~ 💎 WEEKLY POWER GOALS 💎🔥 60→1ch | 100→2ch | 200→5ch ⏰ Resets Monday!
Thanks!
[Original setting: Dragon’s Might and Dragon’s Nature, the innate pressure of a dragon, attracting the strong, holding a natural allure for the opposite sex.
As for the pressure itself, not only is it suppressed the moment he appears, he’s a Demon Emperor.
A little dragon’s might can’t touch him.] …
Second-floor rear.
Open-air balcony.
Alpha watched Beta, who was leaning against a pillar with her feet up on the railing, pen moving across a notebook in lazy, unhurried strokes.
“Beta.
No eavesdropping on big brother’s conversation.” “Eh?
I’m not.” Beta glanced at Li Ancheng by the pool and giggled.
“Ancheng-sama gave me permission to record this.” Alpha leaned in, curious.
She scanned the notebook, and a flush crept across her fair, composed face.
[Demon Court Steward Alpha: composed personality, pursues perfection, extremely strong sense of responsibility.
For now, any smile shown to anyone other than Ancheng-sama is a fake smile.] “Why are you recording me?” Beta smiled.
“Everything related to Ancheng-sama.
I record all of it.” “Focus on finalizing the candidate list for the Demon Court.” Alpha exhaled softly and turned her gaze toward the poolside.
…
Li Ancheng watched Rias and Akeno go quiet.
He reached for a cup of black tea from the table and took a slow sip.
“No rush.
Think it over, then tell me.” Rias steadied herself and drew a quiet breath.
“Actually, I have a marriage engagement.
It’s a contract set by my family.
So I can’t agree to your request.” “That’s fine.” Li Ancheng smiled, unbothered.
“It just means the deal can’t proceed.” Himejima Akeno blinked.
She’d expected him to say something about canceling the engagement.
She hadn’t expected…
This.
He was this indifferent?
Like he’d tossed the request out on a whim.
If the other party declined, he simply lost interest.
Nothing more.
That casual about it?
Something seemed to click for Rias.
“You think one more or one less of me makes no difference.
Right?” “I’m simply respecting your decision.” Li Ancheng chuckled and shook his head.
“Honestly, the Demon Court right now — I’ve handed most of it to my steward.” “As for me, think of me as an ordinary university student.” “And — what you said on the rooftop today wasn’t wrong.
I am greedy.” A faint anger lit behind Rias’s eyes.
She didn’t bother hiding her displeasure.
“Don’t hide behind greed when you can’t even be bothered!” “Real greed means you have to have it.
By any means necessary!” “The way you’re acting right now, you’re treating me like a trivial amusement!” “Your so-called greed doesn’t put me, Rias Gremory, in your eyes at all!” Himejima Akeno’s chest tightened.
She stepped quickly between them.
“Ancheng-san, the chains on the president are too heavy.
The family’s engagement isn’t something she can break free from just by wanting to.” “Even if Ancheng-san is greedy, please give the president a little more time.
Alright?” Li Ancheng didn’t acknowledge Rias at all.
He just smiled and looked at Akeno.
“And you, Akeno-senpai?” “…” A few seconds of silence.
Then Akeno smiled, the corner of her mouth twitching into something apologetic.
“I also need time.” Li Ancheng nodded lightly, rose from his seat, and walked toward the house.
“I have plenty of time.
If Rias hadn’t noticed my strength first and proposed a deal herself, I wouldn’t have considered any of this.” His steps paused.
He looked back at Rias.
“As for those family matters you mentioned — I have no interest in them whatsoever.” “What I’m interested in is you.
Just you.” Rias watched his back disappear through the doorway.
She pulled in a long breath and turned to Akeno.
“I lost my composure again…” “I thought he was treating me like an object.” Akeno gave a soft laugh and shook her head.
“President, you shouldn’t have been so impatient.
I wasn’t in the Rating Game, but it must be incredibly difficult, right?” Rias didn’t say much more.
She nodded once.
“Let’s head back.
We need to tell Koneko and Kiba about Li Ancheng.” …
Warm light filled the living room.
Hyoudou Issei felt cold to his fingertips.
He sat at the very edge of the sofa, head hung so low his shoulders were nearly swallowing it.
“Issei.
Still haven’t gone home?” Li Ancheng’s voice drifted in from the doorway, easy and light, carrying that same unhurried smile.
Hyoudou Issei startled.
He shot to his feet and bowed deep.
“Ancheng-aniki!
S-sorry…
I exposed your identity…” “Don’t worry about it.” Li Ancheng waved him off and dropped onto the main sofa.
“As long as our classmates don’t find out, it’s fine.
Everyone else, doesn’t matter.” Hyoudou Issei took a slow breath and walked over.
“Ancheng-aniki…
I’ve decided.
