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Game of Monsters - 180
🕑 Added 2025-03-18 18:04:00 +0000 UTC-And I Don’t Claim To Be
Idly, Joshua wondered when it had become normal to raid Khaos Brigade bases.
Sure, it didn’t happen often or anything like that. They didn’t have that much intel, much as it galled them to admit. They also preferred to use actual faction forces for the big raids or important raids. Not that Joshua couldn’t take care of those, but it was better to let the factions put more people, more eyes, more organization, more professionalism and more… bureaucracy, of a sort.
At some point, he’d just started going for lesser targets just to test spells and such, for the most part.
Joshua didn’t much care. He also wasn’t fond of the raids, even if they carried a certain pleasure in the fact that they were actively working against Khaos Brigade. Beyond that though, the only thing he cared about was the fact that the attacks provided him with fresh… test subjects for some of his most dangerous and painful spells, so the arrangement certainly worked for him.
There was probably quite a bit of a moral problem going on with that, Joshua imagined, but he couldn’t afford to doubt himself that much. He needed as much progress as he could get and testing his theories and ideas was the way to get to the end of the line faster. Besides, was there really that much of a difference between an awful spell and an experimental one?
Maybe the experimental one could be considered worse, because you were treating the other person as if they were less than human, in a way? Joshua wasn’t too sure that was how it worked, but that’s how it felt at times. Alas, his targets were terrorists, so he tried not to care all that much about their feelings or their fates.
“She’s having fun,” he commented, looking towards one side of the base, a side that was completely covered in a sea of purple flames. Raynare had apparently gone the extra mile, evil cackles and all. Maybe that should be concerning, he supposed, but all he could muster was… some mild amusement and being happy for her.
Margalo chirped an acknowledging agreement, following his gaze from where she was perched on his shoulder.
“Oh… you should not have run this way,” he commented when someone unknown came out of the building entrance in front of him. He was panicking, but that was hardly surprising or telling him much. Anyone in his raid group could have caused that reaction, even Jeanne. Not always, but his sister did have a mean bone or two in her body, admittedly. The piece of her that had allowed her to be part of Khaos Brigade in the original timeline, he supposed.
That didn’t matter, since he’d helped her be a well-adjusted member of society… sort of. Maybe?
Back to the fleeing Khaos Brigade member though, he metaphorically flexed his magic and the poor bastard fell face first on the ground. Then he blinked as he looked deeper into his energies and who he was. ‘Well, that’s unexpected,’ he mused, walking calmly up to the guy, whose face was still pressed against the dirt at Joshua’s feet.
“So, you’re my target here, huh?” he thought out loud in a whisper, tilting his head and appraising the guy much more thoroughly.
“That’s the one you wanted, right~?” Kuroka asked and he turned to regard her as the nekoshou skipped like a little girl up to them. “Sacred Gear and a mean streak way too wide for his strength,” she commented, kicking the guy on the ground lightly. Or lightly for her, he supposed, because he was pretty sure that tap did plenty of damage. “The others are still looking, but Ray-Ray might have been too effective,” she added.
Joshua nodded thoughtfully, still considering the man.
“Yeah, this is him. You guys can go wild now,” he replied with a slight smile.
“Nice~” Kuroka cheered lightly, twirling and then skipping back towards the building. That is, before she paused. “Say, can I tell them to keep looking? I think it might be fun~”
“... Go for it,” he allowed, mostly because he saw no harm in that, but also because he didn’t really care and because he was a little distracted. His eyes were still locked on his target for the day, after all. “Just don’t let it become a problem,” he added, almost like an afterthought. He doubted the game could cause any trouble, but one never knew.
“Sure thing~”
And then Kuroka was gone, back to the halls of the building.
That was that, he guessed.
It would be fun to hear how that went.
For the moment though, he had an asshole to deal with and he had just the way to go about it too. He wasn’t going anywhere, of course, but what use was delaying? So, he just tapped his foot on the ground and let Friday do her thing, reaching out from him and summoning magic circles and materials to anchor herself.
