The Mage Emperor

To the stars

The next day the first thing to do was to take care of Ishtar's knocked out soldiers. Although I wanted to heal their minds, I was only capable of erasing their fanatical love for their master, which could easily crush many of them. This was because they would remember what they have done and would have to live with it. Some of them may have killed their own families and then Ishtar used them to kill even more. If I was forced to do something like that to my family by being mind-controlled, I couldn't really imagine myself living on.

There was also the problem that I checked their personalities with the help of soul language and if I got everything right, there were quite a lot of bad people among them who most likely wouldn’t give a fuck about their actions. In fact, they would probably continue killing and taking advantage of others since their training from Ishtar would remain, putting their capabilities well over the average.

I was in a bit of a tough spot because I either had to selectively get rid of some of them or I had to get rid of all of them. The soul language proved to be reliable and accurate over the years but I wasn’t fond of the idea that it could decide who lived and died. After all, the meaning of those marks in people’s souls was interpreted by me and I couldn’t be sure that everything I learned was correct.

I believed it was fine to use for allowing entrance to Leviathan but using it to decide life and death was too much. That being the case, I teleported to the hidden island where the soldiers laid and brought Ma’at along since her mind-reading ability was more reliable in this kind of situation.

Gil turned out to be quite clingy since he also wanted to come along but I refused him to let Ma’at focus on her job properly. Even I found it harder to focus on my job if I was with my loved ones, not to mention Gil and Ma’at whose minds were comparably slower than mine.

In the end, I had to spend the whole day dealing with the soldiers and ended up killing about half of them either because they no longer wanted to live or because they had grand ideas that wouldn’t do any good for humanity in the future. Most of those ideas were limited to taking over the control of some territory they knew of and then becoming the local tyrant where they could act like kings and have all the women they took a liking to. I wasn’t fond of the idea of those kinds of guys running around so I dealt with them quickly.

Those who stayed alive were offered a chance to go to any place they wanted and after creating portals for them, they were left to do their own things. Since I still had the evening ahead of me and a juicy night with my wife, I quickly thanked Ma’at for her help and then hurried home.

As I appeared in the living room, I noticed the back of Lien’s head as she sat on the sofa, dozing off to some action movie on the television. Felice and Reiner were laying on her thighs with their eyes closed, fast asleep. Stopping right behind them, I leaned forward and kissed my wife on the lips to wake her up.

“Welcome back. Are you finished?” she asked as she smiled at me.

“Mhm, I am, which means that we are pretty much free to do whatever we want for the time being,” I nodded as I brushed her hair over her face.

“Why did you cover my eyes with my hair?” she chortled as she tried to blow it away with her mouth without success.

“I just felt like it. How about we retire for today?” I asked, seeing that the kids didn’t even budge despite our talk.

“Go and take a shower then we can go to bed. I’m kind of sleepy now anyway and I don’t want to wake up the kids,” she waved her hand, shooing me towards the bathroom.

“Oh, right, do you mind if we all sleep together?” she added as I was about to turn around.

“Don’t be silly. Although I admit I was expecting a passionate night, I thought that I shouldn’t bother and wake up my lovely family after seeing you three like this. I’ll be back in two minutes,” I smiled at her.

Seeing her pursing her lips, I gave her another kiss on the lips and then left to take a shower while she was still awake. In reality, I wasn’t even dirty so taking a shower wasn’t necessary but it was kind of refreshing and I knew that Lien loved the fragrance of my shower gel so I went along with her wish anyway. Just like I promised, I returned in less than two minutes and teleported the kids and Lien to our bedroom. Realising that they were all dressed up, I changed everyone’s clothes to pajamas and then entered the bed, facing Lien.

Felice and Reiner were sleeping between us but since my lovely wife couldn’t sleep well without having me in her arm’s reach, she climbed to the upper part of the bed and leaned over our kids’ heads to push the top of her head against my chest. We were in a quite retarded position but it still made me warm inside.

“You smell nice,” Lien muttered as she closed her eyes and took a whiff of my fragrance.

Closing my eyes, I followed her to the lands of dreams.

---

The next morning I woke up to my wife's beautiful face and the fruits of our love. The kids somehow got behind Lien during the night, though they were still hugging each other which I found quite cute. There was only one 'problem' with the image. My wife was giving me a handjob.

