Allen's vision blurred strangely, as if he had forgotten something important.
Once again, Allen was somewhere else, in a place where life was like a futuristic movie filled with cyborgs, robots, and flying cars.
....
(Flashback)
The smell of metal and gunpowder, the fire and death... all of it struck Allen, who should still have been at Kuoh's Occult Research Club.
"That arm..."
Allen heard a voice and looked at his arm. It was metallic and shiny, with energy circuits running through it.
"That arm reminds me of the insolent bastard who thought he was all that but died for nothing, though this guy seems more functional."
The contemptuous words made Allen focus.
Standing in front of him was a gigantic black metal figure. It was a robot, or at least that was Allen's first impression.
"Allen Walker, you show up out of nowhere and never stop being a nuisance... Are you that eager to die? Arasaka has already permitted me to kill you..."
Allen felt disgust toward the machine standing before him. He had seen a vision of this man killing a girl with turquoise skin and pink eyes. He recognized her from his previous dream.
"Rebecca... You're Adam Smasher!" Allen growled through gritted teeth, aiming his Malorian Arms 3516, a modified .45-caliber handgun held in his right, human hand.
Smasher stopped moving and looked at Allen for a moment. Then he disappeared, reappearing behind Allen, who raised his silver arm to block the punch.
The collision sparked and rang with a metallic impact.
"Sandevistan..." Allen said contemptuously. He didn't know what a Sandevistan was, didn't know who Adam Smasher was, and didn't know why he despised him, but he had to kill him!
Allen fired. The bullets struck Smasher's body, and the latter immediately sensed danger and dodged, moving as fast as sound itself. Allen's bullets felt like antimatter rifle rounds.
Smasher charged at Allen, grabbed him by the neck, and slammed him into a building. They crashed through the walls as Allen fired twice, then used his metal arm to punch Smasher and break free.
Allen raised his arm, which transformed into an energy cannon. He charged the shot and aimed in less than a second, but Smasher was already there. He grabbed the arm head-on and deflected the shot, which tore through the building behind him.
"Smasher!" Allen shouted as the massacre had only just begun.
(End of Flashback)
....
Allen returned to reality.
The air in the club seemed to be sucked into an impossible void in the center of Allen's palm. Rias and Sona gasped in unison, clutching their chests as they fell to their knees.
It wasn't pain. It was a feeling of being completely stripped bare, followed by an overwhelming sense of fulfillment that appeared in no book of demonic laws.
The Evil Pieces didn't simply merge with him; they were devoured by his essence. In the process, the threads of authority belonging to the two heiresses twisted, knotted together, and returned to them bearing a new signature of power that made them tremble to their very cores.
"What... what have you done?!" Sona exclaimed, gasping as her eyes widened behind her glasses. She could still feel her connection to her peerage, but there was now a new central axis, a gravitational sun that wasn't herself, but Allen.
Their bond wasn't that of a master and servant. It was something deeper, as if she had become part of his very existence. Tsubaki staggered, sensing through Sona that her hierarchy had just been altered by a phenomenon that defied all logic.
Akeno hugged herself, her black wings trembling violently. "Ara ara... this isn't reincarnation. Buchou, look at his eyes..."
The redhead couldn't look away. Allen was sitting there with a blank stare, but his aura had stopped being purely passive and had become dominant.
Rias could feel the Power of Destruction in her blood bowing before him, not out of fear, but recognition.
"Allen... you belong to me, but at the same time..." Rias crawled closer, pressing her forehead against his with a devotion that bordered on religious reverence. "I feel like I'm the one who can't exist without your orders now. You've broken the Evil Piece system... you've become a King to us, without a crown but with every right to the title."
"I... I don't know what happened." Allen was already confused by his vision of another reality, and now he still had to figure out what had just happened.
Koneko rubbed herself against his leg, her pupils narrowing into feline slits as she purred with an intensity that made the floor vibrate. "You smell... like home, but also like something immense."
Allen was unaware that he had just used a fragment of his latent 'Omnipotence' to rewrite the laws of the Underworld.
"I'm sorry. I don't know what I did... I don't want to take everything away from you," Allen said apologetically.
At that moment, as if his latent power understood his command, the domain shrank and returned Rias and Sona to their positions as Kings, though not completely. Their authority was now shared with him.
Everyone was in shock, especially the two Kings. The fact that Allen could grant and take away authority as easily as breathing was almost infuriating.
Tsubaki adjusted her glasses. "Allen-kun unconsciously promoted himself to King, taking the positions of Rias Gremory and the Student Council President. But now, consciously, he's chosen to share that authority..."
"But how is that even possible?" Allen asked Sona and Rias. "What am I?"
Rias and Sona gasping as the flow of power stabilized into a tripartite balance that defied thousands of years of magical laws.
Sona was the first to recover her voice. She adjusted her glasses with a hand that was still visibly trembling, her eyes fixed on Allen with a mixture of scientific terror and fascination that threatened to consume her logic.
