Asia, who had been sleeping soundly, was jolted awake. It wasn't a nightmare that roused her, but a series of distinct, lewd sounds—sharp, rhythmic spanks and muffled, passionate gasps that echoed from somewhere else in the bedroom suite, piercing through her deep slumber.
Her mind was still hazy with sleep, her eyes unfocused as she blinked slowly, trying to make sense of her surroundings.
The first thing she saw was a man with blonde hair, sitting casually in a plush chair positioned directly in front of her bed. He was dressed in a sharp, crimson suit.
Beside him stood a blonde-haired girl, whose face was flushed a deep, telling pink.
The girl's eyes were watery and glazed, her breathing still slightly uneven.
Asia, still groggy and completely unaware of what had just transpired between them, focused on the man with a surge of pure, heartfelt gratitude.
"Thank you, Sir…" she began, her voice soft and sincere. "Thank you for your help back then. If not for you…"
Her memory was a blur of terror, but the core image was clear: this was the man who had appeared in that nightmarish church.
He was the one who had pulled her from the cross, saved her from the Fallen Angels and that mad priest, Freed.
At the time, she had been so desperately happy to find new "friends" who would accept her despite her status as a Heretic Nun.
The fallen angels and the excommunicated priest had told her she was a gift, that she would be presented to their God.
She, in her naive faith, had been willing—if her life could be traded for the future happiness of others, even her enemies, she would have blessed them and accepted her fate.
But then she had overheard their true plans.
They didn't want to present her; they wanted to extract her Sacred Gear, to tear it from her soul. And even that she might have accepted as a necessary sacrifice.
But their casual, laughing conversation about what they would do to her corpse afterward… that had sparked something unfamiliar in her heart: a cold, despairing anger.
Being excommunicated was one thing; she had blamed herself, believing she wasn't good enough.
But this desire to defile and desecrate the empty vessel of a life they had taken… it felt like a violation of something sacred, a line that should never be crossed.
And then he had come.
Her hero.
Riser, being thanked so earnestly, looked at her with a mixture of amusement and stark disbelief. "Are you even aware of who I am, nun?"
"You are my hero, Sir," Asia repeated, her smile utterly sincere, devoid of any guile or fear.
Beside him, Ravel couldn't hold back a laugh, the sound bright and tinged with irony.
A Devil, hailed as a hero by a nun of the Church.
The world truly is full of wonders.
"You are a good one, nun. I like you already," Ravel said, her smile widening with genuine relish. "My brother here has gifted you to me. You are to become a future member of my peerage. Are you willing?"
Asia looked back and forth between them, her large, innocent eyes clouded with complete confusion. "What… what is a 'peerage member'?"
Riser answered her nonchalantly, not bothering to sugarcoat the truth. "It's the method by which a Devil converts a human into one of us, and into our pawn. I won't hypocritically tell you that being converted is some honorable ascension. It is, in essence, becoming our servant. Your only path to true freedom is to become powerful enough, to gain enough merit, that you can eventually be independent—to build your own peerage and become a high-ranking Devil in your own right."
His bluntness was a stark contrast to the Gremory narrative.
Rias always spoke of her peerage as "family," carefully omitting the underlying reality of ownership and subjugation.
But Riser laid it bare
If the Gremorys truly treated their peerage as family, he reasoned, why did they so often leave their members' deep-seated traumas unaddressed?
Why, for instance, did they allow Koneko (Shirone) to fester in her hatred and misunderstanding toward her sister, rather than genuinely helping to resolve the conflict and making the girl more isolated and dependent on the Gremory household?
The hypocrisy was glaring.
Wouldn't true family seek healing, not dependency?
Riser was under no illusion that he was a "good person."
But he prided himself on this: he would not deceive with sweet promises or false pretenses.
The deal was what it was.
"So… you are a Devil, Sir?" Asia asked, her voice small but surprisingly unshaken by the talk of servitude.
Instead, her mind, ever compassionate, drifted to a past encounter. "I remember… in the past, I healed one of your kind. How is he now? Is he fine?"
