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The echo of Kaiju Hano's final step, followed by the heavy, rhythmic drag of his colossal beasts' claws, faded into the hallways of the old school building. When the double oak doors finally closed with a dull creak, the silence that fell over the Occult Research Club was not peaceful. It was the silence of survivors after a natural disaster.
No one moved for a full minute.
The air in the room was still suffocating, stale with the residual smoke of the immense fire dragon and the overwhelming pressure of six apex predators who had just left the premises. The wooden floor, once immaculate, looked as if it had been plowed; deep grooves marked the places where the Garchomp and Aggron had stood.
Rias Gremory, the proud heiress of ruin, dropped her weight onto the intact leather sofa, running a trembling hand through her crimson hair. Her chest rose and fell rapidly.
"He's gone..." Kiba Yuto murmured, instinctively sheathing a sword he had not even dared to fully materialize. The blond Knight leaned against a bookshelf, feeling his legs threaten to give out. "Their presences... simply evaporated. There is no trace of them in the city."
Akeno Himejima did not offer her usual sadistic smile. She approached the coffee table, looking at Asia's silver crucifix, which Kaiju had tossed disdainfully onto the wood before leaving. Rias's Queen extended two fingers and brushed the blessed metal. A faint sizzle and a stab of pain forced her to withdraw her hand immediately.
"It is pure silver. Blessed by the Church," Akeno confirmed, her voice losing all of its flirtatious modulation. "And he... he held it as if it were a simple plastic toy. He just reincarnated as a devil, and sacred light did absolutely nothing to him."
Sona Sitri remained standing, unmoving, staring at the empty space where Kaiju had been sitting minutes earlier. The Student Council president adjusted her glasses, still cracked, while her analytical brain attempted to organize the logical chaos she had just witnessed.
"It was not only the immunity to the cross, Akeno," Sona said, her cold and calculated voice barely hiding the tremor in her vocal cords. "It was what he did to that girl. Sylvie."
Tsubaki Shinra stepped forward, nodding gravely. "That technique... the 'Lunar Mark.' A human newly reincarnated as a Pawn should not have more power than necessary to survive. But the energy she emitted..."
"It equaled mine," Rias declared, closing her eyes with a mixture of frustration and fascinated terror. "For an instant, that ordinary gray-haired girl's demonic pressure was on par with that of an heiress of the 72 Pillars. He altered Ajuka-sama's Evil Pieces system in front of us, purified the artifacts, and then turned a novice Pawn into a High-Class Devil with a simple touch to the forehead."
Issei, who had been holding his breath in his corner, finally dropped to his knees, rubbing his head with both hands.
"I told you!" the brown-haired boy groaned, sweating buckets. "The guy is a monster! And so are his pets! That orange dragon was looking at me like I was a marshmallow!"
Rias opened her eyes and looked at her childhood friend and rival. Sona was still absorbed in her thoughts, touching her chest, exactly where her own King piece pulsed with unnatural heaviness.
"Sona..." Rias called softly. "How does your board feel?"
The Sitri heiress released a long sigh and exhaled through her nose. She crossed her arms and lowered her gaze.
"As if I were tied to a black hole," Sona confessed, with unusual sincerity between them. "The master-servant bond is there. Formally, Kaiju Hano is my Pawn. But if I tried to give him a direct order through the seal... I feel my own soul would break before the order even reached him. He is not my servant, Rias. For all practical purposes, I am the nominal owner of a continent I cannot govern."
"But we have his word," Koneko intervened, sitting on a destroyed chair, opening a sweet with mechanical movements to calm her feline nerves. "He said he would intervene if the King is about to fall."
Sona slowly nodded. "And that is the only reason my sanity remains intact. We have the largest life insurance policy in the Underworld. But the rules are clear: mutual ignorance. For the rest of the academy and the city, Kaiju, Sylvie, and Asia Argento are simple humans. We will not follow them. We will not interrogate them. If anyone from our peerages breaks that agreement..."
Sona did not have to finish the sentence. The threat of the Hakai that had erased her desk remained fresh in everyone's memory.
Rias stood up, straightening her uniform skirt, trying to recover the dignity of House Gremory.
"Then let us return to normal," Rias declared. "Tomorrow, at the academy, no one will say a word. Issei, maintain your role as a clueless friend. And under no circumstances ask him to teach you that... 'Kaio-ken.'"
"Y-Yes, Buchou!" Issei replied, though deep in his otaku heart, the temptation to beg his "Master" still pulsed strongly.
The two peerages began withdrawing through their magic circles, physically and mentally exhausted. They had survived the most dangerous summit of their lives, securing a truce with the God who walked their hallways.
The next morning, the sun shone with an intensity that, for the vast majority of mortals, promised an excellent start to the week. For Hyoudou Issei, however, the sun was a beacon of misery.
