AN: I originally wanted to include a Sothis/Demeter interlude showing them working and talking together but decided to save that for the future. While I already planned out the first few legs of their DXD trip I decided to focus more on their altered Nasuverse timeline, a bit on the world-building, Nikaias as a character and Fayne (I mean, someone had to fall for the DragonD in the local reality at some point, may as well address it now).
Local Dragon Ruins History 7 (Waifu Catalog, Nasu!Mythology)
Target Sighted...
Exiting [Absolute Stealth Mode]...
Success!
I have successfully reached my target without having over 50 people greet me with some variation of the "Good morning Lord Nikaias" dialogue line.
I may be perfectly capable and willing to exchange courtesies everyday but today's plan requires some measure of discretion.
I probably should have invested in enchantments that improved my Sneak ability but such magical research was rather low on my priority list in this era where various deity-led civilizations around the world were mostly insular. Thankfully, my recently refined [Absolute Stealth Mode] allowed me to selectively hide certain aspects of myself (instead of making my existence totally invisible to everything), like say, my Dragon Aura.
No longer shall I worry about attending family gatherings and seducing any future members of my extended family!
… Though that might be the case, I really do need to learn how to control my supernatural aura. That skill hadn't been necessary for centuries as there were more important things to do when all the humans around me were too weak to be seriously affected by my aura and I had limited close contact with them anyways.
That wasn't the case anymore. A relatively powerful mage, magic knight or warrior would be affected by my aura if I so much as mingled among them.
I shook my head and slapped my cheeks to regain my focus. Getting lost in my thoughts is a bad habit that I must have picked up after getting too used to being an immortal.
There she was. The red-haired beauty that I desired for a central role in my plans.
Fayne Valentia was exploring the institution all by her lonesome.
Most of the other candidates that attempted to prove themselves yesterday were grouped up together in their various little cliques, spending their time exchanging stories, getting in some extra training at the field, indulging in the latest culinary advancements or were attending a free lecture or two.
Fayne was regarded highly by the few that knew of her, though she largely keeps to herself from what I've gathered thus far.
Perfect. Just where I wanted her.
I creeped up behind her like the sneakiest rogue in the universe, "Konichi...", then sprang up my greeting with a surprise "-WAH!"
The small 'weeb' parts of my memories compelled me to do so.
"Hiiiiyaaaa!"
A fist flew towards me as she turned her head around in fright. I moved back slightly in order to dodge it but I miscalculated- no! Her body was automatically adjusting to my evasive maneuvers-
Ah. What a beautiful blue sky.
I never got punched by a woman before.
This is a new experience.
"Oh gods! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry my body just moved on its own and- AAHHH! Lord Nikaias! I didn't mean to strike you and-" Her panicked apologies quickly turned into sobbing apologies and I seriously felt bad about my little joke. I could feel guilt and horror from her as if she had committed an unforgivable crime.
"Fayne. Calm down, no harm done. See?" I laughed it off as I stood back up, truth to be told, I'm more worried about her hand after she struck my hard face, "Besides, it's my fault for sneaking up on you like that." I took hold of one of her hands and spoke reassuringly, "You did nothing wrong. I'm not angry."
She cared a great deal about how I felt about her. I wasn't completely sure why yet but it was definitely due to her great devotion to me. Sothis and I had done a lot for the people so such devotion didn't come as a surprise, though I suspect that hers was above average at worst.
"A-are you certain? Y-you're not going to punish me?"
"If striking or slandering me was a punishable offence then there would have been a lot less heads around. Anyhow, good morning! Did you sleep well?"
She seemed taken aback by my quick topic change but did her best to answer anyways, "No! Yes! I mean, uh… I didn't get much sleep but that's because yesterday was so… exciting."
"Understandable." Sensing her rising anxiety I quickly elaborated to get her back on track, "You performed a great and worthy feat yesterday in purging the foul invaders from the realm. It's no surprise that you feel jubilant about your victory."
From her sudden relief I could tell that I was a bit off the mark, nonetheless, she nodded and happily accepted my praise soon after. Happy might be understating it, her face lit up as if her dream had just come true and that she had just won a gold medal in the Olympics.
"You don't seem very familiar with Garreg Mach. First time?"
"Um, yes, I suppose it is. I arrived to participate in the hunt on the day itself and haven't had much time to explore the place."
"Great. Then let me show you around. Have you eaten breakfast?"
"No? W-wait, please, Lord Nikaias!" She hurriedly got one knee, making me cringe internally, "I'm not worthy of such an honor."
There were several types of people that actually got on at least one knee like this. This girl seemed to be a mix of several types and could be summed up as one of my "self-proclaimed number one fangirl and most devoted servant".
