Roxanne hands me one of her special MP potions, and I drink it eagerly.

"[What the fuck was that]?!" Hukarere exclaims in Reo.

"Is it over?" Silvano warily asks, his pretty face as serious as Yunia's.

"My MP ran out," I casually reply to calm them down.

"[That's exactly what we're trying to understand]," Roxanne replies to Hukarere with a cheeky smile.

"[Divines take me…]," Hukarere mumbles in awe.

When I look over at Poosh, her horrified expression makes me feel a bit guilty and sad. I don't want to make her worry, but I guess it was inevitable.

"That was definitely the most unique mana I've ever sensed," Almaria comments, her tone still wary. She has [Sense Mana] at level 25, so she can sense a lot of details and nuance in the mana I exude.

"I felt the unmistakable flavor of [Space Magic], like a strong spice in a flavorful dish," Alcander ponders with a smirk, quickly relaxing now that the danger has passed.

"It reminds me of [Golemancy]'s [Infuse], somehow," Roxanne chimes in.

"Gih," Gify clarifies that the two spells have some small part in common, but they aren't really that similar when taken as a whole.

"Maybe they share an 'abstract concept'? Something about being 'cold and calculating,'" Roxanne wonders, and Gify nods in agreement.

Yunia turns to Almaria, the only one present who can give a proper description of my mana. "Can you describe it in more detail?"

Almaria's eyes lose focus as she thinks carefully, her tired gaze gradually becoming creepier until she suddenly starts speaking as fast as she can, her mouth trying its best to keep up with her brain, "It felt as if you were exposing the muscles beneath the skin in a dissection of reality, your eyes peering at something that you don't have permission to see, looking towards an invisible door that leads to things beyond our understanding. This spell was made by someone who could see as far as the Gods can."

Damn, that's a bit… dramatic.

"I definitely felt the 'lack of permission' aspect," Ciel agrees, though she's a bit conflicted about the "See as far as the Gods" part.

"Perhaps this is why the Gods don't want any others to have access to it," Alissa speculates.

That suggestion suddenly gives me an idea. "What if the other Cycles and realms have their own Humanoid Gods, and they don't like it when the people of our realm can disturb their land?" I wonder.

Ciel instinctively believes this to be true, which worries her quite a bit. "The realms in our Cycle are said to be similar to ours, but other Cycles can be anything imaginable, so it makes sense that some of them could be like that," she rationalizes her intuition.

"Didn't the Gods say that it's impossible to travel between realms or Cycles?" Alissa questions her.

Ciel is taken off-guard and hesitates to answer. "They… well, I don't remember the exact Message, so we'll have to do some research," she admits, feeling a bit of shame.

"It'd seem extremely suspicious to Teresina if we suddenly asked her about it," Yunia points out.

"How about Arantos? Your adoptive father?" I kindly ask Ciel, looking forward to meeting the chubby old man again.

Ciel blushes since she's a bit embarrassed about me blatantly calling Arantos her father. "I'm sure he'll agree to help us in secret, so I'll ask him about it when we next see him."

"Now, could you explain to us exactly what this spell is all about?" Sandoro asks rather sternly. Almaria's description of the spell's mana has made him rather apprehensive.

I clear my throat and start the explanation, "It's a spell from [Summoning Magic] called [Otherworldly Summoning], and I believe that it allowed me to see the other Cycles and their realms, though I couldn't find any among them that seem 'similar' to ours. It's like they're just lifeless 'shapes' full of energy and chaos."

Ciel agrees with my assessment and expands on it, "The purpose of the God of Creation is just 'to create,' not 'to give life,' so it makes sense that most Cycles are like that. The Gods of Creation and Destruction have been fighting for an unknowable length of time, so there could be uncountable Cycles in existence, and they could even be increasing in number as we speak."

"Are you trying to find our Cycle or something similar?" Sandoro cautiously questions.

I shake my head and wave my hand dismissively as I answer, "I'm just exploring, so not necessarily, but it'd be very interesting if I did find it."

"What about these other Cycles, can you 'summon' anything from them?" Silvano earnestly questions.

I shrug and explain, "I haven't really tried that, but I get the feeling that they're 'incompatible' whenever I try to look deeper into them."

And then Ciel sagely expands on my words again, "These realms could be the remnants of the battle of the Gods, just like The Everlasting Storm is. I don't think there's anything 'good' that you could summon from them."

