The Mage Emperor

(AN: A strong warning for the readers! Those who are highly religious or can't take different opinions should tread carefully in the next few chapters, least they find themselves offended. While I don't think I have many highly religious readers (I could be wrong), I wanted to warn them, just in case.

People have differing opinions and I respect yours, whatever you believe in but the next two chapters will contain a part of my beliefs about the matter. Feel free to disagree with it, just don't start hating on me for having a different opinion. :D

Despite my warning, I'm expecting a few 1-star ratings, especially once I post chapter 28 as well... In fact, I think that 28 is the one that you could find offending.)

A new… religion?

“Where did this happen?” I asked with a frown, staring back at Lugh. Seeing that I was calm and wasn’t panicking, he took a deep breath and calmed down as well. Realising that we shouldn’t be chatting in front of my door, I grabbed his shoulder and said, “Let’s go to the office.” Seeing him nodding, I teleported both of us to our office in the city hall.

I sat down in my chair while he took a seat on the dark brown leather sofa and picked up a cup of tea from the table.

“That’s mine… I left it there yesterday,” I remarked.

Waving his hand, he said, “It doesn’t matter, I don’t mind drinking after you. Your body doesn’t have anything dirty in it anyway.”

“Whatever. Let’s get back to the point,” I urged him.

“Ah, you’re right,” he slapped his forehead. Although he was a master of illusions, I could still affect his mind and make him calm down with a bit of trickery. Turned out I calmed him down a bit too much since he almost forgot about it.

“Sylvanus destroyed Baghdad which was a large city in the Southwestern corner of Asia. It had a population of about four million and they were growing steadily over the years. Their military force was considerably high compared to the size of their city since almost everyone was a capable magician. They had about fifty people who had enough magic power to use WORD magic, though they didn’t have the necessary knowledge for it.”

“As far as I know, only three people knew how to use it and they were all god incarnations… which means that Sylvanus easily got rid of those three as well. Although every Sentinel in Leviathan has the ability to do the same, they were still god incarnations at the Warlord rank so they weren’t weaklings either. I would have to put up a good fight to beat down three warlords at the same time.”

“Considering that many of the Sage ranked people were close to those three god incarnations, I’m quite sure that they actually knew how to use WORD magic, even if our scouts couldn’t find out about it when they first visited the city. What do you think? Is it possible to launch such a large scale attack without anyone noticing it and wiping out the whole population with a single spell?” he asked, raising his brows.

“Why? Was it caused by a single spell?” I asked back instead.

“That’s what the scouts said but once you go there, you can probably figure out more than them,” he replied.

“We’ll go and check it out in a bit,” I replied while I was thinking through many possibilities.

“To answer your question, it’s possible. You said there was a big crater in the middle of the city so let’s start out with that. First of all, answer me a question. Would you be able to sense a spell that I created in space? Even if it was a large scale one that would move a lot of mana.”

“No,” he shook his head, his eyes flashing as he realised my implications.

“I’m passively sensing my surroundings every second and my senses cover an area of two hundred kilometers in all directions. The shortest distance to space is about a hundred kilometers away but there is no way a Warlord ranked mage could notice anything that’s so far away. Now let’s say Sylvanus created a meteorite above the city and let’s not forget that it was night so nobody could see it either. It then stacked different kinds of WORD magic on the rock that would activate upon impact.”

“Its magic power is probably comparable to mine, or even stronger, so its effects would be devastating. If it also increased the speed of the meteor, those Warlord ranked god incarnations wouldn’t notice the incoming attack before it reached within… five or six kilometers of the city. If they weren’t in the middle of the city, they wouldn’t even sense it with passive sense alone, not to mention that not everyone is scanning their surroundings continuously.”

“True, even the god incarnations that have joined us were usually rookies who relied purely on their strength. They thought that it would be fine to not scan their surroundings since nothing could hurt them anyway. Most of them scanned it actively only a few times a day and that was all,” he nodded, agreeing with my opinion.

“Yeah, so there is a projectile shooting towards the middle of the city which they probably didn’t even sense and said projectile was full of destructive magic. Even if somebody noticed it, they surely had no chance to do anything about it. Depending on the speed, even I would have trouble doing anything about it if I noticed it when it was so close,” I raised my finger.

“Bah, let’s not talk about you, you freak… anyway, that seems to be plausible so shall we go and check out what’s left of the city?” he asked.

“Let’s go,” I replied and then both of us teleported to the city of Bagdad. Or at least, its place. Sure enough, there was nothing left of the city other than a huge crater and for many kilometers, we couldn’t see anything other than sand. The River Tigris that crossed the city was bordering with the crater but it didn’t fill it up so we could still go there and check things out.

Seeing a few hooded figures in the middle of it, Lugh looked at me and explained, “They’re our scouts. A few of them stayed back to watch over the area until you arrived.”

“Okay,” I replied, quickly flying over and landing next to them.

“Hello, boss!” one of the scouts stepped forward.

“Dixon? I haven’t seen you in a while. How’re you doing?” I asked. Since she had been with us ever since I’ve killed Thanatos, she had become a Magister ranked magician. There were very few people when things started out so I was teaching everyone personally. Well, to be more exact, Lien ended up teaching most of them since not everyone could understand my roundabout explanations. But she was certainly one of those people.

