DXD SI : Chapter 72 : Back to the Underworld! Conveniently Placed & Masochist Maybe?! (Patreon)

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

Bael Compound, Underworld

–Magdaran Bael–

Coming back to the Underworld, it wasn’t exactly….hard, but it definitely brought back memories of times when he did not have the level of freedom and happiness as he did now. Hell, he didn’t even have any friends he could talk to or talk about. 

Just him, his Garden, and an endless pit of misery that was sometimes sprinkled with joy at seeing his own progress when it came to personal power.

After he was able to get out of here and undergo weekly training sessions with Thor of all the Gods, he understood that even the small amount of happiness he felt in between those bouts of depression was fake. Sure, he’d increased his demonic energy reserves, gotten used to shaping his power in any manner he liked, and increased his resistance to holy energies to a very high level, but he didn’t learn how to fight at all.

The majority of his time was spent in the Pits, fighting Demonic Beasts, which were incapable of rational thought or planning ahead. That, combined with his power, meant he was always hitting them instead of fighting them. Over time, he grew strong enough to outright ignore any Demonic Beast who had the audacity or the stupidity to actually attack him, leading to even less need for any skill in hand to hand combat.

Most of the time, he had to actually talk to people or fight with people either involving him flexing just his Demonic Power and his bloodline trait, or just blasting everything in his sight with his overwhelming power.

Never once did he have to rely on close quarter combat skills to fight someone, and it showed. It showed when he was defeated by a regular Einherjar of the Norse, after Odin sealed away most of his Demonic Energy and just allowed him to use his physical abilities.

It was an interesting experience to be so bereft of the one thing that made him who he was, but he let Odin put the seal on him because of the very easy trigger cast on his other hand that allowed him to undo the seal with a single thought.

In the end, he had lost, but he did not let that defeat deter him, instead adding yet another thing to do in his schedule. Weekly, he sparred with Thor using his magic and his special power of Destruction, and every other day, he sparred with a rotating line of warriors who were all too happy to punt him into the ground and not suffer any consequences of doing so.

Ofcourse, there were people who wanted to take the chance to express their views on Devil kind using that opportunity, but Thor and the others were quick to put them in their place, which was in the dirt, after having eaten a punch to the head.

Shaking his head, he refocused on the task at hand. Taking a deep breath, he looked down at the sparsely populated Bael Compound. It was the first time he had shown his face publicly to anyone in the Underworld in almost five years.

The times he came back to retrieve the Sleeping Sickness patients, he did so in absolute stealth, using some of the techniques Odin taught him to make sure no one could detect him, save for maybe Ajuka, who could come up with something out of his ass to detect him moving about in the Underworld. That was always a concern when it came to dealing with the Super Devil, but thankfully, the man did not look for him, or if he knew where he was, did not bother looking for him.

Either way, he was here now, and he was here with a purpose. He did not plan to stay long anyway, so with that in mind, he flew down and appeared right outside the wards that kept the house protected.

He did not want to raise a fuss, so he decided to fly inside the wards after only a little bit of hesitation, his power making sure that the wards did not detect him at all, right up until he had to push open the door that housed Misla in her sleeping form. He knew that because he had scouted this place beforehand years ago, tempted to go ahead and heal her without much in the name of experimentation, because Odin himself had told him that his method of healing soul injuries was valid.

Still, he was glad that he waited a bit, as years to Devils were practically nothing. Still, he was worried a bit about Sairaorg and his mentality, but he was sure that the young Devil would have toughened up already, creating the personality that would end up in a Devil becoming an Ultimate Class Devil with just his physical body.

Shaking his head, he pushed the door open, after having sensed that the butler assigned to watch over her was not present inside the property at all, which was definitely strange but he was not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, so he pushed in and after doing a check just in case something truly unexpected happened, he walked towards Misla and gently placed his hand on top of her head.

____xx___

New Lilith

–Serafall Leviathan—

She gave the man in front of her, with an absolutely frigid glare, an apologetic smile, “I am truly sorry for this. I would not have called for you if not for the emergency. I know that you have been staying by Lady Vapula’s side all this….”

“Please, Satan Leviathan,” She winced internally at the tone. Normally, a mere High Class Devil, no matter of what origin, would never speak to her like this and, more importantly, she would never talk to them with such a humble tone, but things are different now.

