Of course, what surprised Yuuji was not their appearance, what surprised him was their identities.
'Koneko and Kiba?'
Yuuji raised an eyebrow with interest.
These two were supposed to be part of Rias's peerage, but the mission clearly stated that Rias had not noticed Issei yet, which led to a rather amusing conclusion.
'They don't serve Rias in this timeline.'
"Reveal your identities" Kiba said.
While Yuuji observed them, they were also observing him and Lala.
"We're just ordinary people passing through" Yuuji said.
"That's not what your auras say" Kiba replied.
"Auras?" Yuuji asked.
"Your auras are far stronger than those of normal people, so don't try to deceive us. I can see that neither of you has any trace of demonic aura, so I'm not considering you enemies... yet. But that can change if you don't reveal your identities."
"I'm just someone passing through. I sensed someone powerful, so I got curious" Yuuji decided to say.
Hearing this, Kiba narrowed his eyes as he scrutinized them.
"I see. I don't know what organization you belong to, but Issei belongs to the Anti-Demonic Alliance. We'll let you leave, but don't approach him again."
"Anti-Demonic Alliance, huh?"
"Yuuji, what do we do?" Lala whispered beside him.
"Well, it seems they're watching Issei, so pretending to agree and then coming back later won't work."
The moment Yuuji finished saying that.
Crash!
Both of their bodies shattered into dozens of crystal fragments from Koneko's strike.
Koneko opened her eyes in surprise for a second before looking up at the sky. As if she sensed something but wasn't certain, she sniffed in that direction before jumping and striking the air itself.
Space, or rather the crystals reflecting the sky beyond it, cracked apart, revealing Yuuji and Lala.
After being surprised for an instant, Yuuji crouched slightly and turned around before grabbing the arm Koneko was using to attack them and pulling it, attempting to throw her away.
But halfway through, Koneko twisted around and tried to hit him with her free fist.
Yuuji pulled on the arm he was still holding, drove a knee into her stomach, and jumped backward, sending her crashing down.
The next moment, a shield of compressed earth formed behind him, stopping several swords that were flying toward him.
After being deflected, the swords vanished while a sword clearly superior to the others appeared in Kiba's hands as he remained on the ground.
An instant later, Koneko landed beside him and assumed a fighting stance.
"How is he?" Kiba asked.
"Strength at C rank. Technique at A rank. He used my own strength against me while dodging effortlessly. He hasn't used any abilities beyond crystal illusions and the shield, but I think he might have more."
"Sounds troublesome."
"Yes, and..." Koneko frowned while looking at the two individuals standing in the air, simply watching them without the slightest nervousness.
"What is it?" Kiba asked after noticing his companion's seriousness.
"The girl beside him. She never stopped smiling. She's enjoying this. I think she might be more dangerous than the boy."
"I'll test her. Can you handle her partner?"
"Mm." Koneko nodded.
Two cat ears and two tails appeared on her body while her arms and legs became covered in silver white energy.
"Going all out, huh?" Kiba smiled. "Then I can't hold back either."
Meanwhile, in the sky.
"Yuuji, did you see her?! She's a cat girl!" Lala said excitedly.
"Haven't you already seen plenty of cat girls on other planets?"
"Yes, but she's definitely the cutest one. Do you think she'll let me pet her?"
"No" Koneko's voice sounded from behind them.
The blow struck Yuuji directly, piercing through his chest, but to the cat girl's surprise, it didn't seem to harm him at all.
Koneko quickly retreated, pulling her fist back with incredible ease.
For a second, remembering what had happened, she wondered whether it was even possible to hurt him, but recalling his previous movements, she shook her head.
'No, if he could always do that, he wouldn't have dodged before.'
Thinking this, Koneko smiled, excited at the prospect of fighting someone strong and seeing it as an opportunity to improve her technique.
But in the next second Yuuji raised both hands into the air and two firearms appeared.
"Sorry, I don't like close combat" Yuuji said with a smile as he aimed at Koneko.
The next moment.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
'Damn it.'
Yuuji started firing while Koneko gave everything she had to dodge.
At her level, bullets normally shouldn't be able to hurt her, but judging by appearances alone, those guns were clearly not ordinary weapons, so she didn't dare take the risk.
However, after dodging for a while using all four limbs like a cat, she realized there was a problem.
Yuuji kept shooting at her head on while she continued dodging.
