Chapter 5: Time Flies.
Time flew by; before Naruto or Rias knew it, they had become quite promising young adults. Of course, Zeoticus and Venelana no longer trusted their second son as much as before, due to his tendency to rush headlong into anything that caught his minimal attention. However, Oliver always made sure to keep her son safe. To be honest, the parents were still unsure why he had chosen to name her Oliver when he reincarnated her as his queen; they only knew that Naruto found the idea funny at the time, and that he still didn't regret doing it, and probably never would.
Moreover, the girl didn't seem bothered by the masculine name. She argued that the man who had given purpose to her meaningless life could call her whatever he wished, and her name, even if a man's, was her most valuable treasure.
To both parents, it was evident that the now young woman was completely in love with their son. This didn't surprise them, since despite his impulsive personality and his fascination with any kind of magic that seemed minimally interesting to him (i.e., absolutely all of it), Naruto had proven to be a good King.
He had dedicated himself to research to help the girls overcome the stigma of being rejected by their society due to the life debt they owed him. He treated them like family, something normal in their clan. Unlike Rias, who also considered them family, Naruto focused on helping them grow alongside him, forming a group that Zeoticus himself considered incredibly strong for a relatively young group of devils.
There was no doubt that, at seventeen, the strength they showed would far surpass that of several older High-Class Devils by the time they reached twenty. For example, his political nephew could barely fight Naruto on equal terms.
Despite his obsession with mastering all the magic in the world, Naruto had not neglected his physique. Thanks to Rias and his inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality, the young man had discovered how to use demonic energy to strengthen the body. He had even managed to replicate the "Black Flash" from one of Rias's favorite shounen, and he taught it to anyone willing to pay a modest price, as it was an incredibly powerful ability that he wouldn't just give away to any idiot... not that he could do so easily, as replicating it figuratively required the stars to align.
However, if what Rias had told him was true, Naruto had actually broken the rules of the anime from which he extracted the technique. The fact that he could guarantee a Black Flash at will was, in fact, the truly impossible part. Within the original series, so many factors outside the sorcerer's control were required to ensure a Black Flash that Naruto's students didn't demand it precisely because they understood that what he did was unusual. Nevertheless, they managed to perform the enhanced blow at 2.5 if the stars aligned for them to achieve it.
Because of this, the Rating Games had to be modified. This was because the abilities Naruto taught (which he had managed to decipher from the anime world, thinking they were documentary series) were not the only power he had discovered. In fact, he needed to have a very serious conversation with him before he decided to go on a quest to find Acnologia, the black dragon, or the seven dragon balls.
The point is that, thanks to his dojo, where he taught others the wonders he had discovered and where he even sold some of his custom-designed weapons, the Rating Games were forced to change.
One might think that the devils didn't take a child who claimed to have achieved the impossible seriously. And, in fact, they didn't at first. However, when suddenly the few who came to see him, more out of curiosity than conviction, literally began to outperform everyone else, the "business" entered an explosive boom. Now, the techniques and weapons created by Naruto became the engine of a revolution in the games.
The boy, in fact, never left the Underworld. He opted to stay instead of going to the human world with his sister, who had left at twelve in search of adventures. He preferred to get involved in this because it would allow him to witness even more amazing magic and see how far devils could go with the cool superpowers he was developing.
Naruto, along with Roygun Belphegor, became so actively involved in the rating games league that they essentially transformed the rules, turning them into a real sport. They implemented a complete system with leagues, promotional merchandise, and even tours with the best players. This caused an existential crisis in Ajuka, who never imagined that a child could drive such a massive revolution in the system he himself created. Sirzechs, on the other hand, was immensely proud. In fact, he decorated his room with all the official league promotional merchandise as soon as it went on sale, always being the first in line, unless Grayfia went to fetch him beforehand.
In fact, many already took him for granted as the champion of this year's youth league. This was because he himself had imposed an age limit for the official rating games and had publicly declared, on a couple of occasions, that he would enter the league as a participant at the same time as his sister. Moreover, since he had firsthand access to the latest techniques... given that he was the developer of those techniques, and the weapons that were for sale, people were convinced that there was no way the young man would lose to anyone in the Youth division.
Especially because he assured them that Shiron—his beloved, precious, beautiful, and many other adjectives that the Gremory patriarch preferred not to recall at that moment—had achieved something incredible that guaranteed him victory over anyone.
To be honest, Zeoticus wasn't sure he wanted to know what the hell he had created for him to act that way. Not even when he created the cursed tools did he act like that. He only hoped it wasn't another craziness that completely broke the system; they had already had enough of those.
However, setting his heir aside, the Gremory council was practically forced to lift the probation period early due to his numerous achievements. For the prestige of the clan, it was much more advantageous to say that "the heir of the clan" had achieved such feats than to simply attribute them to "a son of the clan."
As for Rias, her love for her princess was undeniable, but... honestly, he felt a certain disappointment. He had recently learned that she had acquired two incredibly useful Sacred Gear users and that she had somehow disrupted some kind of Fallen Angel movement in the city where she currently lived... a matter that was honestly worrying and that kept Sirzechs busy trying to clarify what had happened. However, compared to her older brother, the girl had stagnated.
