I wasn't screaming when I regained consciousness in the meeting room; it seemed that the white blast that Sauron used didn't inflict soul damage like his mace did. Feeling relieved, I immediately stood up. That unfortunately involved kind of pushing Hilda and Medea aside, since they were getting in each other's faces right in front of me, but they would live. Rose, Sophia, and Daiya all stood up with me. They remembered, and knew what had to be done.

"Daiya, stay here and defend the dwarf hold. Rose and Sophia, come with me to the empire."

They all nodded; Daiya opened up the hole in the wall to see exactly where the explosions would be coming from, while Rose and Sophia strode to my side. Hilda and Medea blinked in confusion.

"What?" Hilda asked.

"Uh, you two stay here and help with the defense, I guess. Not having memories kind of kneecaps the meaning in bringing you around."

Hilda pouted, and Medea gave a forlorn look of true sadness, but what was there to do? I didn't want to have to bring them up to speed every time. Plus, the defense of the dwarf hold could probably maybe use them. Anyway.

Rose, Sophia, and I ran down the halls to the teleporter room. It was by no means close to the meeting room, and so the explosion and shaking started while we were on the way there. Sophia stumbled and fell onto me, which may or may not have been on purpose. I picked her up in a princess carry without breaking my sprint; this felt nostalgic, somehow, and she nuzzled her head against my chest to stealthily sniff along the way. That was almost a public display of affection, but she hid it well enough that it barely passed the tsundere test.

Upon reaching the teleporter to the Beastkin Empire, I set her down, despite her clear reluctance to let go. To be honest, it was hard to resist the overwhelming urge to just abandon this loop and go fuck the hell out of her. My own brain was as sex-addled as any member of my harem's by this point, and to be clear, Sophia was still a stunningly attractive elf. She had more or less used Pavlovian conditioning to make me associate the lips of her pretty face with blowjobs, and her bubble butt with raw fucking from behind. It was impossible to not see her face and not wish for a blowjob, or see her ass and not get hard at the thought of slapping it while pounding away. In a way, I was the real dog here, drooling at the mouth upon hearing the bell marking dinnertime. The entire time I had been thinking of Sophia as a dog and training her with my dick, the reality was that she had been training me, and now my sex-addled instincts drooled like a horny dog at the sight of her.

Still, they were just urges, and nothing more. I resisted the urges, which perhaps gave me one level of human pride above her still, and stepped through the portal with them following.

Zwoop.

We arrived in a room with ivory white walls. It was hardly very different from the stone room we had just left, but upon leaving through the door we were greeted by ornate pillars and buildings that smacked of ancient Rome. There was a massive coliseum in the distance, as well as a palace built on a small-ish mountain (hill?) at the edge of the city. It seemed the teleport didn't quite lead into the capital city's palace, which was a bit interesting since that had always been the case before.

What stood out the most, however, were the huge pillars of billowing black smoke everywhere and the monsters rampaging through the city. It was basically the same state of affairs as the dwarf hold, which more or less confirmed the demon invasion was continent-wide and set to begin the instant bombs planted ahead of time exploded. Someone gives a signal, the bombs explode, and everyone rushes their pre-planned city with an army of summons. The ratio of demons to monsters was somewhere between 1:100 and 1:1000, which was pretty absurd. The prophecy stated there would be unending legions or whatever, and maybe this was what they were talking about—the demons being able to launch a damn effective continent-wide invasion through extreme bolstering of their numbers through summons. The Excursed was looking increasingly involved here, but to my knowledge you could only summon monsters where you could see them. Stupidly powerful or not, the Excursed couldn't be everywhere at once.

Putting that aside, we needed to get brought up to speed fast. The prophesized princess was going to be dead in thirty minutes or something. I looked around to find someone to talk to; there were a bunch of soldiers running about, but they didn't seem willing to talk. They wore what looked like red hoplite armor, which left their arms bare and thus allowed me to see the scales covering them. Dragonkin, though judging by their humanoid shape, their dragon blood was only thick enough to give them scaly arms.

The thing about the beastkin was that the animal attributes were, more or less, recessive. Most beastkin were mostly just humans with some token animal features like cat ears, while others had really thick blood and recessive attributes which led to them basically being full animal. How this worked on a genetic level across generations, I had no idea. All I knew was that there was a sliding scale of furry, and most were more on the human side than the full furry side.

