Chapter 791: The journey.
Nightingale.
Hassan was looking at a group of women in front of him with an indifferent expression.
After a long and endless period of thorough investigation by two frightening women [Agnes and Natashia], he was finally allowed to approach the group to teach his students.
But not in his wildest dreams did he expect this sight in front of him.
"So, who is he?" Pepper asked curiously.
"Our new teacher that our Husband arranged," Lacus replied boredly.
"Ugh, do we really have to train?" Siena complained.
"Don't be lazy, or do you want to fall behind and grow weaker? You know what will happen if Darling or my mother deems you weak," Ruby spoke.
Siena shuddered. "...Fine, I'll train," she mumbled.
"Hmm... Why am I here again?" Victoria raised her hand.
"For what else, My Little Sister? It's for you to train, of course," Natashia nodded.
"Right, as Darling's Wife, you can't be weak, or you'll be taken advantage of. Strength is necessary!" Sasha agreed, nodding with her mother.
"I don't remember becoming Victor's Wife."
"Say that before signing the marriage contract, my beloved aunt."
Victoria was about to say something, but she decided to stay silent. After all, Sasha was right—if she wanted nothing to do with Victor, she would have fled that damn incident. She was just too shy to fully accept it, considering the man she was married to was shared between her sister and her niece.
"Putting that aside, if I'm here, who will manage our Clan while we're away?" Victoria asked.
"Of course, it will be Tatsuya and his beloved Witch, Hecate," Natashia nodded.
"I'm leaving," Victoria declared quickly but was stopped by Sasha and Natashia, who appeared beside her and held her by the arm, lifting her slightly in the air.
"Let me go!"
"Stop bothering your son. Let him enjoy himself with the Witch. Who knows? Maybe you'll have a grandchild in the future," Sasha spoke.
"Never!" Natashia struggled even more. "He's still a baby! He's only 100 years old! I must protect him!"
"Stop the drama. Despite being young, he's already quite strong—not at Victor's abnormal level, but he's a genius few can match due to his father's Heritage of Illusion Control," Natashia rolled her eyes.
"Hmm, this is calmer than I thought..." Jeane muttered.
"Only when chaotic beings like Violet, Agnes, Natashia, Morgana, Maria, and Roberta are together does everything become a mess. Those women have no sense of decency," Hestia said.
"Who has no decency, you horny Goddess?"
Hestia opened her eyes wide and jumped back, only to see Agnes looking at her with a neutral expression.
"Agnes! When did you appear behind me?"
"Just now."
"How?"
"A new Technique I'm developing," Agnes said but didn't give further details. "Back to the topic. You forgot Aphrodite, your horny Goddess."
A vein bulged on Hestia's head. "I am not a horny Goddess! Stop defaming my image!"
"Humph, then stop calling me a chaotic being. I'm a very quiet and understanding woman."
Hestia's expression turned neutral, and she looked at Agnes with a visibly confused and slightly worried look. "...Are you experimenting with illicit drugs? What kind of hallucinations are you seeing now?"
"...I am not experimenting with anything!" Somehow, Hestia's genuine kindness hurt Agnes. 'I'm not that chaotic, right? By Vampire standards, I'm normal,' she thought.
Jeanne rolled her eyes at this situation; she was still surprised that these women didn't realize how abnormal they were. 'Then again, I can't judge too much since I've been alive since the beginning.'
Hassan, who was looking at this group, was simply speechless. 'How many Wives does that man have? And why are they all so absolutely beautiful?'
Hassan felt like he had entered a forbidden garden where the most beautiful women in existence resided or something like that. Little did he know that this garden had a Guardian.
A gust of wind was felt all around, and Hassan's instincts went haywire. He quickly looked around, and before he could react, something appeared in front of him.
It was a stunningly beautiful woman, even more beautiful than all the others present, but that wasn't what caught his attention. It was the woman's neutral gaze and her Draconic features.
Zaladrac spread her wings wide, completely covering the moonlight from Hassan.
"Any harmful action, any wrong move, any wrong thought..." Zaladrac's eyes glowed an intense violet. "And I will erase your existence." Violet flames emanated from Zaladrac's mouth with every word she spoke.
Though she spoke in a neutral tone, the threat in her voice was unmistakable. A threat that Hassan took very seriously—after all, it was not every day you had a Dragon personally looking at you.