Although back in the days she became a dryad because she gathered too many particles of the nature element, I’ve fixed her body and turned her back into a normal human. She also learned how to cultivate all elements and gained the elemental body about two months later. After Shawn joined our ranks and became one of the sentinels, Dixon took an interest in his way of fighting and started working under him.

She learned a lot from Shawn and besides using the nature element, she focused a lot on dark magic, concealment, quick and deadly offensive magic, and learned illusion magic from Lugh as well. She turned out to be a very capable scout and assassin. In fact, she was close to becoming a Sentinel herself.

Although she was quite short, reaching only a height of a hundred and sixty-five centimeters, she still had a voluptuous body which she wasn’t afraid to use to seduce men. Sadly for those guys, they never got what they were expecting. I heard she also liked to fool men in Leviathan and I could see why they fell for it… The only thing she kept from her Dryad body was her grass-green hair which went really well with her green eyes.

Placing her hand on my chest, she asked, “Boss, you can do more than staring~”

Rolling my eyes, I grabbed her wrist and pushed her hand away.

“Hahaha, and here I thought I could tell on you to Lien. You were staring so much I thought you wanted something,” she said playfully as she followed me to the center of the crater. She became much more talkative than in the past, though she was still a clever girl, foxy even.

“I would never even consider other women so you can rest assured, even if I’m staring at someone, I’m most likely thinking about something. You just happen to be in front of me while I was spacing out so stop fooling around,” I waved my hand, signalling for her to keep quiet.

She didn’t have to know that if either of us cheated on the other, my commandment would kill the cheating side. Well, it was something like a safety belt and I could probably disable it if I looked into it but I never considered cheating on my beloved wife so I never checked out how it worked. It was a small devilish circle. I just didn’t waste my time researching something that I’d have no use of.

Maybe I would if Lien wanted to break up as that would probably make her happier, though that would be my last day as well, most likely… Luckily, we were crazy over each other and neither of us wanted our budding relationship to end, so that was unlikely to ever happen.

Now I kind of want to go back and hug her along with my children… whatever, I should focus on this mess first, I thought as I looked around.

“Is this where you found the wooden plate with the message?” I asked, seeing a small rectangle shaped dent in the ground.

“Yes. I don’t know what caused this crater but there are many small rocks littering in the crater so I thought it could have been a meteorite or something. It probably wasn’t too large else it would have destroyed the planet…” she replied, looking over my shoulder, also blocking the sun.

Rolling my eyes, I generated some light with my hand to ‘look’ at the point of impact and see even the tiniest of traces.

“Have you noticed that there is a needle-sized hole in the ground?” I asked, turning towards Dixon.

It was incredibly hard to notice but I could easily spot even a speck of dust in a hayrick, as long as I focused on something. Well, to be more exact, I wasn’t seeing with my eyes but with my mana. At this point, my eyes existed only to make me look human and to convey my emotions since I didn’t use them for anything else. My brain could process the returning information from my mana scan just as well as it could the information from a normal human’s eyes.

In fact, I could perceive the difference in every color unlike normal eyes and ‘see’ things I had never seen before through mana. That was once again something that she didn’t have to know which was the only reason I used some light magic to pretend that I was looking at the area. Thanks to my powers I knew a lot of things about the people around me, both their private life and what they showed to others.

I could see through many people and although I never judged my people, no matter what weird hobbies or habits they had, they surely wouldn’t want me to know about them. That was the main reason I made sure they wouldn’t find out about my senses.

“A hole? What hole?” she asked with a frown, squinting her eyes as she stared at the place in front of me. After scanning it with her mana multiple times, she said, “Look, I’m strong enough to sense all the tiny holes in the ground but there are thousands of them and it’s not exclusive to this place so what’s your point? There are many others like those and I can’t sense unnaturally large ones either. So everything looks natural, no?”

“You aren’t wrong but the one I’m talking about goes twenty kilometers deep and has a needle-sized stone at its bottom so tell me, is that normal?” I asked with a smile. That was the main reason my ‘sight’ was different when compared to normal people, even if they were god incarnations. With my new body, I could sense literally everything that was around me and I could also process the huge influx of information. Even if a normal god incarnation got my body and my sight, they wouldn’t be able to use its advantages because of their limited brain capabilities. 

Just scanning a few meters ahead would probably make their brain overloaded with information and knock them out. It was true that passive scanning was different and didn’t require that much brain usage but when I scanned actively, like now, even I had to use my brain to the utmost.

“That’s bullshit! How could I notice a needle-sized stone twenty kilometers underground? Or wait, are you joking with me? You can’t possibly be that ridiculous-” while she didn’t want to believe me and was about to deny me, I used gravity magic to pull it to the surface and take a closer look. It was a dark green coloured crystal which had tiny veins in it, kind of resembling the image of a glass cage that was filled to the brim with vines. Naturally, the stone was as tiny as a needle, else it would have left a larger hole.

“What’s that? How come I didn’t notice it?” Dixon stomped on the ground, pissed off to see me pull out some strange object.

