A/N: Chapter 4 Rewrite Version is up! go check it out~
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Dust and debris drifted through the air like gray snow, soft and quiet against the devastation below.
Where half of Kuoh Academy had once stood, there was now only a wide smoldering crater of broken stone and churned soil, still steaming from the force that carved it open.
The group stepped out slowly from behind the battered shields Alice and Anisphia had conjured. Their barriers barely held together long enough to keep them standing.
Asia stood frozen, fists clenched at her sides, her wide eyes locked on the smoking crater. Not a single word left her lips.
Koneko gripped Kiba's sleeve, not even able to maintain her usual stoic expression, while Issei stared at the remains of the academy grounds, mouth open as if trying to make sense of what just happened.
Rias and Sona lowered what was left of their defensive spells. Pale, sweating, and shaken, neither said a word. The disbelief was clear in their eyes.
Even Azazel looked thrown off. He ran a hand through his hair and muttered under his breath, "What kind of monster did we just encounter..."
Vali let out a low whistle, his tone more impressed than shocked. "Well..... that's what you call star-level destruction."
At the center of it all, Hajime stretched his back with a slow, casual motion. The Star of Eden hovered quietly at his side, its glow fading as the last of the black hole's energy settled into stillness.
Without glancing back, he let out a quiet sigh and mumbled, "Finally, that's done~."
Alice stepped forward, still a bit shaky. "Hajime... are you okay?"
He tilted his head and gave a small, crooked smirk. "Yep~ Didn't think I'd need to try that hard for something like this."
Anisphia laughed—part relief, part disbelief. "Says the guy who just erased half the battlefield like it was nothing."
Rias and Sona exchanged a glance, both still pale and rattled.
"That was... on a completely different level," Rias's tone caught somewhere between disbelief and awe. "I don't even know how to process what we just saw."
Sona nodded slowly, adjusting her cracked glasses with fingers that hadn't quite stopped shaking. "If Nagumo-san hadn't kept that under control...."
Sona didn't even finish her words, because Rias herself thought of it and sent shivers to both of them.
Azazel let out a dry laugh. "Yeah. Good thing he's one of the good guys."
Nearby, Sagiri Ameno stepped out from behind a fractured wall, her breathing uneven. She looked shaken but steady, pushing through the tremble in her legs with quiet stubbornness.
The rest of the Gremory and Sitri peerages clustered together, still can not wrap their heads from what they'd just witnessed.
Tsubaki stood stiff, fists clenched so tightly her knuckles had gone white. Her usual composure gone, eyes fixed on the crater where the academy once stood. Her mind struggling to make sense of it all. Beside her, Saji stared slack-jawed, mouthing words that refused to form.
Ruruko and Tomoe leaned on each other, pale and unsteady. Their legs felt like they could give at any moment, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of what had just happened. Tsubasa tried to control the tremble in her arms. She refused to fall apart, but the pounding on chest made it hard to do so.
All eyes turned to the one responsible for everything they'd just witnessed—still smirking like nothing had happened, casually flirting with his girls. Whatever Hajime whispered to Alice had her cheeks burning, while Anisphia clung to his arm like she was already floating above the clouds.
The contrast was hard to process. Moments ago, he'd flattened a battlefield with power that defied belief. Now, he looked like just another teenager, joking around like this was a regular school day.
The shift made everyone pause.
Just who was Hajime Nagumo?
Feeling their collective stares, Hajime turned and threw them a big grin and a thumbs-up.
It was ridiculous.
And somehow... comforting.
A strange feeling passed through the group—part relief, part gratitude, part exhaustion. Whatever the emotion was, they didn't bother naming it.
They just knew—maybe, just maybe—if Hajime and his team were around, then they had a real shot at whatever came next.
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After a long pause, Sona stepped forward, her patience clearly worn thin. She was glaring at Hajime with a look that could probably shatter glass, her fingers twitching like she was restraining herself from launching a clipboard at his head. Her eyes swept across the wrecked school grounds, her expression straining between frustration and sheer disbelief.
"Nagumo-san," she said, her voice unnervingly sweet with irritation bubbling just beneath the surface, "would you care to explain how you plan on fixing this?"
Hajime turned toward her, completely unfazed. He gave her an innocent smile, too innocent, and tilted his head ever so slightly, like he genuinely didn't understand the issue.
"Hmm...? Oh, that?" he said, lazily scratching the back of his head. "Just a bit of remodeling, right? No big deal."
Sona looked like she was about to unload a lecture long enough to count as a thesis paper, but Azazel cut in first with a low whistle, hands shoved in his coat pockets like none of this surprised him.
"Kid, with that kind of firepower? You're basically a one-man natural disaster," he said with a lopsided grin. It sounded casual, but there was no mistaking the tone of his words. He meant every bit of it.
Sona pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a sharp sigh, clearly holding back a full meltdown. "Couldn't you have... I don't know... maybe not blown up half the school?"
"Yeah!" Saji added in, still pale and twitching. "That's not an oops, Nagumo-san! That's a full-scale disaster!"
