The Mage Emperor

A deal

“Goaaa! Goaaa!” Lien and I were forced to wake up in the middle of the night, as usual, once Felice and Reiner became hungry.

“Mm~ is it that time again?" she sighed loudly, waking up a moment later than I did. "I've gotta go, can you let go of me?” she mumbled as she tried to sit up but failed to do so. It'd have been surprising if she could considering that my arms were tightly wrapped around her body.

"Go ahead," I replied as I raised my arms and sat up to follow her with my eyes.

Brushing her long hair to the side, she got out of bed and walked up to the cradle, turning on the lamp. Taking them into her arms, she came back to our bed and sat down on its side. Inching closer to her, I sat down right behind her and wrapped my arms around her waist, pulling her between my legs.

“Come on, you can lean back now,” I said, kissing the back of her head.

"Ah, just perfect," she said as she leaned on my chest and then started feeding our children. Looking at my cute daughter and son sucking on her breasts, I could only hug her strongly in my happiness. It was a heart-warming sight for me.

After a good twenty minutes, both of them fell asleep so we also went back to bed and slept like logs until early morning. Even then, we woke up to their hungry cries. I was also supposed to change their diapers but thanks to my enchantments, that wasn't necessary. We cleaned their bodies with magic since that didn’t irritate their skin in any way.

Thanks to their evolved bodies and mana cells, they were naturally resistant to common viruses and bacteria so we didn’t have to take special measures against them. While Lien was feeding them, I got dressed and prepared breakfast for ourselves.

Another twenty minutes later, she came to the kitchen wearing a deep-cut dark blue blouse with white jeans that fit her legs tightly. While I was placing the plates on the table, I couldn’t help but whistle loudly as I remarked, “Look at that beauty! Who is she? Could she be my wifey?”

“I wonder,” she laughed lightly as she came over and took her seat that happened to be right in front of me.

Once Felice and Reiner grew older, they’d be able to sit with us at the table which I was really looking forward to and it wasn’t even that far away. A few months and they’d most likely learn to walk and considering their evolved bodies, I was quite sure that they’d learn how to crawl when they turned three or four months old. For the time being, we could still enjoy teasing each other under the table when we felt like it, which I had to admit, happened more often than it should have had.

“What did you make? I smell bacon and eggs,” she added shortly after, placing her hands under her chin and staring at me with interest.

“Mhm, it’s been a while since we last ate it so I thought this was the right time. Would you rather eat something else?” I asked.

“No, I was kind of lusting after it myself,” she shook her head, quickly taking the plate full of bacon from my hand

Taking my seat in front of her, I picked up my fork and started eating as I asked, “Is there anything you want to tell me? Anything to confess?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, showing me an innocent smile.

“You’re cleaning your body with magic in the evening instead of taking a proper shower or bath. I’ve noticed that you take a proper bath only when I go in with you, which didn’t happen last night and the night before. Both yesterday and the day before yesterday you just went in and cleaned your body with magic. Didn’t we agree that we wouldn’t use magic for such basic necessities?” I asked, looking at her with a frown.

I started out the same in the past, and then everything went downhill from then on. Well, I was quite sure that she could handle it at her age as she was more mature than I was at the age of six, but it was still a dangerous thing to get used to.

“Oh, come on, dear. It’s only because I have to feed Felice and Reiner and have less time for my daily necessities. Once they’re old enough and I have more time, I’ll get back to my regular routines, don’t worry,” she waved her hand dismissively.

I stared at her like a hawk, looking for even the smallest bit of weakness for a good five seconds before coming to the conclusion that she was alright. I also felt that she wasn’t lying through Link.

“Fine then, I’ll believe you. I just don’t want you to make the same mistake that I made years ago,” I sighed loudly.

“Don’t worry. Unlike the ‘you’ from years ago, I’m resorting to magic only because it’s necessary. I know that we could fix everything with magic but we made a decision together that we wouldn’t live like that, so I’ll naturally keep to it,” she replied, flailing her fork around as she spoke.

It wasn’t like we never used magic for convenience’s sake, it was just that we didn’t do it regularly for daily things and necessities, like bathing. Felice and Reiner were a bit of an exception since cleaning them with magic was healthier and it was also more hygienic to enchant their diapers than to wait until they dirtied themselves.

The enchantment turned their waste into oxygen and had a self-cleaning function, so we never had to switch to new ones. This way they were always clean and hygienic.

Just as I was about to accept her explanation, I realised that something was wrong with the whole problem.

 “Wait. If that’s the case, how come you don’t use magic when I go in with you?” I asked with a frown.

Placing her fork on her plate, she looked into my eyes and said, “Hubby, I’ll play a small guessing game with you. What activity takes quite a lot of time and we do it daily. I can’t do it if I go alone to the bathroom but I can do it if both of us go. Can you guess?” she smiled at me.

“Well… is it perverted? Because then I know the answer,” I muttered.

“I don’t think it’s perverted. It’s a natural thing between men and women, even more so between husband and wife, but the amount we do it is probably considered perverted,” she said with a nod and then continued eating.

“What can I say. I’m sorry for asking stupid questions,” I said, feeling sorry for even asking.

