62 My SI Stash #62 - Level-Up Dragon King by ENIYA (DXD)

-Another SI DXD Fic, SI as Side Character Saji~

ψ(｀∇´)ψ

Sypnosis: Someone get's inserted to the side character Saji from birth, he gets creative and power games his way to survival. And keep his family from dying just like canon. Not that he knows they do but it's the thought that counts.

Rated: M

Words: 230K

Posted on: https://forum.questionablequesting.com/threads/level-up-dragon-king-saji-si-highschool-dxd.9011/

(ENIYA)

PS: If you're not able to copy/paste the link, you have everything in here to find it, by simply searching the author and the story title. It sucks that you can't copy links on mobile (*´ー｀*)

-I'll be putting the chapter ones of all the fanfics mentioned, to give you guys a sample if you wan't more please do go to the website and support the author! (And maybe even convince them to start uploading chapters in here as well!)

Chapter 1

One of my pet peeves when it comes to the light novels, especially the battle-harem kind, is how much of the world development and non-main character-related events are glossed through or simplified in a manner that raises many questions.

Some of those questions can be very worrying.

Let's say… there's this OP arc villain that the main character and his main harem can't defeat without lots of help, so they need to fulfill various requirements just to have a chance against the enemy of the week. They decide that they need to chip away at the antagonist's strength, there's a minor character established a few volumes ago with a weak ass power has that effect, but he sucks… so what happens? That poor bastard gets powered up by a procedure that has been established since the first volume to be freaking dangerous and life threatening! Not just to the recipient, but to the "donors" from where the new power-ups come from?

What is the main question here? Well... How did a faction filled with non-humans of dubious morality (to say the least) enhance a side character (to be a convenient and future plot device/ally) through a dangerous procedure involving extremely hard to get materials?

What does it sound like to me? It's as if some group became either desperate or science crazy and decided to buff up a human / human-like side character as if he was a Common Rarity character in some Gacha game with really strange materials that has terrifying implications when you take a moment to really think about it.

It worries me. It worries me a lot.

Well, of course it worries me! Considering that the Truck-sama decided to send me off to Highschool DXD, where that exact scenario has happened (and many other similar events) before, I have legitimate reasons for worrying my ass off about all of this!

To cut a long story short, I'm concerned about the story of Genshirou Saji. The resident counterpart comparison to the perverted main character Issei Hyoudou but with an added impregnation fetish.

If I recalled correctly, during the whole (lame version of) Loki debacle, Saji just had several different "Vritra Sacred Gears" stuffed into him by the Fallen Angels. Like, what the fuck? Hasn't it been established that Sacred Gears are attached to people's souls? What kind of fuckery is this?

How the actual fucking hell did they just randomly get Sacred Gears? Especially those specific high-powered ones that belong to the split soul of an Evil Dragon? Did they just go to some random possessor and say, "Oh hey there, you have the soul of a dead Dragon King in you, imma just gonna shank you and rip it out of you for research, teehee!"

Oh sure, there's the possibility of those Sacred Gear wielders being the mad-types that would go crazy just from activating their god-given artifact but what if they weren't? What if Saji only lucked out because he so happened to be the only Vritra Sacred Gear wielder that was part of the biblical faction alliance?

Considering that no other Vritra-user appeared in the light novels despite there being mention of even more of those types of Sacred Gears… I can only speculate on the possibilities… and it worries me.

Ah, why am I worried about the case of Saji Genshirou specifically? It's because I know the guy in my second life.

Well, of course I know him. He's me.

It took me a few years to figure out I was in Highschool DXD. To be fair, it only took so long to confirm my suspicions because I had to wait until I was old enough to ask legitimate questions on the geography of Japan. I mean, if some four-year-old kid asked about whether there was a town called "Kuou" or not, then that would be very weird.

A six year old child prodigy? Heh, it was a much more reasonable question to ask one's parents then.

I'd like to think that I played the role of a good son for most of my new life in this battle harem genre world.

When my new fraternal twin siblings Gosei and Kouho had been born when I turned ten years old, I had devoted a good amount of time that I could have spent on training with them and helping my mother when I could.