Poosh shivers in fear and suddenly asks, "Have any of you seen the Storm?" Her tone uncharacteristically grim.

But only negative replies come from our mouths.

She whispers as she reminisces, her tone full of awe, "It's monumental, humbling, and deadly to even approach."

"Yeah…" -I awkwardly scratch my horn with a claw- "I'm definitely going to leave those dangerous Cycles alone."

"You're doing it again?" Sai asks concernedly, her eyebrows knitting in worry.

I nod and smile guiltily. "I need to understand more about this spell and why it's so dangerous. We'll also have to replace it with another spell so that no summoner ever learns about this spell again."

"The Moons shield us from the unknown," Alcander quietly prays, surprising Ciel that he knows such an obscure prayer.

Silvano sighs and runs a hand through his silver, silky long hair. "Well, I knew things would be 'interesting,' but this is something completely unexpected," he comments with a wry smile.

"Remember that the Goddess of Knowledge herself told me that this spell is extremely dangerous, so don't ever think about replicating it," I warn him sternly.

He lifts his hand in surrender and closes his eyes. "I know, I know."

I nod in acknowledgment, then I turn to the other Officers. "Alright. Once my MP is full, we'll do it again."

The "Folder of Cycles" really does seem to be endless, and I don't even have a "scrolling bar" to speed things up or to help orient myself in regards to where I am in the vast grid.

That whole process of "painting" the first Cycle doesn't happen again, though, and the spell immediately sends me right back to where I was previously, so at least I don't have to restart the "search" every time I cast it.

As time passes, the tension fades and everyone relaxes somewhat, but nobody drops their guard. Alissa is still acting as the main observer, and she only needs to say the word for everyone to pounce on me.

After a few hours of scrolling through, I get the intuition that the Cycles are gradually changing, though I can't describe it more clearly than that.

My body starts to get weary from being drained and refilled with mana multiple times, but it seems that my resistance to Overuse has increased a bit thanks to [Mana Body], so this experiment takes a good part of our afternoon before I decide to end it.

Poosh sighs in relief as the last bit of worry leaves her body. She was definitely the most tense of us all.

Unfortunately, this isn't the last time she'll have to go through this. I turn to the Officers again and announce, "We'll be doing this experiment again many more times, so put it in your schedule, though we'll be a bit busy once we start visiting the parents of my wives. Perhaps we should replace our regular meetings with the experiment to make use of the occasion since we're all gathered together anyway.

"It shall be done, your Highness," Sandoro diligently replies with a bow.

The Officers don't have anything super urgent to do since most of their job is training their underlings, so it's not that hard for them to make room for regular experiments.

We all disperse and make use of the rest of our afternoon. I go to a dungeon with Ciel, Hukarere, Sir Palo, Oritiki, and some of the Lordsguard for a combat exercise; Alissa talks with Almaria and Sandoro about getting the smiths and mages to build the table football and air hockey games for the rest of the Lordsguard; Lina and Hana go out to find someone to commercialize my creations; Roxanne and Aoi work on making a bullet for the rifle; Yunia goes to see our newest Quartermaster, Istante, who previously worked for Confiel, after which, my Queen also visits Osaria and Mimi to see how their work is going.

The Space mages open a [Gate] that takes us to the Stinky Goblins dungeon, somewhere near the nest of those very same goblins, which we have to exterminate.

We're inside a dark, rocky cave that spirals down underground. Lina feels nostalgic as she observes it all through my eyes, seeing the damp, mossy cave full of weird mushrooms and even weirder, alien-looking plants.

The sound of trickling water is constant here as the humidity and rain from above seeps down into the dungeon, the soft earth of the High Forest being extremely good at letting water flow through.

"Mages! Lane!" Palo shouts, his echoing voice drawing the attention of the goblins, but we were just going to wait for their charge, anyway.

The Earth mages create a patch of dry, stable, and flat ground for us and clear the area of plants so that we'll have a perfect shot on the goblins once they get near.

"Formation 'Spiked Shield'! BOWS!" Palo commands, his dashing, white grin visible even from under his barbute.

The men pull out enchanted longbows and rest their shields against their legs.

"SKREEEE!"

"GYAAH!"

The goblins' screams of rage echo from within the oppressive darkness ahead as they notice that humanoids are nearby, their guttural shrieks grating on my royal ears.

