96
"So with that done you two are now officially hired, Thank you by the way." Signing the last of the boring paperwork Shea pushes it out of the way and looks across her desk at Delia and Isabella. The both of them decided they wanted to do something and Izzy is getting her old job back and Delia is taking an upgraded position compared to what she had in dark shadow empire.
And with that out of the way, I am free from paperwork for the foreseeable future, its been delegated by my most merciful empress. But on a real note, I was going to find a way to delegate it myself if Shea didn't assign some real personnel to the job. Sitting around memorizing and summarizing made me feel like a computer.
Wait... couldn't I have had the people at Olympus do it since they are absolutely loyal even Friday could have sorted and summarized all the year's worth of paperwork in a few minutes.
I smack my forehead and wonder why the good ideas only come when they are useless, well to me at least. This will help Izzy and Delia a lot, lucky little...
"Nova?" Shea speaks up breaking the awkward atmosphere after my self-abuse.
"I just realized my kingdom, Olympus could have done all the paperwork we wasted all that time doing, and it would have been much faster." Shea's eyes go wide in recognition of the superiority of an autonomous paperwork slav- worker.
Shea's bangs fall over her face as she looks down with a gloomy atmosphere taking over, on the other side of the table Izzy and Delia look like they just won the lottery.
"Nova~." Izzy puts on the works as she bats her eyelashes and leans her chest onto the table giving a good preview. "You wouldn't mind sharing your kingdom to help us with a few things, would you?" I am about to nod and agree since it isn't a big deal anyway when Delia sees my silence as hesitation and also joins in.
"Come on Nova~ we would have so much free time for other activities if you helped us clear up a few things." Gobsmacked is my reaction to Delia's joining in on Isabella's ploy.
"Y-Yea, sure thing." I stare at them weirdly as they celebrate, I guess it makes sense if you take into account they thought their job would have a lot of boring paperwork. Now, they have a way to get out of the boring stuff.
"Nova." Shea's authoritative voice takes my attention away from the two who are making me feel like I got ripped off.
"What's up Shea?" I am itching to get out of here and go work on my implants project, I am making headway on small-time implants and limb replacement technology with the assistance of Friday.
"Do you have time to help me with something?" I purse my lips and hesitantly nod, here goes my research time.
"Depends on how messed up the thing your about to ask is." She softly smiles and stands up and approaches me.
"Nothing you can't handle." She teleports us and out of the corner of my eye, I see Izzy start to panic.
----
- Isabella's POV -
I stomp my foot after not making it in time to stop their teleport, I even used my flash bloodline talent and still failed.
"What's wrong Isabella?" Delia asks with a hint of worry in her voice.
"He hasn't set up the paperwork machine and all this stuff has to be done by the end of today." I feel my blood start to boil from sheer frustration, Shea even had the gall to smile as she started the teleport.
"Wait, what?" Delia looks at the paperwork and then back at me with tears welling up in her eyes. "Say your kidding."
----
- Nova POV -
"So you just wanted them to suffer a day as we did?" She nods and walks over to her bed and flops down on it causally.
"Yea, I also do need to talk to you about a matter that was brought up to me last night." After I bought out a massive hotel and hired a nanny to watch the kids she picked up on the streets we finally retired and it was pretty late.
"What could that be I wonder." She leans her head up to look at me and I walk over and flop next to her.
"Multiple people have brought up an issue I was expecting but didn't plan to address right away." I turn my head and look at her, seeing the side of her face I admire the look she has when she isn't putting on a cold persona.
"What issue?" She looks at me and can see the room reflected in her amethyst eyes.
"I will just get straight to the point, I think we should also do a public marriage." A few steps were skipped in this procedure causing my brain to short. She at least has the decency to blush after such a crap proposal.
"I am not exactly feeling swept off my feet here Shea." I grumble and she giggles in response.
"Let me explain, For political reasons I need a husband and people already see you as my backer. If I married someone else they would think many problematic thoughts, they will jump to all kinds of conclusions and so someone else isn't an option politically because it would be a mess."
I could see people trying to cause a rift or assuming there already is one if that was the case. Maybe even try to get her to take a consort that they can use as an in-between on their behalf and to look out for their interests.
