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The imposing Gremory family mansion stood in the middle of the mountains, surrounded by dense forests and pure air that sharply contrasted with the city's pollution. To Issei Hyoudou, the place was a palace taken straight out of a dream. To Yugo Hano, it was simply a playground with a better budget.
The main doors opened, and the two peerages—or at least the entirety of the Gremory group and Sitri's solitary "reinforcement"—gathered in the immense training courtyard of packed earth and ancient rocks.
Rias Gremory stepped forward, ready to give her usual motivational speech as club president. She opened her mouth to inspire her servants, but a large, pale hand entered her field of vision.
Yugo Hano advanced, cutting off the Princess of Ruin's authority without the slightest effort. He stood in front of the line of young devils. He adjusted his glasses with his index finger and looked at them with those characteristic gray eyes that, to Issei, always seemed to be calculating how many milliseconds it would take to kill him.
"Save the speeches about friendship and the power of love, Gremory," the professor declared in a monotone voice, ignoring Rias's frown. "We have ten days. That is nothing. So we're going to make the rules clear from this exact moment."
The air in the courtyard grew heavier. Kiba straightened his posture. Koneko stopped staring into nothingness. Even Akeno fell silent, observing the imposing figure of the man who had promised to save them.
"You are going to train until you die," Yugo announced, with clinical coldness that allowed no reply. "And when you feel your bodies collapse, when your muscles tear and you can't breathe, Asia will heal you. And then you will train again until you break yourselves all over again. That will be your cycle for the next nine days."
Issei swallowed audibly. "U-Until we die, Sensei?"
"That was the instruction, Hyoudou. Don't make me repeat it," Yugo replied. Then he slipped his hands into his pants pockets, and his gaze grew even sharper. "But there is something fundamental that all of you must understand about the Rating Game. I am not your babysitter."
Rias blinked, confused. "What do you mean, Hano-sensei? You said you would participate."
"And I will," the professor confirmed. "But I will not interfere in your battles. Riser has fifteen servants. A Queen, Knights, Rooks, Bishops, and Pawns. All of them... are solely and exclusively your problem."
Yugo's eyes swept over the Gremory peerage one by one.
"If you think I'm going to transform and wipe Riser's servants off the map so you can calmly walk toward victory, you are very mistaken. That is your job. Your objective is to destroy the enemy pieces. If you fall to Riser's maids, then you deserve to lose. I am not going to lift a single finger to save you from them."
Issei clenched his fists, feeling the weight of responsibility fall onto his shoulders. Kiba slowly nodded, understanding the military logic behind the order.
"If we handle the fifteen servants..." Rias murmured, her heart pounding. "What will you do?"
Yugo let out a snort, a short exhale that dripped absolute contempt and an arrogance so well-founded it was intoxicating.
"I'll handle the roast chicken."
The statement fell over the courtyard with the weight of a mountain. There was no doubt in his voice. No hesitation, no false modesty. Yugo Hano had just declared that defeating a pure-blood high-class devil, an immortal heir, was simply a task on his to-do list.
"Listen carefully," Yugo continued, raising his chin slightly. "Plucking Riser Phenex, extinguishing his supposed immortality, and making him swallow his pride will be a walk in the park for me. I can destroy him without sweating through my shirt. But for me to give him that beating, you need to open the way and survive. You have to prove to the Underworld that the Gremory name is not just decoration."
The block of ice cracked for a fraction of a second, allowing a rough, harsh, but genuinely motivating tone of command to come through.
"Riser thinks you are trash. He thinks you are weak. He thinks Issei is useless and that Rias is only a trophy." Yugo pointed at them with an accusing finger. "Prove him wrong. Survive his peerage, so I can enjoy the pleasure of breaking the final boss's face. Understood?"
The blood of the young devils boiled. Fear was replaced by competitive fury.
"YES, SENSEI!" Issei and Kiba roared in unison.
Rias smiled, feeling determination ignite in her chest once more. Sitri's Pawn was not belittling them; he was forcing them to earn their own salvation.
