Highschool DxD: Dragon's Ascent

Chapter 13: Keikaku Doori

"Eh?" This seemed to throw Rias for a loop and I understood perfectly well why.

This girl had no experience in recruiting people or negotiations in general. Almost all of her peerage members she had found half dead while taking a stroll and the other one had literally been gifted to her.

And I wasn't someone down on their luck or mentally vulnerable for her to recruit with ease.

"Why should I join your peerage? I am an alchemist, so becoming ageless is not a big issue for me, I can probably figure that out in a year or two. The same thing goes for flight as well, not too complicated. Language is tough but I can live with it." I said, my voice tone staying consistent as I sipped the tea Akeno had placed in front of me.

Wow, that is quite a nice tea.

I could see that they were taken aback, I am not surprised, they see me as yet another student after all, Rias most likely as an inexperienced alchemist.

To put it bluntly, they did not expect me to be so self-assured.

Right here, I was not the weaker party in this negotiation, I was the one with the upper hand even though I was the no-name mage while she was basically the princess of the underworld.

It was simply because they were the ones asking me to join, they were the ones that needed to satisfy me and my conditions, not the other way around.

After a few moments of thinking Rias replied to me with a more serious face.

"Well, that... may be true. But you cannot deny the fact it would help right? Besides, if you join my peerage I will also offer you the full support of the Gremory family and as well as my protection, after all, it must be difficult to be a lone magician." I nodded lightly at her reasoning and offer.

To be honest, it was quite lucrative, the full support of an entire Devil Noble house as well as the protection of both Rias and by proxy Sirzechs, the very strong guy. That coupled with the benefits becoming was a very tempting and frankly one of the best deals you can get.

Sure, you lose most of your political freedom until you can get strong enough to say fuck the rules. But Rias was someone that truly treated her peerage as family and would throw away her life to protect them.

But.

She did not know I knew that did she?

"Tempting as it sounds, I still have to refuse. While support from you sounds lucrative I do not it's worth selling my soul for and becoming a slave in my process."

"That may be the case but Takumi-kun, I can assure you. I treat my peerage members as family, if you truly don't want to I won't force you to do anything out of you really don't want to." Well, I believed the truth of her words.

She goes really easy on her peerage members and treats them truly like family.