"Urgh..." Rias groaned as she slowly came back to consciousness. She somehow remembered a pink-clad two-legged unnatural disaster-waiting-to-happen being pat by the 'polite'-acting, cunning and outright insane boy she called her husband.
Then she realized that her memories weren't just a delusion born from being nagged at by Sona for too long and passing out, but rather reality that had happened.
Rias sat up with speed that would put springboards to shame.
She looked around, noticed that she was in the Student Council room, and that Akeno was also groggily waking up beside her. She also noticed that Sona was lying on a couch nearby, holding to her head while her Peerage were milling about in the room, half with weapons drawn, and rest busy preparing refreshments or fanning Sona.
"Wha-what happened?" Rias asked no-one in particular.
"Rias-sama, we found you, Akeno-sama and Sona-sama lying on the floor after that pervert, Hyuoudou, had... done something to you. We didn't find sleeping drops in the tea, but he might have slipped them in some other way. The... state of the room suggested struggle and the couch... " A tall and athletic boy answered before going quiet with rage clear in his face, and Rias recalled that the boy's name was Saji-something. "We tried to capture that leech for questioning and retribution, but he escaped through the window after muttering something. Afterwards we attempted to wake you up, but with the exception of Sona we couldn't get to you."
Rias raised her eyebrow and Saji took a long baguette from the table and tried to poke Rias with it, 'trying' being the keyword as the baguette seemed to disintegrate when it came within a feet or so of her.
Rias's eyes bulged. 'Issei- erm, Momon knows how to cast wards?'
She reached her hand numbly towards the ward before she thought about what she was doing, and pulled her hand back as if stung when it passed through something like a thin film of gel. Oddly enough though, it seemed that the invisible ward didn't hurt her, and when her hand had touched the boundary, a green dome came into being around her and Akeno and then the dome shattered like glass.
'Did the ward break when I left its radius?' Rias shook her head. She'd have some questions for Momon when he next met him, as well as a tongue-lashing for seducing Serafall Leviathan of all people.
The thought still caused her to shake and her face to pale.
It looked like Saji took her physical reaction the wrong way as the boy's face hardened. "I see. Please don't worry, Rias-sama. Hyoudou-sama will face retribution for... doing what he did to you."
Rias's face turned even more pale. "Wait, wait, I think you have the wrong impression. Momo- er, Issei just told us some things that caused us to pass out, they were quite shocking. Nothing bad happened."
"...Akeno-sama's face has bruising." Saji noted quietly while Akeno lifted herself to a sitting position and rubbed her face, which had a bruise after she had fallen flat on her face. "Listen, it's alright, we'll help. We won't blame you for what Hyoudou did to you, and neither will anyone, and neither does the information of this 'incident' need to spread to the rest of the student populace. You don't have to defend Hyoudou, specifically when he did something so horrible to the three of you. The first thing is to report this to our respective families, and they can decide if they want to report this to this world's police or if they want to take care of Hyoudou their way, and string him up on the gates by his entrails and have ravens eat his eyes and flesh while he still lives..."
"No, no, nono, that's not... argh! Why does this keep happening to me! Momo- uh, Issei did nothing to me, Akeno or Sona! Insinuate anything else and I'll slap you!" Rias growled at Saiji while palming her face. "Wait, where did you say Mo-er, Issei went?"
"...He jumped out of the window." The boy motioned towards an open window, through which Serafall had jumped during her dramatic exit.
"That means..." Akeno put to words what Rias couldn't, mostly thanks to her almost suffocating due to shock she received from the information.
"...Momon has escaped into the school grounds where he's free to mingle with the mostly-female students." Rias finished Akeno's speech after coughing and taking a deep breath.
"Oh yes." "Oh no." The two girls turned to look at eachother, Akeno with a smug, sadistic grin on her face and Rias with a horrified, desperate look on hers.
"Akeno!"
"Rias-chan!"
"WE HAVE TO STOP HIM BEFORE HE SEDUCES THE ENTIRE FEMALE POPULATION OF KUOH!" Rias screamed, causing Saji to flinch hard, and Sona to groan from her couch while the rest of the Peerage milling about in the room paused whatever they were doing, with exception of a blue-haired girl who dropped a vase, and stared at Rias.
