DXD SI : Chapter 81 : HOLY~! Cow, Employee? & Monthly Competition..... (Patreon)

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

Inner Sanctum, the Garden

–Magdaran Bael–

He smiled as Aldric’s hands touched the Holy Cows, as Vali affectionately called them, and his eyes lit up with the same green color as his hands did, his entire being focused on the cow in front of him.

He snorted at the thought of his ancestors, Devils who had dedicated their entire lives to war and for war only, who might just turn in their non-existent graves if they saw their descendant going crazy over a mere cow. A cow that was special but not in the manner they preferred. It had no combat applications, but its entire being could be used to enhance any Devils, and that sort of long term thinking was not afforded to the early Devil Houses, as they were all thrust into war the moment they were born and could think.

After all, they were not to think for themselves but for Lucifer and his Great War against Big G himself.

“Magnificient.” Aldric whispered to himself, the green glow signifying the use of his magic was gone, but he continued to pet the Cow, who only seemed to preen at the attention. As it turns out, the reports regarding Aldric being a pacifist were true. But it was also true that he knew every possible way to use his power for offense. He just chose not to.

A true pacifist, as having the power to do harm and choosing not to do so was what made a pacifist, instead of just being powerless to do anything. That was just being weak.

“She is, isn’t she?” He asked her while he snapped his fingers, sending the Cow back to her barn. She, along with dozens of other Cows, had a large barn where they could graze and move about freely. It was out there in the Outer Sanctum, less guarded, but still the Mother Tree kept a watch over them and could secure them at a moment’s notice.

At this point, the only way someone could break into his Garden without him noticing was if someone of Odin’s current calibre, when it came to magic at least, broke in and managed to subdue the Mother Tree and stop all the alerts at the same time. Odin could do so because he was the one who helped him design the whole thing, and the God of Magic himself admitted that even for him, it would be tough to secure everything before an alert went out, as long as he did not know everything.

If someone had all the inside information, then he could only assume that he had been betrayed or someone on the level of Ophis had taken interest in him, which would spell the end for him, no matter his power, current connections, and potential for future growth. The Ouroboros dragon was just that powerful.

“What next?” Aldric looked at the spot where the cow had been before looking at him.

He smiled at the man. “Now, we train. You have a lot to learn before we can move forward.” 

He clapped Aldric on the shoulder before leading him towards the workshop, one that had been emptied in favour of the Lab floors he built underneath, sealed from the rest of the world. They should be enough to serve as a training place for the Zagan.

“Move forward with what?”

His smile must have been devilish as the Zagan shivered minutely before slumping forward. “Everything.”

____xx___

[A Few Days Later]

He sat on a chair of roots, watching as Aldric, his newest and only apprentice, worked on manipulating the trees in front of him. They were run of the mill variety, mostly used as fertiliser, and something that he only grew because they were part of the Garden when he brought the whole thing here and refused to let go of them out of nostalgia. Otherwise, they were pretty useless and were grown in a small corner, out of sight. The Mother Tree basically did the bare minimum to keep them alive, but as it turns out, a vastly more powerful Mother Tree with so much more energy and nutrients could turn even run of the mill native species found in the Underworld into more powerful variants, as Aldrich was finding out.

Aldric's task of the day was to figure out a way to make sure that the plants do not die in the face of a concentrated dose of Holy Water, using the nutrient roots available, without altering the tree so much that it was an entirely different species.

If he had told Aldric that he needed to make a tree that could resist Holy Water and given him time to iterate, then he would probably have a working prototype within the day, but he did not need that. As Aldric would have just created an entirely different species.

He wanted Aldric to figure out a way to upgrade trees without changing their entire makeup, akin to what he accomplished with his concepts.

Once Aldric could do that, then they could move on to the fruit and vegetables, before ultimately moving on to the animals. Sure, he could do the same using his powers, and with Aldric’s current power levels, he would not be able to match the work done by his mutated power of Destruction, but over time, he had high expectations from the Zagan.

Also, this served as a way to get the Devil to open up a bit more. He could tell that Aldric was still skittish around him, which was expected given the power difference, but he could bet that Aldric was concerned about being forced to use his power for offense.

To give him a hard assignment, which was just figuring out a way to make a plant stronger, and in a way that it could not be used for any offensive application, was just so the guy would calm down a bit. 

After all, going forward, he was going to have to deal with the many, many different plants in this place, and so far, he hadn’t even seen the offensive ones. He smiled internally, anticipating his reaction when he saw the Devil Eater, capable of secreting a paralytic so strong that it had taken Vali a few seconds before she just shrugged it off and blew the entire plant away. Of course, she had to work on his Garden for an entire week to compensate for that Devil Eater he regrew in a matter of moments, which he very much enjoyed. The reason he called it the Devil Eater was that it was the sole plant type in his entire Garden that could take in Holy Water and inject it into any Devil unfortunate enough to fall into its mouth. 

