Blah, blah, blah.
That was all Kenji was hearing as he tuned everyone out on the table. They had asked him to stay. Fine. He stayed. But nothing said he had to waste his time listening to them drone on about treaties and posturing.
His eyes were currently scrolling through the Multiversal System Store with the same expression one would have while half-asleep in a boring lecture. He hadn't eaten dinner, and the lack of decent nourishment was starting to grate on his nerves.
The store had everything in the omniverse, literally everything from singularity weapons capable of erasing star systems to bespoke reality anchors and simple, mundane stuff like games and food.
You could even buy omnipotence if you had the right price, but that was a hell of a price, a price Kenji definitely did not have at the moment. Constant jumping of worlds had helped him with points and gold, so he could buy quite a few things.
Right now, he was scrolling for food.
He filtered the results. Category: Food. Sub-category: Food Wars.
He had always been curious about what Soma's cooking tasted like. Since it was "just food," normal food no matter how delicious, it wasn't expensive. It was merely a fraction of the cost of a basic healing potion.
He immediately bought a gourmet burger and a premium soda.
The leaders of the factions and even the younger devils were surprised when the man sitting with the leaders seemed to summon food and just started eating right in front of them, right in the middle of a crucial diplomatic discussion.
It was clear from the moment the man sat down that he hadn't been paying attention, but this blatant disregard for decorum was just something else entirely. The man really had the guts to be eating right there in front of some of the most powerful beings in the world.
Rias sniffed the air, her eyes widening slightly. It smelled delicious. The patty must have been perfectly seared and seasoned; just the savory scent of beef fat mixing with caramelized onions and a faint, sharp tang of a secret sauce was almost physically painful. She could feel her stomach rumble.
She could see she wasn't the only one suffering. Several devils and even the fallen repeatedly glanced at the man's meal with thinly veiled longing. Baraqiel's gaze lingered perhaps a second too long on the sesame seed bun.
But no one dared ask. The sheer audacity of Kenji's action created a silent, unapproachable wall around him, and they watched as the man finished his food, took a noisy sip of soda, and went back to just staring off into empty space, eyes unfocused.
Azazel looked like he desperately wanted to comment, probably something crude or provocative about the food, but every time he opened his mouth, either Michael's steely, divine glare or Sirzechs's polite but firm redirection would change the subject and steer it back on course.
Azazel narrowed his eyes subtly at Kenji as Sirzechs was speaking. Sure, Kenji may look like he was relaxed, slouched, and disinterested, but his mind was fully active at the moment, trying to figure out one thing. Kenji.
He knew the human was special when they met, but this was an aberration. Azazel had run the numbers countless times. When he had first sensed the magic barrier around the man's home, he'd initially pegged it as belonging to a high-class practitioner, he was surprised to find a low-ultimate class being.
Humans on that level are usually known, noted, and watched. But just a few weeks after that initial encounter, Kenji was already registering as a peak ultimate-class being. That kind of meteoric, exponential growth, a vertical leap across levels, was unheard of.
That was what Azazel was obsessively trying to figure out. How did he do it? Was it a highly potent, perhaps unique, Sacred Gear that they had never heard of? Something in his bloodline? No, he had investigated his family already.
Kenji was the only child of his parents, and they had died back when he was thirteen, so he grew up with his uncle, who threw him out when he turned eighteen. Azazel had traced the family line a few generations back, and there was nothing special about them. They were painfully mundane.
So, it had to be the Sacred Gear, or some hidden, powerful tool. He had been trying to instigate the man into revealing something, a flicker of power, an accidental activation, but Kenji was playing dead harder than a possum in front of a wolf.
Kenji, meanwhile, wasn't thinking about the nosy Fallen Angel. He was looking at his quest menu and communicating with his friends. He checked the mission, he had two days left before the jump.
He sighed internally, 'Just imagine, after facing whatever terror the mission was, I have to come back and face an equal or worse situation, the in-laws.' He rubbed his head and held back a groan. 'An in-laws meeting level difficulty crisis. Right.'
He shook his head. 'No, Kenji, let's focus on the lesser of evils at the moment.... the quest.'
So, the mission was DC. He knew that, but what version of DC? That was the question right now. He didn't recognize the number designation for the Earth, but that doesn't even matter. It could be from anything, like the Young Justice universe, the Silver Age timeline, or a Crisis event. He didn't want to be dropped in the Injustice world; it was bleak. Superman going bad, killing a lot of heroes, and Wonder Woman, the devil on his shoulder, whispers to the Kryptonian. The Amazon was a tyrannical dick in that world.
