7 The Hard Path

Nobody said anything until they were well out of earshot of the young man.

"What happened Koneko?" Rias asked gently, taking the younger girl's hand in her own. "You're shaking. Another nightmare?"

"...No." 

How was she supposed to say this? 

Was she supposed to say anything?

"Was it Eren?" Akeno asked with a concerned frown as she took her junior's other hand. "Did he do something?"

"He didn't do anything." In the end, Koneko trusted her King and Queen. "I felt his life force."

""What?"" They both asked in confusion, but then Rias' eyes lit up in excitement.

"And?" She asked eagerly. "Did you feel anything special? Some hidden bloodline or Sacred Gear? Magic?"

"No." This question was easy to answer, as it was one she had looked into before. "He's definitely human. No magic or Sacred Gear. I'm sure."

It wasn't just a pitiful amount of magic, like some humans. Koneko had not felt even a drop of magical potential in the boy. It was like he was magically disabled, which did happen sometimes. That meant he couldn't have a Sacred Gear, as they all had a magical component to them, even if only a tad.

Rias's face fell, and Koneko immediately felt terrible. She knew her King had been searching for any excuse she could find to make an offer to Eren to have him join her Peerage. Still, she wouldn't lie.

"If it wasn't that, then he had a lot of life force, right? That's what surprised you?"

Koneko nodded at Akeno's guess.

"That's good!" Rias fist pumped quietly. "I can have my cousin train him. I hear he's been trying to attain Touki recently. With Eren's experience and the chance he can gain Touki, the family won't complain when I reincarnate him."

"You can't."

"I'm going to ask first, of course," Rias' chuckled, rubbing Koneko's hair gently. "Eren would flip if he was forced into a Peerage. I want to get him to trust me first so he'll agree. I was just worried about the repercussions. But this should be enough. Thank you, Koneko."

She looked so happy, as if a great burden had been lifted from her shoulders, that Koneko regretted her next words as soon as they left her mouth.

"You can't," she repeated. "You're too weak."

Rias froze in place, hand resting on Koneko's scalp in the middle of ruffling her hair.

Koneko felt her eyes water at the hurt in her King's eyes. She didn't want Rias looking at her like that.

"Koneko," Akeno crouched slightly till she was at eye level with her junior and spoke softly. "Dear. What do you mean? Rias might be a lazy weeb, but she's not weak."

The nekoshou knew Akeno was trying to use humour to deflect, but it didn't change the truth. But how to explain it in a way they could understand?

"It's like a fire." She eventually said, speaking to both of them. "Most people are candles. Yuuto is like a fireplace. You two are bonfires. Buchou's is bigger."

It was a testament to the situation that Rias didn't start immediately bragging about 'size' to Akeno.

"And Eren?"

"... Remember the forest fire Surtr II started two years ago?"

"The one Nee-san tore into him about?" Akeno remembered with a fond smile. That smile dipped. "The one that burned down his entire territory?"

"Eren felt like that?" Rias asked with an intake of air. "How?"

Koneko shrugged, not having an answer to the question. She just knew what she felt.

"Can you compare it to anything else, dear?" Akeno asked gently, and Koneko gave it some real thought.

She didn't keep her Ki senses open often. Partly because it was only possible to get a really good sense of things when her ears and tail were out, but also because she was afraid it would leave her open to Senjutsu and the malice of the world that drove her sister mad. So, she only had a few frames of reference to work from.

"Less than Nee-san," Koneko said with certainty, then continued with much less confidence. "More than... Lord Gremory?" This was not an exact science by any means, and she was going by impressions more than anything.

Both Akeno and Rias shared a look.

Grayfia Lucifuge was probably the second strongest female devil alive, so Eren being less powerful than her didn't say much. But Rias' father was firmly in the ultimate class, if on the lower end. 

For Eren's life force to rival his...

"Does he know Touki," Rias asked, and Koneko shrugged again. There was no way to tell if someone knew how to use their Ki until they actually did.

