Local Dragon Ruins History 6 (Waifu Catalog, Nasu!Mythology)
To my great joy, Demeter managed to get the Multi-Form and Instant Transmission technique down within the month. The two techniques allowed the harvest goddess to leave a duplicate of herself running Olympus without losing any processing power for the meagre cost of halving her maximum power output to spend time with Sothis and I without raising suspicions on her true allegiance.
It took a few days for us to establish a new normal after reaching that point. I started to take Demeter out on dates (while also showing her around the empire) and began providing her daily doses of my blood.
"Oh my, what kind of food is this?" She looked surprised as I introduced her to a new method of receiving my blood. It was one that I came up with once I had access to a proper kitchen in order to make the routine Sothis and I had carried on for over two hundred years more pleasurable.
"It's deep fried blood pudding, on a stick." Plenty of protein and fats on a stick too, not that it'll matter to a goddess, "Using my blood as an ingredient helped me break my bad habits of bloodletting. Anyways, judging by your reaction, I guess there aren't any deep fried foods in Atlantis?"
She shook her head, "Not quite. We have dishes similar to this made through the use of convection ovens."
As expected of a civilization uplifted by totalitarian god-like machine beings. They had completely skipped over the discovery and utilization of oil for both daily and industrial usages.
"Ah yes, that basically simulates the deep-frying method without the use of oil. Perfectly acceptable. The oil adds a flavor of its own which is why I'm using this method… also, I ended up buying up lots of high quality cooking oil and other ingredients from the other Earth so it's about time I started using it."
Our current civilization can't support that kind of oil use in cooking so I held back from certain cooking methods (especially in public events catered by me) so that I wouldn't start any wasteful trends. Now that I can buy stuff from the Dragonball world's supermarkets, however, I can now expand my cooking range further without making custom creation requests from Sothis.
Demeter picked up the skewered crunchy snack and bit into it, predictably reacting like she was in food heaven. She made sure not to waste even a single crumb of it and finished it all.
"That was wonderful! Thank you for choosing such a thoughtful method."
"Would you prefer if I prepared my blood in similar ways from now on?"
"I would not be opposed to it."
Her smile didn't quite reach her eyes as she visibly struggled to be honest with herself.
I flicked a finger and magically cleaned the dishes, then responded to her, "It's not too much effort on my part. And if it makes you happy then I'll do it everyday for you."
"Please. I would be most grateful if I could process your blood without denigrating myself to the level of a blood-drinking bat."
While vampires don't exist in our little corner of the Nasuverse at this point, Demeter had learned about them after she began reading all sorts of stories from the books we retrieved from the other Earth, suffice to say she had gotten a bad impression of the self-proclaimed superiority of other magical races in fiction.
With what I knew about vampires in general she wasn't exactly wrong about it, so I said little about it before noting that there were always unique exceptions to the rule, citing several beautiful blonde vampires that I would happily bring in if I had the opportunity.
I hear a small ping from the advanced tablet computer gifted to us by Demeter (after she removed all Atlantean spyware and connection features from it), she happily suggested that I take a look at it and sat down beside me as I read the file she copied into it.
"'Your Blood and Power Levels: Summary ft. Graphs'?"
Demeter bounced in her seat with excitement (it wasn't the only thing that was bouncing) and shook her fists with stars in her eyes, "Yes! I took your advice about the importance of visualization, visited your academic institution and integrated several graphics into the research report."
Shifting my gaze from her 'eyes' back to the tablet computer, I took a moment to admire the report showcasing the most relevant figures in a manner pleasing to my eyes instead of the character-dense report she made for us the first time around.
If she wasn't a goddess then I would have begged her to be my personal assistant.
"This is brilliant Demeter." I placed my hand on hers, holding it tight while looking into her eyes, "I truly appreciate it. Is there anything you would like for a reward?"
Her face heated up involuntarily, my secret wife's love attack power was 255 but her defensive power was at 0. She was still inexperienced when it came to dealing with her feelings of romantic love.
I waited for her answer as her eyes darted about the living room, she came to a sudden stop as I received her response through several image files on my tablet computer.
"A wedding dress? Ah, you want a wedding ceremony?"
She must have learnt of these through the other Earth's magazines.
"It is an intriguing mortal tradition. I understand that the altar and place of worship means nothing for a goddess like myself, yet it doesn't diminish my desire for us to declare our love for one another in a more public manner."
