of response, Lilith flicked her hand to form a magic-circle and show him how Adam used to look… and true to her word, exactly what he'd been picturing when Lilith first called for Adam, was pretty much what he used to looked like. Bulging muscles, handsome, chiselled features… Adam looked- or used to look- like the avatar of testosterone itself.

"Toxic masculinity to a T…" Lilith sighed. "I've got stories. And Eve's got them too, though you're best not asking her. Not until she's ready to tell you. At the very least, she hates him as much as I do, and that's all you really need to know.

"Yeah… I figured." Raylix replied, recalling Eve's hardened expression and cracked knuckles with a noticeable pause. "Anyways… you mentioned a new compound to Katerea. Back in Hebeth?"

"I did." Lilith remarked, dispelling the image of Adam as quickly as she'd summoned it with a wave of her hand. "And, well, I don't think it'd be the best look for the faction's leadership to be leading it from a relatively dinky little apartment. Nor would it for ME to lead from either here," she gestured at the villa behind her, "Or the Lilim's side of Hell. Better to have a new place built, for the leaders of a new faction to work and live in, wouldn't you agree?"

As Lilith spoke, she pulled the door to the villa open and stepped inside, with Raylix nodding and following after her. Without breaking stride once both were inside, Lilith made for the stairs, making her way up to her office on the villa's top floor, with Raylix following a couple of steps behind. When they got there, Lilith sat down on one of the chairs around the table beside her desk, upon which there was a plate of snacks presumably made and delivered by Adam. Raylix imitated the Succubus Queen, sitting down in the chair directly across from her as she grabbed a couple of the berries on one of the plates, transferring them to her mouth.

"So, any ideas for what you'd want in the compound?" she asked, looking across at Raylix after swallowing the berries. "Amenities-wise, I mean."

"Somewhere to train." Raylix replied, immediately. "Something like the training-hall you've got here downstairs. Maybe a gym, too, in case anyone's more in the mood to work out than practice their moves."

"Understood." Lilith nodded, snapping her fingers and summoning what looked like a hologram of a piece of paper between herself and Raylix. At the top of the page, a couple of bullet-points appeared: 'sparring chamber' and 'gym'. "I'll add the basic stuff, just so the guys I get to build the compound don't forget…"

Within a couple of seconds, a few more bullet points appeared on the virtual page: 'bedrooms', 'offices' and 'library'.

"How many bedrooms are we talking?" Raylix asked, his eyes flicking from the virtual page to Lilith. "There's me, you and Katerea, three leaders, Hikari and Kurumi make five, and the women I arrived here with on top of that make nine…"

"Oh, I was thinking… at least twenty?" Lilith replied, adjusting her position in her chair before reaching for more berries. "Twenty-five…? Actually, let's be really safe and call it fifty. You never know how many trusted allies you'll end up running into, on the path we've started down." She remarked, when she saw Raylix's slightly incredulous expression. "And want to keep close. Nowhere near that many offices though, only you, Katerea and I really need them."

"Yeah, I was gonna say." Raylix replied. "Would it be too much to ask for a home cinema of some kind? I remember the Gremory Castle having one installed a few decades before I left… don't think it got used more than once every couple of years, though."

"Of course it wouldn't be too much to ask." Lilith remarked, immediately adding 'home cinema' to the virtual list. "It's your new home we're building, just as much as Katerea's and mine. You can ask for whatever you want: the sky's the limit, as humans say nowadays."

A small chuckle escaped Raylix as he leant back in his chair.

"Probably a bar, too, then." He remarked. "And a wine cellar. I get the feeling there's gonna be a fair bit of drinking going down."

"Good feeling." Lilith nodded, adding the points 'bar' and 'wine cellar' to the list. "I'll handle keeping both of those stocked, no need to worry. Now, let's see…" she leant back in her chair, transferring the last of the berries in her hand to her mouth before chewing and swallowing, a thoughtful expression on her face. "Hm, there should be some more recreational amenities too… how about…?"

Over the next few seconds, some more bullet-points appeared on the list, which Raylix read out as they did so.

"Games room, sports court, bowling alley, and… swimming pools? Plural?"

Looking up for a second, Lilith noticed Raylix going slightly pale at the last entry.

"I saw something in a magazine about some people that own lakefront properties in the human-world." Lilith explained. "They pay loads of money to have part of the lake their properties are in front of essentially converted into a private mini beach. Was thinking of trying to have something like that here, as well as a more regular pool like you'd see at the Olympics or something."

"Ahhah, right…" Raylix replied, still slightly pale as he adjusted himself in his chair. "Probably wouldn't use those pools either way, personally. Don't know about any of the other games stuff, either."

"Good thing the compound isn't just gonna be for you then, huh?" Lilith retorted, grinning as she dispelled the list with a wave of her hand. "That's enough for now, anyway. I'll see if Katerea's got anything to add to it when we head back to Hebeth: she's probably moved Shalba and Creuserey away from the mansion by now."

"Yeah, can't have them knocking around when we're building a whole-ass new compound in place of Shalba's mansion." Raylix remarked. "Actually, what ARE you planning on doing with them? You gonna kill them, or something?"

"As tempting as that may be, no." Lilith replied. "No need to jeopardize the good work we did on their former servicemen by taking such extreme actions. Plus, that's not really my style."

"Seems to be Hikari's." Raylix remarked, taking some berries of his own and chomping down on the lot of them at once. Lilith let out a small giggle at both his remark, and the action.

"Yeah, it definitely is." She nodded. "Either way, I know of some lands dotted around the human world that aren't supernaturally inhabited. I was thinking of setting Shalba and Creuserey up in one of those areas, maybe have a small place built for them to live away from the faction that they've lost. Under surveillance, of course."

"So, imprisonment?" Raylix asked. "Exile?"

"If you want to call it one of those things, sure." Lilith shrugged. "Though now that I say it out loud, we should probably extend that offer to anyone who, somehow, isn't on board with us in the aftermath of our little talk with them earlier."

"Like who?" Raylix asked. "From what I could see, pretty much everyone who we talked with earlier ended up pretty taken in by what you said."

"True, definitely a majority." Lilith replied. "But if I had to make any kind of guess, I'd say anyone who's more loyal to Shalba and Creuserey themselves, than to the goals of the wider faction, would be harder to flip. Any royal guards or personal forces, stuff like that."

Raylix hummed in acknowledgement, as Lilith fixed him with a look.

"You should probably think about building up some kind of similar force of your own, Raylix." She remarked. "Having a personal group of elite fighters… never know when you might need them. Anyway," she let out a breath, lifting herself out of the chair and onto her feet. "I think I'm gonna head back to Hebeth, soon. There's a lot to do, so the sooner we get started, the better. You coming?"

"Mmhmm." Raylix hummed in agreement, making to get to his feet. Though just as he did so, a loud gurgling sound met both Raylix and Lilith's ears. A second or so later, they realised just where said sound was coming from: Raylix's stomach. Looking down at it for a second, he looked back up at Lilith, a nervous chuckle escaping him.

"I… don't think I had breakfast this morning. Before the fight."

"Get some." Lilith remarked, letting out a breath and shaking her head. "And have some of those snacks, it's what they're there for. Then we'll head out."

---

An aimless tune escaped Malech's throat as, after pouring some water into a mug and adding a teabag to it, he pointed at the water. It immediately began to heat up and boil as the middle-aged dark-haired Devil sat down at the small table in the house that had been provided for him by the leadership of the True Satan Faction upon his arrival and induction into the faction a few years ago.

Though, he supposed, it wouldn't be correct to call it the True Satan Faction anymore, now would it? Not after Raylix had turned back up in Hebeth, half a week ago, with LILITH herself in tow, and Shalba and Creuserey being kicked off the metaphorical throne of leadership within the day. And now Raylix was apparently one of the leaders of what was now being called the Underworld Reformation Faction… things sure moved fast, Malech thought to himself as he idly waved his hand over the cup of tea in front of him, which began to stir of its own accord.

After several seconds of stirring, Malech pointed at the tea bag inside the cup, which disappeared from said cup immediately. Settling a little more comfortably into his chair, Malech raised the teacup to his lips and took a sip… though he almost dropped said cup as a series of loud knocks sounded at his front door. It wasn't often he had people knocking on his door, especially not since joining the TSF… or URF, he supposed he should be calling it, now. Setting his cup back down on the table, Malech rose from his chair and moved over to the door, magically unlocking it and pulling it open. When he saw who was standing on the other side, he blinked, almost taking a step back out of sheer surprise at who was at his door.

"Raylix!" Malech spoke, holding the door open with his foot as he looked Raylix up and down. "Sorry, Lo- should I be referring to you with any kind of title, now?"

"Just Raylix is fine for you, Malech." Raylix replied, a small smile crossing his face for a moment. "I feel like you've earned that, at least."

There was silence between the two Devils for a couple of seconds, before Malech hurriedly stepped back from the doorway.

"Did you want to come in?" the older Devil asked. "I can put on some tea for you, if you'd like."

"That'd be nice, thank you." Raylix replied. "We haven't really talked in a while, have we? I figured now would be a good time to, if you're free."

"I am." Malech nodded, shifting slightly further back as Raylix stepped through the doorway into his house. "And yes, I've got time to catch up, if that's what you want."

It didn't take long for Raylix and Malech to be sat down at the same table that just Malech himself was sitting at a moment ago, and for Raylix to have a cup of tea in front of him just as Malech did. The pair of them steadily made their way through said cups as Raylix recounted his adventures throughout the around-a-year he'd been on his mission for what was then the True Satan Faction: the companions he'd come across and taken under his wings or reunited with for the first time in ages, the places he and his newfound group had travelled to in search of the Sephiroth Graal, meeting Lilith and her adopted daughters…

Malech was a decently captive audience, Raylix thought to himself as he paused for a second to take another gulp of tea, just to wet his throat again after all the talking. He'd been pretty quiet throughout most of the recounting Raylix had done, with only the occasional hum of acknowledgement and question regarding the women Raylix had picked up on his travels coming out of him in terms of sound. He did get a pair of raised eyebrows out of the older Devil by way of reaction when he brought up Lilith, but nothing beyond that.

"Honestly, now that I think about it…" Raylix continued, putting his cup down and leaning back in his chair. "I imagine pretty much as soon as she got it out of me that I'd joined this faction, Lilith must have started planning some kind of takeover operation. And no matter what, she'd probably have gotten her way in taking over in one way or another."

"I'd believe it." Malech remarked, taking a gulp of his own tea. "And it was just down to Shalba, Creuserey and Katerea in terms of where they were going to stand, and whether they were going to make it easier or harder for her. Not that it would've made much difference in the end, when she apparently had the fully trained wielder of the Vanishing Dragon's Sacred Gear under her thumb."

"Well, I wouldn't say Hikari is FULLY trained." Raylix remarked. "As far as I know, she's barely an adult… though now that I say that out loud, that actually makes her sound a bit scarier, doesn't it?"

Malech simply shrugged, taking another gulp of tea before setting his empty cup down.

"Well, scary or not, Lilith seems to be the one really running things now." He remarked. "Thanks, in part at the very least, to your decisions and choices. I guess only time will tell whether you made the right calls."

Raylix didn't reply as Malech leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling for a moment before his eyes flicked back to Raylix's.

"Well, I wish I could say the last year's been as interesting as it's clearly been for you, Raylix, but I'd be lying." He continued. "Truth be told, all it's been is overseeing your brigade… though to an extent, I must confess that I've begun to think of it as MY brigade, considering your absence from the faction."

"Understandable." Raylix replied, shrugging and taking another gulp of tea himself. "I totally get it; I'm not pissed off or anything if that's what you thought my reaction would be. Although…" he set the nearly empty cup on the table himself. "I must confess that wanting to catch up WASN'T the only reason I wanted to meet with you today, Malech."

Malech let out a slow breath, adjusting his position in his seat as he kept his eyes on Raylix.

"I should've figured." He remarked, his expression neutral. "Well, I guess you should get to that reason, rather than waste both of our time."

Raylix let out a little snort, nodding as he downed the remains of his teacup.

"Alright then, I will." He replied. "Recently, it's come to my attention that I may need a personal elite force of my own within the URF. You know, to carry out missions that wouldn't be right for the regular rank-and-file members of the Faction, report directly to me about the goings-on within, serve as my personal squad in battles when numbers are needed. Stuff like that, you know?"

"A wise decision." Malech mused, waving a hand to refill both his and Raylix's cups of tea. Raylix nodded, picked up his cup once it was fully refilled, and took a gulp out of it.

"Yeah." He replied. "And I was thinking that I'd need someone to… you know, lead this force when I'm busy with other things related to the URF. And I think, Malech, that it should be you."

Malech had initially moved to pick up his newly refilled teacup, but upon hearing Raylix's declaration, he paused for a second before shifting back a little. His eyes remained on Raylix's as he did so, searching for any hint that Raylix might not have meant what he just said… but he found none.

"Raylix…" he began. "I'm honoured you'd consider someone like me for such an important role. Truly, I am, and I wouldn't want you to think for a second that I don't appreciate this offer. But surely, there are more powerful members of the True Sa- I mean Underworld Reformation Faction, that would be worthy leaders of such a force."

"Yeah." Raylix remarked, taking another sip of his tea before lowering the cup. "You're probably right."

"And more experienced commanders, too." Malech continued. "I don't know if this ever came up in any conversation we had prior to joining this faction, but I was an officer in the Devils' military during the Great War… I might have commanded my own battalion of troops, but I never saw much action. I have a feeling that if you looked around this faction, you'd probably find a former officer or two with far more experience in leading troops into battle."

Raylix nodded, humming as he ran his finger around the top of his teacup, letting out a slow breath in response to Malech's words. Slight confusion entered the older Devil's face and eyes as silence stretched out between him and Raylix for another few seconds, before Malech chose to break it again.

"So… what are you still doing here?" he asked. "What possible reason could you have to want me in charge of your personal elite force, rather than someone much more qualified that I'm sure would gladly take up the role if you offered it to them?"

Raylix remained silent, taking another sip out of his teacup before setting it down once again.

"Just one." He replied. "And it's a pretty important one, Malech. All those hypothetical people out there throughout the faction, that you say could do a better job of leading- of commanding this elite force I'm planning on forming… I'm sure they exist, and I'm sure you're right about them, but… I don't know them. They didn't help wake me up to the horrific shit that the noble Pillars are putting the rest of the Devils through, and how shoddily the Devils' side of Hell was really being run. They didn't show me that I had another possible direction to point my life, in joining up with the True Satan Faction- back when it was called that and help me damn near every step of the way when it came to joining it. They didn't listen every time I wanted to vent, or just talk, about… about Sabemka and Tomosei."

He trailed off for a second before regaining his composure and keeping his eyes on Malech.

"On the other hand, Malech, you did all of that." He continued. "I know you; I trust you, maybe the most out of any single member of this faction. DEFINITELY the most out of anyone alive I know from outside the URF. I guess in my eyes, that's more than enough for me to want you leading my elite force, maybe even serving as my second-in-command."

Raylix raised his teacup to his lips and drained the rest of its contents in a couple of quick gulps, before setting the cup down on the table and rising to his feet.

"Consider it, at the very least. That's all I'm asking, Malech." Raylix spoke, while casually stretching. "Thanks for the tea."

And without another word, Raylix was gone from Malech's house, shutting the door behind him as he went. A couple of seconds later, Malech heard the sound of a transportation-circle activating and saw the flash of light outside one of the windows that signified Raylix's departure from the area. Halfway across Hebeth at around the same time, in the newly built six-story URF leader's compound, built within a couple of days in place of Shalba's mansion, a transportation-circle opened in Raylix's office that Raylix himself popped out of.

Yeah, he had his own personal office now. Not just a dinky little desk shoved in the corner of Katerea's spare bedroom, or even a much nicer desk in his bedroom at the Gremory Castle. No, this was a whole-ass ROOM dedicated to work, and a damn nice one at that. Lilith really had spared absolutely NO expense in making sure the compound had everything that anyone could want in somewhere to both live and work.

