บท 7: Chapter 7: Set the curtains on fire
"H-Haa, haah… ah! Ah! Ahn.. mm.." The glasses-wearing once strict-acting maid groaned and moaned as she kept grinding herself against Momonga's thankfully fully clothed crotch.
'Why did it end like this?' Momonga lamented over his fate as kept his host-body's face stuck to a horrified expression, while his mental expression was more akin to him holding his face with both hands and groaning in frustration.
He kept trying to swat away at the maid with his hands, but because he wasn't putting much effort into the strikes the maid just parried the blows or used them to do something lewd, like slipping his hand between her breasts. 'I blame Peroroncino. When in doubt, blame the pervert in the group. Yes, this is the way. No, mother, I have not strayed from the path. Your son has not become a pervert.'
"No! Not like this, this can't be happening!" A garbled sob caused Momonga to turn his attention back to the fight happening just ten feet or so away with horrifying realization that his 'fight' with the maid had somehow managed to absorb quite a bit of his attention.
He blamed the undead maid's bust, which in closer inspection was actually quite respectable in size.
'Am I becoming a pervert? Is it a gradual process or a sudden one? Do I just wake up one day and claim 'I have become a hentai hikikomori' and go on with my life?' Momonga shook his head to clear his mind of thoughts that had started to research dangerous things.
He looked at the Death Knight battling Rias's group and saw that the cat-girl, Koneno, was currently breathing heavily while leaning against the wall with a serious-looking stomach wound and the nun, Asia, was healing the white-haired girl while tears kept falling down the nun's pale face.
The swordsman, Yuuto, was blocking and parrying for his dear life while trying to keep the Death Knight from approaching the pair and slaying the nun, while on the other side of the hallway Rias and Akeno had been forced against the wall and were pinned in place by the Death Squire-fied maids, flamberges held against their throats, with both struggling weakly against the hold. Rias was also staring at 'Issei' with wide, despair-filled eyes.
'Huh. Surprising. I thought they'd be stronger than that. I somehow doubt getting trapped like that is part of their battle plan...' Momonga concluded, a frown forming on his mental face while he kept his physical face with a horrified expression. 'I'll have to reflect on these findings. Oh, and I may have to consider using some other expressions on my physical face, lest the others get suspicious. Ah, maybe I should add some voicelines'
"Rias! No!" Momonga hoped he put the appropriate amount of fright in his voice as he called out for the girl. It seemed that the red-haired girl had seen 'Issei' get molested by the undead maid, and had been distracted enough to get hit by one of the Squires, and the raven-haired shrine-maiden girl had covered for the red-headed one, and got hit in turn, and the failure cascade of taking unnecessary hits for one another had continued until the pair had ended up as they had.
The fact both girls seemed to be completely out of energy probably meant they had likely panicked once the hits had started to roll in and had used abilities that were either prohibitively mana-inefficient or just tossed spells and abilities at random, hoping something would work.
It seemed that the battle came to an end as the Death Knight knocked Yuuto's blade off the boy's hands and the blonde boy fell on his knees. The fatigue clearly forced Yuuto to bow his head after fighting one-on-one with the undead monster for so long.
The Knight lifted its flamberge in preparation to lop off the blonde boy's head while Momonga calculated the pros and cons of keeping Rias's group alive, and came to the conclusion that it would be better to have the sister of Lucifer alive than dead, mostly because if necessary he could use her as hostage. And since it'd be better to reserve using hostages until the negotiations broke completely, he probably shouldn't just order the Death Knight to capture Rias and kill the rest, and thus he came to his final conclusion.
'Alright, well, this gives a good opportunity to test how friendly fire works.'Momonga thought about the odd behaviour the undead maid had directed towards him and wondered if it was because of the friendly fire system, and if she actually couldn't hurt him, thus his panicked order to 'attack him' had turned into 'molestation' instead. 'Well, here goes nothing'
[Silent magic: Fireball]' Momonga cast the spell at the maid grinding his waist, causing the maid to let out a highly disturbing scream of ecstasy as the flame ball splashed against her chest, burrowing into her and blowing her against the opposite wall of the hallway. The maid twitched violently a few times with a clear puddle of what Momonga hoped to be water forming under her, before the fire in her chest spread over her and burned her away.
