Zephir and Iris

Having said goodbye to Akito she teleported out and arrived in Zephir in an instant.

Reiko was old, very old. She once lived on Earth and had died in an accident, after dying she awoke on a different planet which was called Kuthier. Her memories of Earth were fragmented and she had reincarnated as a non-human. To be more specific, she was a spider, or rather she was a baby of the Arach race, it was quite lucky as when they got stronger and evolved they could eventually gain a humanoid form. In her early life as an Arach, she faced many predators, including humans, that wanted to eat or kill her and survived by killing each and every one of them. After gaining a human form she encountered her teacher, and eventually became a god, this allowed her to return to Earth using spatial magic. Upon returning to Earth she changed many things, although her memories were fragmented she was still fond of the planet, or maybe just fond of the vast array of entertainment that existed there.

Being immortal was rather boring, a good movie could occupy her for a few hours and then give her something to think about for perhaps even a few days.

So in her goal to entertain herself, she decided the preservation of Earth was essential, and to do so she introduced mana. Introducing mana brought a vast number of changes, allowing the plant to steer away from self-destruction. To further ensure its continued existence she also decided to get rid of any nuclear weapons and redirected a bunch of asteroids. Mana caused wild animals to evolve, and the food chain got shaken up a bit, humans ended up placed quite low down so it resulted in a great number of deaths and the collapse of quite a few countries. The deaths didn't particularly bother her, after all, this allowed humanity to discover magic and strengthened the race as a whole. With humanity strengthened it was unlikely that they would self-destruct, meaning she would be provided with entertainment for eons to come. After spending a few centuries helping Earth stabilise she used magic to allow her to connect to the internet from Kuthier, and then promptly left Earth. Although she had introduced mana to Earth, the mana density was about 3 times lesser there than on Kuthier. She felt more comfortable there than on Earth and so if she could spend time there instead, she would.

Back before she had become a god she had encountered the Demon Queen and become quite good friends with her. When it later came to war between the Daemonfolk and humans she joined her side. After squashing an empire and a few kingdoms, becoming a god, and returning from Earth, she discovered an untouched continent, she helped the Demon Queen relocate the entire race to this continent which finally resulted in peace.

Naturally, over time a massive empire was created and the Demon Queen became a Demon Empress. Many thousands of years passed, and she stepped down from her throne to be later known as the Immortal Demon Empress, the founding members also became known as the Immortal Demon Generals. The replacement for the Empress was a non-immortal demon and so the throne would be passed down through the family, the only Immortals on Kuthier were the former generals and the founding empress herself. None of the later rulers held any power over the founding generals, when the first empress stepped down she stated that although she was stepping down, her former generals and she held power greater than the replacement rulers. Since, at the time she was worshipped like a god no one disputed this, and the entire empire kept to this rule since.

Reiko was one of these founding generals and she had taken the remainder of her army to the snowy north of the continent and settled a city. This city was called Zephir. As the only one of the former generals to do so, she had at the time been granted the title of Grand Duchess by the Empress and she had kept that title for the last 90 thousand years.

Having teleported to the main hall of her castle she called her secretary and went to her office. She read all the reports on her desk in a couple of seconds and then decided the best way to deal with everything.

"Catherine I want you to go over the mining village and see how their food supplies are, if they are low we will need to bring in more from Iris. This is a particularly cold winter we are having so food supplies are our priority. After you are done there I want you to check the fortress in the mountain pass as well, the commander there will give you a report with all the details. If he doesn't then beat the shit out of him, he should have had it ready as of last week."

"Yes Reiko", her secretary, Catherine, had been working with Reiko since before the founding of the empire so she didn't bother using her title in private, this didn't bother Reiko so it was fine.

"Sorry I'm making you do this personally, but anyone other than the Valkyries or Valors won't be able to deal with this weather. The other Valkyries in Zephir are already busy so it falls to you", the temperatures dropped far lower than usual this winter, it was currently -70°C and no normal person could deal with it for long. However, the race of Valkyries, as well as the Valors, was no normal race, they were very strong, and something like a little cold would never bother them.

"That is alright, it's my job anyways", Catherine was a Valkyrie, and one of the strongest Valkyries who served Reiko.

After saying this Catherine left the office and prepared to leave, Reiko finished up some papers and was about to head off to Iris where she had a little more work to do. She was about to say something to Catherine but realised she had already left. So instead, she left a note on her desk telling her to get directly in contact with Erika, the Valkyrie in charge of Iris, if she needed supplies and include it in a written report later rather than waiting to do it in person.

After dealing with all the paperwork in Zephir she inspected the castle, the reading of reports and giving out new orders took her 2 hours even though she could read and think at many times the speed of a human. This trait is common among immortals and gods, it is simply thought acceleration. Reiko quickly inspected the castle to check if Catherine had done her job correctly, she always did but it was better to check, and once satisfied she teleported to Iris.

