The Mage Emperor

Leviathan

“What are your plans for the rest of the day?” Lien asked as I laid down on the bed.

Sprawling out like a frog on a leaf, I closed my eyes and said, “Mhhh, nothing in particular. I just want to take a rest.”

“Are you alright?” she asked, taking a set on the side of the bed.

Opening my left eye, I turned towards her and said, “Yes. I’m just a little sleepy. The morning felt much longer than it was, though the afternoon went by really quickly.”

“Haha, time flows quickly if you’re surrounded by your loved ones. I also find it hard to believe how much happened today,” she said, slowly caressing my back while talking.

“I guess that’s true,” I chuckled.

“It is. Do you want me to do something while you’re asleep? Maybe hunt monsters, build something, or cook for everyone?” she asked as she leaned forward to see my face.

Opening both of my eyes, I asked, “What do you mean? I thought you’d sleep with me.”

“I didn’t want to cling to you too much since I thought that it’d annoy you, but if you're fine with it then...” she muttered, and then hopped over me and laid down on her front.

“Annoying me? Are you kidding me?” I asked with a frown, turning to the other side to see her. I didn’t even understand how could she think of something like that.

“Well, don’t people want some ‘air’ sometimes? I thought that maybe you-”

“Lien, I don’t need the kind of ‘air’ other people need. I believe that our relationship is something really special. I mean, other couples argue and stuff like that, but we’ve never once argued, have we?” I asked.

“No, we haven’t,” she shook her head.

“I think that it's because we’re like best friends and we are similar as well. Also, who doesn’t like hanging out with their best friend?” I asked.

“I guess you have a point,” she muttered. “But hey, even if I had some ‘best friend’, I don't think I'd want to spend the whole day with them everyday. If what you said is true, then what do you think, why do I not feel 'bored’ of you? I mean, you could cling to me all day and I wouldn't even bat an eye,” she started speculating.

“Hmm, you do have a point, but I think I have a clue about the reason. This is probably going to sound a little silly, but even best friends would find it hard to show their true selves and desires in front of one another. This includes their physical desires, as well as all those tiny little modifications we make to our personalities to appear in a better light in front of the other. Or the fact that there are things you wouldn't want to tell your best friend because you could hurt them.”

“I think I don’t have to explain why that’s not a problem with us. I know everything about you and you also know everything about me, including even stuff like our fetishes. We also don't have to shake off one another if our sexual desires are getting too strong since we can satisfy each other. Since neither of us have to restrain ourselves in front of the other, we don't feel 'pressured’ by each other’s presences and can stay our true selves. We may annoy each other sometimes, but that's not something that'd make me want to have some air,” I said.

“Actually, that sounds reasonable. I can agree with that,” she nodded.

“See? I'm not talking bullshit every time!” I laughed.

“I never thought you did,” she smiled at me. Creeping a little closer, she pulled my head into her bosom and started caressing the back of my head. Feeling her scent and the warmth of her body, I couldn’t help but hug her tightly. The way her fingers ran through my hair felt so nice, I could feel my heart bubbling. She was the only woman other than my mother who could make me feel thia way..

“You’re like a giant baby sometimes. Why don’t you start sucking your thumb?” she started laughing, seeing me rubbing my face against her chest.

Raising my head, I looked into her eyes and said, “What if I sucked something else instead?”

Smirking at me, she said, “If that’s what you want.”

“Uw, I want it, but I’m also sleepy. How about another time?” I asked.

“I think it’d be for the best if we didn’t force this cosplay stuff. We should do it when both of us are in the mood,” she replied. “And if I have to be honest, I have no desire of sex right now. I'm just feeling really affectionate,” she muttered, giving a small kiss on the top of my head.

“I agree,” I nodded my head. I couldn't help but smile like an idiot, so I was glad that she didn't see my face. Enjoying the warmth of her soft bosom, I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

…

I woke up some time later, but even when I opened my eyes, it was complete darkness and I found it hard to breathe. Maybe that was the reason I woke up. When I raised my upper body, I realised it was because my face was between Lien’s breasts and she was sprawled out under me. I honestly got a little confused by our positions since we were laying on our sides when we went to sleep. I probably rolled over her while I was sleeping.

Maybe because she felt the warmth my body provided getting further away from her chest, Lien ‘blindly’ caught after me and pulled me down. Much to my dismay, she also locked her arms around my neck and then turned to the side. The problem with this was that I had to twist my waist in a very uncomfortable position, so I tapped her arm and asked, “Lien, are you awake?”

“Mrmm~” she moaned lightly and put even more force into her hug.

“Uh, what should I do now?” I grumbled as I tried to straighten my body. Realising that it’d be impossible without breaking my bones, I pried her arms open with strength and sat up.

“Mh~ Come back, it feels cold!” she groaned, grabbing my shirt and pulling me down once again.

“Whoa, what the fuck?” I couldn’t help but curse as I found myself in the same situation for the second time. “So you were awake all along!” I cried out.

“No, I woke up when you raised your body. It suddenly got cold, and I felt a wave of cold,” she said in a low voice, slowly opening her eyes.

“That’s basically the same,” I rolled my eyes, finally noticing what kind of sight was in front of me. The light of the moon shone through the window, slightly illuminating the right side of our room. Our bed also happened to be on the right side, but what made the sight truly beautiful was Lien.

I was standing over her on all fours, my hands next to her bare shoulders, and her hair sprawled out under her. Since we fell asleep wearing our clothes, she still had that sexy shoulderless dress on her, which put a great emphasis on her neckline and her cleavage. Looking downwards, I felt mesmerized by her crazy curves, especially her thin waist and wide hips.

Not even realising how stunning she looked, she unconsciously tried to pull her dress lower so that it’d cover her thighs better, and turned to the side to pick up her phone from the nightstand.

“Uh, what time is it?” she muttered, slowly rubbing her forehead, probably annoyed by the bright light of the screen. “What the hell, we’re barely past midnight!” she cried out, quickly putting her phone back in its place and then closing her eyes.

“Lien…”

“Hmm?” she opened her right eye and peeked at me. Maybe she would have been alright with going back to sleep, but I was literally going crazy from the boner I’ve got.

She seemed to notice that something was off so she opened both of her eyes and looked into mine. “What’s the problem? You’re breathing heavily,” she asked, placing her hand on my forehead.

Placing my finger on her soft red lips, I pulled them apart and then leaned closer, stopping only when our noses were about to touch. Gazing deep into her eyes from up close, I grabbed her wrists and said, “I’m going to do you, now.”

“Huh?” her eyes shot open, visibly confused by my words. “Wait, I’ve just woken up, you can’t expect me to-” not caring about her excuses, I pried her lips open with my tongue and shoved it into her mouth. Her tongue felt incredibly hot, but her mouth was quite dry since she had just barely woken up.

Placing my elbows next to her shoulders, I grabbed the back of her head and lifted her up to my level so that I could kiss her properly. For some reason it felt really satisfying that I left her no way to turn anywhere or move even an inch. She was completely under my control and in my grasp, which I loved in bed.

Imagining how sexy she’d look in a maid uniform, I decided it was time to change her clothes. I was totally in the mood for it, and this one time, I didn’t care what she wanted. Well, knowing her, she’d start wanting it as soon as I started playing with her clitoris, so I had nothing to worry about. With the help of my magic, I removed her leggings and turned her dress into the desired clothes.

Since her leggings were gone, I went ahead and used her moment of weakness to push my hand under her skirt and start rubbing her clitoris. Realising that it wasn’t good enough through her panties, I pulled it to the side and toucher her private place directly. As I stuck my finger into her vagina, she moaned loudly and raised her lower half for a moment. It was sort of like a showcase of how much she liked it.

“Mhh~ dho ih moh,” she told me to move my fingers more, even though my tongue was still inside her mouth. Feeling that I did as told, she started sucking on my tongue like a hoover as a reward.

I could feel her hips moving up and down in her excitement and her legs also stiffened up as usual. Sex was always great after a good sleep and although she was still a little sleepy, she was visibly getting into it.

Running out of air from our long kissing, I pulled back my lips and opened my eyes to take a look at what I did. Her eyes slightly hazy, she stared back at me, her chest continuously heaving up and down as she kept panting. I could feel her hot breath tickling my ears, her husky voice sounding like good music. She was a goddamn succubus, I didn’t care what she said.

“If you keep looking at me like that, I’ll burst even before I insert it,” I remarked.

Being as cheeky as she was, she raised her head and whispered into my ear, “You should cum inside me instead, don’t you think? I’m sure my place is much warmer and wetter than outside.”

Her dirty talk like felt like an aphrodisiac, my penis instantly started twitching and was overcome with the desire to enter her body. I couldn’t help but contemplate and think that maybe I should have some foreplay with her, but seeing the look she gave me, I decided to keep it for later. I wanted her, right then and right there.

I ran my eyes down on her body one last time and had to grit my teeth to hold back my animalistic desires. “You seem to be struggling, honey,” she said with a smirk as she pulled up her leg. Looking deep into my eyes, she started rubbing my crotch with her knee, continuously giving me flirtatious looks.

Taking a deep breath, I pulled off my pants and pushed her knee to the side. Although I couldn’t see anything under the blanket, I moved my penis to the right place with perfect accuracy. I was really proud of knowing her body that well, and I wasn’t surprised to feel her insides spasming and twitching the moment I inserted the tip. Her pussy was simply amazing.

“You’re incredibly wet, you know? What about not wanting it after sleeping?” I raised a brow as I lifted up her legs.

Averting her eyes, she muttered, “Well, I’ve got quite horny from this restricted situation and your hand, so… mhh~”

While she was talking, I have taken the liberty and put it all the way in, causing her pussy to squelch. “God damn, Lien, you’re so wet you’re squelching, and we haven’t even started,” I hissed in my excitement.

Before I started moving, I took a good look at her new clothes else it’d have been pointless to change them. The way her dress pushed up her big bust made her cleavage so inviting that I considered asking her for a titty fuck. Regardless, her insides felt too good for my penis to pull it out, so before my eyes could get lost in that valley, I mustered up my courage and started moving. I needed courage because I feared that I’d cum in a few seconds if I moved.

Feeling her folds clamping down on me, a sense of pleasure ran through my whole back, filling my mind with nothing but her pussy. I could feel my savage, manly instincts taking over me, telling me to start pounding her as quickly as I could. Although I wanted to resist my instincts, Lien whispered into my ear once again as if she knew what was going on in my mind, “You can do me roughly if you want, you know that I like it so don’t hold back.”

Gazing deep into her eyes, I put my arms under her back to get a good hold of her and started moving my hips. Although her offer made things even harder for me, I started out slow and leaned closer to kiss her neck instead. Being as obedient in bed as she was, I didn’t even have to command her to do something, she simply raised her chin and let me do as I pleased.

I sort of realised at that moment that the ‘maid’ roleplay was the most pointless thing between us since she was kind of submissive in bed anyway. Well, if nothing else, her dress gave a big boost to her cuteness and sexiness. Maybe I was a bit too biased, but she was both sexy and cute, in a way.

Biting her lower lip, she kept gazing back at me as I slowly picked up the pace, continuously thrusting deeper and rougher into her. As I’ve gotten a little rough with her, she grasped my wrists and spread her legs even more to make moving easier. Her chest heaved up and down as she kept panting, visibly enjoying the whole thing.

“You’re so fucking hot,” I couldn’t help but praise her.

Locking her legs behind my back, she pulled me all the way inside as she replied, “And you’re thick.” Happy to hear her praise, I rewarded her with an even rougher treatment, though I knew it’d be short lived since I was about to burst.

