While some factions in the Underworld pledged their undying loyalty to the descendants of the original Demon Kings, others wanted nothing more than to grind them into the dirt.
Sirzechs, anticipating the worst, knew the transport of these descendants was a prime target.
Fearing that radicals from the Reformist Faction might launch a bloody interception, he orchestrated the transfer of the rescued personnel to the House of Lucifer’s ancestral castle in multiple, highly guarded trips.
The staggered approach guaranteed their safety.
It was also a calculated gesture of goodwill from the Underworld’s current administration to Levi.
Following the departure of Rizevim and Vali, both of whom had stripped the estate of numerous servants for their own factions, the Lucifer castle was left drastically short-handed.
This influx of new arrivals was the perfect solution to fill the echoing, empty halls.
Naturally, Grayfia took charge of the majority, herding them away for strict retraining to meet the rigorous standards of the household.
But there was one exception.
A single girl was pulled from the processing line before Grayfia could assign her.
Kuroka had spotted her from across the courtyard and immediately dragged her away.
Now, sitting opposite the nekomata, Sakura Tohsaka kept her fingers tightly intertwined in her lap.
Her heart hammered against her ribs.
“Sakura, I didn’t see you in the Naberius family’s testing area, so I thought the worst,” Kuroka said, her golden eyes softening with a complicated mix of relief and sorrow.
“I never expected you to be fished out by the Underworld’s transport team.
To actually see you again…
I don’t even know what to say, nya.”
Before Kuroka could finish her sentence, Shirone launched herself forward.
The small, white-haired girl buried her face into Sakura’s chest, her tiny hands gripping the dark fabric of Sakura’s clothes.
“Big Sister Sakura…” Shirone mumbled, her voice muffled but thick with emotion.
Sakura slowly raised a trembling hand and stroked Shirone’s white hair.
The rigid tension locking her spine finally began to melt, and a fragile, exhausted smile graced her lips.
“I didn’t expect it to turn out like this either…”
Sakura sighed, the sound carrying years of quiet suffering.
She wasn’t a devil.
She was human—a girl born into a proud Magus lineage.
Once, she had a father, a mother, and an older sister.
Her family had been whole, her days painted with the innocent laughter of childhood.
That was until her father, spouting beyond understanding ideals about legacy and magic crests, threw her into the abyss of another Magus family.
But her nightmare hadn’t ended there.
The patriarch of that new family had been swindled by a devil, and in the resulting fallout, she was dragged down into the Underworld alongside them.
Stripped of her humanity and her name, she was reduced to a slave, struggling every waking second just to breathe.
It was during those bleak days in the Naberius estate that she met Kuroka and Shirone.
Assigned to deliver their meager meals, Sakura found a strange solace in the two sisters.
Over time, the cold iron bars of their confinement had forged a quiet, desperate bond between them.
Life had never offered Sakura a single kindness.
Yet, looking down at Shirone in her arms and Kuroka sitting across from her, a deep sense of relief washed over her.
She wasn’t happy for herself.
She was happy for them.
The sisters had survived the Naberius family’s cruelty.
They were out, and they were smiling.
In the unforgiving dark of the Underworld, that alone was a miracle.
“Alright, Sakura, I’ll take you to meet Lord Levi, nya,” Kuroka said, extending a hand across the table.
“Lord Levi isn’t a bad person.
He’s actually very easy to get along with.
Here, no matter what your status is, you won’t be treated like garbage anymore.”
Sakura stared at the offered hand.
Her fingers twitched, instinctively wanting to reach out and grasp the lifeline.
But she pulled back.
The phantom weight of her past anchored her wrists.
She didn’t dare take the initiative anymore.
She was terrified of the inevitable disappointment, and even more terrified of becoming a burden to the only two people who had ever shown her kindness.
Before she could fully retreat into her shell, Kuroka lunged forward and snatched her wrist.
At the same time, Shirone planted her small hands on Sakura’s back and pushed with all her might.
“Let’s go, Sakura,” Shirone urged.
Pulled from the front and pushed from behind, Sakura stumbled forward.
As she was dragged out into the open courtyard, Sakura looked up.
The Underworld was perpetually bathed in the eerie light of a purple sun, yet in that specific moment, the suffocating gloom seemed to fracture.
The colors of her bleak reality suddenly sharpened, breathing life into a world she had long thought dead.
Her long, dark night had finally broken.
Levi stared at the ticking hands of his silver pocket watch, his mind rapidly cataloging the pattern of his recent system sign-ins.
