DXD SI : Chapter 105 : Manipulations & Ass-kicking..... (Patreon)

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

Grigori Prison Grounds

–Vali–

She was broken out of the sheer euphoria she was feeling at seeing that silvery mass of light win against Rizevim’s power, and make that power her own, when she felt Albion’s connection break through that mass and reach her, forcibly. She could tell then and there that Albion had exhausted himself to do that, so she consciously manifested her Sacred Gear, and straightaway reached Balanced Breaker in one go, surprising even her.

“Vali, something has happened to Magdaran. I have received no less than a hundred distress alerts from him. You have to–” Was all she let Albion say before she withdrew the mass of silvery light within her, forcibly taking control as a jolt of anxiety ran through her body at the implications of Magdaran of all people sending him a distress signal. She cursed herself for severing the link to the comms network Odin had created for them because she feared Ophis using it to track down Magdaran and the others to target them.

Her first thought of escaping this prison was dismissed entirely in favour of using the now humongous amounts of power she had at her disposal. It was actually mind boggling just how much power she commanded right now, and that was not even mentioning the one thing that the entire Lucifer line desperately wanted to inherit, but never got the chance to. 

Oh, if she didn’t already know that Rizevim was dead and had actually tried to kill her as one of his last acts, she would have loved to fly over to him and rub this in his face. After all, the power gap did not really matter now. She had the Demonic Brilliance of Evil Light now, and every single power she had ever seen paled in front of this.

‘Thanks for the compliment, partner.’ Albion snorted in her mind as she simply willed to leave, as the wards that covered the entire Prison grounds simply gave away as she disappeared from her spot and teleported right next to the ward line of the Outer Sanctum, only for her eyes to widen as she took in the sheer destruction around the Garden.

The entire Outer Sanctum was gone, riddled with craters now, and even the wards covering the Outer Sanctum were shattered, with the last line of defense dome visible around the Inner Sanctum.

What could have forced Mag— 

She looked up at a clash of titanic amounts of energy creating a shockwave that was nullified by her shiny new power. Her eyes narrowed as she watched Magdaran being blown back from the clash, as Thor looked down at Magdaran with his hammer raised. Lightning crackled around them, as Mjolnir sparked before sending down a bolt of lightning straight towards Magdaran.

Her power instinctively acted as she pushed forward and created a shield with her power, tanking the blow with ease. Looking down, she saw Magdaran looking up at her with a wide-eyed, confused look. Then, that look turned into pure relief as she spied Magdaran’s hand healing, but instead of bones, he had tree roots that glowed with barely restrained magic.

“Vali Lucifer,” Thor’s voice boomed above them as she dispelled the shield and floated up to glare at the God of Thunder, a being who, up until an hour ago, could have killed her with a single blow.

“WHAT. IS. HAPPENING.” She gnashed her teeth, her power flaring around her, as Thor looked at the new power with interest. Magdaran, meanwhile, had retreated to the ground, presumably to heal. That was fine. She was here now, and she could handle this.

“You were not supposed to be here,” Thor said to her, which just made her more frustrated than before.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Vali, what happened to you?” Magdaran whispered from below, so she glared at the God of Thunder one last time before she snapped her fingers, her silver power flaring and devouring the lightning cage Thor had erected around the Garden, before replacing it with her own power. The cage only grew in power as it devoured Thor’s Divine Lightning. It was incredibly empowering to see just what this power could do.

Even now, as she looked at Magdaran, she could tell, with a look, that despite the incredible growth Magdaran had experienced since she last saw him, she could kill him with a single well placed energy explosion. 

“I saw your sword shatter after an attack that could only have come from Azazel. What happened? Where is Azazel? Were you attacked by someone else? And what in the heck is that power? It is incredibly dangerous, even to me. Why do you suddenly have Super Devil levels of power?”

She smiled at the rapid fire barrage of questions that came from Magdaran, his concern for her evident, and yet, she knew now was not the time for that. The moment she had made contact with Magdaran’s body, she knew what he had done and what level of desperation must be necessary for him to do so. From what she could tell from a preliminary scan, Magdaran was well on his way to fusing permanently with the Mother Tree, and becoming a Tree-Devil hybrid. An entirely new kind of Devil created from the desperate fight he was in.

It was clear to her that Thor was not serious here, at all. If he was, Magdaran and the Garden would not exist right now. The God, despite her newly enhanced powers, was still a step above anyone she had ever met. The only reason she had the confidence to even remotely escape a serious Thor was because of her new powers.

Lucifer’s powers were documented to have the ability to threaten Gods as well, the same way that an Angel could threaten the life of a higher tier Devil if the attack was timed right.

She couldn't imagine what Magdaran must have had in his mind when he decided to throw everything he had at Thor. He was throwing everything he had at Thor right now, because he was on his way to losing the Mother Tree, in its current form at the very least. From her calculations, and what she had seen with the way Magdaran healed, he only had to heal himself from grievous harm a few thousand more times for the Mother Tree to have completely assimilated into his being.

