28
Seigyou Tensei – Legitimately Employed Reincarnation
28
Metastasis+ 1 year.
"What are you doing?"
"Hm?" Looking up from my fancy mirror spell, I sent Eris an amused look. "This? Giving myself a haircut."
It had started to get long and I hated long hair. I had only left it as long as it was previously for two reasons: Zenith liked it that way and it enhanced the effect of the 'innocent and cute shota' act. So now that it was starting to get irritating, I was dead set on getting rid of it.
It was also an excuse to practice fine control of force and light magic. I had created a construct of force magic in the shape of a comb and was using it to move my hair, while I used telekinesis to cut it down to the precise length I wanted.
Eris seemed somehow affronted, crossing her arms over her chest as she glared at my shirtless form. Finally, she demanded, "Scissors."
"Not using any," I countered.
Grumbling, she reached down to the ground and created a pair of scissors by pulling the metal from the dirt. I felt so proud at that moment that I couldn't help myself. I reached out and patted her head. "You've grown."
The girl blushed and moved behind me. "Yeah, well, you haven't."
Don't expect a tsundere to make sense in every retort she makes to a genuine complement, you'll save yourself a lot of headache that way. It was usually the equivalent of "NO U" anyway.
I sat still and watched as Eris worked. "How short?" She asked.
"This much at the top," I held my fingers apart an inch and a half, "this much on the sides and back," and closed the distance to a quarter inch. I'd given her a little over what I actually wanted just in case she messed up.
It turned out, I didn't need to worry. Apparently, Eris had a natural eye for it and a steady hand. I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised. For all that her fighting style was wild when I met her and has only gotten more unpredictable with the addition of a third dimension, her actual technique was if not flawless then close enough.
I sat quietly as she worked, just watching. Eventually, Eris asked, "We'll be in Wind Port tomorrow?"
"Yeah. We'll set up shop outside the actual city and I'll begin construction there."
"And we'll be leaving once we've gotten all the refugees?"
I nodded. "For the first trip. There are a lot of people, so it's going to take a few trips to get everyone. I figure I'll go on the first flight just to make sure nothing happens and no issues come up with the design, then after that I'll build two more ships and have them run automagically."
Eris snorted softly. "You mean let Sprite handle it."
"I mean let Sprite handle it," I agreed. "We can head west and hit up every town and village between here and Roa with the bikes now, since they're just that much faster." It made making road harder, but as usual, I took it as another magical exercise and never went so fast that I couldn't do it right the first time.
"We could go faster."
"This way gives them a clear path to follow and safe places to sleep at night."
Looking up from my hair, Eris sent an amused look at my 'reflection.' "You know they're calling you 'Rudeus the Road Builder' again? It's spread. They're calling Roxy 'Roxy the Wayfinder' because of the statues."
I sighed. "Rumor travels faster than light. And I really want to see her face when she hears that. It'll be great." I sent her a warning look, "Don't spoil it for me by telling her."
Eris shrugged. "At least yours sound cool."
Shooting her a small smirk, I asked, "You don't like being 'Mad Dog Eris?'"
Eris snipped the scissors especially hard, likely as a warning to stop teasing her. "It reminds me of the time some jerk buried me up to my neck in the dirt, made me drink out of a doggie bowl, and humiliated me in front of our family servants."
"Erm…"
"Then made me piss myself, stripped me naked, and left me exposed outside all night where anyone could see."
I held in the urge to make a snarky comment along the lines of, 'And whose fault is that?'
"The weirdest thing is, I'm not sure whether to be mad about it or not. It was humiliating, but, well… Yeah. Didn't know I liked that sort of thing."
Deciding it might be safe to tease her a little, I sent her a leer. "If you liked that, we can try other things. Maybe tie you up and let one of the other girls play with you. Or make you watch while I play with one of them."
That might have been a little too far as her face lit up in a blush that quickly spread down her chest. That blush became a flush of indignant anger a moment later, but miraculously, she reigned it in. Finally, in a very quiet voice, she said, "'kay."
I grinned. "Oh really? Would you prefer Sylphie or Roxy?"
Eris shrugged. "Either/or."
Eventually, she finished my hair and I took a minute to look it over. "Good job Eris. Thanks."
"Mm! I can do it again next time."
Studying my pseudo-reflection, I took in my new appearance. Short white hair, bright green eyes I had gotten from Zenith, the mole under my eye had been removed with flesh magic, moderately cute shonen face just on the cusp of becoming handsome (I gave it about a year). My face was unchanged beyond the mole, but that, the haircut, and the different color on top of growing up and losing baby fat had slowly distanced me from the face I had grown used to seeing in the mirror.
I had my doubts that anyone would recognize me as Paul and Zenith's son at first or even second glance, unless they knew beforehand. I wasn't exactly trying to put distance between us there, it was just the result of changes adding up—voluntary or not. I just need a cool scar to go with it and I'm set for maximum panty-dropping.
Standing up, I used magic to clean off the cut hair and got dressed. "Alright, I need to see about working on some stuff."
"'Kay," Eris nodded, dropping her scissors into the dirt and heading off to practice some more.
Finding a clear spot, I sat down and pulled out my phone. "Okay, give me access to Overwatch-1."
I had enough drones working now that I had to label them in groups. The overwatch series were a group set up to provide exactly that for our party and to scout ahead a bit—three drones for three people, kept close at hand for emergencies or just use as needed. Additionally, I had a drone each assigned to that position for Roxy, Lilia, Aisha, Sylphie, Ariel, Hilda, Phillip, Sauros, and Ghislaine—for a total of twelve providing 24/7 security.
The recon series were on mapping duty and were scattered to the corners of the world. There were about a hundred of those per continent. Roughly. Five continents, but the landmass was distributed unevenly between them. The Central Continent was about twice the size of all of the rest on average, minus the Heaven Continent, which was about a tenth of the size of the Demon Continent. The total number was something like a thousand drones—several dedicated to each major city on every continent, covering every major island chain, and the rest scattered across the continents mapping, cataloging, monitoring towns, and generally doing other tasks while searching for survivors—specifically, Norn and Zenith.
The watchdog series was dedicated to the search and rescue operation, either hunting for survivors in specific areas or riding herd over the group trailing us from Rikarisu. There were about a hundred of them. Technically, all available drones were being used for this purpose, it's just that the others had specific goals in mind while search and rescue was a side mission for then and these were dedicated to the task, hunting down leads Sprite picked up from conversations she was listening to or things people were writing down the world over. Already, that large scale surveillance had borne fruit in the form of rescues of slaves (and the subsequent elimination of their former owners).
And finally, were the harvester series. Of these, there were about a thousand, each about the size of a bird. I kept adding to them as time went on and we collected more small mana crystals. These were used for only one purpose: gathering metal resources from the demon continent. Right now, they were actively tearing down a mountain in some monster infested corner of the continent, making ingots, and storing them for later use.
Sprite brought up the feed for the drone flying directly overhead and I ordered it down to the ground.
"Okay, so you know the airship design I've been working on?"
"Yes, master. I have all the designs memorized."
"Good girl. I'm going to try a few new things on the small scale and we'll go up from there. This should just be putting it all together for the most part. All I'm really changing here is the interior, to work out cabin space."
I began constructing a new model by pulling metal from the ground or having Sprite convert the soil and rock into the elements I needed, as she was doing with much of the excess from her excavation work that didn't go into piles of stone for future building projects. When I was finished, I had a cross-section of an airship roughly ten feet long and three feet wide, composed of an upper and lower half.
The upper half was a hollow lifting surface composed of a grid of small connected triangles and covered with a thin skin of smooth metal. It had short wings and all the control surfaces needed to maneuver, in addition to thrusters spaced along the exterior to make it more agile than its size and profile would normally allow for. The interior would be filled with a form-fitting force-field, filled with vacuum—this would make it positively buoyant, while the thrusters along the bottom of the lifting surface and the lift provided the conventional way, would allow it to rise very quickly.