“It’s alright, the mana flow is very fine-tuned in it so your senses probably considered it to be normal mana flow, or maybe a mana vein, right? It was also very deep underground so I wouldn’t be surprised if you couldn’t even sense it,” I replied, trying to make her feel better. I was telling the truth so she really had no reason to feel bad about it.

“I figured but it’s still annoying. Even now, I can sense it only because it’s above the ground…” she grumbled while I decided to ignore her existential crisis and continued looking around. The magic power in the stone was indeed comparable to mine, though it was a bit weaker which was probably because of the mana leakage.

Thanks to this stone, now I have a clue of what I have to look for and if Gil could pick up on Sylvanus’ mana, it’d be much easier to find that monster. Well, let’s hope that Gil can sense it…

After placing a mana-sealing formation on the stone to stop the mana from leaking, I consulted with the others about what to do and then returned to Leviathan.

“What happened?” Lien asked through Link, ‘sounding’ a bit worried.

“Sylvanus destroyed a whole city where I laid down my soul-blocking formation. I made this one yesterday and it was the only city that ended up that way,” I replied shortly.

“Hmm, considering that the other cities are still safe, Sylvanus is either waiting for you to remove the existing formations or it doesn’t know about the other cities. The latter would be great since it would mean that its hideout is somewhere around Bagdad,” she said.

“Indeed but even if that’s the case, it probably moved to another place after taking action. I hope that it’s not going to ruin another city which has my formation around it.”

“I hope so, that’d be horrible. By the way, the kids are sleeping so I could take them over to our parents for the time being and help you out,” she said, sort of asking for my confirmation.

“Fine by me. Go and bring Gil to me in that case while I check out the stone I found,” I said and after saying our goodbyes, I made a few tests on the stone.

It was made of condensed mana and contained a huge amount of energy, enough to blow up a whole city. Naturally, a simple explosion wouldn’t have killed god incarnations and powerful magicians so the energy was used to fuel the spells. It was quite amazing that even after being fired once, it still had that much energy in it.

“Is it fine if Ma’at comes with Gil? They were together, on a date, I believe…” Lien asked a few minutes after she left to call over Gil.

“Oh? Are they going out?” I chortled, thinking of ways to tease them once they came over.

“I don’t know but I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, seemingly not moved by the idea.

“Ah, yes, it’s fine. Lugh has been with me the whole time anyway. I guess I should call over Mazu and Shawn as well while we’re at it,” I replied.

“You do that,” she laughed, appearing in front of me without any warning. Teleporting so close to someone was very dangerous.

“O-Okay…” I stuttered in my surprise, our lips only inches away. Quickly regaining my composure, I looked over her shoulder and saw Gil and Ma’at behind her back. Clearing my throat, I added, “You shouldn’t teleport so close to someone. What if a part of your body was supposed to return to its original shape in someone else’s place? If I took a step forward or just stretched my leg, you could have easily lost your legs!”

“Hehe, I was sure that you wouldn’t move so I dared to teleport in front of you. It also wouldn’t be much to regrow my leg even if I lost it, so what does it matter?” she asked, placing her finger on the tip of my nose.

“Just don’t do it,” I rolled my eyes, flicking her forehead.

“Ouch~ it seems like everyone is here so let’s get to the point,” she mumbled as she stepped to the side, finally pulling back her knee from between my legs. Skadi, Mazu, and Shawn teleported to the room while we were flirting with each other so when Lien moved to the side, I was forced to face six people staring at me with various expressions on their faces.

After observing them a bit more, I realised that Gil and Ma’at were focused on each other while Lugh and Mazu were ‘immune’ to our flirtatious behavior, seemingly used to it. Skadi just shook her head while Shawn was looking at me with a mocking smile splattered on his stupid face.

“I’m sorry about that,” I said and continued as if nothing happened, “I’ve called you all here because…” after explaining everything to them along with my findings about the stone, I handed it over to Gil and let him inspect it, hoping that he could sense Sylvanus’ mana.

Coming to the end of my explanation, I told Gil what I wanted from him, “That being the case, I want you to use your commandment to look for Sylvanus in the nearby area. Since your commandment works with magic-generated rain as well, I’ll help you go through the whole continent. Hopefully, you can find that bastard.”

“I’ll try my best but I’m not sure if I can actually do it. Even if you’re capable to make it rain on a whole continent, the distance I can sense is limited…” he said with a downcast face, seemingly ashamed of himself.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s already much better than what we had before. I’ve moved around the planet and tried scanning every area multiple times but it never bore fruit. Maybe you can find that thing with your commandment,” I patted his shoulder. Like most of the people in Leviathan, he was also affected by my soul force so that little gesture was enough to make him feel better and brighten up his mood.

For some reason, it felt as if I was praising my kids or something… even though they were all grown up adults. The way they reacted to my praise also resembled the way young kids reacted when their parents praised them.

I still found it a bit strange but honestly speaking, I didn’t feel bad even after learning about the exact effects of my soul force. It wasn’t like I used their ‘affection’ for anything bad and I could also cheer them up easily. There was also no danger of them becoming overly dependent on me since they still preferred fixing their own problems on their own.

