TSSG - Chapter 11 : Shadow War confirmation & Future Plans..... (Patreon)

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

Lucifaad, Underworld

–Natasha Romanoff–

It was interesting to watch utter idiots at work, armed with resources so far beyond what she would have ever received in her past life, using their gifts in such a useless manner. Even if she hadn’t had any practice with this foreign yet utterly familiar feeling energy coursing through her, she knew from Shin’s memories that it was not entirely necessary for the level of destruction these Devils were inflicting on the store.

It was evident that they had orders from up above, and it was something along the lines of just ruffling the store and doing superficial damage before moving on. The entrance was damaged, some of the front was burned off, but these buffoons made no attempt to enter the store, thereby confirming Shin’s theories of there being a shadow war happening in the capital of the Underworld.

They loitered around the store for a while before attacking and then stayed for a while after attacking as well, likely to see if someone would respond or not. When nothing happened for quite a while, all of them looked at each other, before they shuffled out of the area, as every other Devil in the vicinity had wisely chosen not to stay around for whatever came out of unnamed and unidentified Devils vandalising one of the stores of the Lucifer Houses.

If Shin was to be believed, the Six Houses of Lucifer were all prideful and arrogant, a trait they got from the Lucifer House, and would never stand for this attack, even if it came from the Satan Descendants. As of now, the only Satan that should exist in the eyes of the Six Lucifer Houses must be that Super Devil known as Rizevim, and with that guy retreating from everything else to do something that Shin was not sure of, the Underworld was effectively flailing about, rudderless, and from what she could gather on her own as well as from Shin’s thoughts, that was quite dangerous, not just for the Underworld but for the world as a whole.

Shaking her head slightly, she waited around for quite a while after the goons left, to see if someone would come to check or not, but when nothing happened even when people began walking that street openly, looking at the broken and burned store without stopping, she realised that no one was going to come, so she moved onto her next objective she had created for this night.

Well, she said night, but there was always night in the Underworld. Night here meant the time Shin slept after coming back from work. 

Thinking of Shin, the temptation of going back and slipping into a warm bed with him was so strong she barely stopped herself from sending the signal right then and there, as she still had more work to do. She told herself that all this was for Shin as well, so she could take the next step.

The city was in stark contrast to any human city she had seen in her previous life, and she had seen most of what the world had to offer. From the uber rich enclaves in Europe and North America to the poverty ridden cities of South Asia where Billionaires and beggars lived on the same street. She had seen it all and yet, for some reason, this felt different.

The city itself had a different feel to it. It reeked of hopelessness, despair, and defeat.

___xx___

After that pitstop, she found no less than three other shops, all in various states of damage, all done recently, all without any sign of forced entry, all owned by one or the other House of Lucifer. She also found multiple groups of people moving about the city seemingly without an aim, but their gazes lingered on people and the stores around them for a beat too long, and the way they moved told her of their training.

It was probably after hour 3 that she remembered that she also had to gather clothing before heading back. Thankfully, she had already marked a closed shop that seemed to have clothing on her way back, so it was quite easy to reach the store. The advantage of the store in a poor part of the city was that her being in a cloak that hid most of her body was nothing out of the norm.

Every other person here did the same, so she just blended in with the crowd and passed the same closed store multiple times before she decided to do it and slipped right into the alleyway behind the store. The alleyway stank, but she managed to gain entrance from the back door that was not secured properly.

A shove from her enhanced strength was enough to dislodge the internal lock, and after that, it was only a matter of some jostling before she pushed the door open, revealing rows after rows of clothing to her.

Knowing that this was not a super rich clothing store, she took only 10 outfits before heading out, locking the door on her way out. Her enhanced strength made easy work of carrying such a burden with not a lot of leverage to hold onto. Within minutes, her home was back in sight, as she slowed down a bit to make sure she was not being tracked, until she finally reached Shin’s home.

The shop below the home was closed as well, and so was the entire street, as the entire street seemed to be full of people who followed the same cycle as Shin did, which probably helped a lot in making sure that Shin could actually fall asleep instead of having to listen to people go about their days, which would have definitely disturbed Shin’s sleep.

She pushed the door open slowly, only to see Shin meditating?

She also saw a bunch of stuff strewn around Shin, with the most eye-catching being a misshapen metallic piece that was sitting on the table right next to Shin. Upon a second inspection, she found that it was a pan that had melted and turned into its current shape.

So, Shin did that?

