Human World, Japan, Kuoh.
Evening of the next day, Leona, Venelana, Rhea, and Yasaka were seated in the living room of the Alaverus Estate while Grayfia stood behind Venelana to fulfill any needs the ladies may have while they chatted and drank tea.
"I feel like I have to call foul." Leona said after finishing the contents of her teacup.
"What do you mean?" Rhea asked curiously.
"She's just jealous at How gentle Master Scathach is with Kunou." Venelana said with a giggle while covering her mouth elegantly.
"I mean, I know she's cute..." Leona said while shaking her head. Then she put on her most innocent smile. "But I'm cute too, right?"
Instead of responding, the urge to drink some of Grayfia's magnificent tea overcame the three other ladies. At the same time, Grayfia decided that the tea she had brewed not even ten minutes ago had been sitting too long and became stale.
"Right?" Leona asked again.
Still, there was no response. Leona even noticed that Rhea's cup was empty. However, she kept drinking and making slurping sounds like the teacup was being liquified as well.
"Ahem... I really don't know how Kunou does it." Yasaka said after the silence became a bit too uncomfortable. "I mean, she can even make my stoic guard captain, Sesshoumaru, crack a smile in her presence."
"You mean the tall white-haired guy with the cresent moon on his forehead?" Leona asked curiously. "I mean, if you told me that he had never smiled a day in his life, I would have believed it."
'Good, she dropped the subject.' Yasaka thought, mentally wiping sweat from her forehead.
Stealthily, Venelana and Rhea gave Yasaka thumbs up which Yasaka smiled at in response.
The ladies continued to chat as Grayfia returned with a fresh pot of tea, noticing that Leona was no longer asking about being cute or not. Although none of them would argue about Leona being beautiful, all the pranks she has pulled, ever since James had his change of personality at six years old, have stolen the right to be called cute from her permanently.
After a short while, a teleportation circle appeared in the corner of the living room. Noticing that it was James' magic circle, the ladies stopped their chatter and prepared to greet him, Tiamat, and Zest. However, when they became visible, the ladies were surprised to see the dead look in James' eyes. Zest had the same blank expression on her face as usual. Tiamat on the other hand was holding a platinum tiara with six diamonds of different colors slotted into it.
"Okay, James, your first tribute has been accepted." Tiamat said excitedly.
Then, Tiamat began to skip away in happiness. Meanwhile, James began to sway with fatigue. Luckily, Zest was standing right next to him, catching him before he could fall.
"James, what happened?" Leona asked, standing up to approach her son.
"James is unable to answer the phone right now..." James said in a daze. "Please leave a message after the tone and I'll get back to you as soon as possible... Thanks and have a great day."
After speaking in a loopy tone, James closed his eyes and passed out. Seeing this, the five ladies who were already in the living room were more than surprised. Meanwhile, Zest lifted James and brought him over to a sofa and laid him down on it.
As soon as James was laid down, Grayfia placed a cold towel on his forehead. Then, when she raised her head, she met eyes with Zest. At the center of their gazes, the other ladies in the room could feel lightning beginning to spark.
"The rivalry is strong with these two." Leona said with a smile of amusement.
"I know, right?" Rhea replied with a nod of her head. "In the centuries that I've known her, I've never seen Grayfia act like this."
"I guess Sheila's declaration of Zest being the realm's best maid really lit a fire under her, huh?" Venelana said with a giggle.
"Zest, can you tell us what happened?" Yasaka asked, deciding that she wanted to get to the meat of the matter. "And why is James so... lifeless?"
"As you wish, Madam Yasaka." Zest said, turning away from Grayfia and bowing. "Over the course of fifteen hours, Young Master James, Miss Tiamat, and I visited one hundred jewelry stores all over the world."
"But that would mean they only spent... nine minutes in each store." Rhea said after doing some mental math. "How is that enough time to look at anything?"
"Ugh... That's all the time it took for Tia to assess the value of every piece in each shop." James said from his spot on the sofa in a weak tone. "And when I say every piece, I mean every piece. Even the ones that were not on display."
"Seriously?" Leona asked.
"Yeah, and we only went to the one hundred highest end shops all over the globe." James said with his eyes closed. "So, everyone looked at us like were crazy when we would enter the store, Tia would make a once over of what they had on display, and then close her eyes."
"Close her eyes? Why?" Venelana asked as she raised James' head and took a seat so that he could use her lap as a pillow.
"Damn, that was smooth." Leona muttered while watching Venelana's actions.
Rhea could only nod in response to Leona's mutterings while Grayfia remembered a conversation at Venelana's bar in the Gremory Estate.
"Is she...?" Yasaka asked, not receiving an answer.
'I'll remember this for the next time Young Master James seems exhausted.' Zest thought to herself while she watched James.
"Yeah..." James answered Venelana's question absent mindedly. "After closing her eyes, she would use magic to hypnotize everyone in the shop. Then, she would walk into their storage room and start browsing at high speed. I had to pay extra close attention to her at those times, so she didn't just pocket something she liked."
===Flashback===
Human World, U.S.A., New York, New York City.
In the Tiffany & Co. Shop on Time Square, Tiamat had just finished looking over each piece of jewelry in all of the display cases. Although there were several pieces that she liked, especially a white gold ring with seven small diamonds set in it, she knew this shop had more to offer. She could feel it.
So, she shut her eyes. Then, James and Zest felt a burst of magic spread out around her. A moment later, everyone in the shop stopped in place and had a dazed look in their eyes. Then, Tiamat opened her eyes and began to walk toward the back of the shop. Naturally, James and Zest followed her. When they finally made it to a storage room, Tiamat used magic to unlock the door and disable any security measures that might be on the door or in the room.
"Haha!" Tiamat laughed. "The good stuff is definitely in here."