"Ara? I was thinking more along the lines that he might stumble upon, erm, him if Momon-san decides to flee to the woods." Akeno blinked at Rias. "Come to think of it, your statement might be true also, Momon-sa~ma~ might even seduce him before he realizes he's a him and not a she. Or~ perhaps he won't care~ Ufufufu..."
Rias looked at Akeno, opened her mouth, the realization struck her, and she fell on the busty girl's lap, completely unconscious.
"Right, Akeno-san, you better tell me what is going on or I'll start force-feeding student records to you." Sona growled as she sat up from her couch, still wobbly from the after-effects of Serafall's landslide-like passing and from nearly getting the stuffings hugged out of her by panicking Rias.
"Ufufufu, then you'ld best better listen carefully, Sona-chan..." Akeno chuckled while flipping Rias's unconscious body around and hugging her against her chest so that the back of the red-headed girl's head rested between the raven-haired one's breasts, causing most of the room's occupants to blush from the display of the two girl's close relationship.
"So, the story started when Issei-kun got killed..." Akeno recounted to the rapidly paling members of the Student Council...
.
.
"Hm..." Momonga considered his options as he stood with his back against a tree.
'So, I got chased out of the student council room by a bunch of students. I'm guessing they are 'in' on the supernatural stuff, because some of them were holding weapons... I cast [Anti-Life Cocoon] around Rias and Akeno before I left so they should be safe in case the group decides to attack them, at least until they are conscious and can decide if they need to fight their way out or if the group is friendly... Either way, the spell should hold for quite a long time unless they leave its radius.' Momonga sighed.
He could have just left the girls alone or dragged them along, but he would have to take a few hits when dragging Akeno and Rias with him, and he didn't really want to leave the girls completely without protection even if he'd have to come up with a good explanation for the magic afterwards.
'Hm?' Momonga paused his line of thoughts. 'I wonder... Why did I care that much about them? If they became a hindrance to my goal of surviving this in this world I'd just discard them...'
He practically felt a flat stare that came from the Touch Me-plushie, making him realize something fairly important. '...Have I come to think of them as my friends, like I thought of the members of Ainz Ooal Gown?'
Momonga walked forwards in deep thought as he started to think about his relationship with his Peerage and tried to come up with an answer he had asked of himself: Had he started to think of the people within his 'group' as more than just expendable bodies between himself and whatever might try to kill him?
'Could it be that ever since I formed my raiding party, or Peerage, I've come to think of them like 'my guild' in this world, rather than just as a group of random people mishmashed together to form a wall of meat?'
The thought led to another, much more horrifying thought. '...What if, while I'm moving their loyalties towards myself, they are also moving mine towards them, and away from Ainz Ooal Gown?'
Third thought entered his mind. '...Are those two mutually exclusive? Perhaps... Ainz Ooal Gown had only heteromorphic members, but that was mostly because humanoids and heteromorph players were hostile to each other, which led to the creation of 'the rule' when recruiting... would the same be the case here? Is it even an issue in the first place, since while my Peerage looks and acts like humans, they are actually part of the heteromorphic race of Devils...'
'...I wonder what they actually look like, assuming they have a 'true form'.' Momonga sighed as he realized how little he actually knew about the members of his Peerage. 'Perhaps Rias looks something like Ulbert Allan Odle's avatar in her true form? Or Tabula Smaragdina?'
He kept walking and eventually came across a feeling of passing through a ward, which he hadn't even realized he had been in the range of.
The feeling caused Momonga to instantly cast [Body of Effulgent Beryl] and [Body of Effulgent Ruby] on himself as he mentally shifted from daydreaming to a more prepared not-quite-combat mode. 'Someone placed a ward here... was it meant to keep people in? I didn't even feel it when I was approaching it, and it didn't try to eject me... was it a suggestion ward or something like that? It wouldn't affect the Undead due to their immunity to mental ailments and such... '
"[Detect Life]" Momonga raised his hand to wave over the oddly desolate looking building in the middle of nowhere, 'nowhere' being the little 'forest' behind Kuoh acedemy's high-school portion that connects the middle-school portion and the college portion. "Is that some sort of detached classroom? What is it doing here? Did someone move it?"
The small building seemed quite out of place in the forest, making Momonga suspect that it was either a hiding spot for something supernatural, or containment for some sort of monster.
