NO CHILL! (High School DxD - Human SI Chapter 3)
Koneko Toujou's head snapped back, as she started looking from side to side. The Rook of Rias Gremory, thought she felt another inkling of the presence.
Akeno Himejima, Rias' Queen sighed and paused in her magic training.
"Koneko, I don't mind you wanting to stick around, and it's nice that you want us to spend more time together, but this paranoia is starting to get worrisome." Akeno sighed, resting a hand against her cheek.
"There was someone watching us-No, watching you. I just know it." The cat girl turned Reincarnated Devil was sure of it.
The first time she was sure she felt something with a lot of malice around it, watching them. But from then on, it was like someone was only taking a peek at Koneko and then shifted their focus to Akeno. It could have been a coincidence, or just someone glancing at the voluptuous Akeno, but it was consistent enough that Koneko be on edge for anything.
"Oh Koneko..." Akeno sighed once more. It's been a week since Koneko felt 'something malicious lurking around' and started hanging around Occult Research Club members more closely, before settling on Akeno. A teasing smile came to the Half-Fallen turned Reincarnated Devil at the thought. "You know," Akeno went and hugged the tense Koneko from behind. "If little Koneko just suddenly got curious about girls, and wanted to ask, I'd be happy to oblige~."
The white hair short girl jumped away from her friend and senior, while looked at her blushing.
"P-Pervert! Akeno, you pervert!" Koneko accused.
Akeno laughed as the mood changed to one more lighthearted.
A miles away Kenji Hajime was writing in his notebook everything he managed to gain about magic from studying Akeno on how she uses her spells. How they are formed, shaped, which ones where purely Devil Magic, and which ones were purely using calculations.
Sure, he only got how Akeno did her Lightning Magic, Summoning Magic, and that one time he lucked out on her using Teleportation Magic to go to the ORC club house, but that was all he needed. He can figure out Elemental Magic and Spatial Magic from there.
Also testing what Koneko is able to sense, so he can hide his power better. It's not like he cared overly much about his power being discovered, but that's for later.
It's annoying to have your training arc interrupted. Plus, he might want to make a separate identity for when he eventually interacted with the supernatural world to challenge himself against it. When he did that he'd like for his home be a solace, to just return to and relax.
Thirteen.
I, Kenji Hajime, am now thirteen years old. I have left the state of boyhood to enter the realm of...teenagers.
Thankfully I was still playing the sick boy card to I can avoid that annoyance for as long as possible.
At the moment my journey for strength and power was going steady.
Rokushiki. Seimei Kikan. Hercules Shooting Style. Weirding Way. Total Concentration Breathing.
Those five techniques I can confidently say I've mastered.
Being aware of my body, how to move and control every aspect of it, including the insides, such as my heart, muscles, blood and nerves had proven to exponentially open the way forward for me.
No, it's more accurate to say, it's blown away the blindfolds on what the illusions of what my limits were.
Feeling all the biological systems within my body and being able to control them, combine that with Senjutsu, and...
I could honestly say I've almost achieved Mastery of Self.
As Sun Tzu said: "If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles."
But as I've said, almost achieved Master of Self. Like 90% there. Almost 95% if I stretch the truth.
Physically, I've mastered my body. Spiritually however...eh, it's a mixed bag.
Touki was wonderful in how straight forward it was. It was literally Armament Haki, but as an energy, (which thinking about, isn't that what Haki is?) and the Haki was spiritual power that was like a muscle. You need to work on it to improve it and use it longer.
...Actually the more I describe it, the more it sounds like just plain old Armament Haki.
Anyways, point is, Touki can be used an aura to spread over my body, or objects held by me. It can be compressed, spread out, shot like a kamehameha (no, I wasn't giddy the whole day when I discovered that. Murayama and those pictures are lying), and most importantly, it was an integral part of my body. So watching how Touki interacted with my biological systems, how if I poured Ki into my veins or nerves refined and improved their function, or how applied to my brain made me able to think faster and clearer.
It was also interesting how the body functions affected Touki and its generation. If I'm eating well and eating a lot, food is broken and the energy within it is divided into physical energy taken by the body, and the spiritual component goes into the link to my soul, and thus Ki is produced.
It was a captivating process, watching the body and soul interacting with one another.
Hamon was just fascinating to see on top of everything else. It wasn't the same one-to-one as Hamon from Jojo. The energy is just a shade of Touki but caused by the body absorbing sunlight and running it through the blood in the veins. The potency and power of Touki increased by several times. I haven't discovered what more I could do with it, as I need a live experience. To see it in battle. I sighed in sorrow that I can't find that opportunity.
I wonder what would happen if I spun the blood in my veins as it was moving, while using Hamon. Something for later.