"Oh, I remember that incident…" Ravel Phenex blinked, then offered the unvarnished truth. "For… solid reasons, the Satan Sirzechs has forcibly relinquished Diodora Astaroth's claim over the Astaroth House. He seems to be the one you're looking for."
She looked Asia over with a mix of pity and pragmatic concern. "Well, girl, it seems I shouldn't let you out unsupervised or allow you to mingle with shady people. You are dangerously easy to deceive."
"Why?" Asia wondered aloud, her brow furrowed in confusion.
Why would the Devil she saved be cast out, just as she had been?
Riser rolled his eyes, a gesture of pure disdain. "His name is Diodora Astaroth. Probably, Sirzechs learned about this piece of filth from Prophet and decided to clean house. He likely wanted him dead, but had to give some face to Ajuka Beelzebub. So his punishment for defiling nuns and deceiving them into his peerage wasn't execution. It was merely exile."
"Yeah, that's the story," Ravel added, nodding. "He had a particularly terrible and wasteful hobby: deceiving pure nuns into depravity. He even bribed members of the Church to aid him and maintained a network of spies."
She gave Asia a meaningful look. "It's possible you were excommunicated because some of those very people were on his payroll. If not… well, I truly wonder why the Church would be stupid enough to throw away a valuable asset like you."
The picture they painted was a cynical one, where Asia's kindness had been exploited by the devil, and her subsequent exile was likely just collateral damage in a larger, dirtier game.
It was a harsh lesson, delivered without the comforting lies she was used to.
Such blatant truth wasn't exactly the best strategy for peerage recruitment, especially if Riser had wanted to deceive Asia into servitude and make her eternally grateful.
After all, he was also a devil. Ravel was a devil. They were offering Asia the chance to become a devil. Telling the raw, unvarnished truth about how she'd likely been deliberately deceived and manipulated by Diodora—a devil who had dragged her through the mud for his own perverse ends—was only going to solidify a terrible first impression of their entire race.
Contrary to his expectations, Asia's response wasn't fear or hatred. She looked up at him, her expression firming with a resolve that seemed too heavy for her small frame.
"Since you saved me," she said, her voice quiet but clear, "I will repay the favor, Sir. I will not let you bear the burden of upsetting your sister because of my refusal."
Riser replied with deliberate nonchalance, trying to downplay the gravity of the offer. "No need to repay anything. I was just lending a hand. Trading one help for an eternity of servitude… don't you think that's a bad deal, girl?"
"Well, my brother is right," Ravel interjected, unable to stay silent.
She couldn't stand watching this painfully gullible nun walk into a binding contract out of sheer, misguided gratitude. "You can think about it more. I can ask my brother for a different favor later."
Her tone was uncharacteristically gentle, an attempt to give Asia an honorable way out.
At their reluctance, Asia's composure cracked.
She lowered her head, her eyes welling up with tears that shimmered in the dim light.
Her voice trembled, small and wounded. "Even… even you don't want me, Sir?"
Riser let out a quiet, exasperated sigh. The girl before him wasn't just naive; she seemed burdened by a profound vulnerability, a kind of emotional fragility that bordered on a disability.
A wave of unexpected pity washed over him.
He didn't explain the decision to Asia. He didn't offer platitudes or false promises.
He simply reached out and patted Ravel's head.
She leaned into the touch, resting her head against his shoulder for a moment, understanding flowing silently between them.
"I know, brother," she murmured back.
No more words were needed. They both knew what had to be done. This nun was special. She possessed a Sacred Gear that made her a target for every major faction in the supernatural world.
More than that, she clearly didn't have the mental fortitude or street smarts to navigate the viper's nest awaiting her.
Leaving her alone wasn't an option; it was a death sentence.
She would be deceived, kidnapped, or worse before the week was out.
So, they made a decision. They would recruit her. She would become one of Ravel's peerage members, bound by her Evil Pieces.
...
"You speak the truth, Venelana. Sirzechs is unfit to rule the Underworld." Great Baal's voice was heavy, his expression grim as he stared at the damning results of the investigation he had ordered.