Seeing me looking down and then back at her, she probably understood that I was about to cum and said, “Do it inside. I’ll take it all in.” Her words once again increased my excitement, which was enough to break the dam that was holding back all my pent up frustration.

Knowing that I wouldn’t last any longer, I yanked her hands away and after grabbing her wrists, I pushed them on the bed. Clasping our hands, I lowered my body until our chests touched and thrust as deep into her as I could. A sense of warmth flooded my abdomen as I shot my whole load deep inside her, followed by a shudder than ran up my spine. It always felt so satisfying when I came into her and it was such a complex emotion, that it’d be really hard to replicate with mind magic.

Luckily, I didn’t have to worry about getting her pregnant unless she intentionally didn’t protect her womb from my sperm.

“Do you like having sex while staring at each other as much as I do?” I couldn’t help but ask.

Placing her hand on my face, she smiled at me as she said, “I do. Somehow it’s different, I can feel your love through your eyes.”

“Hehe, indeed,” I smiled back and then gave a small peck on her lips.

“Master? What’s next?” she asked with a smug face when I pulled back.

My lips inadvertently curled upwards and a new desire emerged inside me. I kind of wanted to abuse her somehow, I just wasn’t sure how. Although I still wanted her to give me a blowjob, it felt too nice under the blanket. It was really warm and comfy inside, not to mention that my wife’s hot body was continuously rubbing against my member.

“Turn around,” I replied, excited by the idea of pounding her from behind. With our bodies so close to each other, I’d be able to do anything with her. Knowing me well, pressed her chest against the bed and raised her beautiful ass and started swaying her hips left and right.

Looking at the sight from above, my desire to pound her grew even stronger, so I pulled up her extremely short skirt to get a ‘closer’ look. Taking a deep breath, I put my hands on her round buttocks and started caressing them slowly, though I couldn’t stop myself from slapping them every few seconds.

“You look great in your maid uniform, and this ass. I can’t wait to see your demon form, I’m going to abuse the shit out of your tail,” I started dreaming about the forthcoming days.

Turning towards me with a smile on her face, she spread her labia and said, “Master, why are you pondering about the future when you should be focusing on the present? Your lowly servant is doing her best to please you, you know?”

“Well, well, are you talking back to your master?” I asked, slapping her ass with a bit more strength. Her smile instantly disappeared and some kind of mix of pleasure, pain, and excitement replaced it. With my eyes enhanced, I could see a bit of her fluids flowing out her pussy, slowly dripping down on her thighs.

“Master, your manliness keeps twitching like crazy… Why don’t you punish this lowly me for talking back to you?” she asked as she ran her finger around her labia and then spread them once again. Seeing her cavernous pussy, I lost my ability to play along with her and shoved my penis straight inside her.

“Ahn~” a small moan left her cherry coloured lips, almost driving me nuts. Her pussy once again engulfed my penis, but this time I didn’t feel that I’d cum after a few thrusts since I had just came. Being in the mood to have a little fun with her breasts, I pushed my left hand under her body and took her nipples between my finger.

Realising that her erect nipples were rubbing against the bed the whole time, a new desire emerged inside my mind, so I quickly used my magic to satisfy it. Two long vines grew out of my hand and wrapped around her wrist, and then tied them to the top of the bed.

“Huh?” she turned around, surprised by my new idea.

“A maid should be tied up and punish- urgh, you’re clamping down on me so hard. Do you enjoy being tied up?” I broke my sentence mid-way since her folds spasmed and then gripped me with so much strength that I almost moaned. It was almost as strong as the grip of my hand, just really soft, hot, and wet.

“Punish me, Master,” she replied playfully. Spreading her legs wide, I tied them up as well and the slapped her ass. Seeing her round ass jiggling, I jumped at it like a kid would at a candy, and grabbed them with both of my hands. My fingers sank deep into her bouncy ass as I spread them apart, revealing her tiny asshole and her sloshing wet pussy, which was filled to the brim with my dick.

All the veins were bulging in my penis, clearly reflecting my massive erection. Lien’s curves were just too sexy to resist, especially in the doggy pose since she always put her head on the bed. It was more than enough for a man to feel total domination if a woman lowered her whole body and stuck out only her butt. Even now, seeing the curve going down from her round butt all the way through her arching back, up to her neck, I felt like a fucking king.

What made the sight even better was that I could see my penis going in and out of her, and after a few seconds of moving, she shoved her face into her pillow and bit it to hold back her voice. I could feel her folds spasming and twitching inside, and in the next moment she clamped down on me once again, this time also releasing her fluids.

“I can’t believe what a lewd maid you are. I’ve just started moving and you already came… tell me, aren’t you enjoying this a little too much?” I shook my head.

“Mhn~” she drowned her moan with her pillow, much to my displeasure. Wishing to hear it straight from her mouth, I grabbed her hair and gently pulled on it until she had to raise her head. Creating a giant mirror in front of her face, I straightened my body and picked up my pace.

Since her eyes were closed, she didn’t notice the mirror, which turned out to be a great thing. Thanks to the mirror, I could see every expression she made crystal clear. She didn’t hide any of her reactions, showing when it felt really good or when my grip on her ass hurt a little. But the best was that her mouth was slightly opened the whole time and she kept panting like a dog. Reaching forward, I squeezed her left breast with a little more strength than she appreciated, and she instantly grit her teeth.

When I let go of it, she went back to her usual lewd expression. Despite her quivering lips, she didn’t start moaning, so seeing that she wouldn’t break too easily, I let go of her hair and rested my body on her back. Feeling the warmth of my chest on her back, her lips instantly curled upwards, even more so when I hugged her.

Probably expecting that I wanted to kiss, she finally opened her eyes, but her face instantly froze when she noticed her own face staring back at her. Realising what was going on, her eyes opened wide and then her face reddened. “The faces you made were incredible, I loved them all,” I whispered into her ear, and then kissed her ear.

“No!” she moaned as she shoved her face into her pillow, trying to hide from me once again. Pulling out my right hand from under her chest, I ran it down on her side and slowly pushed it under her abdomen. Taking her clitoris between my fingers, I bit on the top of her ear and started nibbling on it. Knowing that she liked it rough, I relentlessly pulled, pinched, and rubbed her clit, making her orgasm in just a few seconds. Thanks to the increased pressure and the excitement I felt from seeing her ecstatic face, I also happened to cum at the same time.

“Mhh~ my god,” she growled as she grit her teeth, feeling another huge load painting her walls white. Thanks to my increased regeneration speed and metabolism, I could produce way more sperm than a normal human, and I always felt great when all those huge loads shot into her.

“I think some of it spilled out,” I chuckled, seeing her clenching the blanket and clawing the sheet under her.

“Can you feel all the cream inside you?” I kept whispering dirty things into her ear, though it really felt much better. Just knowing that it was my sperm that was filling her up made things more exciting, not to mention the happy expressions she made.

Unable to contain her happiness, she smiled brightly as she turned to the side and stuck out her lips. Letting go of her ear, I moved over to her lips and pushed my tongue into her mouth. Our tongues rolled around, both of us trying to suck out all the air from the other’s mouth. Quickly running out of air, she pulled back and then gave a few pecks on my lips.

Since the vines were getting in the way, I quickly cut them off and then turned to my side, pulling Lien along with me. The bed was pushed on the wall and remembering how nice it was, I created another mirror on the wall which happened to run along the side of the bed. Seeing a mirror appearing in front of her once again, I could see her face slightly reddening.

“Again?”

“Yes, and I think I’m going to do you like this every time from now on,” I replied.

“Master… you can’t be this cruel to me. How am I going to face you?” she asked, her voice slightly shaking.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about any of that. I loved all the faces you made,” I replied as I pulled up the blanket to cover only our backs and our sides. “There we go, now we can both see your hot body. Don’t you think you’re goddamn sexy? Just look at your own curves and these… these breasts” - I gently squeezed them - “my god, I love them.”

“Gh- it hurts, Master,” she clenched her teeth.

“Is that so? You don’t seem to mind it, though. Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of these melons,” I replied, slowly rolling my finger around her nipple. Looking at ourselves in the mirror, I slowly ran my fingers down on her body, enjoying the silky texture of her maid clothes. Reaching her lower half, I made her skirt even shorter to see her pussy even without the need to lift it up. Seeing her eyes intently following my fingers, I started caressing her thighs while she just kept staring at the mirror image in silence.

Starting to feel a little impatient, I grabbed her knee and spread her legs to get a good sight at the place where we were connected. My penis was covered in both my cum and her pussy juices, making her insides incredibly wet and creamy. Despite not doing anything in particular, I could see some liquid leaking from her pussy, showing that she was enjoying the sight just as much as I did.

Pinching her clit, I started moving inside her, afraid that the ‘magical’ feeling would go away if I kept staring. “Mhn~ it makes me so goddamn aroused that I can see you doing me from behind. It’s just incredible,” she finally admitted the truth.

“Do you want to see me doing you hard from behind?” I whispered into her ear and then kissed her neck. Seeing her tilting her head to the side to give way to me just made the image even better.

“Yeah~” she said with a smile, not even bothering with my slow movements.

“You like only rough sex, don’t you?” I asked as I took hold of her hand and clasped it with mine.

“You’re wrong. I may not have strong reactions to this, but in a way, this feels a thousand times better than rough sex. This is so much more emotional, it really makes me feel fluffy inside,” she chuckled. “Uh~ and sometimes you hit very, very sensitive spot this way,” she added.

“Hmm~ is that so?” I mused as I gave a small kiss on her face.

“Yeah.”

“So while this is pleasing your soul,” - I sped up my movements and started moving roughly - “this is pleasing your body.”

“Y-Yes,” her lips quivered, this time trying her best to stop herself from moaning. Since I constantly kept switching back and forth between the styles, it took about ten minutes for me to bust another load into her, but it was really worth the wait. Just like she said, going slow was emotionally satisfying. It was real love making.

She also finished me with a quick cleanup blowjob and then we both went to the tiny bathroom. After having a quick shower and cleaning each other’s bodies, we went back to bed and had a lengthy conversation about a few things that worried us, our plans for the future, and stuff like that. She also brought up the matter regarding the ‘sex for mana’ thing and told me how she felt about it. After assuring me that she really didn’t mind it, I felt really lucky to have her as my wife.

Maybe outsiders would think that she was with me only because of my power or that I loved her only because of her looks, but they’d be very wrong. She provided me with a kind of emotional stability which I’ve never felt before. On the other hand, she also made me really confident because I knew that no matter what I did, she’d stand behind me, and I really loved her for that. I loved her for loving me, and I loved her for who she was.

Well, it was also a good thing that she was a goddamn sex goddess, which helped a lot at the start of our relationship, but the emotional stuff helped way more in keeping me happy and satisfied. Honestly speaking, I’d have gotten bored of her body by now if we were together only because of physical stuff. It’d have been a huge waste of my life if I kept living an unemotional and machine-like life like in the past. Ironically, she said that she felt the same way about me, which made me believe that purely physical relationships wouldn’t last long. I could be wrong, though.

“Haah, nothing beats a good talk after sex,” I couldn’t help but say as I held her in my arms.

Raising her head, she looked up at me and said, “Not even my pussy?”

“Hmm, that’s a hard question,” I stuck out my tongue.

Hearing my reply, she started smiling and closed her eyes as she said, “Let’s sleep because we still have to wake up in the morning. Just because we had sex, we can’t expect our parents to sleep until noon.”

