DXD SI : Chapter 118 : MIND THE GAP?! [Edited] (Patreon)

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

End of the World

–Aldric Zagan—

This was it. He could feel it. He could barely control his excitement from bubbling forth, as he continuously checked their work, though he doubted Ajuka and Odin would change anything. See, he had agonised over this for years. About a way to force them into acting against themselves. See, he knew that no matter his power level, he was still practically a babe in front of these ancient monsters, and outmaneuvering them and then giving them little to no time to plan against him was the only way he would be able to get one over them.

If he gave them time, or if he gave them any leeway within a plan that had lesser chances of success, the game would have been flipped on him in some way; he was sure of that. Even now, he could tell that Odin must be furiously racking his brain trying to find a way out of this. For that as well, he had chosen to use Ygdrassil. See, the World Tree was, in the end, just a tree, and he could control it to a pretty good extent.

The ritual was to use the World Tree’s excess energy to do two things. Locate the Beast and the seals around it, which was pretty easy since Odin, one of the more connected beings to the World Tree, had been to that place before, and secondly, to make sure that the World Tree did not have an excess of energy when he hijacked it.

See, no matter what bullshit he gave to Ajuka and Odin, the fact was that the World Tree was an ancient, primordial entity, one that would have fought tooth and nail against him had he tried to subsume it during his initial encounter with it. So, he’d played it a bit smart and forced it to exhaust all its energy to burn away those seals.

This also prevented Odin from trying to substitute the energy from Ragnarok with the excess energy of the World Tree to save his Pantheon, which was not the goal of this whole exercise.

He wanted Odin and Thor gone. And with both of them gone, Asgard was as good as done, as they, just like every other Pantheon out there, had enemies that would be more than glad to feast on the remnants and make sure that no one lived. Better that they died with Ragnarok than suffer under the tender mercies of their enemies.

Zeus, for one, if he survived the fight happening inside, would not waste a minute before laying waste to Asgard and taking all the women with him. Shaking his head, he focused on the task at hand, monitoring stuff, but even then, he could barely make sense of half of what Ajuka was doing with his Kankara Formula.

The man’s brain simply worked on a different level, and even if he was a Super Devil, it wouldn't matter much in that regard. Hopefully, the rushed timeline and all the viable options that he’d cut off meant that they would have no leeway whatsoever.

After all, this was his way of repaying his teacher for all he’d done, and fulfilling one of his original goals. 

___xx__

–Thor Odinson–

He grinned, even as he felt every single one of the blows he’d inflicted on the beast heal up just in time for another volley of attacks to hit it from all sides. Truly, his father had been right when it came to the Hindu Gods.

Even now, with all the power he’d accrued from his connection with the World Tree, he could not match any one of the Three Hindu Gods who’d come to assist them. His hold over Mjolnir tightened as a flash of white entered his vision, as he sent in a blast of lightning just in time for everyone to take a step back, allowing everyone the much needed breathing room. The wounds that everyone had opened up opened even further with his blow.

Immediately after, a flash of red collided with the massive beast and pushed it back. The Devil had been the one to do most of the close proximity attacks. Everyone else focused more on ranged attacks, and even he avoided using Mjolnir ever since the first attack.

The feedback he’d received from Mjolnir about the nature of the beast was not…pleasant. 

The Red Haired Devil, on the other hand, had morphed into this formless beast of destruction, and had pounced on the Beast with all his might, successfully pushing it back, albeit at the cost of energy.

Both the beasts were destructive, and the Red Haired one somehow could mirror the beast’s destructive capacity to an extent, forcing even greater wounds on Trihexa, but in doing so, reduced the mass. Already, the True Form of the Devil was smaller than it was when they began.

Taking a deep breath, he ignored the beast’s attempt to warp his mind before raising Mjolnir high up in the sky, signalling Zeus to do his thing. The God might not be as powerful as either him or his father, but he had a commendable command over lightning, more so than his own. He could summon far bigger bolts of lightning, but Zeus could control thousands of smaller ones at once.

A moment later, a hundred different lightning bolts hit Mjolnir from all angles, colored differently with different offensive applications. Then, with a thought, he amplified all those bolts before hurling them right at the beast, just in time for the Red Devil to slip away from the beast’s grasp.

Any more and Trihexa would have begun eating away at the Red Devil. It was through such a game that they had been able to avoid any severe injuries to anyone, and stall it long enough that every single powerful entity had enough time to charge up their attacks.

After that, the others leapt into the fray once more, not giving the beast any time to counter, and it was during this small downtime he had when he felt his father contact him, “Thor. There is a situation here.”

A moment later, he felt a compressed stream of information enter his brain, as he realised what had happened. He sighed, his body slumping over. He knew such a day would come, but he had not expected it to come at such a critical juncture that threatened the entire world.

