Lucifer: Quite the speech you gave there.
Pleiases, Lucifer and Reinhard were currently sitting in a luxurious carriage that was bringing them back to the mansion.
Pleiades: It would have been better if I hadn't been constantly interupted.
Reinhard: Well...It is understandable that they'd have their concerns about you...
The young man rolled his eyes as he looked out the window.
Pleiades:...How much you wanna bet that Cerberus burned the mansion down?
Reinhard: I don't think-
Lucifer: Five silver coins.
*later*
Pleiades sat on his bed in his room, he was thinking about how the Royal Selection has started. One canditate wants to get rid of a free guard dog for the kingdom, the next wants the whole country because she's greedy, another is naive and has a shady sponsor and the last one is just a massive bitch.
Now he would need to figure out a plan on finding the Witchcult and killing it's Archbishops. If he does manage to do that, then it would most likely clear out the suspicions against him and make the election ten times easier.
Still, finding a Sin Archbishop and killing the cultist is way easier said than done. After all, no one had killed a Sin Archbishop since the cult's founding, except for that one time about 40 years ago when Pride was killed, though it was never fully confirmed whether Stride was actually the Archbishop of Pride.
However, he could use his own unfortunate position to his advantage. He somehow has to attract the attention of the cult to kill them? What better way than for everyone to call you a Sin Archbishop and then tell the world that you're going to battle the Witchcult, right?
But if he was being frank, he hated the lack of information on the Witchcult. For the last two months he has had to face multiple situations that could have resulted in his death due to a lack of information.
He wanted to be more prepared for whatever challanges appear in the future, but the world just had to tell him to go fuck himself as there is absolutely no information on the cult's inner workings or it's Archbishops.
The only thing Pleiades knows is that Sloth is the most active one, Greed being the second on that list while the other sins aren't even known to appear anywhere.
If Pleiades had to bet, the other sins were most likely the kind that wouldn't leave any indication that they were the ones to cause whatever damage they did cause to a certain place or area.
He did briefly consider making an announcement in a random area that they found an item made by a Witch.
That is of course a lie, but the cult is well known for attacking places where a Witch item appears.
Though he did scrap the idea as the cult would be smart enough to realize that that was a trap as he had declared war on them less than 24 hours ago. They were obviously smart about where they attack, so they were obviously not going to fall for such a blatant trap.
He also doubts that the Witchcult will attack him in the capital as such a move would be dangerous, even for a Archbishop as the Capital is filled with knights, guards and the obvious home of the Sword Saint.
So here's the plan and information Pleiades has gathered:
- He will travel outside of the capital and to other cities to see whether an Archbishop shows up. Try and attract as much attention as possible, so much so that even the Witchcult can't ignore it.
- Hire certain groups that might have the capabilty of maybe finding something out about the Witchcult, as small as that chance is.
- Sloth is the most likely one to appear.
Again, Pleiades would have prefered to have more information on his hands, the cult is extremely secretive, so he'll have to make due for now.
Pleiades put his hands on his face and gave out a loud and drawn out sigh as he tried to think of a way to deal with the cult, despite the lack of information.
*SLAM*
Pleiades jumped slightly in his seat as the door of his room is somehow on the ground next to him. Judging by the noise, he presumed that someone had kicked it off it's hinges.
He quickly turned around and saw the culprit of this crime.
It was Justice.
Pleiades: Justice, why is my door on the ground?
She considered what to say for a little while, looking around like she could actually see anything with a hand on her chin in a thinking pose.
Then she froze like she had just thought of the best excuse in the world.
Justice: Because the door couldn't handle my awesomeness!
.....
Before anything more could be said, a certain trio entered the room, almost crashing into Justice as they entered the room.
Cerberus: We heard!
Cerberus: Chaos!
Cerberus: And something about a door!
.....
Cerberus felt a sweat roll down their forehead as they watched Pleiades's face slowly twist into a look that could probably kill someone.
Pleiades: Cerberus. Could you kindly shut up?
Pleiades flinched as he heard the sound of his own voice when he said that last part. It sounded more like an echo, as if he was in a long tunnel.
Before he could even ask about it, he noticed that despite the sudden change in voice, Cerberus was weirdly quiet.
Pleiades: Cerberus?
They still didn't respond, they just made weird faces and kept opening their mouths like they were trying to speak, but they somehow couldn't.
Justice looked just as confused, but she suddenly looked like she had a bright idea and pulled out a piece of meat from god knows where.
Justice: Look.
The trio instantly snapped their heads in the direction of the meat and jumped towards Justice, who just calmly dropped the piece of meat and took a step to the side to avoid being slammed into the ground by one of the trio.
They devoured the meat quickly, like a dog would, but what was strange that apart from the sound of drowl coming from their mouths and dropping to the floor, they were completely silent as they ate the piece of meat.
