Ren Buné POV
1 week later
Kuoh Park
The summer air was humid, and the vending machine made a satisfying thunk as two cans dropped out.
I tossed one to Issei, who caught it with both hands and grinned.
"Thanks, man. You're a lifesaver."
"You're always sweaty. Are you training, or just staring at girls again?" I teased.
He coughed, nearly spilling his soda.
"I-Ir—I mean! No! I'm working on my endurance, okay?!"
I raised an eyebrow.
Then followed his gaze toward a pair of girls across the park, laughing.
Both older. Both wearing tank tops.
"You're focusing real hard on their—form," I said dryly.
"Breasts," he corrected, unashamed. "It's divine art, Ren."
I shook my head.
But that's when I felt it.
A pulse. Just faint. Fuzzy. But unmistakable. Sacred Gear energy.
It flickered around his left hand—then vanished.
He hadn't noticed, so I quietly activated Archive Vision, overlaying a scan of his aura into my eyes.
There it was again: a dormant gear signature. Jade. Coiled. Unawakened—but ancient.
"That… explains a lot."
"Huh?" he blinked. "What?"
"Nothing," I said, sipping my drink. "But someday, you're going to need to learn to control more than just your eyes."
He looked confused.
But I already saw it: The spark of a dragon flickering inside the goofball I once played in a park with. My Archive interface flickered once over my eye. The system pulled in the latent signature from Issei's left arm, gently capturing its dormant waveform.
"Sacred Gear: Classified – Twice Critical Variant.""Signature anomaly: embedded draconic soul – Identity Match: Zirconis, the Jade Dragon."
I froze.
"A dragon soul? Inside him?"
Zirconis… the playful, perverted Emerald-scaled dragon from an entirely different world. What the hell was he doing bound to a Sacred Gear in this timeline?
"So that's what you are," I murmured. "Not a fighter. A vessel."
I let Archive finish the scan, encoding Zirconis's frequency into a private subfile—sealed, locked, view-only unless I gave manual override.
"Store Gear ID: [Issei Hyoudou – Jade Thread] – Status: Dormant."
I looked back at Issei, who was currently zoning out while sipping lemon soda and staring at a girl walking her dog.
He had no idea the creature sleeping in his arm could shatter buildings with a breath or charm every woman within sight if he spoke in draconic.
I smiled faintly.
"Zirconis picked the perfect host, I guess."
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2 days later
The stone beneath the circle at the training grounds were blackened with old fire, but today I wasn't here for flame.
Today, I wanted to test something deeper.
"If Dragon Slayer Magic is about embodying elemental truth through draconic instinct," I murmured, "then fire was only the first layer."
I extended my right hand. My demonic core pulsed in sync with my aura. I had long since stopped trying to mimic Fairy Tail dragons. Now, I was building my own system—element by element.
Water Dragon Slayer Magic – Ripple of Breath
I conjured demonic energy in my lungs and shaped it into flow: smooth, dense, cold, and crashing.
"Water Dragon's Roar."
The breath attack surged out—low and wide, cutting through the air like a tidal whip. Condensation laced my tongue, but my throat didn't freeze. My body was adapting.
"Internal cold balance achieved. Resistance confirmed. Breath ratio—stable."
Ice Dragon Slayer Magic – Fractured Instinct
I shaped stillness into my core—not calm, but a cold so sharp it felt like silence itself.
When I exhaled, frozen crystals burst from my mouth in jagged spirals.
[Ice Dragon's Fang.]
The room chilled instantly, frost crawling across the barrier wall. My skin flaked slightly, but healed just as fast.
"Cannot consume my own ice. External absorption test pending."
Earth Dragon Slayer Magic – Core of Pressure
This time, I sank my aura downward.
I stomped once.
A pillar of stone erupted from the ground, scaled with draconic patterning. It wasn't elegant—but it was force incarnate.
[Earth Dragon's Talon.]
I flexed my hand. My skin darkened briefly to obsidian scale before returning.
Metal Dragon Slayer Magic – Internal Armor Variant
I infused my demonic energy with rigidity, shaping it into compressed veins of spiritual ore.
My forearms shimmered silver. I slammed them together—sparks flew, not from impact, but from the aura clash.
"Metal Dragon's Pulse. Adaptation complete."
I stepped back. Body steaming, but soul still hungry.
"The first four. Done. But not inherited. Forged."
My Archive magic recorded the elemental reaction data, syncing it with runic templates.
Now I didn't just wield fire.
I was building an entire draconic codebase—an elemental array that no single world had ever produced.
"Soon… I won't need dragons to teach me."
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1 week later
I was walking across the upper terrace with my father when I noticed something.
The sky blinked. Just once.
And then I felt it: a ripple in reality. A scent of ancient mana that didn't belong to our world. Neither Underworld nor Heaven. Something else.
"You feel it too," Lucerius said.
I nodded. "Something's reaching."
"You're going to follow it."
Not a question. A truth.
After that, over the next few days, my Archive magic began pinging strange magical fluctuations—a layered convergence of foreign frequencies, like dimensional drift. And I knew: Tortus was calling.
"It's not a summoning. It's a pull."
In the garden that night, I left my parents a message—recorded into Archive light and stored above the prayer stone:
"By the time I return to the Underworld, I will have carved something new into my soul.Resolve.This isn't just about growing strong.It's about preparing.I'm not building a peerage of pawns.I'm gathering kindred spirits.Not followers.Allies.And when the time comes… I will rise not as a devil king… but as a dragon reborn."