Over time I started to realise that the desire to overcome our own hardships by ourselves was a common quality of Leviathan’s people, including me and my wife. We all liked working in a team but I preferred doing things I could do alone on my own. Still, when I had no time or I needed help, there was always someone to jump in and help me out which was great.

The sentinels were often busy and yet whenever both Lien and I had something to do and there was something important to deal with, they still took their time to help us out. There were also many cases when Lugh or Skadi had to deal with something in their own country so Lien, myself, or someone else jumped in to replace them. In short, the people in Leviathan had a mutually helpful relationship.

Honestly speaking, I never thought that this kind of synchronization was possible among thousands of people without going through a gruesome training together. Humans simply weren’t that kind of species and I never thought that Leviathan would be this peaceful. Even when I built it, I thought there’d be lots of trouble in the future but there wasn’t. I could only guess that it had to do with my soul force since it was present in everyone. Maybe it served as a bridge between people to create harmony.

The reason I thought about this was quite simple. Looking back in history, even when times were hard, humans would fight amongst themselves even if it endangered our own species. We united only in the very last moments so, to me, it made no sense that the various cities and countries weren’t waging wars these days.

People had no trouble killing each other so that certainly wasn’t the reason they didn’t attack each other. Many of them were safe enough from monsters so the outside threat wasn’t a problem either, and it wasn’t like all the powerful cities had ‘nice’ leaders. In fact, most of them were nice only on the surface. If we didn’t bring anything valuable to Washington, I was quite sure that Tanner would have tried to deal with us in a much grosser way.

That was the main reason I wasn’t touched by their cute little story of nice father and daughter relationship and how the poor them were being attacked by James and Justin. Tanner’s daughter seemed to be a rather annoying person as well.

Abbey… was it? Thinking about her, I remembered that she even tried to take me to her bed.

So back to the point, I had a guess why these powerful communities never attacked one another or tried to increase their own territories. It was because of Sylvanus’ soul force in their bodies. It seemed to harmonize people on a global scale, though it wasn’t enough to avoid all personal conflicts. Well, the ‘taming’ trait wasn’t exclusive to beasts either, it was just that nobody used it on another human. At least, they didn’t do it openly.

Actually, now that I think about it, Aphrodite’s commandment made people go crazy over her and stuff. They started worshiping her as their god and even her smile was enough to make them eternally happy. After a few weeks have passed, my tiger pet, Aria has become very attached to me as well. I just pat her head and she instantly rolls around in her happiness. 

Most of the people in Aphrodite’s family were born with the tamer trait but as a god incarnation, she probably knew more about it than anyone else and used it on people instead of monsters. When she tried to affect me, she also tried to pour her soul force into my body and I tamed Aria in the same way.

So if I poured a large part of my soul force into people… could I also tame them and make them obey me the way the White family followed her? Now that I think about it, she didn’t resemble her father so maybe she wasn’t even the descendant of the White family. They just happened to be powerful and she tamed the poor guy when she was still a child and turned him into her father.

Ugh- if that’s really what happened, I feel sorry for that ruined family. Aphrodite is really better off dead. I guess I’ll try it on some evil gangs instead of killing them in the future. I’ll just get rid of them after I get my answers since I don’t want to control people in that way.

While I was deep in thought, I felt that Tanner crushed the stone I gave him, meaning that he needed my help in Washington. Thinking about that bastard Justin guy who threatened me with his father’s name and the way he wanted to boss around and take my wife, I could only smile.

“The timing is simply perfect,” I muttered to myself.

“What for?” Lien asked.

“I’ll explain in a bit. You can come with me if you want but before that, could someone take Gil on a trip to Baghdad and make him scan the nearby area? I have something else to do right now."

"I could…" Ma'at said in a low voice.

"How cute of you. Taking care of your hubby?" I asked with a smirk, seeing her blushing.

Unfortunately, she wasn't too gullible and quickly regained her composure. "Yes, yes…" she waved her hand. "But you'll have to shut down the entrance to your testing grounds since I won't be able to welcome the newcomers.”

“Oh, there is no need to worry about that. I’ve closed all portals yesterday. The ones that came afterward are people who passed the test after I closed the gates,” Lien replied before I could.

“Is that so?” I raised my brows, hearing this for the first time.

Looking at me, she said, “I was the one who opened the portals as practice back in the years so I don’t have to go over to close them. And the reason I closed them is related to the peace of Leviathan. You see, after you got rid of the Germs and Necrons, thousands of people tried their luck and passed the test in a single month. Our population barely passed ten thousand and if too many new people came, it’d ruin the stability and the balance of our community.”

“Once they get used to the place and integrate into our systems, we can reopen the portals.”

“Hahaha, my dear, I know about that. My question was meant to point out that you forgot to tell me about your actions,” I laughed, caressing her face. Well, it wasn’t like she had to report to me everything she did. It was just that closing the portals wasn’t the same as going to the shop and not telling me about it. Her order of importance was a little messed up sometimes. She never left the house without telling me where she went but sometimes she did ‘grander’ things without telling me.

“Oops? I’m really sorry about that,” she looked at me filled with guilt.