The brown-haired boy dragged his feet through the second-year hallway, shielding his eyes from the windows with his forearm. His new demonic nature rejected daylight, causing him a throbbing headache and fatigue that made him feel as if he had lead weights tied to his ankles.
When he slid open the door to his classroom, his gaze immediately searched the back of the room. He expected to find the stoic figure of his "Master," but Kaiju Hano's desk was completely empty.
Issei frowned. He shifted his gaze toward the neighboring seat.
Sylvie was there.
The brown-haired boy blinked, feeling his headache disappear for one second, replaced by genuine confusion. Although Sylvie had always been undeniably beautiful, that morning she radiated an aura that defied any logical description.
Her pale skin seemed to shine with supernatural freshness. Her grayish hair fell in perfect soft waves over her shoulders, and her eyes brimmed with vibrant light. She was not simply happy; she looked victorious. She wore a small, tilted smile, almost predatory, and hummed a cheerful melody while arranging her notebooks, detached from the world. Beside her, Asia Argento read a history book, looking equally peaceful and ignorant of the scarred boy's absence.
Matsuda and Motohama approached Issei from behind, giving him a simultaneous pat that nearly made him stumble.
"Hey, Ise, did you notice Sylvie-chan today?" Matsuda whispered, drooling slightly. "She's... dazzling. It's like she absorbed the life energy of the entire universe."
"What I'm wondering is where the guardian beast is," Motohama murmured, adjusting his glasses while scanning the empty classroom. "Kaiju never misses class. Do you think he got sick?"
Issei swallowed, remembering Kaiju's words about his humanity and immortality. The scarred boy was a God, but now he was also a devil. Did gods get sick? Deciding that the best thing was to follow Rias's order and act normal, Issei walked toward his seat, casting nervous glances at the radiant gray-haired girl, wondering what kind of Spartan training Kaiju had been doing to skip class.
The answer, however, was not on a dimensional battlefield nor in meditation on the mountains of Yardrat.
It was a couple of buildings away, in the exclusive territory of the Student Council.
The Student Council office looked slightly different that morning. The immense and elegant oak desk that usually dominated the room had been replaced by a white plastic folding table, courtesy of the janitorial storage room. Sona Sitri sat behind it, reviewing a stack of disciplinary reports with patience that threatened to run out at any second.
Genshirou Saji was organizing folders in a corner, occasionally trembling as he remembered the monsters from the previous night, while Tsubaki Shinra stood, stoic, reviewing the day's agenda on her magical tablet.
Suddenly, the office's sliding door opened. There was no polite knock. It simply slid heavily.
Saji jumped, dropping a couple of folders to the floor. Sona lifted her gaze above her glasses, and Tsubaki tensed her posture.
The figure that crossed the threshold made all three devils blink, unable to process the image.
Kaiju Hano, the self-proclaimed owner of Kuoh, the entity capable of erasing the president's desk from existence with a breath, looked like he was ten seconds away from cardiac arrest.
The young man walked while dragging his feet, shoulders slumped, with such a hunched posture that he seemed to weigh a ton. His uniform jacket was carelessly open, his jet-black hair was a complete mess, and beneath his one healthy eye, dark circles as deep, black, and purple as the purest night betrayed a critical lack of sleep. His breathing was shallow and hoarse.
Sona froze, her fountain pen suspended millimeters above the paper. She had never seen anyone look so miserably drained of energy.
Kaiju closed the door behind himself with his foot. He slowly advanced toward the center of the room, his boots dragging over the wood like those of a zombie in a low-budget movie.
"I came... to report in," Kaiju murmured, his voice sounding like crushed gravel. He raised a trembling hand in a languid salute. "As the newest piece of your... distinguished board... and as the newest member of the Student Council."
Saji hid a little farther behind the filing cabinet, while Tsubaki advanced half a step, her brow furrowed with genuine tactical concern.
"Kaiju-san?" Tsubaki asked, scanning the environment out of pure survival instinct. "Your physical energy level is in critical condition. Were you intercepted? Was there a Grigori attack? A supreme-class incursion?"
Kaiju did not even dignify the vice president with an answer. He simply turned his staggering body toward the immense, plush leather sofa resting against the side wall of the office. He fell face-first onto it. The impact of his face against the cushions sounded dull, and a long, pitiful, agonizing sigh escaped his lips.
Sona stood from her folding chair, crossing her arms, her analytical mind working at full speed. If an outside threat had managed to leave the "Ghost" in this state of physical deterioration, all of Kuoh was in imminent danger.
"Kaiju. Wake up," Sona demanded, using a tone of moderate authority, trying not to sound like a Queen giving orders, but like a concerned president. "You have classes. You cannot use the Student Council as your personal bedroom. Who or what reduced you to this state?"
