23 Meeting with Azazel

"I've delivered the trio of fallen to the agreed upon location." Slane announced on his return.

"No issues, I hope?" Zieg casually waved at the bipedal lizard man before asking.

"None, they were surprisingly cordial." he shook his head.

"I'm not sure why you're so confident, this Azazel man will do as you say." Emiya wondered as he continued to man the stove he projected.

Emiya had a point, why would one of the leaders of the biblical factions go out of his way to do anything a few randoms would ask.

"Because he is the type that wants to be in the know about things." Zieg answered simply as he sipped on his cup. "Plus he probably wants an excuse to get away from his desk anyway."

"Oh, so he's one of those types." Emiya muttered with a shake of his head.

"Yep." Zieg said, popping the 'p'.

The 3 had gathered around to eat a small breakfast within the basement of the dilapidated church.

After some hard work and cleaning, they had made the basement decent enough to live in. Before, the only nice things were the beds, most likely owned by the former fallen residents.

The bodies of the stray exorcists were burned and now they were just waiting for Azazel to make contact with them.

"By the way, how are we going to feed ourselves? We don't exactly have any money on hand."

"I've still got some money on me. Just use that for now." Zieg took out some japanese currency. However it was money from the Nasuverse. Luckily it looked exactly the same as the one in their current reality.

"Right, I guess I'm in charge of our kitchen then." Emiya took the money and began to leave.

"Well not like anyone else can cook as well." Slane added as neither him nor Zieg were capable of cooking well. At best they could grill meat, but that was it.

"I'll be heading out for some groceries then." He said as the two waved him away.

"Well, I'll be heading out as well then." Slane got up and began to leave.

"Wait, what? Where are you going?" Zieg blinked as the dude was literally a bipedal lizard. Granted they could change his appearance with magic. But Slane didn't like hiding his appearance.

"I heard of an anime and manga fest in Kyoto! I am most interested in attending." The bipedal dragon knight nodded with stars in his eyes.

"I keep forgetting you're an otaku now. Fine, go ahead. They'll probably think you're cosplaying anyway." Zieg didn't pay it much mind. He didn't want to keep Slane cooped up too much. He was already cooped up inside his inner world already. It would be good for him to get out more.

∞

I held up the floating schnee glyph in my hand.

Examining every angle of the flat snowflake design. Honestly, I should probably learn more about my own semblance. Considering the fact that it's literally one of the core parts of my abilities.

If I remember correctly, the time dilation glyph was achieved through a combination of lightning dust and semblance. So in theory if I just changed the nature of my magical energy to lightning for a moment...

The glyph rapidly rotated in my hand. My Primeval Eyes revealed a temporal anomaly within the glyph. Neat.

I summoned a random Mausoleum Soldier and threw the glyph at it. The headless soldier glowed for a moment before I ordered it to run to the end of the room and back.

My eyes tracked the speed at which it moved and I must say. It was impressive. At least compared to usual.

The reason why I don't always just use my summons on stronger enemies is that, they aren't strong or fast enough to be more than just a distraction. But this might be able to change things a little.

It's still unfortunate how none of my soldier summons can fly.

I changed the elemental composition of my magical energy a few times.

So I've noticed the main purpose of the base glyph is to 'accelerate' the flow of magical energy types. Which sort of means... isn't this basically high speed incantation without the speaking part?

So in theory, these glyphs should be able to cast my spells as if they were apart of me...

I widened my eyes as the realization set in. Making a single average sized glyph in the air, I watched it quickly rotate like a magic circuit and blast out a Comet Azur at record speed.

The blue torrent of energy smashed into the mausoleum soldier and immediately disintegrated it.

I coughed as the dust kicked up from the ensuing explosion. Luckily the headless soldier took the main brunt of it, or else I would have caved in the basement.

Holy shit, that comet azur was shot out at least 4x faster than I could do it on my own!

I usually don't use Comet Azur in battle, because the amount of time it takes to actually to fire it always took too long. I imagined that it would have required me to make my own spell matrix to speed it up, but I never bothered.

However now with glyphs... I may need to re-think the way I fight.

"Well that's new." I turned my gaze to the voice.

"Well, I didn't expect you to be here so soon." I casually greeted but in reality I was wondering how long he was standing there. I swear I had a bounded field to alert me.

'You were so focused on your little experiments that you just didn't notice that he's been there for about 10 minutes now.' Draig decided to inform me.

"Well I was already in the neighborhood, so I decided to just drop by." Azazel smiled as Raynare stood behind him, visibly trembling.

∞

Emiya wasn't sure what to think at the moment. He knew that trouble generally attracted to him as if he were a magnet, but he didn't think it was this bad.

He had been heading back from the grocery run when a random nun seemed to have tripped out of nowhere in front of him. If he didn't know any better, he'd think that this was a poor attempt at getting information out of him. But the girl seemed to have genuinely tripped, so he couldn't just leave her.

"Are you alright?" He reached his hand out to the nun who seemed to literally trip on thin air.