Interestingly, the living spell could live outside his arrays, home array or any other. He was kind of still researching the specifics, but his running theory was that the piece of himself that he’d used to create her let her anchor herself to him, even while moving around. So, he could have the spell ride shotgun in his body, sort of – but not really – like a Sacred Gear. She couldn’t do anything other than be there, feel what he felt if he allowed it and communicate with him, but Friday didn’t seem overly concerned with those harsh limitations.
If anything, she preferred to be limited to his body than being outside in an array, at least when she didn’t need to do something. That didn’t happen often when he wasn’t home though, since most of what she could do was pull on the quality of life spells he’d set at home. Outside, she mostly just stayed put. He almost felt bad, but if she was happy like that, then who was he to judge, right?
“Wha-What…?” the man at his feet choked out, apparently managing to find enough strength within himself to voice that simple question, that single word. All the same, Joshua was kind of impressed. Not like he was using his strongest restraining array, or even spell, but it was still more than he imagined a normal human should be able to resist. He guessed the guy wasn’t a normal grunt for a reason though.
“Nothing for you to be concerned about,” Joshua lied as easily as he breathed.
Because that man? He’d get no sympathy from him. He’d deliberately seeked out that particular base from a list they had gotten with new information out of several similar ones. Why? Because that man was there and he’d make a perfect test subject for a particular project of his, one that needed a little more… incentive on his part, as it were.
Alternatively, one could say that the project needed a subject that Joshua wouldn’t feel bad torturing a little more than usual. Not that it was saying much, considering what he’d done on other raids, but he needed one with a little extra shittiness to really drive away the guilt for that. Because he wouldn’t be messing with his body alone, no. He’d be messing with his soul, probably tearing it apart and destroying him.
And Joshua still had somewhat of a conscience, despite the DxD world’s best efforts to get rid of it. Not a lot, but something was better than nothing, right? That’s what he liked to tell himself, at least. It wasn’t very reassuring, but at that point… he didn’t much care. It was a token effort to preserve some of his morals and humanity, he supposed.
As long as the people he loved were fine with him, then that was all that truly mattered, as far as he was concerned.
Was that a bad way of looking at things? Probably.
It was still how Joshua saw it.
“I’m just going to try and take your Sacred Gear from you, that’s all,” he commented idly, looking at Friday’s work on the spell array around them. She’d cast everything already and was now letting the spells gather energy from the Khaos members that his group was likely toying with. God knew they could be done already if they so wanted.
Judging by the man’s panicked, muffled groans and whines, he didn’t like the idea of him taking away something that was firmly tied to his soul.
Who’d have thought?
“If you didn’t want me to do unspeakably evil and twisted things to you, then maybe you should have been a better person,” Joshua pointed out with an uncaring shrug. After all, the man had done unspeakably evil and twisted things to other people. It was why Joshua had chosen him. As far as he was concerned, he’d brought this onto himself.
The terror got worse, but the man had less and less energy to fight the spells as the seconds passed by. Even if he hadn’t spent most of his energy running away from Raynare, Kuroka and maybe even the others, Joshua didn’t think he’d ever stood a chance. Too bad for him, but pretty good for Joshua, who would now be free to test a project he’d kind of been avoiding, since he lacked a proper test subject.
Sure, there was Cao Cao, but True Longinus felt like too much of a gamble to be the first he tried the project on. An untold number of things could go wrong and while testing on a normal Sacred Gear would likely be very different from a Longinus, let alone True Longinus, Joshua would prefer to have some foundation for his endeavor. On the other hand, there was Georg and some other Khaos Brigade members that had Sacred Gears and were imprisoned, but…
Again, he felt like this required testing on people that were repulsive, like the guy before him or Cao Cao, who was pretty much leading a crusade against anything non-human, a genocide. So, yeah, Joshua didn’t think Georg and the others were that bad. Particularly in the “others” category. Georg had been pretty high up in Khaos Brigade, after all, but there was a lesser, although still considerable, likeness between his case and Cao Cao’s.
