Having survived without being beaten to an inch away from death's cold thighs, Aki didn't have any trouble getting Xiao Feng, he'd finally learned the man's name, to gather further support for his campaign in conquering the city, not that he specifically explained such intricacies.
"You really don't want to join us?" Asked the embarrassed little girl. She'd been treating him as a freak, but wasn't he very cool just now?
"A home is not a home if you are not trusted by the ones living there." He calmly smiled before explaining in a gallant way. Having the little girl build herself a better image of him would take too long, and it was not like he was lying, just saying things in a more bullshity way.
Bussines done, Aki wished he was able to use some kind of time skip. The next best thing was completely diving into his reading, Which had fallen behind quite a bit when you consider he mostly read novels with Chinese authors, who published chapters once or twice a day. The more American novels had published one or two through these five or so days he'd been cultivating, he'd lost count since looking at the deadline was a bit very enerving, but he was way more interested in those since they were currently in more interesting parts of the story.
*****
"Young master, our troops are ready." Said a non descriptive voice coming from the shadows behind the calm youth sipping at his tea. This gentle looking young man didn't have much of a reaction, he just kept his soft smile and opened his eyes toward the clear skies, flying ships and war machines.
As the wind softly blew on his light brown hair and reinforced the image of peace around him, he stood up from his sitting position and walked toward the tip of the cliff.
"Just a bit more. My uncle will not be able to keep to his foolish resistance. I wish it hadn't come to this, but it was always obvious that dissobeying the gods was not something mortals like us should even try to do. Now lives shaw be lost during these trying times. Will you stay with me while we carve the way to salvation, old friend?" His mellodic voice rang through the mountain side, but there were only the two of then there.
"My place will always be besides the young master for as long as he will have me." Said the shadow, it's loyalty strenghtened again by his lord's heart.
"That makes me happy, though i wish you were a bit less stiff when talking to me alone. Let us win this war and make a better world" He said and stepped off the cliff, falling for a while before extending his wings, the majestic white feathers catching the winds and bringing him up.
*****
"How many more here?" Asked a humanoid form caked in blood with a raspy voice.
"Fourteen." Laughed a young woman's voice, this one not anywhere near.
"Next." It simply said, swinging his sword in great speeds to get rid of the blood on it. A gash opened on the closest wall and the woman still petrified next to him screamed again. All guards were dead. Her husband was dead. There was a very small chance she was going to survive, but before she could try to beg for her life, he left. "This smell is killing me."
"You sure it isn't the healing pains and the new wounds you opened in this fight?" Asked his patron in an inocent tone.
"Yes."
*****
As Aki looked into his phone, he was constantly distracted by the facts that one, people tried to rob his phone every ten minutes, and two, everytime he finished a novel chapter, he'd go back to the home page, not because of any bug or the like, he just couldn't help wanting to call his family.
It was one thing to call his father. If he paid for it, the man would happily leaves the bundles of hyperactivism and blood that were his baby siblings on his hands while exploring the States, he didn't doubt he couldn't convince his mother in law either.
His mother though...
"Ima gonna need even more money. And a girlfriend, forget men, that was too hard anyway." He murmured.
It wasn't a problem about how much he made, but how.
He could call her right now and say he had a way to heal her back pains with some quick sessions he'd be paying for. She would doubt the medical procedure and look to inform herself better, but she would doubt where the money paying for it was coming from much, much more.
'Maybe tell her I started working out again and got scouted as a hooker then Melissa's pet?' She'd be confused and worry about his conditions, but work is work, and he'd ran away from med uni. 'Mother isn't enough of a detective to figure I'm the reason there's a lot more money flowing in, let's go with that. I'll still need to have her get back at least a week before the apocalypse, because she will definitely want to travel around as well. By the bright side, I can finally get rid of all those big wooden furniture. Again, it is a shame for the couch, which was only recently completely paid for, but I'm willing to make the choice for them.' He noded and decided to make the call the moment he got back to his room.
******
Bells rang sweetly, acompanied by a ritm of drums that obviously involved the coordination of hundreds or more sincronized people.
The cherry blossom swan in the air, but all present could only stare at her. Each and every man escorting her were umparareled beauties that would attract the gazes of both man and woman, but all present could only stare at her. The clearing surrounded by trees was emcompased in beautifully sewn banners embrodied with jewels and gold fluterring at the winds, barelly hiding tens of mithycal and fabled creatures, but all present could only stare at her.
She started to accend the short stairs up the pavilion and her retinue of bodyguards surrounded it, standing in formation like they were statues wearing the shining blue armors and the pretty faces of the formely foolish young masters.
Up in the platform, there sat five man wearing expensive robes, jewels and weapons. As she finally stood on the last step, they all stood up and fervently gazed upon her, and quickly kneeled in with their faces to the floor.
"LONG LIVE THE EMPRESS' GLORY!!!" They all said, words reverbarating over the mountain side and every soul withing the transmition's reach.
*****
"And so, we need to speed up things." Aki explained.