“It’s not a problem. Just try to remember it next time,” I smiled at her, kissing her forehead.

“Hubby, don’t do this in front of the others,” she said, taking hold of my hand before I could caress her face again.

“Uhm, you’re right, sorry. I should get going before it’s too late so do you want to come with me?”

“Of course,” she nodded.

Turning around, I ignored all the dead fish stares that I got and said, “Fine then. Ma’at, I’ll leave Gil to you. The others can go back to work or whatever you were doing. I’ve got to leave now.”

Holding Lien’s hand tightly, I teleported both of us to Tanner’s position. The last time I left I gave him a small stone wrapped in a piece of paper that had a few instructions on it. Since he has crushed the stone as it stood on the paper, he probably got in trouble.

“And here I was thinking about where you wanted to go. Is this about the thing you gave Tanner last time?” Lien asked as she looked around, finding herself in the middle of an arena in Washington.

“Yup, though I didn’t think that I would end up here…” I scratched my chin, seeing that I was surrounded by thousands of people who were staring at Lien and me with surprised faces. It was the worst.

“Are you alright or should I take over?” Lien asked, caressing my back.

“I’ll be fine, I’m getting used to being the center of attention, though I still hate it. How can anyone seek this out of their own will? I can’t understand,” I grumbled to her.

“Positive attention feels very good but in reality, it’s all empty. You’ll just crave it more and more and never feel fulfilled while if you do what you like, you’ll feel fulfilled. It’s quite addictive but it doesn’t really make anyone happy. It’s momentary happiness, at best,” she replied.

“Maybe that’s why I hate attention then. I’ve never experienced positive attention from groups when I was young, so it’s like a bad memory to me and even after experiencing it, it’s just acceptable to me. By the way, are you sure that you should be caressing me like that? Am I not supposed to play the role of your guard? People will think I get cucked by a guard...”

“Oh my, you can’t let people think that, can you? It’d be quite troublesome for me as well so you better clarify who you are,” she laughed, shooing me to go towards Tanner who was surrounded by three ‘S ranked’ magicians. That Justin boy who harassed my wife last time was laying on the ground, covering his wounds, while Tanner’s daughter, Abby was held hostage by another S ranked magician. They all had the fire element mixed into their mana so they most likely belonged to Justin’s family.

It was quite funny when I realised that if Lien visited this city two weeks later, we would have talked to another leader, probably. Tanner was stronger than these mages but with his daughter held captive, I wasn’t sure what would happen to them without me.

“Who are you?” one of the three magicians surrounding Tanner asked. His short hair reminded me of ginger since it was red, though it had a few streaks of blonde as well. I was quite sure that his original hair colour was blonde but since he infused the fire element into his mana, it started mutating his body.

I replied in my normal tone and used magic to carry my voice to everyone’s ears, “My name is Seth Clearfall, the creator and leader of Leviathan. I’m a little sorry for you since I don’t really meddle in power struggles in all the communities that exist but today is going to be an exception.”

“Leviathan… I’ve heard of it but why do you have to step in now of all times?” he asked, his face turning ashen. It seemed like he knew about my place so I was kind of hoping that he would give up.

 “First of all, my wife made a deal with Tanner and it’s in my best interest that our deal won’t get thrown out the window by a new leader-”

Before I could continue, he cut into my words and said desperately, “I’ll do what you agreed on! I’ll even make it more favorable to you!”

Ignoring his offer, I appeared in front of Abby and pushed the guy who held her captive away. He couldn’t even react before he got flung into the stone wall behind him. Well, he would probably recover in a few days so it was fine.

Moving next to Tanner, I continued, “Your offer is nice but I don’t like shitty people. I’ve got some info about this city since the last time I was here and things seem to be pretty peaceful under Tanner’s rule so you should have no reason to revolt unless you are greedy and want more power. It’s good to be ambitious but since you are willing to kill a family and forcefully take over the leader’s position, it shows that your character isn’t that good and as I said, I hate shitty people.”

“Oh, and I almost forgot. Your son, Justin, tried to harass my wife the last time we were here, right in front of me, so that’s also one more reason for me to dislike your family. If you can’t even discipline your son to keep his dick in his pants instead of replacing his brain with it, how do you want to control and manage a huge city like this? Considering all this, I don’t think that I should let you take over the role of a leader.”

“Regardless, I didn’t come here to murder so I can let you live as long as you stop all your advances to become the new city lord. What do you say?” I held out my hand as I stopped in front of him.

Thanks to soul language, I knew what would happen and this way, I also didn't look like another greedy bastard. Well, I honestly wasn't greedy since this had nothing to do with our agreement with Tanner. I just wanted to get rid of another fucker who was willing to do anything to get into a better position.

Glancing at his teammates, he nodded his head and then reached towards my hand, slowly grabbing it. "I thank you for your kind offer… but I must refuse it!" he shouted as flames burst forth from his palm and covered my whole body, burning at three thousand degrees Celsius. He started laughing like an idiot, thinking that he got me as another guy 'stabbed' me into the heart while the last one charged towards Lien and put a knife to her throat.

The poor guy couldn't see anything of me because of his own stupid flame that had no effect on me. My body was made of mana… and fire was just slightly altered mana. Elemental magic had no way to hurt me.

