That time I eloped with the main character's daughter (DXD / Multicross / Essence CYOA)
By: ENIYA
[NSFW] - That time I eloped with the main character's daughter (DXD / Multicross / Essence CYOA) by ENIYA
Status: ongoing
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-04-10
Words: 94254
Chapters: 22
Original source: https/forum./threads/13930
Exported with the assistance of
That time I eloped with the main character's daughter (DXD / Multicross / Essence CYOA)
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 1
Spoiler: Essence CYOA Build
Essence Build Summary Blank
- Limitless Potential Buff other Essences
Crafter - Mythical Item Crafting, Conceptual Imbuement, Conjuration of non-living materials
Archmage - Unlimited Memory Storage, OP Intelligence, Muh Magic (shareable)
Cultivator - Potential to cultivate to become Super Primordial God Super God (shareable, to an extent), standard genius talent package, make Cultivation stuff out of other things like dead enemies and plants, no limits and 'bottlenecks', heaven-defying luck, unlimited willpower, and ability to constantly find tougher opponents
Harem Protagonist - Bonus Affection Points, 'Attraction Field', required secondary Harem Maintenance, Anti-NTR and Sexual Intercourse capabilities
Spoiler: Essence Full Description
Essence of the Blank
By taking this essence, you gain but one benefit:
Your potential becomes limitless. You can learn any discipline or skillset, even if you shouldn't be capable of it, without forgetting it and practice them into mastery, no matter how many you learn. Any abilities you have from other Essences will increase where possible and develop in ways beyond their initial purposes.
Essence of the Crafter
Master craftsman, able to design, build, and maintain anything from machines to a simple shovel. Flawless work, anything created will never rot or rust only able to be destroyed through violence. These creations are extremely durable as well. Creations work better than one made by someone else. Can conjure dead or inorganic materials needed to work with from thin air. Ability to craft items on par with those in myth and legend, spears that never miss, swords that can cut through anything, invulnerable armor, etc. Can force specific abilities onto items through sheer skill and ability to craft on a conceptual level.
Essence of the Archmage
By consuming the essence of the Archmage you gain several boons
Perfect memory with infinite storage Beyond genius level intellect Capacity to learn any 'magic' even unique ones upon seeing it once or understanding enough about it. This also includes things like Ki, Chakra, soul power, etc. Possess a supernatural reactor that can adapt to any supernatural energy to fuel spells, enchantments, powers, etc. this reactor provides a steady supply of power that will grow over time, right now you could use high consumption abilities with wild abandon and still not make much of a dent after a few hours. Can teach others systems even if they previously lacked the capacity. Manipulate entire systems or combine then with experimentation. are capable of casting any spell as long as you have the energy not requiring any extra element like a focus or materials. The time required to cast if any remains however.
Essence of the Cultivator
By consuming this essence you become as ridiculously overpowered and blessed with potential and luck as the greatest of xianxia main characters. Which, if you know xianxia, is pretty damn ridiculous.
You gain the ability to 'cultivate' your 'internal energy', allowing you access to increasing tiers of effects and powers in-theme for wuxia and/or xianxia, the exact nature and power level of these effects depending on what degree have cultivated it to. You may use an existing cultivation system from any xianxia novel or create your own. You may grant this ability to cultivate to others and teach them your system, but they are limited to their own willpower, comprehensive abilities, and talents when it comes to success. You may still use external means, such as alchemy or creating and sharing secret techniques, to help them. Cultivating your internal energy slows down your aging, eventually making you truly unaging. Likewise, you may eventually transcend mortal needs such as sustenance, normal rest, or needing to breathe. Your mind and soul will be adjusted so as to be able to endure immortality. Your talent for cultivation and speed and ease of learning at all things related to cultivation (including martial arts, alchemy, and creating artifacts) is beyond ludicrous. Your aptitude is raised to the maximum possible allowable in existence and perhaps slightly beyond even that. You can choose to slow this down when you need to or when you wish to avoid attracting attention. This includes your ability to make use of external cultivation aids, such as parts from mystical beasts and exotic plants and treasures. You may easily consume and gain maximum benefit from such things even without preparation, and gain even greater benefits from them with sufficient preparation and alchemical knowledge. Even if your cultivation system does not normally provide you with one you will still be gifted with perfect memory, including infinite storage and perfect indexing. As one specially blessed by this Essence and the heavens, you may ignore the usual limits of your cultivation system whenever you find it convenient. You may mix incompatible elements, cultivate female-only arts as a male or vice versa, ignore dietary or behavioral restrictions normally required of cultivators, etc. Your cultivation cannot be 'crippled'. Injuries that would normally destroy your cultivation instead merely temporarily wound it, but you can heal in time. Likewise, any cultivation techniques that carry a risk of death if performed incorrectly are entirely safe for you; you may or may not succeed at them but failure will never kill or permanently injure you, and you may try again. Your cultivation never dead-ends or gets trapped in a bottleneck. Regardless of what choices you make or what system you are in, there are no 'traps' that leave you stuck at a given stage of cultivation forever. All setbacks are clearable with enough hard work and your 'foundation' is always ideally solid. Your willpower is truly unlimited, unbreakable, and unsurpassed, and you have a perfect sense of 'self'. No amount of pain or hardship can deter you, no illusion can trap you or bind your heart or soul, and you can focus on a task for eternity if need be. Any cultivation challenges that depend on strength of will or clarity of mind are auto-win for you. You have the luck of a top-tier xianxia protagonist. Coincidence and fate favor you greatly, mentors and training materials seem to be available whenever most needed, discovering treasures and rarities seem to be much more common for you than for other people whenever you go exploring and adventuring, and you have plot armor sufficient to survive almost anything. Cultivation is not for the idle, but instead for those who struggle and overcome challenges. Regardless of how powerful you grow you may always find things that challenge you if you make a sufficient effort to seek them out, until you finally stand among the highest of beings.
Essence of the Harem Protagonist
There is something about you that can attract anyone, even strange alien beings beyond the comprehension of mortals and gods alike. What it is that attracts these individuals will vary from person to person but there will always at least be something that will pique their interest. Their interest can easily blossom into fondness, a desire for friendship, or even genuine love if given some time to interact with you in some way whether it be in person or through hearing about you. Are quite a bit tougher, enough that you could survive the rather destructive results of typical harem shenanigans. You will never suffer crippling or lethal wounds from any of those in your harem. You will passively draw towards you individuals that have significant power, importance in their world plot wise or some other reason, grand destinies, and this such as that. Toggleable. Granted infinite stamina and vitality, you are a quite able lover, able to please a mind boggling amount of people into bliss. Any individuals that become part of your harem will be more willing to put aside differences and grievances to work towards your happiness and their own if circumstances permit. The feelings and loyalty they have for you will remain eternally strong unless you do something terrible to change that. Fate, Destiny, and coincidence will bend, twist, warp, and maneuver to keep those in your harem yours. That doesn't mean they are bound to you forever if they honestly want to move on, just that things like individuals with mind control abilities, infernal lust powers, or a dirty monster tries to claim them these attempts at taking them will fail quite spectacularly. You can sense any who try to claim what is yours and who they are.
AN: This is basically a crackfic/parody of DXD harem multicross, it may get slightly more serious if I continue it, but I'll see how things go first since I was just trying to get a really sticky idea out of my head by writing it out. And yes, the protagonist name was chosen as a way to troll Issei, and no, I'm not making Jojo references here. As for worlds they will be eloping to, I'll probably be following the trend of appearing at non-canon periods, like Danmachi when Zeus/Hera (more importantly, Zard and Alfia) are around.
That time I eloped with the main character's daughter (DXD / Multicross / Essence CYOA)
I woke up as the happiest 4-year-old in the world!
The reincarnation was a success! I was now the proud consumer of 5 OP Essences in a harem series! I may not have gotten the chance to grab the more powerful ones since I was only given half a minute to make my choices, but I can't say that I was dissatisfied with grabbing the few Essences I did know about when I was given a limit of 5 Essence Bottles.
Blank for that sweet limitless potential and overall buff to other Essences. Crafter for my magical bling of war, free conjured materials, and general skills in creating masterful works. Archmage for all the magic! Cultivator that gives me all the genius, heaven defyingly lucky Xianxia Protagonist perks and potential to become a Super God. And finally, Harem Protagonist for obvious reasons.
The unknown god that granted me this blessing of second life as an overpowered protagonist may have been laughing maniacally when I said I wanted to go to the DXD universe, but despite whatever twists or challenges he had undoubtedly placed in my way, I couldn't help but be grateful to him for this chance.
I took a look at my surroundings, noting that I was in Japan, and recalled that my rich American parents decided to move to this country for business purposes. It was a pretty standard background fact required to put a future OP protagonist like me into Kuoh Academy. I don't care how contrived it was, so long as it helped me to achieve my goals of banging all the blonde waifus like Asia Argento then I have no problems with my super cliched backstory.
Unless, of course, it involves my parents contracting a case of overly edgy death with a side dish of rape by supernatural beings.
My new family was apparently doing a great job raising me so I fully intended to repay them for their service with sufficient filial love and many boons once I become the strongest being this universe has ever seen.
Suddenly, I heard a strangely familiar sound coming from outside… ah, my parents are back home from work!
I ran downstairs and opened the door for them, then happily ran up and hugged them. Thomas and Lia Dorana, my new father and mother, lovingly hugged me back. They had bought dinner back and also prepared a delicious chocolate cake for my birthday!
"And now, it's time for presents! Honey, you did get that action figure on time…?"
My mother was whispering to my father about something, probably about my present.
Honestly, I wasn't going to be picky about these trivial matters, not when I could now conjure materials and build better things thanks to my Essence of the Crafter.
"Uh, about that…"
I couldn't hear what he said but I could hear the word 'sale' and my mother seemed to be happy with it so it was probably okay.
I opened up the packaging on my present and found a rather cool looking red-armored action figure. Oh, the green button on its chest looks very pressable-
"OPPAI!"
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
That wasn't me screaming despite the utter horror that was swelling in me.
My mother snatched the toy out of my hand and proceeded to lecture my father over buying something so perverted. I couldn't even muster the strength to keep up the childish act by questioning 'what is Oppai' to elicit some hilarious reaction from them.
The Oppai Dragon was already a thing. Canon was progressing or had already progressed, and I was still just a human child.
I searched for my new body's memories and realized that it was the year 2021!
From my previous life's memories, I recalled something about that shitty time travel volume involving Issei's kids coming from 30 years in the future.
The fucking unknown god sent me to Highschool DXD Volume EX!
All my dreams of my perfect DXD harem came crashing down.
What's the point of being an overpowered self-insert harem protagonist when there's no harem worth going after? I could probably go after any amount of hot supernatural women whenever I wanted but if I did that then it would be the same as picking up random mob characters.
There's just a really special appeal about canon haremettes, even though plenty of harem girls have cliche character traits and backstories, I can't help but long for story significant characters. It doesn't really matter whether my desires for canon girls were just for the fandom bragging rights or some dumbass autistic reasons, point is, I came here for the express purpose of getting those girls, and accepting anything less would be the same as living a mediocre life!
Yeah, that's right! Fuck that, I had potentially unlimited power within reach, all I needed to do was get so OP that I can jump into an alternate timeline and get all the waifus I want!
Ah, yes, there are some complications with that. Gasper was going to basically end up a god of time and could possibly undo my actions, it would be dangerous to try time travel before gaining sufficient cosmic power… Shiva was likely still a threat with his precognition, normally, I wouldn't have to worry about them thanks to my crazy Xianxia protagonist luck.
The problem was that Gasper was best friends with Issei and, knowing Issei, he probably has Shiva as part of his 'Rival Harem' right now. I may have Xianxia Protagonist plot armor, but Issei Hyoudou has Plot Armor as well, how else would he have made it this far in life without bullshit luck?!
I can't risk the notice of beings that have Issei's trademarked 'Plot Armor Insurance Coverage' until I was strong enough… or I manage to neutralize his plot armor advantage by playing the tropes against him.
Harem protagonists can't be anything more than harem protagonists lest they lose their defining trait as a main character, these kinds of protagonists have rules of conduct to follow, granted, Issei's morals are still pretty shit by true hero standards, but even then he wouldn't start torturing innocents or friends of his family out of the blue.
And there's the kicker.
He can't do anything that would make his harem and his family hate him.
Issei Hyoudou was most likely a father by now, if that's the case, he should have a couple of daughters my age. It was a no brainer.
All I needed to do is to make friends with some of his kids and become the boyfriend of one of his daughters. His plot armor would fail to work against me since I hate NTR and have no intentions of fucking his harem, in this timeline at least, and by dating any of his daughters he will be obligated to tolerate me lest he gains the undying hatred of his daughters.
"Ahahaha! I'm a genius! Now, I, Dio Dorana, shall increase my personal power and husbando levels through hard work."
Now then… time to figure out how to learn magic and start cultivating to solve all my self-defense problems. To do that, I need time and freedom. Both my parents are working so I don't have a parent staying as a housewife or househusband, I'm pretty independent at this point, but I'll still need pocket money and the autonomy to buy organic material for magic and alchemy.
I can probably get more leeway, pocket money, and free time from my parents by displaying my genius with my Crafter given abilities. I'll just design a couple of machines, make advancements in robotics or some other discipline in the near future then.
Many years later…
I had just completed the totally unnecessary high school exams to enter Kuoh Academy.
The combination of nostalgia and desire for their children to attend the same school they did should push Issei and his harem to send their children there.
With my Harem Protagonist luck toggled on I see no reason why the few plot significant, and available, female characters wouldn't gravitate there.
In addition to that, the school would be foolish to deny me my rightful position as a student when I am already renown as a genius in the field of metallurgy. Inventing a couple of new metals to push science forward tends to make one reasonably famous. I didn't have to worry about kidnappings and poaching from other organizations, both mundane and supernatural, thanks to my high luck giving me many opportunities to make any problems disappear.
Those problems ended up as alchemy materials to fuel my Cultivation further.
"Guess I'll scout the town a bit before I officially move here."
I ended up running into a stray devil.
In fucking Kuoh Town. Where the Hyoudou Residence is situated at.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
"Kuhahahaha! I'll kill you and eat y-"
"Look, stop, can you just stop this nonsense and leave this town already? Do you even know which town this is?"
"What does that have anything to do with me eating you?"
"Oh, sure, now you can think and speak properly. Anyways, point is, you're in Kuoh Town. Hometown of the Red Dragon Emperor, one of the Satans, the strongest beings in this world. Are you courting death?"
"Erm… I'm still going to eat you!"
"Haa… tell you what, I'm feeling merciful, so if you kowtow until I am satisfied then I will kill you quickly, return your body to human form with my power, find your family and bury your body with them. It's a better offer than anything else you're going to get."
This stray devil is honestly too stupid to be allowed to live. The only option I could give it was in how it wanted to die, I am already willing to waste its body's use as middling alchemy materials if it complied with my rather lenient demands. Am I not merciful?
"Aurrgh!"
I guess that's a 'no'.
I flicked the sleeves of my jacket, shooting out one of 50 inscribed talismans containing a good measure of my power from my web-shooter inspired device, killing the stray devil instantly by ripping out its spirit and storing it for later use.
Storing its body in my 8th spatial ring along with the spirit-killing/storing talisman, I continued on exploring the town and helped out a grandma with some heavy bags on the way to the train station.
"Oh, thank you, you're such a sweet boy. Please, take this Omamori with you."
"Thank you, you're too kind. Have a nice day and a safe trip back!"
I examined the Omamori and found it to be filled with a decent amount of divine energy.
How unexpected.
Once again, my Xianxia brand of luck continues to astound me.
I was just about to go on an amulet purchasing spree across temples in search of the rare ones with more energy in them, but sure, this works too. Wouldn't be the first time it happened to me.
Want to get a start with magic? Two days later, I ended up getting an introductory book to magic after pointing out a modern magician's problem with his motorcycle.
Time to start learning the local Senjutsu and Touki because my Cultivation stages need way too much energy and I needed a short-term usage for all the energy I collected? Treated a hungry beaten-up Yokai to some Ramen and gave him some money. He ended up showing me some techniques for the sake of humoring me, not knowing that I could copy and improve on his techniques after having a good look.
Need a technique to hide my growing magical and life energy reserves? Found a small magical bead that was capable of doing just that in an abandoned local park! I replicated and improved upon the artifact's effect in a manner of days.
I could probably take a trip to the Underworld and accidentally find a small pocket dimension containing a broken piece of a Malebranche even though all of it should have been cleaned up by good old' Sirzechs and his successor, the main character Issei Hyoudou.
Again, I'm not complaining, I just find it so absurd that I'm basically incentivized to take a walk and help someone whenever I feel mildly inconvenienced about anything.
Yes, finally, the start of the school year!
"Uniform and protagonist spiky hair? Check. Invisible spatial rings and energy suppression seals? Check. Extra hidden resistance magic seals and automatic defense spells? Check."
Several more checks later…
"-Master Patissier levels of sweets packed up to share with the class" And my target girl, who should like sweets like any other anime girl, "Check."
Love is War and I intend to have a total victory!
"Haaa…" I still sighed involuntarily when I thought about the plan.
Despite my progress over the past couple of years and with my goals being closer than ever, I still feel some measure of distaste at the idea of seducing a daughter or two of the girls I originally wanted to fuck.
Urgh, worse comes to worst, I'll just dump her when I acquire enough power to restart the entire DXD multiverse to keep things painless.
I managed to keep up my usual appearance without frowning until I sensed one of the devils in the school finally entering my classroom just when homeroom was about to start, sliding the door aside so hard that it looked as if it was going to be torn right off like paper!
"Haaaaa…..SAFE!"
My jaw dropped. She was the prettiest girl I had ever seen. Long blonde hair that flowed all the way down her back, beautiful green eyes, a sexy body that packed a lot of power and moved skillfully-
"Wah! What was that!" "So loud!" "Is the door supposed to look like that?"
-The heavenly beauty looked at the nearly broken door, chuckled with a mischievous smile, and stuck out her tongue.
"I overdid it "
Ah, my heart… I can't take this cuteness… I think… I may have a crush on her.
Stupid hormones, it's all my teenage body's fault!
"Dorana, Dio."
"Present."
It wasn't supposed to be like this, ah, but… maybe, if I get to know her a bit better then…
"Hyoudou, Airi."
"Here!"
"Report to the student council after school."
"Urgh!"
She's so pretty even when she's dreading a scolding. I guess that's to be expected when she's the spitting image of her mother, Asia Argento.
I think I could love this girl properly. No, scratch that, I'll marry her!
If her overprotective parents try to stop me I'll just elope with her to another world!
Chapter 2
Spoiler: Reference: Issei's children age right now
Just for reference, at this point in time, Issei's named children ages are (roughly, till the end of Airi's first year of high school):
Kurenai - 15 years old (he went straight to the Grigori so he's not in school)
Airi - 15 years old
Zen and Shin - 14 years old
Ernestine - 13 Years old (studying under Gasper in the Underworld)
Helmwige - 12 Years old
Ex - 12 years old
Robertina - 11 Years old
Shirayuki and Kurobara - 9 years old
Chapter 2
"Hyoudou-san, you seem pretty interesting, let's be friends."
"Well, that's certainly a novel greeting, sure, let's be friends!"
Success!!!
My calm smiling expression hid the fact that I had been jumping for joy in my heart.
I was going to go full throttle in my plan to make Airi Hyoudou my wife!
Excuse me? Do I have to start with the girlfriend stage?
Who decided that?!?
… Then again, she might be against it, so I guess I should play it safe by dating her first.
I started off slowly by getting to know her, using the pretense of getting feedback on my cooking to spend more time with her, I managed to distract our classmates with lesser sweets and food.
When she spoke about her concerns about eating too much sugar as she trains daily for 'self-defense', I merely took out my prepared sugar-free desserts, like my Chocolate-Coconut Mousse.
"Ahahaha! You're really taking your high school debut seriously, aren't you?" Airi let out a hearty laugh and spoke with an energetic smile on her face. "Mnnnn!!! Amazing! This is too good!"
Her casual demeanor was entirely unlike her more timid and occasionally air-headed mother. And yet I could find no fault in that.
So love has blinded me? Possibly.
But I don't care. I wanted to make her laugh and smile more, it would be wonderful if she could have a distinctive way to show her happiness just for me one day, but until then I'll settle for this.
"It can't be helped. I never made many friends in middle school, except for my obligatory pudgy best friend." Every Xianxia protagonist needs a fatty best friend, after all, so I made one and helped build him up to peak physique using my secret fitness (totally JPMA and FDA approved) pills after swearing him to secrecy, "Japan doesn't really let me test right out into university, so I may as well do my best to enjoy my high school life. The first phase involves making a good impression through the power of food."
"Ooh! So you're pretty smart huh? Like my big brother Kurenai!" She didn't doubt my genius for a second and embraced it! "He's already working as a researcher at the Gri- I mean, as a research intern at a lab!"
Airi Hyoudou hastily corrected her little slip-up, ah, so cute~
Has she let her guard down around me a bit? Wonderful!
"Wow! Is he around your age?"
"Yeah, Kurenai Nii-chan and I were born in the same year."
"Eh, must be nice to have an older brother. Do you have any younger brothers and sisters to spoil?"
"Oh yes, dozens! Let's see there's Zen, Shin, Ernestine, Helmwige, Ex, Mordred, Robertina, Shirayuki and Kurobara… a-ah, did I say they were siblings, I mean, uh, their my cousins that I treat like siblings, hahaha!"
I smiled pleasantly, well aware that she was trying to cover up how unusual her family tree was.
"I understand." Then I leaned into her ear and whispered softly, "It's fine, Japan's population is declining fast, if one man helps stem the tide by partnering with more women then I'm not complaining."
She hurriedly nodded, she was blushing bright red, whether it was due to my sudden proximity, my looks, the way I whispered to her, or a combination of everything that didn't really matter to me. Airi just looked too cute like that, ah, I want to turn her into a blushing mess!
Heh, admittedly, I like the fact that she can make mistakes like that. Her slightly klutzy habits when it comes to information security on her family just shows how passionate she feels about them, which is also an indication of how loving she is as an individual.
Perfect! I'm not looking for a cold jade beauty perfect politician type of wife. I just want beautiful girls that I can love and, in turn, be loved by! Granted, they still have to be 'canon' girls, but I can loosen up some of my standards for girls like Airi Hyoudou.
After lunch had ended, I managed to confirm some of my thoughts on her after having just gotten a summary from my various A.I.'s that transmitted the information to the nanomachines interfaced with my brain. My little helpers had just processed many digital records from her earlier schooling to provide me more information on her personality.
Nanomachines are machines too, naturally, I could build and maintain divine nanomachines just fine with sufficient resources.
Crafter Essence is so overpowered and I can't stop lovin' it!
Scratch that, every one of my Essences is OP as fuck, the fact that I can improve upon each of their respective ability sets by using each other's output makes them a game-breaker.
Use mundane conjured materials to create conceptual legendary weapons? Study the effect with my Archmage given genius ability to create new spells then break it down into materials to be used for magic and Cultivation Alchemy.
Then use Magic and Cultivation abilities to refine the materials of the broken down weapon into something that can be used by my crafting abilities, and voila!
An improvement loop more broken than Skyrim's Restoration, Alchemy, and Enchanting bullshit!
My body may be weak as shit compared to my god-tier magical power and huge Ki reserves, but I have HAX spells, enchanted accessories with conceptual defenses, super poisons, and overpowered weapons and armor to make up for it.
Not that any of it was enough to let me keep up with the bullshit speeds that the strongest beings fight at (yet), but they won't be able to kill me easily with all my stacked up defenses and contingencies. I could probably fake my death 57 times in a row before they get a real shot at killing me.
Anyway, it appears that her seniority among her siblings has made her a highly responsible and protective individual. She's already beaten up some kids who tried bullying her younger siblings.
Mmm, siblings huh, guess I just have to win them over. If her siblings love me like a cool older brother character then they'll support Airi to 'bring me into the family', preferably by marrying me.
I spent the month leading up to Golden Week winning over her siblings.
I started with Airi's little 'twin' sisters, Shirayuki and Kurobara, the daughters of Shirone and Kuroka. The two girls were grade-schoolers who Airi often went home together with, I simply needed to adjust my schedule and negotiate my club's attendance a bit and I was in the perfect position to run into them regularly.
"Dio-niichan's sweets are the best nya!"
Kurobara inherited her mother's verbal tic.
"… Un, delicious."
Shirone should have gotten over her stoic-ness as a result of her standard DXD tragic backstory, so I wasn't sure why her daughter caught some of that 'quiet girl' trait, ah well, the two Nekoshou-Devil-Dragon God hybrid girls were still adorable!
"I'm glad that you two are enjoying this batch. Any feedback?"
"More chocolates nya." "More sugar."
"You two…" Airi gave her signature innocent bright smile, but the 'aura' surrounding her was anything but innocent, "Aren't the two of you being quite rude?"
"Nya!? Thank you Dio-niichan, for the sweets today!"
"Thank you… please give more tomorrow."
Airi sighed and looked at me, "Honestly… aren't you spoiling them a bit too much? If they get cavities then I know who I'm coming for." The pretty girl palmed her fist and laced a bit of her intimidation aura into her tone.
"Scary, Airi nee-san…"
"Nyeah… never ever make Airi onee-chan mad…"
I wasn't the least bit affected by it, and gave out a care-free laugh, "Ah, Hyoudou-san loves her sisters very much."
"He's still awake!"
Shirayuki exclaimed with surprise!
"A boy that can stand up to Airi onee-chan, are you going to mate with him nya?"
Kurobara is a prophet in the making.
"W-wh-what are you talking about? Who taught you that word!? Is it Kuroka kaa-san or Xenovia kaa-san?"
Gotta give it to the siblings, they sure know how to fluster their older sister (even if it was done unintentionally).
I decided to give Airi an 'out' and said, "Now, now, we haven't even gotten to the first-name basis. Maybe next time then."
Then I winked at her, making the cute girl even more embarrassed until she was waving her hands frantically, "Dio! You, ah, Dorana-san… !"
"Oh right, don't worry about teeth problems, one of my other companies is releasing a special cleansing product for the issue."
I've accelerated my plans for total economic domination of Japan and the world since I've decided to ditch my plans to crash this timeline to marry Airi and make lots of babies with her!
It was only natural that I started to release many bio-mechanical technologies that can solve humanity's health problems and make money off it.
Japan, other countries, and the world as a whole were going to shit. There wasn't any grand hero or genius about to change the status quo, if there were any talented people they were probably reincarnated as devils, angels, or some other race and were working under a company owned by those rich supernatural races anyways. Those beings only cared about their society and profits.
Hence it was up to me, Dio Dorana, the future Supreme Super God of this world, to transform the planet into a world worthy to house my future wife Airi and myself!
My next encounter with the Hyoudou family was actually unplanned.
I had been taking a walk in the shopping district when I noticed an elderly man falling to the ground, with clear signs that he was suffering from a stroke, and so I rushed in to help while yelling, "Don't sue me for this!"
And then I jabbed him with a syringe of nanomachines that would fix the symptoms and repair all the brain damage. The screaming grandmother, who was his spouse, stopped yelling at me and started hugging her old husband with joy when he was back up and running.
When he started talking about how he felt 20 years younger I went ahead and took out some documents for him to sign that would absolve me of any legal issues of using new, yet to be registered, science to heal him.
I also used the chance to give a speech to the public about the wonders of nanomachines to distract them from what I've just done. I was already a famous public figure and they used to the bullshit I pull out every so often so they just ate it all up.
After that, I called for my personal driver to pick us up so that I can safely escort the elderly couple back home. We were properly introduced then and it turns out that the couple lived in the Hyoudou Residence.
My Xianxia Protagonist luck just threw me the chance to 'rescue' my future wife's grandparents, Gorou and Miki Hyoudou, right onto my feet.
A brief check with my 'expert' senses indicated that they didn't have any teleportation magic circles on them, so they must have left their emergency devil contact circles at home. If that's the case, Asia may not have gotten there on time, and from my research, Twilight Healing's success rates on brain complications aren't really that great.
My luck can be terrifying but I wouldn't have it any other way so long as I keep benefiting from it.
I left the elderly couple at their doorstep and left before I could meet up with any of the Hyoudou Residence dwellers. I wanted to meet up with the rest of her siblings on my own terms so I needed to keep a low profile for now-
- Wait a minute, Low profile and Xianxia Protagonist luck… yeah, that's the most unlikely couple in the entire multiverse.
Now that I just tempted fate by thinking 'low profile' so strongly there will inevitably be an occasion where I have to reveal my true Cultivation, wait, barely anyone knows that that is so… I will have to reveal a fraction of my immense magical might and legendary arsenal.
Guess I'll have to make yet another spatial ring with only 'low-level' weapons, armors, and talismans in order to hide my true power.
The Hyoudou family had been especially grateful for my actions in helping Issei's parents, Airi thanked me for the next day at school and actually started to show some interest in my work/creations, our conversations have become less one-sided now that it wasn't just me that was showing interest in her.
She then invited me to attend her brother's birthday party, specifically Zen's, needless to say, I accepted and decided to gift him a few masterwork creations.
I started with a bicycle that can transform into a robot, and then back again. It was basically a discount, non-sapient Transformer. As for the next present, I had to give one to the brother closest to his age, Shin, as well since it would only be entertaining if he had someone else join in the fun-
"This is so cool! Wait, stop spamming-!"
"Ahahaha! Take this, my ultimate combo!"
Zen and Shin were easy to win over when I gave them some of my prototype fighting robots as presents. The 'twin' sisters were easily appeased with more sweets, and so were Airi's other little sisters. Kurenai was apparently a big fan of my work and we managed to talk about science for a long time. Ex joined in when I started talking about high-frequency blades, I managed to rope in the other boys once they had to plug in their newest toys for recharging purposes.
My plan to use the initial positive impression from saving their grandparents to establish myself as the cool older brother seemed to be working like a charm.
It was easy to get them to look up to me, especially when all their primary male models were absent. Yuuto Kiba, Vali Lucifer, Gasper Vladi, and their chronically absent father, Issei Hyoudou… none of them attended Zen's birthday party since they were all working on something today. How fortuitous for me!
Truly, my luck is such that heaven itself would weep in jealousy over!
As for their mothers… surprisingly, I felt very little jealousy or indignation of having my chance to bag Asia and the other girls (who were all big tiddy MILF's now) denied to me by the unknown god.
Hmm, yes, love really is a wonderful thing.
"There's 40 days of summer vacation and school comes along just to end it. So the annual problem for our generation is finding a good way to spend it… Like maybe-"
I ended my initial sing-song like introduction and went off to explain my ideas on things to do this Summer to Airi during lunchtime.
"Surfing tidal waves? You mean to fly over all the way to Australia?"
She asked me after we traded lunchboxes. Airi had forwarded a 'suggestion' from her mother after the birthday party to exchange pointers, in cooking, and so I exchanged my personal flavors for the Hyoudou flavors with Airi on a regular basis.
To taste the food cooked by someone that should have been part of my Isekai harem… I really don't know how to feel about it now that I want to marry her daughter.
"While the US and Australia lay claim to most of the world's top surfing destinations, Japan's coastline provides more than just a few great places to catch a wave, like say, Chiba and Shonan."
I answered Airi without giving any indication that I was contemplating a profound matter.
"I would have to check with my family, we have plans but… I dunno, if my father doesn't show up then there may not even be a need to go together."
"He's busier than the average Japanese salaryman."
"I know right! It's ridiculous! Dioooooo… can you make a robot that can, like, connect with someone's brain from across the world?"
"Not right now. I still need to make more advances in energy and communications."
And I'm not planning to anytime soon, at least, not for public use and especially not for Issei's use. No discount shadow clones or doom bots for Issei! I wasn't going to make life any easier for Issei until I married Airi. After that, it was only natural for me to help out my father-in-law, right?
Hehehe… and the best part is that this doesn't count as holding his work-life balance hostage since I haven't even invented the solution to his problems yet!
"Aww…" She slumped right down onto her desk.
"There, there Airi-chan." I patted her head consolingly.
It didn't take us very long to move on to a first-name basis and intimate honorifics if I do say so myself! Yes, everything is going according to plan!
"Say, I know a pretty good Yakiniku place, let me treat you to cheer you up tonight!"
"Meat?! Okay!"
As expected from a trained martial artist! She has been conditioned to consume lots of protein.
Airi was all but salivating when I started ordering the expensive cuts for dinner. While we were waiting, I decided to ask her an important question that would determine the number of specific preparations I would have to make for our future relationship together.
"I know this sounds like a weird question, but you don't happen to have an arranged marriage partner from a big family somewhere in another town right?"
"What?! No way. I don't have anything like that. I'm not sure how it will go with Ex and Robertina but… ah, forget I said that."
That's good. Instead of beating up her fiance, brother, and father in that order, I only need to fight the last two on the list.
I also won't need to worry about some being from a higher realm forcefully taking her away from me on our wedding night since Issei Hyoudou's the top dog here, and the otherworld invaders are basically asexual androids created by an equally asexual evil god.
"That's good. I won't need to enact any nine generations extermination protocols then."
And their cattle, chicken, and dog too.
"Huh?"
"Oh, the food's here."
Airi ended up eating several meals worth of meat, I could have eaten more myself but I chose to simply watch her sate her hunger.
I don't know how long I stared at her like a love-struck fool but it was a trivial matter to me, especially when she finally stopped eating and saw the look on my face.
"Haha, you must have been hungry."
She stared at me, her expression frozen in place until her face got so red that I thought, for a moment, that steam was coming out of her ears. That was, of course, just my impression and not at all what happened in reality.
"A-ah, that's well, I didn't eat any snacks?"
"Hahaha…"
"Mou~ Stop laughing. I'll get angry, I really will… !"
Please pout more!
"Okay, okay. Well, you did enjoy your meal right?"
I'll let her go this round.
"Yeah! It was great! Ah, about the cost…"
"Don't worry, I've got it covered."
She could easily cover the cost for our food but I said I was going to treat her and I would stick with my decision despite feeling a slight dread in my stomach over the meal cost.
"Thank you…"
"I'm just glad you enjoyed the date."
"D-date!?'
"Hmm, we hung out together, didn't we?"
"Oh, so that's what you meant…"
She looked disappointed when I played the dense protagonist card, just as planned.
I smiled and relocated myself until I sat right next to her, "Is that what you want it to mean?"
"Eh?"
I tilted her chin up with one hand and cupped her cheeks with the other, then looked at her eyes with all the affection I had in me. "Well, I want this date to mean more than just us, hanging out as friends. Do you feel the same, Airi?"
Her response was to widen her eyes and then nod shyly.
We shared our first kiss together and left the restaurant holding each others hands.
I pushed aside my thoughts about victory and successes in order to bask in our shared happiness, right here, right now, this is all that should matter to me-
-spatial anomaly targeted right below our feet. My senses tracked the destination point and quickly scanned my adversaries.
Inconsequential yet inconvenient.
I can't get us out of the anomaly area in time without resorting to my high-powered contingencies. Looks like I have no choice but to go with the 'soft reveal' plan.
These fools dare to interrupt my first proper date with my girlfriend? I will give them the gift of death then!
Our surroundings changed in a near-instant, Airi quickly sprang into a defensive stance and I followed suit after forcefully slowing my reaction down by a second.
"This is… the stolen Artificial Sacred Gear, Alternate Point!"
Thanks for the exposition Airi. So someone made a teleportation focused Sacred Gear and it got stolen by some weaklings? Wonderful.
"Oh ho? You're well informed." It was a four-winged fallen angel, geez, their organization is full of traitors aren't they… and a bunch of other mooks of other races, all wielding those artificial Sacred Gears, "Then you know that we have also stolen the Artificial Longinus as well, so why don't you do us a favor and come quietly with us."
"Chemosh… you were always jealous of my brother, to think that you've stolen his work-"
"-His Work!? It was mine by rights and- oh, what the hell, why do I bother with speaking reason to filthy devils like you!"
"Devil?"
I chose that time to bring notice to myself, I was getting tired with their conversation anyway.
"Oh? Is that your boyfriend? Could it be that he doesn't know what you are?" The fallen angel dead meat spoke with a cold smile on his face.
"Dio, this isn't… please I…"
Oh no, don't cry. Please don't cry.
I cut off her fear of being rejected with my masterful head patting skills and a confident smile, "Don't worry. I'm just surprised to know that you're part of the other side."
"Huh?"
"I own quite a bit of surveillance technologies, I learned about the supernatural ages ago and picked up a bit of magic myself. I don't care whether you're a fallen angel, a yokai, or a devil. All I care about is that you're Airi Hyoudou, the girl I love the most in the world."
"Dio… I love you too!"
Hnggggg….!
If there's one thing I'm grateful for, is that these idiots gave me the perfect chance to confess my love dramatically and get a confession in return!
"Then you can die with your love!"
Aaaaand, the Chemosh guy ruined it.
I smacked the light spear out of the air with a contemptuous flick of my wrist and newly materialized spear.
"What!?"
I ignored him and focused on Airi, "Hey, Airi, do these numbskulls have an organization name or something?"
She furrowed her eyebrows in thought, "Um, the mysterious group that has stolen Artificial Sacred Gears from all factions, I don't think so?"
"Okay then." I turned to the peanut gallery and the lead walking dead man, "Hey Trash, you dare to interrupt my date with my girlfriend!? Be glad that I, your grandfather, am in a merciful mood! If you chop off your arms now and kowtow until I am satisfied then I will consider leaving your corpse intact for your family!"
They all stared in silence until they burst out with laughter, oh yes, this is all coming together right now.
Airi's palm met her face, she whined, "Why did you have to say that?!"
I shrugged and answered, "These madmen won't back down if you give them a soft offer, you gotta go with threats right off so that they know just how outmatched they are."
"Die human!"
Needless to say, the trash lacked enough intelligence to accept my mercy.
I channeled 1% of my magic into my spear and swung, cutting down the leader and a couple of mooks in half instantly.
"Come back here and take your punishment! How dare you try to bully my boyfriend!"
Once again, I'm grateful for such a wonderful girlfriend, Airi didn't even bother to stop and stare, instead, she was already beating up all the other leftover mooks when they started trying to escape.
I had already locked the space around us so none of them could teleport out, we rounded up the rest of the mooks for capture while I sneakily collected some corpse chunks for recycling purposes.
"Oh wow, you know, this is a pretty weird first date ahaha… !" Airi laughed out loud after the rather anti-climatic end to this encounter.
"Yeah, tell me about it, still… I don't regret anything." I walked right up to her and embraced her, bringing her up to me for another kiss.
She reciprocated energetically and kissed me back, she was still inexperienced but made up for it with enthusiasm.
I teleported us back to town and handed the rest of the captives off to Airi.
Well, my low profile act has come to an end, but I can't say I was dissatisfied with how it went.
At this pace, if things go well, we will be able to get married before the end of the year!
Chapter 3
Chapter 3
In the end, the Hyoudou family had to cancel their summer vacation plans because there were some disputes between a few gods of the seas and various related deities, a dispute that a certain Issei Hyoudou had to be present for in order to keep hostilities from spilling out.
The world-famous Oppai Dragon had a perfectly good reason for not wanting his children to be anywhere near the sea and the negotiation areas. I'm sure it wasn't the first time that exposing his family in public had led to a kidnapping incident or two.
It's not all bad, however, there are already backup vacation plans to be enacted during the next half of Japan's summer break. His harem was extremely well prepared for such an eventuality.
The same could not be said about his children.
"Dioooooo! My little brothers and sisters are bugging me about the beach trip even after I explained things to them! What do I do?"
Airi ended up calling me up to ask for advice on her little problem. They can't leave for any beach in the human world, the Underworld had no oceans, so that was a bust, they couldn't just visit Asgard's private beach resort (built-in 'honor' of Odin for his sacrifice against Trihexa) since the other realms won't be safe either.
"Eh, just bring your family over to my house, my magically expanded backyard has a beach."
It was only natural that I took the opportunity to earn even more merits with the Hyoudou family.
Admittedly, the main appeal of my proposal was the opportunity to see Airi in a bikini. I was going to be throwing away a small number of my secrets just by showing them my rather large backyard, but I guess it doesn't really matter in the long run since the Hyoudou's are going to be family soon. I needed to show off a good amount of my power anyway.
In addition to that, it was strategically sound for me to nonchalantly display some of my magical feats, especially when I had already casually shown off powerful handcrafted magical weapons back when Airi and I were ambushed.
Not that they were especially powerful, all those items were trash (in comparison to my god-killing weapons) and I had happily loaned them to Kurenai Himejima saying that they were old 'prototypes' anyway. My future brother-in-law happily tossed me some cheap ass artificial Sacred Gears to see what I could make of it, I went ahead and improved them on the spot.
After doing so, he was all but begging me to join the Grigori, or at least work for them through him as a point of contact. Starting to call me 'Dio-niichan' was pretty indicative of how much he wanted me to join up (how much was he referring to the organization or his family I'm wasn't entirely sure…), but it wasn't enough, as he wasn't a cute girl!
Anyway, so, everyone arrived at my place and I brought them all straight to my backyard.
Spoiler: Literally all biomes
[img: https/i.redd.it/xumplocm54561.jpg]
"… You call this a backyard? How big is this place?" Airi stared at the vast desert we stepped right into after going through the special portal.
"Only 90,000 square kilometers. Just about the size of South Korea. I could have made it bigger but making a new one from scratch is easier than expanding this one, so I'm leaving all this as it is for now."
Le Fay, Kurenai, Rossweisse, and her daughter Helmwige had already invaded my private space to badger me about how I did it. Thankfully, best future mother-in-law, Asia Hyoudou put a stop to it by pointing at the impatient kids that want to go to the beach already.
I snapped my fingers and teleported us to the beach section of my backyard. Then cast a special barrier spell to keep the wildlife from pestering us.
"Now then, I'll just add some of my pre-built facilities…" I took out my recently built beach resort homes from my interspacial ring, stored within yet another artifact that mimicked Capsule Corporation's technology. Throwing the capsule, the mini-resort stored within sprang forth and occupied some free space. "Okay then. You can go leave your stuff there and get changed. I'll just go clear out some of the wildlife first."
"Wildlife?" They all questioned at once just as a particularly large one was approaching the beach, so I pointed at where the animal was coming from so that they could take a look at the various species' that populated my backyard.
"GUOOOO!!!" A gigantic winged sea-serpent flew out of the ocean and began charging up a magical laser attack-
-which I countered by raining a dozen god-level lightning bolt spells from above, killing the magically mutated demon beast in an instant.
The animals I had thrown into my backyard ended up mutating as a result of the extremely magically potent environment.
The whole place was made with a combination of inorganic materials, magical tools to landscape the area and create plant life, then plugged into my huge reserves of magic so that it could maintain itself and enrich the environment with my power in hope that I could grow better alchemic materials.
I already had enough magical reserves to toss out high-level spells continuously for hours that would barely put a dent in my total amount of magic from the moment I arrived in this world. My reserves had grown stronger since then, to the point where I could cast hundreds of god-level spells for an entire month before I dipped below 90% of my reserves.
As a result, my backyard was pretty much the realm with the densest magical energy, containing enough magical power that would be the equivalent of thousands of gods' worth of reserves.
If I hadn't mastered my total magical concealment spells years ago then there would have been loads of people trying to break into my backyard.
"Right, that was one of the Bloodfury Saint Ocean Serpents. It's particularly aggressive so please don't go beyond the barrier I set up and pick a fight with them."
"ARE YOU SURE YOU'RE NOT A GOD?!" Kurenai ran up to me and started shaking me all of a sudden. Issei's wives (excluding Asia) are giving me a more careful lookover, as for the rest of the kids…
"That was so cool! Teach me that spell!" The little girl Helmwige started to pester me for even more of my magical techniques.
"Kaa-san! Can I get a sea-dragon like that for a familiar?" "Only if you beat it and make it submit." Xenovia made her stance clear on Zen's choices on pets.
"Dio is Italian for God. This is an entirely self-created realm populated with its own species. Could it be that- no, haha, that's just silly!" "Mom, what are you on about?" "Nothing Shin!" "Okay? Right, can we start training in Dio-niichan's backyard instead?" "Noooooooo! It's too dangerous!"
Irina and her son were having a slight dispute at the side.
"Was that holy lightning?" "No mother, I'm pretty sure that was divine lightning." The two wielders of Holy Lightning had a short discussion at the side.
Airi was perfectly accepting of what was happening, although she was a little stumped by the sheer scale of everything. I told her that I was 'inspired' by some Xianxia novels when I was learning magic and things ended up becoming like this before I realized it.
"You're overdoing it. What are you going to do with all this space?"
"I dunno. I just pop by on occasion to catalog the new species' and train a bit, at least, I used to. But I'm at the point where my spells are a little too destructive."
"I can see why you're not very worried about your lifespan."
Airi had made the standard 'wanna be a devil' offer so that I could live the same lifespan as her, but I had told her that I already found a way around mortality, so she never mentioned it again.
After our small chat, I gave some short answers to everyone (while insisting that I was human for now), then took out some flying swords, hopped on to them, and started flying around to exterminate the mutated animals within the barrier.
Everyone had just gotten into their beachwear by the time I returned, so I took out the volleyball nets and other fun things we could play with on the beach.
Like good old Watermelon smashing!
"Don't you think it's a bit mean to smash watermelons like that?" Airi had the cutest concerns when it came to violent acts.
I mean, smash someone's head in? No problemo. Smash a watermelon? That's immoral!
"I don't think so, but I do believe it's a waste of a good watermelon. So let's just replace it with a Pinata instead, it's filled with my homemade sweets wrapped within gold mini boxes, by the way. So if anyone is looking for extra pocket money…"
"Sweets!?" "Did you say sweets nya?!"
The cat 'twins' signed up immediately. Kuroka, who was the only catgirl waifu taking care of the kids today, took them to the side and gave them some tips on how to use Senjutsu to win.
Huh? Why would that work? Oh, my pinata does seem to have small amounts of life energy in them. How weird.
"What do you mean by gold boxes?"
I took out a sample golden case and opened it up to show the chocolate sweet within.
"I'm pretty sure you're breaking a lot of laws on transmuting gold."
"I'm not transmuting them. I'm making them, it's different. Hey Kurenai-kun, it's not illegal right?"
"Totally legal. Gods do that all the time."
"See Airi? I'm a law-abiding citizen. In any case, I don't bother selling gold, I make enough money from my patents and businesses anyways. This is just for fun."
"… Ahahaha! Yeah, only you can do all these crazy things for fun!" Airi looked around for a bit, then hugged me quickly, "But don't get carried away okay? This is very impressive and all, but I didn't fall in love with you for all this shiny stuff."
Hngggggggggggggggg!
This girl… my girlfriend loves me, and it's not because I'm rich and too powerful… Aaah, I'm so happy, my heart is beating fast, what should I do?
"Okay, we should get going and- kyaa!"
I quickly hug and kiss her back just before she can separate from me. As a result, the one person not distracted by the entertainment I've thrown at everyone and the beach saw us embrace each other, and gave us both one of those happy 'Ara Ara' looks.
It means a lot to know that Asia-mama is happy for us.
It's been almost a month since the start of summer break. Airi and I managed to keep our relationship secret so far, her mother wasn't going to lie to anyone about it, but wouldn't explicitly tell anyone if they didn't ask about it first.
During my break, Kurenai, Le Fay, and anyone else in the family interested in magic came to me with some questions. I handed them some personally crafted spells (the trash ones that were still a whole lot more efficient and useful than the current ones) so that they could improve their arsenal.
I wasn't really bothered with receiving anything from them since I had invented something to replicate a portion of the Library of Heaven's Path ability a year ago, and still had a huge backlog of books to go through… as in, I had a lot of 'stolen' magical knowledge just waiting to be read. I was mainly trying to improve my merit score with the rest of the Hyoudou family anyway, so giving some pointers was no big deal, especially for a Primordial Chaos Berserk Dragon Immortal Heavenly Martial Supreme God (my Cultivation has no real realm names, so I just randomize frequently used words in Xianxia to describe them) in the making.
"So where did you go after checking out Yellowstone?"
"Mmm… We were going to go to Universe Studios but then some guys attacked us, so-"
The Hyoudou family had just gotten back from their short trip in the US, apparently, it got cut short because the same group that stole those artificial Sacred Gears still had a deathwish.
"If you want, I can try to make a real effort to get rid of these guys. I'll make sure not to leave a body intact."
"Dio… ! You're not supposed to jump onto 'extermination' as a first option."
I surrendered when she started pouting so cutely.
"Alright, alright, I'm just offering. By the way, I ended up missing your birthday since you celebrated it with your family over in the states so here you go! Happy Sixteenth Birthday!"
"Oh wow! That's a big box! It's… a door?"
"Not just any door. It's a mini-Hyperbolic Time Chamber! Well, it'll only work once before it kicks you out and collapses in on itself, and you can only fit in three months into a single day, but it's definitely safe and useful as a training tool if you want to pull off a last-minute training arc."
"But what about food?"
"All supplied, enough to last those three months. And yes, I did tailor the amount to how much you eat." I grinned as I remembered all the meals we shared together.
Airi blushed heavily and started pummeling my chest with moderate strength, ouch, "I don't eat that much! Please don't tease me like that…"
"I'll love you even if eat like a glutton!"
"Dio-baka!"
"Airi, did you catch the tsundere bug somewhere?"
"No, that's Robertina's thing."
We laughed together and ended up sharing some of Ravel's daughters' cute moments. The two of us spent hours together before Airi had to get back home. I miniaturized the time dilation artifact and taught Airi how to use it.
Before leaving, she leaped into my arms and kissed me hungrily, I matched her enthusiasm easily and I started to give her the usual treatment.
It's hard to cultivate conceptual energies or various 'laws' in this world, DXD isn't particularly heavy in conceptual HAX, but there are a few decently powerful concepts here. Namely, Destruction, Dreams and Desire.
All of which helped maintain the world as a battle-harem setting. Desire covers things like ambition, love, and lust. Naturally, having cultivated a good amount of that energy from this perverted world, I managed to create some special techniques.
The little body tempering I did with 'Desire' infused medicine was more than effective in making my body capable of bringing pleasure to a woman just by being near them when I will it so. The combination of some passive emittance of Yang energies, my body's constitution, and her great love for me made it so that Airi couldn't get enough of me.
Even without my powerful kissing techniques, she would still be more than willing to exchange our saliva. I had to be careful, however, as I was similarly affected by Airi's beauty and love for me. There were a couple of times where I almost tore her shirt and skirt off in order to grope them as if I was infected by Issei's molester energy back in the Kyoto volume.
After allowing myself to indulge a little, roaming my hands all the way down until I was almost touching her delectable ass, I stopped and separated from her. Ah, that's a lot of saliva down there, how long have we been going at it?
"Mnn! Aaah~ Dio, darling, why did you stop?"
"Come on Airi, what would your mother think? If we go any further, then you wouldn't be able to save yourself for our marriage."
"Y-yeah, you're right! W-what, marriage?!"
"Mnn, something to discuss another time, tomorrow then?"
