Life

By: Warriorseadra

"Uhhh," I groan getting up.

Sitting up on my bed, I look down at my hands.

"I'm... not dead?" I question my predicament.

I must be fighting too many monsters. But, that seemed too real to be a dream. I could have sworn that beast ripped me to shreds, literally.

As I shiver at my recollection, a warm hand places itself on my shoulder. I look up and see a young woman smiling at me.

"Relax," she says, "everything is ok now."

I blink. This girl, although she isn't drop dead gorgeous, she's pretty cute.

No, that's not important right now. Instead, something isn't right here.

Realizing this, I observe my surrounds and discover that I neither know where I am, or recognize the people before me. For some reason, the room seems to be on a train and other than the young woman, there are two males here too.

"Finally awake I see." The taller one says. "Now, you're probably really confused right now, but if yo-"

I jump out of the bed and punch the guy's face. Swirling, I form a sphere out of my ki and from my hands fire it at the other male.

"Demons!" I shout, "What do you want with me?"

I see, this must be their doing.

"Ca-calm down, we just want to talk." the first male says.

"I will have nothing to do with demons!"

This is neither my first encounter with demons, nor will it be my last. But I will definitely never succumb to them. I'll die before that happens.

"Fufu," the female giggles, "But haven't you realized it yet? You're a demon too."

The words chill me to my core. That just cannot be true!

"Blasphemy!" I retort.

"No, it's true." The second male backs the female, "Just check for yourself."

As I look inside myself, I fall to my knees. As they claimed, from within my body emits demonic energy.

How repulsive...

"What did you do to me?" I ask glaring.

"I resurrected you." The first male responds.

"What!" I ask.

"That dream you just had wasn't a dream. You really did die against that monster. Your ability interested me, so I brought you back as one of my family members. Congratulations, you are my new bishop."

"Go to Hell."

He brought eternal damnation to me because of my ability? I'll kill him!

"Later, but first allow me to introduce myself. My name is Godai."

"I'm Selena." The female from before introduces herself.

"I am Seijiro." The other male, who's carrying a bundled object, greets me.

"""Welcome.""" They all say.

"I'll kill you." I respond.

"Wo wo wo, I just gave you a second chance to live. Shouldn't you be more, happy?"

For all I know, my death may have been doing!

"You cursed me to Hell. How could I be happy!"

"You could avenge your death by getting revenge."

"I've no need for something as petty as revenge! Forget it, I'm going home."

"Wait." Seijiro calls out. "That won't work."

"Why not?"

"Because, even though you were resurrected, you still died and a lot of people saw your body. If you go back now, you'll probably be killed again for being a witch."

I froze. So not only am I cursed to eternal damnation, but I can't even go home!

"Arghhhhh!" I scream, "Fine then!"

I only have one choice left, to do God's work as devil and pray for forgiveness. Ow, a slight pain runs threw my body.

"Looks like you're ready to listen now." Godai notes. "I should probably start from the beginning. I'm a low class devil and I aspire to become an ultimate class devil! Only then will I be able to completely do away with the old traditions and families and restructure the underworld!"

That sort of makes sense. From what I recall of Hell, various demons lords exist ruling over lesser and minor demons. So this Godai must want to take the place of one of those demons. If this is true, then I could use him to my advantage.

"Even though we now have a new Hell in place, many of the old families and traditions of old Hell still exist. Because of that, only high class devils and higher are able to enjoy life as a devil while the rest of us devils scrape away at the bottom trying to stay alive. Sure, in theory low class devils can move up in rank, but that's only for those with connections. Regardless if whether a devil is pure blood or not, we will forever remain in class we are born into, unless we make those connections."

"You lost me, what do you mean by pure blood devil?" I interrupt.

"A pure blood devil is a devil descended from pure devils, like me. Non-pure devils are devils who were not born as pure devils or where made into devils after death, like you." Godai explains. "But as I was saying, I want to change this underworld into one everyone can get ahead, regardless of blood or connection! I want for true equality to exist for all devils! But first I need strength, which is why I brought you, Selena, and Seijiro back to life."

This guy is full of passion, but I wonder how much of it is true.

"I don't understand, why not just resurrect an entire army if you need strength?" I pick at a major flaw in his story.

"You've misunderstood." Godai corrects me, "Resurrection is only a recent discovery made possible thanks to the evil chess pieces, aku no koma. All high class devils are giving a set of chess pieces to resurrect a family of servants."

That sounds pretty selfish.

