~Three Days Before Kuoh Academy Opens, Kuoh Residential District~
Issei Hyoudou walked alone beneath the evening streetlights.
He carried a convenience-store bag filled with snacks and several magazines Soutarou had no interest in examining closely.
The boy hummed to himself.
Completely unaware.
Completely ordinary.
Completely unworthy of the pressure buried beneath his soul.
‘I don’t claim to be pure myself…
I have dirty thoughts all the time…
I’m a pervert amongst perverts…
and I admit that…
But you…
You’re just fucking sex offender who got away with it.
Even at my worst I have self control and restraint…
Well lecturing you in my mind won’t change what’s about to happen…’
‘I do pity your parents…
But with the result they got even after all of your mother’s miscarriages and troubles…
You’re a pathetic excuse for a human being…
I’m going to enjoy every second of this…
Issei…
Hyoudou.’
And so Soutarou watched from the roof of a nearby building…
Even suppressed…
Even asleep…
Ddraig’s presence stained the air around Issei.
Faintly fiery…
Heavy…
Draconic.
Sure it wasn’t enough to influence anyone yet…
But even the possibility that it could be was absolutely unacceptable.
Soutarou’s expression remained cold.
‘No miracles.’
Issei turned down a narrow street and Soutarou moved.
‘No sudden awakening.’
The streetlights flickered once and Issei looked upward before Soutarou appeared behind him and placed two fingers against the base of his skull.
‘No breasts giving you the strength to overturn reality.’
A pulse entered Issei’s nervous system and his body went limp.
Soutarou caught the convenience-store bag before it hit the ground and he glanced at the magazines inside.
Only for his brow to immediately twitch.
Soutarou dropped the bag beside the unconscious boy and opened a barrier around them.
The residential street vanished.
A silent black space replaced it.
Issei never opened his eyes and Soutarou didn’t speak to him…
after all there was nothing to say.
The Devouring Gear formed across his arm…
The purple gem pulsed violently the moment it sensed what rested inside Issei…
For the first time in years…
The sleeping pressure of Apophis shifted just barely.
A distant movement in the dark.
Soutarou’s hazel-golden eyes sharpened.
‘You feel it too.’
He placed the gauntlet above Issei’s chest and the connection unfolded…
Compared to the Vritra Gears, the Boosted Gear was enormous.
Its structure reached deep into Issei’s soul…
Crimson pathways wrapped around a dormant draconic core…
Restraints directly connected the Gear to Heaven…
And at its center slept a consciousness vast enough to dwarf the human carrying it a million times.
Soutarou almost laughed.
‘All of that…
Inside him.’
He closed the claws…
The first pull produced no movement…
The Gear resisted with the passive weight of a Longinus…
and so Soutarou released more power.
Slowly but surely golden light moved across the gauntlet and then black as the Devouring Gear growled.
*GRRRRRRRNNNN…*
Crimson energy erupted from Issei’s chest and even the barrier trembled, but Soutarou pulled harder.
One connection snapped.
Then another.
The entire street-shaped illusion distorted beneath the pressure…
Issei’s body convulsed once…
His breathing stopped…
And finally a crimson gauntlet tore free from his soul.
Boosted Gear formed above Soutarou’s palm…
The jewel at its center opened…
Ddraig’s deep voice rolled through the barrier as the Heavenly Dragon contemptuously remarked, “Finally…
Out of this worthless host.”
Soutarou stared at the Gear and then a small smile crossed his face, but he didn’t answer.
Ddraig’s presence shifted within the crimson core…
Powerful…
Awake enough to understand what kind of freedom this was…
But even then…
Not in the slightest bit hostile.
Soutarou placed Boosted Gear inside the prepared isolation formation.
Crimson light vanished behind layered barriers and he returned his attention to Issei.
The boy was dead…
That was it.
Soutarou lifted one hand.
Ordinary fire magic gathered above his palm.
This flame carried no identity beyond heat and destruction and soutarou released it.
Fire spread across Issei’s body.
The corpse blackened…
Collapsed…
And continued burning until bone, clothing, and every remaining biological trace became ash.
Soutarou compressed the remains into a small sphere.