The next day…
"-let me spend my entire life proving my love to you. Will you marry me?"
I proposed the very next day!
It wasn't even a rehearsal, I used my actual speech after a lovely dinner, prepared the scene, went down on a knee, and presented her the ring.
I didn't really expect her to accept right now, but I needed to let her know how serious I was in wanting to be with her!
"Yes! Yes, I'll marry you!"
… Am I dreaming? Eh?! If this is a dream then I don't want to wake up!
I'll just act like it's real and continue on-
Three days later…
"-I now pronounce you husband and wife."
It wasn't a dream. I can't believe I actually convinced her to have a secret marriage so that we could really work on showing our love to each other.
Thank goodness I found and 'convinced' a priest (in some country where it was legal for us to marry at our ages) to marry us together before she could change her mind. Not that it was likely for her to do so, she seemed to be of the same mind as me, Airi had wanted this marriage and believed most of her family would get in the way of it.
Well… even my loving parents would have some problems with my arrangements, so yeah, this was the best option!
"You may now kiss the bride."
We sealed our marriage with our vows and with a kiss. There weren't any other witnesses aside from the priest. A true shame, but we both agreed that we would have a second wedding with all the family, once we get everyone's forgiveness, that is.
I carried my newly wedded bride in my arms and ran out of the church, both of us were chatting animately about what we were going to do for our honeymoon.
"There's only a few more days until school… aww…"
"We could sneak a series of day trips in another country then finish off by using a time-dilated realm? Or we could leave for another world where time passes differently? Don't worry, I can slip past the dimension gap easy!"
"Hahaha! I know you can, if there's anyone that can do it, it would be my darling husband! Ah, husband, I like saying it so much."
"Me too! I love hearing it from you, Airi, my loving wife."
"Wife, hehehe! Say it again!"
Hmm, this is wonderful. My wife is so cute, that even reviewing this memory might fill me with bliss~
Just before I said those words, several individuals landed some distance in front of us, I can see a few of my mothers-in-law, a blonde swordsman, Vali Lucifer, and my father-in-law.
"Hey, father-"
I almost couldn't react in time when my red-armored father-in-law sent his fist slamming into my face. Thankfully, my automatic defenses, including a momentary thought acceleration spell, gave me sufficient time to plot out my next moves.
I threw up a barrier around Airi to protect her from the incoming shockwaves and teleported her just a few meters to the side before powering down just the conceptual barriers around me, letting Issei Hyoudou strike my left cheek and my jaw after the blow's power has diminished sufficiently.
Ouch, okay, that hurts. Not as bad as some of the training I do, but holy shit, it hurts even after being slowed down by several god-class magic barriers. They weren't my best defenses but they were still pretty good.
Relying on my supreme acting skills, I allowed myself to skid and crash on the ground a few times, before I could get myself into the proper pose, Issei was on me again and rained down a flurry of punches.
"YOU BASTARD! DID! YOU! THINK! YOU! CAN! STEAL! MY! DAUGHTER!"
Okay, note to self, timing your punches with your words adds power to it in a battle harem verse.
Or maybe that's just me imagining it.
I repeatedly basted my skin-thin barriers in response to his blows, but they weren't as effective as the outer barriers that had been broken, nor even comparable to my unused conceptual barriers.
"Otou-san, stop it! You're hurting him!"
I didn't fight back and properly dropped down into the Yamcha pose as Airi ran towards me with tears in her eyes, I discreetly gathered the power needed for my World Crossing spell, ready to elope with Airi after making myself out to be a victim.
"Airi! What are you doing? Get away from him! Don't be fooled by this guy, he's-"
"My best friend. A friend to the family, our family! And I love him-"
"That shithead Diodora is just playing with you!"
"His name is Dio Dorana, not some long-forgotten devil from your past!"
"Airi, I… look, calm down, you're too young to be married. Think about it-"
Mmm, if I stay on the ground any longer, then I would have truly become too shameless.
"A-Airi, my love…" I 'weakly' uttered with my broken body, in actuality, it was already healed but I placed an illusion to make it look like I was still hurt.
"Dio, Dio! Are you alright?! Why didn't you fight back, I know you could have defended yourself!"
"I-I couldn't… hurt your father. He's family…"
I spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground dramatically. A flash of recognition could be seen on Airi's face, she was probably going to slap me later for this, but it looked like she was going to play along.
"You… you stupid head! Honestly… " She seemed relieved, then quickly turned around to look at her father in anger, "Come on Dio, let's go, it's clear that some people don't respect their family's choices."
"You're not going anywhere-"
I activated the spell and we were gone in a flash.
… We landed upon plains overlooking a massive city with a tower that stretched up to the heavens.
"Yes, success! The sacrifices of soul puppets #1 to #7 were not in vain!"
Airi slapped my face, glared at me, and then hugged me tightly, "Dio, you're crazy, you know that right? Who actually thinks of taking my Otou-san's hits straight on? I thought you were going to die…"
"….Sorry, Airi. I won't ever do something like that again. I didn't want to make you cry. I just thought that we could enjoy our honeymoon while running away from your dad in one fell swoop."
"I'll forgive you this once. If you try that again, I'll punch your face in myself."
"Haha, I'll be expecting that."
"Mnn… hey, so, where are we?"
"Oh, just a world I scouted out some time ago… although, I haven't gotten the time selection bit correct. We will be able to return home without any issues but I didn't get to select the time period for this world. Guess we just have to explore it together!"
"Un! Together!"
It took us a long while to notice that everyone had been staring at us because we were the happiest newlywed couple among them all. It was very evident, especially when we forgot to take off our wedding clothes.
AN: As for how Issei and co. found out so quickly, all Christian marriages are flagged by the heaven system, Airi is high profile enough so they immediately sent a message to Issei about it when it happened.
Chapter 4
AN: Had a lot of trouble coming up with finalizing Airi's character, she'll come off as a bit of a confused teenager with some angst (you guys know how much I avoid that) due to her family situation, but she quickly gets over it thanks to the power of a Harem Protagonist and actually compatible character. Hopefully, this is satisfactory for now. Next chapter will focus on his interactions with some characters that don't get canon screentime or are Danmemo entries (e.g. Zeus and Hera Familia). As for the images below, they're for references purposes, Airi technically looks like Asia but with a thiccer build (not much visible muscles cuz Devil). Or you can just look up Marie from Dies Irae and ignore the scar.
Spoiler: With a more energetic smile
[img: https/i./8Wdmd6B.jpg]
Chapter 4
Airi POV
Airi Hyoudou lived a simple life.
Complicated family situation and global level threats notwithstanding.
She was the oldest among her twenty-plus (currently) siblings alongside Kurenai. It was the responsibility of an older sibling to protect their little brothers and sisters, this was especially the case when she learned about the potential threats from other worlds and her parents' many enemies that would attempt to harm them through herself, her brothers and sisters.
Airi was the older sister. So she has to protect her younger brothers and sisters. She started running into problems right from the beginning.
She wasn't born with talent, a Sacred Gear, special blessings, outstanding powers, or genetics. Her mother didn't share blood with legendary figures like the Pendragons, there was no trace of divinity in her like Rossweisse's Valkyrie origin, no special knack for Senjutsu like her part-Nekoshou siblings, not a hint of Ophis' blessing or dragon taming traits, she lacked inheritable abilities like the Power of Destruction and Holy Lightning, nor did she have any naturally high reserves of demonic power to start with like the Gremory or Leviathan bloodline.
She wasn't a genius with a sword in her hand like Ex, Shin and Zen were. Nor was she an intellectual type of genius like Kurenai, she didn't have a high aptitude for magic like Mordred and Helmwige either.
The only thing she could rely on was her own body.
Airi had used her full powered puppy-dog eyes in order to get Uncle Sairoarg to visit and give her some pointers. Out of all her wonderful uncles, she considered Sairaorg as the best for always believing in her, even when her father and mother didn't like the idea of her training like a maniac when 'there was no need for her to go that far'.
At that time she had truly wanted to scream at them like the little girl she was, but instead, she gave them a determined smile to show that it would be alright like an older sister should be doing.
Despite training like crazy she also kept up her duties as an older sister to everyone, there were always babies and really young siblings to help take care of. Airi loved helping her mother and other mothers in taking care of children. Studying hard to get into Kuoh Academy, where her parents' studied, and being everyone's responsible older sister was her way of winding down.
Not that it wasn't difficult. Her siblings, that is.
Airi ended up learning a non-lethal variant of killing intent projection while keeping up her best older sister smile for a good reason.
It all worked out in the end. She was strong enough to match the strongest of her siblings and beat up plenty of high-class devil equivalents. Her grades were good enough, she hadn't been left in the dust by her overpowered siblings, she was the older sister everyone could rely on.
And then Dio Dorana threw a giant exploding lemon right in the midst of her carefully managed life plan.
Airi had, at first, believed he would be like her mother's first and best friend, Aika Kiryuu. A friend that she could get along very well with, but had to keep some distance from in order to hide the existence of the supernatural from them until they were properly introduced to their world (Airi heard that Aika was now a famous matchmaker through fortune-telling).
She didn't know how to react when he called her 'interesting' of all things, it was so embarrassing when she used one of her mothers' 'polite' social gathering responses on reflex! That was the worst first impression she could have made but he carried on and blew her expectations away by finding out and accepting her strange family situation nearly instantly.
Airi found him difficult to speak with at the start, he always made her feel a giddy kind of 'weird' whenever she saw his handsome face, her body would start feeling warm if she stared at his body too much as well. Thankfully, he was interested in knowing about her and treating her to all sorts of things instead of noticing her odd behavior.
Outside of her family and uncles, there had been no one else that genuinely cared for her, that wanted to know Airi beyond the role she had chosen for herself, that did his best to make her smile and laugh whenever they meet…
Spending time with him made her feel a sense of peace and contentment. A feeling that she would rarely feel when she was together with her family lately.
Airi had known she was blessed with the kind of family she had, her home was always lively, she wanted for nothing, there wasn't a better feeling than knowing her wonderful mother loved her and many more things to be happy about.
But was it ever enough for her? Was that what she really needed?
Of course, she wanted to continue living with her loving family, she wanted a good relationship with everyone, but she started questioning herself on whether they needed her the same way she wanted to be needed by them?
Airi Hyoudou had, even if she used her best efforts to put her doubts to rest, felt that she wasn't as 'necessary' to the family as she wanted to be. She would always be a beloved daughter, but it wasn't enough, when she was honest with herself she found that she was even a little resentful of 'wasting' so much time making herself into the 'best older sister' she could be.
There were a lot of reasons for why she felt that way, but she supposed it all came down to never feeling like she was good enough for her father, mother, and everyone else. She had no talent, she wasn't truly exceptional and she had way too many better siblings to ever be loved as that 'special one' by anyone in the family.
And Airi knew that she had no one else to blame but herself for being a stupid little girl in thinking that she could be the big hero in the family and earn a special place in everyone's heart through hard work.
But she never had to feel that way with Dio, even without her knowing it, he was giving her everything she had ever wanted. Her parents named her Airi, for 'Love' and 'Truth', and though it took some time, she came to understand his love for her and appreciate his endearing honesty about it.
They got along well, while they were strangely alike in why they worked the way they did, they were the opposites in so many different ways!
The most blatant difference was in their innate abilities. He had overwhelming talent and power to the point where he was single-handedly changing the nation, while she only had some supposedly super devil dragon god genetics that gave her little to set her apart from her family, much less an actual impact on anything.
She couldn't even feel resentful of that fact because of what he's done for her, all the effort he's made into making her happy and relaxed, all the food he cooked just for her, the little things about him that made her want to spend more time with him and many more reasons for her to love him.
They were very different people when it came to love. Airi worked hard for everyone in the family because it's what she thought was the right thing to do, while Dio only gave the 'necessary filial love' needed to his small family and dedicated everything else to herself.
She could see this in the way he went about his life. Airi was energetic by nature and necessity, she approached the present with everything she had, Dio on the other hand, appeared somewhat lifeless even when he was focusing his attention around him or speaking with others.
In contrast, his face would light up at the sight of her, Airi felt his full attention on her even when they were chatting with many classmates. Airi knew he was only giving everyone else the time of day because she was speaking with them.
It was better than winning a spar with her siblings or completing a challenge set by her teachers. Just knowing that Dio would go from a hard-working but somewhat uncaring genius teenager to become the passionate, funny (frequently dorky), loving mature guy for her sake made her want to jump and scream in joy!
He was obviously unstable, it was more apparent when he started showing off his power blatantly, he was the 'I would casually destroy the world if I wanted to' kind of crazy (kinda like Aunt Ophis and Uncle Great Red), he clearly needed someone to help him love this world and his life more… and she was the exact person for the job!
Well, it wasn't just a job, it was clearly a lifetime commitment that she had no problems in signing up for! Her mother helped her to understand that she liked him and maybe loved him, the fact that he was crazy enough to change for the better just for her sake made her want to be with him even more.
It would have been easy to just leave it like that, continue being the reasonable girlfriend to his crazy Xianxia scale shenanigans, she would have loved taking it slow with him but she felt bad about misleading him on the kind of girl she was.
Airi came clean to him after the beach party about how she felt about her family, about her own life, and him. Dio had this look of utter shock on his face, but again, she ended up worrying and overcomplicating things for nothing because he was happy about it!
"H-how could you even be happy with me like this? I sometimes feel like I don't even know who I am or who I want to really be when I don't want to be everyone's big sister anymore!"
"Airi… I want you to remember why you worked so hard in the first place for. Yes, you wanted to be special, you felt like you deserved more and wanted more love… that's not inherently bad, you never acted in an entitled manner. I want you to think about why that is the case?"
"I… I wanted to protect them. That's what I'm supposed to do as an older sister."
"Mm hmm… so why are you even doing your 'duty' anyways? You could have done nothing and your parents would have loved you the same amount or just a little less. But you cared… didn't you?"
"Eh!?"
"While hatred does oppose love… but apathy is the lack of love. The stress of all the hard work may have messed with your priorities a little, but the origin of why you did what you did is right there in your name."
"Ah…"
"You are who you are because of the love you have in your heart, whether it's for the world, everyone you know, or just little old me. Don't worry so much about who you are right now, whether it's the girl that wants to be loved more than anything, or the ever selfless older sister… Both of them are the real you."
Airi had completely fallen in love with him on that day.
She wanted to be with him more than anything else. When he asked her to marry him, the answer was obvious!
She didn't have to worry so much about her family, they handled the general absence of their father pretty well, they could do without an older sister for a while.
Airi had practiced signing her new name over and over into the night.
And when the day finally came, they married in secret and it was the happiest day of her life.
Sure her idiot father messed things up a little, but they still got married and got to have their honeymoon in another world!
Who else could brag about having their husband bringing their wife to a fantasy world for a honeymoon? They had everything from gods coming to live among humans, dwarves, elves ('prudish elves', according to Dio), catgirls, werewolves, hobbits ('Pallums', but whatever, hobbits all the way), Cow Girls (he looked so cute when he tried not to stare) and many more races all living in harmony.
Her homeworld hadn't come close to achieving this much unity among the mortal races.
Airi Dorana was by his side as he casually sold one of his 'decent' weapons directly to the god(dess) of the forge, Hephaestus, for a large sum of currency.
Dio took that 100 million Valis reluctant after failing to negotiate down (the goddess really wanted to pay more) as he initially planned, immediately purchased some land with a few million Valis (800K was enough for a small house) then brought her to the casinos in the Entertainment District, where he increased his wealth up to 800 over million Valis overnight.
Airi was surprised to find that the land and home they bought had been fully turned into an odd modernized castle equivalent by the time they got back. All thanks to the work of Dio's [Talisman Clone, a technique that he complained about for being limited to only one clone at a time at 10% of his max power.
As for the bedroom… the aftermath of their wedding night had necessitated a full room cleanup. Airi felt like her mind had a lot of blank spots, he made her feel so good, she knew it in her heart that there was no way she could live without him now!
Just thinking about sex with him made her risk turning into a bit of an air-head like her mother.
She couldn't help herself from thinking about the night before even as they were having lunch in a local restaurant. With a look only a dreaming maiden could have, she intertwined her supple fingers over her chest as she fantasized about how her husband would shower her with overwhelming love tonight again.
The unattached male deities and mortal beings alike all played a role in generating an atmosphere filled with envy.
Oddly enough, the gods were kind of pathetic in this world. Even if they hadn't sealed their powers to descend to this mortal world, and to take residence in Orario, most male gods seem to have pretty pathetic personalities instead of just being arrogant back in their world.
It shouldn't have been a surprise to her when, of all things, some rich looking arrogant human came sauntering towards their table with a lustful gaze directed at her.
"You're in my seat."
Her husbands' eyes lit up with glee after hearing the words coming out of the interloper's mouth.
Oh no, she recognized this cliche from one of his stories.
"Don't worry, I'll just de-escalate this."
She knew where this was going. As his wife, it was her duty to set a positive example for him to work towards, as a start, she should stop him from extermination this man's Nine Generations.
"Darling, let me handle this one."
Airi interjected gently with her big sister smile plastered on her face.
"But he's a toad lusting after swans' meat."
"Your definition of de-escalation is when everyone is rendered incapable of escalating, permanently."
"I see no problems with that."
"Hey, stop ignoring m-"
She reached out and squeezed his neck, carefully controlling her strength so that she would not pop his head right off.
"If we're going to do this, we'll do it thoroughly. Don't ya underestimate me!"
She dragged him, and his lackeys, outside the restaurant and towards the back. A few seconds of pummeling later, she went back inside and asked her husband to heal them. Now that they've been punished properly and understood their place, she can leave the job of threatening them to Dio, who doesn't have any reason to take further action on them anymore.
Airi finished up her filling lunch moments after, Dio stared at the table for a bit, she blushed a little and thought to herself that she may have had eaten a bit too quickly.
She waited for him to finish eating and pay the bills, she was getting a bit uncomfortable with being stared at by so many people. Hmm, come to think of it, their clothes are a bit off by this world's standards.
"Let's get a move on." Airi realized how impatient she sounded and quickly calmed herself, switching back to her normal tone, "Ahem, I mean, shall we leave now?"
Dio gave her that silly smile of his, and said, "Airi's snappy tone is cute too!"
"Aaaah! Why did you say something like that?! Don't you know that makes me way too happy even though you're teasing me…"
Before she knew it, Dio was up in her face, forming a not-particularly-cute imitation of the pout she had made in front of him.
It was so funny that she ended up laughing out loud.
They eventually made it to the Shopping District, where there were so many different types of clothing stores for different races and styles! The Amazon clothes were a bit too skimpy for her, but seeing how much Dio liked them, she bought a few so that they could try out something called 'roleplay sex' in the future. She purchased a lot more dresses from the Elven clothing stores, there were also shops that sold clothes that suited 'Adventurers', the ones who dived into the monster-spewing dungeon underneath their feet.
Spoiler: Style, but with longer hair
[img: https/i./tjUoY09.jpg]
Dio made arrangements for weeks worth of activity for them to try out things that they wouldn't or couldn't do back in their homeworld. They played vigilantes for three nights, partied among the rich for a day, gave the merchant lifestyle a go, became artists for a day, glided off a top floor of Babel, various other kingdom castles and mountains all over the world (teleportation, yay) to enjoy breathtaking experiences, and etc…
It was a fantastic honeymoon.
Airi had a lot of pictures and videos to share with her family after Dio upgraded her phone until it could fly around and automatically shoot photos/videos of them. They could return at any point from when they left their world, Airi was planning to send her family some letters and attach some photos to show that she was alright. She knew that her father had some irrational fears about Dio stealing her away in order to turn her into a sex slave just because his name was similar to an old enemy. It would be better to send them something so that he doesn't go crazy mad and blow up a country or something stupid like that.
"Okay, now I've just got to edit all this… honey, can I borrow your neural interface?"
"I've included one in your interspatial ring."
"Thank you! You're the best."
"My wife is the best!"
After flirting for a bit, she noticed that Dio was wearing more 'escape items' on him than usual.
"Are you going to scout the dungeon?"
Her husband was going to research the dungeon and the Falna system, they've put it off in favor of their honeymoon, but now that they've settled down somewhat, the both of them have started to think about exploring the key features of this world.
Well, Airi has started to think about it, Dio most certainly had made a plan using his prior knowledge of this world's history and future. That world crossing and viewing spell of his is seriously overpowered!
"No, not right now. I'm going to head off a potential god-class threat at the Elsos ruins. The main disaster will only happen in 15 years time but I can save some lives by dealing with the monster, Antares. After that, I'll make my way to Veltane to kill the Swamp King, a parasitic monster living off the land's 'Spring of Life', so that the people won't have to follow a multi-generational breeding plan to create a give birth to a special mixed-breed as a magical sacrifice to suppress it. And then I'll go implant some homemade Sacred Gears and escape items into the Loga clan so that Bete won't lose his clan and sister…"
"Ahem! Aren't you forgetting something?"
She loved how focused he looked as he listed off his plans to deal with problems that the locals would have trouble managing themselves. Airi felt that he's come a long way from how he was at the start of the school year.
"I was just getting to that. You're invited to spruce up your resume with some heroics, of course, though not for the first one. That's a bit too dangerous."
He continued on without missing a beat, that's good, it's obvious that he meant it and he wasn't leaving her out of anything.
"Alright then, so you'll come to pick me up to deal with this Swamp King?"
"Of course. I'll want my wife to see how cool I can be!"
"Ahaha, now I'm worried for the locals, if that's the case then you'll go with the flashiest way possible and maybe remove a mountain or two. I'll just be here editing these videos."
She didn't quite expect him to come back after picking up a goddess in some faraway ruins.
Chapter 5
Chapter 5
I skipped the scenic route and teleported all the way towards the ruins of Elsos.
Even with the added neural interface, Airi would still need an entire day to edit a month's worth of videos, photos, and her personal messages to my in-laws. Getting rid of Antares quickly will earn me some free time, letting me Cultivate in a specially prepared sealed room within Orario in peace.
The energy levels may not be especially higher than my DXD homeworld, but the intensity and profoundness of nearly all the Laws relevant to my Cultivation were absurdly high. Hell, just watching two drunken battle gods duke it out with mortal level stats was enough to give me Enlightenment into battle techniques!
The gods here ranged anywhere from Peak Ultimate-Class Devils, Satan Class Devils / Weak Gods, and up to powerful gods that could destroy the planet in terms of destructive power, but nowhere near as easily as someone like DXD Shiva could have done himself. Their strength laid in the mastery of their domains, so much so, that a goddess like Hephaestus can make Divine-level weapons with just mortal materials through pure skill.
With the descent of the gods unto this plane of existence, the mortal world became saturated with the power of 'Laws', Orario especially so. I could comprehend all aspects of life and nothingness simultaneously, cultivating all the laws at nearly 20 times the speed of how I cultivated the Laws of Desire, Destruction, and Dreams back at my homeworld.
The only thing that kept me from undergoing closed-doors Cultivation to break through into the next realm, which would be the equivalent of 'Core Formation' for some Cultivation systems with loads of realms and absurd power levels, was my utmost desire to be the best husband for Airi.
Now that her appetite for quality time together is temporarily sated, she was now sufficiently concerned about her parents and siblings enough to occupy herself with crafting a personal response to them. It was the perfect opportunity for me to get some secret Cultivation time by using the excuse of performing heroics!
Well, to be honest, I did feel bad about sitting on my ass on all the knowledge I had on the Danmachi series (Danmemo included). It would also suck if Airi ever asked me about the future of this world, me truthfully responding about the number of tragedies that would befall upon major characters and her inevitable line of questioning on why I did nothing about it.
If it were the old me, then I would have considered just utilizing my meta knowledge to just get a harem. If I had ended up reincarnating in this world instead, in this time period that's over 15 years before canon started… then I could have ended up just like how I was before I met Airi.
For all I know I might have even considered a relationship with Freya or her Syr persona (not that she had made one at this point in time), or just joined the Demeter Familia for her sweet tracts of land (her farmland would also be useful for growing alchemy materials… wait, what was I talking about…?), or rendered my services to the Zeus and Hera Familia immediately for protection and power.
I would have even attempted to rule over Orario, yet allow canon events to occur, solely for the sake of acquiring the best local waifu Aiz Wallenstein in a vulnerable position. I knew myself, I knew that I could callously wait for the right time to enter into her life, I could have offered her unimaginable power and she would throw herself at me like a thirsty bitch in need of water.
But I don't want to be that kind of person anymore.
I wanted to be someone that a gentle, kind, and a passionately protective person like Airi would be proud of. I want to be a person that she could hold her head up high and happily brag about, shouting "That's my husband over there! Isn't he the best!? I love him more than anything else in all existence!"
Though I did have some selfish, efficient reasons for going all the way to changing the future of this world for the better not all of them would grant me many direct benefits. I personally saw my growing altruism as a sign that I was heading in the right direction.
Sadly, I still had to work on caring for others, people still meant nothing for me if they didn't play a part in the future I wanted to build, the results I wanted to have or were entertaining enough to the point where I wanted to see them thrive. The only other way unrelated people would get kindness from me is if they showed it to me first or I helped them out of habit.
"There it is. Now then, I'll set up these barriers to keep the villages safe."
I flicked my sleeves and shot out thousands of talismans in an instant. They flew out to form a spherical array formation that would contain the destruction and amount of power used to an extent.
Now for the next phase of my plan, I would need to sense its exact location so that I could extract Artemis's body, the 'arrow' Orion (and with it, a part of Artemis's consciousness) and then break down the weakened Antares into research materials.
Calling upon the Laws of Earth and Air, I reached out using my senses and directed it down into the cavern below. Artemis's 'residue' is awake and patiently absorbing energy, as for Antares-
-huh? What? Why is there a blank zone?
No, this is… ! It's not that I can't sense anything, it's that the energy I was using to sense my prey is being devoured!
The earth began to tremble, fuck, shit, I did not expect it to awake early!
Tch, to think that it would dare to absorb a pittance of my energy…
Plan A to C was shot to hell now that my preparation period is practically gone. May as well just play it by ear and beat Antares the old fashioned way.
I drew my Touki unto the surface of my body then propelled myself towards the temple's sealed gate, where a portion of Artemis's existence remained.
"Who are you?"
"I'm here to help and kill Antares."
Even as a fragment of a goddess, she could still discern whether my words were lies or the truth, and so the beautiful blue-haired goddess accepted my words due to the urgency of the situation.
"I understand. But to actually kill Antares, you would need the power of this spear… I'm afraid it's power is insufficient at the moment."
She held out the 'spear', her divine arrow, towards me with a hopeless expression.
"That won't be necessary. I have my own means, but if it'll make you feel better…" I touched the dark blue weapon of divine origin, attuned my magical power to its energy signature, then filled it to the brink with my power as quickly as I could.
I felt something stir within my body, my own internal energies desired to bond with the arrow?! What the hell! Could it be…?
Even though my Cultivation is designed towards creating and controlling all existence and beyond that, my body and energy is still geared towards the 'Yang' side of things as I was a man. Artemis is a goddess of the moon which means she's practically entirely 'Yin' aligned, our energies are seeking a mutual balance within each other…
"Aaaaahn! This feeling, I, how could you possibly-"
She was as shocked as I was by the sudden exchange in power. I forcibly stopped any more of my Yang internal energies mixing in with the divine mana transfer, preventing her divine Yin essence from fully mixing with my own.
"It's a long explanation. I apologize for the trouble." Her projected body appeared rather weak, so I hurriedly caught her as she was falling, "Will you be alright?"
She nodded with a gentle expression, "Yes, I will be. My current existence is not as unstable as it was before. But with my connection to… Antares, I believe it knows as well. And as a result, it is stirring even faster than I initially thought it would."
She managed to gather enough strength to stand back up, for some reason, I felt deeply concerned for her state, although I had a few ideas why I cared so much I decided to think about that later.
"If it helps, I sensed that this isn't your main body and that it's being contained by Antares."
"How did… nevermind, you're telling the truth, I'll be quick then. It knows that you are powerful and will come for you."
I snorted and then smiled with barely contained excitement.
"Good, good, good. Exactly what I had in mind."
"That's a lie."
She stated as if talking about the weather, not at all angry at my words as much as I thought a manhater like Artemis would latch on to. Then again, this remnant has mellowed out after hundreds of years, so I guessed that makes sense.
"Okay fine, I really wanted to do snipe it dead after I finished all my prep work, but now that it's awakened and I can't get an accurate read on its location I'll have to actually fight it."
"You don't seem too worried."
"I can still beat it easily. I also have anti-god level weapons and armor, from my world, such things were the bare minimum you needed to survive."
"Your world?"
"I'm a visitor from another world, got some knowledge of the future while scouting this world, decided to stop Antares since it's convenient for me and it'll also save some of the nearby villagers while I'm at it."
I didn't bother to hide the fact that my altruistic reasons were secondary to my personal ones, but Artemis seems to like my response and giggled, "Hehe, you're better than you think you are. Well, if you're this confident, then you won't mind me selfishly entrusting you with my hopes then?"
"That's…" To be honest, wasn't I prepared for that from the very beginning since it's the kind of responsibility I expected from a harem protagonist, to be the one person that a cute girl places their hopes in?
There was nothing else more to be said. "Yeah, I'll happily accept them. Just watch me."
I retrieved some powerful defensive treasures and escape items from my interspatial ring, decking her out with protective gear then sending her out the temple.
It would have been easy to just nuke Antares, but given that it was an ancient monster originating from the dungeon, one that could literally sense and devour the energy I emitted as part of a scanning technique, I wasn't going to take any chances of awakening another long-forgotten monster, triggering the dungeon or catching the attention of the One-Eyed Black Dragon by unleashing even a portion of my full might.
The arrays I've set up would conceal my magic, but only to a point, they weren't as good as my personal magic concealment seals, I would normally set up an alternate dimension for an enemy of this level, but that required preparations, the type of prep work that could only be done if Antares hadn't been awakened early.
This means I'll have to limit myself to Touki, a few select abilities, and weapons.
Yeah. Totally winnable.
I punched the sealed door open. Bits of Antares' flesh was already coating the entrance, there was hentai tentacle pit monster like pods scattered across the corridors, spawning disgusting monsters like a discount Dungeon.
Unfortunately, they didn't stick around after I killed them, disappearing into dust as I cut my way through every monstrosity like taking a lightsaber to a room filled with children.
"There you are, you dumbass giant enemy scorpion."
Fleshy tentacles connected to all the walls, black carapace, giant scorpion-like tail, and a body texture that would look awful with bad CGI. Not as bad as Berserk's CGI, but close enough.
It fired a beam of divine energy straight at me.
I deflected it with one of my shields, Rho Aias Alternative, then rushed at it with an Anti-Monster blade that had the enchantment of being incapable of harming non-targets.
My sword went through its armor like Qui Gon's lightsaber through those blast doors.
In other words, it was fucking cool but not nearly as effective enough.
I bounced off its body as it attempted to strike at me, then launched off the wall back at it to continuously slice at the carapace, eventually cutting enough of it till I could kick a piece of its torso right off!
Revealing the trapped goddess within. I immediately took out several anti-binding inscription talismans and shot them at the crystalized goddess.
Antares immediately began to roar with pain and tried to keep the goddess contained.
Yeah, not gonna happen. Keeping my magic weak enough, I focused it on telekinetically pulling the goddess out of its body and yanked Antares's little battery right out!
Huh, bugger, the thing actually drained out most of her divine essence.
I could still save her, and I didn't intend to let her die because fuck sad endings, those are for weak non-OP protagonists and that's not me!
And more than that, I felt a pang in my heart at her situation. Was it empathy? Is it because of her situation as a glorified mana battery to a monster, a situation that I could find myself in thanks to my near-endless supply of power, that I wanted to save her no matter what?
I shattered the crystal, grabbed hold of her hand, and poured my power into her just awoken body. Well, shit, her divine essence was damaged, if I let her go now then her body would just disperse just as if she was killed.
"Ah, this is… you don't intend to save me?"
To have been trapped so long that death would be considered freedom to her… I wouldn't wish that situation upon anyone, knowing that there was a time in my life that I feared that situation myself when I was hilariously weak.
"If killing you means saving you then no, thank you very much. You deserve another chance of life and that's what I'll give you!"
Antares roared once again and unleashed a black wave of energy right up into the sky, while also crushing everything but where it stood into debris… I could have flown up, but knowing what was down there, I decided to allow myself to fall for a bit.
Right into a cavern with the dead Artemis Familia, of which, they were mysteriously preserved over the course of centuries. Looks like calling down her arrow from the heavens wasn't the only thing she did in her last moments.
Artemis moved at the sight of her dead family, I didn't let her go since she couldn't afford to be apart from me when I was spending some time fixing her essence, she seemed to understand that and silently gave me a look that requested that I follow her for a while.
"My children… All I could do was watch. Watch the monster that had consumed me and murder my children… murder at my own hands." Artemis gently brushed the hair of a red-headed member of her Familia, she sobbed silently, "I'm home."
I tightened my grip over her hand, "Don't say that. You can still make a new home out there."
I handed her a handkerchief from my trusty interspatial ring while keeping track of Antares using my seismic senses, she accepted the piece of cloth and wiped her tears, "Yes, I should. What would my children say if I had given up hope just like that?"
"Are you ready?"
"Yes, I am."
I waved my hands and stored all their bodies, "I'm keeping them in storage so we can give them all a proper burial."
I answered her unspoken question. She smiled, leaned into my body, and spoke her heartfelt thanks, "Thank you for this."
"It's no trouble at all."
It was the least I could do for someone I empathized with to an extent. The extra effort was no longer an inconvenience for me.
I held her tightly and flew all the way up to the surface where Antares was charging up a divine bow in the sky. Well, it tried to place it high up, but my barrier seemed to be restricting it's casting range.
The other Artemis carrying her divine weapon spotted us easily and then turned into a flash of light, combining with the Artemis I was holding right now. All the protective measures and her clothes were also transferred over. How convenient!
"Oh, that was… apologies for the suddenness!"
"It's fine. Now then, I'll just take care of this trash right now."
I took out a weaker Anti-Life, Anti-God blade, based out of the Surtr's [Laevatein: Sword Like a Sun that Becomes a Calamity, then swung a blast of conceptually powerful flames at the monster using my free hand.
Sensing the danger, it prematurely fired all its gathered stolen divine arrows at my attack, to no avail as my flames burnt right through them.
It was now an angry burning giant scorpion. I had originally intended to take its corpse back as materials but I was somehow… angry enough, at the monster, to have decided on throughout incineration instead.
Is it because of Artemis's influence on my emotions or just me leaning on the safe side? I wasn't quite sure but I was still fine with the result.
The flames spread forth to even the tiniest bit of Antares's flesh still remaining in the cavern. A sign that the conceptual effect targets all of the designated life forms, just as intended.
"It's gone. It's finally gone."
"Yeah. Is there any place you want to go in particular? For, well, you know."
"… The forest, over there. We used to hunt there."
Artemis said her goodbyes to the masterfully crafted gravestones (still great even if I did it all with one hand) and then asked me what was next.
"I still have a lot I want to do in this world, but for now, what say we head back to Orario so you can meet up with old friends?"
"That sounds lovely. But um… how would we go about getting there?"
"Well, I could just teleport us there, or if you want to take the scenic route-"
"-Scenic route please!"
"Land or air?"
"I like the idea of flying, though, this manner of aerial movement is a bit…"
She was more than satisfied with the magic carpet option when my flying spell felt awkward to her. I was flying a lot faster than that of the faster creatures (tamed wyverns included) that could transport people in order to get back to Orario before dinner, even so, Artemis was fine with that and pointed out all sorts of things about nature that she liked.
I found myself listening to her and enraptured in her love for the land even after all this time.
I'm pretty sure that my Cultivation was accelerated via several enlightenments just by listening to her profound descriptions but that wasn't my main motivator for paying attention to her.
Whether it was because of how compatible our energies were, circumstantial empathy for her, something about our inner natures that just 'clicked' with one another… I couldn't help but be drawn to the goddess in a similar way to…
I didn't want to finish that thought. I hadn't wanted to notice that Artemis felt the same way.
Yet with how she was happily latching unto me and how I did nothing to deny her of that privilege that should only have belonged to my wife and family… I couldn't see any other end result for me. There was something about her that made me think she would understand and accept me, I wasn't quite sure what it was, but I wanted to ask Airi for permission on courting the goddess so I could find out.
"Wow, so this is your home?!" She marveled at my mansion after we snuck into Orario.
"Uh yeah… our home. D-did I mention that I am married?"
Artemis stared at me for a moment, then smiled without a care in the world, "No, I must have forgotten to ask. Oh, you must tell me, love, is it good?"
"It's the most wonderful thing in the world. I wouldn't be who I am without falling in love with a person as passionate and kind as Airi. I would be much worse…"
"Hmm, Lante always said that love was good and that I should give it a try… come on! I want to introduce myself to your wife!"
I was now mentally preparing myself for my face to be punched into the ground.
"… Well, that took you longer than expected… someone falling in love with you, that is."
I-I'm spared?
Airi Maji Tenshi!
Wait, that doesn't fit, she's a devil. But I can't say 'Akuma' either so should that be 'Airi Maji Megami'? Ah, but there's an actual goddess right here…
"This feeling is love? I think I like it."
"Bwuh…?"
Now that a harem might actually be happening I found myself oddly unprepared for it, turns out that ditching all my plans for a harem after meeting Airi had made me neglect mentally preparing for the situation. Who would have thought?
Airi placed a hand on my shoulder and said, "You remember what kind of household I come from, right?"
"Oh, yes… very much so."
"While I may complain about my family from time to time, I do enjoy having a large family and the idea of sister-wives, Artemis seems to love you for good reasons instead of selfish ones right from the get-go… unlike *mumble grumble*…"
I elected to ignore her unintelligible grumbling of certain DXD waifus that I may have sought after for their less than brilliant initial reasons for going after Issei Hyoudou.
"Well, we'll still need to see how we get along…"
Our first step in getting to know one another better was to eat dinner together.
"Whoa! Is that Artemis?" "Hey, I haven't seen her in centuries!" "She's still here?"
A couple of gods and goddesses recognized Artemis, though none seemed eager to approach her, probably for good reason thanks to her manhater tendencies.
Although I wonder if it's all gone now thanks to me…?
"Artemis!!! Have sex with me!"
One shameless god, however, all but launched himself at her!
I would have moved to intercept him if Artemis hadn't moved first. Even with one of our hands still clasped together, she spun around with grace and slammed her drinking mug right into the god's head!
"You dare pull that kind of stunt?! Know your place you worthless swine!"
"Hiiii! Thank you, ma'am!"
Oh, gods!
He's the trash from the 'Step on me Lady Artemis!' club!
Why are all the gods here so pathetic?!
"Ah, the good old times." "That's Artemis alright." "Why is she holding that mortal's hand though?"
Artemis kicked the god's fallen body away until he rolled all the way across the room with a happy expression on his face.
The goddess returned back to her seat and then smiled at me kindly, "I'm sorry that you had to see that, my hero. Orario is just filled with all sorts of trash and gossiping women."
At first, I thought she was missing something out, then I realized she still equated all men with trash.
Huh, that kinda makes me feel really special.
Airi looked at the goddess with stars in her eyes, "Like I thought! She's kinda like you, Dio."
Hey, it's not like I looked at everyone like trash… they were just potential trash, you know, the kind of trash I would call people with my young master act. No, wait, I was the kind of person that would automatically designate anyone that looked at my women covetously as 'trash'.
"Haa… you know me so well."
"Haha, I'm glad that we have things in common!"
"Hey Artemis, let's take a selfie! I want to tell my parents that I'm friends with a goddess!"
"A selfie?"
Well, I'm just glad that Airi and Artemis are in good cheer and got along together.
I didn't get to cultivate as intended but I don't think I'll regret picking up a goddess from a pseudo dungeon anytime soon.
Chapter 6
AN: Since the fourth update was mostly an interlude, it doesn't count to my 3 chapter per universe plan. The next one should wrap up Danmachi for the most part, dealing with the Zeus/Hera Familia and the Grand Quests, before they return back to DXD for a meet and greet. I will try to update the Local Dragon story but I'll see how it goes.
Chapter 6
"And you're absolutely sure that we won't suffer from our hereditary disease anymore?"
"For the last freaking time, the answer is yes! If you don't believe me then any one of you can volunteer as tribute, I mean, as the control group and go without the Spring of Life for a couple of decades and see how that goes!"
Killing the giant dark-purple tentacle sludge monster known as the 'Swamp King' plaguing the town of Veltane was the easy part. Convincing all the townspeople that I had also successfully healed them with the AOE effect of my [Staff of Asclepius] so that they wouldn't need to stay near the Spring of Life, which the Swamp King had attached itself to, in order to live past 30 years old was an entirely different ballgame.
They were still resistant even with the sole local goddess Bheara testifying to the truth of my words. To be completely fair, it was understandable for them to be stuck in a state of disbelief when I just dealt with the monster and its corruption of the land in a matter of minutes like it was nothing.
Their ancestors have taught that they had a chronic hereditary disease that shortened their life spans and that they couldn't live without the spring of life, whose waters could heal wounds, restore resistances and heal diseases, allowing them to fight off the disease. When the Swamp King invaded the place and latched on to the magic spring, they couldn't leave their home lest they died young and they were too weak to defeat the monster, especially when it could regenerate using the Spring of Life's power.
Their only solution was the ritual offered by the goddess Bheara that consisted of crossing the blood of multiple races to create a sacrifice forcing it into a decades-long slumber, such a ritual was repeated for centuries, and then came along I, Dio, who eliminated the source of all their problems in one fell swoop!
If they had been arrogant cultivators from Xianxia novels then they would have started saying things like 'Im-Impossible!" or "This cannot be!" like a broken record.
Uskari, the Captain of the Bheara Familia, placed a hand on my shoulder and gave me a small smile, "It's alright. Everyone will come around eventually. You've done enough and they'll be grateful in due time."
One of the few saving graces besides the presence of Airi and Artemis was the very calm and reasonable Elf in front of me. He may not be fatty but I'm going to designate him as my new best male friend.
"Dio… Why are you looking at me like that?"
"Sorry Uskari, I was just measuring your body to figure out the best mix of spirit energy pills to feed you."
"While I appreciate your generous spirit please don't talk about distributing drugs so casually!"
Blasphemy! Who could ever reject free Cultivation boosting pills given to them by the MC?
If this were a Cultivation world then you would have been making me your sworn brother after I gave you a better Cultivation technique and some free pills because of the sheer scarcity of generosity in those types of worlds.
"Okay fine. But can you help me out in testing my new Elven physique specific, Body Tempering Art? I call it the Nine Steps Ljósálfar Body." I ask my green-haired elf friend of a favor that is far beneath the value of freeing Veltane with an earnest expression.
"Ah, that sounds a lot safer, that won't be a problem." Uskari's expression was getting increasingly troubled, hmm, that means I can still ask for more!
"One more thing, let's take this opportunity to exchange pointers so that we may gain some enlightenment and become more profound in the way of battle."
"Excuse me?"
"I want to spar with you, learn from how you fight, and see what kind of magic you use so that I can copy it."
"Haa…? Fine, I suppose that's alright. It's not as if it will make much difference to your strength." Uskari agreed to my request quite readily, looks like asking for a fight actually relieved him more than exasperating him.
I guess I can see why that's the case. It's much easier to deal with a miracle worker that asks for a couple of minor favors in return instead of one that came barging in and expected nothing as a reward.
"That being said, Veltane's blades are tempered in the harshest mountains and poisons, do you still wish for me to enlighten you on the ways of violence?"
"Come at me with everything you have!"
"Fine then! Become a sword, devoted hearth of steel!"
A blade of wind was materialized as he completed the chant for his personal spell Uska Nori, I allowed his blade to strike me with enough force to send me flying, I calmly focused on his movements as he followed up with more attacks, pushing me out into the mountains surrounding the town.
"I see, so that's it…" I copied his spell and wordlessly manifested a blade of wind to match his own, "Your spell is a manifestation of your devotion to duty, to Veltane, how long have you been fighting for the sake of your people?"
"I had a blade in my hand since I was a six-year-old child, so I'll say nearly 80 years."
He didn't hesitate to slip his blade past mine to strike my eyes, his attack was still utterly ineffective as the blade couldn't penetrate my eyes, but his sheer combat experience was apparent. It was a vicious style of combat that targeted an enemy's most vulnerable spots, one that suited the harsh environments created by the Swamp King and his spawn, given that they were basically sludge monsters with eyeballs, tentacles, and claws.
" Tuvalo!"
The blade of wind expanded suddenly and exploded, I wasn't surprised, as I could see the process of the spell as it happened. The power of the explosion was still far below my base stats as Uskari was only Level 4, the equivalent of a peak mid-class devil back in my world.
"That wasn't part of the original spell. I see, so wresting control over your personal spell's power lets you expand its functions, it's something I've seen before when observing other mages of this world."
I swiped my hand and blew away the chunks of earth he flung at me to obscure my vision, then created a blade of wind behind my neck to block his silent sneak attack, when he used the short distraction created by both actions to maneuver behind me when my sight was blocked for the briefest of moments.
"For your information, I'm still using the same spell, but instead of using a chant to control the magic power flow and form the spell, I'm directly controlling my flow of magic to match the magical frequency of your spell."
Uskari stopped his attacks and gave me a pensive look, "You use some unfamiliar terms, but from what I'm hearing, you're saying that every spell has a pattern and that you can directly manipulate the flow of your magic to form that pattern, thereby casting any spell you want."
I grinned widely, pleased that my fellow (future) Daoist has gained some form of enlightenment in our brief battle, "You understand the heart of the matter. And I'm sure you also understand what I'm offering now…"
"… Yes, you made your point. Now that Veltane is free and that the poisonous mists have been cleared, our 'nation' would now be open to other countries, which means we'll have to defend ourselves."
"And while your Familia certainly is strong by the standards of other countries you have a disadvantage of numbers. You won't be able to protect the Spring of Life if some other country decides to claim it from you. Even if you do not need it anymore, it still is an important part of your people's history and culture."
"You forget that some still do not believe that we are free from the disease, but for what it's worth, I believe you and agree with what must be done."
"Call a meeting with all your Familia members tomorrow. I'll teach everyone of you how to directly manipulate magic, discover your personal spells much like activating a blank Grimoire and then give you some spells to learn in your own time."
"You sure do a throughout job… but I can't say I'm not grateful."
I went for several drinks with my new male elf best friend afterward before returning to the lodgings provided by the Bheara Familia, where Airi and Artemis had been resting after helping out in clearing the Swamp King's minions.
The two of them had already changed into their nightwear and looked somewhat grumpy as they silently played on the portable video game consoles I had prepared for them.
Spoiler: Artemis nightgown
[img: https/i./ytEbdfr.jpg]
"Let me guess, Bheara?"
Artemis grumpily hugged the pillow I made just for her, turned to her side while heading to the save point in her game, with how distracted she looked it was obvious that she was still ruminating on some matter.
"I forgot how maliciously honest she was. Tch…"
I looked at Airi, who looked like she wanted to punch something, "That weirdo said some things that… we kinda knew about, but in a bad way…"
Turns out that the local goddess didn't mince words when it came to Artemis' still remaining manhater ways and Airi's inferiority complex to her other siblings when they went about speaking with her despite my warnings on the goddess.
Bheara honestly provided good advice despite her harsh words. I appreciated that the two managed to learn something without me involved in it so that they wouldn't grow too dependent on me. It would be a shame if they failed to any progress without me being there.
Knowing that they had meaningful interactions without me involved is like having off-screen character development that would only be covered in side-stories. Not the best thing in the world, but it's still better than character regression or stagnancy.
That said… as helpful as her words may turn out, I should still get back at her one way or another for offending my wives. I may not care about 'face' here but I still need to do something for honor's sake.
Eh, I'll just teleport a whoopie cushion just before she seats down. That should be enough.
No need to beat up her Familia members or anything.
A week later…
"Okay, the Loga clan have been sorted out."
"That was quick!"
Airi exclaimed as she was just about to get started on the pack of marshmallows after starting up a campfire.
I finished the 'escape item' and Sacred Gear insertion procedures for the entire clan in a matter of minutes. My homeworld may be utter shit in terms of soul damaging or removal methods but they were pretty good when it comes to sealing things within souls. Naturally, I had developed both ways of manipulating the soul to even greater heights.
"As I said, it wouldn't be a lengthy process. Handling the aftermath is always the time-consuming part. I'm sure your parents had shared some stories of their first year as devils. All they did was fight and kick ass while all the adults handled the lengthy clean-up."
With a childlike, innocent tone, Artemis started asking all sorts of questions about Airi's background. Airi could only provide a second-hand account, but thanks to my ability to view our world's past, I had the perfect excuse as to why I could provide better detail into her parent's school days and shenanigans.
Using my altered World Crossing spell to show events in a timeline through a magical viewing screen just made the experience better.
"My mother was turned into a man!?" Airi screamed at the sight of Asia Argento turning into a guy when Issei was hospitalized by the common Devil Flu.
"Azazel's Gender-Swap Raygun truly was the most powerful invention of the former Governor-General… I truly looked up to the mad evil scientist. May his soul rest in peace."
"Uncle Azazel isn't dead! Don't write him off like that!"
"His smile may be friendly but I can't help but feel revulsion by just looking at him…" Artemis's instincts were spot on, while the man was truly working towards peace and was great to hang out with, it didn't change the fact he was an utter pervert and a mad scientist with enough horrible experiments that made human war criminals look like kids in comparison.
"It's alright to trust your instincts, just so long as you keep in mind that what you're feeling isn't just a result of their gender. If anything, I fully believe in your judgment on this one."
"Why do you admire him then?"
"He still made some pretty nifty stuff. Mhmm, the genderswap gun is still the best…"
"Hawawa! Is that Uncle Yuuto?!"
"For the record, your father was definitely attracted to 'Yumi Kiba' at that time."
Airi started blabbering about how her father was definitely not spending time with Vali and Yuuto in 'that way' despite me not saying a word about it.
Artemis tapped her fist into her hand and went "Oh!"
"Hmm?"
The goddess looked straight at me with an understanding expression, "I can see why you were avoiding your father-in-law now until then."
Artemis is oddly innocent about such matters, I guess it's a result of merging with her much mellow 'residue', but it's pretty charming.
Even so, I'll take this opportunity and play along.
I made a troubled expression and said, "It has been said that Issei Hyoudou had a 'rival harem', as I had my heart set on my wife, I did everything I could to avoid being drawn into his harem gravity field."
Airi's mortified expression made me want to laugh as her imagination went wild.
"Hey, that's a lie." Artemis pointed out and poked my cheek in response.
"Yeah, I really just didn't want to get beat up or have him separate Airi and I."
"You… you… Dioooooooooooo!"
Airi launched a tickle assault at me! Not wanting to be outdone, I retaliated and also dragged Artemis into the battle!
We had to run away a few minutes later because we kind of ignored the Loga clan that was still nearby until they picked up on our presence and started to chase after us.