Well, it didn't matter what universe it was, just that he was not strong enough. DC power scaling could go from street-level thugs struggling with a knife, to a cosmic entity like the Anti-Monitor, to the Joker EATING China. He shivered. That terrifying absurdity, a gag character like the Joker being planet-level, was precisely why he needed to be stronger. Never know what you'd run into.
Sure, he was Continent-level if he unleashed all his power, that was the power of an Ultimate Class, a Tier 6, but even among them, he was sure he was one of the few to be at that level of destruction, since his way of leveling was different from normal people. Not all their stats are on the same tier as themselves, which gave him an immense advantage against anyone on the same level as him in this world. But in DC? He was cannon fodder for the upper tiers.
"....Hashi," someone said, but he didn't even hear it; he was just thinking of the quest. "KAHASHI... TAKAHASHI... MR. TAKAHASHI!"
The increase in volume finally snapped him out of his internal spiraling.
"Yes?" he said calmly as he turned and faced Gabriel, who had been calling him.
"We were wondering if you had anything to say regarding the terms of the treaty," she said, tilting her head, her beautiful face etched with concern, looking like a lost puppy.
"No thanks. I'm good," he said, waving her off dismissively. She sighed softly and turned back to the table that had been looking at him with varying degrees of indignation.
"Well, anyway, as I was saying, we all want peace, so let's go for peace, but it would not do to ignore the opinions of the Dragon Emperors," Azazel said, seamlessly returning to his role as moderator.
"What I want is to fight someone who is as strong as me," Vali said, utterly uninterested in the discussion, leaning back with his arms crossed.
"Yes, well, you can still find a lot of powerful opponents without having a war," Azazel countered, trying to inject some logic into the White Dragon Emperor.
"I suppose," Vali said lazily, but his eyes were now fixed entirely on Kenji, the shift of his predatory focus palpable, and nobody seemed to miss the silent challenge.
"And you, Red Dragon Emperor. Thoughts?" Azazel asked, dragging Issei into the spotlight.
He started to stammer and twist words out. "Well, ah, wow, I'm not really good at coming up with stuff on the spot," Issei managed.
"I see," Azazel said, steepling his fingers together as he leaned on the table. "Well, why don't I make it a little easier for you, Issei? If we started fighting again, you'd never be able to have your way with Rias Gremory," he added, hitting the boy's core motivation.
"Ah!?" Rias let out a high-pitched squeak of surprise and indignation.
"But," he gave Issei a knowing smirk, "if we make peace instead, prosperity and propagation become far more important," he said to Issei, making the implication obvious.
"You mean like," Issei gulped, his face turning bright red as he leaned forward, "baby making?" he said out loud.
"That's right," Azazel confirmed, his eyes twinkling. "Imagine those training sessions, and you could practice every single day."
"Hey! I'm right here!" Rias complained, covering her face. Most of the leaders, including Michael and Sirzechs, sighed out, resigned to the man's antics.
"Peace means a daily dose of Rias loving. War means no sexy time," he summarized for the boy.
"PEACE! I choose PEACE!" Issei shouted out immediately, his conviction absolute.
Kenji just sighed, watching the kid; he truly was hopeless.
"And what of you, Mr. Takahashi? What do you want?" Azazel asked, turning his attention back to Kenji.
"Do I look like I'm a part of your faction?" Kenji answered coldly, still slumped in his chair.
Azazel laughed shamelessly. "Well, we still need to know if you don't want peace, it could be a problem for us," Azazel said, layering thick sarcasm into his tone, as if Kenji's opinion really mattered and that he wasn't actually here because they had decided to look for his trouble.
Before anything more could be said—
Kenji froze.
He sat up straight, instantly shedding his bored demeanor, his golden eyes blazing with sudden, profound seriousness.
"Incoming," he said quietly, the word a low, resonant baritone.
Everyone, from the leaders to the Dragon Emperors, tensed their muscles coiling, and they waited. For like ten seconds, an eternity in that charged atmosphere, nothing happened. The air was still.
"Are you su..." before Baraqiel could finish, attempting to dismiss it—
A pressure descended.
All the leader-class beings, the Dragon Emperors, and even the high-classes felt it simultaneously. It was like a force, a wave, a crushing wave that swept through. Then, in an instant, Time stood still. The entire room seemed to dim, and the sound of the world was muted to a high-pitched whine.
Kenji let out a small, satisfied hum. He had been starting to think they wouldn't come, that they had decided to chicken out, but here they were, like the fools they were.
He sat, rolling his shoulders, the sound of his joints clicking audible in the strained silence as he watched everything going on.
"I was starting to think they wouldn't show."
He smiled faintly.
"The buffet has arrived."
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