"What, are there not enough devils that there's a need to increase the population? Are you guys preparing for war?" I ask

"No, the opposite. Not long ago, the devils, fallen angels, and angels had a great war. The end of the war resulted in the death of many devils, including our leaders, the Maou. To increase the population of devils back to former numbers, we bring creatures of other races back to life as devils. This also furthers the diversity of abilities present among devils."

Like mine...

"Ok, so why do you have aku no koma when you're a low class devil?" I ask.

This guy just leaves too many unanswered questions in his story. Not sure if I can believe everything he's telling me, but it doesn't make sense for him to completely lie to me. I mean, I could probably cross check this information with other devils later.

"To be completely honest, I found them."

A devil that tells the truth, huh?

"Not too long ago, I was training and found the queen, bishop, and knight pieces in a river. I looked for around for the rest, but those were all I found. Therefore, there won't be anymore devils joining us. Still, knowing I now have comrades puts me at ease. I'm now no longer fighting the entire underworld on my own, I have a team." Godai finishes in a relieved tone.

Well, the story and answers flow pretty well now, and there's really no reason for him to lie to me. I mean, I could always confirm the truth about his story with other devils.

"Listen," Godai begins again in a serious tone. "The only reason I have chess pieces is because I found them. Again, chess pieces are only reserved for high class devils, so for me to own some is probably a crime. If anyone asks, you tell them you're just a low class devil, nothing more. Officially, the four of us are merely a team of devils who have banded together as Freelancers. A small service I run where we do odd jobs."

"You run a shop?"

"Yeah," Godai sheepishly admits. "If we want to change the underworld, we're going to need status, and one of the few ways to gain status is by serving other devils. The better our results, the better customers we'll get. It's a slow process, but better than nothing. Other than that, we'll have to spend our time training and getting stronger. We'll need strength for our revolution."

"Allow us to reintroduce ourselves," Seijiro speaks out. "I am our knight, Seijiro. I'm from Japan."

"I am our queen, Selena. I'm from Europe."

That's really specific.

"I am our king, Godai. Adrian, as our bishop, welcome to team Freelancers."

What a weird group of people.

"So, what comes next?" I ask.

"We return to the underworld." Seijiro answers.

"On a train?"

"No, we don't get such fancy service, the train's just taking us to the entrance." Selena replies.

…..

Off the train, we walk deep into a forest. Due to my ability over ki, the forest seems really eerie to me. Ki isn't anything special, it's life energy everyone is born with. I was born with a rare ability to naturally detect and manipulate the ki my body generates. I can detect ki, project it, and manipulate the flow of ki to an extent. However, I'm not too good at it. In my fights against monsters I've only barely been getting by. But I can sense ki well enough to tell that this forest is super creepy.

I look at the others and see they are also find the forest disturbing, although they don't seem to be as bothered by it as much as me.

"Why is the entrance located in this forest?" Seijiro asks.

"Because it isn't a proper entrance." Selena replies. "It's a secret one."

"A secret entrance into the underworld." I repeat, "Like the one Dante used?"

"Yeah," Godai responds, "In truth, I'm not allowed to be out here. The human world is only assessable to privileged devils, and I'm not one of them. I snuck out here find suitable people for my team, you guys. Now we need to get back before anyone notices I'm gone. But be careful, finding monsters out here isn't rare. There's a good chance we might be attacked."

That explains why a lot.

"You mean like that thing that's been following us for the past mile or so?" I ask pointing my thumb back.

"What thing?" Godai asks facing me.

"Don't know, I never felt anything like it before, but its ki is repulsive."

The others also turn and take a stance readying themselves for battle.

Seijiro unwraps from his bundle a katana and Selena raises her fists.

A deep, loud stomp radiates from the forest behind. As I turn and prepare my self for the battle, a small tremor shakes the ground.

I swallow and take a deep breath to relax myself. I can't fight if my body is tense.

As the tremors get closer, the tree branches before us spread apart and a large crocodile mouth comes into view. As the beast roars, a row of large, sharp teeth are revealed. Within the trees I see that the beast has fur covering its body, but also sense an appendage growing off to the side.

'Must be a tail.' I reason.

"A bunyip." Godai names the creature, "Odd, we stayed away from bodies of water."

"Maybe it's hungry?" Selena points out, "Bunyips do have a taste for women."

"Aren't you two too relaxed right now?" Seijiro asks while focusing his attention on the bunyip.

"Meh." Selena responds blasting the beast with lighting.

