High School DxD: The Lucifer's Devil Trigger — Chapter 21

Chapter 21: The Queen’s Resolve

Kotomine Kirei crouched in the damp, echoing darkness of the Fuyuki sewer system. The stench of stagnant water clung to his cassock, but his expression remained entirely placid. He knew exactly where Arjuna and Saint George had come from. He had stood in the very same room the night Tohsaka Tokiomi summoned the dragon-slaying saint. That intimate knowledge of the Tohsaka camp’s inner workings meant that even if Tokiomi and his daughter sensed a disturbance, they were entirely blind to his blade.

However…

“The information network is drying up,” Kirei murmured, his deep voice echoing faintly against the moss-slicked stone. “I suppose it is time to stir the waters.”

He turned his gaze toward the shadows. Hundred Faces knelt there, a fractured collection of silent wraiths. Kirei’s lips curved into a hollow, chilling smile. “Tell me, Assassin. Do you believe we will be the ones to claim the Holy Grail in the end?”

The multiple personas of Hundred Faces had never seriously entertained the thought of victory. Not after witnessing the apocalyptic firepower of Heroic Spirits like Arjuna and Saint George. Now? The concept of winning was a distant joke.

There was a modern phrase for their Master’s current trajectory. Courting death.

Yes, that was it. Kirei was sprinting headlong into the abyss, dragging his Servants down a path that offered zero chance of survival. With no other option, the lead persona simply offered a slow, silent nod.

Kirei’s smile widened a fraction as he glanced at the masked clone. “Then pray with all your might. Look forward to the climax. Unlike the others scrambling in the dark, we at least have reinforcements worth their weight.”

“If the worst comes to pass, we still have reinforcements to call upon.”

Levi leaned back against the plush sofa, a faint, relaxed smile playing on his lips as he addressed the nervous Nekomata standing before him.

Kuroka blinked, her golden eyes widening in surprise as her twin tails flicked behind her. “Reinforcements? Lord Levi, do you mean the Underworld is going to send a strike force to back us up?”

Levi gave a dismissive shrug. “The Underworld won’t mobilize an army just to bail out the Old Satan Faction. Sirzechs might hold the title of Satan, but his schedule isn’t exactly open for trivial favors.” He tapped his fingers rhythmically against the armrest. “However… within my nominal ‘family’, there is one particular individual who possesses entirely too much free time. He is willing to do just about anything, provided it amuses him.”

His gaze drifted toward a small, dormant communication device resting on the table. Contacting him carried immense risk. But if the opposition decided to throw away the rules and play dirty, Levi had no qualms about unleashing the mad hound.

He was thinking of Rizevim Livan Lucifer.

Currently, Rizevim believed Levi was a loyal mole planted deep within the Underworld’s hierarchy. Conversely, Sirzechs Lucifer viewed Levi as a vital undercover agent embedded within the Old Satan Faction to monitor Rizevim’s movements. To put it bluntly, Levi was playing both sides of the chessboard. Depending on the shifting tides of the board, either Sirzechs or Rizevim could serve as a temporary ally.

Most of the time, Sirzechs was the logical choice. But in the rarest, most desperate of scenarios, he might have to entertain that lunatic.

Not that he ever wanted to make that call. The hatred for Rizevim etched into this body’s very bones ran deep and cold. Once his own strength crossed the necessary threshold, Levi fully intended to ally with Sirzechs and wipe Rizevim from existence. In that specific regard, he shared the exact same sentiment as the cheap younger brother he had never even bothered to meet.

The only difference was that Levi understood Rizevim’s twisted nature far better—and he fully intended to be the one standing at the end.

“That should suffice.”

Footsteps sounded on the stairs. Grayfia descended into the living room, her silver hair catching the ambient light. Levi stood up to meet her.

“Thank you for your hard work.”

“It is merely my duty,” she replied, her tone perfectly level, betraying no exhaustion.