All of these thoughts passed through her mind in an instant as she closed the door behind her, noting the timer that was placed in front of Shin, likely to make sure he could call her back right on time. After all, she was warned that the moment the timer reached four hours, Shin was going to recall her, no matter what she was doing. She would have loved to break into people’s homes and gather some more information instead of just passively gathering it, but she had a hunch that if something were to happen, Shin might have an aggressive reaction to it, which would not be good.

She would have to slowly ease Shin into the idea of her being out there, doing spy work. Most of it stemmed from his lack of strength, so she was pretty sure that once he gained enough strength, he would have no issue letting her move around and risk things a bit.

Shin’s eyes cracked open as she sat down in front of him, his eyes widening in relief before he rushed past the timer and hugged her tightly. She returned the hug, basking in his presence, feeling much lighter already.

___xx__

–Shin–

He leaned back and looked at the bag right next to Nat, grinning slightly as he asked, “Mission success, I assume?”

Nat smiled back and shook the bag with her hand. “Yup. This is the loot for the day.”

“Alright. So, you can start going on missions tomorrow, right?” He asked her, all smiling, but inside, the worry of something happening to her on one of these raids continued to eat him up from the inside. If only he had been stronger. Far stronger than he was now. Even being High Class would have been more than enough to balance most of the risks, but then, he would have had no safe job and might even have a spotlight shone on him due to his suspicious strength and the mismatched job.

After all, he didn't think there was a single High Class devil who would ever do something as menial as being a janitor in the Gremory Estate, except maybe for when Lucifer was alive and personally commanded one of the High Class devils to do it.

If there was a Devil out there who could do that, it would be the Morningstar.

Nat smiled back, clearly eager to get out there instead of being cooped up inside his tiny apartment or his soul scape. She was her own person, and with the kind of jobs and travel history she had accumulated in her previous life, he was pretty sure that staying inside with him was boring her immensely. So, he just hid his feelings and tried to be as supportive as possible.

“Yes, with this, I can do more raids, and if things favour us, we can even move out of here soon.”

His brows furrowed as he asked her, “Move out of here? Why? And how do you think we can do that without falling into more danger?”

That was the main thing that was keeping him here, and employed. Sure, the presence of magic, as well as his cheats, made it so that he would not need to be here, inside the city, in a few years at best, but soon? His power worked on a biannual cycle, provided he trained really hard, so even keeping the best case scenario in mind, he would be 4 times as strong as he was right now, barely enough to be classified as a Mid class devil.

That too was based on his assumptions. He had no real idea of just how strong a mid class or a high class devil was supposed to be in comparison to low class ones. For all he knew, there could be classifications inside each of those tiers as well. The anime didn’t really go all that deep into that, as it had quickly escalated into the protagonist becoming Hentai powered and reaching heights someone like him should have never reached.

“Let’s be realistic here,” Nat scooched closer to him, “Your power is meant to grow over time, and we don’t really have the space here for you to be able to train freely. No matter what happens, your strength is the key here. If you are sufficiently powerful, then we would not have to worry about anything else.”

“I can understand that, but my power won’t have grown sufficiently atleast for a few years if we want to venture out of the city on our own, that is. Remember that the time right now is really bad to try and strike it out on our own. With the Civil War on the way, any devil out there is fair game. The only safe place, in my opinion, is the Gremory Estate because of Sirzechs.”

She shook her head slightly, evidently disagreeing. “That is precisely because Gremory Estate is going to become unsafe soon. From your own words, you know that Sirzechs did not initially join the Civil War effort and only stepped in when his choir was massacred, provoking him into action. Who’s to say that they did not hit multiple places all at once, and you only knew of the choir because that’s what ticked him off the most? What if they hit the place that Sirzechs had changed so much for the betterment of the employees?

Also, what are you planning on doing when your employers have questions about your rapidly increasing strength? As far as I know, we have nothing that can accurately hide your strength without being flabbed by the security at your job.”

He was at a loss for words there, because she was being right, and yet, it felt utterly wrong for him to actively try and plan to leave his job, all because it was too safe right now, and would not be nearly as safe as it was right now, in the near future.

With the way those attacks on shops owned by the Lucifer Houses were escalating, it seemed like the Civil War was not far away. Even if the full fledged CIvil War was far away, the small skirmishes that led to the death of entire Pillar Houses must be close by.

Argh. If only he had been born a few decades earlier, or into some strong Pillar House, pampered from birth and provided with everything he could have ever wanted, allowing him to grow strong as heck before he had to face the Civil War.