NOVEL WEB DxD 0025: Stray Hybrid
As he was walking to the Student Council room to meet with Sona, he ended up running into her on the way.
“Abaddon. Let’s go, I’ve found him, we have to get him before we lose him.” She said before grabbing his arm and pulling him through a teleportation circle.
“Calm down, girl…” He said as he let her bring him through. “You don’t understand,” She said, “This stray demon has been eluding me for weeks now and this is the closest that I’ve been to his trail. Whenever I feel I’m about to capture him, he slips away. I assume that he has some unique power that’s related to shadows. That’s the only way he should be able to escape me in those circumstances.” Sona said.
“Shadow powers… Troublesome indeed,” He said with an understanding nod.
“Do you have any solutions?” She asked.
“I can help you contain him, but it’ll take all of my concentration, so you’ll have to be the one taking care of the demon.” He lied partially. He wanted to see Sona’s strength so that he could accurately set up a training regimen for her.
‘It’s like I’m setting up a training camp…’ He thought. He was basically gauging the strength of all the participants of his camp to see who would need what kind of training.
“That’s more than enough,” Sona said confidently while she looked around.
Abaddon saw that they had appeared in what seemed like a graveyard with a church in front of them. “A bit dumb for a stray devil, no…” He rolled his eyes.
“Could you please set up the barrier, Abaddon?” She asked him. “Yeah, you can go ham on the guy.” He told her as his wings extended out of his back and he took flight.
At the same time, he took out the staff that amplifies his spells and used it as the focus to cast a strong barrier that covered the whole graveyard and church. By the time he was done, he was slightly winded as he had to use almost half of his reserves of demonic energy for the barrier. But for all it took, it was just as strong. It would take multiple high-class devils attacking the barrier for quite a while to break through. And Sona was the only high-class devil in this area, apart from him of course.
He made a show of being forced to stay up in the air to maintain the barrier and continuously supply energy to it while letting Sona look for the stray devil.
Sona looked around the area while casting multiple detection spells to find her target.
‘There he is…’ Abaddon noticed the stray devil trying to escape from the barrier, ‘A half vampire-devil… How peculiar.’ He thought as he realized that this wasn’t a pure devil, and nor was he a reincarnated devil. He was a half devil half vampire.
He didn’t mention anything to Sona and made it seem that he was focusing on maintaining the barrier while Sona looked around.
The stray was able to elude Sona for almost 10 minutes before her detection spells were practically scattered all over the area and he couldn’t avoid them anymore. Just as he stepped on one of them, Sona appeared instantly in front of him and he was bombarded by multiple spears that were comprised of water.
‘She didn’t just lay down detection spells, she layered them with her water manipulation spells and some other ones too…’ He realized that the stray had already made a huge mistake. He’d given Sona time to prepare. And a prepared Sona was extremely dangerous.
The sun had already started setting so the stray had multiple shadows to escape into and he did exactly that. Before the spears could even touch him, he melded into the shadow and disappeared.
‘Is that a sacred gear?’ Abaddon thought, ‘Vampire demon hybrid and a sacred gear holder at that… No wonder he’s a stray.’ He knew how much the vampire society discriminated against those they deemed impure. And anyone who wasn’t a pure-blooded vampire was impure. And with the presence of the sacred gear, he was bound to attract the wrong kind of attention.
Seeing the stray escape, Sona wasn’t surprised as she appeared in another location where the stray had just emerged and cast more water-based attacks.
‘Does she not use any other element?’ He thought. A bit of fire magic would go a long way to get rid of the shadows and make the stray appear.
The same process was repeated multiple times as both Sona and the stray seemed to be playing a game of cat and mouse. The stray tried taunting her sometimes but seeing as it had no effect on her stoic persona, he focused on escaping. He had already tried to escape the barrier multiple times but wasn’t able to escape.
‘This is getting me nowhere…’ The stray was getting desperate. And although Sona was also getting winded up due to the constant chase, she was calm and collected as she made plans to act in another manner.
She had already understood his movement patterns and had even ambushed him multiple times but to no avail, he was just too slippery.
“Come on, can’t you just let me live?” He pleaded to Sona as he got grazed by another of her water spears before he disappeared into the shadows.
“You should’ve thought of that when you attacked and ate the people in my territory,” Sona said before continuing her merciless assault.
“Well fuck you then!” The stray seemed to have broken a straw as instead of melding into the shadows, he turned into multiple bats that scattered around. Sona’s water attacks were able to stab a few bats, but the others still seemed to be able to function properly.
Those bats, instead of running away approached Sona at extreme speeds as many of them were upon her within moments and scratching her. Although she’d killed a few more of them she was getting scratched by the numerous bats that kept attacking her.
‘Well, well, well…’ Abaddon was suddenly much more interested in the fight as Sona’s clothes were also getting damaged, revealing hints of her skin from the shallow cuts on her clothes.
Realizing her predicament, Sona quickly cast a water barrier that shrouded her body and prevented her clothes from being damaged anymore. ‘Aww…’ Abaddon was disappointed that he couldn’t see more of her skin.
Soon, the stray’s desperate bid for survival failed and Sona finally killed the final bat, getting rid of the hybrid for good.
As she huffed and allowed her natural healing to take care of the minor cuts on her body, Abaddon descended from the air and stood in front of her.
“How was the show?” Sona asked. She’d long realized that he wanted to see her strength and wasn’t actually occupied with the barrier.
“Pretty good. You took care of that stray with relative ease, although it took some time, it makes sense since he was too slippery. And speaking of slippery…” Abaddon stabbed his staff into the ground and chanted in the old devil language, {Extract}.
With his chant, a yellow glow extended out of the staff and covered the dead remains of the stray. A minute later, that glow started coalescing into a singular item in front of Abaddon. It was a sort of shroud that seemed to be made of shadows itself.
“His sacred gear…” Sona realized what Abaddon was doing. “Yep,” He said, “The stray was using this Shadow Shroud gear to augment his natural vampiric ability to meld with the shadows. This is why he was so slippery.” He said.
“What are you going to do with it?” Sona asked.
“Do you want it?” He offered nonchalantly. “Not really,” She answered, “No one in my peerage would benefit from this either.”
“I guess, I’ll keep it then.” He said as he teleported the shroud back to his room in one of the random suitcases which had some space. “Now then, for your evaluation. You depend too much on your water manipulation and you aren’t good enough with it to actually use it as a substitute for other elements. You either have to learn more elements so that you can use them at some basic level, or you could focus completely on water and use it to its fullest potential. What do you want to do?” He asked.
“Why are you asking me to choose?” She was confused. “Because I’m doing a training camp with Rias and her peerage. Seekvaira might also be coming, and I’m not planning on excluding you from it.” He told her.
“Oh… When?” She was surprised before coming to terms with it.
“From tomorrow morning.” He told her. Her expression changed to a deadpan one as she looked at him with a dry face, “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah. What’s wrong? Wanna watch anime for the weekend?” He said sarcastically.
“Well… Kinda yeah. I wanted to rest for the weekend.” She said with a blush as she saw his expression.
“Yeah, you’re coming with us tomorrow morning. I will drag you out of your bed if I have to.” He said.
Before Sona could say something with the aggrieved expression that had appeared on her face he said, “For now, let’s enjoy our date. You’ve already beat up the stray we should go celebrate.” He held her hand and started walking out of the graveyard.
“My dress is damaged,” She said to him. Hearing her words, he cast a spell, and her dress was completely fixed as if new. “Perfect.” He complimented her.
Sona shook her head with a wry smile as she wrapped her arm around his, deciding to enjoy their date.
