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The echo of the sonic attack finally dissipated in the depths of the mountain, leaving behind a silence that felt heavy and painful.
For the Gremory peerage, the concept of "extreme fatigue" had just been rewritten. It was no longer about tired muscles or empty magical reserves; it was a collapse of the central nervous system caused by pure, plain terror.
Issei Hyoudou was lying face down, his cheek pressed against the dirt, with small tears of agony sliding down his face. Kiba was in a fetal position beside a bush. Koneko, the indomitable Rook, lay on her back staring at the sky with unfocused eyes. Akeno and Rias, despite their pride, were sitting on the ground, hugging their knees and breathing with alarming difficulty, feeling as if a sharp ringing was still drilling through their ears.
In the center of this landscape of absolute misery, the thirty-two white silicone clones converged, jumping over one another until they merged into a single being.
The small white alien brushed a bit of nonexistent dust off his shoulders and looked at the fallen group.
"I warned you..." Echo Echo's metallic and distorted voice buzzed, resonating like a faulty speaker in the clearing. "If you wanted a break, now you understand that the pain of running is much less than the pain of staying still."
Issei raised a trembling hand, thumb pointing downward, without even enough strength to articulate a coherent complaint.
Echo Echo slowly walked among the scattered bodies of the young devils.
"And just so we're clear..." the small creature continued, his synthetic tone taking on an implacable gravity. "This was only a reminder. From now on, the real hell begins. I'm going to train you worse than I trained Sona's peerage. I'm going to break every limit you thought you had, and when you feel like you're going to die, I'll scream louder."
Rias swallowed, nodding weakly. Despite the pain, she knew he was right. If they wanted to defeat Riser Phenex's entourage, they needed this level of brutality.
Suddenly, the sound of light footsteps broke the military tension in the clearing.
From the path connecting to the mansion, Asia Argento appeared trotting. The little golden nun was carrying a silver tray full of wet towels and glasses of cold water, looking as fresh and immaculate as a spring morning.
"Guys! I'm back with hydration!" Asia announced with a bright smile, before stopping dead when she saw the disaster. "Oh, my God! What happened to you?! Everyone is on the ground!"
Echo Echo turned toward her. His large silicone head tilted slightly. Yugo's brain, in that very instant, processed a flaw in his tactical calculation of group punishment.
"Ah... I forgot about Asia..." the alien muttered to himself.
The nun blinked, tilting her head in confusion. "Yugo-san?"
The professor, trapped in his own rhetoric of being a strict and impartial "Demon of Discipline," realized that he could not maintain martial respect if he left one member of the team unpunished. Justice had to be blind. All Gremory members had to suffer equally.
"Asia," Echo Echo called, adopting a rigid and authoritarian posture. "On this training field, there are no exceptions. As a member of this clan, I must be fair. I will also punish you with a sonic attack for arriving late to formation."
Issei, despite being half-dead, opened one eye in horror. He was going to burst poor, sweet Asia's eardrums?! The professor really was a heartless sadist!
Asia let out a small gasp, clutching the tray against her chest and squeezing her eyes shut, preparing for the painful impact that had knocked down her formidable companions.
Echo Echo took a step toward her. He inhaled, inflating his small silicone chest. He opened his square mouth, ready to unleash the fury of sound.
"Ah."
It was a sigh.
No, a sigh was too violent. It was a tiny noise. A dull and pathetic micro-squeak, similar to that of a toy chick whose stomach was barely pressed. The cry of a newborn baby ten blocks away would have been exponentially more deafening.
The "attack" ended in less than a second.
Asia opened one eye, then the other. She touched her ears, completely unharmed, without feeling even a breeze.
Echo Echo nodded solemnly, crossing his small arms over the Omnitrix symbol.
"Done. Severe punishment administered. Now everything is even," the alien ruled with absolute and shameless seriousness.
The silence in the clearing was overwhelming.
Issei Hyoudou clenched a fist against the dirt, the veins in his neck about to burst. Severe punishment?! That garbage would not have scared even a fly! The professor's favoritism was so monumental, so blatant, and so cynically obvious that it bordered on mockery!