He was not foolish, nor was he driven by his desires; he hadn't reached his current position by being emotional.
"Don't worry, Zaladrac. He's being watched... And you know Darling wouldn't compromise our safety."
Zaladrac looked down, specifically at Hassan's shadow, and she saw various Demons of Despair, Demonic creatures that could hide in an individual's shadow. Not to mention, she also sensed several women from Clan Blank around, observing everything.
Victor didn't play with his Family's safety. He sent a teacher, but that teacher wouldn't be sent without being checked or having several confidentiality contracts obliging him not to speak about what he discovered in Nightingale.
"Mm." Zaladrac nodded and then flew into the air, hovering there as if unaffected by everything.
"... The Demon King sent me to train someone. Who am I going to train?"
"All of us..." Agnes spoke. "Though your focus will be on the less experienced girls." She looked at Violet in the distance and nodded.
Violet returned the gesture and walked towards Hassan with Ophis and Nero behind her.
"These are The Daughters of The Demon King," Agnes said.
When Hassan heard this, he opened his eyes wide in shock. 'The Demon King already has descendants?'
Suddenly, he felt hundreds of eyes on him. He snapped out of his stupor and looked around, realizing that the gazes he was feeling came from all the women present.
'Yes, this isn't a forbidden garden with the most beautiful women in existence... This is a deadly trap with thorny flowers capable of great atrocities.' Hassan thought, feeling a chill down his spine.
He could easily identify that the most dangerous women here were the Dragon and the blonde woman named Jeanne—those two gave him the worst feeling.
"You will train them however you see fit."
"...I can't train them," Hassan spoke after assessing the situation, then turned his gaze to Agnes.
"...Huh?" Agnes's red eyes became lifeless as she turned her face 90 degrees, looking very confused but also very scary.
The worst part was that she wasn't the only one giving him that look; almost all the women present had a similar expression except the Goddess, who seemed normal. But with everything he had seen in this short time, he highly doubted that this Goddess was normal.
"What do you mean? Why can't you train them?" Agnes persisted.
"My training is harsh," Hassan replied with the same tone as before and a neutral expression.
Only once did Hassan lose control of his expressions, and that was when he saw the Demon King's daughters. It was a significant piece of news, but during the entire encounter, he remained composed.
His training was so ingrained in his body that even in a situation like this, where several dangerous Beings were looking at him, he stayed calm.
And this attitude surprised the girls around him; after all, their sisters were not normal Beings. Moreover, this man had seen the lifeless gazes of the women present here, and if it were anyone else, they would already be terrified. But he remained calm.
As expected of someone who inherited the name "Hassan."
He was a Master.
Hassan looked at Ophis and Nero. "Injuries will happen, and their mentalities will be tested. I can't train them because you will interfere if I get too harsh... And that goes for all the other students too."
"I thought it would be a more plausible reason, but that's all?" Sasha snorted and smiled in amusement.
"Right? I thought it would be another reason too," Violet rolled her eyes.
"I guess he doesn't know about my Mother's and my Husband's ways, huh," Pepper thought.
"Even if he knew, it would be strange. After all, Darling doesn't share much about his personal life with strangers. He's extremely reserved about delicate matters," Lacus said.
"...Darling, huh?" Ruby raised an eyebrow with an amused expression.
Lacus blushed slightly, but she didn't look away. "What? You all call him that directly. Why can't I?"
"...Stop with that shit-eating grin!" Lacus snapped.
"Hehehe," Ruby chuckled lightly.
Pepper shuddered slightly. "That laugh... Fuck, in the future, Ruby will become a Milf, who says, Ara Ara."
Ruby's amused expression disappeared, and she returned to a neutral expression, looking at her older sister. "Stop talking nonsense. I'm not Japanese. Why the hell would I say, Ara Ara? It's more likely for Haruna, Kaguya, or even Mizuki to become someone like that."
"Hmm, that's true... But Kaguya grew up in a culture more oriented toward the West, so we should rule her out," Pepper said.
"I think Kaguya will remain the same as always, even in the future, just more strict," Siena pointed out.
"It's quite likely," Pepper nodded.
The eerie atmosphere completely disappeared, and the girls started talking among themselves, ignoring Hassan.
