Having finished the process of stabilizing both of his new ‘guests’ Soma had just enough energy to set up the bounded field to alert him in case any unwelcome guests were to come.

Of course, considering his knowledge on the matter the bounded field was extremely effective, lethal, and almost entirely undetectable unless someone was to walk right into it. With the number of religious symbols used for the construction of the bounded field, it was safe to say that it was a field especially suited for dealing with devils. ​​

After finishing his work and making sure to set up several magic alarms and traps in case his ‘guests’ woke up soon, Soma went to sleep. He was far too tired and he needed rest before more crazy shit happened and he had to deal with it.

Seriously, how is it that he got involved in this sort of mess out of the blue like that? Since when was this world this crazy?

Well, at least it didn’t seem like things could be any worse.

///—///

Things could not be any worse.

This was the consensus running through Sona Sitri’s head as news of what happened reached her.

As was expected, when Rias’ newest Peerage member got too close to the nun who arrived in town, a nun working for the fallen angels no less, Sona got worried. Not that the little pawn could cause anything big, but what Rias would do if her servant went out of the weels and did something stupid because of emotion.

And he did precisely that, running headfirst in a church, which already is quite terrible in terms to politics, but he did so to attack fallen angels in a mission given by the governor-general or at least a higher-up of the Grigory.

While Sona knew that this would not be enough to reignite the war it would make the peace talks going behind the scenes all the harder. As Serafall’s little sister Sona knew that the talks were ongoing and were very tense with all three sides wanting peace but none wanting to come out as the loser that would need to give extra concessions.

What Issei did was exactly the type of thing that could make the devils be pushed to that uncomfortable role and to fix that Serafal would need to spend even MORE time in the Peace Talks, effectively making the treaty take longer and thus keep the devil race in a state of war for even longer. More money and resources spent in this cold war instead of in things like education, which Sona desperately wanted to see more investments into.

But did Rias, who KNOWS of this situation seeing as she was a devil heiress as well and was taught those things, do anything to stop the stupid pawn who knows NOTHING about what was at stake from potentially ruining tens of thousands of devils’ lives? Fuck no, she sent the rest of her Peerage and went personally to kill everyone there without a single care and without informing anyone of what she and her group were doing.

Sona sometimes wondered if all of Rias’ brains went to her boobs, it would explain her decision-making at the very least. Any devil worth their salt would at most send his Peerage but not go personally, if there were to be any problems from these actions the King could just say that his Peerage acted without his knowledge and he would properly punish them for it.

It was politics 101 in devil school, something Sona knew Rias had attended before coming to Kuoh. Did she not listen to ANYTHING of what she was being taught and instead only spent time reading manga and playing games?

Sighing, Sona knew this was not what made her so stressed out. No, that particular ‘honor’ belonged to whoever exorcist that was running around town at this very moment that managed to not only defeat Kiba but send him to the hospital as even Phenex Tears were useless in the injuries he inflicted.

Sona only found out what happened thanks to her sending message after message to Rias after she felt the spike of energy the redhead released earlier tonight. And even then Sona had to keep sending messages for almost three hours before Rias bothered to answer.

Looking around Sona could see that her entire Peerage was in her house now. Knowing a crazy killing machine was on town Sona could not risk her Peerage being killed off during the night and she already sent a request to her sister for a guard or someone who could help in case of emergency.

Sona did not want to do that in all honesty, but she would rather lower her head to her sister than lower her head in shame if her servants died due to her pride.

“kaichou, are things that bad?” Saji asked, her newest Pawn was worried since he had never really been in a fight until this point and did not know how to react to all that was happening.

“It depends. Right now we don’t know if a dangerous enemy is around or not, but considering what he did he should be leaving town by the end of the night. As long as we last until then there shouldn’t be any issues.” Sona said while trying her best to make her peerage feel safe.

Unfortunately, someone in there wasn’t exactly glad about her words.

CLAP CLAP

Mocking and slow claps could be heard in the room and turning to the direction it came from one could see someone sitting there. It was a woman in her early twenties, she had short blond hair that was quite messy, giving it a somewhat spiky appearance. She had a voluptuous body that makes one think immoral thoughts even if she doesn’t actively try to do so and her golden eyes gave an illusion of someone who was mischievous as well.

“To think the little sister would learn to talk big, how amusing.” The woman said as Sona cursed that, from all of her sister’s Peerage, it was THIS woman that was sent. Of them, she was easily the most flimsy and prone to doing whatever she wanted as long as the mission was fulfilled with no consideration for consequences besides what would amuse her more.

This was the sort of woman that Dimaria, the Rook of her sister was… unfortunately.