A few months later…
It took a while to make slavery unprofitable after discreetly freeing all the slaves and settling them within a hidden realm right in the middle of the Kaios Desert region. Sorry, Kaios Rainforest region, I kinda terraformed the entire land after replacing most of the sand with conjured earth and minerals expected from a rainforest. I had also made sure to place some environmental spells that would keep the region stable for at least a thousand years.
After performing my duty as a modern OP protagonist, I went on to transform the peninsula where the country of Telskyura and the amazons were located into a tropical rainforest zone. The culture was too entrenched at this point to use pure economic means to eliminate slavery, I was tempted to set a country-wide Rating Game-based spell that would prevent fatal attacks but figured that it wouldn't really deter the Amazons from killing each other.
It would probably be better to delegate the duty of civilizing that particular part of the continent to someone else. Although to be fully honest, the real reason why I didn't get more deeply involved is that both Airi and Artemis disapproved of me accidentally attracting Amazons and making them fall in love with me.
A side project of mine was the modification of Hyazning, a forest island located in a giant lake in the remote frontiers of the continent. Previously there were two kingdoms, one of White Elves and the other of Dark Elves, which constantly fought between them until they mutually destroyed. I had effectively sealed the area off with special boundary field spells that made other mortals and monsters ignore the place, fixed up the land surrounding the giant lake, and created some artificial leylines using my tremendous power.
The project was largely done as a place to dump any large number of people I would save in the next couple of years so that they can live and create a new life in a relatively peaceful world.
One of my last big projects outside of Orario was to visit Altena, a country famed for it's magic, and deliver my 'revolutionary' method of mastering magical energy instead of trying to master individual spells. I basically barged into a big debate with all those old looking wizards, denounced their 'outdated' ways, showed off my magic, and then taught my method to a couple of volunteers.
The local gods that updated my temporary apprentices status were shocked to discover a new Skill denoting their magic mastery and that their already acquired spells being labeled 'redundant' since they could just cast them without the chants now that they've mastered the utilization of mastering magic.
Of course, teaching the method to others themselves were a bit more difficult, since I had practically cheated with some artifacts that made it easier for them to sense magical energy when I was teaching them. I left some magical artifacts and spells with them that would teach them everything essential and leave them to develop in their own ways afterward.
"I am not looking forward to going back to school." Airi remarked as she completed her sixth package that she would have me send to her family. With how long we were staying in this world, we were pretty much updating them on our adventurers every couple of hours.
"You know, you could try out some academies in the Education District."
"Nooooooooo~! School sucks! Let's just test out or something…"
Airi has finally understood the appeal of ditching school and going on adventures.
I'm so proud of her! *Sniff*
"Is school truly that bad?" Artemis has yet to know the horrors of being surrounded by teenagers and being placed in the Japanese Education system.
"It's good if you're a normal human… er, it kinda depends even then. But for someone overpowered like me and for Airi that has a taste of adventure…"
"Then there's no true appeal in being restrained by an institution, especially when you have learned things beyond what could be taught in a small room."
"Right on the mark Artemis. Say, now that we're back in Orario, is there anyone you want to meet up with?"
"Not reall- haa… I suppose meeting up with Demeter wouldn't be too bad."
Artemis is becoming more sociable!
"That sounds wonderful. You should be quick though, the Goddess Festival will be held in a few days, so I expect her to be quite busy with preparations."
The Goddess Festival was a festival that lasted for three days every year. Its purpose is to honor the goddesses of harvest, there were five of them in Orario. Freya, Demeter, Ishtar, Hathor, and Damia.
The streets would be lined up with the current year's fall harvest crops. As long as they had a Guild purchased badge (for a cheap price of 1000 Valis) anyone could take any food they wanted for free. There were even shops mixed in with food stalls that would bake bread out of the wheat they took and cooked other types of food for them as long as they had all the ingredients they need.
I was honestly excited about the festival since it'll be a great opportunity to take Airi and Artemis out on a date.
"Yeah, you're right. I'll be heading out now then."
"Alright, wait, do you have your enchanted suit and escape items with you?"
"Hehe, of course. You're such a worrywart, Dio." Artemis kissed me goodbye, "But I love that side of you too."
After waving Artemis goodbye, I turned around and asked Airi, "Airi, do you want to head out anywhere?"
"You go on ahead. I'm just going to finish this month's video."
I'll take that as permission to go out and Cultivate then!
Before I did so, I decided to visit a restaurant frequented by Adventurers, just to keep up with the latest gossip. For some reason, however, a lot of customers were leaving the restaurant with a disgruntled look.
"Huh, what's up?"
"Fucking occupied that's what! The crazy bastard from the Zeus Familia took over the kitchen so no one's orders are coming anytime soon."
Oh? Now, this is interesting…
I entered the nearly deserted restaurant and found that the kitchen was occupied by a single man. I could tell that he was powerful and could keep up with me using only Touki from a glance.
"Hmm, no, needs more anti-toxin… a bit too sour, some sugar will be needed…"
Is he cooking monster meat? The only time a monster would leave behind its body is if it were born in the wild from monsters that escaped the dungeon. This guy… is an innovator.
No, wait, what is this?! His cooking technique, his precise seasoning, and masterful control of heat… it's like staring at a master… no, it's more than that! If my cooking were to be ranked as a 5-Star Mortal Chef Realm then this man was in the middle stage of the Immortal Chef Realm!
I feel like I have just gained some pointers to break through the bottlenecks in my cooking technique!
"Finally! Some good fucking food!"
He dug into his own meal with enthusiasm and savored the taste. I see, so he was unsatisfied with the meals offered and decided to cook his own, his taste buds must be comparable to the 'God's Tongue' from Shokugeki no Soma!
"Excuse me…"
"Hmm?"
"Do you think you can do anything with this?"
I took out the corpse of an Indigo Scaled Sea Dragonoid from my interspatial ring and tossed it onto the ground.
"What the… !"
"A magical artifact of mine, we can discuss that later. What do you think you can do with this?"
"I have never seen this kind of monster before… hmm, you are an interesting one."
"I may answer your questions if you cook me a worthy meal."
"Challenge accepted. Wait, who are you?"
"Dio Dorana. And you?"
" Zald, an Executive of the Zeus Familia."
"Yes, well, get cooking."
He stared at me for a moment like a predator looking at his next meal, I snorted and pointed at the kitchen. The man that could eat the flesh of monsters and man alike in order to gain power smirked at my response, then took the corpse to the kitchen as I wished.
I never seriously thought about branching out to cooking the mutated monsters in my pocket dimensions anytime soon, but with how good Zald made the meal without losing much of its spiritually rich content, I may just change my mind and refocus my attention towards cooking.
"Uuuuuoooooh! Delicious!!!!"
"I concur. I haven't tasted such a fine meal in ages."
"It's not just that! My body is brimming with power, my Skill had never granted me such a large boost with cooked meals before, that corpse you brought is something special."
"Heh. Naturally. Well, you'll find out more in due time, after the harvest festival."
"And what if I want my answers now?"
I challenged him to an arm-wrestling contest and beat him by combining both Touki and magic reinforcement. He acknowledged my strength and let me go without any trouble after that.
Straightforward warrior fellows were the best to deal with sometimes.
After getting sidetracked, I decided to put off my Cultivation for a bit and scout out an abandoned church for future roleplay sex with my wife Airi.
There were, oddly enough, already two people inside of the usually empty church.
"Ahahaha! Stop it, I can't, I'm laughing too hard!"
"That just means my Lady Hera act is that brilliant!"
There was a cute silver-haired, green-eyed girl happily spending time with a black-haired, red-eyed man that looked a bit like a ruffian. I could tell that the two of them were in love instantly.
"Hello there!" The two of them almost screamed at my entrance as I jumped through the open doors of the church. "I see the two of you are on time, now then, let's get this wedding ceremony on the road!"
"W-w-wedding!?" "Oh my! Is this why you called me out here…" "N-no, I wasn't going to-" "Huh? You weren't…?" "Wait, you want to…"
The confident-looking jokester was a bit less sure of her feelings for him than I thought he was.
"You two make a lovely couple."
They blushed in response. Ah, young love… wait, now I'm sounding like an old man…
"I, well, thanks but… I don't think we can get married…"
"Mostly for the sake of his continued wellbeing."
"My wellbeing? You don't have to worry about me, I'm the master at running away! It's your health that everyone's concerned about if Lady Hera and your sister found out then-"
"Oh? So you have a sickness of some sort?"
Turns out the girl had a congenital disease that made her weak and tired almost all the time, to the point that she was not even able to leave her room at times.
I took out my [Staff of Asclepius] and healed her instantly. She felt the surge of energy and lack of weakness instantly, the girl grabbed her companions and dragged him along in a dance that she always wanted to try out.
I left a note about the specifics of my healing and that they can check out her condition with a doctor if they wanted confirmation. I also included my name and address in case there were any unexpected complications and that I would treat her further if required.
It was natural that I would help out members of the Hera and Zeus Familia, or more specifically, Bell Cranel's parents.
Ah, first day back at Orario and I'm already setting up for future events involving the Zeus and Hera Familia, all without any planning whatsoever.
As expected, my protagonist luck is the cheat ability among cheats!
The payout came earlier than expected, however, when the acquaintances I met that day came knocking on my door the night before the Goddess Festival began.
Spoiler: Alfia
[img: https/i./tV5xV6j.jpg]
Along with someone that looked extremely similar to the girl I healed that day.
Only instead of looking extremely cute like the previous girl, Alfia was beautiful to the point that of making me question my preference for blonde-haired pretty girls, just for a moment.
"Huh, guess you were the same person." Zald seemed pleasantly surprised. Bell Cranel's would-be father had naturally informed his superiors of the miracle that had occurred since Meteria had been healed.
"Were you the one that healed Meteria?" Alfia straight out asked for confirmation of my identity.
Meteria, the girl that looked as cute as a bunny, pouted and pinched her older twin sister's cheek, "Sister… don't be so rude!"
The Monster of Talent, Level 7 Executive of the Hera Familia, was instantly defeated by her Level 1 sister.
I can see where Bell Cranel got his cuteness from. Such cuteness is truly a dangerous weapon!
Chapter 7
Chapter 7
I tapped Alfia with my Staff of Asclepius before even inviting her into my home. I had no intention of negotiating any services, items, or favors from a girl that was sick to the point where even lifting her eyelids was tiresome.
Although to be completely honest, I mostly healed her out of habit. The only other significant reason for acting as such was because it made me look good in front of Airi and Artemis.
I didn't particularly concern myself with the benefits of ingratiating myself with the Zeus and Hera Familia even further with this act since fixing up Meteria would be sufficient for Hera and I already had many other ways to convince Zeus to follow my lead in the following months.
I disregarded any further courtesies and confidently walked down into the basement floor of the mansion after inviting everyone to follow me.
Right into the secret realm I had managed to set up and develop over the time we spent outside of Orario. Since I had no use for the secret realm when I had been traveling the world, I could afford to disconnect it from the time stream and then reconnect it when I got back, enabling me to cheat the limitations of my controlled time dilation settings, allowing the magically charged world filled with creatures and plants to develop by themselves over a random period of time.
Over thousands of years passed within when only less than a year had passed for me. Truly, my luck is the greatest thing in the world.
Easiest secret realm development plan of my life!
I wouldn't have risked it back at my home universe, as Great Red had the right domains and conditions to find my realm, but it was a different case in this world where the idea of traversing the timeline was completely alien to these gods despite their greater conceptual strength and authority.
Hmm, note to self, I should farm up a couple of secret realms this way before going back to my homeworld. I can just bring them alone easily by stuffing them all in my super interspatial rings anyway.
Upon completing that train of thought within one of my spirit's multiple independent thought processes dedicated to idea, musings and monologues I proceeded to use the opportunity to test my ability against one of the strongest humans of this world.
Goading Alfia to spar with me required less time than what it took to brew a cup of tea.
"You provoked me into battling yet all you have to show for is this shabby swordsmanship?"
"It can't be helped. Magic is my specialty, but using it will end the fight too quickly."
It wasn't as if my melee combat abilities were terrible, per se… my movements were 'perfect', in the sense that I copied and practiced enough to get rid of excessive movements. I just didn't know how and when to use them to its most effective level as I hadn't gone through enough enlightenment in the ways of combat.
The girl in front of me, however, had been fighting since she was a child as a frontline fighter. Magic may have been her specialty, but she was a master with every weapon! She had picked up one of the 'decent' blades I threw in front of her and was using the magical weapon as if she was its owner in a matter of seconds.
My base speed was higher than hers with Touki, in spite of that, her response speed was monstrous in comparison to mine and she was easily striking my body, triggering my self-replenishing magical defenses at speeds far beyond that of any opponent I had ever faced before.
Airi may have entered the realm of Ultimate class devils through our regular spars and the subtle energy infusions I performed on her through sex but she was a hell lot less dangerous than this 16-year-old Adventurer in front of me!
"What a coincidence. I happen to be a mage myself… do you have a deathwish?"
In spite of speaking the words that signified instant defeat, Alfia opened her eyes and smiled with anticipation.
Her enchanting grey and green eyes made me freeze for a moment… goddamn it, aren't I becoming more and more unfaithful as a husband the longer I stay here?
" Gospel."
I didn't get a chance to consider that possibility for a second longer when the mountain top we were fighting was crushed into pieces.
The heavy blocks of sound buffeted against my Touki-enhanced defenses, I allowed myself to crash into the ground below, and excitedly examined my shaking hands.
Haha… the only time I've been hit with such blunt force was when I allowed Airi to use her ultimate punch on me… my wife could rarely ever hit me with that move at the level I was fighting at, for Alfia to do so with a single chant even with most of her magical might be restrained by her active magic negating enchantment… ah, looks like I have to turn more of my magical defenses back on, lest I waste some of my life-saving contingencies.
I rolled out of the way of Alfia's swing at my laying down form, avoiding the earth-shattering blow then took out a shield to defend myself against her following attacks. She may not have Airi's raw strength but her attacks were far more dangerous!
"You may as well turn off that enchantment of yours. I won't be casting any real spells in this fight, outside of this one… Gospel."
"Wh-!?"
I blew apart our entire surroundings, erasing several mountains and caused thousands of magical beasts to flee their destroyed homes. With a burst of power, I channeled magic to the land and activated the realm's mechanisms, causing time to reverse in a limited fashion in order to restore the places devastated by our battle.
Alfia was blasted through several mountain ranges and bounced off the ground several times. It was a moderate injury, but not a serious one, as her enchantment negated a good amount of the spell. Even so, the blunt force of the modified version of her own spell, Satanas Verion, managed to hurt her in spite of her secret defense magic.
I used a special movement to take a thousand steps with the effort of only a single step, arriving right in front of Alfia and plastered a cocky smile on my face.
"As you can see, your Silentium Eden isn't impenetrable, if you wish to defeat me then you will have to discard that super short chant enchant magic if yours and unleash your true destructive power."
She looked as if she was about to do just that, then froze, and threw the blade I lent her onto the ground.
"There is no reason to do that. You have already proved that my condition will no longer deteriorate as I battle, have you not? I have no intentions of wasting my time like this."
I frowned, but accepted her choice, she may have misinterpreted my actions but it was also true that this battle wasn't benefiting her since I wasn't fighting her seriously.
For someone that lived her entire life believing that she would die as a result of her disease before she could live a full life, yet continued to throw herself against the dangers of the dungeon in spite of the increased risk of death, every moment of her life was precious and could not be wasted.
Even if the situation has changed as a result of my actions, it didn't mean that her mindset had changed.
The difference between the two of us was like heaven and earth. She came into the world cursed to live a short human life, while I was pretty much-guaranteed immortality as an all-powerful being.
The way she lived her life could easily be counted as 'heaven-defying' among Cultivators, but I needed to understand Alfia more and what her innermost desires for pushing herself this far to confirm my thoughts on her. This feeling in my heart… I think I'm starting to understand why all those godlike beings in other worlds find mortals so… fascinating.
An arrow flew right between the space between us, killing a Sand Devouring Wyrm just a few meters from where we stood.
"Dio! Could you send that ingredient to us?" Artemis transmitted her thoughts to me using an artifact I made her.
As expected of my second lover! The goddess of hunting can't even miss at such a distance!
Granted, the 56th iteration of [Tri-star Amore Mio] I gave her was a superb divine bow, but most of its functions were currently sealed while Artemis still used her mortal body. It could only fire energy arrows charged up by her passive divine aura at its current state, even so, to instantly kill a monster at this distance with just a bow is something I couldn't do without the aid of magic.
I waved my hand and teleported the dead mutated animal to Artemis.
Alfia raised an eyebrow, I smiled lightly and said, "Shall we head back to where everyone is? Our little battle took us quite far…"
"You may do so." The way she said it was as if she were a queen giving a command to a subject. Ah, she must have been emulating Hera, or her Familia Captain, a little bit there.
I left an illusion at my spot then silently teleported right behind her.
The fact that her senses were refined to the point where she could react the moment I was behind her was impressive. I guess that's what you get for learning to fight without 'wasting energy' in performing basic human actions like 'opening her eyes' over many years.
Even so, with Touki and magic enhancing my movements, she couldn't stop me from scooping her right up and princess-carrying her all the way back to everyone.
"Wha-!? L-let me down this instant! Pig! Swine! Pervert!"
"No way! The chance of carrying the strongest female Adventurer in my arms like this has got to worth something as bragging rights!"
Her attempts to snap my neck and poke my eyeballs out were pretty cute.
She ceased her actions the moment I arrived right in front of her sister, however…
"Amazing! I didn't know big sister was so strong! And to be carried back like that…"
"Don't say a word! Erase this moment from your mind!"
Leave it to her little sister to embarrass the most talented Adventurer of this generation.
Jason, Meteria's fiance (and Bell's future father), was already making teasing remarks at Alfia after my little performance, resulting in him being chased around the area by a furious young woman.
Ah, he's really good at running away…
"-and now we grill the meat like this…" Zald was currently cooking the dead monster Artemis killed a minute ago.
"You are… quite skilled in preparing the beast." Artemis begrudgingly praised Zald's survival/cooking skills when it came to handling monster meat.
I count that as progress towards lessening the Manhater trait.
"Airi, is everything alright?"
I noticed that Airi was casting a few glances at Alfia now even as I was reviewing my small battle with her.
"Hmm, I guess… I was just thinking that…" Airi tapped her ear, I responded to her signal by casting an illusion around us to disguise the content of our conversation from lip readers, then the main privacy spell that would prevent anyone short of a high-tier god from hearing us, "Miss Alfia reminds me of my father's friends."
"Oh, how so?"
"Cao Cao and his 'hero' group, they're…"
Airi couldn't help but compare the sight of Alfia to some of her father's 'hero' friends, or rather, the image of what they should have been.
"I can definitely see that. When compared to certain Longinus wielders in our world, she's just like them, a glass cannon with enough speed, reflexes, and skill to defeat stronger beings…"
"That's true, but I wasn't really talking about that."
"I see… so you're talking about the part where she's closer to an actual 'hero'?"
"Yeah, and also… I can see why she would destroy Orario as well."
"…"
"You talked about the survivors of the One-Eyed Black Dragon causing chaos in Orario to make themselves stepping stones for new heroes, remember? Zald's skill and Alfia's disease gave it away."
She had heard enough of the Zeus and Hera Familia's deeds, what they wanted to accomplish, and their eventual fate from me. I hadn't shied away from their flaws either, back then…
I didn't want them to judge Zald, Alfia, and a number of others when that future wasn't going to happen anymore. I hadn't said any names back then when Artemis asked me about the future, where I told them the tale of the last two members of those Familias, turning to evil in order to end the Age of Gods for the sake of birthing new heroes.
Even so, Airi had figured the rest out upon hearing Meteria's story about her disease and her sister's achievements, then recalling my remarks on the 'fallen heroes' only losing because the heroes of the Astrea, Loki, Freya, and Ganesha Familia turned it into a battle of endurance on account of their debilitating conditions.
"Yeah. That's them right there." I glanced at Zald and Alfia who was dragged into a conversation between Meteria and Artemis about romance-related topics, then I pulled Airi close into a hug, wrapping my arms around her waist as she comfortably snuggled into my chest "How do you feel about it?"
She looked up at me with her cute green eyes, then admitted, "I'm a little bit jealous. It really feels like everyone that catches your eye is more exceptional than me."
I considered how she referenced her father's rival turned friend Cao Cao and understood what was eating at her.
Alfia was a hero. She suffered from a deadly disease, with limited time left to live. She was fragile, with her life exposed to death throughout. Still, she chose to become a hero.
Airi was thinking along the lines of 'Oh no, my husband has his eyes on a real heroine! Another exceptional person is being roped into the harem! Is it still alright to be the main wife?'
Well, time to reassure her. She's still making progress in getting rid of her insecurities and this result is a lot better than before.
I poked her cheek, "That's not true. Only someone like you could capture my heart like this."
"You're just saying that."
"Uh uh. Being completely honest with myself… if it were the past me, I would have found a way to corrupt Artemis to my purposes using her unique situation for my benefit, then exploit Alfia's situation as much as I could simply because it's a hell lot easier for me to do so instead of charming them the right way."
I would have gone after every 'waifu' I desired, using their circumstances and changing them to accept who I used to be, instead of improving my own character until I became someone worthy of the affections of many different women.
It was the bog-standard harem fanfiction playbook, after all. Especially for someone that desired a DXD harem like myself… I won't deny that 'saving' maidens like Asia Argento, Valerie Tepes, Ingvild Leviathan, and exploiting many other waifu's backstories to make them trust and rely on me wasn't part of the plan.
There are plenty of self-inserts like myself that would use their OP powers and meta-knowledge to make those girls fall in love or desire them through careful manipulation of the situation, words, and action then slowly corrupt them to their way of thinking.
Though Airi has learned the ways of showing off overwhelming power and cheat items to achieve long-term societal improvements from yours truly, the only way I had 'corrupted' her was in getting her to agree to marriage so quickly. Other than that, I hadn't dared to make her change from the loving, kind, passionate hard-working girl that I had fallen in love with.
I had resolved to change myself instead so that she could love me without changing the core of who she was as Airi Dorana nee Hyoudou and who she wanted to be in the future.
My decision also applied towards any other woman that caught my eye and had been approved by my darling wife. Artemis was slowly changing as a result of fusing with her residue and her love for me. The vow we took for 10,000 years of romance and beyond was a promise for us to dedicate ourselves to one another, it was a bond that we would develop patiently over many years as we were both immortals with a different view of time.
"That's pretty scummy."
"I won't ever deny it. But right now, I'm the type of guy that trusts his heart and learns to love others just as they are."
Airi laughed boisterously, "Hahaha! That sounded so cheesy. If you actually loved anyone else that wasn't a beautiful woman or their family then you may as well be the second coming of Jesus."
I smiled wryly, "Okay, you have a point, I'll limit that to potential wives and people with the potential for great good then. I'll leave the 'saving everyone hearts' thing to those main characters that were meant to be Messiah Archetypes like Ninja Jesus then."
"Ninja Jesus?"
"Did you ever hear the Tale of the Utterly Gutsy Ninja?"
I ended up sharing a very long and increasingly complicated story with everyone over a magnificently cooked meal.
The goddess festival largely went off without a hitch.
There was a little trouble there, nothing unexpected from a festival in Orario… okay, fine, it was pretty unique since it involved me dissing that bitch Ishtar.
How I ended up insulting her was a pretty complicated matter.
But the short story started when I stepped in when Hera dumped a cup of pumpkin juice on Freya's head and was going full 'bitch mode', I had gently admonished Hera who had then screeched a variant of the 'do you know who I am?' template response until Meteria went up and scolded her saying 'do you know who he is?'
Once it was revealed that I was the one that healed Meteria and Alfia, Hera immediately apologized and turned into a super nice MILF that I was seriously tempted to fuck because she was a hot blonde (she reminded me of FGO's Europa). But my will was strong, so I turned around and cast a simple spell to clean Freya up so that she can enjoy the rest of her festival.
And then that bitch Ishtar stirred some shit by implying some Charm ability abuse with me as a target, Hera was about to go hysterical at Freya until I snorted and honestly told everyone that Freya wasn't my type at all. Freya looked like she didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Ishtar started laughing at Freya's expression until I told the dumb bitch to shut the fuck up, called her a toad, and said that the difference between Freya and her was like that of Heaven and Earth.
Yeah… the goddess festival somehow managed to continue without me kicking Ishtar back to heaven, thanks to Artemis bringing Demeter over to smooth things out.
My first meeting with Zeus started with him laughing and toasting a goblet at wine in my honor for all I had done… and for almost started a huge catfight between goddesses. I get the feeling that he was mostly interested in the latter because of the possibility of clothing damage.
Truly, he was a man of culture.
We got into some serious talk soon after when I discreetly revealed some truths on the results of their future expeditions to defeat Behemoth, Leviathan, and the One-Eyed Black Dragon. Zeus needed some time alone to digest the idea of his entire Familia being slaughtered by the dragon and what would happen to Orario in the future, especially with the tragic resolve of Zeld and Alfia's actions.
After a couple of hours, he heard the rest of my story out and was completely on board when I spoke about the Last Hero candidate (Bell Cranel) and his achievements.
Zeus then went on to (albeit fearfully) converse with Hera (who was apparently Yandere for him) privately in order to convince her himself. Hera was in a reflective mood for the next month, a month in which I spent dealing with problems like the Ikelos Familia, various criminal groups and helping out Soma in establishing healthy Familia protocols.
I went ahead and taught both the Zeus and Hera Familia of my magic control methods, quickly getting Hera's Captain Ilithyia (also known as 'Empress'), Alfia and all their mages up to speed.
My mass-produced interspatial rings sold like hotcakes, I managed to make a method of creating interspatial rings that would work for those with the Mystery development ability, which would allow Orario's adventurers to sustain future expeditions much easier when they can just keep their supply train with them. I probably stole the jobs of many juniors within large Familia's, but at least they will never have to carry luggage again.
Alfia and Zald had gotten to Level 8 after visiting my secret realm a few times in that month. Zald, Jason and I had ended up becoming good friends when Meteria, Alfia, Artemis and Airi have started hanging out together for some reason. I hung out with Zald thanks to his cooking expertise, Jason because he was fun like Zeus and I occasionally kidnapped Uskari to join us since I needed my obligatory best friend character.
Airi and I joined in the next expedition with the two Familia's into the dungeon, with the help of my extermination and collection type magic spells (via hundreds of orbs that shoot out death beams and teleport items into my interspatial rings), I eradicated every monster and collected every piece of loot uptill the 37th floor. Past that floor we all started to 'adventure' in the dungeon properly.
I used this time to research the Falna and how Excelia was gained. Thanks to my high comprehension abilities, I managed to 'enlighten' a select few like the Familia Captains and Executives on some methods that might increase their Excelia gain.
They took my words with a grain of salt but gave it a go anyways out of respect.
Airi and I ended up sparring regularly with the strongest Familia members in the dungeon, we didn't have to worry about tiring ourselves since I had plenty of drugs restorative pills and defensive magical spells to prevent monster ambushes from harming the group.
We steamrolled through everything until we reached the 70th floor, where the environment got seriously hazardous, to the point where I had to dedicate more magic and focus towards protecting the group instead of offensive magic because they couldn't make preparations for floors deeper than this until they've seen it themselves.
Our expedition came to a stop at the 85th floor where magic resistant and magic absorbing metallic monsters started to spawn. The only way I could defeat them was by using my decently strong weapons and overwhelming magical power, even then, it was no longer safe enough to continue as I couldn't increase my firepower further without causing damage to the planet.
Once we evacuated to the surface, I went on several dates with Artemis to catch up then shut myself off in order to go through closed-doors Cultivation.
Relying on magic just wasn't going to cut it anymore.
I reached the peak of my equivalent of Core Formation/Golden Core realm after a few days. Most of the accumulated Law energies that I could safely absorb were drained from Orario and I wouldn't be able to make the next breakthrough within the city anymore.
So I teleported to the Empire, the second strongest nation in the world and started Cultivating there. I broke through to the Nascent Soul equivalent stage which reinforced my soul's ability to continue existing without a body before visiting other countries and spending a day there to make some progress on my Cultivation.
By the time Alfia and I had our semi-regular match again, she had somehow reached the peak status points in all her Level 8 attributes.
She didn't stand a chance even when I was holding back. All of my attributes had increased exponentially after I progressed through two entire realms. I could probably wrestle against one of those strong gods in my homeworld without Touki at this point.
"Hey Alfia, I've just finished preparing custom Cultivation methods for Airi, Artemis, and you. Wanna join the club?"
"You are not seriously suggesting that I rely on meditating and snorting magical drugs to increase my strength…"
"Noooo? Don't worry, my manuals include minimal closed-doors Cultivation and lots of active exercises."
"Why would you offer me this opportunity? The only other ones that you want to join you on this is… well…"
Her oddly bashful expression led her to the right conclusion. Even so, I did have other reasons for wanting her to Cultivate as I did. For the most part, I wanted to see what she could do with her insane talent, and well, I felt that she could be a worthy eternal sparring partner.
"I'm not pushing for anything at the moment. But a thought came to me… what do you want to do after the One-Eyed Black Dragon?"
"So sure of yourself, you believe victory is already at hand. As for that… I admit that I haven't thought that far. All my life, I have always decided to live with as little regrets as I have."
"Why is that?"
She looked at me like an idiot for a moment, then scoffed and smiled fondly at me.
"If I hadn't known you for your brilliance I would have thought you a fool. I never had the luxury for regrets, with this short life of mine, for my sister's weaker constitution… the only thing I could do to reduce the guilt in my heart for 'stealing' my sister's share of talent and strength in the womb was to make our short lives worth living. That is to say, I sought absolution in being a hero, a hero so great that my actions will serve as proof that we had ever existed. Even if my name was forgotten, if my deeds were to rid this world of evil and shine a light into the future then I can accept my fate with a smile."
I listened silently for a moment, then said, "Your resolve is beautiful. Part of me wishes that I can dedicate my life to a purpose like that, but I'm just too blessed in comparison! The only path for me is that of an immortal Cultivator that will achieve ultimate power."
Alfia rolled her eyes, "Had you spoken those words with any other tone then I would have gouged your eyes out. But coming from you, who worked for the betterment of this world which my sister loves… I can't find it in myself to hate someone like you."
"Oh? I thought we were well past the hate stage? Aren't we the best of friends?"
"Your wife said something about calling all your 'best friends' "fatty" in private. I like my figure just as it is."
"Same."
"Pervert. I can see why you get along so well with Zeus and Jason."
"As for the former… I kinda did help him out with his relationship needs."
As part of our plan for the future, Zeus and Hera would leave Orario to the future generations to make up for their arrogance and so that they wouldn't depend on them anymore. They would, instead, form their own nation and have travelling groups of heroes rid the world of monsters, while also helping to develop the world in better directions. I had given them a slew of secret realms and technological knowledge to keep them future-proofed.
For the nation part… I took a shortcut by stealing another nation for them to settle in while resolving Zeus's sexual needs. Namely, I took a 'short' trip to a hentai world and convinced an elf queen (he was insanely jealous of how Loki has Riveria as part of her Familia) to become his wife.
The sheer amount of work I had to put in to get him the best elf wife available that suited all our requirements (especially the sexual ones) were astronomical. And a technical virgin at that? Honestly, it would have been impossible to convince her if her husband hadn't died against the demons, without resulting in distasteful means, that is.
She got her ass fucked and trained a bit by a bastard villain but I got to her before she broke and I convinced her that becoming the wife of a god from another universe would benefit her kingdom. I then had to wipe out the demonic threat of their world, purify their entire land, bring order to several countries, free the elven slaves across the world then repatriate them all before finally constructing a grand ritual to migrate the entire damn kingdom to this world!
She's one of the good monarchs, still a little bit naive, but in any case, I had to take care of practically everything in order to make her consent to this.
As for how grateful Zeus was about it…
"I name you as my eternal friend! You can help yourself to the treasury, not that I think you need it but hey, you can take whatever you want from my Familia when this pans out!"
"Right, right, let's just hurry this up before Hera finds out. I've got the aphrodisiacs, a sealed room, and the marriage documents all prepared."
"This is the best end-to-end service I ever had… *sniff* have I ever told you that you are like a son to me? That's it! I'm adopting you!"
And so I ended up getting semi-officially adopted.
Hera was about to blow up the morning after I locked Zeus and his new hot as fuck elf queen wife in a room with Xianxia aphrodisiacs. Until I healed Zeus of his fatigue, shoved her into the same room and then drugged them all with the same aphrodisiacs again.
Turns out getting fucked by super god dick solves lots of problems.
So anyway… that sealed land near Hyazning I had set up is now home to a huge population of elves that have innate magic resistance and probably have 'better' genes than the local elves since they live longer lives and have a few more racial bonuses. Also, the girls are hentai elves, of sorts so… their neighbors are going to be surprised when an elf kingdom pops out of nowhere when the barrier drops in the next century.
And then I remember that Zeus and Hera are going to co-lead the country. Hoo boy…
"… Why are you suddenly looking particularly miserable?"
"I'm recalling a moment in my life where I was very sexually frustrated."
Fucking Zeus! She was my favorite kind of elf too! That pervy god should be worshiping me for being a man of my word. My self control was impeccable. I only started fucking like crazy when I got back to my wives despite all the pretty elves there!
Aaaaaah!
"You're still looking terrible."
"Bad memories… I regret making that promise to not touch the merch- I mean, goods. I could have took some time when making Zeus that promise!"
Blue balled filled flashbacks are not pleasant.
"Regrets huh? Could have, should have, and would have… each time humans utter these words, they grow older. Regretting a decision means cursing yourself for the things you've done. If you keep thinking back to those memories filled with regret then you will grow to become an ugly old man, if not outwardly, your heart will grow old in such a fashion."
"… I know that damn well. It's something I have to deal with especially when my memories don't fade with time. Well, in the end, it was just a small matter… your words of wisdom is appreciated. Hey, how about coming with us, Airi, Artemis and I when we're done here?"
"Back to your world and more words that I could scarcely imagine?" Alfia smiled brilliantly, "I would like that. After all, if I stay here any longer, then Meteria's child will be calling me 'Auntie', which is something I cannot stand for."
"Aww, come on, you'll love the kid!"
"I know. That's why, I want you to take me away before I do, or else I will never leave to experience life to the fullest beyond this world. Your actions here… you performed miracles, and I do not regret missing out on what you will do next."
"Is it so hard to say that you enjoy my company- ooof! Stop jabbing my sides!"
"Your wife said it was a weakness of yours."
"Gasp! Betrayal!"
Behemoth went down a month after we left Orario. Zeus hadn't needed to resort to distasteful means like conscripting 'children' from other Familia to scout for the poisonous monster with the help of my magic. I left the fighting to them, however, as this victory needed to be achieved by the hands of the natives instead of relying on my might.
Zald still sliced Behemoth in half after eating its corrosive flesh like in the story, although this time, I was around to heal him and prevent any future complications.
Alfia finished off Leviathan with her sound magic after a grueling fight at the sea.
As for the black dragon… well, it was really good at [Devouring] practically everything. Including the life of the land and the power of spirits.
I mean, Aria was pretty much plugged into the dragon, just as Artemis had been, apparently.
I pretty much nerfed the black dragon down to beatable levels by freeing Aria and restoring her power, then reversed the flow of stolen power from the black dragon back to the land.
They eventually managed to beat down the One-Eyed Black Dragon, Airi had joined the battle and gained some valuable experience, while Artemis helped out discreetly by shooting a couple of arrows to knock its aim off a little.
The Three Grand Quests were complete with surprisingly few casualties.
I helped everyone settle back down back at their new kingdom before saying my goodbyes to all my friends here. Afterward, I fulfilled my promise to Alfia and brought her along back to our world. We hadn't fully decided to progress our relationship in that direction yet, but we were both certain that we wanted to travel together.
Ah, home sweet home… my father-in-law has probably cooled off by now. Airi has kept everyone up to date so I'm sure he'll be a lot more accepting of our relationship now.
Chapter 8
Chapter 8
"The air here is filthy and these 'vehicles' are noisy."
"Have humans here truly lived apart from nature for most of their lives?"
After the initial bout of standard Reverse Isekai excitement, Alfia and Artemis started giving their honest thoughts on the current state of the world.
"Yes, I know. Truly, it's a terrible shame. Ah, don't worry, I'll be working on some things to fix this!"
I honestly had no strong feelings about the depressing state of the world after having single-mindedly pursued my goals since I was a child and then going after Airi at full-throttle. I simply didn't have time to contemplate on such matters outside of Cultivation sessions, of which, the 'inelegant' parts of modern life were but a tiny part of my life that I had to reflect on.
But the two of them were special to me, just as Airi was, and I had to make this world more suitable to their tastes. While we wouldn't necessarily be living in any singular world on a permanent basis, ensuring that all worlds we reside on for a significant period of time are fitting for my wives (and future wives) is my sworn duty as a wonderful husband.
Let's see here… I'm going to need to make silent Electric cars, other transportation methods that produce minimal 'noise', a nanomachine swarm that can consume pollution to clean up the air, ocean, and land, replant several forests…
"Mm-hmm, uh-huh… got it. If you find anything or anyone to be unsightly in your eyes just let me know and I'll handle it."
I was originally going to delegate parts of my current money-making businesses to my various 'fatty' subordinates while I worked more on the world-changing technologies, but if I'm going to quickly transform this world to suit my women then I won't be able to do it on my own.
Oh, I certainly could do it by myself, but it would make it obvious I wasn't human at all. The easiest way to do it was to just hop over to the Naruto-verse, grab the Shadow Clone Jutsu and Transformation Jutsu, improve on those techniques and then have my clones masquerade as different leading figures paving the way for the future by rapidly releasing new technologies, policies and taking over the world while I'm at it.
But I would rather not be directly responsible for the welfare of the world when I can just delegate it to someone else like a proper powerful Cultivator. I don't particularly care about most of the world or it's people either. The purpose of their continued state of existence resides in their value to Airi, Artemis, and Alfia, whether as an outlet for them to exercise their free will, achieve their dreams, or as mere decoration for their lives.
If I was the type of scum that only cared about their appearance or as their 'novelty' value as waifus then I may just leave them on some world and go off Cultivating until I reach ultimate power, then return to that exact point in time where I left them and create an entirely new realm from scratch where I reign supreme and they can live a life of luxury as my trophy wives.
Transforming already existing worlds into 'tolerable' planes of existence for their sakes is a much more… elegant compromise.
"Wait just a minute, did you say 'handle it' in the same sentence as 'anyone'? I've heard enough stories to know that involves a lot of-" Airi voiced her concerns and continued by swiping her finger across her neck. "And I'm pretty sure you have no problems with that…"
I tried to stop myself from laughing at how cute her worried look was, "Ha… haha, come on Airi, you know I wouldn't kill anyone that isn't irredeemable trash. If they even have some hope of reforming without the use of 'distasteful methods' then I'll only beat them to an inch of their life, cripple them and then hand them over to the proper authorities."
Airi glanced at Artemis, the goddess looked back without saying a word, given her habit, that was a telltale sign that I was telling the complete truth.
"The fact that you can say all that and mean it while innocently drinking milk tea is what I'm concerned about. Please don't go overboard."
My wife pleaded with those earnest eyes that I couldn't refuse!
"Ah, you're adorable when you're worried like that…"
"Mou…"
Her worries were not unwarranted, but they were unnecessary. I was a lot less trigger happy after meeting Airi. Nowadays, I only kill people when they absolutely deserved it (I normally kill enemy combatants, who usually are too stupid to live and deserve to die for failing to see Mount Tai) or are an obvious unrepentant future threat.
I've only killed a few dozen or so people in the past year, most of them were working (or contributing) towards the destruction of Orario and the power of the law wholly sanctioned me to do just that!
Granted, the Law was synonymous with Zeus and Hera Familia at that point, and I had a great deal of say during my short stint with them, but the point was that all my actions were lauded as 'justice' in the eyes of the world.
The various charities paid for using the expensive Adamantite and Orihalcum I tore off the artificial dungeon of Knossos, my grand contributions to magic and alchemy, clandestine anti-slavery operations, and other benevolent acts done in the dark… my 'hero' credentials will be hard to dispute especially after topping it all off with my help against the Behemoth, Leviathan and One-Eyed Black Dragon.
Alfia stopped drinking her boba tea (she has a sweet tooth just like her sister Meteria) and asked a question all of a sudden, "Can you clarify on that? For example, if some disgusting swine attempted to touch me inappropriately then I should 'only' half-kill him, cripple him and then hand them over to this 'police' you spoke of?" She could certainly do that with absurd ease, even before she became a Level 9 when Artemis updated her Status upon arrival in this world.
Artemis followed up and asked some questions of her own, "I'm a goddess. I give you permission to just kill those types of men in my name!"
"Don't worry! I have anti-sexual assault enchantment spells on all of you so if anyone even tries anything they'll suffer immense pain and be unable to reproduce anymore! But if you want to kill some scum then go ahead, I'll cover things up." I reassured all my wives (and wives-to-be) that I was honoring my husbandly duty as a protector.
Airi sucked the rest of her milk tea up using her straw and then slammed the empty plastic cup onto the table, smiling sweetly while she began emitting some killing intent as an aura, "No one is killing anyone. Don't you think that level of crippling going too far? Oh my, I forgot that the common sense in fantasy-like worlds is totally different. Dio, honey, did you make sure to properly debrief them on the social mores of our world?"
I smiled confidently and said, "Of course not! Where's the fun in that? How can I miss out on the opportunity to properly introduce someone to a whole new world? If I gave them a dry run on what to expect then all there's no magic in the reverse isekai introduction experience!"
Airi stared at me before breaking out into laughter.
"Dio… you… hahaha, that's so you! You're right though, I'm having lots of fun showing Artemis and Alfia around. Hmm, hmm, I think I'm recovering my 'onee-chan' power this way… It really feels like I'm the older sister."
"You're younger than me."
Alfia is always so sensitive when it comes to her age. It's mostly due to a complex about her white/greyish colored hair, totally irrational, but I find it pretty charming myself.
"I'm several millions of years old."
As always, Artemis's straight forward innocent delivery has made my heart skip a few beats. She may not be as glamorous as Freya, Demeter, and some other goddesses I've seen, but her 'gentle beauty' type looks combined with her wide range of expressions shows so many sides of her that I love discovering more of every day.
"Shush, let me have this."
We gave Airi a moment of silence, one that she ended herself when she shouted, "Okay! Let's go meet my family! Ah, I'm still not looking forward to school tomorrow, maybe I should just skip…"
"I can send some paper clones to take our place."
"Yes, I'm saved! I love you so much"
I can now use three paper clones at the same time at 30% of my maximum power after my breakthroughs. Back then I could only make one paper clone at 10% of my power, but now, a single one of my new paper clones was stronger than the pre-breakthrough me by several times because of my Cultivation's insane power growth!
Though there will still be a deficiency here and there, I could now make full-powered paper clones of Airi, Alfia, and Artemis if the situation requires. School is obviously one of those cases where it's needed!
"Eh?! They aren't picking up!"
Airi tried to call her siblings and her mother using her phone but it seems that there was no signal from their location. This is quite odd, as her original phone was already made to connect to the Underworld and other realms, even before I upgraded it.
"Do you have a picture of your family?" Artemis asked Airi before I could make the suggestion myself, knowing what she was going to do, I settled for just double-checking the city with my senses, making a privacy barrier, and preparing some automated memory alteration spells to make our departure smooth.
"Yeah, lots. What are you going to do?"
"This."
Artemis used her power to form several Divine Mirrors, all of which were divining for my in-laws, it took a few seconds but several images showed different perspectives where Airi's younger brothers were fighting some generic trash to protect their sisters and mothers.
"Something must be nerfing your mothers since they haven't just killed the trash themselves," I remarked lightly, having a couple of ideas on how to make sense of the situation.
The only viable fighters they had were Ex, Kurenai, Zen, Shin and Mordred since they were all male. Right now, all of my mothers-in-law trapped there were in the 'mage' category, if Xenovia and Irina (and other fighters) were there then they wouldn't be in this mess. I'm also slightly annoyed by the fact that Akeno is still strictly a caster type fighter after all these years despite having the Queen piece.
"T-that orb! That's an imitation of Cao Cao's Itsutei Ratana!"
"The sexist Balance Breaker ability that negates the special abilities of women?"
I spoke out loud for Alfia's and Artemis's benefit, both of them twitching slightly at the idea of such a specific weapon existing in this world.
I made a note to not reveal the existence of a special mirror that can explode the genitals of any men (except myself) in a wide area. I had made that artifact to deal with hentai rape worlds or scenarios when I was younger and after I found this world's version of Kuroinu, yeah, not my finest moment.
"Do you two mind staying here for a bit?" I addressed Alfia and Artemis, "It'll be a lot more troublesome if people from another world interfered with this world's supernatural affairs, especially when we haven't made the right introductions. I can handle this quickly enough."
The two of them agreed, not particularly bloodthirsty enough to tag along and deal with weak enemies. Works fine for me. I've trained as a househusband for years so my cleaning abilities are top-notch! Ridding the world of these shitstains won't take more than 5 minutes.
Tracking their locations by hitchhiking on Artemis's divine mirrors was a piece of cake, turns out that Airi's in-laws were just in yet another pocket dimension with the Dimension Gap. Honestly… the whole place is practically free real estate.
Airi and I teleported right next to the main bad guy of the week that, once again, stole yet another piece of powerful magical technology right from the hands of the 'good guys'.
… People in DXD have all their cool stuff stolen with the help of spies way too often.
Good thing that everything I've given out in this world is 'trash' compared to the stuff kept in my private laboratory in yet another hidden realm of mine.
"Ho? Did someone get throu-"
The weak-ass leader's right-hand man got punched in the face by Airi and was knocked out in a single hit. The leader gaped and shouted, "I-impossible! Who are you?! How did you get into my domain? You're a woman so why isn't the replica Itsutei Ratana working?!"
"Are you stupid? My body's just a bit stronger than yours, that's all. Now then, I'm gonna beat you all until you all cry for bullying my family!"
"Airi, do you want quantity or quality?" I chimed in and asked for my wife's preference.
"Eh, you can have the elites, I'll take care of the rest of them. And please try to at least take the leader alive."
"Sure thing!"
Airi blasted towards the hordes of cloaked mooks (seriously, get better fashion designers…) and defeated everyone opposing her with a single punch, usually, she'll take down a handful of enemies as a result of the sheer might of her strikes.
"It's Airi-neesan!"
"She's back!"
"Yeah, fuck them up!"
Her siblings were already in good cheer at the sight of their big sister returning home. Watching as she turned the tide by her lonesome also played a big part in that.
"Honestly, you people should just give up targeting the Hyoudou family. Many have tried and many have failed over the past decades, one might think you have ignored all the object lessons such failures have become."
The leader's attention was drawn towards me, I shook my head with disappointment at him. His eyes were bloodshot and he was all but frothing with rage. From the looks of it, he seemed to be a Fallen Angel, but he grafted the organs, bones, and energies of other races into his body.
I would be impressed if it wasn't abundantly clear that he was just a discount Kabuto.
"A human?! What manner of Sacred Gear do you possess? Ah, whatever, I'll just pry it out of your cold dead corpse and then finish off that bitch for ruining my perfect plan."
The fuck did you just say?!
That's it! I was going to give you some face but now I'll turn your useless body into dog food!
I channeled the powers of several laws and magical energies from my core, preparing to kill him and anyone else that Airi hadn't finished off herself.
"You dare threaten this young master's wife?! You do not know the immensity between heaven and earth! This daddy will teach you a lesson in place of your father!"
"Did you miss the memo?! I'm a Fallen Angel and our Lord Father is dead!"
I smiled coldly and said, "And now I'll send you right to him. Hmph!"
My eyes lit up and I let out a cold snort.
As my cold snort echoed across the dimension, explosions began engulfing everything in sight.
The trash in front of me suddenly trembled and exploded into a pile of flesh.
"Hmph, this is what happens when you make this young master angry. Not even your father can recognize your body now. Hmph!"
Huh, snorting is kinda fun.
"DIOOOO!!! I can't believe you killed him by snorting in his direction! And didn't I say to leave him alive!?"
Ah, Airi's really angry now. Did she really think that I would let my temper get in the way of her conditions?
"Don't worry. Unlike the rest, I hadn't destroyed his soul back then! It was admittedly a close call, if I had wagged my finger instead then there would be no hope of salvaging him."
That was a lie!
I only killed them in such an undignified manner because I was actively concentrating a tiny amount of my energies to do so. If I had truly broken through two more realms then I would have been able to kill the enemies here by sneezing accidentally.
I took out a soul puppet and slapped it with a talisman, binding the dead fallen angel's soul to it. The puppet immediately takes the form of the enemy leader, "There we go, one enemy leader bound to a soul pupper. As he is, he won't be able to refuse any of your commands and will tell you what you need."
I then teleported everyone out of the collapsing artificial dimension after using my powers to loot everything in an instant. We arrived just outside the milk tea place where Alfia and Artemis were waiting for us.
All of this took some time to describe but it all happened within two minutes.
My actions earned the admiration of my brothers and sisters-in-law. Kurenai, Le Fay and Helmwige were the most appreciative of my showcase as I could easily get into the artificial dimension and back out with ridiculous ease.
With a quick custom privacy barrier set, Airi had a proper tearful reunion with her mother and the present members of her family. Asia went ahead to admonish us both in a way that made us feel a little bad for ditching everything to enjoy our honeymoon together, even then, she wasn't angry and accepted me as her son-in-law!
Yes, success!
Some of my mothers-in-law were still a bit concerned, but at least half their number had enthusiastically accepted me into the family. Most of my new siblings were happy too, but they were a bit angry for taking Airi from them so suddenly, as such, I had to compensate them with presents and sweets.
After that, it was time to introduce them to my traveling companions.
Artemis's introduction went as smoothly as possible (even if she was a bit stiff when greeting my brothers-in-law), especially when she started recounted how she met me and our subsequent adventures together.
And by together, I mean, as a trio…
"Airi, you did include all aspects of our relationship into your video messages right?"
"Well, I didn't want to surprise them yet so… I said she was a good friend? Teehee "
"What do you mean 'Teehee '?!"
Okay, this is still salvageable, so long as no one tells Issei anything then we can still keep things civil.
At some point, someone asked to clarify what Alfia's relationship was with me.
"We're good friends and sparring partners."
"You've gone so far beyond me so I don't believe I can hold the latter title any longer."
"It can't be helped. You know how Cultivation works, first one to the next realm gets ahead by leaps and bounds."
"… You really are shameless, aren't you?"
"False humility is just another form of arrogance."
From my preliminary observations, I could tell that no one really believed that we would just stay as good friends. Well, if it keeps my brothers-in-law from gawking at Alfia like idiots, then I'll take it.
The next few days passed by productively since my father-in-law was out of communication range in an expedition somewhere to assess a 'dimension frontier fortress' built to watch out for threats from another world.
Those invaders from the ExE world should arrive in around two years, I'll have to make some specialized tools to use against them when the time comes.
But for now, I would focus my efforts on this world!
