Me? Human? : Chapter 34 : Legal systems & Hajimare! (Patreon)

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

Kuoh, Japan

–Motohama Kenji–

“Ready?” he smiled and looked down at Asia, who looked nervous as hell about the whole examination thing but nevertheless smiled at him and gave him a thumbs up.

“Don’t worry too much about it. I don’t think they will test both you and me with the same criteria. Your gift will obviously be tested differently, and I am pretty sure that they will accept you, even if they do not accept me. So, don’t worry, okay?”

She, once again, nodded and gave him double thumbs up this time, just shooting an arrow through his heart, as he glanced at her earrings and thanked Rias for them, even if she did do that when all the other options were exhausted, and Asia was going to leave anyway.

To think that they had translation rings ready and did not give one to him or Asia all this time, just so they could monopolise any conversation with the Sacred Gear user. He made sure to convey his feelings about that rather scummy behavior through his glare. Though it did not seem to have much effect, presumably because they were all out of options and had expected such a thing, they would come to regret the actions one day, once he revealed his power up to them. Well, after he got it anyway. As he was now, while he could maybe injure some of Rias’ peerage with an ambush strike, provided he could do something about that magic of his, he would not stand a chance against any of her peerage members head on, as all of them were more than used to their advantages and their devil physiques, which gave them a head start over every other human in existence.

Well, the ones who were not blessed with a Sacred Gear, or a bloodline, or extreme talent. So, a majority of humanity was like that.

Shaking his head, he smiled as Asia squeezed his hand, looking at the clock in front of them, which was being projected by the same card that Azazel handed to him. They were told to arrive at this spot, inside the forest on the other side of the school, pretty deep in.

They were safe though, because they were most definitely inside some kind of ward boundary, judging by the constant buzzing noise he could hear all around him.

The timer had begun at 10 minutes, and now it was in the final 30 second clockdown, and as the seconds passed by, so did Asia’s nervousness, as did his but he tried his best not to show it. He wondered how and who was going to take their tests.

After all, it had taken him a long time, many arguments, multiple utensils and slippers thrown at him, and most of all, outright threats of leaving the home and never coming back ever again, to finally convince his mom to let him go to an unknown supernatural place, ruled by Angels who had Fallen from grace, for a duration of two months, without the guarantee of coming back in one piece, or alive even.

Frankly, it was a good decision on his part to make sure that his portion of the waivers were hidden deep underground, in the park, where he and the other two members of the perverted Trio had created a safe to stash our stuff in a bid to make sure it was not confiscated by helicopter parents.

Fortunately, that did not come to pass, and through sheer persistence and will, all three of them had parents who were all but desensitised to the stuff that the Perverter Trio regularly used to indulge in, leaving that safe behind empty and forgotten. 

That was where he had stashed the waivers, just in case he needed those copies again. Though, he failed to think where he could take those pieces of paper. Come to think of it, what value does a piece of paper have when taken in the context of the supernatural world, when magic could do almost anything, when imagination was the limitation to magic?

What court was he going to go to present those documents in? No state, organisation, or nation had a monopoly on violence anymore. Hell, in the supernatural world, even movement cannot be properly regulated, aside from truly small and insulated places like Heaven.

Even then, he could foresee maybe a God, or someone of non infernal alignment, somehow getting past the protection protocols in the initial layers at the very least, in the wake of God dying and his System being piloted by a floundering Michael who simply did not have the expertise, power and experience required to run that huge ass System.

No one could bar an entire realm away from teleportation. The Light Elves were the only who came close but even they had been successful because some of their strongest members sacrificed themselves, and burned the souls of their fallen members to create an uber strong seal on their realm, the location of which was guarded by the Norse, who had (allegedly) multiple Top Ten Strongest beings on their side, or so he could remember from his past life.

Who knows if that knowledge was worth anything at his point or not.

So, when no single entity in this universe could dictate terms of movement, have a monopoly on violence or currency, then where was he going to take those waivers and use them in case of any wrongdoing?

More importantly, why would they leave him alive if there was—

He was snapped out of his truly useless thoughts, his mind doing its thing whenever he was faced with a huge problem, by Asia who poked him in the side, and pointed at the clock in front of them, which was counting down to….3…2…1.

He braced for some kind of teleportation sequence acting around them, surprising them with a trip to the Fallen Lands, or someone just appearing in front of them, likely one of the higher ranking ones to intimidate them before taking the exam, but nope. Nothing of that sort happened.

