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The sun was slowly disappearing behind the mountains of Kuoh, staining the sky a blood-red color that, to Rias Gremory, seemed like a mockery of fate.
The Occult Research Club was immersed in a gloomy silence. In the backyard, the sound of panting and the clash of wood echoed faintly. Issei Hyoudou was doing hundreds of push-ups until his arms trembled, while Kiba swung his wooden sword against a log with a ferocity born of pure frustration. Koneko struck a punching bag with grim monotony.
Rias watched them through the window from her desk, with an untouched cup of tea cooling beside her.
At any other moment in her life, seeing her servants pushing themselves so hard would have filled her with immense pride. She would have smiled, confident that the pure talent of her peerage would be enough to overcome any obstacle the Underworld threw at her.
But not today. Today, the pride of the Princess of Ruin was shattered.
Less than twenty-four hours remained. Tomorrow night, Riser Phenex, the third son of House Phenex, would cross those doors with his characteristic arrogance to claim her. He would force her to fulfill the arranged marriage contract her family had agreed to in order to preserve the purity of demonic blood.
In the canon of her own plans, Rias had planned to challenge him to a Rating Game. She had bet her freedom on the latent strength of the Red Dragon Emperor and the talent of her family.
But the cruel reality check that Yugo Hano had thrown in her face still burned in her memory.
Rias closed her eyes, and the image of the sky being erased by a beam of blue plasma played again in her mind.
"We couldn't even touch Sona's peerage," Rias thought, feeling a knot of bitterness close her throat. "Her Pawns wiped the floor with us. And then... Hano-sensei showed us that we aren't even players on this board. We're ants."
If her team had been massacred by the survival tactics of the Sitri clan in a simple school game... what chance did they have against a high-class devil with battle experience, who possessed instant regeneration and a full peerage of fifteen immortal servants?
None. It was suicide.
The soft sound of the porcelain teapot pulled her out of her gloomy thoughts. Akeno Himejima was refilling her cup with impeccable grace.
"You should drink a little, Buchou. It will help you relax," Akeno said softly.
Rias looked up at her Queen. She noticed that Akeno, unlike her and the rest of the club, did not seem to be drowning in despair. In fact, there was a strange serenity in the violet eyes of the Priestess of Thunder. A secret calm, as if Akeno had found an anchor in the middle of the storm that escaped Rias.
"Akeno... he's coming tomorrow," Rias murmured, her voice barely a thread, stripped of all her usual authority. "Grayfia informed me this morning. He's coming to formalize the engagement."
Akeno stopped her movements for a microsecond, but then continued pouring the tea.
"I know, Buchou. Riser Phenex isn't someone who takes 'no' for an answer. And the peerage he brings with him is formidable."
"I was thinking of challenging him to a Rating Game," Rias confessed, bringing her hands to her face, rubbing her eyes with exhaustion. "I was going to bet my life on all of you. I believed we were special. But after training with Sona... I realized how naive I've been. Ise can barely manifest the gauntlet. Kiba is fast but fragile. And if we face the flames of House Phenex..."
Rias lowered her hands, looking at her Queen with a vulnerability she rarely showed.
"They'll kill you, Akeno. If I force you to fight in an official game for my own selfishness, Riser will tear you apart. My arrogance almost cost us our lives against that Rogue Devil. If it hadn't been for Sona's Pawn..."
The unspoken name remained floating in the air.
When she thought of Yugo Hano, Akeno felt her own heart give a warm beat, but she kept her expression neutral in front of her mistress. The Priestess of Thunder loved Rias, owed her life to her for having saved her from the streets, but now she knew that the true strength ruling Kuoh did not reside in pure-blood titles. It resided in the back room of a convenience store, drinking black coffee.
"Ise-kun and the others are willing to die for you, Buchou," Akeno said diplomatically, placing a hand on Rias's shoulder. "But I understand your fear. Hano-sensei showed us that the real world does not forgive weakness."
At that moment, the clubroom door burst open.
Issei staggered in, covered in dirt and sweat, with the red Boosted Gear glowing faintly on his left arm. He was breathing so hard that he looked about to faint, but his brown eyes burned with fierce determination.
"Buchou!" Issei panted, leaning against the doorframe. "One hundred and fifty push-ups with Kiba on my back! I'm feeling the Dragon's power!"
Rias looked at him. The affection she felt for her Pawn was genuine, but reality was a cruel mirror. Issei was proud of a few push-ups, while Raynare, a single minimum-wage employee of the Sitri clan, had knocked him unconscious with her bare fists a few days ago.
