Freed couldn't believe that Basara had such a powerful sacred gear within him.

Not only was he born from a powerful and world-renowned father that could shelter him from any outside threat, but he was also extremely talented— a prodigy of the highest degree, so to say; and to top it all off, he even had one of the most powerful gifts the God ever bestowed upon humankind, it was simply ridiculous.

'Is this what it means to be loved by God?'

Even though he was bleeding heavily from his detached arm and was feeling extremely faint, Freed could only laugh with insane glee at how unjust fate truly was.

Looking up, he could see Basara looking down on him with extremely cold eyes as though he was looking at a disgusting worm, struggling at the last dregs of its life even after being squashed.

'Now that I think about it, didn't those Fallen Angels come here because they were searching for someone with a powerful sacred gear?'

He immediately put two and two together and linked Basara to this and his eyes brightened with a new will to hold onto dear life. He knew that he had a way to not die here and now.

Soon the Fallen would come here, drawn in by the commotion; hence, all he had to do now was to stall for enough time for their entrance.

'But could those Fallen deal with Basara?'

He bit his lips hard to focus, 'Don't think. You have no other way. Just act.'

It was all or nothing.

"I-I have some information that can be pretty useful to you!!"

Whoosh!

Freed felt his heart rate increase a mile a minute when he felt the demonic sword stop just before his throat, mere centimeters away. He could even feel the blade slightly bit into his skin, even without touching it, and draw fresh blood.

*Gulp* 

‘The greatest demonic sword — Brynhildr.'

Cold sweat covered his back and trickled down as he reminisced about the information he knew about this damned weapon. No matter how he died, he could never let himself be killed by THAT sword.

"From your expression, I guess you know the ability of this sword. But that’s weird. Only higher-ups in the church should know about that."

Basara muttered under his breath in plain confusion. He hated this sword more than anything else — even more than the sacred gear that was forcefully attached to his soul, at least in his perspective it was forceful since he had never asked to be born with a sacred gear — but even he had to admit that the weapon was extremely scary in its capabilities.

After all, that damned sword had the ability to absorb souls and digest them before transferring the skills of the soul that was shredded to the wielder. [1]

As for the soul that was devoured? It was reduced to nothingness. Damned to never enter neither all the Heavens nor the numerous Hells in existence; it couldn’t even enter the cycle of reincarnation, for the very simple reason that the soul completely ceased to exist from reality. [2]

It was a demonic sword right to its very bone; a sword born from the blood and soul of the very first Valkyrie with the name of Brynhildr. She had sacrificed her very self to seal an all-powerful evil being, and her leftover essence manifested in the form of this greatsword that became an object of nightmares for many powerful entities. This was the fame this weapon held.

"Now, talk. One, what are you doing here? Two, how did you know about my sword? Three, what does Asia have to do with you guys?"

Freed knew that he had just escaped death by a hair’s breadth. Even so, the cold blade positioned against his neck was practically screaming to him that he wasn't off the hook yet.

Was he going to keep his mouth shut, though? 

Never.

"I came under the orders of one of the cadres of Grigori; his name is Kokabiel. My mission is to inspect Kuoh Town and verify the presence of the two princesses of the devil families — Rias Gremory and Sona Sitri. Once their presence and location are confirmed, I was ordered to reunite with a higher-up of the church who was exiled like us, his name is Valper Galilei."

"What after that?"

"I don't know. It seems like Kokabiel is preparing something big, but I was dispatched just as a grunt soldier, to do some recon work at best. "

Basara looked deeply at Freed, scrutinizing his body language to figure out the truth behind his statements, while his mind went full throttle to cohesively organize all the information he just acquired.

He knew Kokabiel, or rather, he had heard of him. After all, it was the man who fought with his master, Vasco Strada.

But why would a Fallen Angel cadre search to verify the whereabouts of important devils in a human town? 

'Does he want to start a new war?'

From what he had gathered, both Rias and Sona were the respective heiresses of the Gremory and Sitri house. Furthermore, the two of them were the sisters of Maou Lucifer and Maou Leviathan, two of the four Maous that controlled the current underworld.