Glancing over at his desk, Raylix let out a slow breath as he looked at the files that he'd left there about an hour ago. Pertaining to Shalba and Creuserey's, or rather what USED to be Shalba and Creuserey's, human-world businesses that they ran to fund the True Satan Faction's, or rather what USED to be the True Satan Faction's, operations. As far as he understood it, they had 'voluntarily' signed over control and ownership of the businesses to Katerea yesterday… though Lilith was apparently involved in that signing-over, so it begged the question of just HOW voluntary things ended up being. Either way, Katerea had thought it'd be best for Raylix to get up to date with exactly how much money the URF had to work with presently: profits from the three companies that she now fully owned, expenses, how much spare money the faction was saving every month to be put away for potential new expenses and expansions, that kind of thing.

Nothing Raylix was all that thrown off by, he remembered doing this kind of thing for Zeoticus and the Gremory Large Enterprise, back when he was still an aristocrat.

There were also some other memos from Katerea regarding ideas for how to restructure the Underworld Reformation Faction, which Raylix hadn't looked at yet, either. He wasn't planning to until at LEAST after he was done going through all the financial stuff first… and maybe after he'd gotten something to eat, too. It was getting to be around that time, and Raylix had skipped breakfast in lieu of morning training…

Just as the thought crossed his mind, however, he heard a light knock on the door of his office, prompting him to turn around. Before he could even call out to whoever was on the other side of the door that they could come in, the door was pushed open.

"Raylix?" Eve's voice sounded through the door as it opened, before the woman herself appeared, carrying a box. "Oh, you're back." She remarked once her eyes met Raylix's, adjusting the box she was holding as she entered the room, shutting the door behind her.

"Hey, Eve." Raylix replied, yawning and pointing to the desk. "Thanks for bringing those, you can just put them on the side. I'll look them over when I've got time to."

"Okay," Eve nodded, carrying the box past Raylix and carefully placing it down on the floor, just next to his desk. "And it's no problem, Raylix. Really. Actually, while I've got you, I wanted to apologize."

"Hm?" Raylix, occupied with adjusting a book on one of the bookshelves that looked slightly out of place, looked over at Eve, who had moved away from the desk. "For what?"

"How I reacted when we first met." The Primordial Human replied. "When you brought up my… humiliated pack horse."

She suppressed a giggle at the last three words, shifting her sandal-clad feet over the carpet a little bit.

"Whatever you might have known of the stories about me and him," Eve explained. "You couldn't have known what our present relationship would have been. I should've been more aware of that, rather than nearly fly off the handle with you."

"Truth be told, I didn't even know you were still alive." Raylix remarked. "I never heard anything about either of you after the Great War wrapped up, so I just assumed you'd died, or something. Definitely wasn't expecting you to be under Lilith's wing, and definitely not for Adam to look like he did."

"Well, I imagine we probably would have died, had Lily not been able to take us in." Eve replied. "Or at the very least, be kept under lock, key and a mountain of protective enchantments up in Heaven, which I doubt would have been much better."

Raylix suppressed a chuckle himself.

"Either way, it's fine." He assured Eve. "At least I know for next time. Though I've got to admit, I'm still curious about what the story is between you, him and Lilith."

"You're probably best asking Lily." Eve remarked, walking towards the door. "It's… hard, reliving that time. Besides, Lily could probably tell you a far fuller version. Up to and including why Lily's pet dog looks like he does~"

With her face turned away from Raylix at that moment, he didn't see a light blush crossing Eve's face.

"You're okay with her telling me that?" Raylix asked, shifting himself from one foot to another as he tore his eyes away from Eve's ass, up towards her no-longer-blushing face as she turned around.

"Yup!" the cream-haired woman replied, smiling as she pulled the door open. "I've got no problem with it." She made to step through it, but paused mid-step before turning around. "Oh! I was just going to get something for lunch, did you want something? Maybe a drink?"

"Sure, yeah." Raylix replied, nodding. "That'd be nice, thanks."

Nodding with a smile, Eve left the room, shutting the door behind her and leaving Raylix alone in his office again. Taking a breath and trying to force down the boner he didn't realise he'd formed until just now from Eve's sheer presence over the last few minutes, he moved behind his desk to the custom-made armchair behind it, sporting a colour scheme of black and silver. Slumping down into it, he reached over to the first of the files relating to Shalba and Creuserey's businesses.

Judging by the size of the pile of files on his desk, and of the size of the box of files Eve had brought him just now, Raylix wouldn't be surprised if he spent the whole day on it…

Oh well, he thought, mentally shrugging as he tore his eyes away from the box, and refocused on the file in his hand as he flipped it open. The workout he was planning to do later, he'd just have to go even harder with it than he was already planning to. Though before he could fully focus on the file, he felt a communications-circle forming by his ear. Resisting the urge to sigh at the constant interruptions, he reached up and tapped the circle with a finger.

"This is Raylix."

"And this is Malech." Malech's voice sounded off in his ear, from the comms-circle. "Raylix, I've thought about it. The… the offer you gave me, about being the head of your elite force?"

"Oh?" Raylix leaned back in his chair. "…And?"

"And… I'm in." Malech replied. "I accept… if it's still open."

"Malech, it's barely been five minutes." Raylix remarked, resisting the urge to chuckle. "But still. Excellent. Thank you. We'll talk soon."

Malech hummed, on the other end, before hanging up. When the comms-circle faded away from Raylix's ear, he took another long breath and, hoping to go at least a minute or more without getting interrupted again, opened the file.

---

"Everyone seems to be settling in alright."

"Mmhmm, good." Lilith replied, adjusting her position in her chair as she looked across at the magic-circle floating in front of her, which displayed an image of a talking Hikari. "And Shalba and Creuserey? Have you checked in on them recently?"

"Yeah, yesterday." The White Dragon Empress replied. "Nothing to report on that front."

"I see." The dark-haired Succubus nodded. "Well, you and Kurumi keep me posted, okay?"

"Of course, Mother." Hikari nodded. Lilith saw her stretching a little on her end. "I'll be back in a couple of hours."

"Alright." Lilith replied. "See you then."

The magic-circle faded away, leaving Lilith alone in her office within the URF's new compound, essentially a scaled-up version of the personal office she'd had back in her villa. It had been about a week since she, Raylix and Katerea had taken over the True Satan Faction and replaced it with the Underworld Reformation Faction: since then, it had been one thing after another for her.

Consulting Katerea regarding plans for the compound, getting the compound built, moving most of her stuff from the villa to the compound, setting up a good location to exile Shalba and Creuserey to, helping weed out any servicemen from the URF that wouldn't be willing to follow the new leadership, setting said servicemen up with new places in the human world, keeping tabs on all of said servicemen plus Shalba and Creuserey as they settled into their new lives outside of the faction they were no longer a part of, and that was to say nothing of all the regular business she had to deal with as the top monarch of the Lilim…

She knew, she'd known for a long time, that the path she'd started down would be an EXTREMELY long and arduous one, but still… damn. Although, as she took another couple of breaths and appreciated the silence that was her office, as her mind racked with everything that might need doing now… there was nothing she could think of that, either on this side of her life or her official side back in the Underworld, that strictly NEEDED taking care of RIGHT NOW.

She actually had some free time, for the first time in over a week. She actually had the space in her schedule to tackle something that she'd WANTED to do, for a decently long while at this point. The only thing was, though… where would he be?

…

'Well, knowing him, that's probably an easy answer.' Lilith thought to herself, spinning her chair back around before getting to her feet and leaving her office. Making her way along the landing and down the stairs to a couple of floors below the one her office and bedroom sat on, she made her way to the sparring hall and gym, pushing open the doors to the former as she reached it first. Almost immediately upon entering, her eyes snapped onto the exact person she was looking for.

Just in time to see Raylix, Rubilacxe in one hand and Gaeneron in the other, sweep-kicking an armless training dummy to send it spinning into the air. Before Lilith's very eyes, Raylix seemed to disappear for a second as he moved towards the dummy, delivering multiple heavy slashes to it so quickly that the dummy he seemed to have been practicing his moves on was utterly obliterated, in roughly the amount of time that it took Lilith to blink.

Raylix then reappeared, Rubilacxe and Gaeneron dissipating from his hands as the dummy in front of him seemingly collapsed to dust. Lilith saw him taking a couple of breaths before he turned around, having seemingly finally noticed that someone other than him was in the sparring hall. Almost immediately, she noticed some shadows underneath the former Gremory Heir's eyes.

"You need something, Lilith?" he asked, reaching up to rub at his eyes for a second as he spoke.

"Yeah, I do." She replied, shifting a couple of stray hairs out of her face. "We need to talk, Raylix. No, this can't wait until later." She immediately added, the second she saw Raylix opening his mouth, which he closed again for a couple of seconds before opening again. "And no, you don't need to keep training, you look like you've been here for hours. Hell, I didn't see you at breakfast, how long HAVE you been here?"

"Since, uh…" Raylix stretched a little as he looked slightly thoughtful, before what looked like a minor 'oh, shit' expression came over his face. "8 in the morning?"

…It was currently 3 in the afternoon.

"Fine, we can talk." Raylix relented, relaxing his body a little as he looked over at Lilith. "What's up?"

Well, at least he'd recognised that he could take a moment, Lilith thought to herself as she took a breath.

"The girls." She replied. "I'm not gonna beat around the bush, Raylix, we've needed to talk about this for a while. And I think you know why."

"Oh, really?" Raylix asked, as he wiped his sweaty hands on his pants. A blank look had crossed his face, which Lilith found herself slightly annoyed by. The ignorance angle, huh? Definitely wasn't making him look all that much better, but still. She thought this might happen, she'd long-since figured out what Raylix needed to hear.

Whatever expression her face had shifted into when the annoyance came over her, though, Raylix had picked up on and almost seemed to shrink a little bit at, before turning away slightly.

"Irene, Katerea, Cinder, Esdeath, Tamamo, Hikari, Kurumi," she began. "You've known some of them only a few weeks, some for years, Irene nearly your entire life. I might not know some of them as well as you… probably, do, but what I do know? They're all playing parts in your life now, pretty major parts at that."

Lilith took a breath as she surveyed Raylix's reaction to her words… up until he looked down, averting his eyes from hers, he didn't seem to have been having one at all. He was listening, at least.

"They all like you, that's incredibly obvious." She continued. "I don't know whether or not you, somehow, haven't realised that, or are just intentionally ignoring that, but either way, it's time for that to stop. Time for you to start respecting their feelings, consider at least trying to have some kind of relationship with them beyond keeping everyone at arms-length, which you seem to be doing whether deliberately or not."

Raylix rolled his neck around a little bit, before turning slightly away from Lilith.

"No." he replied, beginning to make his way towards the exit of the sparring-arena, aiming to go around the Lilim Queen. "There are more important things than-"

"STOP."

And just like that, Raylix stopped dead in his tracks, suddenly unable to keep walking towards the doors to the sparring arena. He was right alongside Lilith, who herself hadn't moved from the spot she'd started their conversation in. Looking to the side and up at her- realising that whatever she did to Shalba and Creuserey to get them to shut up, she'd just done to him- he felt himself going pale at the barely contained anger present on her face.

"Let me guess," Lilith continued, her voice still calm but now carrying a noticeable edge to it. "You're heading for the gym next door so you can keep working out?

When Raylix didn't immediately reply, she let out a sigh.

"You're reminding me of Hikari, when I first took her in." she remarked, reaching over and resting a hand on Raylix's shoulder. "She was obsessed with getting stronger whenever she could, but even she knew when to give it a rest and get some sleep-"

"It's not that!" Raylix cut across Lilith as he pulled away from her, having found the strength to move his body again. "It's more than just that, Lilith!"

Lilith didn't move or verbally reply, only raising an eyebrow in a silent invitation for Raylix to continue as she kept her gaze on him steady. She could almost see his confidence under her gaze slipping away by the second, as he almost immediately tried to avert his eyes.

"It's… what I'm training for, as well…" he continued, in a far quieter tone.

"I'm listening." Lilith stated. As she did so, the doors to the sparring hall swung shut, which Raylix immediately noticed and let out a small sigh at.

No letting him run.

"For… I guess my whole life, up until relatively recently," Raylix began, his hands shoved into the pockets of his pants. "I had my friends, Sabemka and Tomosei. My best friends… my only friends." Audibly swallowing, he continued. "Ever since we met during the Great War, we did everything together. And I mean EVERYTHING. Up until… until…"

"They were killed." Lilith spoke. "During your engagement party to the Phenex Heiress. I heard about the Fallen Angel attack that night… I'm sorry."

"I GOT them killed, though." Raylix replied, rubbing at his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. "Every night after it happened, and just most nights recently, whenever I close my eyes, it's the fucking engagement party. The Fallen Angels moving in, me moving to fight them off… Sa- Sabemka and Tomosei joining in… and… and sometimes I wish I…"

Lilith heard a choked sob escaping Raylix's throat, as he seemed to visibly shrink in on himself a little bit.

"It's… it's empty." He spoke, though shallow, ragged breaths, clutching at himself with one hand. "After all the… the shit that went down with my f-family-" He spat the word as if it was poisonous. Lilith almost thought she spied some drool flying from Raylix's mouth as he said the f-word. "And… and after I threw away everything else I thought I had… for the smallest chance at making things better…"

Raylix wiped at his eyes again with the same sleeve. In spite of that movement, though, Lilith could still see tears welled-up in the auburn-haired Devil's blue eyes, with some of them beginning to flow.

"Recently, th-though" Raylix continued. "I found something to live- to fight for, for the first time in years."

Lilith's eyes widened a fraction at the verbal slip-up. Whatever alarms in her head that had been stirring for the past minute or so, they were now well and truly ringing.

"Not just fighting to reform Hell, or what you've got planned for the wider world," Raylix spoke, his voice quivering and his breath shaky, even as he tried to keep his cool. "but finding the Sephiroth Graal so I can bring them back. I can't go back, and I can't fail… if I do, I'll have… nothing!"

Raylix couldn't keep going. The tears that dropped from his eyes were so much that to try and hide them or wipe them away would just be a fruitless endeavour, fighting a losing battle. All he could really do was turn his face away from Lilith in some vain attempt to not be seen, but he couldn't do anything about the loud sobs that escaped his throat. He didn't remember crying this hard in any situation, or crying PERIOD, for years: probably not since he was still Gremory Heir, now that he thought about it.

His cries were the only sound that filled the sparring hall for a moment or two, and just letting all the repressed sadness and pain that he'd been carrying and bottling up for years out, was all he could focus (if one could even call it that) on, until…

Raylix didn't even realise that he was no longer on his feet until he felt his body hitting the hard ground, heard the thud that came along with it, also felt a sharp stinging sensation on one of his cheeks. As soon as his mind caught up to the fact that he was now on the ground instead of stood upright, he looked up and saw Lilith, a couple of steps' distance forward from where she'd been standing earlier, pretty much right where he himself had been standing, lowering one of her hands that she'd apparently raised.

She'd hit him. Pretty damn hard at that, if it was enough to knock HIM down without him even realising what had happened. It was also at that second that he copped a glance at the expression on Lilith's face… and it was anything but a happy one. Quite the opposite, it looked like the anger that she'd been holding in a few minutes ago was now a good bit LESS held-in, with a fair dash of disappointment added in.

"I can't believe you." Lilith spoke, her crimson eyes boring down into Raylix's tear-filled blue. "I genuinely CANNOT believe that you'd have the GALL to make a claim like that, Raylix!"

Raylix blinked a couple of times, too shocked by the fact that Lilith had just slapped him to even think about formulating an immediate response.

"But at the same time, I can't call myself surprised." Lilith spoke, again. "Considering your track record."

"Wh-what?" was all Raylix could muster as a reply, his voice a bit hoarse and still shaking after all the crying.

"I have my ways." Lilith replied. "Now be quiet: I heard you out, you're GOING to hear me out, whether you like it or not."

Raylix's mouth had opened again, but the look on Lilith's face was more than enough for him to close it again. This was more than the cold contempt Lilith had shown Shalba and Creuserey before she'd done… whatever she'd done after Hikari had beaten the shit out of them. She was MAD.

"I know more than you realise." the Succubus Queen explained: "I know that things started out pretty well for the pair of you, before the unfortunate events of your engagement party. I know things got a bit harder for you in the aftermath of said engagement party, and how Ruvella still tried to make things work in spite of how you'd long-since checked out of it all. Though I suppose that checking-out made it pretty easy for you to stab her in the heart like you did."

Raylix was too caught-up in the revelation that Lilith knew THAT much about his life, down to how his relationships had gone, and wondering just what else she could know about him to formulate any attempt at a response, before Lilith continued.