"There are no records of anything like this in any text from the Underworld, Allen," Sona said breathlessly, rising with Tsubaki's help as the latter supported her as if the world had just shifted on its axis. "The Evil Pieces were created by Ajuka Beelzebub based on human chess. The King is the unique piece, the core. For you to have absorbed two Pawn pieces from different clans and, instead of dying from blood rejection, promoted yourself to a shared King... it's a mathematical impossibility. You're not a demon, but... it's as if you've just hacked the very essence of our race."
Rias wrapping her arms around Allen's neck in a hug that mixed a master's protectiveness with a subordinate's devotion. Her blue eyes burned with a new intensity, a connection that vibrated in her soul every time Allen's heart beat. "What you are..." Rias paused, kissing Allen on the cheek with such devotion that Akeno let out an envious sigh. "You're a mystery that even the Underworld's system can't contain. I can feel your power as something warm, something that doesn't destroy but accepts. You didn't become our servant, Allen; you became our other half. If my brother Sirzechs finds out about this, the entire world will tremble."
Akeno slipped to Allen's other side, intertwining her fingers with his as her fallen angel wings wrapped around him like a cocoon of black silk. "Ara ara, it seems our sheriff doesn't just clean up the yard; he also rewrites the laws of Heaven and Hell as he pleases," she purred, her gaze filled with a lust that was now tinged with sacred respect. "Whatever you are, Allen-kun, you're now the center of our universe. I'm afraid Sona and Rias will have to learn to share the throne... both on the chessboard and in this room."
"Well, all this loyalty is a little embarrassing. Although I suppose I should do some training. I don't know what powers I have, but at this rate, I wouldn't even be able to beat the weakest demon. Also, what are we going to do about my identity? Won't it be strange for a human to be part of a demon's peerage? If we say that you're lending me to each other, that could explain why I belong to both peerages, but I'm still human."
Rias pulled away just a few inches from Allen, her eyes shining with fierce determination as one of her hands descended to intertwine firmly with his. The idea that Allen considered himself 'weak' seemed almost comical after what she had just witnessed, but she understood his point.
"Allen, you've just 'marked' our souls with your authority... Even though you let me become King again, I can feel that you could take the position away from me if you wanted to," Rias said, her voice regaining the velvety, commanding tone that characterized her so well. "Don't worry, it doesn't bother me... on the contrary, it's... warm, as if a part of me bears your mark~."
Everyone looked at Rias, who blushed. Sona felt something similar and looked away as well.
"As for your training, don't worry. Between Akeno, Koneko, and me, we'll turn you into someone capable of bringing the Underworld to its knees. Not just through power, but through technique."
"Hey, don't you have a little too much faith in me?" Allen asked with a smile. He didn't know how powerful demons were, but there were definitely unimaginable monsters out there.
Rias hugged him against her chest. "Allen, Sona and I are high-class demons in terms of raw demonic power, and yet you subdued us effortlessly."
Sona, regaining her professional demeanor despite the faint blush still lingering on her cheeks, adjusted her glasses and nodded at the boy's suggestion. "I also believe you have enormous potential, but we need to deal with the immediate problems. The idea of 'loaning' pieces between the Gremory and Sitri peerages is a bureaucratic anomaly, but it's the only legal cover we have to prevent the Devil Council from declaring Allen a forbidden research subject. We'll say you're a human specimen with a unique Sacred Gear... or something like that." Sona paused, looking at Allen, who was still nestled against Rias's chest. "However, your presence can't remain hidden forever."
Akeno let out a mischievous "Ufufu" as her black wings brushed against Allen's shoulder. "How modest, for a human who has claimed two heiresses from the strongest demonic clans as his own before lunchtime," the black-haired girl laughed, leaning closer to gently bite his earlobe. "But you're right. If we're going to introduce you as our 'shared treasure,' we'll have to teach you to use those muscles for something other than swinging a baseball bat and wielding fire extinguishers. Get ready, because lessons with Rias-oneesan and me can be... quite intense."
Koneko, who hadn't moved from his lap, simply tightened her grip on his leg. "I'll teach you how to punch," she declared flatly. "The other two are weird, but I'll make you genuinely strong."
"Training makes sense, but what's a Sacred Gear?" Allen couldn't help asking.
Rias settled back onto Allen's lap, resting her chin on his shoulder as she played with a strand of his white hair.
Upon hearing the question, her blue eyes shone with that mixture of academic seriousness and protective affection.
"Sacred Gears, or 'Holy Artifacts,' are gifts that the Biblical God left in the human world. They're tools with specific powers that manifest in humans with special potential. Some can heal, others grant holy swords, and the most powerful ones, the Longinus, have the potential to kill gods or supreme-ranking demons. Since you're able to interact with our Evil Pieces in such a strange way, the world will assume you possess an exceptionally rare one."