"Even someone with only a little Ki can use Touki," Akeno shook her head and explained to her King. She was more familiar with the practice, thanks to her past studies. "Having a lot of Ki doesn't mean he can use it, just that finding it is easier, and once he does, it is more useful. The question is, how did he gain so much? If he was part Yokai or had a Sacred Gear or something like it, it would be understandable. But a pure human?"

"Eren exercises regularly when he gets home," Rias spoke aloud. "I've had my familiar keep an eye on him occasionally when a Stray is in the area. Despite his condition, he spends at least a few hours daily keeping up a demanding regime for a human. It is the only thing he does besides sit on the bench. It's why he's still in decent shape."

"That isn't enough," Akeno shook her head, not even commenting on Rias' use of her familiar to 'keep an eye' on a young man. "Some humans have more Ki than others, but nothing like Koneko saw. Not without access to some sort of mystic art. A few hours of exercise isn't enough to make up that difference. To even have a hope of gaining that much lifeforce at that age, he'd need training from a Sennin or a similar teacher and years of effort."

"He's meditating," Koneko said with realization, the Queen's words tickling her brain to memories of her older sis... to Kuroka learning her own Ki arts. "When he's on the bench. He's meditating."

"Unconsciously?" Rias asked with disbelief. Humans meditating was nothing new, but doing so in a way to channel or raise their Ki without instruction was practically unheard of.

"Maybe not," Akeno, too, had a moment of realization. "His second in command in his mercenary company was Chinese if I remember right. And others were from cultures with mystic traditions that merged with regular humans. The Sitri agents didn't find anything supernatural in his past, but it is possible he learned proper meditation techniques without knowing how to consciously use the Ki. If all he does is meditate and exercise, it is theoretically possible for a human to reach Ki levels comparable in magnitude, if not usage, to an Ultimate Class. It would take an insanely gifted genius to do it at his age, but it is possible."

"That still doesn't make sense," Rias said, biting the tip of her nail in frustration. "If he has that much life force, he shouldn't be dying."

That Koneko did have an answer for.

"Strong, but limited." She struggled to put what she had felt into words. "The forest is running out of trees. Or, fire isn't getting air?"

What she had felt had been incredibly bright to her senses but not spread. In fact, it had been tightly contained. 

Koneko was a nekoshou, a variant race of nekomata which were themselves a race of Yokai supernaturally gifted with talents in the Sage arts, and she hadn't felt any of his prodigious Ki when Rias first asked her to investigate him. It was only because she had been touching Eren directly, with her ears and tail out, that she felt it.

Like a sun trapped in a glass ball. 

And that ball was shrinking as his body gave out.

Only a few hundred feet from that sun, Koneko could sense nothing special about the boy.

Ki was not a cure-all. Nor was having a significant source of vital energy a guarantee of a long life. People with Ki would still get sick and would still die from disease, poison, or even age. Their life might be strong, but their body might not be.

In real life, Ki was not like it was in Dragon Ball or other media. Eren Yeager could have all the Ki in the world; all it would do was delay the inevitable if his body failed.

Rias' finger was bleeding she was biting its tip so hard.

"If Koneko only sensed it now, it would explain how the Sitri servants missed it." Akeno continued to piece the puzzle together. "And why no other devil or faction has come to snatch him up."

"Is there any way he can learn to use his Ki to heal himself?" Rias asked both of them, a bit of desperation leaking into her voice.

Akeno looked at the Rook, but Koneko shook her head slightly.

"It is his body," she explained. "It shouldn't be this way, but it is. He's already doing everything but is still sick. Ki can't help, or it would have. Sickness, not injury. Internal, not external."

Koneko didn't need to tell them that it was probably only thanks to his prodigious life force that Eren had managed to stay alive this long. If he didn't have that internal reservoir of power he was unconsciously using, his body would have shut down long ago.

How young would he have been when he died without it?

Ten? Twelve? Koneko could not imagine he would have survived to fourteen if all his Ki could do was keep him going till nineteen.

But she did not need to speak those grim words to the older girls.

Both of them had probably guessed as much.

"If we could move his soul to a new body, it would fix the problem at the root," Akeno postulated. "But the only thing that can do that is the Sephiroth Grail, which hasn't appeared in generations."

