Aki was quite happy with the increased effects of his charisma over people, so he couldn't actually complaing much, but hells if he'd not complain every bit he could about the 'civilized lover' and 'demi lover' jobs. It was the best he could do while spearing the march towards the empire without frightening his troops even more than he already was by drilling them a hole over the mountain range separating Ark's main paladin base, which was way to the north east from his territory.
They'd known he'd been coming, yet there had still been some trouble with the overly cautious head templar. The man could probably pass for a ultra marine if he ever got the equipment as he had the hair, height and attitude of one.
Attitude problems aside, both jobs were literally pure debauchery and had ridiculous XP requirements. While he was happily married to three women of similar prowess, that did not mean they actually had the necessary time.
When he pointed that out, all his wives laughed their asses off, Aki himself starting to laugh by the time Mari let out a strondous fart out of nowhere.
In the end, everyone just gave him the green light for fucking till he'd capped his jobs.
He considered just doing his mind trick and having the people in question just cream themselves through magic, no physical contact or emotional involvement from his part, but he stopped midway on explaining what he actually did when he said he 'just magicked the sluts away'.
It'd been quite stupid of him really.
It'd also been quite stupid to think it'd be anywhere as easy as to answer some nonsensical questions of a devil with a voice that was to die for. What'd he not actually give for even a random one of those bastards though!
No, after a lengthy QeA with Vera, she pointed him into a room with three hundred of her children. Most were younglings, but he finally devolved a good enough test to have them pass and narrowed down their the candidates to two incubus and three succubus with increasingly harder to pronounce species names.
Having each sign a lengthy contract was relatively harder thanks to his requirements for agents, but as he was not restrained by the same things normal warlocks struggled with, it was easy enough to grant whatever they wished for.
How they would do so was also his problem, so he quickly added a new page to the contract with a series of spells that would make it so their limitations were instead assets in their interests.
Or translating, he gave the five demons the ability to better torture those who had heavily sinned or carried seeds of regret with them while deriving pleasure similar to the sin suppressed.
Aki could only smirk at the memory of the same demons figuring out he was immortal the moment the last one of them signed the whole thing, his image finally not suppressed to that of a normal young man anymore, the thing binding all parties together for the duration of his life burning itself into all of their souls.
Now he had several spies all over the continent, who could tithe him great amounts of XP from their actions. And better yet, they were all completely expendable, their bodies mana constructs empowered by their demonic souls.
He'd farm them for materials after finding out if there was a need for those and how long he'd take to make mana constructs like those permanent. He didn't know, he was just given the spell to summon them.
This whole scheme, in turn, had Aki quite bored by the time he actually found a dragon nest in the middle of the mountain he was tunneling through. The mages helping him were terrified by the pressure emitting from the giant eye staring right at them. He just raised a barrier to stop the spell coming their way.
"We just want to pass, i'll even close the tunnel if that's what you ask, but my babies could always drink more divine blood." He tiredly warned, already warming up his body and cracking his knuckles.
"And what makes you think you have the qualifications to..." Aki didn't let the beast insult him, there was just no use talking to most red dragons, punching it's giant jaw and having it's crocodilic head cracking the ceiling of it's cave.
"Understood, i will just shackle you to my territory after i'm done beating the shit out of your bones then. Scream for mercy if you'd prefer to not become undead." He grinned, the giant lizard flinching as he released his own aura, mana crystallising around him as several attacks were overcharged. "Let's do a break boys. We will continue that tunnel in fifteen. Tell everyone i won't be needing help." A barrier was raised over the tunnel.
*****
By the time the empire territory was breached, Aki had tammed a red dragon, a colony of fungal monstrosities and a deep dragon (giant worm).
While dragons were absurdly simple to tame, there'd not actually been a need to do anything about the mushroom spirits, they just followed whatever he said and were almost immediately guided.
Their sense of self was literally that weak. His titles and bonuses literally overruled their natural instincts. Which could be summed up to just propagation in general, so they had no problems with just moving out.
People saw him teleporting away the fungi with relative ease, but none really questioned why he'd not just teleported the army instead. It was one thing to go somewhere you knew and had authorization to, and another to just teleport to a random coordinate protected by several wards while bringing an army with you.
Aki wasn't going to correct them on his capabilities though. It'd still be possible to transport the two thousand paladins, but the energy consumption would be gross compared to doing things the physical way.
This crusade got a lot of attention though, the sword emperor himself expecting their men outside the tunnel's exit.
That wasn't the Monster Count's problem though, the expericed baldy throwing his own weight around to get a temporary visa for the time they took to deal with the undead blight.
"Know that there will be consequences for overstepping yourselves. Your god has no power in here." He claimed before disappearing.
