The artificial sun had long since set by the time the doors of the shop finally closed for the day.
The last remaining customer had already left, leaving Karma alone in the shop as he closed up. The moment the lock clicked shut behind the man, Karma let out a long, slow sigh.
The elderly devil straightened his hunched posture from behind the counter. Then, his physical form blurred.
A glowing silver magic circle flared beneath his boots. Teleportation in the Underworld was a notoriously volatile art, it was not an easy thing to do. The dimension's dense, magic-saturated atmosphere resisted spatial shearing, making most teleportation techniques a guarded jealously by the noble houses.
Under Raum's uncompromising tutelage, however, He hadn't just learned to trigger a pre-made circle, he had mastered teleporting in the underworld, of course, not yet able to go to earth, still, but able to control magic good enough not to mind the demonic magic in the air.
The empty tavern warped. Then, he was gone from the shop. The old man vanished from the empty tavern, leaving behind only a brief draft of wind to fill the void and the faint, lingering scent of sulfur.
Several miles away, inside the quiet living room of a modest, comfortable home, a matching teleportation circle illuminated the floor. Karma stepped out of the light. The moment his feet touched the polished wooden floorboards, the Gaea Foundation's restructuring slid over his skin like cool water.
His weathered, wrinkled skin smoothed out, shedding centuries of fake age. His thin hair shifted and lightened into soft purple hair. His height shrank slightly, his shoulders narrowing back into the frame of a youth. Within seconds, the frail, elderly man disappeared entirely.
Standing in his place was a young devil with sharp, mismatched silver and crimson eyes.
Lucian Lux Raum.
He rolled his shoulders, feeling the pleasantness of being Lucian again rather than karma. There really wasn't any problem when he sifted, but when he was in a single form for too long, he started to feel...homey? When he changed back
"You'd think after the first few times someone died trying to cheat me, the rest of them would learn how to read a contract," he muttered to himself, kicking off his boots.
'You are the fool if you truly believe these creatures will ever stop falling victim to their own petty greed and sins,' Raum's voice rang out in his mind, carrying its usual undertone of ancient, aristocratic disdain.
Lucian scoffed, walking over to a shelf to grab a clean glass. "Well, then I guess I'll just have to keep killing them. It's free real estate, ancestor."
'Seems you have gotten cocky, boy,' Raum remarked, though there was a dark, rumbling hint of amusement behind the words. 'You will meet a person who will break out of one of your deals one day. And on that day, you will be the one on the losing end.'
"Break my deals?" Lucian repeated. He paused, then burst into a loud, genuine laugh that echoed off the clean walls of his living room.
'All deals can be broken, boy,' Raum said coldly, his voice dripping with centuries of pride. 'Simply because you have some rare talent in using demon magic despite being a devil, does not mean you are a demon yourself. And even we, the Great Lords of the underworld, have had our contracts shattered by those with enough power or through loopholes.'
Lucian only laughed harder, pouring himself a drink. He didn't bother correcting the ancient demon.
It had been a full year since their initial bargain, and the long dead Great Earl was still here, faithfully fulfilling his end of the contract while Lucian allowed him to view the world through his eyes.
But just a few months into Lucian's commercial expansion, Raum had proudly jumped to his own conclusion, he believed Lucian's "Essence of Merchant" was a rare form of demon contract magic.
Lucian had let him believe it. It was far too convenient to correct. Why waste his breath and do something so stupid. After all, while Raum was in a way his teacher, the demon was not his friend or someone he trusted. No, not at all.
In this world, there was a vast, fundamental difference between a devil's contract and a demon's bargain. Devils were strictly limited by their own standing and active resources, they could not grant a wish using power they did not personally possess, meaning their "miracles" were often things they could perform themselves and nothing more.
Demons, however, were creatures of pure conceptual law. Within the rigid framework of a signed pact, a high-ranking demon could manipulate space, warp reality, and twist fate itself to fulfill a wish. They do this using something devils couldn't really use.
Souls.
See, devils can too make soul deals, but they really couldn't use the power of souls. Yes, they could devour it, but even then, they didn't really gain much from it, but demons could use souls as battiers, and drawing upon that immortal soul power, they could shape creation and do things they weren't able to do normally.
But even a demon's conceptual magic still had limits depending on a lot of factors. It was a mere candle compared to the absolute authority of the Essence of Merchant.
Lucian's power of deals was truly absolute that even he couldn't break a deal once made, and he'd be forced to do whatever it was he had said to be done in a deal.
At the end wasn't about to explain the difference to Raum. Let the old crow think his descendant was just an anomaly or had gotten something from him.
Lucian collapsed onto his plush couch, sinking into the soft cushions with a contented sigh.
The house was completely different from the shabby, drafty ruin he had occupied a year ago. Back when he first brought the Gaea Foundation back to DxD, he had been terrified.
He had known he needed resources, money, and most importantly, an untraceable mask.
