The Foldable Cultivator [High School DxD]

[Boroda Orka]

"My stomach hurts," I told the guy across from me. I didn't get so much as a shred of sympathy.

"You piece of trash… How dare you…"

He never got to finish. It's hard to hurl abuse at someone when you've got a knife sticking out of your throat. Not a combat knife, either, just a perfectly innocent tool for peeling and chopping roots. Still capable of doing irreparable damage to a body, though… given its current location.

"I said my stomach hurts." I kicked the still-breathing lump in the face as it dropped to its knees, clutching the wound. "I'm in no mood to listen to the same thing for the twentieth time today."

Fucking cultivators, fucking traditions, fucking cookie-cutter morons everywhere I turned. Any second now, some piece of pig shit among the senior disciples would start throwing his weight around.

"Junior Disciple! You… you killed Junior Brother Pun!"

Right on cue. A fairly pretty girl, one of the senior disciples. She'd watched quite calmly as some self-important son of a bitch tried to grind a harmless junior alchemist into the dirt. Now she was choking on outrage while my victim choked on blood. And that little twat in a senior disciple's robes had damn well seen what he'd done to my pill.

"That scumbag's no brother of mine," I said, wincing again. "Besides…" I stared into the girl's green eyes. "My. Stomach. Hurts."

"And you killed Sun Pun over that?" Oh, just listen to all that righteous indignation. Not a hint of judgment in her eyes, though. The senior disciple was just going through the motions. She didn't give a damn about me. Sun mattered a little more, but she didn't give a damn about him either.

"I'm ready to kill on an industrial scale over this," I growled, making my way gingerly toward my cell. If I was going to croak, I'd rather do it in my own bed than curled up on the floor, howling.

My gut felt like it was being torn apart. Fucking pill, fucking dying bastard. How could I have missed that son of a busted condom and a half-witted donkey slipping something into the cauldron? The fucker had done a beautiful job of sabotaging it, too. The extra ingredient hadn't caused an explosion or disrupted the reaction. It had fit perfectly into the refining process, but completely fucked up the result. Which meant I'd be dead soon. Well, at least I'd have company.

A vicious smile broke through my grimace of pain as the twitching body on the floor went still. Pun had played his last prank. Fucking bastard… That pathetic imitation of the Weasley twins had driven every junior disciple up the fucking wall with his "jokes." Me included. And he'd gotten away with all of it because his father was a practitioner. Not an elder, but still more than a match for us juniors. Except that funny little shit hadn't considered that a dying rat could still tear your throat out.

"God, it hurts," I whimpered, taking tiny steps down the corridor. If I could just make it…

The pill… That beautiful, wonderful, magnificent pill. One of the jade achievements of my past lives (even after so many reincarnations, those names still made me laugh). A miracle drug—there was no other word for it—meant to completely rebuild my body and energy system. A leap forward. A breakthrough. In life after life, it had let me skip the early stages of cultivation. A cheat code for a newbie, a simple exploit for a veteran practitioner like me.

But rushing things… Never a good idea. Neither was getting cocky. I wanted to put my days as a junior disciple behind me as soon as possible. I'd been in a hurry, so I'd joined a sect for its resources. Faster than tracking down rare ingredients on my own. And safer, or so I'd thought. It was a road I'd traveled in life after life. Grit my teeth and put up with it, then "brew" myself a booster and become just another toad in the swamp. Then, once I had access to even rarer and more valuable resources, become the fattest toad of them all! And after that, move on.

Use drugs to get close to my old level, then keep cultivating, pushing higher and further, toward godhood and beyond mortal existence. But… I'd royally shit the bed. And what really stung was that I hadn't been brought down by some ancient practitioner, a demonic or divine beast, a god or a demon. Just an idiot. An idiot who'd been lucky enough to catch me tired and distracted, and in the end…

"Uuugh, suka…" I howled in Russian, bent into a pretzel. My energy system was going to shit, and so was my body. My dantian blazed like a star called the Sun, burning out the surrounding energy channels I'd spent two years preparing for a breakthrough… I could feel my guts tying themselves in knots. Only dozens of lifetimes of experience and more than a few torture "events" with me cast as the victim kept me from curling into a ball and screaming loud enough for the whole sect to hear.

How much time did I have left? Fuck if I knew. However long it took for the pill to finish me off or the dead bastard's daddy to find me. Did I regret killing him? Not one fucking bit! This was a goddamn cultivation world. People would rip your throat out for looking at them funny. Everything came down to personal strength. Literally everything!

Are you strong? The absolute strongest in the sect? So strong that you're stronger than literally everyone else in it? Then it's yours. All its resources are yours. All its female cultivators, too. Well, if you're a woman yourself or "swing the other way," help yourself to all the men instead. Me, I was as straight as they come, but after so many lifetimes, I'd seen all sorts…

Anyway, are you stronger than everyone in the city? Stronger than the whole city put together, including the ruling family and its guard? Then the city's got a new ruling family. All the old family's wealth is yours. All the cuties are yours. And so on. The country's ruler will just applaud your strength. But he'll start keeping an eye on you, just in case, and getting a bigger club ready. So he can hand out a preemptive ass-kicking before he gets one himself.

Stronger than everyone in an empire, a realm, a kingdom? It's yours. Strongest on the continent? Help yourself. Everyone below you is trash; everyone above you is respected, revered, wise beyond measure. Until they become trash too, of course.

In my last few lives, I'd become the strongest person in a medium-sized country. I never parked my ass on the throne, though; that would've gotten in the way of cultivation. It didn't cost me any respect. The rulers of those countries were wise men, and they showered the Great Practitioner—whose countenance shone with divine wisdom and whose kick packed the power of a thousand dragons—with all the goodies I needed. From rare ingredients to their own daughters, if they had any.

And why not? It suited the ruler, and I was happy with the deal. The girls were usually drop-dead gorgeous. Especially the second-to-last ruler's daughter—just… damn, wow, and a few dozen more along those lines! Besides, her daddy didn't have a male heir. After her father, the Emperor, died, my wife did the ruling and I did the cultivating. Everyone was happy. My boy took the throne when she died of old age. I kept watching over my descendants for a few more generations, until one of my great-great-great-grandsons got too fucking big for his britches.

"Ooooh…" I swore in one long vowel as I lowered myself onto the hard bed in my tiny cell.

Right about now, some xianxia and cultivation fanboy would be screaming that I was stupid, a moron, an idiot—hell, a stool had more brains than I did. You're supposed to be cultivating your way to godhood!!! Jerk off that dantian and hurry up and evolve. Broaden your horizons and all that other bullshit!

And I'd have a question for that smartass: "Know how to say 'It's not as simple as you think, my little buttercup' in Chinese?" He'd ask, "How?" And I'd tell him, "Go fuck yourself, moron."

Cultivation isn't masturbation. Despite all the jokes about jerking it off, a dantian isn't a dick. Cultivation is an incredibly complicated process that takes more than mindless meditation and working out. You also need those mythical flashes of enlightenment. And I… was stuck. No enlightenment for me. My mind wasn't opening onto new horizons, nor was I fathoming the universe in the sound of a single drop of water falling into a lake. Fuck-all. Fuckity-fuck-all. Yep.