The dragonkin were here because the capital city of the Beastkin Empire belonged to the Dragons. The seven beastkin ranks were organized according to their strength; the size of their individual countries within the empire, and their population. Winning wars and territory boosted your ranking, and according to Rose, the only reason the Beastkin Empire hadn't conquered the entire continent was simply because they were too busy fighting wars among themselves to boost their ranking while weakening their enemies. Expanding outwards was hard when six countries were posed to invade the second you left your home territory.

(Incidentally, the rankings went like so:

1 - Dragons

2 - Avians

3 - Bovines

4 - Cats

5 - Dogs

6 - Bunnies

7 - D... D... Fuck, I forgot this one again. They were weak herbivores, but the name escaped me.)

Anyway, dragons were obviously the strongest, and owned the most territory. The imperial capital was thus their capital, and here we were. Given that all seven beastkin princesses died in the last loop, it seemed safe to guess that all of their capitals were undergoing attacks exactly like this.

We walked around for far too long, traversing the pure white stone that served as the city's foundation. The teleporter was high up on a hill that was a good distance away from most of the fighting, so aside from Sophia shooting a few stray orcs in the head, we were fine. The biggest problem was that nobody was talking to us; we wasted a lot of time trying and failing to flag down a soldier. Didn't they know I was the motha fuckin Heir of the World?

Luckily for all of dragonkind, we eventually found a scholarly looking dude sitting on a bench with his head in his hands, shellshocked eyes peeking out from between her shaky fingers.

"Ho there, good sir," I said. "Would you mind telling us what's going on here?"

The dragonkin looked up at me blankly. No scales on him, but I did notice his distinctly yellow eyes with slit pupils. "What?"

"Exactly. What's going on here?"

He choked out a laugh. "The end of the world, that's what! The legions are here and we're defenseless. They struck us when we were at our weakest. We're doomed. The world is doomed!"

"You were at your weakest? Do tell."

The dragonkin obliged, seeming to be in a mood to rant fervently anyway. "The Beastkin Empire has declined! That was what we were all saying. A steady decline for years, then a sudden one plummet into hell. Maybe at our height we could have pulled ourselves back up, but years of internal rot weakened us to the point there was nothing we could do when the disasters struck. We were powerless. We still are." He cackled. I took another look at his clothes; they were pretty fancy blue robes, embroidered with gold that matches his eyes. Maybe he was a higher up in the government.

"Disasters?" I asked. Maybe the key to this invasion rested within the disaster that had struck the Beastkin Empire.

"A blight fell upon every race! The avians inexplicably lost their ability to fly, the catkin and dogkin finally went to all-out war after centuries of tense peace, the bovines lost control of their milk production, the bunnykin were struck by a genuine plague that debilitated their bodies, and do not even get me started with the deerkin. Not even the woman in blue could cure the bunnykin or heal the avian's hearts. Every race, crippled, distorted shells of their former selves. How could we ever unify against the demons like this?" More cackling.

Ah, right. The seventh race was deer. But, wait. "Uh... Woman in blue?"

The dragonkin nodded. "A human saint capable of incredible feats of magic. She arrived at the Beastkin Empire and forestalled the decline for years, earning the trust of every leader, but the blight was overwhelming. Even her greatest magic could not cure us, and in her shame she exiled herself, never to be seen again. Some say losing her sealed our fate."

Nooooooooooo.

Nooooooooooo.

Medea, what the fuck? Are you really so racist that you embedded yourself in the Beastkin Empire for years and systemically tore them down from the inside? Did you really cast a blight upon each of their races? Are you literally why they are falling like paper beneath the demon invasion? Did you leave months ago just to start working on the dwarves while passing it off as self-exile? Holy shit.

I got the feeling Medea's exploits in the Beastkin Empire could fill a series of novels all on their own. Years of subterfuge and deception; manipulation of the highest powers; complete and total destruction of seven entire countries composing an empire. The lengths she must have gone to embed herself in power structures and then dismantle them without being detected boggled the mind. She was like Wormtongue but extremely hot and racist.

Was... Was I responsible for this, indirectly? She had been driven to this after seeing a prophetic vision of me. She wanted to, presumably, weaken the Beastkin Kingdom so the prophesized princess could be killed just like she weakened Daiya's dwarf hold to kill her. The scale was a bit different, but... Damn. Medea was basically history's greatest monster. An actual antichrist figure. The cause of more suffering than any other living being.

When I got back to base, I would have to punish her with my dick until she apologized. Yeah, that would show her.