"Good morning, honey,” Lien mused as she gazed into my eyes, her long eyelashes and crystal-clear green eyes captivating my very soul. Her melodic voice and red lips seemed to be even more alluring than usual as she stroked my dick fervently.

“Uh- Stop rubbing it,” I hissed between my teeth, feeling that I was getting dangerously close to cumming. She looked so beautiful as she laid on her side, her hand under her head, I almost busted just from looking at her.

“Can’t do,” she giggled as she used pleasure touch on me and made me jizz my pants on the spot.

“What are you doing?” I grumbled, feeling that I got totally ruined first thing in the morning.

“Your face was kind of amusing to watch while you were sleeping. I just thought I should give it a try,” she laughed as she pulled back her hand and looked at the sperm that got stuck on it.

“You came strong. Did you have a wet dream?” she winked at me as she slowly stuck her finger into her mouth, showing me one of her most arousing expressions.

Feeling that the pleasure I woke up to has slowly come to an end, I took a deep breath and backed out from under the blanket. Looking down, I could see the bulge in my crotch moving around since I was still ready for more but I knew it was impossible to continue. Lien’s attack was dirty and dangerous enough already considering that our children were sleeping right behind her back.

Appearing in front of me, she pressed her body against mine and started caressing my chest, “How about we take a morning shower before they wake up?” she asked as she glanced at the kids. To make things even worse, she was wearing a black gown that was so thin I could see her nipples through it. She probably changed her gown before I woke up.

“These goddamn jugs are making me go crazy,” I growled into her ear as I grabbed her breasts and squeezed them, earning a small yelp from Lien. It was lucky I set up a soundproof barrier around us in advance else the kids would have woken up.

Looking over her shoulder and seeing her arching back and round ass, I knew I was no longer sane enough to resist her temptation so I gave in and took her straight to the bathroom. After doing some intensive work on my manhood I made her some clothes and dressed her up.

“Let’s go and make some breakfast,” she said as she opened the bathroom door and waited for me to start moving.

Running my eyes over her perfect figure, I couldn’t help but nod in appreciation before doing as told.

“Do you like what you are seeing?” she chortled as I passed by.

“I’m loving it,” I replied, quickly reaching for her ass.

While I created some healthy cereal and set the table with a good portion for everyone, Lien put some bread, butter, cheese, vegetables, and salami on the table. It was sort of a do it yourself breakfast for the kids, though they would probably go for the cereal anyway. Although we made breakfast for them every day, recently we started having them help us cook lunch to make them a bit more familiar with house chores. They weren’t too happy about it in the beginning but they were starting to get used to it as the days passed by.

“I’ll go and wake up the kids,” I said as I turned to leave but all of a sudden Lien jumped up with a loud hooray.

“What’s up?” I tilted my head to the side, wondering what made her so happy.

Grabbing my hands, she pulled them between her breasts and started jumping up and down in one place as she cried out happily, “Finally, I have found it!”

Raising my brows, I waited for her to continue since I had no idea what she was talking about, which was kind of a first. Slowly calming down, she stopped hopping around and cleared her throat to explain what she meant, “Long story short, I have a little secret project that I wanted to surprise you with and after a whole year of secrecy, the time has finally come.”

“A secret what?” I shook my head in confusion, finding her words quite baffling.

“It was really hard to hide it from you, alright? You see, one day when you were out for work, I’ve made a few clones and sent them out in space to look for signs of intelligent life. I didn’t believe that this was the only planet with life on it and after a whole year of exploration, I have finally found not one but four planets with life on it.”

“My clone has just entered one of them and I must say, it’s a gorgeous planet with great living conditions. What’s even more surprising is that the inhabitants have mana in their bodies and the average goes from our Sage rank all the way to Warlords. Or at least, it’s the average where my clone landed, though I’m not sure if it’s the territory of someone powerful or if that’s really the average or maybe, below average on the planet.”

“Whichever is the case, I’m certain that their magic is much older than ours, probably going back as far as four to five thousand years…” turning silent for a moment, she seemed to focus on something and then continued her barrage of words, “Wait, I can sense a spell that’s connecting the four planets, seemingly some kind of portal, though I can’t be sure without checking it out with my real body. Aaa, I’m so excited now!” she shouted as she hugged me with all her strength.

