DXD SI : Chapter 73 : Let the Zekram hunting Begin! (Patreon)

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

The Pits, Underworld

–Magdaran Bael–

He sat cross legged, in the middle of the second last Holy Pit, letting the Holy energy in the area attack him en masse, converging on his location like a pack of rabid beasts who’d smelled meat for the first time in weeks. It was a feeling he was well aware of, and while just a scant few years ago, he would have had to create a cube of his Power of Destruction to ward off the majority of the Holy energy and let in controlled amounts for optimal growth, now he was no longer constrained by such things.

He just sat there as the Holy Energy exhausted itself trying to burrow into his skin, only to fail to even make a dent as he had hardened his flesh beyond the pale, to the point that a glancing hit from a serious Thor only bruised his skin, as opposed to rupturing everything and breaking everything around it.

It truly was a stark reminder as to how far he’d come in the past five years. Most of that credit went to the fact that he now had a safe and secure space to train, as well as people who actually knew how to fight and were willing to teach him.

Or maybe in Thor’s case, people who really wanted to fight strong people without the other party breaking in half from a single serious blow, and were willing to invest the time and effort to teach someone who could one day grow up to take heavy blows from the God of Thunder and instead of turning into red mist, fight back.

As time went on, the Holy Energy in the area lessened and lessened, failing to actually make a meaningful impact on his skin. It would be obvious since he had been training his body to take blows from Thor, so this much energy was nothing.

After the first hour, he was done with meditation and with the whole palace as well, so he stood up and after taking one last look at the place that gave him such an easy method of training and strengthening himself to shore up one of the innate weaknesses of his race, he smiled and waved his hand, launching a wave of his power at the Holy Energy that surged forth to fight back against his power, but ultimately, lost the battle, leaving behind a hole in the ground, with the top layer having been destroyed by his power to remove the Holy Energy completely from the area.

As he did that, his gaze then went to the Last Holy Pit in the Pits, an area that was off limits to most Devils, save for the scant few Satan Class ones, who would not risk coming here and setting something off for no reason. The Super Devils would likely come out unscathed from whatever was here, but they too had no reason to come here.

There were far other more interesting things to do.

Sighing, he checked the tie and realised that only two hours had passed since he healed Misla, and while he would have loved to use Misla and Sai as bait, he could not risk the fallout of fighting Zekram out in the open and Serafall getting a chance to talk to him. Also, he could not let Zekram target Misla, so it was just his fortune that Serafall managed to follow the butler back to the house. Hopefully, her presence alone would deter Zekram from taking any rash steps.

He could have foreseen Zekram doing something reckless if he knew that the one who healed Misla was Magdaran Bael, but he had never revealed that ability of his. He had simply no reason to, as he was never publicly injured and even if he was, he never had the need to heal himself publicly.

He, once again, patted himself on the back for his paranoia, as it came in clutch, saving him a ton of trouble.

As he was done with the self glazing, he was faced with a decision.

Wait here and try his hand at the Last Holy Pit in the Underworld, a place so rife with Holy Energy that it felt like Big G himself had laid down some kind of immutable law about the place being full of Holy Energy. He could feel that even he would have to take measures to protect himself from the onslaught of Holy Energy that would inevitably land on his head the moment he dared to enter that place.

OR, wait and look for Zekram, ambush the old Devil, kill him without letting the man talk a single word about anything, because he had already fallen into that trap before,  and then move on from the Underworld, and with his life. 

Zekram truly was the last ghost from the past in his life, and while he had achieved much and felt content with his current rate of growth, he would love to resolve this one issue so he had nothing truly holding him to the Underworld or any other place, save for his Garden, which was fine since he actually owned the place and was making great progress, relatively at least, with respect to becoming able to move at least the core parts of his Garden into a pocket dimension and carry it around with him, if not permanently then at least for a little while until he found a better palace to put down his Garden.

Shaking his head, he floated off the now just Pit, instead of a Holy Pit, looking down at the cleared area before teleporting.

In the end, the decision was quite easy. He could always come back to fulfil his curiosity regarding that Pit and what could be at the center of that place, but Zekram had a countdown that he was probably unaware of, and it was prudent to let Zekram know that the countdown to his life was down to the last few digits.

