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The Unexpected Summoning Ch.15 (Harry Potter/High School DxD)
🕑 Added 2023-03-05 10:55:58 +0000 UTCA/N: Had a lot of trouble with this chapter. Turns out that longer fight scenes are a struggle for me to write. Let me know if it was interesting/boring. I'm open to changing the chapter if needed.
“You had your chance at a free shot,” Riser’s mouth had finished forming, but half his face was still missing, “Don’t expect to get another.”
“So you’re saying you won’t stand still when I throw this at you?” Harry’s fists were clenched, but the lightning could be heard crackling within.
His mocking tone and Akeno’s barely hidden giggle didn’t really help the Phenex’s foul mood.
“This is over,” Riser declared, his rate of regeneration increasing drastically, “I wanted to give some face to Lucifer-sama by letting you all show your skills, but it’s time I put you in your place.”
Harry raised an eyebrow and prepared to cast a shield at a moment’s notice. Riser might be chattier than his usual enemies, but that didn’t mean he was any less dangerous.
“Stand aside, Ravel. I’ll finish this quickly.”
Harry wanted to say that he had already said that, if not getting distracted by the earsplitting scream one of the girls let out behind him.
Heat.
Searing, skin-melting, hot as the sun, heat.
[Fucking idiot. Pay attention to the fight. This is the last time I will save your sorry ass against this weakling.]
Harry was in a horrific state. He could no longer feel half of his body from having his nerves burned away. Harry was no Phenex and didn’t have a cheat like their regenerative powers. Still, his magic was working quickly to fix the damage.
“You’re full of surprises,” Riser said lazily as he walked toward Harry, “You survived, even after taking that straight on.”
Harry gritted his teeth, willing himself to ignore the pain and put his focus back on the fight. He knew he couldn’t afford to make another mistake against Riser. Harry had been foolishly patting himself on the back about how he was more powerful than he realized. All he got in return were flames eating away at his flesh.
“Enough!” Rias sounded like she was on the verge of crying, “Harry, you don’t need to fight.”
“No,” Harry’s voice sounded parched, weak, and dry from the fire burning him, “He won’t be able to get me again.”
Before Rias could argue, Harry cast a makeshift shield that protected them while also ensuring they would stay out of the fight.
Just in time, because Riser made his move the moment he thought Harry was distracted. However, Harry was prepared.
He dodged Riser’s flaming fist and retaliated with a powerful blast of lightning that hit him squarely in the chest. The force of the strike blew Riser off his feet and punched a hole in the middle of his chest, sending him flying before crashing into a wall.
Harry acted like Riser was undamaged and poured all the magic he could gather into another attack, this time an overpowered blasting curse to cause maximum damage.
BOOM!
The wall exploded under the attack, and Harry was a little hopeful that Riser was caught along with it.
Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, Riser emerged from the rubble, barely phased by the attack. Well, for him. Riser was riddled with holes and burns that would have killed anyone else. Still, as with the previous injuries, it was recovering with ease.
[As much as I love to see you using him as target practice, would you mind taking this seriously?]
‘… fucking hell. I can’t believe I forgot about you.’
“I have to say, you are impressive for a new devil,” Riser said grudgingly as he dusted his shoulders, “I expected you to have collapsed in exhaustion by now.”
Harry wondered what Riser would say if he knew he was still human and the only reason he was in the rating game was because of a Satan.
However, he didn’t have time to ponder on that.
When Harry saw a rather impressive set of fiery wings emerge from Riser’s back, he summoned the small knife and prepared for a close-range fight. This was fine. It was what Grayfia made him focus on. If he could take on a vampire duchess head-on, then he could certainly do the same with a cocky devil.
“Fuck!” Harry wheezed when it felt like his ribs were going to cave in. His magic-reinforced body was straining to handle the fist, trying to cave in his chest.
Riser shook the hand he used to punch Harry with disgust as he flung the blood away. “You might have some power, but speed is your weakness.”