“Mh- It doesn’t matter,” she waved her hand, speaking while her mouth was full. It always made me happy that I was the only person who could see her dirty, clumsy, and carefree sides. She didn’t let go of herself so much even if she was with her parents.

“Anyway, you either follow me to the bathroom every night and wash me personally, or I’ll continue using magic to clean myself until Felice and Reiner are old enough to be safe even if we don’t watch over them. My offer is also available only if you can make sure that you can watch over them even if both of us are in the bathroom. If you can’t do that then we’ll bath separately for the time being and I’ll continue using magic. I admit that I wouldn’t be able to focus on them when we get too much into it.”

“I see. To be honest, I wouldn’t be able to focus either if I relied on my senses alone since those are usually focused on you. But clones are a different matter because of how they work. Just like Sylvanus’ doppelgangers, I can also create clones of myself that can use magic. It’s just that each of these clones has to be initialised with a set of instructions beforehand.”

“By the way, I’ve been wanting to ask you about your clones. You created one yesterday as well and it really did watch over our children but how does it actually work? You’ve just started using them but I don’t know anything about them. I just didn’t want to ask about them yesterday since I was in a hurry,” she said, her curiosity instantly piqued.

She was trying so hard to explain herself, even though there was no need for it. It was kind of cute.

“First of all, there is no need to explain yourself so much. You know that I’m willing to teach you anything. You also made it possible for me to create mana and I didn’t have to go through many tests myself, what’s the difference?”

“Okay, okay, just answer my question in that case,” she waved her hand.

“That’s more like it,” I chortled. “Back to the point, my clones inherit my muscle memory and whatnot but they can’t think for themselves. On the other hand, the longer they live, the more they can learn from me and other people, as long as their initial instructions are good enough. Let’s say… I could create a clone with an instruction to watch over Felice and Reiner while I’m gone.”

“The clone would certainly watch over them but would it do anything if they touched a knife? The answer is no since it was created with very primitive and simple instructions. But let’s say I created it to watch over our children and stop them from hurting themselves and each other and protect them from outside dangers, it’d do much more than simply watch over them.”

“Of course, this is an overly simplified explanation but that’s the gist of it. Their magic power is also limited to twenty percent of my full magic power. Well, considering that mine is above five hundred thousand, my clone could still become as powerful as the Sentinels of Leviathan, as long as it had enough ‘brain’ to use its power,” I explained.

“You never cease to amaze me you know?,” she chortled.

“I just copied what I had seen from Sylvanus’ doppelgangers,” I replied, not feeling that it was that big of a deal. I understood that cloning magic has great possibilities but it wasn't me who came up with it. I just figured it out after dissecting a few of Sylvanus’ clones.

“Bah, what does it matter? It’s still a great achievement,” she shook her head.

“And what do you plan to do?” I asked.

“I have a meeting with the governor of Washington in North America since I want the coins to spread all around the world. It’s going to become a very powerful currency since it’ll be usable anywhere. As it turned out, some cities raised the exchange rate of Leviathan Coins even above what we agreed at initially because it was the only solution for them to make sure that they weren’t dealing with counterfeit money.”

“Especially the countries which have many powerful magicians and simply can't prove that the money they use is crafted by the government. Their economies are a total mess since many people have infinite money," she laughed as she spoke about it.

Imagining it was quite hilarious indeed. It was no wonder even Peking’s governor agreed to it so readily and was so respectful to her. Introducing a stable and counterfeit-proof currency was probably one of the most desired things for these governors. They could only resort to trading in treasures, beast hides, organs, and cores if they wanted to make sure that both sides were dealing with the real deal.

“Washington is also a huge country, isn’t it?” I asked.

“It is, it’s just that this will be our first time meeting so I’ll have to prove it to him that it’ll be worth for him to use our currency,” she said with a nod.

“Look at that, you’re like a money agent,” I laughed, feeling happy from the bottom of my heart.

“I guess I am,” she stuck out her tongue. “Also, why are you making that heavy face? What is it that you don’t want to ask but still want to know?” she raised her brows, seemingly reading my mind.

“Well, I don’t have anything too important to do these days, meaning that I’m kind of free. Of course, this is mainly so that I can be with our children and take care of them. I don’t really want to leave them to my clone but I’m kind of interested in going with you to one of these first-time meetings, even if it’s as your bodyguard, assistant, or whatever you think of.”

“I’d-”

“Wait a moment,” she raised her hand, interrupting me.

“Hm?”

“I don’t mind you coming, don’t get me wrong, but didn’t you come with me yesterday with the exact same reason?” she asked, raising a brow.

“Well, yes but no. I said a first-time meeting. I thought it would be your first time meeting Peking’s minister but it turned out you had not only met him before, you even had a deal. We just went to hand over the coins, basically!” I replied. “I’m curious how you’re treated when you visit a city leader for the first time and what you have to go through to make a deal with them.”

“It’s just that I’d have to leave the kids to a clone if I did that and I also don’t want to intrude on you and maybe mess something up, so I wasn’t sure if I should ask you about it or just keep it for myself. Since you’ve made me say it anyway, please tell me if you’d rather go alone. I wouldn’t take it to heart, I swear,” I replied.

