Disclaimer - I don't own any of the characters appearing in High School DXD or the Anime or the manga whatsoever.
Kuoh Town, Japan
–Magdaran Bael–
After informing the devil, who was obviously assigned to keep a watch over him, he had made his merry way to the nearest public transportation service, i.e., the train station. Having roamed around the town twice now, he knew his way quite well. Ofcourse, a stop at the nearest bakery was mandatory.
Making sure that he had enough stock to last the journey, he reached the train station, only to be informed that the next direct train to Kyoto was three hours away. Understandable since it was the middle of the day. Unfortunately, his stock of confectionery was rather limited, and he had a hunch that the moment his mouth was empty, he would lose his patience and directly teleport to that place.
So, he decided to skip a few steps and looked at a map. Now, he could have done something truly reckless as letting his aura spread all around him in all directions, letting his full might be displayed to the rest of the world, all so he could lock down the town in his perception before teleporting there directly, but one, that would be supremely idiotic and against his self imposed rule of keeping a low profile.
Secondly, Kyoto was now Kuoh, and probably had a substantial set of wards all around the city. Even if they couldn’t stop his teleportation attempt outright, they would know of his arrival, and that was just counterproductive to his trip there. He was going to go there to see if he could find any appropriate peerage members, and failing that, roam around a bit before he moved to the next country.
The garden would be fine for weeks on end, even if no one attended to it, and the moment someone tried to tamper with anything, he would be alerted, and after that? Well then, let’s just say that he could tolerate Zekram entering his garden once, but there were not many Zekrams in the underworld, and for most people, they would not be getting that next chance.
Shaking his head, he looked at the map, and flew up, getting ready to teleport to the nearest town and see if he could fly from there or teleport once more to create a chain of teleportations, when he felt it.
A spike of Demonic Energy. A rather familiar energy signature, and even if she was vastly weaker than him, it did not mean she was untrained. It would be laughable if someone who couldn’t control their Demonic Energy spikes was made the head of a rather important experiment for one of the Satans.
No, this was likely a way to get her message across, or she had truly received some very Hell shattering news. Either way, not his problem. So, without any ado, he vanished from the spot, appearing hundreds of kilometers away, on top of a small settlement, which was half empty, before teleporting once more.
He wondered what had rattled Cleria that much.
__xx__
–Cleria Belial–
She took a deep breath and connected the number she was given only for emergencies. Satan Leviathan was very adamant that she be contacted only for emergencies, and knowing just how busy and hectic her life was, she was in agreement with the rather scary Satan, but alas, circumstances had forced her hand.
Technically, she couldn’t force any Devil heir from entering or leaving her territory, not without proper cause. Magdaran hadn’t done anything wrong, and even if he had, she wagered it would take a lot more to try and restrict his movements.
His decision to travel to Kyoto couldn’t have come at a worse time, due to the rather large Church gathering scheduled to happen there. She didn’t know why that was happening, but she knew that adding any devil to an already volatile situation, such as the one with the Shinto Faction and Church mixed together, would be a bad idea.
But to let Magdaran go in there? She..didn't really know what could happen, but she knew it would be bad. Hence, the direct and urgent call to Satan Leviathan, on the number she knew, would take precedence over everything else.
She had multiple such avenues of direct communication with the Satan, with varying degrees of urgency assigned to each method.
“What is it, Cleria?” A cold voice, quite unlike what the Satan liked to portray to the rest of the world and her close ones, came from the speaker. She gulped, but she figured it would be better to just rip it all off at once.
“Heir Bael is headed towards Kyoto. Earlier this month, I was informed of a meeting that was scheduled to happen–”
“Yes, I am aware of the meeting,” Satan Leviathan interrupted her with a calm voice, but for some reason, this calm was different from her normal calm. It gave rise to a foreboding feeling in her heart, one she tried to ignore as much as she could. Unfortunately, the next words from the Satan only served to increase her stress.
“Listen very closely to what I say, Cleria. The meeting happening in Kyoto can go either way, but what I can tell you is that it is very important to both factions. Unfortunately, I cannot intervene in any way. One of the prerequisites of the treaty forbids me or any of the Satans from forcing our way into Japan during times of national importance. They’ve already informed us of the meeting, and as such, I cannot come there on my own.
This is classified information, but they are there to decide on the fate of a half Youkai who was born with a special Sacred Gear. It is….”
