The blinding light slowly dissipated, leaving behind a low-frequency hum that made the air inside the barrier vibrate.
Yugo opened his eyes, blinking to clear the patches of light from his vision. He glanced down at his left arm, momentarily ignoring the blood that still soaked his shirt. Clad to his wrist and part of his forearm was an imposing artifact. It was a thick, dark, metallic bracelet, its design reminiscent of an oversized clock. In the center, a faceplate bearing an hourglass symbol glowed with a radioactive green light.
There were no magic circles around it. No celestial chants or demonic auras. To anyone in that world, it was simply a Sacred Gear that had just awakened. A common artifact in concept, but of a completely unknown category.
Raynare, who had covered her face with her black feathered wings, slowly lowered her guard. Her eyes narrowed with curiosity and disdain as she focused on the strange device.
"A Sacred Gear awakening right before dying? What a cliché," the Fallen Angel scoffed, tilting her head. "I've never seen one with such a crude shape... What is it supposed to be? A shield? Never mind, I'll kill you and then take it to Azazel for him to investigate."
Yugo didn't hear her. His breathing was shallow and erratic from the fatal wound in his stomach, but his mind, flooded with memories of his former life, recognized the artifact instantly. It was impossible. It was absurd. But in a world where demons and dragons existed, logic had died long ago.
Guided by an instinct he didn't know he possessed, Yugo raised his trembling arm. With his blood-stained fingers, he pressed the two small green buttons on either side of the main sphere.
¡BEEP!
The clock's core popped up with a mechanical click. The faceplate glowed even brighter, projecting a small hologram of a robust, humanoid silhouette.
Raynare materialized another spear of light, losing patience. "Die already, you trash!"
Before the spear left the Fallen Angel's hand, Yugo raised his right hand and crushed the clock's core down with all the strength he had left.
A dense, absolute emerald green flash devoured him completely.
For a microscopic second, Yugo felt indescribable pain. It was as if his bones were splintering simultaneously, as if his flesh were crystallizing and his blood turning into frozen magma. A strangled scream tried to escape his throat, but the pain vanished as quickly as it had come, replaced by an overwhelming feeling of invulnerability.
Raynare's light spear flew straight towards him.
But there was no weak human left. The new Yugo raised an arm. Without needing to think, the ground in front of him creaked and a thick barrier of pale green, translucent crystals erupted from the asphalt at breakneck speed.
¡CRASH!
The spear of divine light struck the crystal wall, shattering into a thousand pieces without even scratching the structure.
Raynare's eyes widened in astonishment. "What...?!"
Before she could react, the glass wall shattered from within. Yugo leaped through the rubble with terrifying propulsive force. His fist, now massive and carved from razor-sharp crystalline rock, sliced through the air and slammed into the Fallen Angel's face.
The impact sounded like a cement block hitting steel. Raynare was thrown backward, through two park benches, and crashed brutally into a tree trunk, spitting blood.
The Fallen Angel staggered to her feet, clutching her fractured jaw. When she looked up, terror and confusion stained her face.
The bloodied high school teacher was no longer standing before her. In his place stood a humanoid giant over two meters tall, composed entirely of pale, faceted organic crystal. Its back was covered in sharp spikes, and its face lacked a mouth or nose, revealing only two coldly glowing green eyes. In the center of its left chest, the same hourglass symbol rested, embedded in the crystal.
Yugo looked down at his own hands. He clenched his fists, the sound of his knuckles rubbing together like glass. He brought his hand to his abdomen. It was smooth, hard, and perfect. The passive ability of the transformation, by converting his human biology into living silicon, had completely closed and replaced the lethal wound Raynare had inflicted. He was unharmed.
"Damn monster!" Raynare shrieked, spreading her wings and soaring into the night sky above the barrier to gain distance. She began to unleash a relentless barrage of light spears.
Yugo leaped to intercept her. At first, the fight was clumsy. The weight of his new body and the density of his limbs caused him to misjudge the inertia of his blows. Several spears struck his chest and shoulders, tearing off shards of glass, but the pain was minimal, and his body regenerated the fragments almost instantly.
Yugo transformed his right arm into a giant blade and lunged at her, engaging in a brutal exchange of blows. He possessed devastating physical strength and an impenetrable defense, but she had the advantage of speed and flight. It was an even clash, a battle of attrition where power outages and shards of glass shattered the park plaza.
Raynare blocked an attack from Yugo, skidding through the air. She was panting, covered in superficial cuts, and her pride was wounded. This battle was dragging on too long, and her magical energy was dwindling.
He looked down. Issei Hyoudou, the true target of his mission, lay in a pool of blood, barely breathing. He was seconds away from taking his last breath.