Jumping up from her place, she walked around the table and hugged me as she said, “Aww~ don’t be silly my big bear. How could you be a hindrance? Thanks to your efforts, Leviathan is quite well-known throughout the world which is already a good enough starting point most of the time. In fact, the most frequently asked questions are the ‘where is the leader’ type of questions. As long as you behaved and didn’t start raging if some guy ogled me, things could go even smoother if you came with me."

“As for the kids, you don’t have to worry about it since the first meetings rarely take longer than half an hour, and once I feed them, they’re usually asleep for at least half an hour. You’ve also sealed their mana and they can’t walk and crawl yet anyway so it’s not like they’d be in danger.”

“Are you sure it’d be okay?” I asked, looking up at her as she stood beside me.

“Of course,” she nodded, showing me a bright smile.

“Fine then. So when exactly is this meeting of yours?”

“It’s whenever I decide to go and introduce myself to them,” she laughed. “Joking aside, I was planning to go tomorrow. I want to spend more time with Felice and Reiner once they can move around. I’m doing this now only because they just eat and sleep most of the time anyway, so I kind of don’t lose out on anything.”

“I see. If you really don’t mind it then I’d like to tag along with you tomorrow,” I said.

“As you wish,” she nodded.

Once we finished eating, I left the house and went out to visit my white tiger and how its soul progressed in a soul-force-free area. In the meantime, she visited Lea, Rose, and her other apostles to teach them magic. They were close to reaching the Sage rank, even though they started training not long ago.

My wife was a great teacher. I had trouble explaining magic to others, even if I knew more than her. Only people who could understand my cryptic explanation could learn more from me than her. When "I" taught Gil the Portal magic, Lien often had to take over the explanation…

Well, nobody was perfect in everything, much less me.

On the way to the Great Forest of Leviathan, I happened to run into a group of familiar faces, namely Gil, his friend Brian, and the team I went out on a mission with. Pele and Cuchulain were holding each other's hands so I could guess that they had started a relationship.

"Hey, Boss! How come you are here?" Brian shouted from far away like an idiot, waving his hand.

"I'm on my way to the Great Forest for some small business," I replied to all of them telepathically, instead of shouting back.

"And you guys?" I asked when we got close enough to talk.

"We're going on a mission together," Gil replied.

Glancing at Erlang, Pele, and Cuchulain, I only shook my head seeing how silent and reserved they became. "What's wrong? I'm not going to bite you lot," I laughed, patting Erlang's shoulder.

"Do you know each other?" Gil asked.

"Yeah, I pretended to be a common citizen and went with them on a mission," I said with a nod.

"Uh, I bet they were dumbfounded when they found out," Brian laughed at them.

"We still are," Erlang replied.

"Well, you don't have to behave differently in front of me. I've seen that you're good guys so all is fine," I replied with a smile.

"Thank you, in that case," he said with a nod.

"By the way, Gil. How far can you reach now? I want to get rid of the other three as well," I asked, changing the topic to something more important.

"I've reached the Sage rank and can sense about a quarter of Leviathan when it rains," he replied.

"That's pretty good. We may send you on scouting missions in the future, in case you don't mind."

"I'd be happy to pay you back for all the help. I've made up with my brother thanks to you," he replied.

"Oh, I'm glad to hear that. Well then, I'd best be off," I replied.

After saying our goodbyes, we parted ways and I continued on my way to the forest. Once I reached the white tiger's territory, I released my magic power so that she could find me quickly. Just a few seconds passed and I could feel the ground trembling beneath my feet as Aria ran towards me at full speed.

Since I stood on a tiny hill, I could see the trees shaking in the distance and a moment later she jumped right over my head, sliding on the ground as she landed behind me. As she swung her tail around and hit a few trees, they broke into two halves like small sticks and fell over, turning the area into a place of destruction.

“Aria, can’t you be a bit more nature-friendly?” I laughed, seeing it rolling around on its back and knocking over a few more trees. If the citizens of Balan had ever run into a beast-like Aria, the whole city would be wiped out and the survivors would scatter in the forest like rats.

There were many cities that were similarly weak and if Sylvanus could control the beasts to attack all these cities, humanity would suffer huge losses. I never cared deeply for humans but since I had the power to help them, I had a sense of obligation to do something for them. Leaving Sylvanus to do whatever it wanted wasn’t an option either.

As Aria leaned closer to sniff me, I patted her huge nose and scanned her soul to see how she progressed. When I last checked on her, Sylvanus’ soul force left her body so I removed the soul restricting barrier and let her live in an area that was filled with my soul force instead.

Not much to my surprise, my soul force penetrated quite deeply into hers, effectively turning her into my own pet. I didn’t have the tamer trait and yet I could tame monsters with my soul force. I wasn’t sure how the original was supposed to work but I could confidently say from now on that I had two traits, which was unheard of. The monkey-type beast was also left in a soul-force-free area but once its soul was cleansed, I let only a very tiny portion of my soul into its territory to see how things would change.