Momonga thought he had heard something like 'Aha, Momonga-sama gave me his burning love!' coming from the direction but chose to ignore it for the sake of his sanity.
Suzuki Satorou shivered down to his soul as his molester expired but Momonga shook his head to clear his thoughts. 'Well, it seems like friendly fire is on. Literally in this case. I'll have to be careful.'
"Issei!" Rias's panicked scream echoed in the hallway as the Death Knight received its new orders, pausing its execution of the blonde boy and charging towards its summoner. Momonga ordered the undead Knight and the maids to move away from Rias's group so they wouldn't get splashed by fire as he lifted his hand.
He used the chance to stand up and take what he hoped to be a sufficiently regal stance while lifting his hand like he had seen human mages do in YGGDRASIL.
'[Silent magic: Widen Magic: Fireball]' Momonga pointed at the group of Squires that had formed a charging phalanx around the Knight, the spell impacting against the shields and blowing the tight shield formation into loose clump of barely recovering undead, which was followed by another similar fireball that burned the undead maids away.
The Death Knight let a howl as it charged past the dead Squires, and met a similar fate as Momonga cast his fourth silent [Fireball]. The Death Knight took one more step after running out of HP, before the fire from Yuuto's blade which was still ticking damage burned it to nothingness.
Feeling around in his head, Momonga figured that he had lost approximately third of his overall mana since the 'breakfast' with Lucifer, mainly due to using so much silent casting and delayed spells. 'I'll have to see what's wrong with my Inventory. Since I have a physical body I can probably use food items now to recover my health and boost my mana regeneration, but the food is of little use if I can't access it.'
'Right, I can't just stand around as if nothing had happened.' Momonga realized that from any other point of view he had just blasted a maid away with fire, stood up, and calmly blasted away a group of armed undead and an undead knight that had crushed Lucifer's sister's entire team.
"Ah…" Momonga pretended to be light-headed and fell on his knees, only to be intercepted as the red-headed girl charged him and hugged him into a weak, wobbly hug. "Well, that was a thing, huh?"
He thought he heard something like a sob before he realized he had been pushed against a wall, the redhead grabbed his face, and without further ado mushed her lips against his with passion far exceeding what the undead maid had displayed. A second passed and Rias's unconscious body slumped against Momonga's host body, held up only by 'Issei's arms.
'Alright, time to figure out a convincing excuse for everything that happened.' Momonga nodded resolutely to himself as he pretended physical exhaustion (his mind having been long since exhausted to the point of hitting the integer overflow and looping back into being well refreshed by the way of being too exhausted to be exhausted), and slid himself back down to sitting position against the wall with the softly sleeping red-head held tightly against his chest.
Mostly because hostages were useful.
The two soft mounds rubbing against Momonga's chest in rhythm with her breathing had nothing to do with the decision.
'Dammit, Peroroncino!'
"Welcome to my parlor, said the spider to the fly.'' The blonde man didn't turn from his work as he spoke, sitting behind a desk he had presumably dragged to the roof of the Phenix family's estate in the Rating Game grounds. The man put aside a paper containing a drawing of a circle with runes at the center and a big red cross painted over it with wobbly red lines, using a long yellowish strip of parchment floating around his body to grab a new paper from a stack of thick papers nearby and deposit it on his waiting hand. "Tch, that wouldn't work either…"
"Eight blind eyes see as much as none, said the hornet to the spider." Sirzechs Lucifer countered while nodding his head politely, masking his growing anger with polite humor. "Rias Phenix. I must say, today's show has been truly spectacular. I'd congratulate you for the performance, only if you hadn't sprang your play upon my flock. For that you will die. Tell me what you know and you'll die quickly, I promised as much to your father."
"You've made no such promise to my father. The test subject at my laboratory is merely the progenitor of my body, nothing more." Riser tapped his cheek with a pen that seemed to be filled with red liquid and lifted his face to look at Sirzechs. The man's voice was growly, giving a feeling like stale air flowing from an ancient crypt. His eyes were sunk like that of a corpse while his skin was almost paper-thin, a baleful red light shining clear in the gaze. "My father is beyond your comprehension. His power eclipses the gods in the sky and the demons below. All creation is his to command as he sees fit, even if they do know they do so, dancing on his strings and believing it to be their free will."