"To work," Yugo ordered, turning around and walking away toward the mansion's side garden.
Three hours later.
The training courtyard was the living image of demonic misery.
Issei Hyoudou was doing push-ups with a backpack full of rocks and Koneko Toujou sitting on top of it, spitting dust and muttering pleas to nonexistent deities. Kiba ran with weights on his ankles while dodging magical blasts from Akeno, and Rias practiced her Power of Ruin against magic-steel targets until her knuckles bled.
Asia ran back and forth, healing bruises and sprains almost instantly, only for her companions to return to the cycle of relentless torture. They were pushing their bodies to the absolute limit.
Issei, with his face pressed against the dirt and his arms trembling like jelly, turned his head to the left, searching for a hint of inspiration. He looked for the stoic and terrifying figure of the "Demon of Discipline," expecting to see him meditating beneath a waterfall or lifting tons of rock with a single finger to motivate them.
What he saw nearly made a vein burst in his forehead.
About thirty meters away, beneath the pleasant shade of a sturdy oak tree, there was a reclining beach chair.
On the chair, reclined at a perfect one-hundred-and-twenty-degree angle, was Yugo Hano.
The history professor had removed his shoes and socks. He wore a light shirt unbuttoned at the collar and comfortable pants. Dark aviator sunglasses rested on the bridge of his nose. Beside him, on a small wrought-iron garden table, sat a tall glass of iced tea, ice cubes floating inside and a small paper umbrella stuck into a slice of lemon.
Yugo crossed his legs at the ankles, took the glass, sipped calmly, and let out a sigh of deep and absolute relaxation.
"IT'S NOT FAIR!" Issei bellowed, crying tears of blood as his arms collapsed under Koneko's weight. "HE TOLD US TO TRAIN UNTIL WE DIE AND HE'S ON VACATION! HE'S A SADIST!"
Koneko simply tapped Issei on the head so he would keep pushing. "Less crying, more push-ups, pervert. Hano-sensei is already broken. We aren't."
Under the shade of the tree, Yugo heard Issei's screams but did not make the slightest effort to move. He simply adjusted his sunglasses.
No one in that courtyard knew it. No one knew the hell his life had been.
He had fallen into an unknown world as a frightened twenty-one-year-old with nothing. He had slept in freezing alleys, hugging his knees so he would not die of hypothermia. He had rummaged through garbage for a piece of bread. He had been hunted by monsters, and had turned into a sociopathic assassin to survive. He had spent three thousand six hundred and fifty days sleeping with one eye open, expecting death on every corner, carrying the weight of knowing about a universe that conspired against him.
And now... now he was a reincarnated devil with perfect health. He had a billionaire fiancée and tactical genius. He had a convenience store run by three enslaved Fallen Angels, a useless dog that slept all day, and a nun who considered him her personal miracle. He had the recalibrated Omnitrix with twenty-one apocalypses at his disposal and an Ectonurite kept on a short leash.
Yugo Hano closed his eyes behind the dark glasses, feeling the mountain breeze caress his face.
"Ten years," Jose thought, allowing himself a small and almost imperceptible smile of satisfaction. "I earned this damn reclining chair."
In the distance, Akeno Himejima launched a lightning bolt that intentionally missed Kiba. The Priestess of Thunder looked toward the tree, watching the man resting beneath the umbrella. A soft laugh filled with affection escaped her lips. She knew exactly what he had been through, and seeing him there, finally relaxed and at peace with the world, was the most beautiful image the Underworld could offer her.
Jose took another sip of his iced tea. Riser Phenex was going to burn in ten days, yes. But today, the only fire that interested him was the afternoon sun warming his vacation.
...
The third day of training in the mountains had reduced the proud peerage of the Gremory Clan to a group of zombies breathing through pure inertia and stubbornness.
