Chapter 44 - Metal of the Gods

"Zatanna, we've met three times now and each time we've been involved with demons and warlocks selling their souls," I looked at the sorceress, who was already preparing to fight the demon, as soon as Faust's dagger fell to the ground and was splattered with his blood, causing him to shake and exhaust his demonic energy. There wasn't much we could do about it from this side...

"I'm not to blame!" she shouted and stomped her foot, causing the last cultist, aside from Faust, to be blown away by a very strong gust of wind straight into the wall, and judging by the crunch, he probably wouldn't get up.

"Maybe not, but the trend is very unpleasant," I accepted her words. At that moment, the dagger began to disintegrate into tiny particles and dissolve, but a black dot appeared in its place, like a small black hole. Within a second, it grew to be about three meters and spewed out a blue-skinned demon. Or rather, only his spiritual shell.

"The Lord knew you couldn't handle it, worm," he looked at Faust, who was holding onto his cult, and... began to possess him with obvious disgust on his face.

"N-no, you promised... agh-r-r," he began to scream, going through the process of possession. But Zatanna didn't watch any further and tried to freeze him... but it didn't work, the ice instantly melted. That's when I used my power over the earth and pierced Faust with dozens of earthy protrusions that had grown from below. But all these protrusions began to quickly rot.

"Demons... I don't know what's worse, them or those who trust them," I whispered and approached the changing body of Faust, to plunge the sword into his chest.

"Agh-r-r-r!" he clearly didn't like the metal of the gods. I'll have to deal with these metals more closely, it's too powerful of a thing. Fighting demons with pure magic, especially when the demon is more or less equal to you or not much weaker in magical power, is quite a hobby... for amateurs. I read this in the book of Tot and the book of Arion. Moreover, the latter also had a weapon made of the metal of the gods with inclusions of the Ninth Metal straight from the Dark Multiverse. Simply having such a weapon can give you godlike power, the ability to fly, regeneration, and the ability to slightly influence reality itself. The latter is likely to depend on the amount of Ninth Metal, which is a less concentrated and "pure" version of the Tenth Metal, which I don't know much about."

"I don't like demons," I said, and with a wave of my hand, I chopped off his head, and the demon's spirit burst forth along with Faust's soul, and they were sent, apparently, to Hell. "We need a way to kill such enemies for good," I said aloud. Of course, I could kill the physical body and even wound the spirit, but still, I couldn't destroy it completely.

"The last time I was in Oblivion, I heard that this Faust had sold himself to the Cult of Cold Fire," Zatanna approached me.

"He's a lover of selling his own ass," I nodded. "You know that one of the founders of the Cult was your father, right?" I glanced over my shoulder at the sorceress.

"What?!" she exclaimed in shock. "My father couldn't! That's a dark cult!"

"And do you think your father was always a defender of order?" I smiled, but then looked at the dead bodies. "Tcerruser," I said "resurrect" backwards, but nothing happened.

"It doesn't work for me either," Zatanna said. "And what about my father?"

"Wait..." I used alchemy to restore their bodies, but once again, nothing happened. So I drew magical seals under the bodies and tried to force the souls back into the bodies, but all I achieved was exhaustion. "Your mother..." Apparently, sacrifices were needed for the barrier I had raised, and the souls of these victims went... somewhere.

"There's nothing you can do now. According to the books, even my father can't fully resurrect a person without consequences," the girl's eyes flickered with regret and even repentance. After all, two families of seven people were victims, two of whom were children.

"The gods could resurrect them with their power," I said, turning away from the "healthy" bodies and simply splitting them into atoms using alchemy. It shows once again how mortal we are... sometimes suddenly mortal. It's a good thing I moved my sister and put some protective spells on her.

"You're not a god," I received a quite laconic response.

"No... not yet," I whispered. "Your father, Zatanna, has been living on Earth for quite some time now. Many years ago, he and his friends felt almost omnipotent and founded their organization - the Cult of the Cold Flame. This Cult was meant to create an army of magical users and become gods for them... but your father eventually came to his senses and left. Later, he realized that he had helped create sectarians who played with dark magic, sacrifices, and demonology, so he began to oppose them," I gave a brief summary of Giovanni Zatara, which I gleaned from his book. "Perhaps this information is somewhere in his records."

"...maybe I haven't progressed far enough in the books yet," the girl who had returned the broken parts of the chairs to their places shrugged. "In any case, we still have much to talk about."

***

In the large room with a calm and spiritual atmosphere, there were three people. The first was a young girl of fifteen or sixteen with purple-pink eyes, honey-light hair, and an impressive figure with a bust that could shame many women. She was dressed in a sports tank top and seemed to be concentrating on something.

The second person was an old man with gray hair and a beard, his face framed by a scar over his right eye. He stood next to a tall, over two meters man with wheat-light hair and clearly visible muscles.

"This is something..." the man standing next to the old man said. Though, you couldn't tell by his appearance, he was older than the old man. "She catches everything on the fly," he said, feeling Ki movements around the girl.

"Of course, she does, she's my granddaughter!" the old man said proudly.

"My granddaughter is no worse," the tall man snorted. "But still... I've never seen anyone without learning martial arts be physically on the level of a Low-Class Master," he shook his head, looking at the girl's figure. "You know, Sendzaemon, are you sure you're not lying to me about her?"

"What?! How dare you accuse the Demon King of Gluttony of that?!" he exclaimed. "I'm telling you, just a couple of days ago, she came up to me and said she wanted to learn how to fight. I was surprised at first and started to suspect that someone was bullying her." After those words, the tall man felt deadly Ki, as if someone was very angry... and it was. "But no, that wasn't the case..."