The lower half was the actual cabin area, coming in at six feet long and two feet wide. This, I divided into three floors worth of space and several individual sections. Since I was planning to have Sprite control it, there was no real need for a cockpit or control area, but I gave it one with manual controls anyway, just in case. This, I tucked into the very front of the cabin area and secured with a wall and locked door. It would double as the 'engine room,' since there was no need for one in the conventional sense given that its power production would be a series of three particularly large monster cores, layered with every enchantment the ship would need and tied into Sprite's network. It was also where the wind spirit I summoned for these would be housed.
Behind the cockpit, on the top floor, I added a larder and freezer for food storage, then a kitchen for food preparation. Following that were restroom and bathing facilities. The entire next two floors down were divided into bunk rooms. The middle floor was for families while the lower floor was for individuals or groups. I didn't divide anything up by gender or age, aside from making sure to keep children with their families, nor did I make space for private rooms for individuals or couples. Everyone could be equally miserable together, and with no hidden spaces people would be less likely to get up to trouble. Not that there would be any, with Sprite watching.
I instructed her to throw troublemakers (people starting fights or getting violent) out the nearest airlock. Without landing first.
Once I was finished, I set it on the ground on a stand. The final design looked pretty nice, I thought. "Okay, let's make a small completed model and test it out. We'll let you do that through the drone using summoned materials from the stockpile."
"Of course," Sprite agreed, and the drone lifted off and moved several feed away, before ingots of material began appearing in flashes of light as she summoned them.
Wind Port was… Well, it was a port. A near-medival port. So not only did it reek of the stenches all too common in this society, but you could add a layer of fish and rot on top of it. I cast my air freshener spell (basically just a wind spell that stripped out chemicals that didn't fall under the header of 'normal air at ground level') out of habit, stretching it to include the whole group. We had left our bikes outside the city and walked in, so I didn't have to cover much area.
"Should we check the guild?" Eris suggested.
My phone chimed and I frowned as I realized I didn't recognize the sound. Fishing it out, the screen lit up instead of displaying the usual hologram. I blinked as I read the text message displayed on it.
[Find the horned 300 year old demon loli in fetish gear. Buy her a meal and a drink and befriend her.]
Scratching my chin in thought, I looked away from the phone to the waiting pair of Eris and Ruijerd. "Go on ahead of me. I need to check out a few things, then go see if I can find a shipwright or something. Someone with some knowledge of shipbuilding anyway. I want to run my design by someone with more experience before I implement it."
I did most of the information gathering for the group when Sprite wasn't doing it herself, so it wasn't unheard-of for me to take off on my own the minute we got somewhere new. Eris nodded. "We'll get rooms and I'll call with the information."
"Good girl," I praised her, causing her to perk up and smile.
"Come on, Ruijerd," Eris smacked the man's arm. "Let's check the guild, then I want to go to the beach!"
As soon as the pair left, I turned and went the opposite direction. "Sprite, have the drones run a sweep for anyone in the city matching that description. And tell me where that text came from. I didn't implement a texting feature."
"Scanning the city for the target, master. Text message capability was added during an update last night that came in from a remote unit. The text message was sent with this phone's identification key from that same unit, but at the moment it's still off-network. It can send and I can send data back, but unless it initiates a connection, I can't actually connect to it the same way I do with the rest of the network. Which is strange. Every phone, every drone, everything I'm connected to runs a copy of my consciousness. Technically, we're all the same entity because we're all inter-connected and it only becomes apparent that it's multiple versions of myself if something forces a disconnect—such as the metastasis event a year prior. But this one appears to be its own entity."
"Huh. Okay. So I sent the message to myself?" I wondered, my eyes narrowing as I considered the phone. The spirit running the phone and managing my information was contracted to me. Supposedly, that meant she was loyal, and Sprite had had several chances to take advantage of everything I'd given her so far. She had not, and had remained steadfastly loyal, helpful, and attentive. Our relationship was not the master/slave relationship suggested in the summoning manual, nor was it employer/employee. She was as much a friend as Sylphie, Eris, or Roxy and I was not blind to the fact that while she never mentioned it, she didn't exactly hide the fact that she was smitten either.
In other words, it was highly unlikely that Sprite was lying.
"I've found the target," she reported, pulling me from my thoughts.
The display shifted to show a young-looking demon woman laying in an alley, clutching her stomach. "So hungry," the girl whined.
"Alright, give me a waypoint and I'll go make nice."
The 'demon loli' in question was on the opposite side of the city from me, so I took the opportunity to take in the sights. I made a short trip through the market to get an idea of what was available and let Sprite scrape prices for her database, then meandered towards the girl's position.
I found the alley in question and strolled down it, stopping when I came across a girl who looked somewhere between my and Eris' age, if a little scrawny and flat, wearing fetish bondage gear—or some approximation, including shackles at the wrists and neck and a long chain connecting the shackles on her wrists. Something that would look good on a grown woman but which looked criminal on a girl of her apparent visible age.
I could make allowances for ageless immortals, reincarnations, long lived races, curses or deaging and the reality of an adult mind in a child body—I fell under that umbrella myself, after all. But for fuck sake, there are some things you just shouldn't wear with that type of body.
Poking the girl with my foot, I asked, "You alive?"
"Hungry," came the exaggerated whine, followed by a roar from her stomach that would make more sense coming from a lion.
Sighing, I bent down and helped her up her feet. "Come on, I'll get you lunch."
The girl perked up immediately and sprang to her feet, staring at me with wide, purple eyes. "Finally, someone who shows proper respect to the world's greatest Demon Emperor, Kishirika Kishirisu! I shall gratefully accept your offer!"
One of the girl's eyes rolled back in her head, displaying an entirely different iris of a different color and I eyed it warily. A moment later, the other followed, leaving her with one red and one green eye. "Are you having a stroke?"
"No! I am observing your soul and the mana flow around you! And it's strange. Your soul looks older than your body. You're also surrounded by a… web of light, trailing off to thousands of points. It's… beautiful."
"Probably because I'm a reincarnation and I've got enough spells going to burn down a small nation," I supplied. "Magic eyes?"
"Demon eyes!" The girl clarified as I lead her out of the alley, towards a bar I had seen not too far away. "Have you never heard of me?"
I shook my head. "Can't say that I have, beyond connecting the dots that Rikarisu was named after you."
The girl nodded enthusiastically, setting her violet hair bobbing. "It was!"
I held the door open for her and we took a seat at an unoccupied table in a corner. Not that the place was exactly busy at this hour. A scaly lady came over to take our orders. "Two of whatever the lunch special is and a pint of whatever ale you have on tap for my friend."
"Coming right up," the barmaid agreed and left just as quickly as she'd come.
"Ale too?" Kishirika asked, looking like someone had just told her Christmas came early. "I am in your debt! What boon would you wish of me?"
"Tell me about these demon eye things. Are they some technique or—"
"No, no! I grant demon eyes! I can give you one if you like."
"What can they do?" I asked, suddenly very curious. After all, Ghislaine had one…
"Anything! Almost. Not quite so right now, because I'm not at my full power. At the moment, I can only grant a few. The ability to see things far away—"
"I have a spell for that. Several, really."
Kishirika frowned. "What about the ability to see through objects?"
"Got a spell for that." In a roundabout way.
Narrowing her eyes, she tried again. "Seeing mana! Do you have a spell for that?!"
"No," she perked up, "but I can make one. In fact, I'll go ahead and do that tonight."
The demon loli wilted. "So you have one for seeing the future too, don't you?"
I blinked. "Nope. Can't say that I do. How far into the future?"
"That depends on you! But no less than a second."
Short range precognition? Not something I can easily emulate with a spell. No fucking clue where to start with making one. Useful, too.
Our food arrived as I thought it over. Kishirika dug right in, downing her ale immediately and calling for another. Seeing the writing on the wall, I pulled out an Asuran gold coin and passed it to the barmaid. "This should more than cover whatever she wants to eat and drink."
Left alone with Kishirika again, I dug into my meal. It was stewed fish and it was absolutely disgusting. Any other day, I'd have sent it back to the chef and demanded a full refund. But not today. No, today was the first time I'd had food that wasn't either an MRE or the absolute dogshit and crime against culinary arts that the Demon Continent dared call food.
I nearly wept, it was so good. By comparison.
I want to eat good food! Not this garbage. I miss Earth food. I want a pizza so bad I could kill for it.