After making the trees grow about ten times their normal size so that Aria couldn’t knock them over, I checked on the monkey as well and as expected, its soul barely had traces of mine. This proved my theory that Sylvanus was using those trees and its doppelgangers to spread its soul force and affect every living being on the planet.

However I looked at it, that was its best chance to catch everyone since even if there were ‘few’ god incarnations who could use WORD magic, they still numbered in the tens of thousands. If they all attacked me at the same time, I wouldn’t be able to survive it either. No matter how strong you become, you couldn’t just leave if you were surrounded by destructive spells, and defending against all of them wouldn’t be possible either.

It was a bit intimidating when I thought about how it was clever and patient enough to wait even seventy years just to succeed. Unlucky for it, it wasn’t yet ready to take over the most powerful humans’ minds and I also managed to grow up while it was waiting. Fast-growing god incarnations like me weren’t supposed to live long since other greedy humans always killed us in fear.

If I was born in a more magically developed area and I had shown signs of my potential early on, I’d have surely been killed along with my whole family. It was quite annoying when I thought about it but it wasn’t like every human thought that way. I would kill others with great potential only if I saw that they were bad people and the soul language was perfect for spotting those kinds of people.

Finally having a good grasp of my own situation and the actual dangers that Sylvanus posed, I went back home in a hurry while thinking about ways to deal with this matter. I had to be careful since I didn’t know how many helpers it had or how strong it was. Recently my scouts reported that more and more doppelgangers started appearing in the outside world.

While deep in thought, I entered my home and said in a loud voice, “I’m back.”

Rushing out of our bedroom, Lien jumped into my neck and kissed me on the face. "Welcome back, Hubby," she said with a bright smile.

"Woah, what's up? You seem to be awfully happy. Did something good happen?" I asked, finding her reaction a bit unusual. She was always happy when I came back but she rarely jumped into my neck.

"Why? Can't I be happy when my husband comes back home?" she asked, leaning to the side with her hands behind her back.

"No, I was just caught off guard," I replied.

"Hehe, I'm just in a good mood," she said, kissing me on the face once again.

Rubbing my face, I said, "Okay. Out with it. What happened?"

"As I said, it's nothing. I was just feeding our children and while staring at their cute little faces, I started thinking about my life and how much you gave me, emotionally. I kind of felt like giving some of it back to you and you happened to come back right away," she said, waving her finger as she reasoned with me.

“Well I’m glad that I can make you happy,” I laughed, her smile making me just as happy. Seeing her turning around to leave, I had a sudden urge to hug her from behind so I took action right away, surprising her a little.

“Hmm~ do you want something?” she asked playfully.

“It would be great but I just want to hug you now,” I replied, kissing the back of her head.

"Silly," she replied, turning around in my arms and kissing me on the lips. Surprisingly, I didn't feel horny even after the kiss. I just wanted to hug my wife and enjoy the warmth of her body.

Returning to our bedroom, we played around with Felice and Reiner for a bit and then spent some more time meditating and planning ahead. For the time being, the best idea seemed to be to lay down formations around the most powerful cities and activate all of them at once. The humans would be cleansed in a few days or at least enough so that Sylvanus wouldn’t be able to control them.

Once that happened, even if it launched an attack, the powerful ones wouldn’t turn against their own kind. As for the weaker people, we could mostly ignore their attacks since they were usually limited to simple elemental magic. If we managed to take care of Sylvanus, they’d also regain their control and could continue living their lives. I knew this was just a ‘dream’ for the time being but I was really hoping that things would turn out as I wanted, even if that was unlikely to happen.

Late into the night we had some fun in the bathroom while the kids were sleeping and then went to sleep before the big day. Since I also wanted to do other things and we didn’t know how long the meeting would take, we woke up at eight in the morning and were ready to depart at nine.

Both Lien and I were forced to realise that we were completely retarded sometimes. It was one thing that we didn’t ask for help when we wanted to have sexy times but it was a completely different matter that we forgot we could ask our parents to take care of Felice and Reiner when we had some business.

They were also very happy to have some alone time with their grandchildren and even reprimanded us for not taking Felice and Reiner to them more often. I had no idea how I didn’t think of it sooner considering that they were coming over almost every day to visit their grandchildren.

It was strange to realise that I had gotten too used to relying on myself and Lien in these past two years. Most of my problems were caused by other people and I needed power to resolve them so I never really had to ask for help from my parents. The same went for Lien. I knew my parents felt a bit left out because of this but it couldn’t be helped.

At least, they finally had the chance to help out both of us and see us more often. Children could really bring families together.

Although we were ready in half an hour, it took another half an hour to leave our parents’ house after taking Felice and Reiner to them, hence, we couldn’t leave before nine. Well, it seemed to be a good time for a meeting anyway. Using portal magic, we moved to Washington’s city hall with a single step, right from our parents’ house. The building had thirty floors and reached a height of a hundred and twenty meters, so it was much taller than any building I had ever seen before.

As usual, people parted ways and avoided us carefully after seeing that we came out of nothingness. There were more than enough arrogant people who hurt others even for the smallest of things once they became powerful enough. Sealing my magic power completely, I stood behind Lien.

