^^ Lesser Deity of Astral Mana ^^

— Nonith, Anitra's Divine Dungeon Arena, Anitra —

Getting from Tier Three to Tier Five in one day was not exactly my plan for today. I mean, I intended to Recreate Arcata, and I assumed that would give me a chunk of XP, but then Muradin, that big fuckin' drama queen, decided to piss me off inside my own territory, and apparently me kicking their little ass and force-choking them was enough to count as 'Defeating them in Honorable Combat', for some reason. I mean, I get the difference between us is pretty massive, even as weakened as they are, but Twelve Levels at once seemed a little bit like Overkill. Add in my XP Modifier, and... yeah. Still, the 1/3 XP thing was enough to take my 74.91 Levels of nonsense and turn it into 24.97... and then of course the Lesser Deity I captured as part of that Oath Process bumped me up a bit more than the measly .3% I needed.

The Lesser Deity in question was a Lesser Deity of Slaughter called 'Avtç', according to themselves and Muradin, though the name really only worked mentally, so the Gate was a little difficult, but overall manageable. I was quite happy to get that particular Deity out of the way, considering all the utter chaos they could've caused if they made any more Pacts. Plus, their Divine Realm was useful when fused with mine, because all the Death inside the Dungeons now actually produced Prana for me, even when just Monsters died, meaning every single person in the dungeons, whoever they worshiped, now made me Prana with every kill, even while their Mana went to someone else. Very useful.

Of course, with Muradin's nerf on our deal, I didn't get to get 80 stat points a level, so instead I settled for the highest 'paying' class, the one that gave me 64, (10 in each stat and 4 extra,) the Paladin Oath of Slaughter Class from Avtç, and now I was back inside the Class change place, looking at a very surprised and ice-blue tiefling-esque woman in leather clothing who, eschewing the apparent tradition of making a version of me for her Class Portrait, was just standing in the mirror with her Spellbook and icy hair, staring down at me with an expression of confused awe.

"Weren't you... just here?"

"I had a lot of XP Banked." I shrugged.

"HOW?!?"

"Beat up a god, got a couple Titles, but that's not important; you're a Lesser Deity of some form of Magic, right? But not a disciple or subordinate of Muradin?"Her pallid skin rippled with colors for a moment, catching my attention briefly before I kicked myself mentally. 'No, bad Laura, no shiny for you!!! Pay attention!!! Get her name!!! Honey, is she on the list of Evil Deities?'

"I am most certainly not a Disciple of that faceless hack!!! My Magic is based on using Emotions as Fuel, and it's called 'Astral Magic' or 'Infernal Magic' by the uneducated fools who only see how it is used, and not it's potential!!!"

'She is on the list, yes: she may talk a good talk, but she glassed three planets to fuel the spell that became her Apotheosis. Her morals are bankrupt, even if she's right about her Magic being logically and ethically neutral when used with solid ethics.'

"Mm... I see, so you can turn the chemicals of the mind into Mana? That's interesting..."

"The Soul interacts with The Weave, in small amounts, and those ripples of Astral Energy can be harvested for Magic. As for Chemicals of the Mind... how do you mean?"

"The human brain secretes chemicals to synthesize emotions in response to stimuli. Emotions are the flexing of the brain to try to help itself survive and thrive in society, so how that interacts with the Soul and the Weave is a curious concept to me... regardless, my previous class gave me 64 Stats per level; how many will you give me? Keep in mind I have Prana, not Mana, due to my Titles, and I know exactly how valuable that would be for you, a lesser deity, so if you don't give me a good deal, I'll just make an offer to one of the Demigods over there and help them Ascend."

Her skin rippled again with a riot of colors, even though her face didn't move, for several quiet minutes. Eventually, she opened her mouth, and I noticed a vague delay in her movements versus the sound coming from the mirror. "You are saying that you can offer enough Prana to create Apotheosis? Alone?"

I smirked at her, deciding to play the part of the arrogant brat to get her more comfortable with the process of 'fleecing' me. "I am Anitra the Legendary Living Deity and Legendary Unbound Champion, dear; I own 30 different Dungeons, and my Titles turn all that Mana directly into Prana, after it gets purified and amplified by the Divine Planar Engine I've merged with my Mage Core. I could help ten different Demigods entirely replace their Mana with Prana in less than a week."

The rippled calmed, visibly stabilizing as she smiled. "Ah, yes, I've heard of you! Naughty little human, stealing someone's Divine Realm!!! Is that how you beat the Deity you got all the XP from?"