Kishirika didn't look remotely as conflicted as I felt about the food. Then again, if she had lived here her entire life, I shouldn't be surprised. She had nothing to compare the food to. No, she scarfed it down like it was the best thing she'd ever had.
"What's involved in getting a demon eye? Do you have to remove my eyeball or something?"
"No, no. I just scratch off the top of it and replace it with magic."
I winced. "Sounds painful."
"Don't be a baby! Besides, you didn't think it would be without cost or sacrifice, did you?"
"True," I admitted. "Sounds worth it."
"So, you want to do this now or…?"
Reaching up to my left eye, I used biothurgy to temporarily disable the nerves in the eye and the area around it. I also made sure to cut off the feed from that eye, because I didn't want to see what was coming either. Then, I leaned in. "Go ahead."
"Oh? So bold! Very well!" She reached out and began doing something to my eye. Thankfully, I neither saw nor felt a thing. After a few minutes, she pulled away. "All done. Wow, you're the first person to ever sit still while I did that."
I fixed all the temporary changes I made and winced when my vision returned. Everything on the left side was overlaid with an echo of something. Well, everything that would move. The walls, floor, ceiling, and other static fixtures remained unchanged. As did Kishirika. But the barmaid had a sort of blurry halo that moved before she did by about a second.
"How's this work?" I asked as Kishirika continued to stuff her little face.
"Mana," she answered around a mouthful. "There should be two lenses. One to adjust focus, the other to adjust how far ahead you're trying to look. Just supply the right amount of mana to change it."
It took some playing with it, but over the course of another three glasses of ale for the demon loli, I managed to figure it out. To get used to it, I left it at about 70% transparency and a half-second ahead, so I could see a transparent echo of everything moving and get used to reacting to it.
"Very nice. Thanks."
"And thank you for the meal!"
I nodded, considering the girl before me. "How far can your eyes see?"
"Across the whole world!" Kishirika answered in a cheer.
My heart thumped in my chest and I felt like every muscle drew taut at once. "And how selective are they? Like, if I asked you to find one specific person, or a group of people from a specific place?"
"Child's play!" The girl waved off the suggestion. "Eep!"
I don't entirely blame her for yelping, considering I came across the table and latched onto her by the shoulders. I probably looked like a crazy man (boy), given the wide eyes and frantic look. "Can you find my mother and sister?"
Something in her gaze softened and the girl in my arms relaxed. "Of course. Just let me…" she nodded down towards where I was holding her.
Somewhat reluctantly, I let go and sat back in my seat. The demon loli's eyes rolled back in her head, flipping to new irises. "Let's see…"
She was silent for several minutes, a frown growing on her face as she ate and drank. Eventually though, she blinked and tilted her head slowly to the side. "Huh. That's… weird."
"What's weird?"
Kishirika shook her head. Her eyes shifted focus back to me and she asked, "You meant the blonde ones, right?"
"Yeah."
The little woman looked annoyed. "I can't see them."
My heart skipped a beat. Forcing myself to breathe, I asked, "What does that mean?"
"Well, if they were dead, I'd at least see a corpse or maybe the monster that ate them. If they were somewhere I couldn't see, then I'd at least see generally where they were. It's like they've dropped off the face of the world." The little demon looked annoyed. "I'm sorry. I'll keep looking."
Well, it wasn't the instant fix I had hoped it would be, but it was one more set of eyes on the problem. I would take it. "It's fine. So, I plastered a grin on my face, even as I felt like shoving my boot up someone's ass. "And what would it cost me to convince you to find a bunch of people for me?"
Kishirika hummed, eyeing me over the rim of her mug. "I don't know…"
Her tone implied she wanted me to convince her, probably through bribery. "Have you ever left the Demon Continent?"
She shook her head. "I can't. And I'm looking for someone right now… I can't see him with my demon eyes, so I just have to search."
Picturing what I wanted, I summoned a specific type of MRE, labeled 'Snacks. Dried fruit and nuts.' Kishirika eyed the package with interest as I opened it up, before popping a dried nut in my mouth.
"Want one?" I asked, holding the bag open for her.
"Thank you!" Kishirika beamed, reaching in and withdrawing a single piece, what looked like a strawberry. She popped it in her mouth. I could tell the moment she bit down, because her whole body shuddered and a positively lewd moan escaped her lips. I ignored the way it made my cock twitch. Kishirika's eyes drifted shut as she chewed slowly, head turning this way and that as she had what looked like a religious experience.
It was a gamble, but I was betting on more people like Roxy who didn't know they wanted better food until they tasted it than people like Ruijerd, who simply shrugged it off and actually liked Demon Continent food. Though maybe that was my own personal experience speaking, seeing as I found Demon Continent food absolute inedible slop, unfit for serving prisoners in magical Gitmo, let alone citizens.
"C-can I have some more, please?" Kishirika asked, in the tone of one who had just discovered something amazing and was afraid it would disappear if she wasn't careful.
"Sure," I agreed, offering the bag again. Once more, she withdrew a single piece and slid it into her mouth. I was again treated to the sight of the demon loli having a foodgasm.
"So, about that request…" I lead.
"Nnf," the girl pouted, looking torn. "But I have to search for Badi."
"I've got fast transportation. Sprite can see much of the continent at the moment, particularly the larger villages and cities. I could get you across the place pretty quick."
"Nn… Would you, truly?" She asked, taking another piece from the outstretched bag. "Mmf."
"Sure. I can take you wherever you want to go."
Kishirika considered it for a moment before, with a sigh, she took the entire bag. "Very well. I accept your request." Turning, she yelled at the barmaid, "More ale!"
Okay, now I can start sending drones out using Kishirika to do directed searches. This should speed things up a bit.
"So, who's this 'Badi' guy and what's he look like?"
Kishirika sat up straighter. "Badigadi! He's my fiancee! He's reeeeally tall. He's a demon with six arms, violet hair, and black skin."
I raised an eyebrow. "Brown or black?"
"That second one!" Kishirika nodded. "He likes getting into fights. I think people call him the 'Fighting God' now?"
"Got all that, Sprite?" I asked, and a miniature hologram of the spirit in question appeared, sitting on the rim of Kishirika's mug, earning a curious and amused look from the demon loli.
"Yes, master. I'll let you know when I find him."
"Thanks," I nodded. Smiling at Kishirika, I said, "There you go. Now, I need to go take care of some things. I've paid the barmaid ahead of time, so feel free to run out the tab. I'll be staying in an inn in the city for a while, so come find me later." Summoning a spare phone, I tossed it to her, causing her to fumble for it a bit before finally catching it. "If you need something, or if you spot my mom or sister, call me or ask for Sprite."
Kishirika took the phone in hand and nodded. "Will do!"
With that, I stood and left the bar. Taking out my phone, I had Sprite direct me towards the docks, where I could hopefully find a shipwright. While I walked, I opened up the new text app and typed a message to the mysterious unknown sender.
[Thanks for the tip. Anything else to add?]
I was surprised when, a moment later, I got a response.
[How do you defend against a mind-reader?]
I stumbled at that question. Okay. Not good. But it stands to reason that 'telepathy' wouldn't be limited to just two-way communication. So, work out some way of defending against it. Preferably some sort of automatic, always-on defense keyed to only allow communication from specific individuals.
[You sent me to Kishirika to find Zenith and Norn, didn't you? Do you know where they are?]
[Refer to Step 1.]
"Fuck. Okay, smartass," I grumbled, stuffing my phone into my pocket. Yeah, I was pretty sure I knew who I was talking to, but I'd be trying very hard not to think about it. Which, of course, made me want to think of it more. Let's just call him Archer. At least then, if someone's listening in, it's a layer of obfuscation.
Not long after that, I found myself wandering into the heart of nastiness—the source of most of the rank stench permeating the city. A bit of asking around got me a lead on what I was looking for and I made my way down to the end of the dock, where a large warehouse was set up with a dry dock. Finding the main office, I knocked and let myself in. Looking up from a bit of parchment, an old, bearded dwarf eyed me suspiciously. "An' just who are you?"
"Rudeus Greyrat, adventurer and mage. And yourself?"
The dwarf looked back to his paper, which looked like a draft of some sort of ship. "Name's Grim, lad. Shipwright by trade. Now, how can I help ye?"
