High School DxD: Fox of Ill Omen

Issei

The center of the hall cleared fast.

A second ago it had been a noble engagement party full of scandalized Devils and expensive perfume and people pretending they weren’t listening.

Now it looked like somebody had cut the heart out of the ceremony and left a ring in its place.

The guests gathered at the edges with eyes bright and ugly and eager.

Buchou and the peerage had been moved to one side.

Maou-sama stood near her, still looking amused in a way I absolutely did not trust.

On the Phoenix side, Riser’s relatives had gathered behind him, with Ravel there among them, calm again now that the room had decided to turn all of this into spectacle.

And Kusari-san—

Kusari-san still stood where Maou-sama had placed her, in servant black and white, one arm in a sling, tails lowered, face unreadable from this distance.

That sight sat under my ribs like a nail.

I wanted to remember exactly what these people thought it could do to people and then call it family business.

Riser stood opposite me in the newly cleared space, fire wings half unfurled behind him and that same confident look on his face like the whole room already belonged to him.

Maybe it did.

Didn’t matter.

Not for the next few minutes.

A Devil official in formal clothes raised his voice.

“Please begin!”

Finally.

Riser pointed at the gauntlet on my arm and smiled without humor.

“All of your abilities are already known,” he said. “The [Boosted Gear]. A Sacred Gear that keeps doubling the user’s power. And the new trick—the one that transfers the amplified power into objects or allies.”

So he knew about Gift.

About Transfer.

Knowing and stopping were different things.

I looked over at Buchou and grinned on purpose.

“Buchou,” I called. “I’ll finish this in ten seconds.”

That got the reaction I wanted.

She stared at me like I had either become much cooler than before or far stupider.

Both were possible.

“Ise…?”

“It’s all right.”

I pointed at Riser without looking away from her.

“I’ll settle it right now.”

Riser laughed.

“You talk big for someone saying he’ll finish it in ten seconds. Then I’ll finish you in five. It won’t be like last time, Rias’s [Pawn].”

Keep talking.

I bared my teeth at him and then called to the only person whose answer mattered.

“Buchou! Please allow me to use Promotion here!”

The room sharpened.

That excited the crowd quickly.

Some of them leaned in.

Some looked annoyed.

Maou-sama just kept smiling.

Buchou met my eyes.

Then she nodded.

The heartbeat came immediately.

That heavy, deep sound inside my body that always answered Promotion, like the piece itself had acknowledged me and decided, for a little while, to let me become more than what I usually was.

“[Promotion]! [Queen]!”

Power surged through me.

Not new exactly.

Not unfamiliar.

But wider.

More complete.

This wasn’t the rough scramble of a field promotion in the middle of the game.

This was granted cleanly, openly, in front of all of them.

I felt bigger inside my own skin.

Faster.

More balanced.

Like every piece of me that usually had to choose between speed, power, and surviving was being allowed to do all three at once for a little while.

I threw my head back and shouted because hell with subtlety.

“Buchou!”

The whole hall heard me.

“I don’t have talent for swords like Yuuto-san!” I said. “I’m not a genius with demonic power like Akeno-san! I can’t control a fight like Kusari-san! I don’t have crazy strength like Koneko-chan or healing power like Asia!”

A few of the nobles actually looked confused by this speech.

“But even so,” I said, voice rising, “I’m going to become the strongest [Pawn]!”

The words hit the hall and echoed slightly in the large room.

They seemed dramatic.

But I was going to make them true.

I pointed at myself with my free hand.

“With this Boosted Gear, my only weapon, I’ll protect you!”

Buchou looked at me with the kind of face that should’ve made me stop and get embarrassed.

I didn’t.

There wasn’t time.

I called inward instead.

“Shine! Over Boost!”

Ddraig answered.

[Welsh Dragon Over Booster!]

The jewel on the gauntlet erupted in deep red light, and for one instant I could feel it—his power, old and enormous and far too much for the body I was still technically borrowing from humanity.

[Use it. However, only for 10 seconds. Your body can’t endure more than that.]

“Yeah,” I thought at him. “I know. Ten seconds.”

[That’s right. With 10 seconds you will—]

“We’ll take Riser down!”

Then the light swallowed me.

The hall disappeared into red.

When it receded, the armor was there.

Not just a gauntlet.

Deep crimson, sharp-edged, dragon-themed, covering my body in hard plates that felt half like equipment and half like a second skin.

The gauntlet had spread to the right arm too.

Jewels sat at the shoulders, arms, knees, and chest.

On my back, the propulsion unit hummed with compressed, violent intention.

The hall gasped.

Riser actually looked shocked.

“Armor? You managed to make the Red Dragon Emperor's power take form?!”

“This is the Forbidden Move Balance Breaker, [Red Dragon Emperor’s Armour— Boosted Gear Scale Mail]!”

The name rang out beautifully.

“And if you want to complain about forbidden techniques, go ask the Maou!”

Maou-sama laughed.

The count started.

[X]

No time.

I brought my hands together, shaping demonic power between them.

The mass that formed was huge.

Bigger than I expected.

Bigger than any attack should’ve been inside a hall like this.

I fired it instantly.

The demonic-power blast swallowed half the ring and went screaming toward Riser like an oncoming wall of red destruction.

