Kapitel 73: Fight to protect one's Dignity, Fight to protect one's loved ones

Sakura was already fighting against the devils who set fire on the nearby wood storehouses, she was not certain if the people who set the place had mental problems but they clearly did not understand the fire-resistant characteristics of the bloodwood which is naturally the other reasons even Nobles from the Phenex family is the main client for these resources.

She was currently clashing against a devil that was wearing a uniform which the patrol unit of the Belial wears, "Why are you a Belial Soldier attacking the village?"

One of the devils grinned lustfully at her while shouting out loud, "Why shouldn't we!? We are officials of the Belial family so we can do whatever we want with the commoners!"

Sakura tilts her head thinking that this was simply too... Obvious. What she never realized was these people were bandits who never properly studied before so their ideas and manoeuvres were simply to easy to know, 'The one who sent them must have already had a cut off plan for if they fail... So a smart one controlling this group of ignorant people dummies huh?'

Sakura suddenly felt a bit bored, perhaps it was because of her nature changing ever since she became a devil but she was not repulsed at the sight of blood when she started to simply massacre her enemies that were simply cannon fodders.

One of the leaders noticed Sakura felt threatened so he told his assistant to monitor the situation and pull back once it was enough so he went straight towards Sakura, Sakura could feel a stronger presence was heading straight towards her so she immediately pulled back after killing her current opponent and waited while trying to sense from where he would come out.

She was not disappointed as the leader came out from the woods, bulky body wearing ragged clothes covered in tattered leather armour and a butcher knife that was larger than normal attached to his waist, "I see you have been keeping my men company"

Sakura felt this man would be able to give her a decent fight compared to the other... trash

"Are you going to tell me why you guys are trying to act like Belial Patrol Units attacking the villages?" Sakura asked with a stoic face, her emotions were slowly fading as she unleashed an unprecedented killing intent enough to cause the leader to flinch.

Regaining his composure the leader laughed, "Isn't it because we want to? Why else..."

Sakura nodded as she expected that talking with them would be useless "I see... no use in talking then"

Sakura used trackless step disappearing from the leader's vision, the leader with many years of experience in fighting dangerous people immediately uses his energy sense to feel Sakura was already behind him so he barely managed to dodge the strike that was intended for his back.

Feeling threatened, he pulled out a large butcher knife which he normally uses which was attached to his waist.

The moment the knife was pulled the leader came to attack Sakura, due to difference in strength Sakura changed her offensive stance to defensive to get the hang of each strike from the leader while observing his technique.

She was quite surprised of this man's natural raw strength behind each of his strike, she noticed that facing it directly would be too much for her arms to handle so she slowly began to deflect the strikes to other direction slowly getting used to defending the man's strikes while learning his rhythm.

It was taking a while she thought while facing the leader feeling that she could do better, meanwhile, she for some reason began to recall what Masaru told her about sacred gears. Although she knew with techniques she could slowly whittle down his opponent's strength and kill him but she too wanted to end it in one strike.

Desire... What should she desire for? Power? Fame? Money?

While she was fighting against this man she was asking herself why was she fighting to begin with, why had she accepted Masaru's offer, why had she discarded her humanity to follow that man's back.

She could see it during their strikes, the back of the man whom she came to love because of their spars she could never get enough of. Yes, him... For him... 'I want the power to be useful to him... I too want to protect him and not only to be protected'

Many things flashed in her mind as she herself was not conscious of the fact her body was giving off a faint emit of seven different colours of light.

"What the hell is going on?" The leader strikes down on his hardest but what he was met with was a purple lavender that was made out of energy materialize in front of him and in front of the Flower several barriers formed on top of each other like layers reflecting the strike.

Upon the opening created by her defensive sacred Gear Sakura covered her blade with demonic energy which she learnt from Masaru cutting the head of the leader cleanly off. When she came to she was breathing heavily as the amount of energy her sacred gear took to operate was more than she anticipated, the surrounding attacking devils saw their leader was dead so they immediately made a run for it.

"BLOOD!!!"

One of the Militia screamed and the rest of the Villagers followed after him to pursue the attackers.

"Blood! For Belial!"

"Make that man cough up BLOOD!"