Which meant that he had possibly stumbled into this world's equivalent of a hidden world boss, or an entrance to a dungeon.
'Hm... [Detect Life] latched onto something, so there's something living in there... Not too high level, because it's health is low, but [False Data: Life] could distract the spell. At least I have an approximate location for whoever is in...' Momonga felt his instincts flare as he analyzed the situation.
He thought for a while if he wanted to poke a unknown potential enemy, but finally came to the conclusion that as long as he kept to defensive measures until he ascertained the hostility of his target then he could claim obliviousness should whatever was in be part of some larger group, and if not, then he could see if he could gain experience in the new world. 'Hmm... come to think of it, I haven't actually killed anyone in personal capacity here... or before? Does my summons killing someone count as my kills as far as experience is concerned? After all, this world is reality, so... would killing someone here make me a murderer? Do I care? If I am found out, will I become a fugitive?'
A small mental struggle was had between 'Momonga' and 'Suzuki Satorou', and was concluded with a decision that if something attacked him while he was intruding in the 'classroom', he'd defend himself.
The deal with himself sort-of satisfied both Suzuki's sense of paranoia towards law 'enforcement' and Momonga's need to find out if experience could be gained- even if the arrangement was completely unfair for whoever was in the 'den'.
He walked into the classroom, taking a look around at the somewhat ordinary looking room that had an odd collection of cardboard boxes and a shroud-covered black wooden box in the middle. 'A coffin? So a vampire... Ho, now I'm getting excited...'
'Something' within the room let a girly shriek as Momonga took one more step towards the coffin, and...
Momonga's [Time Stop] countermeasure activated instantly, countering the stoppage of time cast by the creature in the room, yet not quite countering it at the same time.
In YGGDRASIL, due to constraints placed by reality, [Time Stop] didn't actually stop 'time', but rather allowed the user of the spell to 'step out of time' in the form of giving them a high-priority data connection with YGGDRASIL's servers, that allowed them to perform a set of actions instantly with the help of macros and other data compiling tricks.
It was, essentially, a complete removal of 'global cooldown' between spells, allowing the user of the spell to create one huge burst of damage or utility for equally huge mana cost as the cost of the [Time Stop] and delayed magic would pile up very quickly.
When Momonga had entered the world he was in it had seemed that the ability hadn't changed, except that he could visualize the time stop much more vividly, but now he realized that while the spell hadn't quite changed, there were multiple variants of [Time Stop] and their equivalents in the world he was in.
Indeed, time had been stopped, despite the countermeasure, but Momonga had been drawn into the stopped time with the vampire, rather than blocking it from using the spell.
He based this on how a female vampire sprang out of a cardboard box, scattering the boxes and ran towards one of the windows of the classroom.
'She... She can move items while time is stopped...' Momonga realized he needed to act fast so he pulled himself out of his stupor and placed another theory to the test. "[Time Stop]!"
And, much like before, time 'stopped' for him, causing the vampire's movements to come to an instant halt as did everything else moving in the room, that being the boxes the girl had knocked over. 'So... she stops time, and I step out of time...'
'Ten seconds...' Momonga reached out for a nearby table and tried to push it over. It didn't budge, as was expected as one couldn't affect physical items in stopped time. '...There are multiple levels of time manipulation... and there's no telling that there isn't one that works at 'higher level' than my version... or could become a higher level with time and experience.'
He reached a hand towards the girl.
"[Delay Magic: Hold Species] [Delay Magic: Detect Magic] [Delay Magic: Greater Seal] [Reality Slash]" Momonga rattled spells off and moved himself to block the girl's escape route, managing to get in place just as the time ran out on his [Time Stop].
The spells went off at once, causing the vampire to stumble mid-step as her body had been completely paralyzed, and she crashed against Momonga as her momentum carried her through the air.
He hadn't actually expected for the spell to affect her fully, rather just to slow her down so it would force her to face him rather than fleeing.
The [Detect Magic] found something fairly powerful, and he concentrated his attention on the vampire girl's eyes which seemed to radiate power. 'Hm? It's almost as if she has a World-class item... oh, a [Sacred Gear]. But I'm guessing she can't use it fully or doesn't have much experience with it, if she can't even break free of [Hold Species]...'
He realized he was holding onto the girl's shoulders while she was frozen like a statue in front of him.
