11

Morning and I get ready and head to meet with Shea, I also need to drop off the poison I made and antidote so Aldas can win the competition. heading out I decided to walk so I can absorb all the sin along the way instead of just warping a few times to get to the meeting room.

[Shop - Sin total = 4250

Tier up - 10000 sin

Contracts advanced - 1000

Magic circles advanced - 5000

Garden - 1000

Temple of Sin - 1000

Evil piece

Queen - 5000

Rook - 2000

Bishop - 2000

Knight - 2000

Pawn - 1000 ]

Arriving at the meeting room I check how close I am getting to advanced circles and should be able to finish it today or tomorrow if I spend the day walking around all the densely populated spots. I could also go visit Alice's store and see if she has any items with sin in them. walking into the room and heading to the seat I always sit in I notice Gauss is here this morning.

"Good morning lord Shea and Gauss." taking my seat they both look up from the files they are looking over.

"Good morning Nova, I was checking over the farms yesterday and I can already see the plants growing at a rapid pace." Gauss then goes on to inform me of when they expect to be able to harvest at this rate and how they want me to set up some of the cold storage I mentioned.

"When you have a storage place ready I can set it up." I am getting another 5% from this and it's easy to do so even if it takes a few hours it's no problem. "I was also planning on trying to buy a few buildings for my use and was going to look around today so if your looking for me I will be out and about."

"What are you planning with a few buildings?" Shea asked with a hint of curiosity.

"I was planning on starting a restaurant with one but I will have to train someone to cook the recipes I have in mind. also, I was going to try to make some of the alcohol from my world called vodka and moonshine. there different but also extremally similar if I can get it right in my testing I will need to take some of the crop grown to start producing in a large quantity."

"Lala potatoes for making alcohol?" Shea looks a bit grossed out I guess if there used to wine and using berries then vodka would come off as weird.

"You will just have to wait and see if I can't get it right I might just blow myself up anyway." she nods at that but I happen to notice the corner of her lips curl up slightly. the most emotion I have seen her make so far.

"Also I just need some space to try to make a few things, I plan on making some ice-cream makers and a load of other things that are missing in the demon realm but I need private locations to keep the methods secret so they don't pop up all over the place."

"Alice told me about the ice cream, next time you make it let me know I would like to try it as well." Shea's smile got just a bit bigger and Gauss on the side is practically bug eye looking at the girl.

"Not a problem I will let you know when I next make it, as well I need to hand over these." passing the things for Aldas competition Gauss takes them and puts them in his bracelet without even checking them. guess I am getting a bit more trust which is a good sign.

*cough* "Nova I was supposed to let you know of another matter this morning." looking over at him he begins to go on about how much I have helped the dark moon by alleviating the need to buy food from other estates and they judged a reward was due.

"Award? I was just completing my end of the contract that's what I was supposed to do." wondering what they could be giving me they honestly don't have anything to spare then a thought comes to mind and I get a bit worried. then Gauss begins talking again and confirms my worries.

"Well, we heard how taken you were with Kia after your trip to the blue lake with her and Alice so we thought that you would be happy to have her serve you." oh shit this is what made her hate Chen Rui and also caused Athena to be in a bit of a fit if I remember correctly.

"Lord Shea this is truly unneeded, if anything this will cause me problems." she looks at me a bit oddly.

"What kind of problems could you have with a beautiful succubus serving you?" I don't like what she's insinuating especially with that look she has on her face that almost asks if I am even a man. "anyway it has been decided and she has been notified so it's done and this is a test in a way." I know what she wants is for me to try to find the reason Kia was planted here. she has always doubted Kia, especially with how she arrived at an opportune moment. but I have to play the part of not knowing.

"What kind of test?" she looks at Gauss and he begins to explain how Kia came about working here and their doubt of her intentions. even how they put a cuff on her that suppresses her magic or they would have just sent her off and not risked having her close.

"So really it's a reward and a test on your investigative means." huh at least they told it to me straight instead of hiding it. guess I need to find a way to solve the Kia issue, I know her mom and she is soul shackled by Sabrina who is Kia's dad's main wife. Freya who is Kia's mom goes back and forth between their bases with Sabrina as he hostage and maid and she is mainly at bloody vine estate. If I can use Kia as a test to break the soul shackles with my worthless then I could try to save Freya which would solve the Kia issue and also make her very happy.

"Alright I got it don't worry about it I will try to figure her out. is there anything else to discuss this morning?" Shea pushes some files my way and I skim through them and a few grab my attention. taking two of them I pass the rest back to Shea and she raises an eyebrow.

