Chapter 23: Training Results.

This is still a flashback

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*The description will be 3rd person, the rest will be 1st*

Valerian's lower body dissolved into a gold smoke like matter that quickly spread out around him until it reached farther than the eye could see. Meanwhile, his upper body dissolved as well, but kept a somewhat humanoid shape. He now had a torso, shoulders and an arm. His right shoulder had white, wisp like tentacles that flowed off of him like smoke while his right arm merged with the smoke that spread around him. Inside of that smoke, faces, mouths, tentacles, eyes and various other disgusting things could be seen shifting in and out of view. Sitting atop his shoulders was a hood made of smoke, under which no eyes or face could be seen, just an endless abyss. At the edges of the golden smoke, Tentacles the size of entire planets emerged and danced in harmony with the others.

(Image here hopefully.)

'This is honestly not what I was expecting my outer god form to look like. I was expecting more... grotesque things than this. Sure the faces and other things in the smoke that appear are kind of grotesque I was expecting a lot worse.'

I felt two presences appear near me, turning to them, I see an old man and a large, red western dragon with four wings approaching the edge of my body. They look somewhat hesitant to get near me, so I move in their direction, which causes the large tentacles to dissipate and reform into smoke, which flows behind me similar to a cape or robe in this case.

Even though I look humanoid, my actual main 'body' is actually just as large as Great red, meaning the tentacles I previously thought were the size of planets are much, much bigger.

Seeing my main body arrive in front of them with the rest of it flowing behind me, covering the entirety of their sight behind me in the golden smoke, still with various things appearing and disappearing from their sight, I speak out loud, but it comes out in an eldritch tongue that makes nails on a chalkboard sound like a woman's sensual moan in comparison.

The two dragon gods are shaken slightly from the use of the language, but they are still conceptual beings, even if minor ones, so they are relatively fine. Instead I opt to use telepathy, "I'm going to be training here for the time being. I'd rather not cause everyone on earth and probably the other realms to go insane the instant I use this form. You don't need to worry, I don't intend to harm this universe, I was 'born' here." I said to them, mostly to Great Red since Ophis couldn't care less, they was mostly just interested in what showed up in the dimentional gap. Ophis looked at me and then at Great Red before narrowing their eyes and disappearing from view.

The large dragon sighed before looking at me, and speaking out loud, "Very well... I can tell you are an outer being, but you also seem to have a connection to this universe. Be careful not to cause this universe too much damage.

I nod at him in return, I then notice that a lot of my powers in this form and unlocked, and I'm significantly stronger, though the downside is the obvious madness to anyone around me, and the fact I'm the size of a decently large galaxy. I shake off the thought and notice Great Red turned around and went off flying back into a random part of the dimensional gap, doing an occasional barrel roll, much to my amusement.

Thus my training begun for the next 5 years with me periodically going back home to spend time with everyone. My relationship with all of the girls had improved once again as I spent more time alone with each girl in these five years.

I also occasionally checked up with Ajuka, who has finally made some more progress with the evil pieces. He even has a prototype, which were the king pieces. They made devils stronger, but they wouldn't change others into devils. When I found out, I told him to not tell anyone, not even Lucifer, which at first he was concerned about, but decided to trust me anyways. Thus the information was kept hidden, and he entrusted all the king pieces he had made to me.

The most important part, aka the entire reason I went there to train was my void manipulation, which I unlocked and can now use it, even in my humanoid form. This came with a huge jump in power since my body was saturated in void energy, strengthening it and skyrocketing me all the way from mid ultimate-class to mid, Satan-class. And the rest of the training made me jump to peak Satan-class, which is the same as Lucifer. But that power jump was the only one of that level I'd get, with my body getting saturated in void energy, it strengthened considerably, and there won't be anything else that will strengthen it to that degree.