Her hair was let down, letting the wind carry the fragrance of her shampoo along with it, making many people turn around as they passed by us. Combined with her shoulderless pure white one-piece dress which fluttered in the gentle wind, I could see many guys staring at her right away.

“Isn’t your dress a bit too short?” I asked, seeing that it reached only a bit below her mid-thighs.

Simply laughing it off, she made her way towards the door while I looked around and glared at all the hungry wolves. I sensed multiple Sage ranked magicians in my near vicinity and there were even more in the city hall. This city was filled to the brim with powerful magicians which was often an ill omen since, with power, arrogance came.

Following my wife into the building, I asked, “Are my clothes fine? It’s not a good thing if I look out of place.”

“Hubby, you’re way too tall to not look out of place but most bodyguards these days dress simply like you. Blue jeans and a simple black hoodie, I think that it’s perfectly fine. If I need you to play the bad and release some magic power, I'll tell you,” she replied while she also talked to the receptionist and requested a meeting with the city lord.

It was kind of annoying that everyone called everything differently. Country, city, tribe, kingdom, and all kinds of bullshit for territories, and city lord, minister, king, emperor, and even a long list of names for titles. Even my own country or city or what had different titles. I could say that mine relied on a title system because they had a meaning but so could every other community say the same.

It was certainly a bit better thought out in the past but the current communities didn’t really communicate with each other, or at least, not enough to care about each other’s titles and ranking systems.

Should I publicize our own system to the world in the future? I wonder, I thought while Lien told the receptionist woman where we came from and summed up the reason for our visit. I was also introduced as a bodyguard, again… well, at least, I didn’t have to talk this way. I was quite sure that I was one of the best when it came to reading the mood and I also knew how to deal with things, but when I had to talk, I usually became too nervous and things went wrong.

Whether it was ridiculous or not, I didn’t care. It was certainly one of my weaknesses which I couldn’t overcome in two fucking years, though I was getting better at it!

I hoped.

“Sir William. Miss Lien from Leviathan is here and wishes to meet the city lord to make a deal. Could you notify him?” the receptionist spoke into the microphone in front of her after pressing a button.

“Quick, lead them up!” he replied loudly, seemingly knowing my city. I believed it was reasonable to call it a city for the time being since our population was only a few tens of thousands, which probably wasn’t enough to call it a country… Of course, thanks to our fame, our numbers started growing quite rapidly which made Ma’at quite busy these days. She had to receive the newcomers which was most likely a little stressing. Luckily, Gil often accompanied her when she had some free time and she seemed to be in a good mood whenever I met her so these days I often wondered what was going on between them.

Realising that my mind was wandering off once again, I made up my mind to focus on what was going on in front of me. Coming around the receptionist's desk, she quickly led us towards the elevator which worked with gravity magic, instead of common electricity. This was my first time seeing something like this outside of Leviathan. I couldn’t help but think that I should have come here sooner. Well, the main exception was that our ‘elevators’ were moving horizontally since there were no skyscrapers and tall buildings.

As she pressed a button, I could feel the gravity change in the chamber thanks to a formation and the elevator quickly came down to our level. They even built in a sensor to test whether the elevator had people in it or not and if it was empty, it moved as fast as it could, reaching a speed that would normally push people on the floor or the ceiling of the elevator room, depending on its direction.

I was kind of impressed, even if they were simple tricks. You could rarely see these kinds of crafts outside of Leviathan. As we reached the twentieth floor which had very few people compared to the other floors, and the reason was most likely related to the mana gathering formation that was laid on this floor. It pulled the mana from below and pushed it upwards, gathering on the top floor.

The twentieth floor hard many small rooms and almost every one of them were filled with a magician who could be considered C-ranked in Leviathan. They were weaklings for sure, but for humans outside, they could be considered powerhouses as they could fight ‘S ranked’ beasts like my Aria. It was true that their so-called S rank was only the bottom in Leviathan but that didn’t mean that they were useless. In fact, these people got to this level without having a god’s inheritance which was an amazing feat.

“We have arrived,” the receptionist woman said after pressing a button and a moment later the elevator door opened. I kind of wished I didn’t scan the whole building beforehand but it had become a habit of mine so there was no helping it. I was doing it unconsciously at this point so even though the magic-lit elemental tiles provided a mesmerizing sight, I knew what was waiting for me on this floor so I wasn’t surprised.

Glancing at Lien’s face, I could see her staring forward with an unconcerned expression on her face, suffering from the exact same problem as me. Being powerful also had its drawbacks… it was hard to surprise us.

Clearly, the guy called William was more surprised to see our stone-like expressions despite this being our first time in this building. He had short black hair and some stubbles on his handsome face, going really well with his elegant white shirt and blue jeans, matching with a black leather belt. He looked like a real casanova. I’d probably feel threatened if I didn’t know my wife better.

Simply sizing him up and running her eyes over his body, she then looked into his eyes naturally. In fact, it was William who couldn’t hide his hunger completely after seeing my wife. She was my ultimate waifu.

Ignoring the matter, for the time being, William quickly recovered and said, “Please, come and follow me. I’ve notified the City Lord but while we’re waiting for him, let me show you around.”

