START OF VOL 9: THE WAR
When Sol came back to his sense, the first sensation that he felt was dampness and wetness.
‘Where am I?’
Opening his eyes, he looked around and realized that he was in fact in a bath.
‘As large as always.’
Joking inwardly, he tried to move but felt a hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t move.”
He recognized the voice,
“Kiyohime?”
“Indeed. It seems like after you formed the contract, you fainted and your temperature was rising greatly. The little phoenix called me to help you. She was quite shaken.”
“Hey!”
Isis, who stood on the side while covered by a simple camisole clearly couldn’t take the embarrassment. She already bathed and wiped away all traces of semen or love juice from her body.
“Oh hush, no need to be shy girl. Anyway, Sol how do you feel?”
Nent scolded lightly Isis because of her outburst and focused on the problem at hand. This wasn’t the first time she saw a human form a contract with a magical being. In fact, she had observed many humans doing so. Her old friends were humans after all.
This was why she knew.
There was no gain without pain.
“You know this isn’t the end, right?”
Sol nodded, his mind was still hazy but he knew that his situation was far from over. He didn’t need Castitas to give him such information to infer it himself. After all, he was already used to such situations.
“Why put me in a hot bath?”
He asked with difficulty but seeing the bitter smile on Kiyohime face he understood what happened.
“The water was cold initially. Freezing in fact. But your temperature melted the ice. Soon, your internal temperature might surpass what your body can handle.”
Sol sighed. He could indeed feel his blood boiling and his heartbeat was going crazy. Clearly, the powers he received were slowly fusing with his body. Once he reached the tipping point…
‘Such a pain.’
“Ugh…”
He grunted a little bit as a trail of blood flowed from the corner of his mouth. Internally, not only his blood was boiling, but his body was going through many changes.
This reminded Sol of what happened when his body produced a core and this was why he knew that he would definitely not like what would happen next if things were left as is.
‘Should I try it?’
He begins to focus on his inner mind, trying to detach his conscious mind from his body. Nack on earth, some people were able to suffer an unimaginable amount of punishment without feeling much pain thanks to a rigorous mental training.
Furthermore, he knew that goddesses and powerful beings could bring other people into their own mindscape so Sol had always wondered if he could do the same.
Even though the pain was distracting him, he slowly begin to find a kind of inner peace. The world around him changed and when he ‘opened’ his eyes, he found that he wasn’t in the bathroom anymore but in a world composed of an endless blue sea and a white sky.
The water was so clear, so blue, that Sol could see his reflection on the surface of the water. Even though said reflection would become fuzzy each time he took a step.
“The water…”
Even though the surface of the sea was utterly calm, Sol could somehow feel that the undercurrent hidden from his sight was quite strong. As if a storm was brewing inside unseen to all.
‘So this is my mind world.’
He looked a little surprised. As the name suggested, the mind world was the reflection of the true inner side and desire of a person. You could lie to everyone, even to yourself at times. But the truth would always be buried deep in your heart.
‘Do I really hide my emotions that much?’
Sol couldn’t help but ask himself this question. He realized that he needed more and more to keep a lid on his emotion. To put on a mask of confidence when facing the other.
The truth was…He was scared.
Really scared.
Ever since he awakened, the pressure he had been under had never ceased to grow going from facing a rebellion to now facing the wrath of a goddess and a small-scale war between Chaos and Order.
But he couldn’t express his fear openly. He refused to do so. He had to keep a brave front. Appear as if everything was alright and never falter.
After all, he wasn’t the only one that was scared.
‘Fight on. I just need to face the incoming crisis. I am not alone.’
He wouldn’t make the mistake of thinking he had the fate of the world on his shoulder. Even though he did in a certain way.
Rather than worrying about what he couldn’t do, he had to make sure that he would do well in what he could do and what he could do now was…
‘Studying the new power that was settling in his body.’
—--
While Sol was exploring the confine of his mind, the water of the bath went from mildly hot to terribly hot and now was positively boiling. Bubbles appeared on the water while steam rose above.
“Will he be alright?”
Kiyohime frowned a little when she saw how the water was reacting. There was a limit to what she could do in this situation.
Like Nent, Kiyohime had also seen humans forming contracts, with elves of spirits during the war, so she knew that some pain could happen when getting a specially unique power. But this time it seemed quite exaggerated.
“Well. The pain is proportional to the number of gift and the power received. Nirvana is the strongest skill of us Phoenix and in fact, a skill that only us possess, personally bestowed by the goddess. Sol body is trying to adjust to the power of a phoenix and the process will not be pretty.”
On the side, Isis could only give a nod with a grim expression. She could see more. In the soul of Sol, three motes of light, each of them with different sizes, were slowly approaching it and placed themselves on an axis of rotation.
If Sol’s soul was the sun, then now one planete with two satellites was being added and moving around the said sun.
This was different from the changes in her own soul. Rather than a satellite adding itself to it, a corner of her soul, more than one-third, changed to a wavelength similar to that of Sol. She could feel his warmth and gentleness directly.
She guessed that this was because while she was forming a contract with Sol only, Sol would form contracts with many others in the future.
It was then….Whooosh…Just like that, in a blink of an eye, Sol body vanished from under their sights.
“Wha…!?”
“Do not worry.” Kiyohime hurriedly calmed down the two phoenixes before speaking, “…Mother?”
Tiamat’s voice resonated to their ears in the bathroom.
[Go to your position. It’s the ideal time for him to enter the blood pool.]
Kiyohime’s expression darkened. She understood very well that once Sol begin the transition in the Duke realm, two possibilities would offer themselves to them.
[By the way, girl. I will borrow your little friend. We might need her help.]
Isis had no time to answer before the presence of Tiamat simply vanished.
Now alone, the three of them gazed into each other eyes before Kiyohime began to move.
“Will you fine?”
It was a simple question. They had already made preparation to evacuate the dragons that were too young to fight. As guests, Isis and Nent had the right to do the same.
“Heh…”
She received no direct answer, but the challenging look in their eyes told a story on its own, making any words useless.
“Very well. Let’s go then.”
Isis laughed and took a step as she followed behind Nent and Kiyohime. Truly, she would never forget her first time. After all, just after losing her virginity, she was about to be embroiled in a fight that could decide the destiny of an entire realm.
She didn’t think many people could boast about such adventure. As such, she needed to survive in order to tell the tale.
Furthermore, her first time had been very pleasuring and she certainly wanted a second, third, and N amount of time more with Sol.
This was a simple wish, a little naughty wish, but in the end, she simply wished to be happy with the man she literally gave a part of her soul to and she would be damned if she let anyone stop her from enjoying those times.
(AN: Oh man. Did Anyone here watch, The Good Place? I currently feel like Chidi. I feel like I have a stomachache. This is officially now the start of vol 9. I am having PTSD from vol 5. *Groan* Let's hope I do justice to the ideas behind this volume.)