I had two paper clones spending half a day at school impersonating Airi and I while we caught up with the family, the rest of the paper clones active time would go into finishing some of my local work, while my last paper clone was working on the logistics and business issues revolving getting my 'make the world more suited for my wives' technologies ready for use.
Finally, at the end of the week…
"Dorana-san…"
"Father-in-law! I bring gifts! Here, have this memory crystal showing some nice views of Demeter's Oppai!"
"You can't tempt me with-"
The crystal activated. Issei Hyoudou was tempted.
"Ah, no, the Oppai… I… Haaa! You almost got me there. Hmph! Do I look like a guy who can be swayed by any pair of breasts?"
He had taken the crystal and had his face buried in the hard-light projection of the goddess's bosom.
"You do."
"Damn straight."
"So… we good?"
He cracked his fist in an attempt to intimidate me after storing the crystal into the Boosted Gear's jewel. I can hear the resigned groan of Ddraig echoing in the room.
"Look… I did some thinking-"
"Wow."
"-Don't ruin the moment you little shit! Anyways, I don't know you, but my family trusts you and I don't believe you're a bad guy. I was in the wrong back then when I attacked you and I apologize for that. As for Airi… she's happy, with you, and that's what matters… so I won't try to separate you or anything crazy. But I'm not letting you off the hook, jumping straight into marriage is going too far!"
"I seem to recall you being engaged at my age."
"I was a year older! And the marriage didn't really happen until a few years later."
He started grumbling about having lots of work and needing to ensure peace, but all I heard was bullshit. I knew that most of it was due to executive meddling and that the in-story reason for the lack of sex was Ophis and Great Red's new desires for peace influencing his body that was made from their flesh. At least, according to Shiva back then.
"Still not hearing a good reason for not marrying your lovely daughter."
"You didn't even ask for permission!"
"Why do I need permission to prove my love to her?"
Just before we got into a philosophical argument about how love and marriage work, I felt Airi entering the room in order to stop our talks from escalating into a fight.
My eyes were on the verge of bulging out with how much I was staring at her.
"Alright, that's enough you two! Now, why don't we sit down and calmly-"
"Bwah…"
I was sounding really dumb right now.
"Asia? Did you end up drinking that age-down drug by accident?"
Unlike myself, Issei didn't just sound stupid, he was actually doing something idiotic.
"Father? What are you talking about?! It's me, Airi!"
I can certainly tell that by the large breasts attached to her relatively small frame compared to her mother when Airi was her age.
The main reason why Issei Hyoudou is confused was due to Airi's current attire.
"Hmph, unlike you, I can recognize the voice and presence of Airi instantly."
"It was just nostalgia alright?! Airi, why are you dressed up in your mother's old nun clothes?"
"Oh! I asked mom if I could make some copies of her old clothes, then I tried this on to see how I could modify it."
"You aren't thinking of joining the church faction or anything right? Even for me, letting a devil join is a little…"
"No, of course not! This is for our roleplay sex sessions!"
Airi blushed bright red as she realizes she just blurted out our bedroom activity plans. She looked to me with a helpless expression so I immediately sought out to deflect his attention unto me to save her from embarrassment!
"Airi doesn't really make a good devil so we couldn't go ahead with that 'female devil seduces the human priest' angle. So we decided to go with the 'rich playboy devil tricks an innocent nun into leaving the church, takes her as a servant and then turns her into his plaything' scenario."
"…"
"…"
"…"
"… YOU ARE DOING WHAT?!!!!"
"And that's our cue to leave!"
"Dio, you idiot!"
Airi didn't have a chance to finish her scolding since I already brought her, Artemis and Alfia along to another world instantly using my world crossing spell. I could bring them all with me since I'm always tagging them with my senses or with several different spells.
Alfia was in the middle of drinking tea and wasn't troubled by the move at all. Artemis looked mildly annoyed as the sudden transportation made her miss the timing on her game console.
"My Father-in-law is mad at me again."
"Only because you had to remind him of his past like that! And where are we anyway? There's not a lot of mana in this world but it's definitely not ordinary."
Just as she finished saying those words, a discarded flyer smacked me right in the face. I removed it and read the contents of it.
"Good news, we're in a world with VRMMORPG's. Better news, it's not a death game."
I passed the flyer to Airi so that she can do a read up on this game's features.
"NewWorld Online?"
Chapter 9
AN: I may just start a new thread for this story when I have the next update ready, it'll let me fit in a couple of side stories or things that didn't quite make the cut (or could happen in the future, but with other MC's taking the lead after being effected by Dio, e.g. Hachiman - Cultivator)
Chapter 9
Whew! Finally done!
Setting up our legal home in this universe, paid for by 'reappropriated' money from organized criminal entities, was pretty time-consuming! There are a lot more processes to go through and subvert to get everything sorted out without raising any kind of suspicion!
The girls had just gone around and had fun in this much happier and safer version of Japan during the day while I did most of the hard work.
It was only natural. I was the one that brought them to another world all of a sudden without giving them a head's up, hence it was my responsibility to resolve any complications that arose from it.
Besides, once I got the master bedroom properly furnished I was well rewarded for my efforts.
We spent a few days enjoying a supernatural-free universe before the main attraction of this universe would be launched. That is, the VRMMORPG NewWorld Online, the game that would be played by the cute shield-wielding girl 'Maple' as in the story "I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense".
I needed to make a lot of adjustments to the VR gear, however, to accommodate everyone's unique physiologies and power sets. Airi and Artemis were straight up not human while Alfia's mental power was directly related to her ability to cast magic, so I had to make it so that she (and everyone else) could use the equipment comfortably without any accidental activations of their powers which would destroy the town.
Funnily enough, my personal VR gear's adjustments were nothing in comparison to their modifications, as I was already used to running several independent thought processes to the point where I could just dedicate a portion of my brainpower to play the game while the rest of my soul's consciousness can focus on increasing my comprehension of laws in the meantime.
"- Every two levels, a player receives 5 stat points. On levels ending in 0 such as ten, twenty, etc. You'll receive 10 stat points instead. STR increases your attack power, carrying capacity, and HP-"
I happily gave everyone a brief run-through of NewWorld Online's mechanics from what I could remember when I watched BOFURI in my first life.
I didn't really read the web or light novel, nor did I read the manga, so certain details eluded me. I could have gotten all the information about the game by just hacking the company using a combination of nanomachines and magic, but I decided to just play the game normally like Maple instead.
Well, I say normally, but I have already gotten everyone credit cards associated with bank accounts filled with loads of cash for them to spend on in-game items.
There won't be any cash shop items that will grant combat-related benefits, but the ability to buy items that would prevent Experience Loss upon death, personal warping points, and special resurrection items that would only work outside of dungeons and events will still improve our ability to farm and travel!
Of course, cosmetic items are also a very important part of the game. Huhu…
"So does anyone here want to learn more about the build of this world's main character?"
"I think that might have been obvious by the fact that 'Max Out My Defense' is in the supposed title of the story this world is based on." Alfia rolled her eyes at my paltry attempts to tell a joke.
Airi started waving her hands frantically, "No way! No way! I'm not going to steal anyone else's build! I'm going to be a Monk that uses her fist-" And I'll have to stop her there. "Gauntlets and other knuckle-type weapons don't exist in the game."
I destroyed Airi's dream-build in an instant. She sat on the bed sullenly after throwing away her character sheet, which included a doodle of her 'character' and her planned status distribution.
"Eh… is that so? Ah whatever, I'll just copy my dad and use a greatsword. It's not like you need much talent to use it anyways…"
Alfia looked like she wanted to disagree but I shot her a look and shook my head at her. Understanding my message to not make Airi feel worse given her issues with 'talent', the insanely talented magic warrior continued the conversation with her planned build.
"I intend to spread my stats between Strength, Agility, and Intelligence equally. I have lived my life with the assumption that even a single hit could worsen my old condition to the point of no return so this 'play style' will suit me just fine."
"Perfect build! 10 out of 10 for playing Dark Souls style!"
Alfia's build will be somewhat similar to Sally's build, though it will be more balanced in favor of STR and INT instead of extreme speed. She'll need a lot of good gear to make it work, however, to compensate for that kind of status spread.
Artemis, who was seated on my lap, happily went next and spoke about going straight for the Bow and Arrow as her starting weapon, for obvious reasons, "I'll mostly spend my points in Strength and Agility, but I'll probably put a few points in Dexterity to see how that goes. If it makes no difference in performing these 'critical hits' then I can buy that Status Reset item from the Cash Shop and optimize my status points afterward."
"Nice! If the game devs don't register your awesome perfect hits as critical strikes then I'll send a complaint at them. Speaking of which, maybe I can buy out the company or insert some compulsions to add fist-type weapons in for Airi."
"You will?!"
Airi regained her positive disposition just as quickly as she lost it earlier. Ah, now that she's looking at me with hope in her eyes, I could only go through with it and influence the devs to add it.
"Anything for the woman I love." As I said those words to Airi, I leaned into Artemis and spoke softly, "Don't forget that means you too, so if there's anything you want, just tell me."
The goddess seated between my legs giggled lightly and snuggled into my chest, "I already have all I could want, don't I?" I feel her hand softly caressing my cheek, "For now, at least."
Alfia tried to appear as if she wasn't affected by the sight of me receiving more kisses but she could not escape my Cultivator 'divine senses'. I'll take that as a sign that I can start showing more blatant affection for her then.
Eventually, it came down to discussing my build, which I quickly elaborated on in great detail.
"I'm going to put everything into INT. The end."
Airi and Alfia both looked at me with a complicated expression.
"If you want to die so badly then go right ahead." Alfia simply sighed at my decision and started putting on her VR gear.
"Dio, this is a game, you can't just overpower everything with just a few spells like in real life. Game balance is a thing, you know?"
Oh Airi, you sweet summer child… if you only knew the true extent of Maple's power…
With Artemis being the only one who believed in my build, or more specifically, in my ability to overcome my limitations and thrive despite it, I decided to use the opportunity to make a bet with Airi and Alfia.
"How about this? We will all login and create our characters at the same time, then leave the starter town separately to farm on our own. Whoever comes back with the highest stats at the end of the day from the combination of leveling up, skill bonuses, and gear bonuses, will be the winner! If I lose then I'll acknowledge that my build was a dumb idea and redo my entire character concept."
The two detractors looked at each other, then nodded as if they had finished an unspoken conversation, "Challenge accepted, but we'll have to up the stakes first! If you lose then you're going to stop deliberately making my dad angry."
"For a month, tops."
"A year."
"Are you mad?! I can only restrain myself around him for a month max!"
"You… three months then!"
I accepted Airi's condition while secretly thinking of excuses to be away from my homeworld for three entire months so that I could do the right thing by behaving in a completely honest fashion around my father-in-law. In other words, I wasn't going to give up my rights to mess with him anytime soon.
"As for my request, you'll have to help me procure and deliver gifts for my sister and my nephew's birthdays until my nephew becomes an adult."
Until he reaches 15, huh?
"Will you tell me what you want for them?"
"I wouldn't be asking you to put in the effort if I wasn't so terrible with deciding on the right sorts of gifts myself."
That's not the only thing you're terrible at. Who was the person that used not wanting to be called 'Auntie' as an excuse to travel other worlds with me again?
Anyways, with Meteria, I could get her a castle's worth of sweets easily enough. She would guard her sweet stuff with more viciousness than a dragon guarding their hoard. I still remember poor Hera being forced to kowtow for a long time when she was caught stealing from Meteria's special stash…
As for the future MC (does that still apply?), I'll just make Bell Cranel some cool magic swords and armor… and get him a harem.
Not that I plan to lose this challenge.
I just want to make sure they don't get horrible gifts from Alfia and deal with her crippling inability to face her cute nephew so she can deliver those presents herself.
"Well, now that you've up the stakes, it's only fair that I adjust mine as well…"
Just as I have hoped for.
Ahahaha, you fools!
I am MC!
Accepting bets from people that are confident of their victory and winning regardless of the odds is exactly the kind of thing I was born to do!
I may not want to slap your pretty faces but now these ladies will understand what it's like to face a Xianxia MC in his element!
"If I win then, at the time of my choosing, the two of you will serve me wearing these maid uniforms for a month!"
Upon seeing just how short the skirt of the uniform was they began to 'negotiate' me down to just a week, which is a bit more than I initially planned for, but I wasn't complaining.
"What do you mean the name "DIO" is taken?!"
Fucking hell! The Jojo fans have already taken the name within the first hour of launch!
I briefly considered the idea of calling myself 'Diodora' but discarded it because that would be in bad taste given Airi's family history. I'm fine with trolling Issei alone but I draw the line on teasing with Airi.
The good nun, evil devil roleplay was consensual and had quite a bit of difference from what happened in the past, so it didn't count. Airi loved getting fucked roughly and the slave-play we enacted anyway so there was no problem so long as everything is kept to the bedroom.
I considered using other Jojo related names but then decided on a name that wouldn't exactly fit my character.
"Let's go with [Orion]. This is for believing in me, Artemis."
I quickly chose the Stave as my starter weapon, which increased my INT by 28 and STR by 9.
HP: 40/40
MP: 266/266
[STR 09] [VIT 0] [AGI 0] [DEX 0] [INT 10028]
The starter town was kind of crowded when I arrived, even so, it was easy to spot Airi, Alfia and Artemis given how beautiful they were in comparison to everyone else.
The game used our actual appearances with some leeway given through the use of cosmetics to change our hair and eye colors and to replicate the effects of certain kinds of makeup (or magical flair effects).
"You all went with your names? Mine was taken by the Jojo fans."
Artemis laughed and hugged me after accepting my friend request, "Haha, poor darling. There, there, you can try to use 'Dio' in another game instead. Still, I think 'Orion' is a wonderful name."
My lovely goddess had already read and learned about her various counterparts, hence her appreciation of my choice.
Airi and Alfia dashed out of town the moment we agreed to get the competition started.
As for me? I was currently imitating a crippled man trying to escape from a monster by pushing myself forward with a long stick.
Replace 'crippled' with a big fat 0 in AGI and the act of escaping with the equivalent of using physics to move faster than a dying dog.
"… Asking for help isn't against the rules. Artemis, can you please carry me out of town and drop me off in that direction?"
"I would love to!"
So this is how Maple feels like when she's getting carried by Sally!
Artemis eventually dropped me in the middle of a forest and went away to farm on her own. She may not be part of our competition, but she was certainly going to enjoy this advanced VR world that managed to capture so much of nature's beauty.
"Oh ho? An insect flying in my direction? You dare to approach me?! [Force Bolt]!"
It would appear that the initial spells were somewhat randomized for those that chose Staves as their weapon. I had seen some beginners (like me) using fireballs and icicles to attack, so it was easy to guess that other players going with a magic build would get an elemental magic spell.
My beginner spell had no elemental alignment, which meant that I wouldn't suffer from any elemental resistance-related problems, nor would I benefit from any elemental weaknesses. It cost 5 MP to cast [Force Bolt] and since it was a weak spell, it had no serious limits or long cooldowns attached to it.
The Giant Bee was killed instantly by my overwhelming magical power.
[Skill [Giant Killing] had been acquired. Your level has risen to 2]
[Giant Killing]
During times when you have more than four stats, other than HP/MP, lower than the battle opponent, stats other than HP/MP will be doubled.
Skill Requirement
Subjugate a monster alone, with four stats (other than HP/MP) higher than your own.
I managed to get one of Maple's bullshit skills that effectively doubles my INT status against every opponent, in other words, it's free double damage.
As for the loot drops, I managed to pick up the standard enemy loot and a rare piece of equipment!
Suddenly, I sensed more enemies incoming, so I quickly put it on and started firing off more Force Bolts, crushing a handful of monsters by careful targeting and using my extensive combat experience to predict their movements.
Good to know that the enemy A.I. is still dumb as usual.
I ended up with a full set of thematic rare gear that boosted my HP, MP, and INT. I looked kind of ridiculous for wearing a mix of forest and insect-themed gear, but hey, so long as there are good stats I don't care how I looked.
After an hour of walking in a random direction, I got to Level 12 and had acquired a few skills from killing monsters non-stop.
[Absolute Arcane Might]
Multiplies INT by x2. Required points to increase [STR[VIT[AGI] multiplied by 3.
Skill Requirement
Kill monsters continuously using only magic without receiving any damage.
[Stave Proficiency I]
Acquired Skills: [Arcane Strike]
Skill Requirement
Repeated usage of Staves to deal magic damage.
[Expensive Tastes]
Halves Gear Bonuses for equipped items with a rarity of [Uncommon] and below, if the rarity of equipped items exceeds [Rare] then multiply Gear Bonuses by x1.5. If equipped items belong to an [Unique Series] then Gear Bonuses are multiplied by x2 instead.
Skill Requirement
Acquire more than 10 rare items within an hour.
[Counter Magic]
If the MP used in a magic skill is greater than the combined STR value of your opponent then the attack is negated and repulsed. Also, the magic skill used will do double damage to your opponent, if it connects.
Skill Requirement
Negate over 100 projectiles (physical or magic) using your magic skills before it reaches you.
The last skill on my list made me wish I had that in real life. I could spam an insane amount of god-tier spells with my nearly inexhaustible pool of magical power, the only thing I was limited by was my knowledge of even greater spells and my maximum output, the latter of which had risen considerably once I broke through two whole great realms in my Cultivation.
If I had [Counter Magic] in real life then I could easily negate the attacks of several gods all at once… hold on, this might be possible… !
If some random force of nature or a magical accident created by some Dragon Lords from a backwater world can somehow transmigrate 'player characters' from a VRMMORPG with D mechanics ramped up to eleven ( P2W bullshit) along with their 'World Items' (bullshit lore included) then there's no reason for me to be incapable of replicating and improving on the phenomena myself!
Of course, I would have to modify it so that it would only 'add' the in-game stats and effects to my person, without weakening my body in any way. It should be possible considering my bullshit innate physique combined with Essence of the Blank. The difficult part will be in adapting it to my loved ones, whose supernatural abilities all differ from one another.
"At Level 12 my base INT has gone up to 135, with Gear bonuses bringing it all up to 198-" My lucky drops consisted of a lot of gear that primarily increased INT, with a few increasing my MP pool and providing a slight MP regeneration boost, all of which gained further bonuses thanks to [Expensive Tastes, "-[Absolute Arcane Might] doubles my INT that number permanently along with my MP pool, with [Giant Killing] bringing my effective INT up to nearly 800."
The only thing that hadn't dropped for me is a new stave, which, unfortunately, has become a bit weaker due to being a [Common] rarity weapon as a result of [Expensive Tastes].
Hmm? The ground appears sullied by 'corruptive energies', could this be a dungeon?
This seems like a good place to solo a boss. But first, I've got to do some shopping!
I used my Cash Item to place a personal teleportation point right in front of the dungeon then warped right back to the starter town. Heading right towards the magic shop, I sold most of the pricey vendor trash and monster drops for more currency, then purchased every Skill that I was eligible for.
There were skills like [Cover Move] that didn't have any stat requirements, beginner elemental spells hadn't required any either, although their power was dependent on INT so if you were going full warrior there was no point in learning them anyway.
The most useful skills that I had acquired were healing skills, traps and barrier skills, buffs, debuffs, and then the new AOE and single target damage spells. I bought a [Rare] grade stave, the most expensive piece of equipment with no effects on it (trash), and equipped it to further boost my INT while benefiting from the [Expensive Tastes] skill.
After buying hundreds of MP potions I teleported back to the entrance of the dungeon.
"[Tainted Forest of the Faeries, sounds like a great place to get magic boosting items."
I had to fight my way through a forest of trees where [Tainted Faeries] and other such monsters would frequently ambush me. As I had more than five different barrier skills, all of which absorbed damage dependent on my INT score, I could simply subsist on a single magic barrier at all times and rotate them for a different barrier during cooldown periods.
These spells may not be as good as Maple's raw defense but it was more than sufficient in delaying my enemies until they got a face load of my DPS spells. The new spells I purchased all had cooldowns of various lengths, but since there was no limit on Skills I could simply just buy them all and rotate casting patterns according to my needs much like my defenses.
Uwah… so this is what it feels like to be a mediocre magic turret.
I never had to fight like this in the real world since I could just spam spells that could burn a hole down to the Earth's core and my enemy's souls like nobody's business.
Being forced to rotate between weak spells is a pretty novel experience for me.
The final boss of the dungeon was a corrupted faerie queen, which was, of course, accompanied by legions of mob monsters. Those mob monsters were also shielding the boss, which meant that there were two phases to the battle.
If it was a party of players then the optimal strategy would be for the mage to spam AOE skills repeatedly while having everyone else tank the monster horde and the attacks of the boss monster harassing them under the safety of their barrier for the first half of the fight.
But for me? A first-time VRMMORPG player playing the game normally as a glass cannon?
This was just free EXP.
" [Explosion!]"
I don't know which of the devs is the 'genius' that made a 'joke skill' which utilized all of the player's MP to cast 'medium fire damage' with a bad scaling to INT in return for an AOE that changes depending on the MP used, but I was seriously tempted to Isekai the individual to Konosuba just so that he can fully understand the glory that is [Explosion] magic!
How dare they make [Explosion] magic so sub-optimal!
It's too bad for the devs that I, the player [Orion, has maximized my Intelligence score so that even a 'joke skill' can wipe out monsters within my level range!
I leveled up three levels up to Level 22 by wiping out everything and taking most of the boss monster's health along with its mobs.
[Skill [Grand Magic] had been acquired.]
[Grand Magic]
Triples the AOE of all INT dependent skills for no additional MP cost.
Note: Friendly Fire is still enabled.
Skill Requirement
Defeat over a hundred monsters within 5 levels of you using a single AOE spell.
I added the rest of my points to INT, used several MP potions while the boss was still performing its second phase animation, then fired my strongest single-target spell, [Lightsworn Ray], at the boss, my mouth already moving to cast the next spells on my list-
"EH!? It died?!"
Okay, I kind of expected the boss to be tougher than that, but it still died from a single magic skill like every other monster!
Yui and Mai had the right of it. Putting everything into your damage-dealing status works!
[Skill [Spell Duelist] and [Vanquisher of the Corrupt] had been acquired. Your level has risen to 23]
[Spell Duelist]
When facing against a single opponent, any single-target magic skill inflicts double damage.
Skill Requirement
Defeat a dungeon boss with a single instance of damage.
[Vanquisher of the Corrupt]
Halves the effect and duration of debuffs.
Skill Requirement
Defeat the [Corrupted Faerie Queen] within 2 minutes.
Mmn, yes, the sweet taste of level up's and achievement perks…
This game is kinda fun.
No, scratch that, I'm actually having a lot of fun even though I've been playing as a solo character thus far!
While I do want to transpose the Skills of the game world into real life for practical purposes, being able to start from scratch and work my way back up to the top in a fantastically crafted world like this fills me with a great sense of pride and accomplishment.
Even if I failed to assimilate the perks of my game avatar I would still be satisfied with this experience!
I shook my head and decided to shelve the project for a bit. This is a game, I should be having fun instead of just seeing as a way to gain power.
After I win our 'bet' I will take my women to all the scenic places and to enjoy all the best foods available here!
"Now then, it's LOOT TIME!"
I rub my hands greedily before opening the reward chest.
"Yahoo! Unique series!"
[Living Wood Stave of the Magic Forest]
[INT 40]
[Nature Essence Growth]
Skill Slot -
[Shimmering Robe of the Forest Sage]
[INT 22] [VIT 8]
[Major Magic Skill Costdown]
Skill Slot -
[Faerie Queen's Ring of Promise]
[INT 20]
[Major MP Regeneration]
Skill Slot -
I quickly equipped all the items before dwelling into its effects. [Nature Essence Growth] appeared to be like a downgraded version of Maple's [Destructive Growth] effect, instead of getting stronger upon destruction, it looks like I'll need to feed my new stave herbs, vegetables and fruits with unique effects for it to improve.
The robe's effect was just straight out great since I wouldn't have to worry about ever needing to add points into MP for overly costly spells anymore. My MP only increases by 2 per INT point added into it, until I discover a skill that changes that, it isn't going to grow dramatically higher unless I invested points into it like Mii had done in the series.
As for the ring… I found myself staring at it for over a minute. It was beautifully crafted and based on the description, it was clearly an engagement ring. Even though I knew that this was just a game, I couldn't help but think about what might have happened in the boss monster's lore.
Did the Faerie Queen ever get to marry the one that gave her this ring? Was she corrupted to the point where she killed her own fiance? She must have surely been in pain this whole time…
I was sure that it was a tragic story. A story that I couldn't help but think over as I thought over the kind of horrible things that could happen to the women I love.
"I won't ever be complacent in protecting all of you. Airi, Artemis… you too, Alfia."
I would have to seriously scout out more worlds that would be safe for solo exploration and Cultivation in case I ever need a dramatic training arc to power up enough if we ever ran into someone too powerful to defeat.
Retreating temporarily and taking advantage of the cheating time adjustment effects of my World Crossing spell would be a perfectly legitimate strategy for beating surprise boss-tier enemies.
I exited the dungeon and chugged a few MP potions down, restoring my MP to the maximum.
"Well, I think I've finished farming for now, but I might as well clear out this forest one more time."
I looked around to make sure that no one was looking and then started to chant.
"Darker than twilight, darker than flowing blood. Crush the torrential flow of time and purge this world of light! [Explosion]!"
The forest didn't stand a chance under the combined might of my improved MP pool and AOE multiplier skill. The entire area which I had farmed for over an hour earlier in the day was completely reduced to a charred crater after the cataclysmic explosion had erupted.
I leveled up once more and teleported straight back to the town, innocently ignoring the gawking players that had just witnessed the first proper 'Explosion' of the game.
Hehehe, that felt good. I would never chant chuuni bullshit incantations in real life because of how inefficient or unnecessary they are to my spells, but in this universe where I had no enemies or potential threats that could watch over me in a higher realm, I could afford to indulge a little bit.
Everyone else returned to the starting town a few hours later to see me leisurely reading through some purchased books from the town's library.
"That explosion was caused by you, wasn't it?" Airi saw through me in an instant.
"Guilty as charged. I suppose the forest will just have to grow back upon the nightly reset."
"I visited the area some time ago and came across accessories like these." Alfia showed me an [Uncommon] accessory, "You didn't even bother to collect your spoils?"
"I didn't need any of that low-level stuff."
"Spoken like a true first-class adventurer."
Alfia and I had a mutual understanding on that point given that the only loot that mattered to us back in the dungeon was the high-class loot. While I had gathered thousands of magic stones up to and past the middle-floors, most of the loot simply couldn't be compared to the deeper floors.
I was inevitably the victor in our little competition and the pair had resigned themselves to serving me in a maid uniform. They were, at first, thinking they could get away with it since we would be playing NewWorld Online for some time. But then I reminded them that they agreed to serve me 'at a time of my choosing', so they couldn't weasel out from the bet anytime soon.
I brought everyone to a place called [Cafe Radish] in the starter town, sat us down somewhere, opened up the virtual menu that sprang forth from the table and purchased one of every dessert. I could already see the waitress preparing to bring over the stacks of cake and sweets, the total cost was well over 10,000g, which barely made a dent in my big fat in-game wallet.
"The ambiance is nice and all but… doesn't that seem out of place." Artemis pointed at the side of the table next to the wall, where a very typical Japanese styled holder for tissue papers and condiments were located at.
"Though the restaurant is similar to the kinds I would expect in Orario it seems that certain details have been neglected," Alfia remarked as she looked around the place.
"I'll take a screenshot and send it to the support team then. Somehow I get the feeling that they don't mind losing a bit of immersive-ness in return for familiarity." Most of the player base was Japanese, after all.
"These are your orders." The friendly waitress NPC dropped by and laid over 10 different plates in front of us.
"Oh wow, they look so real!" Airi's eyes sparkled with delight, Artemis was similarly amazed by how realistic the desserts looked.
Alfia looked very much like her sister right now that there were delicious sweet treats in front of us. Even my usually severe sparring partner and friend have an adorable, girlish side when it comes to things like cake.
"Please enjoy!"
"Thanks!" "Thank you."
Airi and I responded instinctively in a very standard Japanese manner.
Artemis looked slightly discomforted by the presence of NPCs, her ability to detect lies of mortals worked fine for other players but didn't work against NPCs so it made sense for her to instinctively think 'unknown entity' despite knowing what they are.
Alfia was the first to take a bite out of the cake slices.
"This is delicious!" She exclaimed with excitement after the first bite.
"You started already? Yosh, my turn! Mnn, this is good!"
"Indeed. These cakes aren't any worse than the cakes I bake myself."
I had to admit, I was impressed. I would need to copy and research their advanced technology that can reproduce a human's sense of taste in such a manner more deeply!
"It's a step below that of divine dishes, but nonetheless, I agree. This is quite a delight!"
Artemis also enjoyed the selection of desserts, though her comment reminded me that I couldn't rest on my laurels upon the path of cooking, as there was still an even higher realm of cooking that I needed to reach!
Hmm? What was that about a candlelight dinner under a starry sky?
Though my body and senses have been limited by the game, my comprehension and processing ability is still far beyond that of normal beings. Even from here, I can read the lips of other players through the window while carrying a conversation with everyone.
I had, fortunately, managed to get the location out of the two male players as they spoke to one another before they moved away from my field of vision.
"Hey, there's a place I want to check out, we'll have to get there by midnight in-game time however so let's stay on for a bit more."
It took traveling through the forest and into a giant tree stump for all of us to be teleported into a special area. It was as if we were transported right up into the air, held up only by a giant tree trunk, floating rocks and some magical giant leaves acting as a bridge.
The sky was transformed into an otherworldly star-filled canvas, in the center of the giant tree stump was a smaller stump acting as a table, with two wooden chairs placed on opposite sides of the table. There were unlit candles, two empty wine glasses and dinner plates on the table, which was illuminated by many orbs of lights attached to the elevated floor.
"Waaa! It's so pretty!"
"Hmm, not bad."
"It's artificial but there is a sense of beauty to it."
Airi, Alfia and Artemis were all adequately enjoying the place I brought us to.
"Apparently, something will happen when the seats are filled. Since there are four of us, let's take turns. Airi, Artemis, why don't you two go first?"
The pair agreed without a second thought and sat down, starting the show where the wine glasses flew up into the air and were filled with a black liquid by two bright stars above.
We all observed the wine glass as it landed down and transformed into a colorful glowing drink that appeared just like the starry sky. The show hadn't ended there and the candles lit up abruptly, fiery wisps formed and stretched out towards the dinner plates, condensing itself into three different colored glowing orbs.
Reading off the menu window that just appeared, it seems that the dish and drink combination was titled [The Little Sky].
"What is this…?"
"Hehe… it's so soft!"
"It's like I ate a strawberry, mandarin orange and apple all at once."
"Can flavors really interact like that?"
Airi and Artemis started with the glowing orbs, the latter was surprised by how odd yet delicious the meal was.
"As expected, if they can perfectly replicate the taste of ordinary desserts, then the developer team could also create new artificial flavors." I nodded appreciatively at the sight.
Alfia glanced at me oddly, and smiled a little, "Hmm? This is the first time I've seen you look genuinely impressed."
I shrugged and grinned, "There's always a bigger fish. I know that I still have a long way to go before I master everything in existence. I'm still far behind in terms of technology, so it's only natural to give credit for where it's due. And what are you talking about? Aren't I constantly impressed by the loveliness of all you ladies everyday?"
"Even if that were the case your unceasing perverted lust detracts from it-"
Alfia and I chatted a bit together as the pair continued to eat their dishes. When the two tried the drink both their hair colors changed into rainbow colors! The colors kept on changing and I used the opportunity to imagine them both with different hair colors, only to come to the conclusion that their natural ones suited them the best.
Once they were done, Alfia and I took our turn and sat down at the dinner table.
Like Airi and Artemis before us, we enjoyed the unique taste of [The Little Sky, as for myself, I had a little moment of enlightenment and felt as if I knew how to take my cooking to the next level.
As expected, my insane comprehension abilities were yet another hallmark of a true Xianxia MC!
"So what did I get?"
"Glowing hair like those two."
"Darn it, I wanted to try for the sparkling eyes like those Cultivators. At least you managed to get them."
Two hand mirrors materialized after we drank from the wine glass just as it did for the previous pair.
"Haha, I look funny as hell!"
"Is it me or is his hair sparkling more than ours?"
"Let's find out!"
I felt Airi and Artemis fussing over my hair a moment after.
Alfia watched us with a mix of confusion and something else, "Honestly, this is ridiculous."
"But it's not as if you don't enjoy it. What we've done today is pretty much all in the name of meaningless fun, so how does it feel, to take a step back and just enjoy life like this for once?"
The hero who had used to fight to make every second of her sickly life matter fell into deep contemplation, and then finally nodded, "It's not unpleasant, once in a while…"
"Mm hmm…"
"What are you looking at?"
"Your enchanting glittering eyes."
Alfia startled, crossed her arms, huffed, and turned around in her seat within the span of nine seconds. We all ended up giggling at her reaction. I could spot the small smile she hid on her face but stayed silent and allowed her to keep her peace.
We spent the next couple of days exploring the first floor of the game together, completing quests and occasionally battling against other players in PvP combat. Looking at a few online threads, it looks like our party of 4 has become a little famous.
I spotted Maple in the starter town after finally making her character, sometime before the first event would begin, just as in canon. Ah, she really was adorable, cute, and innocent.
"Let's visit another universe before coming back here to participate in the event. We can pop back to our homeworld, later on, hopefully, Airi's dad has cooled off and is willing to be reasonable."
"Who's fault is that again?"
I ignored Airi's jab and continued, "Anyways… the universe where we are going into has a lot of rules, and I mean, lots of them. Artemis shouldn't be using her full divine power where possible, Airi would probably count as a 'Phantasmal Species' there, so I'll need you both to put on some magical artifacts that will disguise your power there."
"Is there any particular reason for going to this universe?" Alfia started asking the right questions.
"Good starter question. Simply put, it depends on when we arrive at the timeline. There are countless timelines in this universe, but some of them are 'culled' and cease to exist if humanity risks destruction or stagnation in the future as a result of a culmination of 'wrong' choices." The Nasuverse is as harsh as expected, "We'll be going into a timeline that would cease to exist by the year 2050 for reasons unknown. If we arrive there past the 'Quantum Timelock', and I'll get to that later, then it's too late to change things. We should just take what we can and save whoever we want."
I let everyone think about it for a minute, then started elaborating more on the nature of the 'Root' and the world's mechanics. I also spoke about various timelines like the Notes, Fate/Extra and FGO ones to hammer in the fact that we aren't in the position to save the entire world when the universe itself wants to erase everything.
This was, admittedly, a way for me to help them get used to the fact that I couldn't (or wouldn't) necessarily resolve everything myself (and hopefully, won't have to commit to full-time heroics in the future), especially when one considers the sheer scale of the various multiverses and powerful entities out there.
"Continuing on, should we arrive before the 'Quantum Timelock', however, then we should investigate and see how we can get the timeline back in order. Unless, of course, we have to commit a great evil to fix things. In that case, it may not be worth it to keep a world that requires an atrocity to keep surviving alive, and we should cut our losses by acting as if it's a lost cause."
I personally liked the sound of that plan, but of course, Airi and Alfia were unhappy about it. Artemis had a more, larger view, and could accept it even if she wasn't entirely content with it.
It's a tough thing to balance. I need them to be a bit more realistic so that I don't get dragged into commitments where I end up biting off more than I can chew. On the other hand, I want them to remain firmly as optimists and keep true to their innately good natures.
"Now then, as for this world, this is a bit of a tough one to figure out. It's a one-way trip since I can't visit the same timeline without drawing attention to the 'Root' so listen closely. The first major point in deviation I can decipher is the lack of a fourth and fifth Holy Grail War taking place in Fuyuki City, instead, there seem to be many Grail Wars-"
Chapter 10
AN: Finally started a new thread for the first time in forever. I should be able to resolve any odd story ideas that didn't find it's way to the main story and fluff/lewd scenes too. Took some time to write this since I re-read Volume 4 of the light novel to get the sequence of events before the battle right for consistency purposes.
Chapter 10
For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. If one bastardizes the statement by changing it up a little to read, "For every action, there is a disproportionate and increasingly complicated interaction", then you would have summarized every Xianxia story ever written.
One particular story cliche came to mind when I expanded my senses across Trifas and beyond upon my arrival in this universe.
There would always be an inexplicably rare resource absorbing all the energy in the area that would only manifest itself (or bloom if it's a plant) for a short moment after centuries have passed for no reason other than to serve as a once-in-a-lifetime resource for asshole Cultivators.
For illustration purposes, let's randomize the name of a Xianxia plant and call it "Thousand-Year Old Myriad Etherial Heavenly Herb", or Magical Cannabis for short.
The protagonist of the story is, obviously, insanely lucky or has some sort of gimmick that makes him aware of the existence of Magical Cannabis. Whether he is a time-traveler or has a 'Gamer'-like system that teleports him to the area where it's approximately located doesn't matter.
What matters is that there are probably at least two different powerful sects, one future MC bootlicker and one old monster present trying to grab that piece of Magical Cannabis right at the same time.
And surprise, surprise! Out of all the players fighting there, the winner is none other than the MC!
The MC slaps everyone in the face by doing the 'impossible' right in front of them and depriving them of such a rare resource! The MC then earns the enmity of everyone that had eyes but failed to see Mount Tai, thereby expanding his list of future enemies by getting entangled by the strings of Karma even further.
The author then gets to write another 100 chapters resolving the latest set of enemies while using them to introduce several more enemies. Once all of them are truly dead, the next higher realm opponents appear together with even more rare resources and avenues of power to take!
When one boils the situation down to its essence, it means that when the famous Xianxia MC luck strikes again and presents an opportunity to attain a rare power (beyond his initial super unique advantage), so too will he get 'lucky' and be in a position where his next set of stepping stones is present.
I should have seriously considered the possibility that my luck would have thrown me in Fate/Apocrypha just when the Greater Grail was already stolen for some time and at the point where it's adjustments by Shirou Tokisada Amakusa was being completed with the help of Shakespeare.
If I had arrived after the Great Holy Grail War I would have just gone with the main looting plan while looking around for why this timeline would get pruned.
If I had arrived a few months before the main event then I would have still gone around looting, but I would appear in the war in order to hack the Grail and summon an additional Servant on my own. After that, I would send my Servant along with Airi and Alfia out to fight the other Servants for EXP and teamwork building purposes.
But it turns out my luck made me miss out on all the fun and sent me straight to the rewards stage.
I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
What happened to my 'frantic dash for the rare resource' story cliche?!
"Well, let's go check out Bucharest then head over to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, I bet whatever is amiss in this timeline is over there."
A high-speed area relocation movement spell was used in place of the usual teleporting magic since I still need some time to adjust to the local laws that governed space. Best not to risk accidentally teleporting to the other side of the world or somewhere even more inconvenient.
We arrived above Bucharest in a matter of seconds, I double-checked through the city and found that the individuals that made out the alliance against Shirou and Semiramis ( remaining Red Servants), namely that of Jeanne, Sieg, Astolfo, Chiron, Caules, Fiore, Gordes, Mordred, Kairi, and the homunculi had already left the city as planned.
I looked up at the moonless sky and narrowed my eyes, there was no aerial battle going on, nor was there any fierce fighting taking place in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.
At least, not anymore.
I stayed silent even as Airi, Artemis and Alfia started questioning me on what was going on as I pushed my spatial relocation spell to the max, shifting us all safely at the speed of lightning.
A wave of my hand annihilated the magical defenses of the flying fortress of a Noble Phantasm. In the span of another breath, we had all been moved right into the chamber that held the Greater Grail and the last remaining members of the Great Holy Grail War.
I moved my legs for the first time I arrived in this world, crossing over fifty steps with just a single step, then ended my movement technique prematurely to be in a position to stop a katana from executing a badly hurt foe.
"What-?!" The empowered incarnated Servant, Shirou Tokisada Amakusa, couldn't finish expressing his surprise as I flicked my finger at him, breaking the enchanted katana [Miike Tenta Mitsuyo] and sent his body flying through several pillars.
"Master!" Semiramis screamed in response to attacking her loved one, I could see that she was prepared to attack me… which wasn't much of a concern.
"Attacking the peanut gallery is against the natural order. Don't you know that an audience is important for final battles like these? Tsk, tsk." I ignored the Assassin and chided the antagonist of the day after I pieced together the situation.
Everything had been going according to canon until a couple of seconds ago. Sieg and Shirou were having their final showdown after Jeanne used her Noble Phantasm. Upon exchanging some final words, Laeticia's body was left behind, Astolfo flew in to help only to be pinned down by a badly hurt Semiramis. Sieg entrusted Caules to watch over Laeticia while he fought against Shirou with help from Siegfried and Fran's power.
The only difference was that the remaining Ruler Servant somehow managed to keep his cool and decided to throw away any semblance of honor and nobility by attacking both Laeticia and Caules, forcing Sieg to defend them both with his body.
He would have succeeded in forcing humanity into stagnancy by making their souls eternal using Heaven's Feel after defeating Sieg in this timeline resulting in it getting pruned by the 'World' later on.
My women arrived just as I stomped on the ground, negating Semiramis's attempt to pin me with her summoned chains and poisoned weapons, while also shielding the helpless audience from my own actions using magic barriers.
I then conjured some barriers remotely to shield the five masters of the Red faction kept in some room here from further harm.
"Rude. Were you the one that gave him the idea, I wonder?"
I didn't spare the Queen of Assyria more than a side glance. A wave of my hand was more than enough to heal Sieg of his current injuries, a crushing motion freed Astolfo and his Hippogriff of their command sealed powered restraints.
… Shit! He really is super cute.
I'm in danger.
"Woah! That was so cool! Who the heck are you? Hey, wait, this feeling of the moon… are you a moon goddess?!"
Don't look at Astolfo, don't look at the trap…
"Ahaha… I am the goddess Artemis, but not the Artemis of this world." The blue-haired goddess didn't show any discomfort from being near Astolfo despite knowing his gender.
As expected, cute traps transcend man-hater habits.
Somewhere at the side, Caules was looking like he was forcing a brain reboot, while Sieg alternated between relief for his allies' safety and back to a simmering fury as he prepared to face Shirou once more.
"Dio! What was all that moving around for!?" Alfia complained loudly, I tuned her out in favor of monitoring the movements of the Greater Grail and Shirou Tokisada Amakusa.
"I take it the hard part is over?" Airi was much more understanding, we lived together for nearly a year, she knew my habits very well. I wouldn't have rushed without saying anything to her if the situation wasn't potentially dire.
I nodded quietly, collecting my thoughts and sending it over as an information package to my women, with a request to keep the peace between everyone while I settled things.
"Just wait here, I'll settle things."
And reap the benefits for myself while I'm at it.
I appeared before the Greater Grail where the saint stood, having attempted to sneak away to accelerate the processing of his wish.
"Haha… even the gods are against my wish, then?" He spoke with a resigned smile, truly, he was someone that had discarded his grudges to the point where disappointments like betrayals would only result in him acknowledging it and moving on.
"Not necessarily. I'm only doing this because the 'right' thing to do is to keep this timeline alive." The 'right' thing for me to do to look good in the eyes of my women while also reaping the immediate benefits, that is, hehehe! "I'm afraid that humanity will stagnate once it receives your wish for eternal peace. I've got no problems with humanity gaining salvation or immortality if it's done with the proper foundation in place, unfortunately, the conditions aren't met and the rules of this universe will force the world to end at 2050 if humanity stagnates."
"… What a cruel world."
"Don't sweat it too much. Just don't do something stupid like getting yourself killed and I'll send you to another world where you can make your wish come true."
He still tried to attack me in a last-ditch effort to stop me, but I simply negated his attack and sent him flying back to where everybody was.
I deployed my most powerful barriers and took out several defensive items.
I reached for the Greater Grail, took control of as many of its functions as I could, then sealed it within my spiritual realm where so that Heaven's Feel would only affect me instead of the rest of the world. Not that I would allow it to alter me without my careful direction.
Sitting down in a lotus position, I started Cultivating while diving into my spiritual realm. I continued subverting the Greater Grail and found that most of its resources were already invested in enacting the saint's illegal wish. As for the regular wish, I didn't even qualify for it since I wasn't a winning master-servant pair, there wasn't much energy dedicated to it anyways so I just charged it up with my own mana and began modifying the Greater Grail for my purposes.
The fabricated image of the Justeaze Lizrich von Einzbern, the representation of the Greater Grail, appeared before it's new admin and started hearing out my requests.
"Keep those wish slots in reserve and use the new mana storage to punch a hole to the Root."
I didn't have to worry about collateral damage since the Greater Grail was activating within my spiritual realm, which is like an entire universe of its own, just a lot smaller at my current level.
The path to the Akashic Records was open, it's Counter Guardian's came pouring out to face me as the source of the entire Nasuverse attempted to delete me from existence.
However, I had already prepared for that, as my spiritual realm was already populated with powerful battle golems equipped with some of my best mass-produced artifacts!
As if I would ever leave my personal spiritual realm without proper defenses, what do I look like, a reckless idiot?!
I continued to cultivate every single law using the profound opportunity I've given myself. With access to parts of the 'Root', I could absorb and comprehend everything I needed to perform 'magic' and more while fueling my Cultivation further.
A fierce battle was being waged on within my realm as my defense system fought off the might of the 'World', my power was increasing to even greater heights, but it wasn't enough to keep up with the rapidly escalating force being leveled against me.
I took the opportunity to look for certain abandoned timelines that were fucked up beyond belief, looking back into the far past, then reached out with a variant of my world crossing spell and refined those already doomed worlds into energy!
Comprehending the knowledge of the root pushed my understanding of all laws to the mid-point of an entire great realm beyond me, but my actual Cultivation level had not increased much. Consuming the energies from worlds that were already gone in the far past (were it not for my time travel/world crossing cheating spell) was my answer to that!
Those worlds had close to zero chances of ever recovering due to the influence of Foreigners invading those timelines anyway. I may as well do everyone a favor, myself included, by depriving those beings of their resources while mercy killing every living being there.
I quickly shut the hole to the Akasha with my own power as I accustomed myself to my new level of power.
If my Cultivation levels went from 0 to 10, with each whole number representing one great realm, then I had just jumped straight from 0.65 to 0.999999. It wouldn't be wrong to say that I was a Half-Step away from the next breakthrough.
Unfortunately, I needed more energy for that, I could probably get it easily but staying at this point might give me some advantages. If I ascended to the next great realms then hiding from higher dimensional beings would become increasingly difficult. The safest choice would be to remain at this level until I completely mastered the use of all my current laws to the point where I can defeat enemies the equivalent of one whole great realm stronger than me!
Which would be… difficult to measure, given that I'm the only one with this kind of Cultivation System. Ah well, I'll figure it out eventually.
All of this takes some time to describe but actually happened within the span of one minute.
I came out to the sight of Airi and Alfia literally holding Shirou, Semiramis, and Sieg down on the ground. Turns out that everyone is still pissed off at everyone after all the killing over these past few days. Who would have thought?
Anyhow… Sieg was still turning into a dragonid as a result of losing his command seals that suppressed the curse, thankfully, I was here to help him decide between living normally in this world or going the canon route by using the Greater Grail's power to turn into Fafnir and keep waiting in the Reverse Side of the World for his waifu.
The waifu choice won out. I have never been so proud of this little homunculus.
Not that I've known him for more than a couple of minutes.
Anyways, it looks like Astolfo is still going with that world-traveling itenary.
Shirou and Semiramis managed to have a similar to canon heartwarming talk when they assumed I was going to kill them off. I waited for them to kiss each other before using my new knowledge of Souls and the laws of Life to incarnate them with as much power as I could fit into their bodies then Isekai'ed them into a different world.
"Where did you banish them to?" Airi asked me while Alfia and Artemis were keeping everyone entertained (or reassured), as they too, were privy to my plans that I've urgently modified after discovering the situation.
"Some soft enough world based on a hentai game where they can live together peacefully or try for something ambitious if they want."
I had scouted many worlds for the sake of sending refugees, friends, and enemies to the places that suited them the best. Hentai worlds were generally pretty tame in terms of power-levels and there was enough stuff to do there to keep heroic spirits or anti-heroes busy.
I simply randomized a world within one of my hentai world catalogs and sent them there. Wait, hold on… oh, whew, that's good. I made sure to keep the Taimanin world in a separate catalog, so they wouldn't have been sent there by accident.
"You look worried. What happened?"
"Nothing, really. I was just working up a cold sweat when I almost thought I sent them to an NTR rape world by accident."
"… Why do you even look up those worlds for?"
"… For my enemies?"
"So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets."
"Okay, okay, I'll revise the punishment list!"
Airi only ever quotes the Bible when she feels I'm going way out of line.
I lazily teleported everyone back down to the floor as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon began to crumble properly. Teleporting within the Nasuverse was no longer an issue now that I had sufficient understanding of both the Greater and the local laws of Space.
"-with the surviving Red Masters that, as you said, Karna loyally defended from Semiramis, as hostages we can use them as a bargaining chip… I could offer a conditional surrender to the Mage's Association as the current leader of the Yggdmillennia, formally ending the Greater Grail War."
Caules and I were currently discussing the issue about the Greater Grail's current location having left Yggdmilennia lands, into areas where the Mage's Association technically owns due to Shirou and Semiramis' plans. He had already accepted the fact that he wouldn't be getting the Greater Grail anytime soon from me and so moved on to the matter of concluding this whole war.
"Hostages? Don't you mean my hostages? I was the one to get them out safe and sound remember? And also, is there any benefit to me helping you stay safe from the Mage's Association?"
Airi and Artemis double-teamed me and jabbed me at my sides.
"Ouch! Okay, okay, sheesh, I was just joking! I don't even care for them, you can have the hostages. I wasn't planning on getting anything from you anyway, seeing as you don't have anything I could ever need or want. I was just trying to play up the shameless Xianxia MC this time around and make him squirm a bit by being 'overbearing', I swear!"
Caules didn't know how to react to someone as overpowered as me being 'handled' like this.
Astolfo was just laughing his ass off. Well, at least he has a good sense of humor.
"Anyways… your family coffers aren't going to look good after all this."
"Haa… yes, the association will probably disband the Yggdmillennia clan for good and confiscate everything. I have accepted that and will be happy to just remain the head of the Forvedge family if the punishments remain light."
"Given that they've been monitoring the phenomenon from the distance and likely extracted useful insights from it… I'd think they will be in a good mood. Besides, you have the excuse of being unable to resist and oppose Darnic even if you wanted to."
Caules smiled wryly, "Yeah, there is that. At least this way, my sister, Gordes, and the homunculi should be able to get on with their lives."
Ah yes, Gordes, the father of Chaldea's new director Gordolf, who is surprisingly pleasant for a magus. The remaining homunculi are just getting started with having thoughts of their own, note to self, give them some souls and other buffs discreetly…
As for his sister, Fiore… she had already passed on the family crest to Caules and is determined to leave the life of a Magus, while Caules decided to embrace it instead.
