Thomas Prest: A Simple Magician

Author Note:

Heavily AU.

I know that Misla was not born Bael. Well, I know that now. When I wrote the chapter, I had no idea so... :D.

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Tom spent so much time poking and prodding inside of Misla's body... and that came out exactly as he wanted it to... because he wasn't just trying to find out a way to awaken her.

Twenty seconds in the real world was for him, with the usage of his Sacred Gear, several hours. He actually spent eight magic gems around his neck and only because he took his time with channeling the mana instead of going as fast as possible could his body bear it.

He still suffered a massive physical strain but it was still within his limits.

Nevertheless, it was worth it. This was a golden opportunity for Tom. A living person usually had a lot of resistance to being extensively probed with his Sacred Gear. Loopholes existed, sure, but it was still a drag. But Misla was unconscious and that gave Tom the confidence to try being thorough with her.

And he discovered there was no resistance to his knowledge hunting throughout her body. How could he let an opportunity like this go?

To be honest, awakening her was a trivial matter and it took only a bit of Tom's time to find out what was wrong with her and how to correct it.

The reason for the Sleeping Sickness was that devils were artificially created lifeforms in the first place.

The first devil, Lucifer, was first an angel, and those were made by the Biblical God. He was not naturally born but artificially created. A massive difference.

From the devil history books, Tom briefly knew that Lucifer grew dissatisfied with all the restrictions put on him by the big G. Hence, Lucifer fell and became a Fallen Angel.

Not a devil straight away but a Fallen Angel.

But nobody knew what happened during his time as a Fallen Angel. All that was written in the history books is that Lucifer who was already a devil at that time met a demoness Lilith and used her to give birth to the devil race.

A lot of things were just glossed over in the history of devils and how they came to be.

But... to an attentive reader, the keywords said a bit more of the true story.

The history books had called Lilith a 'Demoness'. Not a Devil.

It might be surprising but Devils and Demons were not one and the same. And if Tom took into account what he so dearly wished to forget. Aka, that his world was also a variant of Marvel-verse...

Heck, who could have a clue about what demonic entity Lucifer made a deal with or what kind of accursed ritual he put himself through to change from a Fallen to a Devil?

Apparently, he got two for the price of one and the entity even gave him one of its demons as a sex slave to birth him his new race. Voila, the Pillars were born.

So... taking an artificial lifeform who went through some kind of unhealthy corrupting magical ritual that most likely screwed a few things loose in his genes as the first progenitor and then mixing it with a bonafide demonic entity as the second progenitor and voila, the devil-kind was born.

Was it any freaking wonder the devils had so many nutcases among them, skewed morals, many obsessions, and some rare diseases? They were akin to a successfully screwed genetic experiment straight out of the ancient era!

The Sleeping Sickness was just a slight disconnection between body and soul, forcing the person into an unconsciousness. Just like human bodies could develop cancer, the devils had this. It came to be due to their origin. Due to them being half artificial beings.

In a way, Tom could compare this to homunculi from the Fate series. Strong but flawed. Then again, Devils were certainly a much bigger success than homunculi ever could be.

The Sleeping Sickness was easy to fix for someone like Tom. For someone who had the Sacred Gear Vision and could see what is needed to just snap the connection between body and soul back.

For those without such a Sacred Gear... yeah, now that would be a very hard task and most devils would probably have no idea where to even begin with it.

It didn't help that devils didn't exactly study souls a lot. They could definitely slightly affect them as could be seen from Devil Pieces and the Old Contracts, but they sure as heck had no idea how to even begin healing one.

And they didn't seem to care about it anyway.

When Tom found out how to cure Misla, he started to rummage through different places in her body. Namely, he was interested in what the Power of Destruction was...

And boy was he surprised.

The Power of Destruction was not something in the Bael Family's blood or body. They had an innate connection to the concept of destruction and could imbue their demonic power with it, creating 'Power of Destruction'.

At least, that's what Vision told him.

Such a connection passed through the bloodline couldn't be cheap to acquire.

Tom didn't believe even for a second that Pillar Families were actually born with their 'bloodline' powers from the very beginning.

Angels and Fallen only had light magic, yet, devils had 72 different and potent special powers on top of their special imagination-based magic?

Pfft. If Lucifer could create them like that on his own, he could have trounced the big G with one hand behind his back. Since that didn't happen, the obvious conclusion is that something else happened.

It took a bit more magic power out of Tom than he expected but he was too curious to let it go. He sunk deeper into the history of the Power of Destruction through Misla Bael's connection to the concept of destruction and he found out the origin of this connection.

He found out that these bloodline powers were acquired through various hefty deals made by the progenitors of their families with extradimensional beings. The same beings the Masters of the Mystic Arts were dealing with.

Well, more often than not, the beings these Masters actually tried to prevent getting into this dimension.

Of course, these beings thought they outsmarted this new race and would acquire powerful slaves once their powers corrupted them and get an easy passage into this plane of existence through them but something in the devils' make-up, namely, their connection to the Heaven System of the Biblical God, prevented the first devils from being screwed six ways till Sunday despite doing something as stupid as trying to sell their souls to the so-called Demon Lords for special powers.

Yes, Tom actually facepalmed when he learned about that.

As much of a bother the headache when mentioning God's name was for the devils, Tom thought the Devils should be damn happy for their distant relation to him and the fact they still were a part of his System.

Without that, there would be no devil race today to plague the world and make a mess of things.

It also explained why especially Zekram Bael held the Power of Destruction in such high regard. He was one of the fools who was almost enslaved because of it and he certainly knew it. His nature and the concept of exchange imbued in the devil race would make him painfully aware of what he just did the second he agreed to the deal offered to him even if the other party was a powerful Demon Lord.

At most, the Demon Lords could hide the real intention behind the deal up till the point the other party agreed. Not any further.

Well, Tom surmised not every bloodline was the same. Some, like the Phenex Family bloodline, could have been a deal with a much milder dimensional entity but Tom could only inspect the Power of Destruction right now so anything else was just speculation.

For all he knew, some bloodlines could be mutations or acquired by other means like special rituals or even scientifically...

Eh, it didn't matter. Tom decided to focus on what was in front of him. Namely, the Power of Destruction.

What did it matter how Phenexes acquired their bloodline? The information would not help Tom in any way right now.

The last thing Tom did was to make sure his ideas and plans could be done. He wanted to know if Misla could make a deal with him through her unconsciousness. It was a farfetched idea, Tom had to admit.

But...

Like a good magician, he wasn't above using underhanded means. Having the concept of Exchange imbued in their being was very convenient for devils and they could grow stronger by simply making deals.

But obviously, there were drawbacks to this too. Drawbacks Tom could use as a backdoor to get what he wanted from an unconscious devil.

Usually, a devil would instantly wake up if somebody tried to force a deal upon him but Misla was as out of it as it gets. She could not wake up even if somebody was trying to drill a hole into her with a jackhammer.

The best part? Misla would be none the wiser due to the disconnection of her soul and body.

A Cheshire grin appeared on Tom's lips in his mind as he realized he had just found his cheat code to increase his personal power. Stopping channeling his mana into his Sacred Gear, Tom pulled back into the real world.