time skip 1

Huuufffffff~~~

I laid back on the cold hard floor, my chest heaving up and down as I struggled to breathe in as much oxygen as I could at once.

Yet all that I could think of was; 'We have been fighting each other for hours now and This spar is officially the hardest and longest we've had yet'….

"It's my loss this time… and congratulations on finally becoming a Satan-class devil, Sai," I said with a smile on my face.

"Thank you, Harry…. I wouldn't have reached this point without your help. I uh, I'm really grateful," he replied, his voice thick with emotion.

I turned and noticed small tears on his face, making me look away….what? I don't like watching my friend's sap-filled moments. Though,My face hurt from how wide I smiled.

I never thought I would enjoy someone else's accomplishments this much, but this time, I did—not because of the goodness of my heart, nor some other idealistic reason, But because I witnessed just how hard he trained to reach this stage.

I was there; I helped him. I trained with him, I provided him with magical elixirs like stamina potions and regeneration elixirs, alchemically altered food—that took more trial and error to create than I'd have liked, and artifacts such as weight bracelets and body restriction clothing that aided our body training.

But seriously, all those things wouldn't have worked for anyone else but him. Who else would train his body to exhaustion every day for years without quitting half way? The only thing I can say about him is that; He reached this level of power and skill with sheer fucking will and nothing else…

I mean, just In the three years since I met him, I have never seen or heard of Sai missing a single day of training, no matter what.

His dedication spoke volumes about what kind of devil he was: a true devil that found away to harness his own sins the best way he could…Envy and Gluttony this combination of sins would have driven most devils to indulged and lose themselves but not sai. Even I was stunned when I saw how he channeled his sins….

'sheer fucking will indeed.'

Anyway, it's time to get going…

"I'm taking a shower, dude. You better take one too, or else Aunty is going to punish you by bathing you like a kid." ….

"Hahahaha, I still can't believe she did that to you," I said, trying hard—and failing—not to laugh. That memory still remained one of the funniest things I had ever witnessed happening to him.

"Ugh, shut up and forget about that…" He said but I couldn't hear what else he said after that, because I was already under the shower, enjoying the perfect water temperature and pressure.

—————

I still can't believe how fast these three years flew by or how much nonsense I had to deal with.

Still, It wasn't all that bad. I learned a lot about myself, such as discovering that I was a 'neurodivergent', —which perfectly and logically explained the constant narrator thought I have in my head…

That meant it wasn't some cool way my mind uses to sharing my story with an imaginary audience—I was sad for two days when I found that out and decided to stop reading anything related to psychology right afte— that branch of science ruined my fantasy of someday going to a reality where my story was written.

'But maybe not all hope is lost?'…. Distracting thoughts go away, away, away…

…..

Anyway, back to how I spent my three years…

After I installed the first version of the Gravity Ward/Circle for Sai and his peerage, I requested a phone like theirs, which turned out was called a Devilphone—a little on the nose if you ask me, but eh, who am I to judge?

Right after that, I dove into researching everything I could about the supernatural world using it. For a week, I read and searched all over the Devil Network about anything and everything. This brought me a lot of insights into supernatural societies, be they devils, fallen angels, exorcists, yokai, monsters, gods of different pantheons, etc.

Even though I didn't take everything I read as fact, I still used the useful information as guidelines.

Still the research took that long only because I had a fussy baby to take care of on top of my own job as a 'sage', and transferring all the knowledge in my Grimoire into my head.

Right After I had all the knowledge required dumped in my head, I started preparations to cast a modified Fidelius Charm that made me both the caster and the secret keeper, ensuring that no one in the world would notice my or Elizabeth's natures or relationship— by keeping it a secret from the world.

Casting this modified spell in the DxD reality was a bad idea, simply because this world had many powerful beings—gods or otherwise.

It weighed heavily on my soul, so much so that I could barely move or function. It didn't end there; as the burden increased with time. Still, I gritted my teeth and endured it…. Thankfully, it had gotten much easier now, to the point that I barely even notice it.

At the time, I hypothesized that because these powerful beings noticed what the spell did and tried to uncover the secret— the more they tried, the heavier the secret became until I either broke the spell or died with it. Which turned out to be the case, because I reviewed the original spell again and all it did was keeping whatever you want a secret from wizard kind and the likes only, and still needed a secret keeper….So yes, my version of the spell would have killed anyone else that attempted it.

Now, a normal person would have died long ago or broken the spell, but not me. No, I used this method to train my soul— (idiocy at its finest)—but it worked…for the most part until it began to disturb the balance of my Trifecta, which forced me to start training my body and magic just to catch up… because I didn't want to screw myself over.

This was what started my friendship with Sairaorg for real. After I noticed this problem and came up with a solution, I apparated directly to his house, tearing down whatever wards he had at the time.

Let me tell you, That wasn't a good idea, as it nearly sparked a deadly fight between me and his peerage. But hey, I was sleep-deprived and needed to return home quickly before Ellie woke up, so I think I get a pass.

Sai quickly came to the rescue before the situation escalated, breaking up the confrontation…and I had to build a new warding scheme for them as compensation, but that wasn't really a problem.

It didn't take long; I just used the same ward stone and threw together a masterpiece of a warding scheme, leaving them bewildered by how I did it.

After that, I remember taking a few flyers from Kuisha so that I could summon her and Sai, then I went home—completely forgetting the reason I had gone there in the first place.

I didn't summon them again until a week later when I finally remembered why. I made a deal with Sai to let me train with him in return for upgrading the gravity ward/circle into a full-blown gravity room/gym…

I was going to offer more but he agreed faster.

I mean, It didn't take him even a second to agree, and since then, it became a habit to take Ellie with me every day just to offload the responsibility of taking care of her onto the girls while I trained my body.

Looking back at those memories—specifically those first six months—I still can't quite decide if they were good or bad ones.

I mean, aside from the brutal physical training that left me unable to move, the sheer busy schedule alone still gives me nightmares.

For example, there was the crying baby who dictated my sleeping schedule…and… Let me tell you, I was not a fan…. I had half a mind to drop her at an orphanage a few times—oh, don't judge me. Try doing the same and then you can come and be all 'holier than thou' in front of me.

My daily job of purifying natural energy… well, that was good and relaxing; I'm just including it to complain because I didn't have time to do it more often.

Creating food that helped speed up recovery and provide more energy? That was a hassle. It was a whole new magical branch that took weeks of trial and error to find the perfect ratio of magic and natural energy infusion…That was definitely not a good time.

Still when It worked I had Sai offer me access to their library in the underworld but that's a story for another time.

Trying to figure out how to create those pesky stamina potions and regeneration elixirs wasn't a walk in the park either, but at least I had fun with this one...

And they worked wonders too, I mean imagine yourself doing push-ups, sit-ups, crunches,and running in a room with twice the gravity, and when you're done with all of this? you flop down dead tired, and can't move an inch more—you drink one of these pesky little things and in a few minutes you feel good as new…

Oh, And let's not forget about Artificts—trying to come up with artifacts that helped speed up training, enchanting them and then trying them was a whole other kind of waste of time…

So Yeah, my daily life was on hell mode during those first six months, that's for sure. Still, I went through it and came out a better man, I guess.

—————-