Speaking of Fiore, it looks like she's about to arrive, she was a couple of minutes drive away from where I brought us all to when Caules called her to give her a quick summary of what happened.
"Back to your finances, let's make a deal." I snapped my fingers and conjured thousands of gold coins, with many precious jewels among them, all stacked up on very artistic carts, "I don't really plan to stay here for long, so why don't you exchange 10% of all this to cash, then hand that money over to me and you can keep the other 90%."
My intentions were as plain as day, I got us some legal tender for us to enjoy modern life here for a bit, and Caules would have enough money to jumpstart his family finances.
"Th-this is too much! And how did you do that? I can tell that it isn't Projection magic. Is it the Denial of Nothingness?! Do you have the First Magic too! How am I supposed to carry all this-"
I decided to shut him up by handing him an interspatial ring and forcing him to use it himself to collect all the treasure. By the end of it, he was looking at the ring as if it was one of the most precious Mystic Code he had ever seen in his life.
It probably was, but that was a matter of perspective.
Then again, he practically sees me as a god right now.
"Oh, one more thing… I would like your help with a magical experiment of sorts…"
"Yes? Of course, what do you need me to do?"
"I keep a collection of animals across many secret realms, most of them are saturated with my power to the point where the animals turn into magical beasts over a long period of time. I was hoping to see what would happen to one such animal on the cusp of evolving if it were to start living in this world instead of my realms. I would like to think that you are someone I can entrust one of my creatures to…"
Having seen a part of his memories using my senses, it just so happens that I have just the animal with the right breed and temperament as a pet his family once had.
Airi was staring at me with a suspicious look. Ah, can this be called a wife's intuition?
"I'll be happy to!"
"Good! Now, meet Timmy!"
I gave the dog I took out of one of the realms I carried on me a random name.
Just then, a certain voice called out from a limousine, "Brother!"
With a small compulsion, the dog 'wiggled' out of my hands and started running up to the disabled young woman before her brother could react!
"Arf! Arf!"
"Huh? This is…"
Her surprise was expected. The dog I brought out looked exactly like the god used as a 'bad example' of spirit evocation by their father and died horribly in front of Fiore and Caules when they were young.
That dog's sacrifice was one of the impetus for Fiore to continue on the path of the Magus even though she was too gentle to handle it. While she liked studying and enacting magecraft, being a cold-blooded magus was impossible for her. While bringing out that dog was a possible trauma point I personally saw it as a way to give her a second chance to resolve any regrets.
I teleported right to the car door and then tapped one of her legs, instantly fixing the damage for both limbs, to a certain point.
She instantly kicked out at me in surprise, a completely ineffective kick, of course.
"Ow! Who are you? Where do you think you're… touching…"
Fiore stared at her currently functioning legs.
"As expected of Lord Dio." Caules spoke seriously while having a huge smile on his face.
"Just for your information, I've only healed her up to the mid-recovery stage so that she can have the choice of experience the challenge of rehabilitating her ability to walk. It's a generally positive experience when you succeed and will be a nice thing to look back to, heck, you can even write about it in your future autobiography if you ever write one."
It wouldn't be fair to remove all positive opportunities from someone's life. She would have gotten her legs healed regardless, I simply used my cheat abilities to fix her legs while also adding something similar to magic circuits back to them to replace the family crest she gave away.
Her brother simply nodded along and began sharing his happiness with his sister. I stayed at the sidelines so that I wouldn't bother them at this point.
When I looked at Alfia she rolled her eyes at me, as if she figured that I was going to do that.
Airi and Artemis had knowing smiles. I hope they weren't overthinking it or anything. I was just providing my typical OP MC end-to-end services and support package!
Hmm, I'll deal with their possible misunderstandings later. Time to revise my plans to loot the Mage's Association and Atlas a little bit to take into account my new levels of power.
Hmm, with my current powers… can't I give Albion's counterpart a little help? Being stuck as a corpse underneath the Mage's Association and being used as a resource isn't fitting a dragon at all!
More importantly, if I can get the dragon's acknowledgment before he properly leaves for the Reverse Side of the World, it could help me win the Hyoudou's favorite uncle Vali over to my side.
Good…. very good! Just you wait, Father-in-law, not even your rival harem will be safe from my influence!
Chapter 11
Chapter 11
I happily hummed to the tune of Sorairo Days as I walked back to my New York apartment upon completing a short shopping trip. It only took a few days for Caules to purchase the place and a couple of hours for me to furnish it myself.
Traveling the world as tourists, staying in all sorts of high-class hotels, and enjoying the world's cuisine with everyone was a change of pace from our usual rush to get acclimatized to things (like our homeworld and my in-laws) or try out a new world's main attraction (e.g. NewWorld Online).
Even so, nothing beats having a familiar place you can return to after a hard day of work. This may just be a temporary base in the grand scale of things, but having a regular place of rest like this does wonders for my women, which is the main benefit from acquiring a local home.
"I can start my plans for real now that I've acquired 'that' contract and the money from Caules." I smiled to myself as the thoughts of acquiring inspiration for new techniques and artifacts comforted my soul.
"I'm home! And I've bought ice cream!"
"Welcome home!" Airi had appeared in front of me in the blink of an eye, with only a frilly apron to cover herself, "Would you like dinner? A bath? Or perhaps… me?"
Aaaah! This is bliss!
I quickly shook myself to put aside my stupid happy look and happily declared my intentions.
"All of the above! But I'll start with you!"
"Kyaa!"
Despite 'screaming' like that Airi's smile made it clear that she had been anticipating this very response. I shut the door behind me, grabbed my beautiful blonde wife by the arm, and kissed her. I didn't hesitate to take off my pants and fuck her against the wall as she wrapped her arms and legs around my body, happily accepting her husband's cock like the lovely wife she was.
"Can the two of you keep your noise at a reasonable level for once in your life?!" Alfia was dressed in a bath towel and appeared to have been relaxing recently, indicated by the magical rejuvenating face mask product on her face (modern pollution irritated her skin) and the earphones dangling around her neck. "And I swear that the two of you have done this exact song and dance just three days ago…"
I casually isolated Airi and me in a small magical barrier so that sound wouldn't escape or enter, fulfilling Alfia's wish while annoying her by not responding to her.
After filling up Airi's womb with my semen and allowing the rest to overflow onto the floor, I canceled the barrier and answered as if nothing had happened, "Nonsense. I fucked Airi doggystyle then. Right Airi?"
"Mmnn…" My first wife shamelessly licked her finger clean of my seed as if enjoying a snack, "Don't forget the leash. That was when we were trying out the 'slave-wife' play, it's totally different." She blushed as she recalled the details, "T-that said, I'm still not used to saying things like 'please reward this lowly sow', but I should get it done by the end of the month!"
Alfia stared at the earnest and determined-looking Airi with an astonished look, "You… are you seriously treating this like actual training?"
I took out a sheet of paper showing our agreed-upon sexual training schedule, "It really is. Airi should be proficient enough in uttering degrading phrases by then, allowing us to move on to the 'secretly eager slave-wife' stage."
As if remembering that normal people weren't supposed to be proud of that, Airi suddenly covered up her nakedness with her hands and pouted at me, "D-don't say things like that out loud! If you keep doing that you're going to end up talking about it over dinner in front of my father."
"I see no problems with this."
"You're impossible!"
"I'm just joking! Really!"
Artemis poked her head out of the corridor a second later and said, "That's half a lie."
Airi kicked my shin and I acted appropriately by exaggerating the pain, "Ouch! But it was also half-true!"
"Honestly… We're having roasted pork so let's go take a bath first."
Before we can finally vacate the entrance to the apartment, Artemis stared at the pool of cum on the floor and muttered, "I just mopped that part…"
I snapped my fingers and cleaned it up in an instant.
"You're not in your homeworld anymore. While you shouldn't go all out you can still use your divine powers for little things like this."
Artemis went 'oooh' and bumped her fist on her head, "I forgot."
"… It doesn't have the same effect like that." I ended up commenting on Artemis's act.
"You're supposed to stick out your tongue and wink while you're doing it!" Airi insisted all of a sudden, ah, so Airi's been introducing Artemis to the standardized 'cute girl' playbook.
"I don't think I can do it like that. It didn't feel quite right when I practiced in the mirror." Artemis sighed as she recalled her efforts.
"Isn't it because it makes you look childish?" Alfia critiqued the entire act, but she certainly had a point there.
"Alfia's spot on!" I agreed hurriedly, to Alfia's surprise, "Airi has the cute innocent girl look down to pat even though she's really lewd at heart!"
"T-that's not true!" Airi protested half-heartedly, I continued on without acknowledging her denials.
"-Artemis, in your case, you fit the gentle beauty archetype a lot more, so that kind of act doesn't work the same way. Try for something like placing your hand over your cheek after sighing with a tired expression."
She did just that and looked very much like an Onee-sama type of girl for a moment.
"Yeah, that works a lot better. Though it may fit Alfia more…" My silver-haired companion turned red with both anger and embarrassment.
"I can't believe you are discussing the topic of mannerisms in such a manner!"
"We are merely optimizing character archetype builds." I jokingly answered her.
"It's fun trying out new things." Artemis was completely serious in her response.
"Hmm, learning how to maximize one's appeal is necessary for a polygamous relationship." Airi nodded sagely as she thought of her many mothers.
"I-is that really necessary?" Alfia asked with an unusual amount of curiosity.
"When I was younger I accidentally mistook Ingvild for my birth mother Asia when she hugged me from behind because both of them are really gentle and share a lot in common." Airi had a mortified look when she recalled that part of her past.
Growing up as a child of a harem protagonist really has its own share of problems… perhaps I should sign all my women up to speech and drama classes? Maybe that will help? Or I could throw them into weird situations until they develop even more quirks…
"… What's with that suspicious look on your face?" Airi narrowed her eyes at me.
"I was just thinking about the merits of attending an academy on the performing arts. We could all use some lessons, heck, I certainly have to improve a lot on being dramatic." I smoothly answered her question without giving away my less than flattering intentions.
"Speaking of lessons, do you all need any help with your Cultivation?"
After figuring out how the Falna worked, the process of Excelia accumulation, and refining it into 'Status' points, I expanded upon the process and integrated it into their customized Cultivation manuals (and my own lifestyle, enabling me to process daily insights a lot quicker).
Airi and Alfia no longer needed to rely on Artemis' blessings to have their full potential unlocked (Airi was still Level 1 and didn't get much of a boost, to begin with), which benefited Alfia the most now that her abilities as a Level 9 have become her baseline stats without any further reliance on a divine connection.
Everyone could now Cultivate passively by doing what Adventurers normally did, which is, to live life, work hard and achieve great things. They could absorb energy using traditional means like meditating to absorb energy and contemplate matters, or start chugging down my special pills like drug addicts (I can't wait to introduce Airi to my 'recreational drugs' when we advance through the sexual training schedule further, hehehe…), but by giving them the passive Cultivation option I'm minimizing the chances of them going into closed-doors cultivation.
Closed-doors Cultivation is a nefarious practice that will decrease my quality time with them!
I will prevent them from relying on the practice as much as I can by giving them life experience, dangling some of my comprehensive knowledge of laws for them as rewards (it's a good thing they're stubborn enough to not accept effort-free power, heh) and giving them energy-packed drugs where appropriate!
"No problems here! In fact, I've made a couple of new techniques that I would like to try out!"
Airi's Cultivation was more 'general' like my own since she hasn't fully determined what kind of 'path' or 'Dao' she wants to refine. Even so, she derived many benefits from it and greatly enjoyed using her new control over her internal energies to form special attacks.
"I may need some time to consider a few matters more deeply." Alfia quickly answered me before I properly got to her and then walked away.
I could confront her about it, but I'll give her some 'face' since she's just too shy to say that she's stuck at a bottleneck. Alfia's never gotten stuck on anything for long since I healed her, she will either overcome this herself or she'll lose a bit of confidence by remaining at a bottleneck with little progress for a long time.
As much as I wanted to help her, Alfia has to let go of her pride sometimes and learn to ask for help for things that aren't matters of life and death.
Artemis hummed and embraced me tightly, "Hehe, I quite like expanding my domains like this. My progress is going great, thanks to you… in fact, I think we've become more compatible, so let's 'dual-cultivate' more often, okay?"
I ended up spending the entire night after finishing dinner 'cultivating' with Artemis under the moonlight, in other words, I fucked her outdoors in a public park and taught her the joys of exhibitionism.
The next morning…
I was the earliest riser of the family and used the alone time to finalize my Clock Tower invasion plans.
Sensing a familiar presence approaching, I changed into my casual outfit and looked out the window to see my new neighbor arriving.
Whew, that's a lot of stuff in that moving truck…
A certain lady that left the world of Magecraft was directing some homunculi volunteers while walking with the assistance of crutches outside. The dog I gave her was dutifully guarding her as he wagged his tail with a dumb innocent expression on his face, clearly baiting future mob characters to attack him before he kills them with a single paw.
Sniff, they grow up so fast…
I teleported outside and said hello, "Morning Fiore, need any help?"
Spoiler: Fiore
[img: https/i./YS2ey9s.jpg]
She turned around in surprise, I could see that a spell was on the tip of her tongue before then tension faded and she relaxed just as quickly upon recognizing me.
"L-lord Dio!"
"Ahem, just Dio. We don't have that kind of relationship."
"Ufufu… what kind of relationship could you be insinuating?"
She recovered quickly and faintly giggled with a gentle smile on her face. The light of the morning sun on her face made the entire moment look exquisite to my eyes.
I smiled back at her and said, "This isn't the Magus world, after all. You don't have to address anyone with greater power in such a respectful manner."
Fiore became shyly embarrassed, "Yes, well, I'm still getting used to it. It has only been two weeks since then… ah, forgive my reminiscence. Would you mind answering a question of mind?"
"Ask away."
"Are you here for any specific purpose or is this a social call?"
"Just here to greet my new neighbor and help her move in."
"N-neighbor!?"
"You're moving into the same apartment complex that my women and I are staying in. You know, the one that your brother got for us."
"T-that brother of mine! What is he thinking!?"
"Oh! The horror! I am such a repulsive being that even my new neighbor dreads my presence-"
"It's not like that! I'm just surprised that my brother would think to set us up like this!"
"Huh? Set us up how?"
"N-nothing! It was probably just a prank!"
Ah, I love playing the dense guy, especially when I get to see so many cute expressions.
"Hmm, alright. Anyways, I'll just help you move everything inside if that's okay with you."
"I appreciate the help."
I teleported everything right into her apartment, then used some of my independent thought processes to manage the unpacking and decoration with telekinesis. I added some of my stockpiled masterfully crafted furniture to fill in the gaps according to her existing items.
Everything was finished by the time Fiore, the homunculi and I arrived at the door to her new home. Her jaw dropped at the sight of a fully and beautifully decorated apartment suite.
"H-how?!"
"Magic."
I said simply while creating the illusion of a rainbow as I moved my hands accordingly.
Fiore's eyes twitched with irritation, it wasn't the first time I spoke about the bullshit that was my homeworld's magic system and it's convenience in everyday life.
Even so, she never stopped wanting to hear more about it. She was even happier when I said that what I did to add 'magic circuits' to her legs would enable her to use my brand of magic.
Fiore didn't wait a second before skim-reading through my grimoire of compiled basic spells and theory that day. She reminded me a lot of… well… myself, when I first learned how to use magic.
"Hold on, if you moved everything so precisely by yourself then…"
"Hmm?"
Her face was red and her fists were clenched tightly, "Y-you saw?"
I tilted my head innocently and repeated, "Saw what? Are you talking about your bras and panties-"
"You pervert!"
I returned to my apartment with a slap mark on my face laughing all the while.
A few hours later…
I was currently taking a walk down memory lane, more specifically, I was walking through the busy streets of where 'Chinatown' was located in London.
While the architecture remained the same, the people and the shops were vastly different from both my homeworld and original world.
I decided to check out a familiar store that was well known for its rude staff back in my first life, only to see two young girls arguing with each other about forgetting their wallet.
When the waiter arrived with the bill, I sensed a small buildup of energy which confirmed my assumption that they were both magus, and stepped in to save everyone some trouble.
"Ah, hey, there you are. I've got the cash you've asked for." I said while depositing the exact amount unto the tray with the receipt, which the staff quickly took away without saying a word, not caring who paid the bill, "Mmm, good times. A bit exaggerated but this is an anime world afterall."
"Hey, what was that for? We had that handled!" The blonde girl with a ponytail complained ungratefully until she took a good look at my face and blushed furiously.
"What my sister meant to say was 'thank you'-" Her blonde sister who wore a cute headband cut her sister short, sternly glaring at her, "-and that we are curious as to why you assisted us after my forgetful sister made one of the classic blunders." She turned out the same way as her sister after seeing my handsome face that was typical for Cultivators.
I shrugged and smiled lightly, "Too much Hypnosis could ruin someone's mind. I'd rather not have that on my conscience since I was here to prevent its use."
"I've never seen you around before. Which department do you belong to?" The sister with the hairband asked immediately while looking away from me, assuming that I was a student in the Clock Tower.
"Are you American? You kinda look American. But your accent is a bit… Asian? Or just not very heavy." Ponytailed sister was pretty perceptive if she could pick that out quickly.
"Hmm, let's talk outside, the staff look like they want us to leave."
"What kind of customer service is this?!" "Rude."
We introduced ourselves as we walked towards a particular part of Chinatown in Soho. Well, I was walking in that direction while the twin sisters were following me.
"I'm Dio Dorana, pleasure to meet you two ladies."
"It's nice to meet you too! Nazica Pentel!" The more rowdy sister with the ponytail introduced herself excitedly.
"I am delighted to meet your acquaintance. Radia Pentel." The more serious twin with the hairband politely gave me her name. "We're both currently attending lectures and classes in the Modern Magecraft Theories department."
"Oh? The one thought by Waver, I mean, Lord El-Melloi the Second? I've heard many great things about his teaching abilities."
"He's awesome! The way he breaks down mysteries is kinda scary but you learn a lot from it!" Nazica exclaimed proudly.
"That he does." I agreed with her as I quite liked how skilled he was in it, especially since I was someone that could understand and replicate any form of magic instantly.
"You still have yet to answer my question." Radia continued to 'subtly' badger me for my answer.
"Oh, about my department? Well, I'll get back to you on that. I just arrived at my stop."
"Huh? Wait, this is-"
I snapped my fingers and opened one of the four pathways to the Spiritual Grave of Albion, located in this bustling part of London.
"A labyrinth right down to where Albion met an unfortunate accident. Tsk tsk, a truly undignified way to die."
Just when they were about to say something, a familiar-looking pair of brothers appeared, "Cousin! There you are, we were looking to catch up on… on… L-Lord DIO!?"
The twin Pentel brothers stared at me with shock and fear in their eyes.
"Oh, Deimlek, Cabit, how have you been? I hope you two have recuperated well from the madness inflicted by Semiramis."
The two brothers were former Masters of Red in the Great Grail War, rescued by yours truly.
"We did!" "Yes!"
The twin sisters stared at their relatives' reactions with shock. The two of them started to overthink like Magi tended to and had fear in their hearts.
"You're a lord of the Clock Tower?! Oh god, I mouthed off to a Lord! My life is ruined…" Nazica looked like she wanted to die.
"Sister! Behave!" Radia admonished her instantly as if to stop me from getting upset.
Haa, even though it would be a good time to demand them to kowtow and cripple themselves for forgiveness, this is just too pathetic.
"Not as such. I am merely a Magician with a few magics up my sleeve, I don't have a formal position in the Clock Tower, but I'm sure I'll make a name for myself in the next hour or two."
I looked back at their male relatives and said, "Go tell everyone that I'm reviving Albion and replacing him with a different source of Mystery."
Without even looking back, I walked right into the labyrinth and released my aura, suppressing all the magical traps and magical beasts that dwelled within.
Hmm, this is quite a big place, guess I should just teleport straight down.
"Waaaaait! Wait up! What do you mean you're reviving Albion!?"
"What my sister means is that 'we would like to observe your magic please!'"
These two sisters… are actually quite shameless themselves. Do they have a deathwish? Charging right into the Clock Tower's most protected area? Just because their relatives' reaction proved I was the one that 'became' a Magician by snatching the Greater Grail at the last moment?
The other magi won't let them get away with this. They are courting death!
Ah, well, I'll feel bad if they get harmed as a result of my actions. I will just have to take responsibility for their safety then and make sure they are adequately protected as recompense for coming this far and amusing me.
"Very well, come along."
I snapped my fingers and teleported us all the way down, but took a detour to the Carillon Observatory, where Sealing Designations were decided upon.
I ignored the protests of the two sisters and kicked down the door, teleported every present staff member, and introduced myself as I suppressed them with my aura.
"Good afternoon peasants! Be honored that this young master will be giving you the privilege of demonstrating your magecraft to me!"
"Y-you dare!? I am Fern-"
I flicked my finger and obliterated the mouthy magi's body instantly, used the Law of Souls to preserve the man's soul, then stuffed it into a soul puppet which mimicked the man's appearance in a second.
"Haa… The path to heaven was before you but you chose the path to hell. Go on Soul Slave, demonstrate your spells for me. Oh, and you can explain your mysteries out loud for the benefit of these two lovely ladies."
I'm not sure what was crueler to them, killing them and forcing them to comply like this… or the fact that they had to explain their life's work and dispel the 'mystery' supporting their power.
Nazica and Radia didn't know whether to scream in horror or cry awkwardly, in the end, they did neither after I used an emotion calming spell on them.
I copied his spells and improved upon them on the spot, explaining how I did it, and then removed the man's soul from the puppet. With another snap of my fingers, I reformed his body and inserted his soul right back to it.
He was crying while hugging his knees on the ground after I granted him mercy and gave his life back. He should count himself lucky that I promised my women that I wouldn't kill anyone that wasn't ridiculously evil (I had to lower the bar since most were 'just amoral')… permanently, that is.
"So? Does anyone else want to volunteer their spells? Or do you want to experience what it's like to be torn apart and put back together?"
Only 20% of the remaining magi needed to receive the soul puppet interrogation treatment, the rest were much more compliant after that.
I quickly bound them all with a magical rope artifact temporarily before departing for the core of Albion's grave. Using what I've learned from Heaven's Feel and my own replication of what I've seen from the Sephiroth Graal in the past, I traced back a 'record' of Albion's existence and then reformed it using my own power, then inserted it back to it's core and used my other magical abilities to form its body.
I specifically remade it's body since I had one of my clones looting his actual body that's spread across the underground cavern and hadn't intended to waste any good material.
"Welcome back to the world of the living Albion, say, why don't we become friends-"
"Rrrrwooa… ah!?"
The revived dragon took one look at me and immediately turned around, then dived right into the ground and through into the Reverse Side of the World!
"… Ah… what the… what the hell is that? Are you a dragon or a lizard? What happened to your dignity, pride and self-respect?!"
There goes my plan to get Albion's recognition. Guess I'll just use its body to make cool stuff instead and maybe create new dragons from it.
I sighed and then took out my 'compensation' for nabbing Albion's bones.
I was only doing this for the sake of preserving some magic in this world. It helps that I'm not losing anything of value by giving them this either.
"There we go. One unopened Pandora's Box plugged into the gravesite."
Looking towards the still shocked twins, I explained, "I got this from a dead timeline thousands of years in the past. Pandora hadn't opened the 'box' which is more like a jar, fyi, and that timeline was invaded by all sorts of foreign deities which made it slated for erasure by the 'World'. There were some things I couldn't refine very quickly like this thing, so I just took it with me for research purposes. I already have all the information I need so I'll just leave this to the Clock Tower as a replacement."
In addition to that, I was expecting that some idiot will try to open it in a few decades and doom the world. While I won't be killing these arrogant magi permanently unless they're explicitly super evil, I hadn't agreed to not help them kill themselves, especially when they would deserve it for committing stupid acts.
I teleported us three back up to one of the main rooms of the Clock Tower, bypassing their hundreds of security measures right into their emergency meeting room.
There were hundreds of magi gathered discussing on how to deal with me by the time I arrived.
"Nazica, Radia, what the hell are you two doing with him?!" Lord El-Melloi II almost tore his hair out when I made myself known.
I shrugged and smiled confidently, "Don't blame them. I just dragged them along since they were nearby. Speaking of which, Waver…"
I casually blocked several incoming spells before suppressing everyone with my aura, then I summoned one of my personally crafted Holy Grails, slapped some Command Seals on Great Teacher El-Melloi's hands, then summoned up Iskandar in the Rider Class while giving him a living body so that his 'Master' wouldn't die when providing him upkeep mana.
"M-my King?!"
"You-"
"The two of you can continue your bromance outside, thank you."
I teleported them both to the other side of the country and then separated the good from the bad amongst the Magi.
They could do nothing to resist. The proud 'lords' of the tower (including that asshole dad Marisbury Animusphere) could do nothing as I explained the 'rules' and what was expected of them.
Things began proceeding smoothly after I made an object example of a few arrogant magi while rewarding some of the 'good' ones like Waver's students, some side characters I knew of and that cutie pie Olga Marie (she's so cute) with some treasures and compiled magecraft grimoires.
I probably still traumatized everyone but I've also taught them some humility and empathy while I was at it, so I'd say it all balances it out.
I was finally done with all the magi that were in London by the evening and teleported right into the director's office of Atlas, the director of which was currently having a pleasant discussion with his daughter.
"Good evening, you're Zepia Eltnam Atlasia, correct?"
After a brief moment of shock and several futile attempts to activate the office's self-defense mechanisms, he sat back down on his chair and calmly introduced himself properly, "That's correct. Who are you and what are your intentions?"
"That's quite a lot to unpack, as for that… Nazica, Radia, the two of you look terribly exhausted. Young Miss, could you be a dear and get them something to drink?"
I spoke right at his daughter, Sion Eltnam Sokaris, who looked like a much more positive young woman than her Tsukihime timeline counterpart given that Zepia is actually sane and a good guy in the Fate timelines.
The young woman calmly agreed to my 'request' and I turned right back to face the director of Atlas.
I took out the contract I acquired yesterday and placed it right on the table. His eyes widened near imperceptibly before he released a sigh of resignation, "How may we assist you?"
Since the founding of the academy, the Atlas Temple has been bound to cooperate with someone who possesses one of seven contracts. Marisbury had one of the contracts himself in the FGO timeline, which is how he got Atlas to provide a central Pseudo-Spiritrons calculation engine to the Chaldea, invent TRISMEGISTUS and also provide the Paper Moon to them. Gray's hometown was another example of a contract holder which allowed them to recruit the current director himself to create the Logos React Replica to seal Rhongomyniad.
I simply found one of the lost contracts for my own use some time ago in order to smooth things out with the superweapon creating organization.
"Oh, I'm something of an Alchemist myself… I was thinking that we can start with a trade deal."
Chapter 12
Chapter 12
The regular Atlas Alchemist follows the mantra of "Faster, Stronger, More Accurate" and treats their bodies as containers to fill and modify in order to develop their ability to gather information, analyze it and then directly solve any perceived problems.
"We have no need to be the strongest. We create that which is the strongest."
While I don't necessarily agree with their central dogma, I do concede that such specialization makes sense for limited beings in a world like this.
Different worlds have different priorities, after all.
Live in DXD and you'll be working on punching things harder. Live in a world that runs on Shounen rules and you'll need lots of friends to protect to derive even more battle power.
If you live in the Nasuverse where there are rules within rules then maximizing what you can get within and around those rules is just what you're going to do.
Thankfully for Atlas, I had just the solution to their never-ending need for more number-crunching power.
"Does it always stink?"
"That's what happens when you remove the accumulated impurities from one's body, so yeah, it tends to stink a lot."
"I'm not going to try any more of your shady pills!"
I chuckled while absentmindedly waving my arm, cleaning up the black gunk off Sion by erasing the offending material, then handed her a particular artifact that we were using to measure an Alchemist's calculation ability.
"Astounding! A 300% increase in efficiency right from the start-"
Zepia was already quite happy with my specialized body refinement pills that can be made with current Alchemy techniques and ingredients found in this world. Another benefit of my alchemic solution is that it also gave them the ability to draw on and direct mana from the air without magic circuits as if they were still living in the Age of Gods, albeit at a very much weaker extent.
Despite volunteering for the initial test and receiving favorable results, Sion wasn't exactly happy about how it went. I probably should have been more specific about what I meant by 'impurities' better but in the end it wasn't a big deal.
Other than that, I handed them a couple of my decent 'calamity' class weapons, a few useful artifacts and conjured an absurd amount of Photonic Crystals based on the ones I took from the Moon Cell in a particular doomed timeline.
What I requested of Atlas as a whole was pretty reasonable, all things considered. All I wanted was to have a look at absolutely everything they have ever made, any schematics they had (both workable and scrapped), a sample of all their synthetically created materials and all their 'trash' inventions that they've 'disposed' of.
I also tossed them the Pseudo-Spiritron theory and several new measurement devices to improve their ability to observe the world.
Compared to the Magi in the Clock Tower, the alchemists were pretty decent when they're not going full mad scientist since they had a good Director (that actually cared about humanity) to keep them on track.
Most of them couldn't enact any magecraft and their knowledge was largely specific to this world's laws so there was no need to plunder them for it. I only needed a glimpse into what they've worked on for inspiration purposes.
Take, for example, the Black Barrel, which imposes the concept of 'natural life span' on otherwise immortal beings. The Black Barrel is made out of the Fifth True Theoretical Element and disintegrates every instance of Grain and Ether it comes into contact with.
While there are similar analogs to those substances in other worlds, the Black Barrel's functions were ultimately optimized for use in the Nasuverse, and would only have partial effectiveness in other universes. However, upon copying that superweapons schematics and understanding it's concept further, I could just create and customize Black Barrels to deal with different immortal beings across the multiverse.
Granted, it will still require a lot of research, time, and effort to make it work perfectly against every new foe. But it'll be worth it when I have to deal with enemies outside my weight class.
It took me three whole days to finish my work at Atlas, when I went to pick up Nazica and Radia from wherever they were left at, I found them fast asleep behind a desk with several stacks of paper filled with hand-written notes.
I wrapped the cute sisters up with a thick fluffy blanket while shaking my head, "I'll have to teach you two how to use a computer and a scanner."
"If I earned a quarter for every time I heard that being said to a Magus then I'll be a very rich man." A rough yet amused response rang out from the borrowed office we were using.
I took one look at the old man and concurrently cast over a hundred spells to fix his horrid condition, "Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg. You're the biggest medical mess I have ever seen. I hope you're fine with being human again."
The old man that had suddenly reverted back to his prime blinked a couple of times, before chuckling softly with his eyes closed, "Ah, this takes me back. No, I have no such problems. Thank you. Are you going to ask for anything?"
"Not particularly. I already have enough practice in handling different worlds and I have a tendency to heal anyone in front of me… unless the person is above the line on the hot-evil scale."
He smiled and said, "I'm flattered."
"You're clearly on the opposite end of evil. It's only natural to help out."
"So what you've done at the Clock Tower counts as 'helping' then? And Pandora's Box? Really?"
"There was no true lasting damage and nothing of value was lost." Zelretch muttered 'debatable' under his breath, "And besides, they can't be that stupid."
He rolled his eyes while saying, "You don't believe that."
I raised my hands in mock surrender, "Guilty as charged. But hey, I'm sure with enough Counter Force interference things will work out just fine. Besides, I won't be making anything worse, especially since I won't be able to visit this timeline again personally without having Counter Guardians hunting my ass down."
We had a pleasant discussion after that about various timeline matters before we started trading jokes and spoke about our personal lives.
When he brought up his granddaughter's (Arcueid) issues with her vampiric instincts endangering her current boyfriend (lucky bastard) I was quick to offer him an artifact that I made after researching Zepia's dead apostle condition that would suppress them.
In return, he gave me the designs for a Kaleidostick and a quick look at his Jeweled Sword.
Huh… maybe I could give one Kaleidostick to my in-laws' "Auntie Sona" or Serafall, once I subdued Trihexa for materials and free the sealed faction members there.
Even if they aren't directly related to Issei's family I can still reinforce my position as the 'best son-in-law' if I gain the favor of their external support groups.
A few months later…
It is a common story for powerful cultivators to have a 'mortal arc' where they learn to live among mortals and learn truths from simple living, sometimes it's because they are just tired from all the fighting, or they are looking for that next big breakthrough to the next realm by gaining new insights.
After the 'eventfulness' of the Grail War (that I technically participated in for only a couple of minutes max), the Clock Tower raid, Atlas research exchange program and many occasions where I slayed monsters lurking in all sorts of places in the world it's safe to say that I've become the equivalent of an 'old monster' at the peak of the mortal world looking for new insights to solidify a perfect breakthrough to the next realm.
Spoiler: Fiore
[img: https/i./skuYAak.jpg]
"Almost there… yes!"
Taking the time to watch Fiore regain her ability to walk was one of my favorite pastimes.
It was like a diluted version of a former genius Cultivator getting crippled only to rise up like a phoenix after a major event (like getting their engagement annulled by their fiance), only, the order and circumstances are completely different. Even so, Fiore's progress was a reminder of the fragility of living beings and their tenacity to overcome their circumstances.
It was a simple aspect of living that I had lost touch with a long time ago.
"Dio? You're here again."
"The traffic in New York is terrible at these times so I came to pick you up."
"You used that excuse just two days ago, do you read them off a list or something?"
"Hahaha, of course I do. Anything more absurd would be grounds for you to call the police on me."
"Ufufu, such a shameless stalker!"
Despite her words Fiore had still taken my hand without hesitation. Though my remarks may come out as perverted or flirty at times, she knew that I would never behave in an ungentlemanly fashion with her.
Unless she desired it, of course.
"This isn't my floor."
"I thought you wanted to collect a package from your neighbors?"
"Ah yes, thank you for the reminder."
Fiore rang the doorbell until the door was opened by our mutual neighbor.
"Good afternoon Fiore, your package is just over there."
"Thank you Radia, for holding unto it for me."
The Pentel sisters had relocated to the same apartment complex for safety reasons after my stunt. Airi, Artemis and Alfia gave me a good scolding for getting the two 'bystanders' involved on a whim, though they also said that it was good that I was taking responsibility for them.
Since they were counted as 'accomplices' to my 'crimes' (Zelretch wasn't going to take action for or against me on behalf of the Mage's Association, as we agreed upon) I had decided to take the two sisters as my apprentices in magic, much like I unofficially did with Fiore.
"No worries. Oh, Dio, my sister has something to say to you."
"Is she still mad about Kaleidostick Jade? She's going to yell at me again, isn't she?"
"Most likely. The 'magical girl outfit' you designed is… exceptionally risque, after all."
I had gifted them both with my own crafted Kaleido-Sticks for their own protection yesterday, Nazica went on a shooting spree that would make Nanoha proud once she got a good look at her transformed outfit. Radia took it a lot better as it turns out that she's a closet pervert.
That said, Nazica didn't have the chance to vent her anger today, as I, Dio, had the courage to hide in Fiore's apartment!
"Don't sound so proud of it! You can't just slap the word 'courage' unto anything and make it sound like a good thing."
"Not with that attitude you can't!"
"Try me."
Fiore really makes me want to tease her when she crosses her arms challengingly like that.
"The courage to lie to your lover."
"Don't you do that every day?"
"Nonsense. They always hear the truth from me, of course, I don't tell them everything. I am a busy man, after all."
"This is why you get scolded…"
"Next one! The courage to admit defeat."
"… That isn't entirely bad if you understand that you are way out of your depth. It also gives off the impression of a strategic retreat."
"See, you're getting it! The courage to betray your friends!"
"That's just standard backstabbing which happens in the Magus world all the time!"
"Not necessarily. If this was a manga or anime then characters like that are usually trying to protect their friends in secret. For the record, I never betrayed any of my friends… intentionally."
"You could have left out the last part…" Fiore looked particularly irritated at me for a short while before she sighed and said, "Very well, you win. I have the courage to admit defeat, after all."
I clutched my heart as if struck by an invisible arrow.
"H-how could this be?! I won the battle but lost the war."
After sharing some laughter together I started to inquire about Fiore's spellwork and a missing animal.
"Timmy? I had one of the homunculi maids' send him over to Caules. My brother will need the extra protection after a certain someone's stunt."
Fiore gave me the stink eye, making me grin in return.
"Wow, whoever caused so much trouble for your brother must be a real idiot huh?"
"The idiot is right in front of me. Honestly, I once thought you were some unfathomable god-like magician, but it turns out you're like one of those powerful do-gooders with no common sense."
"I do have common sense, I just elected to not use it when it can save me trouble. Ah, your spell circle is…"
"I'm switching the spell during the middle of its formation."
"Not bad. It will be a good trick if you can do it in under a millisecond for higher tier fights."
"I'm not practicing magic to fight, this is to improve my focus and train my visualization abilities."
"That's a good idea… ooh! This is a new spell?"
"It's for descaling fish!"
Fiore looked excited about the mundane spell, I couldn't help but share in her feelings as I too, liked utility spells just like this one.
"Oooh! That's super convenient. I can see a lot of potential in this…"
I may have my peak-mortal knife skills but if I ramp up her spell a bit more then I could use it to descale sea serpents and dragons!
"I feel the same way! I'm thinking of making a complete set of spells just for surviving in the wilderness and rebuilding civilization from nothing!"
Supervising her with her spellwork and engraving the marvelous smile on her face when she succeeds makes all this effort worth it.
"Haha, I didn't take you for a prepper."
"It's not like that! I just thought it would be appropriate to make spells that trace the steps of human civilization."
"I'm pretty sure you would have to start with even simpler spells then, but as long as you're having fun then that's what matters."
"Ufufu, like I thought, you understand my sentiment quite well, don't you?"
"When I can afford to, I try to make and cast spells for fun as well."
The only problem is that my type of fun involves getting stronger, building greater wonders, or killing a future enemy.
Watching someone that grew up in a brutal Magus environment yet still love magic for its innate wonders fills me with a sense of joy and a desire to protect this feeling.
"What's wrong?" I must look really weird by smiling at her like this.
"Nothing. I just thought that it would be good if everyone can enjoy magic like you do." I sighed and started complaining a bit about the state of magical associations across different universes, "I don't need to say much about this world, but in some worlds, magic is all about power and its potential in war, in my world and some other worlds-" Like the ToAru universe, "-it's about using magic as a means to an end to achieve one's unfulfilled wishes or a certain status. Which reminds me that I'll need to politely refuse my mother-in-law's invitation to their magician's associations…"
Kurenai wasn't the only one trying to get me to join their organization or be associated with them. Outside of the Grigori, Le Fay Pendragon has been one of the most vocal among my in-laws in becoming a member of the Golden Dawn, which she rejoined after having her status as a terrorist (during those teenage years) rescinded.
"Why don't you just make your own? If you can overpower the entire Clock Tower here then I'm sure you have the ability to make an association of your own."
Fiore's suggestion was like a hammer of inspiration striking my cranium of stagnation!
Or just another one of those Cultivator enlightenment moments, but nonetheless, she raised a damn good point!
"That's it! That's what I'll do. It's about time I create my own Sect!"
"You mean associat-"
I cut her short and earnestly made a request to her as I grabbed hold of her hands, "Fiore, why don't you come with me and walk the path of magic for fun! Please? Say yes, come on, this offer won't be here forever. We're leaving in around two weeks time"
"Heeeh?! Well, I mean… I did send Timmy away thinking that it would be alright to follow along with you… but…"
"I'll sweeten the pot. I'll make you my right-hand woman, you get to have your own cool title and everything. Don't worry about your lack of combat power in my crazy world, I'll handle everything and will make sure no one would dare to offend me."
"I was more concerned about my own qualifications."
"It's fine, everyone starts from somewhere."
"T-then I shall accept on the condition that I have the right to veto key decisions that will affect the direction and prestige of your organization."
Ah, as expected of the Magus heiress training, she wasn't going to let me run wild with it after seeing what I've done to the Clock Tower. She'll be a competent Patriarch, I mean, Matriarch of my newest sect yet!
It shouldn't take me much effort to bring along the Pentel sisters as 'Elders' to my sect either. After a week of staying angry at me, the pair had started to warm up to me and eventually, became good friends of mine (and my women) and turned into excellent disciples.
"Yahoo! I have my first member for my Peerless Heavenly Spell Sect!"
"Denied. Think of a different name."
I got vetoed immediately despite following all the sect naming rules by inserting a qualifier, adjective and noun before the word 'sect'.
After giving Caules and our other acquaintances a head's up, we all packed our things as we traveled back to our designated homeworld. The first thing Airi did was to head home and take over from the paper clone I left behind while I settled everyone back down in my mansion.
I'll be putting some effort into avoiding Issei since I would rather not 'be forced to' run away to another world so soon, especially when everyone wants to settle down properly for now.
Thankfully, I had plenty of guestrooms and could fit everyone in my home just fine.
Once I caught up with affairs from my own paper clones, I made many more new clones at even greater power levels now that my Cultivation had advanced by leaps and bounds, then set them off to do even more work and grind my cooking skills.
"… I can't sleep. Something feels a bit off."
Now that my 'divine senses' have advanced to the point where I could sense the very fabric of reality and the laws that make up this world with great clarity I have become a great deal more sensitive to any 'noise' formed by distortions within the world's natural order.
The textures of the Nasuverse was one thing, but the sheer amount of different afterlife systems running in the background was annoying as hell. I'll just have to get used to it for now, I guess… at least until I can take over control of all of it and consolidate it into one system that properly allocated souls to their respective afterlives.
It will benefit the world a lot since a smoothly run end-to-end system will be less 'buggy' than what I'm feeling right now and-
"Oh fuck, what the hell is that noise?!"
-I leaped out of my bedroom in my pajamas and ran to the source of the loud distortion.
It was in a hospital, a quick check showed that it originated from a newborn baby… oh… Oh, so that's it! It was a Sacred Gear bestowal upon birth, but it wasn't just any kind of Sacred Gear, it's one of those 'new Longinus' types.
I see… yeah, fuck that. I'm not going to let all these supernatural systems and everything that the dead Biblical God in this world has set up clog up my senses with badly formatted 'data' and chug along like a dying legacy computer.
Well, may as well start with the big one.
Guess it's time to invade Heaven, I'm sure everyone will understand that I'm doing this for a good cause.
Chapter 13
Chapter 13
Until my recent jaunt to the Nasuverse I had never entertained the idea of creating a true 'trump card' worthy technique using the energy I cultivated as my 'magic' power and aptitude was far greater.
That changed when I reached the peak of my 'mortal realm' and half-step into the 'immortal realm' equivalent in my Cultivation. While my prowess as an 'Archmage' was still many times greater than that of a Cultivator with the best possible method, and that was after the maximum amount of magic I could output had increased massively thanks to my breakthroughs, there were still a lot of things that I could not achieve with just magic or manipulating some 'laws' at my current level.
I was well aware that, even in the Nasuverse, there were still a handful of beings that I could not hope to face at my level even if I had more destructive power and variety in conceptual abilities than they did. Most of my magical abilities were still within the realms of what could be achieved within that universe, or more specifically, by the 'Root' and any alien god capable of threatening any timeline's existence without much trouble.
I would lose if I faced any of those threats head-on. There were two ways I could have gone about this, the first was to create a masterpiece of a weapon that could allow me to punch above my weight class, and the second was to create a technique to do the exact same thing.
The first could be stolen, the second option was just a little more secure, even if it had more output limits than the first.
And so I devised two techniques that, while still incomplete, would allow me to either wrest control over the entire universe for a short time and use its power to supplement me in defeating my enemy… or render any sort of power reliant on the local laws of the universe or support from beyond the universe, null and void.
The latter was created to suppress invading gods, beings of great power formed after the creation of the universe and beings that relied on external authority or support like other 'main characters' like existences with cheat abilities, especially any 'System' sort of power.
As for the former technique, my incomplete [Unified-Realm, Divine Augmentation] Ascendant God Art would combine the breadth and depth of all my comprehended laws to create a temporary tiny universe within myself, then use my 'Divine Sense' as a bridge to connect the universe under my control and the universe I was targeting, thereby connecting my 'Divine Sense' and powers to it.
From that point onwards it was a matter of transposing the absolute control of my own universe unto the targeted universe, which lets me use all my abilities wherever my divine sense can reach in the universe, simply put, everywhere.
Of course, it has its limitations. I am still limited to my current abilities and whatever power the universe can afford to support me with. Unless it's a 'do or die' scenario, taking a significant amount of energy would have far-reaching consequences that will not be worth dealing with.
As I was currently focused on using my [Unified-Realm, Divine Augmentation] as a way to be in a minor sub-realm (in this case, Heaven) and have the results of my actions be imposed upon the universe undetected while minimizing reality distortions, this meant that my 'Divine Sense' and mental focus would be wholly focused on the task ahead.
Just because my Divine Sense could encompass the entirety of the universe doesn't mean it should, nor does it mean my mental focus becomes infinite and enables me to keep track of every single phenomenon in the universe happening at every moment.
That would only have been possible to an extent if I was at a much higher realm or could tap into the universe's consciousness to boost my mental powers.
Why don't I use the second method then? Well, the problem isn't that this DXD universe doesn't have a consciousness… The problem is that it does!
"-OPPAI! BREASTS! TITS! BOOBS! OPPAI! OPPAI! CHEST! BOOBIES! KNOCKERS! OPPAI! MELONS! HEAVENLY PEAKS! OPPAI! Ass-OPPAI!"
AND IT'S FUCKING CONTAMINATED THANKS TO ISSEI HYOUDOU!
I would legitimately get brain damage if I linked my mind with this universe's consciousness!
My father-in-law completely ruined the debut of my deeply profound Ascendant God Art! Damn you Issei, how dare you ruin my efforts unintentionally by spreading your perverseness!?
If I don't repay this frustration three-fold then I'm not Dio Dorana!!!
I took a deep breath and cycled my energies around my body, expelling my irritation that could have caused me to vomit blood out of anger.
I didn't have much time to waste, this technique was energy-intensive and I could only keep it up for an hour or so, my time limit might end up even shorter since I needed to dedicate some energy to defend my mind from potential mental pollution arising from the universe's perverted consciousness. It would take a good night's rest to recover the sheer amount of energy I was using for this task, a peaceful rest that I could only get if I dealt with this one major source of chaotic distortions.
Granted, I could just jump to another world and stay in a hotel there whenever I want to rest, but I wasn't going to leave a problem so close to home unattended and as a potential source of future distractions at crucial moments. And don't get me started with the possible fallout when the system inevitably collapses from the overwhelming number of bugs and glitches… Waiting to get 'permission' from the angels that clearly cannot run Heaven optimally would take too much time given how notorious they are for their resistance to change.
Since the Angels are all about forgiveness these days (they let bygones be bygones with the Devils for God's sake!) I may as well go ahead with my plans regardless of their opinions. Besides, it's not like they can do anything to me, and if they tried something?
Then I would show them the immensity between Heaven and Earth!
… Anyways, in conclusion, there was no good reason for me to tough it out or weaken my own 'divine senses' for the time being since it would just leave us vulnerable to potential threats. The safety of the ones I love is more important than my momentary convenience and inner peace.
And so I got to work.
I gave a cursory 'glance' at the first four 'Heavens', then took about half a minute to browse through all the data stored in the research facilities of the Fifth Heaven, committing it all to memory for a review some other time.
I scanned through the near-empty Sixth Heaven, the current 'core' where the Seraphs resided, then frowned as I realized that the only tenant was Gabriel and that this was the normal state of affairs for her.
All the replacement Seraphs were reincarnated angels that still had strong connections to the Church and attachments to human civilization, as such, they mainly operated from Earth and only stayed in Heaven on occasion. While this wasn't necessarily a bad thing since they weren't disconnected with their humanity, it meant that Heaven's current leader was bereft of companionship amongst her kin that shared a similar status to her as of late.
My body reformed within the Sixth Heaven in front of the most beautiful woman I had ever laid my eyes down, who had fallen asleep on a throne-like chair after overworking herself.
… No Dio! Focus on her circumstances, not her appearance!
Kuh, damn, Gabriel's exactly the type of woman I would have slaughtered billions for…
I regained my calm and investigated the situation.
Just like her brother Michael, the current leader of Heaven, Gabriel, had trouble handling God's legacy and Heaven's affairs despite the additional helping hands in the form of reincarnated angels. While the situation on the ground was a lot better thanks to the general peaceful state of affairs, Heaven was still as busy as ever, with most of the crucial responsibilities falling into the delicate hands of the sole remaining original great seraphs as she was the only person capable of making any sense of God's System.
Seriously, where are the rest of the Seraphim? Shouldn't Metatron be done with his ninja training already?
A quick search by specifically targeting certain aura frequencies allowed me to find them. It looks like they have taken up responsibilities within the global supernatural alliance or have other missions elsewhere. As expected, a long race's sense of time differs greatly from my own, a few years of only visiting 'home' in Heaven on occasion is considered short for them.
I sighed and contemplated the oddly familiar sensation swelling in my heart.
That lonely expression… It reminds me so much of myself, especially back during my younger days. Until I met Airi I had spent almost all my time improving myself for the sake of my plans and doing the bare minimum to keep up the facade of a good son in front of my parents.
There were days where I would just collapse on the floor exhausted from working on an artifact, comprehending new laws, or casting several complex spells that could give me headaches back when I was weak.
I had only overcome those problems when my Cultivation reached the point where I could subsist without food, water, and sleep.
It only made me feel lonelier than ever.
"Rest well, sweet angel."
Retrieving one of my 'Comfy Warm Blanket' artifacts that I made for the ladies that followed me on my adventures, I gently wrapped it around her sleeping form and then took my leave.
Manifesting my form within the Seventh Heaven, a large realm of light-filled with space-time cracks at odd places, with several magical metal wonders fused with the realm and a golden throne right in the center of everything.
This was the previous home of God, and right now, the current home to the Sacred Gear System and God's System, both of which desperately needed a huge software patch and hardware upgrades.
I expressed how impressed I was with a whistle after completing a cursory inspection of both systems later. To think that the core of these systems could extend beyond this universe if required… it looks like this iteration of DXD's Biblical God is not simple!
I'm even inclined to think that this version of God may just be a tiny remnant soul of the main 'God' from a much higher realm that decided to adopt/protect the locals out of compassion.
The main reason being that there was a strong concentration of Laws utilized in the creation of the Systems… Laws that were not dominant across this universe, such as 'Creation' and 'Transmigration'.
I will have to add that to my list of investigations to conduct in the future, for now, I need to focus on upgrading this thing. A few paper clones and several simultaneous conjurations of photonic crystals later and I had the information storage overhaul procedure settled.
I couldn't conjure magical metals so outright replacing the 'hardware' of the systems wasn't feasible, what I could do, however, is perform large scale alteration and reinforcement on the material so that it would be enchanted to a higher state for a couple of centuries.
Now then, time to work on the bugs, glitches, code, and some quality of life improvements.
I moved towards the Throne of God and sat right on it to fully access the system, the protective spells and restrictions were of no consequence since anyone with the right amount of law comprehension and power could access it. As I was right now, my comprehension of all the laws far surpassed the level required to create and operate these systems, the only thing stopping me from creating my own was the lack of time, resources, knowledge, and experience.
