The Mage Emperor

(AN: I'm past my shitty writer's block so hooray! Here is the next chapter... For those who requested me to put the novel up on Amazon, here is a link to the latest batch that contains chapter 26-32 and a link to all my published stuff: here )

The first steps

--- Seth’s POV ---

Two months passed by seemingly in the blink of an eye and I've had multiple smaller meetings with Sylvanus. After chatting with him about all kinds of topics, I started trusting him but both of us held a safe distance from each other. Since replacing his soul force wasn’t an easy feat, even least so considering that we had some enemies working in the background, he told me that he would remove his mana-nodes in an area only when I finished covering it with my soul force.

That being the case, I decided to leave things in his hands in the beginning and spent a few days casting large-scale spells to set up my own root system with nature magic. Although my spells consumed a huge amount of mana, it didn’t matter since I utilized the mana around me and simply injected some of my own. Spells were much less costly with my evolved body.

The root system covered the whole planet and laid twenty kilometers underground, just like Sylvanus’. He told me that there were many cracks and caverns at that depth, and the mana density was much higher as well, meaning that magicians’ senses wouldn’t be able to pick up on it even if they were as powerful as me. Sure enough, I haven’t found anything for two years so it was understandable. It was also true that very few magicians had strong enough senses that could reach so deep.

After the foundation of my own mana-nodes was prepared, I connected to it which turned out to be a little time consuming since it took me about two days but the result was something incredible. Once I made the first mana node and started spreading my soul force, I found out that I could sense almost anything and that I could appear anywhere with teleportation in that area. I came to trust Sylvanus even more after that since with my roots in place, I understood how many chances he had to kill me when I was weaker.

If only I didn’t grow so much stronger while he was still thinking about what to do with humans… he could have found me with his soul force and tell me that I was destroying his mana nodes for no good reason. It was a bit strange to know that I was going in the wrong direction for two years because I grew powerful too quickly.

The first mana nodes were set up around Washington, followed by Kyoto, Hong Kong, Sydney, and other large cities with millions of people living in it. Since I had to focus on one place at a time, I always filled them to the brim and waited for a few days for my soul force to take effect before decreasing the output. My only problem was that I physically had to connect to the roots and its nodes that grew on the surface to release my mana and soul force.

Since I didn’t want to copy Sylvanus in everything, I used my trait to transform the nodes into a giant tower of emerald, reaching a height of ten meters. They looked fancier than trees and after the catastrophe, most places were covered in forests anyway, so it was good to see something else from time to time… I also enhanced the nodes with an alarm, a protective barrier, and a teleportation rune to our testing grounds.

Those who broke my barrier and touched the emerald tower would be teleported to our testing grounds in the future. I believed it would prove to be useful to catch bad guys and talented people as well.

As for the physical connection, I asked for some advice from Sylvanus and he taught me a few things about creating clones and doppelgangers of different quality. I found it a bit strange that he trusted me enough to teach me some of the contents of his own inheritance but when I asked him about it, he said that if I didn’t get drunk on power after building Leviathan and becoming the strongest human magician, I was unlikely to become greedy afterward.

I found his reasoning plausible since I could get almost anything I wanted with my own powers and with the continuously spreading fame of Leviathan, I could get things even just by talking. People respected and feared the power that was at my disposal so they were more than likely to accept any request I had once I revealed my identity.

That being the case, neither Lien nor I revealed our background when we went out. It was annoying when people suddenly changed their behavior because of my background and talked to me with all those fake smiles and sugar-coated words. I never intended to use my power in a selfish way that would affect others too much. Maybe that was the exact reason that made it possible for me to reach where I stood and not get myself killed by someone stronger while I was still growing.

Once he taught me how to create a powerful clone, I spent a few days learning, testing and experimenting with it before spending a whole day to create a clone without emotions and logic. It was just a husk but it had a single set of instructions in its brain that described how to feed the roots with its own mana and soul force. Since it was my clone, a part of me, I could feed my soul force to it directly which was then released through the roots. It had about eighty percent of my magic capabilities so it used its own mana and the mana in its surroundings to control the roots.

I also created another clone that was set to create mana nodes through the root system and my main clone, so thanks to some quick coaching from Sylvanus, I could start spreading my soul force in just a few weeks and I didn’t even have to do anything once the system was set up.

My clones and the ‘head’ of my root system were buried a thousand kilometers underground, right under Antarctica, in a solid part of the mantle of the planet. It was a pretty hot place so the roots had to be enhanced to withstand the heat and I also set up thousands of restrictive formations around them. It was a death zone for anyone but me and even if my formations wouldn’t be able to kill the intruders, I would be notified and could go there in person.

Mana was flowing like water through the crevices and caverns of the planet below twenty kilometers, so the mantle was filled with incredibly dense mana. It would be hard to destroy the core of my roots even if someone managed to find it which was a nigh-impossible task.

Today I had another planned meeting with Sylvanus that was supposed to take place in the auction house of Mosshollow. It was a city that was created by thirty powerful clans seventy years ago in Middle Europe and rose to fame in the area quite quickly. They had many powerful magicians that were strong enough to get an A or B rank even in Leviathan, and their technological level was similar to that of Washington.

Since their technologies and magic made use of the powerful monsters’ bodies, they had a huge auction house in the heart of the city where people could sell and bid for the things they saw. Except for humans, you could even bid for another person’s clothes if they were willing to sell them for a price on the spot. Obviously, people usually went there for the cores of monsters. I usually let Sylvanus choose the place for our meeting and he always managed to show me some interesting places. He picked this place as well.

“This place looks quite awesome,” Lien remarked as she looked around. The interior height of the building was fifty meters and it was eighty meters long. The walls and the floor had dark red carpet glued to them, matching the color of the comfy armchairs that filled the place. The first and second floors had an open view on the stage in the middle but while the first floor had sixty rooms, the second had only ten of them.

It was probably the cheapest to stay on the ground floor and then bid for the items that you liked and had enough money for. Since there were two robust guys standing in the ‘gate’ that was a thick red rope connecting the walls, I looked around and just as I thought, I found a ‘Selling Tickets’ sign on the wall with a small cabin under it.

After buying five tickets to one of the VIP rooms, we showed our tickets to the guards that were almost comparable to me in stature. A beautiful young girl walked up to us the moment we passed the guards and asked for our tickets once again.

“Sir Seth has chosen our VIP service. Please, follow me to the elevator and I’ll show you to your room,” she said after taking a look at our tickets that also had our names on it. It was a requirement to buy a ticket to the VIP room so I couldn’t get around telling them my name. I could have lied but there was no point since my name alone didn’t reveal my identity.

“I thank you but there is no need to bother. The ticket has the room number on it so we should be able to find it,” I politely refused her, knowing that it was just a way for the auction house to charm the male customers. Men wanted to look powerful and rich in front of women so if there was a beautiful girl next to someone in a VIP room, it was more likely that the customer would pay more than intended.

While that wouldn’t affect me in any way, I was planning to meet with Sylvanus and that girl shouldn’t be there when that happened.

“As you wish,” she replied, slightly lowering her head as she gave back our tickets. The reason I bought five of them was that we brought Felice and Reiner with us on this trip, and the remaining one was obviously for Sylvanus.

After reaching the elevator, Felice and Reiner both looked around with interest.

“Dad, what are those?” Reiner asked as he moved around in my arms, pointing at the two buttons next to the elevator door.

“It will make the elevator move, just press the top one with the ‘up’ text on it,” I replied as I stepped a bit closer so that he could reach it. Doing as told, he was surprised by the small sound that it played and then to see that the door started closing.

Right when it was about to close completely, a hand thrust through the small gap and pulled the doors apart. A group of six stood in front of us, led by a red-haired youth. They were all in their twenties and two of them were girls while the remaining four were guys.

“I’m sorry, do you mind if we come along? There should be enough space for everyone,” the red-haired guy asked as he looked back and forth between Lien and me. Maybe thanks to the kids or because they weren’t some rich pricks, neither of them ogled my wife.

“Go ahead,” I replied.

“Thanks,” he smiled at me and quickly entered along with the others. Since the elevator was five square meters, there was quite a lot of space inside and we could fit in easily.

“Which clan are you from, or are you new in Mosshollow?” he asked as the door closed behind him.

“We aren’t from around,” I replied while Reiner cried out in surprise from the feel in his stomach as the elevator suddenly started moving upwards.

“Mum, it felt so stange! My stomach went all up and down!” Felice remarked, staring at her mother in wonder. Rough letters like the ‘r’ were a little challenging for them sometimes and they left it out of their words but they spoke quite clearly most of the time.

“Huh? How can they talk? I have a little sister who is six months old and she can’t even move properly!” one of the girls raised her voice, seeing that Felice talked.

“Maybe these kids are older?” one of the guys replied dumbly.

“Are you seriously so stupid? Even if they were one year old, they shouldn’t be able to talk like that and they clearly don’t look like it,” the girl replied.

“Hush, aren’t you guys a bit too rude?” the red-haired guy reprimanded both of them.

“Haha, it’s fine. You can talk about them as long as it’s not bad mouthing,” I replied, seeing that they realised that we were still here.

Hearing my statement, I could see a glimpse of arrogance appear in his eyes but he quickly suppressed it. Considering that we weren’t from one of their well-known clans that were the core of this city and that I still dared to say the bad mouthing part in a threatening way, it was understandable that he felt the need to be a little arrogant. Luckily for him, he was clever enough to realise that it wasn’t worth picking a fight with some unknown guy over such a minor thing.

“It’s still rude to be like that but thank you. It seems we’ll have to part ways here,” he replied naturally as the door opened behind him. They left in a hurry while the girl gave the kids a few more glances before going after her friends. For normal teenagers, it probably didn’t mean too much that Felice and Reiner could talk at the age of four months, even if they missed a few letters and such at times. It was way more surprising for those that had a similarly young sibling and knew how things should normally go.

After leaving the elevator, we went straight to our room since it was easy for us to find with our senses. A thick wooden door opened from the corridor to the room that was covered in the same kind of carpet as the whole interior of the auction house. The only exception was that there was a two-piece thin, black silk curtain at the opening of the room, hiding us from the people below. Even if somebody tried to look up into our room, they wouldn’t be able to see anyone unless one of us leaned out.

“Hello,” I said as I sat down next to Sylvanus who appeared the moment I stepped into the room.

