Sirzechs Lucifer exhaled a long, weary sigh as he watched the grand doors of the Council Chamber seal shut. The heavy thud of the wood echoed through the vast hall. He just knew that he was going to walk out of this hall ready to kill a few of these people at the end of this.
The silence that followed was heavy. By the time everyone was there and sitting, all looking at him and his fellow satans, their eyes already demanding answers before they even spoke.
There was no point in lying about what's to come, or at least not outright lying anyway.
He had considered it, of course, he had. He had spent years mastering the art of the "softer version of the truth," a version scrubbed of details, he was a devil after all, the way of words comes naturally for him, and as a leader, it became even more apparent.
But that had never been a realistic option for the meeting they were having today.
The noble houses would find out. They always did. They had spies in every shadow, ears in every wall, and servants who were more loyal to their pockets than their Satans.
When they did find out, the backlash of the discovered lie would be ten times more catastrophic than the admission of a difficult truth. So, alongside the remaining Satans, Sirzechs had called this emergency meeting to control the narrative before it could be weaponized against them.
Unfortunately, the weaponization had already begun before he could even open his mouth.
"Explain yourself, Sirzech!" Someone shouted.
The shout echoed off the high, vaulted ceilings, demanding. Sirzechs' gaze slowly shifted toward the speaker, Lord Naberius.
The man was a puggy, self-important figure whose house had long been suspected of harboring deep-seated sympathies for the Old Satan faction. He stood up from his seat, with a not so hidden smirk from Sirzech, his face flushed with a mixture of feigned outrage and opportunistic malice.
"We have reports of the event in Gremory territory!" Naberius continued, his voice rising to a frantic crescendo. "A human invades our lands, insults our heritage, and attacks our leaders. And yet, the Satans return battered, bloodied, and silent! Tell us, how does the 'Strongest' lose to a creature that lives for eighty years and dies of a common cold?"
The man was yelling all that out as he waved his hands around, like he was performing a drama. The man was obviously hoping to get attention from the other lords around him.
Sirzechs' eyes were flat and cold as he just stared. He didn't deny the claim, nor did he confirm it. Beside him, Ajuka Beelzebub didn't even react, he was not someone who cared about things like this normally, so to him, even this was just a normal thing, and only the subject was more serious today.
Serafall, on the other hand, had a tight, uncharacteristic frown on her face. This was not something that should be known to others yet, she had erected the barriers herself during the fight to prevent people from coming and finding out what was going on and preventing information from getting out, and so this was not supposed to be known already.
"Tell me, Lord Naberius," Sirzechs said, his voice terrifyingly even, carrying a vibration that made the water in the glasses on the table ripple. "Where did you hear such specific claims?"
Naberius stiffened but didn't give anything away, he was not going to back down now, not when he had the advantage. "I… have sources. Visitors who were in the region. The ground shook for miles, Sirzech. You cannot have thought that you'd be able to hide what happened in the gremory territory that easily, could you."
"That's interesting," Sirzechs replied, leaning forward. The pressure in the room began to rise, a subtle but suffocating weight that made the lesser lords gasp for air. "Because the ground shaking does not tell you the race of the ones involved, nor does it detail the outcome of the fight. So I will ask again… who told you?"
Naberius slammed his hands onto the table, the wood groaning under his frantic strength. "This is not about me! This is about the disgrace brought upon our race! You were supposed to be our shield, yet you allowed a human to walk in and out after treating the Satans like lesser beings! How can we trust your leadership if you cannot even handle a single human intruder?"
"I agree with Lord Naberius," another voice added. It was Lord Shax. Then Lord Valac. One by one, the houses aligned with the old ways began to rally. It was already clear to Sirzech that these people knew what had happened, or at least an idea of what had happened, seeing as they didn't even ask what Naberius was talking about and were already in agreement with him.
Now they were trying to make a fuss, and he was getting annoyed.
Sirzechs felt his patience snap. He was exhausted, even two days after what happened, he could still feel the phantom pains and annoyance at the thought of the result of the fight.
He didn't have time for the theater of the weak at the moment.
VROOOM—!!
The temperature in the room plummeted. A massive, crushing wave of Power flared from Sirzechs. It was like a black hole had opened in the center of the room, sucking the very oxygen out of the atmosphere. The shouting stopped instantly. Lords who had been standing were forced back into their seats by the sheer gravity of his presence, their faces turning a ghostly pale.
Sirzechs didn't move an inch. His fingers remained interlocked before him. "Are you all finished with your chatter?"
No one dared to breathe.
"Good." Sirzechs turned his gaze back to Naberius. "The matter you spoke of is exactly why we are here. Two days ago, an individual named Kenji Takahashi entered the Underworld. He was under the mistaken impression that his daughters had been abducted, and unfortunately, he encountered Azazel, and due to a prior... history, a conflict ensued."
Sirzechs chose his next words very carefully. "I intervened to prevent the total destruction of the territory. The individual proved to be exceptionally powerful, possessing quite the talent and several abilities. In the end, we reached a stalemate, and he withdrew under a diplomatic agreement. It was a draw, which both sides decided was better for."
That was a blatant lie, of course.
He and Ajuka had been beaten. But to admit total defeat would be to invite a civil war that would tear the Underworld further apart from what it already was.
