Local Dragon Ruins History 3 (Waifu Catalog, Nasu!Mythology)
Ancient times in the Nasuverse are dangerous times indeed. But an abundance of threats also equated a sufficient pool of EXP waiting out there for me to harvest.
Simply put, protecting the combined groups of hunter-gatherers that have joined under us doubled up as a training routine. The foes that I had defeated were also useful as empowering reagents for both Sothis and I.
Of course, the lifestyle of a hunter could not possibly be sustainable, much less scalable. As such, I compiled all of my knowledge from the Civilization games and engaged in deep discussion with Sothis in order to determine our next steps.
To move the humans on from 'hunter-gatherer' to the next stage in their civilization, we had to start settling them properly and have them begin domesticating animals as well. That is to say, we needed to start making some actual cities with access to fresh water, create farms, breed animals and prepare to take to the seas later on.
After clearing up the central and northern parts of Europe, eliminating the most obviously dangerous Phantasmal Species and various weak Divine Spirits, we went on to purge the waters of such similar beings so that the population of normal aquatic life could flourish without their supernatural predators depleting their numbers.
And by 'we', I actually mean 'me with Sothis cheering at the side'.
"WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK IS THAT CRUSTACEAN MONSTROSITY!?"
I have fought and eaten all sorts of monsters before but this gigantic humanoid crab hybrid with eyes and tentacles across its body is freaking me out!
I feel as if I just took some mental damage after looking at it.
"Is it just me or do you feel like we just lost a few sanity points there?"
Sothis was handling it better than me although even she seemed, at the very least, profoundly appalled by the appearance of the 'thing'.
"It's not just you. I'm just going to assume it's one of those Great Old Ones since they fit the bill."
The now titled (in my head) King of Crabs was gurgling unintelligible words, the only thing I could understand was the fact that it placed a heavy weight and sense of wrongness upon my mind. Not willing to let this go on for any longer lest the headaches get worse, I transformed and cracked the ground as I leapt up into the sky.
I fired a torrential wave of burning magical power using my breath attack, just as I was forced to end the attack, I used my conceptual authority over 'Absolutes' to grasp the flow of the time itself.
Time grinded to a complete halt. With the exception of Sothis there were no other beings that could move in this world of stopped time.
[Absolute Cessation of Time's Flow]
One of the three time-related applications of my power that I had successfully gained over the past few years. At first, I could only stop time for a mere blink of an eye. But as I began to familiarize myself with the world of stopped time, I soon could stop it for two seconds, then three and am now a tenth of a second off from reaching five seconds.
"Haaaaa…" I took a deep breath and refilled my lungs with air. While I didn't need air to survive the act of doing so strengthens my breath attack.
I used the moment of brief respite to reposition myself and gather power for yet another breath attack, altering its composition to have more focused conceptual destructive power instead of the first AOE blast which was usually used to weaken an enemy's defence and reduce their vision.
Flying back down to sea-level, I blasted my next breath attack at the giant enemy crab's defenceless side as it was focused on the attack from above.
I still have some time to spare, Sothis is going to give me crap for this (or just spam 'ZA WARUDO' when I least expect it in order to troll me back) but I can't resist anymore!
"One more second…" I raised a single finger and then closed it back down, "Zero."
Time resumes and my enemy explodes into a seafood buffet!
Seeing the foreign gunk flying right at my eyes, I activated [Absolute Stillness of One's Time] and defended myself from being soaked in the monster's remains.
My body was time-locked and frozen in the very space I occupied. Every bit of the being's disgusting insides was forced apart from my body.
[Absolute Stillness of One's Time] was still incomplete as it would freeze me in place when activated. I couldn't attack while I was defending myself in this way, it was also a complete bitch of an application to train up since I needed Sothis around to keep myself from fucking up and accidentally freezing my own consciousness up end till I became an unmoving statue.
Having minutes pass by in a blink of an eye was a terrifying preview into what would happen if I fucked up by freezing time in all the wrong places.
Aside from the incomplete technique, it was evident that I was far from replicating Regulus's use of his Authority of Greed, [Stillness of an Object's Time], in its entirety. For one thing, the defensive and offensive applications of the original power are split into two entirely different techniques.