She was sure that he hadn’t even noticed how he no longer had a direct physical connection to the Mother Tree in the garden, as the roots were long since severed, but the physical connection did not matter much in this case. They were both on their way to become a single entity, and unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how Magdaran looked at it, the process had reached a state where it would be dangerous for both of them to try and reverse the process.

Magdaran could only go forward, and she was sure that he would never make the choice in time. He would beat himself up over it for a long period of time, spend a lot of time trying to figure out ways to reverse it, and if it had been before, she would have let him. But now? With that power came an inherent understanding of Devil physiology, and she could tell that outside of destroying Magdaran’s current body, doing Soul Surgery on him and then creating an entirely new body for that soul to go into, there wasn’t anything else they could do if they wanted Magdaran to live.

So, with a smile, instead of answering his questions, she placed both her hands on his shoulders, “Instead of doing the Q&A, why don’t we kick Thor’s ass, huh? It should be a fun change of pace for you?”

“Hey!” Magdarn’s offended look made her laugh freely. “That was uncalled for. You try fighting Thor in his current form. Hell, he was playing with me, and told me that the only reason he was here was to make sure I could not leave the Garden. I mean, what in the fuck was that? Also, how do you propose we kick his ass, huh?”

She smiled brightly at Magdaran. “Now, you leave that part to me.”

“What are you going to do?” Magdaran understandably looked wary at her bright, innocent smile, but could do nothing as she clamped down on his shoulder before injecting her magic into his body, a process she could make torturously painful with but a single thought. This application, however, was kept entirely on the beneficial side of the spectrum of things she could do with the Demonic Brilliance of Evil Light, and as such, Magdaran did not realise what was happening until the very end.

She had just coated his body’s internals with her power, and supercharged the integration process. It was quite easy to do so, as the Mother Tree had the same goal, and Magdaran wanted the same thing as well; he just did not know or have the time to process what he would end up losing after that. Her smile hid the pain she was going to feel when Magdaran inevitably understood what she had done and cursed her for it.

But until then, she would enjoy this fight.

Taking her hands off Magdaran, she smiled as she looked at his glowing hands, the Mother Tree in the garden spiking with one final flare of its energy, before it sent all that energy to Magdaran, making him shine with a mixture of her own power and the Mother Tree’s power, before it was all assimilated into his own cloak of power, the standard dark violent energy that flared to life behind him.

Magdaran looked curiously at his own hands before he clenched his fists, the cloak behind him flaring with an ever increasing version of his Power of Destruction, only increasing in intensity as the Mother Tree accelerated the process. Still, to complete the process without letting Magdaran think too much of it, she would have to distract him with something. Something that would take all of his focus, and not leave any to notice the integration.

“So,” She floated closer to Magdaran, “Let’s kick this guy’s ass, shall we?”

Magdaran only grinned at her as a dark sword manifested itself in front of him, his arms glowing with the enchantments he had done to the Tree roots that had long since covered most of his skeleton. Gripping the sword tightly, she noted the density of energy within the sword as Magdaran whispered, “Gladly.”

Magdaran disappeared from her vision as she looked up and saw Magdaran’s sword being blocked by Mjolnir, and this time, Thor’s single arm being used to push Magdaran was trembling in place, as the energy output from Magdaran only increased.

Looking down at the Inner Sanctum, she noted the slight dimming of the energy signature of the massive tree network beneath the ground, before she turned around and slammed her fist into Thor’s, blowing away all three of them.

Looking at the gaping hole in space created from her clash with Thor’s fist, she grinned, excited at what she could do with this power. 

The irony of the whole situation was not lost on her. All her life, she had wanted this power to kill Rizevim, to kill Razevan, and to meet her mother again without the cloud of the Lucifer name hanging over both of them. She hadn’t even tried to search for her, fearing that doing so might lead to someone tracking her down and killing her.

No, she had wanted this power for so long, and then it was revealed to her that even if she somehow reached the same levels of power as Rizevim, she would not be able to defeat him, simply because of the nature of her powers and what Rizevim had developed for himself.

Then, presumably because someone got to Rizevim before she did, Rizevim activated some failsafe of his that would have killed her, and she could not have done anything about it, only for the same power that Rizevim would have begged to have to come to her rescue and not just save her, but empower her at the same time.

The fact that the same power, sent by Rizevim, that was meant to kill her, was consumed by her bloodline trait and turned into her strength, elevating her to Super Devil status.

“Whoa,” Magdaran flew closer to her as she waved her hand and dispelled her power that was burning through his Power of Destruction at a rapid rate, “That was…”

“Awesome? Cool? Dangerous? Yeah, praise me! For I have become a Super Devil, before you, Mr.Conceptual Destroyer.”

“Lucky break,” Magdaran grumbled about it, prompting yet another free laugh from her.

She had to enjoy this before Magdaran realised what she had done and tried to kill her for it.