Please, take the power out of me.” “Oh?” Li Ancheng raised an eyebrow, watching him with quiet interest.
“That sudden?
No other requests?” Hyoudou Issei blanked.
His face went red, visibly, in real time.
“J-just…
Yuuma…” “Hahaha.” Li Ancheng laughed.
“Relax.
Your first love, leave it to me.” Hyoudou Issei’s eyes lit up instantly.
“Then start now, please!” Li Ancheng stood and clapped a hand on his shoulder.
“Alright.
Now it is.” His gaze dropped to Issei’s left hand.
He raised one finger and tapped lightly through the air.
SSSS!
A wisp of green light bloomed from beneath the skin of Hyoudou Issei’s left arm.
Issei looked down, dazed.
The next second.
A dark red gauntlet, its texture oddly foreign, wrapped around his left hand without warning.
“Is…
is this my power?” Hyoudou Issei tentatively clenched his fist.
“Doesn’t feel like anything special.” Just then.
Rias and Himejima Akeno came rushing into the living room.
Li Ancheng glanced at them.
“The Red Dragon Emperor’s Gauntlet.
One of the thirteen Longinus.” “Longinus?!” Rias’s pupils snapped narrow.
“That’s right.” Li Ancheng’s voice didn’t change.
“From the moment the fallen angels entered this area, he was their only target.
Their high command confirmed long ago that this thing was sleeping inside him.” “The approach, the relationship, the kill, all of it was a targeted hunt.
Nothing about it was coincidence.” He finished speaking and raised his right index finger.
A thread of pitch-black, fine as ink, seeped from the fingertip.
It moved like something alive, drifting out in a lazy curl and coiling around Issei’s left arm.
“Ugh…
h-hot!” Hyoudou Issei’s whole body seized.
No tearing pain.
But a crushing pressure settled over him, the sensation of one force blanketing another and pressing it flat.
Deep inside his left arm, the power that had just stirred awake, roaring and volcanic, was being shoved back down into silence.
“Come out of this body.” The instant Li Ancheng’s words landed, BOOM!
The Red Dragon Emperor’s Gauntlet erupted with blinding light.
Complex dragon patterns rose across its surface.
Hyoudou Issei’s entire left arm lifted without his control.
Red light peeled away from his skin and surged upward, gathering in the air above him.
It coalesced, faint but unmistakable, into the phantom form of a small red dragon.
The phantom turned to face Li Ancheng.
Its jaws parted in a silent, furious roar.
“What are you doing?!” Rias couldn’t stop herself.
“Forcibly stripping a Sacred Gear will kill the host!” Hyoudou Issei’s face drained of color.
His legs nearly gave.
But then his eyes found Li Ancheng’s.
Utterly calm.
Not a ripple of concern.
The fear churning in Issei’s chest went quiet.
Beside him, Asia spoke up in a small voice.
“Um…
miss, Ancheng-san…
he can even bring back people who have already died.” Li Ancheng said nothing more.
He just parted his lips, slightly.
The pitch-black thread coiled around Issei’s arm drew gently tighter.
BANG!
The Red Dragon Emperor’s phantom burst apart like a punctured balloon, gone, just like that, scattered into nothing!
Crimson motes of light rained through the air.
The next second.
Under Rias and Akeno’s gazes, their eyes wide and stricken as though they were watching something impossible, Li Ancheng inhaled.
Like a whale drawing in the sea, he pulled every last one of those crimson motes, pure dragon soul and energy rendered into light, And swallowed them whole.
He…
He raw-swallowed the Red Dragon Emperor’s soul?!
As the dragon soul vanished, the violent mass of red light in the air contracted rapidly, condensed, and settled into something still.
Something with no will left inside it.
The gauntlet.
Stripped of every trace of its berserk dragon’s might.
Nothing left but the shell, red base, gold patterns.
It drifted down, slow and weightless, into Li Ancheng’s open palm.
Silence.
THUD!
Hyoudou Issei sat down hard on the floor.
He stared at his left hand.
Completely normal.
He reached over with his right hand and pinched it hard.
It hurt.
Skin intact.
Not a mark on it.
He was alive.
He really, actually hadn’t died.
And Rias, Her lips, rarely anything but composed, hung open.
Her eyes were round and frozen.
She had stopped breathing entirely.
What she’d just watched was like a sledgehammer swinging straight through her skull, Smashing every piece of demonic common sense she had ever built into rubble.
That was a Longinus.
A power even the Demon Kings feared.
And it carried an absolute, ironclad rule: strip it from the host, and the host dies.
Yet in this man’s hands, It was like reaching over and sliding a winter glove off someone else’s hand.
Just like that.
Effortless.
Just what kind of monster is this?!
➤ Next: One Sword Cuts Down the Longinus — This Is the Forbidden Power You Fear?