Having delivered Magdalena and Gray to their respective teacher, fough a spectacular duel with Artoria that ended in the blooming of romance and helping Fran move past her trauma bred concerns, Jun was about to go out into the world once more. The question was, what world?
Jun did have something to do in DxD, namely, scouting out some more talent but in the end, one thing he came to realize, was the his DxD forces were infinitely less useful than his Nasuverse ones.
After all, in the Nasuverse, he could get guaranteed loyalty, power and experience by summoning an heroic spirit that fit his needs.
In DxD, loyalty was much harder to find and the powercap was much lower when compared to the Nasuverse where one could become a Star System Buster or theoretically, even a galaxy and Universe buster, at least he could.
And so, Jun decided to postpone his DxD based endeavours and continue working on his self given assignments in the Nasuverse. Next up on the list was meeting the new Lord El-Melloi and his master, Reines El-Melloi Archisorte.
One of Asako's bodies had already come to deliver the information while he was busy in Domina Coronam so he decided to set up a meeting which the other party was happy to accept, they even proposed to drag themselves all the way to meet him wherever he was but Jun refused.
After all, no need to show part of his hand by inviting them to his stronghold just yet. As such, he decided to simply meet them in London at one of Reines' properties.
Though that could be considered as putting himself in the hands of the other party, Jun knew they could not threaten him in the slightest and eve if they could, he doubted they were stupid enough to antagonize him when there was so much more to gain by having him as a friend.
And so, a few days later, a meeting was set up in a rather luxurious looking mansion in London. As soon as Jun approached it, he immediately saw for what it was, a veritable stronghold filled with bounded fields of various purposes and traps of all kinds.
Judging from how fortified it was and the level to which it had been refined, Jun surmised it was an inherited workshop rather than something set up by the current generation.
Jun's mystic eyes flashed and he saw Reines and Waver in a living room with tea and snacks as well as two couches facing each other, seemingly waiting for him to show.
If the various generations of magi who built the mansion and further refined it over generations knew Jun was so easily seeing through all of their protections and examining all of its secrets, it could be predicted they would suddenly rise as undead to protest.
'Arriving normally would simply not be representative of my status . . . No, I must arrive in style . . .' Jun thought with a smirk.
By style, he did not mean something like an entourage or luxurious vehicle, oh no for magi, to arrive in style was to show their prowess while making one's superiority when compared to one's host, plain for them to see.
Jun waited for the exact time he was scheduled to arrive, noting Reines seemed to be getting impatient, from her words, because despite setting a wide perimeter of surveillance around her mansion, she had not caught any trace of their supposedly coming guest.
Rather than deducing it was due to the utter inability of the surveillance to detect someone of Jun's caliber, she instead thought he was late, whether that was intentional or not however, remained to be seen. Of course, she was wrong.
The very instant the time of Jun's arrival came, a spatial distortion formed in the core of the mansion and before Reines and Waver's shocked gazes, Jun materialized sitting on the couch in front of them with a smile on his face.
"Long time no see Waver! And it is a pleasure to meet you Lady Archisorte." Jun greeted.
Reines was still quite too shocked to respond at the spectacle that was on the level of True Magic that Jun just showed to them. Waver who already had an inkling of Jun's outrageousness however, quickly calmed down at least enough to respond.
"I think your choice of transportation will cause untold chaos that we're soon going to have to deal with." Waver sighed.
"Hmm? If you're talking about the servants and guards in this mansion, they didn't even feel my arrival. I've isolated this entire room in a different space and cast a bounded field they cannot detect that will influenced them to keep away from the room." Jun calmly explained.
Said explanation however, only served to unsettle his hosts further.
How had he pulled off such outrageous feats without breaking a sweat?
Why did he do so?
What exactly was he?
How the hell were they supposed to act after knowing a being powerful beyond their comprehension stood before them?
The questions were endless.
After letting them stew for a bit, Jun decided to try and move the conversation along.
"So my girls told me you wanted meet yes?" He inquired and it seemed to let them refocus on the matter at hand while pushing aside the various questions they had for later.
Who knew, maybe if they established a good enough relationship with the individual in front of them, he might even explain what he did and how. One could always hope after all.
"We were wondering how you obtained these "items" you saw fit to return to us." Reines tried to get the conversation going.
"Oh? I thought that was obvious enough." Jun commented before replying.
"I took it of Kayneth's corpse after my subordinate killed him." He casually said.
"W-Well . . . It was an Holy Grail War and you were adversaries so I guess such a thing is only natural." Reines responded. Jun's words were quite alarming considering he was in a position of absolute power while careless speaking of having his people kill her predecessor.
"Indeed." Jun nodded in agreement.
"I returned those items to you as I don't have any desire to further hostilities between my people and yours. It was a battle, and I won so ideally, no grudges should remain." He added.
"However . . ." Jun's tone became a little more serious, enough for the pair in front of them to notice it.
"If your side wants to maintain hostilities . . . I can always use whetstones for my weaker subordinates." He gave a chilling grin.
"Unfortunately, you will have to look elsewhere as we desire no such conflict either." Waver was quick to point out.
"Alas! My search continues. I'm not to worried though, people tell me I'm great at pissing others off so making enemies ought be easy. I simply have to be myself!" Jun proudly spoke and his two host were a bit taken aback by his weird sense of pride.
"Moving on however, my gifts are not just peace offerings, there is a price. After all, I'm not one to shy away from conflict so I wouldn't make offering to avoid one, specially one I am certain to come out even better than when I started." He continued.
Waver and Reines fought the urge to look at each other with concern at what kind of ridiculous demands the being in front of them would make.
"I won't let you go unrewarded however, I'll even toss in my support for any future endeavours from you two, though I reserve the right to withdraw if I don't feel like it." Jun dangled even more benefits in front of them.
"Why?" Was all Reines could say in her confusion.
"Why what what my lady?" Jun inquired.
"Why give us this much? It is clear as day that there is nothing we could to to refuse you. In fact, you are so beyond my understanding that I doubt you could possibly "need" anything from us." Reines elaborated.
"I do indeed want things from you and I could tell you some nonsense about how I'm giving you all that I'm giving you in order to make you more useful to me by strengthening you positions but the truth, is much much simpler." Jun responded.
"And what is that truth?" This time, Waver asked with curiosity and both he and Reines attentively waited for the coming answer . . .
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P.a.t.r.e.o.n is officially up!
The link is: https://www.p.a.t.r.e.o.n.com/lusoba without the extra dots of course.
You'll get to read up to FOUR week ahead, a full month, but I'll still post here.
There's also my other novel Archon of DanMachi, do check it out!
I would greatly appreciate any support since this is going to be my breadwinner.