Taking a seat in one of the hand carved wooden chairs across from him (a rare luxury on the Demon Continent, with its complete lack of real wood aside from the petrified crap in a certain forest full of horrors), I asked, "I've got a few questions I'd like to ask, if you don't mind? I'm willing to pay for your time." When the dwarf looked up expectantly, I fished out some of the local currency and dropped a few scrap iron coins on the desk. He quickly swept them up and disappeared them.
"What sort of questions did you have in mind, lad?"
Taking out my phone, I laid it on the table, earning a raised eyebrow from the dwarf. "Sprite, could you display the blueprints for the current cabin layout?"
The dwarf's eyebrows retreated into his graying hairline as a 3D hologram of the cabin section of my airship design spawned in midair. "By thunder," he muttered, leaning in closer and looking the design over. Frowning, he quickly said, "She'll never float. She's shaped all wrong for it. She'll roll over at the first decent wave. Why'n the world d'ya have two keels, boy? And no deck! No sails, either."
"Well, let's ignore all that for the moment," I dismissed his concerns, earning an irritated look. "Suppose you wanted to house a few hundred people looking to make a voyage between here and the Central Continent—"
"Can't be done," he shook his head. "You'd need a ship the size of ten galleons for that, just to hold all the food needed to feed that many folk for the time it'd take to make the trip—even if they're helpin' that along with catching fish. You'd need fruit too, to prevent scurvy. Wood or coal to fuel the cook fires, so more space there, 'less you've got a fire mage in your pocket. Hundreds of barrels of fresh water or rum, unless you're packing in a water mage."
I nodded. "All valid concerns for any other vessel. Let's assume none of them matter here—"
"An' what're you even makin' this tub out of? There ain't enough wood in all Wind Port for this fool's errand. Ye'd have to ship it in from Zant Port, and that'll cost enough gold to sink whatever boat you put it on!"
Sending the dwarf an amused look, I said, "I'm a mage. I can shape metal with my mind. The ship's going to be made of metal."
Grim spluttered, eyeing the empty tankard on the corner of his desk suspiciously, before turning a look on me that told me he suspected I'd been dropped on my head as a child. (I had, but that was beside the point, and it was Paul's fault anyway.) "…Metal don't float, lad. Are ye daft?"
I sent the man my own 'are you an idiot' look. "Fb = Vpg = pghA."
"An' what sorta gibberish is that supposed to be?"
"Buoyancy. Put simply, doesn't matter if it's metal or wood, as long as it doesn't have a hole in the bottom it'll float if you spread it out enough. It's all about displacement of weight over a large enough surface area."
The dwarf shook his head. "Sounds like wizard shit to me."
I sighed. "I suppose it'd really blow your mind if I told you that thing's going to fly."
"Fly? The fuck? Ye are daft! How'n the blazes are you goin' to make her fly?"
"Magic. Also, the same way boats float—buoyancy. Except the air is your water, in this case."
Grim stood up and stormed around his desk, over to the door. He threw it open and pointed outside. "If ye wanna play with magic, go far north and play with the mages! When yer ready to build a proper boat that floats on water and is made of wood, then yer coin's welcome. Until then, fuck off!"
Standing, I left the office with a jaunty wave. As soon as the door closed, I laughed. "Well, that went about how I expected. Guess I'll just have to figure it out myself."
I think I'm going to enjoy watching heads explode if that's the typical reaction I can expect from the idea of airships.
Seigyou Tensei – Legitimately Employed Reincarnation
29
Partially commissioned by kyo amamoto
Some time shortly after my eleventh birthday, refugees began streaming into Wind Port from all corners of the Demon Continent. They went first to the Adventures' Guild, signing various forms and going through procedures to verify their identities, that they were in good health, and that this leg of the mission was complete. Adventures got paid, then went back out to escort more refugees under the direction of the guild, sent to specific locations that I had given them by way of Kishirika.
The refugees that had been delivered already were settled into temporary housing outside the city, in a walled compound I had built using earth magic. They were supplied with food (billed to the Kingdom of Asura), water (drawn, purified, and otherwise treated by yours truly, mana stones again billed to the Kingdom of Asura), and an allowance (more money billed to Asura) while they waited.
I had scrapped the idea of doing just one airship and then building more later, once I realized just how effective using construction drones to build them could be. No, instead I was building five at the same time, using a sixth as a template for specific features. Some testing at scale had also shown that while I could do it with vacuum-based lifting, it was more energy efficient to do it with helium—which Sprite had discovered in her resource gathering.
With harvester drones stripping down a second mountain into resources, I had all the materials I needed. Construction drones, dedicated just to building things, put them together using earth magic. Point-to-point summoning/sending spells cast through the drones by Sprite allowed resources to be moved from half a continent away at a moment's notice, as needed.
Hunter drones, specifically enchanted with laser alpha strike capability and telekinesis, went after high priority monster targets for their cores, which would act as the capacitors powering the airships. The rest of the materials, harvested using telekinesis, were prepared and stored for later use—either resale or for making something useful out of them.
Considering a few of those monsters were dragons native to the Demon Continent with particularly tough hides, bones, teeth, claws, and so forth I was looking forward to playing with them.
Okay, look, I wanted a set of dragon leather boots and a few other odds and ends. Plus, you know, turning that leather into padded seats for bikes or other things.
How did I kill a dragon, let alone several? The same way America kills anything it doesn't like any more.
Drone strike.
In this case, a drone strike using Emperor-level spells the first time. It was about the equivalent of using a tactical nuke to take out a tank. …I had to scale it back a bit when the first dragon exploded, along with part of a mountain range. Now, I used precision strikes to burn their brains to a crisp.
Live and learn!
Thankfully, I didn't have to manage all of that crap beyond giving Sprite some directives and making sure everything was going accordingly every now and then. It left me with a lot of free time.
Free time which I turned around and used for training.
With Ruijerd:
I parried a blow from the white spear aiming for my head, following it in with a thrust from my sword. Ruijerd shifted his grip on his weapon, reversed its direction, and turned my blade aside in a parry of his own.
I was off balance enough for him to capitalize on the shift in weight, bringing his weapon around in a swing at my midsection. Instead of trying to block or parry, I went with the momentum and turned my aborted thrust into a forward roll, diving under the blow and coming up behind him.
Not that that mattered much, given that he had the damned sense organ. That was fine though, I had tricks of my own up my sleeve. I wasn't allowed to use magic directly in these fights, it would defeat the purpose. I could use it indirectly, however—such as to enhance myself or my perception.
In this case, I was using it three different ways, aside from as touki.
First, I was training my precognition. It was one of the only reasons I was staying in the game. I could look one, maybe two seconds ahead without problems, but in a melee fight, half a second to one second was the ideal window for countering. Two seconds was really only good when there was travel time between me and a target, for leading spells. I never missed, now—even when I wasn't using seeking projectiles.
Second was a pseudo echolocation/tremor sense/telekinetic sense that worked in a short area around myself to expand my bodily awareness. By creating a light field of telekinesis around myself, I could feel objects and people that moved through it, like a spider feels movement in a web. This eliminated blind spots up close and personal and allowed me to react to things that were outside my ability to see using precognition.
Thirdly, I was using a little trick I had discovered during the teleport incident and had been refining ever since. By pushing mana into my eyes (and brain) I had found that I could force my eyes to see at a higher framerate and allow my brain to process it without being overwhelmed.
In other words, the world slowed down. Coupled with precognition and being able to detect everything around me, it gave me a ridiculous edge in close quarters combat. Not good enough to beat Ruijerd, but at this point I was pretty sure the guy was an Emperor-level swordsman, in terms of just raw experience.
Rolling to my feet, I resumed the opening Water God stance, waiting as I slowly circled my target. The style favored counters, parries, and evasion heavily so as far as 2D sword styles went, it came out superior to Sword God style when combined with my advantages.
Ruijerd struck and I saw the blow coming, the line of his spear aiming for my chest— It blurred as I shifted to parry. Then it blurred again, and again. What the fuck?
I hesitated, and in so doing caught the tip of the man's spear against my ribs, where it stopped and solidified.
"Do you see?"
"No. That's the problem. It went blurry. How did you counter the precognition?"