Sona crossed her arms, interjecting in her methodical tone. "Exactly. It's the only way high-class demons will be able to rationalize your existence without panicking. If we tell them you're simply 'Allen' and that you can rewrite our laws just because you feel like it, they'll come after you with everything they've got. A Sacred Gear is a safe label, a mask that will conceal whatever you really are for a while... Of course, some people simply won't buy that story, but we have no choice."
Akeno let out a mischievous giggle and ran her tongue over her lips, whispering near Allen's ear as her chest pressed against his arm. "Ara ara, Allen-kun... although right now, the only 'sacred artifact' I'm interested in is the one right in front of me. It doesn't matter whether you have a Gear or not. To us, you're already the most precious thing in existence. But tell me, don't you feel anything inside you? Any voice, a strange warmth, or a desire to summon something other than puddings and fire extinguishers?"
"Huh? Well, I don't know. Hmm, there's indeed something inside me that makes things appear and now lets me do things."
"That's very vague... We'll have to analyze that power during training," Tsubaki said, her expression softening slightly.
Koneko simply looked up at him intently. "Whether you have a Gear is secondary. What matters is the engine. And your engine is weird, but I like it." The little Nekoshou closed her eyes, enjoying the energy emanating from him.
"The Biblical God exists?" Allen blinked as if he'd just heard something incredible. "Well, if demons exist, nothing surprises me anymore. But why create something like that? Wasn't God's policy nonintervention and letting people have free will? It seems like He knew He wouldn't be around much longer, or maybe He left something for humanity before He went away. Haha."
Rias fell silent for a moment, exchanging a melancholy look with Akeno and Sona before focusing on Allen again. Mentioning the Creator always left a trail of ash in the air for those who knew the truth about the supernatural world. She moved closer, caressing his cheek with an almost reverent gentleness.
"You're perceptive, Allen... but the reality is sadder than the philosophy of free will," Rias said with a heavy sigh. "The Biblical God existed, but He died a long time ago, along with the original Four Great Satans, during the Great War of the Three Factions. The Sacred Gears weren't just farewell gifts; they're automated systems that continued functioning after His departure. Nobody knows exactly why He created them, but thanks to them, humanity has had a chance to defend itself in a world full of monsters."
"God is dead?" Allen's eyes widened. The way the Biblical God was portrayed made Him seem like an absolute existence, an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent being... perhaps He wasn't as powerful as Allen had thought?
Akeno lowered her gaze, and a trace of dark electricity ran across her black wings, reflecting her own conflict with her celestial heritage. "Ara ara, what a curious way of looking at it, Allen-kun. You talk about Him as if He were a father who forgot to close the door on his way out," she laughed, a hint of bitterness in her voice that soon gave way to her usual playfulness.
Sona adjusted her glasses, her strategic mind processing Allen's words. "It's ironic that you mention it. Sacred Gears are essentially anomalies in the world's system. For you, a human, to have become the central axis of two demonic clans is the greatest and most beautiful 'error' that system has ever produced, assuming your power really is a Sacred Gear."
Koneko simply tightened her embrace around Allen's arm, as if she feared that merely talking about 'God' might cause Him to take Allen away from her.
"Wait, the Sacred Gear thing was just a cover story? Can you tell whether I have one? I mean, do I actually have one?"
Rias grew thoughtful, tilting her head as her fingers traced invisible circles over Allen's bare chest, feeling the warmth that didn't seem to have any logical origin. 'How is it possible that he doesn't know what he's radiating?' she wondered before answering with an enigmatic smile that mixed curiosity with almost maternal tenderness.
"It's difficult to say, Allen. Normally, a Sacred Gear manifests in response to an intense emotion or a critical need, but you... you seem to be something different. You weren't a human with a special artifact. You were special yourself," Rias explained, her eyes gleaming with a crimson spark.
Most wielders have an object, a gauntlet, a ring, or a sword. But we can't see anything external on you. Still, the way you absorbed the Pawn pieces suggests that your body is the vessel for something that 'rewrites' reality.
Akeno let out a husky whisper, her lips almost brushing Allen's ear as her hand moved dangerously down his abdomen. "Ara ara, Allen-kun... if you don't have one, then you're a biological 'Miracle.' But if you do, I'd love to see how it awakens under... the right stimuli~. Maybe it doesn't activate through danger, but through pleasure. Wouldn't you like to test that theory with us?"
The black-haired girl gave an electrifying giggle, feeling Allen's aura react to her closeness, expanding subtly but dominantly.
Sona, observing the scene with a seriousness that was beginning to crack under the club's intimate atmosphere, intervened in a firm voice. "For now, Allen, we'll assume you have a 'Gear.' If you try to summon something and no weapon appears, don't worry. Your greatest power seems to be your ability to make the impossible seem like an ordinary high school joke. But be careful... if you really have a Longinus-level Gear hidden behind that shameless attitude of yours, the entire world will come to claim you."
Koneko simply buried her face deeper into Allen's arm, letting out a small growl. "Gear or no Gear... he's still my scratching post. And I'm not giving him to anyone else."
Allen laughed at Koneko's declaration.