Kuoh Academy. Old school building. The Occult Research Club...
When Leo stepped out of the magic circle and into the not-unfamiliar clubroom, he realized he was the last to arrive.
"Leo."
Sona stood by the desk with Tsubaki Shinra at her side. The moment she saw Leo emerge from the magic circle, she called out to him.
"Welcome back, Leo."
Rias, the president of the Occult Research Club, was naturally present as well. Only Akeno Himejima accompanied her. She greeted Leo with a warm smile, clearly having heard the news of his return already.
"Seeing you safe puts my mind at ease."
Sirzechs was already seated behind the desk, Grayfia standing beside him. The look he gave Leo was nothing but gentle.
"Sorry I'm late."
Leo offered his apology, then couldn't help but think of Ophis.
More precisely, he was thinking about the matter of his Queen piece.
In settings like this, both Rias and Sona always brought their Queens. Even Sirzechs had his Queen present. Yet Leo was still showing up alone. It wasn't a great look.
The Queen position really needed to be settled soon.
He just wondered what kind of expressions everyone would wear when he showed up with the Dragon God Ophis and announced her as his Queen...
Leo mused about this with detached amusement.
"You're not that late. I was the one who was a bit impatient, wanting to see for myself that you're truly safe and sound." Sirzechs didn't hold the tardiness against him. Instead, he gave Leo a subtle once-over and smiled. "I heard you fell into the dimensional gap and only barely found a way back?"
"That's right." Leo nodded, a wry tone in his voice. "It really was a close call."
If he hadn't encountered Ophis, and if he hadn't happened to carry a trace of Great Red's aura that caught her attention, whether he could have escaped the dimensional gap at all was an open question.
"Would you mind telling me about your experience?"
Sirzechs asked gently, like a considerate superior worried about a subordinate.
And in truth, Sirzechs genuinely cared about what Leo had gone through. He was concerned about the dangers Leo might have faced.
Leo saw no reason to hide anything, so he told Sirzechs everything.
He described how his fierce battle with Cao Cao had fractured the pocket dimension, accidentally sending him tumbling into the dimensional gap. How he'd drifted aimlessly through it for several days.
There wasn't much to say about the drifting itself. Just as Leo described it, he'd been flying around without direction, unable to even tell which way was up or down. He'd brushed with incomprehensible phenomena several times, each one dangerous enough to make Sona and Rias visibly tense just hearing about it.
Of course, the truly alarming part wasn't what happened at the beginning. It was what came after.
Leo told them about discovering the ruins of the Famillion Kingdom, encountering Kanna, a Dragon King who guarded its gates, fighting a fierce battle against her, and then recruiting her as a servant. How he'd successfully entered the castle, and with Ophis's help reached the throne room, broke Stella's seal, and recruited her as well.
He also spoke openly about Ophis and Great Red clashing in the dimensional gap, and about how it was Ophis's assistance that ultimately allowed him to escape.
There was only one thing Leo kept to himself: that Ophis had proposed a deal, planning to become his Queen in order to help him grow stronger, intending to gift him the majority of her power so he could help her defeat Great Red.
A deal with the leader of the Khaos Brigade was neither trivial nor something to reveal lightly, and it bore directly on the path he'd walk going forward. After much deliberation, Leo decided to keep it under wraps for now.
If he chose to walk that path in the future, premature disclosure could only create unnecessary complications.
Even with that detail withheld, the revelation that he'd encountered Ophis in the dimensional gap, encountered Great Red, and witnessed the two of them battle was enough to stun everyone in the room.
"You... you actually saw the two Dragon Gods fighting in the dimensional gap?"
"That's truly... astonishing."
Rias and Sona made no effort to conceal their shock, and even Akeno and Tsubaki beside them looked shaken.
"Sirzechs-sama..."
Even Grayfia couldn't help but turn to address her master.
"I certainly didn't expect something like this to happen." The warmth on Sirzechs's face gave way to gravity, tinged with concern. "Ophis. We've only just confirmed that she's the leader of the Khaos Brigade, our enemy, and now Leo encounters her in the dimensional gap. And she was in conflict with the other Dragon God on top of that. This is a situation we cannot afford to ignore."
At this point, Sirzechs and the others had no idea why Ophis had become the leader of a terrorist organization, or why she'd clashed with Great Red in the dimensional gap.
They didn't know the reasons, but the mere fact that the only two Dragon Gods in existence harbored a grudge severe enough to come to blows was a development no one in the world could afford to dismiss.
Whether it was Ophis or Great Red, both were beings that the world's major factions could barely hope to resist.
Either one of them possessed the power to wage war against the entire world. Either one had the strength to destroy it. And now it turned out they'd been fighting in secret. If that conflict ever spilled into the mortal realm, the consequences would be catastrophic.
The end of the world might genuinely come to pass.
Compared to something that monumental, the fact that Ophis had taken notice of Leo because of the trace of Great Red's aura on him, made contact, and helped him escape the dimensional gap barely registered.
He'd accepted help from the leader of an enemy faction, yes, but as long as there was no suspicion of him defecting to the other side, Sirzechs's nature meant he wouldn't hold Leo accountable for it.
"Do you know why those two were in conflict?"
Sirzechs finally posed the question.
"According to Ophis, Great Red unilaterally drove her out of the dimensional gap. That's why she wants to take Great Red down." Leo held nothing back on this point, speaking plainly. "Ophis seems to have always wanted to return to the dimensional gap, to go back to the silent world that gave birth to her. That's why she wants to defeat Great Red, who's taken over the dimensional gap."
"Her decision to become the Khaos Brigade's leader was likewise for the purpose of borrowing their strength to defeat Great Red."
Hearing this, Sona couldn't contain herself.
