NOVEL NEXT DxD 0099: Trap
Abaddon clinically observed the feminine ‘boy’ who had just come out of the coffin. Though it felt like a shame to call ‘him’ a boy, Gasper Vladi was indeed a male. With silver hair and extremely pale skin along with blood-red fluttering eyes, he looked very much like a female vampire. Sadly, he was not.
‘If I was into that kind of stuff, he could’ve been turned into a proper sissy…’ Abaddon thought of a weird kink that a few devils he knew had. Feeling an uncomfortable shiver creep along his neck at the thought of this kink, he shook his head and left the room, letting Rias and her peerage do their whole reunion thing. Even though it didn’t really seem to be going very well with how much Gasper seemed to be crying and resisting.
Abaddon let Rias deal with the whiney femboy and went back upstairs. He cast a magic circle, ‘Oh?’ He noticed something and teleported immediately.
…
Sona was walking on the street after school ended. She was going to the new residence that she was essentially forced to move into. That was when she was attacked by a lightning bolt.
She barely cast a water shield for herself and jumped away as the lightning broke through her water barrier and destroyed a section of the pavement. She felt her arm stinging and saw that a part of her sleeve was slightly burnt and torn and her arm had a burn mark.
She quickly cast a defensive water spell that surrounded her as she looked around for her assailant, but there was none. Just as she frowned, she saw multiple fireballs approaching her water barrier.
“Damn it, this place isn’t hidden…” She could see that the assailant was attacking her in the presence of other humans. It wasn’t too big a deal, but it would be troublesome for her to wipe the memories of each and every individual who saw their fight.
She cast another spell that spread the ground with water. It would allow the assailant’s movements to be perceived by her. She also took flight and floated a bit above the ground.
She couldn’t detect anyone’s presence through the water that was spread all around her on the ground, which told her that her enemy was also airborne.
‘Guess that also works…’ Wanting to get rid of this unknown assassin quickly while also not wanting more people to see their fight, she took to the skies.
Just as she thought that she’d lured her enemy toward herself, she felt multiple lightning strikes from all around her. She cast multiple water barriers, which were much more sturdy, to defend against those strikes. Some of the remnants of the lightning broke through her barriers since Water wasn’t the best thing to use to deal with lightning, but they didn’t harm her. At best, her uniform got ripped in some places.
But as she was focused on those strikes, she didn’t notice an artifact being thrown at her.
Just as the lightning died down and Sona took a breath, she felt something wrapping around her wings. She turned and saw that it was a set of enchanted chains that were rapidly wrapping around her wings. Without their support, Sona would be forced to descend. Even though she could use demonic energy to float for a while and slow her descent, she would be like a sitting duck in front of this unknown enemy if she exhausted her demonic energy by staying airborne.
Just as she gathered some water into a sharp blade to cut through those chains, the blade was attacked by a fireball that caused it to evaporate away. At the same time, Sona felt the air current around her getting more violent as she was forced to descend if she didn’t want to get hurled away from her location. It would be difficult for her to stay airborne under such violent wind even if her wings weren’t restrained. But right now, her state was extremely precarious and she could only use demonic energy to keep herself afloat.
As she descended toward the ground, she used the water that she’d previously summoned and gathered it under herself as a platform to stay high up instead of standing on the ground.
Still unable to find her unknown assassin, she decided to summon rain. Although the gathered clouds would also support the assassin’s lightning, she would have a much greater advantage with her control over water in that scenario. At the very least, she would be able to pinpoint the location of her attacker.
She quickly processed many things such as the assailant’s control over their lightning and their attacking efficiency and decided that it would be better for her to summon the rain to get the necessary advantage.
‘An acceptable exchange…’ She thought while casting a large magic circle to summon rain, and just as it was completed, more lightning fell toward her from all around her. There was no specific direction that the bolts came from.
She could barely defend herself against those attacks by making the water platform that she was using get higher and avoid the strikes. But it came at the cost of making almost half of that water disappear due to the lightning striking the water, causing Sona’s footing to get smaller.
Even then, she got struck by a few stray bolts that served as nothing but an annoyance that ripped her clothes.
‘It’s fine, the rain will naturally give me a home-ground advantage…’ As long as there was enough water, Sona could keep fighting for hours. It wasn’t the control that required her to use most of her demonic energy, it was summoning the necessary quantities of water.
