The Devouring Dragon-Chapter 50: Training

"You hesitate too much," I said casually as I swung my sword, easily knocking Kiba's to the side and out of his hands. My arm swung upward, and my blade was now pointed at his neck.

"What do you mean?" Kiba asked confusedly, taking a step back.

"You're not strong enough to hesitate," I said bluntly, "You're too slow, too weak, and too unskilled. Each of your swings needs to carry purpose - either to attack your enemy, or to defend yourself. You don't think quick enough to be able to adjust mid-swing."

"...I see," Kiba muttered, nodding at me as he held up his hand, summoning another blade in it.

The Knight of the Gremory Peerage and I were standing in a large open space, which was a fair bit down the side of the mountain. The area had a couple of chairs, a rack of swords, shields, and bows, along with a bunch of targets and training dummies strewn around the open space.

It was essentially a training space, which Vargan had requested be made. Well, he hadn't specifically requested that this exact one was made, but he'd requested for training areas to be made all across my territory.

It was a pretty good idea, too. While I could grind up my skills and stats slowly from the monster farms being used to produce food, that didn't particularly make me more experienced at fighting. I was pretty good with the sword at the moment, which was largely a result of all the fights I'd been in so far, but I could still improve.

"That was... not complete shit," Tiamat hummed lazily nearby, watching as Sona Sitri launched a ball of water into one of the training dummies, "But you have more demonic power than you're able to use. You need to train your basic power harnessing."

"So, that means I'm ahead of you, Sona," Rias smirked to Sona's side, the beautiful redhead flinging out a large orb of destruction. It flew into the training dummy and destroyed it in one hit. Tsubaki, who was standing at Sona's side, gave Rias a slight glare for her words.

"No," Tiamat shot her down instantly, causing Rias' smirk to waver, "You can use more of your demonic power in each attack, but your overall control is nearly nothing. At least the Sitri can control her power to a decent degree."

"This is why the Phenex's are a superior family," Ravel said smugly, stepping up next to Rias as she raised her hand, "Watch carefully, Gremory. This is how a real high-class devil uses their bloodline!"

She shoved her hand forward, and a large wave of fire shot out and slammed into a different training dummy. The training dummy erupted into flames, and Ravel smirked with a sense of superiority.

"You're the worst of the three," Tiamat said casually, and Ravel facefaulted, "Your demonic power is lower than the other two, and you're stuck in mediocrity. You can control it to a decent degree, and you can channel a decent amount of your power, but it's nothing impressive. It'd be better to be good at control like the Sitri, or good at channeling the power like the Gremory, instead of being average at both."

"S-Stupid dragon," Ravel huffed, blushing as Rias smirked down at her, "Why do we have to train anyway?! I thought we were just hostages!"

"You are," I hummed casually, turning away from Kiba to grin at the shorter girl, "Permanent hostages, and weak ones at that. Weak, but with a lot of potential. Why would I not want my subordinates to reach their full potential?"

Despite my offer to Serafall, which I had made earlier today, I had no intention of giving up any of the hostages. They were all important bargaining chips to have and were top-tier women in this world.

It didn't make sense to give them up now, even if they'd inevitably come back under my rule once I took over the Underworld.

So, I decided that training them up wouldn't be a bad idea. It wasn't like they'd become strong enough to actually escape any time soon, and having strong subordinates would only benefit me in the future.

Beyond that, it helped grow my reputation with the beautiful women. My reputation with all of them was at least 'Neutral' again, with it even reaching 'Liked' with a couple already. Considering that I had literally kidnapped them, being not in the negatives was a feat in itself.

Of course, Tiamat training the three high-class devils and me personally training Kiba wasn't the only training going on.

"It will be more powerful if you condense the energy," Benemue stood next to Akeno, watching as the much younger, yet somehow much bustier, woman launched a stream of lighting towards a target. The lightning bolt burst through the target, turning the entire thing into a burnt scrap.

Benemue raised her own hand, and a burst of light shot forward at a different target. Instead of being a wide beam like Akeno's, the much thinner beam shot through the middle of the target and tore through it... then continued on to tear through the bark of a tree behind it.

"..." Akeno didn't say anything, merely glaring lightly at Benemue. The Fallen-Devil hybrid was a lot less open to the training than the rest of the devils, which largely came from her own dislike of her fallen half.

It stemmed from her relationship with her father, Baraqiel, and I'd need to do something about it eventually. She'd be much more useful if she could use holy lightning.

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"Take it slow," Further down the line of trainees was Koneko, who Kuroka was still calling Shirone. She had been the other devil to resist the training at first, and that came because it was Kuroka trying to teach her to harness her Nekoshou powers.

Surprisingly, Koneko had taken to reuniting with Kuroka again much better than I imagined. In the series, it took a long time for Kuroka to make up with Koneko, and even Rias was hostile towards her until she did.

I assumed it was because I was before the main timeline had started, and as a result, Koneko had less time to build up hatred for her sister. Instead of many years passing, it seemed only a couple of years had gone by between Kuroka 'abandoning' Koneko and the current moment.

Judging from the devils coming here for familiars to begin with, along with Rias being dismayed that her moving to Japan was 'even more delayed' immediately after being kidnapped, I suspected that I was around 3-4 years before the canon events in the series started.

