"What exactly did Asia imagine?"
Lying on the bed, Cid found himself wondering about it.
After he said those words earlier, the maternal warmth in Asia's eyes had practically overflowed. She even went on to make all sorts of declarations, saying she would always stand by his side. Was a woman's imagination really that terrifying?
Well, whatever Asia came up with had nothing to do with him. All he needed to know was that she was currently full of enthusiasm and, for the time being, probably would not act like Alpha and the others.
Come to think of it, he did lose a bit of money today. He was the one who paid for the sandwiches… Oh well, not a big deal.
After letting his thoughts drift for a while, Cid finally gathered some energy. He raised one hand in front of him, and a Pawn Piece from a chess set emerged in his palm.
This was the Evil Piece Rias had given him yesterday, intending to use it to turn him into a Devil.
Fortunately, he had come up with an excuse in time and managed to bluff his way out without fusing with it. Otherwise, that conference room would have ended up with five… no, four more corpses lying on the floor. Right, lucky for Rias and her Peerage, not him.
He had not examined the Evil Pieces closely at the time, but with his decent knowledge and Rias's explanation, he had already pieced together a general understanding.
Rias had said that the number of Evil Pieces required depended on the user's potential. The higher the talent and strength, the more pieces would be consumed. It sounded perfectly reasonable.
But that raised a question.
What if someone's talent or strength was so high that even using up all the Evil Pieces would not be enough to complete the transformation? And what if the owner of the Evil Pieces did not realize this beforehand and forcibly initiated the Devil transformation ritual anyway?
There were five possible outcomes.
First, the ritual would automatically terminate, and all absorbed Evil Pieces would be expelled. This was the best case scenario.
Second, the ritual would end with the death of one of the participants. Most likely, that would be the person absorbing the Evil Pieces. This was also the most typical outcome.
After all, even modern medical procedures carry a considerable risk of death. A ritual that changes one's race would not simply stop midway.
Third, the ritual might forcibly proceed by draining the life force of the Evil Piece's owner, sacrificing part of their life to create a powerful servant. This was the least likely scenario.
Fourth, the ritual could be forcibly stopped at the cost of some backlash to the Evil Piece's owner. From a cost benefit perspective, this was theoretically the most favorable outcome.
Fifth, the situation Rias and her group had faced yesterday.
Because the gap in power was too great, combined with a certain peculiarity of his body, Rias had her life force siphoned in reverse through the Evil Piece. Once hers was drained, it would continue along her connection as a King and begin draining the life force of her Peerage.
The probability of this happening was effectively 100%.
It had triggered his body's defense mechanism. Unless he deliberately stopped it, Rias and her Peerage would have certainly died.
Of course, there was no real point dwelling on it. None of it had actually happened.
As for why he had taken out Rias's Pawn Piece now, it was simply out of curiosity. He wanted to see how this thing could convert someone's race. Yesterday, he had been too preoccupied with issues in his inner world to pay attention to it. But today, with nothing urgent going on, he decided to take a closer look.
Come to think of it, although he'd heard about this thing plenty of times at school and on TV, this was probably his first time actually seeing the piece itself.
Magical Power flowed from within him into his eyes, and his vivid crimson pupils focused on the Evil Piece.
"Oh… so that's how it works… Interesting… as expected of a Devil."
After observing it carefully for a while, Cid withdrew the Magical Power from his eyes and casually tossed the piece onto the table.
Not even half as good as a broken system or a stripped-down external Magic Network. That was Cid's evaluation of this Evil Piece.
Still, it wasn't that the thing was weak. It was just that he had seen too many things stronger than it and instinctively compared them.
Strictly speaking, this thing was like a small local area network. A set of Evil Pieces acted as the wiring, while the Peerage within the network functioned like individual computers, all connected to the King.
And, as expected of something made by Devils, it was genuinely insidious.
He took a closer look and realized that the reincarnation ritual of the Evil Pieces did not require the consent of the one being reincarnated. In other words, the two sides of the ritual were not equal. As long as the owner of the Evil Pieces was willing, they could forcibly convert the race of anyone weaker than themselves and make them serve.
Of course, knowing this did not mean he was going to go around delivering justice. That would be boring, and it did not suit an Eminence in Shadow. Besides, this kind of thing matched his stereotypical image of Devils quite well.
What interested him more was something else inside the piece. A single drop of blood from Rias, which was the key to how the Evil Pieces transformed someone into a Devil.
A dark purple Magical Power appeared in Cid's hand. Unlike his usual calm energy, this dark purple Magical Power was extremely violent. Just looking at it gave off an overwhelming sense of destruction.
If Rias were here, she would recognize this Magical Power immediately. It was the distinctive Power of Destruction of the House of Bael in the Underworld, the very ability inherited by her and her brother.
The reason Cid could produce the Power of Destruction was actually quite simple. He had just extracted the essence from that drop of Rias's blood and learned the inherited ability within it.
The inheritance of Devil bloodlines could be summed up with a phrase he had seen online in his previous life. The ancestors of Devils had engraved it into their DNA.
Staring at the Power of Destruction, Cid fell into thought.
Of course, he was not worried about being exposed. He was simply thinking about what use this power might have.