“Hahaha, I’m really glad for you, though I have to admit you have piqued my interest plenty enough already. But don’t be in a rush, we can check it out after feeding these two sleepyheads,” I said, seeing Felice and Reiner toddled to the table, rubbing their eyes.

“Alright, we can take them along with us once they are done eating,” she hummed as she sat at her place and tapped on the chair next to her, “hurry up,” she urged me.

Nodding my head, I took my seat and started eating, but once I thought over what she just said, I realised there was a small problem with it.

"I'm sorry but I'll have to disappoint you this once. I don't think that we should take the kids along with us without knowing anything about the inhabitants, their customs, and whatnot. It could be dangerous or we may be forced to do something we don't want them to see at their age,” I said through Link.

"It's not a problem because it’s still dark there while the day has just started for us. By the time the kids go to bed, it’s going to be morning there so we can leave during the night,” she replied through Link.

I was seriously looking forward to exploring another planet and meeting people with different customs, or even different races. While Felice and Reiner were chatting with each other over their breakfast, we were too curious to bother with their manners and did the same through Link, “By the way, you said ‘inhabitants’ so are there humans or are there different races on that planet?”

“Would it be still a surprise if I told you everything? You will be able to see it for yourself once we get there,” she chortled as she chewed on her food.

“Mom, why are you laughing like that?” Felice questioned her, finding it strange that she started laughing for no reason.

“I just thought of something funny, my dear. But you shouldn’t chat so much while eating,” she replied, reprimanding our daughter at the same time.

“Hypocrite,” I remarked.

“You are right, so let me fix that,” she replied and then said aloud, “You know what? I’ve never found it rude or annoying if somebody was talking at the table, just make sure that you aren’t talking with your mouth full and aren’t chewing loudly because those are disgusting. You also shouldn’t do it in front of someone who actually hates it because it’s not a nice thing to intentionally annoy others, am I clear?”

“Yes, Mom,” Felice and Reiner replied in sync, even using the same monotonous tone.

Although their voice was monotonous, I could sense that they meant their ‘yes’ seriously. Then again, they very rarely if ever chew loudly or talked with their mouths full so it wasn’t a problem, to begin with. They just liked talking when they weren’t chewing which I believed to be quite normal for people, even adults were like that.

After having breakfast, we took them to the training ground and watched over their battle for a few rounds before I decided to spar with them, ending in their total defeat. Funny enough, Reiner swore that one day he would be able to beat me with Felice while the latter said that she wouldn’t fight me head-on because it was unfair and stupid. It was quite lovely to see the small differences in my children and how they decided to go about a matter.

Reiner was a bit more hot-headed and wanted to train and get better until he could beat me while Felice was more cool-headed and wanted some kind of strategy. Sadly for them, my commandment combined with my lewd wife made my training speed faster than anyone else on the planet or maybe in the whole universe, practically making it impossible for anyone to catch up with me in magic power and mana capacity. On the other hand, I wasn’t a slacker myself and trained and looked for new ways of magic every day, making their goal even harder to achieve.

While I wanted my children to be strong, I wasn’t training for so many years so they could become more powerful than me and take care of me when I got old or something. If it was possible, I wanted to be the most powerful dad and husband for all my life so that I could help and protect my family whenever they needed it.

In the afternoon, I had some management work to do, though things were quite calm these days because the last time Leviathan accepted new members was two weeks ago, and everyone settled down by now. When the kids finally went to bed, I took a hot shower with my wife and then got dressed.

“Are you ready to go?” Lien asked as she smiled at me and took hold of my hand. Seeing me nodding, she teleported us to the planet she discovered. The moment I appeared, I scanned the whole solar system with the help of a small trick I developed over the past eight years. Since mana was abundant and covered the whole universe, I could control it to scan large areas and come to me with the information instead of using my own mana which would limit the size of the scannable area.

This made it possible to scan even a galaxy as long as my mind could process the information, the only drawback being that it was possible to alter the returning information or even block it. At the same time, it was slower and easier to notice but I didn’t mind it in this case.

I found out that the four planets orbiting around the sun were not only the same distance away, they were also of the same size which happened to be about twenty times the size of the Earth, though their rotation speed was slightly faster. One day was approximately 456 hours and a quarter of that was spent in the dark, though I was quite sure the other three planets were visible at night.

