"SO LET'S BE THE DAMN HEROES THEY WANT!" Aki bellowed to his crowd, an assortment of people from all ages and ethnicities wearing plainblack, loose fiting robes with a dog head over their hearts. It was a side view of an unindentifiable race of attack dog, made with silver threads and sporting black eyes with blue/green irises.
Simbolism aside, the uniform wasn't anything special, but that was mostly because the enchanting classes hadn't begun, so there wasn't a high enough number of robes to go around, making Aki decide on giving those more special robes for those that reached the pawn stage, though in the future they'd be standart equipment.
Stealing a mouthfull of coffee from Minthy's umprotected cup, the newby sect master begun unwinding from the exausting amount of pressure that was dealing with crowds and cameras by finally allowing himself to splurge on *atreon and unlocking all the maximum pledges he could.
"And they say money becomes useless when you become a cultivator." He snorted, beggining to move a lot of arquives on all the character ideas he could propagate towards his favorite author's emails.
He'd have ussed the humongous amount of bribe/gift/stolen money he kept receiving from multiple sources that had nothing to do with him for his family's benefits, but they were more than happy to just do nothing for a while and go back to living a normal worker's life, with his uncle buying the ocasional eletronic marvel for the household. Aki had long seen that coming and prepared enchantments and secutiry for the whole they lived resided at, asking them to practice some high level manuals he'd simplified on their spare time.
While his father had to be nudged towards not becoming a max level NEET, draging his siblings with him, the man and his wife were now turring the world with his most powerfull Soldier as their chaperony.
This development left Aki with little to do but face his actual problems, like oppening as many meridians and way points in his body before he had to begin turning into a Spirit realm so he could keep his 100% completion rate, divining where the first gates would open so they could nuke the other side in case of hostility (practically garanteed), or simply taking care of his new magical academy.
All options being a dificult balancing act, Aki was forced to relax much more than he normally did, having spent the previous five days since returning to earth generally glued to his phone when not training. By the way, he'd already reached the stats nescessary for Foundation establishment-9 (Level 50, the equivalent of human for the spirit realm.), but was still trying to amass the highest amount of benefits possible before advancing.
Turns out, the better your foundation the more you can push before you are forced to advance or explode, and as a "doctor", Aki had long since gone back to refine his with whatever method nescessary. You can aparently use a ridiculous amount of energy and actually make your foundation more than just "perfect", raising the exponential curve of acumulated power by quite a bit after everything is said and done.
The only real problem would be the amount of times the energy requirements for such ridiculous feat would be enhanced by not doing it while in said stage, but as someone that literraly had more than ten times the regeneration someone his level should have plus whatever his enemies and batteries had, Aki simply didn't even register the problem when going back to his own procedure.
His closest circle and a couple of his Soldiers had also received said procedure, though everyone but Elizabeth, Juny and CJ had had trouble with adjusting to the new strenght, mostly derivating from the amount of affinity development they'd received as a side effect, the before mentioned not receiving even close to the upgrade experienced by the others for obvious reasons.
(Oh, right, they're not so obvious. It's bassicaly a direct addition to their very being, an addition to all their Xp bars all over, but some fucks already reached a level where that kind of improvement simply doesn't matter as much.)
Said treatment also raised Aki's ability to open his meridians, even allowing for him to sincronise all three dantian forming in his body, effectively triping his natural reservoir of energy and reducing the nescessary energy for breaking through.
Considering the kind of things he was expecting from the event, he knew every bit would matter even though he was obviously doing the equivalent of running nuclear power plants in his basement.
He did try to produce a magical one, but the conversion rate for normal ki was surprisingly low unless he tried some more... esoteric methods, which actually increased the date of leaving the thing behind with supervision from someone other than himself.
While the experiment had made his enchanting skill reach a ridiculous level and given him suitable equipment thanks to the hidden quest he'd completed, he'd also gotten a talk from his patron, who'd directly warned against using this knowledge for frivolous things, insisting on keeping the reactor in hell.
Aki promptly agreed and reassured his boss that he understood it was something that would cause a lot of trouble without the power to back it, so he just stopped entirely.
Doesn't mean his enchanting hadn't received a ridiculous boost from the...
"What are you doing?" Questioned the red head after finishing her milk and coffee.
"Hugging you while binge reading, what else does it look like i'm doing?" Aki chuckled, his thoughts derailed from everything happening in the last days. It was tiring and he needed more snuggles.
"That, you're doing it again, acting like a cat. It's like i'm wearing a human scarf." She rolled her eyes.
"I don't hear you complaining yet, but i could instead give you a massage." He lazily said.
"That, nope, i'll take it." She quickly changed her sentence so as to not lose the oportunity. Aki was surprisingly good at it.
"You do notice you can always just ask me to give you a massage as long as i'm not a slobering mass of sweat for some reason, right?" He pointed out after seing her expression.
