I got Reincarnated Into High School DxD But I Refuse to Be a Slave to Anime Tiddies

Chapter 62

POV: Rias Gremory

PUBLIC MENACE ZERO SABOTAGES SACRED WORK, LORD DIODORA ASTAROTH FALLS DEFENDING THE UNDERWORLD

By Melchior Varen, Senior Correspondent of the Underworld Civic Herald

The peace of the eastern road was shattered yesterday by an act of rebel savagery so calculated, and so contemptuous of devil civilization that even those long accustomed to the tantrums of the so-called revolutionary movement were left with cause to wonder whether Zero and his followers retain any attachment to reason at all. 

A lawful convoy carrying registered reincarnated laborers toward their appointed contribution site was ambushed by armed insurgents acting under the banner of that masked demagogue, whose talent for poetic speeches remains tragically unmatched by any talent for governance or sanity. The convoy, organized under the authority of His Infernal Supremacy Rizevim Livan Lucifer, had been proceeding in accordance with the Great Serpent’s wartime mandate - a mandate designed to restore order, reinforce the sacred future of the underworld, and ensure that all who have benefited from devil society contribute in proportion to their station. It was upon this lawful procession that Zero’s faction descended like carrion things with deception, treachery, and the usual hysterical violence that has become the native language of the rebellion.

Among those leading this outrage were members and sympathizers of the disgraced Gremory line, a house which, having long confused weakness for virtue, has now completed its descent into public disgrace. Once counted among the noble pillars of devil society, the Gremorys have revealed themselves as protectors of slave-born pretenders, soft-hearted collaborators, and enemies of the very hierarchy that gave them their name.

Their participation in yesterday’s attack should surprise no one who has followed their recent degeneration. Under the former order, they adorned themselves with words such as compassion, tolerance, and reform, those honeyed phrases by which noble rot disguises itself before it collapses entirely. Now stripped of official standing and exposed before history, they show what such ideals always concealed - an appetite for chaos, an affection for false devils above true blood, and a willingness to spill noble blood in defense of creatures whose only proper role is service.

Lord Diodora Astaroth, scion of a venerable house and loyal defender of the present order, died in the attack while attempting to protect the convoy from rebel interference. Eyewitnesses describe Lord Diodora as advancing against the insurgents with composure and bravery, placing himself between the lawless attackers and the registered workers under state protection.

It is said that he faced Rias Gremory herself, the wayward princess of that disgraced house, who has now chosen to stain whatever remained of her family’s honor by joining hands with Zero’s rabble. Lord Diodora, ever courteous even in war, reportedly offered terms and sought to prevent needless bloodshed, but was answered with destructive force. His death is already being mourned across loyal territories, where citizens remember him as a refined gentleman, a gifted noble, and a patriot who understood that the underworld cannot survive if every sentimental fool with a famous name is permitted to obstruct the Great Work.

…

“Like anyone is going to believe this nonsense!” Rias Gremory threw the paper into the tree opposite her in anger, and the folded sheet struck the bark with a brittle slap before falling open upon the grass, where the printed face of the article stared up at the sky. 

The rebel camp lay in a shallow green basin beyond the northern ridge, hidden under a canopy of interlocking concealment spells and old glamours that made the air shimmer if one looked too long at the wrong angle, and beside it a lake rested dark and still under a cavern sky whose false clouds moved lethargically. 

Rias sat with her back against a tree, her knees drawn slightly beneath her skirt, her hands still trembling with anger long after the paper had left them, and before her the lake spread wide and silver-black, taking into itself the inverted shapes of tents, security wards, and wounded rebels moving like ghosts along its edge. 

She had come there for quiet, or perhaps she had come there because quiet was the closest thing to confession she could allow herself, and yet the article had found her even there, passed from hand to hand through the camp with bitter laughter and bitterer silence until someone, perhaps thinking she should to know, had placed it beside her meal. She had read every line. 

“Oh, my dear,” said a voice behind her, refined and amused and arriving without footfall, “you overestimate the plebeian capacity for critical thought.”