The next day my mother watched silently as I inscribed a soul anchor into the Forge floor. My escape clause. Just in case.
Then I sent a coded Archive pulse through the magic leyline, tethered to one word: "Return."
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Third-Person Interlude: The Moment the Sky Tore
The scent of scorched iron lingered in the garden.
Astra Buné stood beneath the lantern-lit arch, arms folded, staring into the sky where a sliver of unnatural light shimmered like a blade pressed against the fabric of night.
She didn't blink because she knew this frequency.
"It's not a summoning spell," she muttered. "It's world-crafting… but one formed by desperation."
Beside her, Lucerius closed his eyes, fingertips twitching as if he could feel the rippling leyline fractures Ren had traced into the earth two days earlier.
"He's not being called," Lucerius said.
"He's being chosen," Astra finished.
The magical pressure peaked. The wind shifted.
And Ren Buné—heir of a lost House, wielder of dragons—was gone. Not exploded. Not vaporized. Simply… displaced.
A ripple in space, gone before it could echo.
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Ren's POV
Light swallowed me.
Not the white blaze of a teleport. No—this was gold, raw, ancient.
The pull twisted my body and aura, stretching me thin across something not-magic but older. I gritted my teeth and layered Ten across my skin to hold myself together.
Then—impact.
I landed hard on cool marble, boots scraping against ceremonial stone.
Gasps echoed.
I opened my eyes—and immediately recognized the summoning circle, the high-vaulted chamber, and the ring of startled clergy and students.
The Kingdom of Heiligh, Tortus.
And across the summoning array—Hajime Nagumo, eyes wide and stunned, stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Shizuku, Kaori, Suzu, and others.
"Who—who's that?!"
"He didn't come from our world!"
"A second one?! Is this a divine error?!"
I slowly stood, flexing my fingers. The Boosted Gear shimmered faintly, scales retracting under my skin.
I locked eyes with Aiko-sensei, who stepped forward out of instinct more than understanding.
"State your name, and your allegiance!" one of the priests barked, fear and confusion lacing his tone.
I gave a soft smile.
"Ren Buné," I said. "Devil-born. Dragon-souled. Not summoned—but sent and I'd like to know who dragged me into a war that doesn't belong to me."
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Later that evening, after the Kingdom's priests finished floundering through explanations and endless divine justification, they started to hand out status plates to everyone.
Most of the summoned students had already recieved their status plate.
Hajime looked at his plate lik he was looking like a ghost—his "Synergist" job scrawled across his screen like a cosmic joke. Shizuku stood tall despite the weight behind her eyes. Suzu, ever bright, was still quietly shaken.
Then it was my turn.
I activated my status plate and saw my status:
Name: Ren Buné
Age: 14
Race: Hybrid (Devil/Human)
Job: Magic Researcher
Level: 1
Stats:
Strength: 680
Vitality: 630
Defense: 610
Agility: 700
Magic: 820
Magic Defense: 780
Skills: [Pure Soul], [Archive Magic], [Jutsu Shiki], [Fire Dragon Slayer Magic], Water Dragon Slayer Magic], [Ice Dragon Slayer Magic], [Earth Dragon Slayer Magic], [Metal Dragon Slayer Magic], [Demonic Core Stabilization], [Dragonblood Resonance]
The silence that followed was heavy.
"Magic Researcher?" someone murmured.
"With those stats?"
"He's stronger than the knight captain at level one…"
The priests shifted uncomfortably. Even the king leaned in from his gilded throne.
I pulled my hand back and didn't speak.
Let them wonder.
I then activated a silent Archive stream—just a low-band scan coded to track aura density, posture, and subconscious magic channels. It skimmed over the students as I watched from a corner.
Hajime: Aura scattered. Emotional storm. Mentally vulnerable. Potential: High adaptability.
Shizuku: Strong Ten. Calm under pressure. Blade posture optimal. Potential: Sword-art Nen fusion possible.
Kaori: Compassionate. Magic core unbalanced. Heart-first combatant.
Suzu: High empathy. Glyph logic unstable. Would benefit from structured Shiki training.
Eri Nakamura: Low Ren control. Emotional layers… blocked. Concealment pattern detected.
Daisuke Hiyama: Aura pattern shifting under stress. Emotional instability. Fractured envy. Potential for sabotage: High.
I stored the data silently into Archive.
"File entry complete: Tortus Hero Group – Highschool Cohort. and Tag Eri and Daisuke – Monitor Closely."
I turned to leave when I caught Aiko-sensei watching me—not with suspicion, but with concern. She was already carrying the burden of leadership, even if she hadn't accepted it yet.
"You'll need help keeping them safe," I thought, "even from each other."
As the chamber doors opened to let us file out, I took one last look at the group—some wide-eyed, some exhausted, all unprepared.
That night, I stood under the moonlight near the castle garden, watching constellations I didn't know.
While I was wondering why my nen abilities didn't show up on my status, Shizuku approached quietly, her steps soft on the stone path.
She studied me.
"Your not from our world are you?"
"No."
"You're not lost either are you?"
I nodded.
"I'm exactly where I need to be."
I didn't come to play hero but I'd already chosen the kind of world I'd protect.
And this one?
It had too many dragons left to meet.