Issei Hyoudou was lying on his back in the dirt, the Boosted Gear deactivated and his chest rising and falling erratically. Kiba Yuuto, the swift Knight, was leaning against the trunk of a tree, his legs trembling so much he could barely remain standing. Koneko had her gaze lost in the void, her small bruised fists hanging at her sides. Rias and Akeno were not in much better condition; both were panting deeply, their reserves of magical power drained almost to the limit.
The afternoon heat weighed over them like a slab of lead. They believed they had reached the absolute limit of their demonic bodies. They were convinced that there was not a single drop of energy left in their veins.
The sound of a folding chair closing broke the silence of their misery.
Yugo Hano, who had spent the last seventy-two hours in an enviable state of vacation-like relaxation, calmly walked toward the center of the training field. He slipped his sunglasses into his shirt pocket and looked at them with his usual expression of gray apathy.
"You look bored," the history professor declared.
Issei lifted his head from the dirt with great difficulty, spitting out a bit of dry grass.
"B-Bored?! Sensei, I feel like I'm going to vomit my own heart! I can't even move!"
"That is exactly the problem, Hyoudou. You are too comfortable surrendering to exhaustion," Yugo replied, adjusting his glasses with his index finger. "In my experience, both the human and demonic body possess emergency energy reserves. Hidden batteries that the mind blocks to avoid pain, but that activate immediately when the brain registers an imminent threat of death."
Rias, supporting herself on her knees, looked up with a frown.
"What are you planning, Hano-sensei?"
A tiny, twisted, sadistic half-smile appeared on the retired assassin's lips.
"We are going to do an interactive activity. A game, if you want to call it that," Yugo explained, rolling up his left sleeve to reveal the dark Omnitrix. "Sona and her peerage loved this game. We played it several times beneath the school. Thanks to it, Saji lowered his reaction time by eighty percent."
Akeno swallowed. Knowing what "Jose" was capable of, the word game sounded more like a tactical execution.
"The rules are simple," Yugo continued, raising his right hand and placing two fingers on the watch dial. "You run. You try to escape from me throughout the forest. If I catch you, I will give you a very convincing reason to run faster. And if you stop... I will make sure to burst your eardrums until your survival instincts overcome your fatigue."
"W-Wait, Sensei, we haven't rested at all!" Kiba shrieked, feeling an icy shiver run down his back.
"Riser's battlefield has no time-outs," Yugo declared.
He slammed down on the core.
FLASH!
The blinding emerald light exploded in the clearing, forcing the Gremory group to cover their eyes. When the radiance faded, the professor had disappeared, replaced by the tiny white silicon creature with built-in speakers.
"Echo Echo..." the metallic and distorted voice buzzed.
"R-Run!" Rias tried to shout, but exhaustion made her order slow.
Too slow.
Before any of the devils could take even a single step, Echo Echo flashed with strobing static. His body split into two. Then four. Sixteen. Thirty-two.
In less than three seconds, a tide of white clones moved with chilling speed, flanking the Gremory group from every possible angle. The clones did not attack physically; they simply formed a closed circle, a perfect cage of silicon bodies around the exhausted teenagers.
Issei looked around, terrified, surrounded by dozens of green eyes without pupils.
"He didn't give us time to run! That's cheating!"
The thirty-two Echo Echo clones opened their square mouths in unison, aiming directly toward the center of the group.
"Run."
And without any countdown, the acoustic nightmare was unleashed.
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING!
A wall of sonic force, a pure and devastating roar capable of shattering steel, struck the Gremory peerage from every direction. The ground shook, the nearby trees bent violently from the shockwave, and the air itself seemed to compress.
Issei, Rias, Akeno, Kiba, and Koneko's eardrums nearly burst in the first microsecond. The pain in their heads was so sharp and immediate that the muscle fatigue they had felt seconds earlier was erased from the map, replaced by the pure and desperate biological need to flee.
Driven by acoustic terror, the Gremory peerage shot into the forest, breaking formation, drawing strength from where there was none, while the Echo Echo clones chased them closely, ready to keep the volume at maximum until their bodies adapted to true survival.