And I'd had spectacularly bad luck with those much-vaunted Legacies of the Great Ancient Practitioners. The very first one—the Jade Elder's Ring of Grandeur—just fried my energy channels and blew up my dantian when I slipped it onto my finger with a gleeful "heh-heh." That was my third life among the "culties." Or rather, the end of my third life.

The Staff of the Four Demons… First, it left me flinching at the number four. Second, I never again laid a finger on anything with "demon" in its name. Without me even noticing, that stick and the "guests" trapped inside it had warped my mind so badly that I spent another four lifetimes as a complete bastard. A concentrated, crystallized piece of shit. When I finally came to my senses, I prayed to every god for the health and good fortune of the people who'd killed me in those lives. As for what I'd done while I had the staff, I still try not to think about it.

And no, I don't think of myself as a nice guy. Not by a long shot. Worlds where "might makes right" is the rule quickly beat any naive softness out of you. Even back then, I thought it perfectly normal to wipe out a clan I had a blood feud with, so there'd be no one left to avenge them. And by "wipe out," I mean everyone. Every last one of them. Or snap someone's neck for insulting me. Hell, even beat someone up for looking at me funny. And even I thought the Staff of the Four Demons had turned me into a bloodthirsty, vicious, unprincipled, deranged son of a bitch. Just to give you an idea of how far off my rocker I was back then.

I'd learned my lesson. I wasn't some xianxia protagonist with plot armor and plot conveniences growing on trees. But I kept looking for something to make me stronger anyway. Fat lot of good that did me. The golden veins of an ancient practitioner killed me when I tried to graft them into my body. The God Pill just burned through my stomach, and I croaked from internal bleeding. And when I put on the Heavenly Dragon Pendant… it summoned a fucking dragon that ripped me apart like a dog with a rag doll.

And the last one, the Ancient One's Ring of Wisdom, which I'd found three lives ago… contained the spirit of some practitioner weaker than me, who tried to take over my body. That was when I lost it—and let him have it. Eyes bulging and foam dripping from my mouth, I beat the shit out of that bearded old fart until he dissipated. And the whole time I was screaming: "You motherfucking bastard, get over here, you piece of dog shit! You thought you could fuck with me, you stinking shithead, you motherfucker, huh? Come on, then, try fucking with me! I'll fuck you up myself, you bastard, you goddamn jerk-off, damn you…" Yeeah… I really went off the deep end that time.

After that, though, I quit hunting for cheats and stuck to making my own. If something falls into my lap, sure, I might give it another shot. Luckily, there's no life counter; I just get reborn with all my progress reset to zero. But running myself ragged across continents in search of yet another brutal, horrifying death? No, thank you. I'd rather work on myself and try to finally make a breakthrough.

Besides, I know a hell of a lot of ways to cultivate. You can spend years meditating under a waterfall, level up by stealing your enemies' life force, or absorb energy from all sorts of celestial bodies, the Heavens, Hell, the Planes. And there are a hell of a lot more options. But! All of it, every last fucking bit of it, comes down to enlightenment. Even demonic practices, which I'm frankly not a fan of, require you to understand the "darkness and hell" within yourself.

The first of my burned-out energy channels snapped with the phantom twang of a breaking string. Not long now. I stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling, waiting to die. For one thing, my corpse would look dignified. I'd even made sure my mug looked suitably stony. For another, I always try to feel every moment of my own death. There's a faint hope it might help me make a breakthrough, but I'm not about to off myself just for that kind of meditation. So I seize the moment. Oh… Here comes the darkness… Well, hello, sweetheart. I've actually missed you. What's the next challenge going to be? Who will I be this time? A poor fisherman's son? An Emperor's grandson?

---

I have a theory that my cycle of reincarnation is broken. How does it work for normal people? You kick the bucket, and that's it. Game over. The loss to end all losses. Me? I croak, and blissful darkness and nothingness settle over my consciousness like a soft blanket. It's like sleep, only deeper. Hazy images flicker through that thick blanket, along with distant voices and my own cries as a baby. None of it disturbs the sleep of death—just memories that will surface once I wake.

Then… it's like someone flips a switch. I wake up at different ages. Sometimes I'm three, sometimes twelve. But never older than fifteen. Maybe I've even lived entire lives without ever remembering who I used to be, but that's just speculation.

This time, I was eight. As soon as I woke, I absorbed my new self into my old one, assimilating the knowledge, language, and habits of this new life. I became both my old self and my new self at once. Except… what percentage of our combined memories could an eight-year-old possibly account for? That's right. A tiny, almost imperceptible fraction of a percent.

But this time, when I woke up on the couch in front of the TV and took in my surroundings, I got one hell of a surprise. First, this world had never heard of cultivators. An eight-year-old would've known about them. Second, I was in Japan. Third, this was a technologically advanced world, and right now I was… watching Sailor Moon!

Okay… okay… OKAY!!! Fuck all that! I'll think about it later! It's been an eternity since I last stared at the idiot box, so I officially declare this my luckiest rebirth yet. Long live normal books, not all that pompous pseudo-Chinese prose! Long live anime and manga! Long live Hollywood and Soyuzmultfilm*! Time to cultivate in comfort!!! And I won't have to worry about some Enlightened High-and-Mighty Prick showing up to beat the shit out of me, saying, "You motherfucking piece of trash, get over here…"

---

Parents… You know, they really get on teenagers' nerves. Of course their kids love them. But they still get on teenagers' nerves. I should know. I've had kids, and I got on their nerves. Hormones, stupidity, idiocy, and all the rest.

But a kid's irritation doesn't even come close to that of an ancient cultivator whose mom won't let him stay out late. It's fucking surreal. Things are a lot easier in cultivation worlds. You're seven, but you've polished up your dantian and advanced through a few stages of cultivation all on your own? You can walk on water and snap century-old trees in half with a punch from your tiny fist? You're a prodigy. Your parents are proud of you, and no one would even dream of telling you no. After all, you're a genius, a talent that comes along once in a thousand years! Your father respects you and brags about you to his friends, while your mother cries tears of joy and basks in her friends' envy.

But here, I don't want to stand out too much! Cultivate or not? There's only one answer: of course I will! But in a world where we don't exist (at least officially), I need to be careful about it. I fully intend to live here as long and as peacefully as possible. Not because I'm tired or anything, but because I'd rather not run from armies, conquer countries, or end up with a tactical nuke dropped on my head. I'll live the quiet life of an ancient cultivator, and my reward for keeping things quiet will be lots and lots of entertainment—the kind that plain old Earth, where I was born the first time around, has in spades.

Yes, it's that simple. No, I'm not an idiot. It's just that when you're reborn into some version of the Middle Ages, life after life, you start desperately missing things like Sailor Moon, game consoles, Brazilian soap operas—even commercials! Especially Japanese ones! The stuff my fellow Japanese come up with just leaves me speechless.