After they were done, they still didn't say anything, but they did certainly seem to try and speak. He might have thought that it was one of their pranks, but he knows Cerberus well enough that all of their logic (the small amount they have) goes out the window when they eat food, so there's no way they could keep up with a prank with food, especially meat in the room.
Pleiades: Uh...You...Can talk now?
And just like that a bunch of random and completely inhuman sounds came from the trio. It would appear that they were trying everything to say anything, so the moment they were able to speak again it sounded as a mess of random sounds.
Cerberus: Uhh...What?
Cerberus: That was weird, like a lot.
Cerberus: What would happen if we sat on his face and farted.
Pleiades sighed in relief, although that didn't last long as he stiffened up.
Pleiades: Sorry about that, I'm not sure what that was about. Also I am going to do everything in my power to remove the existance of the image you forced me to imagine from my mind and throw it down to hell from where you came from.
He then pointed at the trio with a irritated expression present on his face.
Pleiades: Say something like that and I'm throwing you through the window. I should remind you that this room is located on the third floor, so the fall down wouldn't be pleasant.
The trio chuckled, seemingly expecting that kind of reaction from Pleiades as they exited the room with shit eating grins on their face.
Pleiades didn't care though when him and Justice were left alone in the room. Perhaps Cerberus doesn't realize it, but this discovery is something big.
Justice: So? It ain't normal to silence Cerberus with just your voice. Honestly, even if god himself came down here and told them to shut up, they wouldn't listen.
She sat down on his bed and crossed her legs.
Pleiades: That...wasn't expected....
Justice: Damn, how did ya figure that out?
He gave her a small glare that didn't even affect the Awesome Demon, she was blind after all.
He decided to ignore the comment instead and try and figure out what that strange voice of his was.
Pleiades: Slap yourself.
.......
Nothing happened.....This...This was going to take a while....
*later*
And take a while it did as he spent the whole day testing his power out on the people around the mansion.
Through his little experiment, he had figured out that this power only works on certain people.
The people it does work on are Cerberus, Reinhard, most of the maids along with Flora and Kelly. While the likes of Lucifer, Justice, Modeus didn't seem to be affected.
That information...Tells him absolutely fucking nothing.
Seriously, how are Reinhard and Cerberus even in the same category?! If this thing works on a certain condition that the target has, what does Cerberus and Reinhard have in common?
He honestly couldn't think of what those two had in common. They were polar opposites, after all.
With a shake of his head, he decided to spar with Justice as by the Awesome Demon's own words, "More power, more awesome" or something like that.
After about 10 minutes of preparation, the two faced off against one another in the garden the mansion had.
After a moment of silence, Justice charged towards him with her fist raised. When she got close enough, she tried to strike him with a simple straight punch.
Pleiades's Eyes of Envy activated as he casually dodged to the side and tried to kick her in the stomach.
She also managed to dodge the attack with ease as she threw multiple punches this time.
Pleiades's Eyes of Envy saw through them before they even reached him as he dodged every single fist that was sent towards him as he slowly got closer.
Rather than dodging the last one as he managed to get close, he used the back of his hand to move it to the side as it flew past him and caused Justice to lose her balance.
He tried to punch her when she was unbalanced, but she recovered quickly and dodged his fist while approaching him.
She was right infront of him now, Pleiades opted to wait for the punch to come and dodge it with the Eyes of Envy, but Justice's next set of actions surprised him.
First she grinned, then Pleiades felt a sharp pain in his ankle as he jumped back with his other foot.
Justice: Alrighty! I can see what the issue is now!
Pleiades: You're blind thou-
Justice: Your dodges are fantastic! But your attacks are that of an amateur at the very best.
The young man figured as much, the Eyes of Envy allowed him to dodge attacks, but he can't just make perfect strikes like he can do perfect dodges.
Still....It made him remember that time against Elsa, where while yes, he did dodge Elsa's attack, he also managed to somehow use her own attack against her and slice her head off.
He made a mental note te test that out some more later and to try and replicate it.
Justice: You also rely too much on those purple eyes of yours, you probably got too confident with your ability to dodge with them and didn't bother looking at my legs, giving me a chance to kick you.
He had to admit, she can give some decent advise. She does seem like the fighting type, so he supposed that it's only natural.
???: I can't believe that bastard allowed all of these demi-humans into this prestigious estate.
Pleiades looked behind him to see a red haired man walking towards him.
If he had to compare, his red hair was the exact same shade as Reinhard's, he was tall and might have been considered handsome had he not looked so unkempt. He's pretty muscular and has a small stubble beard.
Ah, right. Pleiades remembered that he had asked Reinhard about how the head of the Astrea estate looked.
This was without a doubt Heinkel van Astrea- actually no, just Heinkel Astrea.
About 2100 words.