A Nascent Kaleidoscope.

Chapter 547:

I don't know how this happened. Well, I did know the sequence of events, but the how seemed rather improbable.

I had to turn away and rub my temples because I was quickly getting a headache. A significant feat, because I don't think I've ever had to deal with someone who was able to push my buttons like this. Well, specifically someone I couldn't just punch and be done with.

Tiamat was just silently laying on my couch.

She just decided to stay and thought that was the end of things. Don't get me wrong, if a powerful Dragon wanted to 'vacation' here for a bit, it would probably do nothing but help in the scenario that the Fae somehow counter attack.

But at the same time, I was quickly approaching my limit.

"Mother, you're still here?" Ereshkigal and Rin walked out.

"I like it here; I'm going to stay for a while." Tiamat said simply.

"She's not." I corrected.

They ignored me. I looked to Izzy for help, and she looked away.

Ddraig, your Ex is shameless.

[There were times when she went out into the Human World and didn't have the right coinage, so she would lay down in front of a passing carriage and let it hit her so she could extort money from the humans.] Ddraig replied. [Actually, I think she did that even when she did have money….]

….was that supposed to make me think differently of her?

[No, I just wanted you to know that you haven't seen half of it yet.] Ddraig responded.

And she's your Ex.

Something I felt the need to point out.

[I regret nothing.]

Fair enough.

"Ereshkigal, she seems to have your blessing. Did something happen?" Izzy noted, looking at Rin and back to her.

"Uh….s-she's now my Priestess, yes!" Why did she sound nervous and embarrassed?

I looked at Rin who met my gaze, her lips slowly curling up and she made the universal sign for money.

…..did she extort a Goddess?

Crestfallen Ereshkigal seemed to answer that question. I'm really going to need to get the details about this from her later.

Today has been a really strange day.

"I've never seen you so vexed before. Why don't you let me handle things." Izzy grabbed my hand. "You were in the middle of something before the shameless dragon came."

Well, she was in the middle of something too when I called her, but I accepted the good will.

I quickly kissed her and didn't waste a single moment before very briskly walking out the door.

"Eh?"

I nearly ran right into Jeanne as I walked out.

"Perfect, are you doing anything right now?"

"N-no, I was coming to see if you were around…?" Jeanne shook her head.

I took that as consent and threw her over my shoulder before opening a portal and taking her with me.

@***@

"I'm surprised you didn't protest." I noted that Jeanne was being rather accepting of her position.

"Would you have let me down if I did?" She asked.

"No."

"Then there's no point." She simply smiled. "….how long are you going to have your hand on my butt?"

"That depends, how long are you going to let me?" Because unless she was uncomfortable, I wasn't going to stop.

I made sure to give her nice round butt a good squeeze just in case.

"Neh!" She puffed up cutely.

Well, that wasn't rejection.

"Are we back in Romania?" She shifted around, looking at the surroundings.

"Yup, I'm still in contact with the Yggdmillennia. I think I mentioned this?" I wasn't too sure. "Basically, to summarize, I'm their patron. After what they pulled to separate themselves from the Mages Association, they were going to be destroyed so I stepped in. Basically, they handle some tasks for me like growing herbs and such."

Jeanne just nodded along. "Can you let me down?" She finally asked. "Y-you can still touch my butt if you want…" She added with a growing tinge of red.

"What a lewd Saintess." I complied, setting her down.

"I'm not lewd!"

"Lewd Saintess is telling me to touch her."

"T-that's not what I meant!" She squeaked. "….only because it's you." She whispered.

Despite giving explicit permission, I instead leaned over and kissed her forehead.

She was far too cute.

"Lewd Saintess."

"Neh!" She hit my shoulder.

The gates to the Yggdmillenia castle opened up as we approached, something I wasn't surprised at by this point. I was curious if they constantly had someone on the look out for me just in case I stopped by.

"Lord Schweinorg." Darnic greeted me.

Well, he wasn't nothing if not polite and a stickler for decorum from what I recall. It seems like despite what he was preoccupied with, he would come to greet me if I showed.

"Darnic, it's good to see you again." I walked inside, with Jeanne. "I brought Ruler with me."

