DXD SI : Chapter 68 : Eggs, Progress against Thor, Language!, Last Zagan & Suck it Azazel! (Patreon)

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

The Garden, Somewhere in Norse territory [A Few Years Later]

–Magdaran Bael–

“So,” Vali said, evidently done with her ice cream, and having sat down after he covered the entire kitchen with a veil of his power, indirectly telling her that it was now off limits to her, “What are you doing here? No contact for the past few weeks. Uncle Thor said you missed two of his weekly spars, and he intended to pay you back for that.”

He shuddered a bit at the reminder, as Thor, when it came to anything related to their weekly spars, where he was able to push Thor a bit into using Mjolnir, was intense. Thor loved when they fought, usually because he was now able to affect Thor’s concepts to the point that he could somehow make Thor’s power stutter, a no small feat as a being on a similar level of Thor could easily exploit that opening to permanently end the God of Thunder.

Of course, it was another matter entirely to find someone on the same level willing to end the God of Thunder and trigger one of the most important and chaotic predestined events of the supernatural world, but the fact that he could do it now was a major milestone, for both him and Thor, as was made evidently clear by the mandatory weekly spars. 

It was great practice for him as well, as pushing his powers did require a very hardy target and these days, the list was only growing shorter. The last time he tried to spar with Azazel, the Fallen gave up immediately upon seeing that his Light Spears, theoretically the highest tier of Light Spears that a Fallen could summon, had zero effect on him.

He had grown by leaps and bounds, not just in terms of strength, but also in terms of his various resistances, as well as his precision in power. No longer did he have to blast his power at an enemy to try and overwhelm them. He could do that just as easily with a veil of his power, with a tenth of power usage, and the same utility, as allocating power to a certain point after he’d found the weakness was a matter of thought.

It was this precision that encouraged him to work on more stuff, aside from the hobby finding sessions with his therapist. It brought him back to one of his earlier goals.

Side eyeing Vali, he replied to her question, “You really wanna know?”

“Duh,” She deadpanned at him, “Why else do you think I am here?”

“For the ice cream?”

“....And the eggs. Don’t forget the eggs.” She hastily reminded him, as he chuckled and snapped his fingers, a dozen trays appearing in front of them, that Vali hastily chucked into her storage space. Being half human, she loved eating protein, as while it was not mandatory, it did help somewhat, and Vali was always one to chase after even the most minute of progress.

It was what made her an Ultimate Class Devil in her teenage years, even without using her Sacred Gear, which was just terrific, as he was pretty sure that by the time canon rolled around, she should be able to not just match but maybe even overcome the likes of Serafall and Grayfia.

Standing up, he stretched before a magic circle manifested beneath his feet, enveloping both him and Vali, as they disappeared from his Inner Sanctum and into an enclosed lab space, with full sterile spaces, bright white lights, and grey walls.

“Ewww,” Vali chose to begin with that, “Don’t tell me you got roped into Azazel’s yucky stuff too.”

He shook his head and flicked her forehead, the thin forcefield around her skin shattering with a boom that he immediately contained with his power of Destruction, as a red spot appeared on her skin. “Keep quiet. I am being serious here.”

Vali rubbed that part, before the wound steamed for a bit before it healed itself, “Fine.”

The petulance was clear in her voice, but he let it be as the dome of his Power of Destruction unfurled around them. He walked to the command console, did the authorisation steps, which included imbuing it with his own Power of Destruction, as a section of the wall slid away, revealing a dark hallway.

Vali followed him as the hallway lit up, recognising the presence of people, leading them to a large hall, full of pods filled with nutri-fluid, some of them containing many people from all walks of life. Six of them, to be precise. The other three were recent ones, and thus, were already released to Mephisto, who hid them properly.

“Whoa. Who are they?” Vali whispered to him, the dreary aura of this place quieting even her.

Standing next to a pod that contained a really Old Devil, he said, “They are all victims of a disease. A soul disease, to be precise. Thought to be incurable until now.”

“A soul disease? Why are they still like this, then? Can’t you just…” Vali mimed the gesture of a scissor cutting through something, a thing she had seen him do, when Tobio’s issues came knocking on Azazel’s door and he needed someone to teach the kid about his Sacred Gear that specialised in severing concepts, and the only one Azazel could call upon to teach someone about conceptual severing was him, someone who was only a few years older than the boy himself.

Still, it was true that over the years, in his quest to self improve and relax at the same time, which ironically led him to improve far more than he would have ever expected to, he had picked up a few things about the Immortal Soul and how his powers could be used to heal not just their body, but any soul damage as well.

The most tricky one was a direct curse from the Norns, something that he could have done but was halted by Odin himself, as the Old Man warned him about doing something that could never be reversed, as having the gaze of the Norns on a singular person was never a good thing. He had heeded the advice at the time, and kept the curse as is, but that was not the only soul disease or injury he had ever treated.