“Was anything of what I said wrong?” Sona questioned to which the woman in question just shrugged.

“Nothing much, just that you simply assume that someone capable would just turn tail and run so easily. Sera told me of the injuries of knight boy from that red-haired idiot, those injuries were not designed to kill but to incapacitate and make it flashy while also making him unable to be a threat. Using that on someone to make his allies leave was a very smart move, a person this smart would know that trying to leave town right away would be hard and would be easily detected, painting a big target on his back. No, someone like that would stay low for a while yet, try to either blend in for a while more before leaving. Heck, I wouldn’t find it strange if we won’t know how the enemy even looks like until the weakling who got his ass kicked wakes up.”

Sona sighed and nodded, understanding the logic of the situation.

“What you think we should do then, Lady Dimaria.”

“Use these.” She said as she threw some cheap jewelry at them. “These things were designed to hide the demonic energy we devils exude. It should help you pass undetected if in a crowd and it has an SOS signal in it in case of a fight or if your life is in sudden danger. We normally only let our spies with something like that but we can’t abandon the town and it is your and Rias’ responsibility to watch over it. When the Gremory and her little servants come back she will be provided with similar equipment, even if I doubt she would use them. She and her servants feel like the emotional type and they might go and try to hunt the one who did that.”

Sona wanted to deny that Rias would be stupid enough to try to challenge whoever attacked Kiba by actively serving as bait, but Rias was not exactly logical when pushed and she already wasn’t in the best state of mind due to her approaching Rating Game to decide if she would marry or not.

Heck, Sona even wondered if she would force whoever dealt with Kiba to join her Peerage as ‘compensation’, a stupid and rather shortsighted idea but the redhead was anxious and not thinking straight.

Meanwhile, as Sona and Dimaria talked about the protection protocol and other such matters, Momo worried over her cousin. She knew he was likely safe but he was still in a fragile state and was completely human while being close to her, a devil. Momo was not as worried about her parents since they had a certain degree of protection in the house and knew of the supernatural due to their business, but Soma had no protection against this exorcist running around town.

Not that Soma needed protection against himself, but Momo did not know that the two were one and the same.

With decisiveness, she made it a point that she would go see him as soon as this whole thing blew over.

///—///

It has been a day since Kiba was put in the ICU due to the injuries afflicted to him and Rias was not doing well.

Not doing well at all.

And it did not look like things would be improving any time soon as a woman stood before her. Her usually bubbly personality and cute magical girl dress not in place, instead, formal clothes and a serious expression could be seen when one looked at Serafal Leviathan.

“… You understand what you did wrong, correct?” Serafal said in a serious tone that was not usual for her and Rias flinched at it before her energy flared and eyes of pure anger could be seen.

“I let my peerage fight alone and one of them got injured for it.” Rias said with pure venom and fire-spitting out with every word.

However, no matter how much anger she had it all amounted to nothing in front of the coldness in Serafal’s eyes.

“No, that is not what I am talking about. I honestly couldn’t care less right now about the state of your knight.”

“… Huh?” Rias said, her anger distracted by the sudden words of Satan Leviathan in front of her.

For her the only true concern would be that her servant got injured, that was her main focus so saying that him getting injured wasn’t her mistake made Rias unable to comprehend.

Not minding it Serafal continued, she had to make sure to point out exactly WHAT her actual mistakes were.

“You acted by yourself without talking with either me or Sirzechs when you attacked a group of fallen angels in your territory while invading a church. This alone is bad enough, the problems we will be facing from this act will be quite hard for me specifically to deal with since I am the one responsible for dealing with external affairs and we are already hated by almost every other race and faction in the world. You might not understand this but the devil race is in a truly precarious state since ALL Pantheons and factions hate us and if even one attacks the others will also follow soon after. And your actions tonight provoked the two most likely groups to start the hostilities.”

“I couldn’t let my pawn kill himself if he acted alone and he wouldn’t listen to me when I said to not act!” Rias justified in a loud voice, trying to explain herself.

“THEN BE HIS KING AND MAKE HIM LISTEN!” Serafal yelled at her, her powers flaring and Rias being moved back gasping due to the sheer pressure of it. “You are the KING, he has to listen to you and not the other way around. You can listen to his advice, but you must not be led by a dumb kid who was reincarnated less than a month ago and knows nothing of the supernatural world. But that is not the worst, of far from it.”

Rias did not know if she wanted to know what the ‘worst’ was then.

“You left in a hurry and did not communicate with me, Sirzechs, or any other adult for HOURS regarding what happened and we only found out something happened because Sona told me about it. These hours without anyone of us knowing meant that the police found the battle area and they found over 30 humans dead in terrible manners all around the church with bodies destroyed. News reporters are already on the scene and making this event ‘vanish’ is already impossible. It went viral, all over the world people are seeing the small massacre your peerage made, with several people dressed as priests butchered in a church with the symbols of the religion broken everywhere, panic has already started in an international level.