"Good work, Ise," Rias replied, forcing a smile that did not reach her eyes.
Issei, who could be dense about many things but never about the feelings of the woman he admired, immediately noticed the shadow on his president's face. He straightened up, wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
"Buchou... you've been like this for days. Since what happened in the forest. And now Kiba told me someone important is coming tomorrow. A bad guy. Is that why?" Issei asked, taking a few steps toward the desk. "Tell me who he is! If someone wants to hurt you, I'll use Ddraig's power to kick his ass!"
The declaration, though brave and classic of a rookie hero (Canon), only made Rias's heart sink even more.
"Ise, you don't understand," Rias whispered, shaking her head. "The man coming tomorrow is my fiancé. Riser Phenex. He is a pure-blood high-class devil. His body is immortal; he regenerates from any wound using phoenix fire. He has fifteen experienced servants. He isn't someone you can simply 'kick his ass.'"
Issei clenched his gloved fist. "I don't care if he's a fire chicken! You're our president! No one is going to force you to get married if you don't want to! We'll fight him!"
Rias rose from her chair, frustration and sadness finally breaking through her icy facade.
"Fight with what, Ise?!" Rias exploded, her voice echoing through the clubroom and frightening the brown-haired boy. "Look at us! Sona and her peerage humiliated us without even using destructive magic! Hano-sensei had to save us from a Rogue because my own peerage was outmatched! If I send you to fight Riser Phenex, you won't win. You'll die. And I won't sacrifice your life for a pride I've already lost!"
Silence fell over the clubroom like a stone. Kiba and Koneko, who had just entered through the door behind Issei, froze when they heard the bluntness of their King.
Issei lowered his gaze toward the red gauntlet on his arm. Powerlessness struck him. He knew she was right. He knew he was weak. The absolute terror he felt every time he saw the cold gray eyes of the history teacher was living proof of how useless he was against a real monster.
Rias dropped back into the chair, hiding her face in her hands.
"Tomorrow... when Riser arrives... I'll simply accept it," the Princess of Ruin murmured, surrendering to hopelessness. "I'll cancel any idea of a Rating Game. I'll marry him so that all of you can continue living peacefully in Kuoh."
Akeno closed her eyes, feeling sorry for her mistress. She knew Rias was devastated. But she also knew something else.
She knew Riser Phenex was an arrogant, loud, and extremely territorial aristocrat. And Kuoh was no longer a city where arrogant aristocrats could do whatever they wanted without facing consequences. There was a much larger and more lethal predator watching the streets.
"Riser... you have no idea what hornet's nest you're going to step into tomorrow," Akeno thought, looking toward the window, toward the lights of the shopping district where the Saturn convenience store was already opening its night shift.
If the "flammable bird" made the mistake of insulting Sona's territory, or if by some twist of fate he happened to disrespect a certain blonde nun or a certain history teacher with very little patience... the entire Underworld was going to learn that the fire of a phoenix was nothing compared to the plasma of an alien colossus.
...
The hot water cascaded over Rias Gremory's bare shoulders, but it could not dispel the cold that had settled into her bones.
She placed both hands against the tiles of the wide shower in the Occult Research Club residence, letting the steam wrap around her body. Her long crimson hair clung to her pale skin, a skin that had been cared for, protected, and revered throughout her life as the most precious treasure of her lineage.
Tomorrow, that treasure would be claimed. Riser Phenex would arrive to demand what the contract dictated.
Rias closed her eyes, clenching her teeth until her jaw hurt. Her mind, trained in the politics and intrigues of the Underworld, had been spiraling for hours, searching for a way out. She had discarded the Rating Game. Sending her current peerage against Riser's experienced entourage would be a public execution.
Desperate, her mind had wandered toward the most archaic and sexist traditions of pure-blood devils.
House Phenex was incredibly proud. Riser was a narcissist who boasted of possessing the best, the untouched, the perfect. A noble of his status would never accept a bride who had been "tainted." If she arrived at tomorrow's meeting having given her virginity to another man, the scandal would be so massive that Riser himself, moved by disgust and wounded pride, might break the engagement.
It was a dirty plan. Humiliating. Unworthy of the Princess of Ruin.
But it was the only card she had left to preserve her freedom.
Naturally, her first thought had been Issei Hyoudou. Her Pawn. The boy adored her with almost blind devotion, and given his level of perversion, he would not refuse. Rias had even imagined the scene: entering his room that very night, letting her towel fall, and giving herself to him. It would be quick, and although there would be no deep love, there would be loyalty.
