A/N: So... my life's been really thrown into turmoil recently. My company decided it was cutting down my division and trying to push us to move to another state. Thankfully, they gave us a year's heads-up before the move, but it's still shattered everyone's mood and confidence. That's why you'll probably not see me update as regularly, as this announcement has really taken the wind out of my sails in a lot of ways, so sorry about that.
.~.~.~.
"She's so smol and squishy!" Velzard squealed as she poked Milim's cheeks.
"Aww... she really is adorable," I added, stroking her hair as I held her in my arms.
I looked up at the maid in front of me, I think her name was Salome, who was fidgeting trying not to seem like she wanted to hold Milim and failing miserably. I chuckled at this and gave the little girl another hug before passing her off to the maid. Velzard watched this with soft eyes and a smile on her face. She then looked at me with a questioning look, probably wondering why I didn't let her carry the infant, but I silently put up my arms in surrender and shook my head as if to tell her 'what was I supposed to do?'
As Velzard and I continued our wordless conversation with our eyes, the doors to the room finally opened, and out strolled Lucia and Velda. I was a bit exasperated at seeing Lucia walking around so soon after giving birth. She definitely looked exhausted, but she was walking around perfectly fine despite all of the complications with the birth.
Lucia may be strong, but at the end of the day, she was a human. Granted she was a Human Saint, but that still didn't matter much when it came time to birth her child. The process still put an enormous amount of strain on her body, especially since she was giving birth to a Dragonoid of all things. Despite all of that, she was walking around just fine, and while it looked as though her Existence Points had gone down to about a Million from 1.25 Million, it still wasn't as great a loss of power as a monster would have lost.
Humans didn't lose nearly as much strength when rearing children as monsters did. Furthermore, we didn't lose access to our Skills. Normal Humans wouldn't lose any power and even Enlightened would barely lose notice the difference. It was only when we got to the level of a Saint and were Fully Spiritual Lifeforms that we began to lose noticeable amounts. My own EP, for example, went down slightly when I got Velzard pregnant, but thankfully, I'd grown by the 1 Million Points I'd lost since I last fought anyone, and since I lost that much due to Velzard's birth I didn't even notice it until I was informed by [Solomon].
'Despite the fact we don't talk much, you've really been a help. Thank you, [Solomon]' I prayed overdramatically.
<
I felt like [Solomon] was a bit smug with that response.
<
'I see, so it was my imagination.' I repeated.
I turned to look at Velda who, while not looking as tired as Lucia appeared to be, was actually considerably weaker. He was now about on par with her EP-wise. The fact that someone like Clayman was closer to him in Existence Points than me, when before it was the other way around made me let out a tired sigh. He really did give up the lion's share of his power to Milim, whose power was at least 10 Million... AS A CHILD.
I shook my head. It was pointless to continue worrying about them. Recently I stopped caring too much about convincing them to take their security more seriously and just made sure to keep an eye on them constantly with [Parallel Operation]. I actually tried acquiring [Parallel Existance] by training with Velgrynd these last few weeks so I could always have at least one body guarding them, but that plan was shut down by Velzard who was uncharacteristically adamant about it.
<<...As if we'd allow our man to be split in two. That thirsty Elf would come running as soon as it was known master could be in two places and give full love and attention to two or more women at the same time...>> /1\
'Hm? Did you say something, Solomon?' I thought, pretending I didn't hear what it clearly said to me.
<
I mentally shook my head in exasperation before my attention was pulled back to Velda who was holding Milim in his arms and crying tears of happiness. "Oh, how happy I am to be alive right now!" He declared as he gently held Milim around in the air, lion king style, but making sure to support her head.
"Darling, stop, your gonna upset her!" Lucia said with a chuckle and lightly smacked Velda.
Despite her warning, Milim was simply looking around anxiously. She was still only a few hours old, so she probably couldn't see very well and the noises were probably a bit too loud, which is why, she looked a bit unsettled but not disturbed.
"What an expressive kid," I commented, half wondering if it was another reincarnator or something.
"I guess... A lot of powerful majin children come out like that. They're tougher than the human children you know and don't cry as much." Velzard commented.
"Really?" I asked, but I guess it kinda made sense.