“Oh~? He’s making me wait to show that his city isn’t inferior compared to ours?” Lien seemingly gloated over his decision in her mind.

“Should I?” I asked.

“No. Let’s play along with him. I’ll be polite and wait for now but if he makes me wait for more than five minutes, you can go ahead and release a quarter of your magic power,” she replied, deep inside excited for the latter to happen.

“You are a bad girl.”

“I am.”

“I love it.”

“I know.”

While we were having fun chatting, William went on about introducing this building.

“There is a formation on this floor which gathers mana and pushes it upwards. There are many rooms from this floor upwards and the residents can rent any of them as long as they have the necessary funds. The higher you go, the higher the mana density becomes and the more you can progress. Naturally, the price raises accordingly,” he said proudly, not knowing that Leviathan was built on a similar system but thousands of times more powerful than this one.

I needed a lot of mana to power everything but compared to the density of mana in this area, the amount they were using was negligible, laughable even. Well, it was easy for me to talk when I had a god’s inheritance. I knew it was unfair against these people but I was annoyed by the fact that their City Lord intentionally made us wait. I just couldn’t help it, and it wasn’t like I ridiculed them. It happened only in my mind so it should be allowed!

“I see, it’s quite good,” Lien replied with a small smile, clearly expressing that it was no big deal.

Forcing a smile on his face, unprepared for this kind of reaction, William didn’t know how to respond either so he just shut up. Knowing that if the silence continued things would become extremely awkward for him, he turned around the conversation and ask about Leviathan instead.

“Miss Lien, you don’t seem to be impressed by something this amazing, so could it be that you have something even better?”

His question was quite aggressive but we probably came off as arrogant people to him so it was no wonder. Whether we wanted it or not, we couldn’t allow them to look down on our side else we would start from an unfavorable position even before the meeting started. Their city lord was most likely a god incarnation since he could be considered an S ranked magician even in Leviathan. The other option was that he inherited at least a few scientific books and also had great talent.

“I’m sorry if I came off arrogant but if you had ever taken our test, you’d know the answer. Let me show you a small trick,” she replied humbly as she waved her hand and pointed at me. Nodding my head, I pointed at the ground and compressed enough mana for it turn into a small pool of condensed mana. “This can be done with a formation as well but that’s beside the point.”

“This… no, it’s my fault for asking it like that,” he replied.

Faced with absolute power, his eyes opened wide and he could only drop his arrogant act. He probably hadn’t seen condensed mana before. Truth be told, even condensed mana had different qualities depending on its density and one of the best if not the best was in my body.

One tiny drop of my mana weighed roughly ten kilograms and I had six liters of it in my mana veins, so I was very heavy. In fact, I had to make myself lighter with gravity magic else I’d probably find myself on the floor whenever I laid down on the bed. Hell, maybe the tiles I stood on wouldn’t hold either.

I felt tempted to test its durability but I didn’t come here to cause trouble so I restrained myself.

Being sensible, the city lord still understood that we came from a powerful city so he didn’t make us wait for long and about two minutes later, he allowed us to go up to his floor through his private elevator. Once we entered his large office, we were met with a pair of people sitting behind a large dark brown wooden desk. One of them was the city lord while the other one was a young girl who seemed to be his daughter since she had a few features that resembled the middle-aged man next to her.

The girl seemed to be around sixteen years old while the man was in his late thirties. Both of them had blonde hair but while the girl’s was long and wavy, the man’s was similar to mine, cut up on the sides and short on the top. After scanning both of them thoroughly, I was sure that she was his daughter since their DNA was matching.

“Welcome to my humble city, Miss Lien, right? Pleased to meet you, my name is Tanner Bowen and this is my daughter, Abby Bowen. Please, take a seat,” he greeted us, pointing at the big and comfy chair in front of his desk. Seeing me stopping right behind Lien like a soldier, he added, “Your guard can sit down as well, naturally.”

“I’m fine standing,” I replied to make him feel that only Lien could tell me what to do.

“You can do as he said,” Lien said as she turned towards me, barely loud enough for the man to hear and then turned back to introduce herself. Seeing me sitting down, I could see his brows twitching but he didn’t say anything about it.

“Miss Lien-”

“There is no need for such formalities. I’m only nineteen years old so I prefer talking bluntly,” she interrupted him, seeing that he was about to switch to business mode. Most of these leaders didn’t like serious talks since they could discuss anything with their fists.

“Ah, that’s great then. May I call you Lien in that case? You can also call me Tanner,” he said with a smile. Seeing her nod, he continued from where he left off, “So what can I help you with?”

“I imagine you should have heard of Leviathan so I’m not going to introduce where I come from,” she said, and seeing him nod, she continued, “Today I came here because there is a rather serious problem in the world that we have a solution to. Since you’re quite powerful yourself, you should know that copying money isn’t that hard for most of the people and that many people create counterfeit money.”

“William has told me how this building works so I imagine this problem is no stranger to you considering the number of powerful magicians in your city.”

“It’s indeed a problem but the people who use the upper floors would be able to earn enough money to use the chambers anyway. It’s more troublesome that the fake currency flows into common people’s hands and our dollars are slowly becoming more and more worthless. I tried imbuing money with my own mana in the past but there were many whos mana was almost as powerful as mine and common people couldn’t tell apart whether it was real or not,” he replied, clearly interested after hearing her offer.

