DXD SI : Chapter 71 : Food! Bargain Card & SCIENCE! (Patreon)

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

Inner Sanctum, Garden

–Magdaran Bael–

As he sat down in the kitchen to have some breakfast, he looked at the smiling Vali with a raised eyebrow, the question clear.

What was she still doing here?

The answer couldn’t possibly be just…

“Food!” Vali outright squealed as boiled eggs and milk were delivered to the table at a snap of his finger, already having been prepared using magic.

He sighed, shook his head, and began eating his own food, ignoring Vali’s subtle requests for seconds. The Glutton had already healed himself from the flicks he’d sent in her direction for laughing at the incident.

Now, he only had to talk it out with the Zagan and check if his mental condition was stable or not before he could finally go ahead and do something he had wanted to do ever since he got his freedom back.

Heal Misla and…

His features darkened as he thought of the second thing he was going to do the moment he was done with healing and securing Sai and Misla. Zekram’s days were numbered, and this time, he was not going to listen to a single thing coming from the man’s mouth and worry about any repercussions since he was mostly insulated from them anyway.

His Garden was hidden and secured far better than anything in the Underworld, save for some buildings secured by Ajuka himself, using his MAD SCIENTIST! brain. 

“Who are you thinking of killing?” Vali’s casual question brought him out of his stupor, as he looked at her for a moment before shaking his head, brushing off the question, “No one.”

Or rather, he tried to brush her off her questioning, but Vali was not one to take no for an answer. “Is it Zekram? I bet it is him. So, how are you going to do that? From what I’ve heard, he hasn’t been seen in years, which in and of itself is not unusual, but with what has been happening in the Underworld, with your disappearance and House Bael without an official Head, him not showing his face does raise some questions, don’t you think? I, for one, don’t think he is even in the Underworld. Afraid of you sniping him maybe?”

Vali rattled off all her thoughts, becoming so chatty that for one small moment, he was regretting creating a safe space for her so that she became so expressive, but then, he banished that thought, as expressing your emotions can only be a good thing, especially for someone like her, carrying multiple burdens on her back.

Still, just because he sympathised with her situation did not mean he was going to trust her wholeheartedly. Canon Vali and Canon Azazel had a wildly complicated relationship, with Vali betraying his adopted father multiple times, even though it did not look like it hurt Azazel all that much.

Sure, things were different from Canon, but even so, Vali’s loyalty lay with her adoptive mother, who in turn was loyal to a fault to the Grigori and Azazel, which is why he did not say anything and just continued eating his food in silence.

Vali likely understood what he was trying to convey and did not say anything else. When they were both done, he snapped his fingers, sending the plates to the magical dishwasher, an actual appliance you can buy from Azazel and one of his companies, capable of cleaning even the worst of stains from plates, including ones created because of magical ingredients.

Last he checked, it was a very popular item for supernatural factions involved with fluids in some capacity or other.

Vampires. Dwarves. Goblins. Potion Masters. Phenex Devils and more.

This dishwasher was a nice, convenient thing for them, and Azazel both knew how to make it and was the only one who could repair it, so it created a nice recurring revenue scheme for Azazel and Grigori. 

“So,” Vali said, standing up, “I will leave now, BUT I hope to see you soon, assuming you don’t accidentally kill the only living Zagan left. I hope you realise just how important that statement is.”

He waved her off, “Yeah, yeah, I know. I know what to do with him.”

Vali rolled her eyes at him, “If you say so, old man.” Before teleporting out of the Garden, to who knows where.

Once she left, he remained seated for a couple of minutes, thinking of the Zagan below and how he was going to be used as a bargaining chip if he needed to negotiate with the Satans, which should not be necessary, but just in case, a living Zagan was going to be one hell of a card to play with the New Satans.

Serafall especially might just salivate at the possibility of being the one to introduce a line previously thought extinct back into the Senate, creating a new vote for the New Satans, depending on just where the Zagan’s loyalties lie.

Just the optics of that move would be insane, let alone the actual political ramifications for their race. The Angels would not take this lying down, and that might just ignite a new issue in the Underworld, which is why he was thinking of keeping the man here, in the Garden itself, if he proved himself trustworthy, if only because both of their powers could be used for the same task here.

If the man could repurpose his own bodily mass to so easily create tentacles, magic eating spores, and spiky muscled mass, then he couldn’t see why the man couldn’t work just as easily on plants and trees, provided he was not of the everything should be combat oriented mentality.

Man, he hoped that the reports he had on the man being pacifist to a fault were true. He would hate to have revived a bigot and then set him free in the Underworld, only for the wrong people to gain access to one of the most dangerous bloodlines in the Underworld.

Banishing those thoughts, he checked the time and went down to the Hospital room once again. Hopefully, 20 minutes was enough time for the man to calm down.

Spoiler alert : It was enough time for the man to calm down, but that calmness evaporated when the Zagan saw him, which meant he now had to wait some more.