The original user could stop his own time or anything he was wearing, touched, or even his breath. By cutting himself off from the flow of time he could prevent anything from interfering with his physical integrity. A mere wave of his hand can cause the displaced atmosphere to cause cracks in space that would sever anything in its trajectory regardless of its durability.
I got the defensive part somewhat down… but I was falling behind on the offensive application, [Absolute Stillness: Armament].
I was only capable of applying the stilling effect for a half a second at a time and only through my hands. All it did was give me a spear-long "kill-zone", while still immensely useful as an anti-personnel technique, wasn't very useful against mountain-sized enemies like dragons.
After what happened I never want to go inside a lightning spewing blue dragon ever again, even when it was time to start carving it up. My attempt at drilling through that dragon using the technique resulted in a shocking death when its element-aligned magic power retaliated as I went through it.
Naturally, I had ended back at the Sothis Dojo for the regular grilling on why X was a stupid thing to do in her usual sassy way. Thankfully she's been turning down the condescension as the years go by, so those times have been getting more and more endearing.
"I understand the need to admire your own work on occasion but would you please do something about all this muck before it pollutes the ocean?"
Sothis floated right down besides me as I deactivated the time-stilling effect with a radiant smile on her face. She seemed well pleased with how I dealt with the eldritch being.
"Alright, won't be long."
There was no need to ask why she hadn't done something about the otherworldly corruption stemming from the corpse of the being foreign to this world. Sothis had adapted well to her role as my guide and knew that I was capable of resolving this little issue while allowing her to handle the things that I couldn't do at this point.
[Absolute Zero: Touchpoint]
I dipped a finger into a small untainted section of the water and froze a portion of the ocean instantly. It was easy to imagine a complete lack of heat, the main difficulty was in controlling the area of effect and how long I could sustain 'absolute zero' temperatures. Learning the concepts of Time with Sothis helped out a bit on the latter.
"Well, then. Time to do the world a little favor and unmake this thing!"
The world's time has stopped. I was currently being dragged away by Sothis herself while only being capable of perceiving this timeless world impotently.
It was an annoying feeling. Thankfully Sothis wasn't blonde, nor did she have a tendency to gloat loudly and say "useless' more than twice in a roll or I might end up having flashbacks to unpleasant times.
She formed a bright white magic circle in the sky and saturated it with her power.
Time resumed and the ocean was now rid of that terrible existence.
"How is that?"
Sothis gave me an appealing look, I took a moment to think about what to say before looking at her unblinkingly and giving her a thumbs up.
"10 out of 10, would call for Sothis's purification services again."
Her eye twitched and her voice was taut with frustration, "Hmph! That's all you have to say? Honestly!"
It looked like she tried really hard to look especially good in front of me today. I wasn't quite sure what the occasion was. I certainly don't remember any anniversaries that we're supposed to be celebrating.
"I don't know what else to say." A painful memory from a show that I used to like flashed through my head, okay, wrong choice of words. Time to play this off cooly, "I don't have well paid script-writers you know…"
"If you spent more time working on your words instead of your cave carvings then you wouldn't be in this mess."
Well I had to get some hobbies seeing as most of the ones in my memories won't be available until we start getting computers. The humans already had great sculpting skills and craftsmanship when it came to bone-related tools so I had to find my own niche.
I also thought it would be funny if the humans in the future studied my failed attempts at drawing doujinshi in ancient caverns.
"Oh? Since when was this a mess? What did I do wrong this time?"
"Nothing! It's just… well, don't you think your reactions have been underwhelming lately?"
She looked rather downcast so I immediately sought to make her feel better and try to find out why she's feeling that way.
"... Am I not praising you enough?"
"W-what?! No! Everything's fine."
Sothis turned away from me after saying those unconvincing statements. I suppose she was expecting something else from me today… come to think of it, she's been acting like this more frequently as well.
"Ooooh… he was supposed to say it more passionately, though now that I think about it… if I expected him to speak in one manner then he could have changed the way he…"
Is she… talking to herself?
I'm right here you know…
"You do realize that seeing one future of how the day would go doesn't guarantee it will turn out that way."
As enlightening as it was, it's better to stop her before she says something that will make her feel even more embarrassed by the end of it.
"Huh?! Oh! I! Were you… eavesdropping?"
I shook my head at her panicked look, "You were talking out-loud. Don't worry, these things happen."