Meanwhile, Sakura took a seat against the tree to rest, 'So that was a sacred gear... I need more training' Sakura thought.

It was not her fault for taking so long to kill her opponent, unlike facing human against human she had much experience in. This was considered her true first battle as a devil against another fellow devil race, not to mention her serious training had only recently started with Masaru after all.

Shortly afterwards, she felt something shaking from a distance, it did not feel like an explosion but the impression she held on it was someone screaming. Her heart was beating faster when she recalled the back of that man.

On an impulse, she stood up once more joining the Militia who continued to chase after the running devils who wanted to simply have the farmers think they are Belial Official. Unfortunately, these fools never expected that a real peerage member of Masaru was here so that plan was already down the drain before they even arrived.

>\/<

Masaru lost his consciousness for like a split second but he saw it, a large white tiger with fierce amber eyes challenging him whether he is worthy of it or not. Masaru looked at his hands what he saw were a pair of fingerless gloves around his hand, but it felt like flexible met which was completely white with three black claw strike marks on top of the hand.

Behind his ear the same materials were behind his hears and attached to his calves at his legs, he was not certain but he could feel his natural senses and reflexive sensitivity has increased by how much he was not certain but the world around him appeared to be much slower than before.

The gloves appear to have a function of covering his finer with liquid metal before becoming solid like claws which can repair infinitely and each time it broke the harder it became, the unique ability Masaru's sacred gear has he called this ability Dignity of a King, whenever Masaru stood up after being knocked down his abilities will be increased by two-fold.

Masaru took his first step forward but almost launched himself at a nearby tree because he was not used to the speed, with his enhanced reflex allowed him to stop it on time.

Since he could not waste any more time than this with getting used to the speed he materialized his five pairs of Devil wings and spread them to fly towards the man.

Swoosh!

With a single flap of his wings, Masaru shot up into the air looking in the direction the men were running off to before he took flight with haste to stop them at the location he noticed was the strongest man.

"What is going on with you cowards!?" The leader yelled at his men but the men all began to explain how they were spotted before they could do much damage since the other was to do damage and be spotted once at least while wearing the uniform.

"You fool! How are they going to see your uniform from such a distance?"

"But I already have" Masaru who stopped right above the crowd of devils wearing his family's patrol unit uniform, he felt anger.

These people are willing to go this far to discredit his family?

Would other people actually dare to use such tactics to deal with him if he becomes too strong?

Masaru finally began to understand a part of the real cruelty of this world... Sometimes one has to use whatever means necessary to crush adversity truly meant.

"WH--- What the hell is the wonder child doing here?" Masaru did not hear the man's shout as he slowly descends, he truly hoped at least a small part of him did that people would not go this far in the devil world.

He took a deep breath in and out, "I see, I guess I really was a bit too naive"

"What the hell your spout--blergh!" Before the man could continue Masaru already punctured his chest destroying his heart in the process, covered in Touki Masaru did not have a single drop of blood sprayed over him except for his hand. Removing his hand from the corpse, he used water magic to wash off the blood from his hand.

"Well I managed to unlock my sacred gear, so I will have some of you keep me company... I will at least keep one of you alive" Masaru spoke softly with a voice that sent shivers down the surrounding devil's spine.

The atmosphere felt like it was dropping to a freezing degree yet it was all but an illusion created by having true fear crawl into their hearts.

Liquid Metals came out of the glove-like it was wet covering Masaru's fingers till they were sharp claws before becoming solid, the claws were not much larger than his fingers since having excessive large claws will make it look unsightly.

What followed afterwards was a hunter and prey game, as the devils were all running for their lives Masaru hunted one by one bringing them to their ends but he kept only one alive.

That one was precisely the assistant who assisted the leader in his plans and mobilizing the men, Masaru had a different plan for him so when the people were all cleaned up Masaru cleaned himself before he lowered himself to this devil who feared him deeply.

"You will be my first specimen since I did not want to use this magic because of the fact it is taboo but you guys forced me to you know? It will make you absolutely loyal to me, you will still retain your sense of self and all but you will never be able to betray me... If there is a chance which I highly doubt, your head will explode" Hearing what Masaru said the man began to curse the men who died as he rather wished that he died and have them face this sentence which is worse than death.