Who knew though, maybe once he got a better hang on Project Extraction he’d give it a go with them too, if it turned out not to be too horrific…
Unlikely as that was.
“Wonder if your victims felt the same way,” Joshua said, his tone almost bored, because that’s one way he had found to deal with such situations. He detached himself, becoming an outsider. He focused on the goals and the reasons and the process, pushing aside everything else. It was easier to think about him tearing apart a test subject’s soul than it was to think about doing it to a person, even if both were essentially the same thing.
So, when he took the reigns of the array from Friday, closed her metaphorical eyes and covered her metaphorical ears – she was too young, too innocent, for him to throw her off the deep end like that just yet –, Joshua channeled some of the deities connected to life, death and souls, most of which had already been waiting for the moment to step in since he communicated to them what he wanted to do. After that, he got to work, reaching towards the man’s soul, examining it, prodding it, finding what’s soul, what’s Sacred Gear and what’s both. Then, he needed to start picking at it, trying to separate the two things in the spots where they were one and the same. Not easy, not simple, not even comprehensible, really, but that was what the testing process was all about.
So, Joshua steeled his soul and his nerves and started doing what he went there to do.
He reached deeper, got a better hold of the soul and then pushed harder. He picked that base, that man, for one reason and it was because he wouldn’t have to worry. So, he didn’t worry and went for it. He pulled, poked and tore and bit by bit, he started figuring out things. Sometimes he succeeded, sometimes he failed, but every single time he learned, and that was what he was there to do.
So, he kept going, eyes cold and face blank. The pain became too much for the man at times, the scream almost tore out of him just like his soul was being shredded inside him. Joshua didn’t pay him any mind and Margalo took up singing at one point, to drown out the wails.
And eventually, the night returned to silence, only disturbed by the almost non-existent by then sounds of battling inside the building.
[}-o-{]
“Had fun?” Serafall asked casually when he got back.
“Oh yeah, if only someone had told us that we’d already gotten the target,” Jeanne grumbled, walking past him and garnering eye rolls all around the room. She hadn’t shut up about it since the attack ended and even Margalo was tired of her complaints.
“You’re just sore that you didn’t manage to find a second one and the familiars did,” Raynare – surprisingly, since she didn’t interact with others often, at least not without Joshua telling her to – pointed out, giving the girl a flat look. She was probably right though, Nagini had managed to find a second Sacred Gear holder and driven her right into Margalo’s webs. After that, Cheshire had confirmed to him that she was, indeed, a good enough candidate for his experiments.
Surprisingly, there might be a lot of really awful people in the terrorist organization.
Truly shocking news.
“Am not!” Jeanne whined and Joshua figured she was a lil’ tired. Her childish side shining through was adorable though, so he didn’t point that out. Didn’t point out the adorable part either, obviously, because he appreciated the gift of life he’d been given, twice over at that.
“Well, it’s kind of late,” he said, giving a giggling Serafall a weary smile. That only made her giggle more. “And I have a date to get to. So, how about we all call it a day here?”
“I’ll be in the training room then,” Raynare said, walking out of the room and not seeing him rolling his eyes at her. He meant for everyone to go to sleep, but of course the power-obsessed fallen wanted to get some more training done.
He really should have seen that coming, honestly.
“Good night,” Jeanne grumbled under her breath, leaving too.
“Nagini’s the only one that got a few scratches, Asia, but other than that, you can go to sleep already if you want,” Joshua told the little nun, who had waited up for them to get back, just to be sure they’d be taken care of when they arrived. Both of them knew Joshua could heal them just fine if need be, but she liked being the healer in the house, so who was he to take that away from her?
The girl hummed, approaching his gigantic snake familiar while the rest of his animal companions went their separate ways around the house.