S-so cute! My sexy blonde goddess is surprisingly super cute when it came to such things.
If she tried to change my mind on keeping our relationship a secret through logical arguments then I would have frowned disappointingly until she backed off, but I was a sucker for bashful yet earnest expressions so I'm inclined to let her have her way.
"If it will make you happy then I would love to do so. Very well, we can start planning for it. Keep me updated on the guest list from your side minus Persephone, we both know I won't keep her from you for such a ceremony."
Note to self, minimize contact with Persephone and maybe make a robot avatar for family bonding purposes, lest my dragon aura unintentionally makes her want to jump my bones. I would rather not risk Demeter's reaction…
"Yes, yes! You're so good to me my darling husband-!"
I telekinetically placed the tablet computer elsewhere as we embraced each other and had a short enjoyable make-out session. Demeter had to keep things short since she had to get back to taking care of the growing Senzu Beans. The magic beans required careful tending to for the first month of growth so our resident gardener needed to excuse herself often to keep the spiritual and life force rich environment of our hidden bean plantations at optimal levels.
I went ahead and started reading Demeter's report since there wasn't anything urgent for me to do. I already had my fill of training for the day and as much as I wanted to see Sothis right now, she was currently occupied with making another part of the complex vehicle of the gods capable of traversing across universes connected in particular ways, uncreatively named 'Cube' by the angels and Kai's from the Dragon Ball Multiverse.
It was a personal project of hers and a time consuming one. The Cube's materials were made with materials not of this world and its molecular makeup was immensely complex, requiring significant effort and energy from Sothis despite how good she was at creating things with magic.
When she's finally done with creating it then she would have to program it with the 'Divine Language' of the Dragon Ball Multiverse, something she had learnt through me after I rapidly learned it from the Scroll of Knowledge using my purchased Social Talent. With so little credits left I didn't bother to share that talent so I cheesed it by allowing our minds to connect using telepathy and simply copied my knowledge over to both Sothis and Demeter.
I had purchased Psychic Talent in order to learn Telekinesis and Divination used by fighters and Fortune Teller Baba, then spent another 10 credits in order to share my talent with all my women so that they could learn alternative methods to achieve the same effect. Sefar magic energy absorption won't be optimized towards abilities powered without magical energies so this will give us another avenue of attack against the civilization destroyer when it arrives.
With only 12 credits left after those purchases I went ahead and spent 10 credits on 'Pursued by a Bear', which lets me select my next world out of three worlds to choose from, with their intensity ratings clearly displayed with a wider range from one lower to four higher from my most recent new world. The unchosen options will be available for the next selection and will stay on the list for upto three selections before it will stop appearing for a time.
This should reduce my chances of only having overpowered worlds to pick from, like Warhammer 40K, Shin Megami Tensei, Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagaan or Mondaiji's Little Garden. I could be at Frieza's pre-training power levels, capable of vaporizing planets, wiping out a star system or a small universe and I would still be small peanuts in those kinds of worlds.
Urgh, just thinking about won't do me any good, back to reading…
After observing our blood gifting traditions to our people, feeding my blood to an Atlantean (isolated for a while to prevent discovery from the other gods) and training alongside with us Demeter managed to compile the power level increments and report the good news.
The average citizen's PL was 13, with warriors and mages having at least thrice that amount of power. The average Atlantean had a slightly higher PL than our warriors, but nothing particularly substantial.
Receiving a single dose of my blood increased their PL by 5 uniformly. The results however, differed when it came to Ki Awakened warriors. Sothis's specially chosen Ki Awakened warriors quickly reached a PL of over a hundred and got a much higher PL boost of 25 for every dosage of my blood.
No more, no less. This applied to all of us as well. Demeter's internal PL scanners confirmed that Sothis and herself only received a flat PL boost of 25 for every dosage taken, if another was taken within 18 hours then it would be capped at a flat 5 PL increment.
If they were to literally sit on their asses and rely on my blood as their sole source of power increment (excluding the tier boosts), then they could reach Frieza's Power Level in around 13,000 years, about when the Messiah would have been born.
Of course, we can't afford to wait that long with Sefar doing a drive-by in less than 800 years. If possible I would like to get up to at least 10 Billion so that I could safely 'recruit' Kale and Caulifla from Universe 6 in a fair manner, but I wasn't going to hold my breath as Sothis's temporal manipulation only gave us a 10:1 time difference between our universe and theirs.