“Hi, here is the price of my ticket,” he said as he turned to the side and handed a few coins over to me.

“I don’t really need it…” I chortled as I reached out to take it.

“Same here,” he shrugged his shoulders while Lien sat down on my right. Just as I was about to ask, he took hold of the woman’s hand who sat on his left and said, “I’ve met your wife multiple times and you’ve also brought your children this time, so I thought I should also introduce my family to you. She is my wife, Emily.”

“Hello, it’s nice to meet you,” the woman reached out to shake hands.

“Likewise, Seth,” I smiled at her as I shook her hand, followed by Lien.

“You’ve never told me that you had a wife,” I remarked while Reiner was trying hard to grab Sylvanus’ right horn. We no longer used our battle-ready forms when we met and Sylvanus looked like a normal human, except for that he had two vine-like dark green horns protruding out of his forehead. There was a small curve in them but they were pointing upwards.

“You’ve never asked,” he laughed as he leaned closer to us so that Reiner could grab his horn.

“What is this?” my son asked as he looked at me cluelessly.

“It’s a horn,” I replied, patting the top of his head.

“Mom, I want to touch it!” Felice cried out in panic, seeing that Sylvanus pulled back and sat up straight. She probably saw her chance to grab it swim away at that moment.

“My dear, it’s rude to do something like that. You can do it only if the uncle lets you,” Lien replied to her, shaking her head.

“Uncle let me?” she turned towards Sylvanus to ask right away. Holding my forehead, I could only shake my head helplessly.

“Hahaha, your children are very amusing,” he laughed heartily before appearing in front of Lien and leaning closer to Felice. Once she got her chance, Sylvanus sat back down and tried his best to not look to his left.

Emily was staring at him so persistently that I thought her gaze would hit a hole in Sylvanus’ head. Forcing a smile on his face, he finally looked at her and asked, “What is it, dear?”

“When do you plan to have children? How many times do I have to ask you before you’re willing to-” realising that we were still here as she glanced at us, she didn’t finish her sentence since she wasn’t sure what kind of people we were.

“Is he not willing to knock you up?” Lien asked as she covered our children’s ears with wind magic. Seeing her blushing, we both understood that Emily was the shy type. 

“Hellooo~ I’m still here~” Sylvanus waved his hand, looking back and forth between Lien and Emily.

“You shouldn’t back out for too long, my dude,” I patted his shoulder.

“I’m not backing out, it’s just that things are a little complicated since she is rather weak as she is. She can barely use WORD magic and she should become stronger before she can give birth to my child,” he replied with his soul force. Since I was touching him directly, we could communicate without telepathy.

“Then why don’t you tell her instead of dragging things on? Believe me, it’s better to tell her now than to make her feel despaired. Maybe she will start thinking that you don’t think she is good enough for you or that you don’t like her or some bullshit like that. Uncertainty makes people think of stupid things,” I couldn’t help but give some advice to him, knowing how humans thought most of the time.

“Well, you may be right. She’s a human and you seem to be good with your wife so I’ll take your advice this time,” he nodded and then turned towards Emily. I thought he would wait until they got home but he told her right away. While they talked things over, we played with the kids in our voice-blocking barrier.

Just as they finished and apologized for the inconvenience, the auctioneer woman walked up to the stage in the middle and said in a loud voice, “Greetings, dear guests. As you all know, we hold an auction every week and there are always valuable items that are up for sale. Today, I can tell you that we’ve acquired some very impressive items, and one of them is worth more than any item we’ve ever auctioned off before. The item was brought to you by Sir Sylvanus.”

Finishing her speech, she pointed towards the cover on the platform while the crowd started cheering. Glancing at the person in question, I raised my brows.

“It’s just some enchanted toy for your kind. Humans’ reactions can be quite amusing so I thought that I should bring out something valuable,” he replied, noticing my gaze. “By the way, I don’t really know that much about the rune language so I can’t do these kinds of enchantments. I took this from one of your people yesterday,” he said calmly, crossing one leg over the other.

“...”

“This prank is going to cost me a lot of money, I suppose,” I rolled my eyes, seeing that he was trying hard to hold back his laughter after seeing my displease.

“Hahaha, does it even matter to you? Just don’t forget to tell me later what it feels like to buy something that you made with your own hands,” he laughed heartily.

“Fuck you, I’m not going to tell you anything,” I grumbled while the auctioneer woman publicized all the effects of the enchantments on the necklace.

“Come on, don’t take it to heart. I taught you how to make clones more efficiently so don’t tell me that it wasn’t worth a little prank like this,” he chortled, patting my shoulder.

I could only laugh in my helplessness since everything he said was true. Money didn’t matter to me and Leviathan Coins were accepted in Mosshollow, so the problem was quite easy to solve.

“If it makes you happy,” I sighed loudly.

“Two Leviathan Coins!”

“Three Leviathan Coins!” all the people in the VIP rooms leaned through the curtains and shouted at the top of their lungs.

“Ten Leviathan Coins!”

“Twenty Leviathan Coins!” As they started getting bored of bidding against each other one by one, they went as far as to double the prices. When the necklace was brought to light, I’ve also sensed that some of the people in the VIP rooms sent their henchmen back to their clans. They probably wanted to notify their clan leaders about the item and tell them to bring more money.

Their territory went from old France to Poland, including the Italian peninsula and the Balcanian peninsula, giving a home to numerous powerhouses. Leviathan Coins were worth more in countries where there were many powerful forces and considering the size of their territory, we gave one billion Leviathan Coins to Mosshollow. We didn’t know how they distributed it among their thirty top clans and all the other powerful forces but they clearly had enough to spend.

The bidding continued for minutes since multiple clan leaders arrived at the auction house. While they were trying hard to get their hands on the necklace that was just a regular piece of equipment for our female members, I continued chatting with Sylvanus.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you about this for a while now but what do you know about Ishtar, Adro, Loki’s inheritor, Leo, or Kali’s inheritor, Kylie?”

“While I know a little about Leo, I don’t remember meeting the others based on their names alone. I’ve told you most of the things I know and you should know about Leo so I can’t serve you with more information. As for the others, don’t you have some sort of description or something that could help me in remembering them?” he asked.

“I can only describe what their predecessors stood for in mythology and it’s not even sure that those are accurate,” I replied. “Have you never met someone who wanted the destruction of humankind or something of the sort?”

Placing his hand on his chin, he made a thoughtful face for a few seconds, “Hmm- I think that I’ve met a person like that in the past. I remember that it was at night when she met with one of my clones and I took control to talk with her. She was rather young, probably around sixteen years old at that time and she had shoulder-length black hair and her eyes… yeah, they were definitely purple. I remember that she was filled with rage and hatred for her own kind.”

“I was sort of contemplating about what to do at that time but I still felt that humans should be destroyed and after listening to her story, I told her that I would use my soul force to make humans kill themselves through wars. She said that she had another person helping her and that they would start moving once that happened.”

“Oh? And what about her story? Do you remember it?” I asked, intrigued to find out more.

“I remember that she grew up as a bullied orphan and then she inherited her commandment that helped her in becoming stronger. She met her mysterious partner not long after who helped her in taking revenge by making humans turn against one another. That’s the gist of it,” he replied.

“I’m pretty sure that based on what you said, you were talking about Ishtar,” Lien chimed in.

“And why do you think that?” Sylvanus asked, leaning forward. “She could be Kali’s inheritor as well,” he added.

“That’s true but based on what you said, she doesn’t long to destroy things with her own hands. She just wants people to kill each other which doesn’t really match what Kali is like in mythologies. Although it’s true that mythologies aren’t necessarily accurate, this would be a rather big difference in personality. If she wanted to destroy things herself, she wouldn’t stay idle while she was waiting for you to finish what you started. She would want to take action herself.”

“I agree with you, and I’d like to add that I also haven’t heard of purple eyes. It may be stupid to think this way but I feel that it’s associated with the sexual parts of her commandment,” I added.

“That’s a plausible explanation, except for the stupid eye colour thing,” Sylvanus replied as he nodded at Lien and then frowning at me.

But I had the same idea as Lien, I just meant it as an addition! I grumbled inwardly.

“I’m sure that my husband thought of the things I said, even if he didn’t say them,” my wife took my side right away.

“Well, he can think whatever he wants. What matters is that we’ve learned a few things about Ishtar so we can put the next Soul Gathering formation to use as soon as we get home. Maybe Dorje can find out more things about her,” I said.

“That’s up to you. I’ll help you with information if I learn something new but I don’t wish to take action against them myself. Your battle is not going to affect me in particular and it should be up to you humans to deal with each other. Since I’ve decided that it’s fine to let your kind live, I just need to fill your souls with soul force to prevent you from destroying the planet. I believe that you’re reliable so I’ve left it to you,” Sylvanus said, waving his hand as he spoke.

His words made it clear that he wouldn’t risk his life or his separate world to help me and that I should solve humans’ problems myself. I didn’t feel angry with him because of that since it wasn’t his responsibility. I was wondering only about one thing the whole time.

“I’m fine with all that but I’m curious about one thing,” I said, turning to look at Emily. “Let me say that I don’t mean to judge you. Sometimes even I feel that helping my kind is sort of pointless but how come you don’t care about humans?”

“It’s very simple, I’m not a human,” she smiled at me. “I’m an artificial human who was created by the person next to me,” she added, glancing at Sylvanus.

Raising my brows, I looked at him.

“She’s twenty-seven years old and we married half a year ago. I created an adult body that was to my liking and then filled its mind with the instruction set of an ‘AI’, as you call it. She knew very little about the world when she was born but after a few years, she continued growing as a person and developed complex emotions, desires, and things that living beings had,” he explained things shortly.

“I see,” I nodded.

“One thousand and eight hundred Leviathan Coins! This necklace is going to be mine so stop raising the price!” one old man shouted.

“One thousand and nine hundred! Do you think you are the only one who has that much money?” another shouted back.

“Two thousand!” a third one joined.

Fearing that their yelling would turn into a full-fledged war among the thirty leading clans of Mosshollow, I decided that it was time to join the bidding.

“Ten thousand Leviathan Coins,” I said calmly as I used spatial magic to carry my voice to every corner of the building. With the help of my trait and chemical magic, I also transformed some of the nitrogen in the air into melatonin. As people breathed in the chemicals, I moved it towards their brain, causing them to feel sleepy, except for the auctioneer woman.