"Yes, actually, it wasn't that difficult, once they didn't have a way to recover their Prana... anyway, what's your offer? I'm inclined to get this done swiftly, I don't want to spend a whole year in this place, so if you can't offer me more than my previous Class, someone else will, and you know it."

"That's true, yes... I can offer 66, but that's the highest I can go; that's almost 30 more than most people ever get, even Rare Classes, so you've done very well for yourself... though how you'll get more at Tier Six and Seven, that I don't know."

"66, huh? Only two more? Can anyone else with a Pact Class do better than that?" My gaze swept over the various versions of myself in the mirrors, but they all turned away swiftly, falsely affecting disinterest. "Hmph. Cowards, the lot of you, with no sense of Risk!!! Fine, sign my Contract, and we can do business: one of my Unique Skills is the Legendary Pact of Equity, so you can be assured of it's fairness."

"Pact of Equity, Hmm? Impressive, that's not an easy Pact to get... alright, fine, contract seems easy enough... sharing of magical knowledge, agreement to one Mandatory Summoning via User-Sponsored Portal, presumably for a Smiting, very fun, I like that you're paying for the portal, portal magic is expensive... in exchange, 20% total Mana Regeneration, a bit low, but for a Tier Five with four Pacts, it seems fair. Any more and you wouldn't have any Regen left, and then you'd be useless to me!"

"And dead, of course." I raised an eyebrow at her blithely, making her grin and shrug in response while she signed the contract, causing the mirror to shatter. "Now, your method of magic simply means you use normal magic but you power it with a different type of energy, right?" We were suddenly in a wide gazebo on a mountaintop, sitting across from each other on a felt mat, making me sigh heavily. "Oh, please dear god don't tell me you want to try to get me in touch with my feelings!"

"Considering my Magic is based on Emotions, yes."

"Okay, no, just tell me your methods and I'll get it started on my own, I refuse to subject myself to some hippy-bullshit lesson on my Reiki and my 'Clouded Connection to the Higher Planes'!!!"

She raised an eyebrow, nearly touching it to her Lily-white horn. "You chose an Emotional Magic Class whilst having deep issues with its concepts?"

"You had the best stats, honey, don't think too highly of yourself, okay? I still think your whole shtick is bullshit; your magic is from manipulating Astral Energy generated by and altered by the Soul, right? I have to assume that that means you can drain other peoples' emotions and their souls as well, and use that to power Magical Spells with Souls as Batteries, yes? I couldn't give a shit less about using my own Emotions, considering it's likely vampiric effect on the target. I collect souls in my Divine Realm, and I can say first hand that they're not individually that powerful, so you're probably going to tell me I can just put them in states of extreme stress and then harvest them at their peak, right?"

The milky-skinned tiefling hummed, leaning her cheek against her fist. "If you knew all of that, why did you agree to my Pact and act like you believed me that it was innocent Magic? Aren't you a Chaotic-Good type Champion?"

I scoffed rudely at her (admittedly true) assertion. "Are you serious? I'm contracted to the Deity of Slaughter, ya Knucklehead! You think I care about killing a few bastards and using their souls as batteries?!? Get to the teaching, please, I ain't got all day here!!!"

She grinned slowly, revealing sharp fangs while the scenery was replaced with a torture chamber. "Ahhh, that does make things... so much easier..."

—

My vicious, soul-deep, perhaps unhealthy amount of utterly savage joy at seeing that sadistic bitches face as she was suddenly trapped in my prison, the emotions and Mana and Prana all being drained from her and my other prisoners at an alarming rate by her own magical methods, caused even Muradin to take a step back away from me for a moment, watching me warily, but I didn't care: the complete and utter amoral, sociopathic, psychotic shit I'd had to listen to coming out of her mouth for a whole month was finally over, and the sheer poetry of her eternal prison filled me with a genuine, honest, and bone-deep feeling of true schadenfreude.

"Are you alright, Anitra darling?" Honey The Sweet, the kindest person in the room, placed a hand on my shoulder, looking genuinely concerned for my well-being, so I decided to explain a bit to soothe her concerns.

"That bitch really deserved it... and the Poetry of it makes me... immeasurably proud... Like some version of True Justice is finally being dosed out like the bitterest of medicines... and the assurance she'll never be able to get out of there while myself and Muradin still live? Ha!!!"

She smiled and nodded in agreement. "Ahh, yes, I understand completely; the immaculate joy of Justice being done, especially on someone like this... yes, I've faced similar things before. And her Divine Realm is a good mix with yours, isn't it?"

