The Death We Seek

Beg for Your Life, and the Devil May Cry [Chapter 4]

Issei woke up. His dream had ended slightly better than it had started, thinking about his parents. It was them begging him to live, but change is change.

He got dressed, brushed his teeth and checked on his body's markings. They had spread further. The day before, they hadn't reached further than his upper torso. Now, they were branching towards his limbs and neck. He only had a few days to practice his magic to a proficiency capable of maintaining it eight hours at the minimum. Issei could tell the devils about it, and it would spare him having to last longer.

Satan, his body was toned. He looked good. Tall and muscular, if not a bit pale. The crimson markings marring his torso ruined it, looking like peculiar tribal-style tattoos.

Vain comments aside, he made his way downstairs to his family. Light conversation put a smile on his face after a particularly stupid joke from his father. He wasn't in the mood for breakfast today, for some reason, and his mother did not like that.

"Breakfast is the most important meal of the day! If you feel ill, you shouldn't go to school but you can't not eat anything!"

Issei was not listening. Well, not properly. He was handed a packaged breakfast bar and resolved himself to eat it later, once that sickening feeling in his gut vanished. A quick goodbye kiss to his doting mother and a wave to his 'too-manly-for-kisses' father and he was out the door. He wasn't late, so he walked at a comfortable pace. Complex thoughts about power began to place their roots in his mind.

They were cut short by a more-than-ominous devilish aura permeating the entire space outside of his barrier. Ddraig manifested almost immediately. Something was not right. Whatever it was, it involved powers on the level of all the Maou combined. The Old-Devil Faction? They shouldn't be active this early in his timeline.

Regardless of the source, if Rias and Sona were involved, he was their only source of protection. Skipping the walk, he checked his surroundings before teleporting directly inside one of the bathrooms on the ground floor of the Academy. He almost had to hold his breath upon doing so. It felt not quite murderous, but like it promised death. He could feel another aura, different in nature, but suppressed. He couldn't tell what it was though, thanks to the outlying devils present. They were in the ORC.

Another quick spell and he was outside of the internal door to the main room. Time could not be spared if they were in danger, and he prepared his Balance Breaker's alternative forms. Ddraig kept silent for now while doubling his power, resolved to keep a third and fourth eye on Issei's surroundings.

Two small destructive spells cast at the same time blew the door wide open, and he blitzed through the splinters poised to kill. His aura flooded the room following alongside him, far more potent than what he showed Sirzechs and the devils.

[OVERDRIVE]

Ddraig let cry his own declaration of promised death. A designation of his own design, focused on a perfect balance between his reflexes and physical capabilities. He had enough time for fifty Boosts, usual timeframe of ten seconds forgotten in exchange for a set amount of recoil. It was prepared on sheer reflex once he had left the barrier.

Speaking of Sirzechs, he was sat calmly drinking some tea on one of the sofas, eyes locked onto his in the middle of turning his head. A third sofa lay facing him, which bore three of the four Maou, with an empty sofa and-

Was that Tannin's humanoid form? Why is he here?

Issei's aura was dismissed within the microsecond. If all the Maou and the Blaze Meteor Dragon were here, there was no threat. The increase to his senses was also relinquished, leaving the speed and strength boost just in case.