If anything was to happen to even one of them and that too in the human world… Basara practically shuddered just by that mere thought. As he was now, the best solution was to do nothing and leave it to the pros. He could share the information he had gathered with Lucia later. She would know what to do with it and how to handle the situation at hand.

There was something else that intrigued him, however.

"I guess you learned about Brynhildr because of that man named Valper?"

"Right. Before being exiled he was the foremost eminence in the study of Holy Swords. He also delved deeply into Demonic Swords."

‘Hmm…’

This was an interesting piece of information. There wasn’t much he knew about his own sword. For one, he had never wished to wield it and two, in the first place, it was the weapon Brynhdlr which had forcibly contracted itself with him during that fateful accursed day. 

He knew that his father had visited Asgard in order to make sure that it wasn’t the kind of demonic sword that harmed its own wielder, but Basara knew nothing about how that meeting went. All he knew was that after he returned from the Norse domain, Jin had assured him that nothing would go wrong due to his binding with the weapon.

"Then… What about Asia?"

Perspiration covered Freed's forehead as he realized that the interrogation session was coming to an end.

'I need to buy some more time…somehow, anyhow'

"Wait! You didn't say if you would spare me after I told you everything!"

Basara looked at Freed as if he was looking at a moron, for asking that retarded question. The answer was as plain as day for everyone to see.

“You think I don’t know that you are buying time?”

Freed’s face paled and he was about to beg for his life further when…

Woooo!

The wind stirred abruptly as a portal slowly began to form on the ceiling above their heads inside the small room of the blood-soaked house. Immediately, Freed was reinvigorated by the phenomenon.

“Hahahaha~! The Fallen Angels are coming now. You should flee while you have the–”

“Idiot.”

Sadly for him, he had rejoiced a bit too soon.

Whoosh!

'Huh? Why is the world spinning suddenly?'

Freed thought as the world began to revolve in his eyes. The feeling of weightlessness that strangely appeared did not last long as he felt gravity bring him down again towards the ground. 

It was only after looking at his still kneeling body, after a few rolls on the ground, and the blood flowing out of it like a fountain that he finally understood how the events had rolled out.

'Ah…he killed me after all…well, too bad…I wanted to have some more fun in this world…'

Those were the last thoughts of the deranged psychopathic lunatic of a man named Freed Sellzen. 

———

Looking at the cold body devoid of all signs of life, Basara sighed dejectedly at having killed someone after a long time; he, in no circumstances, liked that sinking feeling, but he had to do the inevitable, there was no way around it sometimes, unfortunately. 

Sighing once more at the misery of his life, waved his hand to make the gleaming silver sword and red gauntlet vanish in thin air, leaving sparkles of red and green in its wake.

Freed was right in his thinking, but he made one fundamental mistake. 

'Why should I care about the masterminds backing you?'

It wasn’t his problem to deal with; since Brynhdlr devoured his soul, there was basically no way for anyone to find out about his involvement with his death. 

Perhaps a competent detective could find the relation with their analyzing capabilities and trace it back to him, but the mistake most people of the supernatural made was that they were too used to looking down on humans; therefore, they practically despised most of the methods used by humans no matter how ingenious and useful it may be. 

It was, strictly speaking, downright retarded, but he wasn’t one to complain since it played in his favor at the moment.

‘The portal should be completed soon. Better get away from here and cover my traces.’

He didn’t know if the Fallen Angel on the other side of the portal was Kokabiel and he didn’t want to know either, he wasn’t willing to make that gamble. As he was now, facing him while protecting Asia would be literally suicidal and unequivocally moronic.

Basara swept his hair away and breathed out, then placed his gaze at the shivering girl whose feet had given up on her. 

From below her partially destroyed robe, which left her cute diminutive breasts visible for all to see, and plain white panties, he could even see a small yellow puddle, showing how shocking and downright terrifying the scene had been for her.

'Asia...'

She was the girl he had met earlier this morning— Asia Argento. A gentle, slightly clumsy, and extremely naive girl who clearly knew nothing about the cruel world, probably because of the clearly sheltered life she had led, he deduced. 

Who would have thought that they would meet again so soon and in such difficult circumstances?