But hey! I still have to cultivate! Progress matters. Maybe this will be the life when enlightenment finally comes to me and I make a breakthrough? But without the right pills, that'll take forever, and it won't be easy! Tracking down the plants, minerals, and other ingredients I need takes time, too. Some have to be gathered at the stroke of midnight by the light of a full moon. Others need to grow where a childless widow's corpse was buried—or meet some other ridiculous requirement.

Once I've leveled up, I'll be able to find energy-rich ingredients easily enough, of course. For now, though, I have to stick to the rules. What I've managed to find so far is incredibly weak compared with the ingredients from the "cultie" worlds. And I often have no idea what any of it does, so I'll have to experiment…

So I ended up looking like a kid playing at being a naturalist. In middle school, I even joined the nature club and went on every field trip. I wiped out every mouse and rat in the area testing potions and pills. And I did it all while sneaking around and hiding what I was up to. That's hard to pull off when you're a kid. Plus school ate up my time, plus kendo practice, plus wushu practice, plus yoga.

After all, I needed a cover story for a body far too developed for a kid, not to mention my strength, my flexibility, and all that meditating. That left me barely a couple of hours a day for the entertainment I'd been missing. But I wasn't complaining. Those were the two hours I savored most.

Eventually, I got used to my parents getting in my way and on my nerves. They couldn't get used to the way I lived.

At first, the adults in the Chiba family couldn't get over what a great kid I was. I was the kid every other mom compared her own to. I played sports, got straight A's, didn't waste time on stupid crap, and never got caught doing anything I shouldn't! But that was only at first. Then it started bothering them that I… had no childhood. I get it, but I couldn't exactly tell them I didn't need the damn thing, could I? I'd had plenty of childhoods already. I was sick of them!

Mom and Dad started trying to make me take breaks. Sometimes I even let them talk me into watching cartoons instead of meditating… But that was nothing. Then Grandpa came to stay and rolled into our already tense household like a tank. The old man fired his main gun with a prediction that horrified my parents: if I kept being such a raging workaholic, there'd be no girlfriend for me and no grandkids for them. Me, I didn't give a damn—I had plenty of time. It would all happen in its own time. My folks, though…

That sly old coot probably wanted to see his great-grandkids himself. And he knew his son—my dad—inside out. He knew Mom pretty well, too. His little bombshell went off with a bang, and Mom and Dad decided to take action.

For ages, I dodged introductions to the daughters of Mom's friends. I didn't have time for that right then. Especially not for a platonic relationship. And that was probably a mistake. Because Dad pulled a fast one—he swapped the high school I was supposed to attend for this…

"A thorn among roses, huh? Well, damn…" I muttered, taking in the buildings of Kuou Academy in Kuou. The former girls' school had only gone coed a couple of years ago, so there were far more lovely young ladies here than boys. And that was going to cause me a hell of a lot of trouble…

---

Notes

* Soyuzmultfilm is a Soviet and Russian animation studio founded in Moscow on June 10, 1936.

---

Original Russian story

You can find more chapters on my Patreon.

The translation of new chapters will also be published here—but with a bit of a delay.

 

[NuclearBirb]

Peak. Can't wait to read more. Im sure im missing something about what foldable means, but it's a very enjoyable premise.

 

[Tomato]

Do you have permission to translate and monetize from the original author?

Looking forward to more, but not if it's plagiarized.

 

[Turncoat]

Oh, lovely, I saw this on sv.

 

[Boroda Orka]

Do you have permission to translate and monetize from the original author?

Looking forward to more, but not if it's plagiarized.

Click to shrink...

Yes. I sleep with him (he is my husband )

 

[step2far]

Yes. I sleep with him (he is my husband ). More seriously the mods _might_ ask for publicly posted perms by the author since permission-less translations are no longer allowed

Click to shrink...

deviant

 

[Vyraco]

Yes. I sleep with him (he is my husband )

Click to shrink...

Nepotism , I knew it!

Nice to see the next story. I honestly thought it would be a "real" cultivator that got reborn by some cosmic accident, and not serial reincarnator, but I'm totally here for it :3

 

[shakeval]

deviant

Click to shrink...

I bet they even hold his hand sometimes. . . sickening

 

[NakedFury]

I bet they even hold his hand sometimes. . . sickening

Click to shrink...

Can you imagine it? Looking into each others eye and hand holding, eugh.

But what does Foldable mean her for the cultivatot?

 

[Boroda Orka]

A high school with lots and lots of girls. Good thing or bad? Oddly enough, it's fine. I barely stand out, apart from being a guy and getting great grades. I haven't joined a club—I couldn't find one that takes regular trips into the countryside, and none of the others interest me.

Girls haven't caused me any trouble, either. I'm not exactly sociable: I don't make friends, I barely talk, and I've earned a reputation as a gloomy loner. Suits me just fine. I did have to turn down a couple of girls, though. Apparently even I'm somebody's type, but I'm not looking for a relationship right now.

Incidentally, after I very politely turned down two girls, the Pervert Trio started giving me odd, pitying looks. They're fun to watch. Their antics give me plenty of laughs, frequent bouts of secondhand embarrassment, and the occasional involuntary combo of the Palm-to-Face Technique. They wanted girlfriends so badly and talked about boobs so often that they scared girls away without even trying. All they had to do was act normal and stop clowning around.

Here in Kuou, boys are in such short supply that the girls are practically fighting secret wars over them. Schemes are hatched, dirty tricks are pulled, alliances are formed. I saw a gaggle of girls trying to invite a cute guy to a café. Nothing serious, of course—no orgy, whatever the Pervert Trio might imagine. Just kids playing at romance.

I finally brewed the pill I needed for a cultivation breakthrough, swallowed it, and successfully advanced. It took ages and a lot of work—the advancement itself, gathering the ingredients, and brewing the pill. The ingredients had to go through dozens of rounds of processing. I had to extract the right energies and components, refine them into a concentrate, infuse the whole lot with qi, and then process it all over again.

The starter pill is my pride and joy. I didn't name it the Jade Pill for nothing. Its full recipe could go straight into my Legacy right now, because this booster can be made almost anywhere.

Decades of work led me to what I call Lesser Elemental Alchemy. Break an ingredient down into its elements, then recombine them to produce the property you need. Amplify it, or tone it down. Step by step, you "build" the ingredients you need, then use them to make whatever concoction you're after.

For example, a rat-lion's liver and chamomile that's spent a hundred days soaking up the Sun's power can be turned into a substitute for the salamander-eye extract in the original recipe. A weaker substitute, sure, but then you infuse it with qi, concentrate it…

Shame Lesser Alchemy can't handle truly powerful ingredients. They're too complex—almost beyond comprehension, I'd say. I doubt I'll get anywhere with Greater Alchemy until I reach a higher level of cultivation. And I can't even imagine where I'd find ingredients for more advanced drugs. Everything available here is too weak, and Water Dragon Bile is a pipe dream.