The size and rotation of the planets were controlled by giant formations which I found a bit weird and pointless at first so I looked more into the matter. After a few seconds of continuous scanning, I also found out that the planets were rotating around the sun much faster than our home planet but their axis wasn’t oblique so it was unlikely that there were seasons.

“These planets have large formations on them to keep their axis straight and there seems to be a large formation around the sun to keep them in a safe distance?” I raised my brows as I looked at Lien who was smiling from ear to ear like a fool.

“Yes, these planets are put in place artificially. Isn’t it amazing?” she said as she sat down and hung down her legs. We were on the edge of a cliff and there was a large settlement right below us, surrounded by a barrier.

Glancing down, I sat down next to her and said, “It’s indeed amazing, though the formation is quite crude.”

“Why do you have to call it crude?” she rolled her eyes.

“Dear, I’m a maximalist. I don’t know the circumstances of the people who made it or the knowledge they had so I said it’s amazing, but I’m not going to say that it’s perfect because it’s far from that. It could consume much less mana than it does and leave more for the solar system, not to mention that they used the wrong runes in some places,” I replied honestly, earning another eye roll.

“Hmm, if my analysis is correct, these planets were in rather dangerous distances away from the sun. It seems that this planet and the one across this one were too far away because the formation generates a stronger gravity field for these planets while the other two were probably too close because they are being pushed away,” I muttered once I found out what the formations did.

“So that’s why these formations exist in the first place,” I nodded, now finding it reasonable.

“If I’m right, all four planets had terrible living conditions in the past, either because they were too hot or too cold in large areas. If we also cancel the axis fixing formation, I think that three out of four planets had unpredictable seasonal changes, making life a living hell. Maybe the ancestors of these people became strong enough to create these formations to fix their living habitat,” I added, finding those formations even more impressive as I thought it over. It surely wasn’t an easy feat so hats off to whoever did it, even if it was crude.

Taking hold of my hand, she pulled it to her lips and gave a small kiss on it, “You’re completely correct, my love. Shall we go down and tour this city, or would you like to go to another one?”

Her clone has probably found out way more since it came here so she was just having fun watching my reactions.

“Now I sort of want to tour you instead of the city but we aren’t here for that, for now, so let’s go down. This city is one of the largest on the planet anyway with over twenty million souls in it, I assume we can gather some information if we ask around,” I replied as I pushed her down and rolled over her.

“Uuu~ are you riding me? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?” she chortled, seeing that I was sitting on her belly.

“I could put it between your tits in this position, you know?” I smirked as I put my hands on her breasts.

Staring back at me in silence for a few seconds, she put her hands on my chest and then suddenly pushed me back, making me fall off the cliff.

“You’re going to ruin my clothes and probably me as well if we continue, so get off. I’m also sensing people rushing towards us,” she said as she sat up.

Sitting in the middle of the air, I scratched my chin as I looked at the people who were rushing up from the slope side of the cliff with swords, axes, and other similar cold weapons in hand.

“They don’t sound too friendly,” I remarked.

“You think so? They want to arrest us,” Lien laughed as she brushed her hair behind her ear.

Damn, my wife is as hot as ever.

Although I was drooling after my wife, I wasn’t sitting here and flirting with her because I couldn’t restrain myself. Both of us were excited to find out more and explore this place but first, I had to analyze and learn the language these people used to communicate. It wasn’t too challenging with my scanning ability and the processing speed of my brain, it just took some time. Lien probably learned it long ago through her clone so she was just waiting for me.

My quick language learning ability wasn’t the work of some mystical magic, I just listened to all the people on the planet and connected the words with the things they were talking about. It was such a huge influx of data that a mortal would probably die from the overload instead of understanding anything, but it wasn’t much for me.

“It’s the first time I listened to the conversations of a whole planet and I must admit that it’s kind of hilarious when you do it and realise that every action a person can make is done by thousands of people at the same time. Shopping, robbing, sleeping, giving birth, copulating, literally everything,” I said.

“Well, there are so many people in different parts of the day and the planet so it’s kind of obvious,” she said, placing her chin on her knee as she smiled at me.

“By the way, the people charging at us are yelling ‘capture the intruders’, right?” I asked, hoping that I got their meaning right.

