Fate: Alternative (Highschool DxD/Fate): Chapter 38

Underwold.

At the heart of the Phenex territory, a large mansion stood a few miles away from where the main mansion of the Phenex family existed.

This was the home of the third son of the Phenex family, Riser Phenex.

Just like his older brothers, he was given this mansion when he turned sixteen. A home that he turned into his playhouse by indulging in all manner of acts.

However, right now, in the depths of this mansion, there was no constant noise of parties, nor was there the constant activity of his servants and peerage.

Instead, in his room, there was only silence as he read through the documents he was given by his mother and delivered by his little sister.

Reading through the contents, he could not help but sneer and put the documents aside.

“I still don’t understand why you and Mother wanted me to look at these things, Ravel.”

Ravel Phenex, the little sister of Riser Phenex and his Bishop, sighed in exasperation at her brother’s dismissal of the problematic news.

“Onii-sama. You need to understand the problem this information poses.”

The girl took out the file and once again pointed at the image of the brown-haired boy that did not look all that impressive on paper.

“While he may not look like much right now, this is still the Red Dragon Emperor of this generation. If we are to look at history, he is guaranteed to become a powerhouse in the supernatural community before he hits thirty. That is some serious potential.”

Ravel stared at her brother seriously.

“Potential that Rias Gremory must also see. Potential that will tempt her to recruit him into her peerage.”

That got a reaction out of Riser as his expressions fell before he held a neutral look.

“I see. I guess Father and Mother want to fast-track the marriage, then? Because they fear that she will recruit this boy and use him to break free from the engagement?”

“Essentially? Yes.”

While he did not give any outward reaction, Riser felt boundless rage churn within his heart at those blunt words. Yet, this anger was not directed at his sister, because she too shared the same circumstances as him.

No. This rage was directed at his parents and, to a greater extent, the nobility system as a whole.

Because it was the rule of nobility that only the eldest child of a devil lord, born from the main wife, shall inherit the position, and the rest of the children are to either carve out their own place in the devil society through their power, connections, or other ways, or end up becoming political tools.

Just like Riser did.

As the third son, he would never inherit the Phenex family head’s position from his father. That is why his parents had long since arranged the political marriage with the Gremory to have him marry into that family, securing his position and future.

To be fair, Riser knew that his parents loved him. In fact, he believed that they loved him more than any of his siblings, which was evident in how they made such a disadvantageous deal with the Gremory family head to have him marry their daughter.

However, he still felt like a political tool thrown to the wolves.

Because he knew that, should Rias will it after their marriage, she could make his life a living hell since he would be in her home territory.

It was a truly dangerous fate.

The only reason why he was even going along with it was that Rias was an airhead who thought she was the master of political maneuvers when, in truth, she was just an emotional girl who let her feelings guide her actions most of the time. It also helped that she was very beautiful and was in Riser’s ‘strike zone’ as the humans say.

And then there is also the fact that Rias had already alienated many potential political assets and the lesser nobility that serve under the Gremory house with her pro-human actions and idiocy, which meant that Riser could use them to secure his position in the Gremory family once they were married.

These kinds of political problems are also why he chose his sister as his Bishop, making sure that she would not be tied to another pillar family and sent away as he would be.

Once again, looking at the file given to him, Riser looked at the information gathered by their family’s spies in the devil squad that patrols Kuoh town to ensure Rias and Sona’s safety in the human world.

“It says here that she has already approached the boy and offered to reincarnate him, yet he rejected, yes?”

Ravel nodded her head at his question, feeling just as baffled as the scouts when they got this news through their methods.

Why would anyone, especially someone with that much potential, want to remain human?

While Ravel did not have anything against humans, she still believed them to be an inferior species, mainly due to the objective facts that she was taught from her childhood.

In terms of their physical body, they were weak. Extremely weak. So weak that even an infant from the weakest supernatural species on the planet can kill an average human with ease.

Mentally, they break very easily. Unlike the supernatural races, which are born with a natural disposition towards certain emotions and thought patterns, humans are born as balls of chaos that have everything and nothing in their minds at the same time. This chaos of good and evil, light and dark, and everything in between, is what causes such mental weakness in their species, leading to a fragile psyche that can be broken with mere words.

Magically, they had no potential whatsoever. Except for a few outliers and bloodlines, which are more of a mixed bloodline than pure humans, most of the human race has very little potential for magic.

It was the reason why most of the devil nobility let that flowery half-blood Merlin reverse engineer devil power and create the human magic system. Unlike what the original 72 devils did with Solomon’s research back then.

Because they knew that even with the magic system Merlin established, humans would never be able to amount to anything truly groundbreaking. Sure, there will be monsters born now and then within their race, which was a given since they were blessed with the concept of ‘Potential’ by the biblical god, but aside from that, the humans would not pose much threat to the devils or any other race out there, even with their magic.