Harry grunted as he pushed off the ground and jumped away from another brutal fist that would have been buried in his stomach.
“If you can’t keep up with me, what can you do?” Riser smirked, making Harry’s senses go haywire.
[Behind you.]
Harry’s eyes glinted as he tightened his grip on the knife and swung backward, reinforcing his upper body to withstand the fist that would soon land on it.
Riser was right. He was too fast for Harry to do much, and any spells that could slow him down had little to no chance of hitting because of the same issue. If Harry ranked the vampire he killed against Riser, he would have to put her slightly below him.
And that damned vampire had left him bloody and bruised.
Harry would need to use all the tricks he could think of to beat Riser. And if taking a punch was necessary to stab the bastard with the knife, then so be it.
However, the punch Harry was prepared for and the expected feeling of stabbing into flesh never happened.
Riser’s wings flapped, moving him a good distance from Harry in less than a blink of an eye. “That blade, what is it?”
Harry glared at him, beyond frustrated that the only thing Riser bothered to dodge was the knife. Watching him take on attacks with no protection and suddenly dodge the one attack Harry suspected would work was infuriating. It was already the second time Riser did it, which almost confirmed to Harry that the knife was the most effective weapon against him.
“The Satans are impartial,” Riser commented, unbothered by Harry’s silence, “They would never allow you to bring a banned item into the rating game. Is this part of your power? A mutated sacred gear?”
Harry’s eyes were darting around Riser as the devil monologued, trying to see if there was anything he could use to trap him long enough to get to him. The most obvious option was Ravel, who was watching the fight a short distance away while occasionally making small fist pumps like a cheerleader when Riser had the upper hand.
The issue was that Riser was playing with Harry’s intention to have a head-to-head fight. If he targeted Ravel, Harry didn’t doubt that Rias and her peerage would also get the attention of Riser. Harry could protect himself when push came to shove, but he doubted he could do so with five more people.
“Something like that,” Harry replied to Riser, trying to get a few more seconds to think, “There’s an easy way to figure out what it can do.”
“Really?” Riser asked with amusement, “And I supposed you’ll tell me how?”
Harry abruptly flung his arm in Riser’s direction and tried to summon him. Without waiting to see if it worked, he twisted in place and disappeared with a sharp crack.
He appeared before an off-balance Riser and silently cast a powerful banishing curse before quickly following it up by lunging to the devil’s right, expecting Riser to dodge in that direction.
Harry remembered something Grayfia had told him during their training, “The key to defeating your opponent is to understand their weaknesses.” Now, he didn’t make use of that much since he was usually knife happy in those fights that Grayfia oversaw, a strange option to take as a wizard, but against an opponent like Riser, it had become mandatory to use unless he wanted to lose.
Harry had noticed a pattern in Riser’s movements. He tended to move right in most situations, so that was what Harry had to bet on. To make that chance even higher, the banishing curse was aimed at Riser’s left.
Harry had predicted correctly, but it wasn’t what he would call a success.
Riser wasn’t a fool. This wasn’t his first rating game and wouldn’t be his last. He had expected an attack after Harry suddenly broke his silence. Riser had expected another lightning bolt to the face or a mad rush toward him to use that strange blade, but the one thing he wasn’t prepared for was the pulling force that knocked him off his balance.
Neither was Riser prepared for the sudden attack from behind. His instinctive dodge put him in the path of the knife that his senses had been screaming in fear about since he had seen it. No matter how much power Riser tried to divert to his wings, he couldn’t completely avoid the swipe of the knife.
Harry frowned at the thin cut on Riser’s side. Of all the possibilities, this might be the worst if what he suspected was true.
Riser hissed in shock and covered the bleeding cut with his hand. He stared incredulously at Harry before bringing his bloodstained palm to his face, as if to confirm what was happening was the truth.
“You brought a holy artifact into the rating game?” Riser blurted in shock before quickly changing his guess, “No, that’s impossible. It would have been detected immediately. This has to be part of your power.”