The Devouring Gear didn’t consume it.
Issei himself offered nothing Soutarou wanted.
The sphere dissolved beneath a second spell and scattered into particles too fine to identify.
Before Soutarou erased the magical residue.
Removed the barrier.
Restored the streetlights.
The convenience-store bag remained near the curb.
Issei Hyoudou would be declared missing.
His parents would wait.
The police would search.
But no body would ever be recovered.
Soutarou looked toward the dark road.
‘You were never the threat.’
His gaze moved toward the isolation formation containing Boosted Gear.
‘What you carried was.’
He vanished.
~Hidden Workshop Beneath the Takashina Residence, Several Hours Later~
Seven isolation barriers enclosed the center of the workshop.
A second set covered the walls.
A third formation surrounded the entire underground chamber and redirected excess energy into a collection of empty storage crystals.
Soutarou stood before the central platform.
The Devouring Gear rested upon his arm.
Its black plates appeared unchanged…
White-gold channels…
Purple gem…
Jagged claws…
A vessel already straining beneath the power sleeping inside it.
Four isolation crystals floated around him.
Three held the Vritra Gears acquired over the previous years.
The fourth held the new acquired Absorption Line.
While Boosted Gear rested within a separate crimson barrier above the platform.
Ddraig had remained silent since extraction.
Soutarou suspected the Heavenly Dragon understood what was about to happen.
He raised his hand.
The first isolation crystal opened.
Black draconic energy poured into the chamber.
The second followed.
Then the third.
Then Absorption Line.
Four separate fragments of Vritra circled the Devouring Gear like pieces of a shattered constellation.
Each carried Vritra’s abilities…
Instinctive structures…
Draconic properties divided across Sacred Gears.
Soutarou’s strange sight opened.
Every pathway became visible.
He adjusted the formations.
Rotated one fragment.
Compressed another.
Aligned the absorption channels until the four Gears formed a complete network around the black gauntlet.
Soutarou quietly ordered, “Devour.”
The purple gem opened.
*THUUUUM!*
A deep voice roared from the purple gem, “DEVOUR!”
All four Vritra Gears collapsed inward.
Black energy flooded the gauntlet.
New channels carved themselves beneath the existing plates…
Lines for binding…
Lines for draining…
Lines for suppressing resistance…
Lines for pulling power inward and preventing anything consumed from escaping before digestion finished.
The Devouring Gear shook.
Spikes extended.
The hooked claws lengthened.
The white-gold skeletal pattern brightened.
Soutarou maintained the barriers.
The first stage stabilized.
He looked toward Boosted Gear.
‘Now the real meal.’
Soutarou released the crimson barrier.
Boosted Gear hovered above the platform.
Its green jewel shone.
Ddraig’s presence filled the room.
For one brief moment, the two gauntlets faced one another…
The crude black vessel built from Twice Critical…
And the perfected Longinus that represented everything Twice Critical had failed to become.
Soutarou opened his hand.
The Devouring Gear’s claws spread.
Boosted Gear moved forward.
Crimson metal struck black.
*BOOOOOOOOOOM!*
The workshop disappeared beneath red, black, white-gold, and emerald light.
Every isolation barrier activated simultaneously.
The first layer cracked.
The second bent inward.
The storage crystals embedded into the walls ignited one after another as the energy spike flooded through them.
Soutarou planted his feet and forced more demonic power into the containment formations.
The Devouring Gear screamed….
With metal…
With energy…
With the sound of a structure being torn apart and rebuilt before it could collapse.
*SKRRRRRRRRRRAAAAAA!*
Crimson plates dissolved into liquid light and poured across the black gauntlet.
The original Twice Critical foundation resisted for less than a second…
and then Boosted Gear began rewriting it.
The narrow internal channels widened.
The minor amplification structure shattered as instead a Longinus-grade engine unfolded within the center of the Devouring Gear and pushed against every limitation surrounding Apophis’s dormant soul.
The purple gem flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then emerald light appeared inside it.
Soutarou’s eyes widened slightly.
The white-gold lines running across the gauntlet began changing…
Emerald spread through them like blood entering empty veins.
Red accents formed across the black plating…
First near the claws…
Then along the wrist…
Then through the layered spikes covering the forearm.
