Chapter 5

Shiro’s POV

While shopping with Alice, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching me. When we gathered the necessary produce, the clerk at the till claimed that everything had already been paid for in advance. Despite insisting that there had been some kind of mistake and being adamant that we wanted to pay ourselves, we were pressured into leaving the store without paying for anything.

We returned home and found another present from my secret admirer. His highness claimed that he didn’t know where it had come from and informed us that he sent Kuro to run an errand for him and that he didn’t know when he’d be back. At first I was worried, but his highness assured me that it was nothing too taxing and that he had already applied the serqet poison prior to sending him, so his hand should be back to normal by the time he returns.

I was relieved, I had already decided to participate in the next summit matchup as the front runner, but I was relieved that Kuro would be back to his normal self. I returned to my room and began preparing for the match by regulating my spiritual power. Grandmother told me that I needed to make sure that I let my power flow continuously and not allow it to stagnante, to avoid it leaking unnecessarily.

Spiritual power is a lot different to demonic energy, it needs a constant stream or flow for it to maintain its efficiency. Demonic energy, is most powerful when it’s allowed to build up and explode, as was demonstrated by Kuro in his battle against Earl Paimon. I imagined the icy stream that my grandmother made me stand barefoot in for hours and allowed my spiritual power to flow.

At first I couldn’t handle controlling the flow of my spiritual power, grandmother said that it was because I had so much of it and not enough room for it to flow within me. She claimed that if I learned how to fully channel my level of spiritual power, I could theoretically have an endless supply. I was nowhere near being able to do that, but I was a lot different to that sheltered princess from over a year ago and I was going to prove it.

I spent the rest of the day strengthening the efficiency of my spiritual power and reaffirming my resolve for what I was about to do.

Kuro’s POV

It had been a good 24 hours since I escaped the Earl’s Estate and returned from Sitri’s apartment. The cast on my hand and forearm cracked out of nowhere and revealed my now rejuvenated left wrist. I channeled some demonic energy into it and was relieved when it responded.

When I got back from my adventures in the upper district of the summit’s vicinity, I instantly collapsed on my bed and was asleep for a good few hours. I suppose it was the effects of serqet poison, or it could have been my tiring exchange with Sitri...Either way when I woke up, I was back to feeling 100% and was ready to get back to focusing on our next opponent.

I made my way to the kitchen to get some food and spotted Seir sitting at the table holding a Hell Weekly magazine, when he noticed me he looked up and began snickering to himself. I was still mad at him for what he put me through but my hand was better now and I suppose I was able to try some of Mei-Lien’s delicious home cooking so it wasn’t all bad. I grabbed some toast that Alice must have left for me, made myself some black coffee and sat opposite Seir.

As I began to eat, Seir would look up at me from the top of his magazine and continue to giggle to himself, it got to a point where it was becoming annoying so I put down my coffee mug and snatched the magazine from him to see what was so funny. The moment I did Seir burst into hysterical laughter, I had a look at the page and realised why…

“Paimon slayer spotted leaving apartment of sizzling Sabrina Sitri in the early hours of the morning.”

Below the headline there was a very fuzzy photo of me looking extremely sneaky as I was leaving the apartment. My heart sank, this photo was taken completely out of context, the reason I was being cautious, was to avoid waking Sitri and having her push me into staying longer. Below the headline and photo was an article which attempted to get to the bottom of our supposed “scandalous” relationship and did nothing but make assumptions and baseless allegations. Apparently I had my eye on Sitri since the opening ceremony and Sitri was on the rebound, following her recent breakup with her high profile celebrity boyfriend and was getting her confidence back, by dating beneth herself.

“T-this is defamation at its worst!”

“Hahahahahahahaha, come now Kuro, I won’t tell anyone, just let me in on all the juicy deets!”

“S-screw you! This is all your fault Seir, if you hadn’t sold me off to that geezer then I wouldn’t have run into Sitri when I escaped!”

“Hahahahahahahahaha”

“Stop laughing! H-has Shiro seen this!”

I was forgetting the scariest part of this article, the fact that Shiro would definitely kill me if she sees this. I’m sure Sitri will never let me hear the end of it either if/when I see her next. I might as well end it all now, Mum, Dad, your son will be with you soon…

“Ahahaha, relax, Shiro-chan has been in her room for a while now, The door is giving off some serious pressure so we haven’t bothered disturbing her.”

“O-oh, but she will see it eventually...”

“Hahahaha don’t look so glum, this magazine is nothing but gossip and tabloid nonsense. Only bored housewives and drama obsessed teenage girls actually take it at face value. Look, I’ll see if I can contact someone in the industry and get a gag order for this magazine, I’ll also buy up all the ones in circulation in our immediate area, so Shiro-chan will never actually see one.”

“T-thanks Seir, I can always...H-hey this is all your fault in the first place!”

“Hahahahahaha, well your overactive love life aside, I was just informed of our next opponent for the summit.”

“W-what! Who is it?”

The atmosphere in the kitchen spiralled into a serious one. Seir took out an official notice from the summit's organissers, he placed it on the kitchen table and I had a look at who our next opponent was going to be.

"The Astaroth House huh? What do we know about it?"

"That's just it Kuro, we don't know anything, there's literally no information about the Astaroth House, all we know is that its one of the new players in the summit and has seen a recent surge in power and influence. It doesn't reside over any territory in the human world but has recently bought out a huge chunk of territory in hell."

"Damn, going in blind is never a good thing, we don't have much time before the match either."

We both wondred how strong the mysterious Astaroth House was, I put all thoughts unrelatted to the summit aside for now and began coming up with a strategy to fight an enemy who's true power we didn't fully understand.