"Aaaaah!" She was clutching her head and freaking out in embarrassment, "Redo! Redo! This is the limit! I'm pushing it-"
"You don't have to reset the last few moments just because of that."
I'm starting to think that I may have gotten her too into Jojo references.
A touch of mana flared up on the sea shore, the two of us turned around to find one of our mages, who had just warped here.
Sothis and I exchanged meaningful looks and descended upon the sandy shore.
I turned back to my human form, briefly stunning the lady mage with my unusual appearance. As I spent a significant amount of time in my dragon form my skin tone was naturally lighter than most of the hard-working humans, in addition to that, my standard anime white-hair and yellow eye combo made me look distinctively inhuman'.
"Lord Nikaias, Lord Sothis, I apologize for interrupting your conversation however something terrible has happened! Please, allow me to warp us back to the settlement."
Yeah, we kinda got that. She wouldn't have came all this way for something so trivial. Most of the humans held too much reverence for us to speak about trivial day-to-day matters unless we engaged them first.
Sothis looked her up and down, then gave her answer, "Layla Ordelia, correct?"
"Yes!"
"You may do so. We have just finished our work here."
Ah, she remembered the human's name.
Thank goodness Sothis remembers their names because I sure don't! Despite the fact that I probably gave her that name when she joined the ranks of the 'blessed'.
Some of the humans honestly reminded me of the Crimson Demon clan when they insisted that we grant them new names upon receiving our full blessing. It's like they have a need to feel super special or something.
In any case, I can't help but be amazed at Sothis's memorization skills! Her memory is amazingly good when it came to people despite her constant complaints about how odd human faces and names were. On the other hand she keeps forgetting about her actual 'children' like Seiros whenever I bring them up. I'm going to assume she mentally disowned the poor girl.
Right, right, stop getting distracted Nikaias! Put on your most godly face because this is a serious issue!
Sothis swatted my shoulder and telepathically yelled at me for looking 'too constipated'.
The dark-haired mage raised her dragonbone stave and casted the Warp spell, bringing us back to the growing settlement near instantly.
A huge crowd was surrounding several individuals, one of which was missing his legs and an arm… and was also bound by several different spells.
"There has been a murder."
I gaped, slack-jawed and shocked by what I just heard.
Murder? What? Someone killed someone else? How could this have happened? When did it happen? Why the hell would a human that I had protected kill their fellow human?!
"You're lucky I stopped time before you started staring like a blithering idiot."
Though her words were harsh, her tone was very gentle and I could feel Sothis rubbing my back consolingly as I tried to process what had happened.
"I-I just… I just can't believe it. Murder. Right under our noses… after we said that we would be away for a few days. It wasn't just some dumb emotional response, that man planned this…"
I tried to focus on the fact that we hadn't managed to prevent this from happening. While I didn't think of us as a pair of helicopter parents or 'Big Brother' watching their every move, the group we had gathered was still small enough for us to keep an eye on and we simply wanted to keep everything together perfectly until we settled down permanently.
For this crime to have occured… it felt like the work we had put in over the past 14 years had been spat upon and ruined!
"It was definitely planned. The accused, over there, was the same one that committed a few minor transgressions in the past. I caught him all those times before but now that I think of it, I think he was testing my reaction."
While I was revered as the Dragon God of Light and Victory, Sothis was revered as a Dragon Goddess of Time and Creation, which she made very apparent with how often she mitigated standard human fuckups by rewinding several hours back in time (without me, half of the time).
Sothis had a hard limit (untested) of up to 24 hours at this point, an act that would exhaust nearly half of her power according to her own words. She could recover most of her power really quickly if she kept it below 6 hours each time, which is a fact that wasn't much of a secret…so it made sense for a determined murderer to make sure that his act would stick by probing Sothis's abilities, our working schedule and making a plan to suit that.
I'd give him that… the murderer showed great adaptability and determination, the traits that made humans amazing… displayed in all its twisted glory right in front of my eyes.
I felt physically sick. It felt like a betrayal to me. They were going to be better, better than normal humans, they were supposed to be better than the humans I knew of!
"Shh… it's alright… you can cry here. It's fine to let it out."
Sothis comforted me with a maternal tone.
