‘there is too much to do and not enough time. problems keep popping up out of nowhere. haaah I better keep my mind on the sky or it might just fall down out of spite’ Lucifer absentmindedly thought.

For that last month or so Lucifer had been busy with one thing or another. Most of the extra workload came from ruling the new court, but, it was interesting for the moment so Lucifer didn’t mind as much.

Immediately after Roberts sentencing people pled for the grievances to be heard. Lucifer didn’t mind and had one of his prisoners take down the detail for him to read later. Some cases were interesting, ingenious plots and murders, vicious rumors, even a story of someone who had their genitals removed by a disgruntled wife.

The Jury was also working quite well which really made the common people happy, especially after a few nobles went through the court. Lucifer did turn down a few cases because of a complete lack of evidence, but most nobles weren't punished for crimes against the commoners so they didn’t exactly hide their actions. These cases spent more time on witnesses than anything else and Lucifer was even forced to stop more coming in. unless he wanted 240 accounts of the same thing.

However, it soon got out of hand, the sheer amount of frivolous accusations made it practically impossible to read through, and he was only getting the cliff notes. Lucifer had to start enforcing the rules he initially set out. If you accuse someone and they are not found guilty, you will take their place as the punished.

There would be far fewer fun cases for Lucifer to work on, but he would be able to strangle back some of his time to “research”

But, again this was still abused, although to a lesser extent by some of the sly nobles. Lives were cheap and paying for a commoner to accuse someone of something wasn’t hard, even paying for a few witnesses was still considered economical depending on the target.

What these people didn’t know was that Lucifer practiced soul magic on all the punished. He would look through their memories to make sure he was right, although he may be more motivated by the magic practice than the truth.

Once Lucifer found out the court was being manipulated he had the “victim” arrested for false accusation, read their memories and found the culprit. Then through his memories he found all the “witnesses” that were paid. Lucifer made a new rule to take record of witnesses and arrested them on false accusation too.

Lucifer had Ahri transmit the imagery of what happened to those people in another theatre meeting, and he took note of the complete indifference of Ahri while showing it. ‘she has become rather twisted’ Lucifer thought.

He knew that she had killed before she met him, her assassin skills and willingness to use them made that obvious, however, she would still be repulsed by anything near as gruesome as what she showed that day.

Inside Lucifer's lab

Lucifer sighed and cleared his thoughts, he summoned a set of demons with practiced ease. they were only a foot or so tall. Their body was mostly an over-sized eyeball that had tiny legs, arms and wings. Lucifer named it Bill Kerman and sent its twin into his construction.

A hatch closed behind the creature and a portal opened below the construction. It fell through the hole and came out of a portal that had opened on the lab roof, right above the previous portal.

The several meter round object fell through the portal only to fall through the portal again as it picked up speed. The ambient mana in the room almost immediately depleted causing the demon to cry out from discomfort.

Lucifer pumped the dungeons mana towards his lab. The adventurers inside noticed the drop and many of them left the dungeon. Soon the dungeons ambient mana was running low enough that it made Lucifer worry so he started pumping his personal mana into the portals.

The object kept falling in the infinite loop gaining speed and now heat. It was time, Lucifer set up another portal on top of his mountain, it was far enough from people to not affect his magic.

The sphere bust through the portal and rocketed up, the citizens witnessed a glowing orange object fly into the sky at an absurd speed. It got smaller and smaller until they couldn’t see it anymore, then it suddenly ejected a bright blue substance leaving behind a blue scar in the sky reaching the heavens.

Lucifer jumped up cheered and spent the next few minutes laughing like a crazy man. He looked down to the twin demon and smiled. It did its interpretation of a nod and projected an image of what its brother was seeing.

Black with white dots scattered about. Lucifer grinned once again and explained what he wanted the demon to tell its brother.

Sometime later.

Lucifer was relaxing after a successful experiment while once again low on mana. He thoughts drifted to the trials once again and he wondered how he could make it easier. Reading the memories of the accuser would simplify things, but he couldn’t use his dungeon magic while other living things were nearby. Lucifer could use magic with his body normally, but his control was abysmal with his controlled bodies.