The Devouring Gear’s pressure expanded.
The third barrier cracked.
Black holy light filled the room.
Golden light followed.
The two wrapped around the evolving Gear and compressed the energy inward.
Then…
Something moved.
Deep inside the Gear…
Beneath the Vritra channels…
Beneath the newly absorbed Longinus…
Beneath Ddraig’s enormous presence…
Another massive sleeping soul shifted.
One slow pulse traveled through Soutarou’s connection.
*THUMP.*
The workshop became still.
Soutarou stopped breathing.
Another pulse followed.
*THUMP.*
Apophis.
After nearly a decade of silence…
The dragon stirred.
The rewritten vessel had finally created enough space for the sleeping soul to move again.
Soutarou smiled.
Then Ddraig’s soul was pulled toward the center.
The Heavenly Dragon’s consciousness stretched across the evolving Gear…
Crimson power folding inward toward the black-gold darkness surrounding Apophis.
Soutarou watched closely…
He expected consumption.
That Ddraig’s soul would be broken down…
Its power assimilated…
Its experience and draconic nature absorbed into Apophis and the Gear…
That was the most likely outcome, but it didn’t happen.
The Devouring Gear attempted to pull Ddraig apart, and yet Ddraig remained whole.
The crimson soul bent…
Compressed…
And then anchored itself directly into the new core.
Separate from Apophis.
Separate from Soutarou.
But permanently connected to both.
The emerald gem flared.
A deep draconic pressure rolled through the workshop.
Soutarou’s brows rose.
‘You didn’t get devoured…’
Ddraig’s presence settled within the Gear like a second inhabitant entering an already occupied home.
Independent.
Conscious.
Silent for the moment.
The unexpected result didn’t destabilize the fusion.
If anything…
The sacred gear became more stable.
The Vritra channels tightened around it.
Apophis’s dormant soul shifted once more.
The black gauntlet pulsed.
Red accents burned across its surface.
Emerald light filled the central gem and raced through the skeletal channels that had once shone white-gold.
For several seconds, Soutarou saw the beginning of what the Devouring Gear might eventually become…
Then every light vanished.
The pressure collapsed.
The gauntlet dissolved from his arm.
Soutarou reached for the connection.
Nothing answered.
He tried again.
No gauntlet formed.
No jewel opened.
No black claws wrapped around his hand.
Only the vast sleeping pressure remained buried inside his soul…
Larger than before…
Deeper…
And occupied by two massive separate draconic presences.
Soutarou lowered his arm.
The barriers around the workshop slowly dimmed.
Three of the outer layers had cracked.
Nearly half the storage crystals had burned out.
The central platform had partially melted.
Soutarou studied the damage before turning his awareness inward once more.
The Gear was processing…
Exactly as expected…
Every meaningful meal had required time…
Much less this time, when he had given it a genuine Longinus…
A god-slaying weapon…
That contained the complete soul of a Heavenly Dragon…
Four Sacred Gears carrying the divided abilities of a Dragon King…
And enough structural material to completely replace the vessel containing Apophis.
The dormancy itself was not surprising, but Ddraig surviving as an independent cohabitor was…
Soutarou closed his eyes and estimated the amount of energy moving inside.
The pace of reconstruction…
The depth of the new channels…
The number of functions being rewritten simultaneously…
He slowly opened his eyes.
‘At best a year or so…’
His gaze moved across the destroyed crystals.
‘Worst case scenario…
It might not awaken for several decades…’
Soutarou remained silent.
Above him…
Mamako and Lavinia slept without knowing what had occurred beneath their home.
By morning, Genshirou Saji’s funeral arrangements would be underway.
Issei Hyoudou’s disappearance would become a missing-person investigation.
In three days, Kuoh Academy would open its doors to male students.
Rias Gremory and Sona Sitri would search the new population for useful pieces.
They would never find the two boys canon had intended for them.
Soutarou looked toward the sealed case containing Cleria Belial’s mutated Evil Pieces.
Then toward the Kuoh Academy uniform hanging beside the workshop stairs.
A faint smile crossed his face.
‘Finally…
A step in the right direction…’