I'll probably have to stick to mild support remedies and forget about serious pills. A bit hardcore, but what can you do? The downside is all the extra time I'll have to spend cultivating. The upside is that there won't be any sudden changes to my body for people to notice, or any pill side effects.

Today's my first day back at school after my "illness." Some of the symptoms were close enough to a bad case of the flu to fool my parents. Trouble was, I spent almost the entire week in the bathroom. Luckily, my room had its own—I'd talked Dad into that when we renovated. My body was purging impurities and improving itself, and the stuff that came out with my sweat… Brr. Gross. That's the part I hate most. So I spent the week meditating in the shower stall, coming out only now and then to show Mom and Dad I was all right.

My reputation as a sensible guy who didn't do stupid things helped a lot. In all the years I'd lived with my parents, I'd never broken their rules, never been caught lying to them, and never done anything reckless. I'd always been serious and responsible. Besides, I'd been preparing to take the miracle pill, so I'd staged a few similar "illnesses" before.

Mom and Dad were worried, but they believed me when I said I didn't need to be hospitalized. It helped that I looked better every day and acted livelier around them. In the end, all it took was a visit to the doctor, a note for school, and treatment at home.

Getting stronger feels good. I drew a deep breath, savoring the energy coursing through my body and the flex of muscles capable of things an ordinary person would dismiss as fantasy. My whole body thrummed with power, and I could finally use some of the more advanced techniques. It's hard to explain to anyone who's never lived in a cultivation world. No matter how far you've come, there's always further to go. That's us.

Don't get me wrong: for all my grumbling about practitioners, I like those worlds. I like the constant progress, I like being strong, and I want to be the strongest. Because the strongest make the rules. And who knows better than anyone what the world needs? That's right—me. It's always been that way, and it always will be. Whoever that "I" happens to be, they always know better than those stupid, narrow-minded "others"—even if they've spent their whole life sitting on their ass and farting into the couch cushions.

I'd build paradise on Earth. First, though, I'd have to level up properly, make the rounds of the celestials' abodes, and, in the grand tradition of the Great Enlightened Ones, beat the shit out of every last one of them while yelling, "You motherfucking piece of trash, get over here…"

Ambitious? Hungry for glory? No doubt about it. But endless reincarnations give me a real shot at it. I can't take my pills, my progress, my disciples, or my artifacts into the next life, but all my experience carries over. That gives me an enormous advantage over the average practitioner: I already know what to do and how to do it. Centuries of work, gathering knowledge, deciphering the treatises of the Great Ancients…

Ooooh… That last one's a whole story in itself. Every practitioner who lives long enough starts thinking about standardization: shared terminology, a common foundation. There's a problem, though. Cultivators have a hard time dealing with their equals. Weaker people? No trouble at all. They become your entourage—the ones who do everything you don't want to waste your time on. Hunting down alchemical ingredients, rare ores, and artifacts. Cooking, cleaning, keeping you comfortable.

The fattest toad surrounds himself with little frogs who stroke his ego and take care of his every need. They'll lap up every word you say, because you are the Wisest One, Whose Visage Shines with Divine Wisdom and Whose Kick Up the Ass Sends You Soaring into the Heavens. That last part is often literal.

But someone more or less your equal… First you have to kick their ass. Or get yours kicked. Settle who gets to be the senior research fellow, so to speak. Practitioners can get together, pool their knowledge, and write a treatise… Trouble is, nobody outside the group will understand their terms or descriptions. Another group could write a treatise on exactly the same thing in completely different words.

And that's a pain in the ass! I've read thousands of texts, and I had to figure out each treatise on its own terms, then fit it into my own framework. After heroic feats of scholarship like that, I'd often go looking for a fight. As experience has shown, asserting dominance over assorted trash does wonders for one's peace of mind.

The trick is not to get carried away. Just beat them up without killing them, then look suitably wise as you explain to the stunned cultivators that it was a lesson. You only did it because you care about them, really. They're promising young men and women—they just seem to be advancing a little too slowly.

And that's usually all it takes. The entire battered sect starts strutting around with their broken noses in the air and cultivating like mad. The Great Practitioner is watching them, after all! How else could they see it? He beat the shit out of every last one of them, so obviously he's Great! And he did it because he thinks they're talented. It was a lesson!

That's the cultivator mindset for you. Didn't kill them? Didn't rob them? Just gave them a thrashing? Then he must want what's best for them: a dose of fatherly encouragement and some guidance thrown in for good measure!

The funny thing is, those little stress-relief sessions often brought out genuine talent in the sects I'd beaten up. Sometimes people even tracked me down to thank me!!! Once, a young man who'd belonged to one of those sects showed up… And the motherfucking bastard had broken through to heights I'd dreamed of reaching for dozens of lives! Lucky piece of trash!

I nearly broke my face trying to smile at him like some kindly old sensei, proud of the student who'd surpassed him.

The worst part was, the guy really was absurdly lucky! A textbook xianxia protagonist: he'd shown up with a whole harem and even managed to absorb a couple of Ancient Practitioners' Legacies on his travels! His entire cultivation journey came down to dumb luck and sheer determination.

When that lucky bastard finally disappeared into the mist with his battalion of women, after thanking me one minute and bragging to my face the next, I was so butthurt I could've spat blood. Actually, I did. Twice.

That last memory got me riled up, so I kept my eyes down as I headed to the staff room. I was keeping my spiritual pressure in check, of course, but I might still hit someone with my killing intent just by looking at them. I'd have to work on controlling that.

The last thing I needed was students—girls and boys alike—pissing themselves in fear. And a reputation as the guy with the death stare… not exactly ideal. I couldn't see a single upside to it.

"Good morning, Shijimu-san!" I bowed to my homeroom teacher as we crossed paths on my way to the staff room. Good timing.

"Ah, Chiba-kun! Good morning!" She smiled, genuinely pleased to see me. "All better? How are you feeling? You look great!"

"Thank you, Sensei. I'm doing fine." I handed her the doctor's note. "Here's my note from the hospital."

"Good." She was still smiling as she took the signed and stamped paper. Teachers liked me. I showed them respect, worked hard, got good grades, and behaved myself. "Chiba-kun, have you changed your mind about joining a club?"

Clubs. I winced inwardly. At Kuou, they aren't mandatory, but they're encouraged. Students are supposed to do something besides study—find a shared interest that benefits society, brings them together, helps them grow. I don't need any of that.

Too bad my homeroom teacher won't stop trying to shoehorn Chiba Taro—a good kid, but a very withdrawn one—into some club or other.

"I'm sorry, Shijimu-san, but I still don't have the time." I shook my head gently. "You know I take wushu and kendo classes."

"What about yoga?" she asked, surprised.

"I had to give it up because I didn't have enough time," I said, barely stretching the truth. Yoga had only ever been a convenient explanation for why I meditated so much. The classes had served their purpose. As far as everyone else knew, I was focusing on school and martial arts training while continuing yoga on my own. After eight years of classes, that was easy enough to believe.