“You may have forgotten, but we only managed to rent, not buy or took by force but RENT, the town from the Shinto Pantheon after a lot of concessions and the promise we wouldn’t create any unrest in their lands. Guess what, unrest is made and the Shinto Pantheon, which already hates us after the Nekoshou Massacre, is trying to take back the town. And it is not only them, all other towns we rented from other Pantheons throughout the world are being put into question since said pantheons are fearful that this disaster happen in their lands as well considering the religious innuendo it took and our race’s current state of cold war with Heaven and Grigory. Every other race is afraid of something that would disturb their territory and they fear we are about to reignite the war and bring them into it again.

“Even IF we manage to keep Kuoh we will need to pay a hefty price and our entire race will bleed for YOUR mistake. We are under threat of war on ALL fronts thanks to YOUR lack of thinking!”

“It wasn’t my fault, I had to make sure Kiba was healed.” Rias said in a slight panic, understanding how bad things were getting but more worried about her knight who she did not know if or when he would be waking up. Her mind was a mess and she was not thinking straight at all at the moment.

“It does not matter, as one of the two owners of the town, even under such circumstances, you should have entered in contact with others that would be able to handle this sort of situation instead of ignoring the problem. Regardless, your punishment has already been decided for your actions this time. You lost the rights to the town entirely, you cannot enter any contract in the city of Kuoh or Japan as a whole and you will only return to the town with your ‘handler’, an older devil who will be responsible for ensuring that you and your Peerage will not cause any more damage for the town. Your rook, Koneko, has to remain in the Underworld since she is part Yokai and the Japanese Pantheon doesn’t want a ‘traitor’ to step foot in their land again and you will be considered on probation, any other activity that could endanger the race will be judged as you being unfit to inherit the house of gremory and be a High-Class devil with you having your rights as King and having a Peerage stripped from you permanently.”

As Rias heard this she felt as if the world was crashing down at her, as if things could not get any worse.

In truth things could have gotten much, much worse. Sirzechs had to push for leniency and exercise his power quite a bit to reach only this degree of punishment, Rias really fucked up with leaving so many dead bodies and carnage just laying around in town and forgetting to do even the most basic actions she should have when in such a situation. Rias was one of the ones responsible for this one town, and she fucked up their entire race due to her stupidity.

Normally about 10% of all funds obtained by the devil government were spent in the renting of towns for devils to obtain their contracts. It was an inevitable but necessary expenditure that they accepted to avoid provoking anyone more than what they normally did by recruiting members of other Pantheons and races, but with what happened in Kuoh the other groups the devils negotiated rent with started to stir and the value the race had to pay to avoid being kicked out went up to 17% of their total revenue.

This seven percent difference meant the loss of a LOT of money for the devils as a whole with many industries and public projects that would work to help their race having to be put on hold. If you consider how many humans with contracts with devils got frightened by the images and news and terminated their contracts things just made things worse, with now devils having to pay more and receive less money from the contracts.

Serafal was pissed, to say the least. She would have to spend weeks, if not months, just to try and eliminate this damage and it wouldn’t be strange if the value would only decrease to 13 or 14% and the devils would be permanently affected by this huge fiasco.

So yeah, Serafal was not happy.

Rias, after recomposing herself as best she could, spoke.

“And who exactly is my ‘handler’ as you said?” As this question hanging in the air Serafal gave a mirthful smile, loving what would come next.

“Well, who else but me of course, my beloved fiancee.” Riser Phenex said, opening the doors while making sure to make as big an entrance as possible to impress. “As your future husband, it is only natural that I was the one chosen to make sure you do not trouble our glorious race and to ensure you are taking your preparations to become a proper lady of the devil race seriously.”

Yeah, Rias decided that this day was officially the worst day of her life past, present, or future.

///—///

In a separated space that no one can normally reach a group was reading several documents.

“So, these are the new prospective Sacred Gear users we managed to detect. What are your orders regarding them?” Siegfried, a clone of the legendary hero Siegfried, questioned his leader who was lazily reclining in his chair, an apple on his hand as he thought about it.

“Send teams 1 and 3 to Germany, they should be strong enough to get to those six new potential recruits and they are quite persuasive to make them come. Team 2 will go to Australia, they are adrenaline junkies and the users there seems to be the type that would demand a more violent approach. As for the ones in Mexico, send team 5 and Herakles, they should be able to rescue the users that are in the hands of the cartel there and would make an impression on the recruit’s impressionable minds.” Cao Cao said easily enough, an effective and useful plan to deal with all of the targets.