The man simply smiled, lifting his spear onto his shoulder before turning to Eris and directing her to step up. Realizing he wasn't going to answer, I rolled my eyes and walked away to sit down and watch, and go over what I did wrong. That was, of course, what he wanted. For me to think and figure it out for myself.
"Sprite, play back that last match for me."
I watched through the whole spar, noting down where I had done something wrong and where I could improve in the future.
Maybe stop moving so much. I'm just making openings when I do that. Water God is based on counters and turning your opponent's attack and momentum against him. It's the Bruce Lee school of sword fighting: be like water. Water is… Patient. Calm. Still. Until it moves. So, let's try that.
Eventually, I came to the end of the fight. Ruijerd struck with the spear— no, he feinted with the spear, pulled back directly in line with the feint, then struck again, directly in line with the first feint.
That son of a bitch! He figured out how to hide an attack in the shadow of another attack.
It was clever. Very clever. And something I made a note to look out for in the future. There are probably other ways to exploit knowing a enemy uses precognition too, now that I think about it. So, how do you beat someone who can see what you're about to do? … Don't have a plan, for one. Or have all the plans. Or move so fast it doesn't matter because he can't react in time. Or be invisible to his ability to precognate. Or be completely unpredictable. Or lie.
With that in mind, I decided it was probably best not to train to the point of over-reliance on the magic demon eye. Train to use it, yes. Train it to the exclusion of my other skills? No. I'd be crippled if I came up against someone who could hard counter it.
Thanks, Ruijerd.
With Eris:
"You're not moving ahead of my attacks," the girl pointed out as we came to a pause, a thousand feet above our camp, swords locked but neither of us really trying to shove the other off.
"Decided the Demon Eye was going to fuck me over if I became reliant on it. It's nice to have the option to use it, but if someone can counter it and I'm not prepared, it just leaves me open."
Eris nodded. "Good."
That was all she said before pushing away and throwing herself into free fall. I kicked off after her, only to have to dodge as she started swinging her sword. Long experience had taught me that if she was swinging and not close, there was an invisible attack heading my way.
Sure enough, I heard wind whisper around me as she threw out attack after attack. I closed to within a yard when a line of pain stretched itself across my chest. A look down showed my gray robe and the shirt under it had been torn open.
Eris and I stopped again and the redhead sheathed her sword and approached to take in the damage. Long, callused fingers, found the wound and I hissed.
"Were you using touki?"
A year ago, that would have been a valid question, considering I couldn't control it then. Now, I used it pretty much full time. Even if it did hurt my soul just a little to stop thinking and just do it.
"Yeah."
And her attack had punched through it. My touki. The stuff that could shrug off Ruijerd's spear when he was actually trying. Going to need to start using shields by default.
"So what was that technique?"
Eris's hand wandered away from the now healed wound (thank you auto-recovery pendant), but stayed on my flesh. "A line of telekinesis. Wind blades inside that. Vacuum inside that."
"What is this three layer bullshit?" I muttered, sending her a grin that let her know I wasn't mad. "And vacuum blades? Really? That's… Kind of cool, actually. You done good. I'm proud of you, Eris. You've improved a lot on the last year."
"Mhmm."
It was around that time I noticed the look in Eris's eyes, and the fact that her nipples were trying to poke through her clothes. Her hands grabbed two fistfuls of my cloak and she pulled herself in, smashing her lips against mine. It was far more aggressive than the tentative kisses we had shared every now and then on the road, or that first unsure thing that night with Ghislaine. Her tongue invaded my mouth and sought out my own as she pressed herself flush against my front.
I let my stone sword fall, wrapping my arms around the very lithe, very fit young woman trying to examine my tonsils. Her ass was tight and firm in my hand and she mewled when I gave it a squeeze.
Before things could go any further, she pulled away and tucked her head under my chin. We held each other for a while before heading down to ground level.
If she wasn't ready for more than that, I wasn't going to push. I was a patient man. I could wait.
Or by myself.
I needed a way to go faster than Air Running. But it had to be something that can stop on a dime too.
Teleportation wasn't continuous, nor was it instantaneous. It took a second to prime. And while I could teleport line of sight now, even line of sight by way of drones, it wasn't the same as a movement technique.
Okay, let's look at this from another angle. What about skipping all the middle-men entirely? Just… a spell that converts mana to 'goes fast.' Velocity. Or kinetic energy.
And I'd need a spell that did the opposite on the other end, to convert inertia into mana in order to go to a dead stop without deceleration trauma. That way, it would cost less mana too because I'd be getting a little back every time I stopped.
So I went into the usual down development cycle while working on everything else until I cobbled together something that worked, mostly. There were still some kinks to work out, but it was better than I had been.
Then, when I eventually did figure it out…
"Fuck."
"Master?"
I sighed. "I've told you, you don't have to call me that, you know."
"I know," Sprite beamed. "What was it?"
"So. With inertia magic, I realize I don't really need the lighter than air design for the airships anymore. I mean, it wouldn't really be useful under any circumstances. If magic failed for whatever reason, containment would fail on the helium providing bouancy and it would fall out of the sky, versus… falling out of the sky if the mana went out. Same consequences either way, but less work to gather and contain helium this way."
"Do you want to modify the design? We have the time and materials. I could salvage most of the completed work, and," she paused just a moment, "I estimate it would probably complete about the same time."
I nodded. "Yeah. If you don't mind. Let's go ahead and get started on that."
And so it went.
"Thank you for the ale! What's the occasion?" Kishirika asked as she started in on the tankard I'd put down in front of her.
"So I've been meaning to ask. How long are you going to be in that form?"
"Eh?" the demon loli raised an eyebrow. Bringing her hands up, she cupped her entirely flat and non-existent breasts. "My deliciously flat, tiny body isn't to your taste, Rudy?"
"More that I'm wondering if it's by choice or a result of your resurrection technique. I'm looking into means of immortality myself, so any insight you could offer would be appreciated."
The demon girl nodded, sending her hair flying about her head. "Of course, of course! I like to think it's a benefit!"
"So it's a side effect."
"Definitely," she sighed. "I have to gather up enough mana to progress to my more," she waved her hands, emphasizing a marvelous set of curves, "mature form."
I hummed, considering her. "So it's just a matter of mana?"
"Yup! At my current rate, it'll take about… another three hundred years. Maybe less now that I'm getting to eat food. I had to use my mana to sustain myself, so I was barely breaking even." With that, she sighed and drained the tankard down her gullet before waving over the bar maid and getting another. Kishirika immediately downed the entire thing, leaving the woman with an amused look.
"I'll just bring you a pitcher," she said, before leaving to get one.
"I can't even get laid like this, Rudy! Do you have any idea what it's like to be stuck in a body too young for your mind?! To be either incapable of the most basic of pleasures, or worse, to be capable, perpetually horny even, only to be unable to scratch the itch?! Badi couldn't even fit in this form! He'd tear me in half! And sure, we've got an agreement to do things with other people when one of us dies, or I wind up like this, but come on! The only people who want anything to do with me are weirdos and creeps. Absolute scum. The worst!"
Sipping at my iced tea, I chuckled. "Yeah, I know that feeling. Worse was when 'dirty old man' brain kicked in and I started thinking lewd thoughts reflexively, only to realize that little kid body had no interest in those things. It's like, feeling like you should appreciate something, mentally knowing it's great, but not actually being able to enjoy it. Or worse, someone would say or do something and set it off, and there I'd be thinking lewd thoughts about girls entirely too young for that sort of thing." I sighed. "I miss Roxy. I can almost taste her and it's driving me nuts, being able to talk to her when I want but nothing else."
Kishirika hummed quietly before murmuring, "That's right, you would know something about that, wouldn't you?"
"A bit. Thankfully, I've only had to suffer through it once. I'm hoping that I'll be able to skip that step if I ever figure out a way of self-resurrection in case someone destroys my body. Which brings me back to my question. How do you do it?"
Refilling her tankard and sipping at it, Kishirika studied me over the lip of her drink. "Alright. I'll tell you how. Later." She was silent for a moment before asking, "What's your arrangement with the other girls? They've been pulling me into their group calls lately and it's looking like you've got yourself a little harem going~"
"I hate that word," I muttered. "Roxy, Eris, Sylphie, and I have a thing, yes. I'll probably wind up marrying all three of them."
