Disclaimer - I don't own any of the characters appearing in High School DXD or the Anime or the manga whatsoever.
Mag’s Garden, Bael House Territory
–Magdaran Bael–
He watched as Abel and his crew positioned themselves on all the edges of his garden. It had only taken a few days of nonstop work for Abel to finally feel comfortable talking to him properly and working here with his crew without Lucien nearby.
As he had suspected, Lucien was a partner, yes, but not a partner for work. No, Lucien Sitri, being a high class devil belonging to the same family as one of the current Satans, meant that his job was to protect the business. Abel was smart like that. He knew that while the New Satans championed the rights of the Reincarnated Devils and the Low Class devils, the truth was much farther than the ideal world the Satans envisioned.
Hence, a Pillar Devil partner who would, more often than not, act as the filter, talking to prospective clients who were, let’s just say, not compatible with Reincarnated Devils working for them, even if the work itself was top notch and Abel and his crew made sure no complaints about their work were made.
Hell, they even had a 4.2 star rating on the DevilNet, which was a fucking miracle because Devils were very petty and more often than not, the review system was hijacked by jerks who just wanted to spread chaos. He should know. He had been the victim of that, more than once.
That was definitely not Japanese Wagyu raised by the Yokia that he had purchased from a devil who was far more willing to make a trade than he should have been.
Shaking his head, he banished the follies of his youth, and looked as all the Devils, at once, began using their tools and their reinforced bodies to stab into the soil. The idea was to create a network of metallic rods, so that once the structure was done, they could use the metal box created inside the soil to lift the whole thing, instead of risking the soil crumbling.
Before he even took the first step, he knew that he could do it by himself. Telekinesis was a basic spell taught to Devils at a young age, and he had abused the spell as much as he could. For some reason, despite having literal imagination based magic and the literal power of destruction within him, the simple act of manipulating matter with his mind was something that fascinated him endlessly.
Vague echoes of the knowledge he’d gained from sitting in four walls for years on end told him of a rather fanciful fantasy. One of pure wish fulfillment, speaking of the possibilities of untold powers of both creation and destruction if he could just manipulate matter down to the very atoms.
Despite his doubts, he had tried. Oh, how hard he’d tried to gain the precise control required to control the building blocks of the known universe. Alas, he failed. Telekinesis as a spell had some hard coded limitations in it, and if he wanted to go further, the difficulty had increased so much that he would have had to abandon everything else and figure out an entirely new method of telekinesis, allowing him to manipulate very small things.
Neither did he have the time for that, nor the intelligence to invent something that would most likely elevate him to a similar level as a Super Devil. It was high reward, yes, but also very high risk, and he had chosen to leave that path be. He figured that if he succeeded in securing his future for now, he could go back to that path and see if he could make something out of it.
In the meantime, he had all this progress with a spell that most devils very much ignored. His growing Demonic Energy reserves and control over them only increased his prowess with the spell. SO, it was no exaggeration to say that he could coat the entire land with his Demonic Energy and lift the entire piece of land as if it were one single block in an instant if he so wished. Alas, that was not something he wished to reveal to the world, and also because he wanted to slow down a bit.
He had considerably more attention on him than he did just a scant few days ago, and he did not want to slip even a little bit, not when the New Satans had taken a strange interest in him, not to mention Zekram’s shadow on the entire House. He had to be twice as careful from now on.
Also, he was very curious as to what Zekram was thinking, arranging contractors beforehand. He half expected sabotage of some sort, Zekram’s mentality of never losing shining through to make sure that his failed attempt was not the end.
But nope, so far, he could find no hint of sabotage.
The base pillars were done, and two devils flew up, with the bigger pillars, ready to stab them in the locations he had already marked for them. One of them stumbled a bit, the heavy metallic pillars slipping out as it required two devils to hold.
“Ah!” They scrambled, only to pause as the pillar glowed a purple, his hand raised in their direction, an identical glow on his hands as he took hold of the pillar. Abel looked at him with concern etched on his face. He chucked at the man, waving his other hand as the pillar was safely positioned and stabbed into the ground with ease.