"And I can only wonder if he notices we can still summon heroic spirits." Commented Aki, not getting an answer from the head templar, the only one who'd heard him.
It took a couple more days to reach the first factory site, but the smell had been there for some time before it was visible in the distance, several undead creatures wandering around like broken puppets.
The blight itself was similar to uranium radiation in the form that some monsters were stronger in it's influence and everybody else slowly got sick or mutated while being a bitch to clean away. The rotting and colour effect were entirely it's own though, since if the radiation/energy scale was followed normally, it'd not actually be even near releasing blue light, nevermind violet.
Since it'd not been long, the blighted camps didn't actually have any inteligent undead or the like commanding them, meaning the extermination force came prepared to deal with several weak undead, some strong ones and stopping the advancement of the blight.
This, in turn, ment that when the vanguard expedition reached specially thin agglomerations, they all knew that this had likely been the work of a necromancer able to steal away the naturally born pawns. There were even standardised ways to identify some and make sure they didn't mess around with the place, but both luckily and unluckily, the place had not been taken care of by one of the more sinister names on the list since there didn't seem to be any such present like the black plague, the red death or the toy house.
They did end up finding an opening to the demon world that was quickly closed by Aki and the head templar before they systematically exterminated each and every demon that had slipped into their part of reality.
It didn't matter how much the holy man feared his power or respected his burden however, he simply couldn't get along with someone so flippant, foul mouthed and with no respect towards their god! It puzzled him to no end why the man was allowed so much disrespect even though he never showed proper deference to the costumes, spirits or even ARK HIMSELF!
Truth be told, it was because he was trying to be annoying that he displayed such side. Trying to pretend to be another person in front of the 'paladin of truth' was quite hard even for him, but would also be quite taxing in case of success. The man himself was also a pain to deal with, so he didn't want to get more than a small connection from him.
Seriously, he already frowned at his daughter praying three times a day, visiting a church once or twice a week and wearing that cross badged (punisher in training badge) around.
It could be worse though, and the notion was strenghtened by spending so much time with the other man. Aki had teleported back home every night since the begining, but as one of the big shots around thanks to his honorary titles and power, his opinion had been consulted in every meeting, he'd ate with the army and had exchanged words with several officials, generaly comparing notes on history, family experiences and/or battle records.
The number of older gentleman and woman who he'd befriended was actually enough to fill most of the posts around.
*****
"So, now that we have checked every factory, i'd like to point out that the lowest parts were clearly slave quarters made to contain and house several mana batteries. Every time we got there we'd find ghosts of apathetic children floating around." Aki drily pointed out in the conference tent, the twenty officers frowning and growing colder.
"I image you want to get somewhere with this?" Asked Arthurius on the other side of the table, his ussualy expressionless face showing a bit of anger and anticipation.
"Yes i do. My territory was recently invaded, tens of thousands of beast kin being dropped on my doorstep. Anyone want's to bet where they say they came from?" There was silence in the room as he said that, but suddenly the growls and teeth gnashing started as realisation downed on the veterans of the vanguard. "Good thing i dind't bet anything. I know i'm not the most religious person around, but i think it's about time we bring the symbol of justice to this place. Some people have wanted an excuse to invade this country for very long already, my suggestion is to start with more subtle tactics of infiltration in the surroundings, scout for information, figure out what actually happens in this fucking godless land, and give people a reason to support a larger scale crusade. At this point we'd already get the support of at least three other churches, but without a more crown wearing supporter it's hard to actually change anything. Moonlith has already promised me they would be the first to answer our call, but there's only so much a small neutral party can do to handle the land." He explained, several magical marking on the map illuminating and moving to show the possible routes for spies, who'd want to join them, an illusion of the other surrounding kingdoms and their flags....
"That all sounds great, but we don't have many humans who'd pass as good spies. This expedition wasn't exactly ment for that kind of task and the main force also should take another week to get to us. I can't exactly go around teleporting with you either though, someone should stay to deal with those sleeping behemoths in case something happens." Pointed out the paladin on the other side of the table, not questioning the need for more purging for a second.
"No need to wait, i will bring some of my territory's men tomorrow at dawn. Prepare those that can actually infiltrate the nearby villages and towns and we should have enough men. I won't believe for a second if someone told me this place isn't fucked up. Nationalist propaganda is normal, sure, but they got to have something very bad to not want any citizen to worship." Pointed out the young man, not that concerned. "Besides, i can make a teleportation charm for each agent. Unless they meet a very strong space mage, they should all come back after breaking those. We send five groups of two or three and make sure they can stick to their cover. Reports once a day and we call it off when we get hard evidence?" He proposed, most agreeing imediatly.
With the proposal past, they started discussing the details, Aki only retiring from the conference around midnight when he went to get some of his men.