After meeting with Ainz and seeing to Clementine's release from prison, Vahn returned to the hotel to find the members of Blue Roses waiting in the kitchen.
"Yo! Welcome back," Gagaran greeted.
"The Perverted Dragon has returned..." Tina appended flatly.
"If only he were more perverted..." Tia added, both twins staring at Vahn as if he had pilfered their favorite pudding from a fridge.
"We heard from Evileye about what transpired this afternoon. Has the matter been resolved...?" Lakyus questioned, her right eye twitching at Tina's and Tia's remarks.
Nodding, Vahn joined the group at the table, sitting next to Keno as he revealed, "The person who attacked Keno to get to me—it turns out her motivations were borne from a misunderstanding. I cleared things up, so the odds of us seeing her again are slim."
"Wait, so you just let her go...?" Gagaran questioned, raising her right brow incredulously.
"I don't operate according to the same short-sighted principles as most people," Vahn stated. "While it's true that the woman who attacked Keno was an assassin and killer, it was a trade she was forced into. And in the grand scheme of things, she never killed anyone of significance to those here. I wouldn't have said anything if Keno had killed her in self-defense, but she was never in any real danger."
"Nn...that woman was definitely stronger than most people, but everyone here would have been able to defeat her—even before Vahn conferred us with powerful equipment..." Keno affirmed. She couldn't help but frown at the revelation that Vahn had personally intervened to aid the person who attacked her, but she presumed that, as a God, he was able to see things within the woman that made her deserving of redemption.
"I suppose that, so long as she doesn't attempt to assassinate the rest of us in retribution, I have nothing to add to the matter..." Lakyus sighed, her green eyes shifting to Vahn as she asked, "That aside, are you—I mean, is Lord Vahn aware of the rumor that has been circulating? It is said that the Sorcerer Kingdom plans to open a brand new Dungeon in the heart of the Katze Plains. I wouldn't have believed it under normal circumstances, but the information came from Momon of Darkness—who mentioned he heard it from someone of high standing within the Sorcerer Kingdom..."
"What you heard is correct," Vahn affirmed, revealing, "When I last spoke with the Sorcerer King, he mentioned that he wanted to turn his Kingdom into a mecca for Adventurers from across the Continent. And doesn't care if they're human, demihuman, or even monsters. So long as they abide by the laws of his Kingdom, everyone will be welcome."
"And he can actually pull that off—creating a Dungeon, I mean? Unless I'm mistaken, only Gods can create Dungeons," Gagaran noted, referring to the various Dungeons that had been brought into her world by former Players. Dungeons weren't naturally occurring in the setting of OL-2138, but there were a few dozen scattered about the Continent, functioning as an inexhaustible source of wealth and resources for the nations fortunate enough to have ownership over them.
"You're not mistaken," Vahn responded, preempting the group's responses by stating, "That's just how capable the Sorcerer King is. He may not be a God, but the power he can muster isn't far from what a God would be able to employ."
"How dreadful..." Lakyus muttered, her expression and tone serious. As someone with the Cleric, Templar, and Priest Job Classes, she couldn't easily accept that there was an Undead with power on par with a God. If it weren't Vahn making the assertion, she would have refused to believe it, if for no other reason than her peace of mind.
Shaking his head, Vahn calmly maintained, "The Sorcerer King wishes to create a nation where people from all backgrounds can gather and strive to better themselves. And if what I've been told is accurate, the Dungeon in question will have ninety-nine floors, allowing people to push past their limits and obtain power and wealth far beyond the standard."
"Ninety-nine floors? Are you serious...?" Keno questioned, reflecting the disbelief of everyone present. The deepest Dungeon on the Continent at that moment was fifty floors, with the deepest anyone had ventured being the 37th. A Dungeon with ninety-nine floors wasn't simply unheard of—it was on a completely different level.
"That's what I've been told," Vahn affirmed. "For that reason, I have been considering creating a second spring here in E-Rantel, allowing those who have access to it to move between here and the capital of Re-Estize in an instant."
"You can do that...?" Gagaran questioned.
"I can," Vahn affirmed, nodding.
"And we'll have access to both, correct...?" Lakyus questioned, referring to Vahn's prior agreement to allow her Party, Blue Roses, to use his spring as their principal base of operations.
"It will technically be the same spring, but you will be able to access and exit from it at multiple locations," Vahn confirmed, leaving the five women more baffled than elucidated. Fortunately, they didn't need to understand how it functioned to make use of the spring entangled properties, which would allow them to move between E-Rantel, the capital of the Re-Estize Kingdom, and any other locations Vahn set up in an instant...
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[January 14th DxD/September 6th DBT]
With little of significance happening in the setting of OL-2138, Vahn was enjoying some quality time with Rukia and Miu, observing their respective birthdays. In Rukia's case, he took her and their daughter to a theme park with a petting zoo and many adorable mascots. In Miu's, he took her and their daughter to an aquarium, where they spent the day learning about a vast array of aquatic plants and animals.
"Papa, Mama! Look at that one! It's so big...!" Kiyomi, Vahn's angelic, golden-haired daughter with Miu, exclaimed, pointing to a creature that resembled a humpback whale but with ivory white hide, a long, spear-like horn, and golden ridges on its head that vaguely resembled the helmet of a gladiator.
"Oh, wow...it's suuuuper big~" Vahn hummed, sporting a relaxed smile as he held onto Kiyomi's legs, preventing her from falling off his shoulders as she fidgeted and moved about excitedly. The aquarium they were visiting belonged to Sona, who had taken an interest in researching and collecting the aquatic superfauna of various settings. The whale-like creature before them was actually an infant Sea King, yet, despite being only nine months old, it was already approaching 200m in length.
