By the way, about sacred gears, even when I was watching the anime it seemed strange that if fallen angels have the technology to extract sacred gears, why aren't they all decked out with them from head to toe?
And why haven't demons invented something similar to power themselves up?
It turned out simple—implanting a sacred gear seriously shortens your lifespan, VERY seriously.
In the anime they even mentioned something like that when Issei tried to take Vali's gear's power.
And he didn't grab the whole gear then, just part of the power!
If he'd actually implanted a second gear, he might not have made it to the end of canon!
As for Raynare, either she didn't know that detail, or she was so crazy and obsessed with her boss that she was willing to sacrifice most of her life to be useful to him for about a hundred years before croaking from old age, or maybe Asia's gear had nuances and its action negated the harm from its transplantation?
History, or more precisely the anime, is silent on this, or I skipped it!
Getting back to the fallen angel's experiment, I don't know exactly what he did, only the general idea when he explained the essence to his accomplices.
And once I ended up in this new body, I understood a lot on an intuitive level or inherited it from the "donors".
And yes, donors... the ritual that the fallen angel devised was brilliant in its own way, but VERY specific, because the one being absorbed couldn't resist, hell, they had to help themselves get eaten and digested!
Otherwise either the efficiency would be near zero, or the one being powered up would die!
Ren's mother loved her son VERY much and gave ALL of herself without remainder, which specifically powered up Ren so much that at such a young age he became a four-winged demon!
But Ren also loved his mother VERY much, and realizing what had happened really destroyed him, he just didn't want to live anymore, he didn't want to exist!
And at such a "wonderful" and very convenient moment, I showed up—a soul yanked from beyond the world's edge!
That's where the fallen angel pulled the first available soul so as not to disrupt the heavenly system's operation in their native world.
He wasn't worried about those whose soul was stolen showing up, since a sentinel mega dragon guards their world's borders in nobody-gets-in, nobody-gets-out mode!
Generally, according to the plan, my soul was supposed to serve as a kind of implant-adapter between the demon's soul and the sacred gear!
My personality was supposed to be erased or absorbed by Ren.
But Ren didn't want to live, hell, he didn't want to exist!
With his grown demonic power, he bent the ritual and made our personalities switch places!
Basically, not only was I not given a choice of world or body, nobody asked me if I wanted to become someone transported, occupy the body of a little demon kid and live in this messed-up world.
Though okay, at that moment I felt a desire to live... though it was more likely Ren's mother's desire for him to live.
No, I didn't blow up and tear all the fallen angels apart like a rag doll, sure I flared up with demonic power, yeah, but that's where my achievements ended, and it didn't hurt the fallen angels either.
The sacred gear?
Oh yeah, there is one, but here's the thing—this is an experiment whose result was planned to be disposed of, and even if it wasn't planned, nobody in an experiment would use a Longinus if this bunch of renegades even had one, so they used something expendable.
And what they didn't mind losing was—Shadow Storage!
This sacred gear created a space in the user's shadow of a whole cubic meter where you could store ANYTHING your heart desired!
What saved me was that I started improvising and bluffing, claiming they were idiots who just ruined Azazel's plan to plant a spy in one of the pillars!
Like my body was being controlled through an artificial sacred gear!
And if they don't come up with an idea right now for HOW to arrange my miraculous rescue, they'll have to answer to the Grigori leader!
I was VERY lucky that the fallen angel knew a lot about Azazel and his affairs, so he'd at least heard that he was working on developing artificial sacred gears, and he knew about Azazel's pet Divine Dividing user, so they bought my bluff!
No, the fallen angels weren't going to arrange my miraculous rescue themselves, but while they were arguing, House Gremory's servants arrived, since Zeoticus got worried that his mistress and son hadn't arrived on time and sent servants to check what was up.
They killed all the fallen angels and arranged my miraculous rescue.
After that day, I had time to think about and digest EVERYTHING that happened to me and even think about how to live going forward.
They left me alone for quite a long time, since demons here are more humane, and it was normal for them that a child who witnessed his mother's murder and was himself almost killed in some ritual would be in a state of shock.
Though a healer checked me out and said I was so healthy a herd of bulls would die of envy, and mentioned that I was a four-winged demon with considerable power, which clearly pleased Zeoticus.
They didn't find out about the sacred gear, apparently special "tests" or magic circles are needed to detect its presence in a patient.
They didn't use them on me simply because it didn't occur to anyone to check a pureblood demon for a sacred gear.
Prescribing such a "test" would be like giving a pregnancy test to a man and expecting a positive result.
And I kept my mouth shut since having a sacred gear as a pureblood demon would be hard to explain.
No, I could've blamed it on the ritual the fallen angel performed, but then demons would start breaking it down into components and researching it, trying to reproduce it.
And quite possibly not just the ritual, but also the successful specimen—meaning me!
But even if not, they could dig into the ritual's essence and realize that I'm not Ren, but a creation from another world that captured Ren's soul... though he dumped everything on me himself and chose to dissolve completely—weakling and coward... and possessing his memories, skills, and powers.
Though not just his, but also his mother's, though she wasn't outstanding, a low-class demon with no prospects.
But she had some knowledge about the underworld and the pillars, and it was her knowledge that helped me realize what deep shit I was in, plus learn some nuances of demon society.
And about some amount of "dirty laundry" whose airing would be fatal for the one doing it.
But just knowing that this kind of stuff goes on was VERY useful!