Putting that aside, the situation was now clear. The Beastkin Empire was like a wet piece of paper ripe for the demon army to rip right through. Maybe in another reality, I would need to go to each country individually and fix their problems one by one, but it was too late for that now. The invasion had fucked everything up beyond reason. The empire had well and truly fallen, as all empires do eventually. My mission now was to locate the prophesized princess, save her from death, then fuck up the demon invasion's leadership. If I played my cards right here, I would get two prophesized princesses at once, and this prophecy business could be wiped up in no time.

"Alright, infodump man," I said. "Where's the dragon princess?"

He eyed me warily. "Do you not even know Princess Flare's name?"

"No. Yes. Maybe. Anyway, where is she? Time's of the essence here, man."

He looked us over, as if judging whether we were demon spies, then shrugged. "She flew off to her hoard, I think," he said while gesturing vaguely at the mountain with the palace on top. There was a gaping hole in the side that certainly looked fit for a hoard.

"Sweet. Team, move out. We gotta run."

And so we did. I didn't know how much time was left until the beastkin princess died, but it couldn't have been much. I started leaping atop buildings to go faster, using all of my Athletics skill to maximize the speed of my sprinting, and soon enough I realized I had completely left Rose and Sophia in the dust. They just couldn't keep up anymore, even with Sophia's dainty elf dexterity. Rushing back to pick them up was an option, but slightly demeaning to them, and I didn't feel like I had the time to waste.

And so it came to pass that I was running up the face of the steep mountain all by my lonesome. I stretched my legs, jumping as high as I could with each step, and soon enough I reached the hole with Flare's hoard or whatever.

Inside was a terribly bloody sight. Slain dragonkin were everywhere, including one actual dragon. There were a number of demon corpses as well, and following the trail led to the back of the horde, where a bloody girl pushed against the wall was surrounded by 30-some demons. She was snarling at them, her poofy red hair and loose red dress matted with even darker blood. The only thing that indicated that she was Flare was her spread out dragon wings, which unfortunately had rips and tears running through them, along with arrows.

At the head of the demons was one clearly higher in status then the rest; he wore shining gold armor and wielded a glowing white sword, as if he were playing the part of hero despite being a demon. His plate helmet had been knocked off, revealing his solid red skin and curved goat horns.

"You fought valiantly, my fair lady, but fate forces my hand," he announced with a sorrowful, yet determined tone. "I regret our first meeting has to end this way, but the world must be saved."

"Grrr! Shut up! I'll kill you!" barked Flare. Her voice was not exactly one that exuded intelligence and grace like the demon's did.

"Alas, no dragon can withstand the might of the Dragonslayer. Fate should have been on your side, but it seems this was a battle you were destined to lose. I name myself, Aeneas, future prince of the demons. It would not be right to kill without naming myself first." He flashed a sad smile, as if mocking himself for thinking about honor before killing an innocent, then stepped forward.

"GRRRR!" Flare growled, but she was too wounded to put up a fight or even really move. She could do nothing but watch as the gleaming sword raced towards her... only to be blocked by my own sword, after I did a triple backflip through the air and landed in front of Aeneas.

"Kept ya waiting, huh?" I said, not deigning to look around. "Sorry about that. The Hero always arrives late."

For a moment, everyone froze. Aeneas's eyes widened, and Flare just let out a confused noise. I flicked my wrist to knock aside the Dragonslayer, then pointed my sword at him.

"The name's Malcador. Malcador the Hero, Heir of the World. It wouldn't be right to kill you without naming myself first."

Aeneas blinked, then grimaced when he realized I was making fun of him and his honor. "So you are the Endbringer, hm? I should have known that evil always arrives to foul even the most well-laid of plans."

"Evil? You're literally a demon, dude. And I'm literally chosen by the Goddess to be the most objectively good force in the entire world. Ever thought about that?"

He scoffed. "The Goddess is a malignant curse upon the world, and the greatest evil one could imagine. Her backing only proves you to be a villain."

"Ever considered the fact you're literally bombing innocents and invading the entire continent right now? Ever paused to think about how maybe you're the baddies?"

"There is a difference between willful evils and necessary evils. To pay a price of death now for a future free of the Goddess is a choice so obvious it is not even a question."

Blah, blah, moralizing. This guy definitely seemed like the type to think that good and evil were actual, concrete elements of reality and not just banal terms in a language game. Lame.

"Enough talk," I said. "You may be the hero of your story, but I'm the goddamn protagonist. You're going down."