The Lordsguard are trained in all sorts of weapons because they have the levels for it, though they aren't particularly strong at any of them, so they could lose to an experienced adventurer in a one-on-one. Duels are the specialty of knights, while the strength of the Lordsguard lies in their teamwork, and the high availability of Eia pills and [Weaverism] makes the elven Lordsguard the strongest out of the entire Empire. As a unit, only the Nemesis squad of monster killers or the Templars could compete with them.

Before we can even see the goblins, we start smelling them, and the silly name of the dungeon starts to make sense, along with the reason why adventurers never explored this dungeon beyond this area.

"Ahead! Clear shot" The tracker announces, sensing the position of the goblin horde.

"FIRE ARROWS! LOOSE!" Palo shouts, and the dark tunnel is illuminated by their [Fire Arrow]s, revealing the horde of pale Cave Goblins swarming towards us like ants, some of them even crawling along the walls and ceiling.

"STANDARD! LOOSE!" And they switch to physical arrows since they don't really have the MP to keep firing enchanted arrows like Arquirandos.

Their arrows are deadly accurate even though they're just blanketing the area ahead with them, and the small horde of goblins quickly decreases in number as they drop like flies. Hukarere and the other Chimera are kind of bad shots with the bow, though, but I think it's just because they haven't had enough time yet to learn it well enough.

The horde is quickly thinned out to a manageable number, eliminating the risk of getting overwhelmed by their swarm, and most of the goblins on the ceiling get picked off.

"WALL!" Palo orders again, and everyone uses [Equip] to pull out their spears, then they throw their bows behind them. This skill seems to be perfect for these "men-of-arms" who have a whole armory inside their [Item Box]es.

Palo stands in the middle of their formation, his hulking frame and shining armor making him the center of attention, which is exactly how he likes it.

Then they all crouch in sync, planting the bottom of their oval shields into the ground to prevent the short goblins from sneaking under them.

Oritiki and Ciel float side-by-side, watching the battle unfold with eagle eyes. The ceiling is quite high, so they can freely fly around in here.

"Follow me. We kill goblins on ceiling," Oritiki clumsily suggests in Andraste.

"Understood. Right behind you," Ciel sternly agrees, and they both fly forward.

The first line of goblins skewer themselves on the spears like the mindless beasts they are, but the second line comes in right behind them.

"SWORDS!" Palo orders, though it wasn't really necessary for him to say it as it's the natural follow up in this battle since their spears are now stuck in the corpses of the first line of goblins.

They draw their shortswords and thrust them forward right as the line of goblins crashes into them.

I extend a long tentacle ahead and stab a goblin in the face, then I sink my halberd into the head of another and use [Telekinesis] to sweep my mace horizontally, knocking out three goblins at the same time, all from behind the line of Lordsguard.

The goblins crawl up the shields and try to climb over them, too weak to push back against their wall, but the second line of men all have their poleaxes at the ready, which they use to turn the goblins into minced meat.

Some of the goblins start to go around, trying to surround us, but they're simply too few, and the men at the edges of our formation are the most veteran, adept at keeping the goblins away while the main force engages the horde.

I float up a bit and freely rake my armed tentacles into the heads of the goblins while Ciel and Oritiki help out at the edges.

The few goblin archers fire flimsy arrows at us, but they just clink off our armor without even leaving a single scratch behind. Their craftsmanship is so poor that they can't even get past our [Wind Armor], so they definitely aren't breeder-types.

The battle doesn't even last a full minute as they're already completely wiped out.

"FINISH THEM OFF!" Palo orders, and they break formation to go after the stragglers.

Ciel and Oritiki come back and clean their weapons, then we wait while the men do their thing. I summon an air elemental just to clear the goblin stink out of the air, and the men silently show their gratitude to me.

"[Have you thought about implanting wings]?" Oritiki suddenly asks Ciel in Reo.

"Eh?" My chocolate angel is taken by surprise, and I give her a few points in the language. "You mean like yours?"

Oritiki nods excitedly. "Exactly. I know that we have a few Alteration mages who can do it."

Ciel holds her chin in thought. "Would they be better than my enchanted armor?"

"They should be, once you get used to them," Oritiki confidently assures her.

Then Ciel turns her eyes to the large pair of white wings on Oritiki's back. "They look… a bit inconvenient."