"Town Yankou is having problems with people starving and also some women and children are disappearing inside the dark moon. I will look into both of these matters starting with the missing women and kids. then I will make a quick trip over to yankou to get a feel for what the problem is." Shea nods and Gauss gives his thanks, he was supposed to travel to yankou and now I am freeing him up. "also those financial records are pretty bad when I get some time to look over them with you we can get them sorted." after talking a bit longer with both I leave the meeting hall planning how to fix both these problems.

Town yankou is stupid rich with a mine that is filled with jade ice crystal a pretty valuable material, but the lead guard and mayor both have hidden the information so they could keep it to themselves. these deaths from starvation are probably miners dying from overwork but they can't say that so the reports are stating starvation. I can most defiantly steamroll this entire operation and take it by force if I remember right the lead guard was only an early higher demon, even Athena could probably beat him and she's new to the higher demon realm.

The missing people should be silva and the Mellon family selling women into the sex trade that is run in blue lava estate. Capturing Silva and getting him to confess should be enough to convince Shea of the threat that the Mellon family is. given now she doesn't have the strength to beat them especially since I know that the Mellon family is a spy planted by the bloody empire. there is a big problem but their house sits on top of an ice cave that contains some kind of essence that's useful for mages. in that cave is a plant called realm king fruit which can help one break through to demon emperor and that is something I will need also Shea could use one to break through.

Have to play this carefully though we don't want it all to come crashing down so one part at a time. I can go ask around for Silva he also sold magic goods as a cover for his slave trade. if I can remember correctly it was in the southeast block that he was based and after defeating him Chen took over the base to use as an operations hub for the cloak gang which could be an idea.

Arriving at the training grounds I find Athena already hard at work practicing her demon transformation, she said she needs to master it or it could burn her life force and it gets harder with each breakthrough. in the book, she went into ' seclusion ' for a few weeks but she hasn't done that here. I wonder if it has to do with the sky battle coming up and she doesn't want to miss it. if she misses it most likely Alice would lose it because Athena has carried Alice for the last two years.

"Hey Athena, how are you today." Turning around in a hurry Athena smiles as she walks over. as she walks over I notice that she has probably been going at it for quite a bit with how her clothes are clinging to her with sweat. "You started early today?"

"Hey Nova what do you mean started early?" she looks down and notices her clothes situation and blushes fiercely and glares at me. "Pervert. douche bag. scum." punching me in the shoulder with each curse she vents her frustration.

"Well, anyway are you ready to start I have some things to look into later and need to cut it a bit short today." shaking off her embarrassment she tilts her head.

"Where are you going today?" probably won't hurt to just tell her if anything she might just want to come and help which would be nice.

"Looking at a few buildings to buy and then later checking into the recent abductions."

"Abductions?! who has been abducted and why are you looking into it."

"Well Shea had some reports I helped her go over and I said I would look into a few like the abductions and the town Yankou problems." also I need to go talk to Alice today sometime, man I am super busy today. " but some women and Children were taken and I wanted to look into it and see what's happening but I am sure you could guess what's happened to them." her eyes practically catch on fire at this... wait there actually on fire she went full demon mode.

"I will help you look into it, I can't believe something like this is happening and no one has found anything out!" Her demon mode is pretty good looking with the slight red tint and the horns that come out she even almost matches me in height in this form.

"Alright I agree but let's get a few hours in I learned some new tricks I want to try out then we can go and get my other tasks done while asking around." she slips out of her form and begins to walk toward the other training sword she prepared for me. throwing it over she gets in her stance and has a wide smile before charging at me with a powerful downward slash at my noggin. she's much faster than even yesterday but too bad for her I have some new tricks today.

-- Athena pov --

Sparing with Nova I notice that he has used some magic on me to lower my speed but it also seems to lower my reaction time and he's dodging every single one of my attacks. igniting my demon fire and taking on my combat form I press on him and manage to close the gap ever so slightly but he still is managing to avoid my attacks. He has this annoying grin plastered on his face that I just want to smack off. if he thinks I'm going to give up then he is mistaken even if he is stronger than me I won't admit defeat!

Wait... stronger than me. I always said the reason I hated all those guys that tried to talk to me was because they were weak but that's not the case with Nova. is that why I feel different when I talk to him?

*Wack* OWW he hit me!

"Wake up Athena your spacing out." Hmmph, this jerk can't even show a bit of mercy when I get lost in thought.

unknowing about the giant smile covering my face I press on and try my best to beat this dang perverted jerk up.