Using the Gaea Foundation, he had crafted his first disguise and sought out a desperate property owner looking to flee the border. Lucian had bought the building using a few gold stones from his vault. Of course, flashing gold in a town of thugs had immediate consequences. The greedy seller had returned three days later with a group, planning to slit Lucian's throat and take the rest of his gold.
Lucian shook his head at the memory. "The idiot should have been content with the gold he had."
The sale had, of course, contained his power, and so, the moment the seller drew his blade at Lucian, trying to go back on his deal, the contract had claimed his life force as a penalty, and Lucian killed the other fools with him.
Once the property was legally and conceptually bound to him, Lucian had used a different face, this time pretending to be an eccentric, wealthy young noble from the inner territories to hire craftsmen to completely renovate the building, turning it into the pristine, secure hub of Karma's Exchange.
From there, he had expanded.
He didn't stay confined to one town. He traveled to the next district, bought another property, traded his gold for local devil currency, and repeated the process. Over the past twelve months, he had established identical safehouses and merchant hubs across four distinct towns in the sector.
And as he worked, he trained. Under Raum's guidance, he had mastered a few arrays of magic. He learned Barrier magic, Illusions, Detection spells, elemental magic, and, most importantly, Teleportation.
In media like anime or movies, teleportation was treated as a common, everyday spell. But in the Underworld, teleportation was incredibly rare. Mastering it had given Lucian an advantage. He could move between his four properties in a heartbeat, completely bypassing the eyes of the local gangs, still it was only easy because the towns didn't have wards around them.
He had recruited employees to run the front shops, but none of them had ever seen his real face. He operated through a roster of seven distinct identities crafted by the Gaea Foundation, three female and four male, ranging from the wise old Karma to a wealthy young lady. Eight faces in total, counting his original one.
But his masterstroke had been his trip to the capital.
Most low-class devils in his position would have avoided the capital like the plague. But Lucian, wearing another face he'd simply had, walked straight into the heart of the Underworld's administration to get some answers. He had been curious about his own legal status.
Though he had been abandoned on the streets as a "street rat," he was still biologically the son of a high-class noble mother from the Raum clan. Because his birth was a source of massive potential scandal, his mother, in the end, had quietly dumped him in the slums, fully expecting him to die.
Crucially, it seemed like they had never formally stripped him of his noble registry or banished him from the clan officially, as doing so would have required a public thing.
Technically, on paper, Lucian Lux Raum was still a registered noble. That meant Lucian Lux Raum was still a high class by hierarchy.
Using that loophole, along with a massive amount of gold to grease the palms of corrupt administrative clerks, Lucian had legally registered all of his properties under his own noble name.
Yes, it would be bad if someone looked at the record trying to find something and saw the name, but nobody really knew where Lucian was after his mother tossed him out, so even if they knew who owned it, if they couldn't find him, then he was a little safe.
For now, anywhere.
Still, because every single purchase was processed with the backing of his meta-power, the concept of "ownership" was absolute. When the paperwork cleared, the properties became his in the eyes of the law and the eyes of the cosmos.
The very stone of the walls was his. The ground they stood on was his. Even the air inside the buildings was bound to his will.
Every single entrance of his shops or other places carried a small writing stating that by entering these premises, they agree to abide by the owner's house rules.
To most, it looked like a harmless, standard rule of conduct. They shrugged, read it, and walked inside. But the moment they read it and chose to cross the threshold, their souls implicitly accepted the contract.
This was how he had neutralized Lexon and his thugs so effortlessly. Lexon had walked into Karma's Exchange, trying to break his deal. They had all read the writing when they entered, and so he was able to decide that magic wouldn't work for them.
So he simply "noped" his magic circles out of existence.
Lexon had come to borrow a substantial amount of gold, signing a standard loan agreement with Karma. Lucian always kept his contracts reasonable, but the penalty clause for attempting to cheat or harm him was absolute. If the debtor defaulted or tried to use violence, the contract automatically claimed their remaining lifespan, power, and assets.
Lexon was the ninth fool to find that out.
Lucian smiled, letting his head fall back against the couch. He snapped his fingers, and a golden ripple of the Gate opened beside him. A chilled glass of drink floated out, and he caught it, pourin git into his glass, taking a long, satisfying sip.
His network now spanned three distinct territories. He had just over two hundred people working for him, most of whom had no idea who the "Director" at the top of the pyramid actually was. And thanks to the nine foolish debtors who had tried to cheat him over the past year, he had harvested a massive lifespan.
He closed his eyes, focusing on something inside.
He could feel the connections to the other worlds he had access to.
Fate. One Piece. Akame ga Kill.
And now, three new worlds have also joined over the past year, without sacrificing a single day of his own default lifespan, those fools have been generous.
Harry Potter. Parallel World Pharmacy. DanMachi.
Six worlds. Six gardens of resources and power.
Lucian opened his eyes, raising his glass to the empty room as a sharp, triumphant grin spread across his face.
"To those nine great fools," he toasted, his voice filled with a rich, dark amusement. "May the next world be just as generous."
He drank, the cool liquid sliding down his throat as the night settled quietly over his secure, comfortable home.
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