{Issei"s POV}"Congratulations Issei Hyoudou you"ve pa.s.sed the test!"
"...What?"
Lost and confused I tried to make sense of what was going on around me but couldn"t. Right now I should have fallen to despair but now I find myself lying on the floor covered in my own sweat. No matter how long I looked I couldn"t find Aniki"s body nor did Esau seem hostile towards me. Instead, he was calmly sitting in a chair with a book while an expensive-looking tea set was placed on the table next to him. It was like everything I just experienced was nothing but a dream.
"It wasn"t a dream, but it wasn"t real either partner," Ddraig commented, "What you saw was an illusion. I tried to snap you out of it but you weren"t responding."
"An illusion…" I repeated
"It"s more like mid-level mind magic," Esau said walking towards my direction, "You see my main focus in this test was to see how high your mental fort.i.tude towards mind magic as well as make you understand the dangers you"ll have to face in the future."
"Why would you want to do that?" I asked a little cautious towards his intentions
Find authorized novels in Webnovel，faster updates, better experience，Please click for visiting.
"It"s because he was asked to by your brother," Ddraig said revealing some shocking news
"What!? Aniki?!" I said in disbelief
"Yes, I will admit it was Yu-sama who asked me to test you," Esau said admitting to Ddraig"s claims, "After all it is a subordinate"s job to help out their superiors."
"Superiors...subordinates? What"s going on?" I was going to ask but probably sensing this Esau raised his hand and stopped me.
"If you wish to ask questions ask the Welsh Dragon Emperor not me. He should know more, after all, he was the one that made a deal with Yu-sama." He said walking back to his chair, "For now I"ll wait over here until you"re done."
Understanding the meaning behind his words, I turned my attention towards the Boosted Gear. There I questioned Ddraig who immediately told me everything. About his first encounter with Aniki, about the deal they made, about how Aniki was protecting everyone in the family, as well as how Aniki was a part of some powerful faction in the supernatural world.
Knowing that Aniki had a life neither I nor my family knew of made me feel a little betrayed since I feel I never truly knew who Aniki was, but I wasn"t an idiot to not catch the hidden meaning behind Aniki"s actions. Aniki kept these things hidden because he didn"t want us to get involved or worry. Aniki did what he did because he wanted to protect our family even if it meant being away most of the time.
As for this test, during my four months of training after every harsh painful training session, Ddraig would ask me whether I wanted to continue or give up. At the time I didn"t think much of his words and only wanted to get strong because I thought it was cool, I never really tried looking at things from a wider perspective. This test was meant to make me face the reality of the world, on the surface it was seen as a simple combat test but in truth, it was meant more as a lesson rather than a test.
"Now do you understand," Ddraig called out to me
"Ya I do," I replied with a sigh
"Now what are you going to do?"
Towards Ddraig"s question, I thought for a moment before standing up while looking towards the ceiling.
"I need to talk to Aniki."
----
{Yu"s POV}
"Well… that was unexpected," I said sitting under the shade of an oak tree with Shirone close by my side.
"Never do that again please," Shirone said resting her tired head on my shoulder
"To be fair I didn"t expect things to escalate that much," I said trying to defend myself
"..."
She didn"t reply to me and instead looked into my eyes for a moment before point off towards a nearby meadow. In the meadow, there was a large pile of injured unconscious dragons with a frustrated Seriyu standing atop them with a displeased expression looking as if someone just took away his favorite toy.
"So how are you going to deal with that?" she asked
Now it was my turn to respond with silence since I was currently recalling what happened just a few short hours ago.
----
It all started after I finished my "talk" with Rias and Sona, as I was about to leave I originally thought of clearing out some of the smaller opposing faction in Kouh Town. Since I had been meaning to for a while, but just haven"t had the time to recently, but unfortunately, before I could even leave Rias and Sona Issei"s sudden spike in mana output forced me to rethink my plans for the day.
At first, I thought Esau had done something to make Issei fly into a fit of rage due to the killing intent he was giving off, but after I looked at him I saw that his eyes were empty even though his body kept releasing waves of menacing dragon aura.
Seeing this it didn"t take a genius to know that something was wrong, so to better understand what had happened down in the sewers, I had Esau tell me what he did. Long story short Esau did what Itachi did to Sasuke in Naruto and it has caused Issei"s mentality to be on the verge of collapse due to despair.
