POV – Gorou Hyoudou
"C-calm down, Asia... I'm not going anywhere. Not for now." I said softly, trying to soothe the young girl.
My efforts took some time, but in the end, I managed to calm the teenager... far too kind for her own good.
Asia inhaled, as if seeking a reassuring scent from my clothes, then finally raised her head toward me.
Her eyes still bore the wet traces of her tears, which I wiped away gently, refusing to press her for answers.
"Si... for now? You're going to leave again..."
Her voice wavered, betraying the pain of what she had guessed behind my soothing gestures.
The implacable truth remained: sooner or later, I would leave this world again.
"I... I... sigh... it's not important, not now Asia."
I had deliberately hardened my tone to close this subject and bring the conversation back to the real urgency:
Rei's disappearance.
"I can't sense Rei on earth anymore. Do you have any idea... how he died?"
At these words, Asia pulled away from my arms and looked away.
Her expression filled with several contradictory emotions: fear, reluctance, regret... and above all, fierce determination.
An expression I already knew from the High School DxD anime.
The face of Asia Argento, as it appeared when she stood up to protect Issei Hyoudou against danger far beyond her abilities.
This idiot clearly wants to keep me from facing Rei's killers.
An endearing gesture, certainly... but this really isn't the time.
"Rei..." She bit her lips for a moment, then let out in a trembling voice:
"I... I saw his body... carried by a man with scarlet hair.
He... he was only supposed to watch over Issei... sniff"
Crack.
I don't know when it happened. But the moment the confirmation of Rei's death hit me... something broke irreparably inside me.
My mind emptied, unable to process this truth.
"Sir..." – a voice filled with respect.
"Master fell asleep in the workshop again... sigh..." – an exasperated voice, as I was carried to a resting place.
"Thank you, sir..." – a grateful voice, after retrieving his chainsaw sword from maintenance.
"Are Alpha and Issei of your blood? Can one be part of a family... without blood ties, sir? Sorry, I overstepped my bounds..." – the creature's face betrayed his desire to no longer be a simple tool, while fearing to disappoint me further.
"No!!!" – that familiar voice screamed after me, as the dimensional portal swallowed me against my will.
All these memories, which I once considered mundane, suddenly became precious again.
Better yet: they burst into my mind like an electric shock coursing through my entire being.
Except that, in this case, it was my mind itself that was invaded, overwhelmed by these fragments of memory.
"Pfff... hahaha... Is it really true? We only understand the value of something... after losing it?"
Ridiculous... yet tragic.
No wonder the one nicknamed the "Mad Lord" in the story Regressor's Tale of Cultivation spent centuries pursuing a loved one, regardless of the limits of space-time or fate itself.
But me... I can't compare myself to that man capable of defying concepts as absurd as causality and destiny to find a person.
I don't feel madness great enough to turn this world upside down because of Rei.
Yet... a deep regret, which I never would have thought possible, settled in my heart.
Regret toward Rei.
Because I wasn't a good master. No... worse yet, I wasn't the family he so desired.
"M... sir? Ouch!"
As I pushed my hair back to gather my thoughts, I gave Asia a small flick on the forehead.
The young girl immediately gave me a vexed and accusatory look... without realizing that she had, for a moment, forgotten the atmosphere of mourning.
Yes... I was indeed in mourning.
...
"M-sir... you can't go there... Hell is a dangerous place."
The underworld.
As a former nun, Asia Argento has both a precise and biased vision of this place.
The dimension known as the underworld is populated by the souls of sinners, but also by various entities and gods.
Why do I intend to go there, when I don't want to turn this world upside down for one person?
It's simple: I don't plan to commit genocide for one person, as the "Mad Lord" would have done.
I'm not emotionally wounded enough for my rationality to be seriously affected.
However, I believe in the law of retaliation mentioned in ancient biblical writings.
Yes... eye for eye, tooth for tooth.
I lost a devil descendant of the Bael clan, and I intend to take the life of a descendant or person linked to this clan as compensation.
"Don't worry, Asia, I never fight without having a chance of victory greater than 70%."
I took Asia's hand while scanning Japan's surface searching for Alpha, thanks to my Ki.
"As long as you're safe..."
After this gloomy reunion, Asia finally smiled at me.
I don't know why, but my heart started beating a little faster.
A sensation I attributed to forced abstinence from sex for five years in another world.
Could I have given in to Saiyan or New Men teenagers? Yes... but the idea of having sexual relations with my own creation instinctively repulsed me.
As for having fun with human women... I didn't want to entertain myself with a prostitute, as it reminded me too much of my past life.
And concerning the ambitious women of the Millennium organization? I didn't plan to expose my "little brother" to potentially dangerous women, too ambitious, like Violet.
At this rate... I risked defiling poor Asia.
I had to quickly find a way to evacuate the excess "hyoudou" seed between my legs... maybe two or three volunteers in the underworld could help me.
"Thank you for your concerns. But let's first go find the others."
After placing my fingers on my forehead, I teleported to a room I would have preferred never to see with my own eyes.
...
Return of the narrator.
"So? What were you saying again... oh yes, Bill Cipher tortures better!"
In front of a tube that Gorou used to store his biological samples, a woman in a white coat faced a head floating in an unknown substance.
Yet the head wasn't dead and had retained full consciousness.
Even more surprising, a strong will shone in his eyes despite the shocking spectacle his body had become, stretched out on the operating table beside him.
"You can always break or destroy my body, but I won't provide any information related to the journals or my dimension of origin!" Ford shouted in response to the provocation.
Alpha plunged her gaze into Ford's, before clicking her tongue in annoyance.
Without any warning, she struck the metal bucket beside her.
All of Ford's organs, including his genitals, spilled onto the cold floor of Alpha's private laboratory.
This vision, worthy of an R-18 horror video game, momentarily destabilized Ford, but he became impassive again.
The man had already survived too many absurdities in Bill Cipher's Dimension 0; seeing his own organs on the floor was therefore nothing truly shocking.
'This man is worthy of being another version of my father... but I'm a masterpiece, so... I can surpass him!' Alpha thought.
She turned away from Stanford and headed toward the "Project Mentem" nearby.
Since Stanford's brain was protected by an unknown alloy, threatening to destroy all knowledge in case of forced penetration, Alpha had decided to hack the scientist's mind thanks to a key aspect of her father's machine: mind encryption.
'If I can succeed in making him believe, unknowingly, that Ford's "will" desires to let me in...'
Project Mentem had already been used to brainwash certain people when Gorou was there.
The problem was that Ford's mental protections were too powerful. Alpha would need time.
That's also why she had separated her prisoner from his body, to avoid any escape attempt.
Thus, this torture wasn't just an attempt to obtain information through interrogation.
"I knew you were hiding something behind your helpful smile, but this... wait a minute... Stanford Pines!"
As she reached Project Mentem, a familiar voice resonated behind Alpha.
"F... father..."
"The... the other me is Asian?"