“So, about that date,” he said, sharing a grin with Serafall, who immediately stood up. She was wearing one of her special edition Levia-tan outfits… so that meant their date was in the Underworld, where she was a known feature. She usually put enough effort to use normal clothes when they stayed on Earth. Then again, sometimes she didn’t, but that was rare. “Underworld then?”
“Yup, I wanna show off to some friends,” the devil answered, hopping off the stool she’d been sitting on at the kitchen island and beaming at him. Joshua, for his part, tilted his head and frowned, confused.
“We’re going on a group date with the Satans?... Actually, are Ajuka and Falbium in a relationship at all?” he asked, because he honestly didn’t know. And also, he didn’t think he was mentally prepared for that kind of social setting. Sirzechs was nice and all, but Joshua barely knew him, let alone the other two. Well, he guessed he did occasionally trade some notes with Ajuka when they wanted to pick each other’s brains, but that didn’t happen often.
They were the same kind of hermit, he supposed.
“Not them. I do have other friends besides the Satans, you know?” Serafall asked, pouting. “What kind of boyfriend are you if you don’t know that?”
“The kind that knows you’ve never mentioned any of these supposed other friends?” he answered with a raised eyebrow. His expression then turned into a smile when she turned away and grumbled.
“Ok, so they might be acquaintances, but still,” she muttered, turning to glare at him without any heat in her eyes. Then she sighed. “This might be a little stuffy and I did have other plans but… Some of the devils around my age range-” What did that even mean? What did a devil age range even look like when they lived for thousands of years? “-are getting together and Sirzechs says one of them could cause trouble. It’s not a big social event, so I wasn’t going to go when I got the invitation, but if one of these idiots wants to do something especially stupid then…”
“You can’t say no,” he finished for her. He checked her outfit again. It was the magical girl version of formal wear, he was pretty sure. It said something about how much Serafall was getting into his brain that he could tell that much, he felt. What did it say? He didn’t know, but it definitely said something. “It’s gonna be really stuffy, huh?”
“Yep,” she replied with a pout. “Sorry for ruining our date,” she added, poking the floor with her foot.
“It’s fine. We’ll just have to try and have fun anyway. Hope I’m not a shoddy date to take to this. I haven’t been able to prepare, so I’ll be extra Joshua for this thing. Hope that’s not a problem.”
“Not at all. You know I love you just the way you are,” Serafall told him with a smile that turned into something decidedly not friendly a second later. “And I wanna see someone say something about you. I dare them,” she all but hissed and he grinned at her. “Now, about those experiments, how did they go?”
Was his soul shredding and searing spellcrafting test a topic that should be talked about during a date?
Probably not.
It was still something they talked about all the same while he got ready and they waited for the right moment to go to the party Serafall was going to drag him to.
Neither of them minded, so he guessed it was fine.
[}-o-{]
“You’re one twisted, awful person, you know that?”
“That’s kind of rich coming from you, isn’t it?” Joshua commented idly, bouncing his foot up and down where it was crossed over his other leg. To an outsider, he probably looked like he had not a care in the world as he wrote away in his notebook. At least, he’d look like that to an uninformed observer, of which there were none around.
Instead, he was pretty sure he did look like an absolute monster to those that were around.
“You think we were as bad as you? We were not. Some might have wished though,” Georg commented, almost casually. Considering he was one of the people he experimented the least on, Joshua supposed that made some sense. Not a lot, but some.
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” Joshua replied, drawing a snort form the prisoner and even Kokabiel, who was the second one that kept his wits about him somewhat. As for the rest, well…
“You… You’ll pay for this,” Shalba muttered, still recovering from his turn. “You… Filthy-” Whatever else he was going to say, Joshua didn’t hear, because he silenced the guy. Normally, he’d let them go on, but he needed to concentrate for this next part. It was also the reason why he’d silenced Katerea, who was the one under his “check up” spells at the moment.
Slowly, he’d moved on through his experimentation with the prisoners. He’d prodded them for all that they had, Sacred Gears, hero descendancy, fallen physiology, devil physiology, devil bloodlines. All of them had given him precious information that he was sure to apply here and there at some point in some spell. He wasn’t sure what or how just yet, but it was a matter of time.