It was specifically engineered for that. There was a spore component that could feed on ambient energy to grow relentlessly, using anything in its vicinity for fuel, including blood. Theoretically, if someone had the misfortune to somehow inhale one of its war type spores, then they would soon find themselves being used as fertiliser for the Devil Eater’s growth. It was a weaponised plant that, hopefully, he would never have to use, but he had created it during the early years here, when he was still a bit paranoid about his safety here.

Nowadays it serves as little more than a novelty. He was far more capable than just a single tree, no matter how fast its spores might spread.

It was just something he experimented on, and it also neatly tied into his whole finding new hobbies thing, so it was a win-win situation. Nowadays, though, he mostly focuses on finding more applications for his power that would net him more money and power, like the upcoming veggie and fruit battle with Odin.

He could feel it. He was this close to winning. Technically, he could sell the fruits and vegetables even now, but his pride wouldn't allow him to sell everything without the products being the best.

Odin’s items were the best, but they were also expensive in terms of energy required. The energy came from Odin himself, and it's safe to say that Odin’s time was far more valuable than him just tasking the Mother Tree with planting and growing everything.

He barely even supervised the whole thing these days, as the Mother Tree also did the reporting task with ease. That way, he didn’t even need to hire anyone for the Garden. Still, he could foresee that he was going to need someone, not just as a helping hand in the Garden but also as a sounding board for ideas.

It was just his luck that a Zagan with his full bloodline trait fell into his lap, and he was not going to let this opportunity go away. Oh, speaking of which, he still hadn’t asked Aldrich about staying here long term.

“Hey, Aldric,” He called out to the Devil, who was focusing intently on the small plant in front of him. Aldric’s focus broke as he looked up. “How do you feel about staying here long-term? As my employee?”

The look of sheer confusion on the man’s face took him aback, as both of them stayed silent for a minute or so before Aldric spoke up in a confused whisper, “Employee?”

He nodded, latching onto the word and explaining the perks, “Yup. You will be paid handsomely, for the work and for the secrecy. You can move to some secure areas, and once you have enough strength and the world knows that you are not to be touched, we can see about letting you go anywhere you want. Of course, you will get one holiday every week. All your necessities will be fulfilled here. I will also personally make sure you will grow to an acceptable level of power. Any questions?”

“Paid? Holiday? Necessities?” The man just whispered to himself, like a broken record, as if the whole thing was earth shattering to him. He gave the Devil time to think, as things in his time must be wildly different, especially in situations where the power difference was as pronounced as it was right now.

He waited for quite a while before the man just looked up at him, “W-What?”

He gently steered the man out of the lab and towards the guest quarter that was being built right now. Perks of having an eldritch tree Spirit that could manipulate everything within a set space was that you could have its roots retrieve and build a solid building within minutes instead of months. The roots holding the structure together were stronger than steel and were capable of unwinding within seconds, making it very easy to build up and destroy rapidly.

“Come, just rest for a bit. I’ll have the employment terms delivered to you in a written format tomorrow. You also have a lot to catch up on. Okay?”

“Okay?” The man nodded distractedly, his gaze on a swivel as they moved through the garden, despite the man having seen most of it before as well. He internally agreed with Aldric, though. Despite building most of it with his own two hands, he could never get enough of this view, not just through his eyes but to his other senses as well.

The day was not far off that even a Satan Class Devil would find themselves trapped and then exhausted to death as the Mother Tree did its job defending the garden. He was still working on the whole Holy Light countermeasure, but it was just something about the Mother Tree’s origin being from the Underworld that did not allow it to resist Holy Light as well as it did all the other energies.

Just Light Energy alone? No problem. Sure, the Mother Tree won’t be stopping Azazel’s Light attacks anytime soon, but the Cadre? He was pretty sure that the Cadres would much sooner exhaust themselves before the Mother Tree could.

He was rocking on that, but he had hit a roadblock on his end. The only path he saw before he awoke Aldric and saw that he was a plant guy as well was to grow in strength and breach the mythical Super Devil barrier and then try again, with that much more oomph behind his powers.

But now? Now, maybe he and Aldric together could come up with something, as it was reported inside whatever little records he could scrounge up that the Zagan of old were capable of morphing even Angel corpses and giving their zombie creations limited Light based abilities, though the Holy Element was absent there as well.

Either way, he couldn't help but look forward to the extremely bright future, one with strength, trees, happiness, and not to mention, extremely strong trees that would make any issue not even worth fretting over.

Once he showed Aldric to his new house, he went back to the kitchen to get his steak dinner, only to pause as he received an alert from Odin. Opening it, he sighed in relief when he saw it wasn’t another invitation to one of his parties, and then opened the actual message.

The Satan brats likely know that you were behind the Romania Massacre. Still no signs of Dracula, so the issue should settle down soon.

That was fine. Dracula’s strength as well as his curse was a cause for worry, especially in the current rendition of human civilization, as it was getting increasingly harder to limit the flow of information, and if Dracula really woke up, it would get that much harder to stop humanity from learning about the supernatural world.

Either way, entire faction leaders were dedicated to maintaining the veil over the world, so that was not on his priority list right now. His current priority?

The monthly Veggie match next week.