After the debacle of quickly opening space for the badly positioned dungeon, the entrance of which was just two four meters tall wooden gate doors with stone bricks for a frame, there was yet the problem that Aki started to release great pressure with his image and float around as he seemed to shine for a moment, which knocked out about a dozen civilians, but luckily nothing too serious happened in either occasion.

It was a bit after sunset when they came back, but as one of the senior government officials Septima was held back to help handle the elves. Her related skills were nothing to write home about, but her stats allowed her great efficiency.

On the bright side, she was able to look at her own documentation and quickly remember where her current lodgings were supposed to be. After so much time in the training camp, there was just no way that she could remember somewhere she'd only spent a few days living at after all, a problem most from Ashe Morten faced, though she couldn't say anything about the rest as Lea had long gone to deliver them to their own villages.

She was not going to just up and forget that she did not live alone so easily however.

"I'm home~" She cheerfully announced, a pitter patter of bare feet already trotting her way as a short woman threw herself at her bosom and hugged her while giggling.

It was strange to think it'd been almost a year for her, a length of time she would like to think of as one where she grew not only in power, but only eight hours had passed for everyone not at the camp. The discrepancy really drove home how little she was looking forward to the next few days.

"Hello to you too, Calliope.” She smiled. ‘Now how do i get this girl out of the house while i talk with Trina and Primo?’ As the question came to her, the face of one certain idiot appeared in her mind. Instead of the smirk she felt like showing however, she immediately started frowning. “Cali, I just realised I brought something with me from work that I shouldn't have.” Seeing the shorter woman flinch in horror and worry for her hurt, quite a bit more than it would’ve before the dungeon actually, but this needed to be dealt with. “Could you do me a favor and deliver this stack of documents to Aki? He was supposed to read them before storing them and I feel rather tired after everything that happened. I will send a message his way and they will let you in, you just have to charm him a bit since he doesn’t really care about these things. Would you do it for me?”

With barely any time in between her words and the response, the determined farvit ran outside with a stack of papers in her hands.

‘And now for a bloody family meeting.’

………….

When a mute farvit girl came to his office and started seducing him, Aki didn’t particularly feel like doing it even if the small woman with big eyes, long and smooth hair and very kissable lips was very, very cute. He had several piles of documents to revise and many ideas to transcribe, so having his dick sucked or some such was not exactly on his mind exactly because he was rather stressed.

Septima had sent her to him so he’d keep her distracted however, something about leaving the group she was in, so he needed to keep her around. Waving her to come closer, he examined her first and foremost, which revealed very little about her disability as this was the first farvit he’d seen with one, and it wasn’t exactly like he could cure it without the proper modifications to the shape of her soul, which would still need the proper therapy to be effective.

“No can do little lady, you are very pretty and also adorable, but i like to hear at least some screams when i am in bed.” Which while true, was rather irrelevant for a girl so cute he’d probably keep kissing non-stop. “You can keep me company in another way however.” He smiled, sending a chill down her spine.

[And that’s your excuse for treating her like a pet?] Septima asked while giving him a womanly look. Currently, Cali sat on his lap, asleep while snuggling to his chest, his hands not stopping his stroking of either her or Ames’ head.

[I also changed her soul so that she'd be able to speak and needed her calm and sedated for the change.] He messaged her back, rolling his eyes. [You cannot possibly mean to tell me you have not fully molested her ears in the months you two have known each other. Look at this, she could make a dragon drop from the sky and adopt her with this level of cuteness.]

{CuTeR!}

‘I love you, how am I supposed to say that you are the cutest if I know my own opinion is above even possibility?’ He scoffed at the cat, speaking through their bond. Her answer was to manifest the rest of a feline’s body, climb up his arm and bite his cheek while doing the mental equivalent of a pout and later dispersing with what was a hint of embarrassment.

For a being of such size and power, that might as well mean that he’d sent her into a full body blush anime style. He was pretty sure she had control over energy like aether and nether, so significance and emotion were obviously an innate power, as made obvious by the sheer amount of both that she transited through said bond, which was very much like a bomb of every hormone for his body and soul. Moments like these were exactly what strengthened their bond, the energies coursing through it making it stronger than even his connection to the system already.

To be fair though, expanding your connection with the system could only be done with an increase in citizenship status and by occupying a post of importance to the Nexus apparently.

Neither were especially useful to him however, as he already had a source of pure aether he could draw from indefinitely and was unable to even properly touch nether, his constitution still needed a lot of modifications for that to even be possible.

[So, are you ready to help me dismantle your former crime syndicate or do you want to hit some dungeons after relaxing a bit? I’m sure you could solo any that’s formed so soon and take out whole forts even more easily.] He asked, having finished his job. With any luck, he'd not touch paperwork for at least a few months.

[I'm not helping you dismantle them, but if you need help with some assimilation I suppose I could help.] She shook her head, taking the sleeping beauty from his lap.

[I'll take it. Do tell how the break up of your fake relationship goes and if you need some more ice cream and some shoulder rubs.] He shrugged and smiled at her.

It'd taken a bit of prodding and the grinding of several more affection points through many encounters, but Aki had indeed learned about Septima's full time lovers.

Of the three women, two were pity cases and the third was a visiting assassin that was pretending to be a pity case, while the man was her (former) manager and veteran assassin. The man in question was apparently aromantic according to her, so he was mostly pretending while acting in public, not that they actually had a rocky relationship or anything though, the older of the two was just extremely focused and professional.

That did not mean she did not end up fucking three out of four, but the idea was to use her position as a way to avoid unwanted attention and spread rumors about how normal they were, adding their own sobstory to the mix and making the red farvit seem like the kind that picked up strays and bought them onto her bed, eventually explaining most things through their conection to Septima.

