Even if Ravel was raised as a noble, she was very good at baking. Occasionally, she also took the time to bake cakes for us. It’d be a worthy contest against Kiba’s cheesecake, and Kiba’s cheesecakes are quite incredible. Ravel continued
“There are many noble girls in the Underworld who are interested in cooking, you know?”
“That’s certainly true I suppose. Rias and Sona-senpai also cook.”
Rias always cooks for me at home, and former president Sona…could also be regarded as someone who cooks. I never expected that the Devil onee-samas around me were able to take care of their daily lives even without servants around them. Elmenhilde then said
“……I will learn!”
Perhaps because her pride had been shattered, she answered rather enthusiastically. Xenovia continued
“Compared to that, it feels as though Elmenhilde has tripped in places where there are no obstacles. This goes beyond Asia as well.”
Ah, indeed. Putting it that way, Elmenhilde always trips over anything. Perhaps her degree of carelessness is above that of Asia. “…That is!”
Elmenhilde originally wanted to protest, but her voice dissipated halfway through. “…Please watch my performance from now on.”
…It seems she understands what she wants to do. Her attitude when we first met was haughty and aggressive, typical of a pure-blooded vampire…I never expected to see such a surprising side to her. …It seems there are things that I wouldn’t have seen if we weren’t living together. Whilst we continued chatting in this manner, we continued our work. As the end of business approached, Ravel looked at the time as she said to me
“Ise-sama, it’s almost time. After this—”
“Yeah, I know.”
Indeed, we also had a meeting scheduled for today. The people we were going to meet were — Dulio’s [Brave Saints] team that we would face in our match at a later date. We were going to meetthe [Trump Card of Heaven]. (Part 2 of 4) (15/8)
Part 3
The place where we would meet the [Joker of Heaven] was — the Hyoudou residence. In fact, choosing to meet at a church-related facility was not a bad idea either, but we were mutually understanding of each other, so we were unable to decide on the meeting place until it was quite late. So we simply chose one of the meeting places of [DxD], which also happened to be the Hyoudou residence. To speak of a reason to meet…it was an opportunity for us to meet and greet the main force of the [Brave Saints] whom we had not been introduced to yet before the match. The Gremory peerage and Rias’ team members were originally going to join us, but Rias coincidentally also had a match, so they were training until late at night. Rias had her own circumstances to take care of, so they would have to wait until next time to meet the main force of the [Brave Saints]. To sum up, only the Hyoudou Issei peerage, the [Sekiryuutei of Blazing Truth] team, and Dulio’s team were meeting. They arrived here through the underground magic circle and were then welcomed upstairs to the Hyoudou residence’s VIP room. The two groups split up and sat across from each other at the long table. I sat on one side, facing the other [King] — Dulio sat opposite me. The person sitting beside me was not my [Queen], it was Ravel. My team did have a [Queen], but I did not yet have a [Queen] in my own peerage. By the way, my [Queen] Bina-shi was present this time. Under usual circumstances, she wouldn’t appear unless the entire team was training. …After all, as someone who knew of her true identity, I also knew that it was not easy for her to be here. Bina sat upright so as not to draw attention to herself…but she still wore a mask, so she became the centre of attention even more. The members of the two teams then began to give self-introductions. However, not all members of the other team were present. It appeared as though the only people who had come were the Aces of the Four Great Seraphim who acted as representatives. In addition, the supervisor of the [Joker of Heaven] team would also be here…. They were different from us as they hired someone to fulfil the role of supervisor. There was nothing wrong with this according to the rules. Professional Rating Games also allowed supervisors to be hired. However, in the majority of professional Rating Games, the [King] personally commanded rather than the supervisor. The role of the supervisor was something that I only found out about afterwards, and the teams who hired a supervisor were a small minority. Moreover, in professional Rating Games, most of them were arrogant nobles who would say things such as
“I don’t need any kind of supervisor! I’m more than enough to command!”
The concept of appointing a supervisor was not prevalent because the total number of players was not particularly large. This was one of the reasons that Rias told me. The other major reason was because Devils naturally had long lifespans, so the age of their bodies wouldn’t put an end their careers, and thus they remained active players for their entire lives. After all, since they could be active for their entire lives, it was understandable that there weren’t any players who would retire to become a supervisor. …Perhaps this was also a problem of the Rating Games. With that in mind, the organisers of the World Tournament had yet to formulate rules on the supervisory position. In actuality, many participating teams aside from the Devils had appointed their own supervisor. The [Joker of Heaven] was the same, and they had recruited a certain famous Rating Game player into their team. Perhaps because of this, our teams were alike in that we were on a winning streak. …Although we had not yet faced a team with god-class beings, they had been victorious against teams composed of so-called monsters from various mythologies. Their supervisor was also a very famous person that we knew of, and we were quite surprised the first time that we heard about it. Ravel was highly vigilant of them. Their supervisor…it seemed like they would be late. So we began our self-introductions first. Ravel made a suggestion to us before the meeting. “Ise-sama, everyone, this meeting may become an opportunity to reconsider our strategy. Underneath the peaceful surface of the meeting, you could say that we’ve already begun to spy on each other’s intelligence. After all, our opponent’s supervisor is that person.”
Though Irina retorted
“Really, this is simply a greeting with some Angels. It won’t become something that drastic.”
Although that was what she said…. It was impossible to ignore Ravel’s advice, so we tentatively kept our guard up. But just as Irina had said, they were comrades who had fought against Qlippoth with us; it seemed quite impossible given that it was Dulio, Sister Griselda, and the members of the [Brave Saints]. We introduced ourselves first. “Uh, I’m the [King] of the [Sekiryuutei of Blazing Truth] team, Hyoudou Issei—”
In roughly the same manner, the self-introductions of our side started with me and then concluded.