"Also, I have zero interest in anyone other than you. No one actively tried to support me other than Athena's dad and so I don't trust anyone and can't see myself getting with someone I don't trust. So as my biggest backer and with your identity as Catherine's husband you would instantly pull everyone hesitant about my reign firmly into my camp. This would be the closest thing to a solid alliance the demon world has had in a very long time." She pauses to give me time to think about what she has said so far but I honestly don't need time. She sees it as an overall beneficial thing for her to be married to 'Nova' because he is stupidly rich and also married to a different Empress.
"I get what you're saying, I am not averse to the idea. I am just wondering how you feel about it and not the benefits for your 'reign'. I will be blunt and say that you are a very closed-off person and are hell-bent on living your father's dream, it makes it difficult to connect meaningfully." She cringes when I bring up her dad and lays her head back breaking the eye contact. "Like I said, not averse to it but you also need to do some personal work on yourself. You got the throne he wanted to have and you know no one but Abyss is a real threat to your 'reign' so the marriage is mainly to shut people up. So is it worth it for that simple fact or do you want to wait and figure out what you want to do?"
If she keeps clinging to a goal she has already achieved and not opening up a marriage would be strictly political. Not that I care, I could eventually work her into something else if I wanted to, but this is also a good time to bring attention to the problem.
"I guess I can see what you are saying. Since the burden to achieve his goal was put on my shoulders I have been rather single-minded." More like only minded but at least she is admitting it. "I would like to work on it, you are right about being too closed off. I was always hesitant to make friends or love someone because of what my father did to my last friends. He made examples out of them to teach me that they can only be a weakness in my armor if I am not strong enough to defeat all my foes. All my foes are pretty much gone, minus the world-ending kind." She looks back over at me and it looks like her eyes are a little reddened.
"So what is it that you want to do Shea?"
----
Shrinking back into myself and shielding my body with my wings I feel like a prisoner stepping out of a jail cell after twenty-plus years.
The sun, the actual sun, and not a moon is shining on my skin and blinding my eyes.
"Damn that feels good, and also kind of tingles my sinful flesh!" I look around at all the more earth-like and less fantasy-looking plants and overall landscape. I feel like I have been sent back to earth by that space seed, but I can still feel the ability to teleport back to the demon world so it can't be too far.
I push off the ground and only start to slow down as I am nearing the clouds. my wings keep me suspended in the air as I look around for signs of life.
Spotting a human city that looks more advanced compared to the demon world I take off in its direction. With the shadow cloak equipped I descend into a crowded city market, I unequip the cloak and appear Infront of people.
No one reacts except for a cute little kid who points at me while pulling his mom's sleeve.
"Mom, is he a ghost? He came out of nowhere!" The woman in question a short blond haired blue eyed woman looks toward where her kid is pointing and meets my eyes.
"Don't point at people it's rude." She reprimands the boy as she blushes and quickly leads her kid away. I smile at the encounter and look around the crowd and not seeing any blue skin or red skin or even any horns or tails I feel a bit odd.
I have become accustomed to the people of the demon world, even if they are annoying at times. I walk over to a shop that is selling some fruits, I grab a few and toss some black crystal coins. Seeing the man's eyes widen and pocket the things I try to remember how rare they are here or if they don't even have them in the human world. Realizing it doesn't matter I lean into his stall to ask him a few questions.
"Hey old man, where am I?" His brows raise and he gives me a pitying look, likely assuming I am touched in the head since I overpaid and don't know where I am.
"Tinai town." I wave him off and press for more specifics.
"What empire and who is the emperor currently?" He looks around and then leans in.
"Dragon Bright Empire and the emperor is Rex Roland the great, try to remember before you cause yourself any problems." I nod as I realize this is the original main character's body's home empire, Arthur Roland.
"Point in the direction of the capital." I drop five gold crystal coins Infront of him as he starts to look concerned, his tune changes and he points off to my left.
"Roughly in that direction." I set a hand on his shoulder over top of all the fruits.
"Thanks for the info old man, I will come back if I don't find the capital in that direction though." And as his brow starts to sweat I equip the cloak and disappear which gets a shout from the man.
Man is it fun to screw with people who have zero power, nothing cruel like breaking their legs but little stuff like this makes my day. Taking out a fruit I bought I keep the seeds safe for later planting and take a bite, a new flavor for my chefs to work with.
I soon take off at full speed toward the sun as it is in the direction the man pointed, hopefully, he didn't lie and I have to look for a map seller.