All of which I will need to put in effort into resolving.
Let's see, Sacred Gears, I will start with making it a requirement for users to have high 'luck' to reduce the number of fodder characters with Sacred Gears. They don't need to be super special, they just need to reach the rank of 'eye-catching minor character'.
God had already placed a system similar to what I had in mind using the subsidiary laws of Karma and Transmigration. What I did was to expand on the laws that governed 'luck' and 'fate', then started making adjustments to the Sacred Gear assignment criteria, increasing the chances of those with a propensity to use their power for a greater purpose to receive Sacred Gears.
I resolved the problem of Sacred Gear users losing control and the Balance Breaker glitch by modifying the 'desire' (strong emotion) based evolution system with a skill tree-like system.
Relatively weaker Sacred Gear users will have their Sacred Gears starting off at a lower part of the 'skill-tree' regardless of the Sacred Gear's individual power. If they don't have the willpower or strength to use a Sacred Gear's full power then they won't be able to use it unless they desperately need it and will have to work hard to unlock more abilities. This system also lets them create more 'sub-species' by evolving alongside the user's requirements and talents as they make overall improvements to their proficiency.
Once they reach the 'late-stage' of mastery they can then breakthrough to the Balance Breaker stage by accumulating a large amount of desire/willpower or train more to reach 'peak' mastery of a few Sacred Gear usage paths.
With the hard part done, I started to fix the buggy Sacred Gears, add some new ones that I made in my free time and perform an immediate recall of all Sacred Gears that were sealed away for study and weren't in use. Everyone and their mother had an Artificial Sacred Gear already so there was no strong reason to horde the artifacts meant for humanity in my point of view.
Under normal circumstances, those Sacred Gears would be out of reach of the System, but thanks to my upgrades and my divine sense empowering it's search functions, I could easily find those lost Sacred Gears and bring them back to where they belonged.
This took just over 20 minutes to accomplish, leaving me with less than 10 minutes to upgrade God's system before my changes will be detected.
I quickly worked on creating various automations and bots that would help Gabriel categorize similar prayer and miracle requests easily then had all the most frequently used solutions coded in as templates that she could reuse and modify slightly whenever she wanted.
The 'revelation' and 'guidance' requests were also automated after I used the centuries of data collected to create a 'divine conversational assistant', then took some principles of machine learning and a few laws that governed relevant human nature to set up a new system to give Gabriel insights and advice on update the assistant based on changing times and believer concerns.
After that, I did an overall upgrade job on the connectivity and strength of the system, then plugged in some advanced magical UI to make the system easier to use and access by all the angels.
Of course, not everyone has the same access to the system, leaving Gabriel as the Super Admin and the Seraphim as ordinary admins. Normal angels should be able to request assistance from God's system anywhere in the universe, though it will largely be for information requests or martial support if they faced a powerful enemy all of a sudden.
Sensing my near-empty internal energies, I released my grip on the universe and ended the [Unified-Realm, Divine Augmentation] technique. My 'Divine Senses' was now limited once more to several hundred thousand kilometers from my body.
"Looks like all the angels are sensing something amiss, now then, the finishing touches…"
I transformed the magical energy from my supernatural energy reactor to match the frequency of the original Biblical God, then refined it further to my usual magical density, before pushing my nigh-endless reserves into both the systems!
The entirety of the Seventh Heaven shone with endless light as my power coursed through the Throne of God.
All the systems were restored to maximum functionality and then increased in performance by many times over in the span of a minute. The cracks and tears within the realm were all sealed up by my power, the weakened protective spells were strengthened to their peak, then my power began to overflow through the rest of the heavens.
"Ah yes, finally, some peace and quiet." I still have to solve the various afterlife systems but those were less distracting and much more 'quieter' than the legacy system I just upgraded.
Feeling that the strongest angels have gathered to investigate, I let out a cold snort, "Hmph! I dare say this realm has never been stronger. Ah, good, they've arrived."
I tapped my fingers on the hand rest and opened the doors to the Seventh Heaven, allowing Gabriel, a few newly arrived Seraphs and various Ultimate-Class angels to fly in.
"Excellent response. I had just completed my work and was about to invite you all to be enlightened on my changes."
Heaven's most beautiful woman immediately adopted a careful approach and was about to engage in the time-honored tradition of diplomacy-
"How dare you sit on our father's throne!?" "Capture the trespasser!" "You violated God's most sacred place-!"
-which was completely ruined by some hot-head angels behind her that decided to throw out light spears and countless spells was a great idea.
I wagged my pinky and erased all their attacks before they could reach me. There was one angel fuming with righteous anger that flew up to me with a light sword, so I entertained his attempt by allowing the attack to shatter ineffectually against my eyelids.
I placed my hand on that one brave angel's shoulder and gave him a patient smile, "Are you done?"
Utilizing my remaining internal energies to manifest my mastery of laws into my magical aura, I then suppressed everyone gathered in the Seventh Heaven with my power, forcing them to their knees.
A moment later, I released the pressure and allowed them to stand, "Now that we have established the fact that harming me is an impossibility, allow me to debrief you all on the changes to the systems."
Then I did the convenient thing and shot them all with energy beams that directly transmitted a 'knowledge package' containing the highlights of my changes directly into their brains.
Yeah, I was getting too tired to talk, so I may as well pick the expedient route.
"If you would all say 'Menu' or 'Home' then you will be able to instantly access the new Heaven user interface by expending a bit of your energy." I opened up a holographic-like window in front of me then flipped it around so everyone can take a look at it, "Like so. You will be able to access this in all realms where the System reaches, which is, pretty much everywhere if you remember that a devil's weakness to light is carried across every realm including the ones owned by other pantheons. Those weaklings never comprehended the greater laws much and could never sense the system's reach, I suppose that still applies in the present."
I ended up muttering about the 'power idiot' natures of most gods in this universe, and then suddenly realized that every one of these supernatural beings could pick up on what I just said under my breath.
"Father?! Is that truly you?" "I can't believe it, I had eyes but could not recognize our Creator." "Hahaha! Father, you too have mastered Ninjutsu, to hide from us for so long…" "Why did you not return to us till now?" "Can I get a hug?" "I will get the first hug!" "Out of the way!"
The original Seraphim and a couple of other original angels were already jumping to the wrong conclusion, while the reincarnated angels were just offering up their prayers in awe and supplication.
"Wait, stop! This is a misunderstanding! I'm human, really!"
I yelled out as I dodged their attempts to catch me in a good hug.
They paused for a moment after checking their lie detector, before Metatron suddenly exclaimed, "I see! Our Heavenly Father had reincarnated into a human!"
Stop agreeing among yourselves! And stop watching those anime featuring cute girls that were reincarnations of famous ninjas in history, Metatron!
"Look, I don't remember anything about being god, alright?"
"That means you just lost your memories but your instincts led you back here to help us in our time of need!"
I'm seriously getting too tired to deal with this.
"If I had any memories of past lives then I only remember my human ones so give it a rest."
"So you admit that you have reincarnated before?"
"Yeah, I did. Oh no…"
Oh crap, I let that one slip!
Note to self, explain that to Airi tomorrow before more drama ensures.
"Um… I don't have many memories of my previous life-" Which was true since my perfect memory only applied to my second life, "-and it is impossible for me to be the God you knew."
Several alerts flashed red in front of their improved Heaven UI pointing out my words as a lie!
What the hell?! How is that a lie? I said it was impossible and it's… true?
Did I really believe that? No way…
I suddenly realized that I didn't truly believe it was an impossibility because I have read too many Xianxia stories, inspected enough of the multiverse, and had real suspicions of the Biblical God being more than he initially appeared upon inspecting his systems!
The story of a Xianxia MC suddenly turning out to be the reincarnation of a much higher god is actually not that rare. Well, the circumstances of the MC's lineage not being so simple isn't rare, the specific part about being a reincarnated god is very rare.
But it's been done before and I wouldn't put it beyond the being that sent me here to give me a surprising backstory or retroactively applying details to my soul that make it appear as if I was a reincarnated god all along!
"Look, Father is remembering now!"
"No, I'm not." I spoke firmly and then sighed, "But I am considering the possibility that I had more past lives than I could have imagined. Even so, you should just proceed as you have always done, if it turns out to be the case then you can count it as a pleasant surprise, until then, I do not wish to get your hopes up for nothing."
There is not much benefit for me being a reincarnation of the Biblical God anyway. It's not like there are many relevant legacies around for me to grab hold of.
Hmm, it seems like they're starting to see some sense, good, good…
It was at this moment that I found myself caught off guard by the sudden appearance of boobs right in front of me.
I sucked in a cold breath of air as Gabriel smiled brilliantly and thanked me, "I truly thank you from the bottom of my heart. My brothers and sisters couldn't tell, but as the administrator of the systems, I could understand the improvements you made instantly. It feels like a great burden has been lifted off my shoulders."
Being completely honest with myself, I totally did not expect to be thanked by the angels after invading their most sacred part of Heaven. I predicted that they would show their appreciation a couple of years later when they calmed down, but I didn't expect that I would get some sincere appreciation so quickly.
I felt overwhelmed by her kindness and understanding, it took my great effort to withhold the urge to yell 'Gabriel Maji Tenshi' when that would be extremely redundant.
Her beautiful expression gave me a burst of energy and I matched her smile with an equally radiant one, "I'm glad that I could help. I came up here just thinking about doing the right thing-" The 'right thing' for me and my family before eventually getting around to making the system work better for the people that needed it most, "-as quickly as possible. I was willing to cause some trouble if it will solve the short and long-term issues. But I think it's worth it knowing that you won't need to overwork yourself to the point where you fall asleep behind your desk again."
Gabriel had the cutest blush on her face and shyly said, "Y-yes! I will endeavor to not repeat my brother's bad habits!"
… Did she just innocently diss Michael's workaholic behaviors? Nevermind, I'll think about that later.
"That's good. You should take better care of yourself. Ah, wait, I have just the thing." I transferred all sorts of artifacts and helpful potions into a small interspatial ring, then handed it over to Gabriel, "This interspatial ring is filled with lots of things to help you work and rest better."
"Ah, thank you very much! I'll treasure it along with the blanket you gave me."
"Ahaha… was it that obvious it was me?"
"I reviewed the recordings when I woke up to find who gave me something so comfy. While I couldn't see you I could still hear your voice."
"So it was like that…"
My intent to hide my presence completely using the technique was bypassed because I spoke to her without really wanting to hide my words?!
I wouldn't have made such a mistake if I had more experience in using my technique.
I blame Issei, it's all his fault for the inane 'Oppai' chant battering against my mental defenses!
"I will wait for things to calm down for a bit, but if you all would forgive me for doing all of this so suddenly, then I wouldn't mind helping to improve Heaven's defensive mechanisms among other things. Oh right, you all can have these artifacts for research too. I also have these Sacred Gear prototypes that need some dragon cores to work, I'll leave them with you all to do as you wish."
"Oh! You forgot to share your name with us!"
"Just call me Dio! I was born a human, you can just check the system for further details."
I dropped a whole pile of my 'decent' weapons, defensive artifacts, Sacred Gears, and 'knick-knacks' that I made on a whim before teleporting right back home to sleep.
If I spend any more time in Heaven they might just convince me to create a new angel for them since I was too tired to argue. I could totally have done it easily but Airi would have gotten mad at me for making a child without considering the full consequences of it.
That said, if I did just that, I would use Gabriel and my own energies as a template so that I could hook her in with the 'adopted daughter' cliche.
I woke up the next morning completely refreshed and ready to tackle the day.
"Hmm? What are all those presences outside my house?"
I looked out the window to see Gabriel and well over a dozen angels camping outside my mansion. Upon noticing my gaze, Gabriel happily waved 'hello' towards me, which I dumbly reciprocated before grabbing for my ringing phone.
"Darling, mother Irina is smugly pointing at her conspiracy theorist-like board that's about you being the reincarnation of the Biblical God. Is there something I should know about?"
"Yeah, I was just about to call you about that, but I ended up using most of my energies last night and really needed some sleep."
"Hmm, hmm, did this have to do with breaking into Heaven? And why there are angels in front of my house staring at me weirdly?"
"Wow, that's a shame, the angels looking at me from outside my mansion are all smiles… Gabriel especially."
"I take my eyes off you for a few hours and you've already gotten a start with Gabriel of all people? Ahaha… I really don't know whether I should laugh or groan now…"
Chapter 14
AN: That time I actually turned a mundane scene and 'realm level' monologue into a fucking Xianxia styled chapter. Kuh… I'm courting death.
Chapter 14
Over thirty people were invited into my house to enjoy an early breakfast.
I already had five people (excluding myself) that were living in my home on a permanent basis so that was an automatic plus five when I include Artemis, Alfia, Fiore, Radia and Nazica.
From Heaven's faction, I counted Gabriel and two of her Brave Saints (both of which were Seraph level), Griselda Quarta and Mirana Shatarova. Then there was Dulio Gesualdo, Metatron, and his 'Jack' Kiyotora Shinra and another ten angels that weren't noteworthy in my eyes but I felt compelled to invite them in any way since they were standing outside my house for well over two hours.
The usual culprits from the Hyoudou Family that I called the 'magic research squad' were present as well. Namely Le Fay, Rossweisse, her daughter Helmwige and Kurenai. The latter two could be here since they don't bother attending school, like Airi and I.
Speaking of Airi, she was here too, along with her mother Asia and the rest of the 'church trio', Irina and Xenovia.
The number of in-laws I had invited in didn't stop there as I finally met Rias Gremory and Ravel Hyoudou nee Phenex properly as their husband's 'representative', as my previous actions would have wide ramifications across the entire supernatural community since God was a huge deal back in the day and Issei was the designated 'symbol of peace' equivalent right now, so he needed to be involved in this discussion one way or another.
On a surface glance, it would have appeared as if he had sent Rias and Ravel to confirm some things about me and to express his concerns for the wider supernatural community (that had yet to find out about the latest news from Heaven's rumor mill and official channels), and that he had the foresight to send his wives in his stead to keep things from escalation due to our 'tense' personal relationship.
While Issei Hyoudou has gotten more politically canny, the fact of the matter was that the two devil princesses (or rather Queen's, in a way) had pretty much scolded him to sit his ass down in his office and let them 'handle me' since they knew we would start criticizing each other and escalating in no time.
That was one of their main reasons for coming over, their other main reason, was to finally meet their son-in-law who married one of their precious daughters. They had a generally positive impression of me and I had no intentions of messing it up.
Hence my decision to treat them all to the best breakfast possible!
My reluctance to leave all the mob angels that were patiently waiting for me to wake up also stemmed from this heaven-sent opportunity to further improve my image in everyone's eyes by showing just how generous and compassionate I can be.
That said, I needed to have a dozen paper clones working like madmen in the two minutes I had to receive everyone into my home.
Refurbishing my dining room at the last possible minute was as much of a priority as was preparing a breakfast worthy of true immortals!
In order to host so many people in my dining room at once, I needed to activate the space-time formation arrays installed in my home as one of the hundred defensive arrays for utility purposes. Using my powers to directly expand space would screw up my current defensive schemes (which were pretty outdated now that my power had increased by leaps and bounds) so that option had to be shelved until I can turn my fortress of a home into a Domain ruled by god-like entities.
My clones utilized their master craftsmanship that I had evolved further from my Essence of the Crafter to transform the dining room into a dazzling feast hall with transmutation and a few finishing touches by hand.
The rest of my clones had quickly gathered up ingredients for an English Breakfast from my many secret realms before secluding themselves in the secret realm hidden in a painting with the highest time dilation rate (and absurd power requirements, even for me) of 1000:1 to serve as a kitchen.
When I brought everyone into the refurbished dining room they were all met with the sight of an impossibly beautiful room with their food and drinks already being served by my clones wearing chef and butler outfits. The unmarried females of the room were, at minimum, 'highly intrigued' by the impression given by the cosplaying clones sharing my likeness.
Immediately after taking in the feast for their eyes, the aromatic fragrance of the food and drinks made with some of my best ingredients diffused into the surroundings made them all sniff the air in delight.
Not bad for 'two minutes' worth of work, if I dare say so myself!
And I do dare, because all the work was done by me, quite literally.
I may not be able to use these clones for speeding up my training effectively like the Shadow Clone Technique, but there were many 'pros' to my Paper Clone technique, including the fact that the clones could perform any non-innovative task I was capable of while having no autonomy and couldn't refuse to work as lazy shadow clones could.
"You'll find that your seats have already been arranged accordingly, we'll be having an English full breakfast with ingredients freshly chosen and prepared from my personal realms. You may find more details on the menu printed and placed on each of your seats."
We ended up slightly delayed on the way to the chair because a few angels were on the verge of crying because their 'father' lowered himself to serve them food. Those mainly consisted of the 'pure angels' and none of the more skeptical reincarnated angels.
Speaking of reincarnated angels, Irina Hyoudou nee Shidou was (surprisingly) part of the group that did think I was God's reincarnation and was over the moon about getting to eat food prepared by me. Her prayer of thanks even consisted of a reference to that time when Jesus served his disciples at the Passover.
"H-how could this be? I can feel immense power radiating from the food!"
Rias Gremory was looked at with a "you'll get used to it" look from the Hyoudou 'magic research squad' for her reaction. Speaking of those in-laws, they were being quite rude with all their scanning magic circles recording every detail of my meal!
Just eat it already!
"Mnn! What an aroma! Just smelling it is enough to wake me up!" Ravel had clearly moved on to become a coffee person after working with Issei's hectic schedule for so long.
"Haha, I assure you, drinking it will be far better than just consuming the aroma. This Blaze Heart Spirit Coffee blend is one of my specialties."
Ravel perked up at the odd sight of me speaking normally despite the distance between us, while her supernatural senses would have allowed her to pick up a whisper, my normal volume would have been 'louder' to her ears.
I addressed everyone and waved it off, "I have an enchantment placed that will enable words addressed to any recipient to be heard at the volume intended by the speaker."
Airi, who was seated beside her mother, whispered, "For the sake of my sanity, please enchant our home's dining room with that."
Ah yes, family meals at a harem protagonist's household can be a nightmare.
Asia Hyoudou smiled brightly and echoed her daughter's sentiments with hope in her eyes. I was swiftly bombarded by the rest of the Hyoudou family with requests to add that enchantment to their home.
I greatly appreciated Rias Gremory's opportunistic nature when she said something different by immediately throwing an offer to advertise my special enchantment services in the future.
A few pure angels that could lip-read (excluding Gabriel and Metatron) looked like they were about to shout 'you dare?!' at Rias Gremory for her shamelessness.
I simply chuckled then had my clones respond to everyone (and prevent the angels from escalating) while politely declining my mother-in-law's business offer. Judging by her smile, it looked like she approved of my action and would probably badger me frequently until we got back to the negotiation table.
"Little bro, I can make these meals for you if you let me know ahead of time, remove that magic circle away and eat already." I said to Kurenai and then looked at everyone, "That goes for all of you too, stop admiring the food and start already."
Rampaging Dragon Cow Sausage, Golden Pig Back Bacon, Sturdy Earth Chicken Sunny-Side Up Eggs, Taotie Tomatoes, Rainbow Mushrooms, Sage Herb Bread, and Crimson Blood-Path Understanding Beans served with a cup of Blaze Heart Spirit Coffee.
In Airi's case, she hasn't quite acquired a taste for coffee. so I gave her some Exquisite Soul Orange Juice instead.
At any rate, their reactions were on point and wouldn't be out of place in a cooking manga.
Their eyes sparkled with delight as they continuously gobbled down the meal prepared for them. Half the angels, who were probably used to subsisting on 'ordinary' food and avoided luxurious foods, wept tears of joy as they consumed the meal. The Seraphs did not react in such an over-the-top manner despite their clear enjoyment, Dulio in particular, ate his food at the slowest pace in order to discern its true quality.
For the rest of my guests, the utensils in their hands never stopped moving until the end, where they savored the piping hot coffee containing profound insights into the Laws of Fire. The only people that would get the full benefit from drinking the coffee would be members of my household that had all been taught my brand of magic (which allowed them to slowly develop their native magical systems towards a supernatural reactor like my own) and the basics of Cultivation, allowing them to absorb and contemplate those insights later on to further their Cultivation.
I felt a deep sense of satisfaction with everyone's current manner of eating. The ones that ate without constraints were proof that my cooking has nearly reached that of an Immortal Chef.
"Mnn! Delicious! Hmm, hold on…" Artemis, who was sitting directly to my right (as Airi was sitting with her family, Artemis gets the first wife seat by default), looked at me with a suspicious gaze, "If you could make out meals this satisfying all the time then why didn't you?"
"We all made the decision to split cooking duties equally. 'Cheating' by relying on high-quality ingredients would undermine your growing confidence in your cooking skills and set unrealistic expectations for mealtimes." I answered honestly while not mentioning the times where I had to train my basic cooking abilities by repeatedly preparing immortal-grade ingredients and taste-testing my own dishes until I got it right.
I wasn't about to let my women eat anything less than my best when it came to dishes of the next realm, which was why I didn't let them taste my 'failure' dishes.
"Have I reached the level of the divine dishes you were used to in the realm of the gods yet?" I asked Artemis who was looking at me with pride in her eyes.
"Quite so. It would be only counted among the 'average' graded meals, but it is still a meal fit for divines."
"Hmm, as they say, there are Heavens beyond the Heavens."
I really wanted to say "There's always a bigger fish", but since I'm a Xianxia MC I have to use the appropriate terminology instead. Urgh, maybe I can indulge a bit when I visit Star Wars myself…
"The coffee is wonderful, and if your brewing skills is this good, then you really should try making some wine. I would rather not rely on Soma or the other gods of wine for my supply."
… Come to think of it, I don't remember ever giving Artemis any alcohol before. Airi and I generally abstained from alcohol, my wife did so because she's a 'good girl' when it comes to the strangest laws, while I made sure to remain sober so that I wouldn't let a hint of my not-so-nice thoughts slip out.
My gut feeling says that it's a 'bad' idea to get Artemis drunk… then again, the 'bad' ideas are often the most entertaining ones so I'll do just that.
"Same here. I'd rather not pop by Orario anytime soon, at least, not without Alfia tagging along." I say while narrowing my eyes at the warrior mage that wouldn't visit the people she knew until she had achievements that would not result in her 'losing face'.
"I can't show my face to my Familia, sister, and nephew-" Tch, so close, "-until I have more satisfying stories to share with them." Alfia returned the look as she 'reminded' me to take responsibility and shove her into a situation where her skills could be put to good use.
Personally, I think that she should consider 'up-skilling' for more peacetime skills since she's really sounding like an unsatisfied retired hero that's going through a midlife crisis. Not that I would say that to her face, she is already sensitive enough about her age after having lived with silver hair for so long.
Despite my own gripes, I did agree with her with regards to facing challenges, performing great works and gaining even more power in doing so. In the end, power and wisdom were necessary to surviving the dangers of the multiverse, the pursuit of both while still keeping to one's ideals is essential to a successful life.
"You should get into video games then. Try the Final Fantasy series, who knows, I might just toss you in one of those worlds while you're asleep and eagerly await tales of your accomplishments."
I almost laughed at Alfia's annoyed look, she knows full well that I would actually go through with it, which means she would actually have to start playing video games if she wants to aim for the 'golden ending'.
Well, well, looks like I can teach a fantasy hero some new tricks (video gaming) and have them utilize their life skills without wasting any effort!
Our private conversation was soon interrupted by my in-laws and the various factions gathered together in the room. The first thing we ended up addressing was the 'reincarnated god' part where I reiterated everything the angels and I discussed yesterday for everyone's benefit with the good old memory projection spell.
"So you're actually one of those overpowered reincarnated protagonists that you have always complained about?" Airi grinned slyly in my direction with enough smugness to match Spongebob when he caught Squidward stealing a Krabby Patty.
"It doesn't count. I barely remember who I was in my past life." I quickly answered her when I had the premonition that Rias was going to ask an age-related question, which would make things awkward. "I worked myself to the bone exploring my surprising amount of power and numerous talents until I forgot my old name and a lot of other things."
I wasn't surprised to see Airi taking the revelation so well, after all, our love for one another could never be in doubt! The eventful year we spent together as husband and wife had also prepared her to handle surprises such as these so the only people I had to reassure was everyone else that wasn't part of my immediate household.
Gabriel, on the other hand, seemed to have taken it the wrong way and looked upon me with worry. I quickly reassured her that it wasn't a terrible life, just one that I succeeded too well in setting aside to deal with my new life, to the point where I forgot most details but still retained key impressions of.
The beautiful angel on my left (and a few pure angels) seemed relieved after my clarifications.
With that dealt with, the discussion moved on to how the various factions and supernatural communities would react to the changes to God's System and the Sacred Gear System.
Kurenai essentially summarized the Grigori's POV for the latter system, namely that they would be disappointed with the lack of research material, but would be looking forward to seeing how Sacred Gears develop now that I introduced much more flexibility and stability. Not having to kill Sacred Gear users with a penchant for running amok would make most fallen angels happy, except for the sadistic ones that are looking for an excuse to kill humans (e.g. Raynare), which apparently, was still a thing.
Ravel echoed her son's (technically Akeno's, but the children are all shared within the Hyoudou household) sentiments for the devils, only with less research focus and more on 'recruitment potential' points.
Artemis furrowed brow gave away her confusion, "Hold on, why are Sacred Gears even given to humans if they're going to end up in the hands of non-human races anyways?"
Thankfully, I did not have to give Artemis the exposition scene, since everyone had their own opinion on it. Rias shared the general devil viewpoint (e.g. Greed in collecting shinies, battle potential, etc…) without any shame, Kurenai gave the Fallen Angel's more practical reasons (lowest population, desperately need human agents, etc…), Dulio built up on Kurenai's explanation and then double-downed on how the Angel's were in an even worse position due to the death of God.
"-To sum it all up, unless you have the protection of a magician's association or another faction like Cao Cao's supernatural world policing group, Sacred Gear users will always be sought after and will not be able to live peacefully, especially when they have awakened. The situation isn't as dire as it was from all those decades ago now that we are at peace, but there is no practical reason to change the recruitment playbook. If everyone is treated as an equal partner with terms being fair and adhered to then any recruitment method that does not necessitate a race change is no different from an employment contract."
Le Fay tied everyone's viewpoint up nicely and then introduced the human perspective to it, although, it's fair to say that Le Fay was biased given that she grew up in a prestigious human family that never had to deal with those issues and didn't have a Sacred Gear.
Fiore, Radia, and Nazica were already running some Magus 'calculations' in their head. I didn't have to worry about them falling for anyone's shameless recruitment strategies since I made it very clear that the path I laid out for them would grant them more power and benefits than everyone else's.
Instead, I would look forward to the inevitable flood of idiots trying to recruit the female Magi from another world, so that I could finally beat some 'toads lusting after swans meat' to death.
Artemis wasn't thrilled with the situation, but I whispered some reassurances to her (telepathically) that I would settle the matter in the future.
"This is a waste of time. Everyone here is committed to this 'new era' of peace and co-operation so all this concern about 'poaching talent' and other trivialities is a worry of the past. Unless of course, this is merely a prolonged ceasefire with a secret build-up of forces on all sides…" Alfia's provocation incensed everyone right until she changed tracks and smiled, "-but from all I have heard from Airi about everyone's efforts, I sincerely doubt that is the case."
Alfia didn't seem very concerned since she was born in a world where other races get along and differences were set aside when there was a common goal to work towards (like not letting the dungeon end the world). She understood that while the current situation wasn't ideal, it would still get better in the long run so long as the leaders were genuinely committed to the cause and were competent in working towards it.
And besides…
"Besides, Dio wouldn't allow that to happen."
… I wouldn't let any idiot warmongers, selfish people in important places of power, and relics of a bygone era get in my way of turning this world into a paradise worthy of being dwelled in by Airi, Artemis, and any other women that I would come to love.
I grinned and nodded in agreement to Alfia's words, which further assured Artemis (and Gabriel?) at the same time.
"Rightly so. There's a lot of work to be done in the world, but if everyone does their part then at some point racial divides and old faction conflicts will be a thing of the past." Some adjustments to their education, social values, and media messaging over a long period of time will ensure that happens, which I will be involved in if necessary, "As for the mundane side of things, I'll be handling that. Dealing with pollution, inefficient technologies, and improving resource distribution will be the first thing on my to-do list."
"That sounds like something that everyone in the family would love to pitch in for, but I feel like we ended up digressing a fair bit." Ravel chimed in and brought everyone back to the main agenda, "To sum it up, the Biblical Factions won't be shaken up by the Sacred Gear changes. And for the sake of brevity, I can safely say that by and large, no one really cares about Heaven's System getting an upgrade."
Leave it to best manager Ravel to sort everything out in a clear way!
"-Whether or not my son-in-law is the reincarnated God of the Bible doesn't matter either, the real issue is that some Angels believe that he is and has undoubtedly leaked it to someone else, who will then leak it to someone else until it reaches the factions that felt themselves wronged by or live in fear of the God of the Bible. This involves the Underworld since most devils, old and new alike, believe that if the Biblical God was still among the living, would gather up Heaven's forces and start Great War II. The same applies to the Fallen Angels, albeit to a lesser extent."
"It would be painful to fight such a war again after we made such great friends from all sides." Gabriel had a sorrowful expression as she said those words… while not at all denying that she would have done just that if God commanded her to do so.
The implications were not lost among everyone in the room.
Only Airi, my household (Artemis, Alfia, Fiore, the Pental sisters), the 'magic research squad' and Asia Hyoudou did not show a shred of worry at her statement.
"Well, that's pretty easy to solve. Give me 5 seconds."
I invoke the Transcendent God Art, [Unified-Realm, Divine Augmentation, once more and utilize my existing clones to maximum effect.
Every devil designated with the 'sleeping disease' and any devils within the 'healing range' of those patients were healed instantly.
One second has passed.
I tracked down every injured and sick Fallen Angel and human members of the Grigori in order to restore them back to full health.
Two seconds have passed.
Quickly accessing the system through the Throne of Heaven, I made a couple of adjustments to the system governing the angels.
Four seconds have passed.
Several items were retrieved and placed into one convenient interspatial ring for what I had in mind next.
Five seconds have passed.
The technique ended and left me feeling a little bit 'heavy'. It looks like there's some problems with using it repeatedly in a short time frame, or the imperfections of the technique are finally becoming apparent. It looks like I still need to Cultivate the technique a lot more.
To everyone else, it would have appeared as if I had never left my seat, they were looking at me awkwardly in silence until five seconds had passed.
Gabriel was the first to notice that something was up, "Oh my, everyone, please check your notifications."
Irina, Dulio, Metatron and the other angels proceeded to do just that.
"Mother-in-law, I believe that Sona Sitri is a good friend of yours, correct? Why don't you call her and see if she's checked up on her father's condition?"
"Why would you… oh, I see!"
It's good to know that Rias is quick on the uptake.
"I-It's trending all over Devilnet, many devils inflicted with the sleeping disease have suddenly woken up!" Ravel got the news a lot quicker from her phone, figures that she would be keeping track on social media since she has to handle Issei's branding.
"Technically it's all the devils afflicted by it." I added in casually while drinking some iced chocolate, "I also healed any patients near them, if any. I did the same for many members of the Grigori as well. I'm sure that counts as a start in showing the concerned factions that the rumored reincarnated God, if he did return, is not about to smite them anytime soon."
"No way… you can really do this?" Dulio was the most composed out of all the angels that were still trying to process what was on their Heaven UI, "Angels won't be falling at a single mistake anymore, they get chances to repent just like humans. Angels don't have to worry about 'lust' when having sex so long as they are married in holy matrimony. Th-this is pretty awesome! Man, I already liked you the moment I saw that breakfast, but wow! We have got to hang out sometime!"
"Doesn't seem like it will impact Irina much." Xenovia simply smirked at her long-time partner, "Pretty sure there was nothing 'pure' about what we did in the bedroom."
"X-Xenovia, you idiot! That's totally different!" Irina promptly lectured Xenovia on how proper the 'union' of man and woman is within marriage.
"Just pointing out the fact that it wasn't the case with Angel and Angel marriages, what I did was simply a few patches to rectify the mistake that the last owner of the System probably didn't get around to doing." I quickly contributed to Irina and Xenovia's chat, then continued for everyone's benefit, "As for the grace system, the same logic applies here. If humans get the chance to repent from their sins then I don't see why Angels shouldn't receive the Grace of God either. In this case, they'll get a private warning that they will fall within months if they don't genuinely repent and seek forgiveness, in this case, from Gabriel. Their wings won't blacken during this grace period so that they won't be shamed or judged by their peers and can privately resolve the matter of sin without external pressure."
I was suddenly 'glomped' and received one of the most pleasant hugs in my life.
"Thank you! Thank you so much! Even if you do not know what it means to my brothers and sisters, I can tell you that to partake in the grace of our Father means the world to us!"
Before I could enjoy my situation, I was promptly taught just how much it meant to the angels by way of Metatron and every other pure angel (except Gabriel) started leaping and dancing in front of me like I was in a musical!
I was mortified at the sight!
Please, don't! YAMEROOOOO!
I only want to see beautiful women dancing in front of me, not male angels in priestly garments! I don't want this etched into my perfect memory!
Aaaaaaaah! It's too late, my divine senses won't let me not see it!
… At least I wasn't alone in my circumstances. Kurenai, my little bro, also looked like he wanted to be somewhere else.
I really did not need 2 Samuel 6 to be enacted in my dining room.
Okay, I think I have an idea. I need to take a pill that manifests my memories in place of my mental demons and punch it to death like any Xianxia MC that can't talk about their problems.
The rest of the meeting continued on smoothly after my most recent 'Act of God'.
To reassure communities that Heaven had taken action against in the past like the Faeries. In their case, I gave the Angels some 'gifts' to pass along to them, like my own version of Excalibur (Prototype) and Avalon from the Nasuverse that I made in my free time. Everyone was a little worried about handling a weapon that could output the equivalent of an 'Ultimate-Class' being attack under most conditions (with only a handful of seals released), until I revealed I had at least 16 improved versions stuffed in my inventory, and that I can hand over artifacts at that level of power like trash.
From then on I had the angels compile a more detailed report on every faction that might have some grievances and worries about Heaven so that I can customize some items for them.
Of course, I'm not going to truly 'appease' them or anything, considering that I'm going to arm Gabriel *cough, I mean, Heaven as a whole with enough measures that will make the gifts handed away to everyone look like a bunch of E-Ranked Noble Phantasms trying to scratch Gilgamesh's Golden Armor.
To further ensure that Heaven wasn't missing out on the goodies, I gave them the Ark of the Covenant that I looted from one of the lost Nasuverse timelines, after recalibrating it to my power so that I can smite any mortal that touches it for lore purposes.
They had apparently lost it in the Great War when a spell sent by a devil flung the Ark of the Covenant into the Dimension Gap where it remained lost to this day.
A few people stuck around and spoke with my household to get to know them (and me, by extension). Gabriel mostly stuck to my side, until Airi ran over from where her mother was seated and latched on to my free arm, where they promptly started talking about various things while still holding on to me.
I spotted Fiore looking at me with her adorable flustered 'you pervert' expression. Mmm, that's the good stuff…
Ravel had, at one point, went up to Artemis and asked whether she wanted to meet with the Greek Pantheon of this world. To which Artemis questioned if Zeus and Hermes were still perverts, at Ravel's nod, Artemis summoned her bow and said that it would be helpful if Ravel could tell them to 'fuck off unless they want to die' if they asked about her.
Ah, that's my wife!
I can't wait to see her violently deal with arrogant males that try to get close to her!
After dual-cultivating together for a long time, it's safe to say that her arrows could probably blow up the planet rather easily just like Lostbelt Artemis… only, she can fire a barrage of it easily like how Lostbelt Zeus fires countless lightning bolts that all equaled Lostbelt Artemis's laser beams in power while all his limiters were applied and 90% of his power was dedicated to managing Olympus.
It's safe to say that Artemis could fight a strong Nasuverse Divine Spirit in terms of raw power, and maybe match Lostbelt Zeus at 10% of his power for a short period of time.
That pretty much makes her one of the strongest beings in this world, not that I would advertise that since Artemis likes keeping a low profile, and that I would be happy to oblige her since I get to watch ignorant males go after her and get a well-deserved beatdown.
Soon enough everyone left my home… which sadly included Airi since she needed to catch up and spend time with her siblings (the ones that didn't attend school) right now, and will be doing so for a few days since they weren't exactly happy with her leaving a clone to take care of them.
… Which technically makes this my fault since I grabbed her to elope to BOFURI's world and subsequently, the Nasuverse, back there.
Alfia took my advice seriously and went ahead to start her video game journey as I intended in the privacy of her own room. Resident gamer girl Artemis went along to help her get used to the RPG series and watch her play.
Which left me with Fiore, Radia and Nazica discussing a manner of topics including the deeper context of the previous meeting and my intentions to start an association of my own.
To my delight, they honestly stated their objections to a certain arrangement of mine, instead of expressing their distaste in an underhanded way.
"No offence to Fiore, she's talented, but she's a total beginner compared to us, much less my sister! I don't very much care about leadership so long as I get to do my thing, but I won't stand for someone so unqualified as our 'leader'."
Nazica was upfront with her reasoning and it was certainly something I have considered.
Like their cousins (the Pentel brothers), the Masters of Red, they were complete monsters in their field of magecraft thanks to their own innate talent and Waver's tutelage.
There were 7 Ranks (excluding the 'colors' like Touko and Aoko) within the Mage's Association, from highest to lowest: Crown, Brand, Pride, Fes, Cause, Count and Frame.
Fiore Forvedge was ranked 'Frame' within the Mage's Association, the kind of rank a crappy Magus like Ayaka Saijou would be ranked at. In practical ability she would actually be ranked at 'Count' (which is below Ritsuka Fujimaru's rank) after taking into account two things. The first of which was her innate ability called "Eulyphis", or Spirit Medium, that would enhance her family's Spirit Evocation specialty. And the second was her knowledge of human engineering and ability to make Mystic Codes like her Bronze-linked Manipulators that could be used with Spirit Evocation to let her contend with Magi above her weight class.
Radia and Nazica Pentel had the rank of 'Brand' and 'Pride' respectively. Considering that monsters like Touko Aozaki and Satsuki Kurogiri were given the rank of 'Crown', this meant that for practical purposes, the two of them held the highest and second-highest achievable rank for 'normal' Magi of the Mage's Association.
To put things in perspective, Zouken Matou held the rank of 'Pride' in his prime (and as a top-tier one at that), where he along with Charles Babbage and his pal Paracelsus slaughtered the entire Mage's Association in the London Singularity of FGO. In ideal conditions like being in his place of power, he was among those groups of humans that could win against a Servant.
Nazica would be the equivalent of an 'Early-Stage Pride' compared to Zouken Matou's 'Late-Stage Pride', yet even after everyone learned my brand of magic that equalized things somewhat, the power gap between just her and Fiore was like that of the clouds and dirt!
Nazica's Binding Magecraft would render Fiore helpless in seconds and would enable her to take down the equivalent of several high-class devils if she manages to reinforce herself before they blitz her using Knight Evil Piece boosted speeds.
As for Radia's combination of Binding Magecraft and Kabbalah thaumaturgy, well, she could have probably made it through the first four volumes of DXD if she had enough prep time and was on the side of the protagonists.
Radia would be considered an 'Early-Stage Brand' compared to Kayneth's 'Mid-Stage Brand' and various Lords of the Clock Tower's 'Late-Stage Brand' rank in terms of power. Taking into consideration that she was younger than Fiore and was 18 years old, that makes her one of the many 'geniuses' that you would expect from a Xianxia story, except she doesn't have Young Mistress level resources compared to someone like Kayneth.
… I can't believe one of my independent thought processes went into a power level and 'realm comparison' monologue.
I think I need some closed-doors Cultivation in an accelerated training realm to collect my thoughts.
"Th-that's not wholly untrue…"
Fiore, please defend yourself better!
Should I motivate her more? Should I say something like 'you dare offend me by disagreeing with this daddy's decision?'
No, that won't really help. She would just look at me like a pervert again, which is a cute look, but one that I should not overdo…
Radia, at least, looked like she didn't want much part in this, "The fact that you can't confidently state why you deserve such a position is worrisome enough. As we have all heard back then, humans are not necessarily considered highly among the Phantasmal specieses of this world, this new 'magician's association' needs to have a strong figurehead despite Dio being the true power behind the organization or it will look like a silly rich girl's club."
She shook her head, "As a researcher at heart, I would rather not take up a leadership position. I also believe that Dio has reasons beyond my comprehension for choosing you-"
Radia glanced at me for a moment and nodded.
Uwah, I just did it because Fiore's cute and we're alike, but I'll just keep quiet and pretend to be a profound sage.
"-but for the sake of not bringing shame upon his currently unfathomable reputation in this world I, Radia Pentel, would formally challenge Fiore Forvedge to forfeit your right to lead this budding association should you lose a little competition between us two."
Oh my, things are heating up, I didn't think they would look so serious about this… I kinda feel bad for jokingly wanting to make a sect now since they were being so considerate about my feelings and reputation.
"I accept your challenge. Then, as the challenged party, you wouldn't mind if I choose the nature of the competition right?"
"Certainly not. You may pick your own field of expertise and it would not change the result."
"Even so… I will keep things fair, let's have a test of our capability by trying something new and unique to this world. Let's have a Sacred Gear making competition."
Huh… I like the sound of that! I will have to find some way to subtly rig things in Fiore's favor, or at least, get her the support she needs to have an even chance.
"Excellent idea ladies! But did you know that the best Sacred Gears often have powerful beasts sealed within them? To make things interesting, how about I open up one of my secret realms for you two so that you can hunt a magical beast down for your Sacred Gear?"
Hosting a little competition between cute ladies is a lot more appealing than going into closed-doors Cultivation.
Chapter 15
AN: This chapter was originally going to be a lot longer, but I think I'll stop here for now before covering the end of the competition, then some character development with fluff and some scenes with Gabriel in the next chapter.
Chapter 15
"-and this is my abandoned old workshop. You may pick any one artifact to help you with your journey and as many drugs *cough* I mean, elixirs and poisons you can carry from the Alchemy table over there. Nazica, feel free to grab some goodies as well. If anyone has any questions on what's what then ask away."
I brought the Three Magi into one of my oldest secret hideouts near my parent's home in Tokyo. This underground workshop several hundreds of meters below our family home had acted as my main base of operations back when I had less confidence in my ability to conceal dimensional spaces and preferred heavily trapping my stronghold instead. The sheer number of powerful concealment and defensive measures I placed here would make Kayneth regret his boasting and kowtow to this daddy!
"Why are there so many different types of pills? What happened to standardization?" Nazica complained as she started picking one of everything from the Alchemy Table, then depositing it into her interspatial ring.
Nearly all the round 'pills' were the Cultivation based ones, while most of the bottled liquid elixirs/poisons were created using methods that would be familiar to anyone that has watched To Aru Majutsu no Index and Seikon no Qwaser… okay, maybe not the best example there, but just citing Full Metal Alchemist would be too mainstream.
Spoiler: Nazica - Approx. coloring
[img: https/i./VVXK1WM.png]
Hews
"Just as it is in your world, Alchemy is also split between Western and Eastern methods. Western Alchemy began with purifying, maturing, and perfecting certain materials for the sake of transmutation and the creation of the elixir of immortality. Eastern Alchemy, or more specifically Chinese Alchemy, focuses mainly on the purification of one's spirit, mind, and body for health, longevity, and wisdom-"
I went into a long lecture about the differences of the Alchemy processes used in the creation of pills and some general tips on how to excel in both fields. Fiore and Radia had split the remaining products of my Alchemy fairly between the two of them, before coming to me with questions for the ones they could not identify.
"What does this red potion do? It looks like it's going to explode at any moment." Fiore asked me while occasionally returning her gaze to the volatile looking bottle.
"That's not actually a potion. That's my special chili sauce mix blended using Abyssal Chilies. With your Cultivation as it is you would probably die if you taste even a little bit of it."
Back then not even I could handle the full extent of that chili sauce…
"We have questions on the potions stored within these strange bottles… every time we try to focus our attention on them we find ourselves distracted and- oh, I saw that artifact before!" Radia showed me something that made me want to groan into the palms of my hands, I don't blame her for getting her attention diverted by the enchantment, even my Divine Senses nearly glanced over the collection of bottled aphrodisiacs there, "It looks interesting, should I swap it for-"
Spoiler: Radia - Approx. coloring
[img: https/i./kVnumJB.png]
Blasted Xianxia Aphrodisiacs! I got too into making everything that I had read in this one novel many years ago, before I knew it, I ended up making potent aphrodisiacs with masterfully crafted containers that could hide its presence even from my senses!
If I hadn't made my most recent breakthroughs then even I would have trouble keeping track of the damn thing in spite of my perfect memory.
"*Ahem* Yeah, that's a troublesome one. It's basically undetectable super aphrodisiacs."
"Hey, sis, I missed that one so gimme!"
"Nazica! Don't act so childishly in front of everyone! Also, here you go, and here's your share Fiore."
… I guess I have to watch them closely to make sure they don't accidentally drug themselves from now on.
"Moving on… the two of you will get an interactive magical map that can keep track of all locations and beings of interest within the realm, although you will need to input your search criteria yourselves. I have already placed an enchantment that will eject you out of the realm if you are in grave danger, you will have a week to spend inside the realm and another week to create the Sacred Gear with the pre-made component parts I've placed on the table."
I went on to explain and clarify the scope of the competition between Fiore and Radia, including the judging portion that will involve inviting members of the Hyoudou family.
"Your judges will be the users of the Sacred Gear, namely, any one of my brothers and sisters-in-law. I have laid out their combat profiles here, you may ask any further questions about them from me as I know them personally and a lot of funny stories about them from Airi. Otherwise, you can continue your preparations and start your journey whenever you think you're ready."
Radia quickly grabbed Kurenia's profile and continued on her way, saying, "Your brother-in-law is quite the enthusiast in all things magic and Sacred Gears. This will be sufficient."
That's a huge loss flag right there…
In contrast, Fiore took the time to look through everyone's profile and then asked questions on their personality, wants, concerns, and other things before showing a great deal of interest in Robertina.
Looks like I may not have to rig anything in her favor after all.
After the two girls teleported back to my home where the portal leading to the secret realm awaited them I went ahead and brought Nazica back up to the surface, where we spent some time shopping and hanging out with each other as friends.
I ended up buying a new phone for her after she became enamored with the modern communications device. Unlike Rin Tohsaka, it looks like this Magus girl isn't technologically illiterate.
Now if only she can tone down the selfie stops…
After bringing Nazica back home I decided to take my extreme time dilated realm artifact and visit a dead universe that appeared to be unmonitored by anyone other than myself. Just to be on the safe side, I decided to cram my Cultivation and training sessions in compressed time, and head back home as soon as I can.
Fixing the internal stress from utilizing [Unified-Realm, Divine Augmentation] took over two weeks, once I was fully healed, I decided to Cultivate the technique until I got rid of as many flaws as I could perceive.
And boy, there was still a lot of room to improve there. It took nearly six months to get rid of the most glaring flaws, nearly a year to practice all my laws to bring up my minimal Law utilization competency to the point where I could use [Unified-Realm, Divine Augmentation] without burning my reserves away and another half a year practicing the technique until I could use it effectively.
I ended up restarting the universe at the end of my practice so I promptly moved to another dead universe to practice my other trump card.
[Domain Rescindment: Eon Reversal]
… I had to cancel my training early because the technique erased my training realm and a large part of the cosmos upon activation, risking the detection of higher beings that may notice the 'abnormality' I caused.
In the end, I had to destroy that dead universe to leave absolutely no traces of my second trump card. To be more specific, I refined the entire universe into energy, which wasn't much because it was the lowliest realm (no life residing in a universe lowers its energy quality massively) I ever had the displeasure of consuming, but it's better than blowing it up and wasting the scrap of energy it could give me.
Airi POV
She waved Dio's clone goodbye after he finished placing the dining room enchantment, ushering a new era of peace into the Hyoudou household mealtimes.
Airi held Kurobara and Shirayuki back from latching on to the clone and begging their 'Dio-niichan' for more sweets. They will only suffer from a lack of confidence in their cuteness if they tried to get anything from those paper clones, which can only convincingly act as a human if it was given a specific role to do so or if they were controlled remotely.
There were a lot of really stupid stories involving her clone that was left behind in the week that had passed by when she was away.
Sensing a sudden intrusion using the lesser laws of Space and Void, Airi quickly retrieved one of her god-killing gauntlets and was about to message Dio for help when-
"Ara, Ophis-chan! It's been a while!"
-Airi heard Akeno greeting the Ouroboros Dragon and the 'honorary little sister' of the family.
"Nee-chan, why do you have a scary face?" "Shiny gloves…"
"It's nothing. Turns out its just Ophis-chan. Ehe, I overreacted "
On the bright side it looks like all the training sessions, aka, sessions where Dio and Artemis continuously 'styles' on Alfia and herself, are paying off.
Airi almost dodged the speeding black bullet that launched itself at her but chose not to, it's been a long while since she got a hug from the family's 'vagabond playmate', "You're back Airi. Issei asked Idiot Red and I to look for you the first time around… we spent so long in the Dimension Gap together… just the two of us…"
Ophis looked increasingly annoyed as she recalled those times.
Airi could only laugh loudly and took out some sweets, knowing that she was looking for an apology, "Sorry for the trouble. Here you go, I saved up some of the sweets Dio made for me."
"Wha-?! You said there were no sweets!" "Gimme!"
Ophis had already swiped the sweets from Airi's hands before her two cat-eared sisters could steal them, "No! Mine! Rwarrh!"
It was the most unconvincing dragon's roar Airi had ever heard.
Ophis may have existed for a long time and changed greatly from when she met Airi's father, but it seemed that she latched on to the behavior of a human child and had stuck with it for decades… probably because she could get free candy this way.
Honestly, Ophis only ever came by and stuck around when she felt the urge to eat Asia's cooking and treats.
"These are… delicious! Extra tasty! Bring your husband, I must have more!"
"He's busy right now, I can try to get a clone of his on dedicated kitchen duty but you'll probably have to pay for it."
"I can pay in dragon scales. I will go beat up Idiot Red for his."
"Please don't start a fight that could destroy the world for sweets!"
Airi's panicked protest was quickly echoed by the entire Hyoudou family when their 'Ophis is going to do something silly' senses were tingling like crazy.
Ophis had no choice but to give up.
"Why is your husband so busy? He took you on holiday, so that must mean he has a lot of free time."
"It's actually the other way around, I'll tell you some stories later, alright? Things have been quite hectic after Dio went and upgraded Heaven's system."
Ophis had a rare look of surprise on her face and exclaimed, "Ooooh! Is that why the 'noise' from Heaven's stupid system is quiet now? Hmm, I see, your husband too, is a man of silence."
The dragon loli looked so satisfied with herself that Airi couldn't bear to interrupt her.
