Ever had something super important you knew you were supposed to be keeping a close eye on, but always decided to push to a later date due to… reasons?
No, I’m not talking about the usual procrastination like how we all did back in school. I’m talking about being so preoccupied with stuff you quite literally forget at some point you have something to do. Mostly because you assumed there were other reliable people watching out for it, but turns out they were also super duper busy with their own stuff to do.
Yeah, that was me right now.
The meeting started swimmingly, everyone was all serious and all, then that had to happen! Of all the things, this one scenario decided to become a reality.
So, right now, I was only halfway through the err… meeting. I wasn’t sure I could call it that anymore. Then there was the party crasher.
Crap, I wasn’t expecting this person to show up today… or any day to be honest. My first instinct was obviously to protect a certain somebody, but this party crasher didn’t come for that somebody. They came for me… well not really… I guess I have to explain this in better detail.
Let me see… ah yes.
Let’s start from this morning.
Day 66
The day started out excellently with the guys having no sleep from the day before since they were still making preparations for the incoming leaders, as well as accommodations for orcs and kobolds that were on their way.
According to the wolves, the rate at which humans keep coming into the west was slowly rising, but they managed to kill them off easily. The thing though is that it took at least 2 days to come from a proper city to Larm, so it’d take a while for people to catch on that the forest is still super dangerous.
Even if some heard that lots of adventurers were dying, those who believed themselves to be above average would try to prove a point, so death wouldn’t necessarily be a good enough deterrent for long. We had to find something else. Sort of like getting actual humans to advice the others not to enter this forest. Preferably a very strong human or group of influential humans.
With that, the chances of people coming in should be reduced to some extent, though some will still persist. We’d just kill them if push came to shove.
What a pain in the ass humans were.
I’d been practicing a bit with [Blood Magic] and its effects reminded me of [Water Magic], but I needed to come up with more creative ways of using the magic. For instance, making weapons out of my blood, or turning my blood acidic. Those weren’t good enough, so I also tried using [Light Magic] on my own blood, by fusing both magics, but that only hurt me. Being part-devil gave me a sort of resistance to light magic externally, by internally it was the equivalent of consuming poison. The original plan was to come up with a way to use the healing property of light magic to ensure that my blood never leaked even if I got injured, and that my healing rate would be unbelievably fast even with [Quick Auto Regen] on.
Guess I was being too greedy there.
No. I can’t think like that. I have to be very greedy with my growth if I want to live comfortably. That was why no matter how absurd something sounded, I would find a way to do it now so it’d be smooth sailing later on.
Only if I was this serious about life back on Earth. Ah well.
I received news that Kara’s sister woke up. Quickly, I went to check up on her. My reason was to find out what exactly happened in the East. The sister was a bit shaken up by my appearance, but there was nothing I could do about it.
Kara wanted to introduce me to her sister, so I guess my coming here was a win-win situation. I asked my question and the sister tried remembering, but ended up being unable to speak from trauma or something. I wasn’t sure.
Whatever it was, it caused her to pass out. The interrogation would have to be pushed back from the looks of things, so I apologised to Kara then went to check up on Grimm. He was training Ulva in the deepest part of the dungeon.
I’d figured that the best way to get Ulva to level up super-fast was by having her attack humans since they gave a great number of experience points. The only issue was if she could kill a human, so I had Grimm here to monitor her. He himself wasn’t up for killing people, so this was going to be a bit tricky.
I summoned a shadow fiend to protect Ulva. The Shadow fiend, being the highest-level soldier I could summon, was approaching the level of an A rank. Unlike the others, it resembled a true monster.
You know, like a ginormous were-wolf with super long claws that shred through steel like paper and aura terrifying enough to make an adult man wet his diapers. Sadly, they weren’t nearly as smart as the Greater Shadow Demon Generals, hence I can’t expect them to lead actual shadows into battle for me. Though considering the potential of an A rank, I could very well have just 1 go fight an army, 5 if I was looking for utter annihilation.
It was to stay put in Ulva’s shadow and follow her orders to the letter. Grimm looked at me weirdly. Maybe giving him one would have insulted his warrior pride so I decided not to even suggest such a thing. Strong people did have that sort of tendency.
Also, key thing to mention. I made Ulva a [Family Member].
Yes. I’d like the entire world to know that I was very biased and would be giving her special treatment.
Again, Grimm gave me a weird look, but I only gave him the position of captain in the familia. Well, I guess that was a fair enough reward for all the work he’d done for us.
There would be more humans coming in today, so just to make sure they could get to the fifth floor, I removed the weak shadows to the third floor.
We tested out [Undead Creation] on some corpses I had. They had about half the stats they did when they were human, probably due to my [Undead Creation] being at a low-level. Since humans were naturally weak, the adventurers should be able to clear them up no problem.
