High School DxD: The Lucifer's Devil Trigger — Chapter 4

Chapter 4: Absolute Power

Levi glanced at his subdued target, casually tossing the now-quiet little wildcat over to the silver-haired maid waiting beside him. He then gently nudged Shirone, whose small hands were still locked in a death grip on her older sister’s clothes, toward Grayfia as well, giving the younger girl’s white hair a reassuring pat.

[Sign-in reward: Physical fitness optimization.]

A line of text flickered across his vision. It was the first time the system had granted him a reward of this nature.

The moment the notification faded, a deep heat flooded his veins. He felt the muscle fibers beneath his skin tighten and condense, binding together with terrifying density. The raw, violent strength dwelling within his Devil Trigger surged dramatically, expanding against the confines of his mortal vessel.

If his raw output had previously hovered at the absolute peak of an Ultimate-Class Devil, this sudden bodily enhancement had just pushed the heavy doors open. His power was now bleeding over the threshold of the Satan-class.

As for what he was still lacking to fully stabilize that realm… he would find out soon enough.

“Grayfia,” Levi murmured, his thumb resting lightly against the polished guard of Yamato. “Let me adapt to the rhythm of battle on my own this time.”

He stared down the heavy, reinforced steel door of the holding cell specifically designed to contain Kuroka and Shirone Toujou.

“If you encounter any danger, I will step in immediately,” Grayfia replied. Her voice was a perfectly level sheet of ice, devoid of emotion, but her stance left no room for argument.

The corner of Levi’s mouth curled upward in dry amusement. “Alright. I’ll take that as a yes—”

Slash.

A singular, blinding arc of blue light fractured the dim corridor.

Kuroka’s entire body seized. Her feline instincts screamed at her, the hairs on her tails standing on end. She had sensed it—in that microscopic fraction of a second, the devil named Levi had moved.

But by the time her slitted pupils dilated to capture the image, Levi was already standing perfectly still in his original posture. His hand rested casually on the hilt of his sheathed blade, his back turning as he prepared to walk out.

As for the heavy steel door…

“It’s gone,” Shirone whispered, her childish voice echoing in the sudden silence as she pointed a tiny finger forward.

Three-fifths of the reinforced barricade had simply ceased to exist.

Hearing her younger sister’s voice, the shock frozen on Kuroka’s face slowly melted into a dry, hollow laugh. She awkwardly swallowed the desperate escape plans that had been brewing in her mind just moments prior. “I didn’t expect you to be so strong…”

Just what kind of monster are we being targeted by?!

Despite the sheer awe radiating from the two Nekomata, Grayfia maintained her flawless, statuesque composure. Her expression remained a mask of polite indifference as she guided the sisters to follow in Levi’s wake.

But beneath that placid exterior, a tempest was raging.

Levi Lucifer. The notoriously useless scion of the Lucifer Clan. A boy cursed with weak demonic power and a frail physical constitution, a teenager who couldn’t even scrape the bottom barrel of a High-Class Devil’s reserves.

Yet, looking at the clean, impossible void where the door used to be…

Lord Levi has hidden himself deeply indeed.

That draw had been too fast for a normal eye to track. If Grayfia’s heightened senses hadn’t deceived her, the blade hadn’t just cut the metal—it had severed the very fabric of space. The missing portion of the door hadn’t been destroyed; it had been directly exiled into the dimensional rift.

Coupled with the oppressive, suffocating aura leaking from his current form… this power was undoubtedly scraping the edges of the Satan-class.

It was truly astonishing.

However, as Grayfia recalled the shadow of Rizevim Livan Lucifer looming over their household—how Levi had been forced to live under that maniac’s roof, how his younger brother had fled the Underworld in terror, how even his own father had been slaughtered by Rizevim’s hands—the pieces fell into place.

Judging by the outcome, her master’s decision to feign weakness and hide his fangs was a stroke of absolute genius. At the very least, he was alive, breathing, and hadn’t been purged from the Underworld.

While Grayfia quietly reevaluated her master, Levi couldn’t care less about the shock trailing behind him.

He swaggered out of the lowest detention block, boots clicking rhythmically against the stone stairs as he plunged straight into the massive underground research facility operated by the Naberius Clan.

He made absolutely zero effort to mask his presence. Naturally, the perimeter guards spotted him the moment he stepped into the light.

“Who are you—”

The devil at the forefront only made it halfway through his demand.

A spectral, glowing blue Summoned Sword materialized from the ether, driving straight through the center of his forehead with a sickening crunch. The guard’s eyes rolled back, and his corpse collapsed heavily to the sterile floor.

Only then did the remaining Naberius researchers and guards register the intruder standing casually at the end of the hall, his hand lowered from a throwing stance.

“Are you insane?!” A devil further down the corridor shrieked, his face contorting in panic as his voice cracked. “If Lord Satan finds out, you’ll pay dearly for this! The Underworld won’t let you off either!”

Levi grinned, a flash of white teeth in the gloom. “I was sent by the Underworld. Did you really think no one knew what kind of sick experiments you were running down here? Who are you kidding?”