"Hello Master of Lancer." Jeanne politely lowered her head for a brief moment in greeting.

"Ruler. I am surprised to see you." Darnic didn't hide it either.

"Long story short, in a Parallel world, humanity has been incinerated and we're working on restoring it. It involves a bunch of Holy Grails." I gave a very brief description.

"I see." He furrowed his brow, probably confused even with that.

"That does raise a question. Have you been interacting with the Clock Tower recently?" I asked.

"As per our arrangement, we had been absorbed back into the Mages Association even if we remained our own entity." He cast a wry smile. "I have made a handful of trips for various meetings and summons."

That made me pause for a moment. "Nothing go wrong I hope?" Because I was backing them with my name and status, even if they didn't know me in this world-line, I wasn't going to let a group I was supporting get bullied.

"Only the usual occurrences. It is by no means something I cannot handle as I did in the past." He said simply.

Right, he was more than capable of handling the normal shenanigans.

"Just remember that you have my backing and that very few entities in this world are capable of making you roll over." I reminded him just in case.

"I will take your words to heart." He seemed pleased by that. "I do, however, carry a message from Lord Zelretch."

"Oh?" Now that surprised me because he was more than capable of reaching me without any intermediary.

"He said it in passing, such as I do not know the importance. It was merely a week ago and said if you came about that I should tell you to 'Check over at home because your Cousin woke up'." He repeated, probably verbatim, the way he spoke it rather than his normal tone.

Well….I suppose I should check back home then.

Curious as to why Gramps from my world-line didn't tell me that but the one here left that message.

But I can say that the thought of meeting my 'cousin', A True Ancestor does pique my interest.

"Thank you for passing on the message. In the meantime, I would like to see the progress you all have made."

"Right away, Lord Schweinorg." He gestured as we followed him inside the castle.

Jeanne looked around happily. "I'm glad that everything is repaired."

"It's thanks to Lord Schweinorg's support that we had the funds and manpower to repair our home and persist until now." Darnic answered, not losing out on the opportunity to throw praise my way.

"Oh wow, it's so pretty." Jeanne's eyes lit up as we walked into the underground Greenhouses.

I shared her sentiment even if I didn't voice. The place had been expanded to an insane degree and it was vibrant and flush with life. Even the air inside carried a hint of sweetness to it as it felt like a small reprieve from the mundane world.

There were very few places like this that existed in this world anymore.

"As you can see, we expanded our operations. We have three more Green Houses, but they're of smaller scale for experiments. We experienced a time of exponential growth that caught us off guard." Dranic stated as we took a small walk around the various herbs planted inside.

"Exponential growth? Explain that." I leaned down to check on a Blue Mountain Flower.

"As you know, we've been using various methods to speed up production and growth rates of the various herbs you've brought. Once we reached a threshold and obtained sufficient experience in handling these materials, we were able to expand thirty times over in a short time frame. However, this had the unforeseen side effect of hitting a rather strange wall we didn't anticipate."

"Oh?"

"The Mana around the castle was dropping rapidly to sustain the growth rate. It was to the point where within a few miles of our residence, there was a noticeable drop that could be observed even through mundane means. Normal plants began to wilt, humans became more sluggish. And isn't to account for more mystical side effects."

Mana was the lifeblood of the world, while normal humans didn't manipulate it like Magus did, it still was an aspect that couldn't be ignored. It would be one thing if it was a steady decline over a long period of time, but a sharp decrease within a short period would have obvious adverse effects.

"If I had to guess, you were forced to destroy some of your extensions and manually restore the vitality to the area through Rituals." I hazarded a guess.

"It's as you say, Lord Schweinorg." He didn't hide it. "The degree of Magical Plants in this era was too much for the ambient Mana and we were forced to reduce our production until a better means would be established. We are at full capacity until we expand outside of our territory."

That sounded about right then. The most obvious method for expansion is to start planting in other places where it wouldn't hurt the environment.

This wasn't something I considered, but makes sense in hindsight. It shouldn't be an issue for the Youkai and Yasaka considering the density of Mana in the air was much more substantial there and replenished quicker.