I had played a bit of a role in Kuroka's rekindling with Koneko too, as I didn't want tension between Kuroka and her sister interfering with assimilating the other devils into my Kingdom. The entire Gremory Peerage held a grudge against Kuroka for what she had done to Koneko, so I had very bluntly ordered Kuroka to fix that when we initially kidnapped them.

I assumed Kuroka came clean and explained her real reason for abandoning Koneko, because neither her sister nor any of Rias' peerage were outright hostile to the older Nekoshou anymore. They weren't exactly comfortable or friendly with her either, but Koneko was at least willing to listen to her sister as she attempted to train her.

"Make it go boom! Boom!" Even further down the line, the final training duo was a rather strange one, "BOOM! Not boom, but BOOM!"

"B-Boom?" Yubelluna stuttered unsurely, watching as Vargan spread his hands out dramatically.

"That's a very good explanation," The duo was actually a trio, as Velrissa nodded sagely next to Vargan.

I idly thought that I should've just left Benemue to train the woman as well. Yubelluna's specialization in explosion magic was rather unique, so I hadn't been sure what to do with her. Tiamat had 'wisely' recommended that I have Vargan train her, to which the dwarf had agreed and roped in Velrissa.

Fortunately, to enchant against explosions, you needed to have an idea about explosion magic. Unfortunately, Vargan's 'idea' seemed to cap out at yelling differing levels of 'boom.'

I looked over at Tiamat, catching her eye as I raised an eyebrow doubtfully at her.

"He's doing a good job," Tiamat huffed, and I wasn't sure if she really believed that or if she was too prideful to admit she was wrong.

"Your Highness!" I turned my head away from both Tiamat and Kiba as a female voice resounded out, a woman waving at me as she entered the training grounds.

The woman was both familiar and not familiar - as she was the unevolved succubus that I had encountered in the Meadow of Love, but she was no longer unevolved.

[Iris] [Succubus] - Level 119

When Talia had said the lowly succubus had a lot of potential, she hadn't been lying. After receiving energy from Velrissa herself, the woman had evolved and was practically unrecognizable.

Instead of a decently beautiful woman who looked like she'd been injected with a horny-zombie virus, the woman looked much more normal - and much more beautiful.

She was tall - really tall, as she stood taller than even myself as she looked to be roughly 10 feet tall. Despite that, her body wasn't skinny or lengthy. It was proportional and thick - very thick.

She had shoulder-length bright green hair that framed her gorgeous face, which looked like it was a mixture of adorably cute yet also extremely sexy. She had big eyes that seemed to drill into me whenever she looked at me, along with thick lips.

The 'very thick' part came in her actual body, as her breasts were the size of cannon balls. Literally - she was tall enough that her proportionally sized breasts were gigantic. They were even bigger than Kyon's, and did the impossible task of surpassing even Akeno's by a large margin.

Hell, they were definitely even bigger than Yasaka's, as there was no way I could fit even my rather large hand around even one of them. Her body was curvy, as her waist thinned out then her hips widened as it led to her thick thighs and enormous rear.

Overall, she looked as if someone had designed the sexiest woman they could in a laboratory, then super-sized the hell out of her.

She'd shot up to level 90 immediately after evolving, and she continued to become stronger as her energy naturally increased. It was faster than even Velrissa, as the woman had grown 29 levels over the past few months despite just acting as Velrissa's aid.

By comparison, even the former Succubus Queen herself had only naturally progressed 5 levels in that same time period. If she continued to power up at this rate, then in just a few years she'd be one of my strongest subordinates.

"What's up?" I asked casually as the woman ran up to me, turning my body so I was face-to-face with her. Or, more specifically, face to tits, as that was about where my head got up to on her.

"There's a lady requesting to see you!" She explained quickly, "The guards didn't let her in because you said not to let anyone in, but then she just blew up a hole in the wall!"

Well, that's a bit annoying. She must be someone important if she was willing to show up to my territory alone and do something like that.

"Do you know her name?" I raised an eyebrow.

Iris frowned, raising a finger to her gorgeous face as she thought, "Um... there was a guy with her who called her... cat? No! It was..."

Despite the woman's hulking size, she was unfortunately a total airhead.

"Caty! Catia! Cat... Cartier? No! Cat Labyrinth!" Iris nodded proudly as she remembered the name. Though, I suspected that she definitely wasn't remembering the name right.

"Was it Katerea?" I asked blandly, connecting the dot, "Katerea Leviathan?"

"Oh, yes! That was it!" Iris nodded, bouncing on her heels happily, which in turn caused the two mountains on her chest to bounce around.

"We'll continue this another time, Kiba," I hummed easily, walking over to my sheath and placing my sword in it as he nodded.

"Do you want me to come?" Tiamat asked, having overheard the conversation.

"Nah, I can handle this," I shook my head, turning and heading back to my palace to get my armor. A flurry of quests had appeared earlier today, and one of them related to this matter, so this was actually great for me.

It seemed the Old Satan Faction was acting quickly. It had only been a day since I made my move, and they had already come to me personally.

It would be rude to make them wait, right?

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AN: Thank you for reading! The next Chapter will be out tomorrow!

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