Three days had passed since Serafall left Lily and me at the Sitri estate. Lily had dragged me on a tour of the second day, proudly showing off what Sona had shown her as the girl in question sulked at her new playmate choosing me.
We had already had a couple of magic lessons with Sona, presided over by Lady Sitri. They were mostly theoretical, but we were brought to the practice range for one of them.
Whilst I didn't get Raphael to cast the magic for me, I discovered that it passively enhanced my intelligence and learning capacity, allowing me to gain basic mastery over a new spell after only a couple of tries.
We also had a history lesson, which was less about history and more about the current state of the clans in the underworld, but it was quite interesting anyway.
I spent most of my free time browsing through the history books in the library looking for any discrepancies in the knowledge I had from Highschool DxD.
Surprisingly there weren't many.
It seemed even in this crossover world with new factions, most still stuck to themselves, the only exception being the great war. Many factions seem to have started small-scale wars against each other in order to settle past grudges whilst Lucifer raised his rebellion.
Naturally, the Sitri estate didn't have much in the way of super ancient history (from before the factions formed) but the snippets of it suggested the world had developed in much the same way I had designed the world in my past life.
There were five eras that history was divided into:
Ancient Era: Before Anos split the world into four, inhabited by only the origin gods, ancient demons, ancient heroes, and ancient spirits.
Chaos Era: After the split, the time in which the origin gods waged war against Ophis trying to claim the Dimensional Gap, the results of their battle reshaped much of the four realms.
Primordial Era: When the divinities left over after the destruction of the origin gods reformed as the primordials of each pantheon who then went on to split the god realm and demon realm to form their own lands.
Pantheonic Era: When primordials produced new gods and pantheons waged war, also when Lucifer led his rebellion.
Modern Era: After the great war when large-scale conflicts between pantheons completely stopped and switched fully to proxy wars using humans.
It seemed that the history told in the various stories was correct on a macro scale. Naturally, there will be some discrepancies like smaller groups being involved in events when they were never mentioned in the stories.
It was during one of my self-study sessions on the world's history that a Magical Girl burst into the room.
"Kay-chan, have you missed me?! It's been suuuuper boring doing paperwork you know." The Magical Girl declaried.
"Serafall, is it time for the meeting?"
"That's no fun Kay-chan, you can't guess before I even ask you to, that's cheating."
"Sorry Levia-tan✮, I won't use my clairvoyance in the future." I replied to her in monotone.
"Humph, you'd better." She nodded whilst pulling me out of my seat.
"Are you ready to meet Zech-chan and Falb-chan?"
"There's not much to prepare for though?" I questioned, expecting to just meet them and then tell my story.
"I suspected this might happen," Serafall sighed before adopting an unusually serious expression.
"Kay-chan, you're seeing everyone around you as characters from a story and expecting them to be like how they were in the story, right? Also, you still think like a human who lives in a peaceful world where everyone is considered equal."
"That combination can be incredibly dangerous, it'll be fine when meeting the other Satans since we're generally quite nice but if you meet some other powerful being and don't show them appropriate respect they might just kill you."
"Lots of younger reincarnated humans have this problem initially, you can't just treat meeting powerful beings like meeting anyone else."
I thought about what she said for a moment before realizing she was right.
If I met someone like Azazel I probably wouldn't take him too seriously as the impression you get about him from DxD is a perverted, laid-back scientist. While he might be exactly that, he is also incredibly strong and the leader of an entire race.
The same applies to Odin, he is also a pervert who makes fun of his bodyguard all the time but is still a powerful God King.
"I see you've thought about it Kay-chan, don't worry too much you shouldn't meet anyone important for a while and the four of us won't care considering your circumstances but keep it in mind. At least until you are strong enough to be the one owed respect."
I nodded, appreciating Serafall pointing this out now so I could adjust my subconscious mindset before it caused a problem.
It wasn't just a story anymore.
"Good, let's go." Serafall summoned her magic circle below us as we directly teleported out of the Sitri estate now that I had been added to the wards.
-----
We arrived in front of the building that housed Ajuka's laboratory. Serafall swiftly led me through the wards whilst explaining that this meeting was being held as if Ajuka had come up with a new invention and was showing his friends rather than the four Satans to prevent the Great King faction getting too interested and exposing me.
She said it was fine for me to be known as her son, which was apparently the talk of the underworld as she had put in the official papers after leaving the other day. However, evidence suggesting I was important enough to need a meeting of all four Satans could cause problems.
We quickly reached the conference room where four people were already waiting.
First was Ajuka, sitting at the table with a laptop open and fiddling with a metal cube.
Next to Ajuka was a bald man who looked to be asleep, this was Falbium Asmodeus, the Satan of military affairs. Well known for his almost impenetrable barrier magic and constantly indulging in sloth.
The next two my eyes scanned over were a man sitting at the table with a woman standing behind him. The woman had silver hair and was wearing a maid outfit.
This was Grayfia Lucifuge, the Silver-Haired Queen of Annihilation and the queen piece of the man she stood behind. She was about as strong as Serafall and had once competed for the position of Satan Leviathan. Despite not being a Satan she certainly had the qualifications.