Rias started so sharply that her shoulder struck the tree behind her, and before she could stop herself her power rose in her palm, a small sphere of crimson-black Destruction forming between her fingers with the instinctive readiness of a frightened animal baring teeth. 

Zero stood a few paces away where there had been no one moments before, his cloak stirring faintly though no wind moved across the lake, his mask turned toward the discarded paper, and the suddenness of him made the world feel theatrical, as though he had stepped from behind the curtain of reality because the scene had reached the moment where he was meant to appear. 

She closed her hand slowly and smothered the sphere before it could grow, feeling heat pass up her wrist and vanish beneath her skin. 

“You shouldn’t sneak behind people like that,” she said. “Who knows how a state declared terrorist might react.” 

“A fair point. Though judging by your aim, I was in more danger from the tree than from you.” 

“I am not really in the mood for some inane ripostes, my lord.” 

“Yes, I gathered that from the way you assaulted the local vegetation. No doubt you were frustrated by the article and meant to destroy it by throwing it at the tree but the tree may struggle to appreciate the distinction.”

Rias looked away first, partly because she refused to smile and partly because she was annoyed that some treacherous corner of her mind had almost done so. Zero had that habit, slipping absurdity into grimness as if refusing to let the world dictate his mood. 

“I don’t understand how you can joke about this,” she said at last, her voice losing some of its sharpness as she looked toward the camp below them. 

A healer knelt beside a boy whose collar burn had cut so deeply into his neck that the flesh around it still smoked faintly when touched by magic. The boy couldn’t have been older than Gasper, though perhaps reincarnation made such guesses useless. 

“They’re lying about what happened. They’re lying about people who suffered more than I can even imagine. They called Diodora of all people a hero! Diodora! He was a monster.” 

“One man’s villain is another man’s hero,” Zero said lightly, then lifted a hand when she turned on him. “That was observation, not defense.” 

“They called you an incompetent madman, doesn’t it bother you? Being called a villain for doing the right thing?” 

“When a dog barks at the moon, the moon doesn’t descend to defend its luminosity,” Zero replied with certain playful theatrics. “Though to tell the truth, I am less troubled by being called mad than by being called incompetent. Madness at least has a certain grandeur to it. Incompetence is simply insulting.” 

“You think people will believe it?” she asked softly.

“It doesn’t matter whether people actually believe the message. The real goal of propaganda is to make them stop caring about what’s true. Once people become indifferent to the truth, they’ll accept whatever they’re told, because they’ve already lost the will to question it. And I am afraid that the denizens of hell have never been particularly renowned for their principles.”

“That’s not true!" she said, her fingers curling into the grass at her side. “The people of the underworld are not all fools eager to believe whatever Rizevim claims. Many hate what he is doing. Many are horrified by what is happening to reincarnated devils, I know they must be. But they have to remain silent because they are afraid, because they have families, because a careless word can bring soldiers to their homes in the night. They have no choice but to accept things as they are. You shouldn’t speak of them as though they are cattle.” 

Zero regarded her for a moment, and though the mask hid his face, she had the distinct sense that he was smiling, and that the smile was sorrowful rather than mocking. 

“Silence is rarely innocent, Lady Gremory,” he said, and before she could answer, he drifted closer to the lake and looked out upon it. “Would you indulge me in a little story?”

Rias said nothing, which he seemed to take as permission to continue.

“There was once a village built in the shadow of a mountain,” he said, “and every spring a river descended from that mountain, carrying clear water through the valley. The villagers drank from it, bathed in it, watered their fields with it, and so long as the river remained pure, the village prospered.

“One year, a tanner built his workshop higher up the slope. It was a profitable trade, but a filthy one. The dyes and chemicals stained the stream red and black. At first, the contamination was barely noticeable. A child complained that the water tasted strange. An old woman swore that fish were dying along the banks. But when the villagers gathered to discuss the matter, the tanner assured them that progress always carried a cost. Each man in that village profited from the tanner one way or another and so had little incentive to really question him.