Senjutsu on the other hand was something I haven't fully figured out yet.
In essence it was the manipulation of Life Energy, or Life-force. How it exists, how it acts and reacts with things around it. It was sensitive to the tiniest things thus emotions can affect it. Negative emotional energy, or malice of the world, were basically Life Energy tainted or corrupted with negative emotions. Redundant and obvious, but it was good to have these things spells out loud.
Thing is, while I can manipulate my own Life-force, there's something I haven't figured out yet.
Like, where the heck does Magical Energy come from? Yes, it's also from the soul, but how? It actually does feel distinct from Ki.
Studying Life Energy from nature is not as helpful because it's just there, it doesn't do anything, and I've seen enough on how negative energy is formed. Same in the rare occasion when positive energy is formed, because someone achieved their dream, their crush said 'yes', or two people who like each other having sex.
Sadly, I couldn't just take some one off the street, to experiment and study them to see how their Life-force behaves.
"Hmm?" It was currently a bit in the afternoon, in the middle of the week. People are at their jobs, the streets are mostly empty with kids and teens at schools, young adults in college, and adults at work.
Outside my window I saw a nun walking, leaning against the fence wall around my house. She seemed to struggle with the simple activity. In fact she looked pretty roughed up, with blood running down bits of her face and body. Bits of her close cut here and there. Her skin turning different shades of purple and green, while changing into some monster, before transforming back to normal, under sheer force of will.
"Oh?" My eyes widened in interest. Given the feel of her energy, and how chaotic it was being, she could only be... "Is that a Stray Devil? Hmm, good person or bad person?" That should help with deciding to help them, or experiment on them.
I left the house and right away went to see this woman. She was so occupied with holding back her transformation, she didn't even notice me literally walking up to her.
"Hey, Miss, do you need some help?" I politely asked. I made sure to make myself look normal and healthy. Also smile without seeming forced. First impression and all that.
"Huh?" She blinked, looked at me, and jumped back a step, like I suddenly appeared from the ether. Which was silly, since I haven't learned to do that yet. "N-No, thank you child. God bless your kind-HHHGUH!" She clenched her head like it was going to explode. The uttering of the Lord's name didn't seem to help her, as her form destabilized further. "I'm fine you delicious chil-No!" Her mouth turned into a wide smile, as her tongue rolled out, long like a serpents, to lick at me, before she slammed a hand over her mouth, looking at me in horror. "I'm, I'm sorry about that. D-Don't be scared, I'm sorry, but I need to go." She said in a hurry, as she tired to walk quickly past me. "I need to find somewhere without people. I need to be alone. I can't, I can't hurt, I won't..."
She really seemed to be struggling in holding herself, but her concern seem genuine, and her heart in the right place.
"I've decided." I smiled.
"Huh?" She looked back at me, sweat running down her tired face. She was so tired, she couldn't even react to my slow tap at the back of her neck knocking her out.
"I'm gonna help you!" I smile as her eyes rolled into the back of her head, her eyelids closing, and her body collapsed.
I caught her easily enough before she hit the ground, dashing with hyper speed, carried her into my room and placed her on my bed. I put a simple barrier around the room so energy and sound don't escape. Easy to maintain, and be able to observe if anyone came home early.
My hand hovered over her chest, as I let out my Life-force and sent it into her body to study her.
Immediately I felt the Demonic Power trying to attack me, while attacking its host. Her soul-body link was producing Demonic Power from her soul, yet it was as if it didn't know how to do that.
If I compared it to how my own soul-body link produced Ki, it was more streamlines and steady. Yet hers was fumbling the process, like a factory line going crazy. Something was stabilizing the Demonic Power production rate, and that is gone. Easy to guess, that stabilizing was her King's Demonic Power, that was sent to her via the Evil Piece within her.
Where is the Evil Piece? I can feel it in her soul yeah, but I can't feel feel it. Like, I know it's there but I can't find it.
The woman groaned and twitched in my bed, as the Strayfication process continued. Her groan half turning to growling hisses at times.
"Ah, fuck it. This gonna hurt buuuut she's dead either way if this goes wrong." Either by my hand, or whichever normal Devil that finds her.
I sent my Life-force toward her soul and just grabbed it, holding the rampant Demonic Power like the reigns on a horse. I slowed down her Demonic Power, letting it move at a normal rate through her body.
For a while moment the thrashing stopped.
Then her eyes snapped open and she screamed in a harrowing pain.
I could feel that while her Demonic Power was moving steadily, her soul was still producing it at an alarming rate. My Life-force was now acting like a blockage, and that Demonic Power is building up, pushing backward and overloading the soul. Like water from a pump moving slow in the pipe, so the source it heating up and about to explode from the pressure.