"Goto-sama has named me his senior student, so kendo takes up a lot more of my time now."

"That's…" My teacher looked a little stunned. Master Goto was famous throughout Japan. Being named his senior student meant training with him personally, and it was a mark of serious skill.

"Congratulations, Chiba-kun! That's quite an achievement! But the school kendo club…"

"I'm sorry, Sensei." I gave a small bow of apology for interrupting her. "I know this will sound rude, but I don't mean to offend anyone. Unfortunately, the school club has nothing to offer me. There's no one there who could push me to improve. Please forgive me, Shijimu-san."

Another bow. I had no desire to sour things with my homeroom teacher. She was good at her job and took her responsibilities to her students seriously. Snapping at her for that would be a shitty thing to do.

But joining the school kendo club meant competing. I had no intention of letting anyone win—I couldn't stomach that—so I'd kick everyone's ass. I wouldn't even need qi or techniques. Plain old skill would be enough. And I'd do it again, match after match. Winning would bring fame, and I still hadn't decided whether I wanted that or whether it would actually hurt me.

The thing is, a practitioner who's advanced even a single stage can easily live to be a hundred and fifty. I've gone much further than that. Right now, my lifespan tops out at around five hundred years. But that's right now. I'm not going to stand still, and even here on Earth, a century of steady cultivation could push that to a thousand without too much trouble. In a cultivation world, I could use what I know to extend that millennium many times over.

The problem is, I've never managed to live out my full lifespan. There's always someone burning to yell, "You motherfucking piece of trash, get over here!" and beat me into a state incompatible with life.

Anyway. Five ordinary human lifetimes is a bit much. So what will I have to do? Right—switch identities before people start wondering why old Chiba-san still hasn't kicked the bucket! Making myself look old won't be hard, but I'll still have to "die." That'll be much easier if I keep a low profile.

An old man remembered only by his children and grandchildren "drowns" while swimming in the ocean. On the other side of Japan, a young man washes ashore who "doesn't remember a thing." The important part is changing my fingerprints and iris patterns. My face is another matter: I can make it look older or younger easily enough, but I can't actually change my features yet. Which is why I'd rather stay out of the spotlight.

I was a little disappointed to learn just how famous Goto-san was. But Dad had worked hard to get me into his dojo, and the master himself was the real deal. I'd never been especially drawn to sword fighting—I preferred the guandao—but if you want to win, you need to know how your opponent fights. Besides, Japanese fighting styles might catch my enemies off guard if I ever ended up in a cultivation world again.

"That's a shame. A real shame," she sighed.

"I'm sorry." I gave her a rueful smile. "May I go, Shijimu-san?"

"Yes, of course. Do your best in class, Chiba-kun!" She smiled and winked, as if there had ever been any doubt about my grades.

"I will, Sensei. Goodbye."

"Goodbye, Chiba-kun."

Well, that went well, I thought as I headed to class. An important stage of my development was behind me without a hitch. Now I needed to focus on cultivation and my studies. I'd need excellent grades to get into a prestigious university someday.

Cultivation worlds often tell physics and common sense to fuck right off, sure, but passing up a chance to broaden my horizons would be stupid. What I learned here on Earth might even help me reach enlightenment someday.

Lost in thought, I gave the student council president and her vice president a slight bow as I passed them. The president, Shitori Sona-san, struck me as quite attractive—both in looks and in character. Calm, composed, serious. She was slender, her hair cut into a neat bob. Her glasses suited her ridiculously well, framing a sharp, intelligent gaze. She was about five foot seven—short by my standards, given what cultivation does for the body—and carried herself with the poise of someone who'd been well brought up.

Most importantly, she was damn good at her job. Teachers and students alike respected her, and she handled her duties with care and skill. I'd never heard of her making a single mistake—and I knew how to listen.

She was exactly my type. A wife—the mother of my heirs, the person closest to me—was someone I needed to respect as well as love. It's hard to respect someone who's just a pretty little flower. A woman with a mind of her own, who knows her business and gets results? Much easier.

Besides, a busy wife lets a man keep what's left of his nerves. Give his better half too much free time, and she'll make an art form of destroying the rest—purely for the love of it.

Maybe I should take a closer look at Shitori-san after graduation, with matrimony in mind.

I glanced back for another appreciative look at her figure… and found both girls studying me intently. Huh. To what did I owe the honor? The school's celebrities had never paid me any attention before. I hadn't said any of that out loud, had I? No. Definitely not. So what was this about?

I gave them a friendly smile and a nod, then kept walking, trying to work out why they were staring.

---

Original Russian story

You can find more chapters on my Patreon.

The translation of new chapters will also be published here—but with a bit of a delay.

 

[Turncoat]

Can you imagine it? Looking into each others eye and hand holding, eugh.

Click to shrink...

Absolutely sickening to hear in a DxD thread. Imagine, healthy relationships.

 

[FTR2017]

On one hand, good on him for knowing what he wants in a mate.

On the other hand, oh boy the surprise he'll get when offered 'slavery' in the form of being a peerage member, forever denied ascension as is his right.

Will he woo the Shitori without becoming a devil?

 

[Starman25]

Will he woo the Shitori without becoming a devil?

Click to shrink...

The MC just needs to show how his insight into the Yin-Yang Dao beneficially affects his Chess Dao (in other words: beat Sona at chess).

 

[FTR2017]

The MC just needs to show how his insight into the Yin-Yang Dao beneficially affects his Chess Dao (in other words: beat Sona at chess).

Click to shrink...

Devils are incredibly dismissive of humans and half-human devils in general, and I doubt MC would let himself become a slave and see his afterlife turn into nothingness, as he knows he's stuck in a reincarnation cycle.

Will becoming second-fiddle to a random devil let him continue that? He simply can't risk it. So Sona would either adjust to being married 'below' her station, or MC has to find a waifu elsewhere. *shrugs*

 

[Tomato]

A high school with lots and lots of girls. Good thing or bad? Oddly enough, it's fine. I barely stand out, apart from being a guy and getting great grades. I haven't joined a club—I couldn't find one that takes regular trips into the countryside, and none of the others interest me.

Girls haven't caused me any trouble, either. I'm not exactly sociable: I don't make friends, I barely talk, and I've earned a reputation as a gloomy loner. Suits me just fine. I did have to turn down a couple of girls, though. Apparently even I'm somebody's type, but I'm not looking for a relationship right now.

Click to shrink...

Looks at image of MC.

Uh huh, sure. Totally ignored. It's not like Kuoh's girls are absolutely rabid or he has an insanely muscled body and a cool guy facade.

 

[Boroda Orka]

"Akeno? Did it work?" The breathtakingly beautiful redhead looked up expectantly as her friend entered the clubroom.

"Yes." Akeno smiled warmly, settled onto the sofa opposite her, and drew the freshly poured cup of tea toward herself.

Every student at Kuou Academy knew those two girls. They held the top two spots in the school's unofficial beauty rankings: Rias Gremory, president of the Occult Research Club, and her best friend and vice president, Akeno Himejima. Both were gorgeous, mysterious, and the brightest stars in Kuou's social universe.