Even I stared at it for half a second with the deeply professional thought of wow, that’s enormous.

Riser didn’t try to block it.

He dodged.

That was all I needed.

The propulsion on my back ignited with a brutal surge of force and hurled me across the ring after him so fast that even my own body lost the right to fully understand it.

It was incredible.

It was horrible.

The G-force made my ribs and stomach protest in ways I did not have time to honor, and I shot straight toward where he had moved—

—and missed.

Straight into the wall.

The impact blew a crater into the hall wall and sent a shower of broken stone and plaster raining down around me.

For one awful second everything hurt again in a way the armor had almost let me forget.

Then I realized two things at once.

One, the armor had protected me beautifully.

Two, if I simply crashed into people at that speed, they might actually die.

[VIII]

Eight seconds.

I tore myself out of the broken wall and turned back toward the ring.

Riser was already waiting, more cautious now, flames building around him in a huge, rainbow-edged aura.

The pressure of his demonic power spread through the hall hard enough that barriers began to rise around some of the watching Devils automatically.

His expression had changed.

No more effortless arrogance.

No more “lower-class trash in a school uniform.”

He was taking me seriously now.

“Shitty Red Dragon brat,” he snarled. “I won’t hold back anymore. I admit it—right now, you are a monster.”

That might have been the nicest thing he’d ever said to me.

Then the fire came.

His wings expanded, flames blasting outward around him so intensely the air itself turned violent. The shape rushing toward me looked less like a man and more like a giant bird of fire wearing one. 

[The fire of the immortal bird Phoenix can also leave a scratch on the scales of a Dragon. It isn’t a good idea to continue being hit by it.]

The heat alone pressed against the armor hard enough to make me understand what Ddraig had said. 

Didn’t matter.

Buchou was watching.

I ran toward it.

“There’s no way I’m losing to your crappy fire!”

The propulsion behind me ignited again and I slammed into him head-on.

Fists met faces.

Flame met dragon power.

The impact shook the entire hall.

For one insane second the whole world became exchanged punches.

Riser’s blows hit like a burning hammer.

Each time he touched me, heat surged through the armor hard enough to remind me that without it, I’d already be a corpse.

My own punches landed harder than I had ever hit anything in my life.

But underneath all that power, one ugly truth stayed exactly where it had always been.

If I took the armor away, if I stripped off the Boosted Gear and all the borrowed miracles and dragon rage and Promotion and Balance Breaker—

Riser would crush me.

He knew it too.

I saw it in his grin.

“Are you scared?” he asked between blows. “You should be. Without that sacred gear, you’re worthless! Without this trick, you have no value!”

Worthless without the gauntlet.

Worthless without the power.

Worthless unless stronger.

For one flash of a second, all I could think about was Kusari-san standing in servant black at Maou-sama side.

No value.

No longer necessary.

Something ugly and useful clicked into place.

[VII]

I reached for something hidden in a section of the gauntlet.

Riser saw the movement too late.

I drove my fist straight into his face in a cross-counter.

BANG.

He reeled.

Then he coughed blood.

The hall gasped again.

I opened my hand and showed him what I’d been holding.

A cross.

Asia’s cross.

Riser’s eyes widened properly this time.

“A cross!? You have a cross!?”

I grinned through the armor.

“That’s right. I punched you while multiplying the effect with Boosted Gear.”

His face twisted.

“Crosses cause intense suffering to Devils! Even with dragon armor, touching one is insane—”

Then he stopped.

He looked at my left arm.

At the pulsing organic line beneath the armor there that no longer matched the rest of the suit.

His expression changed.

“Your left arm…” he said. “Did you offer it to the Dragon residing in the Sacred Gear?”

That quieted the room almost instantly. 

I could feel the eyes on me.

The nobles.

The peerage.

Buchou.

“Yeah,” I said. “My left arm was given up for this power. Now it’s become that of a dragon. That’s why the cross doesn’t work on me.”

Riser actually looked alarmed.

“If you do that, your left arm won’t return to normal!”

“What about it?”

The countdown beat on.

[V]

Buchou was still watching.

That was enough to steady the rest.

“If trading one arm gets Buchou back,” I said, “that’s cheap.”

“You are crazy,” Riser murmured.

Riser’s eyes changed after that.

Something real entered them.

Fear, maybe.

Or maybe just the final understanding that I wasn’t playing at romance or jealousy or spectacle anymore.

He roared and the fire around him swelled again.

“Then I’ll crush you with everything I have!”

Now we were speaking honestly.

He came at me in a full rush of fire.

I set my feet.

Pulled every bit of power I had left into the cross in my hand.

And met him head-on.

Our fists collided.

Light exploded.

The world vanished in white and heat and impact.

For one impossible instant, I felt the armor tear away from me—not literally at first, but in sensation.

That feeling of peeling off something huge and heavy and no longer being protected by it.

The heat hit harder.

The air felt wrong against my skin.

Then the light faded.

The armor was gone.

The Scale Mail had dispersed.

The only thing left transformed was my left arm.

The cross had gone flying from my hand and landed somewhere off to the side of the ring.

My body suddenly understood just how much punishment it had taken while pretending to be invincible.

I was still standing.

Barely.

Riser was too.

And the look on his face told me the next few seconds were going to decide whether this had all been brilliance or a very public way to die.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!