“The miller agreed, for the tanner bought flour from his mill. The merchants agreed, for the tanner's business brought travelers with money to spend. The headman agreed, for the taxes from the workshop repaired roads and filled the village treasury. And so the river darkened. Years passed. The fish vanished entirely. Livestock grew sick after drinking from the water. And yet each time concerns were raised, someone found a reason to delay action. 'Think of what we might lose,' they would say.

“And because the poison came slowly, no one noticed how much had already been lost. Eventually, a young man climbed the mountain and saw what the villagers had never bothered to see for themselves. The tanner was no longer dumping waste by the bucket. He had dug channels and trenches, entire streams of filth flowed from his workshop into the river. 

“The young man returned and told the village what he had seen. And would you believe it? The villagers were outraged. At the young man, for being the bringer of bad news. They called him the enemy of prosperity. They said he exaggerated and that he wished to destroy livelihoods. And because they feared the cost of stopping the poison more than the poison itself, they did nothing.

“Many years later, when the river had become too foul to drink and the fields had turned barren and the village stood on the edge of ruin, the people finally marched up the mountain. But to their surprise, they found the workshop abandoned. The tanner had grown wealthy long ago and moved elsewhere and they were only left with the poisoned river. Who destroyed that village in your opinion, my lady? The tanner who poured the poison into the water, or the people who watched the river darken year after year and convinced themselves that tomorrow would be a better day to act?”

“That’s unfair,” she said, though she did not know whether she spoke for the village or for herself. “It’s easy to condemn people for silence when you’re not the one who must live under the sword. It’s not simple to stand against Rizevim Livan Lucifer when refusal can cost you your life and the lives of everyone you love. For every pure-blooded devil, Lucifer is more than a name in history. He is our first lord, our creator, the architect of our race, and even if he is dead, Rizevim is his son. How many Christians could raise a sword against the word of Christ? How many devils can bring themselves to rebel against the son of the one they were taught to revere before they even understood what reverence meant?” 

It reminded her of how easily Haruki dismissed her people and their history, casting aside traditions and truths that had defined Devilkind for countless generations as though they were nothing more than inconvenient relics. He could not understand that devils were fundamentally different from humans, and, if she were being honest, many of the reincarnated devils failed to understand it as well. They viewed such matters through human eyes, interpreting devil society through values and assumptions they had carried over from their previous lives.

The truth was that devils had more in common with angels than with humans, regardless of what either side cared to admit. Humans were born into uncertainty. They chose their beliefs, forged their identities, and spent their lives searching for meaning. Devils, by contrast, were born knowing exactly what they were. For eons they had existed beneath the rule of their creator, aware of the role they had been fashioned to fulfill within His grand design. Every devil knew that their race had been created by Lord Lucifer Morningstar to stand against Heaven.

Humans, unlike devils, have the freedom to choose whom they followed and what they believed. Devils loyalty was woven into the very foundation of their existence. To ask a devil to reject the son of their creator was akin to asking a loving mother to deny her own child. Such things were possible, certainly, but they ran contrary to every instinct of the heart.

Perhaps that was why Haruki and Zero as well frustrated her so much. They judged devils as though they were humans with horns, never grasping that they were something else entirely.

She expected Zero to laugh at that, or worse, to praise the observation in a way that would make her feel young. Instead he stepped past her and picked up the article from the grass, smoothing its wrinkled corner with one gloved thumb. 

“Well,” Zero said mildly, “Lucifer is dead, and God is dead as well, which leaves the living in the unfortunate position of having to become adults. The world will not improve while it remains chained to the judgments of ancient men, no matter how brilliant, holy, monstrous, or beloved those men were. The people who allow the dead to govern them have surrendered the first duty of life. They must make their own values, speak their own judgments, and bear responsibility for the shape of the world they continue to inhabit. If Lucifer’s blood commands atrocity, then Lucifer’s blood must be disobeyed. If God’s scripture commands chains, then scripture must be purged. Reverence that cannot survive moral examination deserves burial beside its idol.”