The Tournament of Power, for when those two would definitely be born and at their prime, would take place in about 30 years in their universe. Which would translate to 300 years in our universe, and I'm not sure if I can get to Super Saiyan God levels of power in less than 3 centuries at my currently diminishing returns from training.
Power Levels at Initial, End of 1st Month and End of 2nd Month
Sothis PL *calibrated for Godly Ki*: 109,500 to 137,250 to 145,842
Demeter PL: 37,500 to 54,200 to 58,925
Nikaias PL: 9,001 to 52, 834 to 70,020
Sothis had been watching over the planet where Fodlan was located as a goddess long before she actually descended in physical form, as a god that had always been a god from the beginning, I wasn't surprised that her Ki had been more potent than my own.
Demeter was ultimately a machine being with god-like powers and worshipped as a god, but not technically originated as one, so the Ki she had awakened with was more on the regular side just like my own. The both of us would probably get to Godly Ki at some point but it would take a lot more training to do so.
Even then, it likely wouldn't do much against Sefar as even if we stuck to Ki enhanced physical abilities, it would still absorb the blows and turn it into energy for itself. The only way I can see beating Sefar at a zero-casualty run for us and at minimal casualties for our empire would be to master my concept of [Absolutes] to the point where I can erase its core without the power used to confer the conceptual effect being absorbed in time.
Or we smack Sefar back up into space and ping-pong it around the emptiness of space using pure strength until it finally stops moving… on second thought, that might actually be feasible, providing we get to a much higher power level.
Getting the improved Hyperbolic Time Chamber is now a must then. At least for Plan B: Beat It Up Until It Stops.
I took a deep breath, "Okay, stop panicking. This is unbecoming of a long-lived being. What's the more intelligent way to kill Sefar?"
Excalibur. Backed by the power of the Planet.
It's impossible to get the latter because the planet is a huge bitch. Not to mention that aside from magical energy there might be some other 'support' that is key to Sefar's canon defeat. It could be anything from a conceptual cage to keep Sefar from splitting itself up into smaller pieces until its core was destroyed or something else that gave the holy sword user enough time to channel that much power to defeat a being that was growing to be on par with Amaterasu.
Back to Excalibur, what makes the sword 'holy' enough to be an out-of-context solution against Sefar's defences? Why can't it absorb Excalibur's light?
… I'll just have to find that out.
Sothis's projects are good for this, the Cube would be able to get us to other universes, combine that with time travel and I could 'recruit' several different Excalibur users, figure the sword out and then create a sword that could channel planetary amounts of energy (preferably through Ki since we have a lot of it) to BTFO Sefar.
Excellent. I have a new Plan A.
A few weeks later…
I couldn't wait to get this field trip over and done with.
An Old One-esque being had broken into this universe, it was weak enough to the point where properly armed trained humans could deal with it, and since it was my turn to evaluate the candidates requesting for a blessing it was my responsibility to take them out on this excursion to eliminate the foreign corruption.
I gave a rousing speech and how they (our citizens) were going to be the heroes today before sending off to fight the raid boss.
My main job is to spam the Rescue spell just to save people from dying then keep them in one corner at the safe observation space after they 'failed' their attempt.
"Good attempt. You did well until the point where you didn't anticipate the monster's recalibration and stuck with the same attacking pattern. Here, have a Senzu Bean."
I feel like a MMORPG revival system.
This particular outsider may have been weak but it was on the trickier side. Aside from spewing its corrupting miasma at a set pace, it wasn't aggressive until one entered its 'attack range', where its countless tentacles would begin attacking and constantly adapt to its enemies movements.
It wouldn't be apparent to inexperienced fighters until it was too late, but as a god of 'Victory', one of the main abilities I've gained is the ability to 'see' a path to achieving it. It only applied towards active combat and warfare, not to mention it being limited to only seeing a rough idea on how 'victory' could be gained until more information is gathered, so all it really did for me was keep me from dying like an idiot and seeing how others could win or fuck up in equal measure.
"Tch, already, the best has taken out half our number." "Father is going to be so disappointed. Maybe I should try the Science track?" "I was so damn close to getting its eyes!" "I won't give up! I'll sign up for next season's hunt!"