In Ravel’s mind, the only thing that the humans had going for them was their powerful souls, which serve as the best source of energy for any supernatural race out there.

There was a reason why the older devils used to trade human souls in the old days over the souls of any other creature out there, side from Dragons, which were also regarded at the same level as Human Souls.

This was why Ravel believed that any human would take the choice of becoming a devil over remaining as such a weak race with but a brief existence.

Riser put down the file again and stared at Ravel, who snapped out of her thoughts.

“How likely is it that this boy would change his mind?”

“Given that I don’t have much information on him and his personality aside from what out spies managed to gather, which was not much thanks to that strange barrier that surrounds his house, I am guessing that he might change his mind if he is put in some kind of danger and Rias manages to save him at the last moment, just like with her lucky encounters with the rest of her peerage.”

“Heh, of course she would have such a ‘lucky encounter’.”

Ravel smiled wryly at her brother’s sneer.

Rias gremory always believed that she was an extremely lucky individual, and to anyone who refuted her claim, she always showed off her peerage proudly as proof of her luck.

But Riser was not inclined to believe in this luck of hers. Instead, he had his own theory, one he never shared with anyone but Ravel lest he end up ‘taking an indefinite vacation’ on earth thanks to a certain Lucifer.

“Again with that absurd theory? Onii-sama, you really need to let go of such things lest you really do end up attracting Lucifer-sama’s attention for spreading false rumors.”

“Hey! I am not that stupid. You should know that I don’t trust anyone aside from you with this kind of information.”

Then, Riser gave a serious look at his little sister.

“But seriously, tell me I am wrong after listening to the facts.”

Riser raised his fingers one after another and started to put forth his theory accordingly.

“First, Himejima. That girl was starving on the streets in that remote town in Japan. A place that not even the human government would remember exists until they look at their records. So, how did the Humejima clan, that is located far to the east of that town, so far that it would take them an entire day’s travel, even know that the girl was hiding there? And what was Rias doing in such a place with her father, Lord Gremory’s Bishop? As far as I know, there is no business, client, or even a contracted human of theirs in that town to begin with. Hell, even that human that Akeno saved was someone who only appeared in that town the day before.”

“And before you say that town was Agrippa’s territory, I call bull on it. I’ve checked the records. That town only became his territory two days before Akeno Himejima arrived there.”

“Then, there is the Nekoshou, Koneko. Her execution was being pushed for by the lesser nobility at that time, with the Naberius clan as the spearhead. If Lord Lucifer truly wanted to protect her as he portrayed himself back then, why did he wait until the very last minute, when the execution was nearly a done deal, before intervening? Do you think those lesser nobility would even have made a peep about this issue if he had made his intentions of protecting the girl from the very beginning?”

“And then, there is that boy, Kiba Yuuto. Tell me, what the hell was Rias Gremory, heir to the Gremory clan, one of the 72 pillar families, doing in the forests of the Vatican? The heart of the heavenly faction? Why did Okita Souji, her brother’s knight, bring her there in the first place? And why did he conveniently leave the girl alone in the forest to ‘settle some matters’ just a few minutes before she would stumble upon that boy?”

As her brother kept raising such points, Ravel really had no choice but to consider his words, because they really did sound like very suspicious coincidences and cases of ‘luck’.

“....Then, do you think Rias planned all of that?”

Riser could not help but burst out laughing at his sister’s question.

“That airhead? No. She does not have that kind of thinking capacity. She really does believe that all of this was just her luck guiding such unique people to her doorstep.”

“Then...?”

“Yes. I believe that a certain someone is behind all of this. It is the reason why I did not speak to anyone about this theory. Because if I am right, and he is really manipulating things behind the scenes, who knows what he will do to me for finding out about it? Not to mention that he is already cross with me after my parents arranged that marriage with his ‘precious’ sister. That damned sis-con.”

Shaking her head in exasperation and to get rid of the strange paranoia that crept up after considering her brother’s words, she spoke up again.

“But, what about that Dhampire, Gasper?”

Riser held his fingers to his chin in thought before speaking again.

“That, admittedly, was probably an accident and really because of Rias’s luck. After all, she was there with Leviathan and her brother’s peerage for negotiating with the Tepes clan. Negotiations that were already scheduled more than a year before that incident. Nobody could have predicted that the boy would take the chance to escape and end up dead at the hands of vampire hunters, resulting in her reincarnating him.”

 Shaking his head, Riser looked back at the file in his lap.

“Anyways, enough distractions. If what you predicted is right and Rias does end up recruiting this boy, then tell mother and father to do as they please. However, tell them that I would like to confront Rias myself if they do end up pushing the timeline.”

Ravel nodded and teleported out of her brother’s mansion, heading straight for her parents, leaving behind Riser Phenex, who continued reading through the file about the latest wielder of the Boosted Gear.