DxD: The Uncrowned Super Devil

Chapter 31: Vampire Hunt (1)

Azrail Astaroth Pov:

"Haah..."

Heaving the loudest and most tired sigh of this life, I fell face flat on my bed. Moments later, my body went completely limp, with my legs hanging over the edge.

I was mentally and emotionally exhausted, to the point where it felt like my intelligence was regressing.

After my life almost came crashing down within minutes, my emotions were all over the place, and honestly, I wanted something to distract my mind.

[Answer. Master might have received the Skill Braindead(Ex) while passing through the Reincarnation Centre.]

Great Sage, not now.

[... I apologise, Master.]

It had been decades since I dealt with the feeling of losing something important, or in this case, almost everything important, which made it a bit hard to process.

Not that I ever processed these emotions, to begin with.

It always felt like my emotions were perfectly sorted out, but now, it was hard to even make heads and tails of them. I understood why that was happening, or at least I thought I did. It was complicated.

In my previous life, all I wanted to do was survive, regardless of what I had to do.

Thanks to that, even after losing everything, like my brother, parents, and girlfriend, I never sorted out my emotions. Instead, I locked them somewhere inside my heart, not even bothering to remember them.

In short, I ran away—not having the willpower to face them head-on, and simply moved forward with life.

All those emotions that had been piling up for decades came crashing down the moment I was about to lose everything again, which made me realise why I felt so unstable, not to mention vulnerable. It'd be impossible to run away if something like that were to happen in this life, too.

'Thinking feels like a pain...'

I didn't even know if my 'love' for my 'current' family was genuine or not. Was I lying to myself, looking for my dead family within them and making myself believe that they were something they weren't?

It made me wonder...

After how much time we spent together, do I still see them as mere replacements for my original family?

For some reason, that thought disturbed me.

After all—

{Great Sage, activate the self-destruct sequence of all three laboratories and prepare to transfer the explosions to the banquet hall. Make sure to teleport Elmenhilde out of the lab before that...}

{Notice. The attack will endanger Master's family and—}

{I know, but we have no choice...}

The moment Ajuka pushed me into a corner, I had zero hesitations about nuking the banquet hall and endangering the lives of my family.

If Ajuka hadn't stopped when he did...

I didn't even wish to imagine that.

It was hard to understand my own emotions, and it still felt that my previous life was easier because I never had to deal with such things.

What a pathetic excuse of an adult I was.

Ajuka's little life lesson had hit a lot harder than he thought it would.

"What a pain..."

I rolled my body around, lying on my back while looking at the ceiling, thinking about something other than these thoughts.