Perhaps he could ask a mage for help considering they cast magic and had bodies, he made up his mind and started towards Ahri’s room. He hadn’t been there since it was unintentionally painted red, (which he fixed, with insects which creeped her out more but still).

Once inside he found something interesting, most of the decorations including the bed covers were blue, Ahri said it complemented her red hair well, but her hair was white now. However, this wasn’t what he found interesting. Ahri wasn’t alone.

Lucky, Selenia, Ellora and even Kuro were here. Lucky was sleeping on Kuro who was relaxing on half the bed, while Selenia and Ellora sat on the other side facing Ahri who was sitting in her apothecary seat.

They hadn’t noticed him yet. Ahri said, “I was his first” just loud enough for his enhanced hearing to pick up/ He smiled mischievously and stood behind the door. Lucifer could be the perfect spy inside his dungeon, but it was far more interesting in a living form.

“he's not a woman so what does it matter,” Ellora said.

“just because you’ve slept with him do--” Selenia said at the same time but stopped herself.

Both women looked at Selenia and Ahri asked, “why are you even here, it's not like you have ‘laid’ your claim to him”

“of course not,” Selenia said, “I’m here for Kuro” then patted Kuro’s flank absentmindedly.

Kuro lifted her head too look at Selenia sending Lucky tumbling off of her head, then went back to napping. Lucky tumbled down and mumbled, “silly adventurers teehee” in her half-asleep state, then she looked up to the towering head of Kuro and decided to just sleep on the bed she fell on.

The three of them chose not to think about what Lucky was dreaming of and Selenia said, “besides Lucky is here too”

Ahri countered, “Lucky is a child so she doesn’t… how about this you can have a say when you stop being an elven prude and lay claim to him”

Ellora interjected, “can you stop saying lay claim, I grew up with beastmen too, but Lucifer is human”

“dungeon” corrected Selenia

“whatever” Said Ahri, “it doesn’t matter I’m bearing his child so I’m the wife and Ellora will be the concubine”

“it's not his child its whatever body he was usings child” Selenia argued.

“don’t call my baby IT” Ahri growled.

Ellora said, “calm down you two, Ahri you have nothing to worry about, Elves don’t have children until they are a few centuries old”

“hah” Ahri laughed, “Lucifer won’t wait a hundred years for you, he will already be mine by then”

Selenia protested, “elves don’t take that long, we usually wait 100 years so we ample life experience to bring up the child, and also control the population. I can bear children now if I chose to”

“if,” said Ahri.

Lucifer suddenly walked into the room startling the group. Kuro stood up rocking the bed and accidentally stepped on Lucky’s wing. Lucky yelped in pain and Kuro looked slightly guilty, she bent down and licked the panicking fairy.

The action was supposed to show affection, however, Kuro's tongue was even rougher than a normal cat and tore Lucky’s fragile clothes to pieces. And if Lucky herself wasn’t powerful she probably would have lost a wing or half her skin.

Lucifer laughed, “well who would have guessed that you have such a fine figure considering your size”

“she is just a child,” Selenia said as she grabbed the fairy.

“Perhaps if she was human, but fairies are born fully grown so she's an adult and one that looks just like you I might add,” Lucifer said.

All the girls looked at Lucky suspiciously who’s expression said that she had just been caught. Lucky flew into the air and rapidly escaped Selenia's grasp.

Selenia yelled, “stop flying around and showing him my body” while the other girls tried to catch the fairy too, but for entirely different reasons.

Lucifer interrupted the fun, “I came here to learn how magic is used by normal people, not to discuss marriage”

Ahri stopped chasing the fairy around the room and said, “I’ll teach you if you marry me”

Ahri screamed in pain and fell to her knees silencing the room and Lucifer said, “now you will teach me because I said so, and just so you know I’m never getting married, I’m a dungeon”

Somewhere underground.

The ground rumbled and the rock-face crumbled under the persuasion of magic, light suddenly poured into the tunnel blinding the mages within. “we are through” people laughed.

Soon men and beasts flooded through the opening to see the sorely missed sun once again.