Me? Human? : Chapter 36 : Escalating Escalations...... (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–

After he was given food, kinda feeling like a lamb being fattened up for slaughter, he fought Kokabiel again. That is to say, he ran around the entire exam hall, while Kokabiel stayed in one place and sent Light constructs at him at increasingly high speeds, to the point that at one point, he was dodging almost entirely on instinct, as there was no time to actually look out for the incoming avalanche of Light Spears.

His buzzing sense, as he liked to call it, had evolved multiple times as well, allowing him to somewhat reasonably tell the direction of the magic attack as well, which, when combined with his mind sharpened by dodging, allowed him to make on the fly decisions on which Spears to dodge, which to weather, which to dodge barely, and more.

Still, it was getting kind of irritating to just keep running around, dodging the spears, and then catch the occasional glimpse of Kokabiel just standing there, hands folded, looking only slightly amused at the game of cat and mouse happening in front of him.

Now, he was not delusional to think that he would be able to attack and injure a Cadre successfully, not soon anyway, but he needed to have a goal in mind, so that he wouldn't go mad from all this running around.

There was also the issue of Asia, as Kokabiel claimed to know nothing except the task assigned to him, which was this particular test. He wondered just how exclusive the Nephilim Institute was, if they could afford to assign Cadres as exam proctors for an individual candidate, or was he a special candidate?

Shaking his head, he banished those useless thoughts out of his mind, wincing at the sudden pain he felt at the cut on his leg, the thing almost slicing his tendon off, but thankfully, that had already happened before and he had adapted to it.

He did need a ton of food and ran around a lot, likely fulfilling some of Kokabiel’s sadistic tendencies, but he had already grown quite a lot, to the point that some of the Light Spears headed his way were larger than he was, making it harder to completely dodge them. Also, unlike the previous Light Spears, these ones were sharp all around.

Previously, he would just have to dodge the tip and bash the body of the spear, to dissipate the flimsy light construct and throw him away at the same time, but over time, the sharp edges began to increase, eventually culminating in the current situation. Now, even touching any of the Light Spears was guaranteed to draw blood. Thankfully, he was able to keep the sharp edges away from his core areas, sacrificing shallow wounds on the extremities to keep going.

Because that was the only way he could see himself going, see himself winning and getting past this. He didn’t know if there was another stage, something regarding mental prowess or not, but so far, he just kept one goal in his mind.

Reach Kokabiel, injure him, and hope to high heaven that he does not piss the Cadre off enough that the Fallen disintegrates him on the spot. Hopefully, they had someone else watching the whole thing, just in case some of their clearly insane Fallen decided to kill someone over some perceived slights.

Which is why he was doing this whole game with an enthusiasm that would suggest he was some kind of high tier masochist, instead of just a man with a goal. He needed to adapt to the attacks enough to make sure he would survive socking Kokabiel in his ugly face. 

For starters, he needed to be at least strong enough to not worry about his Light Spears spearing him through the body and ending him on the spot. That was where the Light Aura, as he had come to call it, came into play.

Kokabiel might not have noticed it, but aside from using it to stick to other surfaces, he hadn’t used it to stop any Light Spears. It was surprisingly intuitive to program the Aura to do whatever he wanted it to do.

He’d tried it a few times, and he could estimate that with the Light Aura, he could tank spells that could have injured him with startling ease. The drain was not significant as well, so keeping that trump card in his mind, he continued to hop around, continued to do the humiliating thing of dodging and dodging some more.

_____xx___

He lost count sometime after the 15th meal he had to eat before they could continue this game of cat and mouse. The duration between his meals, i.e., the amount of time he needed to completely exhaust himself and make Kokabiel stop the barrage of attacks and summon the good food, was increasing as well. 

Along with the now much deeper well he could access for his Light Aura, he could confidently say that he was leagues above his past self. He still didn’t know how far he was compared to Kokabiel, since he was one of the Last Boss characters, at least for the canon main cast here, but things were definitely improving.

There was no sleep here; he did not need that, no stopping for stretching or checking for injuries as the food alone solved everything.

One particular instance came to the front of his mind as he crashed into the ground, the Light Aura allowing him to surf on the ground, instead of creating a hole in the ground and wasting precious seconds that would allow Kokabiel’s Light Spears to stab him. 

He had already exhausted most of his energy, but Kokabiel hadn’t dispelled his spears, putting him in a pickle as he could do nothing but jump towards the ground, as the Light Aura that allowed him to stick to any surface had run out. He managed to jump out at the last moment, but this particular Light Spear was different. It acted as an explosive, sending shrapnel flying everywhere, with two particular sharp and big pieces lodging themselves into his shoulder blades, almost severing his hands entirely.

He had looked at the white bones visible to him, with barely disguised horror. His first instinct to ask for help was smothered immediately, as all Kokabiel did was snap his fingers and summon that food, with the heavenly smell.

As he stumbled towards the food, his hands hanging, barely connected to his body, blood spilling everywhere, his vision blurry, he saw Kokabiel just standing there, arms crossed, same as before.

Even if he couldn't see the Fallen’s face, he knew the sadist enjoyed seeing the pathetic struggle in front of him.

Anger and shame coursed through him at that point, allowing him to reach the table of food, as he just planted his face into the tray of food, uncaring of anything resembling decorum at that point, and just began eating, not even noticing the blood that spilled onto some of the food.

As awareness returned to him, and he began thinking clearly, he realised that this too, this moment of him almost losing both his arms, and having to heal on his own without any help, was likely an opportunity for the Fallen to gather unimportant data about his physiology and powers.

While that did not lessen the sting at all, it did tell him that while Kokabiel was a sadist, the exam itself too was supposed to be sadistic as well, pushing candidates to their breaking point to gather more data, to decide if the candidate was worth taking in or not.

