I decided to rest after having my pet do as I'd asked. When I arrived at home, I found my favourite girl in the world asleep in bed wearing barely anything, I soon joined her in similar garb. So too did the fiend but I was starting to get accustomed to it. I don't like that it's becoming natural, but it is.
The next morning, I was dragged out of bed by her to go exercise. She complained to me that since we've gotten stronger and learned how to fight it'd be a shame to let these new muscles atrophy. So, we began the morning with some light exercise. I prefer to spend my time reading but it seems important to her we, at least, maintain the muscles we've acquired. Hers are a bit leaner than mine. But from how hard she hits I can tell they're not any weaker.
I could tell she was just waiting to get me back for that time I stole the last win on her during our training. Standing in our backyard near the forest we decided to have a mini spar before we even ate on this fine spring morning. She almost disappeared from my sight the second she signalled for the fight to start.
If not for my celestial form I wouldn't have seen her attack coming. She was obviously the faster of us, but I could get by dodging by a hair's breadth for a while… or at least I thought I could. While we were fighting, I failed to take in the area around us and tripped on a root leading to her claiming the victory.
All in all, we should be evenly matched but I'm not used to moving that fast and as little as it may be she did have actual combat experience in hunting in forests. She must have tripped on roots as well in the past. After I lost that bout, she began to lecture me about where I should keep my focus.
We had a few more spars after breakfast. We couldn't go for as long as we could in the dungeon, mainly because I have next to no stamina and despite how strong I may look now, I couldn't keep up the high-speed movement she wanted me to fight against.
"Aww… you done already?"
"You know I can't keep this up. You did this knowing."
"What do you mean?" she had a cheeky grin on her face like she's enjoying the fact I can't even hold a candle to her in the real world. In a world where we can ignore pain perhaps, I may be her equal but here where I can barely breathe after a few simple spars, not a chance.
I sat drenched in sweat in the shade of a tree. My shirt was off, but my tattoos were hidden by my usual spell the ones that would have shown otherwise just look like a really cool design right now, not really something a person wouldn't want tattooed onto them.
It's been centuries since anyone collected all the domains of magic so I doubt many would know what they meant even if they did. "I'll go make snacks and lemonade." She said as I contemplated the marks hidden beneath my hair.
"That's why you're my favourite," I replied. As I closed my eyes to rest my weary body I felt something soft on the crown of my head and a familiar feeling tapping at my chest a few inches too high. "So… it's that easy to become your favourite is it?"
"Knowing what I'm going to ask for before I ask for it and doing it without me having to ask, you mean?"
I couldn't see her face on account of she was sitting on my head but due to the tension, she exhibited at my words I could tell she wasn't expecting my reasoning to be as it is. "before you even ask, no I don't want you of all people to go around granting me instant gratification. If you tried I might find myself in a situation where you completely forget a table's see-through or something and you act on your own without even asking only to find it wasn't what I wanted at all."
"That's just the thing though, you're interesting because you don't want what most others want, you want power sure, but you don't want it for the reasons everyone else wants it. You just want your family to live in peace and are working to that end and I get it. But I'm not interested in your end goal. I'm interested in the here and now and right now you're out of luck because there's no one around who knows enough about divination or illusion magic to provide you with a full grimoire or even a passive spell."
Her words upset me so I checked in with book and saw that the twins are moving far enough away that if I teleport to them, or back to their house with them, I might just find one of the two because of just how far their father is moving them.
As book says their journey isn't even halfway over yet. Most of the time the twins were called over by me their caravan was camping out, so their absence wasn't much issue but once or twice I called them as the carriage was moving and they had to run back onto their carriage.
The thought of it made me chuckle a bit. "it'll be another few weeks give or take before they get their family over there but I should be able to get the magic I want in due time… or I could just fly there."
"So your journey is coming to a head?"
"Soon, very soon. But even then I want to fight a dragon."
"Why would you want to do that?" her excitement could be felt through her words, despite the fact she was desperately trying to hide the fact I'd piqued her interests.
"No one ever wants to fight someone who took on a dragon and won."
"You know even that infant dragon I fought took more than an hour to put down right?" my favourite of the bunch arrived with snacks in hand. It seems she saw the fiend from afar and prepared her a serving knowing if she didn't she'd just take hers when she presented my serving to me.
"Oh yeah, do you want me to teach you divine and demonic magic too?" the fiend asked my girlfriend.
"How do I learn that?" she asked.
"It's simple, first we both take off all our clothes-"
"I'm not going to do a sex on you."
"What? No, I mean that's disheartening but that's not what I meant." The fiend began explaining the process through which the information is transferred and the fact that it's not exactly a simple matter to teach either domain as they're cast through feeling and not knowledge. Through wisdom and not read information. You have to experience the magic in order to cast it.
It's quite the annoyingly tricky domain to learn but she offered to teach it regardless probably because she knew in a bit when I read learned and mastered all the divine and demonic magics from the tombs planted firmly in my mind's eye, I'd be able to teach her myself which will be enough in the ways of an explanation for what we were doing that morning she was upset with me.
After about lunchtime, I received a telepathic communication from my pet. 'I've walked the web of red tape and slain the spider.'
'What?'
'Your permit to set the dungeon in the material plane is in my hand.'
'Ah well… thanks for the good news.'
"I'm thinking for the wedding we could have my father initiate it, he's a cleric so it should be fine."
"Hm? Oh, right yes. Can we talk while we walk something else less important came up but the impatient man, I am I want to see them both done at the same if not similar time?"
She facepalmed, "Sure, why not?"