Iris was a place that was created by Reiko's magic a number of years after she became a god. It is a dimension where there is simply a large flat world, its overall surface area would be roughly equal to that of the sun with which the humans of Earth were familiar. It was the place where Reiko had her home. In addition to phenomenal mana density which made it ideal to train and also just relax, time ran a little differently here than on Earth and Kuthier. Time dilation is mainly caused by mana density but it can also be manipulated by gods, and Reiko had done exactly that for Iris. Since it was her place of relaxation she wanted to spend as much time as possible here, so she had time run faster here than Earth and Kuthier. While one year would pass on Earth, 3 would pass on Kuthier and 1000 would pass in Iris.

Reiko had built her home spanning 3 extremely close together mountain peaks, it was a large home where she had everything ranging from a cinema, to a blacksmith's forge and an alchemy lab. Halfway up this mountain was a little village where all the Valkyries which served Reiko had their homes. They didn't really visit home that often and there were only 250 of them, however they still needed a place to stay, so Reiko let them settle in Iris, close to where she lived. The only reason they had access to Iris in the first place is that they used to be elites from Reiko's army, she had used magic to change their race from Demons to Valkyries. They became much stronger and also Immortal after this change, it was a reward for serving in her wars in the past and they ended up continuing to serve her.

At the bottom of the mountain and a little away from it, was another settlement. However, this was no small village, it was much more appropriate to call this a city. Off to the side of this city were golden fields which sprawled for miles as well as many orchards with a wonderful variety of fruit. In this settlement lived the Valors, the only other race other than Valkyries that served Reiko. There were a lot of them, unlike the Valkyries their numbers had increased over time and there were now 260,000 of them and they all lived in this one city, that is, apart from the ones that were deployed in Zephir or that interacted with Earth through a portal Reiko had made for them. Of course, the humans had absolutely no idea about this portal. The Valors looked no different from humans at all, so they were able to blend in flawlessly, they ran businesses on earth, and got their goods mainly from Iris. There was also a portal to Iris deep inside her castle in Zephir, that was used to supply food and goods to the region.

After all, Zephir was an extremely cold place which was only inhabited thanks to the use of wide-scale magic which could protect the city from a majority of the cold and blizzards. However that protection was only for the city, protecting fields around the city was not possible with the citizen's capabilities and didn't interest Reiko enough to cast the magic for them. From her point of view there was nothing wrong with importing food from Iris, and the citizens also didn't have much of a problem with their food being imported, the only thing was that they had no idea where the food came from.

When Reiko created Iris, she used magic to protect it from interference of other beings so that she would have a place to rest peacefully, this coincidentally created an ideal place for her subordinates to stay in peacefully, and so she let them.

It was her place of relaxation, but that doesn't mean that she did nothing there. It was the place that all the reports from her subordinates apart from Zephir were sent to, she let her subordinates manage themselves for the most part as she hated dealing with reports and giving out orders, however, it was still necessary every now and then, for example like right now.

Reiko preferred dealing with reports that she received in Iris rather than the ones in Zephir, this was because the reports in Iris were generally about food yields, Valor population growth, training reports from the Valkyries and any money that she received from her subordinates. She didn't tax her subordinates living in Iris, and there were also no fees for using her portals, but for some reason, they felt the need to give her a portion of the money that they earned on Earth. She had told them many times that it was completely unnecessary because she expected something else from them, absolute obedience and participation in any conflicts that occur on Kuthier. They were both her army and her citizens. The Valkyries would also be deployed beyond Kuthier and even in conflicts with other gods, they were far stronger than the Valors and most gods would struggle to fight against them.

Sitting down at her desk and reading the reports provided to her by Erika 'Hmm I see, the population went up a little again, I haven't been to Iris since Akito was born… They gave me more money as well, so bothersome… I don't even know what to do with all the money I have. I don't spend that much on Earth because I already have everything I need.'

Reiko sighed and left her office room to go get something to drink, picking out a bottle of whisky that she particularly enjoyed from her bar she poured herself some and went to go sit on the balcony she had on the top floor of her house.

She simply sat there for a while, not thinking about anything in particular, just gazing out at Iris. Beyond the settlement and the fields of crops and rows of orchards were great lakes, lush forests, snow-capped mountains, and vast plains. Iris was a flat dimension, so sitting on her balcony Reiko could see very, very far, she was not a human whose eyes could not see details beyond a certain distance, focusing on a mountain several thousand miles away was trivial.

Reiko found the view relaxing and it was one she was familiar with. She often sat on her balcony and drank, not that drinking did anything for her. She would need to drink an unfathomable volume of alcohol to get drunk, so she only drank the things of which she found the taste enjoyable.

Although, she could get drunk if she lowered her natural resistances by using magic, however, she never did so as it always resulted in her forgetting what had happened and the people she had been with the night before looking at her strangely.