She had the sinking feeling that Ophis was going to be more than just friends with her husband at this rate…
Airi spent nearly an hour regaling Ophis and her siblings with colorful tales of her adventures in the 'Nasuverse', specifically, the mind-bending strange defensive measures Alfia and her needed to get through just to kill dangerous Magi and Dead Apostles.
"-and then the last door sent me right back to the beginning of the entire labyrinth! What's worse is that a sign appeared with the words 'Are you lost?' right in front of us? Spatial Manipulation is the worst type of trap. Ever. If you ever make your own castle in the future, then please put doorways to different dimensions or ones that would send invaders back to the beginning, make your defenses so frustrating and maddening that any invaders will just leave your home alone and never come back again."
A few of her older brothers and sisters were actually taking notes on the various traps that she had to deal with, while her younger siblings were just laughing at her story. Ophis seemed to be taking a special interest in the 'home defense' measures.
Her father, who had managed to come home early, also joined in the laughter.
"Oh man, if it were me I would have just gotten so mad and blasted everything."
"I know what you mean. Alfia and I were so close to doing it, but if we did, then it will just mean we weren't smart enough to figure the defenses out and we didn't want to give the guy the satisfaction."
"Heh, there's nothing better than to prove arrogant bast-er-en-enemies wrong!"
Airi could admit that she missed doing this with her family, it's nice when they can just talk and share stories of their experiences without getting into any arguments.
"Oh, I wouldn't say nothing… but it's up there in the Top 10."
"Really? Name one thing."
"I can't~"
"Why not?"
Airi chuckled and hugged her father, then whispered, "None of them are appropriate for children to hear about."
Her father looked mortified at the thought, thankfully for him, he didn't need to think about it any further since dinner was ready.
They all sat down at their large dining table and started serving each other food. Dinnertime was a little different with the enchantment in place, but it helped a lot in making mealtimes a lot more 'normal'. Even her father seemed to enjoy the change, it made it easier for people to have their own conversations even when everyone was gathered together, among other things… Airi would really like to selectively filter her senses at times like these, especially when Akeno was rubbing her father's crotch using her feet under the table.
"Pst! Airi-chan!" Ravel 'whispered' from the other side of the table.
"You know you don't have to whisper right?" Airi 'whispered' back since playing along seemed like it would make Robertina's birth mother happy.
"I know, I just wanted to try this out. Anyways, I have great news! We got your Evil Pieces ready and can get the ceremony done by the end of the month."
"Eh, okay? I don't really want them though."
"Heh?"
If it were the past 'her' then she would have been ecstatic about the opportunity, if only so that she could find some 'servants' to help better protect her family with.
But Airi had changed a lot, she was no longer a sheltered girl that only cared and fought for her family. She had spent around a year in a world where gods and mortal races lived together, where her wonderful husband continued to bring great changes to the world, from saving entire countries, revolutionizing the way magic was taught, freeing slaves, lifting the 'ordinary folk' out from poverty and other situations, and preventing future catastrophes.
Watching how he changed an entire world for the better inspired her to do so as well!
The first thing that came to mind had been her own family's racial history.
Airi ended up reflecting on the worst kinds of Familia, how the ruler of the largest Empire behaved, the enslavement of men by the Amazons, and the rampant slavery in the Kalos region until Dio put a stop to it. After doing so, she had started to think about the current situation and direction of her homeworld, and in the end, she found that she could take no part in her race's culture any longer.
Even if the 'servants' of her family were treated like family she still wouldn't have any servants herself because it was not a system she could support and it wasn't one that was necessary.
"Um, Airi, why not? Your mothers and father worked really hard to push it through."
"Thank you for that, I appreciate it, but it would be better if you can give that placement to someone else. I don't want them, nor need them anyway."
"Erm, could you just take them and not use them?"
"Ravel kaa-san, please help me out with this?"
Her other mother shrugged and laughed, "Alright, I can do that much. I figured that you would say 'no' with how you were reacting this morning, at the breakfast."
"E-eh? I didn't say much though."
"You didn't need to. Your discomfort was written all over your face. It's fine, worse comes to worst, the media will just blame it on your husband that 'turned you against the devil race'." Ravel smirked as if imagining a hilarious scenario, "All the rich heirs that have been aiming for you are going to whine and pull out the 'population' excuse."
Airi certainly didn't remember any rich 'young masters' trying to seduce her, then again, her father probably scared them all off. She made a mental note to give him a special present for father's day just for that.
"They can say what they want. Knowing Dio that's exactly what he's looking forward to, he just can't stop baiting idiots so that he can slap their faces. As for the population bit… Dio did say he once pranked a devil noble by using a fertility artifact on him so that his entire peerage got pregnant after an orgy, so solving every faction's fertility problems shouldn't be an issue-"
Ravel dropped her chopsticks and groaned, "Oh, figures. I thought it was weird that your uncle Riser got Yubelluna and the others pregnant all at the same time."
Airi thought back to all the smug grins he gave her whenever he mentioned that story and felt really dumb when she hadn't figured it out. Of course, it had to be someone she knew if he was shooting her his 'knowing grins'!
If this were the week before her father would have already blown up after hearing the conversation Airi had with Ravel, but thanks to the enchantment (and Akeno's footjob) he couldn't hear us at all!
Issei would definitely have blamed Dio for 'corrupting' her just because she had experienced life and cultures from beyond this world and embraced a wider view of how to live a worthwhile life.
Thank Dio for this dining room enchantment!
Wait, what? Oh no, she's starting to sound like those angels… tch, all the 'sect-speak' must be getting to her.
Chapter 16
AN: I was too fixated on a couple of ideas to the point where I failed to realize writing them right now wouldn't fit into the timeline of events I had planned out… D'OH!
Chapter 16
"It looks like calling the effects an 'absolute existential threat' can be counted as an understatement."
I muttered as I observed the will of Hell and countless demons break into the dimensionally relocated dead universe. As I suspected, just the mere activation of [Domain Rescindment: Eon Reversal] was a red alert for any realm or entity intrinsically tied to one of the greater Laws, regardless of how weak they are, if they had sufficient space-time or dimensional detection and travel capabilities.
Granted, I needed to relocate the dead universe all the way to a whole different multiverse, one that was within the reach of a realm of chaos like Hell, in order for it to be detected and invaded by a relatively harmless threat like the demons from the Doom series.
Point is, the activation of my technique was definitely detectable and made beings in other universes feel threatened, and at this rate, I won't be able to confirm the full extent of my Ascendant God Art's power and refine it without an especially 'far away' multiverse to act as a training spot.
And I can say with near absolute certainty that I would be detected no matter how 'far' I go with my World Crossing spell, after taking into consideration the current pattern of how gods/higher dimensional beings are spread throughout the 'vast expanse' of this small part of the omniverse.
Keeping my technique activated for more than half a second with a much higher being in the neighborhood is an instant death sentence.
The most obvious option is to acquire more power until I can create an entire multiverse by myself and have sufficient guardians that can defend it while I safely refine [Domain Rescindment: Eon Reversal].
But that would be too risky.
While I would definitely survive all the opposition could throw at me on my path to acquiring that power, the same can't be said about my wives and the other people I care about. The same people which can only be defended from higher beings using the Ascendant God Art which I'm trying to perfect.
Unfortunately for me, my Xianxia MC luck does not give the people I love absolute immunity to getting their existence erased.
Trying to raise my Cultivation level faster and getting perfect consecutive victories (no death runs) against higher dimensional beings several stages above me is a way of living that I'm actively trying to avoid… because the mere thought of Airi and Artemis being destroyed while I can only watch helplessly hurts me more than I could even describe…
Whether I seek more power or not, whether I try to perfect this technique or not, the possibility of the people I care about getting killed and/or erased still remains. Even if I can bring them back it wouldn't be the same, nor would it remove the stain of failure upon my heart.
Hence, I had to fall back on my proven strategy to overcome this dilemma!
If I cannot overcome this problem with just my plot armor, then I just have to tie myself to an MC with the right kind of power and plot armor that can help me overcome my dilemma!
It already worked on an 'invincible' harem protagonist whose plot armor could force his villains into a desperate position where going full evil was their only option (and got me my darling wife~) so I don't see why my brilliant strategy couldn't be reused to give me the opportunity to gain more power.
And I have just the Main Character in mind for this!
I may not have watched the anime or read through the web novels, but the little I could remember from a wiki walk and a couple of feat discussions I've read through already have me salivating in anticipation at the bullshit magical powers and overpowered equipment within the universe the MC resides and reigns supreme in… !
While my magical and crafting abilities have been improving steadily, what I really need is explosive growth through integrating an entirely new system of magic into my own. The small portion of the Nasuverse's magic system didn't quite cut it since I only got a small glimpse into the Root's mysteries, with only the Third Magic being something I had a high degree of mastery in, neither did I gain the right type of magic that could let me cheat my way into solving the multiverse creation/training ground problems.
I felt a bit bad about leaving on an impromptu adventure without the people I've come to know, but I simply couldn't put this off any longer, if my [Unified-Realm, Divine Augmentation] had so many imperfections, to begin with then there's no way I can rely on my second trump card as it is now.
Besides… I don't think a few of my women would necessarily approve of this sticking around a Demon King for a long period of time, and leaving the rest of the plot for him to resolve like the overpowered MC he is, just for the sake of allowing me to observe his magic.
But first… time to tie up some loose ends. I continued my cross-universe observation of the dead universe being invaded by the denizens of Hell for a little longer-
"Ah yes, demons from hell… in the name of all that is holy I declare Exterminatus upon the dead universe of ABC. I hereby resign the death warrant of an already dead universe and consign hundreds of thousands of demons to oblivion. Yadda yadda yadda… EXPLOSION!"
-before detonating a cache of my 'special-grade' artifacts, causing a chain reaction that would make the dead universe implode in on itself, killing a small portion of Hell's invading force and covering my tracks!
The method I used to destroy a universe could only work for 'trash-tier' realms like dead universes with no life forms and utterly mundane worlds without advanced technology. Just the mere intrusion of weak-ass demons made it impossible for me to 'refine' the universe when it gained a bit of will and power upon the entry of several evil constructs of chaos. Which made destruction via a conceptual bomb the only option to deny resources to the realm called 'Hell'.
Speaking of 'refining' hopeless realms, I would definitely need to compile a proper method for it, especially if I were to make a habit of it. My experience in this is rather limited, after all, and I needed to research this to see whether it was a viable avenue of power.
'Refining' a dead-end timeline according to humanity's definition (or one part of 'The World') back in the Nasuverse was relatively easy and energy-rich. While it was an above average-tier realm, 'pruned' timelines all center around humanity and it's lost potential, which meant that most of the energy was concentrated around the Earth, and having lost half of its world's 'will' (Humanity/Counter Force) made it relatively defenseless.
Dead universes had absolutely no defenses against my improvised existence refining methods, turning the slow process that could only refine a planet-sized entity into a continuous accelerating all-consuming wave that would swallow up an entire universe within two weeks. The downside is that barely any energy can be gained from a useless realm like that.
Incidentally, even a 'low-tier' realm like my homeworld could not be refined by my technique (without killing every living being on the planet), as a result of the universe's strong will and defense mechanisms.
After taking a few more moments to bask in the glorious explosion I created, I activated all my anti-divination, detection, and information obscuring spells before using World Crossing to bring me to my desired world.
Upon taking my first breath in this new universe, I was immediately taken aback by the sheer potency of the energy and Laws that permeated every inch of existence!
Truly, this world was one of the best places to attain even greater power and knowledge!
It didn't take me long to find the recently reincarnated MC and his loving parents.
It was currently nighttime and the Demon King with the physical appearance of a child was currently reading books by the window while his parents were engaged in lovemaking next door.
Looks like I've arrived just before he ages himself up to attend the titular demon academy.
I moved right next to this bedroom window and floated outside, smiling and clasping my hands together, "This dimensional traveler, Dio Dorana, greets Venerable Demon King Anos Voldigoad!"
The protagonist of 'The Misfit Of Demon King Academy' showed absolutely no surprise to my arrival and merely smiled without a hint of mockery, "Hmph, you sure kept me waiting. I was wondering when you would stop gawking like a tourist."
As expected, he detected my arrival in this human city instantly!
"It can't be helped, the overall level of this universe is on a much higher level than any I have visited before."
There's no sense in being dishonest around Anos Voldigoad. He may be an invincible ruthless demon king, but he is also caring and kind to others, I mean, he allowed himself to be killed to end a pointless war for goodness sake!
He was also the right balance between natural kindness and practical ruthlessness that I wanted to emulate. In some ways, I looked up to him as a senior brother.
"With how magic has regressed as of late I suppose it falls to me to take up the burdens of border control. So, what is the purpose of your visit, Dio?"
"I would normally visit other universes with my wives and partners to see what good we can do, learn the local power systems and acquire some souvenirs along the way. In this case, I'm here alone to learn this world's magic to properly defend myself against higher dimensional beings across the omniverse, and who better to learn from than the most powerful being in this universe? Naturally, I have prepared gifts and compensation, for the opportunity to serve and observe you for the duration of my visit."
I had no issues with trying out the 'lackey' role for once in my life, especially for a true magic expert like Anos Voldigoad, who constantly found loopholes in other HAX magics and divine authorities to achieve victory.
Exhibit A - Gods can't be killed permanently? Transmute their temporary corpse into a castle or transfer all their power and authority to another person so they can never harm anyone again.
Exhibit B - You can't kill the god in front of you without the world being destroyed? Just destroy his 'source' till only 10%, the bare minimum required to maintain the world, then prevent him from regenerating it.
And that's just scratching the surface of it all.
"Interesting. You have come a long way. Very well then, meet me in the nearby park tomorrow afternoon, then follow me back home. You can't properly observe me without being accepted by my family."
We talked a bit into the night and made a contract with each other. Having been perfectly candid with him about my abilities helped made him fair and favorable. Suffice to say, I was quite happy with my new mentor.
Well, he wouldn't be the only one doing the teaching. While his strongest magics were a lot more powerful than my own, my compiled magical system and grimoires had a lot of versatility at meager costs in magical power, something that Anos Voldigoad was interested in academically and practically since he was using his currently weakened reincarnated state (reincarnates start at 10% of their original power and can slowly recover it) and fragile environment ('weak' human parents) to practice his magic control.
If he released his power recklessly then his parents would die in an instant, so he had to suppress his power for their sake, incidentally, more magic control would also improve his efficiency and power in the future.
The next day we met up in order to sell the story that I was an average teenage magical prodigy that found a kindred spirit and was impressed by his heaven-defying genius to the point where I needed to pass on my knowledge and exchange my ideas with him to his parents.
The 'act' was a lot more genuine when we were both giving honest praises and criticisms to each other's magical spells. Anos was fond of my paper clones given that they could be used to protect his parents and to dealing with weaklings.
"I'm home, mom."
"Welcome home! Did you have fun? You didn't go too far, did you? You're only two weeks old so it's not very safe out there-"
The adorably cute and lovely voice of Izabella, my benefactor's mother, made me recall a time when I had loving parents.
"Who's this?"
"-Oh right, I still haven't introduced you. This is Dio Dorana. I met him in the park and discussed magical theory with him."
Putting on my earnest excited face, I started laying it thick, "Yes, it's nice to meet you! Though I have been called a prodigy in my life, your son is a genius among geniuses in comparison! I was hoping to get your permission to tutor him and also learn from his insights."
"Kyaa, Anos-chan is so smart!!!" Izabella grabbed on to Anos and rubbed her cheeks on him while patting his head, though he didn't express himself much, I could tell that he was appreciative of her love, "You're only two weeks old and you're already making such smart friends!"
Izabella was very… expressive. Oh, my gods, she was so cute, I can't believe I'm saying this, but for a moment there I thought she was cuter than all my wives combined.
But more than that, I have never seen a mother so devoted to her son, not at this level…
Gusta, Anos's dad, suddenly entered into the living room with a wide grin, "What's this about my son making a friend already? Attaboy! That's my son alright!"
I ended up striking a good rapport with his family. I ended up exchanging crafting knowledge with Gusta who was a craftsman himself, when I showed him my interspatial ring and the artifacts I stored up within, he immediately asked to sign himself up as a student so that he can learn to make something for his precious son.
Izabella and I turned out to be cooks at comparable levels, though I had much stronger technical skills, the sheer amount of love she puts into cooking elevated the dish to beyond mortal levels.
"Dio? Are you alright? You're crying."
Especially the Mushroom Gratin. How could this be… why does it taste so good, yet…
"Your mushroom gratin is just that good, mom." Anos answered in my stead while praising his mother's cooking.
"Yeah, what Anos said. I'm alright." I quickly followed up to keep that worried expression off her face, "This is just so good and… it's been a long time since I had a home-cooked meal like this." Don't get me wrong, Airi and Artemis cooked with love, but they were more focused on making sure the food was good, rather than just cooking with the entirety of their heartfelt feelings, which was understandable since they were cooking for the household and not just myself. As for my parents… unlike in my first life, my second mother rarely cooked at all. "You two make a lovely couple and have raised a wonderful son."
"Fufu! Well, the secret ingredient is love after all! And thank you! Anos-chan really is the best child, isn't he? Yes, yes you are!"
"Come on, mom."
"Do you not have anyone to cook for you?" Gusta asked directly as if sensing my thoughts. Man, I can't overstate how much I love straight-forward, empathetic, earnest parents like these two.
The difference between them and my in-laws (excluding Asia) is like that of heaven and earth. The less said about my parents in this life, the better.
"My wives, the other women staying with me and I take turns cooking-"
"Wives!? Plural! How did you meet them? How many? Wait, y-you will be teaching Anos your casanova ways right? I want lots of grandkids!"
"H-huh what? Two wives, one at school and the other in a dungeon? And I'm pretty sure your son doesn't need any lessons on that…"
"That's right! He's my son alright! The ladies will be swooning over him in no time!"
"They sure will!" I agreed with Gusta instantly.
Anos kept his face stoic, for the most part. The slight curve of his lips showed how much he loved the sight of his parent's sheer happiness.
I wish my new family could have been like this.
I promised myself there and then that I would shower my own children with love just like these two did with their reincarnated demon king.
Life went on peacefully for the next two weeks until Anos got his invitation letter to the demon academy. Incidentally, my special demon magic signature spell paid off, and I managed to get an invitation myself.
"Magic Owls? It's like Hogwarts all over again."
"There's a magical academy in your universe as well?"
"Not quite, it's in a different universe and mostly for human magic users. It's also a pretty famous book series in many other universes, however."
Anos tried to leave to the demon world without his parents after aging himself up but they recognized him in an instant-
"So you've gotten bigger again!"
"I'm surprised you can tell."
"Of course I could tell. Anos-chan is Anos-chan."
-and decided to follow him along!
"… if you'll get lonely, it can't be helped."
I saw the lingering sense of loneliness fall off his expression and could tell just how much his parents truly loved and accepted him at that moment.
The two of us quickly packed everything and were ready to move across worlds, but his parents needed some time to settle their affairs there, so it took a couple of days to move to the demon world.
The day before Anos and I would sit for the tests, his parents and I had a heart-to-heart about my origins after they've started seeing Anos Voldigoad as a real up and coming demon king.
Instead of latching on to the fact that I was a reincarnated person from another universe they were much more concerned about my own relationship with my parents.
"It's not like they don't take care of me. Magic is… not exactly normal there, my parents aren't as open-minded as you two are either. I did my part by revolutionizing technologies and making money with businesses, I tried to spend more time with them but we… couldn't understand each other. Eventually, they just trusted me with my own thing and… stopped trying. Eventually, I stopped trying too. Heck… right now, they don't even know I'm married."
"They love you." Izabella said all of a sudden.
"Yeah, they definitely do." Gusta nodded sagely.
"Huh? But…"
"Nope! They're your parents and I know it in my heart that they love you, they may not know how to show it now, they may even be frightened when you tell them about everything, but they will come to accept you in time so long as you never give up and never stop trying."
Their sheer optimism moved me to the point where I ended up agreeing to set things straight with my parents. Anos's knowing smile at the doorway made me realize that he had set his parents on me to achieve that result.
Honestly, my demon king is way too kind.… he really makes me want to go 120% on my 'competent lackey' roleplay.
A year of over-the-top shenanigans at the titular demon academy was finished without any tragedy, as expected from Anos's invincible MC credentials and my own efforts.
A year of getting outclassed by bullshit HAX from the main villain that pops up every couple of months that I could only hold out against until Anos solved the problem.
I never felt so eclipsed in magical power until Anos fully unlocked his true power.
The totality of my magical reserves could only destroy several solar systems at max, with the right spells and preparations I can move that up to a couple of galaxies, mixed in with my Cultivation techniques and I could do a bit more than that.
My reserves were only a bit higher than his own, but his magical output far outstripped my own, it took examining how the 'Source' interacted with their physical bodies in order to increase my own output, and even then, I still had a long way to go until I could properly compete with the Demon King.
Man, now that I think about it… the entire year was my first true experience in getting outclassed by my usual specialties and had to learn on the fly on how to counter a stronger HAX with different kinds of HAX.
Well, it all paid off, I could now legitimately kill and revive people following the 3-second rule without any complicated workarounds, send my attacks across time, fluctuate my magical power to encompass all possibilities, reincarnate myself, fuse and separate entire beings, transmute my enemies into objects and so much more.
And it all paid off with my own replication of the Silver Sea, which was essentially countless pocket universes layered on top of each other, to finally master my [Domain Rescindment: Eon Reversal] Ascendant God Art.
I also made a couple of friends and… well, I would have to visit one day to resolve some things, but other than that, it was a pretty good time.
That said, the aching loneliness in my heart that formed from not having Airi and Artemis by my side only grew stronger. Training by my lonesome in a dead universe with no sapient lifeforms was perfectly normal for a Cultivator like myself, but going on an adventure and experiencing 'life' beyond training without my wives filled me with a sense of emptiness that was only relieved by the wonderful people I met in the world of 'The Misfit Of Demon King Academy'.
Arriving back at my homeworld just two hours after I departed for my trip, I withheld my urge to see my wives and friends, if only so that I wouldn't give away the fact that I went for a long adventure without them… and also to fulfill the promise I made to Izabella and Gusta.
I reached for my phone and called my parents.
Voicemail. Figures… I reached out for the charms and spells I placed on them and-
-Wait… what the hell?!
[Unified-Realm, Divine Augmentation]
I can't find them.
I can't fucking find them!
They're not in this universe.
I was about to search the past records of the universe but then realized that I would need way more processing power than what I had now, so I opted to utilize a pre-existing system to keep things efficient.
I reappeared right in Heaven and urgently requested of Gabriel to use the system for my selfish request. She agreed immediately and reassured me, then displayed all the results of their last known movements and circumstances.
"They appeared to have… willingly followed some people through a portal here. None of them are recognized by Heaven's system."
"I thought as much. I couldn't find them in this universe… hmm, I'm scanning the area in an attempt to trace them back."
"Dio, there's a letter on the ground."
I almost ignored it if it weren't for Gabriel pointing it out to me.
It was a letter addressed to me with an earnest request written on the front with my home address begging anyone that picked it up to deliver it… I opened the letter in front of Gabriel and sighed in relief.
"Oh thank goodness, turns out that my parents are from a higher realm, I mean, alternate universe. Thomas and Lia Dorana weren't their real names. Turns out that they were the young master and mistress of their respective divine noble families that fell in love with each other and decided to elope together. They had me after living on Earth for a couple of years…"
Gabriel looked at me with surprise on her face, "You don't seem as worried as before."
I smiled brilliantly and pointed to the last words of the letter, "They still love me and that's what matters. I was more worried about them leaving me behind out of disappointment of me being 'just human' or fear of my 'unnatural' talents. I trust their judgement enough to know that they're safe and likely too important to be punished too harshly. I'll find them, teach their families a lesson and bring them back eventually."
Heh. I truly am a Xianxia MC. Anyways, there's no point to rush things go in half-cocked. I need information about their world and general power level before I could formulate some plans.
"Thank you Gabriel, for your help. I really appreciated it. Let me know how I can make it up for you time."
"That isn't necessary at all! I'm just happy that I could help you in return for all you've done for us."
"But I insist! I must repay you somehow."
"Mmnn you don't have to…"
It looked like the word 'hug' was on the top of her tongue, but she did not dare to say it.
Hmm, I have an alternative in mind that she will definitely appreciate.
"Well, I've recently studied up angel physiology and I might have come across a way to help all angels relax with a special massage technique. It's still all very theoretical, but if you have some time off tomorrow night then you could come by my house and help me out with it."
"I would love to!"
She agreed with, ahem, bouncy enthusiasm.
I returned back to Earth a moment later at a particular private island, one that I had made for my parents in mind for their next holiday.
Now that all the urgent matters were attended to, for the time being, and my scouting clones were already hard at work tracing the dimensional signal to my parent's higher realm… I could take some time to calm my heart and mentally prepare myself for seeing everyone again.
Airi had deeply missed her siblings and was currently too busy to spend time with, which was convenient for me given my situation. Alfia was occupied with Final Fantasy right now, Nazica was watching her play by her bedside, Fiore and Radia were in the secret realm… Artemis had just finished dinner and was sitting on top of my home's roof, gazing at the moon above.
I found myself sitting on a rock formation in the freshwater lake I created for the island, looking down at the water's reflection of the moon, idly thinking that Artemis and I were looking at the same thing.
"The moon is beautiful, isn't it?"
The heartfelt, poetic way of confessing one's love in Japanese, somehow found its way out of my mouth before I realized what was happening.
Spending time with Anos's family ended up loosening my tongue a lot.
I felt a familiar soothing presence by my side, a whisper reached my ear, "I quite like that. You can say it again, but-"
Artemis placed herself down and bumped against my legs, then leaned behind and rested her back on my sides, sparing my an alluring side-ways glance that sent my heart aflutter.
"- I would appreciate it more if you can say it directly."
"I love you."
"Ehehe… I love you too."
We stayed together like that for a few minutes, basking in one another's presence in quiet appreciation.
"You were gone for a long time."
Her words almost made me jump.
"I needed to master my two trump cards and ended up spending years in dead universes. You know how I'm like when I get to it, the length of time spent never feels significant, especially when I don't have you by my side."
Artemis playfully shoved her shoulder at my own, "Flatterer and Training Maniac, who would have thought you could embody both so perfectly?"
"Oh, no one's perfect, I could still be better." I quipped back and swayed to my left, shoving her slightly in retaliation.
"I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not, but I'll support you either way… so, did you make a lot of new friends?"
"Huh?"
"I won't tell Airi or anyone else, it will be our little secret."
Ah, the jig's up. "How did you know?"
She shifted her position and then placed her head down on my lap, staring back up at me with her bright green eyes, then poked my nose.
"Everything~ While your energy is a dead giveaway from how much 'deeper' it feels, the first thing I noticed was your 'presence', or rather… you feel a lot less guarded than before and more at peace." I blushed at her knowing look, she was right on the mark that I felt more comfortable with who I am and who I could be, especially after spending a year watching the demon king and his family work his charm, "And, this is just a woman's intuition, I feel that you've learned how to trust and believe in others a little better."
I thought back to how I immediately went up to Gabriel, the resident God system expert other than myself, for assistance instead of commandeering the system for my needs. I realized that I picked up a bit of Anos Voldigoad's habit of allowing others to show their stuff and assist in their development, instead of just handling everything himself while giving others opportunities to be rewarded for their loyalty and assistance.
"Yeah, I think so too. Are you alright with that?"
"Of course I am."
"Then I'm fine with that too."
I brushed the back of my hand over her cheek gently and pushed away some stray strands of hair, she giggled and sat back up, then guided my hands to properly embrace her from behind.
"Did you have fun?"
"I did… but I also felt really lonely."
"Hmm?"
"I don't want to spend that kind of time away from you all again. I know that it's 'just a year', but for me, it still felt like an eternity. I know that it's silly, that we're all going to live for such a long time that just a year doesn't matter…"
"It's not wrong to feel that way, you know, even though it was just for a few hours, I felt really lonely during dinner."
"Ah… right, everyone was away or busy… sorry, it's my fault."
She snuggled into my chest and said, "It's alright. You're here now."
"I'm not leaving, not without you."
We ended up spending a few minutes sharing kisses and laughter together. I then started to tell her about my adventures in the other world, though I kept it brief for now and focused on what I learned, more specifically, about my parents and my own feelings.
"I think I had been unfairly comparing my parents right now to the ones in my past life. I used a type of magic Anos showed me to retrieve some of my past life's memories and they were a lot more involved in my life… because they were the few people I involved myself with. I didn't… have a lot of friends, among other things that… it's really embarrassing to talk about."
"You don't need to talk about it if you don't want to. But I will tell you that it's fine, it's 'only' around twenty years plus worth of your life. Hehe, we gods have many years of shameful memories, sometimes up to a millennia's worth of history that we want to forget. It's alright to take your time."
Artemis's words were a balm to my soul. It's times like these that I become more conscious of just how long-lived and experienced Artemis was. Her perspective on life was far 'longer' than my own and it helped to reassure me that I didn't have to rush everything. I didn't need to be desperate to confess all my troublesome thoughts of the past, both in my past and present life.
"Your existence is suited for immortality, but your mindset still hasn't gotten there yet. I don't think it's a bad thing, you know?"
Airi may be a devil but she was raised with a mortal lifestyle in mind. Alfia never expected to live on as long as she did. The Magi living with me could be expected to live well over a hundred if they were careful, but were intimately aware of their own mortality.
None of them had the countenance of an immortal being, the patient kind of acceptance that I needed… not like Artemis did.
"I love you so much."
"Hehehe… I like hearing those words. Will you say them again?"
"I will say it as many times as you want."
"10,000?"
"10,000 every year or every month?"
"I don't know… what will it cost me?"
"Nothing you aren't already paying."
All my worries for the future faded into the background as we simply talked and kept hold of one another until the sun rose from the horizon.
Chapter 17
Chapter 17
The rays of the morning sun peeked through the gap between our bedroom curtains, with a snap of my fingers the super high-performance magic clock [Tell] spell flickered into existence, indicating the local time and other time-space related measurements.
I could have checked the time by focusing on my Time laws or summoning my smartphone, but I was feeling way too comfortable to put in any further effort. More specifically, any kind of effort that would require me to take any attention away from my current position.
Having my lovely wife sleeping right by my side with her arms splayed over my chest was a sight that I could never get tired of indulging in. Gently brushing her long blue hair with the arm wrapped around her while staring at her cute sleeping face was undoubtedly a husband/lover privilege that was worth going to war over!
Memories of last night's celebratory sex and the exchange of our vital yang/yin energies taken up to a whole new level filled me with a deep sense of satisfaction.
It was the first time sex had ever exhausted me in this second life.
Normally, my stamina would be nigh inexhaustible, but that was only the case with 'normal' sex. Sex with 'dual-cultivation' elements involved was a different matter altogether, especially with a partner that was within the same Cultivation stage as me.
Artemis had broken through into her 'nascent soul' equivalent stage ('Divinity Soul' would be more accurate) a few days after my return from the other universe and after successfully facing the tribulation lightning from the space between dimensions.
While the quality of her cultivated internal energies and law comprehension was far below my own and much more focused, it can't be denied that she was now comparable to me in raw power (excluding my more sizable reserves of magic power). If it were only up to our Cultivation realms then she would be at about 20% of my power, and could probably fight Lostbelt Zeus at 30% of his true power for awhile.
It was a satisfying thought, to know that my wife stood far above all the other beings of my home universe, and would be able to squash any that dared to raise their hand against her. The image of her showing any arrogant male pigs their proper place beneath her feet (and by extension, my feet) was a vision I was looking forward to turning into reality, if only so that I could brag about my darling wife stomping on any man (except her husband) that tried to take her away from me.
Damsels in distress moments are fine as a first encounter and love epiphany… but having wives/lovers that must be defended from one's enemies gets old real quick and makes unnecessary NTR bait in the long run.
But loyal wives that can obliterate any of my enemies, on the other hand, is something that should be celebrated and encouraged!
That brought to mind the question of how exactly was I supposed to 'encourage' her as we progress in our Cultivation. Unlike the bullshit afforded to me by consuming the Essence of the Cultivator and the Blank, Artemis would still be limited to her own willpower, comprehensive abilities, and talents when it comes to success.
The recent tribulation was smooth thanks to her solid 'foundation' and 'perfect method' derived from my own Cultivation path, but until she reaches the point where both of us can become our own Dao/Path and transcend even the Greater Laws our Cultivations would only continue to diverge and the help I could provide her would become increasingly limited.
Compared to Airi, Alfia, and the others, Artemis was by nature, an immortal being that most Daoist Immortals would envy because of how unkillable Danmachi Gods were. While she was already an immortal being, the progression of her early Cultivation stages was similar enough to my own that we shared many benefits and troubles, with her current Nascent/Divine Soul Cultivation stage providing her an immense strengthening of her soul and overall existence. The two of us would eventually ascend into beings that could touch a higher dimension, I would be doing so as an 'immortal' while there was no way of knowing what Artemis would become.
That uncertainty of Artemis' Dao/Path bothers me, it really does bother me, but in the end… I suppose there is nothing I can do other than to support her the best I can.
No matter how I look at it, raising her innate talent would be the first step in ensuring that she lives through her tribulations and keep up with me as we break through to the higher realms.
Comprehension, Willpower, and Luck (common Cultivator stats) require fortuitous encounters and momentous decisions to be made in order to rise to a higher level. Or at the very least, temporarily enhanced by the use of powerful heavenly treasures.
Innate Talent, however, can always be raised with more drugs, uh, the miraculous power of Alchemy!
Therefore, I needed to find rare materials or refine the corpses of powerful enemies into some Talent boosting elixirs!
Speaking of talent, Airi really should be on the Talent boosting waitlist. I felt a bit guilty about how I had subconsciously written her off on ever standing by my side in terms of power, but now that my Talent boosting project is about to be kicked off, I realized that Airi would actually benefit the most out of having her Talent boosted!
Her Talent may be below average by all measures, but her comprehension ability isn't too shabby, while her willpower and luck respectively are equal to and greater than both Alfia and Artemis!
I know that objectively since I scanned them all using an artifact that measures those Cultivator stats on a scale of 1 to 10, where every single-digit difference is like that of heaven and earth (incidentally my own numbers kept on rising until it reached 100 causing the artifact to self-destruct because it couldn't calculate any further).
On the note of objective measurements of 'luck' or how reality favors someone, Airi having a 9 in Luck, giving her the second-highest value in this universe compared to her father's max 10, makes a lot of sense given that she had gotten me as her husband.
As the main character in my own right and having trained the househusband arts for years, it is only natural that a girl born with such a high luck value would meet the best possible partner for her!
Aside from taking pride in how capable my wives can be, I also take pride in how awesome I am as a husband to many women!
Hmm, oh, Artemis is starting to wake up. Sensing how contented she felt made it all the more apparent that we were both feeling 'lazy' after how intense our night went.
The mutual exchange of vital energies was now within similar quantities, leaving both Artemis and I with tremendous amounts of unrefined vital yin/yang energies while leaving a smaller proportion of our recovered reserves intact. This has resulted in a form of exhaustion that wouldn't go away until we refined those energies to improve our Cultivation base and foundation.
But it was all worth it. After all, with her recent breakthrough, the 'resonance' between our Yin and Yang had never been stronger. As sexual partners, this meant that dual-cultivation between the two of us had become far more pleasurable and exhausting than having sex with anyone else.
The pleasure was worth every bit of tiredness in my soul.
"Mnn, morning, darling~" She whispered after pulling herself closer to me.
"Good morning to you too, my love." I kissed Artemis and then embraced her, enjoying the sensation of her breasts pressing against my body.
"I don't want to get out of bed. Can't we just sleep in?" Artemis complained while resting her head on my chest, looking up at me with a cute pout.
"Hahaha, I wish, I wish. Unfortunately, I have quite a busy day ahead. How about we just start this off the fun way?" I say as I brushed my hand through her hair and down past her waistline, then started fondling her ass, making her shudder in excitement.
"Oh, very well. If we must." The grin on her face and her grip on my hardened dick told me all that I needed to know about how she really felt. "Just stay like that, for now."
Artemis sat and lifted herself up, giving me a full view of her nakedness, much to my delight.
While her 'twin peaks' weren't very big, especially in a universe obsessed with breast sizes, they were beautifully shaped and felt just right in the palms of my hands. Looking at how happy she was as I groped her breasts made me feel warm inside, and encouraged me to double my efforts in controlling my vital energies to 'resonate' with her properly.
By this point in our relationship, 'dual-cultivation' was more important as a technique to enhance our mutual pleasure, rather than anything else.
Artemis slowly raised and lowered her hips, her pussy wrapped tightly around my cock as if swallowing it whole. After enjoying the feeling of my hard rod poking her insides for a bit, she started to thrust her hips harder and faster, but the pace of it was going a little too slow for me.
"Hey, stop lazing around, I might just fall asleep at this rate."
"Hmm, so does that mean sleeping in is still on the table?"
This… cheeky little goddess!
I grabbed her waist and thrust deep and hard into her!
"Mnghh!? Ahh, ungh! Y-you're being really rough, nghhhh!"
The suddenness of it bewildered her for a split second before her shock gave way to pleasure, as I made sure to hit all her sensitive spots and allowed our energies to intermingle with precise timing to maximize our mutual pleasure.
"Aaah, ah! Ungh! Mngh! Oooh! That's the spot! Ha… your thick cock is fucking me so hard, ah!"
"Haa… ! Ah, hearing such vulgar noises from a former virginal goddess… is the best!" By this point, Artemis was matching my own efforts by moving her hips to my pace, "The fact that you've put in the effort to get better at stroking my cock with your pussy makes me really happy."
"I'm happy to hear that- Ahh! Ahn, aahn! It feels so good, I can't stop my hips!" The slutty expression on her face was threatening to make me lose control, "Ahh! I can really feel it now! It's making my womb tremble!"
Artemis took my cock deep into her as she continued to grind her hips against mine. Every time she thrust down into me, she would pull out just far enough that the tip of my cock would still be inside.
Her eyes gleamed with pleasure as she repeated this movement when she saw how much I enjoyed it. Seeing her drowning in love and pleasure like this causes me to lose my last remaining semblance of control.
"Uunghh! Alright, I'm gonna cum!"
"Yes, please cum! Ahh, I'm going to cum too! My womb is being fucked so hard! I'm gonna come- Ooooohhh!"
I pumped her womb full of my seed, then got up to hug her tightly while thrusting my still-hard rod that remained inside her, eliciting a loud moan of pleasure.
We went for a couple more rounds until we could finally bathe and recover properly.
As per our new routine, I took Artemis with me to a time-dilated secret realm where we could Cultivate our accumulated vital energies together, then departed to the kitchen so that we could prepare breakfast for everyone.
Artemis and I were getting more used to doing practically everything together since Airi started staying with her family, and with Fiore and Radia finishing up in the secret realm, and would still be spending a couple of days working on their Sacred Gears.
With the old rotation schedule broken up, everyone was doing their own thing, except for Artemis and I. The two of us made the decision to do as much as we can together until we needed a break from one another.
This was, in part, because I needed a lot of intimacy after being away for a year in another world. The other part was that Artemis was determined to follow along with me, regardless of my activities, be it personal training, my crafting and alchemy sessions, or any sort of work that she couldn't understand.
"Are you sure you want to hang around while I mass-produce blades that could drive universe-destroying entities insane with depression to the point of committing suicide? Most of this stuff is pretty beyond you…"
"Then explain it to me. I don't care if I don't understand anything, if you're fine with having me then I would just be happy to spend time with you."
I didn't quite know how to handle Artemis when she wasn't dissuaded at all by how incomprehensible my work can be to those that lacked understanding.
Back then when I was courting Airi and just after marrying her, I would spend most of my waking moments with her so long as she wasn't occupied with some matter, then sneak off to do my personal training, crafting, alchemy, etc…
The routine hadn't changed much when Artemis came into the mix, things still stayed the same when Alfia, Fiore and the Pentel sisters came into my life as well.
In the end, the only thing I could do was gratefully accepted her presence and accommodate her into my usual creation, improvement, and preparation work. My productivity suffered as a result, yet I found myself enjoying every moment of it.
All my life I could only ever share a small part of my working process (as a lesson for others) and the end results of my work with everyone around me. Artemis was the first person to have patiently stuck around and happily watched me do my own thing, without me explicitly making it a purposeful lesson or demonstration of my capabilities.
I could feel that we had gotten immeasurably closer to each other ever since.
"It's about time for the usual appointment. Can you help me set up the bed?"
"Of course. Do you mind if I set up a second one?"
"Certainly not. I do owe you a few massages, after all."
Gabriel rang the doorbell a few seconds after our talk, I greeted her happily and invited the enthusiastic angel inside while making some conversation with her.
"-Dulio is still trying to cook that 'sky serpent' meat you gave him to 'perfection'. He's recruited my brother's brave saints to act as testers, along with Griselda and Mirana, and now he's challenged everyone else to a 'Cook-off' to get some inspiration."
"Oh wow, I'm sorry if I caused any trouble with that."
"Hehe, no worries~ I love it when Heaven is lively! Normally it might have been a problem but with the upgraded system, everyone's burdens have lessened quite considerably! It's good that everyone can have the time to share their joys and laughter with one another."
"That's wonderful. I'm glad that everything is working out so far."
"Me too! Ah, but there are some concerns from the other factions like the Norse and Grecian ones now that the news has gotten out."
"Sounds like it's time to throw in more chaos into the mix to distract them. Maybe I should just revive everyone that was killed by Trihexa all those decades ago?"
"That would be a very nice thing to do… e-eh, a-are you serious?"
"I can do that easily enough, though I have to exclude the humans since their souls can be contacted by mediums and other entities in an afterlife which could cause a paradox if I retrieved them from the past. There are no complications with the likes of devils, angels, and other beings that just have their souls drifting in some other realm."
Learning how to bend the rules of reality over and fucked it in the ass with every loophole imaginable was one of the biggest lessons I learned from Anos Voldigoad.
"U-um, it's a wonderful idea, but could I please discuss that with my brothers first?"
While Gabriel's distressed expression was really cute, it was not one that I liked to see on her outside of the times when I teased her, so I quickly reassured her that I wouldn't do it without consulting her.
"Of course, please do. Though you can add that I'm also offering to revive every angel that has been killed in the past as well if you want them back and think you can transition them into this new era peacefully enough."
"Oh, thank you. I'm sure they will love your idea! You're so kind and generous to us… are you sure this is alright?"
I felt the familiar yet immensely pleasing sensation of getting hugged by one of the most beautiful women I had the pleasure of knowing. Also, one of the best pairs of breasts pressing against me will never be a bad thing.
"It's fine, everyone has, overall, been benefiting from Heaven's systems for a long time." More specifically, the Sacred Gear system, "So I don't see any reason not to help Heaven out a bit."
I have essentially taken up some limited role as a 'volunteer god' within the Heaven hierarchy with how things have been going with them. This suits me just fine since it fits into my plans to seduce Gabriel from the position of a 'senior at work'.
Many men have tried to gain Gabriel's favor across the centuries to no avail as a result of her deep sense of duty and lack of desire to pursue love, among many other reasons. While brazenly offering to marry her could work out, I find it more satisfying to appeal to her from a position no one else could fulfill.
As the second replacement for Heaven's leadership and management of God's system, there was effective, no one else that Gabriel could truly speak to about the sorts of problems she faces when managing the system or various intricacies of the system that she would like changed. The only one she could have done that with would be either Michael or her Father, both of which are unavailable.
I, on the other hand, can empathize with her troubles and help her in managing the system. I can also speak to her about possible improvements and whether or not such changes to the systems should be implemented.
Simply put, I'm her 'reliable senpai' to her 'adorable kohai'.
"By the way, any new changes to your abilities after the previous massage?"
"Yes! There was a 7% increase in light energy intensity in my spears and-"
Gabriel quickly gave me the usual statistics that I requested of her to measure the success of my massages.
"That's good. If we combine that with the other treatment I had planned out, I should also be able to solve the issue of pure angels being unable to gain more power and new pairs of wings."
"Truly?! As expected of you, Dio, you really do work miracles… !"
I had been keeping my massages completely chaste as starting off with the lewd massage would give the game away, unlike a certain silver-haired knight that gets drugged with an aphrodisiac and falls for a revenge-obsessed MC, Gabriel acutely understands the difference between lust and feelings of love.
This is as a result of being long-lived, a target of other people's lust and affections, and also a strong understanding of sin and desire from the perspective of an angel. Even if I conditioned her body to desire me, she wouldn't misunderstand that as feelings of love and would likely repress her desires, and maybe even restrain herself from seeing me, if she felt it necessary.
"Oh, what's this second bed doing here?"
"That would be for me. Dio will be doing working on me after he's done with you."
"Ah, Artemis, hello again!"
That being said, there was nothing wrong with teaching Gabriel the joys of a wholesome 'pleasure' focused massage given from a husband to his wedded wife.
She will be mine, in time. There is no need to foolishly rush matters.
The plan is elegant in its simplicity, just repeat what worked for Airi and raise my standing among Gabriel's 'family' to the point where they wouldn't think bad of me or outright start encouraging her to marry me! If the idiots she surrounds herself by could convince her to pose in a swimsuit just so that Heaven's representatives could win a fight against Issei in an overly dragged out tournament arc, then creating the ideal scenario where they'll convince Gabriel to marry me might actually be easier than any other complicated plan.
Chapter 18
AN: This was totally going to start with Airi's POV, wrap up a few things and lead into Issei's latest reason for wanting to kill poor 'innocent' DIO… but then I felt the tone would be too jarring for what I had planned for both Gabriel and Airi, and before I knew it, I took one small idea and expanded it to a whole chapter. Warning: Pure Fluff Ahead…
Chapter 18
Gabriel had visited today after clearing up a considerable amount of work ahead of time.
"So you never had your hair done by anyone else? Not even by your sisters?"
"Mn, no? I don't recall anyone offering to style my hair, nor has it ever occurred to me."
"Well let's give it a shot then!"
After the usual massage session, I had decided to put my considerable skills in the arts to work in an attempt to make Gabriel look even more beautiful, well, she was already perfect just the way, so it's more accurate to say I was just providing her alternate hairstyles that could accentuate her beauty in other ways.
Having already pampered Gabriel's body in a chaste yet intimate fashion so thoroughly, it was only natural for me to move on to other parts of her, like her knee-length curly blonde hair.
Dear God, thank you for making this long, luscious golden hair!
I had always been aware of my 'preference' for blonde girls (both 2D and 3D), after all, that little quirk of mine was one of the main reasons why Airi had caught my eye back then.
I never expected to find my heart pounding even harder than it usually does with Gabriel (though I hide it by using a vibration canceling technique) when she gave me permission to have free-reign with her hair!
It was a more stressful endeavor than I initially believed it to be. Half of the blame could be attributed to myself, as I was second-guessing myself on whether or not I would ruin her beauty by messing with the natural order (her natural hairstyle) like this.
So I ended up defaulting on my backup options, that is to say, I was ripping off hairstyles from fictional characters and seeing if it would work well on her.
"Waah! It's like having front antennas! Well, for lack of better word, it's not as if I would know what antennas should feel like… maybe I should make a headband to try it? Ooooh, the ribbon is sooo cute! I love it!"
At least Gabriel liked the forward-shaped bangs and the large ribbon tied behind her, the former didn't quite fit her, while the latter accessory and adjustments did. Guess I can cross out Aerith's Wall Market dress and hairstyle in the Remake.
The next hairstyles we tried involved different kinds of braids, as before, Gabriel enjoyed them while I was still wracking my head at how 'imperfect' it appeared.
"If I spin my head then my hair could become a weapon!" She gestured childishly as if she was insistent that would be the case, "I remember brother Metatron had once spoke of the mentor of the main character from a Ninja anime called Barotu doing the same!"
I felt like coughing out blood at the mention of yet another of DXD's horrific franchise 'ripoffs. Please don't sully the memory of my man Jiraiya like that!
Ahhhh, noooo, it's too late… the knowledge of it has already been written into my perfect memory. I try not to sniff and cry in despair. There's a reason why I avoided reading manga and watching the anime of this world, and that is to avoid tainting my mind with these cheap knockoff fictional works.
"T-that's nice. Let's try some drill curls next."
Gabriel ended up looking like the nicest, prettiest princess ever. She adored the hairstyle and played with her hair, blissfully ignorant of the fact that I was already planning different ways to prevent her from using it often, as her appearance gave me strong 'hentai princess rape bait' vibes that made me extremely worried for her.
We ended up trying many different kinds of hairstyles. Thanks to my limited powers over time I could simply revert any changes back to her original head of hair if I ever trimmed or cut too much of her hair.
For the record, I had already gathered enough of her hair in secret for preservation and re- uh, inspiration purposes…
"Um, I know I said that I would leave it to you, but…"
"Don't hold back, ask and you shall receive."
"Oh you… ! Well, I would like to try this hairstyle."
Gabriel showed me an image of her 'friend' Serafall and I quickly understood her intentions.
"Twintails huh? Hey, why don't we take it a step further?"
"What do you mean?"
"We just need to magic up a suitable matching costume… on second thought, let me introduce you to Kaleidostick Blue Diamond!"
Gabriel went through the whole magical girl transformation sequence, much to my pleasure, and then followed my instructions on posing so that I could take the best pictures.
Granted, they were the best SFW pictures… the true best images were all properly 'taken' by using [Unified-Realm, Divine Augmentation and recording every detail of what happened in this room into my memory.
That being said, my heart almost suffered critical damage from her wondrous appearance and how alluring she was with the initial reluctance at posing with the 'shameless' outfit.
"Hehe, Serafall is going to be so happy when I share these with her over the communication array."
Considering how Serafall is like… why do I get the feeling that Gabriel's 'friend' would be absolutely livid when she thinks that Gabriel is plotting to use her absence to replace 'Levia-tan' in the hearts of magical girl fans everywhere?
"This is so fun! Hehehe, I finally understand why human females of all ages enjoy this activity now. Though come to think of it, it's not just limited to humans…" Gabriel mused after giggling to herself.
"I'm just glad that you're enjoying this. I was worried that it was a waste of time since none of them turned out better, ah, you're just too beautiful by being yourself that I can't help but consider my skills to be lacking!"
I lamented dramatically, drawing a great deal of embarrassment and happiness from the angel.
"I-I don't know about that… but, hmm, how do I say this… it's not a bad feeling. Even if none of them really screamed 'me', I felt that was alright because it was the first time I felt as if I was a different person." Gabriel turned her head around and looked towards me with a lonely expression, "Does that make sense? It sounds strange to me. I never considered being anyone else but 'me' before, I never had a reason to, Father made me this way as he intended and so I continued on like this. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, yet… why do I feel relieved when I play around in such a manner?"
I gently patted her head and then planted my hands on her shoulders reassuringly.