Thanks to all my help, my father considers me reliable enough to let me get away with a lot of things, and my mother spoils me a whole lot. I'm twelve years old now and I sure hope that my siblings won't feel left out by the different treatment that they're likely to get.

"...Genshirou, why did you skip school again?" My second mother Haru Saji, a sweet and caring woman, gently questioned me after finding her child hiding out in our home's storehouse instead of going to school.

For the third time this year.

And the twentieth time since I started Elementary school.

"Oh, you know, the usual. I had a bad feeling and I thought someone would break into the house to kill my lovely mother. So I decided to camp here to reverse gank your would-be assailant while getting some studying done at the same time." I smiled as I explained my reasoning for this particular incident as I hid the metal pipe I "salvaged" from somewhere behind me.

"Ufufu, my brave little boy is so sweet. You're still getting punished, however, so no Weekly Shonen Jump for you." She admonished me and took my Level 1 weapon away from me.

"Aww..." One day I shall be vindicated, and I truly am not looking forward to that day...

"You shouldn't be worrying so much."

"I can't help it."

Considering that the pasts of most of the Sitri peerage were unknown, with only two or three of them having shitty pasts and Ruruko Nimura having a completely normal life, I think it's a reasonable assumption that most of the reincarnated devils (among the good guy cast) there had good reason to ditch their current lives and become a devil.

Since this is a battle harem light novel, there's a high probability that every character has an atypical home life outside of the main character, with my status as a side character I was greatly worried about the life expectancy of my parents.

The fact that my (somehow) naturally blonde half-Japanese mother has been using the "Dead Anime Mom Hairstyle" from as far as I can remember is a huge cause for concern. I tried to convince her to try out other hair-styles, but alas, my efforts were in vain.

As "punishment", my mother cooked us (my dad when he finally got home from work) my favorite home Curry Katsu Rice, before sending me back to my room for the rest of the evening so that I can't watch TV.

I'm pretty sure she only chose that punishment because she knew that I wasn't interested with most of the stuff being shown this year.

Considering that I had the best grades at school, never gave her any trouble outside of a few "I had a bad feeling" events, and that she doted on me a lot, I dare say she never punished me for real or would ever think of doing so unless I killed a man and buried him in our garden.

I might need to do just that if the bad things happen on schedule. And by on schedule, I mean before I become old enough to attend Kuoh Academy.

"Hmm, what to do for tonight?" I look through my book and apparatus filled room for ideas on how to train my abilities tonight.

I unlocked my Sacred Gear, Absorption Line, three years ago when I was just a third-grader.

Genshirou Saji was just like Issei in the sense that he had only recently unlocked his Sacred Gear and became a reincarnated devil at just about the same time as Issei did. Which meant that he had little idea how to use his Sacred Gear and was thrust into many life and death battles where he had to learn on the fly. This meant that he quickly gained strength and tactical skill, but lacked the time to truly experiment and develop his abilities.

I, on the other hand, had a higher IQ and many more years to make up for his lack of spare time. The poor guy was bogged down by his duties to the student council and most of his training was regimented by his strict "master" (the word still gives me chills), with so little time for independent development it was no wonder that he needed some off-screen deadly powerup to stop being a one-trick pony.

After locking my room door, I summoned up the multi-headed mini-dragon device on both my arms and flexed.

Shooting out sixteen tape-like lines glowing bright blue, eight from each arm out of each of the eight heads in many directions, sinking into the additional sensations given by the divine artifact, I manually controlled each of them as if they were extensions of my own body.

From what I can remember, Saji only made it to four lines after he extended his capabilities to manifesting Absorption Line on both hands and both feet. It was much more useful for combat, but I decided to choose a different route with the amount of time available to me.

I chose four lines, sending them to two power sockets, one new battery and an old battery I used for the first generation Gameboy that my parents got me. The ones targeted at the power sockets twisted until they looked like a twisted piece of tissue paper, they stopped right at the entrance to the sockets before slowly entering the holes. The two lines I sent for the batteries quickly wrapped up the targets in a crude manner.