"Such high praise! Tell me, does he hold a name?" Sirzechs pretended to be amazed, letting the man in front of him rattle off valuable information out of his free will.
"Hehe… Indeed." The man, no, creature growled. "He does hold a name, but ones such as you do not deserve to have his name bless your ears. For you, he is the Supreme Being, and the Last Being."
"Oh? What makes him supreme? I've heard many things claim themselves to be the end and the beginning, even met few that would fit the definition." Sirzechs pretended wonder and blind amazement in a display that would have fooled all but few select gods in even fewer pantheons. His title of Maou wasn't solely for his combat prowess, after all.
"He simply is. He was the last of the Beings who created and destroyed worlds and civilizations like sculptors of clay, standing as the Last Being at the end of the final era when all other Supreme Beings had long ceased to be." Riser paused his writing. "He vanquished gods by the thousands. He fell heroes and villains by the millions, and lesser beings by the billions. He created beings with the power surpassing those of Gods from his will alone. One thousand five hundred Supreme Beings, beings akin to him, assaulted his fortress at the same time, and fell before his might. His realm encompasses all ten worlds woven together and laid on top of eachother. Within his treasury lie all creations of forty-one and all the treasures of the past worlds and world's past. Within his halls lie servants of unbreakable loyalty, strength and determination, monsters beyond peer, and power beyond measure. When he walks the very reality corrects itself to what he wants it to be. When he stood from the Throne of Kings the End of the Final Era began, and all you worms gnawing at the skin of the world shall burn before his grand design."
Sirzechs allowed the man to complete his speech, cataloguing each word and placing them securely in his memory.
"This is the foe you set yourself against, should you choose to hinder me. My task in this pathetic hovel comes directly from him, and you're distracting me from it." Riser ended his speech by wiping the red-crossed papers from his desk.
"Oh, that's quite impressive indeed." Sirzechs paused his next words as he saw a familiar magic circle out of the corner of his eye. "Hm, one moment, please."
"Go ahead." Riser nodded curtly, reaching for a new paper. "I may be able to use the abnormally large energy reservoir within the maid you brought to finally achieve a breakthrough in my research, for that I thank you."
"..." Sirzechs paused as he looked over the edge of the rooftop and saw Grayfia, lying down and barely conscious while bleeding from her knee, and in front of her he saw the Undead Knight Grayfia had challenged as well as what appeared to be a good half of Riser's Peerage, the latter group currently defending themselves against Grayfia's magical barrage. However, if the strain on the gray-haired woman's face was any indication, she'd likely run her energy reserve dry before the group opposing her would fall. And the whole battle had happened below without a single sound reaching the rooftop. "It's quiet."
"Ah, I placed a ward that blocks off incoming sound on the rooftop and in the third floor. I didn't want the ruckus to ruin my concentration."
"Out of curiosity, what were you planning on doing to the maid below?" Sirzechs asked, his voice now perfectly soft and velvety with mocking and ridicule. "Surely the Supreme Being's plans don't hinge on a single maid?"
"The maid that came with you? Hm, it seems that her mana reservoir, or rather what passes for mana for your people, is starting to run dry, but when filled hers is larger than what any of my current servants had." Riser scrabbed something at yet another paper, scoffed, and tossed it. "Since Phoenixes are quite resistant to, well, death, I was planning to see if I can have her and the male Phoenix create a child, or a hybrid embryo, that could be turned undead. Since I can just pull the result out of her womb I wouldn't have to wait for it to fully mature. I figured I'd use one of the living non-Phoenix females I have in my custody for the task but that maid seems far more suitable due to her potency."
"Ah."
"I could then reverse-engineer the test results and use it on the male Phoenix, hopefully turning him into an undead Phoenix." Riser answered with little care, scoffing at another drawing and discarding it. The next paper he wrote on disintegrated and he frowned at it. "Hm, so the local paper can only withstand up to four. Disappointing and surprising at the same time. Anyway, originally I'd have used one of the female Phoenixes as their gender makes it easier to develop new strains, but to my eternal shame they seemed to have escaped."