Momonga then realized that the time was still stopped for him as some boxes the vampire had touched were suspended mid-air, seemingly losing their anti-time stop properties when she had let go of them.
So, my countermeasures sort of work, and this girl is actually quite powerful if she can keep her version of [Time Stop] up for so long... It's been more than ten seconds already... or she's a one-skill monster who actually doesn't have many abilities so she's spending her whole mana pool on sustaining time stoppage...' Momonga considered letting the [Reality Slash] he had stored in his [Greater Seal] to release and see how much damage it would cause. 'I should just kill her while she's weakened and claim her [Sacred Gear]...'
However, the nagging voice of Suzuki Satorou reminded that while the vampire girl had cast a spell, she hadn't technically attacked him as she had tried to run away.
Touch Me-plushie noted that 'Momonga' was being hypocrite for trying to circumvent his 'deal' with himself by finding a reason for killing someone from them using a spell to escape after he had entered their home uninvited.
'Momonga' tried to reason that one death was small sacrifice for the knowledge he'd gain of the world's mechanics and for the [Sacred Gear] he'd claim, while Peroroncino-plushie was equally disappointed, except this time for 'Momonga's attempt to kill a cute vampire 'loli' that made Momonga remember the NPC Peroroncino had created, and make a connection.
He then noted that Peroroncino-plushie was too biased to make an informed decision and cut it off the mental conference call.
Suzuki Satorou noted that the original agreement held, as the girl hadn't attacked him, and thus 'Momonga' had to concede defeat.
"So... are you conscious?" Momonga asked the paralyzed girl he was holding up. He then realized that she couldn't quite give an answer, so he sighed. "Listen, I'm going to release the spell holding you, but if you try to attack me I'll kill you instantly, and if you try to run away I'll paralyze you again."
He then released the [Hold Species], causing the girl to slump and take a steadying step to keep herself from falling over.
"Right, introductions. I'm Momon. Who are you, and what is a vampire doing in a warded location next to a school filled with young humans and devils?" Momonga asked, quickly connecting some dots in an attempt to justify his barging into the vampire's den and almost killing her, even if she hadn't realized he had almost killed her to satisfy his curiosity.
The vampire's miserable and frightened expression made Momonga think of a scared and wounded baby rabbit quivering under the hungry maw of a wolf.
The image made Peroroncino-plushie glare at Momonga despite being tied up with packaging tape and stuffed into a corner that made 'horny jail' of his mind, while Touch Me-plushie just looked disappointed. '...Ugh... I'm a terrible person, aren't I... I need to stop thinking that this world is analogous to YGGDRASIL, or I'll end up creating conflicts that I don't need... After all, I told Ddraig my intention was not to rule but rather to explore and adventure... '
"Listen, do you have a name?" Momonga calmed his tone a bit while patting the girl's head, relaxing a bit but being still on guard in case her acting was a ruse. "I'm sorry for frightening you."
"A-a-a-a..." the girl seemed to suffer a panic attack, but Momonga kept patting her head, mixing in a tussle while he was at it.
The girl almost fell over. "M-m-m..."
"Yes?"
"M-my name is G-Gasper, um... Vladi." The girl got out before falling on her knees in exertion. "P-please leave, I'll hurt you, I don't want to kill you, everything... everything just dies... when I'm near them, please, please I don't want to, I don't want to... please, please... NO!"
The girl's eyes seemed to turn from their hollow, shattered form that radiated power of the [Sacred Gear] into black holes, and a wave of death flooded out of her now-limp body.
A wave of black energy engulfed the whole classroom, causing everything within it to die from the sheer amount of negative energy released, even the once-pristine walls, floor and benches had decayed and turned to nightmarish parodies of their former selves.
Momonga looked as his 'flesh' turned pale and lifeless, the negative energy having instantly 'killed' the fleshy body that he was 'equipping'.
"Impressive." Momonga's voice was much deeper, almost echoing, as he looked at the second stage of the Vampire's 'boss fight', and then shook his head mentally. '...I shouldn't think of these things with YGGDRASIL logic... That way lies madness and despair, which I have felt too much already... Let's be tactical about this. This is a new world, new rules... I'll only deceive myself if I associate one with the other.'