Oritiki shrugs, and her wings start to shrink until they become rather chibi-fied. "Well, I'm sure you can afford a pair that completely disappears when you want them to, like with dragonkin wings. It's just more expensive. I don't have them myself because the Celestial Horns aren't allowed to hide them."

Ciel mellows out and becomes more receptive to the suggestion. "Oh~… it sounds like an interesting idea."

But I get an idea. "Hide them? Can they help me hide these draconic parts, then?" I curiously ask.

Oritiki narrows her eyes in thought, unsure about how to answer that. "Maybe? I think you mean replacing your claws with human hands, right?" -I nod- "I don't know if they can do that, specifically."

"Hm…" I hold my chin in thought, mirroring Ciel's previous gesture.

Dokkanchee's illusions are good enough, but if the Chimeras can alter my hands to work like a dragonkin's wings, then maybe I could make it into a racial skill that all of my children would inherit.

We move on towards the actual goblin nest, and the human within me immediately begs to get out of here.

These goblins live like barbarians in filthy, flimsy huts made of weird underground plants, and they lack even the most basic concepts of hygiene.

Shit, piss, semen, and rotten carcasses are strewn about everywhere, including the bodies of the old and the young who didn't survive their childhood. Some of the carcasses have even been disposed of in a sort of macabre tribal bone "art," clearly telling any trespassers that cruelty is a normal occurrence for this tribe of goblins.

Not all goblins live like this, it's just that this tribe is partway into a sort of plague/rot "attunement." One of the sniffers even detects some pseudo-necromantic mana coming from what seems to be a ritual site. The fact that they don't have mages yet is evidence that their attunement isn't complete.

These types of goblins are the worst enemy of the Lords because once they change into breeder-types and attack a town, disease-ridden shit hits the almost literal fan. Because of the risk of a plague, adventurers have been forbidden to enter this dungeon ever since its discovery.

I summon four light elemental-wives and order them to accompany the Lordsguard. Ciel, Oritiki, and I stay at the edge of the camp and watch them work while Ciel's [Holy Spirit] protects us from the foul air, but we still help out from range.

I make sure to watch as they kill the young and weak goblins, burning it all into my memory so that my mind doesn't go soft, but I don't rejoice at their deaths. This is just part of the "nature" of this world, though that doesn't mean that I want monsters to suffer. Their existence is a cursed one, and I'm showing them mercy by giving them a swift end.

Alissa and Lina comfort us through [Bind], and my foxy lady thanks me for not bringing her along for this exercise.

I also feel a sort of ironic comfort once I realize that Lords are basically "janitors" for the dungeons.

Once the tracker confirms that there are no living monsters left, we continue down, deeper into the dungeon. Things become slightly interesting as small crystals start to light the way, and with that, we also encounter crystal-themed enemies. Though this isn't a mana solidification dungeon, the crystals down here are so weak that they aren't even worth the effort to mine them, so we leave them be.

We fight a few creepy, insect-like monsters and a few different species of mole-like animals. They've all been "infected" with crystals, like a sort of mineral-based fungus that acts as a symbiont, giving them increased magical power in exchange for being its host. They aren't much of a problem since they don't swarm like goblins, though the large number of humanoids in our group does attract a lot of monsters.

Palo demonstrates his perfect control of his soldiers, even though half of them are new recruits.

I observe them as they fight and help out a bit here and there, trying to work out what's more effective.

They're a strong and independent unit that needs no Lord… but seriously, they're pretty solid and well-prepared for all sorts of situations, so there's no obvious area where I can help them out. I just have to support them in whatever way I can to lighten their load.

We don't go too deep into this dungeon since this is only an exercise, and we call it a day at sunset.

Intermission 24 – Palo Orir

Tentacles?! Really?!

People have been calling him "Shapeshifter," so I imagined something silly, like turning into an orc to give himself a bigger body, but it's really something else to see him in action!

What led him to create such a unique skill? Why did he even need so many limbs to hold multiple weapons when warriors could spend lifetimes just mastering one? It might be related to his Gift, so I don't think I should just casually ask him about it.

I wonder how far he will grow with this skill. Maybe one day, he'll be able to take on literal armies by himself, his innumerous tentacles reaping hundreds of souls every second.

Wait… if he can make them take any shape he wants, then… oh, Gods… he could also fuck an army by himself!