"I bet you didn't even think of how just walking out to join the True Satan Faction- not even a week before the wedding- would affect her, did you?" she asked, rhetorically. "Of course you didn't. But I'll fill you in on something: it affected her quite a bit. She was devastated, Raylix: to the point that the dress she was going to wear for you in THREE DAYS TIME, and I bet she'd still have been happy to wear in spite of how shit a fiancé you were to her, she apparently destroyed instead. It would've been the happiest day of her life, and you went and turned not just it, but the whole situation leading up to it into something she might not ever recover from."

Raylix felt like he'd been slapped again. He didn't even have the mental strength to try and move himself out of the position that Lilith had slapped him down into as she ploughed on, not done by a long way.

"Anything- literally ANYTHING- you could have done for her, would have been better than what you ended up doing, or not doing." She remarked. "You could've apologised for what you were about to do, on the night you ended up leaving? You could have had some kind of message to her, explaining what you were doing and why, for her to receive after you left? You could've even explained why you were the way that you were, or what you were about to do in-person during one of the MANY times you met up with each other leading up to when you left? Had you played your cards right, she might have even joined you, and you'd have gotten to run away together!"

"Th-there's no way that would've happened." Raylix replied, his voice still hoarse. "She'd have ratted me out immediately, and-"

"I said: QUIET." Lilith hissed, shutting Raylix up immediately. "Whether or not you'd be able to convince Ruvella to go with you is neither here nor there: my POINT is that you went and caused your fiancée so much hurt and pain, when all- or at least most- of it could've been so easily avoided. Just a little bit of effort from you, and you wouldn't have ended up making your pain her problem!"

Lilith closed her eyes, shook her head a little bit as she took a breath. Raylix, by contrast, seemed to shrink in his position on the ground, feeling smaller than he already was against all six-foot-one and a bit of her.

"And that's not even mentioning the maids," Lilith continued, after a second. "Oh, you thought I was just going to stop at Ruvella? Think again!" she added, when she saw Raylix's eyes widen. "Now Ruvella, I can somewhat understand you being reluctant to share any information about what you were planning with her, or to invite her along, but your little troupe of PERSONAL servants? Did you even think about them, leading up to when you left? Never even consider that at least one of them might want to leave alongside you- without being paranoid and deluded enough to ACTUALLY think that they'd tattle to your parents rather than take the side of the man they loved? That they may well have wanted to leave alongside you for their own reasons, or just want to help keep you safe, rather than just being dumped and left to wonder if you were even alive?"

Raylix opened his mouth as Lilith paused, but after half a second's consideration over what he could POSSIBLY say to counter anything Lilith had thrown at him, he closed it again. He'd been mentally blocking the entire subject of Ruvella and the maids from his mind pretty much ever since he'd left, but Lilith had only gone and made UNGODLY short work of that. Pretty much every single thing she'd said: it was either absolutely dead-on accurate, or he could see why Lilith would come to the conclusions she'd come to based on the information she had… which seemed to be a damn lot. And even in those cases, in his heart of hearts, he knew she had a point.

"As if that wasn't bad enough for them," Lilith continued. "Those maids that served you, slept with you, loved you? If the rumours coming out of the Devils' side of Hell are right, they're gone from the Gremory Clan's service. Never to return, likely never to find work in the Underworld again. One of them might even be dead… all because of you."

Forget slapped, Raylix felt like he'd just been stabbed. His eyes widened a bit more, before he tore them away from Lilith's piercing gaze and focused his attention on the floor that he was half-sitting half-lying on.

One of his maids… dead? Someone else to join Sabemka and Tomosei in the club of people close to him that HE'D gotten killed? That… that might be true. And he had a feeling he could make a guess as to which innocent maid was the one to meet that fate, if it was.

Unconsciously, he dragged himself into a more presentable and stabilized sitting position, keeping his eyes on the ground as Lilith looked down at him, shaking her head before bending down. The sound of her doing so, and the sight of her approaching him out of the corner of his eye was enough to get him to look up.

"Ruvella, Rheliesh, Zest, Narberal, Hannah… Whether you forgot about them in your grief, or simply just ignored them, you still had people who cared: don't you DARE claim that just because Sabemka and Tomosei are dead, Raylix, you had nothing." Lilith spoke. "Hell, is Irene nothing? What about Cinder, Esdeath, Tamamo, Katerea? You seem to have done just fine in replacing your old collection of women from before you left with a mostly new set by choosing to leave alone, and you still claim you have nothing? You've always had something, but you're just content to push away whatever you gain! Finding the Sephiroth Graal to revive Sabemka and Tomosei, that's a noble goal to be sure, but how can you POSSIBLY expect to get anywhere when all it seems like you want to do is wallow in your own self-pity and nihility, to the point it's beginning to sound more like you want to go join them than bring them back?!"

Raylix averted his eyes from Lilith again, drawing his legs up towards himself. Having seemingly finally finished what she wanted to say, Lilith drew herself back up to her full height, but still looked down at Raylix as she made a half-turn towards the door.

"Think about it, Raylix." The Lilim Queen's voice, while still hard, was now slightly softer… but only slightly. "Get up, go somewhere more comfortable than here, and REALLY think about it. I doubt you'll be able to properly train with so much on your mind, at the very least."

Waving a hand as she fully turned towards it and began walking, the doors to the sparring hall opened in front of Lilith as she strode through them and left Raylix alone. She could only let out a deep breath as she felt herself calming down from the high that saying what she'd said to Raylix had brought.

Some of it- no, probably most of what she'd said- some would probably call it harsh. But it was like how she'd gone about swaying the True Satan Faction to her cause as the Underworld Reformation Faction: she would call it necessary, what Raylix needed to hear. However, UNlike last week, she wasn't going to get immediate results. But she had a feeling results WOULD come sooner or later, she definitely felt like she'd gotten through to Raylix at least a little bit. Still, though, whatever happened next…

It was up to him.

---

There was no going back now, Venelana thought to herself as she walked in near step with Zeoticus, down one of the hallways of the Gremory Castle, towards a certain bedroom.

They'd just gotten off the magical comms with Rika and Renzo Phenex, the last of what had been several long sessions of drawing up, negotiating the terms of and, finally, signing a new version of the contract that had been broken between the two families.

It was already at the very least SOMEWHAT official, ever since Zeoticus had first pitched the idea, but now it was… official-official. Rias, their daughter, and Riser Phenex, were now engaged. They would be married when Rias reached maturity. By which point- if she'd been taught right- Rias would have had every possible lesson regarding how to live and conduct herself as the Gremory Heiress well and truly drilled into her, so the engagement and marriage between her and Riser could go ahead without any possibility of a repeat of… last time.

Acknowledging with a nod to a servant of the Clan that happened to walk past them at that moment, the Duke and Duchess stopped outside the door to Rias' bedroom, sharing a look with each other as Zeoticus reached out to the door and pushed it open, stepping into their daughter's chambers. Her bedroom was rather simple-looking, but no less grand in its scale.

Like most rooms within the Gremory Castle, the walls of Rias' room were painted a deep crimson, with a white ceiling. Five dull-looking metallic orbs (one in each corner, and in the room's centre), which could emanate light if the user desired, floated close to the ceiling, all presently turned off. To the direct right of the door that they'd just come through was a large window, with open curtains on either side that allowed the afternoon light of the Underworld's sun to streak in. By the window was a wardrobe that stretched the remaining length of that side of Rias' bedroom, which held most of the clothes she'd either had made for her by the Clan's employed tailors, bought for her on Zeoticus and Venelana's orders, or gifted to her by other noble Clans. Each of the wardrobe's seven doors also had a mirror embedded into it, reflecting the room.

Opposite to the window and wardrobe were a couple of bookcases, which mostly housed books on the history of the Underworld and the Gremory Clan (specifically aimed at and written for noble children), but also held a number of books of children's stories, as well as the beginnings of a manga collection.

Rias' bed, directly opposite the door that her parents had just come through, was more than large enough to house the toddler. Hell, it'd probably be large enough to comfortably house at least five of her. The thick red sheets were what Rias herself- clad in a cute white dress- currently sat cross-legged on, a book on Underworld history open on the bed in front of her that she seemed to be reading quite intently. She looked up, however, as Zeoticus and Venelana entered her room.

"Father? Mother?" she asked, looking from one to the other. "Is it time for dinner?"

Zeoticus let out a chuckle as he strode across the bedroom, approaching the bed.

"No, Rias, it won't be time for dinner for a while." he replied. "I can get someone to whip you up a snack if you're feeling hungry, though."

Rias shook her head as Zeoticus shifted himself onto the bed, glancing at the book that Rias had in front of her. There was a picture of Lucifer and Lilith, on their wedding day, on one page, and a recounting of Lucifer's life up to when he met his future wife and eventually married her on the other. After shutting the door, Venelana walked over and joined her husband and daughter on the bed, coming up on Rias' other side.

"Then… am I in trouble?" Rias asked, looking from Zeoticus to Venelana again and seeming to shrink slightly in her position on the bed. "What did I do wrong?"

"Nothing, Rias, nothing!" Venelana quickly assured the young redhead, reaching over and pulling Rias into her lap, giving her a one-armed hug. "Your father and I…" she paused for a second, her eyes flicking up to Zeoticus' face before refocusing on Rias. "We just have to talk to you about something, that's all."

"Oh… alright." Rias replied, reaching up to begin twirling a lock of her crimson hair around her finger. Venelana and Zeoticus shared another look with each other, before Zeoticus cleared his throat, closing the book that Rias had been reading.

"You remember how our family, the Gremory Clan, is of a high standing within Hell, right Rias?" he asked. "How we have important duties and responsibilities to the other Devil Clans, and to the Underworld?"

"Mmhmm." Rias replied, adjusting her position in Venelana's lap as she continued twirling her hair around her finger.

"Well, one of those responsibilities," Venelana spoke, attracting Rias' attention. "is making sure our family keeps its high standing in the Underworld. And to do that, Rias, sometimes that means having to make promises."

Rias furrowed her tiny crimson eyebrows. She certainly understood… some of the words her parents were saying to her. Not all, nowhere NEAR all, but enough to have the beginnings of an idea of what they were getting at.

"Promises?" she asked. "Like when I promised to share my toys with Sona, whenever she came around?"

Zeoticus let out a soft snort through his nose, nodding.

"Something like that." he replied. "But this promise is a bit bigger than that. We, as a family, have promised to another family that when you come around, you're going to be…"

The crimson-haired Duke looked over at his wife, pausing for a second. It was clear, from a glance at her husband's face, to Venelana that he wasn't quite sure how to word what he wanted to tell their daughter, in a way that she'd fully understand.

"You're going to be friends, with someone from another family." the brunette took over, catching Rias' attention again. "Do you remember Riser Phenex, from your debut?"

"Riser?" Rias' face screwed up in concentration as she took a couple of seconds to recall who her mother was talking about, before it seemed to light up as she remembered. "I remember him! He… talked a lot."

"Yes, I suppose he did." Venelana replied, stroking Rias' hair a bit with her free hand as she shared another look with Zeoticus. "One day, you and Riser will be spending a lot of time together, so it's important that you become good friends with him. It's a special promise, that your father and I made with Riser's mother and father."

Rias looked from Venelana to Zeoticus, confusion becoming more and more evident on her face by the second.

"…Why?" she replied. "Why do I have to be friends with Riser? What's wrong with Sona?"

"Nothing, Rias, nothing!" Venelana replied, tightening the one-armed hug she'd been holding Rias in this whole time. "You can still be friends with Sona, you can be friends with whoever you want! If you think we're telling you to stop being friends with Sona anymore, we're not."

"Oh… okay." Rias nodded, settling a little more comfortably into the hug with her mother, clinging onto Venelana's arm with her own tiny ones.

"But it's still important, Rias," Zeoticus spoke up. "That whoever else you choose to become friends with, it's important to get to know Riser, and be kind to him, as you grow up into the woman your mother and I know you can be." he gently tapped the cover of the book that Rias had been reading before he and Venelana had come in. "I'm sure you, as smart as you are, will come to understand why soon enough."

"Okay!" Rias, perking up a bit at how her father had called her smart. "I'll do my best, Father!"

"And that's all we can ask of you, Rias." Venelana replied, leaning down a bit to plant a kiss on Rias' heads, before unwrapping her arm from around her and getting off the bed, with Zeoticus following. "We'll send someone to collect you when dinner's ready."

Rias hummed and nodded as she watched her parents retreating from the bedroom, shutting the door behind them.

---

Awful. Hypocrite. Overall, an utter piece of shit. If one could subsist off of how bad they were, he probably wouldn't have to worry about eating or drinking for the rest of his life, however many thousands of years that ended up being.

Those kinds of thoughts, and more, had been swirling around Raylix's mind ever since Lilith had left him alone in the sparring chamber. He hadn't stayed there long after she'd left, electing to head out himself and head straight back to his room. Best chances out of anywhere in the compound of no-one coming to interrupt him, while he tried to clear his head.

It was as Lilith had said: there was no way he could continue training, not like he'd been doing before she'd shown up. Not after the truly INTENSE dressing-down she'd given him, and also the fact that after the adrenaline that came with said training, followed by being yelled at, had worn off, his body had just crashed. It was all he could do once he'd gotten back into his room, to take the extra few steps to get into bed and nap, just to try and recover SOME energy at the very least. But once he'd woken up from his nap a few hours later, and he'd been able to think about what Lilith had said with anything CLOSE to a clear head…

She was absolutely right.

Distancing himself from his quartet of maids, who'd done NOTHING but be there for whatever he needed, whenever he needed it? They'd done nothing to deserve that!

Lashing out at Ruvella, when all she'd been trying to do was get him to pay attention to a conversation about THEIR wedding? There was no need for that, not when it was apparently Venelana that had told her to hit him!

In fact, just being an overall prick to Ruvella throughout their engagement ever since Sabemka and Tomosei's deaths, when all she was trying to do was connect with her fiancé? She couldn't have known the specifics of WHY he was in the state that he was… she was going to be his WIFE, for Lilith's sake, why the hell didn't he just TELL HER?

Worse still, he'd gone and left her alone, that close to the wedding, without so much as an explanation or goodbye? If they were ever to see each other again, unlikely as it was, he wouldn't be surprised if Ruvella tried to kill him on sight.

Not giving the MAIDS a chance to leave with him? Not even Rheliesh, who had told him straight-up that she LOVED HIM (somehow) not even two weeks before she'd gone, which he'd ignored, not even really paid attention to? Of all the non-Sabemka and Tomosei people that he could have confided in about his intentions to leave, she'd probably have been the most willing to take the leap with him: he'd considered telling her, probably more times than all the other potential people combined, and he just… didn't?

WHAT HAD HE BEEN THINKING?!

And that was to say nothing of the girls he'd met on his travels ever since joining the TSF. Pulling them along in his aimless chase for the Sephiroth Graal, keeping them close the entire time, and then pushing them away for no apparent reason whenever they got TOO close? He was surprised that they hadn't just left him, especially after they'd temporarily settled down with-

A knock on his bedroom door jolted Raylix from his thoughts. He didn't go for it immediately; unsure if he could even find the strength to. It had been hours since his and Lilith's conversation in the sparring chamber, so he wouldn't be surprised if news of what was said had spread around the compound to everyone living here. He'd be even less surprised if whoever was on the other side of his door had come to pile on the verbal beatdown that Lilith had started earlier… not that he didn't deserve it.

Taking a breath, and bracing himself for what was to come, he pulled himself up from his bed and shuffled across his room to the door, pulling it open. He blinked a couple of times when he realised that the person standing on the other side wasn't one of the other inhabitants of the compound, come to continue berating him after doubtlessly hearing what Lilith had said a few hours ago… but rather Lilith herself.

Devil and Succubus shared a second or two of silence as they looked up/down at each other, before Lilith elected to be the one to break it.

"…Can I come in?"

Raylix remained silent, and in place for another couple of seconds before stepping aside, opening the door a bit wider, allowing Lilith to walk in before shutting the door behind her. The Succubus Queen took a couple of steps into his room, before turning around to face Raylix. She opened her mouth to speak, but for once, Raylix was faster in getting the words out.

"I've been a prick, Lilith."

It was Lilith's turn to blink a couple of times, before she closed her mouth. Raylix walked past her, taking a seat back on the bed and not even looking at her as he continued.