In fact, there being someone who could actually heal souls had led to the spars in Asgard growing ever more rampant, as they truly forgot just how dangerous and, more importantly, taboo soul weapons and soul attacks were, before he came along and Odin told them that as long as the injury was recent and not imbued with a Divine Will and Divine weapon, it could be healed.

It has led to people becoming pretty reckless, in his opinion. Now, the Asgardians were more concerned with eking out all the more juice out of their souls, instead of making sure it was never vulnerable. It has made the entirety of Asgard all the more dangerous for it, something he was sure that Odin appreciated a tiny bit, as every bit of combat prowess was going to be necessary for Ragnarok, whenever it came knocking.

It also helped him a bit as he had collected far more data on souls than anyone around him, even Azazel, as the Man child constantly begged for all his data on the Soul in an easily digestible format, so that Azazel could finally finish his research on his Artificial Sacred Gear system.

As for Vali’s question, “Well, these people are somewhat different. I am sure you’ve noticed, but they are all Full Devils.”

There was also the case of that Half-human Leviathan Girl who was like an uber prodigy with a Sacred Gear that meshed well with her existing abilities, but that could be done later on, at the cost of a massive favour from Serafall.

“So, there is a soul disease that appears in certain Devils, without any cause or method of propagation or any method of cure. It is called the—”

“The Sleeping Sickness, I know.” Vali finished for him, as he looked at her in surprise.

She rolled her eyes at him, “Oh, fuc–Oww!”

He had flicked her forehead again, after breaking through her personal forcefield, again, “Language.”

He giggled at the inside joke, as she glared at him.

“Fine. I was saying, Don’t look so surprised. I do read too. In fact, I’ll have you know, I have finished my quota for reading books for the rest of the week. So, I am free for sparring, if you have the balls for it.”

He raised his finger threateningly, as she backed away a bit.

He smirked mockingly at her, “You know, you should respect your elders.”

She clearly wanted to curse him out for it, but in this space, with no clear exit, and no way to actually fight without destroying something important, that would lead to no future fights, Vali was powerless and thus could only remain silent and take his mocking words.

Satisfied with that, he continued, “As I was saying, before I was rudely interrupted, they are all Devils afflicted with the Sleeping Sickness. It was a pain and a half to get them smuggled safely out of the Underworld, by the way. For the past year or so, I have been working extensively on curing the Sleeping Sickness.”

“And? Were you successful?" 

He smirked at her, prideful in his achievement, and instead of replying, snapped his fingers, as one of the tubes outright disappeared, along with a magic circle appearing beneath them, whisking them away deeper into the lab.

Vali’s annoyed groan was drowned out as they appeared in what was a replica of a Sitri Hospital room, something he created to pacify any patients that could awaken violently. Well, his power made it a trivial matter to impose order, but he did not want that on some of the Devils he had upstairs.

These six were some of the oldest Devils fallen to the Sleeping Sickness, to the point that most of the Underworld had probably forgotten that they even existed.

The pod appeared in the room, as he got the Devil out without any of the nutri-fluid and gently placed them on the hospital bed.

“Who is he?” Vali whispered behind him.

“That is the last Lord Zagan.”

A choked noise escaped Vali’s lips as he smiled, self satisfied at the reaction. It was one of the reasons why he chose this moment to awaken the only known living Zagan in the world.

Zekram must have been truly void of any logical thinking to either do the deed himself and then forget to secure the Lord Zagan, or he was foolish enough to disseminate the method of the Sleeping Sickness curse to someone who was foolish enough not to secure the last known Zagan with a fully manifested bloodline trait.

Either way, it was their loss and his win, as he knew why this particular Zagan was targeted and kept sleeping even when the Underworld had peace.

He still thanked his lucky stars when he read the file on this man. A full bloodied Zagan, exceptionally skilled with his life manipulation, but instead of churning out half mad zombies to act as cannon fodder for the war effort, the man was more interested in growing more plants to create a better and stronger next generation of Devils.

He also could not directly be killed because he had no heir and was not interested in helping create more war, giving public statements about rather dying than killing more Devils.

A pacifist, it would seem from the records, and as such, someone from the Old Satan faction or Zekram’s faction had him sealed, and then probably threw the key away with just a few low class servants to keep him alive.

He was decently strong for his age too. High Class at the age of 40, before he fell into Sleeping Sickness

Man, Azazel was going to faint when he realised that the Zagan line still lives, even after Heaven sacrificed a Twelve Winged Angel to get rid of the nightmare producers.

He couldn’t wait!

….”Um, why do you have your evil smile out?” Vali asked him, fearful and hesitant.