Either way, he was at least able to confirm that the Zagan had his mental faculties intact, or as intact as they could be, which was enough for him to decide to go back to the Underworld.

___xx___

With that decision made, he moved to check in on one of the many, many projects he had started over the course of the past five years, some panned out extremely well and some not so much.

One of the more promising projects he’d started was the creation of pocket dimensions. Not expanded spaces to just store stuff, or meat or water, but an actual pocket dimension, anchored to a single point.

Now, it took him the better part of a year, but he was able to not just learn how to make a pocket dimension but also how to properly secure it against foreign intrusions, as well as the constant pressure any pocket space was from the material universe.

If one wanted to keep a pocket dimension sustained at all times, especially one that could hold onto life for a long period of time, then one needs to have the ability to push back against the pressure from the material universe.

The pressure increased exponentially if the pocket dimension in question was built with housing life in mind, i.e., what he had in mind. He wanted to transport his entire Garden into a pocket dimension anchored to himself and just carry it around with him, because that’s the safest place he had deemed for the Garden to be.

But that was when his Garden was of a reasonable size, and he had made it so, keeping in mind that one day, he was going to have to move the entire thing, and that he was in a hostile territory that could turn on him at any point in time.

But in the past few years, when he had both the time, motivation, and even the secured space required to properly expand his garden, he had done so with gusto, creating a Garden that was many times its previous size, just further exacerbating the problem with putting the entire Garden into a large pocket dimension and turning that into a small world of sorts.

He had just made it harder to finish this project, but that was fine. It was one of the more multi purpose projects he had taken up, and while he couldn't foresee a day coming where he could push the entire Garden into a singular pocket dimension that complied to his standards, he could make use of the magic in many other ways.

He snorted as the image of him donning a farmer’s outfit and walking around a supernatural farmer’s market with all his produce in his handy dandy pocket dimension, ready to be sold to anyone asking, entered his mind.

Shaking his head, he dismissed the vivid imagination of his mind and put his hand on the small white bubble that signified the anchor point of the pocket dimension, his power gently enveloping the whole thing to check on it.

The concepts that acted as a counteracting force were holding steady, although the pressure from the material universe was, as expected, only increasing with time, giving credence to the theory that Odin, sometime in the mandatory scheduled downtime of the entire Oppai Club’s Main Branch, which only lasted a few hours, must break down the entire Pocket Dimension before creating it anew, with the same stuff as before.

Or maybe the God had some other way of getting past that problem he didn’t know of, or could not employ on his own. After all, Odin was the God of Magic.

Either way, this was his way, and he was currently in no hurry to just pursue a Pocket Dimension, put all his belongings there, and figure out later that it was not stable in the first place.

At a minimum, decades of testing was going to be necessary, and he wasn’t even at the final prototype stage, so it was safe to say that it was going to take quite some time to employ his Pocket World theory, at least without one of the Two Longinus Sacred Gears that dealt with pocket spaces.

Dimension Lost and Innovate Clear.

As it turns out, Mephisto, despite being a Devil he could amicably talk to and have active dealings with, was either not willing to divulge details about a Longinus wielder or was simply unaware of the descendant of his contracted Magician wielding one.

Either way, he did not know where Georg was, and he didn’t have the foggiest idea about where to find Innovate Clear.

Shrugging, he withdrew his hand from the pocket dimension anchor point, the white bubble flashing purple before slowly turning white, as the visual showed his power slowly dissipating from inside the Pocket Dimension, another feature he wanted inside the finished product.

The ability to use the ambient energy, be it Demonic or Holy, to power the Pocket Dimension or something else, provided the Trees inside could use it.

So far, the Mother Tree couldn't use Holy Energy but could use many other supernatural energies without much damage, but over time, he expected the Tree to become capable of wielding any energy, and at that point, he expected the Tree to become sentient, whatever that might look like in a tree.

After all, Energy Manipulation, atleast on that scale, required a soul to guide it all.

Hopefully, all his efforts and care that went into the Mother Tree one day resulted in the birth of a new life form, one supremely capable.

For some reason, the mere thought of that filled him with so much joy. Now, if only he could figure out how Odin infuses his Odin Force into a bunch of trees and their fruits to create high tier food. That should help him accelerate the growth of high tier food, which was very slow right now.

It had become somewhat of a competition for both of them to see who could create the higher tier stuff with their magic.

Well, he had won in the quality and quantity of Milk and Ice cream, but fell slightly short on berries, leaves, and veggies.

For Meat, both of them were tied, with the judges being the Norse Warriors, so he tended to blame their obvious biases, but internally, he knew that they were right.

Either way, the next tournament was next month, and he intended to resolve the Misla issue before then.

Maybe it was time to meet Serafall. 

The Poor Satan had been searching for him all these years, without having the slightest idea where he was, not having the faintest idea that it was him behind all the new revolutionary food products in the supernatural world.