"I think you just never had the chance to explore anything else outside of your duty. You obeyed as God commanded and acted in accordance to his will. When he passed on, your continued on and did your best to follow through with his wishes. When Michael passed on the throne to you, you accepted it without nary a protest. Throughout a passage of time unimaginable to mortals, your sense of responsibility never wavered. You even managed to find some time to read books, check up on mortals and keep up with new developments. You found a relatively good balance, all things considered, but you can't help but wonder what else is out there for you, whether you are missing out on something…?"
Gabriel met my eyes with an excited smile, "Yes! That's right! Metatron and many of my brothers have all explored and immersed themselves in worldly endeavors without falling. I did think about it, but by the time I did, Michael and the others sealed themselves with Trihexa…"
Her happiness at finding someone that finally understood her dimmed a little at the mention of the Beast, so I quickly moved to reassure her, "That's fine. There's no reason why you can't give it a try now."
"B-but I still have to manage the system…"
"You don't have to drop it and run off somewhere. Just work one or two fewer hours a day to find new things that interest you or something you would like to experience… preferably something that isn't illegal or damaging."
"There's no way I would do something like what you're thinking about! I-I'm not a rebellious teenage daughter or anything…"
… I don't even want to think about the kinds of stuff she's seen girls at that age get up to.
Gabriel blushed and looked away, poking her fingers together while musing on the subject further… I know she's not going to do drugs or have sex randomly, so maybe… she's thinking about music concerts and Christian Rock?
It would fit. After all, Gabriel has a wonderful singing voice that she never really got a chance to explore outside of worshipping in Heaven…
"Are you thinking about starting a band?"
"I-it can't be that hard…"
She was really going to do it?!
"Okay, I believe you. You're going to be the lead vocalist?"
Gabriel nodded shyly.
"It's a good idea to play to your talents. Who else do you have in mind for your band?"
"My Brave Saints. But Griselda is not… musically inclined-" What a nice way to say she's tone-deaf, "-and too 'blunt' so she might cause misunderstandings with any fans."
"I think you're jumping way too many steps ahead. Just think about setting up the band and what you want to get out of this first!"
Not that she was wrong in assuming that they would get fans. A band filled with literal angelic beauties would never lack in the fame (or notoriety, if they suck) department.
We ended up speaking for a long time as I did my best in brainstorming ideas for Gabriel to take back to her future girl group.
"Ah, it's almost time for dinner. Why don't you stay on and join us?"
"I don't wish to impose…"
"Then should I insist?"
"Hehe, I suppose it would be rude to refuse then."
Before I left for the kitchen, Gabriel stopped me by grabbing onto my shirt's sleeve.
"Thank you for hearing me out again. I feel as if I am always troubling you…"
"It's no trouble at all. I'm just glad that I could help a good friend out."
"Did you know that you're one of the few people to have acknowledged me as a friend? A real one. Even among my Brave Saints, only Griselda and Mirana have truly decided to treat me as a friend instead of just their superior. It makes me feel really happy."
"Well… it's not a hard thing to do. Gabriel, you're a lovely person, someone that I can't help but care for and want to help out."
"C-can I ask why?"
"Eh? Does it have to be more complicated than that? I did just say I liked you enough to the point where I want to help you…"
11/10 points for that smooth question dodge!
I wasn't going to admit that I intended to marry her this early as I didn't want her to think I was just like all the other men that offered their love to her, who did so mainly out of lust and bragging rights, instead of truly caring for her as an individual.
"Oh, yes! You did. My mind must have wandered…"
"But if there was anything I could add on to that… I guess it's safe to say I admired your steadfastness and how you've worked hard for such a long time without losing sight of who you are. As someone that's seeking a balance between a mortal's and immortal's mindset, I couldn't help but admire one such as you, for persevering for so long while adapting to the many changes over the decades so well."
Honesty is the best policy when it comes to angels, especially when I have so many real reasons that I could use in place of my less than savory ones.
Gabriel stood there stunned for a few seconds until she graced me with a look so full of love that I felt as if I took a brief trip to Heaven and back… only to realize that probably happened when I failed to track her movements and allowed her to press her lips against mine!
Her lips separated from my own after only a second's worth of contact, I watched as Gabriel brushed a finger over her own lips with an expression of wonder, before running off, leaving behind the lingering echoes of her melodic laughter with me.
My divine sense picked up a few words she mumbled out as she ran out into the garden, it seems like I have a few reincarnated angels to thank for giving her pre-emptive relationship advice.
It took me several minutes and a 'chef' clone yelling at me to notice that my face had been stuck with a dumb smile and I had been daydreaming for half the time I was cooking.
Chapter 19
Chapter 19
"Come on Feng Xiu! Let's go see the real sky as you wish!"
I watched Robertina take off to the sky with her new partner, ice and fire trailing behind them, after signaling the end of my extremely cliched results speech like a seasoned Shokugeki judge.
Fiore's decision to specifically create a Sacred Gear for Robertina, a modified Independent Avatar Type one that allowed the gentle Ice Phoenix within to live by the girl's side, naturally won the little competition I had started some weeks ago.
Radia's Sacred Gear powered by the self-proclaimed 'Tyrannical Lightning Dragon Emperor, Ba Long', which she had captured after sealing all of the relatively powerful dragon's senses mid-combat until he became helpless, was certainly more powerful than Fiore's when it had been given to Kurenai.
But she hadn't taken into account the user's needs and desires.
Kurenai certainly appreciated it enough and liked it, but the additional lightning power was redundant to him, given who his mother was.
Robertina had grown up as a lonely girl much like Airi had (when it came to non-familial interactions) due to their family situation, her Phenex bloodline had mutated in such a way that her regeneration was much weaker in exchange for more firepower (thanks to her father's draconic bloodline).
Fiore had learned all this from me and had ensured that her Sacred Gear resolved that deficiency while providing Robertina her much-desired companion. Having gained Feng Xiu's co-operation, who wanted to get out of the secret realm and see the 'true sky' (am I the Demiurge now?), through pure diplomatic means also helped to secure the Sacred Gear's stability instead of having the sealed being attempting to escape or just try get its possessor killed out of spite.
"Ah, it's been a while since I lost. You realized there was something more to how our creations were judged, heh, you were more perceptive than I thought. I completely misjudged your abilities and the importance of understanding others." Radia placed her hand on Fiore's shoulder and complimented her enthusiastically, the recipient of the praise appeared extremely awkward, "It seems like I have a long way to go until I understand the hearts of others. You truly are fit for the role of a leader!"
"I-I still find that hard to believe." Fiore was practically screaming 'I had no idea that we would be judged this way' in her head like Izuku did when he met Tenya again.
"And done! I just added the two new Sacred Gears to the system so that they can make use of the new evolutionary functions." Gabriel had joined in the Sacred Gear testing with the Hyoudou family to commemorate the first human-made Sacred Gears entering the system, granted, most of the parts were pre-made by yours truly, but it still counts.
"Nice! Ah, but for the sake of completeness, you can set some additional restrictions for the lightning lizard's gear and set Feng Xiu up for release upon death to abide by the contract made by clicking here."
"Oh my, I never thought about that!"
I quickly reassured Gabriel before she could get any ideas on how 'silly' she had been, which she hadn't, as tampering with the seals was generally a recipe for disaster.
"It's good that you didn't. Most beings are probably resentful after over a thousand years of being sealed." I then turned and looked at Issei Hyoudou keeping an eye out for his daughter Robertina, "Hey, father-in-law, does Ddraig want out if you kick the bucket early?"
"What do you think?! Use your head!"
As if pretending not to hear how rude he was, Gabriel followed up and repeated my question, "Mister Issei, do you think Ddraig would be happy to be free one day?"
"He sure would! Thanks, I owe you one!"
Truly, this is double-standards to the highest degree.
"Hehe, then, I would appreciate it if you could be nicer to your dear son-in-law."
"Grurk….!"
Is Gabriel's level of cunning so high that it became a passive skill and loops back round to her being oblivious of what she's capable of?
Best not to think about it.
Rather than thinking about that, I'm just going to be smug about it to my father-in-law. Hahaha! Suck it Issei! I got to know Gabriel better in a week than you ever did over the course of decades. Truly, I am the most blessed under all the Heavens…
"Lady Gabriel! Big Brother Dio!" Shin came running at us after the competition had settled, "I just wanted to thank you two before I forget again, eheh… !"
"Hm, for wha- ah, your mother?"
"Yeah, she's a lot more relaxed and happier now. Aside from my birthdays and the rare holidays, mom had always come home late at night exhausted and did nothing but sleep, at least, for the days that she does come back home. She was so busy with her work in heaven that she's almost never seen until you upgraded the system and Lady Gabriel changed everyone's work schedule! It's so nice seeing my mother more than once a day on a regular basis!"
Issei Hyoudou, what the actual fuck, your angel wife is an even bigger slave to work than you ever were!
I guess I lucked out by always catching Irina on those rare occasions when I spend time with their family.
Gabriel sighed and gave him an apologetic look, "I'm glad to hear that she's doing better. I only wished that I could have done something about it earlier."
I quickly interjected before Gabriel offers any more apologies and Shin goes 'please don't apologize' like the nice polite Japanese kid he can be, "It really couldn't be helped. Heaven was in really bad shape, the first to sixth Heaven was practically a patch job compared to the original Heaven after Trihexa's attack, so angels just had to work harder to keep everything from failing." After successfully reassuring Gabriel, I turned towards Shin, "That reminds me, I will be sending a few hundred of my clones to fix up Heaven's infrastructure, so the Heaven you'll see in the future won't be Japanese corporate hell."
"Yay! Down with the corporate slave lifestyle!"
"That's the spirit little bro! Remember Shin, aim for a proper work-life balance, don't be like your dad!"
"I heard that you little shi- uh, rascal!"
Zen came by a little later to get Shin after having gotten Alfia to agree to a little spar. Since we were in a testing/training ground Zen had figured he may as well use the time to get some training in. They probably thought that getting a hot female teacher would be better than sticking with their 'same old' uncle Yuuto Kiba.
They were quickly disabused of that notion after getting their ass brutally kicked over and over again. Asia shook her head at the sight and kept up her Sacred Gear as a continuous AOE effect because of how badly they were getting beaten up.
Gabriel departed soon after, well, not before giving me a goodbye kiss (much to Issei's sorrow and the mixed respect of the rest of his family).
After awhile, I finally managed to sneak away and rendezvous with my darling Airi.
"I missed you." It was just over a week for Airi, but I had been away for well over a year (discounting secluded training), "There were so many moments where I would turn around, wanting to say something, only to realize that you weren't there by my side. It hurts more than I thought it would."
Airi returned my passionate embrace, and said, "I would never leave you." Not unless I ditched you myself, which I did when I sought out power by the Demon King's side… "I missed you too. Everyone is still dear to me, but it doesn't feel like home anymore, it's just one long family visit. I'm Airi Dorana now and my place is by your side."
"I love you. I love you so much."
"Then show me."
We ended up catching up on lost time in her bedroom.
I had Airi lift her fucked silly face up with a small prompt, then placed my hand on her chin, and ordered her, "Stick it out."
She stuck out her tongue lewdly just like how I trained her. I placed a finger in, which she started sucking on without any prompting.
I could sense her thoughts and feelings with my divine sense, her realization of how quickly she obeyed my words and acted without even considering otherwise, of how I had already trained her body and mind to such an extent… her feelings of humiliation, happiness, resignation, and excitement only served to make my cock harder!
Alas, I had things to do, weapons to make, idiots that courted death (impulsiveness and Olympians, what an iconic duo!) that I needed to process… If I stayed any longer then Airi and I would be fucking until she breaks the devil's 'fastest impregnation since marriage' record without my fertility aids.
Retrieving my talent improving pill, I placed it unto her tongue and told her to swallow. On a normal day, she might have protested a bit about how it was too early into their marriage to break her with drugs, but she was too horny to think right now so I got my way without any hassle.
It happened instantly.
"Wh-what was that? Everything looks and feels so clear now! It's like I had been blind all my life and now I can see."
"Ahem! That's exaggerating things a little too much and insults those that are actually blind, but moving on, that's basically a permanent Talent boosting pill."
"H-huh?! Seriously?!"
"I want you by my side for all eternity, Airi. I love you with all my heart. The thought of you dying during your Cultivation because of a lack of talent or feeling left out as we progressed through more realms is unbearable to me."
It was with great reluctance that we held back from more sex, thankfully, I had a suggestion for a very special kind of 'play' with Airi, which she consented to quite readily.
"Um, Dio, is that really alright? Won't you hurt her?"
Gabriel's voice whispered through the wind as I returned to my work with Artemis by my side.
"Airi consented readily within the confines of marriage. It's no different from those battle maniacs that seek the thrill of the fight and balancing themselves along the border of life and death. Besides, she suggested most of it."
Airi POV
"I'm sorry mom."
"Don't be. *sniff* It's a little earlier than I hoped for, but all of us had experienced many changes in our lives at your age, we should have guessed at least one of our children would take after us in that way."
Airi hugged her mother Asia tightly outside her childhood bedroom where she would be staying one last night.
She was a married woman now and her true home was wherever she could be together with Dio.
Not everyone took to the truth well. Some of her younger siblings cried and begged for her to stay, but Airi was firm about truly leaving home for good.
It's not as if they would be that far apart, their homes were in the same city, after all. As usual, Airi and her father didn't see eye-to-eye in this matter, but there was nothing he could do about it.
"I'll visit at least once a week."
"Thank you, Airi-chan. Have a good night's rest, love you!"
"Love you mom!"
Airi entered the bedroom that had been stripped bare after all the packing she had slowly done (into her interspatial ring) over the past few weeks.
It was no longer her bedroom. It was just another room that belonged to her when she was younger.
After she had truly spent 'quality time' with her husband those weeks ago, the home in which she grew up in slowly stopped feeling like home, which was the proper way of things now that she was a married woman.
She stopped feeling comfortable with sleeping in her own bed, and ended up tossing and turning for well over an hour before falling asleep.
Thankfully, Dio had a very useful sleeping spell to give herself a restful sleep. Airi had used it every night since then and woke up refreshed every morning!
Aside from her sleep troubles, her discomfort with staying with her family got to the point where she even felt a bit of nausea when dealing with her father and her louder siblings.
Again, there was an internal energy technique and spell to deal with that, so it was an inconvenience at best, but a growing one.
"Just one last night to go! Yosh!" Airi hyped herself up on the idea of getting back to the married lifestyle she was used to and jumped right into bed.
Airi drew upon her energies to cast the usual magic spell and… blinked several times as she noticed the oddities on the magic circle.
Were those always there? Why didn't she notice them? What did they do? But… this was how it had always been for weeks, so it's probably just some complex theory she hadn't quite grasped from her husband's lessons yet.
The magic was activated and Airi's instincts screamed at her that something was wrong. She felt weak all of a sudden, everything was dark despite her devil physiology's natural dark-vision, her entire room's space was locked preventing her from escaping-
-Airi screamed as she was forced down onto the bed by someone with familiar hands!
She struggled with all her might to no avail and cursed furiously as per the script her assailant tore her clothes off and forced her husband's hard cock right into her pussy-
-Eh, wait? What was Dio doing here? Why did he break into her room? Why is her husband holding her down and raping her like this when she would have given him anything if he just asked?
"Look at how wet you are now Airi! That's the fastest time ever!"
Fastest… what…
He forced his fingers, the ones soaked in her own pussy juice, into her mouth and… made her remember everything.
This hadn't been the first time she had gone through this.
"Dio, you idiot, you screwed up the memory sealing spell! I was supposed to remember after I go 'aaah~ Yes! Your wife is a dirty slut! Please turn me into your personal onahole ~!' Not this early!"
"I did warn you that you would build up a resistance to it."
Airi easily undid the magical restraints built upon her own power then punched Dio until he hit the ceiling. She's glad that he's near impossible to seriously hurt, but damn it, there are times where she really wants to smack him!
Tonight was supposed to be the climax of their 'rape play'!
Airi had been so excited about the idea of tasting a bit of marital rape and the humiliation of knowing that she had been the one that wanted it in the first place, to the point where she had her own memories erased so that she could remember each and every successive loop's perverse desire for the rough and debasing treatment by her husband.
It would have been a boring routine with her husband if he wasn't an overpowered Cultivator that could read the hearts of mortals. Airi knew that her pleasure and horror of just how low she 'fell' would only increase after every nightly loop, which Dio would easily derive pleasure from, which in turn, would make Airi happy for her husband as a dutiful perverted wife should and…
Haaa… no sense in thinking about the feedback loop now that everything is ruined.
"You're pouting."
"I'm not!"
"Airi's pouting face is too cute~"
In the end, Airi just couldn't stay mad at Dio, so they settled for just some 'ordinary' sex.
Airi really needed to learn how to Dual-Cultivate properly ASAP so that she could wear Dio out as Artemis can. With her increase in 'talent' thanks to her husband's pill, weaving her energies together and comprehending things became a lot easier than before, so she should be capable of dual-cultivating properly in a month or so.
Dio sneaked out of her room by sunrise and Airi joined her family for breakfast sometime later before she would leave home.
"I, have returned, bearing gifts."
Ophis popped into the Hyoudou residence and had everyone pick a random monster egg from a large basket. Airi's parents were already crying at the inevitable pet troubles.
"Airi, Baka Red, and I got you this. Congratulations on the child."
"Um? Thanks for the weddi- wait, what?!"
Airi blinked at Ophis's words. Was she really…?
She thought back to the past few days and wanted to smack herself for not noticing the signs. She was pregnant, oh god, she was going to have Dio's child and…
"WHAT?!" "Did my ears deceive me?!" "Big sister is… !" "S-so quick…" "I'm going to be a grandmother!" "Gorou, you hear that? We're going to be great grandparents!"
Airi smiled when most of her family seemed to be happy for her. Her father looked conflicted about how he was feeling, well, that counts as progress in Airi's book, so yay?
"When… when did that punk even get you pregnant…? I was keeping watch on the house for weeks."
And now it's gone.
Damn it, she's had it with her dad's attitude!
"Don't call him a punk! And stop trying to keep him away from me? You can't keep me from my husband!"
"Your husband is still going around fucking other women behind your back like he's bored of you! How am I supposed to stand for that-"
"He's not bored of me! He's been raping me every night for the past- oh, shit, that came out wrong, wait, it was totally consensual!"
5 Minutes later
Dio had somehow punched his father's 'temporal state' back to before he transformed into a raging dragon, then picked everyone up and transported us all to the safe world where we played that VRMMORPG NewWorld Online.
"Good to know that your dad has Outrage mode as a power-up too."
Her husband was as confident as ever.
"Let's not talk about that."
Airi really wanted to seal away those memories of how she got them into this mess.
"Okay, so, can you tell me what happened all the way from the beginning?"
"It started when Ophis getting a present for me and the baby-"
"You're pregnant!? I'm going to be a father!? I'm so happy! Hey, Artemis! Alfia! Everyone! I'm going to be a father! Airi is pregnant and is going to have a baby! Haha, ahaha!!!"
Chapter 20
Chapter 20
My heart was filled with joy to the point where I felt it was bursting!
I was just so happy!
Airi and I hadn't expected to get pregnant without fertility aids for another decade or so later, but we didn't regret our decisions leading up to this point, not one bit.
Airi was pregnant with my child, our child, and we were going to be parents. I had dreamed of this day ever since I laid my eyes and fell in love with my darling wife.
After hearing the full story from Airi, Alfia showed the young Magi ladies around the apartment, while Artemis, Airi, and I spent some time together and discussed our future plans. Artemis had left for the kitchen to cook everyone some lunch, leaving Airi and I to catch up and share in our mutual joy.
"She's being quiet."
"It's too early for the baby to be kicking around!" Airi gives my head a weak shove in an attempt to liberate her belly, "How do you know she's a girl anyway?"
I laughed and obliged her previous efforts, removing my head over her tummy and rested it on her lap instead, "I don't. I just hope I'll have a daughter. If my first child were a boy, then I would be shaking in my boots at the thought of him imitating daddy dearest."
Airi brushed her hand through my hair, smiling gently at me, "It's good that you're honest about how well you think you would do as a role model, though I think you're exaggerating a lot."
"I think not! Could you imagine him copying me and saying stuff like 'cut off your arms and I'll consider leaving your corpse intact'? He'll definitely end up as a young master character."
"Ahahaha! Dropping the cliched quotes was supposed to be a given so I felt no need to mention it! But seriously, I'll get mad if you say things like that around our children, so don't do it."
"I won't. That's a promise, Airi."
"Thank you."
"Should we start coming up with baby names?"
"Hmm, maybe later… hey, Dio?"
"Yeah?"
"I love you."
"I love you too. If you think I don't say it enough then I'll gladly make up for it."
"Hmm, how about you double that amount? Not for me, but for our baby, I'm sure they would be happy to know how much we love them."
Artemis called out to us a few minutes after we had spoken a bit more about the baby. Once lunch was over, I gathered up everyone to finalize our immediate plans.
"We'll be heading over to Artemis' homeworld, you know, the one that was heroically saved by Alfia-"
"-Please refrain from exaggerating my feats."
"Fine, fine. The one where Alfia and a lot of effective demigod adventurers successfully saved from three powerful monsters. There's still a monster-spawning dungeon down there that will eventually kick-start the apocalypse but that's just a minor detail."
"Minor details he says…"
I was probably the foremost expert at getting Alfia to roll her eyes at this point.
"Minor for me. Not so much for everyone there but I have faith that they will be prepared for it. I did my part in getting things on the right track, now, it's up to you lot."
Artemis nodded at that, "Though the gods may dwell among them, the lower world belongs to mortals, and thus, its fate belongs in mortal hands."
"You say that like Dio's a god… oh wait, close enough! Tee hee!" Airi looked a bit embarrassed at not considering it sooner. It was an unsurprising reaction, given that I was her husband and that 'godhood' was more of a racial thing in her world, so it would never really occur to locals that I was a god just because I had powers that dwarfed most.
"Yeah, apocalypse aside, that would only happen in around… 15-20 years after Bell's birth. Ah right, Bell is Alfia's adorable nephew. Who she should really have visited and attended several birthday parties for-"
"-Kuh! I still have yet to come up with decent gift ideas…"
"Don't worry Alfia, I got you covered. We'll pop over at around 4 years after we left so that you can actually speak with your nephew alright? That way, Airi and I can also get some parenting tips from Meteria and Jason!"
"So we will be heading to Orario?" Fiore asked after raising her hand.
I shook my head, "Nope. We're heading over to the Elven kingdom where most of our friends are staying. The queen knows me and I did matchmake her with Zeus, oh, I also got them together with Hera so technically it's a kingdom co-ruled and backed by the Zeus and Hera Familia."
"Oh right, you did mention Zeus back then…" "Zeus!" "Another divine spirit?!"
I had to reassure Fiore, Radia, and Nazica that they weren't going to be raped by Zeus anytime soon (Artemis still looked skeptical at my words).
For one thing, this version of Zeus is a lot nicer. He would only sexually harass and peek at them at worst, though he will certainly go out of his way to sleep with others when his wives aren't in sight. Secondly, Zeus was my sworn friend (and 2nd father, too), so he would respect my wishes and companions. Lastly, I would be protecting them, nothing else needed to be said.
Our arrival at the kingdom was at dusk, I specifically chose a place where Bell could be sighted. As I planned, Alfia spotted him at an instant, and when Bell turned around, she stood there in front of him, stunned.
Alfia hadn't even realized she had rushed towards him, for the first time in her life, her legs moved on their own. She asked for his name, then placed her hand on Bell's round cheek and quietly hugged him. It was the second time I saw her broke into tears.
The first and only time before today had been just after I healed her, and even then, she had quickly wiped them away lest anyone other than her sister could see them. At least, that was her intention, but everyone present at the time had witnessed her surge of emotion and kept silent for her sake.
The adorable white-haired boy returned the embrace and started crying at having sensed something familiar about the lady that hugged him.
"You look a lot like Meteria. Your white hair, your face, your smile, all are inherited from your mother."
"Mommy? You know mommy?"
"Yes. I'm your aunt Alfia, that is, I'm your mommy's sister."
Alfia then muttered something about his father's red eyes and wanting to hollow them out, but thankfully, the kid was too young to comprehend the rather terrifying words.
Meteria soon came by to bring Bell back home and caught sight of her sister, who she happily embraced and then scolded severely for leaving for years without a single message to them.
We all left Alfia to her fate as she was forced to sit in the Seiza position and accept her punishment. I encountered Zald on the way to meet Zeus and had a quick chat with him, (re)introducing the ladies, telling him the good news about my wife, setting up a time to catch up on stuff, and handed him an interspatial ring with some new ingredients to try out.
"My boy Dio! You finally came to visit!" Zeus was a lot more jolly, the Santa kind of jolly, nowadays. Guess that's what semi-retirement from Orario does to you.
"It's good to see you again. We're planning to stick around for a year so that Airi can give birth safely and without any being back in our homeworld noticing the birth, just in case of anything extraordinary."
Airi laughed and slapped my back playfully, "Hahaha, my husband here is expecting weather changes and a rainbow for when our child gets out."
"Hey, you'll never know what happens if the Heavens bless them. If they turn out to be a main character like myself, then there's sure to be some kind of sign! I just don't want anyone noticing too soon."
Especially from the higher beings.
The main reason I came back to Danmachi is that the gods here can't do a thing against my family even if we caught their attention and because the slightly higher concentration of laws might give our child a head start in Cultivation.
If I wanted optimal results I would have suggested the Anos' universe, but I didn't want a repeat of Misa's case, where her mother (Great Spirit Reno) was killed by a persistent god (in this case, the Heavenly Father God Nousgalia) and she had taken out of her mother's womb for the sake of furthering one of their many plots.
Even if I gained a few Cultivation realm increases, the gods in that universe were still tricky enough with their magic to possibly pull one over me, and I wasn't going to risk that just for the sake of giving my child more powerful traits at birth.
I would only consider doing so for Airi's next pregnancy. By then, I should be able to increase my Cultivation level and magical abilities to new heights.
I didn't want to jump several worlds and go on an extended training spree is because I didn't want to be separated from Airi for any long periods of time after my last adventure so I would just settle with what we have right now.
"He worries a lot. I'm worried too, but his kind of worries are a bit outlandish."
I dare her to say that to all the other Xianxia protagonists that get their babies stolen or entire family massacred.
Zeus nodded sagely, "Well, I kind of understand where the two of you are coming from. Gods and other sorts of beings get very interested in special births. You won't believe the kind of commotion that came up when we had to help Aria and Aiz settle down."
"Are they doing well?" Airi asked in my stead.
"They are! Aiz is a delightful child-"
After chatting for a long time, and then meeting up with Hera again, Zeus brought us to his hentai elf wife Cathia so that she could order some servants to prepare a few rooms for our stay.
Zeus technically had authority in this country, but apparently, he was now 'whipped' when it came to anything outside the bedroom after making some stupid decisions while drunk.
I gave the elf queen the courtesies required of me despite my status as a national hero for what I've done in their homeworld, and in this world, then took Zeus aside to tell him something about his wife.
"Cathia is pregnant."
"WHAT?! I swore I follow all the anti-NTR guidelines!"
"With your child. I know, I sensed your essence within her womb."
"Bwuh… !"
"Yes, yes, I know gods aren't supposed to be capable of having children, but it's a bit similar to Aria's case in that the chances are so low that no one had succeeded until now."
"Uuuuuuuhhhhh…."
Ignoring Zeus' repetitive dumb animal noises, I continued on with a question, "Have you been using the aphrodisiacs?"
"Uh huh."
"Hmm, my theory is that as the aphrodisiacs are capable of 'exciting' the targets at a deeper, spiritual level, it had allowed some of your divine essence to leak out of your mortal container. Coupled with the strong 'life' concept used in its creation, I suppose it increased the chances for that miracle to occur, leading to her pregnancy."
"I'M GOING TO BE A FATHER!?"
"I know right!? Isn't that great!"
"It is! This is wonderful! I have to tell everyone!"
"I think you should start with Hera with me there to explain things."
After all, we didn't want her to go hysterical and mad at some misunderstandings.
Zeus and I started talking about all the exciting father-child things we would be getting up to when the happy day finally arrives.
"Wait, before we head back to our wives…" I put my arm around Zeus' shoulder and whispered conspiratorially, "I just remembered that we have to take advantage of this rare opportunity given how hard natural conception can be in our situation."
He reciprocated my action and did the same, "Oh? Do tell more."
"Pregnant sex."
"Shut the door. Let's get planning."
AN: A bit short but I needed to start writing or else I would forever be side-tracked by other ideas in my head. Heading back to the Danmachi world where Meteria can smaxk some sense into her sister will also help with some character development. As pregnancy is going to be a rare occasion, it is only natural for Dio and Airi to enjoy various perverse sexual acts at different stages of her pregnancy. It's also as good a time as any for Dio to take some 'inspiration' from CoC Revamp to indulge in his Lactation fetish ensure his children are adequately fed.
Chapter 21
AN: No matter what I did I came out unsatisfied with the original plan, so I ended up scraping everything and re-writing an Airi/Dio focused chapter on their thoughts, relationship, and interactions instead just to keep things going and to set up potential pregnant sex scenes later. I might take the time to work on a few side stories on his other world visits before getting back to the main story.
Chapter 21
"Good job Bell! Now then, let's review… what do you say when a stranger walks up to you and says nasty things?"
"Um… um… do you know who I am? And then I tell them who my daddy is!"
"That's right!"
"YOU! What in Hera's name are you teaching my son!?" "You're not turning my nephew into an arrogant young master!!!"
Meteria and Alfia chased me away from the adorable Bell Cranel.
It's hard to become a 'big brother' character to the main protagonist when their parents (and Aunt) are around to keep watch on him.
Well, I could have always just took Bell into an isolated, time dilated space to spend quality time with my 'little bro' but that would definitely veer into creepy kidnapper territory.
If only Bell's parents (and Aunt) were more amiable towards the thought of me spending more time with him. Perhaps they thought I would spoil him too much? Admittedly, the world-ending tier Artificial Spirit I created for him (based on my research across various universes) for all the birthdays I missed may have been a tad too excessive…
I ran up the castle walls and into one of the guest rooms, one that had been redecorated recently to fit Airi's tastes. She never was the type to enjoy overly luxurious rooms.
"Dio, what did you do this time?" Airi asked with a patient smile as she looked up from the sketch she was working on. She had taken up quite a few creative hobbies like drawing and needlework ever since we had learned of her pregnancy.
"Nothing much really. I just got away from Meteria and Alfia when they saw me teaching Bell some life hacks."
Airi chuckled as she set her pencil aside, turning around to meet my eyes, "Ahaha! You're still competing with Zeus on who can influence him the most?"
I shrugged and grinned, then answered in an exaggerated resigned fashion, "It can't be helped. My old man has a head start of several years on me. Even if I'm going to lose I want to at least leave my mark on him as a big brother."
"Admitting a loss? Are you sure you're a Cultivator?"
"Of course I am. Retreating from a lost battle in order to grow stronger, then use my poisons and other underhanded methods-" I faked a cough and corrected my slip, "-I mean, wits and tactics to make my rematch easier is part of being a Cultivator as well. Well, the smart ones at least."
"I never said you're one of the moronic impulsive ones, now did I?"
"Unfortunately, those do make up the majority, as such, I am obliged to keep things specific."
"That does help prevent confusion. Back on topic, really, what did you do this time? Before you were playing around with Bell-kun?"
"Well, it started off with the usual. Learning, training, cooking, creating new things, and improving on my creations. I've arranged a date with Gabriel at Orario to show her a couple of things, helped Cathia out with some public sector slash royal works, spoke with Zeus on a recent expedition of mine, had outdoor sex with Artemis, and then met up with Bell a little after that. Admittedly, I got slightly carried away with the local building projects today so… uh, better late than never?"
Instead of getting angry for being late to our regularly scheduled quality time, Airi merely smiled with amusement, "Jeez, you have to manage your time more carefully. Your work ethic is admirable as always, but this level of busyness is going to make you careless one day."
I moved to her side and knelt before her, "I know. Getting caught up in my work is always the most vulnerable point in time for cultivators like myself. That said, you have to be careful too. You have gotten better at manipulating your internal energy and magic but doing so right now is…"
"Sorry. I should be calling on you to keep watch on me when I try to fit some training in then…"
"I'm not saying you need to do that. So long as you don't push yourself too hard and try something risky then I'm not going to worry… well, not too much. I can't help myself from worrying but I can trust you to be responsible and safe."
As I said those words, I had reached out with my hand and placed it upon her stomach. As the end of her second trimester was nearing, my doubts about my suitability as a first-time father came rushing to the forefront of my mind.
"Our child is right here… it may be a bit selfish of me, but I hope our child takes after you more than me."
I would rather have an unremarkable or more 'average' child than a 'blessed' one that had my personality. The multiverse would be better off without an evil genocidal young man or woman on the loose.
Airi frowned and brushed her hand through my hair, "You're not a bad man."
"But I'm not the best version of me either. And you deserve the best I have to offer."
While I enjoyed what was done for and to Airi over the time that we knew each other, I can't deny my growing conscience's worries that I had wronged her by being the person that I was.
I couldn't fathom loving the person who I had been in the past if I had been reborn into Airi's body and had a super OP SI chasing after and seducing me like that.
Sure, in pretty much all relevant measures, I was certainly a wonderful boyfriend turned husband that kept her content and fulfilled… but I was, and still am, a manipulative bastard that acted the part of a hero and did not deny the romantic advances of other women like any other unfaithful bastard.
"Dio, you don't need to be 'best' husband, man, person, or anything." She smiled knowingly and said, "Call me a girl that wanted to let out her 'inner rebel', or someone that just wanted the accomplishment and validation by succeeding in changing you for the better, or had liked the kind of love you had been given me… but I yearned for you all the same. I can safely say that I have no regrets."
"Airi…"
"I love all of you. You captivated my heart, body, and all the futures I could ever dream of. No matter the sins or mistakes you make, you can count on me to be by your side to knock sense into you and hug you until your pain goes away!"
… I really felt like an idiot right now. The past five months spent thinking about the kind of father I was going to be, the kind of doubts that arose with regards to my capabilities as a father when looking at my actions objectively… all of that was erased the moment the woman I loved said what she thought with conviction.
"Hahaha… gods, that's so you…" That was such an Airi-like response, one that was filled with equal parts love and truth, the only thing left for me to do was to reciprocate in kind, "I love you. You are mine and I am yours. No matter what happens, remember that for my sake and I will always come back to you."
My words were not just another declaration of love. It served a dual purpose as a pledge and an act to further tie our fates together.
I still had many worries, predominantly, worries about Airi's safety. There may come a time that we end up separated by malevolent forces and other terrible things as a result of a mistake I make in the future.
But by declaring that promise along with using my power over the greater laws related to Karma, I had all but enforced my will across the multiverse so that I am always 'fated' to make my way back to Airi so long as the memory of me is engraved upon her existence, past, present, and future.
It was the equivalent of a contract or a curse binding myself to her, I couldn't think of anyone else that would be dumb enough to take things as far as I just did, but I was truly in love with her, and people in love do lots of stupid things.
"Always… Hmm, did you just do something funny there?"
As expected, she did manage to sense that I did something. With how her Cultivation had progressed over these few months it was only natural for her to be more aware of my 'tricks'.
"I did. But it's one of those things that should be left unsaid, like the 'unspoken plan guarantee' trope. You'll find out that it's for the best one day."
"Haa, fine, I'll believe you for now."
"Thanks. Hmm? What do you have there on your bed? That's a lot of socks."
"Hehe… I learned quite a bit about knitting from my mother. I thought about our child getting bigger so I ended up making the socks bigger and bigger too… I may have overdone it a little ~"
"I know your belly is a bit bigger than expected but I don't think it's supposed to be Colossal Titan-sized!"
"I was just thinking about it getting bigger quickly and wanted it to grow up without restraint…"
"There's a possibility that it will grow bigger than the biggest old monster I know so I can't say I like this!"
"Just kidding "
"Oh whew… !"
"I made some for you too."
"Those are way too big! But I'll happily accept any gift made from the woman I love! Well, unless it's the gift of death, but uh, nevermind that."
"Ahaha, I don't think anyone that loves you wants to give you eternal rest."
"You will be surprised at the number of yanderes I came across during my universe scouting adventures."
"You should write a book about that. I might end up laughing too hard if you were to tell me about them yourself."
"Anyway, about the socks, do you mind if I enchant them?"
"I figured you would do that anyway. Well, to be honest, I think it's fine if you just made your own from scratch considering your skills."
"Airi…"
"I'm just being realistic. Compared to what you can do the things I make is kinda… just normal. I won't mind whatever you do with them, Dio. Even if you put them inside the closet and let them collect dust, or-"
"-Stop imagining the most depressing image from the get-go!" I blame the mood swings, "I'll enchant them into becoming super socks that will make kings and gods alike seething in jealousy!" Turning them into planet-destroying artifacts is wholly within my capabilities, "My wife's lovingly crafted gifts will be the envy of all."
"T-that's a bit too much don't you think?! I don't need a war started over my socks!"
"Eh? People have started wars for less… like a random jade beauty down the road."
"Really Dio? Hey, are you hearing this…?" Airi wrapped her fingers around the hand I had over her stomach, "Your father is crazy enough to compare your mother's socks to a jade beauty. Isn't he the nicest?"
"Heh… this daddy here is in a benevolent mood, after all… !"
Airi let out an exasperated sigh at my inevitable 'daddy' joke then started to regale to me about the rest of her day. Nearing the end of her story, I reached out with my 'divine senses' and checked over her body once again. As usual, I didn't get anything out of the ordinary, other than the fact that my child wasn't going to have a hyper-specialized physique of affinity to anything.
… Then again, doesn't the baby seem a bit too balanced?
I had been relying on my 'divine senses' all this time since it was the most comprehensive and reliable of all my sensing methods… but I can't deny that it didn't have its own weaknesses as a result of my still lacking skill level.
"Airi, could you give me a few seconds?"
"Hmm, sure. What are you up to?"
"There's a chance that my 'divine senses' missed something so I'm just going to check you out with my [See-Through Glasses]."
"X-ray glasses? Seriously? Of course, you have them…"
I popped the glasses on… then took them off, shaking my head while casting several of my illusion dispelling spells, then put them on again.
"Huh, my suspicions were spot on… I knew their Yang and Yin energies were too balanced! Airi, we're going to have twins!"
"E-eh!? Twins!? I thought you only sensed one child!"
"I did! It's just that they're so in sync to the point that even their heartbeats beat at the same pace and time! Oh wow, I'm going to have to re-draft my early year's lesson plans if they're going to turn up as magically super connected twins."
Airi and I started discussing children's names again now that we not only knew that we were going to have twins, but that we were going to have one boy and one girl.
"No, we're not going with any similar-sounding matching names."
"How about something with the Japanese word for 'god' in it?"
"Do you want them to become main characters or something?!"
Ah, Airi had a point there…
"Good point. Nevermind that."
"How about something simple? Sora for our boy and Hotaru for our girl."
"Sky and Light huh…? I like it. But how about we make it cooler by using a different language?"
"Dio, no!"
"Dio, yes! Come on, wouldn't Aether and Lumine be cooler?"
"That's a reference, isn't it?! I don't know what it is but I'm not letting you name our children after some fictional character."
"Hey, there's a story for anything these days. There's no way our names aren't the names of fictional characters themselves."
"Just because you're right doesn't mean I have to accept it."
"If I pout cutely at you for several hours will I succeed in convincing you?"
"You aren't a cute girl like me so it won't work."
"Are you sure about that?"
"This doesn't mean you should genderbend yourself temporarily either. I don't need you thinking about how good you would look like a girl and then adding a female clone of yourself to our family."
Wow, Airi had me all figured out. As expected of my wife…
Chapter 22
Chapter 22
"Alright guys, we have all sorts of transformative here to fulfill our 'needs', so let's get started. Jason! Have you ever thought about how cute your wife would be with cat ears?"
The black-haired, red-eyed supporter of the Zeus Familia nodded sagely and answered in an exaggerated manner, "Hmm, why, of course! I would have brought shame upon my lord Zeus if I did not study and contemplate all possible aspects of a woman's beauty."
Zeus nods while stroking his beard, "I have truly taught you well, young Jason. Indeed, if one is to become a complete and cultured man, one must embrace a larger view of women."
I touched my chin and wondered if I needed to grow a beard like my divine dad. It certainly does add to the 'wise sage' look… eh, I'll ask my wives and Gabriel about it later.
Taking out two different sacks of fruits, I explained, "These are modified Whisker Fruits. If you just want the cat ears and tails to match the Cat People of this world then go for these ones. If you want the anthropomorphic package including fur and whiskers then go for the other one."
"I think I'll stick with just the ears and tail, thank you very much."
"I figured that you would. I just needed to make the full offer for the sake of impartiality. Right, I should inform everyone that you can revert all changes with this special elixir here, so make sure to take enough. Next up, we have the cow transformative-"
I went through all of my stock, modified from the items I've studied during my short trip to Mareth, and slowly distributed them to the men of culture of the Zeus Familia.
"And last but not least, my lovingly modified version of Lactaid… ProLactaid! Guaranteed to increase your partner's breast size, induce permanent lactation and provide the necessary augmentations to produce milk without worrying about minor issues like malnutrition."
"Oooooooooh! Give it to me son! I'm gonna have some Elven milk!" A few of his Familia members eyed Zeus' with a mixture of envy and admiration, the god proceeded to take a bottle of my alchemic product, then ran off with the rest of his allocated goodies.
"My fiance is part of the Cows race so I'm not sure if I need it…" "Pft! What a waste! You should take one, bigger is better." "Size is not all that matters. The small firm ones are good too." "What happens if someone takes more than one?"
"I'm glad you asked that question. A second dose grants a chance of a breast size increase while doubling the milk production. You can take ProLactaid up to ten times before it stops having an effect. If you ever want to revert any changes then… uh, we have Reducto to shrink body parts… I don't have anything for the milk production, however."
It may sound pretty shallow and 'uncultured' of me but I believe that more milk is always better.
Why the hell would I want to decrease milk production? The augmentations that the alchemic product bestows upon the chosen milkmaid turns their breasts into energy collectors, that harmlessly utilize ambient energy at an astoundingly efficient rate to produce breast milk.
This world would only risk a net decline in energy levels if the entire female population of the world was force-fed 10 doses of ProLactaid over 9 generations.
Come to think of it, if I mass-produce ProLactaid and other 'production augmentation' creations then I could pave the way to ending world hunger by enabling the population to feed on each other harmlessly.
Truly, my genius knows no bounds!
After completing my obligatory relationship-building activities with my 'allies', I made my way back to Airi's room and found her just as she was almost done with her illustration. putting the finishing touches unto her illustration.
I stood there silently, watching my lovely wife happily indulging in her hobby, and reveling in the sense of accomplishment as she placed the finishing touches unto her art piece.
Aaaah, what a talented and diligent wife I have!
She really is beautiful no matter what she does… I'm just too blessed to have such a woman in my life!
Now then, how should I play this?
Ah! I know! I had been relatively gentler with Airi lately so she's probably eager for me to be rough with her.
I lowered the effectiveness of my concealment technique gradually as I watched her work, allowing her to have suspicions of my presence in the room. Airi had paused for a moment, then continued working as if I wasn't there… though the increasingly aroused state of her body suggested that her mind was going towards pleasurable directions.
She momentarily dropped her guard and anticipation for what was to come when she finally completed her work, "Hehehe! I think this came out pretty well. Let's just scan this and… done!"
After waiting for her to finish up, I reached forward with my hands and groped her swelling breasts from behind, elicitation a surprised cry of pain and pleasure.
"Looks great Airi!"
That said, the slutty look on her face was at least a thousand times better than whatever 'artistic' work I can churn out in the same amount of time.
"Aaaah! Diooooo… ! Sheesh, don't surprise me… ah… like that…"
I smirked at the sight of her perverse grin in light of faux protest, "You say that but you definitely wanted this. No, perhaps, were you anticipating this?"
I just can't get enough of her. Her beautiful face, the expressions she makes, the emotions I can feel through my powers and our bond, her wonderful body, the sensation of squeezing her large breasts like this…
It was difficult for me not to get captivated right away and to remember my objectives.
"Look how hard your nipples are, you were definitely thinking of my dick while you were drawing this thing here, weren't you?"
"T-that's because I knew you were planning something-!!!"
She came within the span of two breaths after I pinched and pulled her nipples harshly. Gotta love these 'dual cultivation' derived techniques…
"What a lovely expression on your face. It certainly is one fitting for the mother of my children." I was grinning hungrily as I pulled her off the chair and dragged her over to the bed.
I pinned both her hands over her head, then took out a different batch of 'ProLactaid' made specifically for Airi's use, "Of course, it's my responsibility to ensure that you are up to the task."
"Dio? What's in that bottle?"
"A special elixir that will increase your breast size and make you lactate huge amounts of healthy milk permanently. Don't worry, I made it so that it will only increase your chest's natural size up to its currently swelled up size. Now, open wide."
"I should have guessed that you had a lactation fetish with how much you sucked on my nipples but I haven't exactly consented to this!"
"Oh? Is your memory okay? You gave me a blank check well over a year ago like the eager, wanton sex slave you are… why would I ever need your permission to do whatever I want with your body?"
"T-that's… no… Dio, please…"
Airi couldn't keep the eager smile off her face even as she 'struggled' against me, she was all but ready to cum again once I started 'forcing' the contents of the elixir into her mouth.
"Every additional dose after this will double your milk production. That being said, that 'limit' is mostly academic seeing as I practically modified the process to work off your internal magical energy, which means I can make you produce as much milk as I want without end." I continued to feed her more of the elixir as I explained more about it, "All it really does is increase your initial milk tank, so to speak. It will probably increase naturally without end barring special circumstances."
The front of her sleepwear was increasingly stained with her milk, I tore off her clothes and cupped her left breast, bringing my mouth right over her nipple.
I brushed my lips right over the wet tip, then withdrew my lips and savored the disappointed expression on Airi's face. I teased her once again by blowing a breath of cold air unto her nipples, Airi shuddered and twitched, her breasts shaking accordingly…
"S-stop messing with me already. If you're going to drink then-" I dived right in and drunk my first mouthful of breast milk, "Aaaah! Oooooh!"
My darling wife threw her head backward as she experienced her first orgasm of this kind!
I appreciated the sight of my pregnant wife laying there with an 'ahegao' expression as her breasts churned out milk at different intervals.
That's not nearly enough for me.
A snap of my fingers later and I brought us both to a dark, secluded location.
Forming several naked temporal clones of myself, my clones and I walked up to Airi, who immediately understand where this was going.
The floating video camera pretty much gave it away.
One long gangbang later, Airi and I returned back to the castle happily with several new homemade sex videos and an entire scrapbook containing pictures of a 'fallen, sex-addicted, pregnant slut', censor bars included for thematic purposes.
"Can we send that anonymously to your dad? Ouch! I was joking!"
"Not. Impressed."
"Fine, fine. You going to show it to anyone?"
"I'm not perverted enough for that."
"Jiiiiiii…"
I gave her a long look, she glanced to the other side and pouted.
"Just Artemis and Alfia, then! Stop that."
"Not Gabriel?"
"Oh please, I know you have your own corruption plans."
"Thank you for being so considerate Airi! I love you so much!"
"I love you too, pervert."
"You might want to check whose that girl in those pictures."
Airi shook my arm violently while making angry noises. Ah, my wife is too cute!
"Hmm? Is Alfia taking them somewhere?" Airi spotted Alfia leaving together with Meteria, Bell and Aiz through a teleportation magic circle.
"Bell wanted to visit the outside world, Aiz suggested Altena after overhearing it from a couple of Hera's familia members who visited the country in secret recently. Naturally, for safety purposes and ease of travel, they turned to their Aunt Alfia for help."
Airi eyed me suspiciously, "You seem to know quite a bit about their travel plans and how they came to be… What did you do?"
"I didn't do anything."
"And indirectly?"
"Well, if you count events that have been set into motions several months back… I was the one that gave the suggestion to Hera to send out members into the world for information gathering purposes. It was such a coincidence that Aiz was there to hear about their stories." I paused for a moment, then grinned, "It just so happens that a school for young elves has arranged an entire field trip to Altena, the city of magic, revolutionalized by my magic control methods today. I think there's a cute oranged hair elf that's about Bell's age whose past life shares a close bond with Bell's past life enrolled in that school."
"I knew it! I knew you had something planned!"
I shrugged. It's not as if I was trying to hide it.
I continued on after allowing Airi that small amount of satisfaction, "A certain werewolf clan had survived a horde of monsters due to the emergence of a mysterious power within the clan heir, who is now traveling to the city famous for the magic to learn more about his power. Due to certain traveling issues, it looks like he'll finally arrive there today."
"Bete Loga? That kid that was supposed to join the Loki Familia?"
"Oddly enough, the Familia that stands for justice has sent a certain Elf to Altena to track down some criminal scum."
"Are you putting every single girl that Bell is 'fated' to meet in the same place?"
"Hey, I promised Zeus that I would support a harem end for Bell! And it's not like I'm just doing it for Bell too. I've also spread the news about Alfia returning along with a similarly looking child over the course of months and leaked enough fake news to point them towards Altena… such a shame that those whispers reached the ears of criminal scum."
"So you're messing with Alfia too?!"
"It's for her own good. You'll see. Also, Fiore, Radia, and Nazica happen to be in Altena as well… it seems like they caught the eye of yet another god that can see souls."
"Do you have anything better to do with your spare time?!!!"
"You."
Airi raised a finger, then dropped it and nodded happily.
"Good answer. That said, it looks like I have no choice but to supervise you for a while. Come to think of it, you haven't told us about your adventures yet."
"I have perfect memory, I definitely recall doing so."
"A universe assessment report does not count. You're the only one that wanted to find 'better worlds' for the birthplace of our children. Anyways, you're dodging the question, how exactly were you messing around in those worlds?"
"Well… it's nothing that you would scold me over."
"Really?"
"Yeah! I barely killed anyone that didn't deserve it!"
Airi took a deep breath and said, "I'm calling Artemis and Gabriel over. I need my living lie detectors to make sure I have an accurate count on how many girls you seduced over your adventures."
"I didn't seduce anyone… not intentionally?"
Even I knew that was a weak-ass excuse.
"I figured. You and dad kinda share the harem protagonist trait."
Okay, that comparison is unwarranted.
"Well, at least I wasn't a dumbass about it!"
"You're not even trying to deny it anymore… !"
"I did consider the possibility but I wasn't going to contemplate starting anything serious without informing everyone… I just wanted to wait until our children were born first before talking about other women."
"Just give me a summary."
"Well, there's this crazy scorpion girl trapped in a tower, a really hot priestess I saved from a rape mushroom, a romcom protagonist's little sister, the student council president of a mecha battle harem anime…"
I ratted off several barebones descriptions with little to no context whatsoever.
"No elves?"
"… I don't want to talk about that."
AN: A little on the shorter side, just kept things focused on Airi for the sake of narrative flow. Dio still has no luck in getting blonde elves, as, on the rare occasions he finds decent 'canon' ones they happen to be 'unavailable' according to his rules.
