Vow: for Infinity

Diehauser came to visit the Friday for a short time before leaving together with Julia and Diana for their long-awaited vacation, Masaru and his team however relaxed till Saturday morning where they were now in the underground training room.

Each and every one of them wore tank shirts and hotpants as gym clothing, while sitting in a circle Masaru started to explain their training regime for the day while maintaining their already applied restrictions and gravity the room itself will be 1.5 times gravity on top of it all.

"Before we start, there is something I want to share with you girls that could become a quite well trump card in the future if we ever face danger. It's a spell that lasts for a very long time and I have just recently discovered in my spellbook, as you all know my spellbook is something like a grimoire tome that allows me to use any magic or spell as long as I understand it at a basic level at least."

The news of a trump card made the girls listen seriously, since it was their master who brought this up with all of them together it meant it was a kind of spell that requires more than one person to cast it. Who would say no to cast a spell with their loved ones?

"Naturally there is more powerful developed magic recorded in the book by the previous owners, I call these unique abilities due to the fact that these magic simply does not exist or perhaps was not recorded in our Devil history.

"The problem with these unique abilities is that each of them has their own set of restrictions, naturally, I can use it but the restrictions would apply to me as well. Some of these restrictions are more severe than the rest, depending on how powerful the magic is. The trump card I found for us is called Kiss Prayer: Vow for infinity

"Kiss Prayer is a unique spell that connects the soul of the Husband and the Wife, it's a spell created for a woman by a woman. What happens is when the wife kisses her husband a unique prayer will emerge from her heart in the form of a vow she has to say out loud, these prayers are unique and different from each other.

"When the prayer is complete the Wife will gain a boost in power depending on how strong her feelings for the Husband is, on top of it she will be able to use one of her abilities several times above her strongest attack. These are the good sides of it" Masaru explained,

Ingvild looked at Masaru mentioned before that depending on how powerful the magic is, the restrictions could be just as severe if not more.

"What are the bad things then?" She asked.

"Just as the magic state it's a prayer spell that links the man and woman through a vow, you can take it as a wedding ceremony on a spiritual level. Should any of you perform this act with me, then it will mean that we will stay together in each reincarnation cycle until we cease to exist

"This includes the fact I will not be able to trade you away because it will be seen as a sign of abandonment and I will suffer a serious injury on my soul and that naturally happen to the one who performed it with me if she abandons me. I know our relationship so I will never abandon you all, ever. But you need to know this spell comes with restrictions"

Masaru took a deep breath as he felt this spell was something good for them, however, he understood from a fundamental level what it meant to live together forever. It was not 100 years or 1000 years or even 10,000 years promise. But a promise for each reincarnation, should they die, the next time their soul reincarnates they will be born close to each other.

"This power boost is terrifying high, but the restrictions is just as high for both sides. In order to use this spell, we would need to perform the ritual that will connect our souls, and that will have to wait till each of us can come to a choice. This is not something of a single lifetime but to infinity."

"But aren't we already prepared to live together for 10 000 years?" Akeno thought the price was too light, this made Masaru smile wryly as Akeno was underestimating living together through infinite lifetimes.

"This spell can be repeated but the bond that forms between the two on the first kiss it will stay there even in the next life and the following till we cease to exist"

Even Masaru was reluctant to use this power, it was not that he did not love the girls enough but each lifetime? Could he guarantee nothing will change? To be honest he felt a bit afraid. Despite the boost it gives will give them a chance to survive even if a God ranked enemy appears. He could not force such a deep choice upon the girls, this was why he reminded them several times of the price so they can think about it deeply.

"With that out of the way, let's sort in groups for training according to your specialty and pieces. Shirone and Everest the two of you will spar with each other. Shirone you need to get used to fighting people stronger in strength and defence than you, and as for you Everest you need to get used to fighting people faster and harder to hit than you"

Masaru dodged the incoming projective from Shirone who was a bit sensitive about her height, if it was not for the fact she felt happy of her good endowment chest then she might have really developed a complex over it. She naturally understood their training was now set up to deal with possible opponents which they have no experience dealing with.

"Angelica and Jeanne the two of you will spar each other, Long Range vs Short Range. You both understand my intention?" Jeanne and Angelica nodded, Angelica will be fighting with her Bow and Daggers while Jeanne will use her Rapier.

"Oh yes, and the use of sacred gears, mana, Demonic energy and Dragon Aura is prohibited" Everest look at Masaru

"You are playing favourites right now!?" Masaru shook his head at the exclaiming Everest with a warm smile, he starts to explain it simply to them.

