*fwoosh fwoosh fwoosh BO-BO-BOOM*
The sound of three explosion echoed in the small garden behind an abandoned bungalow in the town of Kuoh, Japan.
"I did it! I did it! I did it! Did you see?! I did it!"
Lillian rushed over from the center of the garden to me and started shaking me back and forth in excitement. She had finally managed to cast a triple light spear after 3 days of trying.
It had been two weeks since we escaped Rizevim's lab and during that time we had holed ourselves up in the abandoned bungalow we found whilst practicing magic. Occasionally I would sneak out to go and steal food from the shops around town whilst under invisibility magic, but we spent almost all our time training magic.
After our first night in Kuoh, Lillian's personality had undergone a significant shift. During the escape she had just quietly followed me around and even when I gave her a name she was still quiet. Once we woke up from our first night of freedom she had shifted to a childlike and outgoing personality.
Raphael suggested this shift was caused due to the dissonance with her soul and body. We suspected, like me, she had been reincarnated but her reincarnation wasn't perfect as she had some form of amnesia so she had the knowledge of an adult, the body of a child and no memories at all.
Raphael theorized she had spent the first day with a sense of dissonance, having no memories of acting like an adult but having the knowledge of how not to act like a child. I didn't have this problem as I retained my memories.
Raphael explained it like when someone tells you, you are breathing automatically. You then become conscious of your breathing and cant help but shift to breathing manually until something distracts you and your body takes over again.
Lillian had done a sort of reset in her sleep and reached a balance in which she acted like a child due to her body and memories being young. She just had the knowledge of an adult and so, to an outsider, would be viewed as a very intelligent child.
With her now childish personality she had taken to studying magic on our second day of freedom with enthusiasm, the only problem being she was a human-angel-god hybrid and thus could only use human or angelic magic until we figured out her divine heritage.
I tried teaching her human magic by relaying what Raphael had discovered in Rizevim's database, but, due to her now childish personality, she didn't have the patience to do the maths needed to use human magic, thus we focused on her angel lineage. Naturally she was very envious of my imagination based devil/demon magic so I had to placate her with a white lie saying I couldn't use light magic like her.
I could with Raphael's help but there was no need to learn that yet.
We spent the first several days just trying to get her to find her holy power (angel mana) reserves. I would have had the same problem without Raphael, and for once Raphael didn't need to teach me. It turns out that since Raphael is the result of a mutation in my Astaroth clan trait, plus transmigration wish granting, it always drew a miniscule amount of demonic power from my reserves to keep itself active.
Once Lilian had found her holy power reserve she began by trying to just conjure light which, when she succeeded a couple of hours later, lit up garden like some sort of holy floodlight. This propted me to get Raphael to expand a barrier around the garden to keep our magic contained, and over me to stop the burning.
Over the next week she focused on shaping the light into a spear which ended up looking like a lightsaber on her first successful attempt. From there she moved to trying to control the light away from her body and then to generating multiple spheres.
During this time I had Raphael almost constantly downloading information into my mind about various magic theories. I focused mostly on ice manipulation as it came easy with my mutated Sitri clan trait courtesy of Serafall's DNA.
This clan trait was also very important for my plan to find us more secure protection.
Who better to protect a devil than one of the four new satans.
Of the four new satans, Serafall was by far the best to seek out for protection. She was perhaps the kindest devil and was easy to get along with if you could put up with her magical girl persona.
And I'm her son.
Genetically at least.
I had planned to wait another few weeks before trying to get in contact with the devils but the problem I had been worrying about emerged.
The side effects of Lillian missing part of her soul.
We had only realized it a few days ago when, during a conversation the escape from the lab came up.
Lillian couldn't remember it.
In fact she couldn't remember her first day of trying to learn magic.
After a bit of testing we noted she only had a weeks worth of memories and would forget everything before then.
This realization naturally sent me into a bit of a panic, especially with how close we've gotten over the last week and a bit, but I had to ignore it as the panic it induced in Lillian was worse. I spent most of the evening holding and reassuring her that we would find a way to fix it.
Upon consultation with Raphael we came to the assumption that long term memories (more than a week) are stored in the soul whilst short term memories are stored in the brain. Naturally we also assumed the part of her soul that was missing was responsible for memory storage, explained her recent memory loss and amnesia about who she was before.
