Highschool DxD: Dragon's Ascent

It has been 3 days since I had arrived in the underworld and I have been obscenely busy. After helping me get settled Sera had to leave on business as expected of one of the figureheads of an entire race.

What did I do during those days? Well, I explored the capital a little, then spent the rest of the time looking over my Auction House and Emporium, the two buildings that would be imperative for my growth. I also spent time learning more space magic and established a teleportation circle from the underworld to my mansion to import some of my homunculi over to take care of my Gothic Mansion(I did this one with a gothic design because it was in the underworld).

Also I finally briefly met with Grayfia again, I was assigned to clean this mansion in her free time, I didn't exactly have the time to mess with her since I was designing homunculi and doing alchemy at the same time. Which seemed to annoy her even more for some reason.

After one day when I had returned to my gothic mansion from producing another high-grade Elixir for the promotion quest I suddenly received a mental ping from the doorbell of my mansion(I linked the doorbell to my mind). Getting up from where I was busy drawing schematics for new items I could produce I went to the door and opened.

"Good evening, Lord Katsuragi. Lord Satan Beelzebub has sent me to ask you if you are available to see him and that if you are, for me to receive you." A butler with grey hair was in front of my door and damn...

I completely forgot about Ajuka from how grossly busy I was with arranging my auction. I definitely needed to meet him, and I had wanted to too, I just had problems with fixations and hyperfocusing.

Awkwardly I scratched the back of my head.

"Oh, yeah, definitely. Lead the way, I was just a bit too busy these days to get back to him." Fuck, this was horribly embarrassing, why was I so fucking incompetent?

The butler just smiled to relax me.

"No need to worry, Lord Satan Beelzebub is quite understanding, he knew you would be rather busy around this time."

Hopefully, Ajuka was a good fellow, I have no idea since I only watched the anime he had like 4 and three-quarter seconds of screen time.

✧—•✦•—✧—•✦•—✧—•✦•—✧

The butler had teleported to somewhere that was a mix between a high-tech laboratory and a mansion where a tall handsome man with slicked back green hair and blue eyes with a neutral was waiting for us. Seeing me appear he approached me and raised his hands for a handshake which I reciprocated.

"It's good to finally meet you, Lord Beelzebub, admittedly, I didn't get to hear much about you considering I have been a devil for less than a month now, but I have seen some of your works, I am very interested in them." I said honestly, I didn't need to put up a front for politics or business here, I genuinely thought his work was sick.

Ajuka smiled lightly.

"Then I suppose my reputation is doing good, I prefer keeping an air of mystery, which makes me seem more devilish and other people less likely to bother. It's good to meet you Sekiryuutei-dono, or whichever title you prefer. And I must say likewise, your work with your potions and seals is something I find very fascinating. Perhaps you would like to discuss our professions as scientists in a more comfortable environment?" He offered and I could see the glint of curiosity in his eyes, very similar to the one Azazel has.

And I readily accepted, I truly wanted to pick his brain a little and learn what he thought of my work and how his own work functioned.

"Sure, let's do so."

✧—•✦•—✧—•✦•—✧—•✦•—✧

~Ajuka Beelzebub~

"Couldn't I just substitute that by just enchanting Pyrotheum with Firebloom? Soleum seems very high maintenance, having to maintain would put a lot of strain on the mana matrix." Ajuka shook his head and laid out a schematic.

"Actually, you shouldn't need to, as long as you can link it to the mantle it should be able to draw on the heat from there to power its function by itself and largely mitigate the mana maintenance. You could try enchanting Pyrotheum with your powers and I certainly would like to see a model of that but if you did that it wouldn't conceptually emulate natural sunlight but merely emulate a giant ball of flame." Hearing his explanation Takumi nodded and picked up yet another pen and started sketching a schematic at absurd speeds with a look of concentration in his eyes as Ajuka held a light smile watching him to go at it.

Their discussion about their own respective fields had started light, Ajuka found it amusing to watch the young dragon emperor talk about his logic-defying seals and potions like a youth complaining about homework. But he undoubtedly held air similar to his own, the drive to discover and create.

He was also very curious about his own work, and not like the prying kind of interest Azazel desiring his secrets but just honest fascination about his work, the kind of wonder expected of a teen when they find a new console.