"What you and what Shirone need to learn is two separate things. Similar to Jeanne and Angelica. Only by overcoming your weaknesses will you become even stronger, so the time has come for you all to surpass your limits" Masaru smirked,

"The rest of the girls will be having a short Magic lesson from me as I need to review what you all know and what you still need to know. Once the lesson is over I will be training Ichika in Bojutsu" Masaru led the girls away while Shirone and Everest entered one of the training rooms and Angelica with Jeanne went into another.

"Now then, I'm just going to skimp through some things you already know. Using magic through our demonic power only requires a bit of imagination and the correct control making it simpler to produce a spell compared to human spells that require calculations and understanding of each spell they cast.

"I have noticed some of you girls tend to use more mana than originally required to take out a monster" Masaru pulled out a board writing in game terms to make the explanation much easier to understand, "If for example, the spell required to kill the enemy deals 50 damage for 10 mana, there is no need to inject 20 mana to deal 100 damage unless you know the enemy is resilient which is 70% of the time not the case. So my training menu for you girls is this"

Masaru takes out a metal ball with three lines and three dots on each, "Each of you will take one ball, now here is what you do. When the light goes on in a line like this"

The middle line little dot lit up, he continues to explain the functions of the ball. "You inject your demonic energy into the ball but look at this, this ball can measure your mana while comparing it to the 'requirement' which is the three dots."

Masaru injects more energy than necessary activating the topmost line which gives off a red light, "If you inject too much energy this will be the result, the dot will keep changing from line to line and you need to inject the corresponding amount of energy into it. This will help your control over your energy, I will have you girls try out the next phase of the training which will be the two pieces of training you girls as Mages will do. But don't neglect your close combat training either!"

Masaru left Ingvild, Akeno, Stephani and Yui in the room to start their training.

The ball that was created by making use of the game principles of "whack a mole" game that was usually found in gaming centres, this is something Masaru did not tell them since it is meant to be a suprise after all. He went together with Ichika into one of the rooms to start training her Staff techniques while facing someone with a shorter reach.

"Masaru-sama, that Kissing Prayer spell why would a woman create such a spell?"

Hearing Ichika's question, Masaru too had this question but luckily the spellbook contained a bit of history behind the spell as well to help him understand the reason behind the creation which gave it it's formed.

"Because she was once a weak mage who could not do much, she held a desire in her heart to be her husband's strength. She was willing to pay any price for him, even if it means to forever be bonded with him in every lifetime. Remember every unreasonable power comes at a great cost"

Ichika nodded while taking her stance, Masaru took a wooden sword for the first practice. "Now today I will train you to gain some experience in fighting an opponent that specialize in speed, I will also include some techniques for you to learn after this spar. Remember to keep in mind how far your reach is, this is the domain called Seikuken."

Masaru took his first step forest using trackless step disappearing from her sight but her magic sense still picked up traces of his movements, she spins the staff above her head to accumulate kinetic force before swinging it to her left where Masaru blocked off her strike.

If she took too long to accumulate the force he might have scolded but she was faster than he expected, so the two of them continue to clash against one another.

>\/<

"This is a scam!!"

Akeno screamed when she felt like throwing the ball, it was fine after a few minutes but all of a sudden the light dots began to move faster and faster-changing lines. The worst part was the ball even give them a score!

Ingvild, however, giggled finding this toy really fun to play since it had an addictive property of wanting the player to become furious to beat it. It's like holding a game that's taunting you

[Is that all you got?]

Stephani, however, could not control her energy this well, the fun thing about this ball was the fact it changed element requirements as well. How did they find out? There was a user manual on the board that Masaru stuck.

The colour of the dot reflects what element it seeks from Red - Fire, Blue - Water, Green - Wind, Yellow - Earth, Purple - Lightning, etc. It trains reaction speed, judgement speed, control. a Nice 3 in 1 training ball that can make them nuts but they refuse to give in to this little bugger that keeps changing its patterns like a cheating device.

>\/<

Shirone was on the passive for a while now while dodging Everest's strikes, she could not find a method to bypass Everest's natural defence. She was already in her two-tailed modes but the amount of physical strength she could punch out just get shrugged off this Tanky Dragon girl, Everest who was fighting her understood something while fighting Shirone as it reminded her of the times she fought Masaru who also had similar conditions impeded on him.

It was after 20 minutes they took a break, "Shirone, I think I know what Masaru wants you to learn"

Since she experienced this before she will naturally help her little sister and fellow love rival. "Hmm?"

Everest pointed at her fist "Your Ki, senjutsu is the only thing that Masaru did not forbid. Did you ever question it yourself?"