I was already thinking about how long it would take me to break her out of this mindset. If I try my best I could probably manage it within 30 minutes. May as well try to break my record.
"Please do not kneel. I'm not trying to honor you. I'm trying to take you out on a date and get to know you better."
"A-ah…"
I was on the verge of rolling my eyes.
"Damn it Fayne." I patted her shoulder lightly, "Stand up."
She stood up with an unsure smile on her face, "Is that really alright? T-the only one you have taken out on dates is your beloved, the goddess Sothis. The girls in the villages said that it was alright for a man to have dates with more than one woman, but that would require a mutual approval of some form. I do not wish to offend the goddess by accepting, nor do I wish to offend you, my lord, for refusing."
"You are strong and wise, Fayne Valentia, for considering the ramifications of such matters. You may put your worries to rest, however, as my wife knows and approves of my plans when I spoke to her about you yesterday." And spoke about my plans for you to achieve wonders in great length.
"Lady Sothis knows?! A-approval!? Plans!" Her face was almost as red as her hair and eyes. I guess I'm embarrassing her too much at this point. I had gotten rather excited about my "Hero Creation Plan".
"Yes, well, we'll be here all day if I go into detail so that will be a story for another time. Now then, the campus cafeteria will be too crowded but thankfully, I know of this wonderful cafe for us to get some scrumptious breakfast at!"
I grabbed her hand and began fast walking at a normal human pace until she properly kept up with me. In order to keep her from getting lost in her own thoughts I began talking about pretty much everything that came to mind on the way to our destination.
She was awed and bewildered in equal measures at the beginning of the trip, then slowly began to settle at contentment as we moved along.
The staff at the little restaurant knew that I was a regular and treated me relatively normally. They gave some curious glances at Fayne as I sat her down alongside me at my favorite table.
I ordered a full breakfast set for the two of us, then asked my partner, "Do you prefer coffee or tea?"
She blinked, not at all understanding what those two were, "Forgive my ignorance. What's the difference?"
I chuckled and jokingly explained it to her, "Ah yes, the cuisine at Garreg Mach is always ahead of the times. To sum it up, the first option is hot bean juice while the second one is hot leaf juice."
"Um…I'll try the leaves?"
"Tea it is! Well, I'll have the coffee, you can try some of mine later after I convince you that it isn't exactly a drink made out of the vegetable that you thought it was."
"How did you know?! I-I mean, I do eat my veggies."
"Would I get the same answer if I asked your parents?"
"Uuuu…"
"Aw jeez, don't look so down, I'm just teasing you. You're so cute that I just can't help myself."
The poor girl's face could compete with the tomatoes on our plate.
I gave her an explanation on what coffee was and took a sip from my cup before passing it to her to try. I felt strangely happy when she 'subtly' adjusted the cup so that she could consume the liquid from where I had placed my mouth on the cup earlier.
She would probably die of embarrassment if I called her out on it so I decided to remain silent.
Fayne didn't like the coffee, as expected, it took some time to get used to it.
It took her over half an hour to 'get used to me' after watching me interact with the staff, other customers and herself over the course of our time here.
Just after paying for breakfast with a gold coin, I found her looking at me a smile from the table that reminded me of Sothis, for when my wife lovingly smiled at my 'antics' that she considered 'endearing'.
The next place I took her to was the gardens, well, the one a little further away from the main campus and was closer to the dormitories instead. There shouldn't be many people passing it by at this time as lectures and classes were proceeding as normal.
Fayne adored it and said that she had never seen so many types of plants before, aside from the many colorful vegetables planted at her family's estate.
"Is that where your household income comes from?"
"Only a part of it. My great grand uncle and a few of my brothers manage our farms. A few of my brothers and sisters work here at Garreg Mach-"
As I listened on and learnt more about her family the reality of how different the family unit of this world has become finally dawned upon me.
The average family tree extended for up to 8 generations, with some old families reaching up to 11 generations… and unless their ancestors had perished due to murder, death by monster or unfortunate accidents then they were still alive and kicking!
It's been over 200 years and no one that has received our blessing has died of old age yet. It doesn't stop there… heck, a blessed woman can continue giving birth past 40 and there's still no sign of their reproductive years running out!
I was starting to wonder about how we got so many people to fill up the cities. I think I'm not asking the right questions in the census or that our empire's common sense has become so different from what I expected that I completely missed it!
I have to come up with laws to address inheritances and potential inter-family conflicts because this is going to blow up into a huge mess when the blessed humans finally croak. I could already see it… it starts off innocent enough, then it balloons into community/regional differences in how people manage this, humanity then begins to define itself by their differences, pride gets mixed into it, someone kills someone and everything begins to fuck itself up until we have Separatism! Civil War! And then it'll get worse…!