“Understood, I am sure Herakles will like this. Destroying a Cartel would certainly make him quite excited about this act of a hero.” Siegfried chuckled, Herakles was the type that believed that to be a hero you should create as much damage as possible while looking good for those watching.

Probably why he spends so long in the mirror practicing Jojo poses and taking care of his hair.

“Are there any other potential recruits?” Cao Cao questions.

“Well, we have had news that a human managed to defeat and nearly mortally wound the knight of the princess of Gremory.” Siegfried said and Cao Cao rolled his eyes.

“This hardly sounds like enough reason to recruit someone.”

“What is relevant, however, is that no one actually knows who this person is. There is speculation it could be the missing stray exorcist that wasn’t amongst the list of casualties but he was not particularly skilled and would not be able to defeat a knight trained by the self-entitled best swordsman of the devil race. I also confirmed this information with our Grigory spies, the chance of an unknown third party being involved is high. There is even mention of Governor-General Azazel being interested in finding out what is going on, especially seeing as Kuoh is one of the ‘hot spots’ where more Sacred Gear users appear. The chance of this being the work of a yet unknown user is not zero.” Siegfried said and Cao Cao raised a single eyebrow.

“Well, this is slightly more interesting. This person could be a Sacred Gear user we didn’t find before or someone that another faction sent to spy on the devils. Either way, we should try to look into it, send Jeanne and her personal guard there. She is the most careful of our lieutenants and her holy swords would be able to do short work of the weak devils in town if she works together with her squad. At the very least, escape wouldn’t be an issue with someone like her. Tell her that her mission is to find this person, to look for other potential recruits considering how that place is a hot spot, and when it is time to go she is to make sure to create some chaos to make the devils in an even worse situation.” Cao Cao said with Siegfried bowing his head and leaving the room afterward.

The Hero Faction was still a new group, they had to recruit as much as possible if they intend to prove to the supernatural the power of mankind. Any seedling that could help with that shouldn’t be easily ignored, and if this person who managed to hunt a devil knight was truly human then he should be worth recruiting. As for making the devils in an even worse situation, that was just a cherry on top since the devils continuously took Sacred Gear users and turned them into other devils.

They were competition so to say, both aiming to take the same demographic, and if the Hero Faction could make things worse for the devils then all the better.

///—///

DRIP

DRIP

The sound of rain could be heard in the house as Mittlelt woke up. She has never expected to wake up again after what she went through in the hands of that sadistic devil, so much pain was beyond what she expected to be able to wake up from.

Looking around she could only see from one eye as the other was still close due to the swelling over it. Her entire body hurt quite a lot and moving was hard, but the fact she survived was enough to let her happy.

“… It seems like you woke up. It was faster than I expected.”

Moving as fast as she could without making the pain spike even higher Mittlelt could see a human standing there. She tried opening her mouth to speak but her throat was far too dry for her to be able to do that.

“Wait just a sec.” Soma said as he moved to the kitchen, prepared a pitcher of water, and brought it to the fallen angel. Carefully as to not pull any stitch he raised her upper body to let her drink the water to quench her thirst.

The loli fallen drank it all with gusto, needing the water more than even she expected.

“COUGH COUGH.”

“Hey now, no need to hurry. The water ain’t going anywhere.” Soma said after the fallen chocked on the water due to the hurry in trying to drink it. After a bit and with her thirst dealt with Soma sat on her bed and looked her over.

Truly, it was quite unfair. Despite how injured this fallen angel was, she was recovering at an absurd speed when compared to a normal human and her flesh was also tougher than that of a human, something he figured out during her training. She even had a natural mana core, even if it was really small it would still be able to produce enough energy to match 80 magic circuits with no problems.

Shaking his head off such thoughts Soma spoke.

“Now that your thirst is dealt with could you start explaining to me exactly what happened in that church? And I want ALL details told in all honesty. Do not try lying to me, I can be a gracious host or the worst torturer depending on your answers.” Soma said and released just a trace of his killing intend honed during the time he was forced to visit the Land of Shadows while training with the Celtic heroes. He had to impress on her the fact she was not to look down or ignore his words, that she had to listen and listen well to what he said.

As for Mittlelt, as she felt the killing intent she froze and then… passed out.

Soma looked at this and sighed, he was in too much of a hurry and tried to pressure someone when they were in the middle of treatment, passing out wouldn’t be strong.

“SIGH, This questioning will take a while. Well, I guess I could just go and make a late lunch while I wait for her to wake up again.” Soma said to himself before going to the kitchen to deal with hunger, one of the greatest enemies.