What he had initially thought was merely a petty struggle between Sirzechs and the young Phenex had, upon deeper digging, revealed a far more sinister and infuriating reality.
Sirzechs was not acting of his own will. He had become a puppet, his strings pulled by outsiders.
He was no longer the passionate young devil who had risen to power, nor was he a true successor born from Lucifer's original creation.
He was a compromised vessel for external influence.
"He obeys their instructions completely," Zekram continued, the words dripping with cold fury. "The two Sacred Gears, treasures that by all rights should have been secured and utilized by our own people, have vanished without a trace. My spies confirm it—Sirzechs himself was never seen using them. No one in the Gremory or Lucifer households has laid eyes on them since he seized them from those humans in Kuoh Town."
The conclusion was inescapable and galling.
"There is only one possibility: Sirzechs offered those Sacred Gears as a gift to these outsiders. For free." Great Baal's distaste was palpable. "And his brazen attack on the young Phenex was not some personal grudge; it was executed according to an outsider's will. That is not the only transgression. He has been secretly stealing the Naberius Clan's 'Super Devil' serum formula, funneling all their findings and results directly to this… so-called Prophet."
Venelana, her own face set in lines of severe disappointment, listened to the litany of betrayals.
"So, what will you do, Great Grand Ancestor?" she asked, her tone deferential but firm.
Zekram Baal snorted, a sound of pure, cold contempt. "I am the first creation of our Liege, Lucifer the Lightbringer. I was the one who first placed my support behind Sirzechs and declared him our leader. The world has grown complacent. They underestimate us. They believe we are weaker because Sirzechs bears the title of 'Super Devil.'"
A dangerous light glinted in his ancient eyes. "Then we shall show them the price of that miscalculation."
He turned his gaze fully on Venelana, his will radiating absolute command. "Tell my good-for-nothing heir to get his ass up and mobilize every soldier, every asset, every ounce of our clan's might. Prepare for war. I will not tolerate this puppetery any longer. The Devil Society belongs to devils, not to some faceless, interdimensional Prophet playing games with our future."
"Yes, Great Grand Ancestor." Venelana bowed her head, accepting his orders. "I shall tell my brother immediately."
This time, she would not stand by.
She would help sever the Prophet's strings and pull Sirzechs back from the path of ruin, even if it meant tearing him from his throne by force.
As Venelana departed to execute his will, Zekram Baal was left alone with his thoughts.
A weary, centuries-old sigh escaped him. In the end, he once again had to clean up the mess himself, to wipe the ass of the entire Devil faction.
If only my true Liege were here…
But he knew the truth. The Lucifer of this universe was a mere clone, a shadow. The true Lucifer Morningstar, his master, lived and reigned in the true Underworld, the real Hell, a being of such power he could erase a pretender like Sirzechs with the casual flick of a finger.
Yet, for a problem as comparatively trivial as a deluded Super Devil and a cowardly Prophet hiding between dimensions, he would not trouble his Liege.
This was a stain on his legacy, a failure of his oversight.
He would handle them himself. The First Creation would remind the Underworld what true power and sovereignty looked like.
...
Anyway, here we go—the new chapter! If any of you have recommendations for the next world to shoot for, go ahead. I'm basically open to suggestions.
You could choose a Campione world mixed with a rom-com anime fusion like Oshi no Ko or Kaguya-sama: Love is War. Or we could go to worlds like Charlotte, Trinity Seven, Shield Hero, Re:Zero, Arifureta, The Irregular at Magic High School, Mobuseka, Akame ga Kill, and many more.
You can also recommend anime that are recently trending, like Sentenced to be a Hero—that anime is a banger. Not sure if you've watched it, but it's great. Especially the goddess in there; she was cute and adorable...
Yeah, I've basically watched all the new anime, like The Assassin's Status is Higher than the Hero or something, and many more—too many to list.
As for Frieren, well, I'm also in...
Classics like Tokyo Ghoul, Grisaia, Angel Beats, Code Geass, and Monster? I've watched all of those, too.