"An unfeeling, abusive, selfish, paranoid, traitorous, unappreciative bastard. There's no denying it anymore. Every SINGLE thing you said about me, back in the sparring chamber, it's all true. I'm probably no better than the noble Devils I ran away from in the first place… worse, even. I can't fathom why you'd even care enough about this sack of shit," he vaguely gestured to himself as he spoke "to even want to call me out like you did…"

He tore his eyes away from the floor, looking up at Lilith. She hadn't even moved from where she'd stopped within his room, and was looking down towards him, an unreadable expression on her face. Feeling himself going slightly red, Raylix turned away from her, looking back towards the floor.

"That's assuming you DO care." He added, after a second's pause. "Don't see why anyone, who knows the real me, would really care about me beyond what I can do. I know I wouldn't."

He barely heard the soft breath escaping Lilith's nose in response to his little diatribe against himself, didn't register her walking over to the bed and sitting down on the edge of it, right across from him. He definitely registered her hand gently resting on his shoulder, though, and the tip of one of her tails gently pushing against one of his cheeks, encouraging him to look around at her and meet her eyes.

"Well, at least you've thought about it." she replied, her neutral expression remaining but her voice soft. "Though I'm not sure I agree with your assessment that you're worse than the nobles you left behind. That sounds like a bit of an exaggeration to me… you'd be surprised the level some of them will stoop to and laugh about."

Raylix was caught off-guard by the softness of Lilith's voice, remaining silent as she continued.

"And what makes you think I don't care, Raylix? It's BECAUSE I care for you, both as a comrade and beyond that, that I felt the need to say what I said. In fact," Lowering her tail from his face, as she was sure Raylix would hold his gaze on her without that encouragement, Lilith looked across the bedroom for a couple of seconds before returning her own gaze to Raylix. "I think we're quite alike, Raylix. More than you could possibly know, if you can believe it."

Raylix's eyes widened slightly as he heard Lilith say that, and widened still further as he saw her shifting a little bit closer to him, her eyes back on him.

"Just out of curiosity, do you know anything about my past?" Lilith asked, tilting her head slightly as she looked Raylix up and down. "What do you think was the build-up to the Lilith you see before you?"

Raylix blinked again, as he looked Lilith up and down, not quite sure what she meant by her question.

"Isn't your past, like, public knowledge?" he asked. "I thought everyone knew what happened before you met and married Lucifer."

Lilith let out a slow breath, turning away from Raylix for a second or two before turning her gaze back to him.

"Well, that answers that." She murmured to herself, under her breath. "Well, I can assure you that what you think you know about me and my past… it's all bullshit, Raylix. Little more than fabricated propaganda spread both by Lucifer himself, and the noble Devil society that want to give their progenitor a relatively squeaky-clean image. I'm the only one who can tell you what REALLY made me."

"Enlighten me." Raylix replied, adjusting himself slightly on the bed as he turned towards Lilith, who let out a short snort from her nose.

"You asked for it." She remarked. "Well, where to begin… probably the beginning, I guess. "You know the Garden of Eden?"

Raylix nodded. There probably wasn't a being across the Christian Pantheon alive- Angel, Fallen Angel, Devil or Lilim- that DIDN'T know what the Garden of Eden was.

"Well, that so-called paradise was where I was born." she spoke. "From the same Primordial Clay that birthed Adam. You remember how Eve said she was the third Primordial Human? Well, Adam came first… and little old me was right in-between. Yahweh, our father," she frowned slightly as the word escaped her mouth, as if she herself hated just how true it technically was, "Requested… well, ordered would probably be a more apt term, for myself and Adam to be together, to be the progenitors of what was soon to be humanity. Their guides to a better future, or something like that."

Lilith made an annoyed clicking sound with her tongue as she finished that little spiel, looking down at the ground as she spoke.

"Adam was happy to fall in line with His wishes." She remarked. "Yeah, he was more than happy to persistently remind me, every time we spoke to each other, of our duty to our creator, but…" she looked over at Raylix, taking a breath. "I would've liked to have come around to the idea myself, you know? Would've rather taken the time to jump into the whole 'progenitor for all of humanity' thing myself, than be pushed into it not even a week after I was brought into the world." She remarked, annoyance tinged in her tone. "And dear me, was Adam persistent about it. He was like a playboy, but to the worst possible degree: as far as he was concerned, I was his property to enjoy and fill up with his seed whenever he damn well pleased, even though we were both made from the same damn Primordial Clay. Shit, by that same logic, I could've viewed him as MINE back then with absolutely no issue!"

Just now realising that she'd unconsciously raised her voice a bit, Lilith took a breath in an attempt to calm herself, before continuing.

"And Yahweh, he was no better." she spoke. "Even though both Adam and myself were born, right from the get-go, as mentally and physically mature as your average human adult, Yahweh would still treat the pair of us like children. Adam was the favourite, of course: Daddy's perfect little boy that could do no wrong, unlike the rebellious daughter that had committed the truly horrific act of just not being in the mood to be laid out on the ground and be pumped into whenever Brother Dearest wanted!"

"I…" Raylix tried to speak, make SOME kind of comment on what he was being told, but no words were coming out. Hell, no THOUGHTS to get converted into words were forming in his mind… not that Lilith would have listened to whatever he had to say anyway. It was like during the speech she'd made to the URF last week: when she got going, there was no stopping her.

"I don't know what straw landed to break the camel's back," she spoke. "But eventually, I just got sick of it. While Adam was sleeping, and while I knew Yahweh would be working on some other project of his… I left the Garden of Eden, left that heavenly so-called 'paradise', for the world below… or at least, that was what I wanted to do at first."

"You didn't?" Raylix, having finally found his voice, asked.

"Nope." Lilith replied, popping the 'p' bit with her mouth as she said the word. "Even though I left the garden, I still hung around outside the gates that I left through… no, I don't know why. Maybe I wanted to see if Adam would come to his senses and follow, go looking for his property, or I hoped if Yahweh would go looking for me, possibly apologize in an attempt to get me to come back?"

"It sounds like you kind of answered yourself, there…" Raylix muttered, prompting a snort from Lilith as she barely heard him.

"Well, whatever my reasons were, no-one came." She remarked. "After long enough of hanging out, curiosity got the better of me, and I snuck back in. Want to take a guess of what I found?"

"…Eve?" Raylix proposed, after a couple of seconds. He had a feeling Lilith was going to tell him what she'd found no matter what, but Eve was just the answer that made the most sense to him.

"Bingo." Lilith replied. "Yup, Evie had taken my place as Adam's wife, and from what I saw she was way more willing to step into the role. No doubt Yahweh had learned from his mistake when it came to making her, and that told me enough: I was just a tool for him, that could be easily replaced whenever something went wrong with it, and well…"

"That was it?" Raylix asked.

"That was it." Lilith repeated. "After that realisation, I was done, and I left. For good, I abandoned Heaven for the world below, simply traveling the land until humanity… literally popped into view, from what I saw. It was easy enough to find company whenever I felt the need for it… or solitude whenever I didn't."

"Sounds like a pretty nice life." Raylix remarked, letting out a breath through his mouth as Lilith nodded.

"Yeah, it was." She replied. "Really nice, at least at first. Stopped being so nice once I realized how much longer my lifespan was, though."

Raylix immediately nodded, understanding completely.

"Yeah, it's why I never really tried to make friends with humans." He remarked. "Even when I visited the human world with Sabemka and Tomosei damn near three times a week. What's the point when any human we meet, we're gonna outlive them at least a hundred times over?"

Lilith nodded herself, sighing. She looked almost solemn, an expression that Raylix, prior to actually meeting his crush and getting to know her, never would've imagined her wearing.

"Especially not when they weren't even like me from a biological standpoint." She replied. "I didn't know at the time, but apparently Samael had gone and screwed with Yahweh's plans, causing humanity to NOT be made from Adam and Eve at all, but just regular soil. Would've loved to have known back then, though." She added, letting out a small giggle before letting out another sigh. "The whole lifespan issue meant I could never stay anywhere for relatively long. It was tiring, having to move from place to place every few decades before anyone I settled with caught on to the fact that I didn't exactly age the same way everyone else did, and keep starting over with new identities… but in its own way, it was kind of beautiful. I got to see every aspect of the world: the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful. At the end of the day, I wouldn't have minded living that way forever. But of course…"

Lilith paused, letting out another breath and glancing at Raylix for a second, before continuing.

"Eventually, Lucifer found me." She revealed, turning her head away from Raylix. "And I was forced to become his Queen."

"Wait, what?" Raylix replied, blinking. "I…"

Whatever he was going to say almost immediately died in his throat, as soon as he caught the sharp look Lilith was throwing his way. Her expression softened again, though, once Raylix quietened down and she was able to resume her tale.

"You want to know the REAL origins of the Lilim? Innocent human women that Lucifer saw potential in, or had made deals with, or maybe just liked the look of: he kidnapped them, forcefully transformed them into beings with a nature similar to his own, but different in certain ways. All for the purpose of propagating the Devils… Yahweh had his faults, but he never made the Angels in that way."

Raylix could barely believe what he was hearing. The origins of the Devils went beyond propaganda fed by the nobles, this went all the way back to before then, when Lucifer himself was still alive and in charge of Hell. He could definitely see himself having dismissed what she was saying as nothing more than bullshit lies, but as he looked over at Lilith again, the sincerity in her eyes was impossible to ignore or deny. She was telling him the truth, but…

"Too bad for Lucifer, though, that no matter what women he got his hands on to turn into the first Succubi," Lilith continued. "None of them could give him what he truly wanted. Each one- after long enough of being used by him to pop out Devils that would go on to form his initial legions- would eventually just give out and die from overuse after it all, until… u-until…"

Raylix gulped, as he heard Lilith's voice trembling slightly, and her entire body shivering as she looked away from him.

"Y-you don't have to keep going." He spoke, as Lilith swallowed and looked over at him. "I think I can figure out the rest, you can stop if you-"

"No!" Lilith cut across the auburn-haired Devil, her eyes widening slightly as she whirled back on him. When Raylix seemed to visibly shrink away from her again, Lilith let out a breath to calm herself, blinking as she shifted a little closer to Raylix, closing the gap between them a bit more. "Sorry. It's… hard, recalling this kind of thing. But talking about it, it's something I need to do."

"I get it." Raylix replied, straightening up a bit and taking a breath, once he'd seen that Lilith had calmed down a bit. He couldn't help but feel reminded of a few hours ago, of which a reversal of the roles of storyteller and listener seemed to have taken place… maybe Lilith was onto something with that whole 'quite alike' thing? "Go at your own pace, you let me go at mine."

Lilith allowed herself a small smile aimed at Raylix, before focusing her attention on the floor.

"Thanks." She replied, before taking another couple of breaths, seeming to mentally prepare herself before she said what she was clearly about to say. "…Until Lucifer found me, and raped me."

Lilith didn't have to look back in Raylix's direction to tell that his eyes had widened to damn near double their usual size when she said those last seven words. She could practically HEAR the skin around his eyeballs stretching as she spoke.

"I couldn't stop him. I had no hope of stopping him." She recounted, her arms shifting from down by her sides to being softly wrapped around herself. "Primordial or otherwise, a Human like me had no chance against the first Devil, formerly Yahweh's very own right-hand Angel. And with every time he came in me, I became less and less who I was, more and more what he'd always wanted: a demonic baby-factory that wouldn't break, no matter what he did. By the time he was done screwing the humanity out of me, and… modifying me, to make sure I'd always need sex, no matter how much I actually WANTED it-"

Raylix felt an extremely unpleasant pang of pity in the pit of his stomach, mixed in with a not-insignificant dash of nausea. The fact that Lilim, Succubi especially, would always crave sex from their partners was one of the main reasons his younger self had always wanted, in the back of his mind, to have a Succubus for a partner. And Lilith was the strongest, the most regal of any Succubus- no, any being PERIOD- he'd ever encountered: his crush on her had manifested before he'd even known about that one trait of the Lilim that was what truly separated them from Devils. Those desires had combined into something much greater over time, but hearing all of this…

Well, he didn't know WHAT the hell to think.

"I had become the blueprint that all of the first Succubi were built from." Lilith finished. "Through either the fun way- for him- or the more efficient way, depending on how he was feeling at the time," she rubbed at herself with her hands, shuddering slightly. "He'd make another one of us, either from inside me or outside. Again, depended on how he was feeling at the time."

It might have been a trick of the light, or just the angle that Raylix was looking at her face from, but he could have sworn he saw shadows covering Lilith's eyes for a fraction of a second. Her entire body seemed to shudder as whatever memories she was doubtlessly dredging up seemed to take over for a second, before she seemed to physically force them down in an effort to continue.

"He might have called me his Queen, you might have known me as his Queen, but I was never truly that to him." She remarked. "I started out as a baby-factory, meant for popping out his progeny, but it got worse from there. Every part of me was either a tool for him to use, or a resource for him to pluck from whenever he damn well pleased…"

Lilith looked over at Raylix, tears welling up slightly in her eyes as her voice became low.

"From time to time, I'd think of all the women that came and went before me, that ended up dead from Lucifer overusing them… and how I hoped to join them." She whispered, finally. "More than anything."

Raylix… didn't know what to say. His eyes were still wide as he watched Lilith taking a couple more breaths to try and compose herself again, but it was clearly harder for her than it appeared to have been a couple of months ago. He'd expected whatever Lilith was going to tell him was going to get pretty heavy, but this?

"Life with Lucifer… was true Hell." Lilith spoke, wiping her eyes with one of her wrists, before resting her arms by her sides again and tightening her fists. "Powerful as I was thanks to originally receiving Lucifer's… essence, I was still powerless to stop him from carrying out his work. Both on me, and our… children." She shuddered at the mention of the word, before letting out another breath. "Especially the scumbag that would go on to become Hikari's grandfather. He was definitely the most like dear old Daddy out of everyone I popped out, which makes it all the more amazing that Hikari herself ended up being the light in my life that she turned out to be."

Raylix let out another breath. He'd long-since figured out the translation of the Vanishing Dragon wielder's given name, and… it made sense, he supposed, knowing what he knew now of Lilith's past, why she would give her great-granddaughter such a name. Though it only reignited his curiosity as to what Hikari's original name even was…

"I suppose that in a way, the Great War was a bit of a reprieve for me." Lilith continued. "Weird as that might be to say to someone who was born right in the middle of it: with Lucifer more focused on his crusade of revenge against his Father than anything else, I didn't have to serve as his baby-factory and resource to conduct all his… experiments, from. That, and… I found a way out."

"You did?" Raylix asked. Lilith didn't reply, or even seem to register his question as she continued.

"1519, first invasion of Heaven." she recounted. "You might remember that battle, you're credited with the death of the Angel they called Selaphiel?"

"Yeah, I remember." Raylix replied. "She was a bitch."

"I bet." Lilith giggled, taking another breath. "But while all of Lucifer's subjects were fighting his war, I… I was approached by Yahweh. He came to me, after I'd defended myself against a thousand or so Angels that thought I'd be an easy kill, asking for two things: the first, a potential way to kill Lucifer. If anyone would have known how to do it, it'd be me, was what he said."

"And you told Yahweh that way to kill him?" Raylix asked.

"That I did." Lilith nodded. "And he was quite willing to help me out, in exchange for me helping me out: namely restoring my original blessings that I had as a Primordial Human, reversing the curse that Lucifer put on me that caused me to constantly need sex, rewinding my virginity to before he stole it from me… he did all he could to restore me to before Lucifer got his hands on me. He couldn't make me ENTIRELY Human again, but I'm definitely happier in my own skin than I used to be. The advantages of human adaptability and," Lilith smirked as she looked over at Raylix and allowed her hands to drift down her body. "Having the best body in the entire supernatural world, I was more than willing to accept. Even if that's just purely cosmetic: if people want to keep calling me a Succubus, I won't stop them, but I consider myself more a Human with Lilim traits than anything else."

"Noted…" Raylix replied, his face flushing slightly, his eyes following Lilith's hands as they trailed down and up her body. "So, uh… what was the second thing? That Yahweh wanted from you?"

"Hm? Oh, yes." Lilith nodded. "It was to take Adam and Eve in: he'd realised as Heaven was finally invaded that his prized Primordial Humans weren't safe, so he needed somewhere else for them to stay. It didn't take much to claim a nice little stretch of European land and siphon a fraction of Lucifer's resources away from the war effort to build somewhere out of the way for Adam and Eve to stay. I imagine that he would have collected them once the Great War reached its ceasefire… had he been alive to see it."