He supposed that this was the only way someone could take revenge on them. In that case, if one was willing to risk the fate of the entire world, then this was the most opportune moment to do so.

His father might have been informing him, but in reality, he was just asking if he was alright with the sacrifice, and as he held Mjolnir in one hand, and looked at the beast in the distance, and remembered his acts, he replied with grim certainty.

“I am fine with this, father. These are consequences of my actions, and I wholeheartedly accept them.” After all, his father might have ordered him to do so, and he might just be a soldier, but ultimately, it was his hand, and his hammer, that stopped Magdaran from leaving, that set into motion a series of actions that led to that loss.

He always knew it was coming. At least when it did come, it came with a solution to perhaps the biggest existential crisis that had hit their world in recent memory.

“Very well, my son.”

__xx___

–Aldric Zagan—

It only took a few hours for everything to be set up properly, and under his supervision, Odin and Ajuka set up the ritual or spell circle, whatever they wanted to call it, to siphon off the energy from the World Tree, which would receive the energy from Ragnarok, into the seals powering the spell matrix that he kind of stole from one of the only visitors they got in his teacher’s world that didn’t get obliterated on sight.

Basically, his plan was to use Trihexa, a primordial entity on par with Great Red, and Ophis, to be lulled into a deep slumber, place the seals on it that would constantly siphon off all the energy it passively gave off, and use that to power some of his own projects.

Extremely reckless and delusional, he knew that. If he was doing it all on his own, sure, he would have never expected this to succeed in a million years. But he had help, from something that gave him and his teacher so much that he felt kind of obligated to help her/it in turn. 

Plus, this also happened to fulfill his goals, so what the hell.

He wondered why the creator of Angels never attempted this?

The errant thought passed through his mind as Odin’s eyes snapped open and pinned him in place. He shrugged off that pressure easily. It was just Odin being cranky and not a serious attack.

“It’s done.” “We are ready.” 

Ajuka and Odin both replied at the same time. He nodded at Odin, “Go and do it, then.”

After that, he waved his hand, and opened a portal, and flew into the space that held the physical representation of the World Tree. It was massive, nearly endless, and had many distinct branches that each held a world of its own. Well, most of them were going to die tonight, which was an acceptable sacrifice to him.

After all, the denizens that are born of and die to the World Tree are never truly dead or alive. Their souls will always return to the World Tree, and from there, it was only a matter of chance and time that everyone would be reborn anew.

He flew forward and touched the World Tree; his hand glowed green, which instantly switched to a kaleidoscope of colors, before settling onto a brighter shade of green. Placing his other hand on it, he felt his body being pulled inside, and he let it; only at the last moment, his hand thrust out into empty space, breaching it and calling forth his own Genus Loci.

A Tree he’d nurtured for years, grown with the best resources that he could get his hands on, and due to who his teacher was, he had everything he could possibly need and more.

The tree shrank until it was barely a potted plant, and landed on his hand. A moment later, he disappeared into the World Tree. Time to get this done.

A few minutes later, as he had once again taken control of the World Tree on a surface level, as it would be impossible for even someone like him to take complete control over such a monstrous being, he felt a flood of energy as one of the branches of the World Tree was outright obliterated, the shockwaves reaching even him, as the energy threatened to rip him apart.

At the same time, the plotted plant he had in his hand surged forth and attached itself to the World Tree, growing rapidly in size and reach as it gobbled up some of that extra energy. Within moments, his Genus Loci had taken over half of all the branches of the World Tree and was only growing bigger by the minute.

Once that was handled, he gently directed both the World Tree, Ygdassil, and his own Genus Loci, which was soon to become Ygdrassil, into taking all that energy and dumping it into the spell matrix he’d gotten from his teacher.

The Golden Energy was blasted out of the World Tree’s trunk and into a hole that led straight to the ritual circle that they had set up earlier. He then took out a snake from his pocket dimension and threw it up into the Golden Energy, turning it into a shimmering black energy that powered the entire ritual circle.

He only had enough time to grin as he felt the snake do its job and stabilise the spell without cracking under the onslaught of all this energy, before his head snapped up, as he had to ward off an attack from…Odin.

___xx__

“What in Father’s name!” He flinched and stepped away from the ritual circle, which was up until a moment ago entirely Golden and powered with the energy from Ragnarok, which was probably why he had seen that massive White Lightning bolt light up the entirety of the interior of the forcefield erected to keep everyone inside with Trihexa, turn black.

"Infinity's Energy,” Ajuka whispered, which made him look up in shock.

What? Ophis? How was it involved in all of this?

Just what in the fuck was Magdaran involved in?!

He did not get a concrete answer to his actions, as the ritual circle spun up, then aimed itself at the forcefield, before glowing bright blue, orange, purple, red, and then eventually settled on Dark Violet, before sending in a massive energy beam.

As was planned, everyone got the message and backed out of the forcefield, as the energy beam broke the forcefield, and then slammed into Trihexa. What came out of that roar was…unpleasant.