Majin children would be stronger and have stronger spiritual bodies layered under their physical bodies, so that means they were mentally more resilient, even when they were newborns. Still, though, I didn't peg that quirk of majin births, almost a technicality if I was being honest, as a bad thing. A baby that was less likely to cry when there isn't something wrong was a good thing... I think. I decided that if I continued down that train of thought, I'd end up giving myself an existential crisis, so I decided to ignore it for now and only look forward to the perk of a baby that would spend more time being a cute little ball of adorableness and less on crying constantly whenever the slightest issue arose.
"Oh, I can't wait to spoil you rotten!" Velda declared before pulling in the child and giving it a big hug and a few kisses on the forehead, which calmed Milim down a bit.
"Oh! I've got a great idea!" Velda said as he reached forward into the empty part of a room with one hand while cradling Milim in the other.
We all stared at him in awkward silence as Velda's face slowly began to blush. He retracted his arm and thrust it back forward once again, but nothing happened.
Velda slowly turned towards Velzard with a bright red face. "Um... Velzard. Could you... um... open a gate to the Heavenly Star Palace for me?" He asked, somewhat meekly.
Lucia folded her arms and looked at him. "Why do you want to take our daughter out of the world when she's not even a full day old?" She asked.
"I-um... Wanted to show off to... Feldway... and the angels..." Velda said, getting quieter and quieter as we listened to his reasoning.
Velzard and I both pinched the bridges of our noises at the same time before looking at one another and chuckling softly.
"Veldora definitely gets his attitude from this guy, right?" I asked, pointing to Velda, who went red again.
"Oh yeah! Combine big brother's boastful nature, a pinch of your selfishness, and Velgrynd's love of destruction, and you get Veldora alright." She said, giving me a soft elbow.
I chuckled at that and snapped my fingers, using Primitive Magic to open the gate. Velda was shocked. "How'd you-" he asked but I interrupted him.
"Come on. It's not a Skill Velzard uses to open those gates, it's magic. YOU taught me the magic to do anything I can think of, remember?" I asked him.
Velda looked like he had an epiphany and nodded at my words. "I see... Well anyways, on to bragging!" He said as he rushed inside, not caring about his wife who he'd so carelessly left behind.
Lucia shook her head and smiled, giving a glance to Velzard. "Men, am I right?"
"No complaints here." Velzard smiled back.
"Hey... I take offense to that." I protested but they ignored me and walked through the gate, following after Velda. "Oy!" I said, actually a bit offended, and rushed after them, just as the gate closed, leaving an exasperated Salome behind.
"Ha~ I'll have to teach Lady Milim not to be so eccentric like them." She said as she walked out of the room to attend to her duties.
...
"So... what did you want to talk to me about?" I asked Velda.
"I think you've figured it out already, but I wanted to run it by you officially, just to make sure we're on the same page," Velda stated.
"I've figured out a lot of things. Like the fact you're planning on leaving soon." I commented, looking off into the distance.
We were back on that same balcony that I talked with him on a while ago when lamenting my fight with Velzard. Lucia had stepped out to take a bath while Salome put Milim to bed. Velzard was with Lucia as they were talking about a bunch of baby stuff too. Lucia was saying how if Velzard gave birth to a boy, we should set them up, but we were pretty sure by now it'd be a girl.
Right now though, the two of us were leaning against the stone railing and looking out past the vast estate and into the wilderness beyond as we talked about official business.
Velda smiled. "That's why I like you, Alaster. You were always quick on the uptake despite everything."
"That the only reason?" I quipped.
Velda chuckled softly. "No comment," He said back but dropped it when I gave him a playful nudge.
"The world's getting more and more chaotic now. You've helped a great deal in stemming the tide with your adventurer's guild, but even still... Monsters are attacking more and more human settlements. Rudra's too busy unifying the East to have the resources to protect the central and western regions, and Guy's having difficulties with Zelanous constantly attacking from the south looking for more land to expand onto the main continent with." He explained. /2\
"Not to mention the stuff with the world's barrier weakening. There's already been a bunch of reports of random other worlders appearing out of nowhere now, not just as summons. As a matter of fact, I'm currently tracking three right now." I stated, double-checking my [Clairvoyance] and noticing them fooling about.
"Well, the World Barrier issue will calm down soon enough. The fluctuations are temporary and soon they'll stabilize. After that, only a handful of people every few decades will appear." He commented.