But reality, raw and crushing, had shattered that fantasy the moment she tried to take the first step out of the shower.
If I sleep with Ise... Riser will know.
Rias opened her eyes, watching the drops of water slide down the fogged glass.
Riser Phenex was immortal. His fire regenerated any wound. And his ego was as colossal as his cruelty. If he discovered that a simple low-class devil, a reincarnated human who could barely sustain his Boosted Gear for a few minutes, had "stolen" his fiancée from him... Riser would not simply kill Issei.
He would burn him alive. He would torture him for centuries. He would make the boy beg for death in a hell of immortal flames from which not even Rias could rescue him. Giving her virginity to Issei was not an act of rebellion; it was signing the most horrifying death sentence possible for the boy who trusted her.
"I am weak," Rias thought, feeling her tears mix with the shower water. "My peerage is weak. No one in my family could withstand the wrath of the Phoenix."
She slid down the wall until she was sitting on the wet floor, hugging her knees.
If she wanted to use her own purity as a weapon to destroy the contract, the person who took it had to meet one single and terrifying requirement: he had to be someone capable of walking away unscathed from the wrath of House Phenex.
He had to be someone who, when Riser sent his immortal infernos to burn him to ash in revenge, would simply look at him with boredom and extinguish his fire with something infinitely worse.
The image crossed Rias's mind like a blinding lightning bolt.
A colossus of magma and dark rock standing on the training field. The blue-and-white plasma beam, hot as the core of a young star, piercing the atmosphere and erasing a massive cloud from the sky in a millisecond.
Yugo Hano.
Rias's breathing stopped completely.
The mere idea of offering her body to the "Demon of Discipline" sent a shiver through her that had nothing to do with the water. That man did not look at her with desire, nor with respect, not even with hatred. He looked at her as if she were a bureaucratic nuisance. He was a retired assassin who enslaved Fallen Angels and kept a fat dog under his arm after massacring armies.
Rias remembered his gray eyes, dead and empty. Approaching him with an offer of that nature was playing with a monster that did not obey the rules of modesty or diplomacy.
"If I try to seduce him, he'll throw me out onto the street. He'll treat me like an idiot," Rias analyzed, her heart beating at a thousand miles per hour.
But then another memory came to her rescue. An echo of the meeting in the Occult Club, when he had gone to claim Asia Argento's freedom.
"In exchange for her freedom and protection... I, the Pawn of Sona Sitri, will owe you a favor. You have my favor stored in your pocket. Don't waste it on stupidity."
Rias slowly stood up, the water sliding down her perfect curves.
A favor. A blank check signed by the most terrifying force of nature in Kuoh.
Yugo Hano never broke a deal. Sona had said it: he operated under strict and transactional logic. If she demanded that he fulfill his favor that very night... if she demanded that he take her to destroy Riser Phenex's pride, he would have to do it, no matter how much the politics of devils disgusted him.
What would happen when Riser found out?
Riser would explode in rage. He would try to burn Yugo Hano. And Rias knew, with clinical and almost sadistic certainty, that the Pawn of Sona Sitri would not hesitate to strike back. The fire of the Phoenix would collide against the alien arsenal of the watch, and Riser Phenex would learn the same cosmic terror that the Gremory peerage had been forced to absorb.
It was madness. It was giving her first time to a man who despised her. It was staining her body to cleanse her destiny.
Rias turned off the shower faucet. Silence returned to the bathroom.
She took a white towel and wrapped herself in it, walking toward the large fogged mirror. She passed a hand over the glass, revealing her own reflection. Her blue-green eyes no longer showed the despair of a cornered princess, but the cold and dark determination of a strategist who had just found her weapon of mass destruction.
She would not use Ise. She would protect her peerage.
Rias left the bathroom and headed to her dressing room. She avoided provocative lingerie and elegant dresses; if she was going to face the "Demon of Discipline," she could not go dressed like prey. She put on a dark coat and casual, discreet clothing.
She looked at the wall clock. It was eleven at night. The "Saturn" convenience store had just closed its doors.
"I'm going to collect my favor, Hano-sensei," Rias thought, clenching her fists, willing to throw her own dignity into the fire if it meant watching Riser Phenex burn.
The Princess of Ruin summoned a silenced magic circle in her room and disappeared into the darkness of the night, heading straight toward the monster's lair.