23
Waiting for Athena to finish with her devil fruit I practice Purson and its synergies with both Belial for countering magic and Astaroth for memorizing things I see. Dodo is also running around the forest killing and assimilating each of the wildlife to have different forms. he's going to be a master infiltrator and with being a pawn to upgrade to a queen behind enemy lines he's going to be a serious threat to our foes. he will kill a higher-up and perfectly replace them minus strength level and memories. but in time when he gains more power, he may even replace some powerful political enemies.
Walking up to the devil fruit tree I place my hand on it and try to interact with the garden I bought. A prompt appears asking to transfer it for five hundred sin and I agree. the tree slowly turns invisible before leaving behind a hole in the ground from the root system.
"And now I have a devil fruit supply." how long does it take for them to grow in the garden and also can I use Agares in the garden to speed it up?
Opening the system and finding the new garden tab under inventory I open it and am transported to a field with the devil fruit tree. looking around there is quite a bit of space, the border of this place seems to be the void and I can't pass into it. so this garden is like a soap bubble floating in the empty space, this is not super dangerous or anything. putting aside the potential danger that is the garden I approach the tree and a prompt appears.
[ Devil fruit - 2 days 23 hours 45 minutes 31 seconds ]
It seems it is going to be producing every three days and to my surprise, it already has my Agares power flowing in it. I also can't speed it up more at this point but the plus side is that everything thrown in here will grow super fast. I wonder if I should grab some random fruits and vegetables to grow in here so I don't have to shop anymore except for animal products. I don't see why not, as I plan out my Farmville I feel a shake and leave the garden.
"Are you ok Nova? you have been just staring off into space. also, where did the tree go?" Athena seems to have finished and with my eyes, I can see she is full of spirit energy and is pulsing but confined. if I had to take a guess this would be a ' bottleneck ' so she should need a little push to go to demon king.
"I am fine and I moved the tree to a different location to speed its growth to get more fruit so I can arm a small force and also enhance them. also congrats on almost breaking through to demon king you just got to higher not long ago and now your almost promoting again."
"Yea devil fruit is useful for the removal of the species limit which can't be seen but it still gave me a small power-up, I need to wait and see if it gave me any unique abilities though it's rare I still hope I got one."
"Dodo got one after eating another fruit after turning into a devil, so after I get a piece to turn you then you can have another fruit to try and get one." Her eyes go wide.
"You gave another to him? how did you know it would do that or were you just guessing?" scratching my cheek.
"I ate one and got a power up so I tried to eat a second and it tasted rancid so I gave it to Dodo and he got a power up and ate the dragon bones. he also got a cool ability to perfectly take the forms of things he eats. the dragon form looks a bit like a slime dragon but that's probably because it was only bones by the time he got the skill. but since he ate the meat blood and essence of the dragon when it died here he already had dragon aspect and he can pass off as a slime dragon of some kind."
"Dodo ate a dead dragon?! is that why he is so smart for a slime?" actually it's probably because over the years he has eaten eighty or more devil fruits and even if it was small gains it leveled up his sentience. but if I tell her that she might cut him down since a single devil fruit can allow a demon not of the royal families to have a potential to make it to demon overlord instead of their species limit of like a higher demon.
"Probably." don't worry Dodo I got your back.
-- Dodo pov --
For some reason, Dodo feels like he has avoided a disaster. it must be the work of Nova! he gave me the shiny red thing and now I can do a lot of cool things. I should bring back some food for Nova since he has shared his fruits with me.
-- Nova pov --
"Athena let's head back to the wyverns and set up camp for today, we can head to the mine in the morning. I want to use the rest of the day to get you used to your new power level. you should be strong enough to handle most of the bandits so I am going to leave a lot of them to you since you need to break through and fighting could help with that." she agrees and I teleport us back to the wyverns who are eating some kind of boar looking animal.
"What about Dodo?" Athena looks around for the slimy boy.
"He is out eating, when he gets bored he can always contact me and I can go grab him." we clear off a spot and set down a tarp and I throw out a tent. the tent looks like a caterpillar but has pretty good insulation. "alright you ready to practice?"
"Yep, I got my new sword so let's get started."
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"I think you used your flames a bit awkwardly, if you use them more concentrated instead of just letting them explode out you wouldn't tire out as fast." as we are eating some food we go over the fight to help each other improve.
"If you could take your eyes off my chest and legs you wouldn't have to teleport to avoid getting gutted and instead can just dodge normally." coughing on my drink I shoot her a glare and she shrugs and I can only sigh.