As Sona’s frustration was rising due to being unable to identify her attacker and having to passively defend herself, she felt a drop of water falling on her, ‘Finally…’ She thought as a huge downpour of rain started.
Soon enough, with rain, came the thunder. Her attacker was clearly amplifying the thunder in the clouds and manipulating it.
‘Found you!’ Sona felt a presence almost a mile away due to sensing the barrier that blocked her water from touching the assailant, ‘You’re like a fucking camper…’ She thought annoyedly as she teleported to her attacker’s location.
Though just as she appeared there, she instantly regretted it. She did indeed see the silhouette of her attacker. But the silhouette disappeared with the attacker as four stone walls were created surrounding her.
‘Even earth…’ After seeing three elements of lightning, fire, and wind, she’d hoped that there wouldn’t be any more, but her hopes were dashed, ‘I expected as much…’ Just because she hoped for that to be the case, she wasn’t caught off guard. If the attacker could have three elements, they could have four.
She quickly created a huge serpent using all of the water that was still in her range and latched herself onto it, escaping the encroachment of the earth cage, ‘Tsk… if only I could free my wings…’ She was annoyed. She’d already tried, but the binders that were holding her wings seemed to be made of something that restricted devils and she couldn’t free herself in a short amount of time.
Just as she escaped from the cage, she sensed the presence of the attacker again and created multiple water wyverns that flew to their location. As for her, she started focusing on freeing her wings, being unable to fly was causing her a severe disadvantage in such a battle.
Just as she created the magic circle to attack the bindings, a huge bolt of lightning fell from the sky, causing her to abandon the spell as she sent the huge water serpent to block the lightning. She could tell that both attacks were enough to cancel each other out and quickly cast another spell to gather two large water serpents this time.
As she was generating the magic circle to gather the water, her eyes widened as she felt the space behind her fluctuate and prepared to defend herself from the attacker who seemed to be teleporting to her. But instead of the attacker, what appeared was a huge fireball.
‘What!?’ This kind of spell just broke every theory of magic that she’d ever learned and she wasn’t able to defend herself from the attack completely.
As the fireball broke through her hastily created water barrier, it latched itself onto her and started burning her. Although still in shock about what just transpired, she was quick to prevent any of the fire from burning her skin. Though the same couldn’t be said about her clothes.
They had caught fire and were quickly burning. Just as Sona was about to create new clothes for herself, she felt another lightning strike approaching her from the sky.
‘I haven’t created the serpent yet…’ She was forced to ignore the state of her clothes that had burned off and did her best to summon the water to her hands. Instead of creating a serpent that would move by itself, she had to manually send a blast of pressured water at the bolt of lightning that fell at her.
As she was still in a match with the lightning, she again felt spacial fluctuations behind her and realized that she had lost the battle. She didn’t have the chance to do anything and had her back wide open to her attacker. The worst part was that she was completely naked due to the previous fireball, ‘I guess I’ll call Onee-sama…’ She thought reluctantly as she grasped a device that could transcend any spacial restrictions and send a message to Serafall in case of an emergency.
That was when she heard a voice that sent shivers down her very naked spine.
«TRANSFER»
The familiar sound made her hesitate for a moment and in that instant, she lost the device. She had merely hesitated for a moment after realizing who her ‘unknown’ assailant was and the device was swiped from her hand before she could activate it. At the same time, she felt bindings similar to the ones that had tied her wings wrapping around her legs, forming tight cuffs at her ankles, calves, and thighs, a corset joined the set and pulled her wings forcefully into her lower back, trapping them there. Lastly, another binding wrapped around her neck.
It all happened the instant she heard the distinctly familiar voice before feeling that her demonic energy was being sucked by the collar that was just wrapped around her throat.
“A—“ She wasn’t able to say a word as the collar started applying pressure directly to her voice box, preventing her from making even the slightest sound.
She felt her attacker approach her from behind and panicked a little when she felt his familiar hands grabbing her previously extended arms and pulling them behind her. They were tied with the same bindings, one set of cuffs at her wrists and another just above her elbows.
In that moment, she finally felt the familiar warmth of her ‘attacker’ as he his arm wrapped around her waist and he pulled her close to himself.