“So how do you plan to solve this problem and what do you expect in turn?”

Smiling at him, she opened a small portal next to her and pulled out a small bag of Leviathan Coins, placing it on Tanner’s desk. While he was still processing what he had seen, he pulled the bag closer to him and took a look inside, along with his daughter who was staring at me quite often, for some reason. Well, I knew why she was staring after checking her with soul language but I could only ignore it. She had a thing for big bulky men and I seemed to be her type.

“Once you take one of them into your hand, you’ll know the answer,” Lien replied.

Doing as told, Tanner quickly picked up a coin and then his eyes opened wide from his surprise, “What incredible power! This coin would be enough to fuel the whole city with energy for a few days!” he couldn’t help but raise his voice.

“All of these coins were made by my husband and contain a bit of his magic power. If you removed the formations from the coins, they would weigh roughly fifty kilograms each because of the high mana density so be careful not to hurt yourself,” she said.

“Incredible. How many of these do you have and just how powerful is your husband?” he asked, still rolling around the coins in his hands.

“We have a few billion of these coins but I’ve started distributing it in many other large cities and countries and the amount they each received was dependent on their own population. What differs everywhere is the exchange rate of these coins which is one of the things I wish to discuss with you.”

“I see, I’d be more than happy to use your currency but I would like a lot of these if possible,” he said, putting it back into the bag.

“I imagine the stronger the population is, the less these coins are going to cost, right?” he asked with a bright smile on his face, expecting a positive answer. Sadly for him, that wasn’t our logic.

“Hehe, it’s the other way around. You see, weak communities don’t have many magicians who could copy money with magic so they don’t have that many problems with their local currencies either. Opposite of that, places like yours are filled with powerful people and many of them could copy your currency, which would also make it easier to buy Leviathan Coins.”

“If the exchange rate was high enough, people would probably check the exchanged money more thoroughly and it’d be much harder to pay with fake money. There is also one golden rule, you can exchange in Leviathan Coins only with the local currencies of each city.”

“Now you may think that this is stupid since your people would simply go to weak cities to exchange for Leviathan Coins, but by the time they found out about this small problem, the side effect of our coins would spread. All these coins have a few small formations on them and cause paper and common metals nearby to slightly evolve. For example, papers could turn brown, iron could turn green or any other random color.”

Thinking about the matter, he said, “There are still loopholes in this but as long as I can prevent people from exchanging fake money to Leviathan Coins, it’d certainly turn secure. I could simply centralize currency exchanges and allow only people who know what the original is like to exchange. I can already see it working!” murmuring to himself, he suddenly raised his voice and slapped his table as he thought about it.

Things were going quite smoothly, it seemed. It was just while they were talking about business, Abby was ogling me the whole time, even staring at my crotch sometimes. I couldn’t help but wonder if women felt the same way I did at the moment. I was kind of happy to see that she was interested in me but I also felt annoyed by her constant staring.

I was just hoping that Lien would stay focused enough and fail to notice what Abby was doing. She trusted me but unlike me, she wasn’t used to other women ogling me and took it in a rather bad way. It rarely happened but she almost always got pissed off. She was just as possessive as I was so I couldn’t blame her for it. I understood her emotions well.

While they discussed the exchange rates and how to proceed with things, I could only sit there and ignore Abby. They took only a few minutes to finish and then both of them leaned back in their chairs, easing up after their long discussion.

Changing the topic to something more personal and friendly, Tenner asked, “By the way, you said you were nineteen years old, right? How come you’re already married? I was twenty-eight years old when I got married,” he laughed.

“Haha, don’t worry. If anyone told me three years ago that I’d be married at the age of nineteen, I’d have laughed in their face. I have known my husband since childhood but some things happened and we were separated. I didn’t think that a few years later we would not only reunite but he would also ask for my hand. I think we went out for about a month at most before he gave me the ring,” she replied, her face filled with smiles as she talked about it.

It was clearly a nice memory in her mind. I could only smile like an idiot myself.

“And what about your daughter? Maybe she will find someone to marry in the near future,” Lien replied as she turned towards Abby. Luckily, she wasn’t sneaking glances at me at that moment so she didn’t notice what she was doing.

“I wouldn’t want to be tied down by a man,” Abby replied, shaking her head. Her voice was quite pleasant as well, matching her ‘noble’ background and pretty looks. It wasn’t even worth looking at other women for me because I always found myself complaining in my mind why my wife was better in all kinds of areas. This blonde girl was pretty but she couldn’t compare to my wifey either.

“I also thought that way but if you find the real one, you’ll be more than happy to marry,” Lien replied.

“That may be true but I don’t know such a man. By the way, I had been looking for a good sparring partner like your guard so would you mind leaving him here so that we could train?” she asked, giving me a flirtatious look.

Oh, no.

As I glanced at Lien, I could see her brows twitching a few times and felt emotions flaring up through Link. Luckily for the girl, she had great self-control and since this was a meeting, she didn’t let it show on her face either.