---------

-- Nova pov --

After we cleaned up and got fresh clothes we head out to look at some buildings for sale or just condemned. I asked Athena to show me cheap areas because I plan on building up the area by buying out all the surrounding buildings and then renovating and making the area better. she leads me to the more unsavory side which just so happens to be the southeast which is Silva's territory and we look around I find a few interesting buildings. one that could be used as a bakery another as a sit-down restaurant and a few that could be cleared off and something new built with a lot of run-down houses next to each other that no one would miss.

I can see why this area has a lot of people going missing it's pretty bad off but that's good for me I can buy cheap and then change it into the most productive and profitable district in the dark moon. as we're walking I see lots of unsavory characters checking us out and the only reason they haven't tried anything is likely everyone knows who Athena is and who her dad is.

Wrapping a corner I spot a kid sitting on the ground some kind of scout or look out but when he sees us he looks away and tries to blend in.

"Hold on Athena, I need to try something." before she can even question me I buff myself with Agares and short distance warp beside the kid and grab him by the shoulders before he can run. " look tell me where to find Silva and I will let you off with some coin." pulling out a hand full of purple crystal coins his eyes go wide before he tries to snatch them and I knock him on the head.

"He is in the big building on the no. 4 street he's got a lot of goons there." dropping the coins in his grasping hands I chuckle a bit seeing Athena with her arms crossed under her breast pushing them up with a pout on her face.

"Why did you run off like that?"

"Wanted to get the kid before he ran off now I know what's going on."

"That kid knew what's going on? seems doubtful."

"Don't worry about it let's just go kick in the door and see if we can find anything." She raises an eyebrow then huffs and follows behind me as I head to the building.

---------

"You sure we aren't going to get in trouble for this?" Athena is a little skeptical about actually kicking the guy's door in and looking for kidnapped people. "What if we don't find anything?" after handing her one of my spare cloaks in my inventory she puts it on.

"Like I said don't worry so much I got faith." after convincing Athena I wrap my hand around her side much to her embarrassment and warp in between the two guards standing duty at the door.

"Hello there." I throw a punch at the minotaur on my left and he soars back and hits the road unresponsive. turning fast to the one beside Athena I see she already knocked him out. "Good job" She smacks my hand away and walks to the door and kicks it in and I follow up after buffing myself with Agares and speed ahead of her into the room.

After seeing four people in the room I guess the three that are armed are some kind of guard and target them before they even can tell what's going on they have lost half their reaction time to my magic. kicking one into the wall and he flies through it I vault over the table wrapping my legs around the head of the closest one. swinging my weight I punch the third in the side of his head and he crumbles, I then focus on the poor sap between my legs and notice he's already falling over from Athena punching him in the gut.

After flipping backward off the guy and standing straight I notice the fourth making a run for the back and I lick my finger with some paralytic venom and dash past him while wiping it on the side of his neck. he stumbles and lays flat on the floor.

"Well good job we kind of just rocked their shit." high fiving over top of the paralyzed mob boss I then flip him over.

"Where are the people you took scum bag?" hehe I wonder if this is how batman feels.

"What are you talking about? I don't have any people! your crazy!" after curing the paralysis he begins denying the charges.

"Well I know for a fact you do and that you are selling them to blue lava estate so you can confess and show me where they are and it will be taken into account you didn't resist or you can resist and I find them anyway and you get a harsher punishment." his eyes go wide at the mention of blue lava and under her cloak, I can see the shock in Athena's eyes as well.

"Wait I will tell you just let me get up." after he gets up and I find out his name is silva he begins leading us to the back and down a hidden staircase into a room full of cages and some magic items and other loot. in the cages I see a bunch of people that look to have lost the will to go on. a few kids that seem to be starved to near death and also what I think is a pregnant woman chained to the wall. before I can even take it all in I hear a loud crack and turn to see Athena break Silva's arm.

"You bastard! what the hell is wrong with you how could you do this!?" before Athena can kill my witness I get between them and she looks at me furiously.

"Wait if you kill him we can't get proof of who all is involved." after hearing that and talking her down she walks over to the people and starts cutting them out. " don't let them leave we need to get them to inform Shea of all they know!" hopefully she heard me she's already swinging like a madman.

turning back around I knock Silva out with some venom and then snag all the loot with Sin in it and leave the rest. I leave the pile of money just in case it would seem weird if there was none here but I got more than enough sin from all the other items. walking over to help Athena I send her back to inform Shea so she can come to see the situation she is not happy about leaving all these people but I persuade her I will look out for them till she's back.

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Hours later after Shea and some guards arrive she looks even angrier than Athena and listens to all the people recount their experiences and then she sends them off with some coins from the pile. walking over to me I am going through some things and she begins to question me about all I know.