20. Future Knight? And a Madara Wannabe Clone.

│1st Person POV of Meliodas│

[Human World, Japan, Kouh Town, Hyoudou Residence…]

A few hours ago, my clone informed me about the situation at the Hyoudou Residence, and now I'm here in person.

It was past midnight, so I didn't have to worry about Samara barging into my room to check on me.

Even in the off-case she did, I left a clone in my bed, who would switch places with me at the first sign of anyone entering the room assigned to me.

Anyway, right now, I was in the bedroom of the only child of Gorou Hyoudou and Miki Hyoudou. The child was ten years old, the same age as me.

This child was the daughter of the Hyoudou couple, their first and only child, Kazumi Hyuodou.

The Hyoudou couple would have had two more children, both of them younger than Kazumi, if Miki didn't have two miscarriages.

It appears that the opposite of what occurred in the original Canon happened in this world.

In the Canon, Issei had two unborn older siblings and in this world, the opposite happened as while the first pregnancy of Miki was successful, the latter two weren't.

Leaving that aside, the reason why I snuck into the bedroom of a ten years old girl—

Thinking about it, my actions seem to be very questionable.

Anyway, I am here in person because my clone got a strange feeling when he was in the vicinity of Kazumi.

He couldn't identify the reason and what the feeling was, so I decided to investigate the situation myself.

However, I didn't have to do much investigation as the second I teleported into this room, I figured out the situation.

Raising my right hand, I summoned the case containing my Evil Pieces.

Opening the case, I saw that one of the Knight Pieces was glowing in golden yellow. In response, Kazumi's sleeping form also started to emit a pale golden-yellow light.

My Knight Piece was telling me that she was a suitable candidate for my Peerage.

My clones' connection to my Evil Pieces is very faint. They cannot summon them, nor can they reincarnate anyone in my place.

Additionally, neither I nor my clones had experienced something like this before. So, he couldn't find the reason he got a strange feeling while being near Kazumi.

Putting that thought at the back of my mind, I looked at the glowing Knight Piece.

All of my Evil Pieces were Mutation Pieces, so the fact that Kazumi was resonating with a Mutation Knight Piece of someone like me, spoke volumes about her potential.

And it wasn't like her Sacred Gear was the reason behind her high potential, like with Issei in the Canon.

She was born with a Low-tier Sacred Gear after all. A simple Twice Critical.

This means that she could be an extremely good close-range speed-based warrior in the future, reaching the level of Satan Class, at the very least, even if she remains a pure Human.

I am sure that if she had a High-tier or Longinus Sacred Gear, she would surpass the likes of Tobio, Cao Cao, Arthur, etc. quite easily in the future.

Anyway, it was time for me to take my leave from here.

Before that though, I marked Kazumi with Binder Essence, so that I can check up on her later. I didn't give her access to any of my essences and I also disabled the loyalty and command function as always.

I was only marking her in precaution in case something happened to her before I got the chance to properly get acquainted with her in the future.

As she was just 10 years old at the moment, I had no intention of trying to reincarnate her now.

I will gauge her character and personality when she grows up a little and see if she is compatible to join my Peerage.

With my decision made, I teleported out of Kazumi's room and reappeared in the room Cleria had assigned to me in her mansion.

Dismissing the clone, I changed my clothes before going to bed.

We will stay in this town for a few days as I want to form a closer acquaintance with Cleria to prevent her from being killed by the Great King Faction in the future.

She was too kind to be killed and she even had the Worthless Clan Trait. I am sure that with a bit of help from me, she will become a valuable asset to me in the future.

=+=+=+=< Scene Change >=+=+=+=

It's been two days since we arrived in Kouh Town.

Living with Cleria and her Peerage had been fun.

I also found out that all members of Cleria's Peerage were Devils who were struggling to make ends meet in the Underworld prior to joining her Peerage.

The reason she chose them was because they had given some help to the Belial Clan when they were in a difficult financial situation, before the rise of Diehauser Belial.

Anyway, it was time for us to depart toward our next destination.

Two more places to visit before we go back to the Underworld.

In the teleportation room, while Samara was making preparations to teleport us, Cleria and her entire Peerage were there to bid us farewell.

"Meliodas, Morgiana, Samara, Mister Souji, please feel free to visit us again. I would be delighted to host you all once again."

Cleria stated happily with her Peerage members nodding at her words.

"I will surely visit again as I enjoyed your company, Cleria." I responded to her.

My three companions also replied positively. All of them have come to like the gray-haired woman in the past two days.

Samara finished preparing the teleportation magic then. We all waved goodbye to Cleria and her Peerage before the spell's light obscured our vision.