"Yeah, I bet…" Raylix replied, before blinking a couple of times and looking up at Lilith, his eyes widening again. "…Wait, he's dead? Yahweh's dead?!"

Out of everything Lilith had revealed him thus far, ever since stepping into his room; that had shot straight to the top of the list of 'wait, what?!' revelations… though he supposed after a second or two, it would explain a few things. Like why Heaven had never tried to invade Hell to finish the Devils off after the deaths of Lucifer and the Old Satans, and the seemingly dwindling power and influence of the Church in the Human world ever since.

"Ooh, did I forget to mention that?" Lilith replied. "Yup. Along with the Old Satans, he's dead. Gone… I never would have expected two of the three men I hated most in the world to take each other out, but when I heard the news… the relief…" she let out a slow, shuddering breath. "I cried. For, like, a solid week. I just had to let it all out after the realisation that… that I was free… fully hit."

"And the third is Adam?" Raylix replied. When Lilith nodded, he could only gulp. "And you went and-"

"Hold your horses, handsome, I'm getting there." Lilith raised a hand to stop Raylix in his verbal tracks. "Adam might never have hurt me in the same way Lucifer, or even Yahweh, did, but I still strongly suspected what my thankfully now dead Father had in mind when making Eve for him, so when I got some free time after the war, I decided to have a look at my little Evie. And what I found from that one look…"

Lilith let out a slow sigh.

"Father was so paranoid that Eve might follow in my footsteps, try to think for herself for once, that he subdued her upon creation. Made her a naïve and loyal subject of Adam, rather than a real companion like I was intended to be, through no fault of her own. But thankfully, since Yahweh was dead, reversing the spells he'd applied to make her as subjugated as she was, was quite easy. And once I did…"

Lilith shivered a little bit, as it was finally HER turn for a blush to form on her face.

"I got to bear witness to her beating the ever-loving shit out of that prick." She spoke. "You should've seen it; it was so hot to watch… I actually creamed while watching it!"

Raylix felt his jaw open slightly, as Lilith let out a little giggle as she seemed to mentally recall the sight, before ceasing her giggles and letting out another calming breath.

"Hot as it was to watch in the moment, and as cathartic as it probably was for her also in the moment, it didn't make her feel much better." She continued. "I found her sobbing in her room soon after, and learned from her about how Yahweh had made humanity from the earth's soil, not from their descendants. Not that she was able to have any, considering one of the spells Yahweh had applied to Eve made her pretty much unable to get pregnant at ALL, or even lose her virginity in the first place. As far as I was able to get out of Eve, the only sex she ever had with Adam was…"

Lilith reached around to her enormous ass with one hand and squeezed one of her cheeks.

"Yahweh was that paranoid after Samael tempted the pair of them into eating the Fruits of Life and Wisdom." Lilith finished, letting out a sigh. "Poor Evie's ass was so abused and raw, that took some fixing."

"I bet." Raylix mused, taking a breath as he pushed the potential bias of her last words, due to her hatred of Adam, to the side. As much as the Church liked to claim that humanity were descendants of Adam and Eve, them just being made from regular soil made more sense in his mind, especially than how the Bible implied the lifespan of humans had just somehow decreased over time, only for healthy diets and medicine to show how easy it was to increase it.

He mentally shrugged at the revelation: the stories that the various Pantheons had fed to humans clashed with each other so often that it was far more likely NONE of it was true than all, with Noah's Arc and the flood being the biggest example he could think of off the top of his head.

"It took a while for Evie to fully calm down and let everything out, and then we both came up with a plan for Adam," Lilith continued, her smirk returning. "Make him witness something so unbelievable to him that it'd scar his mind forever." A small giggle escaped Lilith as she continued. "It was actually Evie's suggestion that we have sex with each other, make him watch us enjoying each other far more than we ever did, or could ever have done, from him."

"So is that how… how Adam and Eve became-" he spoke aloud, beginning to put the pieces together in his mind before Lilith cut him off again.

"Yes and no. I was never planning for Adam and Eve to become like they are now, back then." she clarified. "Initially, it was just going to be a one-and-done thing: have a good time with Eve, mentally scar Adam into knowing who was really in control and leave it at that. It was Eve who ended up enjoying it so much that, right as I was ready to pull out and call it quits… she begged me to keep going."

Her smirk became a more genuine smile, as she shifted a bit closer to Raylix.

"Hearing her begging for more of me like she was… she was so full of lust and love, I couldn't say no." she spoke, slightly breathily as she recalled. "And keep going we did. I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a kick out of enjoying every bit of Evie better than Adam ever thought he could~ mentally breaking him down until I was able to finish him off with a nice little bit of painful anal."

Lilith let out another giggle at recalling that particular memory, then noticed the sight of Raylix blushing at the thought of something like that. She coughed, composing herself as best she could, in spite of the smile that remained on her face.

"Point is," she continued. "when all was said and done, Evie became my devoted girlfriend, and was more than happy to settle into the role of sex-pet with someone she actually loved. While as for Adam…" Another giggle escaped Lilith's throat as she spoke, this one with a slightly more sadistic hint to it than the last few.

Raylix felt a cold chill going down his spine as the sound met his ears, but he didn't find himself any less aroused than he had been before.

"He's our broken little servant-boy, who does whatever his mistresses ask of him without question. And when I need a bit of stress relief, he's more than willing to bend over and take it… though as time's gone on, I've needed that less and less. Either way, he'll never have a hand in messing anyone up like he did Evie and me, which as a final ending to the men I hated above all else, I'm more than happy with."

"I… see." Raylix replied, blinking a couple of times as his mind did its best to process at least some of the absolute DELUGE of information Lilith had just flooded him with. "I… I genuinely don't have the words for what you've been through, Lilith. I had no idea, and I'm so sorry for-"

"For what?" Lilith cut across Raylix, turning to face him again with her head tilted slightly. "You didn't have any hand in my past. And stupid as some of your past decisions have been, Raylix, I don't hate you. Not even close to that."

"G-good to know." Raylix nodded, gulping. "I guess I wanted to ask, though… what are you getting at, with telling me all of this?"

Lilith let out a sigh, half-turning away from Raylix as she looked across his bedroom, out of the window and across Hebeth.

"I got everything I wanted." She began. "Revenge on all the men that, in one way or another, had ruined my life. Someone who genuinely loved me. I was free… but I wasn't."

Back down by her sides, Raylix noticed her hands balling up into fists again.

"It wasn't until everything was over, and the dust had settled, that it all sunk in: just how alone I really was and had been throughout my entire life. I'd been just a follower, and because of that I bore the brunt of just how screwed-up this world really was, and how worse it was getting by the year with how Gods followed Yahweh's example, and tyrants followed Lucifer's."

Raylix blinked a couple of times, those words striking particularly hard for some reason he couldn't quite comprehend, as Lilith unclenched one of her fists and raised her hand to her face, looking at it.

"My strength, my smarts, my body… I'm the result of my mistakes, or the strings pulled by whoever was controlling me at the time." She spoke. "All from no-one even attempting to fix the very world that birthed the problems that allowed everything to even happen in the first place!" she exclaimed, before lowering her hand and taking a deep breath. "What I'm getting at, Raylix, is that I can see the path you're heading down. And I don't want to see you go that way."

Lilith turned to face Raylix, taking a breath.

"We've been through some shit." She remarked. "I'm not denying what you've going through up there," she pointed to his head, gently tapping it with one of her fingers. "because I've been there. Pretty sure you've picked up by now that we're pretty similar in that regard."

Raylix nodded, swallowing as he did so as Lilith continued.

"However, there's a pretty important place in which we differ, Raylix: despite the horror I've endured throughout… well, nearly my entire existence, up until the end of the Great War, I never pushed away any potential allies like you've done- and are still doing- or lost faith that I could achieve what I set out to do like you seem to have."

Raylix gulped, looking down at the floor at Lilith's reminders of how he'd been.

"I'm nowhere CLOSE to the only person that's suffered." She remarked. "And everyone's suffering is worse from their own points of view: hell knows Agrat, Naamah and the others have had it pretty damn bad. Too many people have had it bad…"

Lilith got to her feet, taking a couple of steps away from Raylix's bed towards the window.

"Which is why I'm ready to fight for a better world." She continued. "Rather than wait for everything to decay and crumble forever, I'll bring about changes the world needs. By myself, if need be… as well as finding the Sephiroth Graal."

Raylix looked up, his eyes widening slightly at Lilith's mention of the Holy Grail, as the Lilim Queen turned to face him.

"You want to find it too?" he asked.

"I do." Lilith replied. "Can't go wrong with having another of the Longinus in my arsenal, right? Even if it's only another mid-tier and not one of the highs."

"I never really got the whole 'ranking the Longinus into tiers' thing." Raylix remarked, scratching the back of his head. "Aren't they all as powerful as Gods? Can destroy the world, that kind of thing?"

"Not ALL of them are as powerful as Gods. And the whole destroying-the-world thing? Utter bullshit. Common misconception." Lilith replied. "The real marker of a Longinus is just a combination of multiple abilities. Abilities that you wouldn't see being naturally combined with one another, like all the things Ddraig and Albion could do before we took care of them. Just having that trait, at base level, is enough to class a Sacred Gear as a Longinus of Low-tier standing."

"Mmhmm…" Raylix hummed, nodding.

"Mid-tiers are the ones that have a chance of challenging Gods, through a combination of sheer power output like the Regulus Nemea, or through clever enough usage of its abilities like, again, the Boosted Gear, Divine Dividing and, yes, the Sephiroth Graal." Lilith continued. "While as for the High-tiers… along with being stronger than all other Longinus' at a base level, their wielders are able to affect the world around them on MUCH higher scale than the Low and Mid-tiers, potentially worldwide. That's probably where the whole 'world-destroying' belief comes from."

Lilith took a step closer to Raylix, who hadn't moved from his position on the bed.

"Going back to the Sephiroth Graal," she continued "Irene told me about the books on it you read through like a madman when it was just you and her. You remember one of its powers is genetic manipulation, right?"

"Yeah…" Raylix nodded, slowly. "I was more interested in the whole 'resurrection' bit, though. But why… oh."

His face had screwed up slightly in confusion, before what Lilith had told him- specifically about Yahweh restoring her to a state that she was happier with than when serving as Lucifer's not-really Queen- resurfaced in his mind, and it finally clicked.

"Yup." Lilith nodded back. "When we met back in the human world, and you mentioned wishing to seek out the Sephiroth Graal to revive your friends? I knew we'd find ourselves on the same path: though I'm linked with the Khaos Brigade, and though I wish to create a world that none will have to suffer like you and I have, I have a more… admittedly, selfish, personal goal mixed with all of that."

She took a slow breath, taking another step closer to Raylix.

"To finish the job that Yahweh couldn't, near the end of the Great War. I'm certain that with the Sephiroth Graal, I can make myself how I fully want to be: regain the humanity that I'd fully lost, when Lucifer had me in his evil clutches, while keeping any traits I gained as a result of my suffering that I've come to like… become a being as perfect as you, and so many others, think I am."

Raylix gulped again, his face heating up as Lilith bent down, so her eyes were on a level with Raylix's. With one hand, she reached out towards him, laying the hand on one of his cheeks (the cheek that she'd slapped earlier, Raylix vaguely recalled) and stroking it for a moment, before trailing her hand down his body until it came to a rest at his lower back. She reached out with her other hand as well, resting it on one of Raylix's while not removing her eyes from his. The auburn-haired Devil's face was practically burning now, Lilith was so close to him… and the sudden tightness in his pants certainly wasn't helping.

"We can help each other, Raylix." Lilith spoke, her voice practically a whisper. "But I need you at your best if we're going to walk this path… together."

Raylix swallowed, doing his damndest to moisten his bone-dry throat as he returned Lilith's gaze. Though his heart was going a mile a minute thanks to his crush so close to him, and under normal circumstances he'd be freaking the hell out… he was strangely calm, like he knew what he had to do.

Swallowing again, Raylix turned the hand that Lilith had rested hers on… and closed it around hers, nodding.

"Okay." He replied, after a breath. "Let's do it. I'm with you."

A smile came across Lilith's face as she shifted closer to Raylix, gently wrapping her arm around his back a little more tightly, pulling him closer to her. Her and Raylix's faces were so close to each other, that he could see the beginnings of tears beginning to prick at the corners of her crimson eyes.

"I'm happy to hear it, Raylix." She whispered. "Thank you."

Closing her hand around Raylix's and stroking the back of his with her thumb for a couple of seconds, Lilith blinked back her tears as she looked him over… before leaning forward and pressing her lips against Raylix's.

And Raylix's vision went black.

…

"Everyone thinks they're all dead… the ones everyone knows about, at least. But Rizevim is still alive."

"The truth is… I never loved Lucifer. Quite the opposite, in fact."

"Now I can have sex on my terms, without having to worry about needing to feed off of the act. Better yet, my body's as it was before I did the deed even once."

"By any chance, are you thinking of something… naughty?"

"This'll be our little secret… okay, Ray?"

…

Raylix immediately sat upright, his eyes wide. The disconnected voices he'd been hearing in his dreams ever since the end of the Great War… all of them, they were suddenly becoming a lot more connected. Forming into memories, of… of…

He vaguely registered that he wasn't in his bedroom anymore, and turned around to try and get his bearings of where exactly he was. Though when he caught a glimpse of something- or rather someONE- next to him, he found that goal a little less immediately relevant.

Because it was Lilith, lying on her side next to him, on a bed far softer, larger and more comfortable than the already-comfortable bed in his room. She'd switched out the technically-conservative (but still INCREDIBLY sexy) dress that she'd walked into his room wearing, for an absolutely jaw-droppingly gorgeous one-piece set of black lingerie that perfectly complimented her pale skin, showing off far, FAR more than the dress did but still holding back enough to give Raylix's imagination something to work with. The same smile as before was on her face as she met Raylix's gaze.

"Has it all come back now?" Lilith asked, her expression softening. She shifted a little closer to Raylix, her titanic tits bouncing with every movement. Raylix himself was rooted to the spot he'd sat up in, on what he could only now assume was Lilith's bed in Lilith's room.

"I… yeah…" Raylix replied, slowly raising a hand to his head. "You visited… we walked… you told me the truth of your relationship with Lucifer… and then you… we…"

"That's right~" Lilith nodded, her smile becoming wider as she shifted closer still to Raylix.

"Hang on… I thought you gave yours to Eve?" Raylix asked. "After Yahweh restored your virginity, you-"

"When did I ever say I gave mine to Eve?" Lilith cut across Raylix, shifting herself up into a sitting position. "My post-war virginity? I gave it to you, while taking yours. What an honour for you~"

Raylix gulped as he watched Lilith shifting, her enormous tits continuing to bounce with her movements. He could barely believe what he was remembering, or what was happening right now!

"Then, wait…" Raylix raised a hand to his head, still trying to process everything. "Why did you-?"

"Shh…" Lilith shushed, raising a finger and pressing it to his lips. "Shh, Raylix. I think we've had enough of telling each other things, for the time being."

Her finger still on his lips, Lilith shifted herself so she was on top of Raylix, straddling his legs while leaning over him and resting her other hand on his chest. Once she was fully balanced, she trailed her hand down to his crotch where she could feel the bulge that had been visible ever since before she kissed him.

"I think, instead," Lilith continued, her voice taking on a slightly breathy quality. "that we should start making up for lost time… don't you, Ray?"

Raylix could only nod, looking like he was resisting the urge to moan out as Lilith caressed that certain area of his pants. The look on his face almost made Lilith let out a giggle, though she held herself in.

"Glad you think so." She replied, removing her finger from his face and her hand from his pants, and taking a hold of the t-shirt he was wearing with both. "Now let's…"

With barely any effort, Lilith literally tore Raylix's t-shirt right off his body, allowing the Lilim Queen the first look at his toned chest in centuries. Biting her lip, Lilith shifted herself off of Raylix so she could more easily pull his shoes and socks off of him, tossing them aside. While she busied herself with that, she noticed Raylix quickly shaking the remains of his t-shirt off of him, throwing them in the same vague direction as the pile she was making out of his shoes and socks.

Once Raylix's feet were free, Lilith grabbed Raylix's pants and yanked them down, taking his underwear with them and- once they were off and in the pile- leaving him as naked as the day he was born. Grinning at the sight, and how he blushed at the fact that he was naked in front of his crush, Lilith leaned down onto Raylix and half-crawled half-slid up his body, gently pushing him down onto his back the whole time until he was fully lying on the bed, with her over him.