For some insane reason, Ajuka, after all these years of inactivity, had sent her a message, practically ordering her to summon the Vapula Butler, an Ancient Devil who had served House Vapula for centuries, since before the Great War even, and was currently tasked with overseeing Misla and her health, which was definitely not doing great these days, for no reason whatsoever.

She was to summon him and keep him in her office, keeping him company personally, for a few hours on this day. She received the order a week ago, and for the entire week, her focus had shifted from her two biggest headaches, that were the total disappearance of Magdaran Bael and the sudden appearance of a genius who could make stuff that was truly magical, and that was coming from a literal Satan, to figuring out just why Ajuka had told her to do this.

Was there something wrong with Misla? With the butler? With the Bael Compound? 

Whatever it was, it was out of her reach, which is why she did as she was told and summoned the poor Butler with her personal seal, and since, technically, no one could directly reject her summons without at least being the Head or Heir of a House, the butler kinda had to come.

Now, she had spent the past two hours trying to keep him here, half of which was just spent making him wait outside her office, the other half trying to take details about Misla, and then his own, something that should be done by her office staff, a fact that definitely raised his suspicions, but since he couldn't do anything about it, all the butler did was stare at her impassively, silently telling her that he knew she was doing something but even if he was powerless to do anything about it, he was not going to take it lying down.

It was almost certain that she was going to get an angry call or letter from the current Lord Vapula soon, as it was his dear sister, whom she had somewhat compromised by ordering her chief protector to come to her.

She was about to invent yet another excuse, only for the man to stiffen in alarm, a flash of terror that gave way to anger on his face, as he stood up, clearly outraged about something. She had felt the pulse of magic as well, which was likely tied to some alarm or ward in the home that housed Misla’s sleeping form.

The butler glared at her as a magic circle manifested right next to his ears, no doubt to hear the report of whatever had happened there, only for the man’s face to transform from anger to shock, to incandescent rage.

He spoke with gritted teeth, true venom spitting out of his mouth, “I don't care what you saw! If I come there and find this to be a joke, you will wish to have the capacity to even think of your eyes!”

A magical circle manifested beneath his feet, in fragrant violation of dozens of laws, so she shattered the circle with a thought. Raising a hand to calm down the upcoming outburst of anger, she manifested a circle of her own. “Allow me. I am interested in what has happened as well.”

The man nodded, swallowing his words and a lot of his anger, which was justifiably directed at her since it could not be a coincidence that the one time he was away from Misla in years, that an incident occurs that shocks the butler to his core, and there were not many things that could shock a man who had seen so much of the Devil Society and the things that transpired in the Underworld.

The first thing she saw when she teleported was the house in which Misla was staying, with dozens of Devil guards, ranging from Mid Class to High Class, all standing guard, with more present inside.

She paused in shock at sensing something she never thought she would ever sense. 

A familiar energy signature, much stronger than the pale shadow it had become, as if she was wasting away from something they could not cure.

The butler also likely sensed the same thing as he burst through the door, creating a Devil shaped hole in the walls.

While she would have loved to follow the butler immediately, she took a step back and, with a thought, sent a furious message to Ajuka that she knew wasn’t going to be read immediately.

Taking a deep breath, she calmed down her raging thoughts about the implications of this whole thing and stepped inside the house with a smile plastered on her face, ready to greet Misla, only to be pushed back by a crying child, as Sairaorg wailed and latched onto his very recently awakened mother.

She smiled even as she stumbled a single step before choosing to give the mother son duo their privacy and leaving the premises.

___xx__

–Magdaran Bael–

He took a deep breath, taking his hand away from Misla, her eyes already fluttering as he had infused into her a bit of his energy and healed her from everything, to make sure she was not as weak as she should be after having spent years asleep.

After triple checking that everything was fine, he disappeared from the spot before the guards could come in to check what had tripped the alarm. It was more than likely that the only one who knew the individual wards best was the butler, and he was conveniently absent today, which worked out best for him.

The next moment, he was out of the Bael territory and back into the Pits. More specifically, near the Holy Pit.

He still had a couple of hours to spare before he had to go back and hunt down Zekram Bael.

Until then, he could spare some time to visit one of his most visited spots. 

As he floated down into the pit, the Holy energy attacked him with extreme prejudice and damaged the outer layer of his skin, which he healed immediately, creating a loop of sorts, he sighed, as if welcoming an old nostalgic feeling.

…..Maybe he was a Masochist.