"Well, that was awkward," I remarked as I forced my mana into his body to seal his magic. Naturally, his mana veins were torn into pieces in the process so the seal was quite pointless in the end since there was nothing left to seal. At least, he cried in pain like a pig as he fell on his ass.

"What the hell are you?"

"Good question. I'm just another person, unsurprisingly," I replied, squatting down in front of him. Pulling out the sword from my heart, not even a drop of blood on it, I thrust it into the ground in front of his dick.

Looking at the dumbfounded guy next to me, I created a gravity zone around him which turned his body into the size of a speck of dust in less than a second.

"Monster!"

"Nah, that's you. Monsters are kind of stupid and have limited power. I don't feel that either of these match me but it matches you perfectly," I shook my head.

"Let me go or your wife is dead!" he yelled at me, sweat pouring down on his body as all the effects of crushed mana veins started kicking in.

"Me?" Lien asked as she appeared next to me, leaving the third guy in a dumbass expression on his face.

Looking at the third guy, she made a grabbing motion and crushed him with gravity magic the same way I did. "Just so you know, he was never a threat since I wouldn't die even if my head was cut off, given that he could do it. Sadly for you, out of all the people that are present, only my husband would have the ability to touch me when I didn't want it," she added, waving her finger as she ‘taught’ him.

"Miss Lien, is that really true? Isn't he your guard?" Tanner ran over to her side, staring at me. This was his first time seeing us fighting and he looked very impressed, afraid even. Well, calling it a fight would be stupid since it was a one-way slaughter instead.

Chuckling, she replied, "Why would I need a guard? There are only two cases when I leave Leviathan and I’m pretty much safe in both cases. The first is when I’m going somewhere with my husband and while I can protect myself, I surely wouldn’t be able to find a better guard than him. The other is when…”

Thinking that she shouldn’t continue that sentence, she turned quiet instead. Tanner was curious, though, “When?” he asked.

“Well, I don’t think you want me to say it,” she muttered, quickly adding, “It’s when I leave to do business with people like you.”

Thinking about her words for a moment, it was clear from his expression that he realised she didn’t need guards because people like him were no threat to her. She could crush him just by looking at him. For people like him who worked hard all their life to become strong, it surely hurt to hear from a girl who wasn’t even twenty that they weren’t even worth bringing a guard because they posed no threat. Even if she didn’t say that, that was the point.

Seeing his bittersweet face, she continued, “Anyway, it's just that I am the one dealing with business and he wanted to come with me once so he pretended to be a guard.”

I found it a little strange in the past but larger cities rarely had god incarnations. Instead of having their own beliefs, most people seemed to believe in greater beings like gods. That made it hard to inherit a god’s legacy since you had to be an atheist in the first place. I wasn’t a believer of god as a child and after finding out that they were nothing but powerful people, I naturally didn’t become a believer.

Smaller communities often struggled more in their daily lives so they were more likely to turn away from those beliefs and create their own, and if those beliefs matched a “gods”, they inherited their commandment. Honestly, the word ‘god’ was just a tool for me to describe my ancestors who were powerful enough to create a commandment in their lifetimes.

I never understood why some people put some imaginary being above themselves. They often worked hard and once they achieved something, they thanked God and attributed all their own efforts to God helping them. When they felt down or lived through rough times, they prayed to God for help instead of doing something about it. The worst was when they tried to force their beliefs onto others.

I’ve never tried to change others beliefs and I also didn’t care what they believed in as long as it didn’t ruin other people’s lives. If ‘God’ made them happy, then so be it, it was none of my business. I just didn’t understand the thought process.

“Sir?”

“Huh? Did you say something?” I asked, looking at Tanner. Seeing him looking at me helplessly, I said, “I’m sorry. I fell a bit too deep into my thoughts.”

“I’ve noticed,” he muttered.

“He was asking about James and what you wanted to do with him,” Lien said, pointing at James who was still sitting on the ground in front of me, no mana left in his body.

He was covered in cold sweat, trembling because of Mana Fever and the pain in his body. Knowing that there were only two ways for this to end, I asked, “Are you finished or would you rather take revenge?”

Mustering up his last bit of power, he glared at me as he said, “I would murder your whole family if I could.”

“Fine then,” I shook my head, turning his body into a speck of dust with transmutation. His hate and wrath was understandable but there was no helping it.

“I imagine you can take care of the rest,” I added, turning towards Tanner.

“Yes, leave it to me, Sir,” he replied respectfully, his haughty and proud behaviour nowhere to be seen.

“Great. By the way, my name is Seth, so don’t call me Sir.”

“Alright.”

Taking hold of Lien’s hand, I said, “We should get going.”

“Mhm, see you later!” she waved her hand at Tanner as she opened a huge portal to the Great Plain of Leviathan. Even our little town in the distance was visible, along with the clouds all around the island, making it quite obvious that it was in the skies.

Stepping through the portal, I nodded my head and then closed it, leaving him with his stupid expression and unanswered questions. “Aren’t you a bad girl?” I asked, slapping Lien’s ass as soon as the portal closed.