Counting on the appearance of one of the twelve Longinus in this generation was wishful thinking in the extreme. The world's factions always kept a close eye on them when they showed up, and the last time the Grail appeared was decades ago.

And even if a user did appear in the time they had left, they would need to find them, convince them to help Eren, and create a body for him.

"Ok," Rias said to herself, pacing along the dark path back and forth as she continued to chew her nail. "Ok."

"Should we... tell Lord Lucifer?" Akeno asked delicately, knowing how much Rias valued her independence from her family and brother.

"No." Rias was firm in her denial, and when Akeno made to insist, she continued. "I don't think he can help. Think about it. We are already looking for a way to heal Eren and aren't going to stop. All that has changed is that we know Ki doesn't work and how much potential Eren has now. Potential we cannot let anyone know about. Ever."

Akeno pursed her lips but nodded, seeing the point.

If other high-class devils learned that there was someone like Eren, a once-in-centuries genius with the potential to be a Sennin, was currently weak and vulnerable in the human world...

"If anyone forcibly reincarnates him, he'll go Stray instantly."

Rias nodded sharply at Akeno's words. 

Everything she knew about the older boy told her he would rather die than give up his freedom. He had said as much to Sona and her on different occasions.

That was why she had initially simply planned to make his last few years fun. Her plans had shifted since then, unwilling to let her friend die if she could help it, but she still wasn't going to reincarnate him against his wishes.

"Anyone able to turn him will be the peak of High Class or Ultimate Class at the very least. If he goes Stray, which he will, they'll kill him instantly before he can grow into his potential. He'll start weak because of his condition, Ki or no Ki. The greater his potential, the more risk he's in and the quicker they'd kill him."

"...Sorry," Koneko apologized, feeling terrible that her inattention had inadvertently put Eren in danger.

"Nononono," Rias hurried to reassure her Rook, drawing the young girl into a tight hug. "Us knowing about it is a good thing. It's an excellent thing. It'd be too late if we didn't learn about it till later. We still have time now."

"Time for what?" Akeno asked.

"Time for me to make Ultimate Class!"

"Rias!"

"Not a lot of time, but it should be enough," the King continued despite her Queen's shock and Koneko's wide eyes.

Rias was powerful for her age and did deserve her High-Class status even without her noble heritage. She was the peek of the current generation of devils in pure potential alone, thanks to her raw power and bloodline abilities. 

While Rias might not be comparable to her Super-Devil of a brother, something that bothered her, she was still a once-in-a-generation talent. It was one of the reasons the Phenex family pushed so hard for her hand in marriage. 

Any child of hers, combined with Phenex immortality, had the potential to reach or even eclipse her older brother's stupendous power.

But devils did not grow over years, but over decades. A young devil wasn't even considered mature until after their first half-century.

Rias claiming she could reach Ultimate Class in power, if not in status before she even turned twenty, was nothing less than insane.

"I'm going to tell Sona," Rias rambled on, putting her thoughts in order and setting out a game plan. "She deserves to know too. I'll have to leave ruling Kuoh to her, but between the two of us, I have the best chance. I still have all eight of my pawns. Those are our best shot. After that, I am going to need to get to training. A lot of training. I still have a year and a half left, at least. Akeno, do you mind taking over my clients? I'll need all the time I can get."

"Of course," Akeno answered instinctually but then paused as a thought arose. "What about... you know? Riser. You only have so many pieces left."

Power wouldn't save Rias from the marriage. If it could, she would have had a much easier time. 

Riser was the peak of the High Class. Even if Rias became Ultimate Class, it still wouldn't be enough to overcome his regeneration. All he would have to do was stall her out, regenerating over and over again until he could wear her down.

Even if Eren had the potential to use Touki, it was ironically one of the worst matchups against a Phenex unless the latter was utterly outclassed. 

It didn't matter if one could cause internal damage to someone if the Phenex could heal internal damage in seconds.

The initial desire to come to the human world was to gain independence and fill out their Peerages over the years. The plan had been to comb the human world, particularly the school, for anyone with the potential to at least counter the regeneration. Kuoh was a hotbed of magical potential, which tended to attract Sacred Gear holders unconsciously. 