“We were making progress,” she said, sounding more defensive than she liked. “Small progress, perhaps, and far too slow, but my brother and the others were changing our people. They were trying. If it were not… if it had not been for…” She stopped, the name caught like a thorn in her throat.

“If it had not been for Haruki Yamashiro?” Zero supplied mildly.

“Yes,” Rias said, and the sigh that left her seemed to take with it the last warmth in her chest. “If it had not been for Haruki Yamashiro killing my brother, if I hadn’t been such an idiot that I couldn’t see my own bishop planning all this chaos beneath my nose, none of this would have happened.”

“Is that what you truly believe?” Zero asked, tilting his head. “That if Haruki had not shattered the shining glass house, all would have been sunshine and rainbows within?”

“Of course not,” she said sharply. “I am not so naive that I believe there were no problems. There were many problems. I know that. I knew that even before all this. But at least we were safe then. At least people didn’t have to live in fear that one mistake, one careless word, one refusal to obey some grotesque proclamation, would cost them their heads because we are being ruled by a madman.”

“Safe?” Zero repeated, curiously. “Most certainly. I believe you when you say you were safe, Lady Gremory, and that your family as well as your servants were safe. Much can be said of the Pillar Houses of hell, but I would never accuse the Gremorys of being cruel masters. But what of those reincarnated devils who lacked the fortune of being chosen by a Gremory? 

“What of the pawn who lived in terror of his king’s temper, the bishop whose body was treated as tithe, the knight beaten for sport, the rook lent to another household as one lends a carriage? What court could they appeal to when the law saw them as extensions of their master’s will? What dignity could they claim when the system itself began from the premise that they were no people at all? Can you say with absolute certainty that a person regarded as property with no recognized will of his own was truly so much safer before?” 

Rias had no answer. The lake before her trembled beneath a faint breeze, breaking the reflected campfires into red coins scattered upon dark water, and she thought of the freed captives touching their necks as if waiting for the collar to reappear. 

She thought of Diodora Astaroth and the way he had spoken of reincarnated devils as things whose only dignity was whatever use a pure-blooded master found for them. Diodora had not been born from Rizevim’s proclamation fully formed like some monster called from mud. No, Diodora and people like him had always existed even in he brother’s time.

He had bowed before her brother’s government and hidden his depravities behind noble manners, and if he had hidden them, it was because the old world had demanded discretion. There were many who had always despised reincarnated devils, conservatives who muttered of blood and purity and corruption, old families who would have been enraged by the suggestion that a human reborn by Evil Piece could stand equal to one born from the ancient lines of hell. Rizevim had merely opened the doors and invited them to feast in daylight.

“At least we were happy then,” she said, and the words sounded weak even to her, like a child pleading with a locked door. “Those who abused their servants didn’t dare to do it openly, because they feared Sirzechs’s wrath. They knew there would be consequences if they flaunted cruelty with impunity, unlike now, when Rizevim encourages it.”

Even as she spoke, she could hear the hollowness of her own defense, for what comfort was there in claiming that cruelty had once been hidden? What solace was it to say that suffering had been confined behind closed doors, that torment had been whispered about rather than openly celebrated, that the whip had fallen behind curtains instead of in the public square?

Hear no evil. Speak no evil. See no evil.

How easy it was to convince oneself that things had been better simply because the ugliness had remained out of sight. She had been foolish to cling to that argument. The horrors of the past had merely been concealed from polite eyes. The violence happening now in the open only seemed worse because it could no longer be ignored. Before, it had been carried out where she would neither see it, nor hear it, nor be forced to speak of it.

“We were happy before Haruki came,” she said, more desperately now, because some part of her still needed that world to have been real and good and merely murdered, rather than diseased long before the killing blow. “We were happy.”

“Happiness is a prison, Rias,” Zero said softly. “It is the most insidious prison of all, because its bars are warm and familiar and decorated by those who love you. Incremental progress paralyzed your generation from asking deeper questions. You congratulated yourselves because a few masters followed Sirzechs’ teaching and called their peerages family, while ignoring the great breadth of nobility who saw their peerages as nothing more than slaves with prettier collars. How many incidents like Daeron Barahir do you imagine have occurred across history?”