"I can't believe something like that is going to happen..." Melissa scruntched her eyebrowns and massaged her forehead, uncertain what to do with the new information or the wine she had in hand.
"Focus woman, you need to survive." Aki tonelessly told her while passing the whole bottle of the stuff to her.
*Sigh* "You're right. God, i'm starting to hate you." She said and drank the whole glass in one shot before starting to drink from the prized bottle she'd stolen for an ocasion like this.
"That just means I'm showing my true self to you that fast." He smiled helplessly. "Also, it's not like i'm only a trigger happy bastard. Do you have anyone else to massage your feet while having a drink and complaining about life in general?"
"Touche, but i still hate your ass." She said with a small scowl, not really able to get drunk with the fruity delicacy.
"I can deal with that. By the way, now that you know there's an apocalipse going, are there going to be any little Melissas coming here?" He teased in curiosity.
"Never had children." She shrugged.
"Really? You're what, four or five years younger than my mother? I'd expect otherwise, but that's fine as well." He accepted it just like that and went to his room, which was quite close to her's.
It was near midnight, so he was going to cultivate before calling his mother in the morning.
While the requirements for improvements had been raised ten times, his cultivation speed and improvement had far surpassed that. Probably way more than he realised since he couldn't actually stay cultivating all the time while he was in hell, but that was fine.
He'd play with the dogs, then play with the slime, then pod the garden, then do some paperwork, and finally, attend to whatever the people in Elisium wanted.
While one might naturaly guess that each activity was turned up to eleven when they consider an MC was involved, please note, 'THERE ARE A LOT OF DIFERENT DOGS!', and not all the fuckers in paradise are gentle goodies two shoes, so there's plenty of sparring to the 'death' done there, mostly swords and ginastics, nevermind that the cute faced jellies of deadly acid constantly tried to eat him alive and had to be escaped, the plants were impossible to trim with his current strenght even when he used a divine blade (gardening scissor) and applied several indirect methods, and the documents were written in soul language, which isn't really a language as much as a cluster of simbols representing information over the souls of those they refer to, and that stuff constantly puts pressure to the soul whenever someone tries to read it.
*****
"No, I got that you were his chosen, the dammed normally have a different look in their eyes, but why are you jumping on the handle of a garden tool?" Asked the goddess.
"Oh, I'm practicing gravity manipulation." He exclaimed, jumping again and falling towards the horizontly placed handle of the blade, making it close just tat bit more against the nightmare sunflower he'd been hitting for the last day. "Did you know it gets easier to explode when you shove eletrical currents into the process as well?" He informed the caramel skinned woman.
"...No." She denied, even though her reaction showed otherwise. "You do notice i'm a goddess of plants, right? Don't you think i'd get offended with you trying to kill one of my plants?" She asked while giving him a womanly look and crossing her arms bellow her ample bossom.
"This is a summer flower, you're a spring goddess. This thing is ugly as fuck, you can use me as an excuse to kill it." He replied much the same way as before, like a kid talking about their new toy. "By the way, your boobs look really weird when i'm looking at you horizontly, so that doesn't work."
"Touche." She didn't like that flower. "But don't touch the silver ones."
"Anything from Artemis is off limits, got it Miss P."
"Miss P? Did you speak to my mother already?" Her face blushed a bit. The nickname wasn't bad, just...
"Did she call you sweet or little pea when little and doesn't stop now that you're an adult? Yeah, my mom does that too, though she just calls my branquinho or nego, which is quite common where i'm from, but it's like she doesn't see that i'm twenty now." He pointed out, getting his answer straight from the reconisable expression.
"She can't be that bad. Mom used to get new paintings of us every year until she found out about photos." She reminiced.
"Oh, my mom gets a new chest per year, all as wide as i'm tall, and fills then with tests, photos, medical bills, anything that happened to me in that year." He smiled and crossed his arms, stopping in place so she'd notice she was still accentuating her chest. She did and laughed a bit.
"It seems we both love our mothers. I can see why you ran away though." She said in a more serious tone. Aki just smiled at her.
"I won't compare my story with your's. I'm just a bad person, even if i didn't deserve that woman i will still pay her back. I just can't do it now though." He said and jumped with more strenght, getting a nod from the bombshell before she went away.
*****
"Can't believe he directly went for Apollo's gift!" She smiled at her husband.
"It's literraly the only thing that has anything to do with the sun around the whole garden and it couldn't be closer to daeth if i tried, of course he did. The misserable thing can only be destroyed by a mortal that does not know of the promise and that little asshole is just smart enough to guess he will get paid for getting rid of it." Said the husband, happy to have been proven right.
"Right, because you didn't want to get rid of most other presents too." Persephone rolled her eyes. "I'm going to tell Hera we finally got rid of it and she can come visit again without her husband knowing. Maybe you will want to brag to her too!" She said, with a tone that explained she was definetly not falling for whatever he had thought up.
"Might be a good or terrible idea. We will see. Either way he is fucked, so more power for him and better chances for me." He shrugged and evilly grined.