When he first signed in near the chaotic aura of Rizevim, the system had granted him the Yamato.
Later, signing in near Grayfia—a master of spatial manipulation and demonic logistics—yielded the Summoned Swords, upgraded for long-distance teleportation.
Sirzechs, a monster boasting extraordinary-level destructive power, had provided the Sin Devil Trigger.
Shirone, whose latent senjutsu was currently dormant leaving her with only raw physical traits, granted him a massive physical enhancement.
Kuroka, heavily reliant on senjutsu and hyper-awareness, had rewarded him with Observation Haki.
‘The correlation is obvious,’Levi calculated, his eyes narrowing.’The rewards are directly tied to the fundamental characteristics or latent potential of the target.’He shifted his gaze to the massive crystal resting in the center of the room.’So, what does Ingvild offer?
Dragon-slaying attributes?
Oceanic dominion?
Or something directly tied to the Leviathan bloodline?’
He studied the purple-haired girl suspended in the stasis crystal.
She was a genuine anomaly.
Whatever the system extracted from an existence of this caliber, it would be very useful.
Levi looked back down at the watch.
The second hand clicked into place.
Time was up.
[Sign-in Reward: Vergil’s Yamato Mastery & Combat Experience]
A sharp, piercing spike of pain detonated behind his eyes.
It wasn’t agonizing, but the sheer volume of information flooding his synapses felt like a torrential flood breaching a dam.
Muscle memory, spatial calculations, the exact angle required to sever dimensions, the seamless integration of the Sin Devil Trigger with the Summoned Swords—decades of relentless, bloody combat experience etched itself into his very soul.
As the headache subsided, clarity took its place.
He understood instantly why Ingvild was the catalyst for this specific reward.
“I didn’t see the angle at first, but considering her condition…
it makes perfect sense,” Levi muttered.
He stepped forward and pressed his palm flat against the cold surface of the stasis crystal.
Channeling a precise surge of demonic energy, he bypassed the outer wards.
The crystal hummed, then erupted into a blinding, incandescent white light.
Like ice dropped into a roaring furnace, the crystalline structure melted away layer by layer, dissolving into harmless motes of light that drifted toward the ceiling.
Stripped of her physical support, the purple-haired girl slumped forward.
Levi closed the distance in a single stride, catching her limp body effortlessly against his chest.
With his free hand, he reached into the empty air.
The Yamato materialized silently, its dark scabbard resting heavy in his grip.
“The true essence of the Yamato isn’t just destruction; it’s separation,” Levi whispered, his thumb popping the tsuba to expose an inch of the gleaming blade.
“Until now, I only used it to cleave physical space or shatter the magical restrictions placed on me.
Blunt, forceful applications.”
He looked down at Ingvild’s pale face.
“But the devil sleeping sickness…
it’s a conceptual anomaly.
It’s not a virus, and it’s not a physical flaw.
It’s a curse woven into her very existence.” Levi’s mouth curled into a dry, self-mocking smirk.
“I never even considered using the Yamato to surgically excise a disease.”
With his newly acquired mastery, the impossible was now merely a matter of precision.
Levi carried Ingvild to the plush leather sofa and laid her down gently.
He drew the Yamato.
The blade hummed, vibrating with a terrifying, absolute authority over space.
He reversed his grip and lightly tapped the center of Ingvild’s forehead with the very tip of the katana.
Shing.
There was no blood.
No physical wound.
But as the blade pulled away, it dragged a writhing, sickly yellow mass of light out from her skull.
The conceptual manifestation of the sleeping sickness shrieked silently as it was severed from its host.
Levi snatched the yellow light out of the air and tossed it into his system inventory without a second thought.
It was a potent curse—much like the restriction Rizevim had tried to place on him.
It might prove useful as a weapon later.
Sheathing the Yamato, he sat in the armchair opposite the sofa and waited.
Ten minutes later, the girl’s eyelashes fluttered.
Ingvild Leviathan opened her eyes.
They were a striking, jewel-like violet, currently clouded with heavy disorientation.
“Where…
is this…?” she murmured, her voice raspy from a century of disuse.
Though she was awake, her mind was entirely fragmented.
Her last coherent memory was the scent of sea salt, the sound of crashing waves, and the warm smiles of her parents.
The opulent, gothic architecture of the Lucifer estate was entirely alien to her.
Panic began to bleed into her expression.
“My home,” Levi answered, his voice calm and level.
“I’ll save us both some time and be blunt.