"Can I ride it...!?" Kiyomi questioned excitedly, leaning over Vahn's head and hugging it tightly.
"Well, how about it, Mama? Can she...?" Vahn asked, turning to Miu with an affectionate and slightly playful smile.
"Haaaaa...as long as you can guarantee her safety..." Miu sighed. She was personally opposed to exposing Kiyomi to the wonders beyond her world, yet she didn't have the heart to deny her.
"Yay! Thank you, Mama! Let's go, Papa~!" Kiyomi chimed, grabbing hold of Vahn's hair like reins and kicking his chest with the backs of her heels.
"Of course~" Vahn responded, stepping forward and phasing through the three-meter-thick glass that separated viewers from the creatures within the aquarium. The same intangibility was superimposed on top of Kiyomi, but even if it hadn't been, all of Vahn's children were durable enough that nothing short of a nuclear warhead being detonated directly in their faces could harm them—courtesy of Tiamat.
Sensing Vahn's and Kiyomi's presence, the young Sea King turned toward them and recoiled—its eyes opening to their limits. It wasn't the first time Vahn had brought one of his kids to the aquarium, and the last time, it had made the mistake of attacking them. In retaliation, Vahn had sent it falling through a series of portals for nearly a full day. Thus, while its first instinct was to turn and swim away, the Sea King, trembling, ultimately lowered its head and allowed Vahn and Kiyomi to approach it, an almost human smile adorning its face as it did its best to be ingratiating to the little girl and the monster looming behind her...
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[January 15th DxD/September 7th DBT]
"Mmmnnngh..."
Rousing after a simultaneously long but short evening, the result of one of his clones making use of time compression, Vahn Prime performed a lying stretch before rising to a seated position within a tent formed from animal hide and bone. Next to him, the spear form of Laev-tan hummed, spurring him to pick her up.
'Good morning. Did you sleep well...?' Laev-tan asked, her voice echoing in Vahn's mind as a pleasant hum.
"Very..." Vahn responded, looking around the small but accommodating tent. Ordinarily, he would wake with Lupheria sleeping next to or sprawled on top of him. Her absence suggested she was either out hunting for their breakfast or securing the area around their camp. Likely both.
Exiting the tent's double-layered flap, Vahn found himself in what looked like an impossibly immense cavern based on the rocky ceiling high above him. But, excluding a few areas where the peaks of mountains or massive rock formations came within a few hundred meters of touching, there was nothing to brace the ceiling. And if he looked toward the horizon, he could see it curving upward, as if the ground beneath him and the rocky ceiling high above were spherical planes with an average gap of eight kilometers separating them.
vrrrrrrrrr
As Vahn took in the familiar yet awe-inspiring sight with a relaxed smile, a swarm of what appeared to be honeybees began descending toward him like an ever-shifting cloud. Notably, unlike normal honeybees, which were an average of 20mm in length, those descending toward him were closer to three meters—equipped with spear-like stingers seventy centimeters in length.
"Hmmn...how odd...these aren't creatures that normally attack unless provoked..." Vahn noted aloud, shifting Laev-tan in the grip of his right hand, his thumb absentmindedly caressing her golden haft. Each of the bees before him was a B-Rank monster, but since they were only around the level of being able to destroy a small building, they weren't a threat to him.
Deciding to show mercy, Vahn waited until the bees had begun dive-bombing toward him, their stingers extended and their compound eyes filled with fury, before raising his left hand and releasing a reverberating pulse through his Domain. The vibrations affected space itself, so while they resembled a hazy wave, they stopped the descending bees alive in their tracks.
"Alright, let's see what has you lot in a tiff~" Vahn mused aloud, rising from the ground as if gravity had no sway over him before flying through the sky with the swarm of bees, buzzing loudly, trailing behind him as if they were ensnared in an invisible drag net. He was a frequent visitor to the colossal honeybees' hive, so he knew precisely where to take them.
After ascending to around six kilometers, the fluid within Vahn's inner ear shifted, accompanied by the sensation that he was suddenly falling head-first toward the ground. It was a little disorienting, but as it wasn't his first time experiencing the peculiar phenomenon, Vahn simply flipped over and began his descent toward a beehive larger than some cities.
"So, that's how it is..." Vahn muttered, his eyes narrowing at the sight of a group of colossal horned lizards, each more than twenty meters in length, tearing through the beehive and chomping down on the honeycomb and larvae within. It was strange to consider, but he concluded that the bees, knowing he wouldn't kill them without cause, had attacked him to spur his investigation. Thus, after a moment of consideration, he descended like a bolt of lightning, piercing through the base of one of the colossal lizard's heads.
KAROOHM
Reacting to the powerful vibration that spread through the ground, the remaining lizards turned to face Vahn and their fallen companion before immediately turning tail and retreating. A month prior, they wouldn't have hesitated to fight Vahn to the death. But as those with such a nature had all but been wiped out by that point, those who remained had adapted to flee from him on sight.
"I know that you were just doing your best to survive, but I can't have you wiping out my second-favorite colony of bees..." Vahn sighed, cupping his hands and bowing toward the lizard he had slain. He could have scared it off with the rest, but since he was running low on high-quality lizard meat and scales, he ended its life with the intention of utilizing every part of its corpse.
Finished with his prayer, Vahn freed the honeybees to begin rebuilding before flying away with the colossal lizard trailing behind him. Along the way, a serpentine creature the size of a skyscraper attempted to steal his quarry for itself, but a swift kick to the jaw sent it crashing into the ground before it slithered away as if its life depended on it...
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(A/N: I'm still alive! As for why there haven't been any updates recently, it's because I had to get a Summer job to support myself. I'm planning to increase my output in the future, but if I'm not able to earn enough to support myself through Patreon, I don't have much of a choice but to take breaks for a proper job xD...)