Me? Human? : Chapter 33 : Slaving away, Audacios Dream & Heavenly Marks..... (Patreon)

Disclaimer - I don't own any of the characters appearing in High School DXD or the Anime or the manga whatsoever.

Grigori HQ

–Azazel–

He was deep in thought in his office when Penemue barged into his office during his important working hours, or rather, that was what he would have liked Penemue to think, when in fact, he was just browsing through some questionable material in his free time, sparse as it was, now that he was all but thrown into house arrest for the rest of the month.

Apparently, endangering myself by walking into a Town ruled by two Devils, whose siblings could either fight him or kill him, was not a good idea, in Penemue’s books anyway. In his humble opinion, since what did he know anyway? Besides taking a ragtag group of grieving, mad, destroyed, and broken Fallen Angels and turning them into a formidable faction that could somehow stand head and shoulders with both Devils and Angels.

“I just talked to the weird human kid.” She stated, standing at attention in front of him, acting with deference to someone of his station, but that was just what Penemue would like everyone to believe. He knew her very well and could see her eyes roving over his desk, cataloguing his progress with the giant pile of papers she had plopped on his desk and told him in no uncertain terms that he would not be allowed to leave the office until he was done with them.

He had a sneaking suspicion that she was only going to continue adding to the pile even if he did manage to whittle them down by sheer effort, which is why he was not going to put in the effort required to finish it all in the first place.

Checkmate!

As for her weird human kid she was talking of, “You mean Motohama Kenji? The one I told you to personally induct into the test process?”

She nodded, “Indeed. From what little I could tell through the projection, the kid seems to have some idea of who I am, which is odd because his entire bloodline has no recorded history with the supernatural world, save for his mother working for one of the Gremory companies. Well, she used to work there, as she was just fired with an excessive severance package.”

“The work of the Gremory girl, I presume.”

“Indeed.”

Then, there was silence as he leaned back in his sinfully comfortable chair and looked up at the ceiling, thinking of just how soft Gabriel’s lap pillows would be if this chair itself was so soft, as those were undisputedly the softest material in the universe; he could swear on it! He refused to believe anything else. Why else would Father make Gabriel in that image?

“Why aren’t you doing the work that was assigned to you, oh dear Leader?” Something about those words made a chill run down his spine as he slowly, almost mechanically, straightened himself before hastily snatching multiple files with both his hands, ready to work on them, as that was the only way to get Penemue out of his case, as the Purple Haired Fallen, weaker than him she might be, was strong in all the other ways that mattered and did not stop until he was back here, in a prison of his own making, slaving away at papers that had (mostly) useless information printed on it.

So, he continued doing the work for over an hour, as Penemue stood guard, keeping watch and making sure that he actually did his job before she felt satisfied or was running late to torture yet another poor Fallen Angel, leaving his office slowly, her glare boring two holes in his head as he made sure to keep his head down.

The door closed, but he was not going to get fooled by that, not again anyway. He made sure to work diligently for an hour after that as well, and he was vindicated when the door opened explosively, the woman checking in to make sure, but he was one step ahead of her, working diligently on stuff he had no interest in knowing.

I did not want to know just how many condoms the staff consumed while being on staff, just because I wanted to know about all of our external combat as well as spy missions.

The door closed once more, but once more, he did not fall for it, as it opened up a moment later, the woman marching up to his table, as he did his best to ignore her and continue reading through absolutely useless reports, see what permissions they wanted, and either accepting or declining them, at very high speeds.

It would have been very comical, had it not also been very sad, as he was being bullied by his junior, a Fallen who was vastly weaker than him, all because he was afraid of her whips and who she became when she was pushed too far.

A Twelve Winged Fallen Angel, reduced to an administrative paper pusher.

Shaking his head, he lamented his position before he perked up, slowly looking up at the office door, expecting the familiar and dreaded Purple mop of hair to pop into his vision but when it did not appear despite over a minute of inactivity, he relaxed and slumped in his chair, waving his hand as the entire table was [pushed away from him, or rather, he pushed himself away from the blasted thing, hitting the wall behind him in no time, looking straight up at the ceiling, his thoughts returning to his original line, before Penemue came in and made him do work of all things.

Motohama Kenji.