"A draw?" Naberius sneered, though his voice was lower now, trembling, the way he said that told Sirzech that he knew it wasn't a draw, so he really did know what happened, or a little bit of what happened, and the outcome.
"And what of the future? Do we just let a man capable of 'drawing' with the 'strongest' Satan roam free? My house has spent centuries researching the limits of biological power. It would be better to subdue this human now, to find and capture him, for the good of devil kind. A human with this capacity is an anomaly we've not seen before, and it would be better to be studied... or harvested for the good of the Devil race."
He slammed the table. "We should go after him now, while we can. I've heard his daughters are here, we can use them".
Naberius' eyes gleamed with a dark, twisted hunger. His house had been lying low since the incident with the Nekoshou, but the prospect of Kenji's biology, or that of his daughters, was a prize greater than any.
"If you wish to confront Kenji Takahashi," Sirzechs said casually, "you are free to do so. We will even provide the teleportation circle to his location. But do not expect us to collect your remains for a burial."
"He is still just one man!" Lord Valac argued, trying to regain some shred of bravado. He was not as crazy as Naberius, A man that could draw against Sirzech was a man better left alone, but this was a chance to push the satans back a foot and gain one over them.
"Incorrect," Ajuka finally spoke, his voice cutting through the room like a cold blade. "My investigation revealed that Kenji Takahashi is not alone. He leads a faction of his own, a small group of mid, low, and high classes. More importantly, he possesses constructs, golems capable of battling mid class and even high class to some extent. golems that number in the hundreds."
The golems they sirzech had seen during the faction meeting, but those were not the ones Ajuka was talking about. Ajuka wasn't lying when he said he investigated Kenji. Ajuka hated not knowing, so after the fight, he focused on learning everything about the man who defeated them.
He had poked around the man's territory, luckily he was not there, but Ajuka had caught sight of his faction and the golems that roamed the territory protecting it. He showed it to Sirzech, and even he could tell they were more advanced than what he used during the faction meeting.
It meant he had improved them, and that was a little scary, given that the ones Sirzech first saw were killing mid class and high class. Now that the golems looked like mid to high class, he was sure they were stronger too.
Ajuka looked around the room, his gaze resting on the dissenters with clinical detachment. "I have run the simulations. In an all-out war against Kenji Takahashi, I estimate the Devil race would suffer an eighty to ninety percent casualty rate. We might win by sheer numbers, but we would be so depleted that the Heaven and Fallen factions would take their chance and erase us from history. Is that the 'glory' you seek, Naberius? We are not just leaving things because we don't want to or can't, but because the casualty would involve even you, and I'm sure you don't want to die just yet."
The silence that followed was absolute. Even the other Satans looked at Ajuka in shock, he hadn't shared that specific and frankly terrifying calculation with them until this moment.
"What about the daughters?" Naberius shifted his tactics, his tongue darting out to lick his lips. "If we capture them, we have leverage. We can force him to share his secrets, or at least keep him at bay."
"NO."
The word was spoken by all four Satans simultaneously. Just the thought of Azazel trying to touch his wife and looking like he injured his daughter had pushed him to nearly kill the general governor and beat the hell out of two satans, what do they think would happen when he learns that something happened to them.
Kenji would without a doubt erase the underworld, they were sure of that.
"The girls are guests of House Gremory," Sirzechs said, his eyes glowing with an unholy crimson light. "Any attempt to harm them will not be taken lightly."
Naberius leaned back, his face white as a sheet, but the glint in his eyes didn't vanish. He would find another way, another way to get his hands on one of those humans to study.
The Elemental Nations.
Kenji lay flat on his back, staring up at a sky that was a piercing, honest blue. The air here was filled with Chakra that felt alive.
He exhaled, the sound of the ocean waves crashing against the "island" providing a soothing white noise. It was peaceful, a stark contrast to the chaos he had left behind.
"Yeah," he muttered, his hands behind his head. "This is much better."
He was currently on the back of the Genbu, the Giant Turtle, hidden away from the prying eyes of the five great nations. He had come here for a very specific reason.
After the brawl in the Underworld, he finally admitted his flaw in his current progression, he was one man. No matter how strong his "LAW" was, his ability to train, research, and protect multiple fronts was limited by his single form.
He had checked his system for a Shadow Clone Jutsu mission. To his annoyance, apparently, the system can change the mission reward depending on how powerful he was to even out the prize.
He had eventually narrowed it down to three missions, defeating pain, helping stop the reanimation, and teaching Naruto.
"Teach Naruto," he murmured, a faint smirk playing on his lips. "It would not be an easy thing, but it was calmer than the others and gave more time for him without rushing, Sounds like a vacation. Besides, the kid could use a teacher who doesn't just tell him to 'believe it' and 'he can do it' all the time."
He could feel them now. The shinobi on the island.
They hadn't noticed him yet, his ability to mask his presence was near perfected, but he wasn't planning on staying hidden for long.
He needed that technique. If he could create a hundred clones, each capable of utilizing his system, He would become near unstoppable.
"Let's see what kind of mess I can stir up here," Kenji said, closing his eyes for one moment of peace.
He would rest for an hour, letting the salt air clear his mind. Then, he would show Naruto what he could accomplish with a proper teacher.
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