Masaru take out a special paper that has a strong conductivity to Demonic energy, he pressed his finger on the paper and started to draw several magic circles around the pentagram in the middle, there was even a combination of Norse Runes, Fairy letters and old numbers to complete the circle.

"This is a command seal, so look at it" Masaru showed the paper to the man while injecting the energy into the paper, the eyes of the devil became lifeless for a moment before it regained its lustre.

The manner how the devil looks at Masaru was deep respect, this was a side effect of the magic circle as the other party can't fear their boss since they are completely loyal.

"You will come with me, I will introduce you to my associate to whom you will report to"

"Yes, boss!"

Masaru walked with the devil, he noticed that the Devil did not hesitate to walk over the corpses of his once allies and he never looked at them even once.

Since the issue of the Village was done Masaru went back to bed to sleep while his loyal dog was sleeping in the corner on the floor.

The next morning Masaru welcomed the patrol unit and gave them the location of the corpses which they need to cross-examine with the Devil Register, the villagers were all hyper wanting to thank Masaru for everything before and even now.

Masaru smiled at them warmly while receiving their thanks before he finally left the village. While they went back to the Town the Devil started to explain the plans their higher-ups made for them, Masaru could finally understand what is going on but the worst thing was Ajuka and them already knew this as well and the groups that were harassing were simply thugs and small-time bandits.

>\/<

"Thank you for helping us Milady Sakura!" The Village Elder was thanking Sakura profusely especially the villagers who were happy but even proud that their lord has such a competent peerage member, they all began thinking, she only recently joined with this kind of abilities? Just how monstrous is the rest!?

The villagers threw a banquet early in the morning to celebrate their victory of defending their dear village, even Sakura joined them after they kept pestering her for her to join.

She gazes at the skies wondering about that scream she felt earlier whether it was Masaru, 'I hope you're doing well...' She thought.

She knew compared to the other members she was still at the start so she could not grow complacent and run off leaving the village without a protector so she decided to wait till the patrol arrives then she will head back as fast as she can.

>\/<

Masaru just arrived back in town with the Devil where he met Ulrika and Sakura waiting for him to return.

"Masaru are you okay?" Sakura felt a bit worried about Masaru since she did experience a night raid she was not certain how it was for Masaru.

"Everything is fine, Ulrika, I need to talk with you alone with this guy" Masaru pointed behind him at the devil that was still wearing the Belial Patrol uniform. He glanced at Sakura with a faint smile

"Sakura, could you book a room for us in the Inn while I will discuss what happened at the village with Ulrika in the meantime?" Sakura nodded before leaving. It took a short while for Masaru to enter the meeting room where he first talked with Ulrika with.

"To think I would get to see my master so early again" Ulrika spoke more flirtatiously compared to their public way of speaking.

"Although I love the idea of seeing you soon as well, however, right now I am here for business so I hope you can forgive me" Masaru smiled wryly and pointed at the Devil at the corner again.

"That is a man of the idiots who tried to cause trouble in the villages" Ulrika looked at the Devil up and down with open disgust, but suddenly she was taken aback at how respectful this Devil was looking at Masaru. This was bizarre.

"Why is he so obedient, did you turn him into a doll?" Masaru shook his head then took out several magic circles he drew which was the command seal and subspecies of it.

"What I used on that man is called Command Seal, it deeply ingrains loyalty into the subject's mind and soul, unlike the magic that has similar effects but destroys their sense of self, this allows him to keep his sense of self so the way he acts will be as if nothing happened," Masaru explained the functions of the Command seal before continuing on to his plans for this Devil and his kinds.

"While I was at the villages I came up with a plan we can use instead of hoping that the people we use will be loyal to us, we can use criminals and have them under this seal work for us. We can also have them to volunteer in certain labour work as a 'repentance' sentence so the society would accept them gradually" Ulrika was a bit shocked, she did not feel fear since she already had the Kiss prayer with Masaru so she too could sense that he would never use this on innocents nor those close to him.

"Do you have contacts with those Assassin groups I heard about?" Ulrika nodded at Masaru's question, she wondered why he wanted to know about them.