"T-That's cheating..." Kiba managed to croak from his bush, feeling that the injustice hurt more than the actual sonic attack.
Rias simply dropped her forehead against the grass, surrendering to the absurdity of the situation. Akeno, on the ground, covered her mouth and began to tremble, trying to contain a hysterical laugh that hurt her ribs.
Asia, with a slight blush on her cheeks and a smile so bright it could have illuminated the entire Underworld, gave a small bow.
"Thank you very much for your fair discipline, Yugo-san! I promise I'll try harder."
"Make sure you do. Now hand out the water before Hyoudou dies of dehydration and stains the lawn," Echo Echo ordered, turning around and walking back toward his precious reclining chair under the tree.
Royally ignoring the looks of indignation and the obvious preference he had just displayed, the "Demon of Discipline" brought the third day of his infernal training to an end.
...
The "Demon of Discipline's" vacation beneath the umbrella lasted exactly three days.
On the fourth dawn in the mountains, Yugo Hano decided that extreme fatigue was no longer enough. The young devils' bodies had grown used to physical pain, but their close-combat instincts were still too noble, too... clean. Riser Phenex would not play fair, so neither would he.
Yugo closed his reclining chair with a dry snap. He stood before the exhausted Gremory peerage and rolled up his shirt sleeves to his elbows.
"Starting today, the routine changes," the professor announced, turning the dial of the dark Omnitrix. "You will have one hour of personalized, direct training with me. Sixty uninterrupted minutes in which I will use a different transformation for each of you. Your only objective is to survive that hour without begging for mercy."
Before anyone could complain, Yugo slammed down on the core.
FLASH!
The emerald light inaugurated the personalized hell.
The first turn went to Kiba Yuuto. The Knight, proud of his unmatched speed, found himself facing a slender alien in black-and-blue armor, with a cone-shaped helmet and spherical wheels on his feet.
XLR8 vanished from Kiba's sight before the blond could even draw his sword.
Kiba felt a blow to his back that sent him flying, followed by a kick to the ribs from the opposite direction.
"You're too slow, swordsman," XLR8's static-filled voice buzzed as he ran in circles around Kiba, forming a black-and-blue tornado. "Your speed is linear. Predictable. If you don't react to what you can't see, you'll end up dented before you touch the enemy."
For sixty agonizing minutes, Kiba had to abandon offense and focus all his senses on predicting air friction, desperately trying to block the bursts of supersonic blows so he would not end up turned into a sack of bruises.
FLASH!
The second turn belonged to Koneko Toujou.
In front of the small Rook of brute strength stood a colossus composed entirely of organic silicon crystals, incredibly dense and sharp. Diamondhead looked down at her from his two meters of height.
Koneko launched herself into the attack, landing a direct punch to the alien's chest that would have shattered a battle tank.
CLINK!
The sound of devil flesh colliding against the hardness of the Petrosapien made Koneko step back, hissing in pain while rubbing her knuckles.
"If you can't pierce it with one blow, you have to crack it with precision," Diamondhead instructed her, transforming his right arm into a sharp crystal blade. "And now, dance."
The alien began firing bursts of diamond projectiles at lethal speed. Koneko had to abandon her immovable tank stance and start jumping, dodging, and rolling across the ground to avoid being impaled into the trees, forcing the Rook to become as agile as a Knight.
FLASH!
The third hour was for Akeno Himejima.
The Priestess of Thunder, with a sadistic smile, prepared her magic against a tall, robust creature made of dark crystalline rock with magenta accents: Chromastone.
Akeno launched a massive, deafening lightning bolt at him. But instead of dodging it, Chromastone simply raised his hand and absorbed the lightning. The magenta rocks on his body glowed with blinding intensity.
"Ara, ara..." the Crystalsapien's deep, crystalline voice buzzed, imitating the girl's sing-song tone. "What delicious electricity, Himejima. Let me return it to you."