To be fair, the idea had indeed been hers and she had properly tried to help those she picked up, the difference was that now she trusted him and his government enough to allow him to help instead of playing the long game. Add her general distaste for some missions and now he had the redhead completely on his side.

While it also meant she was single, he rather doubted she’d be willing to just up and stop most of her habits. No, he was going to work hard on that problem. At least help until she couldn’t immediately be confused with a demon of excess or lust.

…………

Looking at the borders of the zone, Aki couldn’t help but sigh. It wasn’t expanding or anything, there wasn’t going to be a sudden influx of people or the need for the rescue of those frozen inside a time bubble, no. That meant those that were not inside a zone simply had no way of being alive.

It’d have been an utter logistical and ethical mess to try and actually put those plans to work, but it seemed that it simply wasn’t how the integration worked. The information he’d collected said that the system was always updating all it’s ideas, so there was a small possibility that their universe would be the first to get a prototype tutorial or some such.

It’d been a few days since he’d left the dungeon now, nothing of note happening except his interrogation of Primo, which had mostly consisted of annoying the shit out of him and punching his nose for having tried to help the people that put a target on his head.

He’d known he was the one who’d tried to keep him in a dream way back in the first days, but hadn’t really made the connection between him and Septima due to not having put much importance on the matter until his friend explained her circumstances to him, causing him to remember the somber older man with shamanic magic gained from his class.

Finally, after plenty of waiting, the system announced the next phase of the zone challenge.

[Due to the existence of a clear government structure and the elimination of several targets of interest, the level of difficulty for this task has been raised along with its respective rewards.

A small, uninhabited part of the planet has been connected to the zone. Within it, several invading forces have been dispatched within said territory and given a stone stele to guard. Some other steles are in special places, great challenges guarding them.

Take down these forces of experienced soldiers and receive special loot and achievements! Each stele contains a buff to be applied! Only after all the steles are claimed by the same force will the zone fully open to the wider world!

If any of these invading forces gains another stele, they will then receive great buffs!

If any of these invading forces manages to obtain all the five steles, those inside the zone will receive heavy debuffs, followed by the opening of yet another wave of invaders, which will be allowed to join the wider world even as the zone is being cleared of natives by the greatly strengthened first wave.]

Honestly, Aki was not so impressed. He was not going to complain about free loot, free fights and free bonuses, but he could at least allow for his elite to take some of those for themselves. That would, of course, depend on what kind of buff was available, as he had already specified that if possible people should help with gathering extra modifiers for all citizens instead of personal ones, and their contracts did not allow them to choose otherwise if it was an option.

First though, he had to find where this new place even was, so he’d wait for Lea to report about it and run towards it. Reaching over a hundred agility had made his speed grow exponentially thanks to his spells and skills, so depending on the distance, it was more efficient to run on his own than to wait for his unbuffed summon.

Surprisingly though, it was actually rather close to his town instead of away from it, so he only needed to go to the nearest village and use the teleportation platform they had to go back and partner up with the local flaming bird to go on a rampage on all the invasion camps before they were even ready.

The reason for that was likely that he had done something impressive by connecting all villages and towns and reducing traveling time for personnel through most of the zone itself, since even he hadn't expected to be offered to purchase these teleporters.

The ironways were still necessary though, as that kind of travel wasn’t inexpensive, making it too costly to use for bulk purchases unless you were trying to walk around with things that would break an economy or had at least as many storage artifacts as Aki, which again, was extremely expensive.

Perhaps in the future normal roads could also be used by the common populace, but the system would make sure to magically spawn creatures all around even if they cleared them regularly, so trying to just walk around wasn’t the best of ideas especially since monsters above level 20 had started appearing some time ago. At least the general fighters would soon be allowed some respite however, as the system made monster hordes would only last until the zone opened to the wider world according to the village spirits.

In turn, that’d mean they’d have to deal with many times more monsters forming holds in the middle of nowhere due to the increase in open territory, so there was that.

“Mer, mercy…” Begged a bird-like biped before his brain was turned to mush by a wave of heat delivered through his skull. His whole expedition had been razed to the ground mere minutes after they landed, soldiers and fortifications burned to ashes, elites decapitated in the blink of an eye, and now their champion dominated in a few exchanges despite his image seed empowering his movements.

“I’m seriously disappointed you know, everyone of my commanders could have destroyed this camp by themselves, while the rest could deal with another camp at the very least.” Aki sighed, starting to loot the corpses of the leaders as he ignored most of his notifications.

“Maybe we should pretend it was hard or something?” Shrugged Lea. “I could dent your armor so it looks like you actually got hit.”

“They will realise the moment they see there’s nothing above level fifty around here. You know how some people with classes already started delving again and came back with levels in the late thirties or so.” Shaking his head, Aki walked over the champion’s looted corpse and touched the floating stone stele he’d been defending, hoping he’d not need to spend more skill points to raise his strength score, though it wasn’t like he would sacrifice his people for it or anything.

[You are the main contributor to the conquest of the Stele of the Sun! Choose one of the following bonuses:

I- You receive +25 vitality, +15 endurance and +10 strength.

II- You receive +15 vitality and +10 endurance. The Insania Katrocatric Republic receive a Tier 1 building token.

III- The Insania Katrocatric Republic receives a +1% to XP and Skill growth to its citizens for this and all it’s future iterations.]

He did not think much about it and chose the third option. While the second one was certainly a useless compromise thanks to his own nexus citizenship, and he did indeed want the extra attributes, the difference between having +10% and +20% on both XP acquisition and Skill growth was huge considering it’d be effective for everyone who was ever declared a citizen of his, specially since he fully planned on toppling rivals to take their territory and poaching talents that could help humanity under his own watch. It was only nine more of these, how hard could it possibly be?