"Yes, I have contact with several of them" Masaru smile grew wider as he felt it was time to slowly take control of the underworld of the devil world from the Bael family.

"Good, call the leaders one at a time and use this command seal on them. It will make them loyal to you, have them bring in the other leaders as well, I want you to have control over all of them" Masaru pushed forward the larger magic circle towards Ulrika.

"This is yours, use it only on important position personnel that will report to you directly. And this stack you can give to each of them one of it so they can use it on their subordinates" Masaru explained to Ulrika while pointing at the slightly larger stack of command seals that was slightly smaller.

"Once you have all of them under your control, command them to move everything they own to the territory in the east near my home, there is a massive forest surrounded by mountains like a volcano" Masaru said while pointing at the location on the map that was framed on the wall of the meeting room, he also pushed forward a black card.

"That is the funds, build a base there. I want a laboratory, training field, simply build a base that can do many kinds of things. While their busy have a few starts kidnapping the people this guy behind me knows those that scum who dirty our lands, have the assassins use their command seal on them so we can use them as farmers to make the base self-sufficient."

Masaru began to explain the first phase of his base to Ulrika, the amount of work is massive but with the Command seal, it will be several times faster than normal. "You certainly are quite evil for doing this"

Masaru leaned back thinking how he eventually began to accept the darkness of the world, he knew he could not continue to do things the way he does if he wants to survive "I am simply making proper use of their lives instead of killing them, plus the rumours of them disappearing will reduce the number of them who are still harming the community."

"This could be considering me giving them a proper second chance, be sure you also build a large isolated mainframe computer because it is necessary for the second phase where the real work starts" Masaru said as he closed his eyes for a moment before opening them again.

"The Second Phase, I want you to then start kidnapping those Scientists who do questionable research from Naberius Family. Have them become ours and turn their research interest towards Human technology, have them research ways to improve human technology enough for us to use it against our enemies if we have to, also have them clear out all the thugs and thieves around the entire devil country especially the younger ones we can train them to become soldiers for us"

"The third phase will be to have at least one spy in each of the families in a high but not high position, this command seal can only work on those who have the mental strength of high class or lower. Next start to send some devils in the Human world to use these command seals on the Yakuza of Japan, especially the larger gangs" Masaru pushed forward a small stack of magic inscribed papers

"Unlike those in the devil world, we will only take over the leaders in the human world so they can be my eyes in Japan since I hate the feeling of not knowing what is going on in my surroundings" Masaru tapped his chin as a smile form on his face,

"Meanwhile, try to form an elite team that will act as Mercenaries for hire to the Supernatural world. We can use it as a cover should we need to move without our allies realizing it"

"Fourth Phase. This is where things become risky and I would never have chosen to do this if it was not for these command seals, I want you to order these assassins then to start kidnapping Fallen Angels from the Grigory and the Exorcists of the church only a few and use these two seals on each of them."

"Make sure you at least have five bishops and five fallen angels under the direct command of Azazel, but don't give them any commands at all, Make sure to include the other races as well but stay away from the mythology races that has god class warriors for now as I do not have the ability to make command seals for them, not to mention I am not certain if a god will be able to detect the command seal although it will be no problem even if they do... These four phases we are only spreading our links everywhere"

"Phase Five, when everything is stable and there are no signs of people being suspicious, start having our spies collect all the information in their respective libraries, computer data, reports, everything they can get. Make sure to get all the information except for the highly protected information" Masaru took a sip of his tea.

Ulrika was writing notes since this was a long term plan although it can move fast it will still take several months to implement it. "Once all the information they can collect without being discovered is complete, sacrifice one of the five higher ranked people of ours to collect the protected information and have them drop it off randomly at human houses where people would not normally suspect"

"Won't they be able to do something about this command seal if they know something is wrong?"

Masaru laughed as he expected this question, "The reason I am fearless is because of the reason this command seal is taboo magic. It is taboo because it can't be easily detected unless they do an in-depth scan on the body and not only that. When the person who we used on this seal on betrays us or the enemies detect the magic circle it will immediately disperse and all memories from the moment the seal was installed up till that moment will be completely wiped and never be recalled since the memories were etched onto the seal itself which is gone"

"The other good thing is it can't be traced, you and I will also be notified when one of our men dies naturally... So there are many ways to work with this" Masaru felt what he was doing is wrong morally, instead, he decided it was best he get personally involved with the dirty work himself as well.

