Hyoudou Issei was a bit lost.
He never thought he'd go on some kind of date with a girl after swearing loyalty to the Prince of Kuoh alongside his friends. As someone as faithful as he was, he would never have agreed to betray his future husband like that, but upon learning the girl just wanted to hang out as friends, he relented a bit. Either way, she was pretty and probably popular; she could give him some tips on how to approach his blond knight from school.
But it was weird.
The girl, Yuuma Amano, as she introduced herself, smiled and laughed at everything he said. Even the bad jokes. Like the one about spicy curry being the work of demons. She even tilted her head, blinked slowly, the kind of flirt that probably worked on any other guy.
But with him…
Well, he was too busy thinking about how Kiba's eyes sparkled when he wielded his sword.
"Are you listening to what I'm saying?" Yuuma asked, smiling.
"Yeah, yeah! Totally…" Issei replied, even though he had no idea what she'd just said. "You're great. Like, really. Super nice and pretty and… do you have wings?"
She stared at him for a second. The question had slipped out without thinking. Somehow, Issei had the strange feeling he'd glimpsed wings behind the girl during parts of their stroll through the mall. Back then, she'd helped him a lot with some romance advice, so it gave him the impression she was an angel. So, he decided to tease her a bit…
"Just kidding," he said, forcing a chuckle. "Imagine if you were an angel or something?"
Yuuma just smiled. But inside, she froze for a moment.
After a while, with the mall closing and night falling over Kuoh, the two walked side by side through a small, empty plaza. The yellow streetlights illuminated the stone path, casting long shadows from the trees.
It was the perfect setting for a kiss.
Or a murder, especially considering that something strange enveloped the place, as if a kind of "curtain" had wrapped around it, making him feel uneasy.
"Issei-kun," Yuuma said, stopping.
"Hey?"
She turned, her eyes glinting with something strange. A mix of sadness and… exhaustion?
"If a friend asked you for a favor… just one, an important one… would you do it?"
Issei's eyes widened, not thinking twice. "Of course! For a friend, I'd do anything. Even pay for their food at the cafeteria!"
Yuuma smiled. It was sweet. Almost kind. But also… empty.
"So… would you die for me?"
Issei blinked.
"What?"
And then, everything happened too fast.
A bright, cold, razor-sharp light gleamed from her arm. A spear made of pure yellow energy appeared. Before he could react, before he could even understand what was happening, she impaled him.
The spear pierced his chest with brutal force, tearing through flesh and bone. Issei gasped, eyes wide, mouth open trying to form a word. There was no immediate pain. Just the impact. The shock. The absurdity of it all.
Yuuma… wasn't Yuuma.
Black lights covered her body as the illusion shattered. Her simple clothes vanished, replaced by a tight, dark outfit, with twisted black wings sprouting from her back. Her eyes gleamed with a peculiar intensity.
"Sorry," she said, emotionless. "Orders are orders."
With a flap of her wings, she flew into the night sky, leaving Hyoudou Issei's fatally wounded body to collapse to his knees, the light of the spear still pulsing in his chest like a dying star.
The plaza returned to silence, and that "curtain" felt like glass shattering soon after—or had he gone mad from dying?
Issei fell to his knees with a dull thud, like a puppet without strings. The stone ground felt colder than it should. He tried to breathe, but the air came in broken whispers, as if his lungs had turned into sieves.
He looked at his chest. Where a horrific hole was present.
"I-I… got stabbed?" he muttered, trying to make sense of it. "Wow… that's… gay."
It didn't make sense. Nothing did. Why would she attack him? They were having a date. Like, he didn't even want a kiss or anything, just to get out of there and text Kiba saying he'd survived a conversation with a girl without dying of embarrassment.
But now he was… actually dying?
He slumped to the side, his vision blurring as if someone had splashed water on the screen of his mind's TV. The pain came in echoes, as if he were hearing his own body from miles away. The sky above seemed so far off. And every star… every point of light…
…brought memories.
His mother's face, smiling when he passed elementary school. Matsuda's loud laugh when they watched their first horror movie together. Kiba, training with that perfect stance, sword in hand, golden hair in the wind, so cool. So bright. So… beautiful.
The memories came like waves. Disjointed. Messy.
And finally, the image of Ryougi Kazuya. The new student. Tall. Arrogant.
A charming, conceited, infuriatingly awesome jerk.
His image grew clearer… closer… almost as if…
"Hyoudou."
The voice was a whisper that cut through the limbo where Issei floated. He blinked, unsure if it was delirium or memory. But then another came.