He adjusted his grip, his left hand sliding slightly higher up Yamato’s dark scabbard. His right hand settled over the hilt. Slowly, deliberately, he drew the blade an inch from its casing.

A chilling, ethereal blue light flared to life in his eyes.

Realizing words were useless, the Naberius devils unfurled their bat-like wings in unison. Violent waves of demonic power surged through the corridor as earthy yellow magic circles ignited in their palms, each one glowing with the crest of the House of Naberius.

Twenty-six targets in total.

Levi locked his gaze onto the glowing array of hostile magic.

Draw.

And then—

“My power is absolute.”

Sheathe.

The sharp, metallic click of Yamato returning to its scabbard echoed like a gunshot.

A storm of spatial distortions bloomed across the corridor. Countless violent, crisscrossing blade marks tore through the very fabric of reality, carving an inescapable grid of death through the spacious laboratory.

The blood of twenty-six devils sprayed into the air in perfect synchronization, tracing the jagged trajectories of the invisible slashes.

Levi didn’t even look at them. His blade was already sheathed.

The Naberius guards hadn’t even seen him move before their bodies were perfectly, symmetrically severed by the spatial cuts. Severed limbs tumbled into the dark rifts torn in the air, while chunks of flesh and torrents of blood splattered across the pristine floor.

None of it mattered to Levi anymore.

Having burned through a massive reserve of demonic power, the dark, armored plating of his Devil Trigger dissolved into ash, automatically reverting him to his human form. With a warm, perfectly sunny smile on his face, he turned his back on the mountain of corpses and the rising sea of blood, strolling casually back toward Grayfia.

Kuroka’s face was deathly pale. Her hands trembled, but she still managed to reach out and firmly cover Shirone’s eyes.

“Sister, what’s wrong?” Shirone mumbled against her hands.

“It’s nothing…” Kuroka swallowed hard, her voice shaking. “Just… all the bad guys are dead.”

“…Oh.”

Shirone could easily tell something was wrong with her sister’s tone, but her trust in Kuroka was absolute. If her sister didn’t want to explain, she wouldn’t push it.

“Grayfia, let’s go. It’s time to head back,” Levi said, stepping over a stray pool of blood. “I’ll have to give Sirzechs a heads-up about the mess we left here later.”

Grayfia was just as sensible as the little Nekomata. She didn’t ask a single question about the massacre or the terrifying swordsmanship she had just witnessed. She merely nodded, her face a mask of professional calm. Channeling her own vast demonic power, she traced a spatial teleportation magic circle into the air.

“I understand, Lord Levi.”

The silver light of the array swallowed them whole, transporting Levi, Grayfia, and the two little kittens directly back to the sprawling, quiet halls of the Lucifer Clan’s castle.

Upon arriving, Levi immediately instructed Grayfia to arrange secure, comfortable accommodations for the Toujou sisters.

He then retreated to his own private quarters.

There wasn’t a single drop of blood on his clothes, yet he still stripped them off, stepped into the bathroom, and twisted the heavy brass faucet.

Ice-cold water poured down from the showerhead. Levi stood beneath the spray, slicking his wet hair back from his forehead.

This was the first time he had actively slaughtered humanoid beings. Yet, as he searched his chest for a reaction, he found nothing. He didn’t feel disgusted. He didn’t feel the urge to collapse and empty his stomach like Kuroka had the moment she thought Shirone wasn’t looking.

“I’m probably a born monster,” he chuckled to himself, shaking his head as the water cascaded over his shoulders.

Stepping out and throwing on a fresh set of clothes, he raised his hand and snapped his fingers.

A black magic circle ignited in his palm, the complex crest of the House of Lucifer spinning slowly in the air.

“Devil Trigger completely drained my main reserves, but I can still manage a simple communication spell,” he muttered. Tsk. I need to find a way to deal with this demonic power bottleneck quickly.

Before he could dwell on it further, Sirzechs’s voice filtered through the black light of the circle.

“Levi? What do you want with me at this hour?”

“The Naberius Clan,” Levi said casually, leaning against his desk. “I’ve already dealt with them.”

A heavy, suffocating silence stretched over the connection.

Before the crimson-haired devil could formulate a response, Levi cut back in. “There are quite a few good things left in their basement. You can easily find the research data and assets with a quick search. It wasn’t politically convenient for you to make a move against them directly, but I have no such restrictions. However, you’ll have to handle the cleanup.”

Sirzechs finally exhaled, the sound crackling through the spell. “Well… although I still think you were far too reckless acting alone, we’ll discuss the politics of this later. But for this time—thanks, Levi.”

Levi stared at the spinning crest in his palm. A mocking, knowing smile played on his lips, though he kept his voice exceptionally bright and earnest. “No worries. It’s all for the future of the Underworld, after all.”

The sky outside the castle windows was still dark.

“No matter how many times I look at this giant purple sun, I can never tell what time of day it actually is,” Levi muttered, scratching his messy hair as he walked down the quiet corridor.

He stopped in front of the guest room and knocked lightly on the heavy oak door.

“Just a moment.”