Their sleepiness combined with their surprise in the sudden spike of the price was enough to make them stay quiet until the woman finally stopped asking for higher bids and let me buy my own creation.

“This auction house gets thirty percent of the income, this was great business for them,” Sylvanus laughed, seeing me tapping my finger on the armrest of my chair. I created a new coin with each tap of my finger, making them pile up at my feet.

“How you do that!?” Reiner asked, leaning closer to my finger to look at it closely. My daughter also climbed over Lien’s arm and stared at my hand from so close that I could easily tap her nose.

“Felice, you’re going to fall off if you climb on the edge of the chair,” Lien pulled her back and hugged her tightly while I stopped playing around and increased the production rate. In just a few seconds, I finished creating ten thousand Leviathan Coins and packed them up into many small towers next to my feet with telekinesis.

Since the necklace was the last item of the auction and I talked things over with Sylvanus, I stood up to leave.

“While I don’t need you to take action, I feel the need to warn you that humans usually hold a strong grudge against those that wronged them. Considering that you made Ishtar and company waste at least two years, they’re definitely pissed off at you for not doing what you said so-”

“I have to be careful, I know, don’t worry,” he waved his hand dismissively.

“It’s good if you know,” I nodded and then left the room. After paying for the necklace and receiving it in a private room, I had to meet multiple clan leaders who waited for me outside the door of the private room. Since they were trying hard to buy the ‘treasure’ from my hands and then even threatened me with their joint forces, I ended up revealing that I was the leader of Leviathan. I also told them how this necklace found its way to their auction and then returned home.

First I provided Ishtar’s description and the things I knew about her to Dorje, hoping that he would be able to find out more about her. I even set up multiple Soul Gathering formations behind his house during the last month so that I could give a boost to his power if it was necessary.

While he couldn’t find out anything important about Ishtar, he managed to find the headquarters of Blood Stigma. It was a troublesome organisation located in South America. Since our target was clear, we spent another month destroying them to their roots and then cleaning up the mess they left behind.

Things were going well with my mana nodes as well, except for the annoying fact they were being destroyed on a daily basis, probably by Leo or Ishtar. I could create more nodes than what was destroyed but it would have been so much better if I could have done so in new places. The nodes were also destroyed from space so my formations had no way to notify me in advance.

I was planning to set up a trap for them but for the time being, I had to bear with that bunch of evildoers. The good thing was that they had to be careful if they didn’t want to be caught so they couldn’t destroy as many mana nodes as many I could create. Despite all their efforts, in just three months, I've covered over two thousand large cities that were in some sort of connection with Leviathan.

Partly because of my soul force and thanks to helping out in many places, the fame of Leviathan and its 'great magicians' continued spreading through the planet. After the past three months, there were no powerful communities that didn't know about us and there were even fewer that were daring enough to attack our members.

I was really satisfied with how things were going, especially because nobody started another religion for us. Well, I did hear some of the residents mention some secret cults here and there but those were for Leviathan itself, not Lien and me. I also heard that they usually had only a few members so I couldn't bother to ask my people to eradicate them. I had more important things to deal with, such as spend time with my family, create mana nodes, and manage Leviathan.

The last batch of newcomers integrated into our system quite quickly and got used to living in Leviathan, so it was time to open up our test grounds once again. At least, that was what Lien told me yesterday but she wasn't sure if we should seriously allow more people to join. The problem was that the more people joined, the harder it would be to manage our own community, and non-combatant members were relatively few in number, even though their skills were just as important as all the powerful magicians.

If everyone focused on the exact same thing in a community, it would be hard or even impossible to manage. That being the case, we needed people with some management skills and train them before allowing more magicians to join. Leviathan was starting to lack diversity.

"Mom!"

"Yes, my darling?" Lien appeared in the room, hearing Felice's call. Our children turned five months old which turned out to be enough for them to learn to talk using simple words and sentences.

"Can you give me mana? Father not give!" she said, looking at her mother with hungry eyes.

Leaning over my daughter's shoulder, I pinched her nose, "Aren't you a bit too demanding?"

"But I hungry," she said as she turned around in my arm. I was entertaining them by showing them magic. I didn't think that Felice would start demanding mana after seeing a few spells and call her mother after I refused her.

"My dear, I'm sorry but I'm not going to give you mana if your father denies it. He surely has a good reason to do so," my wife replied, caressing Felice's head.

Seeing my daughter's sad face, I couldn't help but feel soft. Since Lien was staring at me, she probably noticed my moment of weakness and warned me through Link, "Don't fall for her tricks. She did the same thing last time and after you couldn't stop yourself from giving her mana, she started running around uncontrollably. Felice is pretty underhanded at times so you should be more careful."

"I know, I had no intention of giving her mana this time, I just feel bad for it," I replied. Our children became incredibly hyperactive when we fed mana to them too many times a day. It was because their mana-cells started spreading when they received some energy of great quality which meant mana from Lien and me.

This process of dividing caused their bodies to heat up and produce energy, sort of making them go through a fever but without all the bad feelings. They just heated up and became hyperactive and started complaining about not being able to release their ‘energy’. I didn’t think it was time to break their seals just yet so it was better to keep them calm and composed by feeding them only small amounts of our mana.

It was the twenty-sixth of December in the evening which was supposedly a day of celebration for most of the people in the world, in the past. People called it Christmas and it was a day when they didn’t have to work and families got together to spend some quality time with each other.

Although it was only my wife and our parents last year, I still had my own family to take care of and I sort of liked the concept so I introduced Christmas to the residents of Leviathan. A few days after the celebration, many people said that it created a very good mood and that we should repeat it again next year. Since everyone liked the concept of Christmas, I made it an official holiday at the start of the current year, 2261, meaning that this was our second Christmas.

Since then, I’ve also learned that there was supposed to be snow during Christmas and thanks to my control over the weather in Leviathan, it was easy to create snow. Combined with the nicely decorated pine trees that I grew in the residential areas during these times, I had to admit that it indeed looked even more beautiful when there was snow.

Glancing at our own Christmas tree in the corner of the room, I found myself staring blankly until Lien suddenly changed the topic and asked aloud, "Have you thought about finding managers?"

"I can't say I've spent much time thinking about it but I have an idea," I shrugged my shoulders, averting my eyes from the tree and looking at her beautiful figure. She wore a dark brown sweater and a tight, dark gray trousers at the bottom, making her rather lovely and charming in my eyes.

“Oh? And what is it?” she asked with a bright smile on her face, raising her brows.

“You seem to have something in mind as well, so let me hear it first,” I replied, seeing that she was in a good mood. I was quite sure that she wanted to tell me her idea so I let her do just that.

“Fine. I thought that we could open the testing grounds but not for people who want to become strong but for people who have managing skills. I believe that it would be fine to declare our intention to the world that once we had a few more capable people, we would open the testing grounds for magicians as well. Many leaders are bugging me constantly and are inquiring about the portals since they want to send their ‘elite’ members to this place for training, as they said,” she said, sighing loudly.

“That sounds like a lot of trouble but aren’t they stupid? Our people are loyal to us in every case up to date so aren’t they afraid of losing their own ‘elites’ instead?” I asked with a frown, not seeing why anyone would want to send their core members to us.

I would happily train them and make them become one of us but once that happened, they were unlikely to return to these corrupt, greedy leaders. Leviathan had many times better things to offer than any other power on the planet so the whole idea didn’t make much sense to me. Those that came didn’t want to leave.

Shaking her head, my wife massaged her temples as she replied, “They are stupid, luckily, not everyone. In fact, the leaders of the most powerful forces would be happier if we never opened our portals in their territories. You see, we allow our people to return home or live anywhere they want and although this opportunity is very rarely practiced, some people go home for one or two weeks from time to time.”

“There was a case last month when the leader of a mid-sized clan, the ‘Sun Breaker’ was almost overthrown by another greedy person who wanted the clan leader’s position who happened to be a friend of one of our members, Sol. Sol destroyed the enemy side in a single night when she returned to her old clan and this turned into a ‘breaking news’ in the surrounding areas of Europe. There are many clans and cities in Middle Europe that want to send their elites to Leviathan for training and hope to gain a protector for their positions.”

“For some reason, they fail to realise that neither Sol, nor any other member of Leviathan would want to serve them again once they tasted something better. They also seem to forget that Sol helped only because the clan leader in this story was a good person and her friend.”

“That’s quite stupid,” I couldn’t help but laugh as I thought about it. I would love to record the faces of these leaders once they realised that the elites they sent here willingly would never want to go back to serve them again.

“Wait, is this mainly related to Mosshollow and the thirty clans that govern it?” I asked with a frown, realising that maybe there was a connection.

“Haha, it seems you’ve thought of the same thing as our scouts. After investigating them a bit more thoroughly, they found out that the leaders want to plant spies among our ranks to steal information from us. They seem to be very interested in the production method of the necklace that they saw during the auction last time.”

“Uh, what a bunch of idiots,” I slapped my forehead. “They seem to forget that not just anyone can join us and that power has nothing to do with it. Do they really think that their spies would return to them?” I shook my head, caressing Felice’s head as her plushie fell out of her hands, right onto my lap.

“Yes, and it’s also great that these leaders are looking for nothing but powerful magicians. We can take all the talents that excel in other things like building, inventing technology, designing, etcetera…” my wife laughed, thinking about their stupidity. Power may be the core pillar of any community but we needed different kinds of talents if we wanted to develop in every aspect. The quality of life on the planet was like the most disgusting piece of shit on the planet compared to what we had in Leviathan and how many things people could allow themselves.

We understood that it was possible only because of magic since that was what provided us ‘infinite’ resources but the other communities should have focused on utilizing magic in a similar way long ago. If they continued looking for powerful magicians only, they would never be able to race with Leviathan when it came to ‘seducing’ talents. Every bee wanted to land on our honey, no matter how ‘large’ or ‘delicious’ the other sides were.

“And what was your idea?” Lien asked, remembering that I also wanted to say something.

“If I told you now, you would say that I was just copying you,” I replied with a smile.

“I would never say something like that to anyone… but why? Were you thinking of the same thing?” she raised her brows. Seeing me nodding my head, she added, “We are alike so I find it normal that we have similar ideas most of the time,” she stuck out her tongue.