Kaiju did not lift his head from the cushions. He only turned his face to one side, keeping his eye closed, and raised one trembling finger as a medical excuse.
"Official council matters..." the scarred boy mumbled, his voice muffled by the sofa's leather. "I am supervising the ergonomic quality of... the institute's furniture. Let me die in peace, Sona."
Sona frowned. "I am not playing, Kaiju. Yesterday you demonstrated a power that eclipses supreme classes. You nullified Ajuka's system and changed the rules of demonic biology. What deity or monster could have left you without a drop of stamina in less than twelve hours?"
A broken, bitter laugh, devoid of any trace of divine pride, escaped the teenager's lips. He hugged a cushion, muttering to himself, but the silence in the office was so deep that his words reached the two devil girls' ears clearly and sharply.
"No monster..." Kaiju whispered, his voice filled with infinite regret. "It was me... my own stupidity. My arrogance as a Creator."
Tsubaki moved a little closer, intrigued. "A side effect of assimilating the Evil Piece?"
"No... the damned Lunar Mark..." Kaiju complained, sinking his face even deeper into the sofa. "I gave her the enchantment... so she would have power and wouldn't age. I raised Sylvie to High-Class Devil level..."
Sona nodded, remembering the terrifying display of power from the night before. "Yes. We witnessed it. It was a brilliant tactic to protect your companion. What was the mistake?"
Kaiju opened his one bloodshot eye and looked at Sona and Tsubaki with an expression of pure and absolute male trauma.
"The mistake was that I forgot the basic biology of her new species..." Kaiju murmured, swallowing with difficulty. "The chess pieces don't only grant magic. They multiply the bearer's physical strength, endurance, and base vitality exponentially."
Sona and Tsubaki blinked, still not understanding the tactical problem.
"Sylvie dragged me to the bedroom the moment we crossed the portal last night..." Kaiju let his head fall, his pride crumbling into pieces. "I thought my body trained under 10G gravity was invincible. But the Lunar Mark combined with the vitality of a newly awakened devil gave her infinite stamina. It was like trying to fight a damn category-five hurricane that doesn't need to breathe."
The silence in the Student Council office became heavy. Very, very heavy.
"Six hours..." whimpered the God of Destruction, closing his eye and curling into the fetal position on the sofa. "Six damn hours straight, Sona. No breaks. No mercy. She exhausted all my Ki reserves. My hips are dust. She drained me completely. I created a monster and she devoured me alive."
Sona Sitri's brain, one of the brightest, coldest, and most calculating minds in the entire Underworld, processed the information.
The mental image of what the boy had just confessed projected itself into her mind with mathematical clarity. The terrifying being capable of erasing existences was lying on her sofa, begging for mercy, not because he had faced an army of Fallen Angels or a Dragon God, but because his sweet, gentle, devoted gray-haired girlfriend had used her newly acquired demonic energy buff to squeeze every last drop of virility out of him in a nocturnal marathon that defied human endurance.
Sona Sitri's face went from aristocratic paleness to such an intense and vibrant crimson red that she looked ready to combust spontaneously.
Tsubaki Shinra, always stoic and lethal, dropped her magical tablet. The device fell to the floor with a plastic clack. The vice president covered her mouth with both hands, her violet eyes wide open, while a furious blush rose up her neck to her ears, unable to process the excess intimate information their new Pawn had just thrown in their faces.
Genshirou Saji, from his safe corner, suddenly understood the context of the conversation. He looked at Kaiju, then imagined the beautiful Sylvie, and a cascade of blood tears and envy began to pour from his eyes as he bit the handkerchief of his uniform.
"You...! W-What insolence...!" Sona stammered, losing absolutely all her formal vocabulary. She pointed at Kaiju with a trembling finger, unable to articulate a coherent reprimand that did not sound like that of a scandalized high school girl. "T-That is inappropriate for Student Council premises! W-We do not need to know the technical specifications of your... your nocturnal battles!"
But Kaiju was no longer listening.
The boy's chest rose and fell at a slow, steady rhythm. A faint snore escaped his lips. He had fallen deeply, absolutely, and peacefully asleep on the velvet, surrendering to exhaustion and leaving the two highest-ranking devils in the school to deal with a suffocating attack of embarrassment.
Sona covered her steaming face with both hands, sinking into her folding chair. She had acquired an infinite-yield hydrogen bomb for her board. A lethal, indestructible, terrifying bomb... that was currently out of service because his girlfriend had left him physically inoperable.
"Tsubaki..." Sona murmured, her voice muffled by her own hands.
"Y-Yes, Kaichou?" the vice president answered, fanning her red face with a folder.
"Write in the peerage record... that the ultimate weakness of our new Pawn is not sacred magic, nor gods..." Sona released a sigh of absolute surrender. "His only true weakness... is Sylvie Hano's demonic stamina. May the Maous protect us from that girl."