“Damn, it took me about a quarter of an hour to start understanding sentences while it took you just five minutes. But yeah, that’s what they said,” she nodded. I was still much stronger than Lien, after all, so my mind and learning ability were also quicker. The gap in power between us would never close unless I stopped training and having sex with her and she did everything on her own. Obviously, I didn’t want that for multiple reasons, and supporting my wife was one of my most important ‘life goals’.

“Stop right there!” the captain who led his squad yelled at us as he got closer. He had pale blue while a few others behind him had yellowish and three people had white skin like us. It was lucky we didn’t look like complete aliens, though one of the white guys had four arms and another one had four eyes, but literally.

The bluish and yellowish colored guys also had some strange features such as tails, claws, long canines, and one of them even had some fur on his body. As if that wasn't enough, they also wore enchanted leather and various kinds of metal armours.

“Is this a fantasy land or what?” I thought as I glanced at my wife who just smiled knowingly.

“I think that we could talk to them, or do you want to hide that we have different origins?” I asked as I looked at Lien.

“Whatever,” she chuckled, probably knowing something I didn’t.

“You are surrounded! Raise your hands and surrender!” the large man continued ordering us around. There were multiple intelligent species on this planet, but most of them had ‘humanoid’ shapes in the sense that they had one or more heads, legs, and arms. The most common were humans with two arms, two legs, and one head, though only a few of them had white-colored skin. People on this planet usually had pale blue, green, and yellow skin colors while the people that lived on the planet with a presumably ‘hot’ history had pale red and pink colored skin.

I assumed it was related to the abundant fire, or water and earth element that their ancestors cultivated, causing their bodies to evolve and leave behind these unique skin colors for the newer generations. It was also possible that they were hunted by various monsters since there seemed to be plenty of them on the planet and they simply evolved to hide from their predators.

"Mister, you have been yelling at us but you didn't state our crime. Why do you want to arrest us?" I asked using their language.

"You have climbed the God's peak which is illegal, don't you know even the most basic of the laws?" he yelled at me with a frown.

Don't tell me that they are strongly religious… the gaze he’s giving me looks quite crazy, I thought to myself, staring back at him.

"God's peak? I'm sorry but I’m not from around so I had no idea. Could you let us off?" I asked.

“Those who climb Azael’s peak are to be sentenced to three hundred hours worth of monster hunting for the local community. While you are young, you are already cheeky enough to lie and try to get off so easily, so it’s best if you learn some discipline. Out of compassion, I’ll help you if you follow us obediently and try to reduce your sentence to one day,” he said, placing the tip of his spear on the ground. At least, he was no longer pointing it at our faces like the others in his squad.

“So you’re worshipping this Azael? Interesting,” I mumbled to myself, not expecting that he would stomp on the ground once he heard it and start yelling again, "Blasphemy! Azael is the greatest God who saved the four planets, how dare you talk about her in such a carefree manner?"

"Eh? I told you I’m not from around and by 'around', I mean that I'm coming from a different solar system," I said as I pointed upwards. “Your God has nothing to do with me and with all due respect, I have no time for your fanatic games.”

As I finished talking, I released a bit of my magic power to scare them away, though it seemed to have no effect on any of them at first. Obviously, that was because they all pretended to be strong but I could see beads of sweat appearing on their foreheads as they slowly started taking deeper breaths.

I soon found out who was the weakest in their group since his legs started trembling until he was no longer capable of supporting himself and fell on his knees, soon followed by a few others.

“I could increase the output and knock you all out but I’d rather let you go peacefully. The decision is yours,” I said.

“What- What are you,” the captain stuttered as he looked at me with his big eyes, starting to show signs of fear as he realised they weren’t strong enough to be my opponent.

“Just another guy, just like your Azael,” I winked at him, sort of intentionally annoying him. I knew it wasn’t a nice thing but I wasn’t fond of these fanatical believers. Stupidity annoyed me.

At first, he made a surprised face but it soon turned into outrage once again, “How dare you to call her greatness a guy?!”

“Hahaha, Azael is a woman, my dear,” Lien couldn’t hold it any longer and started laughing at my ignorance.

“But it sounded like a man’s name for me…” I muttered, quickly adding - “but now that I think about it, he said ‘her’ not long ago so I should have known.”