Instead, the card was stuck at 0 for q quite a while, almost a minute, before the card fell on the ground, inert and not glowing as before, appearing lifeless. He exchanged looks with Asia, confused about the whole thing, before he stepped forward to examine the card and see if anything could be done about it, only for the ground beneath him to disappear entirely.

TWING!

A sound echoed in the clearing around them, along with the onset of Asia’s screams, as the ground beneath his right foot turned into a gaping maw, with orange outlines, reminding him of a certain Slayer anime. He would have fallen straight into it, had he not become uber strong, with his core and leg muscles activating immediately, to fling him across the hole in the ground. He rolled and turned around, ready to jump to Asia’s aid, only for a sigh to echo across the clearing.

The next thing he knew, he was shoved, or rather, a force acted on his entire body, forcing it to move towards the hole, without even a possibility of movement on his part. Asia looked at him, confused, as if his movements were entirely on his own and he was not being puppeted by someone else, though it must appear like that to her.

The last thing he saw was Asia looking at him tearfully, before the ground swallowed him whole. The force disappeared not a moment later, leaving him in a free falling condition with no surface to gain leverage. 

For the first 30 minutes or so, he widely flailed about, trying to do everything in his power to find something to touch, to slow down, to do something. Well, he thought 30 minutes, but it could have been longer or shorter. Time seemed to cease to exist in this place as he was subjected to this torture; with no sensory input, he was forced to free fall.

After the first few hours or so passed, once again estimated time, he stopped caring about the speed with which he was accelerating. At this point, even if he did find something to hold onto, he was more likely to rip his arm off than slow himself to a point that he would survive splattering on the ground.

After an unknown amount of time, he found himself uncaring of the fact that he was going to die soon if things continued this way, and found himself actually looking forward to the light at the end of this tunnel.

A while after that, he found himself curious as to how they had constructed this whole thing. With magic, obviously, but with what kind of magic? Spatial magic was obviously used, then maybe some sort of darkness magic? Light Magic? Sound Magic? Hypnosis? Mind Magic? Maybe all of them? 

Some permutation of these magics was used to turn this whole tunnel into a sensory deprivation chamber. His sense of time was lost.

He wondered what happened to Asia in that forest? Hopefully, she had a much gentler entry into this test system.

Oh, he was one hundred percent certain that this was actually part of the test. Because Azazel and the Fallen would have no need to go through all this elaborate trap just to kill him. 

No, this was likely a test to ascertain the mental fortitude of their contestants, which was fine by him because he had already adapted to mental trauma in some shape or form when he first came to this universe, and his head was about to explode from having to hold onto two different personalities at the same time. 

He could not even feel his power, though, which was odd. Way too odd. He tried to think or focus on the light that had become an ubiquitous part of his life since the—

Ah! There it is! He could feel it, the light.

In a bid to do something, he immediately began cycling the light all around his body, feeling a little better for it. After a while, he seemed to slip into some sort of trance, focusing only on the light within him, figuring that this was actually the best time and place to meditate, something that he had scarcely done, in both his lives.

Soon enough, or late enough, he did not know; he could feel his power, and with that came an intense feeling of hunger, as he felt the sheer lethargy and exhaustion that he had not felt in a while now. Even the light that he was cycling before coming to awareness was gone, feeling more akin to sludge that refused to move smoothly instead of the gentle stream that it was before.

Through great difficulty, he popped one of his eyes open, finding himself in a large empty white hall, made up of white hexagonal panels, looking at a tall, burly man, before he found his vision tilting to the side, darkness encroaching as he surrendered to the blissful embrace of sleep.

____xx___

–Kokabiel—

“So, that’s the kid Azazel picked himself?” he spoke into the comms network, the reply arriving swiftly from the supervisor of this whole exam, Penemue.

“Yes. You would do well to treat this with the seriousness and importance it deserves. Azazel-sama does not—”

He waved her off, “Yeah, yeah. I know what he wants. He wants me to test him and leave him in one piece. I read the dossier, don’t worry.”

After all, even if he disagreed with most of Azazel’s actions, he agreed with the man’s many methods of strengthening the Grigori. This was just another novel method used to add to the Grigori’s strengths without alarming the other two Factions.

After all, this boy, like many others, was going to serve as a faithful weapon for the Grigori when the Great War comes roaring back!