Chapter 2288: Forever Longing

After thoroughly stabilizing and purifying the previously hellish Realm of his opponent’s stomach, Vahn surprised Leviathan by simply teleporting outside. His other selves had made this an option from the very start, but he couldn’t just ignore an ocean of billions of spirits crying out in pain.

With Vahn shifting his attention to her, his eyes squinting in displeasure, Leviathan recovered enough of her faculties to bend the knee, lower her head, and say, “The Abyss Dragon, Leviathan, greets her Master, the Sage Dragon Emperor…”

Without changing his expression, Vahn remarked, “I don’t recall accepting you as my subordinate.”

Exhaling a sigh, Leviathan lost her facade of respect as she sat back on the ground, legs spread lazily and carelessly as she said, “Then just get on with it. Now that my original self has been destroyed, the only thing sustaining me is whatever you did while inside me. I figured I could get vengeance by serving you, but I’m sure as hell not going to beg.”

“Hmmm…”

Tearing his eyes away from the admittedly captivating sight of Levithan, Vahn briefly skimmed his Unit Management, unsurprised to find her name listed among his subordinates. He had complete dominion over the Realm within her, so it was no surprise he also had Authority over her. Quite a bit if her ‘Eternal Servitude’ Status was any indicator.

“Stand up.”

Feeling a wave of compulsion surge through her body, an additional sigh escaped Leviathan’s throat as she rose to her feet and remarked, “Don’t get carried away…” in a lazy, non-threatening tone. She knew there was nothing she could do even if Vahn ordered her to rip out her own guts or impale herself on a spike. As far as the Central Network was concerned, she was now an extension of him, a sapient Gift in the same vein as Algol before her liberation.

Realizing the woman had been effectively eliminated as a threat, Vahn took a moment to consider his options before asking, “The collapse of your Realm. Were you betrayed?”

Spreading her hands and shrugging dismissively, Leviathan answered, “Not really. If I had to guess, it was a failsafe our Strategist came up with to destroy your Avatara in the event my Hell of Envy failed to incapacitate you. My pride just doesn’t allow me to accept being treated as a Pawn, so I couldn’t help ripping apart Death the moment you resurrected me.”

Hearing Leviathan mention the Hell of Envy, Vahn now understood why all the Spirits condemned within were so eager to impose their suffering unto him.

“Your Community, which did you belong to?”

Giving Vahn a skeptical look, Leviathan stood with one hand on her hip, her thick tail sliding across the ground as she flatly replied, “Aren’t you supposed to possess some form of omniscience? Even if you didn’t, my name and status as a Pure-Blooded Dragon should be a dead giveaway. You really are new to the Divine Realm, aren’t you?”

Punctuating her words with a flip of her long, two-tone black and blue hair, Leviathan made it clear she had no intention of answering without a direct order. She may have lost her Origin, but she was still an extremely prideful woman. In her mind, it was nonsensical for Vahn not to know who she was.

Resisting the urge to order the proud Dragoness to beg like a puppy, Vahn flatly replied, “Judging by how you referred to yourself as an Avatara, your Community must reside in 1-3-Digit Gates. If I had to guess, you’re, or at least were, a member of the 666 Beasts.”

Clapping her hands together with a completely uninterested expression on her face, Leviathan retorted, “Woooooow, look at you. You can do it if you try…”

“…”

Inhaling a deep breath and exhaling through his nose, Vahn compelled himself to calm down before remarking, “You’re playing with fire…”

Snorting through her nose, Leviathan asked, “What are you going to do about it? As far as I’m concerned, you’re wasting both of our time. You supposedly have the power to know anything you want to know, so this conversation is entirely pointless. If you’re going to kill, torture, fuck, or let me go, just get on with it. I hate being interrogated.”

In a presumed effort to entice Vahn towards a specific option, Leviathan gave the thong-like straps of her Dragonskin chaps a pop. She still didn’t want to die, so even if she had to reduce herself to little more than a sex slave, she was willing to do whatever it took to survive, obtain power, and seek revenge—everything except yielding her pride.

Though Leviathan’s ‘Hell of Envy’ hadn’t left the best impression on him, Vahn’s eyes couldn’t help being drawn to her actions. The anatomy of her hips and thighs were different from ordinary women, but considering she had a tail nearly as thick as his abdomen, that wasn’t too surprising…

Raising her brows, Leviathan asked, “What’s this? The so-called ‘Ancestor of all Pure-Blooded Dragons’ is hesitating? I am not unwilling, and there is absolutely nothing I can do to stop you. If you want to fuck me, then fuck me. It’s that simple.”

Feeling his draconic nature stirring in response to Leviathan’s words, Vahn closed his gold-shifted eyes in an effort to suppress his growing desire to push down and ‘dominate’ the arrogant Dragoness…

“Pathetic…some Dragon God you-“

Unable to finish her words, Leviathan found her face impacting the grassy ground with enough force to embed half her face into the fragrant topsoil. A wave of anger washed over her, but, at the same time, her thinly veiled concupiscence was thoroughly enkindled. She would never admit it, but from the moment she recognized Vahn as her Master, an ever-increasing desire to be conquered by him had been swelling in her heart. She hadn’t been goading him without purpose.