"Was that a report from Obera?" I asked.
"Yup. She should be finishing up around now. I'll bring her back with me when I'm done with my work." He stated.
"Hmm?" I hummed, implying I was questioning his delay in returning her, leaving her to twiddle her thumbs.
Velda looked like he gained a small sweat drop on his forehead and looked away. "A-anyway, enough about that!" he spouted.
"There's still a ton of stuff to talk about." He tried to change the course of the conversation. I could stick with it for a bit longer and tease him, but I decided to give in, as right now his point was way more important than my temporary amusement.
"You were right," Velda admitted.
'[Solomon]!' I shouted in my mind.
<
'Sweet!'
"I should've stayed in my True Dragon Form, at least for a bit longer. It's too difficult to control my power as it is now." He lamented.
"So you're going to go back into that form then?" I asked, a little hope bubbling up inside me.
Velda looked into my expectant eyes and sighed, shaking his head. "No... I love being human too much. I love being with Lucia too much and now that I have Milim, I don't know if I'll ever go back... maybe once humanity has reached a higher stage..." /3\
I wanted to give out yet another sigh but decided against it. Velzard said I was doing that too much lately. "Well, now that you've thoroughly stressed me out for the rest of... forever, maybe you want to get to the point..." I said, defeated.
Velda smirked. "I'm going to wait until your child is born and you're stable in your new lives, but when that happens, can Milim stay with you for a few years?" He asked.
"Years? I thought you'd be gone for weeks at most. and why are you bringing Lucia?" I asked.
"I uh... kinda blew up the foundations of the multiverse when I gave up being a True Dragon and married Lucia. If I don't want to cause it to collapse, then I'll need to work very delicately with it and allow a certain amount of time between changes to stabilize, so my timeline has been extended for at least 3 years, at least, 5 at most," he explained.
"Can't you just go back to being omnipotent again and snap your fingers to fix everything?" I asked.
Velda smiled wryly at that. "Not really, a big part of being Omnipotent I being Omniscient, and I don't want that. I want to be surprised by things and unprepared for certain events. I want to see Milim grow up slowly with my own eyes and feel all of the feelings that I feel for Lucia as they arrive..." he looked at me with a serious face. "It's impossible to find real love when you're Omniscient."
I was a bit taken aback by that. I figured Veldanava only gave up his Omnipotence and Omniscience because he was bored and didn't want to know the end result of his creation. I knew there was a slight loneliness sense to it too, but I didn't realize that it went that deep.
"I guess being omnipotent isn't all it's cracked up to be huh?" I asked with a small joke.
"No, being Omnipotent is awesome, it's being Omniscient that sucks." Velda rebuked me.
A sweat drop rolled down my cheek as I heard that. "Didn't you say you hated it?" I asked but Velda ignored my question.
"Anyways, the only way I'll have my full non-omnipotent power back and fix it is with this method. I guess I could give my power to a successor and have them do it, but they'd face the same problem..." Velda said, peaking at me from the corner of his eyes.
"If being all-powerful means losing Velzard then I'm not doing it," I answered instantly.
"Well.. worth a shot." Velda smiled and sounded defeated but I know he was joking.
'There's no way this eccentric character would throw all the work and responsibility at me like that, right?' I joked inside my head, even following it up with some awkward laughing.
<<...>>
'I never knew silence could be so deafening!' I yelled as I felt like Solomon was giving me a painful look.
I gave another sigh, only now realizing I'd broken the self-made conviction to stop doing that. "I'll protect your child while I'm gone, but you still didn't tell me why you're taking Lucia."
"Oh, that? Well, I guess it's something like what you have with [Solomon], only different. Lucia doesn't want to be apart from me for that long, and due to the unique nature of our connection, we decided to turn her into a Manas temporarily so that she'd be with me during that time." He said, scratching his cheek. "When I get back, I'll make her a body similar to that of an Angel so she can stand beside me in eternity.
I stared out at the wilderness beyond the barrier encompassing the edge of the estate for a while and didn't respond to that. It was a bit scummy of him to leave his daughter like that in another man's care to raise, but he was also in a no-win situation. If he didn't do something, then reality might just collapse on top of us, but if he does, then he loses out on 3 whole years with his child whom he loves more than the world itself.