Harry shifted in place uneasily as the look Riser gave him changed.
“You have potential, boy. I was planning to get rid of you when I married Rias, but I’ll have a place for you even though the thought of a man in my wife’s peerage disgusts me. I’ll make it worth your while. There are plenty of beautiful devils that can fill your harem.”
“Don’t do it, Harry-sensei!” Issei screamed behind Harry’s shield, “You already have Buchou and Akeno-san! Give the harem to me!”
“Tch,” Riser looked disgusted before refocusing on Harry, “So, what do you say? Forfeit the match, and I promise you’ll live like a king.”
Harry was more worried than he let on. He knew how unlikely it was to catch Riser unguarded a second time. The devil had gone from dodging none of his attacks to treating everything as life or death, which wasn’t far from the truth. No matter how fast Riser was, a blast to his body would slow him down briefly, at which point Harry would have sunk the knife into his flesh.
Given that it prevented Riser from healing himself, the knife was a practical death sentence.
Harry needed some help or at least a distraction. He had been far too confident to take on Riser by himself.
{Break}
“I didn’t know Riser was so strong,” Rias said glumly as she watched the fight.
“What Harry did to him might have been motivation,” Akeno sounded serious, one of the rare times she didn’t grin at someone bleeding.
“Maybe, but what did he do to get so strong in such a short time?”
Akeno clenched her fist when another ball of fire barely missed Harry. “Is it possible Riser was always this strong? What if he never bothered to show it since it wasn’t needed? His previous rating games never had someone like Harry in them. Riser’s peerage always did the fighting.”
Rias grudgingly agreed with her Queen. While she wished Riser was as trashy as he seemed, he looked formidable.
“Uh, Buchou? Isn’t it just as surprising that Harry-sensei is this strong? I didn’t know we were all weaker than him.”
“Harry turned Riser into a chicken when he was drunk,” Akeno smiled proudly as if her own child made a fantastic achievement, “That should have told you how strong he is.”
When Issei looked clueless, Rias explained, “It takes a combination of skill and power to do that forcefully to a high-class devil.”
“Oh,” Issei nodded but then asked a question that was burning in his mind, “Then why doesn’t Harry-sensei do the same thing again?”
“Riser is prepared,” Kiba interjected, “Think of the first time as an ambush. Harry-san wasn’t expected by Riser-sama, so he had a greater chance of success. With the amount of time that has passed from then to now, there’s no doubt Riser-sama has something preventing the same from happening again.”
Issei still had plenty of questions, but all of them were blocked in his throat when he saw Asia’s teary eyes. He saw her staring at Harry-sensei and decided to stop asking more questions. With how kind Asia was, Issei knew she was scolding herself mentally about not being any help. And she wasn’t alone.
Issei had initially punched the glowing barrier that surrounded them multiple times with no success. He wanted to jump into the fight and help Harry-sensei, but the man himself blocked them from joining. It pissed Issei off that he couldn’t fight, but he also understood what Harry-sensei was doing.
A true man should fight his rival alone, especially when Buchou’s future is at stake.
Immediately after that thought, Harry’s voice was heard inside the barrier as if to mock Issei.
“I’ll drop the shield in a minute. Riser is too fast for me to land an attack. Give me a distraction. It doesn’t have to be for long. We can win this fight even if you can slow him down for even a millisecond.”
Rias and Akeno looked at each other with determination before turning their gaze back to the fight. They weren’t sure how Harry could speak to them while firing multiple attacks at Riser, but they knew they had to give it their best if he went to this length.
“Issei, Kiba, I want both of you to keep Ravel out of the fight. Asia, follow them to be their support,” Rias ordered, “Akeno, you’re with me.”
They nodded with determination and waited for the shield to drop. When Harry shot a massive bolt of lightning that bathed the surroundings with blinding light, Rias and her peerage found themselves no longer restrained by the barrier.
“Go!” Rias ordered as wings emerged from her back. She and Akeno rocketed toward Riser while the others did the same to Ravel.