At least a third of the warriors here had inherited Sothis's blessing in the blood from their ancestors and chose to earn our blessing to prove themselves worthy of it, a big improvement from the original Crest system of Fodlan (Sothis gets full marks in social policies just for this), and a quality I personally admired since they didn't coast on their ancestor's work (none of which had died of old age yet as their life spans were increased) like many disgraceful examples of humanity.
"Looks like this hunt is going to be the shortest in history." "Oh I'm not looking forward to having my name on record for almost dying so pitifully…" "Are we all here already?" "No! Look! Can't you see? Fayne is still fighting!"
And the way I see it, this particular creature was one that learnt very quickly, so none of these warriors were going to kill it unless they followed the absolute optimal path to defeating the beast-
-Wait, who is that over there? This feeling… the way she's fighting, it's like she's checking off every box in my victory cheat sheet!
There were only three fighters on the field left but of the three, two of them had temporarily retreated while a single lady warrior mage was weaving through the foreign entity's defences as if she was adapting faster than it was.
I walked forward to get a better angle without thinking as my nature as a god of victory had me trembling with excitement at the brilliant display. If there was a Soulsborne-like video game at a scale where supernatural beings with hypersonic reflexes would struggle at playing while achieving a perfect no-damage run in then this would be it!
A thousand eyes became a hundred eyes, the monster was nearly blinded when she lit her sword on fire with magic and finished it off with a flurry of strikes unlike any combat art that I have seen before.
Yes! Yes! She was the one!
The special once-in-a-millennia fighter!
I don't know what makes her more than exceptional but I'll be damned if I didn't make two Anti-Velber 'Holy Sword' so that she can wield one too. It's literally the perfect showcase, if this pans out then it will be a historic moment in this timeline where 'both gods and humans worked together' to defeat a great calamity.
This would be a fantastic way to kick ourselves and our world out of the Nasuverse via Quantum Time Lock. If the universe is going to reject us then I'll have them reject us because gods and humans can do awesome things together!
I teleported the remaining three battles to the safe zone and immediately blasted the area with purifying light. As I distributed the Senzu Beans and properly cleansed everyone of any possible corruption using the techniques Sothis taught me, I lavished praise on the female magic warrior (after discreetly checking the list for her name, I was still kinda bad with names) and began asking questions about her.
"Why did I choose to prove myself here? Honestly, it's a little embarrassing Lord Nikaias. It's a foolish reason."
"Nonsense. I've blessed all sorts of people and I would love to hear more about you."
The pretty red-haired girl with similar colored eyes (better to a quick family check later to see if she was related to any divine spirits), Fayne Valentia, was from a large well-to-do family who all had responsibilities that required combat ability.
Come to think of it, I've seen a few guys with similar features semi-regularly. Some of her family members were probably guardsmen.
"Almost all of my family had been born with the blessing of the gods and they were very protective towards me…" The fact that she defeated the thing without it made her even more impressive in my eyes. "-and I… felt the need to prove myself capable and so I took the opportunity to do so."
Judging by her pause and slight wince I could tell there was more to the story. Well, no matter, I'll sort any family drama out personally if I have to.
So long as I had her then everything would work out.
"That is a perfectly acceptable reason. Still, I would love to learn more about you. Perhaps at a later date?"
"O-of course! It would be a great honor!"
Now that I think about it she's kinda cute when she's embarrassed… anyways, I better let go of her hand now, it was probably a bit rude of me to grab her in my excitement.
Realizing that I had neglected everyone else, I teleported everyone back to the gathering area at Garreg Mach, gave a nice little speech about their efforts and that they should stay for a few days as I evaluated their performance before setting off back to their homes.
I departed in a dramatic pillar of light and teleported back home to where Sothis was inputting the Cube's code with a 'kill me now' expression on her face in the backyard.
I calmed my excitement, walked up behind her and gave her a tight hug.
"I can continue working on it for you." I kissed her on the cheek, receiving a satisfied sound in response, "Why don't you take a break? You're almost done anyways."
As much as I wanted to tell her about the amazing young girl I found that would be great for Plan A, helping her out was more important right now.
"Well, I suppose I could do that. You're such a sweetheart."
She stood back up from her seat to return the hug and kiss before making her way to the kitchen. I spent around three hours working on the code in 'divine language' and understood her pain, seriously, fuck Zeno's angels and their shitty programming skills. I'm pretty sure a good amount of the code shown in the Scroll of Knowledge is for useless things that only the Gods of Destruction would want implemented.