He grimly readied his Dragonslayer, his fate set with determination to save the world. I barely knew this Aeneas guy, but I felt like I understood him on a deep level already. He was much more of a Hero than I ever was or would be. He had strong values, beliefs, and was doing what he felt was right. I, in comparison, was basically just coasting along on the waves of pussy juice that propelled me along on my way to fulfill a prophecy I barely cared about. Honestly, maybe he was right, and the Goddess was a curse. Aside from Rose and her biblethumping paladin ways, I had hardly met anyone who actually had anything good to say about the Supreme Goddess who ruled up in her Alpha Heaven. Maybe Aeneas's quest to break the prophecy really was the most heroic quest anyone had ever set out on.

Sadly for him, I was stuck in an unending time loop that required me to fulfill the prophecy, so I couldn't just bow out and let him fulfill his duty.

The fight began, and to his credit, he signaled for his 30-some demons to not attack. That was stupid, but based on honor, and I could hardly begrudge him for having ideals. We clashed blades dramatically, with parries and swings and blocks, but it didn't take long to realize that Aeneas was just not on the same level as me. He was good, maybe even great, but I had trained with Rose. I had One-Handed Blades Level 100. I had powerleveled, exponentially growing stats. I was nearing the end of the prophecy. This guy didn't stand a chance.

He swung from the right, slowly, far too slowly. I decided to end it here. I elbowed his sword with my left arm then launched a thrust with my right, driving my plain steel sword straight through his neck. He gurgled blood, then staggered backwards. His demons caught him before he fell over, and they all rushed out of the cave; their decision making was swift and without hesitance. They were clearly well-trained, and had been instructed ahead of time on what to do exactly in this situation.

"Sorry," I called as they rushed out. "Looks like you were the baddy after all."

Silence.

I turned around to look at Flare. Her mouth was slightly agape, as if she hadn't expected at all to be saved, or for someone to kill the guy who had slaughtered the sizable dragon at the entrance to the cave. I used her moment of awed silence to look her over. She had a kind of tomboy look to her, with short, poofy hair and a very modest bust that made noticeable but fairly slight indentations on her black dress. She had some faint scars on her face that indicated a life of battle, accentuated by all the actual ashes oozing with blood all over her. Her eyes were gold with slit pupils, just like the other dragonkin I had seen. Her arms were muscular, more muscular than Rose's, but not so much as to be unattractive. I could imagine her having a feminine six-pack or something. She had dragon wings flared out behind her back, and a thick dragon tail emerging from her rear end. I always thought thick dragon tails were pretty erotic; it gave the optical illusion that they had an enormous, scaly dick up their ass at all times. Hot. Her red tail and wings had the only scales on her, aside from her hands and feet. She had fingers instead of claws, but they were scaly fingers with jagged, sharp nails that curved a bit like claws would.

Anyway. Conclusion: Dumb, tomboy princess. Okay.

"You're strong!" she eventually said.

"Yep." I flexed a muscular arm. She clapped. Thank you.

"Let's fight!" she said next, having regained the strength to stand up and lift up a massive battle axe covered in blood. Not her blood. Oh shit.

"Let's not. You're covered in wounds, and—"

With this character's death, the thread of prophecy is severed. Restore a saved game to restore the weave of fate, or persist in the doomed world you have created.

Whaaaat.

But I saved her. Flare was right in front of me, totally fine, even grinning as she swung her battle-axe in the air excitedly. It looked like she was going to be more battle-crazed than sex-crazed, which was a relief. But that wasn't the important thing right now. If she was alive, and the message still popped up... What, was the prophesized princess another of the beastkin? Do I have to go save the deer princess a hundred miles away? Please, god no. I didn't want to fuck a deer. I would never recover from that. It was like my friend Gary the Goatfucker. You can be a standup citizen and build a thousand bridges, but the second you fucked one goat, that was it. Nobody cared about anything else again. That would be me with the deer princess. Hell no. I was, at this point, a sex-crazed harem protagonist that fucked everything that moved, but even I had standards. I wasn't about to dip down to fucking a deer and ruin my reputation forever.

I thought things over while dodging Flare's axe swing. Holy shit, that was a big axe. Was there any way I could check to see if she was the prophesized princess? Eeeh... Uuuuh...

Suddenly, it hit me. It was stupid, and I would hate myself if it worked, but I might as well try.

"Hey, Flare. I'll fight you if you do me a favor."

"Yeah?! What!!!" she exclaimed.

"You know how I'm the heir, right? Say something like, 'I will join you on your quest, Heir.'"

"Okay! I'll join your quest, Heir!"

Companion Unlocked! Princess Flare of the Dragonkin, Imperial Heiress to the Beastkin Empire, has joined your party!