Joshua was getting deeper and deeper into those though, he knew. That’s why he’d stepped up Project Extraction to the point where he could test it on people. That’s how he’d found out that Hero Descendancy was in the soul, not in the blood. That’s how he knew magic permeated devils and fallen like they were half made of the stuff, their blood, their bones, their muscles, their souls. Bloodlines were more than blood too, leaving a mark everywhere, but mostly in their magic.
So, he continued checking Katerea’s soul for all the information it had to give him, no matter how painful, unnatural the process to get that information was.
“Please,” she whimpered when he finally stopped. He didn’t want to kill her, after all. That’d be a crying shame and a waste of a perfectly good source of data.
“You know, it’s kind of funny,” he commented, rolling his eyes as he deactivated all the silencing spells. Sometimes the prisoners said something useful, after all. Most of the time they didn’t, but he was never one to say no to free information. “You plead and beg, but then you go right back to threatening me. You should really just pick on.”
“Would it make a difference?” Kokabiel asked dryly, eyebrow raised.
“Probably not, but one never knows, right? Stranger things have happened,” Joshua answered with a shrug. “Doesn’t change the fact that it’s kind of weird. Just stick to one, even if it’s hating my guts.”
“You’re not wrong about that, but it’s not weird. It’s weak,” Kokabiel commented, scoffing as if he were more disgusted with the devils and heroes than he was angry at Joshua. Which he probably was, even if it was really strange to think about. “Fickle, is what they are. They change to whatever they think suits them best. They curse you when you show them no mercy but beg when they think they might have a chance. And it’s fine to adapt, you know? Survival requires more than strength and bravery and what not, but there comes a point where you should stand up for yourself or you’re just weak.”
“Hm, I guess that’s fair,” Joshua somewhat agreed with a nod, considering those words. After a moment, he focused back on his notebook, ignoring Katerea’s whimpering with practiced ease. Besides, she’d recover real quick, since her bloodline let her shrug off most things much quicker. Granted, soul bruises weren’t quite as easy or as quick as physical injuries, but that was neither here nor there.
“What are you even trying to do?” Georg asked, curious and interested.
“No aim just yet but gathering information,” Joshua answered with a shrug. “Things are kind of coming together in my mind. You all have given me plenty of ideas I can’t wait to put together,” he added, leaving out the fact that he was actually already practicing some of those ideas, like Project Extraction.
Depending on how you looked at it though, he was still putting that one together.
“Are you sure you’re human?” Kokabiel asked, sounding genuinely curious as he peered at Joshua from behind the cell bars. “Because this is… This is the kind of thing I’d expect from Azazel, or Ajuka, or… anyone else other than a human magician.”
“Think you’re so much better than us, huh?” Cao Cao growled, for one speaking up from within his cell.
“Truly a wonder why your team up didn’t work,” Joshua commented, looking between them in amusement. “And yeah, perfectly human,” he added, and he wasn’t sure why the Egyptians seemed to find that so funny, but he resolutely ignored them. Just like he did with the dubious looks from the prisoners. They were just salty they got their asses handed to them by a human.
Joshua deliberately didn’t think about the Salvation of God thing, just like the dimensional hopping thing, or the System thing, or the many divine blessings he carried by then. He was listed as a Human in the system and that was that.
And if that wasn’t it, then he didn’t know what he was.
That’d kind of suck.
[} Chapter End {]
Hey guys! How’s it going?
This was an… interesting character to write. I can’t help but feel like it’s a bit edgy or something along those lines, but I don’t think it is, if that makes sense. I believe it might give that impression, but that’s not what I’m going for at all.
Even if it is edgy as I fear it might come across, I hope you enjoyed the chapter all the same.
Discord Link: discord.gg/UTDransjJZ
Random Question: Lots of juicy information coming our boy’s way. Anything in particular that caught your eye?
See you.
