DxD Chapter 79: Tears to My Eyes (Patreon)

~Takumi Katsuragi Goch~

Looking over the papers Ravel had given me felt a bit weird.

There were a lot of them, some of them lower-ranked Devil nobles but a large majority were actual Clan Houses and affiliated. This made me reflect a bit.

Pillar Nobles, who own their own country-sized territories and are essentially nobility, were vying for my attention, they were sending me letters and gifts in order to meet me faster and curry my favour.

...It's a bit hard to not get a big head with this. I had to make do with self-discipline to not get too arrogant for my britches and get annihilated instantly by any ultimate rank.

Now, there were a few problems with so many people wanting a piece of my shiny alchemic ass. I did not know who to meet with first.

I wanted a lot of things from a lot of people but I did not really know what to do, who to prioritize and how to deal with them. I knew how to make business deals to some extent but yeah, that was about it for me.

Yeah, when I am talking to people I make myself sound confident and knowing but in reality, I am completely improvising all deals and basically faking it all until I make it. But thankfully I now had people around me who could help me cover that gap.

"So, Ravel, what do you think I should do? There are quite a lot of fellows that want to meet me for... reasons. I want a quick rundown on who among the list are the most important." I addressed Ravel while sitting on the couch across from her in her new office, she was wearing her pink dress as usual while sorting through the documents and letters in her hands.

"Well, there are quite a large amount of influential nobles that want to but if you are interested I think I managed to narrow it down to a list that would interest you." I raised my eyebrow, she was taking the initiative now, wasn't she? She must be quite confident to be making a list while eliminating meetings with very important nobles.

"How so? What criteria did you even narrow them down by?" Ravel raised a finger and closed her eyes before explaining, I noticed she tends to do that a lot when she explains something, it's pretty cute.

"I narrowed them down by how much they would interest you personally, from what I know about you at least. I think you would rather avoid meaningless meetings that only serve a purpose network, you value your time a lot after all, or at least I think so. A lot of the invitations and letters, as you would expect from nobles were about inviting you over to have a tea party or visit their estates for a tour and such." Woah, she was good.

She continued.

"Then I sorted them by the offers I thought you would be most interested in. Financial compensation for personal potions orders I put on another pile since you wouldn't care for that little money with the Emporium bringing in such financial power. So I compiled the ones you would be interested in like very influential individuals and especially ones with rare and or unique resources in their territories. U-um, I didn't overreach right?"

I shook my head, in fact, this was exactly what I expected a secretary to do, take care of the boring work and sort out my political life for me while I focused on the more fun stuff.

"No, not at all Ravel, in fact, you even exceeded my expectations to be honest. Good job Ravel, this would have been a pain in my ass otherwise without you." I gave a smile to Ravel who blushed slightly but puffed her chest up in pride.

"I told you I could do it! You can rely on me. Now, do you want me to list the matters of most importance?" I nodded, she was clearly much wiser than me in terms of stuff like this.

Then Ravel started listing the invitations and offers that I received in order of importance. There were important people wanting to meet me, sure, but there weren't any important people. Mostly nobles wanting Emporium locations opened up in their territories. Some wanting to commission potions from me and some wanting to get personal equipment made for them.

Working with Ravel together we dealt with the matters. We held off on opening more emporiums in random locations. It was better to have Emporium locations be more of a privilege to have than not. We put a few names on the maybe pile while Ravel was tasked with writing a polite rejection letter to their offers.

Something along the lines of "Thank you for your offer but currently we currently not thinking of expanding to [Your territory name]." Not too polite, we had to clearly establish a clear boundary here. They were the ones asking me to expand to their territory, it was not my opportunity but theirs.

As for the potion commissions, I actually took some to the confusion of Ravel. It would get me personal favors from people and not only that but making custom potion requests would make his Alchemy skill rise faster. Not the ones for money but the ones that were purposefully vaguely worded of course.

After all, Iter Melius was based on achievement. Fulfilling a potion request from a Devil noble counted as an achievement. He could feel it even without Iter Melius's prompting.

And then Ravel moved to the last issue, pulling out a box from under her desk, I knew it was there due to my minimap showing mana signatures there but I neglected to mention it since I allowed Ravel her privacy.

"Lastly, here is my fa- ahem, the Phenex Famiy's concessions to you as an apology." Ravel opened the ornate case to reveal 10 fucking Phenex Tears inside. "These are 10 Phenex tears, I-I even made one of them myself you know?"

As if in a trance I ignored Ravel's words and grabbed one of the Vials and used Heavenly Comprehensions Insight on it.

[Phenex Tear]

A vial containing a Phenex Tear the refined essence of a Phenex, inside of it is boundless vitality suffused with the ability of immortality that restores the body and mana to full.