"Well it couldn't be helped." I simply shrugged. "At least you should have been able to produce a significant amount of Potions if you weren't sustaining the growth and had to cut down." He said 'destroyed' but that was more so meant that rather than parsing a certain amount to expand, he could push all of that into production of Potions instead until they reduced back to a sustainable amount.

"You are correct, Lord Schweinorg. We have your portion set aside if you would like to view it." He stated.

"It's mainly why I came. Lead the way."

"It's over here." He walked out the room and down the hall until there was a large and metal door encased in quite a few magical defenses. He merely put his hand on it and they receded and pushed the door open, holding out his hand for us to go in.

Jeanne stilled and even I came to an abrupt stop.

Darnic, when I glanced at him, had a bit of a smirk on his face. "I will leave you to it, Lord Schweinorg."

Competence and Intelligence is such a wonderful trait to have in subordinates.

"I can't count them all." Jeanne said softly.

"Do we need to teach you to count as well?" I looked at her.

"That's not what I meant!" She puffed up again. "There's…a lot."

That was an understatement.

Easily over ten thousand potions of varying colors lined up on shelves in a rather large storage room.

This wasn't even everything because the Yggdmillennia family got their share as did Gramps from this World-Line.

These were all mine – relatively speaking considering I was handing them over to Yasaka.

Well, this day certainly just turned around. This would be a huge boon for what's to come. And Yasaka should be announcing our invasion count down today.

I watched as Jeanne bent over to look at a colorful potion of a bright purple.

I raised an eyebrow as her thong peeked out of her booty shorts and I didn't hesitate to pull on it.

"D-don't – Hng?!" She let out a small moan, shuttering slightly.

She looked at me with wide eyes, her face quickly turning red.

It was the first time I've ever heard that from her.

I didn't stop.

Today was a good day.

@***@

Serafall POV

"Today is a shit day, Sirzechs!"

"…..why is that, Serafall?"

"Don't be stupid, you know what." I huffed. "By the way, we just got some information that the Youkai are preparing for their invasion ahead of schedule. They should be starting by the end of the week."

"Already?" He raised an eyebrow. "Even Ajuka said he would need a bit of time to breach into that place."

I shrugged. "What do you want me to say? That they're liars? At this point, I'm inclined to believe them if they said they shit gold."

"Crude, but I get your point."

"Anyways, I'm bringing it up because a few of our Devil News outlets wanted permission to head over to Kyoto and ask the Youkai for permission to film some stuff about the invasion since it's a somewhat hot topic among some of the younger Devils. Apparently they want to follow the Youkai and document what's going to happen on that side." I told him, holding up some of the papers that were sent to me.

"Shouldn't I be handling the domestic stuff? Why did you get a request like that." He asked, taking it from me.

"Since it involves your Bastard, they were at least smart enough to give it to me since you've dropped the ball so hard there. And technically, it does fall under foreign affairs."

Big Red let out a groan. "I can't really argue with either of those points."

"Hmm, I'm surprised you aren't throwing a fit."

"I don't throw fits." He deadpanned.

"Alright, but you know what I mean. You usually sulk or pout whenever your bastard is mentioned."

"I've been trying to do better, alright?" He grumbled.

Well, miracles do happen. Better check to make sure Big G didn't come back suddenly.

"I'm gonna give them the go ahead." I finally said.

"Then why even ask me?" He snorted.

"I just wanted your opinion and to keep you in the loop. Regardless, you would have allowed it as well. You're an idiot, but you're not stupid. Being able to record what's going on with the Youkai War would be….beneficial." If they agree of course, there's no harm in letting them try to approach the Youkai.

The only question is if I get involved. Would it help them or hurt them if I sent a letter ahead to that damn Fox?

Maybe I should have Mama Gremory broach it?

"Hey Red, where's your mom at?"

"I was just heading home to see her, she called me about something urgent?" He cracked his neck. Guess he'd been working for awhile at this point. "Why?"

"Wanna ask her some stuff." I waived it off. "Might be easier for her to ask the Youkai Fox for permission."

"It couldn't hurt to ask." He accepted. "It's not like you're an outsider, just come along with me. If something is wrong, then extra hands would be useful just as well."