Or I'm panicking for no reason and everyone will manage things peacefully like the Nabateans did thanks to Sothis spreading her largely peaceful ways. The main flaw in that logic is that long-lived humans would basically be horny Nabateans without being able to turn into a dragon and without the right mentality to handle long lives.
On the other hand, the Númenóreans handled it well, so it was entirely possible for humans to be humans while having extended life spans.
"-then there's my annoying seventh cousin thrice removed who is wasting his life away by staying in his room all day…? Nikaias, is everything alright?"
"Uh, sorry if I looked a bit distracted, hearing about your family has been an enjoyable and enlightening experience. The enlightening part especially, as it helped me to realize that there might be some potential future problems that might arise if proper laws and teachings were not put into place. So thank you for that, Fayne."
Though she didn't fully understand the situation, I could feel that she accepted my words and intentions for what they were. "I'm glad to have been of service."
"Now, now. "I tutted, "Not everything is about serving me, remember?"
"Yes, of course." She smiled and lied in front of my face as she was unwilling to bend on that point despite being convinced to use my name more casually.
I sighed and moved on, "You spoke a lot about your family but I haven't heard much about yourself."
"I-I'm not that interesting."
"Nonsense. You are a hard-working and beautiful young woman. After yesterday's battle you became more interesting than any other human that I had the pleasure to meet. There is no human female that has caught my eye as much as you have."
I didn't want to say 'talented' or anything that assumed she was a genius or something. That led to a path of laziness and I wanted to emphasize the amount of effort she put into actually making herself capable of achieving victory instead of simply 'seeing' how to achieve it.
As a god of light and victory it behooves me to focus on the important aspects when it came to a warrior's potential. Having talent but no work ethic is one of the worst case scenarios for my potential Velber slaying warrior, it sends a completely wrong message to everyone.
"Really? Do you mean it?"
Note to self. Beat up the person that gave her low self esteem.
"I swear it. I swear upon my name as the god of our people."
It's not like I had visited another world with actually interesting waifus yet (didn't pay much attention to Bulma when we were getting that wish) and my current wives are all goddesses so they aren't human either. So what I said was definitely true at this point in time.
In any case, my words had the desired effect of getting her to truly open up to me.
Her story then made me realize that she's basically a light novel protagonist. I also misunderstood her on various occasions as while I could pick up on falsehoods I didn't clarify matters and made assumptions. Turns out her 'overprotective' family actually meant (Chivalry of a Failed Knight) 'Kurogane Clan' levels of bad.
'Weakest' in her very wealthy, powerful and influential family? Check.
Ignored and kept out of sight because said family was too proud to have a 'failure' of a child born to them? Only descendant in her family line that lacked Sothis's blessing upon her birth, Check.
Consigned to a life that can't be considered 'living' and only mere 'survival'? In her face, it was an arranged marriage to some random guy so that counts.
Only a select few members of her family believed in her, encouraged and supported her dream to become a magic swordsman? Her grandfather and sister fit the roles perfectly (note to self, check for potential incest).
I was stunned at the amount of bullshit that had crept into my lands. Seriously, what the actual fuck, our economy and society didn't support this kind of blessing based bullshit. Her family was just so prideful over getting lucky on having their blessings passed on that they convinced themselves that they were better because of this nonsense!
I'm going to have to get Sothis to give them 'the talk' and her disappointed motherly stare until they changed their ways. Humans come up with the strangest things and make people suffer for it, haaa… I feel as if my IQ just dropped by 5 points after hearing her story.
… I also felt guilty for not picking up on this earlier. While I had no responsibility over the stupidity of others it was still my role as a guardian of the people to keep watch over both external and internal threats. Societal and familial based problems included.
"Argh! How do humans keep finding ways to be stupid! Is the standard curriculum not enough? Do I need to rewrite social policies again?! Why do I keep missing nonsense like this, gah, I know why, it's because I'm not caring enough in the right way!"
"N-Nikaias! Don't hit your head on the pillar, it's going to break!"
I stopped banging my head on the nearest hard object and quickly fixed it with [Absolute Restoration], a minor time reversal technique.
"There, fixed. Now if only I can fix my own mistakes that easily. I'm so sorry Fayne, you wouldn't have had to suffer if I cared and paid more attention to our people. I'm a failure of a god."
"That's not true! If it weren't for you then I wouldn't have reached this far in the first place!"
Eh? Nani? Why do I get the feeling that I did something that made it the most important day in her life when it was just Tuesday for me?
Fayne reached down and pulled up her white dress, revealing a hidden dagger attached to her hip. It was a small dragonbone dagger, a valuable weapon steeped in Mystery and the original dragon's concept, a type of weapon that Sothis and I rarely (if ever) gave out after the first few years of contact.
