Footsteps muffled by the ORC's expensive carpeting rang out as Akeno stumbled towards me and all but grabbed my shoulder as her head leaned towards me. Her eyes aglow with the very definition of desperation, Akeno then spoke thickly as though the words were choked by her desire for it to be true yet held back by the knowledge that such a convenient thing was unlikely to be possible. "Are you serious Jake..."
I glanced at Ria's looking for help, but Akeno's hands moved off my shoulders and then surprisingly softly clasped my cheeks as she made my eyes lock back onto hers. "Jake don't pull on my heartstrings with this. I will do literally anything to see my mother amongst the living again." Akeno said bluntly and not even with any form of teasing. She meant she would literally do anything regardless of morals or cost.
"Yes, if my conjecture from creating my girls is correct then if the body doesn't fit the soul even if they never died their soul will still mutate to fit the form. But vice versa is possible where if a soul is placed into a perfectly fitting body, then the body would be able to host the soul without issue." I spoke and Akeno's eyes closed before, and her hands threaded themselves around the back of my neck as she leaned forward to rest her forehead on my chest.
"Akeno... I promise you I will help use the full power of the Gremory Family in order to extract Valerie as not only can she bring back your mother with Jake's help but knowing she is still alive I won't be able to look at Gasper and know I allowed his sister is being tormented another day." Rias spoke solemnly and Akeno lifted her head off my chest, and I could tell she was currently overwhelmed with her emotions.
"Jake, Akeno come here. We are going now!" Rias said strictly to wake up her queen and Akeno flinched as her hurried and erratic breathing evened a bit with Rias putting some pressure on her.
I led Akeno over to Rias and Rias took my arm I felt her blue eyes staring at me with an unseen intensity as she came to the realization that even if the Phenex clan cows were a great gift to the Devil race despite their small numbers me being able to on mass bring people back to life if Valerie could merely bring their spirits from the afterlife could be a game changer.
Thus, regardless of my having at best peak High-class power even with Sirzechs's genetic potential I still needed time to adjust my body to be able to carry such powerful magic as it was nowhere near as simple as just replacing the equivalents of a water bottle for a water tanker within my body to contain the massive difference in magic that Rias and Sirzechs had between themselves.
Not to mention me who has only been enriching my body for a couple of weeks with magic.
Rias finally closed her eyes, and I felt her magical power flood the surroundings as a much more dense Gremory magical circle formed beneath us finally with a blinding flash of crimson light we were torn from Earth and after a couple of seconds of the blinding light searing my eyes even after I closed them, we arrived in Hell.
We had arrived in an actually landing room or something as the floor we landed upon had the Gremory magical crest engraved upon it with some kind of magical glowing metal that probably helped the Gremory family members teleport between realms.
"Jake, and especially you Akeno. Just allow the family dinner to go without incident and then I can get a meeting with my brother, and I am sure he will be willing to help us." Rias said and I nodded as it made sense.
But Akeno had to get the last word in as it were. "Just like how your brother helped with your engagement?" Even Akeno flinched as she realized her words were far out of line as she refused to meet Rias's eyes when Akeno's king wordlessly stared at her.
"Akeno, I love you like my own sister and so I know you are... Highly emotional right now. But I can't help if you snap and say something stupid to my family or Sirzechs and this plan happens to push the resurrection of your mother back." Akeno's head snapped up at Rias in surprise and a bit of betrayal, but Rias only raised an eyebrow.
"Behave Akeno, I will do everything in my power to return your mother back to life as I know you would do the same if our situations were reversed. But as I said behave!" Rias said bluntly and Akeno swallowed nodding as she knew her previous comment was out of line and although the Gremory family wouldn't keep her from seeing her mom they could just as easily teach her a lesson by making her wait.
With Akeno's mind cleared she seemingly took the position of simply keeping her silence as Rias gave her sister in all but blood a quick hug and whispered something into her ear before she stepped back and took a deep breath. "Alright let's get going to see my family," Rias spoke with a bit of forced cheer as she walked towards the landing room's doors.
Even as Rias approached the large double doors, they swung open at the behest of two silent maids that pushed them open to allow Rias and us entry.
"Thank you." I said to the maids, and they smiled nodding back to me as they took out some dusters and began cleaning off the magical pad we landed upon if they were doing anything else I couldn't see as Rias took my arm into her arm so I could 'escort' her through her own undoubtedly massive home
Rias then led me and Akeno who walked behind me and Rias through the massive Gremory estate and its size was mind-boggling ridiculous...