I clicked my tongue in annoyance.
I tried to compare everything between how my body and soul works, and hers to find away to bring things back to normal for her-!
Wait.
Her Ki isn't moving. Or rather it's not being produced and moving in the same levels as mine. It should have been the same-Well, not the same as me, but in a higher rate with how much her Demonic Power is going...
Magical Energy.
Devils' Demonic Power is the equivalent of Humans' Magical Energy.
Comparing how my Magical Energy acted to her Demonic Power I knew how to slow down the energy production.
The problem was still in the Evil Piece that's like a program going wild, because the safety was off and all it knew was the single command it kept running: Produce Demonic Power.
The Reincarnated Devil may have a Devil's body, but they are not used to it. They can't regulate the power it produces as it's natural born one. Odds are kids, or newborns turned to Reincarnated Devil won't have that problem.
...That's a morbid thought. And there's definitely a Mad Scientist somewhere that discovered this via experimentation.
Now I just need to find the Evil Piece. It was within her soul but somehow not visible.
I could see where the Demonic Power is coming from, and the Ki is produced at a slower rate due to the nun not actively awaken and using it.
I matched how her Demonic Power moved in her body, to how my Magical Energy moved in mine. Her breathing stabilized and she fell back asleep from the pain.
The Evil Piece was still producing an order signal from her soul, but I was overriding it with sheer control over her Life-force.
I tried to match how our Toukis moved to get her body to start healing itself. So first I needed to pull on her Ki from deeper in her soul...
Wait, why the fuck is it deeper? How can it be deeper?
I watched closely how her soul produced both Demonic Power and Ki. Where they move and come from.
For the most part the Ki flows from her soul, to the soul-body link, and that's when the Evil Piece hijacks most of the process to produce Demonic Power, and only a bit of the Ki was left (a little lower than the normal amount for someone untrained in its use) to fill her body.
I started to force her soul to produce more Ki, not as much as mine, but bit by bit like someone awakening their Touki for the first time. The pressure from the Demonic Power lowered, as there was less energy to transform. Her body stabilized further, pain and aches started to recede, and her "natural" Devil regeneration started to sweep in.
Ki comes deeper from within the soul, before the soul-body link takes a bit to transform it into Demonic Power. Or Magical Energy in Human.
"Souls are made of layers." I whispered at the eureka moment. "Souls are ogres!" I snorted at the thought, before grinning widely.
No wonder I couldn't figure this out. My soul is so efficient at energy production it felt like both Ki and Magical Energy are happening at the same time.
Now that I could see it, I followed the nun's Ki to it's source, deciphering the layers of her soul.
First was the top layer of thoughts and feelings. Not important.
Second was the layer were Demonic Power is produced.
Third was the layer that produced Life-force, or Ki, that has a massive chunk turned to Demonic Power-slash-Magical Energy depending on the species. The Evil Piece wasn't there, so I looked deeper.
It was in the fourth layer. That layer seems to be about a person's identity. Not just spiritually who they are, as a person with likes, dislikes and life experience, but their biological and spiritual genealogy. Where does the data to make their form human physically and spiritually come from.
It was the place in the soul that said: "This being is a Human."
And the Evil Piece overwrote that data to say: "This being is a Human Devil."
However, it only changed that part, the part of what they presently, currently are. Thus everything else about the being is preserved. That's how reincarnated Youkai get to keep their original racial powers, or people with Sacred Gears still hold them.
Meaning, removing the Evil Piece should just return a person to the race they once were, since the soul would correct the issue with the previous available data.
This...actually seems too easy.
I kept studying the Evil Piece a bit more to see if there was some secret trap, or some other nasty thing that would happen if I try to remove it. But...nothing.
It's like Ajuka never expected anyone to just remove it.
The Evil Piece then seem to notice that the soul wasn't producing Demonic Power at the max setting anymore, and without the signal telling it to turn it down to a reasonable rate, it started to send a stronger signal. I wanted to experiment more, but I think I should save studying the Evil Piece for later.
Before I removed the Evil Piece, I noted that the soul had a fifth layer.
One where ego doesn't exist and seemed beyond reach. If I could describe it I'd call it "The Will to Be", or "The Will to Exist". It seemed...too beautiful for words.
I forcefully tore my "sight" away, and focused on the Evil Piece.
Gently I covered it in my Life-force, it immediately tried to connect to me, rather than the soul it was in. Huh, so that's how it would enter someone's body and turn them into a Devil. Cute.
I chuckled and shook my head at the feeble attempt, while slowly pulling it out of the nun's soul, and monitoring her in case anything went wrong.