"My main objective has been accomplished," Raynare hissed, wiping the blood from her lip. "Enjoy your pathetic life while you can, possessor of the crystal. I will find you later."
Without giving Yugo time for one last attack, the Fallen Angel drew a magic teleportation circle in the air and disappeared in a flash of black feathers.
The space barrier became unstable with his departure, although it would take the human world a few minutes to fully synchronize.
Yugo, in his immense diamond form, descended heavily onto the shattered asphalt. He turned his head toward where Issei was. The brown-haired boy was babbling incomprehensibly, clutching his stomach, in agony.
Yugo's cold, green eyes watched him for a few seconds. He felt no pity. No urge to save him. To him, that boy remained the symbol of the sick narrative that had stolen everything from him. Issei was going to die, and that was his fate.
Turning his back on the protagonist, Yugo walked toward the bushes. His student, the class president, lay unconscious on the grass, having collapsed from the shock and the sight of so much violence.
Yugo transformed his arms back into flat hands so as not to hurt her with their sharp edges. He lifted her with extreme gentleness, cradling her against his cold but safe crystal chest.
Just as she took the first step to leave, a crimson light, dense and charged with overwhelming demonic power, illuminated the ground behind her. A huge magic circle bearing the emblem of the Gremory Clan began to form on the asphalt. The Princess of Ruin was about to arrive.
Knowing that her new form would unleash political and supernatural chaos if seen, Yugo flexed her enormous crystal legs and leaped prodigiously. She vanished into the shadows of the surrounding buildings mere milliseconds before Rias Gremory's figure materialized beside Issei's body.
Yugo ran across rooftops and through alleyways for what seemed like an eternity, running several kilometers away from the central park. Finally, he landed in a dark, damp, dead-end alley, sheltered from the eyes of the street.
The moment his boots touched the ground, the green symbol on his chest began to flash, emitting an increasingly high-pitched warning sound.
BEEP... BEEP... BEEP...
The flash changed from green to red. A second later, an intense flash blinded him. The crystal shell collapsed, dissolving into energy, and his human body returned in a flash.
Yugo fell to his knees on the cobblestones, breathing heavily. The watch on his wrist was now a dull, lifeless red. He looked at his stomach; the fatal wound hadn't reopened, the lethal tissue damage had been sealed and repaired during the transformation, leaving in its place a grotesque, glowing red scar.
She carefully sat her student down, leaning her against a brick wall. She was safe. Her breathing was calm.
Yugo let his head fall back, leaning against the opposite wall. He was exhausted, both physically and mentally. For the first time, he felt he had the power to protect, not just to kill.
But their moment of peace was suddenly interrupted.
A chill ran down his spine. The killer instinct and hypervigilance that had kept him alive for ten years screamed in his mind. Someone was watching him. Not from afar, but just a few feet away, hidden in the shadows of the alley.
Yugo made no move to flee. His body was at its limit, and his watch needed recharging. He slowly adjusted his shattered glasses and fixed his lifeless gaze on the darkness.
"I never expected seeing you to frighten me..." Yugo murmured, his harsh, monotonous voice echoing in the alley. "Souna Shitori..."
From the shadows, the elegant click of heels echoed. The figure of the Student Council President emerged in the dim moonlight. Her face was a mask of utter coldness and calculating intelligence, and in her hands she held a faint glimmer of demonic water, poised to strike.
Yugo gave a tired half-smile.
—...or should I say... Sona Sitri.
The silence in the alley was so thick you could almost cut it.
Sona didn't let her guard down. The demonic water aura still swirled at her fingertips. Her sharp eyes behind her glasses assessed the scene: her strict history teacher, kneeling on the floor, his shirt soaked in blood but without a visible wound, and one of the academy students unconscious beside him. And on her wrist, a strange metallic artifact with a dull red hourglass.
"Hano-sensei..." Sona said, her voice icy and authoritative. "I just sensed a massive energy surge and the collapse of a Fallen Angels barrier. And now I find you here, using my real name. Explain yourself."
Yugo didn't flinch. Slowly, he stood up, adjusting his shattered glasses. His body ached, but his mind was once again cold and calculating.
"There's not much to explain tonight, Sitri. An incident occurred. I rescued my student. That's all that concerns you for now." Yugo bent down and carefully lifted the girl into his arms. "I'm taking her home. If you want answers, find me in your office tomorrow."
Sona narrowed her eyes. For a second, she considered using restraint magic on him, but the complete lack of fear in the human's lifeless gaze disconcerted her. Besides, Sona's priority was always to avoid public scandal.
"Tomorrow. After classes," the demon declared, dispelling her magic. "And I suggest you don't try to flee the city, Sensei. My familiars are watching the stations."