"I-I'm sorry. I just… I'm not supposed to be reacting like this. Hell, my reaction is wrong. I should be showing more empathy about this, about the loss of life and all the sadness that follows. Yet… I feel angry and betrayed, even though I knew that human nature would rear its ugly head and that murder was inevitable, all I can think about is why did it have to happen this early when we haven't even finished the code of laws."
After spewing out more and more about my frustrations I came to a startling realization.
"Oh hell... I just realized I wasn't the least bit saddened about the fact that someone died... but I feel worse about them killing each other. It's like I see humans like pets! That way of thinking isn't human, I'm… looking at them like I'm seeing property, like a dragon's hoard. I'm more concerned about my lack of humanity than this horrible sin right in front of me. What the fuck…"
Embracing me from behind, Sothis calmly spoke, "I'm sorry. I should have spoke to you about this earlier. I had noticed a long time back when you couldn't even remember their names but chose to keep silent about it. But I feared that even if I did make you understand this it wouldn't have changed anything… I believe you know the answer as to why I would feel that way."
"... Ah… yes. Of course. I'm not human. I never was."
I'm just a bunch of humans blended together in the body of a dragon that deluded himself into thinking he was human. Like a badly written character believing himself to be something he's not. It's no wonder that I had such an easy time coming up with our end-game goals on making sure we succeed in the Nasuverse while having a terribly hard time caring about other people that weren't 'waifus' like Sothis or other powerful threats.
I wasn't human, I was a dragon made to fight gods and fuck women. A dragon that had the advantage of the Waifu Catalogue, to be sure, but in the end I was a fantasy creature made with the intention to gain greater power and more women… likely for the sake of higher dimensional entertainment.
It just so happened that I had deluded myself into thinking I was human, tried to get myself into normal human hobbies in order to 'find myself' and adhered to mostly human morals when it came to Sothis… I mean, the only reason why I haven't fucked her was because she barely counts as a loli, while my sexual interests lied with thicc women like Demeter.
"Urgh, all those years trying to be something I'm not… wasted! Well, not really, it was kinda fun and helped me resolve my memory conflicts."
I felt calm now, more settled than I have ever been. So what if I'm not human? I still know what I want to do. I want to survive and thrive in this world where the golden ending isn't allowed!
And to do that I had to be better than the gods, better than man… or at least just different enough to be the best of both worlds. I am going to be an OP Dragon God that doesn't forget what it means to be human out of the arrogance expected from the typical fantasy story immortal being!
"Yeah. That sounds about right. I'm neither human nor a dragon. I am Hudragoman!"
"You idiot! Did you waste your time thinking about stupid things like that and make me worry for nothing!?"
"Ah, mercy Sothis! It was a joke! A joke! I promise I was reflecting seriously."
After hearing all my thoughts about it she simply smiled in satisfaction and said that she wasn't going to punish me in a standard tsundere fashion since I 'had an important epiphany'.
Sothis resolved the judgement of the murderer after giving her usual speech about how they needed to govern themselves and what basically was a TedTalk on why the gods delivering judgement all the time was bad for them.
The female mage that caught the bastard after he had killed her husband in their sleep was the one to perform the execution this time around. Note to self, establish a proper court of law and due processes as soon as possible.
We returned to the beach after the recent events to perform a more throughout clean up of the area. Sothis was putting up a minor ward to keep the middle-tier dangerous creatures away from a portion of the sea, making a safe space for certain sea life to flourish.
While she was doing all of that I was happily making a couple of sand castles and practicing my time stilling abilities on them.
Muahahaha! Invincible sand castles here I come! All my future friends will tremble in awe at my indestructible sand castles.
"I was going to say something about playing around in sand but your skill in shaping sand is actually quite astounding."
I earned some rare praise from Sothis after she inspected my two meter tall sand castle that was guaranteed to repel twelve year olds.
"Thank you, I really appreciate that. I'm glad that you like it."
She blushed and stammered out a denial.
"It's only natural that I acknowledge your efforts this time. And I wouldn't say I like it, after all, I don't like sand."
That's because you don't wear any footwear Sothis-
-Wait. Did she just...
"Is it because it's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere?"
I asked with an eager look on my face. She took one look at me, placed both her hands on her hips and stared at me with an unreadable look.
"Unbelievable. After everything that has happened you go right back to training, having fun and making your silly references like nothing has happened."