"Tia, I don't have to worry about you stealing anything, right?" James asked skeptically.
"Why would I have to steal anything when you're gonna buy it for me?" Tiamat asked with a bright smile on her face.
"Because your greed for treasure knows no bounds." Ddraig said from James' left hand.
"Huh? I thought I heard a cheating homo dragon who loses other people's stuff say something." Tiamat said while looking around with a confused expression on her face. "James did you hear anything?"
"What did you call me?" Ddraig growled.
"Ddraig?" Tiamat asked innocently. "I never said your name. Maybe you have a guilty conscious?"
"Damn it, I should have stopped him from saving you at all costs." Ddraig grumbled.
At the same time, James hand shot out at lightning speed and stopped Tiamat from putting a bracelet... somewhere. Probably a spatial device or something similar.
"What was that about not stealing?" James asked with his eyes narrowed.
"Tee-hee." Tiamat laughed cutely. "Sorry, I promise it won't happen again. It's just an old habit. And you know how those die hard."
===Flashback End===
Human World, Japan, Kuoh.
"That Tiffany's was only one of the stores we went to." James said tiredly. "And that wasn't the first time I stopped her from stealing something. But I had to stop her fourteen more times in that storage room alone."
"And I'm guessing the other ninety-nine shops had similar experiences, huh?" Yasaka asked, looking at James with pity.
"Yeah, James replied with a nod. "And don't get me started on the constant bickering between Ddraig and Tia. Since she knows she can't kill me, she does everything she can to get under Ddraig's skin."
"Oh, I bet that was glorious." Leona said with a smile, imagining all the insults that Tiamat must have thrown.
"It was... at first." James said. "Until she started trying to seduce me to get to Ddraig."
"*Sigh* Although that was annoying, I don't think that was just to get under my skin, Partner." Ddraig said so that everyone could hear.
"What do you mean, Ddraig?" James asked in a confused tone.
"Well, you're exactly what a dragoness would look for in a mate." Ddraig explained. "Strong draconic aura, more powerful than her, and wealthy."
"That makes sense." Rhea said with a nod.
"Anyway, I'll think about that later." James said. "Now, where was I? Oh yeah, we did that for a total of a hundred stores. Tia also made me take pictures of and note down where the pieces she liked the most were. But she did not pick a single one of them at that time."
"But she clearly picked something." Venelana said in a confused tone while running her fingers through James' braids.
"Yeah, after we left the last store, she spent another hour looking through all the pictures I took before settling on that tiara you all saw her holding." James said. "Then, we went back to the store where she found it. Then, we bought it and came back home."
"Just how much did you spend?" Leona asked curiously.
"Uh... 12.2 million USD?" James replied unsurely.
"It was $12,198,456.99, Young Master James." Zest said quietly.
"Yeah, what she said." James added.
Leona, Venelana, Rhea, and Yasaka looked at him like he was crazy for spending that much on a familiar. Grayfia on the other hand, had an idea of what the number in his account looked like. Since she had been working for the Four Great Satans as a secretary, she knew about the bounties James had received for capturing Diodora, killing Cao Cao, capturing Loki, etc. In liquid assets alone, James was richer than the three richest men on Earth combined. And that doesn't include anything that he decided to invest in after he turned eighteen.
"Well, with all those notes and photos, at least you shouldn't have to worry about going through every store again, right?" Yasaka asked with a smile. "In other words, the experience won't be as torturous as it was this time."
James could only shake his head at Yasaka's naive thought. Then, he began to shed tears at the thought of doing this again next month.
"James, what's wrong?" Venelana asked as she used the cloth on James forehead to wipe away his tears. "Could I have another cold cloth to ease James' suffering."
Just as Venelana's request fell, a pair of slightly damp, cold cloths appeared in front of her. When the women holding the new cloths, Grayfia and Zest, noticed that they were not alone in offering a cold towel, they made eye contact and stared at each other fiercely.
"*Sigh* Thank you both." Venelana said with awry smile on her face.
Venelana then took both towels and placed one on James' forehead. Then, she placed the other on his neck.
"Damn, she's good." Leona whispered.
"She really is." Rhea agreed.
"Is she really...?" Yasaka asked again, still not receiving an answer.
Once James was able to control his tears, he took a deep breath.
"In a month, there is no way that each of those stores won't have received some new merchandise." James said sadly. "On top of that, some of, if not most of, those pieces she liked will have been bought by other customers."
"Oh, that makes sense." Yasaka replied with a nod. "So, that means..."
"That means you get to go on another fun shopping trip with Tia next month." Leona said with a smile.
Once again, tears began to flow from James' eyes. This time, however, his sobs were not silent. Instead, he let out such a heart wrenching wale that everyone who heard it felt bad for him.
{BGM: "Cupid Shuffle" -- Cupid}
At that moment, a smartphone started ringing surprising everyone with the hook to "Cupid Shuffle." However, it surprised everyone even more when Venelana took out her smartphone and answered it calmly.
"Hey, Zeo, what's going on?" Venelana asked with a smile after seeing the surprise on everyone's faces.
{"If you can, turn on the news."} Zeoticus' voice rang out from the phone. {"The Four Great Satans and the Devil Council are about to announce something."}
"Alright, I understand." Venelana said before ending the call.
At the same time, Leona picked up the remote for the TV in the living room and turned on the Underworld Nightly News. When she did, she was just in time for a big reveal. Zekram Bael, standing in front of a podium with the Four Great Satans flanking him, spoke into a microphone.
{"The Devil Council and the Four Great Satans have come to a unanimous decision."} Zekram said from the television. "{From this moment forward, the Four Great satans will be known as the Five Great Satans. And we name James Alaverus as the fifth of the Five Great Satans."}
"What the fuck!?" James exclaimed in confusion.