Harbingers of Change

Chapter 20

Velgrynd's sudden visit demonstrated how utterly unprepared Nazarick was when facing and containing true dragons or similar-level entities. Using Veldora as a measuring stick had proven to be pointless, as Velgrynd was miles above him in terms of power due to her having far superior magicule control and a lot more raw power. Momonga only became aware of this fact because his Omnipresence worked similarly to Velgrynd's Parallel Existence, enabling him to analyze her from many perspectives all at once from many different logical lines. And even that took a lot of effort since she was masterfully masking her true power level.

A mere fraction of this dragoness' power was enough to overwhelm the entire defense grid effortlessly by sheer presence alone. With her full power, she no doubt could teleport directly into the Great Tomb of Nazarick and wreak havoc from within.

Thus, defense and containment measures needed to be revised, and quickly at that.

First, he and Nazarick rebuilt the response system in such a way that any attempts to breach the defenses would be immediately countered by increasing anti-teleportation measures in the area where the breach was occurring first and foremost.

Secondly, the prison was reinforced with more batteries for energy storage and a larger bandwidth to funnel the energy away. Additionally, Momonga reinforced the caloric stone chains with divine energy, which he could use at a limited capacity to hold true-dragon-tier entities down.

Obviously, Veldora wasn't enough to test the new prison, so he had to ask the only person who, in theory, was stronger than all the living true dragons combined due to her heritage. Even his current power level likely wasn't enough to properly test possible detainment measures so Momonga decided against testing the prison himself.

"This isn't your idea of some messed up punishment, is it?" Milim asked while inspecting the impossibly heavy block of stone with chains sticking out of it.

She, Momonga and Buku were standing in the prison, coated in snow and ice on the arctic floor.

"No. Besides, there are no means to build a prison that would be able to hold you if you entered a stampede." Momonga denied her accusations, sighing.

"Ok. But why even bother imprisoning Velgrynd or Velzard? It would be easier to kill them off if they decide to attack us," Milim inquired, in her eyes, an obvious question.

"They would appear once again over time, likely with a grudge. No matter the preparations we could make, it would only be a matter of time before they managed to destroy Tempest," Momonga explained.

Even if Velgrynd wasn't hostile and, on the surface level, even became friends with Buku, she was still part of the Eastern Empire, which was the most common culprit of killing Chloe in previous timelines. It was only a matter of time before they decided to strike, and they needed a way to prevent her from assisting for even a few hours while their forces could clash.

"Let's start then. How far should I go?" Milim sighed while taking a spot where a prisoner would be held in place.

"As far as you can without triggering a stampede. Are you ready?" Momonga prepared to activate the prison.

Compared to the last time such tests were made, the risk of damaging Nazarick's structure was much higher this time. Milim's memory recall event was proof enough of what sort of damage she could do.

"Let's do this!" Milim sharply inhaled and forced up a brave smile.

The chains clasped around her bare wrists and ankles. Milim had decided to wear shorts and a tight t-shirt for the tests to avoid damaging her outfits, thus the chains could attach to uncovered parts of her body with ease. She said she could always repair her skin anyway.

"It tingles, but this energy-draining rate isn't even remotely enough to weaken me," She commented, shaking them willy-nilly.

"It is set at the highest possible rate, right?" Buku asked.

"Yes, about eighty percent of what you can drain with your skill," Momonga replied.

"Try breaking the chains." He urged the dragonoid girl.

Milim strained a tiny bit, but the chain wasn't even close to strong enough to keep her arm in place. The broken chain was replaced by two, and when that failed to contain the girl, four chains wrapped around her arm in an instant.

"Oh, you want a fight, you'll get one," Milim cackled, treating the test as a sport.

Her hands started to glow and suddenly shot out a blinding light, cutting through the chains as if they were made out of paper. But the beams didn't stop there. They pierced through the defensive layer of the building and hit the outer walls of the floor, shattering the holograms displaying the cloudy skies. Even bits of the wall itself had cracks from such a casual attack, with the Tomb immediately beginning reconstruction.

"That's enough! The test is over," Momonga declared, ordering the chains to let go of the girl.

"But I just started," Milim's smile faded as she glanced up at Momonga with puppy eyes.

"There is no way we can build anything that could hold Veldora's sisters or you. If they attack, we will have no option but to go for quick kills. Milim, if you're itching for a fight, you can spar with the World-enders. Just, please, be careful." Momonga suggested, knowing that Milim wouldn't be able to calm down until she got the urge to fight out of her system.

"I'll be careful. Buku, you coming?" She asked.

"I pretty much have to. Otherwise, the floor will be too saturated for a while," Buku sighed.

She and Pandora had to work extra shifts to clean up the magical residue that lingered after Milim had had her fun beating up the eight impossibly strong creatures into the ground. At least the extra power could be used to refill the batteries dedicated to creating more pop monsters, and they had even devised more protocols for pop monsters to regularly use their stored power to create more pop monsters via collection of their remnants.

Despite the original assessment based on Veldora's raw power, the chains combined were no match for a fired-up Milim in any shape or form, although the fights did dance somewhat close to triggering her stampede. The only plus side was that now, with the ongoing therapy, she still had control over herself and could stop it before she did irreparable damage, and with her on their side, she was a monstrously powerful ally to have and keep.

'I should have expected that there is a hard limit on how powerful an entity could be before containment becomes impossible,' Momonga mused. The only thing that he could do was grow in power and help others under him do the same until they too were on the level of true dragons, and as many of them as possible. One undead could only be in so many places at once after all.