Odd, that bolt fills me with a sickening feeling.

I focus my attention onto Selena and, as expected, find her smoldered within her demonic aura. But bellow even that, at her very core, comes something else.

It's as though her very existence is a poison.

"Look out!" Seijiro shouts returning my senses to the battle.

From the corner of my eye, I see something sweeping towards me.

Its tail! I realize.

Instinctively, I avoid it by jumping.

"Naghhhh." I groan untangling myself from some tree branches.

I must have over concentrated and placed too much ki into my legs, causing me to over shoot my jump. No, that's not right. My focus is no different from before, but for some reason, I have better control over my ki now.

I create a sphere of ki and toss it at the bunyip.

Yep, normally I need more time to create a ki sphere of that size. But, I don't think that's everything. Since I became a devil, my body has also felt different, like there was more strength flowing threw it. When we entered this forest, I felt that strength rise even more. Thinking about it, it's really dark in here too, yet I can see just fine. I can clearly see myself waving my hand in front of my face as though it were day. Just how much has my body changed since becoming a devil?

An explosion deafens my ears. As I look back towards the bunyip, I see Seijiro jumping into the monster's chest, delivering a slash. But, that speed. He's almost like a blur. From the monster's back flies out blood tracing the cut.

With an insane cutting ability too...

As the beast stumbles back, Godai also jumps onto the bunyip's chest and delivers a few punches. He then kicks himself off. The bunyip regains its posture and roars, then the parts of its body where Godai punched start to swelling. They continue swelling to the point of where they're about to burst and then...

Boom

One by one, each swelling explodes.

The bunyip falls on its back motionless.

Godai has an interesting ability, but if it's limited to punching like that, it's not too practical. Well, it's his ability, he's probably aware of the limitations.

"Is it dead?" Seijiro asks.

"Look's like it." Selena responds walking up to him.

"It's dead." I announce jumping off the tree. "I don't sense anymore ki coming from it."

I feel a sting from my arm and examine it. I scraped it. I place the palm from my other hand over the wound and focus my ki. Slowly, the skin begins to grow back until it's fully healed.

Yep, my control has improved. I've never been able to heal myself so quickly or easily before.

I feel the others staring at me so I look up.

"What?" I ask.

"Your injury..." Selena asks, "What did you do? Its healed."

"I channeled the ki in my body threw the injury and accelerated my body's natural healing ability." I respond.

"That's pretty convenient." Godai smirks.

"If you have any cuts, I might be able to heal them too." I continue.

"Might?" Seijiro.

"I've never succeeded on healing others, but now I seem to have better control over my ki."

"That's because your now a bishop." Godai explains. "Depending on the chess piece used on the resurrection, the person receives a boost in some of their stats. Knights like Seijiro gain super speed, while rooks gain amazing power. As a bishop, you've gained better control over magic."

"Ki isn't magic." I point out.

"No, but it must be similar enough."

"What do queens and pawns get?" I ask.

"Queens get all of above." Selena responds smiling. "Could you heal my shin? The bunyip's tail whipped me."

I crouch down and place my palm on a bruise Selena reveals beneath her jeans. I close my eyes and focus my ki into her shin. I find her body's ki flow and mix my ki into it. Then, like a current, I guide her ki with mine and improve Selena's circulation of ki with an emphases on extra ki threw the shin. Opening my eyes, I remove my hand. The bruise vanished.

It worked! Finally, I can heal others! But, her ki... it's different. It's neither human or devil. Then, is reincarnation not limited to only humans?

"If you had any pawn pieces," I ask, "could you reincarnate that bunyip?"

"I could." Godai responds.

"What abilities would it get?"

"Pawns don't really have any special abilities when reborn other than gaining the base abilities of a devil. Although, they can promote themselves into any other class piece, besides a king, if given permission."

"What kind of changes do we get for becoming devils?"

"You might have noticed during the battle, but your overall physical strength has increased. You may feel lethargy during the day, but that'll pass with training. Other than that, you've gained devil wings, night vision, and become multi-lingual."

"I can speak any language now?"

No, I refuse to use those symbols of evil called wings.

"Kinda, when you speak to Seijiro, it sounds like English to you, right?"

"Yes."

"Well, in truth, he's probably speaking Japanese. The same is for him, you speak English to him, but he hears Japanese."

Oh, so this is an automatic translator. That's pretty convenient... Gahhhh, no, no, no! I scold my self. I can't let myself be tempted like this! Please forgive me! Ow!