Ajuka found it very refreshing, most of the people he bothered to interact with either found his work too intimidating to breach the subject or only asked about the subject for small talk or for political purposes. It felt almost fun to talk with someone who was intently interested in his work and his work process.

Eventually, their talks got more intense before they moved to his workshop for Takumi to illustrate his points better and explain his processes and ideas while asking for his input and he likewise sought Takumi on how he would use his unique craft to achieve the ideas he had in his backlog.

Then that turned to just working and brainstorming on random projects. Takumi had wondered about his artificial sun and Ajuka explained it to him before they started throwing ideas and theories on how they could replicate the same project on a smaller scale for Takumi to use for farming unique crops and at the same time thinking about ideas on how the design could be improved with Takumi's own unique craft.

It was actually... fun to work with the teen Ajuka had to admit. While not quite an equal, at least not yet(He had a feeling that would change soon) working with someone with such interest and passion about his work and helping them felt actually quite enjoyable to Ajuka.

Almost like having a pupil but that was not quite right, their skill levels weren't so different that it could be considered that, the young dragon didn't need his tutoring but he sought out his assistance. Although he did not know how to quite label Ajuka did enjoy working with the young dragon emperor.

Even if he had to admit that his terrifying potential impressed even him, he was visibly improving his technique every moment. He was a monster through and through if what Serafall had said about how long he had been supernatural was right.

But he supposed that's made it fun to work with him.

✧—•✦•—✧—•✦•—✧—•✦•—✧

~Takumi Katsuragi~

I stretched while getting off of the chair, I felt sore after working on projects for that long, while stretching I turned to Ajuka.

"By the way, Ajuka, do you mind attending my Auction this night? I think the goods there might attract your attention and you being there would help attract even more people here considering even the ever-enigmatic Lord Beelzebub would be there." I asked casually to Ajuka as I packed my stuff, we had hit it off unexpectedly well, maybe even as well as I had hit it off with Azazel.

He was easygoing and a fellow inventor, he and I shared a mutual interest in building interesting shit, him specializing in Artificing and Magic while I specialized in Seals and Alchemy we had much to show each other.

Obviously, Ajuka currently dwarfed me in pure skill but my Alchemy and Seal knowledge was unmatched to the extent that I could help his projects with my own insights and perspectives on the subjects.

He simply shrugged.

"Don't worry, I was already planning on attending I want to see what obscene products you introduce next to the underworld and definitely grab some for myself." I nodded happily, honestly speaking Ajuka already felt like somewhat of a friendly acquaintance even though we had only met 8 hours ago, but damn it, it was a productive 8 hours, he had given me so many potential ideas to work on.

Reaching into my inventory subtly in my pocket(but judging by the slight smirk on Ajuka's face not that subtle) I pulled out a sleek black metal card with red Crimtane engravings on it and handed it over to Ajuka as he curiously inspected the seals on it.

"Here, a Royal VIP card, the highest rank you can get, consider it favouritism as thanks for your help, you can attend all auctions I hold with it and have your own VIP booth with a personal attendant once I get around to making those, you also get the usual stuff like priority and invitations and such as well as the exclusive access to the full inventory of my Emporium." Ajuka looked the card over before slipping it into his pockets.

"I'll certainly get some use out of it. Make sure to make some time tomorrow in your schedule, we haven't breached the topic of your potion craft much after all, nor your seal craft, I may have some ideas on how you could use those." I definitely was coming back, practicing with Ajuka made my skills skyrocket in levels, especially my enchanting which had already levelled up from pure theory and discussion alone.

"I will. Now I will have to set up my auction and make sure everything goes according to plan so I will see you later." After a quick goodbye, I left Ajuka's lab and teleported to the Auction House.

It was gigantic and lavish too, after all, it was a status thing I wanted to be known as the man who held the biggest and best auction house and held all the devils by their balls with my products.

The Grand Goch Auction House consisted of several areas.

The centrepiece which was the auction hall which resembled a stage more than an auction stand but that was for demonstrations and the show that went along with the auction. I liked to be extra. The seats were nice and had subtle classism with the arrangement of it.

The VIP floor which held far better seating and even personal booths should one preferred, as well as several basic homunculi maids attending as 24/7 personal service. I made sure to make the VIP portion feel like an exclusive so that Devils naturally aspired to get in on it, nothing better drives Devils than greed and pride, I wonder just how much they would be willing to fork over for VIP rights.