“I know, I know. I was just joking,” I chortled, leaning closer to kiss her on the lips. Catching her tongue before she could pull it back, I couldn’t help but start sucking on it before remembering that Felice was sitting in my lap and that I should keep my calm. The only problem was that my unruly wife didn’t let me pull back as quickly as I planned and rolled her tongue around a few times before finally letting me go.

Licking her lips, she sat back on her legs and raised her brows playfully as she looked at me, clearly trying to provoke me.

“You are a bad girl,” I grumbled as I was forced to use magic to control my excitement.

“Dad!”

“Yes, my dear?” hearing my daughter’s voice, I recollected myself in a hurry and looked at her with a smile.

“What you doing with mom?” she asked.

“It’s called kissing and it’s a way of showing our love for each other,” I replied, raising her up and moving her to Lien’s face.

“Try giving her a kiss,” I added.

Grabbing her mother’s face, Felice gave her a big juicy kiss. Staring at our daughter like a hungry predator, Lien couldn’t stop herself from pulling her out of my arms and showering her in her own kisses as a reward. Since Lien took Felice into her arms, my lap became free and Reiner seized the spot right away.

“Dad? What is peventing my enegy?” he asked once he got closer to me, trying to move his mana outside of his own body. Surprised by both his question and his ability to move mana as easily as he wanted, I stared at him with a dumbfounded face for a few seconds before regaining my focus and answering, “It’s because I set up a thick barrier around your bodies when you were babies to prevent you from hurting yourselves.”

“Will it disappear?” he asked cluelessly, not really understanding what I said.

“Yes, I’ll remove it when you become older,” I said with a nod.

“Mine too!” Felice turned around in Lien’s arms in a hurry to say her part.

"Yes, yes, don't worry my dear daughter. Once you can talk and think properly, I will remove the restriction," I waved my hand. I found it cute when my children wanted something from me but I knew I shouldn’t dote on them too much, so I had to battle my emotions from time to time. My only luck was that they were pretty much silent when they weren’t asking questions and their requests always concerned the same thing, mana.

Even when we went out in Leviathan and visited more populated areas with all kinds of stores, including sweets, they didn’t ask for anything. My thoughts were soon interrupted as Reiner tapped my belly and looked at me as he asked, "If I learn quick, you remove it soon?"

"Probably, yes," I laughed, seeing his enthusiasm.

“Mommy, can you teach me?” Felice was the first to make her move and asked her mother for guidance. Staring at her blonde hair that grew past her shoulders over the last three months, I could only smile bitterly when I imagined the day she left my side to live with her boyfriend. I knew that I was many years ahead in my thoughts but even the idea of that sucked. I found it easier to relate with Michael after becoming a father. He probably felt the same way about Lien being taken away from him. At least, he got back Lana and I also had Lien.

“My daughter, don’t be silly. Of course, both your father and I can teach you,” she replied, glancing at Reiner as well who was about to ask the same. Seemingly understanding that he was included in the answer, he actually stayed quiet. That was really observant considering his age. After spending some more time with our children and teaching them multiple things, they got tired so we brought them back to their room and waited until they fell asleep.

Leaving the room, Lien asked, "Are you going to announce-"

Knowing what it was about, I interrupted her, "I'm not going to announce anything… because you'll be the one to do it."

Shaking her head helplessly, she said, "I felt a sudden urge to ask 'Aren't you the boss?', but I know that you just don't want to stand out and I don't care anyway, so I’ll do it for you.”

"I knew I could count on you!" I smiled at her as I put my hands on her shoulders.

"Now I also have an urge to punch you in the face…" she added, looking at my hand.

"I have way more lovely urges than that," I smirked as I pulled on her brown sweater and then put my hands on her soft breasts.

Slapping my hand away, she said, "Let me consult with our managers and I'll also modify the testing grounds temporarily."

"It's seven in the evening. Nobody is going to be happy if you barge in on them at this hour for work," I reasoned with her as I was about to hug her but she literally jumped back to avoid my arms.

"I had no intention of visiting anyone, I just have to modify a few testing grounds before the portals are opened. I'll talk with them only when it's done and the portals are ready to be opened," she said.

Raising my brows seeing her reaction, I asked, “Why did you dodge my arms? I just wanted to hug you.”

“It’s… it’s nothing bad. I’ll let you hug me when I’m back,” she replied shortly, clearly trying to hide her emotions.

If she said that it was nothing bad, it surely wasn’t so I didn’t pursue the matter and decided to believe in her. Although I didn’t ask anything and simply shrugged my shoulders to show my ignorance, she seemed to feel bad for not explaining herself and maybe thought that I would also feel bad.

This way of thinking led her to explain it to me anyway, even though I didn’t ask for it, “I just didn’t want to end up feeling cozy and warm in your arms and then… Anyway, we both know what it would lead to so it’s better if I get my work done.”

“Actually, you didn’t have to explain yourself since I believed you,” I chortled, looking at her blushing. “Anyway, it’s nice to know your reason and it kind of makes me happy but who told you that you would go alone?” I asked.

“But if we go together, we’ll just end up-” appearing in front of her, I put my finger on her lips and looked into her deep green eyes as she stared back at me expectantly. She seemed to expect multiple things at the same time, one being that I would push her down and kiss her, the other being that I would resist the temptation and help her instead.

“What are you doing?” she asked, feeling that I slowly pulled her red lips apart and continued staring at her in silence. I felt tempted to stick my finger into her mouth and satisfy the continuously growing desire in my nether region but I didn’t want to hinder her after saying that I just wanted a simple hug.

Staring deep into my eyes, she waited patiently for my next step like an obedient wife, making it even harder to make a decision. I had to admit that having a submissive wife didn’t help too much with my commandment and my perverted nature. Honestly, I could only think of perverted things seeing that she was prepared to be taken to our bedroom but I knew that we were affected by my commandment and I didn’t want to give in to my instincts. After mustering up all my mental strength, I finally managed to pull back my hand and turn away.

Seeing my hands getting further away from her lips, her eyes drooped, seemingly a little disappointed with the sudden end of our staring contest. I knew she didn’t want to go for it else she would have pushed me down the moment she got excited. We had some work to finish, so it certainly wasn’t a good time for pleasuring each other. The problem with having the power to do anything at any time was that we had to set boundaries for ourselves.

And that wasn’t an easy task.

“What are you doing?” I mused, seeing her hand unconsciously moving towards her crotch.

Looking up at me with a miserable face, she took a step closer and slowly moved her left arm around my back, caressing my chest with her right at the same time. Biting her lower lip, she couldn’t stop her hand from entering her panties to touch herself. As her hand came in contact with her clitoris, her body stiffened up and she violently pressed herself against me.

“This is so unbearable… why is this happening to me?” she said in a low voice, sounding a little rough because of her erratic breath.

“I’m sorry but when I get excited, my commandment affects you as well, not just me,” I replied honestly, placing my hand on the top of her head.

“My heart is beating in my ears and I’m…” instead of finishing her sentence, she moved her fingers and I could hear her pussy squelching like when you rub your body with a very foamy and soapy hand.

“That’s a pretty serious case,” I grumbled, finding it harder and harder to resist the temptation with such an unreasonable wife. I could barely stop myself from pushing her down a moment ago and here she was fingering herself in front of me, complaining about how horny she became. I knew that it was because of my commandment but I honestly didn’t feel that she wanted to avoid doing it right now.

“I’m sorry Lien but-” I was about to apologize but she interrupted me.

“You must know that I don’t blame you for this and no matter how much I may have changed because of you, I’d do it all over again anytime,” she spat out a few lovely words, making it even harder for me to stop myself.

Looking at my erotic wife, I had to cover my eyes to prevent myself from taking her straight to bed. “My dear, are you trying to seduce me because no matter how I look at you right now, I’m reaching the end of my patience.”

“No, I want to get the work done but I’ve become a mess so I want you as well,” she replied while I peeked through the hole between my fingers.

“Would you mind pulling your hand out of your panties? Just the sight alone is destroying me,” I remarked, seeing her hand sometimes moving.

“I’m sorry,” she said with a red face, doing as told.

Rubbing my eyes, I started meditating right where I stood to regain my focus and some tranquility. Since my mind was still filled with images of me ripping apart Lien’s clothes, I figured it was pointless and just took her to the testing ground next to Washington.

“Haah~ some fresh cold air. Maybe this is what I needed for my head to clear out a little,” she took a deep breath, followed by me.

“I think so,” I nodded, feeling a little relieved after breathing some fresh oxygen that wasn’t filled with the fragrance of my wife’s body.

Looking around on the grass-covered plain, I scanned our surroundings and confirmed that there was nobody around before using earth magic to reveal the door that led underground.

“Can you go first?” Lien asked once the door raised to the surface and opened to the staircase.

“Hmm? Sure,” I nodded, not sure why she wanted me to go first. Since it was dark outside, the liquefied mana that filled the tunnels in the walls and lit up the stairs was even more beautiful than usual. I had to admit, our testing areas looked really mysterious and magical even for me, not to mention all the people who came here with their little knowledge about magic.

I kind of felt proud of my wife for doing all that, like a father or something. It was a little strange when I thought about it but I was proud of her anyway. Reaching the bottom of the stairs, I stepped to the side and looked up at Lien who followed me tightly.

“Why did you want me to come first?” I asked, taking hold of her hand as she stopped on the last step.

“Oh, it’s just that I would get even more aroused if my loving husband was breathing down on my neck as I came down the stairs while I knew that he was hiding a rock-hard penis in his pants...” she replied casually, pointing at my crotch.

“Fair enough…” I muttered, unsure of what to say.

“We should get to work,” I added, seeing her staring at it even after a few seconds passed.

“Ah, right,” she woke up from her daze after hearing my voice and started moving again. We spent the whole night reworking the testing grounds near the largest cities and made them in a smart way. We didn’t rebuild everything, we just added more paths that tested other things as well and opened only in special cases.

Although it happened by chance, the last place we modified was near Kyoto, in Japan. There seemed to be some kind of festival since the streets were bustling with life despite being so late. Thousands of people walked back and forth and looked at the stalls on the sides. The time was past 10 PM in Kyoto while it was barely past 8 AM in Leviathan that I left nearby Washington. 

“There is a festival nearby,” I said as I finished up the last bit and turned around to look at my wife.