"He's still alive. Barely."
It was a female voice, serious, firm. Like a queen used to giving orders.
"What do we do, Master?"
Another voice. Female. Carefree. Playful, even. With a cruel undertone.
Issei felt something, a presence. Strong. As if someone were there, bending reality around him. A step echoed on the plaza's ground, then another. And then, his shadow appeared before Issei's blurry vision.
White hair, an expression of professional boredom.
"Kazu…ya?" Issei murmured, almost soundlessly. The name slipped out before he could understand why.
The figure crouched beside him. His eyes, pale blue and filled with something Issei couldn't name, watched him for a moment.
"You really are an idiot, huh?" Kazuya said with a sigh.
The last thing Issei saw was the sky growing more distant before his consciousness faded completely.
On the other hand, Kazuya looked at Issei with a calm, indifferent expression. Was it exactly as he remembered, or almost? Raynare's attitude was quite different from the original story, where she mocked and practically traumatized Issei, unlike her attitude toward him just now. She seemed far more indifferent. Perhaps the "new Issei" hadn't displeased her as much as the original, who was an irredeemable pervert. Well, not that it mattered, but it was the first change his interference had caused, so he noticed…
But setting that aside.
"You really are an idiot, huh?" he repeated, now in an almost bored tone. "Did you really think going out with a random girl you met on the street would end well in this world?"
That was something he never understood when reading the novel in his first life—was it naivety or stupidity? He practically thought it was the latter. In the original story, Issei was known as an almost criminal pervert, and out of nowhere, a girl asks him out, fully aware of his reputation and all, and he didn't have the slightest sliver of suspicion that it could be a trap? Even without supernatural involvement, you could think it might be a setup for some kind of bullying from a guy whose girlfriend had been spied on by him…
As Itachi said, "A genjutsu of this level doesn't work on me." In other words, nothing in this world was that simple. When it's too good to be true, even a saint would get suspicious…
But he was a pervert, so it made sense he'd be dumb enough to fall for it.
A sigh escaped his lips.
Ishtar huffed behind him, arms crossed, one eyebrow raised. "Can we go now? This is getting boring."
Ereshkigal, more patient, watched in silence, hands clasped in front of her, as if waiting for Kazuya to give his final farewell to the poor human. But that wasn't it.
"Just a moment…" Kazuya said, without even looking back. As he spoke, he extended his hand toward Issei.
What happened next was just a casual touch, almost careless, like picking up a candy dropped on the floor.
His hand passed through Issei's wounded chest effortlessly, as if the flesh were water and his hand a stone sinking into it. A subtle ripple, a green glow that pulsed for a second, and then the gem appeared: the [Boosted Gear] in his hand, casually removed from Issei's chest.
Initially, he just wanted to take a stroll through the mall and later around the city, heading to the church to confirm if the fallen angels had already arrived to know if it was the start of the story or not. But everything spiraled out of control when he ended up finding Issei with the fallen angel who would kill him, as had happened in the original story. Knowing this, he formulated this plan to steal Issei's Sacred Gear, despite his lack of interest in using it. He wasn't the type of person who liked being the host of some entity that granted him its "power."
His unique ability wasn't exactly an entity, though it had the same mechanics as a system from those clichéd stories he'd read. So, he didn't mind having it, though he still wanted to know its origins.
Even so, it was a [Longinus] practically dropped in his lap, and he couldn't let the opportunity to acquire it pass.
He just wasn't sure he'd be able to extract the Sacred Gear from its user until this moment, where he used his [Third Magic] alongside his mastery of Thaumaturgy brought by his personal skill of [Magecraft: Ex] to succeed. It was a simple mechanic that mixed alchemy and his mastery of true magic—nothing complicated.
Although Magecraft and Thaumaturgy were fundamentally the same thing, the latter was considered the "foundational" practice. It was used to describe the various schools into which Magic later evolved, including Astrology, Kabbalah, Alchemy, and various other Divergent Schools. At its most basic level, however, all thaumaturgical processes dealt with the conversion of Magical Energy within the body, shaping it in a way that allowed the user to produce the phenomenon of [Magecraft] in the external world.
There were several rules that strictly governed what "should" be possible within each school, and it was research that bent these rules that typically determined how proficient someone was with [Magecraft]; however, one had to take into account Origin and Element.
Simply put, Origin referred to the starting point of someone's existence, typically encapsulated in a single word or phrase that described the direction someone could take throughout their life. It was tied to the "Root."