"Before moving on to the next item on the list, please sate my curiosity, why are you answering my questions? I tried to place a compulsion spell on you while you weren't looking, but it seemed to have failed because you've ignored a few of my questions already, and yet you humor me either way?" Sirzechs asked as he turned towards Riser, his tone and presence now radiating calm violence that would have caused a lesser devil to turn to dust on the spot.
"Oh, simply because I was buying time." Riser nodded sagely, before all the 'discarded' papers he had been writing on glowed.
The rooftop exploded.
"Ghah!" Grayfia spat out blood as she felt something snap in her chest from overexertion of her Queen Piece's energy channeling as she tried to heal the cursed injury while both forcibly limiting her power and sculpting it to scalpel-like precision so she'd only attack the enemy in front of her, instead of leveling the entire estate in front of which the enemy stood. 'Just how durable are those things?'
She could have just leveled the entire estate with ease, and suspected that could have wiped out the enemy with similar ease, but that meant that all of the evidence and clues to the origin of the attack would be destroyed, not to mention potentially killing the members of Phenix family who were within the mansion- Which was something Grayfia suspected the enemy aimed for, as part of their attack against the entire Underworld.
So she refused to do as the enemy wished, and instead focused her strength.
The Peerage in front of her were looking worse for wear, with the first of the cat-girls now lying on the grass and burning to a shriveled corpse under the flames Grayfia had conjured, the girl's shield having broken under the onslaught. The other Pawn wasn't looking much better with both her legs blasted clean from under her, yet she held her cracked tower shield to defend her peers. The Knight pieces fared much better, and were still holding strong even if one's shield was burning and the other's shield was glowing cherry-red with heat, sizzling of burning flesh coming from the other side of the shield.
Most worryingly, the Death Knight behind the girls was unhurt, with the exception of wounds from attacks Grayfia had managed to throw at it initially.
She felt black dots dance in her vision and barely dodged as the Death Knight used its remaining arm to toss another flamberge at her, the ranged combat turning from one-sided to two-sided affair as her barrage started to wane.
'Sirzechs… I didn't think I could lose…' Grayfia steeled herself as she swat out another flamberge from the air, the distractions the Knight aimed at her working to throw off her concentration. The lapse in concentration caused the spells, which had until then been continuously conjured and launched at the hostile Peerage, to go wild and hit the posterior of the Phenix estate and the grassy ground around them, a signal that her fine-control over her power was starting to wane. 'I'm sorry... I think I'll have to fight for real...'
A massive explosion threw off her concentration once more as the rooftop of the building in front of her seemed to explode, the resulting shockwave tossing her against the ground and knocking the wind out of her.
Fortunately it seemed that the explosion had broken the Knight's formation as well, thanks to them being closer to the explosion, but the respite was short-lived as none of the Peerage showed signs of concussion or harmful effects before charging at now-delirious gray-haired maid.
A second explosion rocked the yard and Grayfia looked up to see the form of her beloved hitting the ground between her and the hostile Peerage, the man's skin burnt and blasted in places and his immaculate suit torn, with his now singed and soot-covered red hair flowing freely down his back.
Sirzechs glanced at Grayfia wordlessly and then turned towards the Peerage, and then towards the rooftop. "Well then. I think I'm a bit angry."
The words were uttered with a calm tone that caused Grayfia's blood to boil in an instant with want.
The Death Knight let a half of a roar before a needle-like lance of [Power of Destruction] hit both the creature and the rest of the Peerage simultaneously, each of the lances conjured in an instant and hitting their targets and with grim finality.
The group exploded into chunks of meat that disintegrated into nothingness as the [Power of Destruction] worked to destroy them utterly.
"Hm?" Sirzechs paused as the undead knight took one more step towards him, despite losing its arm and having a rapidly expanding hole the size of a football on his chest. A second lance hit the creature's head, piercing through it and blasting it to dust. "My, these things are durable if I had to attack it twice... Good job keeping it back, Grayfia."
Sirzechs snapped his head up as a array of papers, each with a single rune penned onto them, lifted themselves above the now-ruined roof and partially collapsed third floor of the building before them. The red-haired Maou conjured a ball from [Power of Destruction] to counter each of the metallic-looking balls that were shot out from the papers, each of the papers disintegrating as soon as the spell had been cast.