“It may sound like that to you but it isn’t a manly name here and honestly, I think that even people on our planet wouldn’t dare to assume a person’s gender based on that name alone,” she explained a bit more before turning to look at the captain of the squad.

“You could have said it sooner,” I grumbled which she plainly ignored and said, “Sir, I’m afraid you won’t be able to bring justice to us today because we want to visit more places and monster hunting isn’t my favorite thing to do during a date. My husband here is also looking forward to exploring the planet so we must go now.”

"Oh, are we on a dat-" before I could finish my question, Lien waved her hand and teleported both of us to another place, leaving the poor captain without any captives or a chance to respond.

"Yes, we are," Lien replied with a smile as she hugged my arm, knowing well what I wanted to ask.

"Great, we both know how our date always ends so I couldn’t ask for anything better. This time I’ll leave the decision making to you since you are the one who ‘invited’ me,” I chuckled, enjoying her soft melons pressing against my arm.

“I thought so,” she said.

“By the way, is that why you said ‘whatever’? Because you knew he would want to punish me later?” I asked, stopping in place for a moment.

“Hahaha, I knew you would offend him so yes, that’s why I said ‘whatever’. Anyway, let me introduce to you the city ahead which is called Yenasari, the capital city of this whole planet. Given its title and the immense population of this planet, it’s giving homes to over three hundred million people, all of whom are capable magicians going from our so-called Sage rank to Warlord rank, many even reaching the Magister and Sentinel ranks.”

“The Overseer of this planet is called Yehan and he is about ten times as powerful as somebody at the beginning of the Sentinel rank, so not even Ma’at, Lugh, and the others would be his opponent. The overseer is the highest position one can achieve on each planet, and standing above them is Azael, the 'goddess' who saved the four planets a bit over three thousand years ago,” she said.

"Oh? And where is she?" I asked.

“I haven’t found her yet so I'm sorry but I can’t answer your question,” she shook her head.

"Let me see then," I murmured as I started looking for powerful mana sources in the solar system, soon finding the overseer in Yenasari and various other powerful sources. As the information started coming back from the other planets, I soon picked up on the signs of a mana source that went way beyond Yehan's power.

"She seems to be residing in some private little land in space with her followers-"

"Oh! Then that must be Elysium. I've heard some people dreaming about being allowed to visit that place but they all said it was hopeless," Lien added in her excitement.

"I see," I nodded as I looked around in the city. The streets connecting the four city gates were at least five hundred meters wide which I would have found unreasonable if not for seeing that it was filled with people. Many of them were moving out while an equally large number was moving towards the center of the city with short and slow steps, most likely because they were battling in the night and got tired out. Quite a lot of people also used tamed monsters as mounts and moved towards the city gate in groups of three or five.

There was a particularly eye-catching group in the middle of the street, numbering over a hundred members who were also going towards the gate, most likely to fight the monster horde that was charging towards the city and would arrive in about ten minutes.

“Shouldn’t you help them?” Lien asked, obviously expecting a yes.

“Why should I and why can’t you do that if you want to help them,” I raised a brow, confused by her question.

“Dear… the monsters literally started running because your scanning scared them. Shouldn’t you take care of your own shit?" she rolled her eyes.

“Eh? I’m sorry then. I honestly didn’t realise it. I guess I was too focused on gathering information about other things…” I replied. Stopping in place for a moment, I looked for the exact position of the monsters and opened a tiny portal in front of my right eye that led straight in front of the monster horde.

After taking a closer look at them, I was kind of surprised to see that the monsters actually had enough magic power to be considered Sage ranked magicians, some even reaching the Warlord rank.

“The monsters aren’t as simple here as on our planet, are they?” I asked as I turned to look at my wife.

“They certainly aren’t. There are much stronger monsters than what you are looking at, some even capable of posing a serious threat to the Overseers,” she replied.

Nodding my head, I poured my magic power through the tiny portal and forced it into the monsters’ body, causing their mana veins to explode. Their bodies were intact from the outside, except for a few of them that got stomped on as the monsters started falling in their charge.

Closing the portal, I told Lien that I was done and then continued our exploration. Unbeknownst to me, our presence caused greater distress than I imagined.