Frankly, the boy was nothing special. There were likely thousands of humans with that power level roaming around the world, who did not deserve admission into Nephilim. It was not supposed to become a large scale school for humans or for supernatural children, though it was something that he did dream of.

It was an audacious dream, to create a safe space so secure and out of the realm of harm that supernatural races would willingly send in their young ones, to train and mingle with the younger generation of the rest of the supernatural world, creating a bond as they grew up, and returned to their respective homes with that perspective.

That perspective alone would be so valuable, so impactful that he could see a solid 40% of all conflicts between supernatural factions to cease entirely, and an extra 30% to enter into a state of protracted negotiations as the upper brass sympathised with each other but found wrangling their factions too hard to do without appearing soft to the enemy. All in all, it would solve most of the supernatural world’s problems, but the problem lay in creating such a space.

There was no one who could do that, not the ones who could be conversed with anyway. The two beings who had the power to enforce such a zone were more likely to disintegrate the first person to talk to them instead of listening to them.

One did not approach the Infinity and the Dragon of Dreams lightly.

Shaking his head, he swiped his hand in the air, as the photo of that human boy appeared in front of him once more. He looked ordinary, fine even for a normal human. No historical records that could indicate anything, no Sacred Gear from his limited scans of the boy.

All in all, it would be confusing to anyone involved as to why he gave the boy a chance when, so far, the only people inside Nephilim were either Sacred Gear users of very high potential or people with high innate potential. Hell, they had multiple Longinus or near Longinus tier Sacred Gear wielders as well.

What place did a human kid with maybe low High Class stats have in such a place?

The answer to that lay in his soul and how it was affecting the boy.

More specifically, the mark of the System. A mark he knew of intimately, having had the displeasure of experiencing Cain and how the Divine mark affected his entire being. Now, this one was not nearly on the same level as that curse, but Michael was not someone to hand out such curses willy nilly.

The boy must have done something to gain not just Michael’s attention but also his ire. The fact that he was still alive and his house was not assaulted by Angels meant that the ire was not heavy, but the fact that it existed at all meant something had gone wrong.

Even with the mark, Motahama did not become someone special. It just meant that the moment he was within range of the Church’s exorcists who were specifically trained for this job, he was going to be hunted down and brought forth to face justice, or whatever version was popular inside the Church these days.

No, the most interesting thing about the boy was his apparent ability to interact with the mark and not deform or explode because the System did not take kindly to interfering with its works. Sure, if the boy was a career Magician or an Ultimate Class benign, he could maybe see some resistance forming, but in this case, the boy did not seem to notice the curse at all.

In fact, the boy was somehow benefiting from that mark, somehow converting the energy of that curse, originating from the System, and using it to create Light.

He had barely held himself back from knocking the boy out and bringing him back to the Labs to study when he first sensed what the boy was doing, either consciously or subconsciously.

Still, he had incomplete information, which is why he let the boy be. 

After all, it worked out for him as the boy seemed to be looking for him and an admission into Nephilim anyway.

If he failed the test, he would have still gathered more than enough data on the boy’s current abilities, and even if he passed, he would have even more time and authority to study the boy’s bizarre ability to his heart’s content.

After all, it was the dream of every single Fallen, who hadn’t fallen into despair or madness, to one day experience the Heavenly feeling of that Light once more, to have the ability to not just generate but feel that light coursing within him, empowering not just his body but also his soul.

He chuckled bitterly as he realised that even with all that desire and temptation, he was sure that he was never going to accept that light in his life ever again. After all, no one could ever say with certainty that the Governor General of the Grigori, Azazel, was sane.

He would be throwing away everything he had built in this new life if he ever accepted that Light back. So, no, even if he found something, it was not going to be for him. It was going to be for his fellow brothers and sisters, who had to wake up every day and pretend that nothing was wrong, that there wasn’t a gaping hole in their heart and soul that continued to eat at them as they tried to ignore it.

There was a reason the Fallen were as loosely knit as they were, as every single one of them was broken in some manner, and only the strong ones were able to resist its effects to some degree. 

Even so, he feared that many of his stronger brothers had already fallen further into their respective madnesses.

Thinking of Kokabiel and the extremely concerning reports, he sighed and leaned further back in his chair, trying to think of anything else but that…..