The moment Grayfia cleared the landing, Tohsaka Rin sprinted past her, taking the steps two at a time. She burst into the second-floor bedroom. Tohsaka Tokiomi lay flat on the floorboards. His chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. He looked like a corpse that had merely decided to take a nap. Rin dropped to her knees, her hands trembling as she reached out to shake his shoulder. “Dad… Dad, wake up…”

Tokiomi’s eyelids fluttered. He opened his eyes, his gaze clouded with deep confusion as he stared up at the ceiling, then at his daughter. The moment recognition sparked in his eyes, Rin collapsed back onto her heels, letting out a long, ragged exhale that carried all her lingering terror.

“Rin… what is the meaning of this?” Tokiomi pushed himself up, his brow furrowed.

Rin offered him a bitter, exhausted smile and slowly shook her head. “Dad… we’ve completely lost the Holy Grail War.”

Downstairs, Levi let out a quiet sigh. “I really hate making you pull double shifts right after performing such delicate magical surgery. But when it comes to this kind of precision, none of us can hold a candle to you, Grayfia.”

Grayfia had already transitioned from saving a dying magus to establishing a complex surveillance network, monitoring the subtle dimensional ripples of the Celestial Realm and the Underworld.

Upstairs, Tokiomi was finally digesting reality. Rin had recounted every brutal detail of the events following his ‘death’. The man who had drilled the concept of absolute elegance into his daughter’s skull since infancy finally let his shoulders slump. “We lost. I had calculated the odds of defeat, but I never envisioned a collapse of this magnitude.”

It was an absolute rout. His Servants were annihilated. His Command Spells were gone. His most trusted pupil was a traitor who had driven a blade through his back. To compound the humiliation, his life had been preserved by an enemy faction, and his own flesh and blood had forged a pact with a devil to secure that salvation. Tokiomi closed his eyes. If he hadn’t possessed the foresight to send his wife away before the conflict escalated, the entire Tohsaka bloodline would have been erased from the earth.

It was a suffocating reality. Yet, Tokiomi did not shatter. He had never been a generational genius. His magical circuits were merely above average. He had clawed his way through peaks and valleys his entire life, surviving through sheer, stubborn pragmatism. He had stared down absolute ruin at least twice before. He would adapt.

“Delicate spell weaving is my Achilles’ heel,” Levi admitted, crossing his arms. “I’m a brute. I rely on overwhelming raw output to crush obstacles, and it usually works.”

Grayfia shook her head gently, her posture immaculate. “Please do not belittle yourself, Lord Levi. This falls under my purview. Once Miss Ingvild gains proper control over her demonic energy, she will be fully capable of sharing this logistical burden.”

Levi thought of Ingvild, who treated the mere mention of magical training like a prison sentence, and chuckled helplessly. “Don’t place your bets on her just yet. She might have a century under her belt, but she spent most of it asleep. Mentally, she’s still a restless seventeen-year-old who can’t sit still in a chair.”

A rare, microscopic softening appeared at the corners of Grayfia’s mouth. “Lord Levi, it appears even your judgment can falter on occasion. Miss Ingvild desires to master her abilities and stand by your side as a true asset more fiercely than anyone else.”

“Is that so…” Levi murmured, a thoughtful glint in his eye.

Shortly after, the glowing magical circles hovering around Grayfia dissipated. She lowered her hands. “The Fallen Angels primarily reside within the Underworld, making their dimensional footprint relatively simple to track. They remain entirely oblivious to the chaos unfolding in Fuyuki. Instead, they are obsessively monitoring any Sacred Gear possessors they can locate. Their ultimate goal remains unclear.” She paused, her silver eyelashes fluttering shut. “As for the angels of the Celestial Realm… they are expending immense effort to mask their presence. They are undoubtedly preparing for a major maneuver.”

Upstairs, Tokiomi finished processing the tactical board. He straightened his bloodstained vest, adjusted his cuffs, and forced his posture back into the rigid, elegant mold of the Tohsaka head. He looked at his daughter. “Rin. Escort me to the benefactor who preserved the Tohsaka lineage.”

“Eh?” Rin blinked, her brain stalling for a second.

A calm, measured smile surfaced on Tokiomi’s face. “I possess critical intelligence that must be relayed immediately. It concerns the Master of Assassin—Kotomine Kirei.”

Tokiomi had smoothly transitioned into the role of a vassal. He understood the hierarchy of power better than anyone. Rather than throwing his bruised pride against an overwhelmingly superior force with unknown limits, the logical move was to demonstrate his immediate utility. It was the choice of a rational magus.