Shirone looked at her fist, "Is Touki the only application of utilizing your inner Ki? Because I remember Masaru first developed an attack with magic but on the third day he applied it by using his muscle control and Ki control and managed to hurt me"

"What kind of force can pass through a iron wall?" Shirone asked herself as she looked at her fist for a long time then something opened her eyes when she realized, a smile form on her face as she truly felt that she can get even stronger from this point forward.

Everest naturally understood her speed is on the slow side, so what she needs first is to learn how to predict her opponent. Train her reflexive reaction sensitivity to the point that it can supplement her lack of speed till she can fix it naturally without having the need to use Dragon aura for it.

>\/<

"Haah! Haah!" Both Angelica and Jeanne were on the ground wheezing, for the sake of increasing their training speed they went and adjust the gravity to 2 times instead of 1.5, this naturally increased the amount of effort they had to use in order to keep training to increase by more than double.

It could be said the both of them had a pure blonde moment thinking that 1.5 above normal gravity was not enough but only now did they understand that the gravity was actually set perfectly for their training. So they returned it back to normal before resuming their training.

Jeanne was able to handle the incoming arrows from a distance, however, when the distance between her and Angelica becomes closer so does the difficulty of dodging increase proportional intervals between arrows became shorter the closer she got.

Angelica was in no better condition either, the closer Jeanne got the more pressure she felt. This caused her fingers to feel numb from shooting all those arrows without rest, she kept observing Jeanne's movements trying to predict her movements before shooting her arrows making them more accurate the more she trains.

"To think you can push me this hard" Angelica complimented Jeanne's persistence to keep pushing through.

Jeanne shook her head with a broad smile filled with energy despite sweating from all the running, "You're scary you know, I thought you could only shoot single arrows fast but when I got too close and you started to shoot three arrows at the same time all of the sudden. I was scared back there"

Angelica giggled, she could already more or less grasp the reason of their training "I guess I can understand why Masaru stopped our training under Diehauser's peerage for a while"

>\/<

Masaru nodded while looking at Ichika who was sitting on the ground breathing heavily, after checking up on each group and received a request to upgrade the mechanical ball to which the other girls too took a liking to Masaru could consider today's training to have been successful.

'I will personally train them for the year to prevent them from trying to imitate the combat style of my father's peerage and force them into a corner through combat to develop their own moves, but not only that the girls refuse to hold back against one another through training so it works well for me' he thought,

Since the training was over Masaru called them over to the Lounge for them to relax with a drink while Masaru will start his presentation of every peerage to look out for in the Younger Generation Rating Game.

"You all have already been notified it may be a year ahead of time, I will again have a discussion like this next year but what you all need to know if the teams I have marked we have to look out for. I will be starting with those under the Power Type group, first off let's start with Sairaorg Bael:

"Sairaorg Bael, he is the next heir of the Bael Clan and did not inherit the power of destruction of the Bael clan. He is the most dangerous one of his peerage as he trained his body to the utmost limits it's not an exaggeration to say he is at least 1.5 times stronger than Everest if not double her power with only his body.

"Although it is not confirmed if he learnt senjutsu, however, he managed to Touki due to the intensity of his training. He makes use of the basic application of touki by covering his body with it to increase his strength and speed even further. His personality is honest and straight, his fighting style is going through with a punch. No technique, meaning the moment he is tired out, it will be easy to defeat him."

The next picture displayed a beautiful young girl that was Sairaorg's queen,

"Kuisha Abaddon, this girl is the Queen. She is extremely loyal to Sairaorg as for how deep that goes it is yet to be discovered but this is a point we can make use of to disturb her psyche and defeat her if necessary. Her devil's unique ability is Power of Hole, it's similar to Seere's ability over space but this one is specifically about the space hole.

"One of the applications you can expect from this ability is it can be used to redirect the attacks, so if you intend to combat her try focusing more on close combat but don't think she is weak. Remember she is Sairaorg's Queen so expect her to know martial arts which each of you girls will be learning from now on in the human world."

Masaru gives the information he gathered of each member of the peerage and began to explain possible applications of their powers according to his understanding while also listing possible weaknesses to test which includes trampling their pride and feelings.

Once Sairaorg's team was explained and discussed Masaru looked at the girls, just like him he knew there was some things that can't be avoided.

"I am certain you girls don't like using dirty tricks to win, however for this coming Rating Game I want you girls to treat it like real combat for future references where you will be facing opponents stronger than you then you will be left with no choice but to use anything in your arsenal to survive, even if it's against a God, if insulting him can give you an opening then use it. Any questions?"