"I know, we’ve received multiple invitations from their leaders about two weeks ago. Do you want to look around? The kids are still sleeping," she said, placing her hands on her hips.

“Do you mean look around in the city or do you mean going to meet the leaders of Kyoto?” I raised my brows, having different answers for those cases.

“Who would want to do politics and business on a festival, are you stupid?” she rolled her eyes.

“I should have known,” I laughed, seeing her reaction. “We can look around in that case.”

“Great, but we will have to hurry up because the kids are going to wake up soon,” she said.

"I know, come then," I replied with a nod.

Holding each other’s hand, we teleported next to one of the public toilets on a closed street and quickly joined the swarm of people. Men and women alike wore ancient Japanese clothes for this special occasion but there were also many who dressed up casually. One thing was sure, visitors and tourists were quite rare in every city these days since very few groups were strong enough to travel across the monster-infested forests.

Since we obviously didn’t look like Japanese people, they sort of avoided and made way for us on the street, probably thinking that we were powerful tourists who travelled from far away. They weren’t wrong in any case and it also made things much more peaceful. Nobody bumped into us, pushed us from behind, stepped on our heels, and other stupid things that happened in crowded places.

“What made you so happy?” Lien asked when I suddenly started laughing at a similar scene that even turned into a small quarrel.

Wrapping my arm around her shoulder and pressing my face against hers, I made her look towards the people who started arguing and said in a low voice, “That guy over there was staring at a girl’s ass while walking and ended up stepping on some big shot’s heels. Now the guy is furious at the other for not looking forward while walking.”

“I can understand his anger,” she chortled. Licking the apple-shaped burnt sugar that she got from one of the stalls, she glanced at me and said, “While nobody dares to come too close and risk bumping into us, I can sense plenty of guys sizing me up from behind.”

Seeing that she was licking her sweets from its bottom to its top in a rather lewd and provocative way, I couldn’t help but pull a bit further away and shake my head.

“I wonder why…” I remarked, trying hard to stop my mind from imagining my dick in place of her sweets. 

Blowing some air on her sugar apple, she looked straight into my eyes and then gave it another lick before kissing it, knowing exactly what she was doing. It was cold enough outside for our breath to be visible which just made the scene even more erotic in my imagination.

Placing my hands on her shoulders, I made her face me and pressed my forehead against hers, “My dear, I get that it’s delicious and that it’s fun to tease me and all the guys who are staring at you but I’ve been holding back since last night. This is not just teasing anymore, it’s torturing me.”

“Is that so?” she chortled as she pressed her body against mine and stuck the remaining sweets into my mouth. Placing her hand on my abdomen, slowly moving towards my crotch, she added, “I said that we shouldn’t do it while we have work to do but we’re done with that so… why would you restrain yourself?"

“Fine then but we must hurry up,” I said in a low voice, teleporting us behind a large tree in the park.

"Huh? Where did you bring me?" she looked around with a confused face, seeing that it was almost completely dark.

Brushing my fingers through her silky hair, I grabbed the back of her head and pressed my forehead against hers. She was staring back at me so fervently that I thought she would devour me if it continued. Taking her chin between my fingers, I ran my thumb around her red lips and then leaned closer to give her a deep kiss. As her wet and hot tongue found its way into my mouth, I noticed that it had a really sweet flavor thanks to the remnants of her sweets.

Gently biting the tip of her tongue, I pulled on it and then started sucking on it in my excitement. Grabbing her left breast, I slightly squeezed it and held it in my hand to feel her pounding heart. After a few long minutes of fervent kissing, I mustered up my willpower and separated from her in hopes of going for the next stage.

I wanted to see her face after our long kiss so I opened my eyes only to see her staring back at me, her face red, her eyes filled with tenderness and love.

“Dear, I’m starting to lose my reasoning,” she said as she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me with all her strength. Her tender yet loving and lust-filled eyes told me long tales about her current state and desires so I naturally wanted to please my wife to the best of my abilities.

"Are you sure that it will be better here? I bet that this place will be filled with people!" a stranger spoke loudly in the background.

"That's why we have to arrive first!" a passing couple chatted, alerting Lien.

Quickly scanning the area, she realised that we were in a park with thousands of people nearby, all preparing to see the upcoming fireworks. The tree that provided us with a cover was only three meters away from the walkway and the firework was supposed to start in fifteen minutes. The end of this walkway was a clearing where the sight was supposedly the best, so there was a steady stream of people coming our way.

Leaning to the side, she looked at the back of the couple that passed by and then leaned back, facing me. Raising to her toes and pulling me down to reach my ear, she leaned closed to me and said in a low voice, “Normally I would say that this place is too risky but, to be honest, I don’t care anymore.” 

“Just what I thought,” I replied as I grabbed her wrists and pressed them against the tree behind her, also taking a step back to see her in full. She was staring back at me with a hungry look in her eyes, even raising her right leg and pressing her knee against my crotch. While keeping eye contact with me, she used telekinesis to free my dick from my pants and then raised her brows provocatively.

Pressing her wrists together, I grabbed them with one hand and ran the other down on her back, stopping at her round ass. Since my hands were full, I also used magic to lower her black leather leggings and pull up her dark blue shirt. As the cold air suddenly rushed into her panties and against her erect nipples, she gave out a small shriek of displeasure. Although she couldn’t feel cold the way normal people did, the sudden change in temperature was a rather unpleasant feeling.

“What was that sound?”

“Who knows? Maybe there are some wolves further into the forest,” another couple who happened to be a bit too close discussed as they passed by. The funniest was that they even used their senses to scan their surroundings but they couldn’t find us thanks to our superior powers. I could only hope that my mind would stay clear enough to keep ourselves hidden once we start having fun.

Stepping closer to my wife, I sealed her lips with mine and sandwiched my dick between her thighs and also touching her wet pussy.

“Mmmh~” trying to say something, she gave out a small voice but I was sucking on her tongue with so much force that she couldn’t do it for long and ran out of breath.

Pulling back for a moment, I looked down at our private parts that were touching each other and started moving my hips. Leaning closer to her ear, I said in a low voice, “It’s so exciting to fuck you when there are so many people around us.”

“Ahha~ you had a reaction,” I mused, feeling a tiny tremor running through her body. Placing my hands on her hips, I asked, "Do you want to go for the main dish right away or do you want me to prepare you first?"

"Can't we do the first after moving a bit further away from the walkway? You know that I prefer letting my voice out and I’m afraid I won’t be able to hold back my voice," she whispered, averting her eyes.

“You’re so goddamn sweet, I just can’t bother to move back,” I replied as I covered her mouth and guided my dick straight into her. Her soft and wet insides clutched and gripped my penis tightly as I went inside, giving me a wonderful time.

“It’s incredible that you’re still as tight as when I took your first time, I just can’t get enough of your pussy,” I growled into her ear playfully.

Looking at me with her hazy eyes, her hot breath left behind a small fog in the cold air as she spoke, “Please, hug me tightly. I want you to be closer to me.”

“Anything you want, Honey,” I said, gently kissing her forehead as I wrapped my arms around her body.

“Then do me,” she added, seeing that I wasn’t moving.

“Do you want it that much?” I chortled.

“Stop pretending, I can feel that you’re struggling to hold back your lust since you keep twitching inside me. I bet that your dick really wants to go~” she replied.

“Well, the truth is that I feel like cumming after I entered you…” I admitted to her as I put my chin on her shoulder and started moving. Brushing her hair to the side, I kissed her neck from top to bottom, moving across her collarbone, finding my way to her soft, moist lips.

Before I could push my tongue into her mouth, she bit my lower lip and then used her body to push me to the ground. Placing her hands on my chest, she smiled at me and licked her lips, knowing that I was about to cum a moment ago.

“What’s with all this twitching, my dear husband? Mommy will let you cum if you’re a good boy,” she laughed at me, swaying her hips back and forth while keeping her upper body in the same spot. The sight of my wife riding me was simply heavenly but I couldn’t ignore the fact that there were no bushes to hide us from the people’s eyes that passed by.

“We’ll be seen if you keep going like this,” I replied as I rolled over to hide behind the tree, also taking the upper position. While our heads were most likely visible from certain angles, the walkway was lit up and we were in the dark so it would be hard to spot two heads. Even if it happened, it would be only the back of our heads so I believed that it was fine to continue.

Turning back towards my wife from the walkway, my breath was taken away by the beauty that laid under me, even though I had seen her this way many times before. I pinned her down by holding her wrists and her long dark brown hair was sprawled out underneath. Her dark blue shirt was quite messed up and pulled to the side after all the rolling and kisses that I gave on her collarbone, letting me see her beautiful neck. Adding to that her lust-filled yet tender eyes that stared back at me with love, I couldn’t even think of stopping.

As she opened her mouth, I knew that she wanted to moan so I quickly leaned closer and sealed her lips with mine before she could let out any voice.

“Mmm~”

“Do it harder,” she said through Link.

Nodding my head, I picked up the pace a bit more and instead of moving only the length of my glands, I almost pulled it out and then shoved it all the way back in with each movement.

“That’s it, Honey. Keep that up for a few seconds and I’ll jizz all over your dick,” she said through Link as she freed her wrists and threw her arms around my neck. Glancing down, I noticed that my kisses on her collarbone have left a few hickeys, making me sort of happy.

“Daddy gave you a little present,” I chortled as I pulled her shirt downwards. Scanning her own body, she just rolled her eyes when she realised what I was talking about.

Just like she promised, a moment later her pussy clamped down on me and made her place even wetter than before. Going one step further, I wanted to break her completely so I used Pleasure Touch as well while she was cumming.

“Ahn~” she cried out before I could cover her mouth, most likely alerting many people nearby.

Pulling her up to her feet, I pushed her front against the tree and pressed my body against hers to hide from the curious eyes.

“Did you hear that? Didn’t it sound like when…”

“Hehehe, it seems like someone is having a good time in the forest,” two girls who were maybe a few years older than me laughed as they passed by.

Unfortunately, not everyone was so positive about the matter, “Maybe someone is in trouble!” a guy said as he walked off from the walkway and made his way towards us.

“Pervert, I bet he just wants to peek,” the girls murmured amongst themselves while I was thinking about what to do. Since many people stopped after hearing the guy’s statement and were staring towards us, I knew that we had to leave one way or the other. I just didn’t want to go home so instead of doing that, I teleported us closer to the clearing where the fireworks would be visible. Naturally, I still hid behind another tree.

