A/N: This and the next chapter are going to be very fast-paced, as we're skipping many years at a time now. It will be written from Alaster's POV but more in a journal entry or summery style, as I was having trouble giving yall the information organically.
.~.~.~.
Time passed and seasons changed. I continued my work in establishing the Adventurer's Guild and spreading it throughout the world. It was remarkably successful and after just a single year, no country on the planet, with the exception of Nasca in the east, was hesitating in accepting the help of the adventure system.
Sure, I had to do quite a bit of negotiation and secret purging in the countries that attempted to monopolize adventurers or their spoils for themselves or give the Guild a raw deal, but eventually, we had a branch in every major town and village on the western side of the continent. Not only that, but because this was the era before Dwargon Gold Coins became the accepted worldwide currency, the Guild eventually had to expand into what essentially was a bank so that adventurers could trade in their foreign currencies whenever they entered a new kingdom or work.
Our system was so easy to use, as a matter of fact, that a bunch of merchants petitioned to be able to use the same system. This, combined with the need to hire a number of specialists to train them on survival, maintain adventurer's gear, butcher the monster bodies for useful parts, and do various forms fo research on better uses for said parts before they were sold, allowed the Adventurer's Guild to expand dramatically and eventually become something similar to the Free Guild that Yuuki would eventually create.
We were still under constant threats from upstart nobles who tried creating a rival organization, but in the end, these were simply just cash grabs and everyone knew it, as evidenced by the fact no other rival organization had a good reputation. They'd take the lion's share of the profits from the resale of monster parts and quests, would manipulate their members into exploitative contracts which almost made them into nothing better than slaves, and required customers to sign up for expensive memberships before they could even post the quests, and had no useful training regimens. Of course, they also weren't contracted with the literal Queen of the Spirits herself, and fairies didn't tag along with parties as they did at my guild, but that was beside the point. By the time the second year rolled around, most of these 'fakes' had collapsed.
While the business side of my life was going well my family side was going a bit... differently.
Milim and Yumina were fast friends, growing up together and being dragonoids and all that. Velzard was surprisingly a good mother, unlike what her treatment of Veldora would have led you to believe. She became far more invested in cuddling with Yumina and Milim when they were small, breastfeeding them constantly, creating new magical toys for them to play with, and even helping to train the still baby spirit dragon that Velda had left behind.
Despite the fact we had Obera hanging around and being basically our live-in nanny, Velzard spent almost every waking moment looking after them. She didn't even have any weeks-long hibernations like she normally would in the first 2 years. I couldn't blame them though. I still got up every morning and made blueberry pancakes for them topped with honey from a Queen Army Wasp I'd stol- borrowed from Zelanus' lands to the south.
The guy was a bit too crude to negotiate with normally, so I had to be careful when I swiped it. Regardless of how I obtained my steady supply of Honey, though, I made sure to spoil Yumina and Milim rotten at every opportunity. I was constantly taking them to the Dark Continent /1\ when they were still young to 'fight' with some of the Arch Demons Guy summoned there. Of course, they all knew that they weren't allowed to hurt my precious babies, even if they could, so it was more of them being punching bags for the toddlers.
Rain even told me once when she was going a portrait of them, that Guy would send the 'troublemakers' in his ranks to fight the two rather than purge them. I guess for multi-thosand-year-old Arch Demons, being beaten to a pulp by a bunch of children and having their pride shattered is worse than Guy killing them and destroying their cores. It helped to shape up the younger demons in his ranks too, so the attacks on the Western Nations decreased.
I don't know how it happened, but word of me going to the Dark Continent rather frequently and the corresponding decrease in demon attacks due to it, leaked out to the public, making my reputation soar, even though I couldn't really care less about that.
It was also during this time that Lilith decided she wanted to go on a journey. She wanted to find people willing to be a surrogate for her children so she could restart the tiefling race. I also heard they weren't called tieflings but something called Enki, and that Tiefling was just a parallel evolution of the Enki species in the same vein as Fair Oni and Wicked Oni.
[Solomon] had even speculated, based on my memories, that Lilith's children would probably degenerate into monsters in only a generation or two and might even become succubi/incubi in the future before devolving into Imps, which would be similar to how the Oni eventually became Ogres then Goblins.
I did warn Lilith about this, but she said it would be fine with her, so I let her go, though I always make sure to keep an eye on her with [Clairvoyance] just in case something bad happens and she's about to be killed.
