*Ring-Ring-Ring-Ring!*
"Hm? Ah, hold on, guys."
Abaddon put down everything that he was doing and found a place to sit.
Earbuds that were already connected to his phone found their way into his ears and he hurried to pick up the call.
There, he saw a very adorable little face nestled in bed and looking half asleep.
She even had a little bonet on her head.
"You answered..." Courtney rubbed her eyes sleepily.
"Of course I did, sweetheart. I told you that I would answer you no matter what, didn't I? Don't tell me that you thought your old man was a liar."
"No, but Mommy and Stepmom said that you might be too busy..."
Abaddon smiled at her sadly. "I'll never be too busy for you or your siblings. I'll have to scold your mothers when I get home for telling you such a lie."
Courtney sleepily looked to the side before turning her gaze back to her tablet.
"They made weird noises and left the room."
Abaddon was really regretting his decision to come on this trip now.
Don't get him wrong, he knew that it was important, but...it was decidedly not better than sex.
'I wonder if I could step away for a moment and then come back once I've let out enough...'
He licked his lips at the thought and then opened his mouth to tell Courtney that he would be coming home for the night.
"Daddy..?"
"Y-Yes?" All deviant thoughts were immediately shaken from his brain.
"I don't think I like school anymore... Can I stop going..?"
Abaddon felt as if he'd just taken a punch to the gut that was more significant than any injury he'd suffered in the past several months or so.
He wasn't caught up on Courtney's progress in school since he'd been here, but if his first report from Adeline was anything to go off of, she likely still wasn't having a good time.
It left Abaddon feeling a bit conflicted.
Part of him wanted to pull his daughter from school the moment that she confessed to being unhappy.
But those were mere projections of his own disgruntled adolescence.
And the more he thought about it, the more he felt he might be denying his daughter a greater experience in the future just because he was overly paranoid.
He opened his mouth to sigh before he made a decision.
"...Is anyone picking on you?"
"W-Well, no..."
"Nobody is putting their hands on you either, right??"
"No..."
"Then just stick it out for me just a little bit longer, Courtney. At least until the end of the term."
Abaddon figured that by that point Courtney would have at least made one friend.
And plus, schools normally started hosting more fun events towards the end of the year, so his hope was that those things would help her liven up.
He didn't know how she was going to react to his decision, but perhaps because his daughter was already tired, she didn't even try to complain.
"I'll try... Will you tell me a bedtime story?"
'You don't really seem like you need it.' He chuckled internally.
Without even the slightest hint of embarrassment, Abaddon proceeded to recite 'If You Give a Dragon a Donut' from memory.
And true to his suspicions, Courtney ended up falling asleep after less than a minute into it.
He silently bid her goodbye before hanging up the phone, and his anxiety quickly set in.
"Yes, naturally!" He lied. "He is my grandson after all!"
"Amazing..." Jormir muttered.
In the sky above, a countless number of dragons were soaring gracefully in the sky.
And for the first time in an incalculable number of years, they were flying freely without the threat of persecution or riders atop their backs.
This was a complete upheaval of the old order.
Abaddon and his allies had spent the past four days liberating their kin all across the planet.
With the use of Belphegor's abilities and the abyss walkers, they had already touched every stretch of land within Visoleer in some shape or form.
And with true dragons possessing the ability to share memories among each other, the dragon colony was able to spread news of the arrival of their saviors to others all across the planet.
Naturally, some dragons were afraid to step out with inhabitants of the abyss wreaking havoc.
Their dark and chaotic energy was disturbing to the oldest of dragons, and they would not so easily fight alongside such perceivably sinister creatures.
However, once they gained the memories of their source coming to liberate them with these creatures in tow, they understandably lost their hesitation.
As a result, things were going wayyy smoother than anticipated.
And the group was growing unbearably bored.
Their most recent showing was only one in an ongoing series of games ment to liven up this decidedly dull vacation.
Some other games included fighting blindfolded, fighting with one hand behind their back, and fighting with one leg in the air the whole time.
But it was still in need of more excitement.
"Should we just skip around to that Imperial guy now?" Hajun yawned. "He's supposedly the only interesting one among the rabble."
The air suddenly became noticeably warmer.
Looking back, the men found Helios and Hajun smoldering with geriatric rage.
"Oh...? Seems to be a little story there." Asmodeus said with interest. "Mind letting us in on this little backstory? The plot could use some thickening."
Helios looked like he was going to finally reveal a painful piece of his backstory when Abaddon suddenly stood up dramatically.
His gaze was focused in one single direction far from their current position.
Judging by the look on his face, something actually noteworthy had finally occurred.
"Well now... So we meet at last." He smiled eerily.
"Son?" Asmodeus called. "What do you see?"
Abaddon floated into the sky with a large smile on his face and an excitable air around him.
"It seems an end to our boredom is finally at hand, men. The hunters are here."
-
On the opposing side of the continent, the war was still raging with no end in sight.
The only difference was, there was now a new player involved to throw things into disarray.
Humans not native to visolerr were rushing the Abyss Walkers.
Men in brown trenchcoats and white shirts were yelling out unfamiliar words.
"Creature of below, return from the nothingness from whence you came!!"
A bright orange sigil appeared in front of the men before passing over the Abyss Walkers.
Once their bodies were engulfed, they let out horrendous shrieks before their bodies vanished from the world for good.
This scene was repeated dozens, if not hundreds of times over across the shattered city.
Among the men, there was one who seemed to be the normal rabble.
A familiar old man with short silver hair was in the process of banishing his twelfth impure creature when he suddenly heard a voice more chillingly pleasant than any he had ever heard before.
"Director Shin Nagumo of the Shining Order of Sacred Mercy. What a grand honor this is. I've been wanting to meet you for quite a long time."