I took her by the hand and teleported back to the academy where I promptly sprouted wings and flew us over to city hall where my maid was waiting with the documents I needed. "What flavour cake do you want for the wedding?" I asked.
"I'm thinking either chocolate or lemon, what do you think?"
"I prefer chocolate, but I'll do whatever you want."
"see I was leaning towards lemon cause a lot of people in my family prefer lemon but if you want chocolate, I guess we can do chocolate."
"Honey, I honestly don't mind either, if you know our guests would be happier with your choice go with your choice, what's the point in sharing our joy if no one else will be happy with us. That and I don't really care. It's just a cake, what matters is us being together."
"Gross." My pet replied.
After touching down she led us to the spot where we were given permission to set our dungeon. I'd given the country the list of rules I'd decided to set for my labyrinth, and they gave back a list of rules they wanted me to set. A few of the rules were mandatory a few were optional. Most were things to add to the hidden list. I immediately disregarded every optional rule.
The permit says we aren't allowed to set the dungeon until the town's concerns are met. That being said the concerns were more the concerns of the tax collectors than the town. They wanted me to create a special magical item that lists who takes out how much money from the maze and to turn it over to the town.
They demanded I make it so certain individuals can use the labyrinth to produce specific edible monsters in times of famine and basically the right to the inaccessible rooms I had set up already. I sighed and realized they'd probably steal my stuff even if the adventurers didn't.
I had plaques set in every room I'd made otherwise inaccessible with the words, "you who have been given permission to see, know that taking is still in violation of my anti-theft rule and the dungeon is set to kill you slowly if you break that rule. I will not have leniency on thieves no matter who it is." After setting up these plaques in very obvious places, I made the inaccessible rooms to hide all my stuff in the walls so only I could retrieve it anyway.
But in case they have some kind of object to invalidate my control of the labyrinth I've left my pets in charge of punishing rule-breakers. As they aren't subject to the whims of the dungeon, but directly subject to me. After setting up traps and tricks in the otherwise inaccessible rooms I set the dungeon to spawn high-level demons into the room if entered by someone who's not accompanied by me or my pets.
The room in which my magic clones are gestating has had a barrier installed around the coffins with massive signs reading, "Magical experiment in progress do not disturb coffins or we'll have to start over and I'm charging you for the head-sized diamond you will have wasted." In part because I couldn't move them without disturbing them so I had to move the room around them.
They may complain now that I've simply created another inaccessible room within a room but it's not inaccessible there's a way to exit just not a way to enter without my permission it was more like an attraction within a room. within here I'd placed a skeleton with its arm outstretched as if it died touching the barrier, I left a rusted and barely melted sword on the floor by the skeleton's hand.
After complying with a few other less intrusive rules I set up the dungeon where I was told to and someone immediately showed up to speak to me. "Are you the dungeon master?"
"Yes and I'd like to hurry this along I have a wedding to plan." My fiancé smiled at the fact I was really trying to cut this encounter short but the little city official seemed unimpressed, "Yeah, yeah, I'm just here to make sure you're not doing any illegal experiments in your "inaccessible parts" of the dungeon."
"Honestly I just don't want anyone stealing my things. Or touching my things for that matter." Once in the dungeon, via the door which was moved from its previous location as a simple exit and now sitting as a permanent entrance, I dismissed the sad homeless guy of his duties and told him he could go where he pleased if he wanted to but he chose to stay at the door despite knowing monsters would soon start to spawn.
I took the city official around and as I did the stronger of the monsters began to spawn as I set them to… in the inaccessible parts of the dungeon. As I gave the tour I showed them to my maid's quarters where she lives in the dungeon as well as to my wraith who is a bit trigger happy but not at all a bad ghost.
I showed him to the empty rooms and explained that knowing they could now access the inaccessible rooms I'd hidden my tools and things in the walls and refused to elaborate. Eventually, they asked for a pendant that protected them from all harm that could come to them in the labyrinth, and I made them something akin to their request while tapping the sign I wrote earlier in the inaccessible rooms.
Essentially telling them the effects of the pendant will be invalidated if they try to steal from me. And to be fair if they wanted it I could have the dungeon spawn them a chest full of gold if they so wanted it. It'd probably take a month for the gold to become real enough to be removed as the dungeon had only just been integrated into the material world and what little influence I had over it wasn't enough to make the things inside take any less time to become real than the dungeon itself. They set the pendant in one of the inaccessible rooms and asked that I give them the pendant as promised in one months' time or they'd fine me for breach of etiquette and probably try to have me tried for treason.
Regardless I just shrugged and told them to call out to my pet when they needed it and she'd hand it to them in fact I instructed her to wear the pendant while she was in the dungeon so she could easily give it to them when they needed it. They seemed satisfied enough and left us afterwards.
It'll take a while but the link between the dungeon and my, and my parent's, house to the dungeon will probably be severed once it becomes a proper dungeon. Probably about thrice the time it takes the dungeon to become fully realized,
My fiancé and I spent the rest of the day arguing over locations themes bards to play at our reception. We could barely decide upon which stationary to have the invitations written on. But we pulled through eventually.
We definitely weren't going to finish the planning in one day but we did try. Despite us not having to do much today I feel drained and could really use some sleep. The two of us headed back to our bedroom to enjoy each other's company as we lay down to rest.
I think the fiend is in the dungeon making sure to teach the demons how to be respectful lest the dungeon kill them in my presence and have to summon more so this just might be the first time the two of us sleep on our own in a few days, but we planned on enjoying it while it lasts