Well, okay. Up until this point, that had always happened dramatically after I solved the loop, so I kind of associated it with being a win message, but apparently they just had to recognize me as the heir and agree to join my quest. Was... Was this something I could have exploited? I didn't think so. It didn't really seem to serve much of a purpose beyond maybe some niche system message stuff.

What it did tell me, though, was that Flare wasn't the one who had died. Was it Rose, Sophia, or Daiya? I could ask them next loop. But somehow, I didn't think it was them. The connection between our souls hadn't wailed and screamed with agony, which is honestly what I presumed would happen at this point. (None of them had actually died since I maxed out their love points and 'fused our souls' or whatever). Instead, I got the impression it might have been a rogue fifth actor. The princess that had been part of the prophecy all along, but might have hated that more than anyone. The princess who would pull out all the stops to break the prophecy, and then, failing all else, take matters into her own hands.

Princess Xetrathia, of the Demon Realm.

"Fight me fight me fight me! You said you'd fight me!" Flare growled a little bit. Her animal-like behavior reminded me of Sophia, which was both disturbing and heart warming at the same time.

"Okay, okay. En garde."

I readied my sword and prepared to fight. I didn't really want to fight Flare, and I could have just quickloaded out now that this timeline was doomed as hell, but I figured it would be fucked up to break a promise. Aeneas would sneer at me from beyond the grave.

Flare began the fight with a powerful overhead swing, aimed directly for my head. I blocked it in the most lazy way possible by lifting up my sword. She was strong, but n— What?! Her axe smashed right through my sword, shattering it into tiny bits. Her axe would have gone straight through my head if I hadn't busted out my physics-defying Dodging to get out of the way. Holy shit, she was strong. I needed to get a legendary sword or something, because this steel dwarf-made sword was clearly not cutting it. It was, at best, a legendary piece of shit.

I rolled to the side to grab, uh, some red blade dropped by a dead demon. My modus operandi from this point would be to HOLY SHIT I rolled to the side again just in time to avoid another down-swing, which left a crater where I had been attempting to monologue. Okay, when it was game time she did not play around. I needed to focus.

And, to be fair, once I did, it wasn't much of a fight. She was STRONG, impressively so, but lacked finesse or grace. It was no surprise Aeneas had beaten her. The trick was just to dodge her swings and immediately counter. It worked every time, since she was apparently too dumb to actually change her strategy.

In the end, she tried another downward swing, and while her axe was stuck in the ground I kicked it out of her hands. She swiftly moved to pick it back up, but I abandoned chivalry and kicked her in the stomach, sending her flying back against the wall. She hit it on her back, then slid down to the ground, plopping down onto her butt. I extended my sword and held it at her neck.

"I win," I said.

Love Point Gained! Flare +1

Milestone Reached! Budding Crush has become Crush!

The growing strength of your relationship has formed a bond between your souls. It is weak now, but may grow if it is given care.

Great. My immense and very impressive combat prowess was already winning her heart over. No surprise, really; maybe she was just a few sparring matches away from experiencing true love. And hey, maybe the heart-thumping memory of me saving her from Aeneas then beating her in a fight would encourage her to not retreat to this location.

"Wow! You really are strong!" she exclaimed, completely unbothered by the kick to her stomach. Really, this was one of those situations that reminded me everyone had their own system of values and expectations. Someone with a strong moral principle to never hit girls never would have kicked Flare, and thus they never would have dramatically beaten her in a fight, thereby earning a love point from her. Flare wanted me to not hold back, to go all out, and to actually fight her in a real fight. And that meant kicking her. Being self-centered about chivalric values and avoiding hitting her because she was a girl would have been rude as hell and likely even offended her warrior sensibilities. One always had to be careful to consider what the other person wanted, and not get too caught up in projecting your beliefs. You never know when you might need to kick a hot tomboy dragon in the stomach to earn her love.

"Yup. If you train hard, maybe one day you can—"

"Let's fight more!" She stood up on shaky legs and went for her axe.

Oh no no no. No thank you. I was not about to engage in an endless loop of fighting her just to satisfy her crazed bloodlust.

"No thanks. If you want to fight me again, hope that love points lets you remember enough to get the hell out of your hoard and come to the teleporter to the DirIe Ilirad dwarf hold."

"Huh?" she said, blinking.

"Quickload," I replied. No point hanging around a dead timeline. If the love point memories were enough for her to remember DirIe Ilirad, she would probably survive on her own. Maybe.