[Third Person POV]
[Month 9]
After completely assimilating Mother Carmel, Hajime slotted Binz in next. He had stronger characters he could choose from; Binz's abilities were not only useful, but he was relatively weak, which would allow quick assimilation. Especially considering that Binz cared about justice, hunting a few bounties would help him assimilate quickly.
Aside from that, though Hajime finally could safely remove sacred gears, he didn't celebrate yet.
He had succeeded once, sure, but the procedure severely injured the subject, and he might not be able to go through with it again.
That was something Hajime felt needed to be perfected.
Sacred gears were valuable, and most would think it best not to play around with them, but Hajime felt otherwise.
After all, they were just another tool, the same as magic spells and weapons.
If someone wants to try one or more until they get something that fits, why shouldn't they have the choice? There was also the fact that he could use such a method to show ranks. Higher-ranking people in Silent Echo could receive sacred gear, but if they fail to meet expectations, then it's removed.
That meant he would need the process to be safe, both before and after.
For now, that meant subject #1 was under constant surveillance.
There wasn't any worry of his committing suicide. Hajime used his Geass to order the man to obey his every command. Though it was the equivalent of enslaving him, taking his free will, the man killed his girlfriend over a misunderstanding, so Hajime felt almost no pity for him.
With the geass in place, subject #1 was effectively helpless—a regular human trapped in a stone box.
Over the next few weeks, while monitoring subject #1's health, Hajime sent out Monet and Anemoi to collect more test subjects.
Giving her a sizeable allowance, Anemoi would lead her around the globe to wherever the next individual was.
Anemoi was specifically told to go after those who were high-class or lower, since Monet wouldn't be able to beat an ultimate-class opponent as she was now. With Lyon's power, Monet was stronger, but against any fire-type mage, she would struggle.
Obviously, knowing what kinds of dangers existed, Hajime gave her a way out. It was his newest homie, aptly named Shambhala.
Like Yatsufusa, this homie was made from a teigu, this one with the ability to teleport.
By upgrading it to a homie, Shambhala gained the ability to grow stronger, increasing the number of marks it could hold. Not only would this allow Monet to teleport her targets back to base, but she could teleport away in an emergency.
As Monet sent back more subjects week after week, Hajime had more opportunities to see the changes in the body after removal, as well as its recovery rate, should one exist, of course.
Of the gears he had been sent, there were 3 swords, 1 bow, 1 spear, 2 gauntlets, and 1 flower. Of those, one of the gauntlets was another Twice Critical.
Elementally, he had gotten a fire sword and spear, a wind bow, a lava sword, water gauntlets, a healing sword, and an origami flower.
At one point during his testing, Hajime began questioning whether he had assimilated Jiraiya or Orochimaru, given his recent activities.
[Month 10-11]
As testing wore on, results began to show, and with more sacred gears to test, Hajime started new tests to safely insert a new sacred gear.
After a week of adapting to the new sacred gear, Hajime had the subjects activate it as Issei did.
The main thing the tests revealed was that the newly attached sacred gears showed different levels of strength depending on the wielder, as well as a general recovery time of two weeks, which, honestly, wasn't bad.
Two subjects with sword-type sacred gears showed high compatibility with other sword sacred gears.
When a subject was given a bow sacred gear, the power they could wield afterward was limited.
Similar things happened with sacred gears with specific elements: the more similar they were, the easier they were to use.
The lava sword wielder was able to wield the fire sword and spear, though less effectively than their original weapon, while the fire gauntlets were even worse for them.
Switching the two Twice Criticals between the wielders showed no difference in power, a predictable outcome, though still good to know.
By the end of the two months, Hajime had further perfected the process, shortening the recovery time to a week.
He also appointed the Geassed criminals as day laborers for the farm.
Since they were criminals and under his complete control, the only payment he gave was food and 'shelter,' which was just the Root living quarters.
The nine of them took up only 5 bunk beds in three rooms, with one lonely guy in a bed and a room by himself for now.
Though a few people had concerns about his actions, Hajime informed them of the crimes committed, and suddenly it seemed like the fanciest prison possible, with no chance of parole. Mostly because they would be killed for a low of $3,000 to nearly $550,000 at most, with the latter being money Hajime would absolutely take after getting all the use he could from them.
[Month 12]
After a full year of work following the gashadokuro incident, Hajime was exhausted and ready to take a break.
In terms of his organization, it was doing amazingly. Recently, they had recruited two low-class mages and one mid-class mage. It wasn't some grand recruitment number, but Hajime knew it was because Silent Echo was still both new and small, which made it hard for people to trust its value. However, the fact that these three were willing to join meant that Hajime would treat them right.
He used magic contracts to ensure loyalty, as he had with Kuchiro. Still, Hajime made it clear that the benefits of joining would grow as the organization did, meaning these recruits would get significant value from it, even if these members grew much more slowly.
Despite the rarity of their products, Silent Echo still wasn't trusted by most major factions, who preferred to wait for clearer results of their value from others.
Azazel, however, did trust their value, given he had caused them to sell out each month since their deal. At one point, over 90% of Hajime's clones were working in the gardens to keep up with demand, and Hajime even created several dozen garden-tool homies to lighten the workload.
Hajime's allies also grew in strength.
Tsubaki had reached peak mid-class reserves. More importantly, however, was that she finally grew strong enough to wield two full mirrors, rather than just splitting one, and managed to lower the recharge down to 50 seconds. Aside from using both mirrors alternately in 25-second intervals, Tsubaki had finally finished practicing so she could use both back-to-back, enhancing her rebound power.