Back then, dragonbone blades and staves were necessary as weapons, nowadays we keep them for research and our own uses. There were only 30 or so dragonbone weapons kept as family heirlooms while the rest were only to be used by the guardsmen of Garreg Mach.
"You flew over our family lands before and came to a stop at our wheatfield to carve protective runes into the ground eight years ago."
Protective Runes? Wait! It's coming back to me… oh shit, was that when I was practicing my Crop Circle artwork?
No one must ever know the truth.
I had dropped appropriate monetary compensation to the family later on but looking back at it I may have taken things a bit too far with my 'ancient art' trolling activities back then.
"You found me crying by myself as I was lost in the fields-"
"I said that even if no one else believed in you, I did, and that you shouldn't give up on your dreams. Take this and carve your own path."
Thank you brain. Thank you past me by ripping off best boi Dimitri in a moment of madness.
"Hehe! You remember. That's right, your words back then saved me. I trained in secret as much as I could and then ran away from home a year ago with what little support my grandfather was able to get me. I had been training as I travelled to Garreg Mach ever since and sent in my application through a city's messenger service on the way."
Her words made me remember all the times when I thoughtlessly encouraged and behaved in a proper 'godly' fashion even when I was up to something quirky or mischievous. For all that I 'ignored' the rest of the world, my empire, my people… I hadn't failed them completely, I still managed to do some good just by being myself.
It was oddly reassuring to know that I wasn't completely wrong in choosing to act like a god in this world. I've done a lot of good, allowed some 'bad' to fester but I hadn't fucked it all up at this point.
After I deal with her family I'm going to have to take a break from the waifu hunting and training in order to stamp out all these future societal problems first.
Fayne and I ended up thanking each other at the same time after a shared comfortable silence. She thanked me for my past and present actions while I ended up thanking her for making me realize things about my actions as a god.
I managed to speak to her about my 'guardian of the realm' program which she accepted immediately despite giving me a strange look upon my explanation. Still, she seemed overjoyed at the idea of working closely with me.
"Nikaias? I have a question."
"What is it?"
"Do you accept offerings?"
"Well, the answers are a bit complicated."
"Yes or no?"
"It's a yes."
I was glad that she was comfortable enough to semi-demand an answer to her question at this point. It's tough speaking with someone that acts as if a conversation with me is like clearing a minefield.
"I see. Then will you accept my offering."
"Of course- hey! Fayne, what are you-"
Did she just kiss me?
What.
Dragonbrain Task Manager, what's going on?
She's saying something about how it was her first kiss and that I had to accept her body as an offering. Help. Does not compute. Does not fit into WaifuCatalogue XP-
"Will you stop staring into space like a fool?"
Time had stopped. Sothis and Demeter were both there next to me.
"I-it's not what you think!"
The two of them laughed at my frantic denials. I was pretty sure that I was missing something.
"Oh! I told you! His skull is so dense that I could kill a god with it!" Sothis, we kinda did reinforce our skulls, our head is supposed to be hard.
"Hahaha, oh my, I now understand why Aphrodite insists on watching mortals deal with love so much. Darling, would you please take a look at your phone?"
I unlocked my smartphone and found a notification that I had missed.
It detailed the 'capture' of a waifu for no points. Yesterday night. I stared at Fayne and thought back to all our interactions today.
"Damn it all! What's with this misunderstanding field!"
Sothis wrapped her arm around my shoulder with a smug look on her face, "Hey, look at the bright side, your prime candidate for 'Plan A' has been biologically immortal and will live long enough to fight the Velber as you wanted. And you didn't need to lift a finger."
Well how was I supposed to plan around the idea of someone confessing their undying love to me and counting as a waifu while I wasn't even looking! Urgh, if I knew of this earlier then my day probably would have gone a lot easier.
… Even so, it was a good day. Taking responsibility and learning to love someone that I didn't know through works of fiction… I can live with that. Though her life seemed cliche to the extreme, I still had much more to learn about her as a person. Yes, I'm definitely fine with this.
"Before we leave you to your new lover…" Demeter began and drew my attention by crossing her arms over her chest, smiling as her tactic worked wonders on me, "Sothis and I have come to an agreement. You will have Sothis on the first day, myself on the second and we will all have each other on the third."
"... Huh? Oh! Oooooh! Well, I'm glad that the two of you have settled that. So when does the first day start again?"
"Tomorrow." Sothis replied, "So don't get too caught up with your newest girl alright?"
"I won't. I promised myself that I'll be better anyways."
The two departed and the flow of time resumed as normal.
"Fayne? Have you ever ridden on a dragon before?"