If I told you that you’ve been asleep for roughly a hundred years, would you believe me?”
“A hundred…
years…?”
Ingvild froze.
In the original timeline, when she finally awoke, she had at least retained some awareness of her Leviathan heritage and her latent powers.
Right now, she had none of that context.
She was, in her own mind, just a normal human girl from a seaside town.
“It’s fine if you don’t believe it right now,” Levi continued, leaning back in his chair.
“The reality of the situation won’t change.
You’ll slowly come to terms with it as the days pass.”
Ingvild stared at him.
Her mind violently rejected the number.
A hundred years?
It was impossible.
Yet, the boy sitting across from her spoke with an absolute, chilling certainty. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
There was no deception in his dark eyes.
Slowly, she turned her head.
Her gaze caught her own reflection in a tall, ornate mirror resting against the far wall.
She raised a trembling hand to her cheek.
“If…
if what you’re saying is true…” her voice cracked.
“I was only seventeen.
I went to sleep, and now I’m a woman over a century old…
but the face in the mirror hasn’t changed at all.
It doesn’t make sense.”
Tears rapidly welled in her violet eyes.
“Mom and Dad…
if a hundred years have passed, they’re gone, aren’t they?” Her breathing hitched, accelerating into a panic attack.
“The aunt next door…
the kids who played on the hill…
the fisherman who always gave me extra catch…
everyone is gone.”
She curled her knees to her chest, her fingers digging into her hair.
“It feels like my entire life was just a dream.”
Ingvild’s eyes glazed over, losing all focus.
She was spiraling into a psychological black hole.
The sheer crushing weight of total isolation was shutting her mind down, turning her into a hollow, vacant doll.
Levi watched her for a second.
He wasn’t a therapist.
He didn’t have the patience for delicate emotional counseling.
He stood up, crossed the space between them, and pulled her off the sofa, wrapping his arms around her in a firm, grounding embrace.
“Eh…
Eh?!”
The sudden, warm physical contact and the faint scent of ozone and steel snapped Ingvild violently out of her dissociation.
Her pale face instantly flushed crimson, the terrifying numbness shattering under the sudden embarrassment.
“That should clear your head a bit,” Levi said.
Seeing the focus return to her eyes, he immediately released her and stepped back.
He walked over to the heavy velvet curtains and gripped the fabric.
“Let’s get one thing straight.
I’m not a psychologist.
I don’t possess the magical ability to untangle your emotional trauma, and I can’t pull you out of your loneliness with a few pretty words.” Levi looked over his shoulder, his expression serious.
“I won’t insult you by claiming ‘I understand how you feel,’ because I don’t.
But I can deduce that waking up to a dead world is terrifying, lonely, and painful.”
With a sharp pull, Levi threw the curtains open.
Sunlight—even the filtered, violet-tinted sunlight of the Underworld—flooded the dark room.
Ingvild, having been trapped in the dark for a century, instinctively threw her hands up to shield her eyes.
Through the gaps in her fingers, she saw Levi standing in the center of the light, his silhouette framed by the massive window.
“Take your time.
Let your eyes adjust, and then take a good look,” Levi said, his tone softening just a fraction.
“This is the world a hundred years later.
It moved on without you.”
He shoved his hands into his pockets.
“I can’t fix your grief.
But if you want to go somewhere, or if you just want to eat something familiar, tell me.
I have the resources to make it happen.”
Ingvild slowly lowered her hands, blinking away the tears.
“It’s fine to be terrified,” Levi continued, his pragmatic nature bleeding through his attempt at comfort.
“It’s fine to feel like your past was an illusion.
But I’m the one who pulled you out of that crystal, and I’m standing right here.
If you can’t find a place for yourself in this new era…
then just treat this place as your home.”
He met her gaze, his dark eyes unwavering.
“Everyone under this roof will protect you, Ingvild.”
Her eyes finally adjusted to the glare.
She looked at the young man standing in the sunlight.
He was clearly a creature of logic and power, yet here he was, awkwardly attempting to anchor her to reality with blunt, unpolished honesty.
The sheer absurdity of the situation—and the genuine intent behind his clumsy words—finally broke through her despair.
The corners of her mouth twitched, and then, very slowly, she smiled.
It was a fragile, exhausted smile, but it was real.
Home.
Standing on this completely alien soil, surrounded by magic and monsters she didn’t understand, the panic was still there.
But looking at the boy who had literally cut her free from her nightmare, the crushing weight in her chest felt just a little bit lighter.
[Akarin’s Note:
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