"Ok, you got me, why?" She decided to finally ask.
"You forgot that the first time i massaged your shoulders i told you how basically my whole family has at the very least a severe case of stiff shoulders, and that my grandfather used to practice on us but got too tired after hitting a certain age." He stated more than asked, his hands already having put the cup and cellphone on the table and changing the sofa for a massage table with his storage.
"I did, but that was certainly not entirely my fault. I didn't expect it to fell so good i'd basically become pudim!" She exclaimed, not really minding the sudden change of scenario and stripping with her own storage item, a towel covering her lower parts mostly at Aki's request for professionalism rather than shame.
"Yeah, that was one extreme case of muscle soreness and stress. Makes you wonder how Hades looks like inside of all that robe and serious face." He agreed, the amount of bone popping and groaning that happened then was similar to those heard during a torture session.
"Abs and scars." She commented.
"You know what i mean, but thanks for remenbering me of the amazing threesome that will never happen." He sighed, not entirely faking dissapoitment.
"That is so wrong on so many levels." She sucked in breath as he started on her left foot.
"I'm going to hell anyway, so might as well try to seduce the manager. I doubt either would have a problem with their energy considering how happy they are and their respective problems. It could very well all start with a scenario just like this one. I finally convince Hades to let me touch his hands, he melows out..."
"Just stop there, please." She softly asked before groaning a bit as Aki moved up her calve.
"I'm fine with that. I gotta use the chance though, how are you feeling?" He more seriously asked.
"Like i'm being fucked by clowds." That made Aki eat his comeback, because it'd be awkward, and sigh.
"You know what i mean." As his movements became more fluid and he started looking for knots, trying to go deeper into a meditative state, ignoring the moans.
"I still want to just stop thinking... again." She practically murmured.
"I order you to let me give a fuck about this. You know i care, just let me know when you are ready." He said, unceremoniously going for her back and pressing his thumbs on the base of her spine.
"I fucking hate you sometimes." She grumbled with gritted teeth as she'd been treating her back very poorly, while Aki was ussing penetrating Qi to make sure to hit the hardest he could without actually hurting her. It was nescessary.
"Love you too." He smiled. She'd cornered herself and he didn't exitate. "Want to deal with the intruder or leave it to a soldier?" He asked, leaning on her shoulders to whisper to her.
"Back up there, you're into me?" Exclaimed the naiad in surprise.
"I am, most certainly, clingy as hell, but I don't exactly go around hugging and massaging everyone around. Unless I'm acting then I'm actually quite strict on that. I was not kidding though. Even if you are not going to be the one I'm going to show off to my family or the like, I still generally enjoy being with you, talking with you and snuggling. That's my definition of love." He explained while holding her shoulder. "And no, I don't mean I have zero romantic interest in you, just that it is not something I expect to ever work out. Maybe if you had a sudden change and became a bit more like me in some aspects then i'd probably give it a try, but otherwise i simply prefer to preserve my heart's integrity, thank you very much." He shruged and started slowly massaging her left hand, having already sent someone to deal with whatever idiot thought that sneaking in would be easy.
"What do you mean by that?" She icily asked, not entirely focused on him he noticed.
"Minty, what do you think would happen if you cheated on me with someone else after we started dating?" He calmly said.
"... You'd forgive me." She said after a pause.
"And then go find more ways to please and entertain you with everything that i have, trying to figure out what i did wrong or what i did not do enough. What do you think would happen if something like that happened again, or just decided that I am not what you are looking for?" She didn't know the answer to that. "I'd be pissed at the both of us, but I'd forgive you after trying to find a reason for it. Likely go deeply into depression for losing my first actual lover."
"Doesn't that just make you weak?"
"Loving entails being able to allow yourself to be weak."
"I don't like that."
"No one likes it until they do. Besides, being strong all the time is too tiring for anyone to actually do it." He rebuted with a smile, having finished her right arm as well, which left him a bit uncertain about going through her upper body as a whole considering the relative positioning that'd leave him.
"My natural teeth may be sharp, but I don't bite." She snorted, also suddenly finding herself kind of uncomfortable with her current nakedness but still unwilling to show that.
"Sometimes I wonder how awkward I can still get, but I surprise myself all the time, you know?" He sighed, trying to hold down his impulse of proposing. A well done tsundere turned out to be quite cute.
"It'd be more awkward if you asked to massage my front or something." She exemplified.
Stopping with his hands above her collarbone, Aki decided it was enough and hit the breaks. Throwing a bath robe over the woman in front of him, he hugged her and held her out of the massage table, changing it for a love seat and putting her on his lap before turning on the TV of the room.
"We're Netflix and chiling and I blame you." He told the dumpfolded woman, who was not dense enough to misunderstand what he blamed her for.