My mind wandered for a while and eventually came back to the topic of the Milim I remembered from the anime and Web Novel. She was brash, prideful, and arrogant, but at the same time clever, curious, and cheerful. If I was being honest, I didn't really recall much about the anime, and while I could just have [Solomon] recover all of those memories, at this point I knew so much had derailed from canon that I couldn't rely on that knowledge anyway. When it came down to it, I just didn't want the friend and person I grew to respect to die.
"Ok... I'll do it, but you better come back as soon as possible, or I'll teach Milim about how big of a perv you are when it comes to elves," I said, teasingly.
"Oy! Don't do that please!" Velda fell to his knees and begged.
"Hmm?" I couldn't help but smile evilly at seeing essentially god, groveling before me.
"Oh man, he really is an S!" My ear twitched as I heard a whisper and turned to see Lucia and Velzard poking their heads around the corner doorway, watching us.
"H-hey I-" I tried to call out to them but Velda didn't seem to take my ignoring him as a good sign, so he wrapped his arms around me and shook himself, crying and gegging.
The problem with this was he was still on his knees, so his face was only a few centimeters away from where my sacred place resided behind the veil.
"Please don't!" He said as he looked up at me.
"Oh~!!! He's making him beg for it!" Lucia cried out, blood coming from her nose. She seemed to be scribbling something down on a piece of parchment at a rapid rate.
"I-" I didn't get to finish clearing up the misunderstanding in time before Velda put the final nail in the coffin.
"If you want to punish me, then just get it over with!"
"KYAA~!!!" Lucia screamed. "I always knew Alaster would be a good top!" She said before scribbling away even faster.
Her scream seemed to have shocked Velda enough that he instantly broke out of whatever begging play he was in and finally noticed what he was actually doing from an outsider's perspective. Unfortunately, this resulted in him instantly blushing harder than I'd ever seen before in embarrassment. He looked up at me with tears in his eyes and slowly let go. I raised my fist with tickmarks all over my head, implying I was going to hit him. HARD.
"Um... please be gentle..." He said
At this point, Lucia lost it. "KYYYYAAAAAA~!!!! I always dreamed Al-danava would come true, but I didn't think I'd ever see it in real life! I didn't realize how dominant Alaster would be as the top!!!" She cried before passing out.
That was the last straw. I delivered a full-power uppercut to Velda's head, blasting him into the stratosphere like he was team rocket blasting off again.
I began to grumble incoherently as I stewed in my embarrassment and humiliation. I guess that's why I didn't notice when Velzard arrived in front of me until she put a single hand on my shoulder. I looked up at her, only to see a complicated expression on her face.
"A-Alaster... if you're ever going to cheat on me, at least do it with another woman..." She commented before appearing to start breaking down in tears, both hands covering her face. "The thought you could leave me for another man is..."
"IT'S A MISUNDERSTANDING!!!!" I yelled to the heavens.
.~.~.~.
/1\:
[Parallel Existance] is a completely overpowered ability that allows a single consciousness to be in multiple bodies at the same time. It's not clones, but closer to a Psychic Hive Mind that works across any distance and even dimensions. Realistically it's the only way a person could have a harem with all members fully satisfied, as one body could completely devote all of the time and effort of a normal relationship into one lover while other Parallel Existances do the same for the other lovers.
Think of it like a multi-core CPU in a computer. You can run multiple intensive programs on it simultaneously but it's still only a single component, not multiple despite the fact the different cores are processing different things.
This is a power I'd have given to the MC if the vote allowed Evelyn to be the second wife as it'd to bypass most of Velzard's possessiveness, as he'd still spend the same amount of time with her, if not more, while also giving Evelyn his full attention. That would've been in addition to Evelyn working as the surrogate for their child.
Why did I mention that now and not before? Because I didn't want to keep explaining to people that his 'other bodies' aren't clones and he can't be cucked by them like what happened in my other fic.
/2\:
Zelanous is currently occupying the southern continent where El Dorado would've eventually been situated, but since Leon hasn't even been born yet, Zelanous claimed the land.
/3\:
This is one of the reasons posited as to why Veldanava hasn't reincarnated in the LN. He was waiting to live among the humans once they reached their greatest potential or something to that effect.