"Any trouble?"

"None at all." Akeno shook her head, her violet eyes warm as she looked at Rias. "Sitri-san congratulated House Gremory on gaining a new servant—Issei Hyoudou. She didn't seem upset about it, either. House Sitri let us know they're interested in Chiba Taro and asked us not to interfere."

"Chiba?" Rias looked at her friend in surprise. "That gloomy guy from Issei's class? But he's an ordinary human! Strong, healthy, with plenty of life force, sure, but there's nothing else to him. Sona would spend one of her pieces on a useless human? I don't buy it!"

The redhead leaned back against the sofa cushions and took a thoughtful sip of tea. Sona Sitri was many things, but a fool wasn't one of them. Rias's childhood friend was brilliant. Her sharp mind was one reason Rias respected her so deeply; the others were her honesty, her serious nature, and her firm convictions.

Their rivalry over Evil Pieces had cooled their friendship a little, but there was no bad blood between them. A few schemes, a bit of competition, occasional tension, even hurt feelings—none of it was serious. That was just life among high-class devils. Compared with the games the adults played, theirs stayed well within the bounds of friendship and respect.

"Maybe there's something we don't know?" Akeno suggested. She agreed with Rias: Evil Pieces were far too valuable to waste on a human who was strong but otherwise unremarkable.

"Almost certainly." The club president tossed her thick red hair. "It's too late to play this differently now, but… I'm curious. Aren't you? What do we actually know about him? Plenty of life force—that's good. Straight-A student, top of his class—not bad. The teachers love him, but he hasn't joined any clubs. Quiet, unsociable, serious, responsible. Keeps to himself, makes no effort to get close to anyone. No friends at school. Akeno?"

"You know more about him than I do," Akeno said with a snort. "But that personality reminds me of someone. How about you?"

"Of course it does. He's Sona turned up to eleven." Rias smiled back. "Maybe she just wants to recruit him for the student council and doesn't want us making a play for him? He's not in any clubs, so he has time for council work. Serious, calm, responsible—Sona values all of that."

"That sounds plausible," Akeno said with a nod. "If she wants a capable, hardworking assistant for the future—someone to handle the books, for example—then spending a Pawn on him would be worth it. Besides, he knows martial arts, so he wouldn't be complete dead weight."

"I agree. Raw power matters less in a role like that. But there could be another angle. Maybe it has something to do with his life outside the academy? Should we ask Koneko to find out more about him?"

"Sitri-san might take that the wrong way," Akeno said, shaking her head.

"We'd only be looking into him!" Rias protested. "Nobody's going to try to recruit Chiba! The Gremorys keep their word! We'd just… satisfy our curiosity!"

---

We are what we eat. To most people, that just means our bodies are made of things we've eaten. But think about it for a moment, and the saying goes deeper.

We're ravenous monsters. We feed on everything and build ourselves out of it all. The sounds our ears devour. The images our eyes drink in. The sensations our skin absorbs. And, of course, food, water, and air. Those too.

All of it together makes us who we are. Food builds the body; the information we take in shapes the personality.

All of that matters to an ordinary mortal. To a practitioner, it matters even more. Food is crucial in the early stages of cultivation. After all, we are what we eat, and a cultivator trying to perfect himself needs to be made of "clean" ingredients.

Our bodies shouldn't have to waste energy purging junk, so we don't stuff ourselves with crap in the first place. Diet matters like hell at the start of the path, and it stays important for a long time. It saves the body's resources, freeing up another percent or two of its potential for something useful even at fairly advanced stages of cultivation.

Only when a practitioner breaks through to levels approaching those of mythical beings can they stop caring what they shovel into the body's furnace. By then, the physical side of things takes a back seat.

But there's a spiritual side, too. That intangible something fed by everything our senses consume. And today, I've seen the light. I'm seeing it right now, sitting on the roof where I always eat lunch and staring at the very healthy bento I made for myself.

I'm an experienced practitioner, and I knew it was my own fault I hadn't broken through. But knowing something and truly understanding it are two different things. I'd… grown set in my ways. Living the same life hundreds of times, give or take a few details, had left my very sense of self stuck in a rut. My own version of Groundhog Day: get my memories back; start cultivating; find a suitable sect; work my way up through it; become the fattest toad in the sect, then the city, the province, the country… and hit a wall. I'd gotten used to it. My overall progress had all but stopped. With each rebirth, if I advanced at all, it was by a few laughable millimeters compared with the hundreds of thousands of kilometers I'd already covered.

It went something like this: you tear down a straight, familiar highway in a sports car, race through every mile you know, and then smash the car flat against a cliff that came out of God knows where. Again and again, with the stubbornness of… the stubbornness of an ancient practitioner. Yeah. The stubbornness of an old man who'd boxed himself in with rules and limits. With DISCIPLINE.

Cultivation, after all, is about disciplining both body and mind. I'd just forgotten that you can have too much of a good thing. And that lucky bastard I'd been thinking about earlier was one big fat hint.

He went off into the unknown, picking raspberries in the thickets. I stuck to the well-worn path, where every bush along the way had already been picked clean. And the kid was mortal. Dead meant dead for him—unlike me!

So who's the idiot now? The guy who risked everything on his one and only chance and won, or me? Me, betting one measly chip at a time and forever breaking even—when I've got a fucking save-and-load mechanic?! Compared to him, I'm a moron!

Instead of trying new things, thinking them through, and hunting for scraps of the Great Meaning, I mapped out the "optimal route," ran it again and again, and got roughly the same result every time. I stopped feeding my spiritual body!!! I starved it!!! Old fool…

And no, I'm not about to go looking for trouble just for the hell of it! It isn't about risking my life—plenty of Ancient Practitioners reached great heights without ever fighting a Great Battle. What I need is something new, and I've had precious little of that. Something genuinely new! New perspectives, new ideas, new experiences, new feelings!

And this world is exactly what I need. Vast stores of information, a different way of life, new ways to grow. Once again, I'm convinced I hit the jackpot with this rebirth.

"And things are about to get even more interesting, aren't they?" I asked a piece of meat from my bento. Before it could answer, it went straight into my maw.

The array for the Nine Eyes of the Sage technique was almost ready. I'd built and anchored its most basic part in my head before I even took the advancement pill. Now that I could manipulate qi with greater precision and my dantian had grown more powerful, I'd finished the work. Soon the world would take on new colors, and all those limitations would be a thing of the past.

The Nine Eyes of the Sage is an immensely powerful, fiendishly complex technique built around a monstrous array. It's demanding as hell. That's precisely why I've been cultivating using only the energy my dantian produces. The martial art I use for that is called "The Might of the Man Who Reached the Stars."

Grandiose name aside… Hm. Then again, in cultivation worlds, you can't judge a technique or a cultivation path by its name. A strike that's only good for squashing a mosquito could be called "The Flaming Dragon of Destruction Swooping Down from the Seventh Heaven."