“It’ll be fine, we had a few hours of sleep already, and we still have about five hours until eight o’clock,” I replied, also closing my eyes.

“Mhm,” she muttered, her voice turning thinner towards the end.

Unable to resist the darkness, I also fell asleep in the moonlit room, with the only woman I wanted in my life. Obviously, family was a different matter.

---

“Hey, move your ass,” Lien said in a low voice.

“Mhhh, what is it?” I asked as I sat up, rubbing my eyes.

“Our parents knocked on the door a moment ago, they're waiting for us to open up!” she said in a panicked way.

“And? Dress up and open it,” I said as I got out of the bed and picked up my clothes from the floor.

Noticing that she was staring at me intently, I realised that I turned her clothes into a maid uniform so she had nothing to wear. Well, she was wearing it, but it certainly didn’t look appropriate for opening the door. I had yet to fetch our luggage which was left in the village we built, though it'd be dangerous to go there, so it was better to make new ones.

“Oh, shoot. I've got the problem. I'm sorry, I was just still half-asleep,” I yawned as I made a thick and tight black pants for her. While she put it on, I made her a white shirt and a sweater as well. When she finished dressing, I opened the door with telekinesis and found our parents staring back and forth between us.

“Good morning,” I waved my hand and stood up from the bed.

“Good morning. Did you sleep well?” my mother asked, barging into the room.

“You bet,” I replied.

Seeing that they all ended up coming in, I said, “Since you're all here, I can tell you that we probably don't have enough money for a breakfast, and hunting would take a bit too much time, so I'm going to use magic to make some food. Don't expect me to do this often since it costs quite a lot of mana and it's also something that shouldn't be relied upon.”

After I finished talking, I used my trait to make a table and eight chairs around it while Lien left to notify Damon and Dixon. By the time they returned, I filled the table with all kinds of goodies and we all sat down at the table to eat.

“Is that jam? But why is there a lid on it? Did you really bother creating even stuff like that?” Lien started laughing when she noticed a bottle of jam on the table.

“Actually, now that you mention it…” I shrugged my shoulders, realising that I overdid a few things.

“Haha, did you do it without noticing?” she continued laughing.

“Yes, it seems,” I shook my head, seeing her picking it up and trying to open it in a half-assed way.

“Mhh, could you open it for me? I'm not strong enough,” she groaned, moving it in front of my face.

Raising my brows, I took it out of her hand and opened it as I said, “Please, you could break a tree in two with your bare hands, who would believe that you can't open a bottle of jam?”

“Surely not you, but we have to keep up the illusion,” she replied as I gave it back.

“Haha, that's a good one.” I felt a thousand times better after our little midnight fun because I knew that things were really alright between us.

“Hmm, yesterday I sensed a little bit of friction between the two of you, but this time you're getting along awfully well. Did something good happen?” my mother asked with a knowing smile.

I couldn't believe that she always noticed stuff like that and I was about to complain when Lien casually kept doing her thing and said, “Yes, we made love.”

It was lucky that I wasn't eating, else I would have choked on it. Looking at her with wide opened eyes, I waited for some kind of explanation and she did give me one.

“Why are you looking at me like that? She keeps poking the fire, if that's what she wants to hear, I'll tell her.”

“Lien?! How can you say something like that in front of us?” Lana cried out.

“Hahaha, didn't we switch children at some point? Lien is much more like me, and Seth is like you,” my mother laughed at it, while Lana kept shaking her head.

“It seems like my daughter-in-law really fits into the family,” she smiled at Lien and then took a sip of her freshly made tea.

“Why do you look happier after hearing that?” I couldn't help but ask.

“What kind of mother wouldn't be happy if things were going well for their children?” she asked, waving her finger.

“I guess that makes sense,” I muttered, realising that despite Lana's reaction, she was also smiling. The only person who was looking at me with a displeased face was Michael. Trying to think as a father, I came to the conclusion that I wouldn't be happy either if I raised a cute daughter and then I would hear stuff like that. As usual, my father kind of ignored the whole thing.

Leaning closer to Anna, Lana whispered, “Hey, hasn't it been like a month ago that they married?”

“Not yet, but soon. Why?” she asked.

“Then how come they're still behaving as if this was the first few days of their honeymoon?”

“They've been like that ever since they started going out. Haven’t I told you last night that they're real love birds? I've never seen a bond like what these two share,” my mother replied.

Do they really think that I can’t hear them or they just don’t care? But then why would they whisper?

Ignoring what I heard, I decided to eat instead. Lien was right, it was pointless to pay attention to my mother’s taunts. Having finished his meal, Damon was probably more interested in the future than in my private life with Lien, so he asked, “I’m sorry for interrupting your merry mood, but can I have a question?”

Seeing me nodding, he continued, “What do you plan to do from now on and what do you have in mind for Dixon and me? Since we had only a few hours, we couldn’t finish what you asked, but I think that we got rid of the most important things about you and Lien.”

“Are we still officially a married couple?” Lien asked.

“Huh? You probably are. We were more focused on erasing the data about Seth’s magic, such as video files, documents, etcetera,” he replied, a little confused by the ‘importance’ of Lien’s question. When I went back to Balan, they were in the middle of destroying a server park and were interrogating one of the people who worked there. After erasing their seals, I brought them with me since I didn’t want to risk running into Thanatos and company.

“First of all, once we are done eating, I’m going to build a movable base where all of you can live and stay away from harm. It’s probably going to take a few hours so you’ll be free to explore the city or the area in meantime. I’ll teach you all a bit more about magic afterwards and probably take a rest to regain the mana I’m going to use. From then on, you’ll have to train to become stronger. I mean, you probably don’t want to rely on me and serve me all your life, do you?“

Working for and serving someone were two different things. They were doing the latter right now since they were supposed to do everything I told them. I couldn’t imagine myself serving someone for long, but then again, there were people in the past who served others out of their own will, so probably not everyone felt that way about it. I just didn’t expect that I’d meet someone like that in this age.

“Master, if you’re really willing to guide me, I wouldn’t mind serving under you. Naturally, I’d do my best to fulfill any of your nee- requests,” Dixon replied, quickly correcting her last word. She was playing with the fire since Lien was right next to me, though I was surprised to see her eating calmly without any reaction to Dixon’s words. Well, she took care of my needs better than any woman, so I really didn’t need anyone’s help in that regard.

It felt a bit strange when I thought about how I could make most women mine with my powers. Obviously, not every woman was like that and I was sure that there would be a fair number who would refuse me instead, but this was the second time that someone I barely knew was giving me the green lights.

I was glad that I met Lien when I was still weak to the public since it assured me that she wasn’t with me for my powers. Hell, she even thought that I was weak and just had a lot of knowledge, which was actually true. Honestly, at this point there was no woman who could race with Lien for my heart, I also felt too fulfilled to bother caring for anyone but her.

The only bad side of her words was that although Lien didn’t even bother with it, both my mother and Lana started staring daggers at me, looking for even the slightest bit of hesitation on my face. I could only thank myself that I honestly didn’t care about her offer and could sit with a straight face.

Shaking my head, I said, “I don’t know what kind of life you lived in Dark city, but I can assure you that serving me doesn’t include any kind of physical contact with me, and I don’t plan to send you to your deaths either. If you don’t give me a good reason to behave otherwise, I’m going to be nice to you and you’ll be able to consider your ‘servitude’ as a sort of job.”

“That sounds fancy, but I’ve heard too many promises which were broken to believe you. For now, I’ll be happy if I can survive,” Damon replied.

“Mhm, I don’t ask you to believe me, you’re going to experience it anyway. There is one last thing you should remember, though,” I raised a my finger.

“Which is?” he asked with a frown, visibly expecting something bad.

“I have a few very simple rules for you two. First and foremost, don’t ever hurt anyone from my family. Secondly, you should consider Lien’s commands as my commands-”

“Are you kidding me? The last time she was the ‘boss’, she was being sadistic the whole time,” Damon quickly interrupted me, looking at Lien with fearful eyes.

Hearing that, Lien gulped down her food and opened her eyes wide, “I was being what? I’ve told you that it was only to make you two talk, why do you keep thinking that I’m a sadistic woman?”

“Yeah, she’s the opposite,” I nodded, earning a scornful look from Lien and an elbow to my side.

“Isn’t this getting more and more interesting?” my mother whispered to Lana.

“Do you think so? But hey, is my daughter really a masochist?” Lana asked.

“Hmm, I don’t know, but I could imagine my son being a little sadistic so…” she shrugged her shoulders.

“Ahahaha, I hope that they aren’t going overboard with it,” Lana chuckled, looking at me from the corner of her eye. Noticing that I was staring at them with my brows raised, she probably realised that I could hear them, so she looked towards Lien, who was also staring at them.

“Erm, ha ha, I guess we were a bit too loud,” she forced out a small laugh.

Rolling my eyes, I turned back towards Damon and focused on the matter at hand. “You don’t have to worry about it, she’s not going to abuse you or make you do anything weird, so stop whining. Are we clear?”

“Yes, I just hope that what you said is true-”

“Goddamn, stop thinking that I’m a sadist. You don’t agree with him, right?” Lien asked as she turned towards Dixon.

“Well, when you examined me, you dressed me off and- No, no! I really don’t think that you’re sadistic!” she started flailing her hands and ‘corrected’ herself, seeing Lien’s eyes twitching. I couldn’t help but laugh at the scene.

“Stop laughing!” Lien smacked the back of my head.

“Oh, come on, you’d also laugh at me if things were the other way around,” I replied. Seeing that she started sulking, I shook my head helplessly and started caressing her back.

“Alright. I finished eating, so I’m off to start building our base. I’ll make a few clothes for you beforehand since it’s really cold outside and you better use some fire magic to keep yourselves warm. You see, you can die in this kind of cold even if your clothes are warm enough,” I said as I stood up from the table.

Turning towards Lien, I took hold of her hands and said, “I’ve got one request for you. Could you go out and hunt a few monsters? If possible, it’d be also nice if you could find out more about this country. If you get in trouble, just call for me through Link and I’ll be right there, okay?”

“Mhm,” she nodded. Seeing that she was still sulking, I couldn’t think of anything to brighten up her mood, so I gave a kiss on her forehead instead, and then made my way towards our bed.

“Shouldn’t we follow her? It’d be quite boring to keep sitting in our rooms, and we could also help making money,” Dixon asked.

“Actually, that’s a good idea,” I nodded as I turned around.

“Do you mind?” she asked, looking at Lien.

“Why would I? We’ve got to earn money if we want food and stuff like that, so the more the merrier,” Lien replied, shaking her head.

Realising what it was about, Damon’s male pride also kicked in and made him stand up, “I’m going as well.”

“Okay,” she smiled at him and then stood up from the table.

“Wait, is there nothing we can do?” Lana also stood up, seemingly a little panicked.

“I’ll be honest with you, not for now,” I replied. “If you aren’t strong enough to kill simple monsters then I really don’t recommend going out of the city. You could look around if you wanted, but if you ran into some troublesome person, I wouldn’t be able to help. I don’t know what are the customs in this country, so I’d be kind of worried if you started wandering all by yourselves.”

“Are we supposed to housesit then?” my mother asked.

“Well, yes,” I scratched the back of my head. Seeing their displeased faces, I added, “Or you could train, but you probably don’t wa-”

“I like that idea,” Lana jumped at the opportunity.