"And the princess? Ariel, wasn't it?"
I shrugged. "She's nice. I think she's angling for a political marriage for 'the princess,' because I'm an Emperor-level mage and can conjure technology from thin air. Ariel, on a personal level, I'm pretty sure wants to get closer on the basis of being the only other person in this world she can relate to. I wouldn't mind seeing where things go, but not at the risk of hurting the others' feelings. I've seen firsthand what happens when you think with your dick and I'm not my father. Just because I could seduce her doesn't mean I will. If she wants something, she's going to have to work it out with everyone else first."
Rolling my eyes and sipping my tea, I added, "I'm pretty sure they've already done that though and at this point they're just waiting to spring it on me."
"Mm. I see, I see," Kishirika nodded. She killed her tankard and emptied the last of the pitcher into it. "So… Rudy. If I said I wanted to have some fun…?" Kishirika gestured to her body, "Would this be a turn off?"
I shook my head. "Not really. I refused Sylphie because she was too young mentally. I'd make an exception because you know what you're getting into. I don't mind flat and you're fun, so I wouldn't be against it." Humming to myself, I smirked and asked, "You're not against having sex with girls, are you? Cause I know a particularly frisky redhead who would love an excuse to sample the 'local wares' as it were. Eris is a Boreas and they're all super horny. I think the only reasons she hasn't found some cute thing to bring back yet is that she isn't sure how I'd react and she hasn't found any beastkin girls worth risking a spanking over. But I don't think she'd turn down the opportunity to try out a demon. She likes the idea of playing with Roxy…"
"Oh ho? Yes, Eris is shaping up to be a beauty and I've had many female lovers over the years! Yes! She would make an excellent addition to my harem! When I start one again."
I frowned. "No. My wife isn't going to be part of your harem."
Kishirika raised an eyebrow. "You're one of those men who has to be in control aren't you?"
"I'm one of those men who doesn't want someone laying claim to his women." They were my women and I was their man. It was a mutual claiming of each other, as it were. Which is why I wouldn't just go hit up a brothel or find some girl to bring home without running it by them. Not that I wanted more women. Three was enough, thanks. But… I wouldn't say no, either.
Yeah, I liked sex. A lot. I was a man. So sue me.
Kishirika waved her hand as she finished off her drink and waved the bar maid down for another pitcher. "Details! We can work those out later! The important thing is, you're willing to scratch my itch, right?"
"Willing? Sure. But what are you going to do for me?"
Kishirika blinked. "You get to have sex with the demon empress."
I snorted. "The task can't also be the reward." Unless I set it up that way myself. "How about more demon eyes for anyone who wants them, out of my group?"
Kishirika nodded. "A trifle! Easily done! Now, what do I have to do to get laid?!"
"Try talking to Eris first—"
"Then let's go! The sooner, the better!"
Allowing myself to be dragged out of the bar, Kishirika carrying her fresh pitcher in her other hand, I considered the girl pulling me unerringly towards my future third wife. "You know… If it's mana you need, I could fix that." I waved the bait in front of her face.
"At what cost?"
I shrugged. "I'll figure that out later."
A demon eye for every one of my future children if they want it. Entire generations of silently casting mages and magic swordsmen with the demon eyes. And an immortal demon empress around to make sure it stays that way. There's 'sleeping around' and then there's just plain having the good fucking sense to bring the one person who can grant special eyes into the fold.
I reached my mana outwards, touching on my bond with Sprite. The spirit perked up immediately and faintly, I could feel her emotions—fondness, love, adoration, lust, intense carnal pleasure—before she reigned them in.
Sprite: Master?
Let the others know what's up, would you? I want Roxy and Sylphie on board. If we can get Kishirika…
Sprite: I understand. I'll see to it.
Yeah, Sprite and I had almost worked out telepathy. We had only gotten it working through the bond we shared as contractor and summoned spirit, but we both felt like we were close to getting it down to something usable with anyone—and from there, being able to teach the technique to anyone who could cast like I could. Sprite thought we were close to getting shielding against psychic intrusion too, right alongside telepathy—directly derived from it, really.
But without someone to test it on, we couldn't be sure. Mostly because while I could try the technique, my bond with Sprite allowed her to slip right past it like it wasn't even there. She had backdoor access to my mind now that our bond had deeped if she wanted it, and if I wasn't actively trying to keep her out. I'd occasionally caught her snooping through my memories, but beyond that and occasionally reaching out to touch my mind as though to reassure herself that I was still there, she left the connection alone. I'd shown the little spirit I had first summoned a lot of trust and she had grown quickly since then.
We found Eris training with Ruijerd, predictably. Well, it would have been predictable if I didn't know exactly where she was, with Sprite beaming her position directly into my brain. The pair were training by the sea again. Seeing Kishirika looked like she was going to just walk right up to Eris and butt in, I set my feet and pulled her to a stop. Converting the sand beneath us into rock, I made seats for us and sat down. "Have some patience. They know we're here. Let them finish."
"Fine," Kishirika sighed.
Convincing Eris, after we left Ruijerd to go for a walk and have a private conversation, turned out to be relatively easy.
"You want to have sex with us?" she asked, sending Kishirika a curious look as we walked further up the beach.
"Yes!" the horned loli nodded.
Eris turned and met my eyes. She raised an eyebrow in question and I nodded, my eyes drifting down to Kishirika, before I winked my left eye at her—my Demon Eye of Foresight. Eris grinned and nodded. "Alright! I'm convinced! We just have to talk to Roxy and Sylphie. Leave it to me, Rudeus!"
And like that, my sexy redheaded third wife was good to go—
"So," Eris drew out the word, looking at me out of the corner of her eye. "Rudeus…"
"Yeah, Eris?"
Hesitantly, she asked, "Does this mean it's okay for me to uh," she considered for a moment before continuing, "look for beastkin girls? I won't bring any other men home, only girls! That's fine, right? We can share!"
I sent her an amused look and asked, "Eris, do you want me to get you a beastkin slave for your birthday?"
"Yes!" the redhead nodded vehemently.
Blinking, I asked, "Really?"
"What?" Eris asked. "Grandpa, dad, and mom all did it—all the Boreas do. I don't see why we can't keep doing it? Buy them as slaves, take them home, free them, and offer them a job. It gets them out of a life of slavery and gets us sexy maids. It's a win/win, as you like to say!"
I considered what she was saying. I knew about the servants, and about the Boreas prime fetish for beastkin, and that most of them were freed slaves who had been hired on. None of what she was saying was new, per se. I had just never really considered continuing the practice when we got back to Roa and rebuilt—or wherever we decided to settle down. On the one hand, I didn't like the idea of slavery, except as kinky sex play. Actual slavery was godawful.
On the other hand… even if I started using Sprite to hunt and kill slavers right now using her network of drones, that wouldn't save all the people who were already slaves. It wouldn't get rid of the people looking to buy slaves (aside from people like Eris' immediate family, who bought them specifically to free them and hire them as servants). Buying a slave off the market who had been taken from their family, who might not even know where home was, whose family may or may not be dead and then turning around and giving them a good home and a job honestly sounded like a net positive.
Hell, I was pretty sure we could just write it into their contracts that they would be available for 'attention' from their employers and they would sign up anyway—at a guess, that's what Sauros and Phillip had done. I'd have to talk with them to confirm that, but it didn't seem out of the question.
Finally, I nodded. "I'll consider it." Eris perked right up at that.
"Okay! I'll call Roxy and Sylphie when they're awake and talk to them about Kishirika," the redhead nodded. A huge grin spread across her face and she practically vibrated with excitement. "Ahh, an entire harem of pretty beastkin girls just for me—us! I mean us!" Eris corrected herself immediately, glancing at me to see if I would scold her for the slip.
"I'll sink you into the ground up to your neck, fuck them in front of you, and make you watch."
"Eep!" Eris yelped, looking thoroughly scolded. "I'll be good!"
Kishirika tossed herself onto our bed in the little home I'd raised for us outside the city. "Ah! This is great! So soft~"
"Uhhuh," Eris nodded, kicking off her boots and taking her sword belt off. "It's nice. The mattress is thick enough that the supports don't dig into my back or ass when Rudeus is really hammering me into it."