Hearing this and then comparing it to what happened in the anime when Issei went into despair all I could think of was the [Juggernaut Drive]. Issei"s despair turned to rage and his rage stimulated the Boosted Gear into releasing its most dangerous ability. No longer wasting any more time thinking of other possibilities I sent Shirone back to Haven as I appeared in front of Issei as the Boosted Gear started to chant.
After that, I brought Issei with me into Haven inside the depths of the mountains east of the capital. Once there I threw him on one of the mountain peaks and waited for his transformation to finish. I did this for two reasons, one was because I didn"t know the consequences for forcefully suppressing the [Juggernaut Drive] since it wasn"t talked about much in the source material so I was too sure on what happens when it is activated. I did know that it consumed the user"s life force and sanity, but previously I set down a few mental failsafes in Issei"s mind in case this happened so his sanity can be kept intact after the process and as for the life force I can just replenish it with some senjutsu and medicine.
As for the second reason Esau had previously put Issei in a trance that would test out his mental strength and willpower as well as check a few other things I didn"t care to mention. But anyway if I snapped Issei out of his trance too early before he can overcome the trail it might cause his mind to shut down and collapse even with the mental reinforcement I placed on him. Knowing that there was not much I could do but wait I sat down on a mountain peak next to Issei and watched as the transformation continued.
A few chanting incantations later Issei had completed his transformation and ended it off with a loud dragon cry. I don"t know why but when I heard that dragon cry my blood started to boil with the intent of putting the enemy dragon (Issei) in his place through force, but luckily my mental fort.i.tude was strong enough to suppress this feeling. Unfortunately, the same couldn"t be said for others who heard the dragon cry.
Off in the distance a few miles away from me, I could hear the sounds of the sound barrier being broken as many dragons charged towards Issei with the intent to prove dominance, Seriyuu being at the front of the charge.
Feeling that things had suddenly become more of a ha.s.sle than originally intended I used world power to increase the gravity around [Juggernaut Drive] Issei while using six of [Enkidu]"s chains to bind his mouth and body so he doesn"t suddenly go unleashing Longinus Smash. As for Seriyu and the other dragons I used another six chains of [Enkidu] to bind Seiryu and used world power to suppress the rest of the dragons.
Once that was done I literally knocked some sense into Seriyu to bring him back to his senses and had him go and disperse the gathered dragons. Returning back to his usual self Seriyu went to deal with the dragons, the only way dragons knew how to solve an argument, a fight. Thus began Haven"s first every hundred plus dragon all-out brawl lead by Seriyu and a few other strong dragons who would occasionally send compet.i.tive glances towards the loud and thrashing Issei. Fortunately, they didn"t try anything since I was currently sitting atop his head replenishing his life force with senjutsu waiting for Issei to come out of his trance.
Once it did about five hours had pa.s.sed, most of the nearby mountain peaks were either toppled or had craters in them, multiple injured dragons scattered everywhere, a pouty Seriyu who wanted to fight Issei but wasn"t allowed to, and a now had a pa.s.sed out normal Issei in my arms. Watching this scene of destruction I felt that I needed to clean up the place since this was my territory and I didn"t want my territory looking like a war zone. Giving Issei to Esau who was tasked with watching Issei, I tried to terraform the landscape in the hopes of returning the mountain range to its original appearance, while Shirone used senjutsu to bring back the plant life that was destroyed in the fight earlier. The whole restoration didn"t take long but it left Shirone pretty tired so I let her use my lap as a pillow while I waited for Issei to wake up.
----
"By the way?" Shirone called out
"What"s up?" I asked cutting off my train of thought
"Drew told me that some of his subordinates found a group of Fallen Angels that have built a base inside the church by the high school," She said before releasing *nyaa~* like yawn
"Okay what about it," I asked
"Apparently they have some ill intentions towards Asia," She said closing her eyes preparing to take a cat nap, "From what Drew told me they even sent some of their men to go and "convince" her to join them back in Italy. Sadly they lost contact with their team and now they hit a roadblock in their experiments."
"Oh~," I said, "Anything else."
"Drew wants to know if you want them "taken care off" or brought back for information," She said as she drifted off into dreamland
"Seems some things can"t be changed," I thought wondering if I should pay those Fallen Angels in the church a visit tomorrow.
*Swoosh*
Sensing a change in the s.p.a.ce around me I felt two mana signatures appear behind me but didn"t turn around and instead waited for the other party to say the first words.