“It’s been a long time ago that we trained, but I guess we can’t ignore it anymore,” my mother replied, seemingly agreeing as well. Although Michael and Lana were strong magicians in Balan, my parents never really bothered with it since they had no ‘talent’ for it. They used their mana only for everyday use. Since they both worked for companies where magic wasn’t necessary, they had very little knowledge about it.

After telling them a few things which they should practise, I made a few clothes for everyone  and then cast an illusion magic to cover Dixon’s and Damon’s mutated features. Dixon looked like a short girl with brown hair while Damon turned into a two meters tall bulky guy. Looking over them once more, I nodded my head and then left them alone. At this point, Lien was strong enough to protect herself even against people like Damon and Dixon, so I didn’t have to worry about her.

I flew to an empty area outside the city where neither monsters nor humans resided, and then made a small barrier which kept the air inside warm and blocked the powerful wind from entering. I had to concentrate and having a blizzard around me wouldn’t help in the slightest.

Although building was fun, I felt annoyed when I thought about how many houses I built and if stuff like this kept happening, I’d have to keep doing it for the rest of my life. We wanted to explore the world anyway, so I came to the conclusion that our base had to be movable. Obviously, it’d be too much of a bother to build a house and then move it around, so I had only one option left. I had to create my own space. Valerie’s father, Daniel, also did something similar, but it was bound to a specific location.

Making the center of the barrier the epicenter, I created a giant black hole which covered an area of five hundred square kilometers. Once I finished making the black hole, I made the entrance shrink to the size of a door. Although saying it was easy, the whole process took more than twenty minutes and about two-third of my mana pool.

I honestly believed that black holes were amazing. In the past, humankind couldn't understand them, but they were quite simple to create with magic. Well, the knowledge and mana one needed was another thing, but I had plenty of those.

They were basically points in space where multiple cosmic ley lines connected and intertwined, jumbling up space as well. The physical effect was that space was split in two and an entrance was created. The 'hole’ part, the inner space was supposed to be the size of the entrance, but it was possible to shrink or increase their sizes. Of course, the inner space of natural black holes were always the same size as their entrances.

Although they were named black holes about two hundred years ago, based on my ancestor’s memories their name was Astral Gate, which fit them much better considering the way they worked. There was only one very important thing that was good to know about Astral Gates, which was that if something touched them, it'd be sucked in regardless of the size of the space inside, even if it was as tiny as a pebble.

Since black holes couldn’t be born on planets in a natural way, I would never touch an Astral Gate before I scouted it if it wasn’t created by me. The reason was simple. If its inner space was smaller than my body, then I’d be crushed to the death instantly, and I didn’t want to risk my life by being rash. I could simply create a third eye and throw it through the gate to see what’s inside and at most, the eye would be crushed.

After passing through the astral gate, I found myself on the same snow-covered land that my spell devoured. Just like I expected, everything was pitch black inside, making it useless as a base. Luckily, there were very few problems I couldn’t solve with magic, much less something this simple.

I started out by drawing a simple formation which drew the light element towards the middle of the ceiling. In just a few seconds, the mana particles filled up the formation and turned into a house-sized light bulb, irradiating the whole space in its light. Since the formation was fueled by the mana that poured in through the black hole, the light wouldn’t fade out as long as the entrance was in a place where mana was rich enough.

Considering that the inner space had an area of five hundred square kilometers, I had a really large area to build on. I wanted to make multiple sections within the inner space where Lien, Damon, and Dixon would be able to train. If somebody joined us in the future, then I could also provide them with their own area.

Realising that maybe it’d be quite boring if there was only an empty land of snow, I created a few ponds and creeks, and then made a smaller forest grow in the western area. Although the storm was raging on in the outside world, it couldn’t get through the black hole, so the weather was really calm inside, though still cold. Sure enough, the cold increased progression speed, but it wasn’t worth living in minus forty celsius degrees when even warmer temperatures had similar effects, though a bit weaker.

Using the same method as earlier, I made another formation that utilised the mana flow, and set the temperature to minus one celsius degree. I could set it to any temperature, but the more it differed from the climate outside, the more mana it consumed. It'd be fine even if I set it to thirty celsius, but a formation of this size which altered the temperature by more than sixty degrees would consume so much mana, that people would notice it and find the entrance.

Mana was like water, it always flowed towards places where it was scarcer and the density was smaller, which made it almost impossible to predict its flow. This was because unlike water, mana didn’t have ‘boundaries’ like mountains, continents, river banks, etcetera. It was entirely self-dependent, which made it impossible to sense the Astral Gate that connected my world with the outside world.

The only thing that could change this were the formations because if they consumed too much mana, the mana outside would flow towards the entrance to fill up the ‘empty’ space. That was why there was a limit to how much mana my formations could use if I wanted to keep my base secret. Even my parents would notice something like that, not to mention people whose powers were comparable to mine.

The good side was that black holes were movable and visible with naked eye, and the temperature inside always depended on the outside world, so I could always decrease mana consumption by moving to a warmer place

Considering that I cut out a large cube from the planet, I knew that I had to go back and refill it with earth and water magic. After erasing the traces outside, I went back to my brand new private space. When I returned, I was once again faced with the same snow-covered land that my spell devoured, but with the addition of the ponds, rivers, forests, and light, it looked marvelous.

The land and the trees were covered in snow, reflecting the bright light of the light bulb and slightly blinding me, but I didn’t mind it. Although the inner space was ellipsis-shaped, the light was too close to the land and the walls turned black towards the ground, giving it a truly unique look. It was like a color gradient from white to black. Either way, I was quite excited to see Lien’s face when she entered this place, so I stopped staring and continued building.

I didn’t want this space to be another ‘village’ of the sorts. I had much more plans with it, I just needed more time to get things done.

---

When I was done with everything I had in mind, I teleported to the nearest alleyway that I could sense near Lien’s location, and then used magic to make my clothes thicker. Although it was very easy for me to keep my body warm with fire magic, I’d definitely stand out if I continued walking around in jeans and a thin shirt. Since most people wore fur clothes, I also changed the appearance of my shirt and pants to look like the fur of the monsters living in the area.

There were only a few thousand people in the city so most people probably knew each other, but nobody stared at me weirdly when I entered the streets. It took me only a few seconds to reach the building where Lien resided, and I found myself in front of a huge building which had a giant front door with a wolf’s head drawn on it.

There was an ice coloured spear sticking out of its mouth, serving as the holder of the door knob. I had a feeling it was some kind of crest, maybe the crest of the country, but it was only a question of time before I found out. I refused to believe that some random family or a small city like this would have such a cool-looking crest…

“Lien, can I go in or should I knock?” I asked, not wishing to offend someone by barging into their home.

“Seth? Are you finished? Oh, and no, this is something like a guild so you can come in,” she replied, so I quickly opened the door and got in. There was a large hall inside with something like a restaurant on the left side, and an armory on the right side. What I found very strange was that the weapons were filled with mana, some with more some with less, but they all exuded power.

It was really worth travelling the world since I kept seeing new ways of using magic, ways that weren’t described or mentioned in my ‘inheritance’. Drawn in by my curiosity, I enhanced my eyes and took a closer look at the weapons that were put on display, and all of them had some strange characters drawn on them. I used runes to draw formations but I couldn’t recognise any of the characters, so they must have been an other type of runes.

Realising that I shouldn’t stand in the door, I turned towards Lien and found her sitting at a table with Damon and Dixon. There were two strangers sitting with them, and a few others were also surrounding them as if they were listening to some kind of tale. Well, as a man of culture myself, I couldn’t not notice some of the men sneaking peeks at my wife, but at this point I just felt proud of myself for being her husband.

There was one more thing that I had to point out, though, and it was that every man was like some goddamn bodybuilder, filled with muscles. Seeing that even women were on the ‘thicker’ side, I could understand Lien’s popularity. It wasn’t hard to connect two and two. Most likely people used those magic imbued swords and trained their bodies both physically and with magic to fight the monsters. I’ve seen thin and ‘frail-looking’ women like Lien on the streets, but their auras were almost like my parents’, so they probably didn’t have any fighting capability.

“I’m sorry, could you let me through?” I tapped one of the men’s back who was in the way. With my body rebuilt, I was about a hundred and ninety centimeters tall and had a large and muscular frame compared to the norm in Balan, but I kind of felt small in this place. Even the guy I poked was about thirty centimeters taller than me and he wasn’t even the tallest. They were like ogres.

“Hmm? What’s up little boy? Are you interested in the Miss’s tale as well?” he asked as he slapped my shoulder in a friendly way.

“Well, no, I just want to talk to her,” I replied.

“Keep fighting!” Lien just sat there and cheered for me through Link as if she was looking for a good show.

“I’m going to spank you.”

“Aww~ you have to get to me first, but I’m looking forward to it!” she replied, placing her hand over Damon’s mouth who was about to call out to me.

“Hahaha, boy, everyone here wants to talk to her. She beat Marcus without using a magic sword and used external magic only!” the man replied.

How about I beat all of you senseless? I thought, but I replied otherwise, “She’s my wife…”

“OOOOH, Guys! This boy here has just challenged the Miss!”

“I did what?” I raised my brows, my voice echoing in the hall from the sudden silence. Instead of answering my question, the others started shouting in their excitement as well.

“Lien?”

“This country has polygamy and if a woman can fight, men can make them their wives if they beat them. Since they think that I'm not your wife, they think that you basically challenged me to make me your wife,” she replied.

“Then how about you clarify the situation to these brick heads?” I asked with a frown, seeing the others encircling me and starting to chant Lien's name.

“Do you really want me to? It seems that this society is very respectful towards the strong. I've got in a bit of a fight with this Marcus and the others weren't helpful at all, but once I beat him, they all changed. If you beat me, they'd acknowledge you,” she finally explained why was she doing all this facade.

“So? What then? I'm not going to hit you for the sake of respect, you know?” I asked.

“If you can hold your blade against my throat, I'm all yours for the night,” she said aloud.

“Ooh! Quick, someone give him a weapon, he doesn't have anything on him!” one of the men shouted in his excitement.

Before I could say anything, some random guy stuffed a two-handed sword into my hands and then slapped my back to ‘encourage’ me. “Go on!”

“Yeah! Let's get started!”

“Hahaha, I can't wait to see his surprised face, even I lost to her!” a black haired man laughed, who was most likely this Marcus guy. Based on physical strength alone, he was the strongest in the group, but three people were much better in magic so he definitely wasn't the strongest.

“Why do I have to fight my wife?” I asked, shaking my head.

“Haha, he's really self-confident, but don't worry boy, I was like you about an hour ago as well!” he slapped my back once again. It was starting to be irritating.

Most likely noticing my annoyance on my face, Dixon muttered, “You shouldn't…” but her voice was drowned by the others’ laughter.

“You're really my type, honey. How about you just become mine?” Lien also asked playfully, realising that fighting me in my current mood was a bad idea.

Does she really think she can get out of this just like that after putting me through all this crap? Fat chance.

“That'd be unfair against all these people,” I smiled at her. “A man has got to earn his respect, right guys?” I asked as I looked around.

“Yeah, the boy is right!” they answered.

“Who I want to be with is my decision, no? You can come at me if you think otherwise,” she tried to be cocky to escape her fate. She didn't want to fight me while I was annoyed, but I didn't want to let her off because I was annoyed. The others didn't take her warning seriously either, so she had only one option left.

Raising the sword I got, I pointed it towards her and then took a stance. Forcing a smile on her face, she said, “Guys, you've got it all wrong. He really is my husband, I was just fooling around.”

“Is that really true?” they looked towards me expectantly.