“I would never leave behind my own people and he’s also married which means that he has a family waiting for him in Leviathan. I’m afraid I can’t go along with your wish unless the person in question wishes to stay,” she replied, turning to look at me.

“I’m sorry Miss Abby but I wish to go back,” I replied shortly, finally having the chance to express myself.

“Ah, what a shame. And here I was looking forward to it,” she sighed loudly, looking at her father pitifully.

Seeing that Tenner was about to open his mouth, Lien said, “You shouldn’t feel sorry because if you fought him, there’d be nothing left of you.”

For some reason, the way she said it really sounded as if her words had a hidden meaning. It was easy for her to talk big since I progressed slowly and made her get used to pleasure touch. If I ever touched another girl the way I did Lien, their brains would probably turn into vegetables after a single round. People could break because of pain and so they could because of pleasure. Abby seriously didn’t know what she was after.

“Miss Lien, rest assured, my daughter isn’t weak even if she’s young,” hearing her response, Tanner couldn’t help but side with her.

“It seems like you don’t understand the difference, probably because you can’t see through him. Could you?” she asked as she turned to look at me.

As I released a quarter of my magic power and covered the whole room with it, both he and his daughter started sweating profusely. For people, a huge difference in magic power felt as if they were being pressed from all directions, sometimes pushing the air out of them. Being attacked with gravity magic felt very similar except for that it wasn’t forcing you in a specific direction.

Well, to be more accurate, it was possible to achieve the same effect with gravity magic since stars could also collapse into themselves and the same could be done to humans. It was just that I had done it before and it was a rather ugly sight, so I preferred using other magic if it was possible. Something ‘nicer’ and less bloody.

When I finally pulled it back, they both caught their breath and leaned back in their chairs, their faces a little pale. After being pressured for a few seconds, their bodies were trying hard to restabilize their messy pulses, which was perfectly normal when people stayed in a magic-filled environment that was too strong for them to handle.

“Can you understand the difference now? It wouldn’t do any good for her to spar with him,” Lien followed up right away, leaving them no chance to utter a single word.

Taking a deep breath, Tanner quickly fixed his breath while Abby clearly had more trouble taking it. She was clearly inexperienced so it was sensible that she was looking for a sparring partner but she was looking for it in the wrong place.

“I’m more surprised that Miss Lien could endure that pressure… and I must admit I underestimated your guard,” Tanner replied, sneakily drying himself with magic. He at least wasn’t wiping his forehead with his hands as mortals would.

“Sir Tanner, let me give you a piece of advice. You shouldn’t judge someone based on their looks because Miss Lien is stronger than me, it would be weird if she was affected by my presence,” I replied, trying to sound as humble yet powerful as possible. Based on his surprised expression, I believe I did a good job. I probably didn’t sound arrogant either.

His eyes opening wide, he glanced at my wife and just slightly shook his head, starting to understand the power difference between his city and ours. We didn’t want him to feel equals, we weren’t anyway. After chatting a bit more, we said our goodbyes and Lien agreed to bring the coins over in a week, which would be enough for Tanner to prepare everything. He said he would make a speech and broadcast it to the whole city and introduce the Leviathan Coins and how people could exchange their money for it.

Since things were looking good and Lien made a deal with him smoothly, we teleported back to Leviathan straight from his office, probably giving him another surprise. The only thing I found strange was that some of the people who were outside the building when we arrived were still waiting there. It made no sense that a group of people were ‘camping’ in front of the city hall during our whole meeting. I could clearly sense that they were monitoring the place.

For some reason, I had a feeling that they were waiting for someone to come out but I wasn’t sure why. I decided in my heart that I’d follow Lien when it was time for us to hand over the coins and see if those guys would still be around. Since it was possible that they were some kidnappers or human traffickers in the city, I added a new mission in Leviathan for a Sage ranked group who should have a Warlord as a leader.

Such a team was probably overkill for a city like Washington but it was better safe than sorry. One of the best things about Leviathan was that I could do many things through the little utility chip that was integrated into my body. Naturally, mine and Lien’s had the most functions and only the two of us could access everything.

Magic was great but so was technology. I never thought that I would get so much from Light city. It was a ‘bad’ memory but it was also the ‘foundation’ of Leviathan since most of the first residents came over from Light city. It was also kind of unique since there weren’t many cities around which had technology as advanced as ours.

After visiting our parents and picking up Felice and Reiner, we went back home and Lien called over her apostles to continue training them. The good thing was that she just had to show them how to cast the spells they were learning or maybe explain its workings a bit more and the rest was up to them to interpret. She didn’t have to babysit them so we could spend more time together.

I have to admit that after becoming a father and seeing her apostles regularly, I kind of started seeing them as close relatives or something of the sort.

We spent the rest of the day lazing around and went out in the evening to meet up with the other leaders for a small meeting. Lien also planned to visit another large city in the future while I started laying soul-blocking formations around the largest cities. Once I activated them, it’d take only a few days to remove Sylvanus’ soul force from hundreds of millions of people’s bodies.

There was only one problem with it. I was sure that Sylvanus wouldn’t stay idle once I made that step and I could only hope that I was strong enough to beat its ass.