Groaning at imagining the headache this would surely bring him in the future, he walked towards her and kneeled down in front of her.

"Are you alright?"

Even as he gently spoke, he hurriedly took off his jacket and put it around her to hide the pale white skin and cute breasts that were displayed in all their naked glory. In such a situation, Basara had no stray thoughts of lasciviousness, and all he wanted was to comfort her.

Feeling the warmth of his jacket, Asia's expression kept flickering as clear tears streamed down her eyes. She tried to open her mouth and answer, but in the end, she simply fainted from her mind being strained beyond its limits.

Clearly, the events of this night had been simply too much for her. 

'Now then, what do I do?'

Mind whipping her memories was impossible since she wasn't just a simple human.

'Well, let's take her home first.'

Taking her in his arms, in a princess carry, as he wrapped her fully with his jacket, Basara breathed out in irritation as his boosted gear once again appeared on his arm, clearly something he didn’t want to use but was compelled to due to the situation at hand.

Taking one step forward— 

[Boost!]

*WHOOSH* 

—He vanished from the murky bloody room that screamed of nothing but death and desolation.

———

After Basara and Asia left the scene, just as the portal was about to be completed, a magic circle appeared, overlapping the portal, and blocked it before it could form, making it crumble slowly, restricting entry for the ones on the other side of the dimensional gate.

Appearing out of nowhere was a beautiful ebony black cat with golden eyes sparkling in its feline-shaped sockets.

“How interesting Nyaa~ I was just curious about the energy fluctuations, but to think I would find the Red Dragon Emperor of this era. He seems quite strong too, I am sure Vali would be delighted after I deliver this information to him.”

The cat talked to itself as it looked at the sealed gate with mockery. While her understanding of space magic was lower than a witch — for instance, Le Fay Pendragon — it was impossible for a bunch of low-level angels to pass through if she didn’t wish for them to, the difference in power made it impossible for them.

All this while, she had been observing the confrontation between Basara and Freed from start to finish. Thanks to her mastery over Senjutsu which allowed her to fuse her aura with nature and Youjutsu [3] which allowed her to use fairly powerful illusions, she had managed to stay hidden — even from someone like Basara who was quite sensitive to the auras and presences of the supernatural — completely out of sight.

“Those people are as distasteful as always, I see.”

She ignored the corpse of Freed and looked at the mutilated corpses of the innocent folks that were scattered all over the room in a display of gore and inhumanity. Even though she was in no way a gentle person and had the blood of many people on her hands, she had never killed anyone who hadn’t tried to kill her in the first place.

Sighing in a very non-feline-like fashion, her eyes flashed golden and a ball of fire fell on the bodies, or rather whatever remained of them, reducing them to ashes in merely a few seconds. Then, as if she wasn’t satisfied, she let the control over the fire go and let it cover the entire house in a wild destructive form before walking away from the room and then the house.

‘I might have found a way to get some news about Shirone.’

She recognized the school uniform of the boy, wielder of the boosted gear. She knew that the only school in the city was the one where the heiresses of the Gremory and Sitri family were admitted. Since Basara was also from that school, there was no way he didn’t know about the devils.

Leaving the burning house after she completely shattered the teleportation portal, Kuroka decided to follow the scent of the young red dragon emperor.

‘I hope he won’t disappoint me.’

After all, power-wise, he already fulfilled the criteria she had set for a mate. As one of the last remaining Nekosho and the oldest one to boot, it was her duty to find a worthy mate to help her in giving birth to healthy and talented offspring who would continue their bloodline.

She just hoped that his personality would suit her taste just as well as the power coursing through his very being did.

———

[1]; This is indeed Canon and not made-up bullshit.

[2]: DxD has many pantheons integrated inside it and all those pantheons have their own versions of heaven, hell, and reincarnation cycle or whatever of the like.

[3] Senjutsu = Sage arts and Youjutsu= Demon arts (or simply Yokai arts). Youjutsu is available to all Yokai. But Senjutsu is only available to powerful Yokai or those from special races like Koneko and Kuroka who are Nekosho ( a rare variant of Nekomata that are basically extinct at this point in time. It’s implied that Kuroka and Koneko are the last two Nekoshos alive currently.)