“She isn't my wife until I beat her, is she?” I replied with a smile, a sadistic desire filling my body.

“Seth? What's the meaning of this!?”

“Our marriage should be official everywhere, so I must fight you in public and win,” I replied.

“Ugh, curse you. What kind of bullshit is that? Don't you feel sorry for your wife?” she asked.

“The kind you'd pull on me… and not really since it was you who started all this,” I replied, reminding her who started all this.

“…”

“Uhm, guys, how about we all team up and while you try to hold him back, I run?” she asked, making everyone laugh. Seeing that nobody took her offer seriously, she hung her head and took a stance.

---

Five minutes later she fell on my shoulder. “Please, have mercy on me. Haven't you had your revenge already?” she asked between her pants. During our fight, I touched her about thirty times with pleasure touch, so she was making a really erotic face. Most likely realising it, she lowered her head and pushed her face against my chest.

“Fine, but don't screw with me like this again,” I replied, throwing the sword back to its owner. “Thanks!”

“No problem!” the man replied.

“They seem to know each other, could it be that the boy was telling the truth?” another man started whispering.

“That seems to be the case, and although his reflexes were inhuman, his movements were quite sluggish with the sword,” another man replied.

“Do you think that his fighting style is like the girl’s?” he asked.

“Mhm, that’d explain why his sword skills sucked,” he nodded.

What? Why did I suck? I guess I should practice some swordsmanship when I have the time.

Unable to contain their curiosity, the two men came closer and asked in a low voice, “Mister…”

“Seth,” I replied.

“Mr. Seth, could it be that you really are married?” the guy who whispered earlier asked.

Releasing my hands, Lien turned around and said with a smile, “Yes, I was just pulling a prank on him by pretending that I didn’t know him. I hope that you don’t mind it.”

Looking at each other, both men shrugged their shoulders and said, “It's not like it's any of our business. We were just curious.”

“I'm glad to hear that, though I can assure you that he’s much stronger than me. He’s both my master and my husband at the same time,” Lien said, and then stood up from the ground with my help. Dusting off her clothes, she then looked around, only to realise that we were still encircled.

“Erm, what can I help you with?” she asked, forcing a smile on her face.

Seeing that we were starting to feel awkward because of all the staring, most of them turned around and sat down at their tables, but a few of them remained.

A bulky black haired man stepped forward and said, “The Miss told us how external magic worked since we've never seen it. We enchant our weapons and armours instead, which gives us a huge boost in strength.”

“Yeah, and their magic system is really robust as well. If they were to attack Balan, I’m sure it wouldn’t take more than a few days for them to win. People are generally more powerful in this city,” she remarked through Link as she ran her eyes over the guys that remained.

“Oh, I've got it,” I nodded. “And do you want to hear more about it?” I asked, raising a brow.

“Well, I do realise that it'd be to much to ask without giving you anything in return, so… is there anything you need?” he asked as he looked at Lien.

“I wonder if they could teach me how those runes worked or what each of them meant,” I asked Lien.

“Well, I believe that there is a way to help you out. Miss Lien told us how her magic worked anyway, and she’s even strong enough to fight the warriors in the capital city,” the guy replied. I found it a bit strange that almost everyone had black hair, but I figured it probably had to do with the lack of sunlight in the area.

“Are people stronger in the capital city?” I asked, raising a brow.

“Of course, they’re much stronger than us but life is also harder there since the monsters are much more powerful and there are a few mythical creatures as well.”

“Mythical creatures? Like what?” Lien stepped forward, clearly interested in the topic.

“Like frost dragons and ice basilisks, they’re truly fearsome monsters,” the man shuddered.

“Have you ever seen one?” I asked, though I wasn't as interested in the matter as Lien. Sure, I'd want to see a dragon if there was one, but that was all there was to it.

“I did because back in the days when I was as young as you two, I went to school in the capital city. I remember when her Highness visited the school and sat on the back of a frost dragon. That dragon could easily destroy this whole city and kill everyone, and if the rumours are true, her Highness has five frost dragons. They have giant paws and long teeth which could tear apart anything. Their bodies are also covered in scales which would be hard to penetrate even with the best weapon in this city!” he inadvertently raised his voice as he got more and more into his memories.

Hearing the word 'dragon’, the people who left came back once again to listen to his explanation. I found it a bit weird that everyone had so much free time and was gathering in one place, but I had to admit that the atmosphere was very much to my liking. It was also a little strange that once they saw how quickly I could move and that I could beat Lien, they stopped calling me 'boy’.

“That sounds quite interesting. Maybe we should visit the capital city in the future, no?” I asked, turning towards Lien.

“You're right,” she nodded with a bright smile on her face.

How cheerful.

“I almost forgot, what did you want to know about our magic?” the man slapped his forehead when he remembered what he said.

“I wanted to hear about the runes on your weapons,” I said.

“En, I'd like to help, but I'm afraid you'll have to ask a blacksmith. I could introduce you to one of them, though,” he replied.

“That sounds great,” I said and then asked Lien through Link - “What about the money? Did you manage to earn anything?”

Peking at me from the corner of her eye, she smiled at me provocatively and said, “I did, but I hid it in a place where it'd be hard to steal.”

Unsure if I really wanted to know its whereabouts, I said, “I'll find it later…’

“Fufu, I'm looking forward to it.”

“It’d be great if you could introduce us to this friend of yours, but before that, I'd like to talk about something private with Lien,” I said aloud. She made our relationship so much livelier with her little tantrums and games, that I couldn't help but rethink my ways.

“Oh, it's alright. Go ahead, I'll be waiting here,” the man nodded and then went back to his table.

“What is it?” Lien asked as she followed me out of the building. Once I found a place without any people, I stopped in my tracks and turned around.

I was about to say what was on my mind, but Lien misunderstood me and apologised instead, “I'm sorry. I know I should have stayed quiet about our magic, but somehow I just started talking about it. But they still don't know how to cast external magic and that's why they were standing there, waiting for me to continue. Oh, and I also apologise In case I hurt your feelings with my prank,” she lowered her head.

“Huh? No, I didn't call you out here for that,” I shook my head. “In fact, none of the things you mentioned are bothering me, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

“Oh, then what is it?” she asked, a little confused.

“Uhm, maybe it’s slightly related to your prank, after all. Anyway, do you think that I should be more playful?” I asked.

“Eh? Where'd that come from? Also, what do you mean by more playful?” she raised her brows.

“Well, your pranks and games always make me smile and make our relationship livelier, so I was wondering if I should become a bit more active. I don't want to… bore you,” I said.

Raising her brows, she kept staring at me in silence for a few seconds, and then finally answered, “It’s kind of cute of you to think about stuff like that, but there is no need to worry about it. I love you the way you are and there is no need to change yourself for my sake,” she smiled at me.

“Is that so? But I wouldn’t mind changing simple stuff like that,” I replied, shrugging my shoulders.

Rolling her eyes, she stepped closer and put her hands on my face. Looking deep into my eyes, she said, “I wouldn’t mind changing for you either, but let me rephrase my words so that you get the point. We may be very similar, but I’m not you. I know that you can brush off my pranks as if they were nothing, but that doesn’t mean that I could do the same…”

Averting her eyes, she muttered, “If I were to see you surrounded by a bunch of women and you pretended that you didn’t know me, I’d be jealous. Very, very jealous, and it’s not good for you if I become jealous.”

As she finished talking, she let go of my head and then poked my nose, “Are we clear now?”

Paralyzed by her strong gaze and her words, I stood there a little confused and caught to my head only when she turned around to go back to the building. “Uh, huh? Wait, have you just threatened me?” I shook my head as I caught up with her.

“Did I?” she asked, locking arms with me.

“It sounded like that…” I rolled my eyes.

“Fufu, you must be imagining things. I’d never threaten anyone!” she shook her head and waved her right hand.

“Is that so? I know otherwise,” I started laughing.

“What are you talking about? I’m such a nice person that I could be a saint,” she shook her head.

“Haha, can I just point out that you’re a terrible liar?”

“And so are you,” she replied, showing me a bright smile.

“That’s not even true. I can lie to strangers, no trouble.”

“The same goes for me, so shaddap.”

Stopping a few meters away from the door, she said, “Back to your question earlier, we’ve earned a bit over ten thousand skaals and I also found out a few more things about the kingdom.”

“That sounds good. So? What did you find out?” I asked, brushing her hair to the side. It was in front of her eye and I didn’t want it to cover them.

“This place here is the guild and the people inside are all part of the military force. This is because there is a guild in every city, but all of them are controlled by the guild in the capital city, and the person controlling it is one of Skadi’s servants. Based on what I heard, people here respect Skadi beyond everything, so you should never badmouth her if you don’t want to incur the wrath of the whole city.”

“Could it be that they’re fanatic believers?” I raised my brows.

“Yes… Well, they’re nice people anyway, though they can be a bit rough with people who are weaker than them. Their policy is something like ‘the strongest is always right’, so you could have a great time here. Oh, right, the people working for the guild earn money for their services and their task is to keep the cities safe from monsters. They’re doing their job properly since I couldn’t find a single monster anywhere near the city… but this also makes it harder for clothing stores and food businesses to get their materials and ingredients.”

“So that’s why you can earn a lot of money by taking the corpses to them, right?” I asked.

“Yeah, though most of the monsters are worthless since they don’t have fur and meat. Even last time, I took the treants’ corpses with me and I’ve realised it just today that the guy didn’t even pay for them.”

“Was it the ‘you should be happy that I took the trash from you’ kind of response?” I couldn’t help but start laughing.

“Ugh, he said the exact same words when I asked him,” she started pouting.

“Hahaha, I’ve just thought of this but could it be that you took treants to him today as well?” I asked.

“We did, and that’s how I found out that they were worthless, but Dixon found a smaller herd of mammoths so most of our earnings is thanks to her,” she replied as she lowered her head, seemingly dissatisfied with herself.

“Are you annoyed?”

“I am. If not for Dixon running into the mammoths, we wouldn’t have earned more money than yesterday,” she clenched her fists.

Unsure of how to cheer her up, I pulled her closer and said, “I suppose my words aren’t going to make you feel better, but it’d have been fine even if you didn’t earn anything.”

“You are right, they didn’t make me feel better,” she started laughing and then shook her head. “Haah- whatever, I’ll just earn ten times more tomorrow.”

“That’s the right way to think about it,” I smiled at her. “Ugh, this sounded like a template response. I guess I should think more before I say something.”

“You should, also, it’s not like you have to console me after every little thing, though I really appreciate your efforts,” she nodded. Turning towards the door, she added, “Can we get in already? I’m freezing.”

“Oh, sorry, though why are we coming back?” I asked, following her into the building.

“I was waiting for the examiner to arrive since I wanted to join-”

“Wait, wait, you do realise that we aren’t going to stay here for too long, right?” I put my hands on her shoulders and made her turn around.

“Yes, but do you want to leave the kingdom or just the city?”

“I think we could stay in the country for longer so just the city,” I replied.

Pulling me to the side from the door, she glanced towards the men who surrounded her earlier and said in a low voice, “That’s why I wanted to join. We can leave whenever we want, but in this country, you can’t be strong without being part of the military force.”

“Hah? What kind of bullshit is that? What do you mean by that?” I frowned.

“The reason I came here was that these people noticed my magical power, and they also knew that I arrived to the city yesterday. That’s why the told me to join the military and when I said that I didn’t want to, that Marcus guy tried to bring me here with force. Of course, I beat him, but the others were also ready to gang up on me, so I came with them.“

“Since I won the battle, they became a bit wary of me and explained why I had to follow them. Basically, I either join the military right now or I’ll have to leave the country. In case I don’t join and still stay here, I’ll have to be strong enough to fight back the whole army of the country.”