It was lucky that the trees in the forest easily had a diameter of two meters so it wasn’t hard to hide.

“Look at the trouble you have caused,” I shook my head as I looked at Lien, obviously meaning it as a joke.

“Then Daddy should punish me,” she said between her gasps, swaying her hips back and forth on my penis. Running my hands under her clothes, I grabbed her breasts from behind and used my spell on her whole body the moment the first firework flew up and exploded. Thanks to the loud explosion, nobody noticed my wife who moaned loudly.

Her lips quivered as my spell affected her whole body and made her knees go weak. If not for the tree that was in front of her, she would have probably fallen face-first to the ground.

“Darling~ I can’t bear this anymore,” she talked to me mentally since her physical body was under too much stress from all the pleasure she felt.

Stopping my spell, I pulled out my hands from under her clothes and grabbed her wrists from behind. Slowly falling to her knees, I held up her upper body purely by pulling her arms backward since she just wanted to lay down right on the spot.

While the fireworks provided us with a great ‘sound barrier’, I continued pounding my wife from behind, much to her pleasure. The cold and dry ground under my wife’s pussy became drenched in her overflowing fluids in just a few minutes, not to mention her sleek insides. Since our kids were probably about to wake up, I knew that we wouldn’t have time for another round so I used magic to hold back myself from cumming for as long as I could.

Since I had no intention of using wind magic to prevent Lien’s voice from leaking, we had to rely on the fireworks that were about to end. Both Lien and I were capable of perceiving the rockets that were shot towards the sky so when I sensed that there was only one left, I leaned closer to her ear and said in a low voice, “When the last rocket reaches the top, I’ll fill you up with all my pent up sperm and use Pleasure Touch on you at its maximum.”

“Haah~ then I better prepare,” she gasped for air as everything turned silent after the last rocket.

“Is this the end?”

“It was great!”

“No, there is still one. The largest and fanciest one is always fired a few seconds after the last common rockets,” some people nearby conversed. It was quite fun to do my wife from behind while watching the back of hundreds of people who were staring at the sky.

“Your panties are totally ruined but I’ll destroy it even more,” I whispered into Lien’s ear. “Oh~ you squeezed me a little. Do you want me to talk dirty to you till the last moment?”

“I certainly won’t mind it,” she replied.

While I felt prompted to continue, I ran out of time since I saw the largest firework flying towards the sky, leaving behind the trees and us, tiny people. As it reached the top of its range, it exploded and took the shape of a giant bird that flew a few hundred kilometers thanks to some simple fire magic. The loud sound of the explosion reverberated through the area, perfectly masking Lien's voice as she screamed out in pleasure.

Finally removing the lid that held me back from cumming, I shot all my sperm into the deepest parts of her sopping wet pussy, emptying my balls to the last bit. Feeling a wave of warmth spreading through my lower half, I slumped onto Lien's back who leaned on the ground on all fours. We’ve long left the cover of the tree since it made things even more exciting and nobody bothered to look behind anyway.

Her erratic and quick-paced hot breath was easy to see in the air since it was cold outside but she was much warmer than anything else inside. Feeling the difference in temperature, a pleasant shiver ran down my spine, making me look up for a moment.

While my plan was to go back to staring at my mesmerizingly beautiful and erotic wife, I was forced awake from my dazed state when my eyes met with a teenage guy's. He was staring at us with his mouth opened wide in his surprise, seemingly in a daze after seeing Lien's erotic expression. Since Lien was still wearing her shirt and we were in a doggy pose, I was sure that he couldn't see any of her private parts but he saw us nonetheless.

Teleporting back to our bedroom in a hurry, both of us slumped down on the bed while I remained laying on her back and inside her to enjoy the warmth for a bit longer.

“Haah- that guy- that guy saw us, right?” Lien panted loudly.

“He definitely did,” I replied, feeling a little short of breath myself.

“What should we do?” she asked.

“What do you mean? We’re just two strangers to him. Although he saw our faces, it’s not like he would know who we are,” I replied.

“But our faces are quite well-known in the upper echelons of Kyoto. I hope that what you said is true and that he has nothing to do with those people,” she said, quickly recovering from her ‘overcharged’ state. Her body had too many chemicals in it after I used Pleasure Touch for so long but thanks to being powerful, she could recover quite easily.

“It should be fine,” I muttered.

“Haah- my goodness. This was one hell of a beautiful night, though there was a little bump in it,” she laughed as she stuffed her face into her pillow. Since I was laying on top of her in my favorite pose and I was still inside, I couldn’t help but start moving a little. Sitting up on her thighs, I grabbed her big round ass and started pounding her from behind, catching her completely unprepared.

“Mh~ what- What are you doing? Was it not enough for you?” she moaned as she raised her head.

“I thought it was but this sight was too much for me to resist,” I replied, slapping her ass.

“Fine, we can continue until the kids wake up. But not any longer!” she said through Link while I freed her from all her clothes. In the end, we had another fifteen minutes which was enough for me to cum twice in that pose. Once the kids were up, we cleaned our bodies with magic and eradicated any smell of sex in our room.

---

Two weeks later the kids turned six months old and we have also gained many people who were good at management, some even having work experience in the field. Regardless, all of them were sent to a two-week intensive training. The first batch had only one or two days left before they could get to work.

“What do you want for breakfast?” Lien asked as she walked into the kitchen. I was sitting at the table with the kids, teaching them magic.

“Eggs with bacon!” Reiner replied.

“Me too!” Felice followed after.

“Breakfast? But it is ten o’clock. Are you sure it should be called breakfast?” I laughed, hearing her question.

“Hush, who told you to stay up late with the kids and now all of you woke up so late? For me, breakfast is the first meal of the day so if you wake up at eight in the evening and eat, that would still be breakfast,” she reasoned with me, waving the pan in her hand.

“Haha, sure,” I smiled at her.

“Look at your mother, isn’t she beautiful-” I was about to ask the kids but I suddenly felt that one of the Leviathan Emblems was broken. I gave it only to official members to use it if they got into trouble and a few storytellers a year ago.

“Lien, please look after them. I’ve got to deal with something,” I finished my sentence.

“Sure~ but hurry back for breakfast,” she replied with a smile.

Teleporting to the location where the emblem was broken, I looked around and found myself in the middle of a stage that was surrounded by young Japanese kids. Two guys were rolling around, fighting on the side of the stage, leaving me in a dumbfounded state. I thought there was something big going on but it turned out to be a small brawl.

One of the guys was a storyteller who I commissioned a year ago so I knew his face while the other guy was on top so I had yet to see his face. Grabbing the shirt on his back, I raised him into the air and looked at him with my brows raised.

“Why do you look so familiar?” I thought aloud, seeing his thick black brows and long black hair. He was quite young as well, probably similar to me in age, though his stature was a little scrawny and his arms were thin. He didn’t look like a fighter at all, so I didn’t quite understand why would he attack an old man, a storyteller.

“Hi,” he waved his hand and smiled at me awkwardly.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“My Lord! I was just telling the kids about Leviathan and I showed them your emblem when this guy suddenly rushed onto the stage and jumped at me for no reason! He even took the emblem out of my hands and broke it!” the Oldman stood up and explained as he dusted off his clothes.

Glancing back at the offender guy who looked awfully familiar for some reason, I raised my brows, hoping that he would tell me his reasons.

“Oldman! I apologize to you for pushing you down and believe me, I had no intention of hurting anyone-”

“Ahha! Now that you know that I was telling the truth and that the creator of Leviathan is in front of you, you don’t dare admit your mistakes, do you?” the Oldman interrupted him.

“No, it’s not like that. I just wanted to meet Sir…”

“Seth,” I introduced myself, seeing that he was waiting for that. Creating another emblem, I threw it towards the Oldman and put the guy on the ground. “So? Let me hear, why did you go as far as to attack one of our affiliates just to meet me?”

“Sir, I’ve told you that I had no intention of attacking him. I’ve asked for the emblem first but he said that he wouldn’t hand it over to anyone as per your orders so my only option was to take it from him. I’ve been trying to find a way to meet you for two weeks!” he started his explanation while I realised that I was in Kyoto.

Uh- why do I have a bad feeling about this? I grumbled in my mind.

“Could you please follow me to my humble home? I wish to show you something very important. I’m sure that you’re going to like it!”

Is this Leo’s trick or something? Is this a trap? I should be careful, just in case.

“Which direction?” I asked. Once he pointed it out, I used telekinesis to make both of us fly in that direction and reached his house in just a few seconds. His house looked perfectly normal and average, nothing out of the ordinary. After opening the door, he led me to a dark room and then turned on the lights, revealing a bunch of pencils and wrinkled pieces of papers on the ground. The room was filled with half-done drawings but there was one facing the door that had a white blanket covering it.

Walking up to the blanket, he stopped next to it while I covered my eyes, guessing where this was going.

“Sir, please take a look at my drawing. I was so touched and inspired after seeing you with your wife that night that I couldn’t stop myself from drawing the entire night. I spent a lot of time trying to perfect it to express all the emotions that were so clear on your faces and got etched into my memory. While it was a hard task, I believe I have managed to grasp that feeling inside me and did justice to your drawing!” he said before he pulled off the blanket.

The paper was 120 by 240 centimeters in size so the drawing was pretty fucking large compared to anything I had seen before, considering that there weren’t many artists these days who drew and made music. While we had many tracks from the past, visual arts were kind of ‘lost’.

Just like at that time, Lien was leaning forward with her eyes closed and I was holding her wrists to keep her up on the drawing. He even drew the trunk of the tree next to me and the condensed vapor in front of Lien’s mouth as she breathed out. The ground underneath us, the shadows, and the whole environment looked very impressive but I was completely dumbstruck after seeing Lien’s expression. The whole drawing looked so realistic that I could totally imagine it in front of me, leading me to get hard just by looking at it.

I had mixed emotions about the drawing considering that it portrayed Lien and me as we were copulating but I had to admit that it was a great piece and I had to appreciate it.

“Beautiful work,” I let out my honest thoughts.

“Haha, I knew you would like it!” he laughed happily. Our faces looked completely life-like and were exact copies of our real faces, even though he saw us only for a moment before I teleported away. Well, he did say that it left a deep mark in his heart…

“While it’s beautiful, did you show it to anyone?” I asked with a frown.