Akkun then decided to test it out on the ogre and kobold corpses we snuck out of the East.
What ogre and kobold corpses did we sneak out of the East, you ask? Well take that up with Akkun and Akira who have been planning shit behind my back.
I really couldn’t get angry at them since I was already thinking about doing such a thing, but as a way of showing respect to Kara, I didn’t. Well, as long as they stayed in the dungeon, I guess Kara would never find out and there’d never be a problem.
Oh yeah. There was also Goliath’s corpse which I had my shadows sneak into the dungeon.
This time, I issued the order. With Diane’s permission of course, since she and Goliath were close. She was surprisingly chill about the whole me consuming Goliath to obtain his power thing.
Then there was a new problem. For Goliath, I couldn’t consume his core. It had been corrupted by something that wasn’t supposed to be there. No regular dragon should ever have something like that. Sure, Goliath’s core provided him with amazing power, but it stunted his growth.
That’s right, Goliath was never going to get stronger than he already was.
You might be thinking that given how strong he was, that would be no problem, but his corpse was living proof that it was a major issue. Huh, I guess living proof wasn’t the best terminology for this situation.
His core was now basically steroids. Consume it, receive major boost in power, never grow beyond that. I wanted to bet on [Evolver] making my body evolve past such a limitation, but since no one ([God’s Wisdom] and [Supreme Wise Council]) were sure about that, we decided to just put the core in my item box for safe-keeping.
In the end, I was left with trying to make a dragon undead. Whenever I tried, it’d just collapse. It wasn’t an issue of me lacking mana or anything. Simply there was way for all that dragon body to keep functioning without its original core, even when the dragon was undead.
I decided to make the Goliath undead later. Maybe I’d come up with a way to make the undead without Goliath’s core later.
In the mansion, the kobolds were preparing something with all the corpses I brought from Atlantis. I was surprised the food hadn’t gone bad yet, but according to them, Grimm showed them that by keeping the ingredients in a cool room, they could be preserved for a while. Basically, he found an unused part of the mansion and turned it into a store room.
By the end of the day, they would have enough to feed the entire mansion. They also suggested keeping these ingredients specifically for special events. I agreed with their thoughts, though I could just go back at any time to get more.
Later during the day, Yokino came from wherever it was she’d disappeared to. She looked relatively exhausted, but she wouldn’t tell me what she was doing no matter how much I asked.
It was starting to get annoying. Well, my plan for that would kick in very soon, so I guess she could roam free for now.
The day went by quickly and evening time came. I’d sent out some clones to go pick up the representative leaders. Zana came in carrying a bit of the living fog from the South to the West into Diane’s tree in order to stream the stuff to the monsters that were incapable of leaving their domains. I didn’t know the fog could leave the South, but it would always obey her commands since it chose her.
In a sense, that fog was a soul weapon. If it was, I could attribute the title of Biggest Soul Weapon to it. Honestly a terrifying weapon to possess.
She came with a lizard man. A different person from the old man I picked. He was younger and on the bigger side of the lizards. He introduced himself as a leader from a different lizard man village, chosen to represent all the lizard men. They were probably too scared to come themselves and chose him to come in their stead.
Behind Zana was the leader of the copperheads. An old man with a staff in his hand. They all greeted me and were led to their seats. I currently wasn’t in Diane’s tree, but with Reiman discussing issues that weren’t important to the current meeting.
It was about his [Architecture] skill. With it, he had several suggestions on what kind of buildings to make for goblins and other races alike. I liked the idea so I gave him the green light. Of course, the goblins were going to be a major part of the labour force. If they refused to build their own houses, they might as well sleep under the bare stars.
Later, I received a message that Dulk and the leader of the kobolds had arrived. Inu had met with the travelling orcs and kobolds and were bringing them back to the West.
With that, everyone was ready. I was about to inform Reiman, but his position as [Familia General] allowed him to know every move of the members. He left off before, telling me to prepare myself mentally for the meeting.
He mothered me like I was some child going to mess up their first public performance. When he left, I steeled myself and glossed through all the issues we had to discuss, as well as solutions I had. Once I felt I was ready, I left towards Diane’s tree.
Two sprites were waiting for me and smiled once they saw me. They directed me to the room and I was met with the same scenery we had already set up.
Except, there was one major issue that made me frown.
The throne I asked Diane to get rid of. She had done so as one would expect. But whether she misunderstood me or intentionally wanted to prove a point, it was replaced with an even grander throne, making me look like some sort of overlord.
Everyone in the room’s eyes fell on me and I stiffened up a bit. I cleared my throat, walked slowly towards the throne while arguing with Diane in my mind, before eventually taking my seat. Well, not really a sitting down.
As a bird, I simply perched on it and faced everyone.
“Shall we begin the meeting?”
<A/N: Finally started... Please join the discord. Leave comments, powerstones, golden tickets and reviews!>