With his left hand forcing Leviathan’s head into the ground and his right restraining her tail, Vahn’s pupils expanded and contracted as he fought to suppress his instincts. Being recognized as the Progenitor of Dragons meant he was constantly being assailed by the ‘beliefs’ of billions, if not trillions of people. He could always ignore it, but as it was necessary for his plans, Vahn had been allowing it to build ever since his battle against Amaterasu.

Surprising and disappointing Leviathan, Vahn suddenly released her from his grasp. Her wild mane of hair became noticeably spikier as a result of her incomprehensible rage. However, before she could even think about lashing out, Vahn manifested an entire palace and throne out of thin air, saying, “Sit.” in a commanding tone.

Unable to resist the compulsion of Vahn’s voice, Leviathan’s rather large rump impacted the ground with enough force to leave cracks in the stone floor, the tip of her tail twitching in frustration as she glared at him with an expression reminiscent of a wild dog, teeth bared and growling.

Leaning onto the knuckles of his right fist, Vahn turned Leviathan’s fury to vexed indignation as he said, “If you’re that eager to be conquered, then do it yourself. With the vast disparity in our power, expecting me to do all the work is simply arrogant…”

Though she had never felt such rage and frustration since the moment of her inception, Leviathan slowly rose to her feet and said, “Don’t regret it…” in a threatening tone. Then, with the intent of ‘turning the tables’ on Vahn, she began peeling away her clothes as she approached his throne with a hungry, borderline murderous expression on her face…

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Ignoring the pregnant-looking woman passed out next to him, eyes rolled back and butt sticking in the air, Vahn was wondering what he should do about the 666 Beasts. They were one of the most powerful and influential Demonic Communities in the Little Garden. More importantly, they were a counterbalance to the Rank 13 entity known as Truth, the Primeval Divine Spirit serving as the Origin of nearly every Monotheistic Religion.

Though he could always seize and reassign the Origins of the current 666 Beast members, it wouldn’t solve the underlying issue. Unless he created evil or malicious entities willing to commit all manner of atrocities, Vahn’s takeover of Communities such as the 666 Beasts would invariably disrupt the balance of Creation. He couldn’t simply erase evil from existence, so unless he intended to wipe out both the 666 Beasts and Truth itself, there was very little reason to concern himself with their machinations. Unless they were legitimately seeking death, they should avoid him of their own accord in the future.

“I miss when things were simpler…”

Undoubtedly as a result of the time he spent with Sandora, Vahn was no longer looking forward to taking on the Little Garden and climbing his way through the Ranks of the Inner Gates. He just wanted to return ‘home’ and be with the people he loved…

Exhaling a weary sigh, Vahn pushed Leviathan onto her side before lying down next to her and burying his face in her rather ample bosom. She had an aroma that was anything but comforting, but that didn’t prevent Vahn from nestling into the soft yet firm mammaries and simply letting his mind wander…

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After reconvening back at the coliseum, Sandora, Izayoi, and Yo stood on the sidelines as Asuka tried to use her Authority-based Gift, Oraculum, to interrogate the trio from Grimm Grimoire Hamlin. Sandora had sealed their powers, but due to pre-existing contracts they had made before the Gift Game, prohibiting them from revealing the answer, the interrogation had born little fruit.

Realizing that a direct answer would be impossible to acquire, Asuka had spent the better part of twenty minutes compelling Black Percher, Weser, and Ratten to share their origins. All Demon Lords had specific origins, so she was confident she would be able to sus out the answer once she had learned each of them.

Unsurprisingly, Black Percher was the amalgamation of the more than 80 million people, predominately children, that had succumbed to the Black Plague. The more surprising revelation was that she was one of the very first victims, the daughter of a landed noble from Eastern Europe who got infected because she had secretly been providing food and water to her family’s ailing servants.

In response to his daughter’s infection, Black Percher’s father effectively imprisoned her as a rudimentary form of quarantine before subsequently executing every servant, serf, and animal that had come into contact with her. What he didn’t know was that the majority of infections were caused by much smaller creatures: fleas and ticks whose bellies were filled with the contaminated blood of an ever-increasing number of corpses.

Despite his efforts, it wasn’t long before Black Percher’s father, mother, and the rest of her family contracted the same disease. Shortly after that, her father set fire to the estate, a final effort to prevent the spread of the disease and ‘purify’ the land of a plague he believed to be imposed upon them by God.

Moments before her death, as her lungs filled with smoke, Black Percher shouted a curse from the confines of her prison cell. She damned each of them to death, tears of rage and resentment streaming down her face as she writhed about in a vain attempt to smother the flames that invariably consumed her body.

Due to the blame that had been assigned to her, the curse Black Percher made in her final moments ended up accruing her a bit of Spiritual Power. Every time a member of her family or someone else who blamed her died, she became a little bit stronger.

After wandering Europe aimlessly for hundreds of years, Black Percher found her way into Asia, countless spirits gathering around her until she eventually found herself at the center of a ‘family’ comprised of more than 80 million vengeful spirits. Then, as if she had awoken from a bad dream, she spontaneously found herself in the Divine Realm, bound to a ring and given the explanation that her suffering was the result of the Sun being in a cooling period, an event caused by the whimsical nature of beings such as Shiroyasha…

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(A/N: Alternate Titles: ‘Dragons are a bunch of horn dogs…’,’The regret and clarity that follows a moment of passion…’,’Mega oof…’)