"If even the Infinite Dragon God herself can't defeat Great Red, how could the Khaos Brigade possibly manage it?"
Sona had arrived at the exact same thought Leo once had.
And she wasn't alone. Rias voiced her own assessment.
"The Khaos Brigade is certainly a threat, but to claim they could help Ophis defeat Great Red? That's simply not convincing."
At minimum, based on the strength the Khaos Brigade had demonstrated so far, intervening in a battle between two Dragon Gods was utterly out of the question.
Beyond their leader Ophis, the Khaos Brigade had only shown the combined factions and groups formed by malcontents from the three great powers, including the Old Maou Faction and the Hero Faction. That level of force couldn't possibly threaten Great Red.
All three great factions combined were considered a single mythological power, and either Ophis or Great Red alone could single-handedly oppose every mythological power in the world. The Khaos Brigade's known membership was just a fraction of those three factions' dissidents.
So when everyone heard that Ophis planned to use the Khaos Brigade's strength against Great Red, they thought it was pure fantasy.
Only Sirzechs kept his brow furrowed throughout.
"That may be so, but there's no guarantee the Khaos Brigade doesn't possess some means of dealing with a Dragon God."
Sirzechs maintained a cautious outlook. "No one in this world is truly invincible. Just as even the most powerful devil fears weapons of light and holiness, just as even the mightiest dragon fears dragon slayers, just as even gods can be targeted by weapons designed specifically to kill them... surely Dragon Gods must fear something too?"
Leo glanced at Sirzechs, silently impressed.
He'd hit the mark. Even Dragon Gods had something to fear, and its name was Samael, the Dragon Eater.
A being known by many titles: the Devourer of Dragons, God's Venom, God's Malice, Original Sin, the Serpent of Eden. The ultimate dragon slayer. It was the entity that had once taken the form of a serpent and tempted Adam and Eve into eating the fruit of knowledge, incurring the wrath of the God of the Bible. It had been made to bear every drop of malice, venom, and curse born from God's hatred of dragons.
A holy God was not supposed to harbor malice. And so the malice that should not have existed became, upon being forced into Samael, a virulent poison of unimaginable lethality. The divine curse it carried was the ultimate weapon against dragonkind. Its very existence made it the most lethal dragon slayer in history, capable of devouring dragons unto death. Even the legendary dragon-slaying holy sword Ascalon was a toothpick compared to it. If Samael were ever unleashed upon the world, every dragon in existence could face extinction.
For that reason, it had been sealed in the deepest layer of Hell, Cocytus, never to see the light of day.
In the original story, it was precisely by utilizing Samael from the deepest reaches of Hell that the Hero Faction had subdued Ophis, stripping her of most of her power. After that, Ophis never returned to her peak.
If the Khaos Brigade could find Samael, they would indeed have a means of dealing with Great Red.
However, Samael was the most forbidden existence imaginable. Even gods wouldn't approach it casually. In the original, the Hero Faction had only been able to briefly summon Samael with the permission and assistance of Hades, the god of the underworld. If it had been available for unrestricted use, Ophis would have lost far more than just the majority of her power.
As for whether the Khaos Brigade had already made contact with Hades at this point... that was genuinely uncertain.
"I'll take this matter back to the Underworld and discuss it thoroughly with the other Maou." Sirzechs's gaze swept over everyone present, and his tone carried the weight of a command. "Until we've reached a conclusion, I need all of you to keep this absolutely confidential. Not a word to anyone."
"Understood."
Everyone nodded in agreement.
"This experience wasn't entirely a bad thing for you, at least. You gained two powerful servants." Sirzechs turned his attention back to Leo, his expression warming again. "You must have grown considerably stronger, haven't you?"
Rias and Sona both turned to look at Leo.
Grayfia, Akeno, and Tsubaki did the same, their eyes carrying something beyond simple curiosity.
For them, Leo's Servant Conversion trait was no longer a secret. Now that he'd recruited two powerful new servants, he'd certainly become stronger still.
Meeting their collective gaze, Leo broke into a grin and unfurled his bat-like, pitch-black wings.
Twelve devil wings, each one vivid and distinct, filled the sight of everyone present. The room fell silent, breath collectively held.
"Twelve wings..."
Rias found her throat had gone dry.
"The mark of the highest-ranked devils..."
Sona's expression turned distant, almost dazed.
"He's... already reached that level?"
The way Grayfia looked at Leo shifted entirely.
"This is..."
Akeno and Tsubaki could only stare at each other, completely lost for words.
"Good! Good! Good!"
Only Sirzechs seemed purely, genuinely delighted, repeating the word three times in succession.
Twelve wings. The highest-ranking devil. It meant that Leo's base power had truly reached Maou-class, with absolutely nothing inflated about it.
Factor in Zenith Tempest, the world's second most powerful Longinus, and the Balance Breaker he'd long since achieved, and Sirzechs had every reason to believe that Leo's current strength had already surpassed Maou-class.
"Your power now... I imagine it's not too far from where the four of us stand?"
Sirzechs was thrilled by this.
His words, however, nearly made Leo roll his eyes as he retracted his wings.
Compared to the current Leviathan and the current Asmodeus, two Super Maou-class beings, sure, Leo wasn't far behind anymore.
But compared to Sirzechs and Ajuka?
He was still an entire tier below.
Did Sirzechs actually think Leo didn't know his true strength? That Leo believed him to be on the same level as the other two Maou?
"I can't compare to you, Sirzechs-sama. Not yet, at least."
Leo threw him a subtle jab. Drop the act. We both know you're the real final boss here.
"Don't sell yourself short. At your rate of growth, surpassing me is only a matter of time."
Whether Sirzechs caught the hint or not, he responded with encouragement instead.
He really did want to retire.