It was seemingly a dozen convention centers put together in the shape of a mansion/castle and when I asked Rias why this place was so huge, she smiled wryly. "It's not even about having too much money or even wanting to show off our wealth. It's just that devils get bored of their homes and rather than demolish their older homes they just keep adding more onto it every few decades and with my parents being a couple thousand years old..." Rias shrugged in a what can you do manner.
This massive estate was honestly a perfect example of the wealth and connections that the Gremory family has accumulated over the millennia.
"Here we are." Rias smiled as we reached another set of massive double doors. "The southwest informal dining room," Rias spoke, and just as she said there was a small brass plaque on the side of the doors labeling the room past the doors as the informal dining room.
As we approached the double doors once again, they swung open to welcome us but this time rather than maids there was a regal man who looked to be only within his twenties seemingly with slightly lighter red hair and a matching red goatee that pushed open the door.
"Rias my darling you have come home!" Rias's father spoke with charisma rolling off of him and I saw where Sirzechs got his from as they had a similar presence. "Akeno my dear it is good to see you again and Jake... I welcome you within my family. And thank you for standing with my daughter during her rating game." Zeoticus Gremory spoke, and I had to blink as honestly... I was a bit poisoned on fanfics of her father being some controlling asshole.
"It's a pleasure to meet you," I said simply but truthfully, and then the man actually stuck his out to me to shake as an equal, and instinctively I took it.
In that split couple of seconds, I took the man's hand I fully mapped out his body, and relying on my prior example of Rias's Gremory bloodline I think I learned a bit more about the Gremory probability/luck bloodline.
But after I let go of the man's hand, I wore a severe frown as I looked at the man...
"Is something the matter Jake?" He asked also frowning as my respectful smile dropped into a terrible frown and I had to consider how to explain what I had 'seen' within his body.
"It would be for the best if we skip this dinner and you and I speak with Sirzechs alone. You have seen me flip Riser's gender perfectly and stably just by touching him for a half a minute... You have a problem within you, sir." I said frowning as I found what I thought to maybe be the Devils sleeping 'sickness' as I could see the process in which his mind was shutting down permanently with each deep sleep cycle dragging him deeper into a coma.
There was that literally life-ending issue... And then there were the fucking highly venomous tiny tablets that were somehow inside his stomach that was being very, and I mean extremely slowly dissolved in the man's stomach. If my brief glance told me anything I believed the tablets with whatever was within them would take like half a year or something fully dissolved after allowing the minute toxins that escaped the dissolving pills to wreak havoc as the man sleeping in the Devil's Sleeping Sickness progressed.
"Rias please take Akeno and spend some time with your mother, she is in the next-door resting room with Grayfia and Milicas," Zeoticus spoke taking a deep breath as he realized I had found something within that would be problematic without waiting for Rias to answer I entered the dining room with Sirzechs looking up from the end of the table seeing me and his father finally enter.
"Ah, where is Rias and the others?" He asked genially as his father took a seat beside his son and I took a seat in front of the two red-haired men.
"We needed to have an important conversation with them out of the picture, so we don't have to deal with them getting emotional," Zeoticus said bluntly before he looked to me. "Well. Please explain what you have found." He spoke calmly despite how I would have been probably freaking out if I was in his place.
I took a deep breath before I looked to Sirzechs especially before I looked to Zeoticus. "As you know Lord Sirzechs I can manipulate flesh with a bit of skin contact but no matter what when I make skin contact with biomass of any sort, I sort of scan it to get an idea of what it consists of," I explained and before either of them could cut me I got to the meat of the matter. "Sir. you have been poisoned with some kind of highly toxic tiny tablets that have stuck themselves in your stomach lining so you cannot puke them out. They were designed to slowly seep into your body while the next issue takes place."
"What issue could be mentionable in the same sentence to my father being possibly lethally poisoned!" Sirzechs growled as a weight hung on me as his control over his massive magical power slipped away for a moment before he reeled in his power, but his eyes still glowed with Power of Destruction.
"He has the Devil's Sleeping Sickness... And it's not a genetic issue thus it's out of my control even if I could actually wake him when he got into a coma. But in the end, the moment he relaxed and closed his eyes he would slip back into the unending coma." I spoke as clinically as I could and Sirzech's face froze but I coughed.