Teleportation Circle go!

I threw it down and teleported the both of us to Gremory Manor.

Immediately, I saw Rias and she was just standing there with a blank look on her face, and I trailed her eyes to see what she was looking at.

"Ancestor?!" Sirzech's eyes widened.

"I told you to call me Runeas." The affirmed Ancestor of the Gremorys replied, while she was fondling Mama Gremory's big boobs.

How long has it been since we saw her? It should have been at the end of the Civil War as we took up our positions as the new Satans. She came to greet us as she 'woke up from her nap' because of the commotion.

One of two last 'Demons' that remain, her and Zekram.

"….why are you wearing the Kuoh School uniform?" I found myself asking.

The petite ancestor released Mama Gremory and walked over to us. "I found it in Venelana's closet and thought it was cute. Apparently the fashion from a few centuries ago is far gone so I had to adjust."

"Mom, why do you have a School Uniform?" Sirzechs asked.

"Dear, why are you asking me a question you already know the answer to?" Mama Gremory shot back, making Sirzechs stiffen.

I nearly jumped back because Runeas was now grabbing my boobs. Though after a few moments, I realized what she was doing. "Are you, feeling my bra?"

"Is that what it's called?" She tilted her head. "I saw it on Venelana too, it's much better than a corset, I was wondering what it was. Must be something rather recent."

Ah….that makes sense.

She tends to sleep for centuries at a time….I'm not surprised the idea of a Bra is novel to her.

Jeez, I remember when I had to wear a Corset, those were dark times.

"W-what's going on?" Rias finally managed to sputter out.

"Does she not know me?" Runeas let my boobs go, I didn't really pay it any mind since it wasn't sexual.

Not that she wouldn't, she's by far one of the horniest Devils I've ever met in my life even if she doesn't visibly show it.

"I took her to see you while you were sleeping when she was little, she may have forgotten. Rias, meet your Ancestor, Runeas Gremory, the first Gremory."

"She's cute." Runeas smiled. "She takes after me too." The Old Devil said, pushing out her ample chest.

Despite being shorter, Runeas had a noticeably bigger chest, which is a feat.

I wasn't jealous.

"I-I remember now, I think I snuck into her room a few times when I was younger?" Rias blinked.

"Oh? Did you do anything naughty?" Runeas grinned.

"Bwah!?"

Runeas seemed to lose interest. "You're right, Devils now really are more prudish now."

"Ancestor….please don't tease my younger sister." Sirzechs sighed.

"Tease?" Runeas tilted her head. "I was being serious. I don't mind, as long as you all clean up afterwards, you're welcome to have a bit of fun with Ol'Gremory while she sleeps." The little smirk made me uncertain if she was being serious or not.

Rias seemed to need to reboot though.

"Well, I don't mind if I'm not sleeping either." She winked towards Rias.

"I'm afraid you will be disappointed, Lady Runeas." Venelana politely spoke up.

"Oh well." The petite ancient devil sighed. She walked over to the couch, plopping onto it, uncaring that her legs were open and she was wearing a short skirt and apparently no panties. "Tell me what's been going on. That old fuddy woke me up for some reason and he's not even here to greet me. So I may as well catch up with current events."

"Ancestor, I retrieved what you asked." Zeoticus walked into the room, holding a box full of random stuff. "These are all the keepsakes of yours that you asked us to hold onto." He didn't seem perturbed in the slightest by our presence and set the box on the table infront of her.

"Hmm." She started digging through it and pulled out a necklace? It was nothing more than a bit of string with what looked like half a key on it…weird. "Oh goody, I thought I lost this. That old bastard would have been pissed if I did." She chuckled. "Anyways, what's happened while I was sleeping?"

"Mama Gremory is banging Sirzech's son." I blurted out before anyone else and time to speak.

Sirzechs looked at me with utter betrayal.

I'm sorry Sirzechs, this is payback for all the crap I've had to deal with the past year because of you.

Suffer.

"Oooh~ Tell me more." The Gremory Ancestor had a big grin on her face.

Suffer.

@***@

A/N

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