“No, no. This is the only piece that I have made and I wish to give it to you as a present. I haven’t shown it to anyone else and I dare swear upon anything when I say that. Thanks to this drawing, I believe I’ve gained way more than by selling this to others. I’ll be able to draw much more life-like images in the future and I also won’t offend a powerhouse like Leviathan by doing so,” he shook his head.

“That’s good then,” I said with a nod. “But I can appreciate many things in life and I firmly believe that art like this should be appreciated, so I’m going to buy it from you. Just name your price,” I added.

“I’m sorry but I still believe in what I said and a present shouldn’t have a price. I’ve gained more than I’m going to lose by not selling this,” he said with a smile.

“As a person and an artist, probably yes. As a person who must pay for things, you didn’t,” I replied as I put ten Leviathan Coins into his hand. “This should be enough for you to buy even a house and it honestly doesn’t affect me in any way.”

“This is too much-”

“And I also want you to take the test to join Leviathan, right now. An inspiring artist would come in handy,” I interrupted him.

“Are you serious?” he asked with wide-opened eyes.

“Yes.”

“But isn’t it only for combatants and powerful magicians? That’s why I never took your test before,” he asked.

“No, not all of our members are powerful magicians. It’s just that you don’t have to leave Leviathan since we have everything there and they feel happy living there so nobody knows about them. We accept any kind of talent as long as their personalities are good enough, or I should say, similar enough to our standards,” I explained it to him.

“I shall take your test, in that case. People here don’t really appreciate my work, except for a select few,” he sighed loudly. After opening a portal for him and waiting for him to get in, I locked his doors since he forgot, picked up his drawing, and teleported back to Leviathan.

“What happened?” Lien asked, sensing that I appeared behind her.

“Dad is back?” Felice raised her head out of her plate.

"It's nothing serious. I'll tell you later. Why are you not eating with the kids? I mean, I can see that you're washing the dishes but it could have waited," I said.

"You're right, okay? I'm sorry," she raised her hands and appeared between our babies.

"Look Dad! I can use magic if it's coming from inside my body!" Felice said happily as she combusted a tiny flame in her mouth and then used wind magic to create a flamethrower. Covering my forehead, I looked at the scene helplessly while Lien just shook her head and started eating.

"The moment you left Reiner did the same and then Felice tried it as well. I was so startled when a giant flame appeared out of nowhere, not to mention how afraid I was that Reiner's mouth would be hurt by the flame. It seems like there are enough mana cells in their mouth to consume and ignore the harmful heat," Lien explained to me, seeing that I was staring at her with questioning eyes.

"..."

"Daddy, you won't restrict this?" Reiner asked, his question sounding a bit weird but I've got his point anyway.

"While I believe that it's still too early for you to learn magic, I think that it's better if we teach you properly from now on rather than restrict you," I said helplessly. "This also means that there will be no more showcases for you two. The things I'll show you, you'll have to learn."

"Yaaay!" both of them shouted happily.

"Now hurry up and eat, I have something to show to your mother," I said.

“Can we drink it directly?” he asked with hope-filled eyes.

“That’s not my choice…” I muttered, staring at Lien.

“Is it going to take a lot of time?” she asked as she looked at me.

“No, I don’t think so,” I shook my head.

“Then give Mommy a moment and then you can drink it directly. Eat the remaining food on your plates in the meantime,” she answered the kids and pulled on my hand to leave. The kids’ diet was quite peculiar considering that they were capable of talking and their teeth had finished growing. They had no trouble eating cooked food but they still needed breast milk at the same time, sort of like a complementary food.

They were unlike any other babies I had ever seen or heard of, that was for sure. These days Lien just put her breast milk into milk dispensers but from time to time, they asked her for direct feeding. I had a feeling that it was because her mana started dissipating through the milk dispenser so direct feeding was their only way to get access to top-quality milk.

“So? What did you want to show me?” Lien asked on the way to our room but I just kept silent and stopped in front of the door.

“Why are you so secretive? What’s inside?” she asked impatiently. Using telekinesis, I raised the drawing into the air and stretched it out before I opened the door and let her see it. She stared forward with her mouth wide open for a few seconds, finally turning towards me and asking, “Don’t tell me that this is from that night…”

“It is,” I smiled at her, knowing her next question.

“Is it a public image? Was it maybe mass-produced or something like that?” she frowned.

“Haha, no, this is the only piece and we’re the only ones who had seen it,” I waved my hand.

“Did you kill the artist?” she asked, obviously not meaning it seriously.

“Ah, yes. He suffered a lot in my hands. Well, jokes aside, I made him take our test. I hope that he will be able to join us,” I replied.

Rubbing her temples, she said, “The drawing is amazing but I have mixed emotions about it…”

“I know that feeling, don’t worry,” I patted her shoulder. “But what’s more important, look at how stunning you were!”

Slapping the back of my head, she said, “Pervert. Put it away before the kids or someone else could see it. Keeping it secretly is better than destroying something like this.”

“I think so,” I nodded my head, quickly pushing the image into one of my private spaces that served as a storage room.

After going back to the kids, I had some breakfast while Lien fed them until they were full. Soon I also checked on the artist guy to see how he was progressing but I ended up watching his struggles and choices through the surveillance system of the testing ground. The end result was pleasant since he passed the test, just as I expected after checking him out with the soul language.

With everything on track, there was only one thing to do. Open the portals to look for even more like-minded talents.

--- Ishtar's POV ---

“Where are the other two?” I leaned on the table and twirled my black hair around my finger.

“They should be on their way here,” Leo replied, staring sideways. He was clearly having trouble looking at me with my light getup. Considering that I wore a transparent black nightgown and that my charming spell was active, it was no wonder he found it hard to look at me. 

Although I had to find a new sex partner every time I wanted to take advantage of my commandment, it was quite easy with my looks. I charmed and kidnapped over a hundred handsome guys during the last few months and grew quite a bit stronger than in the last two years. Thanks to charming those guys, I also had a small army of men who were willing to do anything for me.

I usually sent the ones I got bored of to destroy Seth’s mana nodes but as it turned out, their death was rather pointless since Seth could create more mana nodes than what we found and destroyed. Either Sylvanus told him how to do it or he had had enough knowledge to create clones and mana nodes since the beginning.

After taking advantage of my powers and using it to its full potential, I felt a bit stupid for mainly relying on the war and destruction-related prospects of my commandment. In the past, I didn’t want to make contact with too many men, even if my desire for them was a bit over the top. Although I wanted to keep the number of my sex partners low, after facing the reality that I had no power to meet Seth safely or even beat his stupid wife, I realised I had to take action to reach my goal.

Having no other way, I started using my spells and drew in one guy after the other to become more powerful, but I didn’t feel as bad about it as I initially thought. I always felt disgusted when I imagined strangers touching my body but when I realised that they were just like toys, I came to use them and enjoy them as I pleased.

It was even more fun to see the faces of some of my toys’ girlfriends when their man couldn’t resist my temptation and dumped them on the spot to follow me. I was a bit surprised when I found out that my charm also grew stronger after each new guy, making it harder and harder for our male members to look at me.

“Why are you looking the other way when I’m here? Am I so ugly that you have to look away?” I asked Leo with a smile as I leaned on the table and put my chin on my hands.

“You know it all too well,” he grumbled, inhaling even more of my pheromones. Since I started using the sex-related part of my commandment to its fullest, my charming spells were constantly active, which turned out to trouble even my dear partner.

In the beginning, he could resist it quite easily but as the difference in our magic power grew, he had to use more mana to clear the chemicals from his body and found it harder to cope with it. If he didn’t want to waste all his mana in just a few minutes, he had to bear with his own needs and affection, whether he liked it or not. I was quite curious to see how Seth would react to my chemicals or how long he would be able to resist it but I didn’t dare meet him in person just yet. If I got found out, he would definitely kill me on the spot so I had to become more powerful.

Sensing that Leo was in ‘pain’ down there, I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. Even though he was the one who took me in a few years ago and raised me like a big brother, here he was lusting after me because of my spell. It was so fun to see men breaking under their own lust, even if they were as clear-headed and willful as Leo. In fact, breaking men like him was the most fun.

I was quite sure that I could easily push him down and make him my slave as I was now but I still felt some restraint about it considering our relationship. One half of me wanted to keep our partner-like relationship while my other half was begging me to break him and turn him into my faithful dog.

Sighing loudly, I canceled my spell and removed all the chemicals from the air. Maybe I was just afraid of breaking the only man who was kind to me in my life and feared what would follow once that happened. At least, I still had one sensible person I could talk to so it was better to keep him around.

“Thanks,” he said as he took a deep breath and finally looked into my eyes. “I’d appreciate it if you stopped playing around with me,” he added, shaking his head.

Excited to play around with him for a bit more, I stood up and walked around the round table, stopping right behind his back. Wrapping my arms around him, I leaned closer to his ear and asked, “Why? Do you want me to be serious with you?”

He sat there in silence for a few seconds so I stood up straight and ran my fingers through his silky blonde hair. Enjoying my hands, he closed his eyes and said in a low voice, “Even that would be better than this bullshit.”

“Well-well, that’s not what I expected to see when you called all of us together for a meeting,” Kylie laughed as she entered the old tower, throwing her long wavy blue hair over her shoulder.

Closing the double doors behind her, Adro turned into a snake and slid to his chair before returning to his human form to take his seat. Glancing at me with his ugly snake eyes, he used his commandment to clone my body, including every single detail. Even his white robe turned into the same sexy black nightgown that I wore as if his clothes were a part of his body.

“Oh my, how come our boss is feeling embarrassed?” he asked playfully using my voice. I hated Adro the most on this planet since he always turned into other women and gained their memories, emotions, and even replicated their powers. I had no idea how he did it and even if he couldn’t use my powers the way I could, it was more than enough to fool someone into believing that they were talking to me.

The worst was that he always took on my shape when we met and I didn’t even know what he looked like in reality. Even now, he came in looking like some random red-haired woman.

“Wait, do you actually want to go for it, with me?” Leo laughed as he turned around and looked at me.

“No, I’m not embarrassed at all. This bastard is lying,” I replied, glaring at Adro. It was strange to glare at your mirror image…

“She is lying,” my stupid ‘clone’ chimed in.

“Get out of my head!” I shouted at Adro.