Alchemical Properties:

Vitality(Ultimate)

Regeneration(Ultimate)

Recovery(Ultimate)

...

-Heavenly Comprehension:

A modified Phenex Tear can be used to revive the deceased as long as their soul can be summoned.

This was it!

My new body! I could finally finish it with this! I turned to Ravel.

"Ravel, handle the things we have talked about today, I have something I need to do right now, I will be absent, for a day, maybe two. Here, a reward for your performance, keep up the good work." I pulled out a ring from my inventory and handed it to her, it should let her recover her mana around 80% faster due to her being considerably weaker than he was.

"O-okay what?" Ravel blushed and took the ring from my hands in bewilderment while I got up and gave her one more trusting look before teleporting away.

"Remember, I am trusting you, don't burn my mansion down while I am away-!"

And I teleported away before Ravel could get a word in.

✧—•✦•—✧—•✦•—✧—•✦•—✧

"Arc, prepare the base of my body now, gather all alchemists you can gather and prepare the list of materials I am sending you." I teleported in front of Arc who was mildly surprised for only a moment before dropping his current project and heeding my orders while I went into my Lab, bringing out all of the materials and samples I wanted to use I got to work.

Serafall's BM, Benemune's BM, my own blood sample, Akeno's BM(Extracted during a particularly kinky sex session), and Rayne's BM will be making up the base of my body, the blueprint basically that the body will build itself around.

Then the actual physical materials to build the body. The Improved Hydrgia Alloy Skeleton, its mana conduction and resilience was unmatched. I also enchanted it with self-repair and reinforcement, as well as making it link up with my physical body. The bones themselves were fairly hollow since I couldn't exactly have a pure metal skeleton.

I had to bind it to my current skeleton, Wolverine style. But unlike him, I could just turn off my pain receptors.

The muscles were replaced with a Hydra and Thunderbird(I had it stored in my basement after Grayfia delivered it) as a composite muscle mix, infused with synthetic materials. It provided the best mix of strength and flexibility. This would replace my musculature.

I replaced my eyes with that of a Thunderbird's that I modified, and I replaced basically all other organs with synthetic replicas too. I was min-maxing the absolute shit out of my body but I was purposefully not making a full body.

I was going to bond all of these to my current body and overwrite the redundancies and room for improvement in my current body. As well as hoping that Iter Melius would throw me a bone and help me homogenize all of these factors around the core of my body.

Then the most important of making my new body was started, compiling and refining the Bloodline Factors. I had to edit them minorly and create specialized elixirs to make sure my Bloodline Abilities still worked with my new body and didn't conflict.

For example, the Holy Lightning from Akeno's bloodline wasn't exactly compatible with Phenex Immortality from Rayne's. So I had to make an elixir that prevented the conflict among them.

I made potion after potion, elixir after elixir and modified them to my standards and requirements. I worked for hours in a daze, not even lifting my head up, I didn't eat or drink. Inspiration burnt in my veins like magma.

Hours ticked by, but from my perspective it was days. And eventually, in my hands were over several dozen Elixirs. I had to drink two Phenex Tears just to keep working at full charge.

[Elixir of Immortality], [Elixir of Frozen Hell], [Elixir of Heavenly Thunder], [Elixir of Fallen Blood], [Elixir of Devil Blood], [Elixir of Poison Resistance], [Elixir of Iron Man], [Elixir of Boundless Stamina], [Elixir of Endless Mana], [Elixir of Vast Vitality]...

From an outsider's perspective, I looked like a hyper-efficient machine working on them at insane speeds, in reality, from my perspective I had spent just about around 13 days on this.

Everything was assembled and ready to fused into me, the skeleton, the muscle mesh, the organs, Arc would be the one operating. There was just one thing left, however.

The Boosted Gear, it was the most important part of this procedure and there was one problem with it.

The built-up resentment inside of it, the bugs inside of it. The remnants of the past users of it that had passed away. I was going to use the Boosted Gear as my core and as long as those were there I couldn't do that.

So.

Tonight I was going to eliminate those remnants and truly claim the Boosted Gear as my own.

A/N: Politics is a busy business, and Takumi frankly has no idea on what to do now that he got there. Thankfully he has his cute secretary to care of the busy work for him. Also, the Phenex Family's personal concessions finally arrived in the mail and Takumi got his Phenex Tears which are as absurd as always. Those things can bring an Ultimate Tier back from basically death to full recovery in a single second. ...And now Takumi has his hands on them.

Also. time to stop beating around the bush and finally make Takumi both improve his personal power and finally get his new body as well as solve the problems with Boosted Gear. Then the world will finally experience the absolute monster Takumi will become. What did you guys think about the developments in this chapter? I would love to know.