Ffor the sake of surviving along with his family in this cruel world, he will have to do at least this much. "All the information needs to be captured in our database for a rainy day, the first four phases is only to spread out our connection like a computer network since the command seals allow you and you alone to send out commands you can decide when you want to receive urgent telepathy reports"

"How did you find this technique?" Masaru smiled bitterly at Ulrika's question, he knew this was not entirely his power so he will not hide it from her since he could trust her.

"It's my spellbook, there are millions of techniques and spells written in it that I can use but because there is many I will not always have a chance to exploit them all... That command seal was something I spotted and kept aside for the day I have resolved myself to really take control over things."

Ulrika finished writing a rough plan of what Masaru just told her, "Are you certain you can bear it? This feeling of making people something quite close to being called puppets"

Masaru felt a bit conflicted but he naturally already resolved himself for this, "Yes, I am. I know there will be peace talks in the future between the three great factions which I am not sure when. But those fools don't understand the cost of having peace means that they will have to fight a war to get it, no perhaps they do but simply don't care since they are powerful."

"Not to mention they will surely not share every little secret of their technology or research openly so we have to get it ourselves"

"One last question, what if we come across devils that are in the gangs in the human world?" Ulrika asked which was naturally a what if case.

Masaru nodded, "Use the command seal on them as well to let them continue their tasks whatever it is, we only need to control the underworld of japan to have eyes and ears everywhere for us. I have no intentions of getting involved in their businesses, speaking of businesses have some of our men also open some shops in the territories to start generating their own funds in the future"

Ulrika smiled bitterly, "This is quite the long term plan you came up with"

Masaru nodded, "Yes, I will have to depend on you to make it more detailed. Luckily with the command seals, you will have loyal subordinates that can help you. Thanks to the help of the command seal completing up till phase 4 with collecting people can be done in three months the latest."

Masaru tapped his chin thinking "Then we enter a buffer period of another three to four months, in that time we can mainly focus on building the base and have our spies slowly return to their daily lives. We can also start training the weaker ones while keeping taps on the stronger ones for the elite team selection. Once we are certain the suspicions is over, we must move slowly forward with the rest"

"Very well, I will be sure to live up to your expectations Master" Masaru smiled warmly at Ulrika, he felt grateful that he had a woman who had a strong mentality to deal with things like this with him.

"Just make sure to get the assassins fast before you move offices, from then on they will act as your hands completing the work for you while you only need to check their progress from time to time" Ulrika sat on Masaru's lap feeling like she wanted to be rewarded by Masaru.

"Will I get a reward?" Masaru chuckled as he knew what kind of reward this little lady wanted from him.

"When I graduate from school" This was enough to tell Ulrika to wait a few more years and they can take the relationship to another level.

Masaru chatted a bit more with Ulrika before he left without taking the Devil with him, when he was gone Ulrika touched her lips smiling like a girl appropriate for her age. "Hehe! I can't wait! I never expected that Master would have such a massive ambition! I, Ulrika will surely succeed with this!"

She turned to the devil and had him follow her as she immediately started to call in the assassin leaders she held contact with through her family which her mother built up over all these years.

>\/<

"So have you finished your talks with Ulrika?" Sakura asked while eating in the dining room of the in.

Masaru just came back from his meeting with Ulrika so he too was hungry. "Yes, I only reported her what I found about the raids especially those behind them so she can take care of it, because the enemies were only an small group of bandits they don't have much worth to pay attention to"

"I see" Sakura continued to eat while Masaru thought,

'Unlike the time I planned to have Ulrika train people to be loyal information gatherers for us this time I changed it into command seals with criminals. It really won't be easily able to share this secret with the other girls, not yet. This is also something I can't share with my family as such things will make them frown upon. To think I have started my own organisation already'

The two of them enjoyed their meals before they head back home to enjoy the rest of their vacation peacefully.