___xx__

It took a lot of running around the Underworld, finding people who could be in contact with Zekram, using force and mind magic, sometimes combining both, to figure out that Zekram had played him or at least tried to anyway.

Zekram probably knew that the moment his Garden was out of the Underworld’s reach, and he was nowhere to be found, that Magdaran was going to hunt Zekram down and had probably gone underground, while spreading conflicting information about his whereabouts to multiple parties. It was obviously a way to slow him down, as even Zekram must know that he could not be stopped, not without putting the two Big Guns of the Underworld directly in his path, and that was not possible right now for a number of reasons.

For one, he knew of the rumour mill that Sirzechs Gremory was currently weakened for some reason, as he only attended important events for minutes at best, addressed the people of the Underworld from behind a magical screen and while that was not enough to act as direct proof since the Crimson Satan had seldomly used his overwhelming power for his job, it was starting to create rumours, and soon, if Sirzechs did not respond with a show of his overwhelming force,, then the enemies of the Underworld were going to come like sharks smelling blood.

Ajuka would not agree to Zekram anyway, not unless–

He shook his head, discarding the thoughts of the what ifs, as Thor had taught him, or rather, beaten out of him over the course of their many, many spars. 

Nowadays, he was much quicker on his feet when it came to fighting anyone, let alone the walking disaster that was Thor.

With the last dead end leading him on a wild goose chase, he figured that his usual methods of locating the Bael were not working, which is why it was time to pull the nuclear option, i.e., Odin himself.

A magical circle manifested next to his ear as he directly dialed Odin. Almost immediately, the call was picked up, and, a very snappish, “What?!” came from the other end.

He cringed a bit at the background noises of an obvious party, but this was important, so he pushed through and asked Odin, “I need to know the location of Zekram Bael. Can you  track him down?”

The party's sounds disappeared instantly, replaced with a slight whoosh noise that signalled that Odin had straightaway teleported away from the party, his voice now much more serious than before. “What are you doing, brat? Are you really willing to take that path?”

“Yes.” Was all he said, hoping that it would convey his seriousness.

There was silence for a bit before Odin replied, “Fine. But know this, Brat. Do not expose your identity as the Pharmacist, or even I won’t be able to save you.”

He rolled his eyes at the concern, which rolled into a threat, “No, I won’t expose myself. How would I even do that? Don’t worry about that.”

The Pharmacist was the moniker given to the individual who was supplying select parts of the Underworld with merchandise that was far higher quality, not to mention capable of esoteric effects, and had become famous in the last few years.

It was him, and while he would have loved to remain isolated, over the course of years, he had realised that socialising with people was important. Far more important than he realised, as he now knew that had he just talked to the right people, his problems would have been solved far earlier or at least with much less pain and headache.

It was just the way things were, even if one was a member of the supernatural world with power levels being in the top 0.1 percent.

“Brat,” Odin’s reply came a minute later, as the God was likely busy using some sort of broken Divination magic to track down the precise location of Zekram. “He is using something to block most Divination magic. Even so, I have managed to track down his location, but the caveat is he knows that, so he will be fleeing soon. Go here soon and get me a sample of his teleportation magic. Then, you can properly hunt him down."

A beautiful smile appeared on his face, a magical circle manifested beneath his feet as he teleported to the coordinates Odin gave him. Zekram was somewhere in Europe, alarmingly close to the Vatican for someone who was an original Pillar Devil.

How very bold of him.

Well, if Zekram thought that hiding somewhere close to the Vatican would deter him from going after him, then he was dead wrong. And also, about to be dead as well.

With that in mind, he opened his eyes to find himself in, as expected, a five star presidential suite, completely abandoned, of course.

Ofcourse, Zekram would not settle for anything less than absolute opulence when he came to Earth, as the old fuck was used to all the luxury that was afforded to him because of being an Original Pillar Devil, a rarity in the Underworld nowadays.

His eyes narrowed as he sensed the teleportation spell, just like Odin had told him, so with that in mind, his power spread all around the suite, locking down on the magical spell signature before sending that information to Odin.

Despite his attempts at expanding his repertoire of magic over the past few years, Odin was the veritable master of all magics, even Divination magic, so he was glad he had someone like Odin to help track down Zekram.

It was time for the Underworld to be one Original Pillar Devil short.

In his humble opinion, they were overrated anyway.