Daeron Barahir…the beginning of the end, the case that started it all. A reincarnated devil executed by House Dantalion for allegedly attacking their heir. The official account had insisted that the assault was unprovoked, that Daeron had succumbed to instability, that the heir had been fortunate to survive. 

Within hours of the execution, contradictory testimonies had surfaced from former servants of House Dantalion, accounts of years of humiliation and abuse, of reincarnated devils forced into degrading entertainments for the amusement of their betters. The stories spread like wildfire through the Underworld, and Zero and the rebels had seized upon them immediately, using the outrage to rally support and force people to confront cruelties they had long ignored.

Was Daeron truly the isolated case the nobles had claimed he was? Could she say with absolute certainty that he had attacked without cause? Could she say with certainty that others like him had not existed in numbers too large to bear?

“The truth,” Zero said, “is that you are privileged, Rias Gremory. You were born into one of the ruling families of hell and never wanted for safety, education, affection, or recourse. Millions never had that luxury. Many were turned into devils without understanding the bargain, some without meaningful consent, and even those who consented often did so at the edge of death. They were forced to serve lords who could abuse them with little fear of consequence, and the system remained blind to their plight because in its eyes they were not people. Many lived in that prison for so long that they forgot the shape of freedom. You know this as well, even if you have trained yourself to look around it. Did you imagine that as long as you were kind to your own peerage and treated them as family, the rest could be endured?” 

She did not know what to say. If Sona had been here, she could have constructed a compelling argument, carefully explaining the reasoning behind the system and the difficult realities that had shaped it. Rias could not.

The truth was that she had rarely involved herself in such matters. Politics had always seemed distant, something discussed in council chambers and noble estates far removed from her everyday life. She had been content to enjoy her youth, spending time with her peerage, attending school, and pursuing the simple happiness that had once seemed so abundant.

Now she found herself regretting that choice. Because standing here, she realized how little she truly understood about the world she had spent her entire life defending.

“No,” she said, and her voice wavered, then steadied by force. “Of course not. I never thought everything was acceptable simply because I treated my peerage well. But what could I do? What else was I supposed to do?”

“Fight!” Zero said. “See injustice and call it out for what it is. There are millions of low-class pure-blooded devils who will never own peerages and never profit from the system, yet many hate reincarnated devils all the same. Do you know why? Because the powers that be arranged the world so that envy would flow sideways rather than upward. A reincarnated devil in a favorable peerage may rise more quickly than a low-class devil born into poverty, provided the master is kind or ambitious enough to cultivate him. The low-class devil sees the opportunity and rarely sees the horror beneath it. 

“He is taught to believe that reincarnated devils stole his place, his advancement, his comfort. He says that if these false devils had never come, life would be better for those of proper birth. This is a lie, but a lie repeated enough times will eventually become the truth. Low-class devils and reincarnated devils are made to hate one another instead of turning together upon the system that starves them both. Rizevim is a symptom of this system, and in truth he is a useful enemy because his madness is so naked that even the timid may learn to point at him and say no. That is why even he understands the value of propaganda, the necessity of papers like the one you hurled at that poor innocent tree.”

“What are you trying to say?” Rias asked, though she already feared the answer.

“I keep telling you, Rias Gremory.” Zero laughed softly. “The system is the true enemy. It perpetuates these injustices, protects them, justifies them, beautifies them, and teaches the injured to blame one another for the wound.  It must be burned to the ground for genuine change to emerge. A revolution, if you will. Rizevim is evil and pointless and wishes to see the world burn for the pleasure of warming his hands at the flame. I would like to believe that most devils value their own lives more than they hate their enemies, and that they will eventually recognize the rot he represents. They must overcome their divisions, refuse his madness, and dismantle the machinery of oppression together, so that something new may be born from the ashes.”