Thus a couple of days of preparation later it was time I began my plan to get in contact with Serafall. Hopefully once I could communicate with Serafall, I could explain Lillian's problem and ask if she could help.
'Raphael can you mask my energy signature so that I look like a human please.'
[Energy signature masked.]
I took a deep breath before poring my desire to meet the peerages king into the pamphlet held in my hand.
Whilst exploring Kuoh, I had come across the knowledge that Cleria Belial had taken up the duty to oversee the town sometime last year. I had also made sure to grab a couple of summoning fliers that had been thrown away by humans thinking they were worthless.
A grey light illuminated the dark garden for a moment. As it faded it revealed a young woman of average height, with grey hair, wearing the Kuoh academy uniform.
"What is your wish?" She asked before opening her eyes.
She looked confused for a bit before looking down and laying eyes upon me. Once she saw my age a look of surprise flashed across her face.
Naturally my wish had been to meet the king of the peerage the summoning flyer was from, which should have piqued her interest. A, presumed, human knowing about peerages was definitely interesting and should lure out the king.
"I wish for a summoning flyer for Serafall Leviathan" I said.
This was my plan.
Summon Cleria, get a flier for Serafall, summon her, explain the situation. Hope everything goes well.
There was not really much else I could do besides hope everything worked out.
I didn't worry about Cleria doing anything to me as she was noted to be particularly kind and gentle for a devil.
She scanned me up and down in silence for a second before raising an eyebrow.
"Why do you want a flier for her? More importantly how do you know about peerages and the Satan Leviathan as a human child?"
Valid questions.
I must appear very suspicious to her.
To help my explanation I asked Raphael to change release my aura slowly but filter it so as to hide my demon and dragon parts.
"Oh you're a devil too!" She clapped, her eyes shooting wide open in surprise.
"Part devil." I clarified.
"I don't care, why did you hide your aura?"
"I didn't know if you would accept being summoned by another devil."
"You're right I probably wouldn't. So why do you want to contact Satan Leviathan?"
This is the riskiest part of my plan because now I need to spin a convincing lie. I had Raphael taking control of my muscles to stop any ticks that could give me away.
"My mom explained how the peerages work, she said I should try and summon one then ask for Serafall Leviathan. She said I should show this," I summoned a shard of ice onto my hand, "and say I had Sitri blood."
Her wide eyes returned and both her eyebrows rose this time, Cleria Belial was clearly a very expressive woman.
"Where's your mom?"
"She should be back home, she put me on a train to Kuoh this morning then told me to find a devil flier when I arrived. I've been wondering around town all day." I said putting on my best annoyed child look.
She frowned heavily at that and fell into thought. I had crafted my story so she would get the idea I was some Sitri bastard child with a mutated clan trait like Serafall's who's human parent was aware of devils and had perhaps realized I was in danger and sent me to a devil controlled town of Kuoh.
Hopefully she would think my 'mom' had told me to ask for Serafall, due to my mutated clan trait and might even assume my 'mom' was a hidden mistress of the Sitri head and was worried about me being in danger if I was sent to the Sitri family, so she directed me towards my 'big sis'.
Perhaps this could be considered a leap in logic but human's, and devil's, minds create stories that are believable as assumptions to fill in the gaps in incomplete information.
Cleria broke out of her thoughts and looked me up and down again whilst I just stared back at her. After a brief staring contest she spoke up.
"I can't get you her summing flyer but I can try and get in contact with Satan Leviathan. She's usually very busy so it will take several days. What are you going to do?"
"I'll stay here with my new friend." I pointed back at the bungalow.
She looked over the bungalow taking note of the boarded up windows before turning back to look at the overgrown garden then back to me.
"How old is your new friend?"
"The same age as me."
She relaxed a bit at that, clearly worried that my new friend was some squatter or worse.
"How about you both come back and stay at my place for a few days?" She offered.
This is a good development for me, even if I couldn't get in contact with Serafall through Cleria, her taking us to her place would still give me an in to the devil faction considering she is a full blooded member of one of the 72 pillars.
"Ok, let me get Lillian." I agreed before rushing back into the house, still keeping up my childish act.
I quickly explained everything to Lillian, who had been watching through a crack in the wood boarding up the windows. I suggested she just remain quiet or give simple answers to any questions before we went back out together to Cleria.