As she heard the specifics of the Youkai blessed or cursed with the Sacred Gear that had apparently forced the Church to pull most of its forces from all the corners of Japan for that meeting, her face went pale, her Demonic Energy fluctuating a bit at the shock.
“Do whatever you have to, but make sure he is away from Kyoto. I will send someone, but they can’t travel out of Kuoh. The only one who can is you.” With that, Satan Leviathan cut the call, leaving her sitting in the chair, slumped.
She knew why she could move about Japan right now. In the sense of wording, she was a representation of her territory, and as such, had full freedom rights in all of Japan, a privilege that was granted to her only after the Shinto Gods knew that she had a full peerage and did not plan on adding any more pieces.
Then, as if snapping out of her shock, she was about to order her Queen, who was standing right outside because of her call with Satan Leviathan, to stall for some time before she could figure out something, but a magic circle appeared right next to her ear.
“He’s gone.” She slumped, taking a moment to marvel at the fact that she once thought that him breaking some mundane rules was going to be a headache instead of him potentially creating a multi faction diplomatic incident, before she moved out of her office, already barking orders at her peerage.
They would have to hold the fort while she went to retrieve the idiot who was about to walk into a diplomatic incident with a faction that was the antithesis of their kind and another one that barely tolerated their presence.
___xx__
–Magdaran Bael–
Shaking his head, he dismissed the slight curiosity about the matter back in Kuoh, to look at the approaching city. He stopped a distance away, simply observing the city.
The city looked like someone had taken a look at Kuoh and simply expanded everything. Bigger skyscrapers, but still nothing compared to a true metro city. Hills from around Kuoh town were magnified to the point it felt like the city was nestled within the hills themselves.
The roads were wider, and there were ten times the water bodies and canals moving through the city like veins. The city had not stopped at the many hills around it. It had simply moved around it or, in some cases, built atop it as well.
All of that was visible to his eyes, but his other senses told him a whole different story. It was as if the entire city was shrouded in a thick layer of dense energy. After some close inspection, it was clear that there were multiple points in the city where the energy was far denser than the other areas.
They were mostly concentrated around the hills near and inside the city, with shrines being the common theme. He was sure that if he decided to peek a little closer, he would be able to see the ley lines that moved all around the city, the lifeline of the Youkai faction, if he was not wrong.
The pocket dimension was easily reachable and visible to anyone with half a sense of how the supernatural communities around the world lived, but only till the front door. There were likely dozens of safety mechanisms to make sure any intruder was shredded to pieces, especially if they were powered by the ley lines he could sense. They likely packed quite the punch.
He could also sense quite a bit of Holy Power as well, which was concentrated at the center of the city.
Shaking his head, he decided to fly ahead and then slowly lower his height as the city approached.
It wouldn’t do for him to just break in through the front door. He was here as a tourist. Might as well act that way and do it the proper way. Plus, even from this distance, he could see quite a number of bakeries. He wondered if there was a difference between the sweets here and in Kuoh.
Still, even as his mind was half focused on the sweets he was about to sample, half of his mind was cataloguing every single anomaly he could feel.
For starters, from what he could tell, the Shinto were quite the territorial pantheon, as were most others. They didn’t allow any other major power to take root in Japan. The Devil territory was likely a result of quite a number of concessions, backed by the two big hammers that Serafall had at her disposal to wave around during any negotiations.
And the lingering presence of the Church was likely because they were established during the prime of Big G’s era, where no God or Pantheon challenged him as he ran roughshod through the entire supernatural world, doing as he pleased, turning any powerful being and stuffing them into fancy magical prisons for future generations of human to use as they pleased.
Even with him gone, the Church still had significant power, but why would they have this high a presence in the middle of a major city?
Not to mention, the biggest concentration of that Holy Power was in the center of the city, which was not a church.
Something was fishy here, and something in his mind told him to retreat, to get out of here before this could evolve into a bigger incident, but something else gave him pause. Hadn’t he done the same countless times before? Out of fear of being discovered.
And what had that led to? A great deal of power, sure, but with it, came an absolute hole in the rest of his life. He had nothing else to his name, and purely because of that one reason, he was tired of running.
If something happened, he could deal with it.
Fighting to prevent the end of the world meant nothing if he didn’t have a life worth living beforehand.