"Ah, thank you kind sir." The blonde nun spoke in a language that Emiya registered as Italian. Luckily for the girl, Emiya had learned italian at some point in his dreadfully long life as a Counter Guardian.

"Your welcome, also no offense but you look lost." Emiya decided to respond in her language. But while he was doing that, he noticed something odd.

The feeling of being watched, and they weren't very good at hiding it.

"Ah! You speak Italian too, sir? My name is Asia Argento, by any chance would you know where the nearby church is?" Asia's eyes seemed to light up at the prospect of being able to communicate with another person.

"No need to call me sir, my name is... Archer." He decided to just go with his usual class.

"Nice to meet you mister Archer." She smiled in a way that practically radiated brightness somehow.

"Well, I'm heading to the church myself. You can come along if you want." Emiya coughed out, offering her to join. But in reality he was focused on the person that was watching them. They didn't seem to be there physically, but they had some method of watching them from afar.

"That would be great! Of course if it isn't too much trouble." She practically lit up.

"It isn't, so what's a nun doing here anyway?" He decided to see what was going on. In the end, old habits die hard and he couldn't just let this go.

∞

"Sorry for the mess, I wasn't exactly expecting you so soon." Zieg smiled, gesturing to a random chair at the table. It was an odd sight as the two ignored the odd sight of the half destroyed room.

"It's no problem. This is more of a pleasure trip for me anyway." Azazel took the chair without paying any attention to it. He was a tall man, appearing to be in his twenties. He had an average build, black hair, golden bangs and a black goatee.

"Well in that case, can I offer you some oolong tea?" Zieg smiled, taking out two empty glasses out of nowhere.

"Got anything else?" He preferred some liquor at the moment

"Nope, just oolong tea." Zieg responded in a sing-song tone.

All the while, Raynare seemed to be doing an imitation of a statue. Unsure of what to say, as she was currently in trouble. The other two had already been punished, yet Azazel had decided to hold off on her punishment for now and had her come along.

"Very well." The fallen angel sighed.

However to his surprise, Zieg took out a bottle of whiskey and vodka. Mixing the two drinks to make the color of oolong tea.

"..This isn't oolong tea though." Azazel blinked at the drink.

"What are you talking about? It's the same color. Plus it's combustible!" Zieg smiled, lighting the drink on fire.

"...Well I can't argue with that. Cheers!" Azazel decided to just not think about it and raised his glass.

The two toasted before taking a large gulp. It was an odd sight, two powerful people just drinking as if they were college students.

"Well then, on to business." Azazel wiped the drink off, before focusing on the white haired sorcerer. "I am here to thank you for preventing a possible disaster."

"Surprising, considering you could have just ignored me."

"I make it a point to show gratitude when it's due. Now you seem like a straightforward guy so let's not beat around the bush, what do you want?"

"A few things. One, I'd like some land in the underworld." Zieg began with his first request.

"Done but I'll warn you beforehand, it's sort of a barren wasteland." Azazel added, to which Zieg expected.

"That's fine. Two, I'd like to meet with Kokabiel."

"That is a bit more difficult..." Azazel frowned. "As you know, he was the one who went behind my back and orchestrated this."

"I know, I was just hoping you would have some sort of communication with him."

"We normally do, however he stopped responding to it. At best, I can tell you if we receive any news on him."

"Don't worry about it, I'll find him myself in the future."

"May I ask for what?" Azazel curiously asked.

"Just a business proposition. Although whether he accepts or not, I'm unsure." Zieg shrugged as if it wasn't that important to him.

"Well I don't have anything else to ask for."

"You sure? I may not look like it, but I can pull some strings if you need." It was true that as a faction leader, he had a lot of sway to get anything he needed.

"Nah it's fine. Just getting land from you is enough for me." Zieg didn't want to push his luck too much.

"Well, in that case. You can have her." Azazel pointed his thumb at Raynare.

"Hm?" Zieg raised a brow.

"Eh!? Azazel-sama?!" Raynare seemed to be panicking.

"Consider it a gesture of good will." The man smirked to which Zieg began to chuckle.

"You know despite being a pacifist, you are one cunning asshole, you know that?" Zieg deadpanned. He was essentially throwing Raynare out of the faction, since she couldn't be trusted. However instead of killing her, Azazel was using her as a gesture of good will. To make it seem like Azazel owed him less.

"You didn't refuse!" Azazel's smirk seemed to widen as Zieg became amused.

"Alright, fine." Zieg stood up to meet him eye to eye.

The two shook hands as Raynare seemed like her world was crumbling.

After Azazel had left, Zieg turned to Raynare with a calculating eye.

"Hm, well I'm not sure what to do with you. So for now, clean up this mess. I don't care what you do for the rest of the day." Zieg decided. He didn't care if she would try to run or not. Raynare wasn't strong enough to survive without a faction backing her and she knew that. It was either work for Zieg or die out in the world.

So with a heavy heart, she grabbed a dustpan and broom.