As the food refilled the Light Aura, it had blossomed to life, holding onto his arms, pulling them back into the sockets, and pushing the shrapnel out, before his body did its job and used the calories to regrow everything and bring it back stronger than before.

After that, Kokabiel had tried the same trick more than once, but it did not work because he had grown immune to that level of shrapnel. He would need to use his Light Spears for that, and for some reason, he did not target him with bigger and bigger Spears anymore, even as he ran around without the armoured form of his Light Aura, expecting more from Kokabiel.

At one point, his entire vision was dotted with just white, as Kokabiel flooded the area with his Light Spears, likely to see what he would do, and he had done as expected. Ran when he could, dodged when he could, took the hit when he had to, let it nick him when it came too close.

On and on, it went as he eventually got used to the cycle.

It was simple to his mind.

Light Spears? Bad. Evade at all costs.

Light Aura? Manipulated with extreme precision to avoid most fatal wounds.

When exhausted, food would be summoned. He would then demolish the food, not even take a look at Kokabiel, before his Light Aura came to life as he began running around in anticipation of more Light Spears.

At one point, he even began ignoring Kokabiel, as his entire focus was on the sea of Light Spears that just blanketed the entire space, all targeted towards him, leaving him with no space to run or hide.

The size of the spears was less than he was expecting someone of Kokabiel’s tier to summon. Maybe it was because of the size constraint of the Exam Hall?

Either way, there was only one way out, and he was about to figure out just how far he had come and just how useful his trump card in the form of that Light Armour was going to help him.

After all, this was just a game.

___xx___

—Penemue—-

A month.

Her eyes remained wide as she looked at the data gathered, and then at the video feed of the human boy going round and round in circles, the white glow around his body dimming as he was constantly being peppered with Kokabiels’ Light Spear, until he fell to the ground and ate the provided food before repeating the same thing.

An entire month of this.

It should have been enough to drive any human to insanity, multiple times over. It was not just the repetitive nature of the activity with no conversation, no interaction, not even seeing another person, but also the pain aspect of it. 

The boy was being injured left, right and centre, and the only response to that was to walk towards Kokabiel, a silent request for food, which was always fulfilled, even when the boy was all but crippled, with all his limbs barely hanging by a thread, as Kokabiel was interested in how far he could push the boy.

That was 4 days ago. 

In these four days, the boy could no longer be injured by any shrapnel that Kokabiel could injure, and any explosion from the Light Spears and even the Spears themselves, despite being sharpened to their maximum, did not seem to hurt the boy too much.

Kokabiel had recognised that something was wrong as well, which is why he had upped the ante immensely, to the point that he had already surpassed his maximum capacity for his Light Spear and was now firmly in his Star of God phase, where he could summon nearly endless amounts of Light Weaponry, empowered by the stars themselves.

They were weakened here without any stars shining above them, but even then, Ultimate Class Humans, Devils, Angels, or Fallen Angels would find it hard to survive the onslaught.

Kokabiel had likely caught onto the same thing as they all had. The Analysts had figured it out last night and ran the metaphorical red alarm, alarming everyone all the way up to Azazel himself.

Unfortunately, their leader was currently embroiled in a trade disagreement between the Norse and the Greek Pantheon, and could not leave without getting a Lightning bolt or a Lightning Hammer to the face for the perceived insult.

The only order she got him was to resolve this issue without killing the boy. 

Of course, their dear leader would focus more on the fact that the boy had somehow grown to survive against sustained output from one of their strongest Cadre, in less than a month, and was only growing stronger.

That part was the one that horrified her and likely even Kokabiel, as the man just let out a scream and summoned all the Spears he could, blanketing her vision with just white.

No, not just white, she realised. The Spears were peppered with glittering points, indicating Kokabiel had just invoked his innate powers.

Diminished as they were, not having an active Star above them, and Kokabiel having Fallen from Grace, this was not something the human boy could withstand.

She immediately made to stop the attack, “Kokabiel! Don’t! On Azazel’s directives, I order you to–”

She stopped, hearing static as she saw Kokabiel cutting their connection, his face set into an intense frown as he looked towards the boy, who was hidden behind the Spears, the entirety of the giant Exam Hall full of White spears.

At this rate…

She shuddered to think what this might result in. The boy hadn’t eaten anything in a while, but the Light Aura around him did not dim one bit. It was as if—

Her eyes widened, her form lunging out of the command room to get to the Exam Hall by any means necessary.

She cursed herself for implementing the No teleportation wards in the entire facility instead of just the Exam Halls, just so the implementation would be cheap and simple, instead of doing everything one by one.

Her face was set in terror, as a horrible possibility had taken root in her mind.

What if the boy was gone in the head? Having grown mad, but his body kept on going, knowing this routine of dodging, getting hurt, getting exhausted, eating food, and then continuing the process.

What if the reason the boy hadn’t exhausted himself in a while was that he was somehow absorbing the Light from Kokabiel’s spear? Something anyone would dismiss as insane, but so was the very existence of the boy.

Then came the next question.

What happened if the boy absorbed all that light and then his mind could not stop? What if the boy continued running around until he exhausted himself, but could not do so? What if he looked at them, at Fallen Angels as food?

No, she had to stop this, at any cost necessary.

Because if she could not stop this, then they might not be able to stop the boy at all, not from likely killing Kokabiel, and not from targeting the rest of the Grigori after that. 

After all, the only one stronger than Kokabiel was Azazel, and he was not here.

FUCK!

Word Count - 2514

A/N - Longest chapter!Also, things really escalated here. Nobody praised the Grigori, especially Kokabiel, for making really sound and well thought decisions.

Exhibit A - MC becoming uber strong now, with his mind not being all there.

Enjoy!