Next, I closed my eyes and focused on what the information coming from the lines, telling me the "power" or what it was prepared to tap into from the surface area that they were interacting with.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled the potential power from the sources at a slow rate, the Sacred Gear processing it in a way that I could understand at first. I was practicing multi-tasking in a way, as I was draining power from different sources at a controlled rate. Wouldn't want to cause another power outage.

I had my Sacred Gear convert the power to replenish my own, first my "mental power" to reduce the fatigue of my mind, then swapping it to my physical energy so that my body would feel energized, then to my life force. It barely affected the latter due to the very inefficient conversion rate.

Vegetables were a much better substitute. Sweet potatoes would be electrical energy for life force supplements any day.

I tend to pick up leftover food thrown away by restaurants when I have the opportunity, hoard it all and then absorb them all in a private location until the food compost turned into ashes. The stored energy could then be used later on to replenish my own reserves, most of the time I used them to help recover from intense training.

I'm basically a dragon that runs on potato power, just like Glados once did, and it works. Admittedly, I had the inspiration to try absorbing plant life power from Superman, after remembering what he did in "The Dark Knight Returns". Hence, it wasn't an original idea.

I withdrew the tendrils and opened my eyes, reaching for both my microscope and water bottle, then used my additional appendages to set the experiment table up.

Unsummoning most of the lines, I focused all my attention onto one line, poured a bit of water over it and slid it under the microscope.

Focus, Understanding, Surface Area and Experience.

These are the main pillars which govern how well I could absorb "power" or any form of energy and then using it for myself.

I hadn't gotten to using Absorption Line to boost my physical capabilities like Saji could, devils likely could imagine physical reinforcement much easier than normal humans could since they have magic in their bodies, however, I made up for the lack of direct combat applications with variety.

Focus. I closed my eyes and turned my senses to just the line and what was on it.

Understanding. Water molecules, Hydrogen and Oxygen, heat energy is key to the state of water. I have to look deeper.

Surface Area. Ignore the light and heat from the microscope, only absorb whatever is in the water.

Experience. Recall the sensation of heat energy, harmonize experience across multiple absorption materials, drain it all then…

… the energy flowed into me, I opened my eyes and saw the thin layer of ice upon my line.

Not enough, when there's nothing left then I have to take even more!

There's still more to take. Don't look at water as a whole, focus… deeper, smaller… find the inter-molecular bonds… it's...

"... Gah! I slipped again."

Drat. It felt like my awareness expanded to "see" something new, yet, I couldn't reach for it.

The level that I intend to reach is still so far away.

That's not even discounting the fact that my molecular-level techniques aren't even usable on the field yet.

It wasn't the case that I lacked the necessary energy, I was in peak condition this time and yet… I need more experience, more knowledge, more of everything.

A few months later and I had barely progressed in that particular field of study, even as was now enrolled in middle school.

Perhaps I need to focus on developing and mastering other abilities first before going back to that field? As I pondered that, I idly answered the teacher's attendance roll call for my first day at middle school.

"Saji Genshirou."

"Here, sensei."

...

"Kaizer Himuro Heydrich."

"Yo!"

I felt like choking on my own spit after hearing that. My eyes quickly opened wide and I discreetly turned my head to look at the boy with the most ridiculously non-Japanese and abnormal name.

Let's see, multi-colored hair, heterochromia, buff as fuck (how is he a middle school student), tanned… oh whatever, he's either a native of the supernatural world, an absolute chuuni or someone's OC donut steel.

Fuck.

I thought the absence of Naruto in Shonen Jump was a bad sign for an incoming NINO crossover, but this might just be worse!

I did my best to plan for canon, but I can't handle fanon! Oh shit, the power creep is going to be even worse, isn't it?

Okay… I can probably survive school just by not getting involved with this guy at all. Note to self, also, don't even think about getting a girlfriend because if he's an OC, he's gonna get some.

In order to assuage my worries, I decided to make a new motto just for the upcoming years.

"Keep calm and keep grinding."