"The best!!! All the monsters have some version of the soul, so they give off emotions, then when they die I get Prana from their Slaughter, and the Adventurers give off emotions constantly, and when they die, I get both the XP they lose as Prana and the emotions that get siphoned away to lessen the psychological trauma on them, so no matter what happens, the Dungeons are more efficient than ever at collecting Mana and Prana!!! Then my Titles are turning all the Mana into Prana, which benefits Muradin because they don't have to alter the state of my energy to make it useful, losing a bit to inefficiency in the meantime!!! And, I get XP for every time I siphon Emotions from someone, so the longer they stay in there and the more Adventurers who have anxiety attacks in my dungeons, the more XP I get passively!!! She really was the best choice of Tier Five Classes!!! I'll be Tier Seven in a month if this works out as well in reality as it does on paper!!!" I cackled wildly, closing the mirror that was showing me the now-blank and lifeless faces of my evil little captives, then stepped out of the Cathedral into my own Realm, looking at the city through the real-time model in my 'Public' Laboratory. "Now, Luxos, how did everything go, any hiccups? Problems I can fix or work at?"

The giant woman stepped through my still-open portal, grinning victoriously herself, though perhaps a bit less maniacally than I had been. "Oh, they tried to be salty. That grandson of mine, Hothien, tried to get snooty with me, but I beat his little ass like a red-headed step-child and then gave his nephew the Emperor a spanking as well, it was quite comical. The Emperor is aware that he is now a King, not an Emperor, and that the city-state of Arcata is a Trade Nation, with our main import-export being Dungeons, and that any military action is to be retaliatory only. He's also aware about Idyllis, which he's expressed interest in purchasing from you, wholesale; even though I told him it was pointless, he didn't seem to want to listen. Curiously he believes himself to still be in charge, and is demanding a meeting with you, ordering you to appear before him, but I say you make him wait; it'll set a good precedent for the future."

"Mm, true. I plan to ignore him until he sends someone to request an appointment, actually. I already told Marshall Eric that the royal family only got one unannounced visit, and they'd used up theirs. I hope he remembers, and doesn't do something stupid."

"Yeah, well, don't hold your breath... so, why isn't the city spinning yet, by the way? We worked pretty hard on your Energy Generation Methods, seems a little silly not to use them, right?"

"I plan on making a Dramatic reveal of that part, to be honest; maybe when the Royal Family's dogs reach us and annoy me, I'll spin the whole city on its head as a warning, eh?" I grinned, watching the model and the troops marching from the Castle District towards the Bazaar, where my Official Residence and Ducal Territory technically resided.

She laughed sharply, glaring at the model with a wolfish, predatory gleam to her eyes. "Ahhh, yesssss... Such Pure Chaos..."

"Your thoughts are leaking, Dearest." Muradin tapped her shoulder gently, looking between us concernedly before lowering their voice and speaking in their ear. "Maybe she's a bad influence on you?"

She smiled and gripped their hand gently. "It's alright, I'm just enjoying the comeuppance of some arrogant idiots who was responsible for the abject rot of my Wedding Laurels into a joke known around the world as 'Fallen'. I'm fine. Also, Anitra is a great influence, she's very funny!"

"Why thank you!" I smiled, then stepped through a portal again to the place I had been watching on the model, the top floor of my Golden Gate Tower in the center of the Bazaar. Below, the soldiers were being barred access by my golems at the edge of the Bazaar, comically and pointlessly trying to reason with the faceless Golems that were blocking their way.

Suddenly, Aron opened the sliding glass door of my office's balcony, gasping for breath. "Ah! There you are, Lady Anitra!!! Uhm, a few updates?!? The city is flying, and the Emperor is demanding your presence?!?"

"I'm aware of the flying city, I am the Creator of said enchantment, with Luxos's permission. As for the royal family's invitation, I will politely decline; they are welcome to make an appointment to come see me, however. Any other bits of information that require my attention before we go on our next Dungeon Hunting Expedition?"

"How did you make the CITY FLY?!?"

"It's a bit rare for you to raise your voice, Aron, are you alright? It's just a Flight Enchantment, that's literally the easiest of all the enchantments I put on the city, no need to get bent out of shape, eh?" I patted his hair down softly, smiling gently at him while he visibly calmed down. "There, see? All is well! Now, could you kindly inform those soldiers that they are not welcome unless they get an appointment? And on the way send me the Guild Executives, so I can get my monthly report?"

He sighed, nodding under my hand. "Yes, my lady Anitra. Is there anything else I should know?"