And just like that, Five Years came and went. I was half-expecting Velda and Lucia to show up during my 40th birthday celebration, but they never did. I talked to Feldway, Dino, and Guy about it, but none of them seemed to be too concerned about the extra amount of time Velda was gone. To them, Five Years was nothing, but I couldn't help but feel my gut sink when I realized this.
Milim was already five by now, and still had never really met her parents. Sure, there were plenty of stories that we told her about them, and I was even able to use [Solomon] in combination with an artifact Velzard made to create a locket with something close to a holographic image of them, but it didn't help. I caught Milim staring at the image by herself late at night multiple times and it broke my heart. She never said it, but I knew she was sad that her parents seemingly abandoned her. True to my word, I swore that when she was old enough to get the joke, I'd tell her all about Velda's elf fetish in revenge.
I wish I could have said that Milim being sad was the only bad thing that happened during that time, but it wasn't. The first Great Tenma War also occurred. I had no real clue how bad these were going to be, nor did I understand just how powerful [Michael] truly was.
The Tenma war later a week and it was total hell. Everyone, everywhere, was under attack. On the first day, half of all human kingdoms collapsed and even Amrita was heavily damaged. Strangely, my Guild Branches all over the world were seemingly targetted heavily, with Seraphim-level Angels personally going after the ones in big cities. Considering that Seraphim were about equivalent to Arch-Demons in terms of deadliness but closer to True Demon Lords when considering EVs, this was a big deal to just about everyone.
Evelyn personally defended Amrita and even she had a difficult time dealing with the Seraphim, though she was able to defeat it by surpassing her limits and awakening her Hero's Egg. She later told me she'd acquired an Ultimate Skill of some sort, but was playing coy about what it was. /2\
That wasn't the issue though. If it was only a few Demon Lord-level enemies than that would be fine. I could wipe them out in a day. No, the REAL problem was what happened to Obera during this time. She went totally stone-faced with eyes like dead fish. This happened when she was doing some evening shopping, so when it happened, she wasn't at home. Her pausing in the middle of the street had caused some drunkards to attempt to assault her, but when they got close, Obera immediately sliced them down.
She'd continue cutting down anyone who neared her during the crisis and wasn't moving a muscle otherwise, going full Gate Guardian in the middle of a busy street during an emergency...
Yeah, I had to come in for that one. I fought with the robotic Obera for a while and eventually managed to knock her back toward our estate where Velzard eventually froze her solid until the crisis was over. The REAL reason this was such a big deal is that if Obera wasn't out shopping, then there would be a decent chance that she'd have cut down Milim or Yumina when they went by to see what was up with their favorite 'Aunt Obera'.
I was so pissed off by that that I went right to Rudra's kingdom with the intent to beat him half to death, but apparently, using [Armageddon] put such a toll on his body, that it immediately disintegrated after that. I'd have to wait until after his current reincarnation grew up from a baby to an adult to sock him.
Interestingly enough, Velgrynd was totally ok with it, as she was mad at Rudra for taking a queen that wasn't her. He didn't love this queen of his, only marrying her for political reasons and only having sex with her a handful of times to ensure she became pregnant so he could reincarnate into that body, but that didn't mean she had to like it, even if she technically approved.
Velzard and Velgrynd got into a huge fight about allowing 'cheating' in their relationship which soured relations between the sisters for a few years. I'm 99% sure that Velzard was just projecting during that fight, which is why she forbid me from returning to Nasca without her and why she became so clingy afterward.
There was so much going on in the world at the time, I completely missed Lilith's Harvest Festival. Apparently, she was able to awaken into a True Demon Lord by collecting human souls lost during the attacks. Apparently, the only one to get a 'gift' from this, was the daemon reincarnation of Scar. He pulled a Diablo and protected her when she was unconscious and seemed to have been watching her for a while now, or at least, that's what she told me when she woke up and had a subordinate she wasn't looking for.
Anyway, she named him Scar at my request, and now my little Lilith is on her way to becoming the Second Demon Lord in history in place of Milim. I was both proud and a little sad that my Lil was growing up so fast and seemingly didn't need me anymore, but thankfully Velzard was there to cheer me up. She was in her golden-eyed form too... that means seggs!
.~.~.~.
/1\:
The 'Dark Continent' is the Ice Continent, but because Velzard isn't there constantly releasing her aura, it never froze over.
/2\:
It was [Sariel], but the MC didn't know that, or else, he'd try to remove the control circuit that [Michael] has over it.