A frantic rustling echoed from within, hurried and cautious, sounding suspiciously like someone caught in the middle of an illicit affair scrambling to hide the evidence.

A few seconds later, the door cracked open just enough to let a sliver of light through.

Kuroka slipped out into the hallway, pulling the door shut behind her. She was wearing a white bathrobe, the sash tied crookedly around her waist in her haste. “Shirone is still asleep,” she whispered, her golden eyes darting nervously. “If there’s something you need, let’s talk downstairs.”

“Sure.”

Levi nodded, turning his back to lead the way down the grand staircase.

Because he was walking ahead, he didn’t notice the way Kuroka’s expression gradually darkened, the shadows of the hallway clinging to her face.

Kuroka had grown up in the hellish laboratories of the Naberius Clan. Everyone who survived that place knew the golden rule: the environment dictates the person. She was intimately familiar with the bottomless greed, the depravity, and the crazed ambitions of devils.

In her worldview, every devil fell into one of two strict categories: either they wanted to extract something from you, or they wanted to kill you.

Even though Levi and Grayfia had pulled her and her sister from that nightmare, it hadn’t erased a decade of trauma. At most, his actions had pried open a tiny, fragile crack in her defenses. She had known, with absolute certainty, that he would come knocking on her door eventually.

Who would rescue two rogue experimental subjects for no reason? He had to have an ulterior motive. A price to exact.

When they reached the wide landing between the first and second floors, Kuroka abruptly stopped. She took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Lord Levi.”

Her voice was pulled taut, vibrating with sudden, desperate tension. “If you have any demands—whether it’s using my body for your own experiments, or breaking my mind to train me as a living weapon—please, target me alone!”

Before Levi could turn around, Kuroka dropped straight to her knees. The dull thud of her legs hitting the hardwood echoed in the empty stairwell.

“I know this request is arrogant,” she choked out, bowing her head. “But I can do anything. I can endure any pain, any hardship. I beg you… just spare Shirone!”

She had survived a brutal, agonizing artificial extraordinary experiment. While her power hadn’t yet stabilized at its absolute peak, the demonic energy coursing through her veins was already firmly entrenched at the High-Class Devil level. Coupled with her rare dual mastery of Senjutsu and demonic magic, she could likely hold her own against an Ultimate-Class Devil in a desperate fight.

If it were the researchers from the House of Naberius standing before her, she would have already ignited her aura and fought to the death to buy Shirone time.

But she had seen Levi draw his blade.

She knew the terrifying truth. As she was now, she stood absolutely zero chance against the monster wearing human skin in front of her. She couldn’t even muster the delusion of running away.

“Stand up.”

Levi’s voice was entirely flat, yet the quiet command carried an obvious, crushing authority.

Kuroka’s instincts screamed at her to stay bowed, to persist in her begging, but her body betrayed her. Compelled by the sheer weight of his tone, she slowly pushed herself up, standing rigidly on the stairs.

Levi turned around, staring at her trembling form for a long, quiet moment before letting out a heavy sigh.

“I’m not good at beating around the bush, so I’ll just be direct,” he said, lazily scratching the back of his head. “As for experiments? I don’t understand the first thing about them. Most magic theory books just give me a headache. As for weapons? I have my own blade. I don’t have the habit of using living people as tools.”

He took a step closer, his blue eyes locking onto her golden ones. “But I did have a purpose in saving you.”

Kuroka’s pupils contracted into sharp slits.

“First, the Naberius Clan was a rot that needed to be cleaned up,” Levi listed, holding up a finger. “Second, even if I don’t possess my own Evil Pieces right now, I will get them sooner or later. I need to start recruiting members for my peerage.”

Levi looked at the utterly stunned Nekomata. Even though the heavy, dramatic atmosphere was starting to make him feel a bit awkward, he maintained a perfectly straight face and extended his right hand toward her.

“I don’t want test subjects. I don’t want weapons,” he repeated softly. “But I am currently known as the notoriously useless scion of the House of Lucifer. There is far too little one person can achieve alone, yet there is far too much I intend to do.”

He paused, letting the weight of his ambition settle over them.

“In that case—”

A cluster of complex black patterns rose from Levi’s palm, forming a hovering contract circle. His gaze softened just a fraction. “Kuroka, I promise to treat you as one of my own. Are you willing to stand by my side?”

Devils had always taken contracts with absolute, terrifying seriousness. Though Kuroka loathed the society of the Underworld, she was well aware of the binding laws of magic.

She stared at the glowing crest hovering over his palm. All she had to do was channel a single drop of her demonic power into it. The moment she did, the promises Levi had just spoken would become an unbreakable, conceptual constraint binding his soul. He would never be able to go back on his word.

But Kuroka didn’t do that.

Instead, she reached out and cleanly swatted the magic circle away, shattering the black light into harmless sparks.

Then, just as Levi blinked in surprise and began to pull his hand back, she lunged forward. She grabbed his palm with both of her trembling hands, her fingers wrapping tightly around his, and slowly, deliberately, pulled his hand to rest directly against the warmth of her chest.