After that, there was the lobby which was obvious what that was for, the hall was more important, it was essentially a gathering hall for people waiting and wanting to socialize as Devil nobles like to do, there was even an option to reserve the hall if you had a Gold VIP membership, though I doubt that will get used until much later when the prestige of this place was much higher.

There was also a Hotel-ish portion for members, after all when you travel all the way here why not stay for a bit? It comes with its own room service and I can certainly tell you my Hotel rooms were second to none.

The silk was handcrafted by my alchemist Homunculi I called it Aranea Silk, more comfortable than normal silk and even more durable than spider silk, the bedding was also handcrafted and so were some of the furniture but those were for the higher rank VIP rooms. There was also room service.

I had Arc make two Homunculi with low power but purely for making food, they were for cooking good meals, with alchemically enhanced ingredients they could cook at the level of professional chefs, the Alchemized food would also be a selling point for the auction house.

So... how much did this all cost? The labour to build it and the furniture and the materials for the new wave of Economically-Friendly Homunculi I had Arc build?

Hehehe...

I was in Debt. Solidly in the red.

OR I WOULD BE!

But nope! Because me selling my goods in the underworld was their privilege, not mine. All of this was paid for in full by the Devil taxpayer money. I didn't spend even a single pebble for all this nor for my emporium.

If I did I would be drowning in debt. That would get fixed immediately after this auction, Sera with the help of the red guy had spared no effort for the advertisement, high-ranked noble families would be coming, and since high-profile families would come other high-ranked families would after them and to leech off the big guys the slightly less small families would be coming.

Everyone was allowed to come here, even the Phenex family because I was curious as to what they would do. Plus I knew they were the clan with the biggest pockets around, I wondered if they would approach me after the auction in order to pay off their child retrieval fee.

Finally, for the homunculi staff, I made Arc make a lot of them on a shorter notice but the result was definitely satisfactory.

30 Service-Type Homunculi, Shortened to Series S-1 through 30. Their physical stats were around 50 each which was while well above peak humans wouldn't hold up against Low-Class Devil's(Not civilians). They wore the Goch Auction House uniform.

The Goch Auction House uniform consisted of sleek black [Aranea Silk Pants] and a [Aranea Silk Vest] worn over a white [Ovis Cotton(Improved cotton structure) Button Up Shirt] with the Goch emblem embroidered on it. They also wore incredibly luxurious polished [Hydra Leather Shoes]. Finally, they had colour-coded ties according to the duties they were assigned to and gloves to complete the look. Lastly, they all had blank white masks to hide their faces.

The outfit of a single homunculi here costs more money than I have ever earned in my previous life several times over. But it cost essentially nothing to make. The silk and cotton were easy to make by just transmuting existing cotton and silk. The Hydra leather came from my Hydra pet who was honestly living its best life, in a comfortable cave with no competition while being tended to and given delicious food, all it had to pay in exchange was some spit, blood, meat and skin, and I had anaesthetics for that.

I had some male Homunculi too but it was only 10 out of the 50. Gotta have at least some diversity, I made sure the girls were busty and curvy while the men were tall and muscular, give the devils something to look at. They all had snow-white hair and red eyes of course.

Then there were Cooking Homunculi who wouldn't be seen by the public so they looked more like robots than human for function. There were two.

I had no security at the moment since almost all attendants would be high-class devils and my bodyguards were only peak middle tier, but I didn't need them at the moment as I was there and I was stronger than the average High Tier and Sera was there if any big arguments broke out.

Normally, I would prefer to have some more people as workers and not just Homunculi as it feels creepy with just them but I will just have to get there when I get there.

But after all of this preparation, I was standing backstage ready to start my auction.

Let's plunge this underworld into chaos, shall we?

A/N: Takumi finally meets his fellow production class enthusiast Ajuka, Azazel is technically one too but their discussions with Takumi usually end up in drinking and going on a fate-changing world-twisting bender.

Ajuka is the best skill trainer for Takumi and they naturally hit it off very well, which is to be expected. Takumi has started putting his finishing touches on his auction, he is planning on shaking the entire underworld with his goods. Time to become the most popular man in the underworld.

For both good and bad that is.

What did you guys think of the chapter and the auction house as well as the relationship with Ajuka? I would love to know so make sure to share your thoughts about it in the comments. Your comments help motivate me and help me improve.