Smirking down at her lover, Lilith rested her forehead against Raylix's for a couple of seconds, before closing the final couple of centimetres' distance between their lips and pressing hers against his again. Closing her eyes as Raylix immediately returned the kiss, Lilith began to slowly grind her body back and forth atop his, mentally grinning as she took such easy control of the kiss. She even slipped her tongue in-between Raylix's lips as their mouths opened in sync with each other, letting out a muffled moan as he did the same with hers. While they made out with each other, Lilith unfurled her horns and tails… she had a feeling they'd be useful.

She was easily able to hold his body down with just hers, on account of being more demonically powerful than him as well as just physically larger. Which left her hands and tails free to roam all around his body, snake into the space between Raylix's body and the bed to get at his back, or into the space between his body and hers to get at his chest. Or better yet, into the space between their grinding crotches, as one of her tails did while wrapping itself around the base of Raylix's erection.

"Mmph?!" Lilith heard Raylix attempting to moan something out, but had found himself muffled by the fact that they were locked at the lips. Opening her eyes, she found Raylix suddenly pulling his lips back from hers, his also-open eyes wider than she'd ever seen them. "Pwah-! U-unholy shit…"

Lilith let out a giggle, shifting herself back while wiping some of the spit that Raylix had accidentally sent out off of her face. She then bent down again, beginning to move the tail that was wrapped around his cock up and down, prompting another moan out of him. One far more… muted than she had expected him to let out for someone who hadn't been engaged in anything to do with sex for a while now. Was he still trying to play the strong and quiet type, even when naked and below her? Whatever, it'd just make it more satisfying when she finally cracked him.

"Tell me, Raylix," she spoke, her voice a low whisper as she stroked him with her tail, continued holding him down with the rest of her body. "How often did you dream of this exact moment? Getting to enjoy yourself with me this intimately?"

"S-so often…" Raylix replied, his face quite screwed-up from the pleasure of getting jerked off like he was. "I dreamed of you… s-so many times!"

"Aww~" Lilith replied, shifting herself so her body brushed up against the tip of Raylix's cock in conjunction with her tail jerking him off. "Cute. You'll be happy to know that you don't have to dream of me anymore… because you'll get to live it."

Raylix visibly shuddered at the feeling of Lilith's smooth lingerie, and smoother body, brushing up against the most sensitive spot on his body, which prompted another giggle out of her before she leaned back down and resumed the kiss. As she felt Raylix himself returning the gesture, Lilith held down the urge to shudder herself as she felt Raylix reaching around her body and resting his hands on her back. Good to know he hadn't completely lost use of his arms and hands in his shock at the situation he'd found himself in.

She allowed herself a little moan of pleasure, though, as she felt his hands trailing downward, gliding over her lower-back before coming to rest on her enormous ass-cheeks as she rocked herself back and forth on his lightly pulsating erection. It was tempting, beyond words, to just slip the bit covering her waiting pussy aside and just slip Raylix's cock inside her, and immediately get to rocking his world in the most hardcore way possible until one of them broke… but that, as the first night they shared together in over half a millennium?

No thanks.

Feeling a slight wetness on her tail as she continued stroking with it, Lilith twisted herself around to look at Raylix's cock, and noticed that it was now leaking precum… though with how much of it had escaped his tip and was dribbling all over every side of it, including all over her tail, leaking almost seemed like too soft a word. His cock was also pulsating far more aggressively than it had been nearly a minute ago, and visibly twitching in Lilith's grasp with every pulse it made.

"This close already?" Lilith asked, turning her attention back to Raylix's face as she slowed her stroking and grinned at him. "Understandable, I suppose. And it's not like we've got a while to get you… trained." She finished, with a giggle.

Raylix let out a strangled mix between a moan and a breath, nodding in response to what Lilith had said. Even if she had the distinct impression he was barely listening. Leaning back down and increasing the speed and force of her strokes, as well as how she rocked herself atop Raylix's cock, she claimed his lips in a series of smaller kisses.

"Mwah~ go ahead and cum, Ray." She whispered huskily, between kisses. "Let it out, unload all over me… you know you want to~"

And good God damn, did he ever. A moan much louder than any he'd let out before now, but still muffled by her mouth over his, escaped Raylix as his cock pulsated and twitched more violently than ever before, before erupting as he hit the first climax brought on by someone that wasn't him for several years. His body bucked and spasmed against Lilith's as rope after fresh, hot rope of his seed landed on Lilith's lingerie, her lower body, the tail that she was stroking him with, and on Raylix himself before it began to drop down onto the bed that they were both lying on.

"More… I know you've got more in there." Lilith whispered, directly into Raylix's ear this time before leaning up and gently nibbling on it with her teeth, not letting up with how she stroked him with her tail but rather going faster and harder still, wanting to milk him of every drop he could possibly let out right now. "Give me EVERYTHING."

A mixture of moans and grunts was all that Raylix could let out as he continued to fruitlessly buck his hips against Lilith, each quick and forceful motion of her stroking tail yielding another spurt or drop of his cum until, after a moment, the amount that he'd let out seemed to finally satisfy her. It was at that point she pulled back, shifting her body off of his and smirking as she surveyed her handiwork… tailwork?

Unwrapping her tail from Raylix's twitching cock and making sure his eyes were zeroed in on her, she moved the appendage in question to her mouth and dragged the cum-covered part of it across her tongue, tasting her lover's cock juice right in front of him and making a long, slow show out of it.

"Hmm… not bad." She remarked, once her tail was licked clean. Reaching down at herself with her hands, she scooped what she could of the cum that had landed on her lingerie and body off of it before raising the hand like a cup, opening her mouth and letting the whitish-grey liquid drop directly into her mouth. "Bit saltier than I remember. Maybe it's better straight from the source?"

"H-huh?" Raylix replied, between heavy pants. His head was spinning from how hard he'd climaxed just now, his cock was twitching and- in spite of how Lilith had just milked him with her tail- still ROCK HARD: that seemed to be the only part of him that was really working properly right now, he felt too drained in the immediate aftermath of cumming to really try and challenge Lilith as she shifted herself down towards him, shifting the shoulder-straps of her lingerie off of her shoulders to fully reveal her titanic tits… not that he wanted to, not in a million years!

Lilith worked herself down onto her stomach, in-between Raylix's spread legs before sticking out her tongue again, licking at the base of his cock and the immediate area around it, making sure to lap up all the cum that had drizzled down onto the rest of his body before trailing her tongue up to his tip. The simple act of touching his cock- anywhere on it- with her tongue so soon after she'd made him cum like she did was enough for Raylix to sharply inhale, followed up by another loud moan.

About time he stopped trying to keep himself quiet, Lilith thought. He knew the room was soundproofed; no-one was gonna hear them but each other.

Raylix's moans became even louder, though, when Lilith continued to drag her tongue across and around his tip, giving it a couple of gentle flicks to get the last remnants of cum out of it before taking things a step further and wrapping her mouth around it, forming a vacuum around the tip while gently sucking on it.

"Ohh, shit…!" Raylix moaned out, his body shaking and writhing from Lilith's ministrations. With his cock still in her mouth, Lilith reached around under Raylix's thighs and lifted them up slightly so his legs weren't lying flat against the bed. Once that was done, she took a gentle hold of the base of his cock in one hand and began jerking him off again, while bobbing her mouth back and forth on the tip and top part of his shaft. Now that she was so up-close with it, she realised just how much bigger he'd gotten since last time they'd been intimate like this. He had to have grown three inches at least… maybe four?

As she blew and jerked him off at the same time, she rested her other hand against Raylix's stomach and lower chest, deftly holding him down as she did her work on him, keeping the writhing and jerking- or at least how much of it affected said work she was doing- to a minimum. He was still moaning, though: god, was it amazing to hear him moaning with every time his tip brushed against the warm inner walls of her mouth, or the back of her throat, and with every time her hand tightened a little around his base while she jerked him off.

It was more amazing still to hear his moans get a hell of a lot louder when, suddenly, Lilith took her hand off Raylix's cock and thrust her entire face down, deep-throating the Devil in one swift motion and holding herself there in place.

"Aaagh~!" Raylix moaned out, throwing his head back and almost feeling like he was going to cum for the second time in as many minutes, his cock was pulsating that hard in the tight confines of Lilith's throat. Though just as the pleasure of it all almost became too much to bear, Lilith lifted herself all the way up and off his cock, now coated in her saliva. She looked down at it for a second or two before she shifted her gaze to Raylix's face, letting out another giggle.

"You like that?" Lilith asked, winking at Raylix as she looked back down at his cock. "Figured that'd be the best way to lube you up a bit, before I…"

Adjusting her position slightly, Lilith reached down to her chest and lifted her enormous breasts up, plopping each one of them down on either side of Raylix's cock before using both hands to close them properly around his shaft, beginning to rub them up and down in a titjob that Raylix surely never thought he'd EVER get to experience again. When she noticed that the tip was poking out from in-between her tits, Lilith leaned forward and wrapped her mouth around said tip to keep sucking on that particularly sensitive area.

To up the ante even further, she began humming directly onto said sensitive tip, sending ultra-pleasurable vibrations through Raylix's cock that seemed to amplify and affect his entire body: "Hm hmm hm-hmm… Hm hmm hm-hmm… Hm hmm hm-hmm, hmm, hmm-hm-hm hm-hmm…"

"Ahh~" Raylix moaned out again. By pure reflex, he reached out with his free hands to try and grab Lilith's horns, to take more direct control of the situation, but before he could get anywhere close to them with his hands, a couple of Lilith's tails shot out and wrapped themselves around his wrists, holding them in place. Stopping her humming for a second, Lilith looked up and- with his shaft still engulfed by her tits and his tip still in her mouth- slowly, mockingly, shook her head a couple of times while letting out a noise that sounded like she was LAUGHING at him, with his cock still in her mouth!

"Fine…" Raylix half-moaned half-growled, raising his hands as best he could in mock-surrender with how Lilith's tails were still wrapped around them. "You win."

Lilith blinked a couple of times, before releasing his wrists from her tails and returning to bobbing her head back and forth on him.

'Good to know you learned your lesson a bit quicker than… some men.' Lilith thought to herself, using her tongue while inside Raylix's mouth to stimulate his tip a little more, to draw out another moan from her lover. She could feel his cock, which had already been twitching a bit ever since she'd deep-throated him, pulsating more and more violently in her mouth and in-between her tits as she stroked and sucked him more and more.

'Come on, Raylix, you can do it.' Lilith thought, her eyes shifting from down at Raylix's cock to up at his face. 'You've got more in here for me, I know it!'

Seemingly on mental command, or just spurred on by the look in her eyes as hers met his, Raylix did just that once again. Another heavy groan escaped his throat as he thrust up between Lilith's tits into her mouth, and began firing shot after shot of his baby-batter right into his new lover's throat.

Lilith let out a muffled squeal of delight at the hot seed coating the inside of her mouth and throat, immediately forming a tight vacuum around his tip with said mouth so not even a drop of it would get out. And then she sucked, slurping all the cum that had landed back on his tip straight into her throat and continuing to work his shaft with her tits to keep him cumming. Locking eyes with him all the while, she let out another lustful moan as she felt every hot, thick spurt of spunk splashing down her gullet.

Only when his cock stopped throbbing, and she'd licked and sucked up the last droplets of his second batch of cum of the night, did Lilith finally pull back, slowly letting out a breath as Raylix's cock, free from the confines of her tits, flopped down onto his lower chest. He was an incredible sight, Lilith thought as she looked down at him: all splayed out on his back, his body shining with sweat, eyes closed and panting almost feverishly in the aftermath of two climaxes in such quick succession.

He looked a little drained, though. Probably thanks to lack of real experience over the last few years rendering him a bit out of practice, or the simple fact that Lilith was just in another league when it came to this sort of thing.

Moving closer to him, she reached up to one of her enormous breasts- which were themselves coated in a light sheen of sweat, some from Raylix, some from her- and tweaked at her nipple with one hand. With the other, she reached down to Raylix's mouth and gently guided his mouth open.

"The night is still young, Ray~" Lilith whispered, squeezing her breast to squirt some of her milk in: milk that, if Raylix had an arousal-free mind right, probably would have recognised the taste of.

The effect that the milk had on him, once he'd swallowed it on instinct, was immediate. Lilith had to quickly shift herself out of the way as Raylix opened his eyes and sat up, looking far more energized than he had been just a couple of seconds ago. Even his cock looked ready to go again, as it stood to attention rather than simply flopping around.

"That's better." Lilith remarked, a satisfied smile crossing her face as she slid off her bed and reached for the lingerie she was still half-wearing. Raylix's eyes followed her movement, and they widened again as she slid the garment off her body and tossed it into the pile that had been made out of Raylix's shoes, socks and pants. Now just as naked as he was, Lilith got back on the bed, crawling over to where Raylix sat before and pressing her lips against his once she got close enough. "I like my lovers coherent, Ray."

"R-Ray?" Raylix asked, still letting out pants but far more lightly, between the faint kisses Lilith planted all over and around his lips as she straddled him.

"You like it?" she asked, giggling cutely as she moved some of her tails behind his back to hold him in the sitting position he was currently in. Some of her other tails went to guide his cock towards her pussy, which was glistening with pure arousal. "Cute nickname for a cutie like you…"

"I… I'm not…" Raylix tried to reply, but his mind couldn't locate the words to say. Not when Lilith- THE Lilith- was straddling him like she was, fully naked! Lilith let out another giggle, adjusting the grip her tails had on Raylix's back as she settled her pussy on the tip of his cock, the outer folds of her lower lips just barely brushing up against the top of his tip.

"Aww, even cuter." She remarked. "Bet the Lilith you had in your mind before we met at the villa never had a pet name for you, huh?"

Raylix could only shake his head as Lilith wrapped a couple of her tails around Raylix's cock, holding it upright as she slowly lowered herself down onto his foot-long cock, taking his tip into her at first before pausing. Letting out a moan, she looked down at Raylix while releasing his cock from her tails, holding herself in place above him for a couple of seconds, before letting herself drop the rest of the way down into his lap. Raylix let out an 'oof!' as he felt Lilith dropping onto him like that, and would have laid back had the Succubus' tails not held him in the sitting position he'd moved into when he'd drank her milk.

He was trapped, the closest he'd physically been to someone since Rheliesh: but thoughts of her disappeared from his mind as quickly as they arrived when he heard Lilith letting out a moan of her own, as she felt the inside of her pussy moulding to fit the shape of Raylix's cock, now that it was fully inside her. Fixing him with a look of pure joy and pleasure, Lilith reached up with her free hands, cupping his face in them and giving him a loving kiss as she lifted herself half-off of his cock, before dropping back down again.

Moans escaped the Devil and Succubus into each other's mouths as Lilith repeated the motion, working herself into a rhythm as she moved one of her hands to the back of Raylix's head to hold him more in place, while resting her other hand against the bed that she and Raylix were on, to keep herself balanced as she began thrusting herself onto his cock.

It was remarkable, just how much better Raylix felt inside her than he did the first time. Not that he'd done a bad job that time- under the circumstances of that being his FIRST time, he'd done excellently- but he'd definitely come a LONG way since then. Hardly surprising, Lilith thought, considering just how much practice he must have had with the maids that had come and gone from the Gremory Clan's employ since that night and when he left. Not to mention, she wouldn't have been surprised if Venelana had decided to give him a little one-on-one coaching…

"Mwah~!" Lilith let out a noise as she pulled back from the kiss with Raylix after a minute and half of locked lips, her eyes lidded with lust as she looked down at the man she was thrusting onto, a trail of saliva connecting their lips for a moment before it broke. When she heard Raylix letting out what sounded like a mix between a moan of pleasure and a growl of frustration at the kiss being broken, she let out another giggle between her breaths. "Aww, Ray… you're hungry for me, aren't you?"

The hand she was gripping the back of Raylix's head with shook slightly, as the auburn-haired Devil nodded. A moan escaped Lilith as she felt Raylix's hands returning to her back and trailing down to her ass before coming to a rest as his own hips began to shift and move in conjunction with Lilith's movements.

"Well lucky for you, I'm in a giving mood tonight." Lilith remarked, increasing the force of her thrusts down onto him. "Are you~?"