"Ah- ah... ah! AAAHHH!" The vampire seemed to realize what she had done, attempted to rise up from the floor where she had fallen... And fell on her face as her strength failed her, screaming in desperation and pain. "NO! No! Not again! I don't wanna. I don't... I killed someone, again, again, again... AAAHH!"
"Not quite." Momonga told the vampire. 'After all, Negative Energy only strengthens the undead... ho? Hold on... While Asia can't heal my 'real' self... this vampire could.'
A brilliant plan came to Momonga. 'If I manage to recruit her to my party, I'll have a pocket healer! Er, a healer who can heal undead... I'll just have to train her so she can funnel negative energy to me instead of just flooding the area like a noob- erm, like an unskilled person.'
"Wahh..." The vampire didn't seem to be capable of speech as she sobbed on the floor, so Momonga went and patted the girl's head. "W-ah?"
"I said, impressive." Momonga repeated as he kept patting the girl. "That negative energy you released just now."
"Y-y-y-you?! A g-g-ghost?!" The girl half-shrieked, half-sobbed. "Wa- wa..."
"Not a ghost either. Ah, disregard the state of my body. I'm quite pale right now, correct?" Momonga thought fast as he struggled to come up with an excuse. "The truth is... I'm actually undead. An undead phoenix-devil."
"Wa?!" The vampire froze. "U-undead? S-scary..."
"No, no, I'm actually quite kind. See?" Momonga kept patting the blonde vampire who had turned utterly pale. 'Now... this presents an opportunity to further my plan...' "Truth is, I was killed already, but I figured out that I'm actually undead at one point, who was somehow a phoenix and a devil at the same time. Want to hear my story, or do you want to tell yours, or do you want me to go away?"
Curiosity was the killer of minds, after all.
The vampire nodded very slowly while Momonga kept patting. "I-I'd like to hear your s-story..."
"Now, it starts when I was killed in a rating game, but I hadn't realized I had turned undead at the time..."
.
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Xenovia Quarta sighed as she flogged a nearly empty cup at a nearby stranger. "Spare some change for a displaced Sister?"
The blue-haired girl looked so desolate and desperate that some elder couples couldn't help themselves but spare a few coins. "God's blessings be upon you, good sir, good madam..."
Irina Shidou sighed as well, but for different reasons. "Xenovia-chan, should we really be doing this?"
"Well, we can't really fulfill our mission without proper funding, so..." Xenovia grumbled before shaking her head.
Kuoh was quite a beautiful city, but the prices for temporary lodging were seriously skewered. The blue-haired girl had only had one meal after arriving in the city and had been stunned by the cost of the food, specifically when it had taken so long to arrive although it had been tasty.
Irina had explained later that Xenovia had gone to a five-star restaurant which had accepted her without reservation due to lack of customers at the time, and she had ordered a full plate of kobe beef while the blonde girl had gone to find lodgings, which they now couldn't afford due to Xenovia's meal having taken approximately ninety percent of their funds for the whole trip.
Xenovia, being Italian, was near illiterate as far as her japanese was concerned even though she could speak it fairly well. Unfortunately, the misunderstanding couldn't be quite corrected with just an apology nor would she be able to regurgitate the beef, so in the end, the two sisters had gone from well-equipped and funded for their mission to just well-equipped, but completely dry as far as money went.
The two weren't Sisters by family though, as the two were Exorcists of the Church, sent to Kuoh to retrieve pieces of sword Excalibur that had been stolen by a rogue Exorcist.
"S-should we try to look for the pieces soon?" Irina asked as a boy stopped to ogle at Xenovia's breasts for a while, during which she flogged her money-cup, and the boy put a few coins in it after realizing he had been staring and some bystanders had started to stare at the boy in disgust.
"Yes, as soon as we can afford to crash for the night." Xenovia flogged her cup once more. "After that we'll need to link up with the local church, see if they know anything, and then introduce ourselves to the local... devils. While I dislike the whole concept of buddying up with the creatures, it's not like we can operate freely in their territory without their 'blessing'."
"Ugh... I hope Issei-kun is doing well..."
"Ah, your childhood friend." Xenovia chuckled at Irina's quiet voice. "Don't worry, we'll go by his house and check up on him if you want to."
"I-I'd like that..." Irina blushed cutely.
A stroke of genius seemed to strike Xenovia. "Hey, do you think Issei-san would allow us to crash at his place for the night?"
Irina's blush reached her hairline.