Rias had been promised till the end of her time in the human world before the actual marriage, even if her family was putting more pressure as the years passed. The stress was mounting for Rias without a counter appearing, but she still had years.

Even if it wasn't a Longinus, certain sacred gears or mystical talents could negate the regeneration of the Phenex clan. Members of the family had been killed or beaten by such in the past.

"We'll still look for someone," Rias reassured her Queen. She wasn't willing to completely give up the hope of finding a counter to the pompous asshole and getting her freedom. "But if I get stronger, it will cost fewer pieces to reincarnate them. So it's a win-win. And once Eren's reincarnated, he can train, get better, and will be able to help."

"Does this mean you aren't going to spend time with Eren anymore?" Akeno asked, trying to follow along with her King.

"What? No! If anything, I am going to spend even more time with him. It won't matter if I get strong enough to reincarnate him if he doesn't accept the offer. A year and a half. That's how much time he said he had, right? That's all the time I have to make Ultimate Class and convince Eren I won't take his freedom from him."

"...Are you sure about this, Rias?" Akeno asked, looking worried. "What about everything else? Your hobbies, your dreams. I like Eren, and I want him to live as well. But I don't want you to burn out. That won't help him."

"I won't," Rias reassured her friend with a smile. "I'll be with you all most of the time I'm training, and I read manga to Eren. Two birds, one stone. I'm also ahead of the curriculum at school. Really, there is no reason I shouldn't have been training this entire time. If I get good enough, we might be able to lift the seal on Gasper. Control training during class and when I'm with Eren, and power training when not. It will be my very own training arc. You better take video's Akeno! I will want to make an anime montage after this."

Koneko and Akeno shared a look.

Rias was putting a brave face on all this, trying to stay chipper and reassure them, but both understood just how hard this would be.

It was easy to say, read about, or play a game about someone spending all their time constantly training to improve, but it was a wholly different thing to do it. 

Nobody wanted to spend every day exercising, doing repeated and monotonous training that left you tired and sweaty. 'Training' was easy to say, but who wants to go to bed every night sore and bruised, exhausted and weak, with a killer headache from overusing their magic. 

You give up hobbies. You give up friends. You give up everything but the pursuit of power.

And that was for humans. 

Devils, creatures of vice and indulgence, did not have to train to become strong. It certainly helped, but any devil that lived over five centuries would become High-class in power just by virtue of age, even if all they did was sleep and eat. If they did basic exercises in magic for ten minutes a day, that time frame shortened to only two centuries.

Rias was already much more dedicated than her peers and spent at least an hour a day training herself and her Peerage. It was a significant factor as to why they were so much stronger than other devils their age. By human standards, they were very active teenagers. 

By devil standards, they were nothing less than training maniacs, only beaten by the likes of Sairaorg and his Peerage. And they didn't have to overcome the same deficiencies as the Bael.

Rias was projected to hit Ultimate Class before she was fifty if she kept this rate up. It was an insane growth speed for a race that measured their lifespan in millennia.

To shorten that down to before she was twenty?

Remarkably few ever achieved something like that, and of those that did, four were the current Satans.

"...We'll help," Koneko said simply after sharing a nod with Akeno.

"I shall break out my good whip," Akeno giggled, but there was a tenseness to it.

"Thank you," Rias said with a wide smile, dragging them into a tight hug. "I love you guys."

Akeno had one last question, but it was an important one.

"If you don't get strong enough in time," she asked as she wrapped her arms around the redhead. "What then?"

"Then I'll ask my brother or one of his Peerage to reincarnate Eren," Rias said with a troubled sigh. "I'll explain everything to Eren, and once I am strong enough, I'll request a trade."

"Eren won't accept that," Akeno sadly shook her head. "Maybe, just maybe, he might trust you enough to become a devil under you or Sona. But someone else? He'd rather die. Will you be able to let him? Let him die if he chooses to?"

"It won't come to that," Rias insisted, a slight tremble in her voice, squeezing both of them tighter. "You'll see. I'm going to be strong enough. Eren will trust me enough. I'm going to save him. Eren is going to live a long, happy life. You'll see."