Chromastone fired a devastating laser of pure energy, a rainbow of lethal colors that devastated half the clearing.
"Kyaaa!" Akeno shrieked, being forced to fly and dodge erratically. "Hano-sensei, if that hits me, you'll ruin my uniform!"
"Focus, or I'll turn you into a permanent stain of color," the alien warned, firing another burst that forced her to exhaust her magical evasive reserves.
FLASH!
The fourth hour was the King's turn. Rias Gremory faced Big Chill.
The Princess launched dozens of spheres of Power of Ruin, hoping to disintegrate the bluish ghost. But the Necrofriggian simply became intangible, allowing the destruction magic to pass through him without leaving even a scratch, only to reappear centimeters from her face.
"Destruction is useless if you strike the air, Gremory," the icy specter whispered, exhaling his absolute-zero breath.
Rias had to run for her life, feeling the ground beneath her feet turn into solid ice. If she stopped for even one second, she would end up as an inert ice cube. She had to learn not to waste her magic, calculating the exact millisecond when the alien became solid to try to attack him.
FLASH!
For the fifth hour, Issei Hyoudou did not receive combat lessons. He received a dose of pure Jurassic terror.
Humungousaur did not speak to him. He did not give tactical advice. The Vaxasaurian simply let out a roar that made the entire mountain tremble and began chasing him through the forest, stepping on trees and threatening to crush him beneath his tons of weight.
"AAAAAAAHHHHH!" Issei cried, crawling and running through the mud, activating the Boosted Gear only to propel himself and avoid ending up as brown-haired mush beneath the colossus's enormous foot.
FLASH!
And finally, the sixth hour... belonged to Asia Argento.
When the green flash dissipated, the golden nun did not find herself facing a terrifying giant or an icy ghost. In front of her was an immense quadruped beast, with bright orange fur, agile, muscular, and eyeless: Wildmutt.
Asia, knowing what this particular training involved, flinched and ran to hide behind some thick rocks, covering her mouth so she would not make noise.
Wildmutt let out a hoarse growl, sniffing the air. Although he could not see her, the infrared sensors in his gills detected the nun's vanilla scent almost instantly.
The Vulpimancer made an acrobatic leap, landed behind the rock, and cornered the poor ex-nun.
But Wildmutt did not attack her. Instead, the enormous alien gently pinned her against the grass with his front paws, let out a playful whine, and began dragging his huge, drooling tongue all over her face.
"Hahaha! Y-Yugo-san! No, it tickles! Kyah!" Asia laughed, wriggling on the ground while the "terrifying" creature aggressively pampered her like a giant puppy.
For Asia, this was stealth training. She had to learn to hide her healing aura and scent, because if the blind alien found her, her punishment was an overwhelming and sticky session of canine licking that left her covered in alien drool.
This cycle of sixty minutes per member repeated mercilessly, day after day.
The Gremory forest became a constant battlefield. As the week progressed, the peerage stopped complaining. They stopped crying. Kiba began anticipating XLR8's movements. Koneko managed to crack Diamondhead's armor by one millimeter. Akeno and Rias optimized their magic so they would not waste power against Chromastone and Big Chill. Issei, driven by the terror of being stepped on by Humungousaur, learned to keep the Boosted Gear active for longer.
Even Asia managed to evade Wildmutt for almost ten full minutes before being subjected to the forced pampering.
And so, sweat, dirt, and alien drool marked the rhythm of time.
When the sun set on the afternoon of the ninth day—the penultimate day before the official arrival of the Phenex peerage—Yugo Hano returned to his human form in the center of the destroyed training field.
The professor observed the young devils. They were dirty, covered in bruises, and exhausted. But their eyes... their eyes were no longer those of frightened aristocratic children. They had stood face-to-face with perfect predators and survived. The weakness in their aura had been burned away and replaced by killer instinct and iron will.
Yugo adjusted his glasses and smiled faintly.
The Harem King, the Knight, the Rook, the Priestess, the Nun, and the Princess of Ruin were ready.
The roast chicken would not know what hit him.