He waved the two devils away who were looking at him with a fearful gaze, shrinking on themselves when he waved them off, as if they were preparing to get hit or something. Damn, just who did these guys meet to get this fearful of any higher tier Devil?
What was he thinking? He could throw a stone in the direction of the Senate, and it was more than likely that it would hit the head of a devil who would love to throw his superiority in the face of other devils, some doing it in a more physical manner.
He slowly floated down right next to Abel, who looked at him with a curious gaze, his gaze alternating from the pillar currently stabbed in the ground to him. This alternated a few more times before Abel uttered a quiet, “huh,” to himself. He looked at the man with a questioning gaze as they got to work once more.
The relocation site was already identified and prepped before the contractors had even arrived, so there was no issue there. All he did was supervise the transfer and lend a hand when it looked like there was too much strain on the devil workers. They gave him grateful looks in exchange, and Abel once more gave him another look, one that he ignored.
He floated high up, his hand still glowing purple as the entire rectangular block that was longer towards the end than the surface was slowly lowered into a giant hole he had made using his Power.
Who’d have thought that the Power of Destruction could be used to clear out a large piece of land very quickly and easily, without messing up the surrounding areas? No rocks, no mud, no blackened soil residue spilling over the sparse greenery around it.
He was sure that the one who had been spying on them all this while was sneering at the use of the vaunted Power of Destruction for something so pedestrian. Alas, the so-called Head of House had no power beyond just looking. He ignored the man while he made sure to take hold of the entire garden at the last moment to make sure the devils flying below it were able to make it out, instead of having to crawl through the narrow tunnels they’d carved out beforehand as an escape strategy. After all, they couldn’t fly through the garden, so they had made the tunnels.
He’d let them do that, but after seeing the size of them, he took pity on them and did the final work all by himself, which earned him yet another look from Abel.
Abel was a light skinned man with a permanent frown etched on his face. He was short but stout, the stereotypical build associated with people working in construction as middle management. It was interesting that despite becoming a devil, a species whose body subconsciously worked to gain the perfect form according to the devil’s mind, his body remained the same.
Or was this his preferred physique, and his earlier form was different? Or could it be that Abel was so secure in his physique and how he looked that there was no change in his appearance even after becoming a devil?
Dismissing those useless, if amusing, questions from his mind, he was about to fly to check on the garden, only to stop as Abel walked to him after he had finished checking up on both the work and his workers. He seemed like a good boss on what little he had seen of the man’s work.
Abel came to stand by his side, looking at the slightly elevated piece of land that was the garden. It stuck out of the ground a bit, but that was by design. He was going to destroy the land beneath the garden after he was done working on the roots for a bit, and lower the garden to create a smooth surface.
For now, the barren land all around the garden and the lush greenery, or rather purple-ery, were in stark contrast.
“You didn’t need us at all, did you?” Abel said out of the blue. He looked at the man from the corner of his eye, but the man was looking straight, at the pieces of root that were exposed to the air. The thick and slightly glowing roots.
“Whatever do you mean, Abel? I couldn’t have done all this without your and your people’s hard work. In fact, as appreciation for a job well done,” he took out his phone and, after tapping a few buttons, the payment, along with a sizable tip, was sent to the bank account details for the contractor.
Abel looked at him for a moment before his phone dinged. Taking it out, he held the phone in the same way he expected a middle aged man to hold it. Tapping the screen with a single finger, he looked at something as his eyes widened.
“Thank you for your work. Buy yourself some lunch. On me,” He said before flying towards the garden. He had a Mother Tree to check on.
Despite the outward appearance, he knew that the Motter Tree was slightly damaged. It would take a few days of concentrated healing for the tree to be back in peak shape, not to mention the smaller, weaker plants that might not even survive without his help.
Well, it was a good thing that he planned to spend the rest of the week right here, in the Garden.
Perks of Devil physique, he supposed. It was basically the ultimate camping body.