"I mean I know you won't gut me so I get distracted easily it's a bad habit." and it is, but with my new Purson trait, I can gauge power levels and will be more serious in fights with strong people. Athena has been trained her entire life and it shows she is skilled, but currently her power level just can't hurt me. it's not ego it's just the difference between tiers especially tiers between brackets. Paglio explained that the brackets are low, mid, high, and then god.
The low bracket is a lesser demon with no power, then it's intermediate the first rank, and lastly higher demon. the differences between them are big but the difference between the higher and demon king is even more massive. so if you take into account I am demon king and have the physical strength of around great demon king, Athena can't compare. I plan on funneling enough resources into her to get her to the highest level I can get her to, I don't like the idea of just any demon king or higher completely able to walk over her.
This is also the reason I am going to take a more supportive role in the raid on the bandits. I could slaughter the whole bandit group but from what I remember four are higher demons and there is one demon king who is rarely there. this is a good challenge for Athena to break through to demon king without any potions or materials so to speak. it's like the difference between using a rare candy on a Pokémon or fighting just one more trainer to get it to evolve. I would rather save the rare candy for a lull in fighting opportunities.
"Oh, so you think I won't run you through? you just wait till I catch up to you then we will see if I dare or not." her feisty attitude is so cute when she switches to it after cutely sharing bites of her food with me. "alright I am heading off to sleep since Dodo volunteered to be lookout tonight since he can sleep during the flight tomorrow." Athena walks over next to my tent and brings out some supplies like a pillow and blanket and lays on the ground like a neanderthal.
"What are you doing Athena?" raising my eyebrow, she looks up from the ground at me.
"What do you mean, I just said I am going to sleep." she looks at me as if I am a fool.
"There is a literal tent like five feet from you, are you blind or something?" catching on that she is just too shy I play dumb.
"That's your tent Nova." nodding but then putting my hands out mimicking a certain soviet bunny.
"Ours." She sits up looking at me confused by the gesture, then just huffs and grabs her stuff, and heads into the tent.
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Waking up with Athena sleeping a few inches away cuddling her sword, I cant help but be a bit jealous. shaking my head I shimmy out of the tent and get ready for the trip to the mine.
"Good morning Nova!" Dodo bounces over happily.
"Morning Dodo how was the night shift?" he tells me of all the exciting things that didn't happen then heads over to the saddle bag for the wyvern and tucks himself into it and falls asleep. chuckling at his antics I ready the wyverns and feed them and they head down to the water beneath the hill we camped on to get a drink. Athena hearing all the noise gets out of the tent freshly dressed in a new outfit and we make breakfast.
"Once the wyverns get back up here we can head off." I nod, I checked the map and we should get there at mid day, and then we can attack the bandits in the night.
"Alright, let's try to attack the bandits tonight, I am looking forward to trying to get to the waste pile in the mine to see how big it is."
"Waste pile?" nodding I begin to explain to her I can use the crystals on the ore to strengthen myself and also make her a piece so she can become a devil. she seems extra fired up to crush the bandits after hearing that. the wyverns soon after arrived and we set off.
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At the base of the mountain, I could see a group of people and a thrown-together stone house. we land and a scarred man with his leg braced in iron supports of sorts approaches. as we jump off he recognizes Athena and calls out.
"Athena?" Athena looks at him confused. "It's me, Gabe, I used to be in your father's army."
"Ah, war-hammer Gabe? I remember you now, it's been a while." they chat a bit before Athena introduces me. "This is Nova he is the new mining officer."
"He is the new mining officer. he's a human, why would Shea send a human to be the mining officer?" he looks at me with obvious disdain, and before Athena can say anything I activate Bune and pressure him and he falls back.
"Don't presume to know me, and questioning you lord's decision is admittedly a small act but still an act of treason. I would think a soldier that was under the great general George Wales would know that." Gabe is laying on his back stiff till I let up and turn off Dune. a dark elf on the side that was busy shaking quickly runs to help Gabe up after I look in his direction and then signal to Gabe. wasting time dealing with these people is not something I am going to do, I would rather scare them in line with some power so their demon mindset sees me as their superior to deal with them wasting my time.
"I apologize, Sir Nova, my old eyes were mistaken can you please allow my vice-captain conner to take my place after my death?" well he certainly changed his tune quickly, but from the uncomfortable look, Athena has I decided to end the show of force.
"I was just surprised at your assumptions and questioning Shea, I didn't say I would kill you. now report the situation in the mine so I can fix all this mess."
Gabe leads us to sit in the stone house and has food brought. we eat as he lets us know how the red devil bandit gang has taken over and they have multiple higher demons and supposably a demon king leader. so nothing different from what I know, we can attack tonight and clear them out then have Shea send some people to fortify the mine and begin operations again.