It took mere moments for the shock to pass on Sera, only a little less than her wives. The ever present mental connection linking all of them suddenly went quiet, only to quickly come back thanks to their enchanted equipment, yet Aki could not be felt despite the ridiculous coverage he promised. Their worry didn't stop them from acting though, the orc quickly grabbing her daughter away from her admirers and activating her shield's enchantment, imediatly appearing next to Xera, who had her spear out and already formed a teleportation circle bellow them. It took another moment to get a hold of Mari, who was aparently fighting several people at once, and yanking her to her other arm with her hammer's ability.
A light shone around them when the cat-kin was in range, her roll being stopped by the wall of their own teleportation room.
"Anyone hurt?" She asked, her mind cold and working overtime to figure what they should do next on the list of possible scenarios.
"Poison." Mentioned the sprawled Mari while looking at her forearm. "Think it's demonic. Cut it off."
She exitated for merely a second, not enough for Clair to understand what was happening at all. Taking out a executioner's blade from her spacial ring, the infected limb was quickly cleaved off. She ussed a bit of magic to sooth the pain and numb that area as their rogue took out an emergency potion and chugged it down, her arm imediatly starting to grow back. While impressive, it was definetly much slower than it should actually be.
"Clair, call your big sister over and go with the servants to the safe room." Xera ordered after taking a mana potion. "Now!" She exclaimed, shaking the girl out of her shock induced stuppor. Their child had none of the experience and fearlessness that the crazy vampire did even if she acted like a small adult.
"Gonna need some more poison resistance." Murmured Mari as she rapidly stripped off her casual attire, each piece dissapearing before it could touch the floor as she summoned her battle gear and dissapeared in the shadows.
Outside, the situation wasn't the best.
As the cat lady quickly assessed, the surroundings were in shambles, everything not protected by the house barrier was on fire. An ugly green fire.
And all that was surrounded by another barrier, Mark and several other adventurers around it, fighting disfigured monsters coming out of the ground.
Directly on their own barrier however, was the gray golem Aki had made, fighting against a screaming man who looked a lot like her husband if not for the sickly green hair it spouted.
The... Thing? Didn't seem to care that it's arms and legs were constantly pierced or turned to mush, none of it's fire clad hits hitting or causing lasting damage.
Then she noticed, Kora was at the door, trembling as she looked at the fight without blinking.
"Kora!" She announced herself before going down from the roof, her fall not producing any sound. "Go protect Clair!"
"Clair is here? No, this..." She seemed to be at the edge of despair, a red gleam shining in her eyes.
"PROTECT HER!" She screamed to her face, seemingly scarring the demon lord into action.
It'd be great if she could just kill the invader, but her mind was clearly not able to handle her own power yet, and Mari really wasn't risking everyone to get out of this.
Yet.
Instead, she took out the key runestone, a small signet ring with a dark stone, and started channeling mana from the house into the golem, which actually got hit in the head right about then.
Before it could fly away though, it latched onto it's enemy, bringing both of them into a spiraling crash. Then the telekinetic thread rolled in and the golem punched it's opponent's head in, gray matter and bone splaterring all around.
She was not innocent enough to think the fight had ended though.
When the smaller version of the previous copy of her lover came through the outer barrier, she was proven correct, but thanks to the strenghtened golem dispatching this one much quicker, she was able to notice by the fourth itteration, that it was the strange mutants coming from the underground of the barrier that changed into a more inteligent version of the same abomination and then shape-shifted before recklessly throwing themselves towards combat.
While aparently there could only be one of those at a time, they all used diferent methods of attacking, though it was generaly a died green colour, and while Aki had left tons of mana batteries, it'd not exactly been a lot of time since he put the real game changer to produce power, the pure-blooded vampire merely having produced some three to four hundred thousand mana. That was, technically, a lot, but to several heroic spirits inhabiting the same body, it was barely enough juice to work for several minutes at max capacity.
It was by the four minutes and a half mark that her completly healed wives came out of the house, Sera taking out the trap control and Xera setting off to restrain the (very likely to be) demon lord of envy.
The numerical and strategical advantages were useful, sure, but the thing seemed to notice through all it's rage and pettyness, that they'd switched from killing it to restraining it's bodies, so it began hopping to another body and exploding those that were restrained, never allowing for a pace to be set as it seamlessly adapted to all it's diferent weapons and schools of magic.
It'd not be long before... *FRUWON*
Several rays of light came from the sky, their bright red replandescence burning the surroundings as hell rained down on the abominations, Envy being sniped before he could reform everytime he died until there was only one flesh puppet remaining, said instance quickly filled with holes as it finally registered to all to look upwards, seeing a red and white star falling towards them while a strange gryphon flapped it's wings way above.