"What I want to know is how he got poisoned with a very slow-acting poison that would only spike into lethality when he slipped deeper into the coma of the Sleeping Sickness," I said bluntly and Sirzechs froze, and his hands that were on the table tensed and with a brutal crack the beautiful wood table's top near him cracked and shattered under the reflexive flex of his arms.
"Sirzechs... I understand if you don't trust me now. But you can take your father to Ajuka or someone you trust, and they can perform an open stomach surgery to remove the tablets within your father so he will at least not be poisoned." I said consolingly and he nodded before his eyes locked onto me and flitted to his father.
"Jake, how easily could you take out the tablets and preserve them?" He asked bluntly and I almost snorted as it would be easier than making a sandwich honestly.
"In comparison to binding devil bloodlines to ordinary cows? Removing the tablets will be child's play for me." I said bluntly and Sirzechs turned in his seat to his father with an unspoken demand.
"You trust him with my life?" Zeoticus asked his son and after a moment Sirzechs nodded but I saw a flash of bloodlust in his eyes as he obviously thought if I fucked up, he would erase me and frankly I wouldn't blame him.
"Alright, Jake I am in your hands," Zeoticus spoke wryly as he weakly smiled and held out a hand to me and I took his hand.
"Unbutton your shirt, I am going to extract it nice and easy," I said as I grew skin that matched Zeoticus's DNA around each tablet, and then almost like flesh-colored marbles they passed through Zeoticus's stomach area and bypassing the other organs as I carefully pushed them outside his body with all the marbles dribbling off his body and onto a tray that Sirzechs laid out to catch them.
"I will turn these into Ajuka for analyses... I assume the tablets are within the skin balls?" Sirzechs asked with a raised eyebrow at the lightly toned skin balls on the tray and I nodded.
"Yes, I encased them in some skin in order to not have them break off as they traveled through your body, and I also healed the minor organ damage that you had in your intestines... Yeah, that reason your uhm stools had been having issues was the toxins." I said trying to be clinical and that sinched it as Zeoticus's face twisted as he realized that he had been poisoned for God knows how long.
"Jake me and my father are going to discuss the family's next steps if he is truly coming down with the Devil's Sickness. So I ask-" Sirzechs spoke but I cut him off.
"Wait!" I said holding up a hand. "I might have a solution for the sleeping sickness at least for your father," I spoke and Sirzechs paused and took a deep breath.
"Alright go ahead then." He waved and I began speaking how from what I had gathered from the Devils Sickness that it was in fact not a physical sickness at all. It was the devil's soul all but collapsing due to various issues. But if we had the Longinus Sephiroth Graal at best we could easily fix him.
Or at worst, I could create him a new body and the wielder could simply push his soul into the new body to buy him a couple more years for Rias to mature as the Devil Sickness would reset with the new body.
"Finding a Longinus, no easy feat Jake... I will do all in my power to do so but I cannot promise to find it father as it may not even be in a human at this time." Sirzechs said softly as he folded his hands in front of his face.
"Uhhh... I know where the Longinus is. Hell according to Rias's you guys weren't even a couple of miles away from her at one point. She is Valerie Tepes a very female Dhampir being held in the Tepes castle against her will with the vampires trying to find some use for her Longinus." I said smiling as Sirzechs face was all but flooded with a million emotions before his face became granite-hard.
"You are sure of that Jake... How sure is your information?" He asked and looking at Sirzechs I saw him as a completely different person.
He was no longer Sirzechs Gremory mourning the possible loss of his Father. He was Sirzechs fucking Lucifer who had found a silver bullet dangling in front of his face to save his father. And woe be to anything that stands in his path.
"On my life, I swear that Valerie Tepes as of a year ago at least still had the Longinus," I spoke and Sirzechs nodded coldly as he smiled with no emotion.
"Jake thank you dearly for coming to dinner tonight. But I am afraid that I have a meeting to take care of... Please check my son and the rest of my family for... Another abnormality as it were." He said and he was bluntly asking me to check if the rest of the Gremory family members may be dropping dead or something soon.
"Yes," I replied simply as I offered an arm to Zeoticus for him to take as he was obviously quite stressed. Then as me and Zeoticus walked into the side room to enlighten the ladies of the Gremory clan on what had happened Sirzechs walked out of the dining room alone before teleporting out of the Underworld.
He was going to go on a very enthusiastic walk.