He should go investigate how his undead grew in power when he had evolved. Perhaps that would be the good news he needed to cheer himself up to continue working.

<X>

With both the Free Guild mercenaries and Dwargon armies spread out across strategic locations after days of wrangling and negotiations, all the monsters were either ordered to stay home or gather in well-protected community centers before the next set of evolutions could finally begin.

The roster of all candidates was gathered in the throne room and split into three distinct groups across the room. They would be the first wave, with more coming later as there were enough candidates to pick from for empowerment.

First were the demon lord seeds, which included Buku, Albedo, Demiurge, Shalltear, Diablo, and finally Shion, who was pushed into the demon seed range through direct empowerment by Momonga.

Together with his consorts, he had decided that she shouldn't be left out and should reach the same state of being as her two peers who fell in that category naturally, being stronger than Kagali as a baseline. The process itself wasn't too difficult but did require a lot of souls which, luckily, Momonga had plenty to spare from his past war. With the help of fifty thousand souls, he pushed her close to SS rank while still firmly remaining in the physical being category, which would allow the demon lord awakening to happen without a hitch.

With Ten Demon Lords directly serving him. It would be more than enough to gain the majority vote and ensure other council members didn't come to Luminous' aid.

The second group consisted of those to be uplifted into local Gods, which was the neutral state between divine humans and Demon lords, requiring not much else than a desire to evolve and around a hundred thousand souls as fuel to push them to greater heights. Pero, Pandora, Sebas, Aura, Mare, and Cocytus were in this group. Though the elven twins also qualified for demon lord awakening, both he and Buku decided against it since it would stunt their growth. That wouldn't be the case if they evolved into local Gods, and the only trade-off was that they wouldn't be contributing in the Walpurgis council since they kept similar power levels.

The final group had only one person, Aureole, in it as she was the only human native to Nazarick and qualified to become a Divine Human from the get-go. Considering how fast Hinata's evolution was, there was no need to worry that the Tempest transportation network would be disabled for long. She just required insane amounts of magic power to fuel since apparently, human evolutions didn't require souls per the design of Veldanava's system, but still could use souls anyways as a source of power, which Momonga was more than happy to use to avoid draining Nazarick's batteries.

"If anyone wants to change their mind, this is your last chance to do so," Momonga declared.

With no one speaking up, not that he expected them to, he poured the souls into the recipients and nodded for Aureole to push her desire to evolve to its absolute limits. As the soon-to-be Demon Lords fell to the ground and the local God candidates began to glow, Aureole dropped to one knee, her power levels spiking within moments.

Momonga ordered Nazarick to teleport all demon lord seeds to their respective beds and put his full attention on Aureole as she got back to her feet. The girl was standing still with her back arched backward as her energy levels steadily increased over time.

Her unique skill quickly evolved into the ultimate skill Hebe, Goddess of Compassion, drastically boosting her capability of empowering others. Same as with Kagali's skill, he quickly obtained assurances from the Greek Goddess that she wouldn't interfere with his dealings and would only advise Aureole should the need arise. The girl's overall power level didn't increase as much as Hinata's since her previous level was much higher than the fallen saint's, but there still was a noticeable improvement.

"I think the evolution is complete, my Lord," Aureole spoke up with a long exhale, glowing with power.

"Good, if you do not have any negative side effects, then please resume your duties and ensure transportation is available should the need arise," Momonga ordered.

"There are no complications I can feel at the moment. Thank you for this gift, my Lord." Aureole bowed and teleported back to the Cherry Blossom Sanctuary to oversee the transportation network that had been temporarily left in Nigredo's care.

With Pero being the furthest ahead in the evolution before the start, Momonga turned his attention to his friend, whose transcendence into a local God was about to be concluded. It was he who had the most to lose if such an evolution went wrong, being the farthest along the godly path beside himself.

Save for becoming a purely spiritual lifeform and experiencing about a fifty percent direct increase in power level, there weren't any dramatic changes. The fifty percent increase was quite useful though, since his ultimate skill had gained a name, now being called Peroroncino, God of the Sun, and gained a sub-skill that let him directly become someone's patron deity without interference from the Voice of the World, so long as he held enough power to do so.

Aura and Mare were next to complete their awakenings since both had a decent number of monsters worshiping them already. Same as their uncle, their names were added to their ultimate skills, their power grew by fifty to seventy percent, and the patron deity subskill was added, enabling them to do act as a patron deity similar to Pero.

It came as no surprise that Cocytus, Sebas, and Pandora received the same upgrades, as all of them were god-skill owners before the uplifting. The only notable exception was Sebas, who also gained a dragon form on top of his natural Dragonoid form, and could freely swap between human, dragonoid, and dragon forms now, and thus was quickly dragged away by Milim for another spar.

Their fast evolutions came as a huge relief as there was always a chance someone would attempt to exploit the nation's weakness during the Harvest Festival. Ker's pet Yuuki was still lurking out there, waiting for the perfect opportunity. Granbell and Mariabell could try to make a move. Guy or even the two dragonesses might decide that Tempest was too much of a danger to let it grow. The faster they got these evolutions finished, the better.

The one thing he did know for sure was that whoever tried an underhanded method against Tempest at its weakest moment would pay a thousandfold for such an offense. Tempest had gained newly sharpened blades against the world, and it wouldn't hesitate to use them.

Editing by aidan_lo.

Proofreading by aidan_lo, Sluethen, clagan, FantasyTroll, Cay, NuggetLover, shynavyseal, KieraKieraARTS, CakeEight, Working_Stiff and Nervy.

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