Yeah, we cultivators have POMP down to a science! I wouldn't be surprised if Warhammer's God-Emperor was actually a Great Practitioner rather than a shaman… Hm. Right, I'm getting sidetracked!

Anyway, the Might of Man is a cultivation path that draws solely on the cultivator's own qi. The only alchemy it allows is the kind that helps produce more of that qi or works on the body itself. Compared with most other paths, it's fairly weak. Follow one of those, and you can burn cities or call down torrents of lightning long before reaching the highest stages.

But it has one enormous advantage: the Nine Eyes of the Sage. It's the best technique I know, letting a cultivator see much, much more. It scales automatically with your cultivation level, only has to be built once, and can be switched on or off at will.

Depending on how far they've advanced, a practitioner who activates the Nine Eyes might gain nothing more than vision sharper than an eagle's—or begin to perceive the world in terms of energy.

As the name suggests, there are nine… hm. Nine modes: keen sight; night vision; qi sight; energy sight, including heat and electricity; unveiling, which lets you see through disguises and illusions; a demon's gaze; a god's gaze… And that's it. I don't know the rest. There are two more modes, but the treatise where I found the array said nothing about them. In my past lives, my cultivation always stalled just as the fifth mode became available.

But there's one catch, and it often puts the technique out of reach of ordinary practitioners. A cultivator's dantian mustn't be attuned to any foreign qi. Only their own human qi will do. Otherwise, when you build the array—which, mind you, goes inside your skull… your brain dies.

Maybe some other kinds of energy wouldn't have that effect. But the practitioner who invented the technique understandably chose not to experiment on himself, and he never assembled a focus group of fellow cultivators. So most practitioners who could build the Nine Eyes of the Sage array choose not to. Those determined to use it spend a very long time cultivating on nothing but their own inner reserves.

In my case, though, those drawbacks aren't nearly as serious. Thanks to the advancement pill, I finished the array and activated the technique two days after my "illness." The Nine Eyes are still coming fully online, linking up with the right parts of my brain. I figure I'll have access to three modes by this evening, and I'll no longer need to keep my dantian from bonding with other kinds of qi.

"Just in time," I whispered, setting aside the empty bento box and settling into a meditation posture. There was still plenty of time before lunch break ended, so I could drive qi through my meridians and do some thinking.

Something weird was going on at Kuou. There was no other way to put it. Ever since I'd run into the student council president and her vice president, every member of the council had been looking at me… strangely.

Before, I'd only ever caught the odd glance, fleeting and almost indifferent. Now there was curiosity in their eyes. Interest. Expectation. I sensed no ill intent, but somehow I'd caught their attention. What had I done to earn it?

As far as I could tell, I hadn't done anything extraordinary. No crazy stunts, nothing to make me stand out. That left two possibilities.

The first was my fake illness. But according to the paperwork, it was real. Besides, why would the student council give a damn? Students got sick. It happened.

The second was my breakthrough. My dantian had reached a whole new level, and I'd gone from an almost ordinary person—albeit an exceptionally healthy and gifted one—to something more than mortal. To other practitioners, I must have stood out among ordinary people like a floodlight among candles.

And I couldn't hide it yet!!! My body and meridians were still rebuilding themselves. Right now, I couldn't suppress my presence for long without damaging my progress. I could end up crippled, and fixing the damage would take years.

It didn't help that my passive senses as a cultivator were only just coming online. I could sense things up close, but a meter or two was my limit. It would take another three or four weeks for everything to settle down, and somehow, someone had already noticed me.

That put me on edge.

Then there was the weirdness brewing right in my own class. Its name was Issei Hyoudou.

Yesterday, I'd caught a glimpse of him with a new girlfriend. With my ridiculously sharp hearing, I'd even heard him bragging about it to the other two members of the Perverted Trio. I was happy for the guy. At last he had a shot at fondling the boobs he'd been dreaming about. The girl was gorgeous, too. Had to be a pervert herself to date him, but gorgeous all the same.

And today…

Nobody remembered a girl named Yuuma Amano. Nobody except Issei and me. That went beyond unnerving. It was a little frightening.

Mind manipulation was nasty shit. Practitioners who dabbled in it tended to get their asses kicked often, hard, and without anyone bothering to be gentle.

Which left me with a few questions. Had they left my mind alone because they assumed I hadn't seen or heard anything? I'd been some distance away; only my cultivation level had let me notice her at all. And why did Issei still remember her?

Besides, Issei himself felt different now. I nearly killed him when he walked past me. For a moment, I took him for a demonic practitioner in disguise. Then I "listened" more closely to the flavor of his qi and relaxed.

There was a hint of something dark about him, but none of the foulness of demonic qi. You couldn't mistake that stuff for anything else. Stale vomit, pus, and a rotting corpse mixed together—that was about the closest I could come to describing the stench my senses picked up from demonic practitioners.

But Issei had definitely gotten stronger. I even had the feeling that someone who might give me a real fight one day had just walked past.

Interesting. Very interesting. Interesting enough that I decided to blow off my plans for the day and follow him after school. I wanted to know what the hell was going on—and what had made him stronger. No cultivator would pass up a free power-up.

So, Issei Hyoudou, today you're getting yourself a bona fide stalker. Sorry, though. It won't be the cute girl you were loudly fantasizing about with your friends a couple of weeks ago.

---

What goes through your head when you're one step from death? Issei Hyoudou could tell you plenty.

He absolutely did not want to die a second time, especially at the hands of some creepy guy. At least his last dream had a little ecchi in it. This one… Well, dream or not, he didn't want to die again.

Too bad he was going to.

He ran from the frightening man with black wings, but he could feel him closing in…

A string of memories flashed before his eyes. A girl from another school. Yuuma. Beautiful, charming Yuuma, who had asked him out. Their date had been a brief stretch of happiness Issei could hardly believe was real.

She was so cute, so beautiful, so much fun that Hyoudou barely gave his powers of perversion a thought. He simply enjoyed being with her. To his surprise—and delight—he realized he was falling in love with this wonderful girl. She was like a real angel!

Then evening came… and the two of them spent it together in this very park.

And the beautiful dream became a nightmare. Sweet Yuuma changed before his eyes. She looked older, and her unfamiliar school uniform gave way to some outrageously revealing outfit, flashing a spectacular pair of boobs in the process…

Then she killed him. Slaughtered him like a pig.

It hurt like hell, but Hyoudou couldn't tell which was worse: the wound through his chest or his heart shattering into a thousand pieces. One date. A few hours together. And he'd already fallen madly in love with her…

He'd died in that dream. Then he'd woken up in his own bed, alive and unhurt. Only then had Hyoudou realized it must have been a dream. His friends didn't remember his Yuuma. Nobody remembered anything. So he must have dreamed it.

But that didn't put the pieces of his heart back together. The dream had felt so real that Issei was still hurting over what had happened.

But there was something else strange, besides the ridiculously detailed dream in which Issei Hyoudou had fallen in love, been betrayed, and come away with a case of phantom heartache.