“You think Rizevim cares what the masses think?” Rias asked, incredulous despite herself. “They could combine all their power and still fail to put a scratch on him. He is a superdevil, and they know that as well as he does.”

“Of course it will not do to rely upon the silent majority,” Zero replied. “Silence is a fragile thing, my dear, because one loud voice can break it. The people are cowed and disorganized, which is precisely why they appear smaller than they are. A few may protest and be dismissed as madmen crying in the wilderness. But noise is relative to the silence preceding it. The more absolute the hush, the more shocking the thunderclap. Hell has never heard its people’s voices rise as one. Let it be different this time.”

“You are insane,” she said quietly. “If the system is destroyed the way you want it destroyed, we will only have chaos and madness.”

“Chaos is the herald of change,” Zero said. “It is the fever between what was and what will be. It is only when we find ourselves at the lowest that we may begin to climb, and this time there will be no Super Devils to hold our hands upon the stairs, no benevolent giants to carry the people while allowing the old house to remain standing. The change must come from the people themselves. It’s only after the old house has burned to its foundation that anyone may see where the stones were rotten and where new beams ought to be laid.”

Rias met the masked man’s gaze, or what passed for gaze behind that mask. “And who will rebuild this world after you burn it?” she asked. “You?”

“No,” Zero said. “It will be you.”

Rias stared at him, certain she had misheard.

“I am the harbinger of destruction,” he said, and there was neither pride nor apology in it. “I was sent, or perhaps made, for the sole purpose of destroying the world that is. You, and those of your generation, are the ones who must rebuild what comes after. You, Sona Sitri, Riser Phenex, Sairaorg Bael, and many others who have seen suffering and wished to prevent it, who have known the flaws of the world and still believe it deserves a future. Those who will stand for their principles when the old banners fall are the only hope of what comes next.”

Rias felt something move through her that made her almost panic. To be rebuked by Zero had been difficult, to be believed in by him was worse. It placed weight upon places in her that still felt broken and young. 

“What can I accomplish?” she asked, and the question came out quieter than she wished. “I am a weak girl who has scarcely achieved anything. What hope do I have against the likes of Zaorama Nebiros and others like him? It’s like hoping for an ant to defeat an elephant.”

“You will not be alone,” Zero said, “and that is the most important truth in any struggle worth winning. Besides, you will not remain weak.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, her eyes narrowing.

Zero lifted one hand, and something appeared between his fingers as if drawn from a fold in the air. It was a chess piece, small enough to rest in his palm, shaped like a king and pulsing with dark and dense demonic power. The air around it seemed to thicken, the grass beneath Zero’s hand bowing as though pressed by unseen weight. 

Rias recognized it at once, despite never having held one in her hands before. Every devil in the Underworld had heard of the King Piece conspiracy by now. It had been one of the many revelations that shattered what little faith remained in the old order. For generations, low class pureblood devils had been taught that the Rating Games were a fair arena where talent and determination alone could elevate a common devil to greatness, that even a peasant might one day rise high enough to stand among the lords of Hell. 

The grand infernal dream, as it had once been called. Then the truth emerged. Certain competitors had been secretly granted King Pieces and other advantages from the very beginning, their victories carefully cultivated behind the scenes by powerful interests. What had been presented as merit was often little more than manipulation. The discovery had driven countless devils into bitterness and outrage, for nothing breeds cynicism faster than the realization that hope itself had been a deception. 

Rias suspected, as with so many upheavals that had shaken the Underworld in recent years, that Haruki Yamashiro’s hand had somehow been involved in exposing it.

“This… is a King Piece,” she said, unable to keep the bewilderment from her voice. “How did you get this?”

“Bedez Abaddon possessed one,” Zero answered calmly. “He was among the Rating Game players gifted such power, and I took it from him when I killed him.”

Rias stared at the piece, and something like dread mingled with fascination inside her. The power inside it was immense in its concentration, and she felt goosebumps across her skin. 