Seeing that I was ready to attack him, Leo jumped up from his seat and stepped between us with his hands raised, “Alright, calm down everyone. I didn’t call you here to fight.”

“Then did you call us here so that we could see Ishtar in her nightgown?” Kylie laughed, throwing her legs onto the table as she leaned back in her chair. She wore black clothes and military boots, as usual, also hiding various butchering knives in her boots and under her leather jacket.

“You smell of blood, you should take a bath sometimes,” I remarked with a frown, noticing that there were dried patches of blood on the soles of her boots.

“Honey, I could also tell you to stop dressing like a whore but would you listen? We get that you are good at fucking, there is no need to flaunt it,” she replied with a smile.

“Who is flaunting it, you bitch? I’m just having fun teasing them and as you can see, it works well even on Leo,” I said proudly, hugging Leo’s arm.

“What did you call me? Come closer and I’ll make a third hole for you,” she jumped up from her seat, seething with anger.

Seeing that she was reaching into her jacket and that she wanted to attack me, I also prepared my mana to beat up her ass but when she was about to move, Leo slapped on the table and shouted loudly, “Stop!”

Seething with anger, I felt prompted to slap her across the face but I knew that it would ruin the meeting so I restrained myself and sat down silently, facing Adro, or I should say ‘myself’.

“Fine, but one more bad word and I’ll cut her up,” Kylie also sat down but she still threw a few threatening words my way. She was a typical hot-headed idiot who could attack someone just because they gave her a bad look.

I shouldn’t lower myself to the level of this idiot, I cursed inwardly, knowing that I let my rage get the better of me for a moment.

“Anyway, why do we have to meet at such a rundown, crappy place?” she asked as she looked around and pointed at all the debris. We were in an old, abandoned stone tower in the middle of nowhere.

“The cities are being overtaken and monitored by Seth one after the other so I’d rather not risk being noticed by his senses. It was hard enough to avoid Sylvanus’ senses and Seth has grown even stronger than him in the last few months. If the four of us went to a city under his control together, I’m afraid he would notice your presence when you behave like this,” he replied with a frown, meaning our little bicker a moment ago.

While we weren’t sure of Seth’s abilities, we all knew that he was a very powerful mage and that he wasn’t a complete idiot either. Well, he was definitely smarter than Kylie and probably even more so than me. If we really started fighting in a city, he would most likely notice it one way or the other and that wouldn’t be good for anyone. I also found this abandoned tower crappy but I agreed with Leo that it was safer this way.

“Dude, you may be the target of his rage but we haven’t done any large-scale attack on humanity that would give him a reason to find and kill us,” she said as she leaned forward in her chair and smiled at him. “So what if he found the four of us together? He would kill only you.”

“Haah- this woman is so hopeless. Shouldn’t you have more brain as the incarnation of Kali, the god of war?” I shook my head helplessly.

“You bitch-”

“Stop!” Leo slapped on the table again. “This is exactly our problem. How do you plan to fight Seth and his organisation when you can’t even stop bickering for one fucking minute?”

“I’ll be quiet,” Kylie shrugged her shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” I said in a low voice. 

“Haah- what a bunch of idiots,” Leo shook his head. “Look, I get that you hate each other but there is one thing in common for all of us. We also want to become powerful and get a place in the world but we can’t do that when we are hunted by someone more powerful because of our methods.”

“You want to replace Lien and get Seth for yourself,” he pointed at me - “You want to have your own human farm for whatever reason,” he pointed at Kylie - “and Adro and I just want to become powerful enough to do whatever we want. To achieve that, we either sit in a fucking meditative position for hundreds of years like some goddamn hermit or we just use our commandments to achieve what we desire.”

“I must say that our resistance against Seth is pretty much a joke at this point so it would be great if you got yourselves together and instead of bickering with each other, worked together with me. He is a god of sex and with his idiotic rate of development, I have no fucking way to fight him with wits alone because he isn’t a complete cock-brain guy either.”

“Or if you think that you can fight him or go out and practice your mass-murder commandments and hobbies as you please without getting caught, then go out and see the repercussions for yourself. I can also assure you, Kylie, that if he found you together with me, he would definitely capture you and probably get rid of you once he found out what kind of person you are.”

Seeing him clenching his fists, we all sat in silence as he finished talking, knowing well that every word he said was true.

Taking a deep breath, I said, “I agree with you so let’s put aside our enmity and talk seriously. During the last three months, I’ve sent quite a lot of my servants to destroy Seth’s mana nodes and while they were successful, I can’t say it had too much effect. In fact, the nodes were back by the next morning and it cost me a servant so trying to do that is a complete waste.”

“I also don’t think that creating our own army that is strong enough to destroy his mana nodes is possible since it would take us years to train them and it would be too late by the time they reached that level. It takes too much time for the four of us to find and destroy his mana nodes and he can clearly create more than we can destroy so I think that we should look for another way.”

“I think so,” Leo nodded his head. “And you seem to have something in mind.”

“I do,” I smiled at him. “We know that Seth’s soul force is spreading and that Sylvanus is removing his nodes only when Seth can take control of an area. While their methods are superb and we can’t do much against it as we are now, it seems like they forgot about something important and made a mistake. Right now, humankind is basically split into three factions. One of them is affected by Sylvanus’ soul force, one of them is affected by Seth’s, and the last one is made of people like us who aren’t affected by anyone.”

“While those who are in the same faction are unlikely to start a large-scale war even if we made some people hate each other, what if we made two leaders from different factions hate each other? They won’t be affected by the same person’s soul force so it will be easy to make them turn against each other. Considering that humans are greedy, they may turn against each other even if we don’t do anything. We’ll just have to use our commandments and take advantage of the situation,” I explained my plan to them.

“That’s indeed a good plan, though we should start laying down the groundwork right away. If we could create some enmity among the various large cities, that would make things much simpler,” Leo replied with a nod.

Leaning forward with interest, Adro said with a smile, “In that case, you may find this a useful piece of information. I copied one of their members’ bodies not long ago and learned from the woman’s memories that they were going to hold another selection for their new members. As you all know, Leviathan is famous these days and many people wish to join, including high-ranking officers of large cities.”

“This means that once their selection starts, the city leaders will be the only ones left in charge in the various cities. There will be much fewer people who could tell them to rethink what they were doing, so you could incite war among various factions way more easily.”

“That sounds like a plan to me,” I raised my brows, waiting for the others to say something.

“I agree with you,” Leo nodded.

“I also agree,” Adro said while Kylie just shook her head sideways, clearly displeased with what she heard.

“What’s your problem?” I asked with a frown, looking at her.

“You can do whatever you want, I’m just annoyed that all you can think of is to make them jump against each other. Why don’t we kill them with our own hands?” she replied.

Slapping my forehead, I felt prompted to punch her in the face for being so stupid. All she could think of was killing and destroying everything. I could see that Leo and Adro were equally displeased with her reaction but everyone held it in and said our goodbyes to each other without making a remark.

Since I wanted to talk with Adro and Leo about something, I told them with my soul force to stay for a bit longer. As soon as Kylie disappeared, Adro couldn’t stop himself from saying, “This woman is so goddamn stupid, even if her past is shitty.”

“What do you mean? Do you know what made her like this?” I raised my brows, slightly interested.

“I tend to clone women to gain their memories and make myself more experienced in every field. It’s also fun to use other’s bodies so I naturally tried out her body as well,” he started his explanation, still using my face…

“I’m not going to go into the details but the short story is that she was the tenth princess of a royal family and got caught at the age of fourteen by another faction. She went through a lot of torturing during that time since they were trying to use her in negotiations. They even cut off her fingers and sent it to the king to dethrone him but her father never cared about her safety and left her to her fate.”

“She sort of lost her sanity after months of torturing and now she wants to return that pain to everyone through destruction. She gained her commandment when she was still a hostage and trained herself while being tortured. Once she was strong enough to kill her captors, she left her old life behind by destroying her captors, the royal family, and leading that kingdom to destruction. As far as her memories go, she was called clever by her parents when she was a child but after that incident, her mind got clouded and that’s why she is like this.”

“That’s actually quite messed up,” I muttered, realising that maybe my life wasn’t as bad as I thought. Regardless, I hated people and I had no problem killing millions of them if it helped me in achieving what I wanted. It was quite fun to see them killing each other over minor things.

“Indeed, but let’s get to the point. Why did we have to stay behind?” Leo asked, looking at me.

“I’m not sure if it would work but I have a plan that I need your help with. Although I could use my charming spells to make a few male leaders turn against each other, I’m afraid Seth would just kill or heal them once he realised that they were controlled and then there would be no war,” I explained, looking at Adro.

Glancing at Leo, I added, “So I believe it would be better to turn them into rivals in a natural way. If they hated each other and planned things carefully then Seth wouldn’t notice that trouble was brewing right under his nose.”

“What kind of rivalry do you want?” Adro raised his brows. “Since I had to stay, I suppose you need a woman for this task but let me tell you a few things about my abilities and my limitations. First of all, I can’t take on women’s form unless I see them at least once so I can’t just turn into any woman you want. Secondly, if you want me to pretend to be a Leviathan member, let me tell you that the last time I met a member was purely by chance. I don’t think that we’ll be lucky enough to capture or meet one of them anytime soon.”

“Finally, you should also forget about me turning into Lien to do something. I had seen her a few months ago in Washington when she and Seth were ready to fight Sylvanus but for some reason, I couldn’t inherit her abilities and memories. I couldn’t even take on her form since I need to read their mind to shapeshift. I’m not sure how she did it but she was blocking my commandment passively.”

“You don’t have to worry about that, I had no such intention,” I shook my head. This was my first time hearing about his abilities, it was good to learn who I worked with, even if I hated him for copying me.

“Okay then,” Adro nodded.

“I will go and find some random good-looking woman who you can use for your shapeshift. Once you have her looks, you should go out to seduce the leader of Washington and Baltimore which is a Kingdom nearby that is still under Sylvanus’ control. Just look at history, men can go to any length when they’re fighting over a woman and if we add on a bit of my charm, they’ll be more than willing to kill each other,” I explained.

“That’s quite easy to achieve, I’ll be able to use your charms even if I shapeshift to another woman,” he replied.

“Great,” I smiled at him.

Once we planned everything out, we left the old tower to start working. It was time to cause some trouble to the all-mighty ‘Mage Emperor’, as outsiders called him.