First there was Rias-senpai, the most beautiful girl in school. She walked right past Issei, looked at him, and smiled. The way she looked at him, the way she smiled, made his heart skip a beat! That gaze, that smile, that cascade of hair the color of blood…

A memory flashed through his mind. After Yuuma had killed him in that dream, he'd stared at his bloodied hands and thought of Rias. Of her hair, redder than spilled blood, brighter and more tempting than ripe strawberries…

And then Chiba Taro happened to Issei.

All he'd done was walk past his classmate when a wave of bloodlust hit him so hard he would have leapt away—if sheer terror hadn't forced his legs to keep moving. He couldn't even freeze. It lasted only a second, but Hyoudou spent the next ten minutes jumping at every little noise.

Chiba hadn't so much as batted an eye. He'd been his usual unreadable self.

I must have imagined it, Issei decided. Then he started worrying about his sanity. Inexplicable dreams, menacing hallucinations…

After school, Issei went with his friends to check out the latest… uh… additions to their collection of pervy "treasures." And that's when the weirdness really started.

The guys turned off the lights so they could see the TV better. Issei noticed the lights go out, but the room didn't get dark!!! He could still make out everything, even with the curtains drawn and the TV as the only source of light.

Issei left his friends and wandered through the city as dusk fell. To his surprise, he found he could see easily in the dark and hear things from far away.

Before he knew it, Hyoudou had reached the very park where Yuuma had killed him in his dream.

But had it really been a dream?

It was right here, by the small fountain in the middle of the park, that he'd met the creepy man in a cloak with black wings.

First, Hyoudou had felt something strange. The world had turned… odd. For a second, everything seemed to waver in a haze. Then the man appeared, practically radiating menace. It wasn't like the wave of bloodlust he'd felt from Chiba at school, but it was still terrifying.

Issei tried to run. The black-winged man chased him, intent on killing him… and Issei knew he couldn't get away.

He really didn't want to die. Especially at the hands of some creepy guy.

A blur shot out from somewhere near the bushes, cutting his memories short. A gust of wind. A thud and a clang behind him.

"Who the hell are you?!" Hyoudou heard the creepy winged man shout.

Issei turned around and, to his surprise, found a new player on the scene: his classmate, Chiba Taro. Yep, the same guy who'd scared the hell out of him at school!

The gloomy, boring, quiet kid he and his friends had written off as a hopeless loser who was scared of girls looked different now. Issei couldn't quite put his finger on it, but Chiba didn't seem like himself at all.

"Trash," Chiba said, spitting contemptuously as he eyed the creepy man and his glowing weapon. Was it a spear or a sword? Issei couldn't tell.

His classmate's voice sounded different, too. Deep, heavy, and so full of arrogance it was practically overflowing.

"Trash that attacks weak children is unworthy of hearing the Greatness of My Name. Begone, you walking disappointment to your father."

"What?" What little Issei could see of the winged man's face beneath his hat twisted. "Kid. You're not one of those creatures. Not like him." He jerked his chin contemptuously toward Issei, who was so startled he forgot all about running away. "I don't know who you are or how you got past the barrier, but I'll pretend I didn't hear that if you leave right now!"

At that, Chiba… burst out laughing.

Issei caught himself thinking he'd heard that laugh hundreds of times in anime. Scornful, arrogant, meant to humiliate whoever it was aimed at. The laugh of a textbook villain.

"Black Rooster-san, I gave you a chance," Issei's classmate drawled mockingly once he'd finished laughing. The winged man's cheek twitched as Chiba settled into some kind of fighting stance. "Now behold the Might of the Man Who Reached the Stars, trash. Get over here, you motherfucking bastard…"

Then things got unbelievable. With that… insulting excuse for a battle cry, Chiba blurred through the air, closing the distance to the man Issei feared so much in a single second. He reached him and struck.

Only Hyoudou's strange new… abilities let him see the blow land. Then Chiba moved again, appearing behind the man his punch had sent flying. As the winged man hurtled toward him, Chiba met him with another simple punch to the back of the head. The blow stopped him in midair and spun him a full hundred and eighty degrees.

And that wasn't the end…

A flurry of kicks, each a blur of motion, lifted the man farther off the ground. He hung there as if trapped in an antigravity field of pain.

And then…

Issei watched the impossible spectacle in terrified awe. His classmate was pummeling the body suspended in midair. The punches came so fast that Chiba seemed to have dozens of arms, each delivering blow after blow.

As if that weren't enough, a phantom double seemed to sprout from Chiba's lower back. It punched the winged man too, doubling the number of phantom fists.

His classmate had lost himself in the fight, and his unbroken roar echoed across the park…

"ORA-ORA-ORA-ORA-ORA…" Chiba bellowed without pause, pounding the creepy man into… a winged cutlet.

This looks more like a beating than a fight, Issei thought, unable to tear his eyes from the surreal spectacle. A microscopic speck of pity for the man being pummeled stirred in him. Then he remembered how frightened he'd been and promptly strangled it.

Hyoudou was so absorbed in the madness before him that even a reddish glow appearing off to one side failed to draw his attention away.

(Issei Hyoudou, the protagonist of the original story.)

---

Original Russian story

You can find more chapters on my Patreon.

The translation of new chapters will also be published here—but with a bit of a delay.

 

[Hansgold]

So he died by having his energy channels mangled because of an idiot

qq: don't make him a devil or reincarnation burea might ban him

 

[Vyraco]

Chicken-Man!!! It is I, your Grandfather!!!

I doubt he would want to become a Devil, that would change is physique, spirit, and soul in a major way, and invalidate a ton of data he needs for his uber-pills and other super precise alchemy products.

 

[Bigreader]

I think you need to reread this chapter. He didn't die

 

[ProjectVojack]

He might not want to become a devil, but there are other options. The position of "Contracted Magician" is commonly used in DxD stories to give non-devil MC's access to Devil plotlines and resources. Which in Sona's case, is actually super relevant, because the Sitri Clan is known to have extremely rich natural areas. Meaning that our MC could find all sorts of medium or better plants, herbs, etc. Also, access to Familiar Forest could be a big deal for multiple reasons.

Lastly: Touki! The Sitris don't have any known practitioners, but I'd be shocked if they couldn't pull up some basic resources regarding it, much less what Magical Girl Levi-Tan could produce for her 'lovely little Sona-tan' if requested. That actually opens up a lot of potential connections, because other known Touki users are part of Slash/Dog, the Hindu Pantheon, and the Youkai Faction. Levi-Tan is Hell's primary diplomat, and as such can call in some favors if need be. Further down that chain of thought, the Hindu Pantheon is linked to the Hero Faction as well. So eventually we might have Chiba 'giving pointers' to CaoCao or chilling with the Great Sage Equaling Heaven.

There is another option, however. Chiba's been around a long time... he might be skilled enough to beat Sona in Chess...

Edit: Oh, almost forgot. Martial Enlightenment is a thing here. If Chiba cultivates hard enough, he might just end up ascending to Buddha-hood.