Raising my brows, I also looked towards the others and then back at her, “That doesn’t sound good. How come they didn’t tell me this after they saw me fighting you?”

“It seems that anyone can spend at least one day in every city before they’re dragged in like me. After asking around, I also found out that our parents won’t be forced to join because they’re too weak considering their age. You’ve got to be weaker than an S ranked monster by the age of twenty if you don’t want to join. Of course, if it’s people like you or me, we’d have to join regardless of our age,” she said.

“Hah? Then you really weren’t joking when you said that they could destroy Balan in a few days. Well, now that I think about it, there are hundreds of presences in the city who are stronger than S ranked monsters,” I said with a frown.

“Yeah, and I was being nice by saying ‘a few days’. If I have to be honest, even a few hours would be enough…” she shook her head..

“I think so ,” I nodded. “Well, and is there anything else that we should be aware of if we join the military?”

“Mhm, they said that there are many regulations and that they also have to meet a quote every year. One of them also mentioned the exact number, but the others were being too loud so I’m not sure if I heard it right. I think he said that they had to slay at least two monsters a month, which is twenty-four monsters a year. Honestly, that’s easily doable and I’m also sure that the examiner is going to tell us everything that we need to know.”

“Uh, it’s such a bother that I always have to join some kind of school or faction or other bullshit group every time I go somewhere. What’s wrong with these people?” I shook my head.

Raising her brows, she asked, “Are you asking this seriously? If I had some kind of country or territory, I wouldn’t want unregistered people to walk around freely either. Just think about the village we built, did you let in anyone without seeing them?”

“No, I know and it’s fine that they want to be able to track people. It all makes sense, but this is the most ridiculous one I’ve seen up till now. How can they expect people to join their military after spending a single day in the city?” I couldn’t help but frown as I thought about it.

“Well, you still have two options, the first is that you stay weak and live in peace or the second is that you go somewhere else. Each community has its own set of rules, it’s just that this one is a little weird, and like I said, we could simply leave as well,” she shrugged her shoulders. “Actually, do you want to move to the capital city then?”

“Yes, why?” I asked.

“It’s just that we still have the option to change our looks with illusion magic every time they find out that we aren’t weaklings. I mean, it’s one thing that they can sense my power, but I’m sure neither of them would be able to sense yours,” she said.

“Actually, you’re wrong about that. It’s true that they wouldn’t be able to sense my power, but they’d be able to sense that there was something they couldn’t see through. That’d be a more than good enough reason to force me to join them since it’d make it obvious that I’m way stronger than them,” I sighed loudly as I started massaging my temples.

“I guess that makes sense, but what do you want to do then?” she asked.

“I’ll think about it,” I waved my hand and made my way towards Damon and Dixon.

“Okay.”

“Are you done with talking things over?” Dixon asked when we took our seats.

I continued pondering about the matter for a few seconds, and then nodded my head, “I think I know what to do. First of all, I’m going to ask that man from earlier to introduce me to his blacksmith friend and see if I could learn anything. Once that’s done, I’ll take you all to our new base and show you around, and then I’ll take everyone to the capital city where we’re going to join the military. I may contact Skadi and see for myself what kind of person she is before we take the test, but I haven’t made my decision about that yet.”

“One more thing. I don’t want to cause a ruckus or be flashy, so if we were to take the exam, use only as much power as the people in the given area. Just be average in everything. In case people are generally much stronger in the capital, then you can use as much power as they have,” I replied.

Seeing Lien raising her brows, I added, “I know, I forgot to mention some of these, but feel free to state your opinion if you think otherwise.”

“Uhm, okay? It doesn’t really matter to me what we do, I was just a little surprised since you didn’t mention anything about the talk with Skadi, or the blacksmith, or that we’d get to visit our base…” she replied, shaking her head helplessly. “Whatever, I think that the order is right and considering that you have only about one-third of your mana left, I also think that it’d be for the best if we avoided combat.”

“You just want to see the base, don’t you?” I asked.

“Uhm, no?” she averted her eyes.

“Lies.”

“What? I’m an honest person, I’d never lie!” she gasped.

“Look, the ceiling is about to fall on you from this lie,” I pointed upwards.

“Hey, take it back. I rarely lie,” she said, earning a few scornful looks from Damon and Dixon. They probably haven’t gotten over their interrogation. “What’s with that look? Your interrogation was a one-time lie and Seth also took part in it, so why do I feel that you intentionally remember only me?” she asked with a frown.

“Maybe it’s because Seth never told you to scare the shit out of me and make me think that I could die any second? That was all your doing…” Damon grumbled while Dixon just nodded her head.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Just fuck you, the both of you,” Lien rolled her eyes.

“I could say the same,” Damon replied, quickly realising that I was present. His calm face instantly turned panicked for some reason, and then he lowered his head and apologised, “I’m sorry-”

“Wait, it’s not like you can’t swear and stuff like that. I just don’t want to hear you swearing at her seriously,” I interrupted him. He seemed to be a little confused by this master-servant relationship since he never knew how to respond to me or what was okay and what wasn’t. I didn’t understand what was so hard to understand about his position. He was allowed to do anything that wouldn’t turn him into a criminal in most communities, and I also told him already what he wasn’t allowed to do.

“I don’t care either as long as it’s not meant seriously,” Lien remarked.

Heaving out a sigh of relief, Damon slumped down in his chair and said, “I’m glad to hear that. I’ve got really scared for a moment.”

“Oh my god, Damon, you’re such a pussy I swear it hurts seeing your face,” Dixon shook her head as she looked at him.

“Pfft-” I quickly covered my mouth, but seeing that Lien started laughing at it openly, I couldn’t hold it back either.

“I'm glad that you lot find it funny, but it's easy for you to talk when you aren’t being threatened by some goddamn guy who could destroy a continent. I honestly have no idea what's your problem with me-”

“Hey, slow down man. Who the hell bugged you ever since the interrogation? We haven't even threatened you. It's just you being paranoid. Think about it clearly. Do you remember us saying anything threatening? I’ve told you when I brought you here that you just have to follow a few rules and everything is going to be fine,” I had to interrupt him. He was blowing his situation out of proportion, not to mention that he misunderstood everything.

“You did when you- or wait, no, it was when… it was, huh? Did you erase my memories? You must have done-”

“This guy's a complete idiot,” Lien slapped her forehead.

“I think so, but here is the deal, Damon. In case you want to leave, you’re free to go anywhere. I’m not going to stop you and then you won’t have to worry about your illusions threatening you because I sure as hell didn’t,” I said, and then stood up from the table.

Taking a deep breath, I added, “Whatever, let’s get going because we’ve got a lot of things to do.”

“Wait, can I seriously leave?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And are you telling me that you’re not going to come after me and kill me?” he frowned.

“No, but if Thanatos catches you, then you’ll be on your own, so be careful,” I replied.

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that because I want to leave this goddamn continent,” he shook his head and then made his way towards the door. Turning around for a moment, he waved his hand and then disappeared just like that.

“Well, I can’t say I expected that,” Lien raised her brows, still looking at the door.

“I think that he was too stupid and paranoid of powerful people to understand that staying with Seth would have been his best option,” Dixon also shook her head.

“You can’t be sure. He may run into someone stronger than me who takes him under their wings,” I shrugged my shoulders.

“I don’t think there’d be someone as powerful as you who’d willingly guide an idiot like him,” she replied.

“Whatever, I won’t have to listen to him crying every time,” I said, and then made my way towards the man I spoke with earlier.

“Hi. I’m sorry for bothering you, but I was just wondering if you could introduce me to that blacksmith friend of yours,” I said as I stopped next to him.

“Oh, you two are back. Do you want to go now?” he asked, looking back and forth between Lien and me.

“If you don’t have anything to do and are free, then yes,” I nodded.

“Hmm, I left one of my weapons at him for repair, I might as well check on it,” he stood up from his seat and picked up his coat. After shaking hands with his friends, he turned towards us and said, “Alright, follow me.”

“Mhm.”

“By the way, have you told him about our rules?” he asked, looking at Lien.

“I did, but we’re going to move to the capital city once he meets your friend,” she replied.

“Could it be that you want to use the loophole and move back and forth between all the cities so that you won’t have to join the military?” he raised his brows as he looked at us and then opened the door.

“Was there an option like that? I didn’t know that this rule worked that way,” I said, equally surprised.

“Oh, I guess you just want to move in that case, but yes, it works that way. Of course, I wouldn’t recommend doing that since you’d have to travel about fifty to a hundred kilometers every second day, which would become a real bother. There is also the problem that you wouldn’t be able to stay anywhere for more than one day, and those kinds of people are looked down upon, really. Only people who don’t respect her Highness would live a life like that, and I’m sure only trash wouldn’t want to serve her.”

Forcing a smile on my face, I said, “I agree. We also plan to join the military in the capital city, it’s just that we have to take care of a few things before that.”

“I’ve been wondering about this, but where are you coming from? I suppose your friends- friend is using magic the same way you two,” he eyed Dixon with suspicion. “Huh? Where did the guy disappear to?”

“You’re right, we’re all using magic in the same way, but they know much more spells than I do, and Damon had some stuff to do so he left to take care of it,” Dixon replied, smartly diverting his attention from his first question. I didn’t want to be known as the ‘outsider’ by telling him that we came from the jungle, and it’d be impossible to make him believe that we were from Helvaria.

“So if I remember correctly to what Miss Lien said, we have to add some kind of elemental property to our mana when we release it from our body, right?” he asked, cleverly trying to pull out more information from Lien. I didn’t care even if everyone learned how to use external magic, so I went ahead and showed it to him.

After giving it a few tries, he also found out how to do it with water magic. I was sure it would help him a lot in the future and I’d also get to learn about runes, so it was a win-win for everyone. On the way to the blacksmith, he continued practising his new skill, though the water froze almost instantly in minus forty degrees so he had little time to make use of it.

We were led to a cozy little building on the outskirts of the city, which had two swords crossed on its door. It looked like an old wooden building from outside, but the place was like a piece of art from inside. The owner used only high-quality wood to build his store, and the weapons put on display were all polished to perfection. When we entered, the door rang a bell and a few seconds later, a bulky guy came forward.

“Argus, my friend! What brought you here?” he quickly shook hands with our guide. I realised only then that he never introduced himself, though it didn’t really matter anyway.

“I’ve come to visit you for two reason. I’ll start with the quicker one. Are you done with the sword I brought in last time?”

“Yes, it’s in the back chamber. Should I bring it out now?” the man asked.

“No, it can wait. The second thing is a small request. My friends here have taught me something really amazing, and I think that you could make good use of it in the future as well. I’m willing to teach it to you, only you, if you could teach him the rune language,” Argus leaned over the counter and whispered to him.

Of course, I pretended that I didn’t hear anything when they sneaked a quick peek at us and just looked around in the building ‘cluelessly’.

“Why doesn’t he just go to the school? Two or three years of learning and he’ll be able to scribble anything he wants on his weapons,” the man asked, sounding a little confused.

“I think that he just wants to get the book and doesn’t want all that hassle,” Argus replied.

“The book? But only students can get one of those and I shouldn’t give it to others,” the man said with a frown.

“Oh, come on, you can just say that you lost it and request a new one. Believe me, this thing is a once in a lifetime chance! You’ll be able to do this!” he said in an excited voice as he created a layer of water which covered his hand.