Yugo simply nodded and walked past him, disappearing into the night.
...
The next morning, Yugo discovered the macabre but convenient efficiency of the supernatural world.
She arrived at the academy early. Her human body was bruised, but functional. Upon entering the second-year classroom, her eyes scanned the desks. There was Issei Hyoudou, laughing with his perverted friends, alive and brimming with an energy that was no longer human. Rias had made her move; the pawn had been reincarnated.
But what Yugo was looking for was his student. He found her in the hallway, organizing some committee papers.
"Good morning, Sensei," she greeted him with a bow and her usual bright smile. There was no terror in her eyes. No trauma.
"Good morning. Are you feeling alright? You seemed unwell yesterday," Yugo asked, assessing her reactions.
"Oh, yes! I'm so embarrassed... The doctor said it was a drop in blood pressure from not eating a proper lunch. I think I fainted on my way home. I woke up in my bed, and my mother said a kind teacher had brought me home. Thank you so much for helping me, Hano-sensei!"
Yugo nodded slowly. "Mass memory wipe," she deduced. The Fallen Angels, or perhaps the Gremory entourage themselves to cover up Issei's murder, had altered the memories of all humans in the area. Her student's mind had filled in the gaps with a mundane excuse. She was safe. Her sacrifice yesterday had not been in vain.
The relief he felt was so genuine that Yugo almost smiled, but his face remained stoic as he headed toward his inevitable questioning.
The Student Council room was empty of humans. Only Sona Sitri was there, sitting behind her desk with her hands clasped, and Tsubaki Shinra, standing beside her, projecting an intimidating aura.
Yugo entered, locked the door, and sat down opposite them, crossing his legs with the same attitude he would use to teach a history class.
"I'll be direct, Sensei," Sona began, adjusting her glasses. "You are human. We've checked your magical records countless times, and they've always come back at zero. However, last night you survived a Fallen Angel's territory, you know my true nature, and you possess an artifact that isn't registered in the Underworld's archives. Speak."
Yugo kept his gray gaze fixed on the heiress.
"I have some knowledge of the world we live in, Sitri. I've known for months that you and Rias Gremory aren't human, but high-class demons. And I know this territory is your playground," Yugo said, masterfully weaving a half-truth. "I simply chose to ignore it so I could do my work in peace. I'm not an exorcist, nor do I work for the Church."
Tsubaki frowned. "And how do you explain the artifact on your arm? Is it a Sacred Gear?"
Yugo raised his left arm, pulling down his shirt sleeve to reveal the sturdy metal watch, whose display was now an inactive green.
"I have no idea what 'Sacred Gear' is. This thing... appeared on my arm yesterday, right when I was about to be killed by that fall. It saved my life, closed my wound, and gave me the strength to pull it off. That's all."
Sona and Tsubaki exchanged a quick glance. Awakening a Sacred Gear in a moment of extreme trauma or imminent death was the canonical behavior of these divine artifacts. It all fit perfectly into the demons' logic. To them, Yugo was an intelligent human who had just awakened an unknown, latent power.
Sona's eyes gleamed with calculating interest. An adult with that discipline, tactical intellect, and an uncatalogued Sacred Gear was an invaluable acquisition.
"Hano-sensei. You already know our world and the dangers that lurk in this city," Sona said, leaning forward and taking a velvet box from her drawer. Opening it, she revealed several dark chess pieces. "Join my peerage. I offer you immortality, protection from the Fallen Angels, and the opportunity to perfect that power under my tutelage. Become my servant."
Yugo looked at the Evil Pieces with utter disdain. He had massacred dozens of people to avoid becoming prey to demons; he wasn't about to become the pet of some aristocratic girl from the underworld.
—Me him.
The response was so swift and decisive that Sona blinked in surprise. "You refuse? Do you understand that now that you've awakened your Sacred Gear, you'll be a constant target?"
"I'm not interested in the war between their factions," Yugo replied. "My only concern is my students. And speaking of them…"
Yugo remembered the class president, who worked part-time to pay for the literature club, and the scholarship girls who always suffered because of the school's lack of funding. The demons had unlimited resources, massive funds they moved around like pocket change.
—I propose a deal, Sitri. Let's bet.
"Bet?" Sona raised an eyebrow, intrigued.
"A game of chess," Yugo said, gesturing to the glass chessboard resting on the office coffee table. "If you win, I'll accept your pieces and become your obedient pawn without question. But if I win, the Student Council will fully approve and fund scholarships, travel, and resources for all my human students' cultural clubs until they graduate. All out of their own pockets."
Sona Sitri, one of the most brilliant tactical minds of the new generation of the underworld, flashed a smile that was a mixture of arrogance and genuine amusement. Nobody, absolutely nobody, could beat her at chess.