Everyone had to use magic to shield themselves from the scream that came from Trihexa. Whatever that energy beam was, it was doing more damage than all of the Other Gods combined.

Sirzechs’ True Form landed beside them, as the Super Devil spoke up, “Ajuka! What–”

“Magdaran Bael has perfected his Conceptual Destruction,” Ajuka stated.

“The energy from Ragnarok was used to jump-start that ritual circle, then Ophis’ energy was used to make sure it never ran out of energy, and the prophesied conceptual destruction of Asgard was the spark necessary to amplify the Destruction concept in the Ritual. I never thought Ophis’ energy could be used in such a way.”

Another roar slammed into them as he winced, as everyone looked at Ajuka for explanation, save for the Hindu Gods who were looking at the beast which was being pushed back continuously, unable to fight back.

“It is not being injured. Just pushed back.” Poseidon remarked, and it was true. Why had Ajuka agreed to this plan if–

His eyes widened as he felt a pulse from the ritual circle, before it began duplicating mid air, until eventually, it had encircled Trihexa. Then a link formed between the Ritual Circles, and then, identical beams, dozens of them, slammed into Trihexa.

That continued to happen for minutes until he noticed that all of the ritual circles were closing in on Trihexa.

“What is it doing?”

The link with the other Ritual Circles slowly shortened until all the Ritual Circles touched one another. Once that happened, a wave of black spread from all the Circles, until Trihexa was nowhere to be seen.

Not even its roars could be felt from outside. All of them exchanged confused glances, even Ajuka, as the blackness flashed with a dark violet, eventually forming a large sphere that then solidified. Runes and symbols constantly flashed on the surface as it seemed alive in a way. That was the only way he could describe it.

Unable to restrain his curiosity, he floated forward to take a closer look at it, only for Ajuka to stop him in his tracks.

“Mind the Gap,” Ajuka said.

Gap? What Gap?

A moment later, his brain caught up, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks as he hurriedly backed up and looked at the space between the stabilised space they had created as a platform and Trihexa in the distance.

What the fuck?!

“It’s done,” Ajuka declared a moment later, coinciding with the Dimensional Gap itself spilling over here, until the purple ball holding Trihexa disappeared completely.

__xx___

–Aldric Zagan—

Odin’s attack was weak, and yet he was at a critical juncture of his plan, and he did not know what was happening outside. All he could tell was that Trihexa’s roars were a good indication of his plan working out. He wanted to then focus on the World Tree that was supposed to fall into deep slumber with the other worlds, but since he wanted a Genus Loci of his own, he was keeping it awake with his own energy.

He did not have anywhere near the energy required to fend off any disturbance, let alone a bloodthirsty Odin who was after his life.

“You did this! You could have done this without Ragnarok, without killing my people! Without making ME kill my people!” Odin snarled, sending yet another beam of energy aimed at his head, which he managed to swat away, but he could tell that he was going to run out of energy to dodge, with the way the World Tree was sucking his energy to keep itself alive.

After all, it was a tree, and it would instinctively do anything to keep itself alive. 

“Well, you could have found out another way as well!” He replied in kind, anger surging forth as he remembered what these people did to Magdaran.

“You could have worked with him. He would have done something. Even if he wouldn’t have done what you wanted, I am sure he could have given you the same firepower that you needed. It is YOUR fault that your people are dead.”

“Nooo! It is you!” Odin was suddenly right in his face, Gungnir aimed at his eyes, and as weakened as Odin was, a Divine Weapon into the eye was a sure fire way to die, especially since most of his energy was–

A sigh echoed all around the space.

An overwhelming force acted on Odin and him. A surge of energy had him grinning as he realised what it was, before Odin was pushed away from him.

Realizing who it was, he let Odin be and focused more on his own Genus Loci integration with the World Tree.

After this, he could finally have his own Mother Tree.

Though what should he name it?

A/N - [RANT ALERT]

FUCKK THIS CHAPTER! Never in all my years of writing have I been THIS troubled with something. This took me TWO days to do, and I am still not happy with it.

I have been awake for 25 hours now, and this is all I can come up with.

At this point, I must have written well over 10k words and deleted them before arriving at this version.

I wanted this chapter to be done yesterday, and it is STILL NOT DONE!

How fucking hard could it be to finish a story?! THIS HARD!!!!

And even after this, there is still one more chapter before I can go to sleep.

I have concepts written out for that chapter and so help me god, I will be awake until I finish that chapter as well.

This is Unedited BTW, and I will edit it once I am officially finished with the story, and can finally SLEEEEP!

Also next chapter is Mag’s POV.

After that, I also have an Epilogue in mind, but at this point, I am soooo tired of this shit that I might just take a break entirely for a couple days before doing that Epilogue.

That’s it for the Rant, I guess.

Thank you for reading.