The slapping sounds that Lilith's and Raylix's hips made as they slammed down against each other growing louder, as Raylix nodded again. He could only let out another strangled moan as his cock continued to twitch and throb within her pussy, with every time Lilith engulfed it when she came down on him.

"Good…" Lilith moaned out in reply. Just as she felt Raylix's cock beginning to pulsate particularly hard within her snatch, she switched to a different tack and began to rock herself back and forth while Raylix's cock was all the way inside her, rather than simply slamming up and down on him. "You gonna- ahh~ -make us official, then? Paint my insides with your- mmh~ -seed?"

More moans escaped Lilith with every time her clit found itself rubbed up against by something as she rocked herself back and forth in Raylix's lap, her eyes still lidded as she held onto the former Gremory Heir for dear life, rocking herself faster and faster.

"I- fuuuu- yeahhhh~!" Raylix moaned out himself, much louder than Lilith as her tight snatch finally caused his cock to erupt once again, triggering him to let out another torrent of his seed straight into her waiting cunt. It was an even more intense and longer-lasting torrent than the first two times tonight that he'd came, and the sudden inner warmth that came with her pussy being flooded with her lover's cum was… momentarily overwhelming to the gorgeous demon riding him. So focused was she on purely dominating Raylix and making HIM cum that she didn't even realise how close she was herself.

"Oh~!" Lilith half-moaned half-shrieked, her inner walls clamping down around Raylix's cock as she came, which only caused Raylix to let out another- this time much smaller- batch of cum from his cock to join the first he'd fired into her womb. Her tails that were wrapped around Raylix's back tightened momentarily, before loosening themselves from around him entirely of their own accord and her grip on Raylix's hair at the back of his head tightened, but didn't loosen after a couple of seconds. Instead, she stayed gripping on him, holding him in place for the next half-minute or so as she rode out the high of her climax before it began to wear off, and she slowed down and released Raylix… who immediately flopped down onto his back, letting out a small grunt as he did so.

"Oh, shit…" Lilith whispered to herself, taking a slower breath as she looked down at Raylix. "Was that the first…?" she trailed off, thinking to herself for a moment about all the men she'd taken to bed since the end of the Great War. Yeah, the climax she'd had just now might have ACTUALLY been the first time, since losing her restored virginity to Raylix all those centuries ago, that she'd came during sex with a man… no wonder it had been so strong.

Another slow breath escaped Lilith as she smiled down at Raylix, pure lust clear all over her face as she slowly lifted herself off of him. She could feel some of his cum that hadn't made it all the way to her womb dripping out of her pussy, either onto Raylix's cock (which was still perfectly upright and hard as a diamond), his stomach or onto the bed they were both on, though most of it remained inside her. Having regained full function of her tails after coming down from her climax, she wrapped two of them- one each- around Raylix's thighs and lifted them up, bringing his knees to his chest.

"W-wait…" Raylix, still coming down a bit from his own orgasm, blinked a couple of times as he felt himself dragged slightly down the bed as Lilith brought his knees to his chest. "Lilith… what are you…"

"Shhh…" Lilith replied, resting a third tail against his lips to silence him, while resting her knees at either side of his chest and half-leaning on his thighs. A fourth tail moved around beneath her, wrapping itself around Raylix's cock and holding it in the right position for her to slowly slide down his thighs, and slip it into her pussy once again. "Just lie back, Ray, and let your Queen handle this…"

Shifting her eyes away from Raylix for a second, Lilith reached out with her demonic power towards one of the pillows at the end of her bed, and quickly pulled it towards her and Raylix so he could rest his head on it as she began to slowly ride him.

"Ahh~" Raylix moaned, as he felt Lilith's pussy sliding onto his super-sensitive cock again, engulfing it as she rested herself a bit more fully on his thighs. "I always… thought of you more as a Goddess than anything else…" he trailed off, blushing as Lilith looked down at him, reached down and gently cupped one of his cheeks in one hand, stroking it with her thumb as she began slowly riding him.

"Hope I'm living up to the title, then." She replied, letting out a slow sigh as she worked herself into a slower rhythm than she was riding him at before. "This alright for you? Comfortable?"

Raylix found himself unconsciously matching Lilith's breathing as he nodded, enjoying the feeling of Lilith stroking his cheek, as well as her pussy engulfing his cock once again.

"Good." Lilith replied, resting her other hand on one of Raylix's pulled-up knees, and beginning to slowly increase the speed of which she shifted up and down on him. "Because we've got all night to do whatever we like~"

She resisted the urge to giggle as she heard Raylix gulping.

…

Lilith adjusted the position of her tails, and how her legs wrapped around Raylix slightly, shifting herself down a little. Pushed up between Raylix and the wall by her bedroom door like she was, she didn't have much room to manoeuvre herself, and let out a soft moan as she felt Raylix's cock go that little bit deeper inside her. Looking down, she allowed herself a small smile as she saw Raylix lean down, sucking on one of her tits like a baby as he thrust in and out of her like an overenergized madman.

It was kind of cute, and somewhat funny, seeing him souped-up on her milk like this. And it wasn't like she was in any real discomfort, she could EASILY overpower him and wrest back control if need be… but she had so many other ideas cooked up in her head for what she and Raylix could do together tonight, and she had a feeling forcing back control would mess with the mood that she'd worked so hard to curate between the pair of them. And she WAS enjoying getting screwed hard and fast… to a degree.

She didn't NOT like it, consensual big dick in her was still consensual big dick in her, she just preferred being in control of her own pleasure was all. But if she was giving Raylix the so-called chance to fully take control…

"That all you can do, big boy?" Lilith asked, as Raylix pulled his mouth back from the tit he'd been latched onto earlier. A thread of mixed saliva and tit-milk connected his mouth and her nipple for half a second before it broke, and Raylix, who had some drops of her milk around his lips, could only let out a mixture between a moan and a growl by way of reply. His hands- which had been at Lilith's back before now- snaked down to her ass, as he adjusted his grip on her against the wall and redoubled his thrusting efforts, letting out rhythmic grunts as he did so.

…

"That's it, stick it right up in- ooh, good boy~"

Lilith threw back her head, letting out a low moan as she felt Raylix's tongue travelling an extra half inch further into her pussy than he'd been going before. After a couple of seconds, though, Lilith noticed Raylix tapping on the bed beside her with one hand and lifted herself off of him for a couple of seconds to allow him a couple of breaths before lowering herself back onto him. Another couple of seconds passed before she felt that same tongue sliding back in-between her lower-lips, and beginning to move up and down, to the top nearer her clit down to the bottom nearer her butthole and back again.

Sighing in pleasure, Lilith began to slowly rock her hips back and forth herself, grinding herself atop Raylix's face and moaning all the while. Mentally smirking as another idea formed in her head, she reached down to Raylix's chest and began tracing her thumbs around his perked-up nipples, immediately causing the auburn-haired Devil to visibly shudder beneath her. She upped the ante still further after a moment of massaging the sensitive areas by taking them both in-between her thumb and index fingers, lightly squeezing and pulling on them rather than just rubbing.

Raylix let out what sounded like a muffled squeal of mixed surprise and pleasure from below, his tongue momentarily seizing up inside Lilith's pussy before he continued his motion with it inside her. Lilith could only let out a small laugh at the sound, under the moan of pleasure at her lover's vigour. She actually hadn't been totally sure if he even knew how to eat a girl out, before tonight: as the Gremory Clan's Heir, in a position of power over damn near every woman he could possibly sexually encounter, and knowing he hadn't had sex with anyone AT ALL since leaving said Clan, she'd been wondering if he'd ever done anything like this.

Good to know, at least, that he had at least SOME skill in this particular area.

…

"Haah… Ahh~! Ohh… shit, shit, shit!"

It was harder than Lilith thought it'd be to openly giggle at the sight of Raylix squirming, the sounds he was making… but who could blame her? Six of her seven tails wrapped around his body to keep him in the desired position, a seventh wrapped tightly around the base of his cock like a makeshift ring, one hand also clenched on his cock and mercilessly pumping up and down, the other a little bit further down at his ass.

Her middle and index fingers were lubed up, thanks to a slight variation on a simple water-spell, and rammed themselves up Raylix's tight asshole while massaging his prostate at the same merciless speed as she was pumping his tied-up dick, giving him quite the intense bout of pleasure. Lilith was pretty sure that he would have climaxed at least three more times by now, had she not got her tail wrapped around the base of his cock to prevent exactly that from happening.

"I know you want to cum, Raylix…" she shifted over and whispered, directly into Raylix's ear. "You want your fifteenth release so… so badly, but you're going to have to earn it. You shouldn't have a problem with begging- maybe even praying- for your Goddess to let you cum, right?"

It was so… no, it had gone beyond cute at this point, it was straight-up HOT to watch Raylix squirming in her grasp like this, clearly wanting more than anything to let out what was probably going to be a bucketful of cum, but too prideful to beg. Whatever he was feeling beneath her, it was clearly extremely intense: his breaths were coming out at a feverish pace, his body was practically thrashing back and forth even when tied up like he was, and Lilith spied tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.

Eyes that flicked over to Lilith and stared up at her for a few seconds, before Raylix opened his mouth. Lilith smirked and leaned down slightly, she couldn't wait to hear this.

…

Lilith let out a half-gasp as she felt herself pulled upward slightly, as Raylix adjusted his grip on her horns and continued to thrust deep, hard and fast into her. The very tips of her gigantic breasts brushed against the bedsheets, which had long-since been drenched in sweat, female fluids, cum and a bit of saliva, with every time Raylix's hips slammed against her from behind.

Letting out a small moan as she felt Raylix's balls slapping in a particular way against her clit, Lilith resisted the urge to yawn… at which point, when she glanced over at the clock on her bedside table, that she and Raylix had been at it the whole night, and it was almost morning. She'd been half-joking seven-and-a-half hours ago, but she'd really surprised herself with how far she'd been able to go, and how eager Raylix was to keep going. Though the fact that she'd had to top him up every now and again with another couple of mouthfuls of her milk had definitely had something to do with that, it was still a minor miracle that his body hadn't simply given out on him and crashed at any point before now.

A sharp smacking sound, and a light stinging sensation on one of her ass-cheeks brought Lilith from her thoughts. Turning her head around to look behind her as best she could, she saw Raylix continuing to thrust in and out of her with as much force and speed as someone who'd been getting constantly screwed by (and occasionally screwing) his sexual superior for more than a quarter of a whole day with no breaks possibly could, under the circumstances. The look on his face painted a picture of someone who was barely conscious, continuing on the last embers of energy granted by the last batch of Succubus tit-milk he'd received from her, but he was clearly still conscious enough to raise his hand and smack her huge ass again as he thrust, causing it to ripple in reaction to his strike.

Lilith let out a small giggle at the sight and sensation, winking at Raylix before turning back around and adjusting how she rested on her elbows slightly, giving Raylix an easier time of keeping up his hard and fast thrusts, and feeling his hands returning to her horns that he'd been using as handlebars for the past several minutes. She totally got why any lusty male Devil would use a Succubus' horns in this way while doing them doggystyle: it was a popular enough position, and she couldn't deny how useful said horns were for-

"Ahhh~ haaaaaa~!"

A loud moan, from behind her, interrupted her thoughts once again, followed almost immediately by… well, it was less a forceful torrent of cum this time around, let alone the firehose-like spurt that had come out when Lilith had had a go at Raylix's prostate, more a moderate splatter. Though Raylix had came in and on her and the bed so much, Lilith thought, that even with her milk and magic to help him out, he was bound to run dry sooner or later.

She felt Raylix's cock exiting her with a light squelching sound, followed immediately by her overflowing pussy beginning to ooze his cum out of it and onto the bed below, and the sound of something heavy landing on the bed behind her with a soft thud. Blinking before turning around, Lilith's eyes widened slightly when she saw Raylix lying on his back on the bed: his entire body flushed red, his eyes half-shut and glassed over, and his breaths slowing down to a more normal pace.

He was unconscious. He'd literally screwed himself into a stupor.

Lilith had opened her mouth, to say… something, she wasn't quite sure of what. Probably some kind of remark to remind Raylix that out of his attempts throughout the night to establish SOME kind of dominance in the bedroom with her, the amount of success he'd achieved on that front hovered around zero… but that remark died in her throat when she realised that he was too unconscious to possibly hear it.

Her attention left Raylix when she heard the door opening, and a voice wafting in.

"Mother?" Hikari's voice sounded before the silverette herself stepped inside. "Tamamo's making breakfast, did you want-"

It was at that moment when Hikari noticed the state of Lilith's bed… and the two people on it. Her crimson eyes widened, and one of them twitched as she stopped in her verbal tracks, taking in the sight before her for a couple of seconds.

"Morning, Hikari." Lilith replied, as if her adoptive daughter HADN'T just walked in on the aftermath of her in bed naked with Raylix. "I'll have some French toast, if it's not too much trouble for Tamamo. In about half an hour, though, I've just got some stuff to sort out up here."

"Oh… okay…" Hikari replied, her voice a couple of octaves higher than half a minute ago, before she walked backwards, slowly retreating from the room.

"Could you get Adam to come up here and change the sheets, too?" Lilith called out, before Hikari shut the door behind her. "Thanks, Hikari!"

Letting out a giggle, Lilith returned her attention to Raylix before letting out a breath. Well, the proverbial cat was out of the bag now… oh well, she'd deal with that in a bit, she figured as she slid off her bed, before strolling over and bodily picking the unconscious Raylix up with one arm. Holding him against her naked body, she moved over to the door to her ensuite bathroom, opening the door with her free hand and heading inside, Raylix still flopped against her chest. Immediately upon entering the bathroom, she pointed at the bath- which was built into the floor and looked more like a pool than a bath- with her free hand, which began to quickly fill with water.

When enough of it was in, and still holding onto Raylix the entire time, she elected to levitate herself and him into the water, and rest against the side as the bath filled up around them. Letting out a satisfied sigh as she felt the adrenaline of the night's activities finally beginning to melt away, Lilith looked over at Raylix and let out another giggle. Her lover looked so cute, sleeping in the pool/tub like he was… though maybe after the night that had just passed, it might be accurate to call him something else.

Boyfriend, at least? Maybe something further? Fiancé? Skip all the preamble and jump straight to husband?

Probably something to talk about when Raylix was actually conscious.

---

Raylix didn't recognise the smell that he registered immediately entering his nostrils as he felt himself gently pulled from unconsciousness. Not at first, at least: he knew it was a pleasant smell, made him want to sink even further into the pillows his head was already resting on and go back to sleep, he idly registered that. Though as his mind transferred from the state it was usually in when Raylix was asleep to its full working condition when he was awake, a few more things began to register.

Firstly, that the pillow he was resting his head on… it seemed softer than the ones he had on his bed in his room. Not by much, because the pillows in his room were already soft enough, but…

Now that he thought about it, the pleasant smell he could feel wafting in his nostrils… he didn't remember that smell being present in his room. As his eyes steadily made their way open, and vision slowly returned to him, a few things began to come a little clearer. Namely that he was, as initially suspected, not in his room. Or in his bed: the one he was lying in was even larger and grander than the one in his room. Easily large enough to fit at least four people quite comfortably, and with sheets so warm and comfortable that part of Raylix just wanted to sink right back into them and go back to sleep.

Pulling himself up, Raylix couldn't stop himself from wincing slightly as he felt a dull pain in his torso. Feeling a little more awakened, he blinked a couple of times and looked around the room, his eyes flicking from the half-shut curtains in front of the window, to the vanity right across from the bed he was currently sitting in, to the wall-to-ceiling bookshelves. All pristine, all extravagant and impressive, all… not his, but still familiar.

And then it clicked. This was Lilith's bedroom. He was sitting in Lilith's bed. He had been SLEEPING in Lilith's bed.

Oh, and he was naked, but that registered a little less in his mind than the previous three facts. And that was to say nothing of the memories that came with the realisation that he was in Lilith's room. What had happened yesterday, and the night before between him and Lilith…

He almost doubted that that had even happened, ignoring the boner that immediately (and slightly painfully) began to form beneath the sheets. No way Lilith- THE Lilith- had… kissed him, crawled all over him, sucked him off, ridden him, smothered him with her indescribably perfect body, just overall DOMINATED him for multiple hours on end. All those feelings, those climaxes upon climaxes, the positions they'd done it (or more accurately, she'd done him) in… that all had to be some incredibly vivid dream. And that wasn't even getting into the memories that she'd planted in his mind when she supposedly kissed him the first time.