Alice and Anisphia glanced at each other, visibly resigned, and turned back to the group with perfectly timed sighs.
"That was him holding back," they said in sync.
The silence that followed hit harder than any explosion. Reality-san seemed took a vacation.
Everyone froze whether the Gremory, Sitri, Exorcists, even Azazel and Vali. Their expressions twisted into a shared blend of horror and dangerously close to panic as all eyes turned—again—to Hajime.
He gave them a harmless smile, rubbing the back of his neck like someone caught sneaking snacks before dinner.
Rias blinked several times, struggling to form words. "H-Holding back? That was you holding back?!"
Sona's hand twitched as she pushed her glasses up, the glare across the lenses more a warning than reflection. "There's not a single logical framework where that counts as restraint, Nagumo-san."
Alice gave a wry smile before pointing at the rest of them. "Look, we're all still standing. That's gotta count for something."
Anisphia let out a long breath, rubbing her temples like the headache might never leave. "And hey, at least half the school didn't get erased. That's technically a win, right?"
Saji flailed, pointing toward the massive crater like it personally offended him. "Half?! HALF?! There's a crater big enough to register on satellite maps!"
Anisphia rolled her eyes, deadpan. "Please. It was a black hole. The fact that any part of the school still exists is practically a miracle."
Ruruko blinked slowly, her voice barely above a whisper. "Was that... really a black hole?"
Tomoe gave a stiff nod, her eyes still fixed on the smoking crater. "It... devours stars, right? We're just lucky the rest of the campus is still here."
Kiba, exhaled trying to release the remaining tension in him. "We were right there... no wonder everything felt like it was collapsing."
Akeno let out a breath that was half sigh, half chuckle. "I guess we found someone who could flatten a city in a breath."
Azazel scratched his neck, his tone somewhere between impressed and resigned. "........Well....It seems that we are lucky. REALLY lucky this time."
Griselda sighs . ".... I may have used up all of my luck then."
Realization hit them all at once again. The memory of what a black hole truly meant came crashing in.
An abyss that consumed everything without compromise.
The reaction was immediate. A collective shivering as they hug themselves or each other. No words were needed because they are the people who experience something far beyond their scale.
Still being scolded and seeing their reactions, Hajime puffed out his cheeks in exaggerated offense. "Ugh, fine, fine~ I'll fix it, okay? Happy now?" he huffed, dramatically waving his hand like a grumpy kid asked to clean up after breaking an entire city.
Before anyone could react, Hajime casually raised his hand, circuits made of soft blue light slipped from his palm, spreading outward. Shapes began forming made from Ones and Zeroes. From mechanical patterns, to formulas, all dancing midair as if sketching a plan only he understood.
The lights grew bolder, their glow bouncing off the broken earth and the awestruck stares around him. Hajime's eyes scanned the wreckage with precision. To torn walls, shattered windows, ruined grounds, memorizing every bit of it.
Data flowed as Hajime's Herrscher of Reason core lit up. The blue circuits etched across the air, syncing with his thoughts. Within seconds, every detail of Kuoh Academy surged through his mind: walls, hallways, classrooms, the exact angle of every rooftop tile. All of it. Each and every detailed was etch on the blueprint in his mind.
The spirals of light danced tighter into his palm waiting signal.
Then, with an effortless snap, he let it all unfold.
Reality bent and warped like it had pressed rewind. The ground beneath their feet rippled, shifting from scorched and broken to smooth and whole. Stone reassembled, walls lifted back into place, windows stitched together without so much as a chip left behind. Kuoh Academy didn't just look repaired—it looked untouched, like time itself had spared it.
The last sparks of reconstruction flickered out, leaving not even dust behind.
No one spoke. The silence wasn't out of awe. It was the kind that came when the mind simply couldn't keep up.
"H-How..." Saji managed to croak out, his voice cracking in pure disbelief as he pointed a trembling finger at the perfectly restored academy.
Ruruko blinked rapidly, as if trying to confirm that she wasn't hallucinating. "Is... is this real? Did he really just..."
Tomoe rubbed her eyes roughly, still staring. "Everything's... just back. No cracks, no debris... not even a scratch."
Tsubaki opened and closed her mouth several times, words failing her for the first time in memory.
Even Sona, who usually kept her composure like a well-oiled machine, just sighed—long, drawn-out, utterly done. The second pinch to the bridge of her nose said more than any words could.
Hajime, of course, looked far too pleased with himself. Arms crossed, smug grin locked in place, he nodded toward the group like he'd just fixed a squeaky door. "Easy fix."
No one moved. No one blinked. It was like the collective brain of the entire crowd short-circuited. Then—
Sona let out a deep breath, her hand hovering midair as if trying to grab the last threads of sanity. Her eyes were wide, glazed from sheer system overload.
"I... I don't even know where to start the reports..." she muttered, dazed.
Hajime, unfazed by the existential breakdown unfolding behind him, simply hummed a cheerful tune. He turned, hands in his pockets, as if casually heading to lunch instead of walking away from literal planetary-class destruction.