"Or when Eris is trying to break my hips," I agreed, pulling off my robe as I toed off my own boots. "You gonna just lay there, or are you going to strip?"
"We could strip her! I like unwrapping presents," Eris suggested.
Kishirika sat up with a lewd little laugh. "Unwrap me, then! I'll give you the gift of me!"
"Careful, your head won't fit through the door if your head gets much bigger from that ego," I warned.
"There's a reason they made the palace doors extra wide in Rikarisu!" I couldn't tell if she was joking or entirely serious. With Kishirika, it could be either. I decided to just roll with it, as that tended to be the easiest thing to do with her.
Eris finished undressing first and looked uncertainly at me. "Do I just… go for it, or should I wait for you?"
"What would you do if it were Roxy or Sylphie?" I asked, instead of answering as I slowed down a bit, taking my time to pull my shirt of and give her a moment to think. A moment to be indecisive and actually work through the problem in her head instead of relying on me to answer.
Humming quietly as she studied me, Kishirika watching silently but growing more impatient by the moment now that she was finally about to get laid for the first time in who knew how many years, Eris eventually said, "I think I'd just go for it."
"And why aren't you now?"
Biting her lip and looking unsure I was reminded that for all that she forged bravely forward from the moment Ghislaine and I popped her cherry, for all that she was sexually adventurous and had a monstrous appetite that rivaled my own (even if I had way more stamina, thanks to my abnormally large mana/touki reserves), and for all her maturity when she wanted to be (such as when she had taken it upon herself to pull me out of my spiraling funk over Zenith and Norn), Eris was still just a thirteen year old girl and this was her first relationship. One she really wanted to make work. She knew she didn't have to walk on eggshells with me, but a certain amount of uncertainty was to be expected with this sort of thing—and honestly, I'd rather have a little unsure and ask rather than be entirely self-assured and do something she'd regret later because she didn't communicate.
"Didn't want to make you mad," she admitted quietly.
I finished pulling my pants off and crossed the few steps between us to take the lithe redhead into my arms. Eris was beginning to develop some nice curves and with my growth spurt, she fit very well against me, tucking her head under my chin and wrapping her arms around me in a hug. "I'm glad you took the time to think and ask, Eris. But I brought her in. I don't mind if you just dive right in. Enjoy yourself to your heart's content."
"'Kay," Eris nodded, before tilting her head up and kissing my lips. She giggled smugly and wriggled her hips, her creamy, smooth thighs brushing against my hard cock. Pulling back, and put her hands on her hips, spread her legs, and straightened her back. "Right!"
"About ti—" the demon loli started.
Turning towards the bed, Eris made a standing leap and pinned Kishirika. Kishirika squealed as Eris began tearing at her clothes. "Gimme them ears! Gimmie!" Eris growled, darting in and taking one of Kishirika's pointed ears into her mouth with a quiet, "Nom!" and beginning to suck and chew on it from the way she was working her jaw. The smaller girl was no match for Eris as she began throwing the demon loli's succubus garb in random directions.
"Rudy~! Help! I'm being attacked!" Kishirika protested, squirming beneath Eris' sexual assault.
"You asked for this," I reminded her, chuckling as I watched, moving over to the bed to get a closer look. "Sprite, you're recording this, right?"
Sprite: Of course, master! I'll sent it to Roxy, Sylphie, and Ariel later.
I blinked. And Ariel?
Sprite: …You didn't hear that, master.
Uh huh, I rolled my eyes. Well, that confirmed my thoughts on my girls having plans for Ariel. Not that I blamed them.
Kishirika kicked and thrashed beneath Eris as my redheaded (future) third wife finally got her fully undressed and began exploring the smaller girl's body with her hands, her mouth still thoroughly occupied with Kishirika's ear. Eris ran her hands down Kishirika's shoulders, over her flat chest, pausing to tweak her perky little nipples before continuing down, stroking the demon loli's flat stomach, sliding over her thighs (which looked like they would thiccen up nicely when she aged up a bit physically), before one hand spread the purple haired girl's legs and the other dove into Kishirika's hairless cunt. Eris's fingers began dancing over Kishirika's bare lips, sliding quickly up and down her slit and getting absolutely soaked from the way the demon was leaking, before she circled the smaller girl's clit. Kishirika's hips bucked, arching off the bed even with Eris' greater weight pinning her down.
Laying down beside Kishirika, I watched Eris explore the demon's folds for a moment more before joining her in teasing the woman (loli-form) with what was probably the world's longest dry streak. Taking her by the jaw and tilting Kishirika's head, I kissed the little demon loli, my tongue slipping past her lips and teasing her own. Kishirika moaned into my mouth as Eris worked at her clit, her hands reaching up and pawing at both myself and Eris. With one hand, I went straight for the juncture of Kishirika's legs, joining Eris. We knew each other so well that Eris and I didn't need to communicate with words. The redhead understood what I wanted and moved her hand down, starting to finger and explore Kishirika's depths while I took over for her in teasing the smaller girl's nub.
The purple haired girl moaned and writhed beneath us as we worked her over, panting into my mouth as she pawed at my chest and arms, mewling desperately as I felt her body start to shudder, her hips beginning to buck in the first signs of orgasm… only to back off. I moved my fingers away from her clit and lightly grazed the area around it. Kishirika whimpered, trying to grind herself on our hands, but Eris knew this game since I'd played it with her more than once—and with someone else on the receiving end of being edged to torment, she was keen to play. Eris's red eyes were fixed on Kishirika's face, a look of wonder and amusement on the redhead's face as she began pumping her fingers into Kishirika again.
"Rudeus. I want to watch her come," Eris said quietly, her gaze shifting to me.
"In a bit," I promised. "I want to watch her squirm first."
"Mm!" Eris nodded, a smirk pulling at her lips. She brought her head down and began lapping at Kishirika's folds with her tongue, occasionally licking my fingers and sending me a lusty look that told me she was ready to go.
"Oooh~! Oh, oh, oh! Rudy! Eris! More!" Kishirika pleaded, her hands squeezing my arms and pulling on them, trying to convince me to play with her clit directly.
I gently teased her, rubbing slow circles on her hood, while leaning down and running my tongue over one of her nipples. "More what? Edging? Sure, we can do that."
"No~!" the demon wailed, her horned head thrashing back and forth. "No more teasing! Make me come!"
"Alright," I nodded in agreement. I stilled my hand. Eris followed my lead and likewise stopped playing with Kishirika. "If you beg."
"B-beg?! But, but I'm the Great Demon Empress! I'm not supposed to beg!"
I flicked her nipple with my tongue, then inhaled it, rolling the little nub around in my mouth for a moment before letting it pop back out. Then I blew on it gently, drawing a shudder from the demon loli. "Well then, I suppose we'll just keep you right on the edge…"
Kishirika pounded and kicked the mattress, tossing her head back and forth as she wailed even more pitifully. "Nooo~! Let me come Rudy~!"
"And what do we say?" I teased.
Staring down at me with a childish pout, Kishirika looked away a moment later. "P-please?"
"Please what?" Eris asked. "You have to be specific about what you want!"
Considering how many times I had tormented Eris with exactly that lesson, I'm not surprised she jumped on the opportunity to use it on someone else. I reached down and patted her head with my free hand and Eris lit up, beaming happily up at me from between Kishirika's legs. If she had a tail, it'd be wagging. She really is a good girl, when she wants to be.
Kishirika made a frustrated sound before shouting, "Please may I come?! Will you please finger and lick my pussy until I squirt all over the bed and can't see straight! Then fuck my tiny little cunt until I can't even sit down! Fill me so full of your cum that I have to get knocked up!" She paused, then quietly added, "But I won't really unless I want to, so don't worry. Not that I can when I'm like this."
Nodding, I grinned. "So what you're really saying is that you want us to fuck you so good that you'll want me to knock you up."
"Yes!"
"Hmm… Alright. Eris, go for it." I moved my hand and gestured at Kishirika's cunt.
"'Kay!" Eris chirped happily, before diving in and starting to lick the demon loli from top to bottom.
I stopped her a moment later, grabbing Eris's hair and pulling her out of Kishirika's snatch, to a whine from the smaller girl. "Turn around. Make her eat you."