“What the hell is that?!”

“See? And you could do this with every element if you learned how they were created and stuff like that. I can use only water for now, but earth and wind shouldn’t be that hard,” Argus continued reasoning with the man until he couldn’t resist the temptation and gave in.

“Fine, fine, but you’ll have to help me get another book. I still have to use it from time to time when some of you crazy lads order something ridiculous,” the man replied.

“Great, I’ll help you with that and you give the book to him,” Argus pointed at me. Nodding his head, the man went to the back of the store and a few seconds later, he returned with a black book which was about five hundred pages long, and a two-handed greatsword.

Handing over everything to the right person, the man said, “You don’t have to pay for these.”

“Thank you very much,” I said with a smile.

I was sure that he wanted to chat with Argus, but he didn’t want to do it in front of us. After saying goodbye and leaving the store, Argus led us back to our inn and then he ‘remembered that he had something to do’. Out of curiosity I tracked him with my soul force and found out that he went back to the blacksmith, which was quite funny.

“Am I the only one who’s excited to see our base?” Lien asked when we entered the inn.

“Although I haven’t heard anything specific about it, I’ve got a feeling that it’s not going to be another simple village or something like that,” Dixon remarked as she looked at me, hoping that I’d reveal something. All of a sudden I felt a little pressured seeing that everyone started having expectations.

“You’ll see it soon,” I replied, deciding to keep quiet about it.

We were about to go upstairs when Dawud stopped us and asked, “Hey, do you have a moment?”

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Firstly, your rent is going to expire in a few hours. Secondly, do you want to have dinner here?”

“Uhm, we’re going to leave in a bit and we’re also going to clean up before that, so the rent is no problem. The second… Lien? Should we eat here?”

“Did you prepare any kind of food?” she tilted her head to the side.

“Well, we just have to cook it,” I replied. “Is that fine with you?”

“Oh, we should cook for ourselves in that case,” she nodded.

Looking at her, Dawud smiled at her and said, “We’ll have some delicious mammoth meat tonight, so maybe you should consider staying.”

“Haha, thanks for your offer, but I have to kindly refuse,” she smiled back. Seeing that he wouldn’t get anywhere by trying to make us have one more dinner, he turned around and went back behind the bar. Considering that there were about twenty people residing in the building, I was quite sure that things weren’t going bad for him.

“I wonder how much your parents progressed. I’d be a little surprised if they learnt how to fly this quickly,” Lien muttered as we neared their room.

“I’d be surprised as well, but who knows,” I shrugged my shoulders. “By the way, I think that  soon your soul will be strong enough to take a soul pill which I’m going to make, but it’s definitely going to hurt for the first time. Of course, you could also just wait until you became strong enough to take it without pain.”

“Meh, no pain, no gain. Also, the fact that you mentioned it means that you want me to take one, so don’t beat around the bush.”

“Actually, yes, I want you to take one and if you’ve learned how to suppress the signals of your receptors, you’re not going to feel any pain. I mean, your soul can’t hurt and physical pain can be blocked with magic. In fact, I don’t feel any physical pain, my brain receives only the location of the pain so I always know where the ‘damage’ is coming from,” I admitted to it.

“Oh, that’s really fancy,” she said, and then entered the room.

--- Lien’s POV ---

My mother and my father were standing in the middle of the air, while Anna and Peter were just floating up and down, though even that looked like they could fall any second. When Seth told our parents that they should learn how to fly, my mother said that she learned how to do it in Light city, and considering that my father had been fighting his whole life, it was no wonder that he learnt it quickly.

It wasn’t hard, but for people who never really used magic for things other than house chores, Anna and Peter were already doing great. Well, I wouldn’t let them fly on their own just yet, but they were getting there.

“If I may be so bold to ask, how did you two meet?” Dixon asked in a low voice when Seth started talking with our parents.

Brushing my hair behind my ear, I couldn’t stop a smile from forming on my face. These kinds of questions always made me smile for some reason, maybe because they always reminded me of my love. “I don’t think it’s anything special, but I can tell you if you’re really interested.”

“I am. I’ve heard bits and pieces from your conversations with your parents, but I still don’t know how you two got to know each other,” she said.

“Hmm, where should I start… You see, even as a child, I had always been interested in magic so I rarely went out with other kids. There was also the problem that most people knew that I was a half-noble, which may be an alien concept to you, but to put it simply, it was bad. Commoners didn’t want to become friends with me because they were unsure of my background and didn’t want to get in trouble, while nobles looked down on me for being half-blood.”

“Oh, so you had the worst of both, I guess,” she shook her head.

“Haha, something like that. Well, I’ve got loving parents so I didn’t really mind it. I always had somewhere to go back to.There was only one kid in my class who couldn’t get along with the others either, and he was also the person who didn’t care about my background. If I have to be honest, that was the main reason I got interested in him back then, so one day I sat down next to him.”

“All I can say is that we had a rather awkward conversation at first, but after a few minutes, it started getting better and better. We also started talking about each other and our own hobbies, and that was when I found out that he was as much of a magic maniac as me. I was even more surprised when I found out that we were living next to each other since I never saw him before that,” I explained.

“Haha, I suppose that’s why you started visiting him,” she started laughing. I realised only then that everyone was listening to me, which made things a little embarrassing, but I continued nonetheless.

“Indeed, and while he was doing his best to create all kinds of spells, I felt drawn towards him. It was just so satisfying to watch, especially when he asked for my help in something or made me test a few spells. I didn’t know back then that he was a god incarnation or that people like him existed. Either way, he always told me to keep it a secret from his parents, and being a kid, I was happy to have a secret of our own.”

“Unless something else happened, I know the rest. I mean, your mother’s fate and then yours and stuff like that,” Dixon said with a smile.

“No, no, that’s all, really,” I waved my hand.

“Hmm, I find it cute, but wasn’t it strange for Seth to talk with you? I mean, you were just a common kid, right?” she asked, raising her brows.

“She was, but I didn’t have the mind of an adult either. It was just that my mind was way more advanced than other kids’,” Seth chimed in. “Anyway, if you two are done talking, then we’re ready to go to our new base,” he added.

Taking hold of his hand, I dragged him towards the door and said, “Why are we still here then? You didn’t tell me anything about the base, so I'm really looking forward to seeing it!”

“Eh? You too?” he made a surprised face and then scratched his face. “I'm starting to feel pressured…”

“There’s no need. I'm not expecting anything great, I just want to see it,” I smiled at him and then gave a small kiss on his face.

Rubbing the spot where my lips touched him, he looked at me with a dumbfounded face and asked through Link, “Can I give it back?”

“What?” I asked, but instead of answering, he leaned forward and pressed his rough lips against mine and put his arm behind my back. I couldn’t help but give in to my emotions when he gently bit on my lower lip and started pulling on it. Quickly releasing it, he did it again and again and also put his hand on the back of my head. His warmth and his gentle touch felt so comforting that I forgot all about where I was.

After a few seconds passed, or maybe minutes, we both opened our eyes and gazed deep into the other’s as we slowly pulled back. It felt really good for both my body and mind, but the latter clicked when I turned to the side and realised that we did the whole thing in front of our parents.

“Why did you even ask if you went through with it before I could answer?” I couldn’t help but complain.

“I don't know. I was just filled with a sudden desire to kiss you,” he replied.

“My, how bold of you,” Anna gasped, seeing that we regained our senses.

“Bold? Although it’s fine to do in front of us, I hope that they aren’t doing things like these in public,” my mother said with a frown.

Anna made a thoughtful face and after a few seconds, she said, “Uhm- I’d lie if I said I haven’t seen them doing it yet, but they never went further than a kiss. Maybe a bit of groping?”

Seeing my mother turning towards me with question marks above her head, I waved my hands defensively and said, “No, no, that’s really not the case anymore. We also thought that it was a bad habit so we stopped doing stuff like that outside.”

“I hope that you aren’t lying, young lady,” my father also said with a frown.

“I’m sorry, I was being impulsive and please, you don’t have to reprimand only her for everything that you find wrong just because I saved you,” Seth chimed in. It was true that ever since he saved my mother, both her and my father were bugging only me with the things that were annoying them.

“Thanks. That’s actually really nice of you, but it’s fine as it is,” I shook my head. “By the way, you were right… We should stop doing lewd things in front of others,” I added through Link.

“Hm? Oh, I just didn’t want to annoy other people by being lovey-dovey in front of them. I guess I forgot to include our parents in that group. We should really keep these kinds of things for the times when we’re all alone,” he replied as he gave a kiss on my forehead.

“Why is that what you’re doing is different than what you’re saying?” I rolled my eyes.

“I just had to.”

“It’s only natural, and this was clearly my fault,” he said aloud. Biting her lower lip, my mother kept staring at him for a few seconds and then turned to the side to show that she dropped the matter. She clearly showed that she didn’t want to ‘reprimand’ Seth since she was still too grateful for him. I understood where she came from, but in Seth’s case, it was really pointless.

Shaking his head, Seth said, “I hope that one day you can forget about this ‘saviour’ barrier between us and say what’s on your mind to me, like you would say it to your family.”

Clearing his throat, Seth took hold of my hand and pulled me towards the door. Once we left the building, he used telekinesis to raise everyone into the air and then bolted off towards the sky. As we got out of the city, he also erected a barrier around us that blocked the powerful wind from entering, though it still felt incredibly cold outside. I had to admit, the country was nice, but I started desiring a warmer place. Of course, I wouldn’t say that to Seth since it was me who said that we should come to somewhere cold.

The good side was that I could practise multicasting and mana control since I had to keep my body warm with fire magic, block the wind with wind magic, and use at least one defensive and offensive spell when I battled monsters. Although Seth rarely sparred with me, he always started it with some kind of defensive spell which was definitely a good habit for magicians.

In fact, I picked up on the usage of defensive spells so much that I wanted to keep one surrounding me at all times. When we reached a height of two thousand meters, I came to the conclusion that I’d add a defensive magic to my wind-fire combo to make things even harder for myself. I was still thinking about magic when the storm disappeared all of a sudden and even the temperature turned much warmer.

Opening my eyes wide, I looked around in amazement seeing that I was in an entirely different place. Turning around, I put my hands on the black wall behind my back and was surprised to feel that it went through without any trouble and the usual cold wind welcomed it outside. Taking a few steps to the side, I pushed my hand through the wall once again, but I got the same result.

“What the hell is this?” I asked, turning towards Seth. There was a house-sized ball of light in the middle of the ceiling so it was really bright inside. The walls were white around the light ball, but they slowly turned darker and darker the closer they were to the ground, turning completely black at ground level.

There was a smaller mountain on our right, which seemed to be the source of the river that ran across the plain in front of us. It flowed all the way to the forestry area on our left, most likely ending up in a giant lake or a giant waterfall. I didn’t know where it ended, but I was sure to find out in the future.

“This is amazing!” I shouted as I spun around and then ran towards the river. Its surface was covered in a thin layer of ice and a beautiful glass bridge curved over the ten meters wide river. I could feel an immense amount of mana radiating from everything in this space, including the bridge, the nature, and the land itself. I was sure that under the surface that I saw and sensed, there were hundreds of formations and spells that kept the place in one piece.

Noticing a few buildings not far away from the other side of the river, I quickly ran over the bridge and then flew closer to check it out. I was very surprised when I saw the house we built in Balan, and Seth’s family house as well. When I went inside to look around, I found out that it even had the same furnitures inside, which made me realise that it wasn’t just a copy. Seth probably moved the whole building into this space.