"Something wrong?" Seijiro asks.

"No-nothing." I quickly reply, regaining my posture. I cannot allow myself to fall, I won't let them tempt me. I'm only going with them because I can use them.

Turning my head away from the others I say, "We should get going."

…..

"We're almost there." Godai informs us. "The entrance should be a cave along this hill side."

"Does anything live in that cave?" I ask.

"No, why?"

"I feel something down in that direction."

"It could be another devil."

"Or maybe a fallen angel."

Seijiro and Selena both offer suggestions.

"It doesn't feel like a devil, but I don't know what fallen angels feel like."

"Well, what can you tell us about it?" Godai asks.

"It makes me think of dog, but it feels nothing like a dog. I know, I've never felt anything like it before. Then again, I've never felt anything like this forest or many of the creatures inside. I'm seriously being over loaded with all these new strange creatures."

"You can distinguish each creature by their ki?" Seijiro asks.

"Yeah, every species is different and has its own type and flow of ki. Then, each individual organism has its own unique ki flow, but that's a little harder to pick up on."

"What about reincarnated devils?" Selena asks.

After a moments silence, I slightly turn my head towards Selena. "I'm not sure what their ki will feel like considering they were something else before becoming devils. I'll need to meet some more before I can give a definite answer."

"How far is your range?" Godai asks.

"Since I've reincarnated, I'm not sure. Before it was one mile, so now I'm guessing about three."

We continue walking towards the cave.

Godai stops walking and holds out his arm. He motions for us to silently gather around him and whispers, "Now that we're closer, I feel its magical presence. The creature at the entrance of the cave is a cerberus."

"The three headed dog?" I ask.

"Yeah." Godai confirms.

Well, that makes sense considering where we're going.

"This is going to be tricky." Godai informs us, "We can't kill or hurt it."

"Why not?" Seijiro asks.

"You also think it's guard?" Selena asks.

"Yeah, but I'm not sure from who." Godai confirms.

Could different factions be fighting for power? I'll have to ask after this.

"Adrian, can you sense anyone or anything else?" Godai asks, "Maybe a different type of ki on the cerberus?"

"Ki is not the same as a scent!" I retort, "It doesn't stick onto others. But no, I don't feel anyone else and inanimate objects don't produce ki."

"So, how are we getting past it?" Seijiro asks, "Can we put it too sleep?"

"I could, but the spell would take a few minutes." Godai responds. "Someone is gonna have to distract it."

"Leave that to me." Seijiro volunteers, stepping forward.

"Great, just keep the beast running around within the clearing in front of the entrance."

Seijiro jumps out and dashes away. Thunderous barking fills the air.

The rest of us walk forward and stop once Seijiro being chased by the cerberus comes into view.

That beast is huge. It's at least as big as a hippopotamus.

"Watch over me." Godai commands Selena and I as he gives his full attention to the beast.

Seijiro continues running around in circles. Due to his smaller size, Seijiro nimbly avoids the beast, even when he gets cornered. Although, fear is clearly visible on Seijiro's face. We can easily tell he's giving his all to avoid getting killed, again.

The beast slows its pace and it's three heads begin to lower. It then stops moving altogether and lays down on the ground falling asleep.

"Nifty spell." Selena comments.

"Yeah, but it still needs work. Casting takes too long." Godai responds.

A spell that slows down another's metabolism. That gives me an idea.

"Common, let's go before it wakes up again." Godai hurries us into the cave. Seijiro rejoins us at the mouth.

"What did you mean earlier?" I ask as we proceed down the cave.

"About what?" Godai responds.

"About not knowing who set the guard. Are the devils divided?"

"Well, the underworld is occupied by two forces, devils and fallen angels. Normal angels reside in heaven. But the two sides of the underworld each fight each other for territory and it isn't uncommon for something like a watch dog to be placed at these entrances for protection."

"I have one issue." Seijiro intervenes, "I thought devils could teleport. Was I mistaken?"

"No, we can."

"So why didn't we teleport to the cave, or better yet, the underworld?"

"Too dangerous for devils like us running around without permission. Someone else could easily detect us, and then usurp the spell."

"Really you two." Selena sighs at us.

I'm sorry for not knowing these things...

A/N: The we have it, my first highschool DxD story. Now, although Ise and the Gremory cast may be mentioned within this story occasionally, they won't really be making any apperances. This story is about the Freelancers and their growth along their quest to reform the underworld. Review please!