“This artifact is a work of genius,” Zero said. “If used correctly, it can increase the power of its bearer by an astonishing degree, perhaps as much as one hundredfold under suitable conditions.”

A hundredfold! 

Rias could barely breathe around the thought. She imagined her own Destruction magnified until the world trembled beneath it, imagined standing before enemies who now dwarfed her and discovering that the distance had narrowed in an instant. She imagined power enough to protect her peerage, enough to break collars before soldiers could stop her, enough perhaps to stand in rooms where decisions were made and be dismissed by no one. 

Then shame followed, because temptation had arrived so quickly, and she had seen enough of power’s corruption to fear any gift that promised to make weakness vanish without demanding time.

“Why are you showing this to me?” she asked, and despite herself there was nervousness in her voice.

“You will need power if you wish to change anything,” Zero said. “If you wish to protect the enslaved, confront tyrants, and help build a world where dignity is more than a word spoken by the comfortable, then conviction alone will not suffice. Ordinarily, such growth would take years, perhaps decades, and time is the one currency we lack. That is why I am offering this to you, Rias Gremory. I believe you will use the power with the responsibility it demands.”

She felt overwhelmed, almost physically pressed back by the enormity of it. Power had always been something she desired, though in ways she had thought noble or at least understandable. She had wanted freedom from arranged marriage, strength to protect her peerage, skill to stand beside those she loved without shame. 

But this was something else. This was a door opened suddenly upon a storm. To accept such power meant accepting that she could no longer take refuge in being young, sheltered, or insufficient. Was she even worthy of it? Weren’t there people who deserved this and indeed could use it better than her?

“But why me?” she asked. “Why do you not use it yourself, or give it to someone already at Ultimate-class or Satan-class? If someone like that used it, we might be able to challenge Rizevim.”

Zero chuckled softly. “My lady, you’re behaving very poorly as a devil,” he said. “You’re supposed to be delighted, intoxicated, swollen with pride at being offered a power for which many would burn nations. Instead you hesitate and ask whether another might serve the cause better… not very devil-like. That is reassuring, and also somewhat inconvenient. We considered the obvious possibilities, of course. The King Piece has a limitation. If someone who is already too powerful uses it, the excess may tear him apart. The body and soul can splatter under the pressure of sudden amplification. Giving it to one of our strongest would be a dramatic method of reducing our leadership by one.”

“So you offer it to me because I am strong enough to survive it and weak enough not to explode,” she said, and the faint absurdity of the sentence nearly made her laugh.

“A sufficient summary of the matter at hand,” Zero said. “So, do you accept this great power and the great responsibility attached to it? You may take time to consider if you wish. No choice of this nature should be made merely because a masked lunatic spoke prettily beside a lake.”

Rias looked at the piece in his hand, and beyond it she saw the camp, the wounded, the freed captives, the rebels patching armor with shaking fingers, the lake holding the red lights like embers within its darkness. 

She thought of Daeron Barahir, of the captives marching barefoot, of all those who had lived and died inside systems she had once not cared about. She thought of her brother, of Haruki, of the world that had been broken and the world that might yet be built from its remains if there were people foolish enough, frightened enough, and stubborn enough to try.

“No,” she said, and her voice was calm. “I will not need time. I will do it. It would be a great honor to become more useful to the cause.”

Zero held the King Piece out to her. Rias reached for it, and as her fingers closed around the small dark shape, she felt power throb against her palm like a second heart waiting to be born.

AN: Rias Gremory has officially become a revolutionary!

A friend of mine read this arc and said that it takes a special kind of "talent" to turn a borderline hentai anime into a political manifesto. I'm not entirely sure he meant that as a compliment, but I've decided to take it as one anyway.

In my defense, if you're given a setting full of ancient noble families, political corruption and class divisions, can you really blame me for making people start questioning the system?

Now, I have a question for you guys. Would you like to see Zero's POV so you can better understand what goes on inside his head and what motivates him? Or would you prefer that he remains somewhat mysterious, with the audience only learning about him through the perspectives of other characters?

I'm curious which approach you'd find more interesting.