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ArabicHigh School DxD: The Lucifer's Devil Trigger — Chapter 18
Beside him sat a blonde girl with eyes the color of a clear summer sky. She rested her chin in her hand, a faint smile playing on her lips as she watched the Servant she had just dragged back across space.
Solomon slowly lowered his gaze to the back of her hand.
Three crimson Command Spells marked her left hand, completely intact. On her right hand, only two remained.
“Now, you are my Master,” he stated.
His previous Master had just died, yet Solomon’s face remained a mask of absolute indifference. Even the fall of a god would barely warrant a blink from him. The death of a mere mortal Master was entirely beneath his emotional threshold.
But there was one variable he hadn’t calculated.
“Why summon me back?”
Sajyou Ayaka let out a light, airy laugh. “Summon you back? No—it’s more accurate to say I saved you.”
Solomon offered no reaction.
Seeing his blank, unbothered stare, Ayaka sighed, her amusement evaporating into utter boredom. “I thought you would at least offer a retort. It seems you are just as incredibly boring as this world.”
With a casual flick of her wrist, she gestured to the empty space beside them.
The ambient water molecules in the air immediately obeyed her silent command, gathering and fusing together. A perfect sphere of water condensed in mid-air. Across its rippling surface, a moving image emerged—the chaotic, destructive clash that had just taken place between Levi and Solomon.
Ayaka stared intently at the projection. She wasn’t analyzing Solomon’s performance; her eyes were locked entirely on Levi.
“Ah… I searched through all the Masters, but it seems that person isn’t a Heroic Spirit at all.” She tilted her head. “But I suppose it doesn’t matter. This was an accident to begin with. A mishap. I certainly didn’t expect to run into someone like you…”
She reached out, her pale fingertip slowly hovering toward the water sphere.
The moment her skin brushed the surface, violent ripples tore across the projection. The image shattered, collapsing back into ordinary droplets that splashed against the floor.
“However, while others might be blind to it, I know the truth.” Ayaka’s gaze shifted back to the Caster. “This current form of yours isn’t your true self, is it?”
Solomon remained silent.
Ayaka straightened her posture, her tone shifting into something far more commanding. “Prepare yourself. We will have to fight him again later.”
Solomon did not understand the complex, chaotic thoughts running through this woman’s mind. Nor did he care to try. Since his ultimate objective required absolute victory, crossing paths with that anomaly of an opponent again was a statistical certainty.
“Understood,” he replied flatly.
Grayfia’s teleportation spell shattered mid-transit.
Instead of materializing directly at Levi’s side, the silver-haired maid was violently ejected from the spatial rift, her boots skidding against the torn earth a fair distance away.
From afar, the clearing ahead looked deceptively normal. But as Grayfia focused her gaze, the sheer wrongness of the environment became glaringly obvious. The light itself was bending and fracturing, as if she were staring through a broken kaleidoscope.
The space in that area hadn’t just been damaged; it had been forcibly shredded into countless microscopic fragments that were now agonizingly trying to stitch themselves back together.
Grayfia’s brows locked together. Demonic magic flared violently around her, forming a protective aura as she charged straight into the unstable distortion.
‘Lord Levi…’
She gritted her teeth, pushing through the spatial pressure. Please, let him be safe.
Levi lay flat on his back against the ruined earth, watching the fractured sky above him slowly knit itself back into a seamless blue. He let out a long, ragged exhale.
His magic reserves were completely bottomed out. Even twitching a finger felt like lifting a boulder.
A mechanical chime echoed in his mind.
[Check-in Reward (Arjuna): Clairvoyance (C+)]
Levi clicked his tongue against his teeth. ‘Did Karna finish things on his end?’
It was a damn good thing he hadn’t gambled on waiting for that specific check-in reward earlier. If he had dragged out a deathmatch with Solomon, hoping for a last-second system bailout while his magic was entirely drained, he would have been thoroughly wiped out.
As the thought crossed his mind, the crunch of approaching footsteps reached his ears.
He didn’t need to turn his head. His Observation Haki mapped out the newcomer’s signature perfectly.
“Artoria,” Levi called out, his voice hoarse but steady. “Did you finish your battle, too?”
Artoria stepped into his line of sight. She scanned the devastated environment, her emerald eyes widening slightly at the lingering spatial tears, before she knelt and offered her hand to help him sit up.