The red-haired man Grayfia served was Sirzechs Lucifer, leader of the four Satans and in charge of internal affairs. He was also the strongest devil.
Whilst both Sirzechs and Ajuka had reached Super-class, Ajuka did it through calculation and control with his Kankara formula, Sirzechs reached that level through pure power.
"Juka-chan, Falb-chan, Zechs-chan, Grayfia-chan. We have arrived!" Serafall exclaimed whilst skipping into the room.
Sirzechs and Grayfia turned towards us and Ajuka nodded, not looking up from whatever he was doing. Falbium didn't even stir.
"Serafall," Sirzechs raised a hand in greeting, "so this is the one you adopted as your son huh?"
"That's right, this is Kay-chan."
I gave a brief bow and introduced myself with my actual name as Serafall did a flourish towards me with her hands then bounded over to the table and took her seat.
"Kay-chan, come sit down," She patted the chair next to her, "you too Grayfia-chan, this'll be a long conversation, and there's no need to continue your maid play right now."
I sat in the seat next to her whilst watching Grayfia glare at Serafall before sitting next to Sirzechs.
"So what's the deal with him then? You and Ajuka have been very secretive with the details." Sirzechs asked once his maid had sat.
Serafall then launched into an explanation about my background, Lily's existence, my clan traits, and even Raphael and my reincarnation. When my reincarnation came up Ajuka pitched in explaining how components of this world were stories in my previous one and his theories on it.
I remained silent during the explanation, watching the constant change of expression on Sirzechs and Grayfia's faces. Even Falbium woke up and began concentraiting on the story.
Once everything was explained Falbium leaned back in his seat looking like he wanted to go back to sleep. Sirzechs was massaging his forehead and Grayfia had somehow combined pity and awe in her expression as she just stared at me.
"I see now why you were being so secretive. Cain could be an incredible ally but just as much a danger if knowledge of his secrets fell into the wrong hands." Sirzechs stated.
"That's right my Kay-chan is super important."
"It's good that you adopted him Serafall and leaving him under the care of your parents will keep him safe whilst he gets used to the underworld. The problem is the Great King faction will try to gain influence over him in any way they can, probably through a marriage proposal."
"That's fine, Serafall and I have already set up a marriage contract with my niece Latia due to Raphael, we can just use that to deny any from the Great King faction." Ajuka spoke without looking up from his laptop.
"What about that demi-angel girl? She might cause problems with Heaven right?" Grayfia asked.
"Ah, she'll join Cain's peerage so it should be fine. You can bring her over after this, I've finished modifying your queen piece and it should work but it needs testing." Ajuka addressed the second part to me causing me to smile at the thought of fixing Lily's problem.
I know she's worried about losing the memories of her first meeting with Sona having grown a bit closer over the last couple of days.
"You're giving him his pieces now?" Sirzechs asked.
"There's no problem giving them to him now, he's mentally mature and has at least High-class reserves," Ajuka replied.
"I suppose it's fine, just don't go showing off that you got them early." I nodded at the crimson Satans command.
"What about his Raphael ability, is that going to cause problems?" Sirzechs then asked Ajuka seemingly determined to make sure my presence would not cause any major problems before we moved on to explaining Highschool DxD.
"Well, it won't cause problems in and of itself. It essentially won't act unless Cain is in directed danger but its calculation and comprehension abilities are absurd. It created its version own of my Kankara formula from the magic knowledge I gave it."
"Wait really!?" I straightened up in my seat and stared at Ajuka in surprise.
"You didn't know?"
"I haven't communicated with Raphael much these past few days. I want to learn magic properly not have Raphael download it into my head. I also haven't been following along with what it's been doing in your lab, I just commanded it to act as your lab assistant." I clarified.
"What so is Raph-chan going Skynet?" Serafall asked in interest.
"Not really, Raphael is an ability for collection and manipulation of knowledge. In the process of helping Ajuka, it must have combined the various things it learned and deduced new knowledge. It fundamentally cannot manipulate the material world without a medium to interact with and a command to do so."
"Aww, it would have been cool." Serafall pouted.
"Between all the myths that are secretly hiding from humanity, I don't think this world needs killer robots as well." I gave her a deadpan stare.
Not only did she want killer robots, but she also wanted my ability to become the AI overlord. I would be the first on the chopping block if Raphael became Skynet.
"So there's no problem at the moment then, that's good." Sirzechs seemed to relax a bit.
"Right, Cain you can now tell my Ria-tan's story."
"No no, it's my So-tan's story," Serafall argued back immediately hearing Sirzechs talk about his little sister.
"It's the Red Dragon Emperor's story," Ajuka broke up the Sis-con argument before it could begin.
"Go on Cain, tell us the entire story this time in as much detail as possible also include any additional information about events before the story starts like Cleria's assasination."
I took a moment to organize how I was going to explain everything before deciding to just go chronologically to make sure I didn't undermine the important events like Kuroka's background by only mentioning them briefly when relevant characters first appear to Issei.