Almost boringly nothing happened, and the Evil Piece floated out of her body toward my hovering hand, covered in a light energy ball of my Ki. I also had to purge the Demonic Power from her body, using an onmyouji talisman to put them in a vase and seal it for later study.
I put Evil Piece aside on the stand and the moment my energy left it, the Evil Piece shut down all its systems and went inert. Huh. So that's the failsafe.
The woman's body relaxed and after another check it was now fine, healthy if a bit hungry and fully human. Her body had began producing Magical Energy, which I had to watch and coach it at times, as if the soul forgot how to produce it, but within a few seconds, her body was making Magical Energy just fine.
With the woman now safe, I went to get some snacks for her, then came back and waited.
She was likely a trained exorcist given her muscle tone and physique, as once her body stabilized its energy, she quickly woke up.
"Where!-Huh?" She sat up in alarm, her face paled the second her eyes landed on me, then she stopped as she felt...nothing. None of the pain, urges, evil thoughts to do harm, all of that was gone. "I'm..." She looked at herself in confusion.
"Thank god you're okay now." I said with a chuckle.
She flinch, expecting pain...only for nothing to happen.
"What?" She said slowly. "...God." She tensed expecting that the previous time was a fluke.
But again nothing happen.
"God? Lord? Heavenly Father, hallowed be thy name!" The nun began praying, tears running down her face. She smile, almost not realizing that was her expression "Why? How could a filthy devil such as I be granted such a miracle?"
"Well for one, you're not a Devil anymore." I said making her look at me again, I picked up the Evil Piece from the bedside table, and her eyes instantly narrowed, as she leaned away from me. "I pulled this out of you, and you turned back to being human. Don't worry, it can't do anything anymore as it completely shut down. Probably one of it's safety features, so other people can't study it. It's basically paper weight now." I said putting it back on the nightstand.
"You pulled, but...how?"
"Well, I wanted to save you, and you'd have died anyways, so half-luck- half-studying." I shrugged.
"What?" She asked confused. Her long purple hair framing her face in a cute way.
"Anyways, I'm Kenji. So why would a Devil reincarnate a nun? Seems kinda weird." I had an idea on why, but that seemed too far fetched.
"I...Thank you. I have no words, I'm...human again. That should have been impossible." She said looking at her hands once more, before realizing I was still waiting for her to introduce herself. "Sorry." She blushed. "My name is Alisa. Alisa Monk." She smiled as her introduced herself, before frowning a little. "I didn't become a Devil by choice." Venom entered her tone.
"Then what happened?"
"A Devil named Diodora Astaroth ambushed and turned me. He wanted me because I am the Spirit Inheritor to Saint Martha... Although I'm not sure if I'm worthy of that title anymore since he..." She flinched at the memory, before frowning and shaking her head. "Thank you again. I don't even understand how you did that? I can't recall any Sacred Gear that gives that ability." Her eyes then widen. "K-Kenji, are you perhaps...the wielder of the Sephirot Graal?"
"Nah, it was just plain Senjutsu." I shrugged.
"Huh?"
"So when I check your body, you looked famished. I got some snacks and leftovers, so why don't you eat?" I said and just casually moved the tray to the bed.
"I, um, that is, you're too generous, but I can't-"
"Just eat, you seriously need it, we can talk more afterwards." I said in that childish pushy tone, and after some internal struggle for some reason, she relented and started to eat. Her eyes widened at how much better she felt from the simple food and began to devour it.
Since her body desperately needed the energy, I increased the nutritional potency of the food, making it energy rich via Senjutsu, so her body can back back to top form quickly. Also food is a good way to relax someone so they're more open to talk.
"I need to go back." She finally said after she finished the water in the water bottle.
"Hmm?"
"My sisters need my aid. I can't just leave the under them mercy of that damn Diodora any longer. I'll have to rescue them to either grant them the Lord's mercy, or...can I bring them here for you to save them as you did me, Kenji?" She pleaded and I easily nodded. Alisa smiled and stood up. "I thank you for everything you'd done, Kenji, but now I must go."
"Alright." I stood up as well and stretched. "I have an afternoon."
"...What'd you mean?" She asked, raising an eyebrow.
The Underworld was in chaos.
An heir to one of the major Devil Pillar Families, the Astaroth Heir, brother to one of the Four Satans, had been found dead. His body looked like he was beating to death by someone's bare hands. His Peerage was also gone without a trace.
But that news paled in comparison to what also happened that day.
Over 300,000 Reincarnated Devil disappeared from the Underworld and most of them turned up at the Vactican City doorstep. Except that have all been turned back to humans.
And no one knew what was going on, or who had done this.
The returned humans only whispered one name in reverence, as the one who answered their pleas and saved them from Hell.
Adam.