“Did something happen while I was fighting Sir Lancelot?” she asked, her tone laced with concern.
Levi looked up, a dry smile breaking across his face. He looked entirely disheveled, his clothes torn and stained with dirt, but his eyes were sharp and unclouded.
“Nothing major. Just that one Heroic Spirit has been eliminated, and I had a little clash with Solomon.” He gestured lazily to his battered state. “Look at the absolute state of me, yet that guy still ran away much faster than I did.”
Artoria froze.
While she had been completely immersed in the ghosts of her past, a battle of this magnitude had been raging right next to her. As the dignified Knight King, experiencing the sensation of arriving only to clean up the aftermath of her Master’s battle left a bitter, uneasy weight in her chest.
“Master,” she said, her grip on his arm tightening. “Next time you encounter Solomon, let me handle it.”
“And what if I have you all jump him together?”
“That…” Artoria’s words caught in her throat, her knightly pride warring with her tactical sense.
Seeing her conflicted expression, Levi actually laughed, the sound pulling at his exhausted muscles. “Alright, I won’t tease you.”
His smile faded, replaced by a cold, calculating shadow as Solomon’s blank face flashed in his mind. “Next time, if my magic isn’t drained to this pathetic extent, I will absolutely finish that fight and settle the score.”
“Master…” Artoria began, a small, proud smile finally touching the corners of her mouth.
Levi didn’t give her a chance to finish the sentiment. “Don’t worry,” he added smoothly. “I will definitely have Karna and Grayfia jump in with you. Three against one!”
“Master!” Artoria scolded, her noble aura instantly deflating.
Right as she began to lecture him on the virtues of honorable combat, another chime echoed in Levi’s head.
[Check-in Reward (Lancelot): Eternal Arms Mastery (A+)]
The sheer volume of martial knowledge that hit his brain made his previous exertion feel like a warm-up. The moment Grayfia finally broke through the spatial distortion and rushed to his side, Levi simply closed his eyes and let the exhaustion drag him into unconsciousness.
When Levi opened his eyes again, the familiar, ornate ceiling of the Einzbern castle greeted him.
Kuroka wasn’t draped over him this time.
Instead, his mind was entirely consumed by the reward he had extracted from Lancelot. A massive, overwhelming ocean of martial arts experience was currently integrating into his muscle memory.
Ever since he had walked out of the Naberius Clan’s territory, one specific question had been gnawing at him.
Why was his Judgment Cut so fundamentally different from Vergil’s?
After acquiring the direct experience of Vergil wielding the Yamato, the discrepancy had only become more glaring. He couldn’t figure out the missing link. The visual effect of the slashes was identical. He wasn’t skimping on the magic output. The blade in his hand was the genuine Yamato. He had even activated his Devil Trigger.
Initially, Levi assumed the flaw lay in his raw magic capacity—that his reserves simply couldn’t compare to Vergil’s, resulting in an inferior technique.
But as the deep combat insight from Eternal Arms Mastery settled into his consciousness, the fog finally cleared.
“Tch…” Levi muttered to the empty room, staring at his own hand. “Last time I used Judgment Cut to repel Solomon, I was actually pleased with myself. I thought I had captured at least a fraction of Vergil’s style. Turns out, I was completely off the mark.”
When Vergil unleashed those blindingly fast slashes, it looked like pure, chaotic destruction. To an observer, it appeared as though he was just hacking wildly, leaving a dome of spatial tears that shredded everything within range.
But that was an illusion.
Vergil’s blade was always striking with absolute, terrifying precision.
When Levi had previously reviewed the system’s implanted memories of Vergil using the Yamato, he had only seen the physical execution. It was purely muscle memory, devoid of the tactical intent behind the strikes. Vergil performed those god-like movements subconsciously. Watching it from a first-person perspective was indistinguishable from just swinging the sword himself.
But Levi wasn’t Vergil. He hadn’t known the why behind the blade’s trajectory.
Now, bolstered by the peerless combat intuition of Eternal Arms Mastery, Levi could finally read the underlying trick.
Vergil’s strikes weren’t reckless. In a fraction of a second, moving faster than the human eye could process, he was executing a flawlessly divided sequence of attacks.
Levi finally understood. Vergil’s true attack was already finished the exact moment he sheathed the blade.