"You seem confused, even though you don't show it, Hassan," Agnes said.
"...That's true. Why did they react that way when they heard about my training?" Hassan decided that being honest about his doubts was the best course of action.
"It's simple." Agnes began to explain. "At some point in their lives, all the girls here were trained by Scathach or even Darling."
"And if there's one thing you need to know, it's that those two individuals have training regimens akin to torture."
"...The ability to harm loved ones for their own good is not something everyone can do lightly, especially for someone like The Demon King," Hassan said.
"Correct. Because of Victor's nature, he avoids the harshest training for the younger girls, but for the older girls, he doesn't go easy," Jeanne said.
'The same applies to the current Scathach. If it were the old Scathach, she wouldn't even blink while subjecting the children to torturous training. But when she met Victor, her mindset changed, and her training went from infernal to bearable, at least for the younger girls in the Family... I bet if she were to train another Being outside the Family, she'd revert to her old ways.' Jeanne thought.
"To be honest, I don't think you can teach us anything," Violet began.
Hassan looked at Violet neutrally.
"Why not?"
"Look around. We have the most competent individuals here—a Master Assassin," Violet pointed to a shadow on the tree, and when everyone looked in the direction she was pointing, they saw Oda leaning against the tree with crossed arms.
"Three Martial Arts Masters, my Husband, Scathach, and one more woman who's not present."
"This also includes several old women who've been walking on the Earth before Jesus even existed."
Veins bulged on the heads of said "old" women.
"Of course, don't forget the Dragon too." Violet smiled as she looked at the sky where Zaladrac was floating, looking at Hassan.
"...And there's you, the old man of the mountain, Hassan-
i Sabbah... Yes, you may be the successor, or even the original 'old' man of the mountain, a unique existence indeed, but what can you teach us?"
Many might mistake Violet's question for arrogance, but it wasn't that. She was genuinely puzzled by the situation—
why did they need to train with this man when there were so many Elites present? She knew Victor didn't make mistakes when it came to his Family, but she couldn't see what this man could teach them.
"A fair question that I also ask myself," Hassan spoke neutrally.
"...Huh?" Violet was confused by what she heard.
"Why did The Demon King send me here? What does he want me to teach you? These questions always come to my mind. I still don't understand that man fully; after all, I only saw him briefly, and we didn't even talk much."
Violet's look went from confused to bored as she heard the man's response. "...It seems Darling made a mistake this time."
"But even though I don't know him well and don't understand his motives, the moment I arrived here, I understood my role."
"....." Violet fell silent as everyone focused their attention on the man.
"With just one look, I could see your problem."
"Faith."
"Faith?" Agnes asked, confused.
"Yes, in this specific aspect... Compared to The Demon King, all of you are 'lost'."
These words made all the women narrow their eyes dangerously at Hassan.
"The only individuals who pass in this aspect are..." He looked at the Dragon in the air. "You," then he looked at Jeanne. "You," he looked at Hestia. "And you."
"Explain what you mean about Faith," Agnes said.
"A conviction... a belief... or Faith... Faith in oneself, Faith in one's own existence."
Hestia's eyes widened when she heard Hassan's words.
"The thought that nourishes the Soul and makes your worth grow in existence, right?" Hassan looked at Hestia.
"...You... How?" Hestia asked in shock; the man's words were very familiar to her.
Hassan didn't answer, only stating, "The path to Divinity is paved through hardships, enlightenment, and understanding. Only when you understand yourself and the world around you can you find your place in existence."
A golden aura began to emanate from the man's body, completely enveloping him.
"I'm Hassan-i Sabbah. I inherited this name from my Master a thousand years ago, and through it, I reached a height that even he couldn't attain."
His golden aura spread around, causing a gust of wind.
"A High-Level God..." Agnes opened her eyes wide as she looked at Zaladrac and saw that the Dragon's expression hadn't changed, which meant Zaladrac knew from the beginning, and if Zaladrac knew, it meant that Victor knew too. After all, they had the same eyes.
'This is why she never stopped observing him...' Agnes said.
"I attained Divinity through my Faith... That's what I will teach you, The Philosophy of Self-Discovery."
"A tool that will aid you on your journey, whatever it may be... I hope that by the end of my lessons, you will know yourselves better than you do now."
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