As Orion spent days sucking away inordinate amounts of energy that the two holy women were producing under the effects of Tantric, things in the rest of the world had only grown far more intense. Not only had Irina and Xenovia missed the main event of Kokabiel's appearance due to Orion occupying them, but the invisible influence of an apparent multiversal Ophis had taken its second and third victims.
The second loss had been one far more terrifying for everyone on Rias' side, scaring Koneko to the point that she refused to stay anywhere other than right beside Rias at all times. At the same time, Issei had become far too intense with his training, pushing himself to near-death every day. Kiba was the one who was lost second, and his death had been witnessed by all three of them.
A purple pillar of light shot through the sky, right on top of Kiba. A brief, shadowy replica of the man became momentarily visible within the thick beam of light and merged into him right as it dissipated, leaving the charred corpse of their once close friend.
The third, ironically enough, had been Kokabiel himself. Before the traitorous Fallen Angel could cause any significant trouble with his plot by trying to kill Rias and Sona to incite another war, he had died.
With such instability rampant in the world, Rias had chosen to hole herself up completely, away from any dangerous events, to make sure that she didn't get caught up in a random burst of Infinity and Chaos. Having given the same order to both Issei and Koneko, she was patiently waiting for Orion to completely saturate the conversion circle that she had made in her bedroom using his body. Its whole purpose was to convert the holy energy extracted from Irina and Xenovia into Demonic Energy and store it.
On another note, Orion finally took the chance to devour Raiser's pawn, which he'd attached himself to during the chaos of the battle. Unfortunately, he was bound to be disappointed by the results. Let alone providing him with any magical energy boosts, he couldn't even get the pawn's memories. All he could do was to perfectly imitate her physical form. While disappointed by the limitation, he wasn't disheartened. There were plenty of other ways for him to get stronger.
When he was finally finished with the two church women, both of them were firmly in the lower end of the Ultimate-Class devil range of strength. At least according to their physique and magical power. Both of them had crossed a hundred thousand units of maximum magical energy, firmly surpassing Rias in quantity. But Orion had outright seen the redhead host of his demonstrate the precise difference between the quality of the two different magical energies, with hers firmly surpassing Irina and Xenovia by a factor of ten. So the actual difference in power was murky at best.
Any doubts that the two women may have had in their pleasure-filled haze were completely cleared when they sensed their strengths after the fact, giving them the confidence to face Kokabiel. Of course, they had no idea about how much the world had changed in the few days that they had disappeared. That would be a surprise for which Orion wouldn't be there to help them, since today was the day that he and Rias were leaving, while Irina and Xenovia were still recovering in the church.
"Are you sure you don't want to wait for a little longer and bid your farewells to what remains of your Peerage?" Orion asked.
"Getting cold feet?" Rias asked. "Or do you miss those two holy cocksleeves of yours? By the way, is it normal for me to occasionally receive dreamy images of the depraved things that you did with them while I sleep?"
"I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling reluctant," he said. "But we can't take them with us. And I really did focus mostly on fucking them to the point that no other thoughts remained in their minds beyond my cock and the pleasure. As for the second thing, no idea. Maybe your repressed perversion is coming out or something." He shrugged.
"Nontheless, I have to say, I'm impressed by your speed. I'd thought you would need a few more days to collect the necessary amount of energy," Rias said.
"Yeah, if you would let me work with you, we would have been done in less than a day. All I needed to do was fuck you until your suppression completely broke."
"You can't release the suppression that easily. The peak Middle-Class devil is a hard cap for me. Beyond that requires me to stay in a specific reality for at least a month. I call that syncing up with my current reality."
"I'll find a way to take care of that as long as I have enough motivation," he said, smirking. "Plus, you're forgetting about the recovery enhancement. I can instantly make you recover to your peak state with a single orgasm. Even with the suppression, a day would be more than enough."
"You know what you are?" She stepped toward him. "You are..." she pointed at his chest, digging her finger into his flesh, "a playboy that can't help himself from hitting on me even after spending a whole week defiling two innocent church maidens in a threesome."
"Jealous?" He asked. "I wouldn't be completely averse to monogamy if it were you."
"All right, come on, mister playboy," she huffed and stepped away. "It's time we started preparing the Inderdimensional Reality Shifting Complex Magic Circle."
"What a mouthful, I'd rather fill your mouth with something else, you know," his words immediately evoked a disgusted expression from Rias.
"With my tongue," he emphasized. "I was talking about a kiss. Get your head out of the gutter, Rias."