But if that was the case, just what the hell was he doing in Lilith's bedroom, in her bed, butt-ass naked? And why did his torso and hard-on hurt like they often did after an entire night of nothing but lust and debauchery?

Leaning forward, ignoring the twinge of pain that his torso sent his brain's way as a form of protest, and resting his head in his hands, Raylix took a couple of breaths. The talk that he and Lilith had had, back in the training arena, which had definitely happened. He remembered that, he remembered what he'd said, he remembered… openly crying in front of the woman he'd had a crush on for centuries.

Followed by Lilith smacking the shit out of him and giving him the biggest dressing-down he'd ever received in his entire life. One that, after he'd returned to his room to think on it, he'd come to the realisation that she was absolutely right in giving him. Every single thing she'd said, every single conclusion she'd came to about him, had been completely accurate.

But then, hours later, Lilith had come to his room to follow up on their conversation and tell him about her own past. Then they… they…

…

The door to Lilith's bedroom was pushed open, immediately attracting Raylix's attention along with a pleasant smell wafting in, that he didn't immediately recognise. Looking up at the door, his breath hitched slightly when he saw someone- a very, VERY familiar someone- stepping into the room, carrying a plate with some kind of chicken and pasta meal on it.

She looked across the room before her crimson eyes locked with Raylix's blue, and made her way over to him, transferring the plate from her hands to a couple of her tails once she got close enough to the bed, and laying the plate down in Raylix's lap as she sat down on its edge.

"I'm gonna be honest, I thought you'd be out for a bit longer." She remarked, by way of greeting. "With how drained you were come morning, I wouldn't have been surprised if you were out for days."

Snapping her fingers, she procured a knife and fork from nowhere that she handed over to Raylix, which he immediately used to tuck into the meal she'd given him.

"How long HAVE I been out?" Raylix asked, through the first mouthful of food before swallowing.

"About ten hours." Lilith replied. "Tamamo just made that for everyone just now, so I had her save a portion for you… they all know, by the way."

"They all…?!"

Raylix almost choked on his second mouthful of food, but managed to hold himself together before swallowing it down.

"So, we… we really…" he trailed off, prompting Lilith to let out a giggle.

"We sure did." She replied, shifting herself slightly closer to Raylix before leaning in closer, her mouth centimetres from his ear and her breath warm against his skin. "Not just another of your wet dreams, Raylix. We really did it."

Raylix felt his cheeks flushing again, a shiver passing through his entire body, as Lilith pulled back and gestured for him to keep eating, which he did.

"Hikari walked in on the pair of us after you fell out of me." Lilith remarked. "After that, I assume she told everyone… or Kurumi got it out of her, and SHE told everyone. Either way, they all know."

Raylix didn't reply immediately, swallowing another mouthful of his meal and forming another with his cutlery before looking up at Lilith.

"Guess that's one way to prevent a competition over who gets to jump me first." He remarked. "Win it before it even happens."

"Yup." Lilith nodded, shifting more securely onto the bed and lying beside Raylix, before reaching over and gently cupping his chin in one hand, tilting it to face her. "But last night, and this morning, was only the first step."

"First step?" Raylix repeated, his eyes narrowing slightly as he chewed on and swallowed his most recent mouthful. "What do you… oh, yeah."

"Yeah." Lilith remarked, leaning back slightly, taking her hand off of his chin. "The others. You're going to have to face them, Raylix. I might know you better now, after the talk we had yesterday, but the others… they're still in the dark. They deserve to know what's been going on with you, why you've been the way you've been, and a look at the real you. An apology probably wouldn't go amiss either, don't you think?"

Raylix, who had been raising the next forkful of food to his mouth, paused for a second as he considered Lilith's words. Up until yesterday, the thoughts of how his behaviour affected the others would never have even crossed his mind. But after yesterday…

"Think of it as the first part of your new relationships with them." Lilith remarked. "Like we talked about yesterday." Though her voice was soft, there was still a tint of seriousness behind them as she looked him up and down. "Unless you'd rather not?"

"No! I'm still for it." Raylix quickly replied, shaking his head immediately. "I'm not about to forget everything you told me in a hurry. Not when you were just… totally right about me."

"Totally right about the OLD you." Lilith replied, nodding. "The new you, the real you… well, I guess it's time to start learning what he's truly like. But after the night we shared, I definitely like him so far."

The hand that had cupped Raylix's cheek before took it again, before gently pulling him in for another kiss, one far gentler than most of the ones that he and Lilith had shared last night. It only lasted for a couple of seconds, but was no less electrifying than the other kisses they'd had, before Lilith pulled back, and stood up.

"I grabbed some new clothes for you, they're on the chair over there." She remarked, waving a hand and summoning a fresh t-shirt, pair of pants, socks and shoes to the chair of her vanity, opposite to the bed. "In the meantime, though, finish your meal. You're probably starving after how drained you were."

Raylix just then realised the pangs in his stomach that cried out for more sustenance, and immediately doubled his pace in shovelling the chicken pasta bake into his mouth. Giggling at the sight, Lilith turned and made for the door she'd just came through, leaving through it and shutting it behind her without looking back. It didn't take him long to finish the rest of the meal after that, though it didn't do much to sate the hunger-pangs… though that in itself didn't surprise him too much: he'd probably have to eat for a week straight to fully regain all the energy he'd spent, with how hard he and Lilith had gone at it last night.

Putting the now-empty plate and cutlery to one side, Raylix got out of bed and, ignoring his body's aches of protest, made his way over to the chair that Lilith had laid out the clothes for him on, and slipped into them before making as Lilith had done, and leaving her bedroom. Stretching as he shut the door to her room behind him, he made his way down the flights of stairs that took him from the top floor of the URF's compound all the way down to the ground floor. It hadn't taken him THAT long to make his way through the food Tamamo had made, so if everyone was gonna be somewhere…

He heard voices coming from behind an open door, and made his way towards said door. Pushing it open, Raylix stepped inside the URF leaders' compound's grand lounge: a room as imposing as it was impressive, just like damn near every room in the entire compound. It was a massive lounge, larger even than the main lounge back at the Gremory Castle: multiple intricate chandeliers hung from the high ceilings, casting a warm light over the room. Three of the four walls were lined with fine art, some apparently from Lilith's personal storage, and richly detailed tapestries depicting battles from centuries gone by, and the floor was covered in a thick, dark, plush carpet that muffled his footsteps. Had he not been wearing shoes, it would doubtlessly feel amazing against his bare feet.

The lounge was furnished with large and luxurious sofas and armchairs, arranged around each other in small circles that encouraged conversation, and yet enabled multiple conversations to go on at once thanks to the room's sheer size. The wall not adorned with art or tapestries featured a large, ornate fireplace that crackled softly on one end, the end closest to the door that Raylix had just come through, and the other side featuring an AgareScreen-II that was currently turned off.

Irene, Cinder, Esdeath, Tamamo, Katerea, Hikari and Kurumi were all sat around in the room, Cinder lowering her hand at the fire that was currently going. All of them looked up as they heard/saw the door being pushed open, their expressions forming into a mixture of curiosity, concern, and something else Raylix couldn't quite place when he entered the room.

"Raylix." Irene remarked, by way of greeting. "Nice to see you outside the training arena."

Raylix let out a dry chuckle by way of response, as Kurumi shifted herself slightly on her side of the couch that she was presently sharing with Hikari.

"Mom told us just now that you had something to tell all of us." She remarked. "We figured we'd gather here, so you could say it to all of us at once?"

"Good idea." Raylix nodded. "And yeah…"

His mouth remained open, but no sound came out of it. A lump had formed in his throat, one that slowly disappeared as he forced himself to swallow, and take a deep breath. "Yeah, I do."

He took a further step into the room, running his teeth nervously across his lower lip as his eyes flicked to each of the women sat before him, meeting their gazes.

"I… I wanted to apologize." Raylix spoke, after a couple of seconds. "Ever since I met all of you recently, I've been… closed off, more distant than I should've been. Downright cold, or inconsiderate of the feelings you've shown and expressed towards me. I know that's probably hurt some of you-" his eyes flicked in Tamamo's direction, in Kurumi's, in Irene's, before he closed them. "And for that, I'm truly sorry."

Raylix's words were met with silence, as the seven women all shared looks with each other. Thankfully, none spoke up, allowing Raylix to continue.

"Before I joined what's now the URF," he spoke. "I was the Heir of the Gremory Clan- you all probably know that- but before even that, I had two best friends, Sabemka and Tomosei. They were more noble than I could ever hope to be, not to mention the best friends a Devil could ask for. We… I loved them."

Raylix's breath caught in his throat slightly as he spoke those last three words, but he ploughed on.

"But that all suddenly ended, when during a gathering of nobles that announced my engagement to Ruvella, the Heiress of the Phenex Clan, to the entire Underworld… they were both killed, in an attack by Fallen Angels. I bet that attack was just a blip to some, on a night of celebration and joy, but for me, it was the worst night of my entire life."

Raylix heard Kurumi remarking "Yeah, I bet." under her breath, with that being the only voice to cut through the silence left when he momentarily paused. As she didn't seem to have anything else to say, he continued.

"I was… I was just shattered." He recounted. "I felt like I'd lost a part of me, and the way the other nobles reacted… like their lives didn't matter in spite of all they'd done for the Underworld… that certainly didn't help. I mean, it sure helped me start hating the demonic nobility, and drove me to the point that I chose to leave the Gremory Clan and join the then-True Satan Faction in the first place."

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Katerea's eyes widening slightly, but no other reaction from her. As Raylix paused, gathering his thoughts and taking a breath.

"But since then, until… I guess still now, I've been depressed." He spoke. "Badly so. Scared, too, of getting close to anyone else, of losing anyone else like I lost them. If I kept everyone at a distance, I thought I'd never have to risk going through what I've been through again."

Letting out a breath, Raylix scanned the room, noting the looks on all the women's faces. Varying degrees of empathy, understanding, concern. At least none of them were yelling at him or slapping him like Lilith had done.

"But that's not an excuse, I know it's not." He continued. "I'm not trying to make excuses for how I've acted, or what I've done with- to you. Only try and explain the old me." He took another deep breath, his heart beginning to pound harder and harder and faster and faster, but still remaining calm. "But that's the end of him. It might be too late, but I've been shown the error of my ways, and I'm ready to open up more than I have been in the past. Even if it means risking the same loss as years ago, I want to let you all in, and at least try having relationships of… of some kind, with all of you. If you'll have them with me."

The room fell silent again, with the only sound being the soft crackling of the fire in the corner of the room. The women in the room exchanged looks with each other once again, their expressions becoming far less readable as silent conversation was had. After a moment or two, and with a small nod, Irene stood up.

Brushing some strands of hair out of her face, she strode over to Raylix, her expression just as unreadable. She quickly weaved between the chairs and couches to make her way over to where Raylix was stood. With every step she took towards him, Raylix's mind suddenly began to race, anticipating another dressing-down coming his way like the one Lilith had given him yesterday, or worse a rejection of his confession and an announcement that she, and all the other women (well, not quite all. Hikari and Kurumi were still loyal to Lilith over him, so they'd be sticking around no matter what) were done with him.

Then- once Irene was directly in front of him- came another slap from her, on the same cheek that Lilith had smacked him on. The sound of it echoed throughout the quiet room, though it definitely didn't hurt as much as Lilith's had done. Which made sense, Raylix vaguely thought, Irene was only human in comparison to Lilith, a being with God-Class strength.

"To make it clear? For how you acted until now, I do feel angry at you." Irene stated as she gave a look that was a mix between a glare and a deadpan stare with traces of subtle anger sprinkled on top.

Before any other thought could form in his mind regarding what he'd just received, however, Irene leaned forward and wrapped her arms around him, thrusting her head forward and claiming his lips in a deep, fervent kiss.

Definitely better than a rejection, Raylix thought over the half-second it took him to register the fact that Irene was kissing him, returning the kiss for the remaining two-or-so seconds before she pulled back, a small smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Her eyes had also visibly softened, affection damn clear in them as she let out a breath.

"But, if you make sure to walk ahead, and make up for your past actions? I'll have you, Raylix." Irene remarked, her voice steady and sincere as she released the Devil from her embrace and sat back down, as if nothing had just happened. Her sentiment was echoed by the other women sat around, some through nods, others through gentle smiles and encouraging words, Kurumi even let out a "Hear, hear!", which got light laughs out of everyone in the room.

Relieved beyond words at how this had gone just about the best way he could have figured it would go, Raylix noticed Tamamo shifting a little further up the couch she was sat on while looking over at him. The gesture clear, he moved over to said couch and took the seat Tamamo had semi-offered him, relaxing on the comfortable seat as Tamamo leaned over, resting her head on his shoulder. When he lifted his hand up and ran it through her pink hair and orange fox-ears, he resisted the urge to chuckle as the kitsune visibly shuddered and let out a small squee-like sound.

"I'm actually curious, Raylix." Kurumi remarked, shifting herself slightly in her seat as she looked over at him. "You mentioned how you'd had your old friends- Sabemka and Tomosei, right?- before you became Gremory Clan Heir… so how did you end up meeting them? Was it during one of the wars, or something like that?"

"Yeah." Raylix replied, nodding as he shifted himself to face Kurumi, and all the other women seemed to lean in slightly. "That's a hell of a story in and of itself…"

---

And so it ends, for now. BY FAR the longest chapter of this story, maybe even the longest chapter of any DxD fic PERIOD, comes to a close.

Can anyone ACTUALLY name a longer single chapter of a DxD fic than this? Not trying to get bragging rights or anything, I'm just genuinely curious at this point. I feel like I've got a right to be after a chapter that VERY NEARLY cracked 40k words (discounting A/Ns), yeah?

Anyway, I feel like after that... to be honest, I don't know if what I just uploaded/you all just got to the end of can even be called a chapter. That MONSTER, I should talk about a few points to make sure there isn't any confusion: First and most simply, if anyone was left doubting that Lilith was gonna be the lead member of Raylix's harem... well, I guess the back third of this monster's put those doubts to bed. And for anyone who thought Raylix wasn't gonna have a harem and that he'd only be with Lilith in a single-pairing... well, maybe in another life. Not this one, unfortunately, but I still hope you're open to where I end up taking things from here. Definitely gonna try and make Raylix and Lilith the best couple they can be, as far as my own fics are concerned.

Next on the list, the URF. I don't want to see anyone thinking that this new faction is gonna be just the Old/True Satan Faction 2.0, or even 1.1. This is an entirely new faction, under pretty much-entirely new leadership. Just HOW the faction will prove to be entirely new wasn't the focus of this 25th chapter, and we've (as in both the absolute fucking LEGEND I've worked on this chapter with, and yours truly) decided it'll be best to hold that back until the coming chapters that wind down this first saga, and prep for the next.

And speaking of the next saga, that's where the canon events of DxD and the story so far will meet, and all the changes made as a result of this fic having gone the way that it's gone so far will start having REAL, RECOGNISABLE effects, as we start the long trek towards that fateful encounter at the start of Chapter 1. Shit, it seemed like a lifetime ago when I first started this behemoth of a fic, didn't it?

Throughout which, as well as the rest of it... if you haven't caught on already, it's gonna feature a bit more moral greyness from the leading man and his leading lady. Definitely darker than what I've done with Roxas in Nephalem, and what I TRIED to do with the little shit that will not be named in that one fic that will not be named. But not quite as dark as the main OC of the NEXT DxD fic I've got planning AFTER this.

Not saying it'll be coming anytime soon, God no, it's barely in the planning stage right now, but when I come out with my next (potentially final) DxD fic, unlike with Roxas being a hero and Raylix and Lilith being... morally gray, the main OC will 100% be a Villain Protagonist.

And coming to the end of my little spiel, speaking of Raylix and Lilith: if you're curious about the time they lost their respective virginities to each other, you can read about just that in the first instalment of the Lemon Series of Of Alliances & Assimilation, which is out... *checks watch* right now!

And if anyone's managed to make it through this monster-chapter... well first of all, well done. Second of all, I really hope you enjoyed it. I also hope that you've got it in you all to leave reviews, drop me a PM, look me up on Discord (my name's on my profile) or join my Discord server (link to join that is also on my profile. Just paste it into a browser and take out the spaces). Any of those methods works just fine for me!

Seeya!