She was not weak, quite the opposite; she got much stronger every year. However, her peerage had indeed stagnated. Akeno seemed to have developed a sadistic streak and looked increasingly emotionally unstable. Kiba was a ticking time bomb: he almost jumped on little Eta when the girl presented them with a new line of swords called "Excalibur Morgan." Naruto had to give him a tremendous beating for it, which showed that the boy still hadn't overcome his trauma with sacred swords and didn't understand the political repercussions it would entail if he achieved his goal.
As for Koneko, he didn't even know where to begin. The girl had several issues. For starters, she looked twelve when she was actually fifteen, almost sixteen. She had the emotionality of a stone. And finally, there was the vampire who literally wouldn't leave his room because he was afraid of his own shadow.
He still didn't know his daughter's new pieces, as they had recently been reincarnated, and Rias had not yet brought them home to introduce them to the family. Or, in Naruto's case, for him to bombard them with so many questions that the poor souls wouldn't be able to answer one before he changed the subject. Nevertheless, for his daughter's sake, he sincerely hoped they were strong, as Sirzechs had found a legal loophole in the engagement contract: if Rias defeated Raiser in a rating game, the engagement would be annulled.
Not that he was particularly worried, as Revan had already made it quite clear (and without subtlety) that Ravel was very interested in his second son and that he wouldn't mind revising the engagement agreement if he wished.
It was a rather subtle way of expressing his desire to participate in his son's businesses and that he wouldn't mind forcing an engagement between his daughter and him to achieve it. For Naruto, the idea might be functional, given his interest in unraveling the secrets of the Phoenix clan's magic, and besides, he found Ravel charming. The real problem lay in the insistence of the elder Zekram on marrying Rias quickly. As the daughter of a main clan, her political value was immense, promising great benefits both for the Gremory clan and, consequently, for the Bael household, from which she was descended.
"Zeoticus... I think we might have a problem," Venelana commented with a mix of nervousness and worry as she entered her husband's office.
"Your father came again to try and convince Naruto to marry his granddaughter," the Gremory patriarch guessed.
Since Naruto strengthened the Underworld—thanks to a combination of luck, stubbornness, and his particular inability to distinguish reality from fiction (or, as Zeoticus called it, his 'lucky madness')—practically all the clans with daughters his age, and even some with already spinster daughters, sought to engage them to him. Their goal was clear: to benefit from his son's genius and his future discoveries.
Naruto knew how to handle those matters, and impressively, he managed to do so without insulting anyone, something he wasn't worried about.
"Uh... yes," Venelana admitted. She saw no reason to hide her father's weekly attempt to convince her son to marry his legal cousin. "But that's not the problem."
"Then what happened?" Zeoticus asked, now with a concerned look, hoping Naruto hadn't offended the old wolf Bael.
"Basically... he kidnapped his cousin and took her to the human world," Venelana explained.
She wasn't entirely sure what it implied: if Naruto was interested in his niece, or if it was simply a not-so-subtle way to annoy her grandfather and screw him over in a way that only Naruto understood.
"Why?" Zeoticus asked.
Normally, Naruto wouldn't act this way. If he was looking for a unique and powerful magic user, he would resort to his usual method... although, thinking about it, that was his son's typical behavior... kidnapping them and returning them once he had achieved his goal.
However, his niece possessed the Power of Destruction, an ability that Naruto completely mastered. Therefore, the fact that he kidnapped the young woman made no sense.
"Something about helping her overcome her limits, that he was incredibly bored, and a pinky promise," Venelana commented, in sync with her husband. As far as she knew, the girl wasn't a prodigy nor did she have new abilities that Naruto was unaware of, and she didn't understand the pinky promise part.
"And how did your father take it?" Zeoticus asked, hoping he wouldn't have to do anything drastic with his son.
"He said, and I quote: 'If you don't come back with a baby inside you, don't bother coming back to my house'," Venelana said, rolling her eyes. Honestly, her father should have at least a little consideration for the girl, considering she's literally his only granddaughter... besides Rias... with the Power of Destruction.
"Then where's the problem?" the Gremory patriarch asked in turn, not perceiving the difficulty. If Zekram wasn't clamoring for bloodshed, but only for his granddaughter to conceive a child with his offspring, which would inevitably lead to marriage or the young woman's exile until the pregnancy was confirmed... then there was no immediate crisis to resolve.
"The other Lords were there and took the girl's kidnapping as a genuine show of Naruto's interest in her, and they aren't exactly happy," Venelana revealed, exposing the real problem: that Naruto, once again, had gotten them into political trouble through his recklessness and idiocy.
"When he returns... I'll make him clean the stables with a toothbrush," Zeoticus growled, dropping his head onto the desk. This ignored the fact that Naruto had, in fact, devised a way to keep those areas clean after that had been his punishment for the sixth time.
end of the chapter.