Naturally bringing someone with an angel lineage before a devil is not the best idea so I had Raphael to develop a new technique that would let me disguise her aura. It worked by spreading my demonic power in my surroundings in a very thin layer, which would only be noticeable to very powerful beings, and Raphael would use its atomic precision to create a filter over Lillian, using that miniscule layer of power, to contain her weak holy aura.
Now Lillian would appear as just a human to most peoples senses like she did in the first few days outside the lab. Her weak holy aura only appeared after she first made a connection to her holy power reserve.
I had also allowed Raphael to maintain demonic power blanket to allow it to gather information on my surroundings so long as it only consumed as much power per hour as I could recover.
This also came with a bonus of deepening my demonic power reserves, slowly, over time through the constant use of power.
"She's just human." Cleria pointed out, proving the cloaking's success.
"Yeh but I showed her my demonic power and she doesn't have any family so I want to bring her with me, I'll add her to my peerage in the future." I said in a proud tone, with suitable childlike possessiveness over a new thing they'd found.
"You know only high-"
"You will?!"
Lillian interrupted what I presume was Cleria telling me only high class devils can get peerages. I had explained the peerage system to Lillian before summing Cleria as she had no knowledge of it.
Her enthusiasm greatly surprised me as she hadn't shown much interest in them before.
"Yes I absolutely will." I agreed, still acting childish.
"Good you promised now. No take backs." She stuck her tong out whilst showing me a smug, satisfied smile.
I wouldn't mind adding her to my peerage in the future, presuming I get one, as we get along well and she should have great potential.
Problems might arise considering she has god DNA as evil pieces can't reincarnate gods, but I don't know if that still applies to what is essentially a demi-god as she has no divinity, as far as I can tell.
"Whatever," Cleria muttered shaking her head a bit, "come closer, well teleport to my house."
I walked over to her with Lillian a step behind to my right. Once I was we were only a meter away from Cleria I felt a surge of demonic power flood the surroundings, before a magic circle appeared on the floor and my vision jumped.
Looking around I noted we were in an empty room, its only defining features being the wooden walls, door and magic circle carved into the floor. I presumed this room acted like a teleportation hub for the devils of Cleria's peerage.
Following her out of the room, we stepped into a large foyer looking like it came from a 19th century mansion.
Devils and their extravagance.
Cleria then led us up a grand staircase while explaining that she would give us a room each to stay in for a couple of days.
When she was done showing us the adjacent rooms, Lillian started an argument about wanting to sleep with me and Cleria was trying to explain in a child friendly way way a boy and girl shouldn't sleep together.
"Who are these two Lady Cleria?"
The argument was interrupted by a cold voice from behind.
We turned around and saw a tall woman in maid clothes with brown hair walking down the corridor.
"They're guests for a couple of days," she then pointed at me and explained, "this one summoned me earlier and asked me to get him a summoning flier for Satan Leviathan. Apparently he has Sitri blood and his mother essentially sent him to find us and ask for help."
She then transformed her point into an attempted head pat on Lillian, who ducked out of the way, before continuing.
"He picked this little one up off the streets and wants to make her into his peerage member in the future." She finished with a smirk and I just nodded along like she was stating the obvious.
The maid raked her eyes over both myself and Lillian in an assessing manner before turning back to Cleria.
"Then I will give them weapon training whilst you get in contact with Lord Belial and Satan Leviathan."
I tilted my head an raised an eyebrow a bit in question at that assertation.
"A learning how to use a weapon is an important thing to learn, and in the future you can repay Lady Cleria back for the lessons."
I understood.
Politics.
In their view this is perhaps an opportunity to get a favor out of the Sitri clan by looking after and training me for a few days. An exchange of favors with the wealthy Sitri would be a great boon to the financially weak Belial clan.
Even if the Sitri house doesn't care about me, then they can still ask a personal favor from me in the future.
They loose nothing except a bit of this maids time.
A good trade.
"Ok." I just nodded in acceptance because any weapons training would be helpful considering I have no experience with weapons yet.
"Good then, you two need to get to bed, its past midnight and we will be waking up early for training," the maid declared before turning back to Cleria, "also it would be fine for them to sleep in the same room for a few nights considering they are children Lady Cleria."
"Ok fine, you two go to bed now," she said whilst pushing us into the room, "Elaine, you'll help me write up a letter to Satan Leviathan to explain this whilst I call nii-sama."