Damien didn't exactly remember the moment he lost consciousness or how he ended up in this situation.
Was it due to a lack of attention after rescuing the kidnapped war journalists? Or perhaps he had been betrayed by the little girl the terrorist had kidnapped and forced into marriage?
Damien doesn't know.
Not only that, but he judged that it wasn't the most urgent thing right now.
He was no longer in Afghanistan, but in an unfamiliar Japanese-style house.
What? He had never been to Japan? Damien had read several mangas, so he formed a general hypothesis about his situation.
The problem lay in its absurdity.
"Is this really an isekai scenario like in light novels?" he thought, before glancing at his surroundings.
The ceiling was ordinary, but unfamiliar.
The room's walls were decorated with strangely familiar family photos, yet he couldn't pinpoint their origin.
The situation resembled an online novel too much, even if he didn't want to admit it.
After all, he had literally gone from a battlefield to the calm of a room.
When Damien tried to remember where he had seen the people in the photos before, he felt like he was grasping something important.
However, that feeling slipped away like water through his fingers.
He could sense it, hold it for a moment, but he couldn't retain it fully or understand it completely.
Yet, he persisted in trying.
Why continue this futile action? Because his instinct, honed on the battlefield, told him to.
Finally, he felt a dam break further in his mind, releasing enough water to overwhelm him.
'What the hell is happening to me?'
Damien's brain was working at full throttle… No, the word "speed" would be an understatement.
He felt like he had been using an 80s computer his whole life, then suddenly switching to a gaming PC.
Thanks to that, he was able to summarize the situation so quickly after finally accessing the elements that had previously escaped him.
"Hmm… no, Issei is here~"
As he was about to get out of bed, a murmuring voice was heard.
Even though he still had a migraine, Damien looked toward the source of that nostalgic voice.
"Holy shit…" A curse naturally escaped him after spotting a person from his new memories.
It was Miki Hyoudou.
(Image)
And yes, this woman was his wife, according to the new information he had just acquired.
"N-no… she's almost twice my age," he thought to himself, his face twisting again.
"I… I have to… Grrr…" During his thoughts, he let out a groan of pain due to other influxes of information.
If the water dam symbolizing the memory of his new body had partially broken, it hadn't let all the water symbolizing that memory escape.
That's why the complete destruction of this dam wasn't a good thing for Damien.
Unfortunately, the cracks created by the former soldier threatened it with total destruction.
If he received too much information from the memory of his new body, Damien risked drowning in it and being absorbed by this new identity.
At that moment, Damien's identity was facing an existential crisis.
Would Gorou Hyoudou overwhelm him? Or would he win? In the end, the former soldier managed to assimilate all of Gorou's memory without losing his identity.
'S-sorry… I don't want to die,' he thought, a selfish thought that the body thief had.
However, he didn't regret his choice.
If there's one thing you learn quickly in a war zone, it's to put your survival first.
Thus, he regretted having killed a civilian, but Damien judged it necessary given the situation.
Finally, Damien… no, Gorou Hyoudou understood the general situation.
He hadn't simply died because of the kidnapped child, but had transmigrated into High School DxD.
He had become Gorou Hyoudou.
(Image)
"So… she really is Miki Hyoudou, the mother of the infamous Issei Hyoudou," he muttered, after regaining his composure.
'Shit, I'm screwed!!!' he mentally screamed, but showed nothing outwardly.
It was currently nighttime, and Gorou didn't want to wake his new family at this critical moment.
Unlike the carefree Gorou Hyoudou, Damien quickly understood the delicacy of his situation.
In the DxD universe, he had reincarnated into the body of a forty-something office worker.
Yet, this universe was teeming with supernatural entities. Of course, they weren't all friendly toward humans.
Damien would even say they were condescending toward the human race.
Proof of that was the general ignorance of humans toward the supernatural, while the latter decided their fate in the shadows.
'The worst part is that Gorou has no Sacred Gear and I've aged like twenty years,' he thought, as bitterness slowly took hold of him.
No one would like suddenly finding themselves in their forties when they were twenty just a moment ago.
"Hmm… what's this thing? An icon?" Gorou wondered, thinking about the next steps.
He briefly considered stealing a Sacred Gear using Raynare's ritual. Unfortunately, the idea was too risky.
It was when he decided to go all in that he noticed an anomaly in his vision.
A holographic icon was floating in the corner of his field of view.
"I probably wouldn't have noticed it today if I hadn't been attentive enough," he thought, before trying to activate it.
[Ding!]
[System installation in progress...]
[Installation successful!]
[Congratulations, you have received a template system]
[Launching search for a compatible template...]
[You have obtained the template: Kai]
[Template origin: Kung Fu Panda]
[Your synchronization level with the Kai template is abnormally high!]
[You start the template at 10%.]
Immediately, several memories of a humanoid ox rampaging across various battlefields appeared to him.
Damien felt like he had become Kai, at least in part.
"Kai… the antagonist from the movie Kung Fu Panda 3," Gorou muttered, as he could feel his life energy circulating in his body.
Kai
(Image)
Damien remembered him because he had been the last major antagonist in the Kung Fu Panda universe.
Once, Kai was a famous general from China, known by several nicknames, including "maker of widows."
He was an unparalleled warrior and the leader of a renowned army, which he commanded alongside his brother-in-arms, Oogway.
They once formed a formidable duo and were the best of friends, but tragedy struck Oogway.
"And that's also when the two brothers took different paths," Gorou thought, after stopping the circulation of his life energy according to Kai's knowledge.
A greenish glow shone in his eyes.