DXD SI : Chapter 15 : Relaxing, Irritatants, Ceremonies & Spy Contractors....

Disclaimer - I don't own any of the characters appearing in High School DXD or the Anime or the manga whatsoever.

Bael House Territory

–Magdaran Bael–

He was sitting next to the tree, eyes closed, face relaxed, leaning on the Mother Tree, feeling in tune with all the nature around him. Nature that he had grown by himself, and that alone sent a happy feeling through his brain, when he felt it.

The gaze on him, that was most likely the Lord of the House using the wards to spy on him, was there on the first day, then the second, but by the third, it was gone. They must have seen that he was not doing anything remotely interesting, so the daily supervision had dropped, and instead, there were people dropping in periodically to check in on him.

Well, they were just passing by, but he knew they were checking what he was doing. Since he hadn’t yet raised the same wards here that he did in his previous garden space, the entire thing was visible to everyone. He would have just done the same beforehand, but his previous protections relied on the Mother Tree. He had used the giant tree as the center point of his ward network, not because he needed to, but because he thought it might lead to something, and also because it was easier for future expansions.

As the Mother Tree was the natural center point of the wards, the fact that it was growing and had roots deep into the ground and reached high heights, meant he could make changes as he went. It was the same the first time around, as he made a multi tier ward network, with multiple functions baked in.

There was the most important one, which was obviously security. It involved blaring out warnings to him and trapping anyone who trespassed. Any half decent Ultimate Class could have escaped the wards, which was by design because he was not willing to reveal his power levels, but now?

Now, Zekram knew about him. From what he knew of the Power of Destruction and how it behaved in the presence of Devils with vastly stronger variants of the same Bloodline trait, Sirzechs almost certainly had a hunch. From the invitation and the unreasonable amount of time and attention given to him by the New Satans, he could infer that Ajuka had probably already scanned him and had a report about his power for the other Satans.

So, altogether, Zekram knew, the New Satans knew, and through them, many of their closest allies knew. So, the secret was not as secret as it once was.

That gave him the freedom to create stronger protections for the garden. It also became necessary to do so. After all, for now, his only attachment to the clan was this garden. This is one thing that made him hesitate every time he thought of defecting to another faction, or leaving the Underworld entirely. If that day, Zekram had truly done something to the garden, he would have most likely snapped, killed the Old Bastard, and left the underworld.

Shaking his head, he cracked one eye open at the devil flying towards him, her eyes roving about all the plants and trees all around the Mother Tree. The fact that all of them survived must have intrigued them if they knew anything about the death rates of tree transplantation. Understandably, it wasn’t a popular subject in the Underworld.

“What do you want?” he asked her bluntly, getting to the point. He was in no mood for any games, especially since she was disturbing him in the middle of one of the most relaxing days of his life, especially in the recent years where he had to constantly look over his shoulder, either in the Pits from the Demons and other Devils or in the House, where he was always worried about being pressganged.

He knew that being Satan Class put him in a very high category, a class that was shared by maybe a dozen devils in the underworld, save for the Super  Devils, but that meant very little when he wasn't willing to just let everything go and fight with nothing on the line. He did have stuff on the line.

He still recalled his time in the nothingness. The void that had nothing in it, that stripped away most of what he was, his memories and feelings. He hated that place with a passion, and ever since that day, the only two things that managed to rouse strong enough emotions in his mind were this garden, trees and flowers in particular, and the death of his mother.

The latter was still a mystery, though it did not take a genius to realise that something was fishy with the way her death was handled and how his mother was unknown to the entire house. It was as if everyone collectively forgot her, or the much more likely option, were made to forget her.

He knew from the records that the current secretary was Zephry’s right hand woman, even before he was born, and knowing what he did about her and where her true allegiances probably lie, he could tell with reasonable certainty that she either knows about his mother or outright had a hand in her death.

There were many mysteries surrounding her death, and it frustrated him to no end to know that the clue to that truth was floating in front of him, but he just couldn’t do anything about that.

Not right now, anyway. Smirking internally at his thoughts, he looked at her, putting some pressure in his voice this time.

“I ask again, what do you want?” She flinched a bit, thought how much of it was real and how much of it was feigned, but he did not know.

“Lord Zephyr was worried about you. You haven’t shown up at your official quarters for–”

“I haven’t shown up there because I don’t live there.”

She looked at him in a new light as she replied, “The heir of the House traditionally lives in the–”

“I know you have moved my stuff there, that’s fine. There was nothing of value there anyway." He kept most of his stuff on him at all times. It helped that a Devil needed very little if they were just willing to rough it out a bit, especially a high ranking one. All he kept were some clothes, and emergency food and water, though he could forego that for weeks on end if need be. 