—I accept the conditions, Hano-sensei. Tsubaki, prepare the board.
Yugo stood up and sat on the sofa facing the chessboard. Sona sat opposite him. White for the human, black for the demon.
"Shall we begin?" Sona asked.
"Give me a second. I won't be the one playing," Yugo replied calmly.
Under the astonished gaze of the two demons, Yugo raised his left arm. He rotated the watch's bezel until the silhouette of a small, big-headed being appeared in the hologram. He pressed the core down hard.
¡FLASH!
A blinding emerald light flooded the office. Tsubaki instinctively stepped back, invoking her defensive magic, while Sona shielded her eyes. When the light faded, Yugo's chair was empty.
And on the glass table, standing next to the white chess pieces, was a humanoid creature no more than fifteen centimeters tall. It had grayish skin with a texture similar to that of an amphibian, large green eyes without pupils but with horizontal rectangular pupils, and wore a small black and white suit with the hourglass symbol on its back.
Sona and Tsubaki stared, mouths agape, completely paralyzed. Their minds tried to process whether this was a familiar, a summoned monster, or some kind of magical illusion.
"The structure of these pieces is fascinating, although the weight of the lead base makes it inefficient for rapid movement," the small creature said. Its voice was high-pitched, quick, and buzzing, laced with an overwhelming intellectual arrogance. "But they'll do. You move first, demon. I have exams to grade."
"S-Sensei?" Sona stammered, completely losing her usual composure.
"Grey Matter, please," Galvan corrected, rubbing his tiny three-fingered hands together. "Are you going to move your pawn, or would you prefer I mathematically calculate your defeat before we begin?"
Sona, forcibly regaining her pride, moved her King's pawn with a slight tremor in her hand.
Grey Matter didn't flinch. With surprising agility for his size, he leaped forward and pushed his own pawn with his entire body.
What followed was not a game of chess; it was an intellectual massacre.
The brain of Galvan, a biological supercomputer capable of processing interstellar equations and trillions of probabilities per millisecond, read Sona Sitri as if she were a children's book. By the fifth move, Grey Matter already knew how the game would end. By the eighth move, it began dictating the moves aloud before Sona had even touched her pieces.
—You'll move your bishop to C4 trying to cover your right flank, which is predictable and stupid, because that allows me to sacrifice my knight on E5, destroying the cohesion of your defensive center and leaving your queen exposed in three turns—Rhys Matter narrated, pacing the board and pushing his pieces with frenetic speed—. Go ahead, do it.
Sona was sweating profusely. Her tactical mind was short-circuiting. Every trap she tried to set was dismantled with utter disdain. The tactics she used to defeat Rias Gremory seemed like preschool games compared to the intellect of this alien being.
On the fifteenth move, Grey Matter leaped onto Sona's black Queen and knocked her off the board. The piece fell to the carpeted floor with a thud.
"Checkmate," declared the little alien, crossing his arms. "A poorly executed Sicilian Defense. Boring. You should read Kasparov, though I doubt your brain structure can process variables of more than four dimensions."
Sona Sitri was petrified. Her eyes trembled, fixed on the chessboard where her King was completely cornered with no escape. She had been annihilated in fifteen moves. Never, in all her life in the Underworld, had anyone humiliated her like that on the chessboard.
A red light shone on the table and, in an instant, the small gray creature disappeared, being replaced by Yugo Hano, having transformed back with the same coldness as always.
"I think I won, Sitri," Yugo said, adjusting his glasses and picking up his briefcase from the floor. "I expect the funds transferred to the student club accounts by Friday at the latest. Have a good day."
Yugo turned and left the Student Council office without looking back, closing the door behind him. He walked down the hall feeling strangely satisfied; he had secured the money for his students' future without spilling a single drop of blood.
What the human was completely unaware of —his only tactical flaw, born from not having read absolutely all the light novels in his past life— was the unbreakable tradition of the Sitri Clan.
Inside the office, Sona continued staring at the whiteboard. Her face, usually pale and calculating, was now flushed a deep red that reached the tips of her ears. Her heart was beating so fast it threatened to break her ribs.
Tsubaki looked at her King with concern. "President... are you alright?"
Sona raised her trembling hands and covered her flushed face, her breath coming in short gasps. Her mind wasn't processing the financial defeat, but the collapse of her entire pre-arranged future.
"He defeated me..." Sona murmured, her voice a mixture of disbelief, humiliation, and an undeniable spark of fanatical devotion. "Tsubaki... he... he defeated me. Hano-sensei is... my fiancé."
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Here's the next chapter, since I was late uploading the previous one. See you later.
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( ̳• · • ̳) ~ ♡ Thanks for reading ♡
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