“Ouh~ why would you hit me?”

“Why did you make the portal so large? You show-off,” I replied, flicking her forehead.

“Hmm~ I did it so people in Washington could find out more about Leviathan. You see, the Germs and Necrons were famous in Asia but not on the American continent so while they knew that we could deal with a huge organisation, it didn’t really mean that much to them. I believe they would be more considerate of our power if they saw that you could make a vast land in the sky,” she said, embracing my arm.

“I see. That may be a good thing,” I nodded.

“Yeah, so could you tell me now why you pretended to kill James and instead teleported him into our prison?” she asked with a frown.

Biting my lower lip, I could only curse in myself. I didn’t want her to see it but she became strong enough over time to pick up on my subtle tricks. “Well, it’s not going to be a nice thing to do but I want to test magic on him. It won’t hurt him but I find it morally questionable so I planned to check it out and then get rid of him as I should have back there.”

Raising her brows, she asked, “That’s all? That’s the big secret?”

“Erm, yeah,” I nodded, a little surprised by her reaction.

“He threatened my family, he deserves anything. I wouldn’t agree with you if you also wanted to torture him but I’d still accept your decision. If that little test really won’t even hurt him then what does it matter? I’ll go and pick up Reiner and Felice while you do your test,” she waved her hand and then disappeared from my side.

“Hm, fine then,” I shrugged my shoulders, teleporting to the prison.

When I tamed Aria, I simply put her in a place that was filled with my soul force and waited for things to take effect. But taming wasn’t like that, it was near instantaneous so I was planning to pour a lot of soul force into his body straight away to see the effects.

“Where am I? Why did you bring me here?” James asked, seeing me appearing in front of his prison cell.

Ignoring his question, I did as planned and carefully distributed my soul force in his body in just a few seconds. I found it very disturbing to see his hate-filled eyes slowly turn to normal, friendly, caring, and finally ending up mad. In just a few seconds, his hate was nowhere to be seen and he was staring at me like a mad worshipper who would do anything for me.

Falling to his knees, he shouted, “My Lord, what requ-”

Disgusted by the possibilities of this kind of magic and the way he changed, I quickly ended his life and put him out of his misery.

Knowing that my opponent was more than strong enough to do this, I could only massage my temples and hope that it didn’t know about it. Sadly, I knew that wasn’t the case considering that it wanted to take over humanity with the same method. It was just hard to affect the whole planet at the same time.

But doing the same to a smaller city would be quite easy for it… which would mean a city of freaks filled with mad worship for their owners.

“Oh my fucking god, don’t tell me religion and those mad worshippers of ‘God’ existed because of this,” I cursed loudly, realising another possibility.

Covering my face, I sat down laughing like a madman. I always thought how much better these times were than the past. We had the possibility to become strong and we were free and we could do anything!

Bullshit.

If only a few people who were as strong as me existed and found out about this, they could literally enslave the whole planet and make every single living creature their faithful dog. Just a bit stronger than me and they could even take my wife away and turn her into their little pet.

The good thing was that the stronger you were, the harder it would be to affect you and at this point, even I would have to bombard Lien’s soul for days to affect her and she would have to sit on her ass and do nothing against it. Anyway, it was very unlikely that she could be affected but I still decided that I would make everyone in Leviathan focus on improving their souls.

Taking a deep breath, I went back to our house and waited until Lien returned with our children. Naturally, I told her everything I found out about the taming trait and how it worked. When I finished talking her first sentence was that I shouldn’t call slave magic as taming. I could only agree with her.

“But I’ll continue calling it taming in front of others. I don’t want people to realise that it can be used on people as well. The fewer people know about it, the better it is. Rather than telling the whole world that one of the most widespread traits could be used for something like that, it’s better if we teach them defensive methods that can be used against it. It’s much harder to enslave humans anyway,” I replied.

“Of course, I didn’t say that you should call it that way in front of others. I just pointed out that it was a bit too similar to what I would define as slave magic,” she waved her finger.

“Ma~ mum,” Reiner cooed as he reached after her finger.

“Hahaha, you’re so cute, my dear,” she laughed, giving a big kiss on his forehead. Looking down at Felice who I was holding in my arms, I saw her staring back at me with her finger in her mouth.

“Do you love Daddy?” I asked playfully.

“Yeh-,” she cooed in a low voice, though her pronunciation was quite off.

“Kuh- isn’t she the cutest thing in the world?” I asked as I raised her up and showed her to Lien. Still sucking on her finger, she just started back at me cluelessly.

“Hahaha, she is,” Lien laughed, taking Reiner into her arms and cuddling him.

“Milk!” Reiner cried out, tapping her breast. They were getting better at talking at an incredible pace which just reflected their quick minds and their ability to learn new things.

“I reckon we will be able to converse with them in a few months,” I said.

“I doubt that they’ll need that much time if we take things seriously and teach them,” Lien shook her head as she prepared to feed Reiner.

“I know but considering Sylvanus and all that, I’m not sure how much time we’ll have… and it’s not something I can just ignore and put aside to deal with later,” I sighed, sitting down next to her. Seeing her chance, Felice quickly crept over to her mother’s thighs and demanded food.