“So the Celestial Realm is finally making a move…” Levi’s eyes narrowed into dangerous slits. “It seems Kotomine Kirei has been busy. If I could just lock onto his magical signature, I’d drag him out of the shadows and extract the answers directly. Unfortunately, the man scurries like a rat. The moment he drove that blade into Tokiomi, he vanished completely.”

Levi had continuously swept the city using the Clairvoyance he acquired from Arjuna’s template, layering it with the sweeping radar of his Observation Haki. Yet, Fuyuki remained completely devoid of Kirei’s presence.

Grayfia remained silent. She possessed encyclopedic knowledge of devil magecraft, but even she had boundaries. Tracking a master assassin through a magically dense city was not her specialty. Grayfia was a weapon forged for frontal annihilation. She didn’t rely on barbaric brute force, but rather an absolute, flawless fusion of overwhelming demonic power and peerless technique. That precise combat mastery was exactly why she was destined to become the strongest Queen in the Underworld.

Locating Kotomine Kirei would have to wait. Levi had a far more pressing matter to address.

He reached into his spatial inventory and withdrew a velvet-lined box. The dark aura of the Evil Pieces pulsed within. He bypassed the pawns and knights, plucking the obsidian Queen piece from its resting place. He held it out toward Grayfia.

“By the way, Grayfia. If your resolve is truly set… then take your place as my subordinate.”

As the words left his mouth, Levi stopped holding back. He activated his Devil Trigger.

The air in the room instantly grew heavy, the atmospheric pressure plummeting as a terrifying, suffocating aura erupted from his body. He bypassed his standard form, stepping directly into his Sin Devil Trigger. A jagged, demonic iron mask materialized over his face, his eyes burning like blue stars through the slits. The sheer density of his demonic energy shattered the conceptual limits of a standard high-class devil.

He had stepped firmly into the Satan-class.

His voice echoed with a metallic, layered resonance. “I cannot offer you grandiose promises of safety right now. I can only guarantee one thing: become my Queen, and I will ensure you never regret this choice.”

Grayfia stared at the towering, armored demonic entity before her, her usually unflappable composure fracturing.

Satan-class.

It was the absolute apex of conventional devil hierarchy. While a handful of desperate fools in the Old Satan Faction might temporarily brush against this tier by consuming Ophis’s snakes, true, unadulterated Satan-class power was the ultimate ceiling. It was the world of the Five Great Dragon Kings.

If a being possessed power so overwhelming that even a Satan-class entity couldn’t suppress them, the Underworld discarded standard classifications and branded them a ‘extraordinary’. To the uninitiated, extraordinary sounded like a mere honorary title. In reality, it was a quarantine label for absolute monsters. A extraordinary was an anomaly that had shattered the biological and conceptual limits of the devil race. Even if a devil multiplied their power ten thousand times over, they would still just be categorized as a extraordinary.

Beings like Hyoudou Issei and Vali Lucifer, even when activating their Juggernaut Drive, did not qualify for that monstrous tier. Only upon achieving their Dragon God and Satan transformations did they truly step into the world of Transcendents. The gap between a Satan-class and a extraordinary was an abyss.

And then there was the Dragon God class. Entities like the Ouroboros Dragon, Ophis, whose attack output, defensive absolute, and total energy reserves were strictly infinite. She existed outside the rules of logic. In her prime, Ophis possessed the theoretical capacity to shatter the entire DxD reality with a casual strike, simply because the mass of a finite world could not withstand infinite force. How the True Dragon, Great Red, had managed to banish such an all-powerful being from the Dimensional Gap remained a terrifying mystery.

Regardless of those cosmic anomalies, achieving Satan-class power was a monumental feat. Grayfia had calculated that it would take a prodigy like Levi at least several decades of grueling combat to even touch the edge of the Satan-class. After all, the Underworld was littered with Ultimate-class devils who had stagnated for millennia without making an inch of progress.

Yet, staring at the suffocating demonic pressure radiating from the iron-masked sovereign before her, Grayfia’s shock slowly melted into absolute certainty.