Seeing the girls did not have any questions he continued onto Rias's team, when Akeno and the girls heard his detailed explanation including the weak points to poke at they could not believe what they were hearing.

"As you may have noticed this peerage is currently a complete mess at the moment, but out of most peerages, I dare say they hold enough potential to reach the top five. If they are trained properly then it's even possible for them to defeat Sairaorg's team, that is under the assumption that they could resolve their problems. So never let your guard down if we ever face them"

Masaru then moved onto the Technique Types, "Here is the two teams I determined to be more dangerous than any other devil teams, not in power but in determination and tactics they stand above all"

At this moment Masaru said this Sona and her team just entered the house, Masaru told her she could just enter even if they are talking but she and her team were shocked. What was displayed on the monitor was Sona and Seekvaira, "Welcome Sona, you and the girls can take a seat and help yourself to a drink"

Sona and her team came greeting everyone but Sona looked at him "Are you sure you want to continue with the presentation despite us being here?"

Masaru smiled at her nodding his head as if this was nothing for him, "Naturally, I will be done in 10 minutes"

Masaru continued to talk about these two technique types, he first then selected Agares peerage explaining each member including public announced powers including possible applications of said powers to expect.

Hearing this even Sona was quite amazed at how wide Masaru's view is on each member, although only the man himself knows that it was due to him using some known similar spells in the Spell Book using them as a reference, soon it came to Sona and her current peerage.

The girls were truly astounded and a bit scared about the accurate information Masaru held which included the personal speculations of their powers, what Masaru presented today was information about the enemies ONLY.

'I will keep the counter plans a secret, since I already knew Sona will be coming today I purposely displayed my information network to her. Hopefully, it will stimulate that mind of hers and give me a real life-threatening match' Masaru thought

"The scary part about these two technique type groups is something the power types are not easily willing to do, that is to sacrifice their pieces. As you know Rating Game has a retirement system which prevents 90% of possible deaths, the only way to get killed if faced with a power greater than the retirement defence system or instant death abilities.

"In other words, unlike the power type teams that can be disrupted by taking down their emotional pillars, the technique types are not easily shaken and will sacrifice a piece for the sake of victory. This kind of opponent is terrifying when in war, so be sure to make note whenever you face someone with a similar mindset"

'To think he holds this much information even his analysis on each team and each individual is on the spot although there is a bit variable, he really is a dangerous opponent to face up against but why would he display this to me? The only thing I learnt here was... I see, a declaration huh? Very well I accept'

Sona realized that Masaru was already sending his declaration of war towards her and displaying a piece of his abilities which was enough to make her wary and eager to grow stronger as much as possible.

Masaru smiled "The good news is, the information about our team is limited"

Hearing this statement the entire Sona's peerage could not help but become serious, "The other reason why I think the technique types are most dangerous is the fact they can more or less already speculate the kind of abilities each of you hold, by gathering information about your origins. Well that's it for now, we will be holding a training session in a few hours together with Sona's peerage"

Masaru walked together with Sona towards the Kitchen where Masaru was starting to make snacks, he left the girls back there to get to know each other.

"You're really mean you know that? Displaying our information and even sharing your analysis like that, it's terrifying especially at the parts where it's accurate"

Masaru smiled at Sona's complaints, he knew she was a sore loser and hated to lose in something she herself was good in "I did it purposefully, Sona your dream is one of the few dreams I admire but because your dream is the most difficult to realize since the Old Devils' view of the society is complete crap, I have no other way to support you than to push you for now."

He continued to speak while looking into her eyes with sincerity, "Give me a fight that you can call it your best, win or lose and I swear as the Heir of Belial I will support you to build and manage schools in the Belial Territory as long as you allow our people to get employed and work for you"

Sona felt complicated wondering why, the help he gives was truly too heavy for her heart. What had she done to deserve it? "Why would you do so?"

Masaru answered without much care of it, he prefers direct and honest approaches in situations like this, "Simple, I believe a new education system is necessary for the current devils, especially for the Low and Mid class, the problem is that I have no time nor does the others of my family thus I had to come up with a plan.

"The only way I can fix this problem is by becoming a board member of your education establishment and let you manage it. Although I have another deeper reason for that, that is for later since that will take decades to realize"

Sona giggled "I see, give and take huh? Very well I accept the deal"

Masaru shook her hand while casting a devil contract between the two of them, this was to make use of when they formally announce their intentions to the devil world

'With this, I can focus on searching for the Ancient creatures since my father can manage everything in regards to the Family territory and businesses with grandfather, Sona can assist with setting up the Education side for our land. It's a win-win situation for me after all' He thought