'System'

[ § ]

Name: Valerian Maara

Race: Devil/Outer God

Age: 23 (∞)

Gender: Male (Genderless)

Power Level: Satan-class Devil - Peak

Durability: ∞

Stamina: ∞

Powers:

-Superhuman Physical Characteristics

-Immortality (Eternal Life & Meta-Immortality)]

-Acausality (Causality Transcendence)

-Concept Manipulation (True Platonic Concept) [Locked]

-Higher-Dimensional Existence (Beyond-Dimensional)

-Enhanced Senses

-Abstract Existence

-Spatial Manipulation

-Time Manipulation

-Causality Manipulation [Locked]

-Telepathy

-Higher Dimensional Manipulation [Locked]

-Matter Manipulation

-Void Manipulation

-Power Bestowal

-Devil Magic

-Swordsmanship

[ § ]

'Hah, okay, I'm ready for the war now. I should be strong enough once the time comes to fight the Satans and the big G. Well, time to head home. Then I have to learn to lead the troops...'

I disappeared and reappeared back in the familiar living room. Everyone knew today was the day I was coming back, so they were all waiting for me with smiles on their faces. Seeing them caused me to smile widely and greet all of them and spend the rest of the day with them.

The next day, I was taken to our training camp where I was told I was going to be given command of over 15,000 troops. 10,000 of which were low class, 4,000 were mid class, 980 are high class, and there are 20 in ultimate class, this includes my sister, Serafall, Grayfia, Roygun, the other heirs of the clans below me, and a few of the other clan heads that are under me.

I'm glad that my mother had me come here early. All of their lives are my responsibility and if I tried to lead this many people into war, whether I know war tactics or not, many would die. Tactics and Leadership are different, one is how you assign your troops to fight, it won't matter if your troops can't trust you to do your best to get them home.

Thus the process of learning to lead people, both in war times and outside of them, through sparing with some of the higher ranks and teaching them, and it moving down the chain, taking care of concerns and other issues. This helped build their trust in me, especially compared to other commanders who would only pass orders down to a few of their officials and let them handle everything. I made sure to meet all the people fighting under me on multiple occasions, and I even ate with them throughout the few years that I had before Kokabiel attacked.

Part of what the camp's duties were to patrol the border, since our borders were shared with Grigori, the fallen angel faction, it was our job to catch any scouts and inform of their movements near our territory. Now we weren't the only one's bordering Grigori, but we did have a large majority of it to watch, especially since we had two decent sized towns right on the border.

Thus I had small scouting parties spread out along the part of our border and intermittently switched them out to give one group a rest while the other group continued scouting.

Luckily, this proved effective, as one of the groups caught Kokabiel's movements and was able to inform me in time, so I was able to rally my men and intercept him.

I was able to lead him and a group of 500 6-8 winged angels away from everyone else and sent them a mental transmission to my captains to keep any of our troops away and started a blood bath to everything around me. Kokabiel was able to keep himself from being fatally injured but his subordinates were lambs to a slaughter. The fallen's men quickly fell until it was just him, he started laughing out loud, "Yes! This is what I wanted! War!" He laughed out and charged forward to confront me. I wanted to see exactly what my form would do to someone, so I made only my head dissolve, and controlled it to be the same size as my devil form, and what greeted the war crazed elf was an endless black abyss that consumed his very sanity.

I reverted my hood back to my head and sent another message to my captains and told them they were free to come to me. I looked back at the now hysteric fallen cadre, who was in the process of clawing out his eyes with disgust and slight distain. I heard the soft landing of three of my captains behind me and recognized their presences with ease.

When she started giving me the casualty report, I used my devil magic to summon a ball of gravity that was continuously collapsing in on itself to finish off Kokabiel. When I was about to turn around, I saw a white ball float out of his body towards the sky, I reached out and grabbed it quickly, before it could get out of reach. Pulling it down, I realized it was his soul, which was an odd construct, but I wasn't sure if he would be able to reincarnate, so I coated my hand in void energy and obliterated his soul from existence. I then turned around and said, "We'll pull back to the forward base for now, everyone is exhausted from the last few days of fighting and the injured need to be tended to. Also we can drop off the prisoners while there." The ones who landed behind me were three of my captains who passed my orders down and trained directly under me: Grayfia, Inanna, and Roygun.

I slung the blood of my sword and sent it into my inventory before walking over to the three girls and told them we were going back before launching into the sky towards the east.