Looking out as Aki blurred through the motions of combat with the gray giant, Mari couldn't help but be completly entranced in the dance of movements he made.
He'd hidden his face behind a helment with the image of a snarling demon tiger in the front, goat like horns sprawling from the sides of his head as the infinite expanse of black around his body flipped her brain as she tried to penetrate through the distorting gravity waves on his training area with her vision to properly observe the multitude of strikes he did on his enduring and unmoving target.
Then suddenly the golen attacked an oppening, it's defensive position changing instantly as it punched and sent her husband flying till he hit the dungeon ceiling, making a hole in his form. His maniacal laugh sending shivers of fear through her even as blood dripped from the crack that'd formed around the dented breastplate.
"As expected *Cough* The harbringer is the best oponent i could ask for right now. This level of power is not even enough to bring out the peak of my own beliefs." The distorted voice behind the armor said, the helmet dissapearing to reveal a young man with crazed eyes filled with determination. "I'd just be straight out killed by my own representations of more complex oponents."
"Boy, i have no idea what this champion you spoke off is supposed to be, but i feel like i could beat myself while alive ten times over." Comented the heroic spirit inside the golem with a chortle that didn't suit the youthfull face he wore at all.
"You'd not understand even if i explained. Next stage please." He answered, activating his evolved skill again and summoning a diferent apostle of Ark. The golem's face took on an uninterested appearence before the air arround it started to get distorted and ten telekinetic threads came from it's back to assault Aki, who started to defend ussing two weaker tendrils of force and his own limbs in a even more complex dance involving invisible platforms and redirection of sinetical energy.
"You know, he's the first person to ever just come and ask for the skill upgrade." Said the glowing wisp by the cat-kin's side, surprising her again both thanks to her concentration on the training session and because of it's identity.
"I'm really sorry your holiness." She meakly apologized, still fablergasted that a god would decend on such vessel just to expectate an idea of her husband.
"It is not really a problem considering how small it is the current amount of heroes that can summon heroic spirits anyway. He had the maxed out skill and the other requirements, I only needed to do a small push for him to get it." Calmly rebuted Ark with an air of nonchalancy. "Though it is certainly the first time someone with those qualifications is also a dungeon master, nevermind the fact he is able to put so much mana into their summoning, allowing for any one spirit under me to stay inside a vessel for even two minutes already requires a lot of resources, nevermind when they use so much techniques. It is truly amazing, both the idea and the construct are not something the people of this world would not have thought of for a long time." Fondly said the almost incorporeal being currently possesed by a god.
"One of the good things about him is how he can do basically anything if he actually puts his mind on it." She smilled. "I was quite surprised when he told me to watch all this, but i guess he's getting a ton of skill levels from fighting against so many powerfull legends."
"That he is, however he has already changed jobs a lot of times by a normal person's standard. 'Battle mage', 'magical warrior', 'monk', 'medic', and right now he is a 'mage hunter'. His attributes at gaining quite the boost considering how much his skills make every point worth. I do have to ask though, do you have any idea why he refuses to wield a sword or bow? I'm sure he could deal even more damage even if the current objective is training."
"Your holiness missunderstands, he isn't trying to train. He is genually trying to kill each and every one of your heroic spirits." Mari pointed out somewhat akwardly. "About the weapons you mentioned though... He isn't going to practice them now, but after he reaches the lost continent." She burried her face on her hands.
"The lost continent... That is unexpectly soon. I imagine the d, your daughter will acompany him them?" Pondered the god, not minding the first part of her explanation. Each of his heroic spirits were legendary figures that upheld justice in their time, the weakest of them would have been able to solo that dragon patriarch Aki had so much dificulty to finish off.
Just the fact so many had been able to link their existences to this golem, allowing them to descend to the mortal world for some time at will, was enough to reconise the thing as a holy treasure he'd have his church collect and store for dark times. Which was luckily quite easier to do with Aki around since he didn't need to wait for another high ranking member of the church to pass on the message or the like.
*****
"Hey Kora." Said Aki as he wrapped his arms around the meditating sword woman. "Wanna go to the beach?"
"I don't like sand, so no." She answered after the surprise washed over. It'd been very, very long since someone had sneaked up on her, so she...
"That's my girl!" He hugged her harder. "Since you also don't want to go we can spend the time on some father daughter activity instead." He proclaimed in a happy tone.
"I was going to..." She tried, reaching for a rebuttal and finding none.
"You have no secret lovers that would allow you to escape my grasp silly daughter." He grinned, booping her nose. "Here's a chance for you then, if you can make even one possible friend you can have your free time back. Otherwise we're going on a day long date on the capital." Turning around to the sudden new voice, she couldn't help but twitch a brown while looking at the motherly smile on the japanese woman with fox ears and tail.
"Could you not do that?"