When Aki finally landed in the only remaining copy, it was not the giant shockwave people had started preparing for, but a bone ratling and soul deep shriek coming from everywhere, and then suddenly silence.
"Ego edicto, in nomine Sante Suberbia, facies deciderium mortem" Resounded the white knight bathed in red flames, none knowing the language he slowly pronounced, but all understood the general intent as it both echoed into their minds and happened before their eyes. "Sed non licet erit vestra vale vitae uel cupiditas non erit venio" He punctuated the end of his sentence by shoving his gauntled hand into his prisioner's chest and taking his still beating heart out.
It'd look like an execution if all the downed monsters around didn't suddenly stand up and howl dying screams again before turning to dust that directed itself towards the blackened human heart in the completly white fist, their wails not stopping even though their heads and throats were the first thing to dessintegrate.
When all that stopped, the heart suddenly lit ablaze with a white flame, not leaving anything behind.
Few understood what'd actually happened, namely those that knew Aki personally and those of divine nature. What literally no one expected, was what'd happen next.
Suddenly, the white knight took off his helmet and somehow made four copies of himself before turning around and charging into his home, three collision quickly happening as he tackled each of his wives, the other two going for his daughters.
He was so fast no one was actually able to react, but the fact all these clones were kissing and hugging while grinning like idiots hinted that this was actually Aki and not the copycat. Another indicative and distracting factor was that his armor started to dissolve all around, quickly leaving him naked, but he didn't give a shit about the hundreds of adventurers watching in the distance.
The outer barrier had long since collapsed at this point, and the house barrier was transparent, so everyone had a show before the frowning gray golem threw the Saint and his wives inside their home.
"Wow, he really is a lot more energetic with his wives around." Commented a blushing Tianyi, surprising Mark as he'd not noticed her by his side till now.
*****
"Ok, now that's out of the way and you are wearing clothes, would you tell us how you've been." Asked Kora, still somehow disturbed at her new father figure cloning himself.
"Well, to begin with, I've been able to produce extra bodies for a while now, your moms even helped me train the earlier versions." He admitted, sitting in seiza in front of the five females on the living room sofa. "But it is less like I am creating another version of myself and more like I am making new body parts, which I generally use to improve my spell casting and brain work too."
"That is indeed, less disconcerting." Admitted Kora, everyone nodding in agreement.
"As for what happened after I was hit... Well, I can say that I was teleported to outside this planet, to a literal plane of existence. There I met Tianyi, the friend I brought over, and made a place for me where I spend the next month and a half." He let out, sighing as he saw understanding and confusion, Aki started explaining further. "Time worked differently there, a minute here being roughly equal to a week in there. I did my best to accumulate the necessary energy, killing people and beasts in the process. I took several treasures from hoards and shops, some you may even like, got a new power up you may also use, but overall, I just really missed you guys." He admitted, getting up and sharing one more quick hug with his family. "The more notorious power up, however, was from the job I took imediatly after coming back. The one I had at the time maxed out the moment I came back into the system, and seeing as the situation was very important, I took the most powerful I had in the list. Literally thousands of stat points and several skill evolutions. And I'm pretty sure I unlocked two other jobs on the same level." He pointed out.
"Saint of Pride?" Asked Mari, pointing out the obvious aura of holiness and perseverance. "You mentioned it before."
"Yup. It's completly capped too, both from previous acts of mine and from imprisoning Envy."
"Wait, it's not dead?" Exclaimed Kora, suddenly starting to get nervous.
"Killing that thing is useless. I don't know if it is a specially hidden information or something, but envy can change it's main host any time. It's basically a living being itself. Much like pride only choses one host or wrath is so easy to pick up, each sin has it's peculiarities. Envy makes you part of a hive mind if you use its effects too much, and the skill itself makes it easier to acquire related Skill levels as long as you are jealous of something or someone. Sealing the main one makes it so it's influence is nulled, but it hasn't happened in at least eight thousand years, so it's no wonder you don't know of this." Aki quickly explained, calming her down by disclosing information from both divine and system origins.
"Thanks." She said, sighing in relief and melting on the sofa.
"Always. Now, who wants to plan our family outing? Everyone is going and it's non-negotiable. See, Clair is excited." He beamed, trying to change the mood as he signaled towards the little girl raising her hand.
"I actually wanted to ask if I will keep going to school." She said.
"Tomorrow? Not a chance. From them on? I will play it hard at first, but yes, you can keep going to school." He nodded. "But now we are all going to bed and not getting up till tomorrow's dawn!" He announced.