If I wasn't so painfully weak then I would have used my mastery of Spirit Control, from where Instant Transmission was derived from, along with the multiverse coordinates in the scroll of knowledge to teleport to their realm just to tell them off.
"Yes! Ha! Fucking finally!"
"You've only worked on it for like… 10% of the time I did."
"I know! And I hated every second of it."
"I know right! There's so many dumb features that I can't exclude without modifying tons of stuff all the way from the beginning. And I only realized it when I'm 70% done with it and reversing time will just mean wasted effort. This is nothing like proper coding! Screw those angels!"
Sothis took the chance to rant about the nonsense that was the 'divine language' and went as far to say that the dark magics of the Agarthians was more elegant than it.
Just as she was done with her complaints my company issued phone buzzed as a rare incoming notification came in. What the hell? My progress bar has been filled?
Making a wish off Shenron granted us quite a bit of progress. Learning Ki, raising our power level, getting new techniques, farming Senzu Beans all raised the bar a bit… it seems like finishing the Cube gave us more progress but if that was the case why did it just complete itself now? Did I achieve something else off-screen? I guess I'll have Sothis investigate that later.
Let's see here, what kind of worlds did I get?
Fuck, I must have jinxed it. I wasn't ready in the least for two of those worlds. The fact that I had little clue into when, where or which specific realm I would be dropped into makes it too dangerous at this point in time. If it was my first world and I had a paper trail then I could at least keep a low profile for a while but that it's too late for that. Sothis's universe wide time-stop would only make those overpowered beings notice us immediately so performing a scouting mission would be dangerous in those worlds.
As for the third option… Well, there's almost nothing that would help in defeating Sefar since it's a magic heavy world. One of the potential heavy hitting waifus got struck by the shounen battle 'joined the good guys' trope and was smacked hard with the Nerfbat.
The time frame provided isn't optimal either… but on the other hand it's still a waifu bonanza that I can take advantage of to access a different world. I can probably put it off for a while until we train up a little more and sort things out here first.
"Well, where are we going next?"
"Somewhere I don't want to visit while I'm technically still a virgin. Anyways, we'll talk about it later, were you working on the Cube for the whole day?"
Sothis shook her head, "Yes, I was almost there so I thought to myself, why not? Well, turns out that I should have paced myself better."
"It would be more irritating if you left it at the point where you are so close to finishing it."
"And you? How was your day? I seem to recall you taking our people out to deal with a foreign incursion?"
"Yes! I was about to intervene when it seemed like they couldn't handle it, but she, there was this lady knight and she was brilliant! Didn't get hit once! She's perfect!"
"W-what!? What are you saying?!" Ah yes, I may have complimented Sothis using such words on occasion, so her anger was understandable.
I quickly elaborated from my previous choice of words, "She's perfect as the local human for Plan A. She beat that eldritch monster's ass like it was a tutorial boss! Fayne's probably got something like Musashi's Empyrean Eye so anyway, I was thinking of selling her on the idea of joining a special team dedicated to protecting the realm along with us."
She'll be just like the Z-Fighters, but with Magic.
"Very well, do what you wish. However, you'll have to train her yourself."
"But you're already training the guards-"
"-that is that, and this is this. I have only awakened the Ki of a few select individuals for the purpose of increased security at Garreg Mach. I do not train them to utilize it beyond the basics. What you're speaking of goes beyond it…"
She stared into space for a moment, clearly using her abilities to check up on who I was talking about. Sothis then grinned all of a sudden, "Hm, what you want is to make her your apprentice. I'm sure you'll enjoy the experience."
Yeah, great, how am I going to be an effective teacher when I would minimize close contact to prevent dragon aura exposure? What if she falls in love with me or something?
That would be like… extra waifus for no credits… what the hell am I thinking, it's not like listed waifus are the only women that should matter to me.
Okay, it shouldn't be too difficult to keep things professional as a 'Sensei', just use illusions and project my voice through it, only getting close to her when necessary in short bursts. I shouldn't be that bad of a teacher even with that little handicap. I taught lessons as a professor before, teaching them how to use Ki, magic, advanced techniques and all that shouldn't be too different.
I still spent a good amount of the night making several training programs as if I was desperately making a mid-life crisis career change to professional teacher.