It worked by deflecting the doubled rebound into the second mirror, doubling the strength again. The increased power comes at the cost of a five-minute recovery time instead of the regular minute, but the 4x power boost is worth it, allowing her to punch well above her weight class.
Akeno had risen to beginner mid-class. Recently, she and Hajime had been practicing an extreme form of lightning manipulation.
She also, with a bit of prompting from Jenny, had been deepening her ties with her mother's relatives by learning the basics of ofuda making. She wasn't interacting with any Himejima, but Jenny insisted she at least learn more about magic from her mother's family.
If not for Hajime, she wouldn't even use her holy magic, but both it and her lightning magic came from her father. However, her mother wasn't a regular person. She was a priestess of the Himejima clan. Her family's knowledge went back centuries, and Shuri Himejima was far from weak.
Actually, she was high-class, which was how she could heal an ultimate-class fallen like Baraqiel. She didn't like fighting, so when she had Akeno, she focused on caring for her, leaving their protection to Baraqiel.
Hajime hired an independent Japanese mage to teach Akeno the basics. Once they finished, the independent mage left. Further progression is only possible with practice and knowledge.
He actually had a clone there for the lessons to expand his knowledge, and he found that the ofudas were quite similar to seals, though they did contain a minor connection to the gods.
Ofudas worked by reading the words on them like lines of code. A light ofuda would reference Amaterasu's light magic as the goddess of the sun; the ofuda would then use the energy stored inside to mimic the ofuda maker's understanding of her light.
It was similar to human calculation magic in that way. Humans can't naturally use light magic, but there were ways to mimic such a thing.
While calculation magic required understanding all facets of a spell and putting them into a mathematical formula, ofuda was closer to a prayer, weakly mimicking a god and acting on intent, but required knowledge of how to properly 'word' the prayer.
Pam had been keeping up with her training, though she hadn't grown much stronger; she could finally cast a fireball spell.
Welf had made quite a lot of progress with his blacksmithing. With numerous new and unfamiliar materials, he had made several dozen swords to get used to them. One sword, made with burning ore, a special metal with natural fire properties, ended up turning into a magical sword without him even trying. It was an excellent conduit for fire magic.
Blake, using the regenerative properties of aura and Hajime's waterbending healing, had drastically increased her physical training in hopes of catching up in strength.
Whenever she ran into trouble, Blake would run. From her parents, from Adam and the White Fang, and though she died before she could, she would've run from Beacon.
Having died with that mindset, she wanted to do whatever she could to break it. Previously, she had been spending her time training reinforcement magic, and a while ago, she had finally reached a point where she could hold it for nearly 10 minutes while fighting; not bad for someone who shouldn't be able to use magic.
Once she reached that point, Blake switched to physical training. According to Hajime's deductions, when he summoned everyone to the DxD world, their bodies were 'altered', allowing them to learn the world's magic.
Monet didn't have haki when she was summoned, but she was the only one able to learn it because she came from the world of One Piece. If any of them visited, they would naturally gain the ability to learn haki too; at least, that's what Hajime believed.
With all of Blake's physical training, she had pushed herself to peak low-class, which was quite the achievement since most of her power came from her physical abilities.
Jenny had been a peculiar case. Using his knowledge from David Shield, Hajime lent a clone to her and had the clone design whatever technology it could think of.
That's why, over the last few months, Jenny's versatility and power had exploded. Machinery was rare in Ishgar, leaving her with magic for more popular things like cars and toasters.
However, Hajime's knowledge of hero gear, technology already designed to improve fighting strength, had given her multiple new forms to try out. Most importantly, he finally understood how her magic worked.
Jenny's Machina Soul basically absorbed the 'essence' of whatever machine she wanted. For example, if she were to use such a power on the Straw Hats' ship, a Klabautermann would be impossible to form. That meant she could use her magic on the Colossus, something which Hajime was excited about, and pushed her strength to initiate high-class thanks to the overwhelming power of the mech, though Jenny was unable to use it for too long.
Lastly, Monet had also grown, mastering Lyon's abilities and reaching peak high-class.
Hajime planned to give her another template soon, which should make it easier for her to break into ultimate-class.
Finally, Hajime also had some good growth during the last few months. His Crystalsapien assimilation had only reached 15% now. It was slow going, but by the time it finished, he would be immune to most, if not all, magic.
Binz's progression was far faster, taking a month to complete. The addition of Binz also made Hajime's job nurturing magic plants easier, something he desperately needed to fill Azazel's orders.
The next character Hajime assimilated was Danny Phantom, who was 5% assimilated, to increase the number of clones he had working at any given time.
Though Hajime was exhausting himself, that didn't mean he was only ever working.
He took one day off a week to prevent himself from going crazy.
Sometimes it was spent relaxing on the beach; other times, hanging out with Tsubaki, Akeno, Kunou, or someone else.
Aside from that, Hajime was keeping track of the rest of the world to the best of his ability.
Buying and collecting information using his powers, he was gathering all he could on other factions. He knew a major event was coming soon, which is why he was doing everything he could to prepare for it.
Most important to him was pushing Monet to ultimate-class before then, so she could help with his interference, because once she reached that level, he would be confident they'd win.
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Author's Note:
Thanks for reading; I'll see you next time!