--- Third-person pov (a little before Seth’s arrival) ---

“You may sit,” a young-looking man with long black hair waved his hand and soon the people in the room took the seat behind them, slightly bowing their heads in respect. The black-haired young man was the overseer of Yenasari, which was one of the four planets orbiting around the sun. The capital city was always named after the planet and the other three were called Naos, Themis, and Anioth.

“I hereby open our monthly meeting in advance, considering the gravity of the situation. As everyone knows, early in the morning an unidentified mana source arrived at our planet early in the morning and somehow changed the mana flow in the whole solar system. This change of mana flow caused multiple cracks and nearly broke our Stellar Formation that keeps the planets in place.”

“If that were to happen, I’m sure you know we wouldn’t have a bright future ahead of us since we don’t know how to rebuild it, even if many of us could go there. Unfortunately, our goddess has been unconscious for the two months so we have no way to ask for her help either. This brings us to my first and most important question, have any of you managed to find out anything about the source of that giant mana source?”

“Rigel? As the head of our security forces, I hope that you can tell me something valuable,” the black-haired man said.

A man with pale purple skin stood up and waited for the Yehan to allow him to speak. Once he saw Yehan waving his hand, he said, “My lord, I naturally went out to investigate the source as soon as you told me and found a large crater amidst the outskirts of the Southern forest. Most of the monsters nearby were killed without a scratch, except for one kind of each species that were butchered, presumably by a humanoid creature for the purpose of eating. I’m saying this because I also found traces of a small fire where the meat was most likely roasted.”

“Wait a moment,” Yehan raised his hand and asked, “Are you telling me that this was caused by some passerby who got hungry? It could have been the campfire of a hunting team,” he frowned.

“I came to the conclusion that it was done by the unknown mana source because the monsters were piled up in one place and left there with a message carved into the ground,” Rigel replied, intriguing Yehan.

“Quickly, what did it say?” Yehan urged the middle-aged man.

“It read as, ‘I’m friendly and consider this a small gift, in case it’s useful to you.’ Although it could be a trap, I think that whoever came to the planet doesn’t harbor ill will,” Rigel replied.

“I see. Does anyone know anything else, possibly a clue about the visitor’s current location?” Yehan asked, looking around to see if anyone had something to say. Seeing that everyone was silent, he sighed loudly, “How unfort-” he couldn’t help but stop talking in the middle of his sentence as he sensed another giant wave of mana rushing through the planet.

“It’s definitely the mana source from earlier!” Rigel cried out.

“No, this is even stronger…” Yehan said with a frown. “I hope that they aren’t planning to attack us with such forces because I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to stop them.”

Although he was a proud mage in the highest position he could achieve, he wasn’t so arrogant and blind to shrug it all off and pretend that he could take care of anything.

“My lord, shouldn’t we rush to their position right away?” another person in the room stood up and asked loudly. Most of the people present were sector lords, which was one rank higher than a king or emperor would be on the Earth since they governed much larger areas and forces. To become a sector lord, one had to be as powerful as the Sentinel ranked members of Leviathan which was their top rank, and they also had to pass various tests that the overseer set up for them.

Obviously, neither the overseer nor the sector lords were some stupid people who just satisfied themselves with their power, even if it was part of the deal for some of them.

“While I wish to meet the person who can cause such change in the mana flow, I’m afraid the Stellar Formation won’t be able to hold out for long if the mana is being sucked away from it so I must go and support it with my own mana. You may gather more information about the visitors in the meantime and if possible try to contact them. But make sure that you don’t attack or offend them without a good reason. If they are coming from another planet or solar system, I don’t want a war to break out between us. Our situation is bad enough already with our goddess missing and the monster lords growing strength,” Yehan urged everyone with a frown.

“For the time being, let’s put this meeting on hold while I go and check on the formation,” he added and then left in a hurry. Once he got out of the building, he used his Dash trait that made him capable of traveling even faster than the speed of light. When he was young, he just became faster in the key moments during his battle and his speed kept increasing as he grew stronger over the years. Now, as the overseer of Yenasari, he was capable of keeping his trait active for hours and reached the Stellar Formation in just fifteen minutes.

Although it was common sense to use teleportation and portals for the people of Leviathan in such large distances, Yenasari, and the other four planets didn’t have the kind of legacy that the people of the Earth had, so their magic was considerably limited in that direction.