The man nodded with a knowing expression. "My Miu also behaves strangely sometimes... I think it's just teenage girl stuff."

"Perhaps," nodded the director of the famous culinary academy, Tootsuki. "But the path of a Battle Chef? The old man hesitated slightly.

"Oh, the path of martial arts is never easy, especially if you're striving for the top. Your granddaughter has talent, even now I can feel a tremendous amount of Ki in her, which I didn't have at her age... even in my twenties. And you know what's most impressive?" the man asked.

"She instinctively uses the three basic uses of Ki: Summoning, Release, and Retention. I sense a Ki field around her that simply won't allow anyone to harm her until she runs out of energy. And all of this without training," he explained.

"My granddaughters are the best, I knew that even without you. Both of them," snorted the head of the Nakiri family.

"Hmm, my Miu won't lose to your granddaughters," the man grinned, clenching his fists. "I'll be staying with you for three more days, and then I'll have to continue my journey. So I'm looking forward to seeing what surprises the God Tongue and the Demonic Chef will have in store for me, ho-ho."

"We'll see how you 'sing' after my dishes," the old man challenged, and once again, Ki radiated from him in all directions as he adjusted his yukata.

"She's already learned to manage her Ki tolerably well over the past few days, now it's important to teach her to fight properly. Although with her current strength, she has nothing to fear from anyone below a Low-Class Master. She's simply faster and stronger than them, but any decent Master will easily realize that she lacks experience and defeat her. But a Battle Chef, ho-ho? I wonder where this path will take her..." the man mused.

"To the top, becoming the best granddaughter," the old man answered, causing Hayato Furinji's smile to fade slightly.

***

I returned to myself lost in thought, which Lena noticed, but she didn't pester me with questions and simply hugged me. Zatanna knew what I was capable of, so she didn't mind a few sessions with me. She didn't say when exactly, but we agreed that she would find me in Metropolis, and I gave her my number and the address of the building.

Gotham left behind a feeling of emptiness and weakness, even though no one seemed to have beaten me, quite the opposite actually. Meeting two black magicians, demons, and ninjas... Gotham is a dangerous city. But that just shows that the weak die. Those two families certainly didn't expect to die after the show at the hands of black magicians...

"Cortana, prepare room zero-four for the experiment," I said aloud.

"Understood. What kind of experiment?" Cortana's voice responded.

"Biological," I said, entering the already furnished room with white walls and ceiling. In the center, there was a large table. With the help of alchemy, I created a terrarium and pulled out Gachi's map with a spider drawn on it from my inventory.

Spider with OZ injection (C)

"This is a genetically modified spider with an interesting mutagen. Its bite should turn an ordinary person into a super soldier... but there may be side effects such as increased aggression, greening, uncontrollable mutation, and degradation of human senses."

"I will conduct a full analysis of the spider," Cortana's voice sounded, and a small drone hovering over the table picked up the terrarium and carried it to the analyzer.

"Then work with it, and I'll go to my lab," I allowed her to finish analyzing the spider herself. Entering the room, I immediately reinforced all the walls and floor with the ceiling using magic, and in the center, with the help of alchemy, I created a containment magic circle containing my knowledge of several worlds. In the magic of the DxD world, magic circles are often used by different races, even demons, for the same purpose of transportation. Scandinavian runes of the god Odin are also very good. The book of Thoth also contained knowledge about barriers and the Will helping to restrain something.

My eyes fell on the things I needed in the Chat Shop.

Eighth Metal (S) — 70 CP/g

Ninth Metal (SS) — 100 CP/g

Tenth Metal (SSS) — 1000 CP/g

Now I can take sixty grams of Eighth Metal, forty-two grams of Ninth, and four grams of Tenth. Spending most of my points, I took fifty grams of Eighth Metal and they ended up in my inventory.

"Let's do this," I said, wishing the metal to appear right in front of me in the center of the seal.

I immediately felt changes in the space around me, as if it had become heavier and lighter at the same time. The metal did not try to dissolve in the dimension, as happens with the Ninth Metal, which is present in the world in very low concentrations according to Arion's book. This is a more stable version of it, but because of this, it is weaker... but compared to the Ninth and Tenth. It is more than powerful in itself, and it was precisely this metal that Hephaestus used to create weapons for his pantheon.

Taking it in my hands, I immediately felt how the energy in my body became more powerful, more agile, and... it was now much easier to control, requiring less magical energy for spells. Cinnabar Spindle, my sword, contains this metal in very low proportions. I would say that it's two hundred to one, meaning that for every two hundred grams of sword, there is only one gram of Eighth Metal. And that was already enough to easily deal with demons.

First, I will conduct a few experiments with it, and then, most likely, I will merge this metal with my sword. Then it will become much stronger, and along with it, my abilities will improve.

Chat Points: 703

I still have the Points to buy the Ninth Metal. But before that, I took a look at what was going on in the Chat.

Hermione Granger: Professor Snape killed Dumbledore!

Hermione Granger: How is this possible?! Why does "Real Memory" show such a bleak future?

Rias Gremory: Well, in the end you won... and you... well…

Shinoa Hiragi: Married a Redhead... I didn't expect this from you, Hermione-chan.

Hermione Granger: Is that all you're interested in? Voldemort will be back in full force! The war will begin! So many students will die!

Shinoa Hiragi: Did you find time to make out with a redhead…