To put it simply: the only strike meant to kill was the final slash—or perhaps the last two—right before the sword clicked back into the scabbard.
If an enemy attempted to dodge during the sequence, the preceding web of sword marks would instantly dice them. The problem was that Vergil’s blade moved so impossibly fast that an enemy couldn’t even twitch a finger before the sequence ended.
So, what was the purpose of the initial storm of slashes?
They were designed to sever the enemy’s escape routes.
The Yamato cleaved through space as effortlessly as a hot knife through butter. Landing just one or two clean hits was more than enough to end a life. The true challenge lay in ensuring those hits actually connected.
In high-level combat, speed alone wasn’t a guarantee. Even if a strike was instantaneous, an opponent’s automatic defensive spells or passive Noble Phantasms could trigger without their conscious input. Or, surviving a glancing blow from the Yamato would instantly snap the enemy into a state of hyper-awareness, allowing them to slip away using some obscure magic.
Vergil’s initial flurry of spatial tears served a dual purpose: slicing open the fabric of space while simultaneously locking the enemy’s physical coordinates in place.
If the target dared to raise a defense, the spatial tears would shred their shields instantly. Trapped, unable to move, and stripped of their defenses, they were left completely exposed.
Then came the kill.
Vergil’s technique was an optical illusion of speed. By the time the blade was drawn, the lockdown was already complete. Most opponents only ever saw the final motion of him sheathing the sword.
Because his ultimate, killing slash was simply that much faster.
Levi rubbed his temples. “I wasn’t just hacking randomly, but my method was to lock onto the target and then throw out a few heavy slashes… No wonder my Judgment Cut got blocked by Saint George’s defensive Glory. I was only spamming the wide-area spread attack Vergil used for crowd control and movement restriction.”
He let out a dry chuckle. “If the strike isn’t designed to be lethal, of course they won’t die.”
His thoughts had never been sharper. Because he had poured all his focus into mimicking the raw destructive power of Judgment Cut, he had completely overlooked the true value of his newest acquisition.
Eternal Arms Mastery. A skill belonging to Lancelot.
This was the exact reason the Mad Enhancement never degraded Lancelot’s martial prowess.
The implications for Levi were staggering. This skill didn’t just grant him techniques and insight. It meant that if he ever lost his sanity while activating Sin Devil Trigger, his combat effectiveness wouldn’t drop to that of a mindless beast. In fact, that was when this skill would truly shine.
While conscious, Levi still needed a fraction of a second to process and execute his moves. But if he lost consciousness? The Eternal Arms Mastery would bypass his thoughts entirely, turning his body into an autonomous, flawless weapon.
Currently, his absolute limit for maintaining Sin Devil Trigger was forty seconds. Now, those forty seconds would be flawlessly lethal.
The lights flickering in the corridor leading to the Einzbern basement were dim and moody. Levi stood at the entrance of the passageway, letting out a long, exhausted sigh.
“You can sort out the issues between you and your sister on your own. Why do you have to drag me into it?” Levi complained, glancing sideways. “Don’t look at me like that. I can’t even manage the absolute mess that is my own family.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. His younger brother had run away from home, his father had been verbally beaten down by the old man until he couldn’t lift his head, and the old man himself had abandoned the Underworld entirely, washing his hands of their faction’s politics.
And they had left Levi behind in the Underworld to act as their solitary inside agent.
If his family’s drama were serialized into a manga, the plot would make Boruto look like a masterpiece of stable storytelling.
“Please don’t worry, Lord Levi…” Sakura murmured, gently tugging at the edge of his sleeve.
From the shadows, Kuroka attempted to launch herself at him again. Without even looking, Levi raised his leg and kicked her squarely in the forehead. The Nekomata yelped, tumbling backward and landing perfectly inside a bamboo basket overflowing with dirty laundry.
Ignoring the muffled complaints from the basket, Levi walked into the main hall.
Grayfia stood perfectly still in the center of the room, her posture rigid and her face entirely devoid of emotion.
Levi walked over and dropped onto one of the plush sofas. “Why is the atmosphere in here so heavy?”
Grayfia turned to him, her voice perfectly measured. “Lord Levi. Karna and the opponent’s Heroic Spirit were both eliminated.”
Levi blinked, genuinely taken aback for a fraction of a second.
Then, he leaned back against the cushions. Considering the sheer firepower of those two, a mutual kill felt entirely reasonable.