Once he reached his destination, he flew to the first piece of artificial meteorite that was rotating around the sun, along with over ten thousand others, each having two runes carved into it. One rune served as a protective layer against the heat of the sun and various energies that could easily destroy the meteorite while the other one was part of the giant formation that surrounded the sun to create various gravity zones.

He really wanted to contact the other three overseers and ask for their help but the other planets were a bit further away and he had to take care of his own things first.

I’ll go and notify them once I finish checking the formation, he thought to himself.

As he continued looking for signs of broken and cracked runes, he spent about three minutes before he ran into a broken meteorite with the rune cracked in two. If there was any air in space, he would have surely yelled like a madman the moment he saw it because he knew that it was terrible news.

And it just has to be rune in the sector of my Yenasari! he cursed inwardly. Even if it was just one rune, the Stellar Formation would no longer work as intended and the gravity zone would probably either start pulling or pushing his planet in the wrong direction. It may take years until something started changing but it would happen sooner or later unless he managed to fix the formation.

This is all because of these giant mana sources and if what Rigel said is true, they may be friendly people. With power like that, they may know how to fix this formation and I could also tell them that it was caused by their scanning. I hope that they can help, Yehan thought as he started planning his first meeting with the strangers. Fearing that they would leave before he could make contact with them, or even worse, the sector lords offended them, he decided that it was fine to talk to the other overseers later and returned to Yenasari instead.

After calling the sector lords to the palace once again, he opened the meeting for the second time and asked them about their findings. As the person responsible for security, it was once again Rigel who managed to gather some useful information.

“My lord, they were spotted on top of Azael’s peak by the local security head who was in the middle of his daily praying, or so he said.”

“And what happened after that?” Yehan asked with a frown, seeing that Rigel turned silent all of a sudden.

“Since their city lord prohibited people from going to the mountain peak, he brought his people and tried to capture them but without success. When I asked the security head how they reacted to his attempt, he said that both of them just laughed at him and said that they had no time to play with him during their date and then simply disappeared from his sight. I managed to keep my composure the whole time I was questioning him so he probably didn’t lie to me either,” he replied, fearing that this piece of information would anger his lord.

A man and a woman. So it’s not just one person and if what Rigel said is true, they weren’t offended and simply ‘disappeared’ from his sight? Hmm, what would I think if I visited another planet with my friend or woman and somebody tried to capture me? I would probably feel afraid of getting caught and leave as soon as possible. Why would I laugh at somebody who tried to capture me… if not because I knew he or the people behind him couldn’t pose a threat to me and I could do whatever I wanted. Is that how they see this place?

“Does anyone know what the word ‘date’ means?” Yehan asked aloud since his pondering didn’t lead him anywhere when he started thinking about the meaning of that word.

“The security head said that both the man and the woman spoke our language fluently but they used some strange words in their sentences that he couldn’t understand. He also said that the woman spoke this word just a moment before they disappeared and the man was about to ask something at the same time,” Rigel replied.

“Mhm, you’ve done a good job. I think that the most important task right now is to find out what that word means and then we may find out why they came or what they want.”

“There is no need to think about it for too long,” an unfamiliar voice resounded in the meeting hall.

“Who are you? Where are you?” Yehan asked with a frown as he looked around in surprise, unable to find the source of the voice.

“We are just some travelers,” the voice replied and a moment later a tiny portal opened in front of Yehan and a small storm of dust got blown into the room, taking the shape of two humans as the particles flew past him.

By the time Yehan turned around, he could see a white-skinned man who barely reached above his waist-line and a brown-haired woman who was even smaller than the man. Considering that Yehan had some giant blood flowing in his veins, it was no wonder.

“Greetings…”

“Seth. My name is Seth and she is my wife, Lien,” the man smiled at him as he introduced himself and the woman next to him.

“Seth,” Yehan finished his sentence, calling out the man’s name with a strong gaze. Sensing the man’s insane magic power that was pushing down on his body, he just hoped that they wouldn’t become enemies because he knew that would be the end of his life.

 

(AN:// My grandma died last week and the burial process took the whole week, meaning that I couldn't write anything in that time frame. Sorry for the long wait but it couldn't be helped...

On a different note, I'll soon update chapter 39 on Patreon but it's pending PR for now. I'll also compile another EPUB for Amazon (probably tomorrow) and then release it which will take another day or two, for those who want to get it in that format.

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