"Hmm? Ah, yes, the city spins, too! You'll see what I mean later, it's a real hoot!!! Off you go, dear, I imagine they're getting impatient at the gate."

As he disappeared off into the stairs with a rapidly clearing expression of confusion, the shadows to my right spoke suddenly. "When you say 'Spin'... you do mean in compass directions... right?"

"That would be boring, Aric." I smirked, sitting at my desk and summoning the Board Table for the Executives that were quickly appearing and taking their seats around the room. Once they'd all filed in, I nodded, having Heron seal the door and stand in front of it as usual. "Good! Now, let's begin your monthly report, everyone! How's everything going, any hiccups?"

"Besides us all being tossed around and teleported into the Dark Bazaar, which is apparently upside down?" One of the Rogues raised an eyebrow at me archly.

"Yes, besides that, we'll address that at the end of the meeting."

"Then no, no hiccups. Three more Dungeon Cores have been captured, but one of them was stolen by a different Branch of the Thieves' Guild, and that whole team was killed, except for one scout who wasn't with the group at the time."

"And my Cleric?"

"That group didn't have one, my lady."

"Damn... if they'd killed a cleric I could've sicced Stone Eye on them... no offense, of course, but I can't do the same for the Thieves."

"Understandable. We're tracking the stolen Core and the Thieves, and they're currently in a ship headed for a different Continent, so they're... beyond our reach, for now."

"Mm. Keep an eye on it, if it comes near any of our Gates, I'll send the Breath of the Grim after it. How goes my Collection of the other Thieves' Guild Branches?"

"On track for completion on this continent in around four more months, without direct intervention by the Grim and our Rogue Champion."

"Have them intervene, then, I want it under control in the next week, if possible. With Arcata now becoming a Trade Nation and City-State, I need to ensure that the only assassinations happening on this continent are ones we have sanctioned... can't have any foreign dignitaries slain in my care by a member of a Thieves' Guild, because the excuse that I didn't order it won't work, with my Dungeon Merchant Guild having control of the majority of this continent's Thieves."

The Rogue executives looked at each other, then nodded to me. "It will be done, Lady Anitra."

"And the Merchant side of things? Profit Margins Green?"

"Black, actually; are you certain we must pay taxes? At this amount of Profit, we'll have to pay 40%..."

"Yes, we will pay our taxes properly; oh! And one more thing, I own the City of Idyllis, which does not yet produce Taxes, but eventually the profits we get from Idyllis will be rather massive, after it becomes more popular, so it'll cover any Taxes we have to pay to Arcata. Oh, one last thing? Idyllis is my city, built by me for me; it is a City State of its own right, and I am it's Owner, so I'll be changing my name to Anitra Idyllis, not Arcata, effective immediately."

Heron, perking up at the door, frowned in my direction. "You mean.., you're forgoing your Duchy?"

"No, I'm forgoing my claim to the Throne of Arcata, and disconnecting myself from the Royal Family; I'll be just a normal Duchess, now, with my own Family Name and my own Family Line."

"... damn, okay. Well, that definitively screws up the Emperor's Plan to use you as a threat to sharpen up his other grandchildren..."

"Oh I'm sure it does, but I don't give a damn; his plans aren't my problem. Now! Me! How goes the &6)2?" The word 'Game' was audibly and mentally censored for citizens of this world, as was any information about Earth, through a rather simple, yet powerful Geas.

A simulacrum of myself that had been managing the players while I was gone glanced up from the screen she was still watching even now, organizing players rewards and penalties. "$/-:;@: (Your Bank Accounts on Earth are doing rather well, in the Millions already. The players are discovering that Gold has value on earth, and a Trading Platform has been established, to limit Black Markets tricking people. Coin Value has been established as Ten Coppers are one Cent, 1 Silver is 1$, 1 Gold is 1,000$, and 1 Platinum is 1,000,000$; no one has bought a Platinum yet, unfortunately, but Gold is being traded rather widely.)@-;:;! Players have generally managed to reach Tier Two, and one of the players reached Tier Three by diving in dungeons continuously for the past two months... they took the Warrior Class, and have been a Purist the whole time, it's rather interesting... I think he wants to be a Sword Saint or something, the little :$(Weeb)$:."

"Ahh, are you talking about that new adventurer, Inigo Montoya, wasn't it? He's been bringing in a ridiculous amount of Loot, incredibly efficient!" One of the Executive Merchants grinned happily, ignoring my and my simulacrum's deep sighs of irritation.

"Regardless... let's break, and see if we can rebalance ourselves before the city decided to start spinning like a top around us, okay?"

"Wait... what?"