…
Soon, Rias guided Orion in forming an intricate and highly complex magic structure that was completely different from the magic circles that he'd seen before. I was so complex that Orion spent almost an hour simply forming the structure accurately and correctly under Rias's guidance, and even then, it felt a little unfinished to him.
Even though she had called it a circle, it was a whole three-dimensional formation that rose high up and formed into a familiar yet distorted cocoon shape—the same one with a slight opening on top, reminiscent of an unbloomed flower, that he had seen when he first encountered Rias. However, quite a few parts of the circle were incomprehensibly unconnected and downright incomplete to him. As if certain runes and lines were interrupted halfway through without any finishing point.
That was when Rias stepped in and used her own energy to meld with Orion's structure to continue working on it. At first, he was confused, seeing the circle become more complete and clear, unsure why Rias hadn't just let him do it if it was that straightforward. Then the internal structure of the spell started morphing in front of his eyes, no longer the consistent shape that it had been before. Even though he himself was a part of it, he couldn't quite understand exactly what was going on as the inscriptions within continued warping. Even parts of his own body were warping right in front of him, yet he couldn't feel anything amiss.
"This is a four-dimensional structure…" It didn't take him long to reach that conclusion. The warping he sensed occurred because the structure was incomprehensible to him and was processed in such a manner instead of actual warping.
"Traveling through the multiverse isn't exactly the simplest of things," Rias stepped back with beads of sweat covering her forehead. She raised her arm and wiped it off before turning to him. "The warping we see occurs when a three-dimensional being attempts to process something that has a four-dimensional structure. It's completely stable, we just can't actually comprehend the structure."
"Then how are you able to make it?"
"Magic," she said flatly.
"Tsk," Orion clicked his tongue and crossed his arms. "Are you teasing me? You are the reason I couldn't spend any time learning magic."
"Get better at multitasking then," she said, shrugging uncaringly. "Not my fault if you can't focus on anything else when fucking someone."
"Don't push it, Rias," he said. "It's been a long time since I truly unleashed all my desires on someone. Tread lightly, lest I decide to take advantage of you."
"It's barely been two hours since you stopped fucking those two cocksleeves of yours."
"And that's two hours too many."
"Try anything, and I'll destroy you, especially your cock," she huffed, crossing her arms.
"Wanna try? Testing your resistance against my sexual prowess… It's a losing game. I will destabilize and take care of any spell that you think of casting before the energy ever escapes your being."
"All right, fine," Rias huffed, crossing her arms. "I was just teasing you a little, and you directly started resorting to tangible threats. Pussy."
Orion stood up and, without a word, started approaching Rias.
At first, she looked up at him defiantly, but his pace didn't slow down as he stared directly into her eyes while drawing closer to her. Her confidence quickly started melting.
"Orion…"
He didn't say anything, almost at arm's length away from her as he kept walking. She started stepping back as her confident expression wavered, making way for a slightly worried one with hesitation in her eyes.
"Orion?" She felt the wall behind her and let out a startled gasp, unable to step back any further as he stopped right in front of her face. "W-what are you doing?"
He raised his hand and held her chin, turning her head a little higher. "You really look down on me, don't you?"
"I was just playing around…" She said in a small voice. "I'll teach you magic. Promise."
"Not that, honey," he smiled mirthlessly. "This whole act of yours, stepping back, letting me feel like the big strong man in this relationship... Yet inside, you are perfectly calm and collected, as if everything is under your control. Makes everything you say or do far more demeaning than it should be."
"I don't get you," Rias sighed and said flatly. "I joke around with you, you have a problem; I stroke your ego, you have a problem; What do you want?"
"You're smart, I'm sure you'll figure it out," he said. "In the meantime, I'm going to figure out a way to break through that mask of yours and actually do something that gets your heart racing."
"Be my guest," she shook her head dismissively. "Not like I've spent the past five years all by myself, navigating this endless multiverse by myself."
"Well, you're no longer alone. And I'm not sure if you've realized it, you can't get rid of me no matter how much you try. Unless you have a way to survive the destruction of your own heart. In time, even that won't get you free of me once I ingrain myself deeper with you."
Rias didn't say anything, but Orion's expression suddenly changed.
"Hey…"
"What?"
"That actually made your heart skip a beat," he said with a victorious smile. "You're just scared that I won't be there once you move to the next reality…"
"Dumbass…" She looked at him annoyedly, putting her hand on his chest and pushing him away. "Get away, your breath stinks."
"That's physically impossible."
"Do you want to learn magic or not?" She asked flatly. "Keep fucking around and see how I reciprocate it."
"Fine," he said with a laugh. "Let's activate your special magic circle."
***
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