The problem was that Yuuji had been flying before and Koneko had needed to jump to attack him, so...
"What am I standing on?" Koneko wondered and looked down, only to discover that she seemed to be standing on the sky itself.
She immediately regretted her actions when she heard Yuuji.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk, don't you know cartoon rules? When you're walking on air, never look down."
The moment he finished speaking, the ground beneath Koneko seemed to disappear and she began falling toward the earth.
The instant she touched the ground, she blurred into a streak, leaving only a mark from her explosive push-off before appearing behind Yuuji and striking the back of his neck with a kick.
Crash!
Koneko frowned upon hearing the familiar sound of breaking crystal. As she fell, she located Yuuji and jumped again the moment she touched the ground.
Crash!
But Yuuji's body exploded into crystals once more.
And this time, while she was falling, she was greeted by bullets from every direction, preventing her from concentrating on locating Yuuji.
...
Meanwhile.
"Hahaha." Lala laughed cheerfully as she watched the battle between Yuuji and Koneko with amusement.
"Are you enjoying yourself, miss?"
Hearing the voice, Lala turned toward its source and found Kiba standing beside her on top of a sword.
Lala's eyes widened in surprise. "Amazing, I want to do that."
"You seem to be having fun. Either you're crazy... or you're dangerous" Kiba said while pointing his sword at her.
The next second Kiba moved through the air. With every step he took, a sword appeared beneath his leading foot to serve as a platform.
However, he did not attack. Instead, he began circling around her. At his speed, he looked like a golden bolt of lightning wrapping around Lala, moving faster and faster until he finally charged toward her.
Seeing Lala's clumsy reaction of simply raising an arm to block, Kiba assumed she was a novice fighter.
However, in the next moment, he saw that his strike had not connected with the girl herself but seemed to have been stopped by her clothing. Not only that, but Lala had not even been pushed backward by the force, and when he tried to withdraw his sword, he realized he couldn't.
No matter how much strength he used, it would not move at all. More than being blocked, the sword seemed to have been frozen in space itself, completely immovable.
"Peke, let him go" Lala said.
[Yes, Miss Lala.]
When he pulled again, Kiba found that the fabric had become soft once more and he was able to withdraw his sword with ease.
However, he did not approach again. Instead, he looked at Lala cautiously.
'Her reaction speed is clearly insufficient, and... that voice from a second ago. An intelligent, adaptive material, where did she get something like that?' he thought.
"What kind of material is that?" Kiba decided to test his luck.
"It's Devilukian Metamorphite" Lala answered honestly.
"Metamorphite... Devilukian?" Kiba muttered. "I've never heard of it."
"Of course not, it's not from this world. Actually, it's not even from this universe." Lala laughed.
"Another... universe?" Kiba frowned for a moment, but in the next second his face became extremely tense.
"Is... is all Metamorphite like that, or..." Kiba hesitated. "Or did you make it yourself?"
Unaware of Kiba's complicated internal situation, Lala simply looked at him in surprise before answering.
"Eh? I made it. So you noticed." she replied naturally, with a bit of satisfaction.
"Damn it, Koneko! We need to ru..."
"Now that I think about it, I have the perfect opponent for you. It looks like Yuuji is having fun, so I should put in some effort too."
Lala immediately interrupted Kiba's words, and Kiba stopped speaking.
Not because he wanted to fight her or out of respect for her speaking, but simply because an enormous shadow fell over him at that moment.
When he looked up, Kiba found himself staring at an enormous metallic silver dragon that looked like a robot.
But Kiba could sense that it was not a mere mechanical puppet. Some parts had simply been replaced, and unlike a normal robot, it seemed far stronger than the original creature.
"So... don't you want to become a dragon slayer?" Lala smiled.
Rooooarrr!
Kiba did not answer, he couldn't. He had to focus entirely on dodging the enormous flying lizard that was trying to ram him.
'Maybe it's not as strong as a real one? Did I misjudge her?' he thought when he saw the dragon using such a crude technique.
He immediately regretted even thinking that.
The dragon opened its mouth as an enormous amount of magical energy gathered inside before erupting into a gigantic sphere of destructive magic launched straight at Kiba.
The sphere was so massive that even using all his power, Kiba could not dodge it. He could only stand there watching the attack slowly approach.
______________________________________
+15 chapters in advance on Patreon.
p-atreon.com/IAMME26
(just delete the hyphen)
80 power stones = 1 extra chapter (cumulative)