{Does it look weird?} She asked while holding her light brown hair and carresing it while her tail swayed playfully. {I just wanted to loaf around and look like we're actually related. I'll stop if you really don't want it.}
{I... Don't know. What did... You think about? I'm speaking in Japanese, aren't I?}
{Yeah, but forget that, who cares if you talk like a boy or use a super hard to understand dialect. Before you ask, yes, I am in fact speaking as if I am some kind of young promiscuous woman because it's the closest to the character I want to perform with.} She quickly fired at the blinking girl, taking a while to understand what was said and sighing.
{You are so weird.} She said before hugging the shapeshifter with too much force before being encompassed by brown fluff.
{My arms and shoulder blades are shattered, but it's totally worth it for the first hug my elder daughter ever gave me.} Aki said, resting his forehead on the top of the smaller woman's head.
{Sorry.} She said, having already eased the vice-like grip.
{You'll be apologizing by walking with linked arms.} The fox said, hugging the teen and pressing their cheeks together.
And so the pair roamed the merchant and noble district on the capital whose name Aki never bothered to learn, buying cute clothes, singing Wanima, which Kora ended up loving, eating a bit on several restaurants and generally playing around on the more interesting parts of the city, and ended up deciding on delving a dungeon with hot springs.
"How about we make it a bit more interesting? Maybe we could switch roles." Aki smiled having returned to his common form since they were alone mowing the monsters dumb enough to approach. The dungeon was barely into C-rank really, so it was as good a place to start as any.
"I try to use magic as a support and you attack with a sword. I mean, it could work, I just don't know if I can do well enough to battle with my minimal talent." She shily said without looking at his face.
"Here." He smiled, establishing a a mental connection. "Sing with Me." He said, the quick beat and guitar of Kyouran Hey Kids! Playing on the background as mana naturally started to flow on the shy girl while Aki ussed both their instincts to 'slowly' dodge and kill each monster in one exchange.
While both ideas worked, the efficiency of either was not even close to satisfactory, Aki receiving various attacks that would have killed him were his body not so hard or exsanguinated him if his body didn't already start to regenerate, and Kora was barely able to keep the invigorating song despite the simplicity of the spell and the fact she had many times the necessary scores thanks to some jobs she got over the years plus her main one affecting all her stats.
"Ok, that was terrible. I need to work on my close combat dodges instead of armor technique and you need to find a way to learn magic the 'normal' way despite your debuffs."
"Uhm?" Questioned his daughter.
"Dear, two thirds of your jobs give you disadvantages on ussing magic and one of them negates that from happening with body reinforcement, which you also don't use all that much." Aki pointed out. He'd looked at the list and looked into all the info he could get on those after all.
"You serious? Is that why i suck so much at anything that has to do with magic?" She asked, the idea getting on her nerves.
"Not really, you have enough stats to make do with some simple spell." He said, starting to cast a calming spell.
"What are you doing?" She asked, trembling slightly.
"I don't trust myself daughter. I'm peering into possibilities of the future, but I still haven't seen one where you react well. Just one more... Not treating it like a game, it's called hyper focus and my head fucking hurts." He quickly added while falling to his knees. "Your horns look beautiful dearest, but maybe it isn't *SLASH* WOULD YOU FUCKING LISTEN TO ME!?" He cried, dropping down on the ground as a part of his brain fell down with his skulls. And reality started to glitch.
"This is all fi *STAB*"
"Let me help *SLASH*"
"I love you idiot." *Fwuun* *splat*
"I can only keep going for so... *SLASH*"
"Your tears look like garnets" *Slash*
{What is happening?}
{Time shenanigans. Do you want to forget?} He offered, not dead this time. She nodded, her blade facing down. {You will end up remembering. Let me show you how to be strong enough to actually get rid of it, please.}
{I am just a pet to you. Why would...}
{Why would that even be a bad thing? Wouldn't that translate to loving you despite whatever you break or the shit you do? Getting angry will only delay this, let me help you get rid of it.} Aki begged with a serious expression. {Let me be your family. Let me be your friend. Let me share your fears like I promised to!} He got up again, slowly approaching the black warrior with a limp. {We will kill whoever cursed you. Than I'll raise them back and make them suffer.} He promised while touching her face after the bone helmet disappeared, the demon lord allowing his spells to work their way and knocking her out.
Sighing while holding his daughter, Aki wished he could just drop to the ground and do nothing while he recovered, but raising a demon lord in secret was not easy, he needed to resurrect some people and manipulate their memories of what happened for the whole dungeon floor to be turned into a dead forest when it was an acid and geyser filled desert to begin with.
Luckily, the Lord of Wrath was known for it's erratic and seemingly random behavior, the records of memorable history only ever pointing to sporadic appearances on civilized land.
He'd be getting an earful from doing something that was technically worse than necromancy, but it wasn't his fault no one else thought the process of true resurrection was so easy.
The amount of curses he'd need to cast so he could hide the resurrection sickness were going to make these people's lives a living hell for the next months, but the thing was just as easy to cure with magical means as cancer was with technology from the XXI century.
You could only pray for it to be a benign tumor that hadn't spread yet.
So he laid his daughter on a bed and started devising a spell to hide the effects of the skill he was about to gain.