I shrugged as I smiled at her.
"It's not like me coming to a huge realization is going to change who I naturally am. I know my goal and I know the type of being I'm trying to be as I try to achieve it. I'm not going to be an overly rushed human that chases power seriously since I have lots of time, I won't be an arrogant or tyrannical dragon god oppressing humanity either. Well, there's a lot of things I'm not trying to be, but anyways... I don't see anything wrong with the pace and how I'm living my life, I just have a clearer perspective on why I'm doing what I do, prepare for the future as per usual and adapt to whatever comes my way."
Sothis continued to stare at me until she released a long sigh and began laughing out loud.
"Ahahaha! Yes, I suppose that is very much something you would do. I can't say I disagree with that since we are pretty similar in some ways. That's what I loved the most about you after all!"
Love? Upon hearing the magic words I leapt off my sand castle and quickly rushed to her side.
"Do you really love me like that?"
"What!? Oh… so this is how it happens…"
"You totally saw into the future and expected something like this but got the timing wrong, didn't you?"
"Yes, yes, you are rather clever. Well, fine, I shall admit that I do love you deeply-"
"Woo hoo!"
"B-be quiet! I wasn't finished- What kind of reaction is that?! Are you a child?"
"I mean, even when I compare my age to the amount of time you spent sleeping-"
"-Nikaias, shut up."
"Yes Sothis."
"Good. Well… as I was saying… ah, nevermind. I'll say the rest another time and skip that because someone interrupted me."
"Won't happen again."
"...Moving on, while I am heartened by your enthusiastic reaction I can't see why you are surprised at the inevitable. We are bound together, after all."
"That may be true, but still, I'm just really happy that our love can be founded upon our compatibility to each other. You said we were similar in some ways, but we're also very different yet I can honestly say that I love you because of our differences."
"...Honestly… you're a bit of a hopeless romantic, aren't you?"
She floated up so that she could reach my face and gave me a chaste kiss. I returned it with a similar kiss, not wanting to take things in a sexual direction at the moment.
"Wow, that was… exhilarating… goodness, it's rather different experiencing it for yourself instead of just watching humans do it." Sothis changed the topic slightly while shyly brushing her green hair.
"We'll be doing more of that from now on. I hope you aren't uh… too eager to take things more seriously yet. Since I'm kinda still waiting for you to grow. I know you can shapeshift but-"
"-but I'm rather terribly with human appearances if I'm not copying off someone else and you prefer my natural form, I know, I know. I agree as well. The closest appearance I could borrow would be Flayn's and I don't think you would like that very much."
"... I was going to say I was partial to Seiros-"
"Who?"
"... The suspicious archbishop Rhea."
"Oh right, her. Well I guess she doesn't look too different from how I was back then… not that I can remember my older human form very much."
"According to the mural you were definitely thicc as fuck."
"Thick? And what is that, supposed to mean?!"
"Allow me to explain the importance of thiccness-"
The years flew by and our love for one another grew along as time marched on.
We eventually settled several cities along the North and Western parts of Europe. After two hundred years they were already killing monsters, building wonders, riding carriages, doing maths and sailing the seas without getting eaten by gigantic sea serpents (most of the time) without us holding their hands. We were so proud of them.
Sothis and I constructed a grand academy for students and researchers alike to congregate for several years before departing back to their cities, taking back the latest knowledge and advancements to share across the local schools. It was one of the more efficient methods we had to share our knowledge.
It was called the Garreg Mach Institution in honor of Sothis's homeland and her host's life.
"Ahahahaha! I grew, I grew!"
The morning after she took her daily dose of my blood began with a surprise as Sothis reached a new level of power as her form began to inch closer to that of her adult one.
Her dark green hair grew along with her newfound height, she looked like a high-schooler all things considered. She had a nice modest pair of breasts that I could actually stare at and feel some sexual desire for.
"Your growth kind of reminds me of a certain vampire regaining her old form."
"Oh? Who was it?"
"Kiss-Shot Acerola-Orion Heart-Under-Blade."
"... she isn't a vampire from this world, right?"
"No… but our vampires have chuuni names to compensate…! Like Nrvnqsr Chaos, Dust of Osiris, The Dark Six."
"Remind me to carefully review each and every of our children's names."