“We’ll see- wait a moment, who is a good boy? Am I feeling it right?” she cried out, her eyes opened wide when Reiner started eating.

“What’s up?” I raised my brows.

“I can feel his teeth. He’s careful with them but his teeth are definitely growing, and he isn’t even two months old!”

“Wait, I thought Felice was sucking on her finger because she was hungry but as far as I know, babies also do it when their teeth start growing and it also comes with increased production of saliva. Could it be that her teeth are also…” scanning her body, I could sense the roots of her teeth forming at a rapid pace.

“Reiner usually drinks a bit more of your milk and he’s a small bit ahead in physical development while Felice seems to be calmer and more calculative. Could it be that this is because of your mana-filled milk? The magic milk makes babies grow? Let’s call it the Mega Milk!” I clapped my hands.

“Mega milk!” Felice repeated my clap and said happily, staring at Lien’s naked breast.

“Yes, Mega Milk!” I laughed, doing it again, only to earn a smack from my wife.

“Mega milk!” Felice jumped on Lien’s thigh as she clapped again, laughing cheerfully.

“Don’t teach her stupid things!” Lien cried out, pressing her finger against Felice’s lips.

“Hahaha, I’m sorry but I couldn't miss the chance. She seemed to be talkative so I tried my luck and things turned out this way.”

Rolling her eyes, she shook her head, “I can’t believe you. What if they start asking for food like that from now on?”

“Then I’ll laugh often,” I chortled.

“Good for you… mega dick,” she muttered, her voice so low even I could barely hear her.

“They probably didn’t hear what you said but I think that we should put a ban on inappropriate words in front of them,” I remarked.

“I know, I used magic so that they wouldn’t hear it,” she replied. “Anyway, I think that it’s better if I start feeding them with mashed food as well considering that their teeth started growing. They can also move around quite well already.”

“That should be fine. I just find it strange that they can’t walk yet but their teeth are growing. It seems like their growth won’t be the same as other kids’, though we should make sure not to treat them too out of the norm else they could feel like outsiders among normal humans,” I said, using magic to make my voice avoid their ears completely.

“That may be right but they are special and that’s also something they will have to learn and accept. Hiding it from them forever won’t do,” she said.

“Of course, I just think that it wouldn’t do them much good at a young age.” Standing up from the sofa, I ruffled Lien’s hair, much to her ‘happiness’, and said, “I’ll go and ask Ma’at and Gil about the results. Once I’m back, I’ll watch over the kids and you can go train your apostles.”

“Fine, but you didn’t have to ruffle my hair,” she glared at me.

“Haha, I couldn’t help it,” I laughed, kissing the top of my babies’ heads. Giving my wife a nice long kiss on the lips, I left in a hurry to meet Gil and Ma’at. Unfortunately, they didn’t find Sylvanus but they found a giant cavern underground in Egypt which had the shape of a dragon. Thanks to that, I learned that it was hiding underground in self-made caverns.

It was a good starting point to know that we should look for it underground. After all, I could have easily imagined it taking the form of a human and living among humans casually. Well, I couldn’t be sure that the cavern wasn’t made just to mislead us but at least I knew that it had been to Africa.

We spent the next few weeks looking for it all over the world but we couldn’t find it and it didn’t attack another city either. I honestly didn’t understand why it didn’t attack me all this time.

There was one problem, though. While I was busy looking for Sylvanus and raising my kids, our little performance in Washington triggered a series of events and caused a huge ruckus. After seeing our home through the portal that Lien opened and that we could easily kill their most powerful magicians even without moving a finger, a few bastards saw the possibility of business in it and started calling us gods.

If it was only a few people who thought that way, I wouldn’t have bothered with it as it didn’t really matter but things didn’t stop there. There were multiple storytellers who I commissioned in the past to go around and tell tales about Leviathan, thinking that they would generate some positive influence for us. They’ve been doing their job properly all this time and I was really happy with them. In fact, many of our residents went through our tests only after hearing good things about us.

Sadly, thanks to their storytelling, the people who wanted to do business using our name gave many chances for these storytellers to introduce all of our good deeds to the residents of Washington. Since it turned into a well-known fact that we didn’t ask for anything in turn for our help, those businessmen said that we were their saviours, the gods who would save them from these dark times.

Our ‘battle’ had been recorded as well and the video spread across the whole city which helped a lot in proving to people our ‘superior origin’ and that we were ‘greater beings’, as they said. The dirty bastards even built a temple for us and started taking donations in our name and when I sent Dixon to investigate them, she told me that they were earning buckets of Leviathan Coins which were supposed to be used in transactions that involved a lot of money.

They even said that gods like me would surely reward them for their generosity, which basically meant that I was owing to all those people even though I didn’t get anything out of it. Unfortunately, we sort of put matters like these aside while we were looking for Sylvanus so I was kind of late to hear about it and things just blew up.

Based on the latest reports, there were thousands of people who visited ‘my’ church and prayed to ‘me’ for my blessing… even though I had nothing to do with any of that. It was very aggravating. About one month after the last time I went to Washington, I decided that it was time to visit that damned place again and give a good beating to the people who caused it and clean up the mess they made.