Devil physique really was a G-sent. (heh!)

Melantha Furcas looked at him for a moment longer before nodding and continuing, “I see. I must still ask that you come back. The Coming of Age ceremony for the Sitri and Gremory heirs is tomorrow. We need to prepare for that.”

Oh. Yeah, he still had that invitation. He totally forgot about that in the middle of keeping his plants alive. While the moving process itself was as meticulously planned as it could be, the end result was far more devastating than he had expected. While none of the plants had died yet, the damage done to them was extensive. Thankfully, while the wards were done and he was unable to use his healing powers, he was able to do some light work and use telekinesis to make sure that more and more roots of the Mother Tree were connected to the plants to save them for now.

A temporary solution, until he got the privacy and anti-scrying wards back up. Then, he could heal them the proper way.

Nodding at her, he stood up, “I will be back as soon as I am done with laying down the wards here.”

She perked up at that, as if she had been waiting for him to say something along the same lines, “We have excellent–”

“No, thank you. I will contact you once I am done.” Saying that, he turned his back to her and began taking out the wardstones necessary for the temporary wards he was about to lay down. 

By virtue of focusing on one thing, he wasn’t that great of a wardmaster, but by virtue of being in the Main Compounds of the Bael House, he did not really have to worry about foreign attacks. All he had to worry about were the members of the House itself, who were way less likely to break into his garden than they were before.

If there was one thing that came from Zekram getting a measure of his power, then it must be the man’s paranoia and long term planning. No matter his plans for him, Zekram would atleast make sure that the one thing keeping him tied to the House was not interfered with, atleast as long as he believed that the heir of the house was in his control.

With that in mind, he laid down the basic wards, and just for the sake of it, cast a barrier spell and supercharged it so that it would last for a couple of days, as long as no one attacked it.

___xx__

–Serafall Leviathan–

“Thank you for the information, Abel-kun. Lucien-kun,” She thanked the two people who ran one of the many companies that had sprouted up in the wake of humans reincarnated into devils, especially the ones that were given the freedom and startup capital to start their own businesses. They nodded and left her office, probably for their next job. They were busy like that.

It helped that rich nobility loved to flaunt their money, and one of the ways that was becoming increasingly popular was to hire these companies that charged comparatively exorbitant amounts of money to import human culture and decoration into the Underworld. It didn’t work for many, but even for the few that employed such companies regularly, it made a difference.

It wasn’t at the stage where she wanted it to be, but one day, she envisioned these companies being in every Pillar Devil’s home, acting as a giant information network for them. After all, Pillar Devils were known to ignore their servants and speak as if they were absent, simply because the punishment for spilling any information was death.

She was also working on making sure that the practice died and was replaced with their current criminal code, but with the large amount of leeway that every single Pillar House had regarding their internal matters, they couldn't do anything except hope that either the low class devil came to them or the Pillars handed the devils to the government to deliver justice.

A prospect that was wholly unpopular among the nobility. It was currently seen as a sign of cowardice, to depend on someone else to right your wrongs, but she was trying to make headway by using the argument of falling Devil birthrates to tell them that each devil was important.

That a lifetime spent doing manual labour was just as bad as death, as the former option at least created value for the Underoweld as a whole. She hated what her life had come to. Once an ardent fighter for equal rights, she could never have imagined just how hard it would be to get what she wanted while making sure that the Underworld did not fracture into factions, becoming easy targets for the rest of the supernatural community.

Now she had to dangle in honest to Lucifer slavery for the Pillars to remove the option of killing their servants for small slights.

Shaking her head, she banished the depressing thoughts and moved to the (relatively) good news.

Magdaran was not bad. No, he could even be called as good for their cause. According to Lucien, he treated Abel and the other reincarnated devils politely, which in and of itself was odd since even the Devils who had neutral opinions about the reincarnated humans were not polite to them, considering them beneath the proper Devils. More than that, he even helped them when an accident was about to happen. Abel freely confessed he expected the young Lord to fly into rage as the Garden they were handling seemed to be the single most valuable thing in his eyes.

Yes, the Garden. He was interested in Botany. She’d read reports about that, but this seemed much more than just a hobby. Lucien told her that the plants and the trees in that small place did not pale at all, even when compared to the Vibrant forests in the Sitri territory, with their abundance of water, atleast when compared to the rest of the underworld.

Abel also told her that Magdarun did not need them at all. He could have just as easily done the whole thing on his own, which he did towards the end, making the worker's job easier.

All of it made some things clear, but raised a whole lot more questions. 

Just who was Magdaran Bael? And why was he interested in that garden so much?