Thus, an Origin could be thought of as follows: if a person were broken down into the concepts that defined them as a person, their Root would be a driving force present from the beginning of their existence. Thus, each human behaved according to their own Origin, and each had different effects on a Mage's Magecraft, making it extremely important in defining someone's talent.
There were various ways in which mages were classified, often based on their alignment with a specific affinity, which is why so many mages specialized in specific fields. In the absence of a specific affinity, following the Origin could yield great results and bypass barriers that would otherwise hinder a mage.
In his case, he didn't need to worry about Origin or Element to cast his [Magecraft], which removed limitations from the Thaumaturgy he functionally mastered—an immense advantage of his [Magecraft: Ex] skill. There was also no [Root] in this world that shed fragments of "Mystery" for Magecraft to function, which theoretically meant it shouldn't exist or be executable in this world. Yet somehow, he was able to do it and bend many limitations.
He judged it was due to the [Third Magic], which could be an inexhaustible source of mystery, a miracle comparable to Christ's resurrection, and practically a larger piece of the [Root], since only those who reached it could access such a miracle. Or perhaps it was due to his unique ability, or there was mystery in this world because the Gods still existed, though it was different from the [Nasuverse]. Many theories swirled in his mind.
But setting that aside, he looked at the green gem he'd seen in the anime on the [Scale Mail]. Was this the core of the [Boosted Gear]?
"Hmm. Cute…" Kazuya murmured, twirling it between his fingers. "But not worth the headache this kid would cause if he kept it."
With a snap of thought, the gem vanished in a soft glow, stored efficiently and discreetly in his [Inventory].
Meanwhile, as they watched his actions and saw he had no intention of saving the boy, Ishtar and Ereshkigal were surprised. They knew he wanted the dead boy's Sacred Gear—their master had mentioned his plans and explained what the [Boosted Gear] did—but they also thought he would save him. As the last Master of Chaldea, Kazuya's heroic sense was evident to everyone; he was an incredibly empathetic person, after all, a trait all Servants admired at some point. And here he was, ignoring a dying man? Was there some hatred involved? Or had their master changed…?
Ereshkigal asked Kazuya, brow furrowed, "Are you really going to leave him like that? Dying?"
Kazuya shrugged.
"Someone will show up…" he replied, crouching beside Issei again. "Look at this…"
Rummaging through the boy's pocket, he pulled out a crumpled flyer. It was red, eye-catching, and magically reinforced.
Kazuya examined the object for a moment, like someone reading the ingredients on a cereal bar, and channeled a bit of his magical energy.
The paper glowed faintly.
Activated.
"There. One of the demons watching him will save him. Let's go, as we agreed before…" Finishing his words, Kazuya stood and used his teleportation spell. His body dissolved into silver-blue particles, like stardust being reclaimed by the universe.
Ishtar, grumbling something, vanished in a golden whisper. Ereshkigal gave Issei one last look and disappeared soon after.
The plaza fell silent. The magical paper pulsed with a faint red light, calling out to whoever was tuned to that frequency.
Issei, even between life and death, wasn't alone.
Not for long.
The red light from the flyer glowed like a small flame in the darkness, expanding into a delicately drawn magical circle on the ground. Demonic symbols spun silently as the air grew denser.
Rias Gremory appeared in the center of the circle, her scarlet hair flowing like silk in still water. Her eyes scanned the plaza with quick, cold precision, accustomed to recognizing traces of the supernatural.
But what she saw made her pause.
She frowned, then walked toward Issei, pulling the box of her [Peerage] pieces from her dimensional pocket. She began the reincarnation process, placing a pawn piece on the boy's chest and reincarnating him as her servant.
But the strange thing was that it was just one.
Just one.
"One?" she whispered, surprised. Her expression shifted, her blue eyes narrowing. "Just one piece is enough?"
Rias bit her lower lip, clearly conflicted. According to Koneko's description, with her insistence on the "dragon smell" he emitted, and her meticulous observation yesterday, Issei likely had a high-level Sacred Gear. Normally, the stronger the potential, the more pieces were needed. It was one of the fundamental rules of the peerage system. Reincarnating someone with just one piece meant they had minimal raw value. A simple pawn. The kind of servant who'd barely serve as magical support in a stronger team.
This meant Issei either didn't have the expected strength, or, even more concerning, she might have wasted a piece, which wasn't an option for her.
Sighing, Rias snapped her fingers. A magical circle appeared around the boy, enveloping him in a sphere of red energy.
"Time to go home."
With a flash of light, the two vanished from the plaza, leaving behind only an uneasy silence.