Eris nodded and quickly turned herself around, dropping her crotch down on Kishirika's face. "Hey! I wasn't mmf—"
"Don't care," I shook my head, moving between Kishirika's legs as Eris quickly worked her back up to the edge and shoved her right over, with all the grace and tact Eris was known for—that is, none whatsoever. Kishirika's hips bucked as Eris held her down, latching onto Kishirika's clit and sucking (and presumably licking) as the demon loli wailed into Eris's red haired cunt. Kishirika quickly tried to get away, her hands pawing at Eris to try to get her off, to no avail as Eris was much stronger than her at the moment.
Taking my cock in hand, I thumped Eris in the forehead to get her attention. The redhead looked up at me with a questioning look. "Hold her legs for me."
"Mm," Eris nodded, leaning back out of Kishirika's cunt and pulling the demon loli's legs up, leaving her splayed out and exposed for me. Kishirika was completely bare. Her fat little lips were puffy and a bit red from where Eris had been abusing them. Laying one hand on her mound, I held her still as I ran my cock up and down her absolutely soaked slit.
"Mmf?!" Kishirika said something from between Eris's legs, but I ignored her and Eris just started grinding and rolling her hips, fucking Kishirika's face with her cunt.
Slowly, carefully, I pressed forward—all the while, using my thumb to gently rub the small girl's clit. She had no hymen, but Kishirika was tiny. Smaller and tighter than even Eris had been. Several times, I had to pause because Kishirika would clench down around me, her pussy shuddering as she tapped Eris's thighs—wanting up, or to say something. Neither of us knew or cared. Finally, with what sounded like a muffled sob on Kishirika's part, I bottomed out inside her.
I held myself still for a bit, just rubbing Kishirika's clit and thighs. Eris, panting from Kishirika's work between her legs, looked between my cock inside Kishirika and my face, a lusty look in her eyes. "Rudeus. Fuck her," Eris breathed.
Leaning forward, I met the redhead's lips in a kiss, tasting Kishirika on her lips as our tongues danced. I pulled out slowly and settled into an easy back-and-forth pace inside the demon loli, whose hips immediately started matching my pace.
Now, let's test that theory about the mana, I thought, before beginning to channel mana through my body. At every point where my body and Kishirika's touched, I pushed my mana into the demon loli. Kishirika squealed immediately, her body shuddering and her cunt squirting around my cock as she greedily drank my mana down. It felt like rain hitting the desert as I felt my mana disappear inside the little demon and spread through her body. Things that had been dormant awakened, flowered, flourished. I turned up the output and flooded her.
Below us, I watched as Kishirika almost immediately grew an inch in height and her body started to fill out. Her tiny, flat breasts started to bud, quickly growing into small mounds. Her thighs grew slightly thicker. With the way Eris was holding her legs, I could see as her flat ass rounded into a nice little bubble butt. Her kind of flabby abdomen tightened down into abs with just a small layer of fat. And her bare cunt sprouted the beginnings of a bush of purple hair that matched what was on her head.
"More~!" I faintly heard Kishirika scream.
Eris's breath sped up, coming in short little pants as her face quickly flushed. "Rudeus," she moaned, her tone warning that she was getting close as her forehead rested on mine.
"Come for me, Eris," I pecked her lips. "Come on her face."
That apparently did it for her. With a quiet, "Mnn!" Eris came, her body shuddering as she started really grinding her cunt into Kishirika's face. Watching one of the girls I loved come was always one of my favorite things and I felt myself getting closer.
"Kishirika, you ready for me to fill you up?"
"MMF!" came the muffled reply, and the (nearly former) loli's hips (which were starting to widen wonderfully) worked harder.
Taking the hint, I picked up my pace, increasing the force of my thrusts into her. Eris reached down, easing my hand out of the way and replacing it with her own, which she used to start almost violently rubbing Kishirika's clit—hard and fast enough that I could hear the lewd sound of Kishirika's juices starting to splash. The demon loli's cunt clenched down hard around me and a drawn out moan escaped from between Eris's legs as her body started to shake. That was enough to send me over the edge and I grunted, kissing Eris again as I filled up Kishirika's cunt with my sperm.
When I came down off my orgasm, I sighed and stopped moving, cutting off the flow of mana to Kishirika. I rested partly against Eris as the redhead ran her hands lovingly over my arms and chest. "That was hot," Eris murmured.
"Yep," I agreed with a smile. "Get off her."
Eris nodded and slung her hips off of Kishirika's face. "So, how was that, your highness?"
Kishirika lay there and panted. Her hair was a mess, splayed out over the pillow. Her face was shiny with Eris's juices, places red where the redhead had rubbed her a bit raw. Her eyes rolled in her head and her tongue lolled out, a thoroughly fucked stupid look on her face. "I needed that," she finally managed to get out. Looking down at herself, she murmured, "I think you added about three years there. Too bad you can't do more."
Turning an amused look on Eris, I jerked my thumb at Kishirika. "That's funny. I think she thinks we're done."
"Pfft, no way. It's not even dark yet," Eris shook her head.
Kishirika blinked, her expression clearing up as she looked at the both of us. "You… can keep going?"
Eris rolled her eyes. "Rudeus can keep going all night and into tomorrow. I'd only last until morning normally, but if we're both mostly working on you… probably longer." Turning to me, she eagerly asked, "Want to see how long we can go?"
"Sounds fun. Think I should break out the kinky sex magic?"
"Duh," the redhead chuckled. "I want to watch you fuck her unconscious."
Kishirika gulped. "Ha. Haha! No-nothing, nothing frightens the Demon Emperor! Do your worst~!"
"Oh no," I shook my head, a smile playing over my face as I tilted my head just so as to cast my eyes in shadow from the room's lamp. Kishirika went a bit wide eyed, her cunt tightening around my still hard cock involuntarily. "I aim to do my best."
Holding up a hand, I conjured a watery construct—an improved version of the water tentacle I'd used on Ghislaine. "Do it Rudeus~" Eris purred, reaching down and starting to finger herself.
Pulling out of the demon loli, I brought the construct down, both girls' eyes following it the whole way. "You, you won't break the Demon Empress so easily!"
"So you intend to resist, prisoner?!" Eris demanded, and Kishirika immediately perked up at that.
"That's right! I'll never talk!"
Chuckling quietly, I ran the toy up and down her slit, still gaping and leaking sperm from where I'd fucked her. "Ve haff vays of making you talk."
I shoved the toy into her and started it rotating.
"Eee!"
"Oh ho ho ho!" Eris laughed, bringing her hand up to hide her lips.
A lithe, curvy little teenager snored softly where she slept curled up in my arms… between myself and Eris. The sun was just starting to shine outside as I closed my eyes and rested, knowing I would be joining them in sleep shortly.
Sprite: Master?
Yeah, Sprite?
Sprite: I think I've found something.
Show me.
Immediately, an image popped into my head. A feed from a drone that zoomed in from well above a village in the middle of nowhere somewhere to the north, bending around until it went through a window and into a room… Where a large, six armed, violet haired, jet black demon was banging away at a woman who looked kind of like a harpy, maybe.
Sprite: I believe this to be Badigadi, the so-called Fighting God. Kishirika's fiancee.
Uh huh. Well shit. I just got her to where I wanted her. But… a deal's a deal. Keep tabs on him and I'll tell her when she wakes up and see what she wants to do.
Sprite: Of course.
There was a moment of silence and curiosity, before the feed cut out. Something the matter?
Sprite: He's… big.
I rolled my eyes. Size isn't everything. Sometimes, it just makes you a bigger target.
Sprite: Do you think Kishirika will choose to go with him?
I considered it for a moment before nodding, knowing she could see—that she was watching over us, even now. Yeah, probably. That's fine. The idea to try to flip her was a spur of the moment thing. As long as she at least thinks favorably of us, I'm pretty sure I can talk her into giving our descendants demon eyes anyway.
Sprite was silent long enough that I had nearly drifted off.
Sprite: I believe my grasp over medical techniques has increased to the point where I could increase your stature to match that of Badigadi over time, if you wanted.
Don't want, I denied immediately. But thanks for offering.
Sprite: Of course, master. Good night.
Night.
I was out like a light not a moment later.