The next moment, our group was in a different teleportation room.

Just after we arrived in the room, the doors opened and some servants entered to greet us before leading us toward the parlor room where the Devil Overseer of this place was waiting for us.

He was a member of one of the Clans affiliated with the Great King Faction.

As we entered the parlor room, he stood up to introduce himself, however, I detected one of the clones attempting to contact me at that moment.

So, I used Parallel Calculation and assigned a very small part of my processing power to interact with the unimportant Devil while I talked with my Clone.

Opening the telepathic link, I heard my clone saying, "Boss, one of the clones is acting out of line. Do something about this."

Hearing that, I quickly scanned through the memories of the Clone that was contacting me. This Clone, along with nine others, was in Transylvania, in the territory of Tepes Faction.

They had the task of using Universal Shapeshift to transform into bats and infiltrate the Tepes Faction.

Then, they were to subtly use Telepathy to slowly incite Marius Tepes into starting a Civil War against King Tepes within the next few months.

Once the war escalated to a sufficient level, the Clones had the job of kidnapping– I mean rescuing a pair of Dhamphirs and making it seem like they escaped on their own initiative.

This way, once the remaining Vampire factions find out about the two Dhampirs in my Peerage in the future, they would have to assume that I came across them by chance and reincarnated them.

They won't be able to demand that I return them to the Vampires, although I am sure that the Vampires wouldn't want them back if they didn't know about the Dhamphirs' Sacred Gears.

This plan was made with the consideration that no problem arose in the future after Valerie and Gasper being in my Peerage came out in the open.

However, one of my Clones is in the process of fucking up the plan because he found it boring.

That fucker used Telekinesis to create a meteor and is planning to drop it on the Tepes Faction's headquarters.

According to the Clone's new plan, once the Vampires noticed the meteor and started panicking, the other Clones were to kidnap Valerie and Gasper.

His thinking was that if the Tepes Faction didn't even exist, how would others find out that Valerie and Gasper originally were from Tepes Faction?

After all, Valerie and Gasper had been kept in captivity in the Tepes Faction from the moment they were born.

Outsiders shouldn't be aware of their existence.

While the plan wasn't bad, the Clone wasn't willing to take into account that other Supernatural Factions would be spooked if a meteor suddenly wiped out an entire Faction.

A meteor that no other Supernatural Factions noticed heading toward Earth.

I am not sure that if other factions decide to investigate the matter, it won't be traced back to me.

After all, If Shiva can have Precognition, who's to say that some other Gods absolutely didn't have something like Retrocognition[1]?

The fucker was ignoring such implications as he just wanted to cause some chaos for fun.

Fucking Madara wannabe.

The reason one of my other Clones decided to call me instead of taking care of that fucker is because they couldn't.

All of them had equal strength and skills.

It would have caused a very big ruckus if the other nine Clones tried to stop that fucker in any way.

I immediately dispelled that fucker before ordering the other nine Clones in Transylvania, "Break up the meteor into pieces and have the chunks fall in remote areas far away from any factions territory."

Fortunately for me, the fucker created the meteor very stealthily over the course of a few hours, before contacting the Clones to try to convince them to go along with his plans.

So, disposing of the meteor discreetly was a doable task for the other Clones.

Once that was done, I told the Clones to proceed with the original plan. After they replied affirmatively, I closed the telepathic link.

It seems that it isn't feasible to have so many Clones run around all the time.

I only checked up on the Clones twice a day and within that time frame, one of them could do something that would fuck up things.

However, I also don't want to do the work that my Clones were doing by myself.

Infiltrating places like Nephilim Institute, Vatican, Athens, Asgard, Kyoto Dimension, etc. to gather information.

Searching for Sacred Gear wielders.

Scouting the world in search of suitable candidates for my Peerage, and many other tasks.

So, I devised a temporary fix for the problem right away.

I used Parallel Calculation again to create a separate consciousness, allocating a significant portion of my processing power to it to monitor all the Clones' actions.

This will do for now, however, I will have to come up with a permanent solution soon or a part of my mind will always have to stay awake.

I don't want that at all.

After all, sleep is very important for us Devils. Just look at Uncle Falbi.

There's even a sleep-related disease that only affects Devils. Once infected, you fall into a permanent sleep unless you are insanely lucky to have something extraordinary happen to you that wakes you up.

=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

A/N: Just a simple explanation for anyone who doesn't know what Precognition and Retrocognition are. (For the record, I didn't.)

The opposite of Precognition is Retrocognition, which refers to the ability to perceive or know about past events that one did not personally experience or witness. While Precognition involves foreseeing future events, Retrocognition involves gaining knowledge of events that have already occurred.

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