Leon sniffed the air, hesitant to leave the shadow of the forest at his back. It was definitely a rabbit. Prey. Looked like a rabbit, smelled like a rabbit, tasteslike a rabbit. He blinked again. The What needed some serious thought, and soon, but first, the horned treat in front of him demanded his attention.
Horned treat. Horned rabbits.
Inari placed him in the starter zone of this world. What. The. Fuck. How does something like this even exist? Wait. Stop.
He wasn't complaining, but this was… he wasn't sure what this was anymore. Fuck it. Food now, find a den after, What and When soon after that. To-Do list made. Stealth mode, engage.
Leon crept around the edge of the field, sticking to the shadows of the trees while sliding over roots and fallen leaves, his belly pressed to the ground as he stalked his prey. He was the hunter in this moment. Death on silent paws. The horned rabbit never saw it coming.
Leon was nearly on top of the beast when he struck, teeth gnashing as he ripped a massive gouge out of the throat of his adversary. Blood sprayed across the grass around them, the rabbit turning to flee but only making it a single hop before collapsing and falling still. A brief surge lifted his spirit as he watched the rabbits eyes glass over.
Leon sniffed at the blood in the air. His instincts must have been helping his human side cope with what he was dealing with as he buried his maw into the soft flesh of his meal. It was delicious. The warm blood, the tender meat, the satisfying crunch of bone. His human mind would have almost assuredly rebelled against this meal entirely. Even now he felt some part of his mind laced with the tiniest amount of disgust and loathing.
That was fine. He wouldn't be in this form forever.
Appetite satiated, Leon returned to the trees. He had spotted a very conveniently located burrow beneath one of the behemoths as he had been stalking his dinner. With some careful sniffing about and attentive listening, it was determined to be abandoned, and with great satisfaction Leon claimed it for himself.
He needed to answer the What and When as best he could for now. Then perhaps afterwards he would search for a water source. One had to be nearby if there were creatures living among the grasses.
He began his observations of himself. Black fur, vicious impulses, confirmed kitsune. Recalling what he knew of Japanese mythology took a few moments, but he eventually managed. Differentiating between Chinese and Japanese fox spirits was important.
From what he recalled, there were two types of fox spirit Yokai, the Zenko, or heavenly foxes, like Yasaka and Kunou, and the Yako, the earthly foxes. There was an important distinction between the two beyond their titles. Zenko were benevolent spirits, evident by the kind and soft nature of the mother-daughter pair in the DxD series. The Yako were the reverse side of the kitsune coin.
While not inherently malicious or evil, Yako had the predisposition to be mischievous and vicious if provoked or uneducated. Leon's human past would help balance his Yako urges, so this wasn't overly concerning for him. Beyond a kitsune's nature was the next most important fact: how they accrued power.
There were two ways for a kitsune to ascend. The first was the long, patient way. Leon labeled this as the incredibly inefficient path to power, especially with the preponderance of enemies available in this world, even during "peace time".
The long route to ascension was the result of a century or millennia of passive power and experience growth. A kitsune gained a tail every hundred years of life, regardless of their activities. Each tail was an exponential power boost, and if it didn't take such a long wait period, might have been considered cheating by most other species in the world. As it was, however, a century was more than enough for any entity to surpass the power gifted by gaining a tail this way.
The shorter route was the traditional path most beings took. Training, fighting, and killing. Training enhanced natural energy expenditure and consumption, expediting the expansion of the soul to enable it to house more power. Fighting, particularly to the death, even further enhanced the speed of natural energy transfer, while killing provided the greatest boost to power, directly siphoning a portion of the slain foe's natural energy.
His Yako side seemed to present this knowledge as an obvious matter of course, something similar to ancestral memories. It was why his spirit was briefly buoyed after slaying the horned rabbit. This was his future path, of this there was no doubt. He could attain his kyuubi form, his nine tails form, within two decades as long as he had an abundance of strong enemies to face. Enemies would be his ultimate bottleneck for progression, though if he was still pre-canon that could be solved rather easily.
Tenko, ten tails, was a different story. Nine tails were already borderline Satan class entities, sitting at the apex of Ultimate class devils. Ten tails firmly pushed them into Satan class, and potentially beyond. There was a reason it was called 'ascending'. It was also the tail that held different requirements to attain, requirements that were unknown for both his prior world knowledge and current ancestral memories.
In China, where the mythology of kitsune originated, the numbers three and nine held a special significance to their beliefs. Tails three, six, and nine were milestones of progress, providing an even larger boost than the rest. This paled in comparison to ten tales. In ancient China, nine was viewed as the pinnacle number. Nine is a multiple of three, a sacred number, but nine is also the apex of numbers before everything returned to zero.
In returning to zero, a kitsune surpassed the apex, ascending beyond the mundane. In essence, they became gods. A walking force of nature, which was more than literal when senjutsu was taken into account. Combine senjutsu with youjutsu, kasha, and touki, it becomes a bit more evident as to the reason why a ten tails kitsune was so unbelievably powerful. It was also the reason why ten tails were almost entirely unheard of in any universe.