As the needle-like lances met the balls the latter exploded with the force of an artillery shell. The air between Sirzechs and the rooftop was filled with fire and shrapnel in an instant from the chain of explosions, forcing him to move himself between Grayfia and the incoming wall of superheated metal shrapnel while he knead out a thin wall from his power, causing the metal pieces to hit a wall made of [Power of Destruction] and disappear into nothingness.
As the barrage ended Sirzechs looked up and let a small 'tsk'-sound. "Hm, he escaped. My, my, for him to use my cute Grayfia as a hostage to mask his escape… I feel like I'm a little annoyed with Riser."
Sirzechs turned around and lifted Grayfia in princess hold, eliciting a hiss and small pinch on his cheek from the woman as he touched her wounded knee. "Oh. Sorry."
"...It is merely unbecoming for the ruling Maou to not note his beautiful maid's injuries." Grayfia had fallen back to her maid-persona while Sirzechs teleported the two out from Phenix estate and in front of Gremory estate.
"Hm, my cute and beautiful maid indeed." Sirzechs chuckled as he began running towards the recovery room, choosing to not teleport to the room itself as Grayfia was holding onto him with such adorable grip that he couldn't resist the urge to prolong it. "I'll drop you off at infirmary and then go search for the rest of the Phenix family."
"And after that, you'll scoop me up from the infirmary and drop me off at your chambers. Into your bed, to be precise. And you'll cancel all meetings you'd have until the morning." Grayfia mouthed to Sirzechs' neck, causing the man's blood to run hot as well.
The play-by-play came to an end as the two encountered Rias Gremory's Peerage lying on the hallway, with unconcious Rias held by Issei who was sitting against a wall, unconscious Koneko who was holding her now-healed stomach, a barely awake Yuuto who was kneeling and leaning onto his battered-looking sword like his life depended on it, and Akeno who was slowly dragging herself towards Issei and Rias, while Asia was struggling between helping Akeno and trying to sanctify the charred, burned dead bodies that had been strewn all over the hallway. The nun-turned-devil had apparently found a glass of water from somewhere and was trying futilely to bless the bodies.
"Well then." Sirzechs coughed politely. "I think I'll have to make multiple trips to the infirmary."
As the hastily made scrolls activated and spat out [Lesser Explosion]s at the red-headed man-creature now in front of Phenix family's estate in the Rating Game grounds, Riser was contemplating his options.
"Hm, That creature didn't die from fifty or so simultaneous directed [Lesser Explosions]. This indicates I have no chance of beating it with my current set of skills. This is most unfortunate. I can only hope the Supreme One can forgive this worthless servant for his failure to be what he intended for this body to become." Riser, or rather Elder Lich that had been created into the body of Riser Phenix sighed.
He should have had the abilities of a Phoenix thanks to his body, but something had gone wrong and instead of being a Elder Lich with [Regeneration], [Reincarnation] and enhanced Fire spells, he was just a regular lich.
He had first presumed the host body's soul had escaped somewhere or had been destroyed before it could be corrupted and turned into an Elder Lich, but since that would imply the Supreme One had made a mistake, it was obviously an incorrect theory.
Elder Lich-Riser's next theory had then been that he had, simply put, been too weak to become what the Supreme One intended him to be. "My efforts must be redoubled further if I am to succeed in becoming what the Supreme One designed me to be, and what I failed to become."
He walked down to the partially collapsed third floor while his prepared array of spells kept detonating to buy him time, and he reached his hastily-constructed lab. "Well then, progenitor of my body, we have work to do."
He took out a blob of patched together flesh, a sacrifice he had made from the flesh of the servants of the estate that contained the souls of the dead. Normally tenth-tier spells were far beyond Elder Liches abilities to cast, but the area was practically saturated with mana and the servant's souls saturated with power, allowing him to temporarily boost his power by sacrificing their souls.
Using [Sacrifice], the Elder Lich saw the blob of flesh explode and he was flooded with mana, which even then was barely enough to allow him to cast a single tenth-tier spell.
"[Gate]!"
Lord Phenix's screams and expletives turned into muffled groans as the Elder Lich tied another [Sealing Cloth] over the man's mouth, and pushed the operating table the struggling man was strapped into through the [Gate], following suit after grabbing his research notes.
"For the glory of the Supreme Being!"
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