Turning around, I sat down on our bed and looked at Seth who caught up with me in the meantime. “Do you like it?” he asked as he leaned on the door frame and crossed his arms.

“Yeah, it feels nice to be ‘home’ after all this travelling,” I smiled at him.

“I thought that it’d be a huge waste if we left this house in Balan after all the hard work we put into it,” he said.

“It’s a little annoying when I think about how we could rebuild it in a few hours with our current abilities, but that just makes it even nicer. This house will always remind me where I come from, even if we go to the other side of the planet,” I replied.

Seeing him staring at me silently, I asked, “By the way, is this whole place a black hole?”

“Hmm? So you realised? When do you even learn?” he shook his head in confusion.

“When, you ask. Although you aren’t here to tell me everything, it’s not like I can’t realise things on my own. The things you teach me help a lot more than you think since I can realise things by myself if I ponder about them. Isn’t that how you learned many of the ‘advanced’ concepts on your own?” I asked with a smile, seeing his surprised face.

“Well, I did. I apologise for underestimating you,” he stuck out his tongue. “Seriously though, I just didn’t think that you’d get to that phase so soon.”

Averting my eyes, I said in a low voice, “Thanks to making love on a daily basis, I don’t have to spend much time with training my body, my soul, and my mana, so I have more time for theoretical stuff.”

“...” after staring at me for a few seconds in silence, he shrugged his shoulders helplessly, “What can I say? It’s not like I’m thinking about power when I’m- you know, become aroused.”

“You’re trying hard to avoid saying ‘when I’m fucking you’, which makes it even more hilarious to me,” I couldn’t help but start laughing at him.

“You have a really dirty mouth sometimes,” he shook his head.

Jumping up from the bed, I walked up to him and stopped in front of him, our bodies only inches away. Placing my hands on his chest, I grabbed his shirt and then looked into his eyes. “That’s what you say now, but you love it during sex, don’t you?” I asked.

“I do,” he replied without a shred of hesitation.

“Purr~ no sex tonight. I want to spend some time with my mother, and it’s been a while that we had to hold back. I think it’d make our next time really… exciting,” I said playfully as I let go of his shirt and walked past him. Even without turning around, I could feel him staring at my back, so I went ahead and swayed my hips with every step I took.

“You do realise that I know that you’re doing this intentionally, right?” he asked, seeing that I turned around to take a quick look at his face.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I chuckled.

“Yeah, of course, you don’t…” he rolled his eyes.

Noticing the television in the living room, I asked, “What about electric stuff like these? I imagine we don’t have companies to provide us with channels and electricity.”

“Erm, yes, that’s something we’ve got to modify before we could start enjoying this place. If not for forgetting about it, I’d have done that as well, but I was busy laying formations to make this place stable and safe,” he replied.

“You don’t have to defend yourself, I didn’t mean it as critique. Also, just so you know, I wanted to fix this problem myself,” I quickly explained myself, seeing that he slightly misunderstood the point.

“Oh. I’m sorry, I must be a little tired,” he said as he rubbed his eyes.

Slowly walking into the kitchen with him in tow, I ran my finger over the edge of a mug and removed the dust. Proceeding to clean up the rest with magic, I asked in a low voice, “Is it because of your mana shortage?”

“It is,” he said after a while.

“Why don’t you take a nap? I’m sure our parents wouldn’t mind, and there is a lot of space to explore now that we’re here,” I said.

“I know, they said they’d check out the mountain and then continue training in their house. It’s just that I’m unsure if I should leave you all to yourselves and sleep… By the way, I’ve also taken the liberty and rebuilt your old family house, though I’m sure it’s not exactly the same since I didn’t remember it clearly.”

“That’s very nice of you,” I smiled at him as I took hold of his hand and pulled him straight into the living room. Taking a seat on the sofa, I pulled his head into my lap and told him to lay down. Doing as told, he laid down facing me and pressed his face against my tummy.

“Pwah~ you’ve such a nice smell, it makes me feel all fuzzy inside,” he sighed as he took a deep breath.

“Haha, I think that it’s only because you’re tired,” I replied, placing my hand on his head. Smiling at him, I ran my fingers through his hair and started caressing his head, quickly drawing a smile on his face. He loved when I fumbled around with his hair or when I caressed his back.

“Mmm~ that feels really nice,” he muttered as he closed his eyes.

Leaning closer, I kissed his face but he didn’t move. Most of the time he had a little trouble sleeping if it wasn’t right after sex, but this time he fell asleep as soon as he closed his eyes.

Looking at his sleeping face, I couldn’t help but start smiling. It’s been a long time since he last slept in my laps, and it felt really nice. Using telekinesis, I made a blanket fly out from one of the drawers and made it land on top of Seth. Seeing that he had everything given for a good nap, I closed my eyes and started practising the defensive spell I thought of.

---

About three hours later, he started groaning and moving around, so I looked down and found him staring at the ceiling. As his eyes moved towards me, a bright smile spread on his face, “Good morning~”

“Morning? It’s evening,” I chuckled.

“But you’re Miss Sunshine so if you are there, it’s morning even if it’s evening,” he murmured, still half-asleep.

“Are you still alright in the head?” I raised my brows.

“Of course. I should be the one to ask that anyway,” he gaped.

“Hah? What is that supposed to mean?” I asked with a frown.

“I really, really, reaaaally appreciate your lap pillow, but I’m sure your legs feel sore after sitting like this for who knows how long,” he shook his head and sat up.

“You slept for three hours, and I enhanced my legs so it wasn’t a problem. I also spent my time well and practised defensive magic,” I stuck out my tongue.

“So for how long will this period last? The no se-” he stopped mid-sentence and after a moment of silence, he continued, “Good evening!”

“Did you mean se-” I also stopped before finishing the word as I turned around and noticed my mother standing in the doorway. Quickly forgetting that I almost said ‘sex’ in front of my mother, I smiled at her and asked, “Mother? Since when are you standing there? Ah, but come here,” I urged her, seeing that she was a little ‘lost’.

“Since Seth called you Miss Sunshine,” she chuckled, slowly coming closer. I quickly inched closer to Seth to free up some space and took hold of her hand when she sat down on my left. “It’s a very fitting nickname,” she remarked.

“And why is that?” I titled my head to the side.

“I think that it’s obvious,” Seth laughed, not answering my question.

Similarly ignoring my question, my mother asked, “What were you talking about?” She was visibly unsure of how to start a conversation, and I was almost stupid enough to answer her without thinking, but I quickly realised that it’d be a bad idea.

“Uhm, Lien thought about doing some kind of secluded training, but I told her that she’d be better off if I helped her and she agreed. We were just joking about that,” Seth quickly thought of a lie, though it sounded a little lame. Either way, my mother seemed to believe it, even if it didn’t make that much sense…

“I- I understand,” she nodded, carefully placing her arm around my back. Covering my face, I couldn’t help but start laughing.

“What’s so funny?” she asked.

“Hahaha, I’m sorry. It’s just that the way you carefully moved your hand was really funny.” Leaning closer, I put my arms around her back and said, “Look, I know that it’s hard for you, but you’ve always been and will be my mother, so you don’t have to be reserved around me.”

“But how could I say anything to you when I disappeared from your life for five years?” she asked, her voice shaking.

“You don’t have to feel bad because of it. It wasn’t your fault,” I replied as I started caressing her back. Although her clothes were thick, I was hugging her strongly so I could feel how little fat she had on her body.

“How come you’re so thin? Isn’t food free in Light city?” I asked, slowly pulling back and taking a closer look at her.

“I had no appetite,” she lowered her head.

“Depression? Well, it seems like I’ll have to stuff you full every day so that you’d get back in shape. I’m sure Father would be all for it as well,” I patted her shoulder.

“Michael? I- I guess he’d like it,” she nodded after a bit of thinking.

Leaning closer, I whispered into her ear, “He’s probably lonely after so many years and I can tell you that men love breasts, and yours have flattened a little over the years. We should get them back in shape!”

“Lien! How can you say stuff like that?” she said in a low voice, her eyes wide opened.

Turning around for a moment, I saw Seth shaking his head with his hand on his forehead, so I stuck out my tongue and then turned back. “I told you already, you don’t have to worry about Seth. There are no topics that are ‘shameful’ in front of him,” I smiled at her, seeing that she kept looking back and forth between him and I.

“He might be my ‘master’ in magic but first and foremost, we’re husband and wife, which means that you’re his mother-in-law,” I said.

“Erm, that’s right. You don’t have to mind me,” he nodded. “Given my nature and my senses, I’ve heard all kinds of things from people. Good, bad, and terrible alike, so there are very few things that could surprise or faze me. This is also a topic that may feel a little awkward or perverted, but it’s totally fine with me.”

“See? It’s not just me who’s saying that it’s fine. Once you get to know him, I’m sure that you’re going to like him,” I said with a smile.

“Considering his commandment or what, I’m not surprised that he’s fine with this kind of topic, but you’re wrong if you think that I dislike him,” she replied, looking back and forth between us.

“I didn’t say that you dislike him, I said that you’re going to like him,” I chuckled.

Scratching his face, Seth chimed in, “I understand that my commandment makes you feel concerned about your daughter and the relationship between us, but I can assure you that I’m a faithful believer of monogamy. On the other hand, please don’t talk about my commandment because it’d be terrible if even more god incarnations found out about it. It’s bad enough that Thanatos and the other bastards know it.”

“Ah, sorry, I didn’t mean to, and I’ve seen enough proof of your bond so I really wasn’t trying to question you two. I’m sorry if it sounded like that, and you’re both grown up people so it’s not my business how you live your lives or what you do together,” she waved her hand defensively. Lowering her head, she said in a low voice, “It’s just that I’m still a mother and the five years that I missed out on with Lien feel like a gaping hole in my life. I guess I’m just trying to fill that up somehow.”

Raising her head, she looked at me with teary eyes, “We were looking so much forward to raising our child with Michael, but I wasn’t there for you when it mattered the most, your puberty.”

Placing my hand on her face, I said, “I’m sure that we will be able to fill up this ‘hole’ you speak of with due time, and I hope that you’ll be able to continue your relationship with Father. I’m not trying to be nosy but-”

“Haha, you don’t have to worry about that. I still love him and as I’ve noticed it, his feelings haven’t changed for me either. Once we have some time alone, we’ll get back on track in no time,” she said with a smile, her mood instantly turning for the better.

She was regretting not being able to spend time with me so much that every time she saw me, she turned sad. If I wanted to fix that, I had to spend a lot of time with her, and that was why I decided to stay with her tonight. Luckily, Seth had no problems with it either, though I’d have been surprised if he had since I knew him to be an understanding person.

“Erm, your mother is continuously getting emotional and I think that my presence doesn’t help in solving the problem, so I’ll leave you two alone,” he said through Link.

“Are you sure? You don’t have to,” I replied.

“It’s fine, I’ve dreamed of something interesting,” he said, and then teleported away.

“Ah, where did he go? Am I in the way?” my mother asked.

Shaking my head, I said, “No, he just has something to do, and please don’t think of silly stuff like that. We’ve just got you back, after all.”

“Okay, but please tell me if you have something important to do, I don’t want to be in the way,” she said.

That night we held a mother-daughter ‘meeting’ and talked a lot about ourselves. The more we did, the more I could see my mother returning to her former self, the mother I knew.

I realised only the next day what my husband started and why we needed a giant black hole two thousand meters above the ground…