Own problems

Aki had made a relatively solid footing with his new enterprise. Even just knowing who the succuby shapeshifted to durring sex, which kinks their patrons had and whatever they said when they thought no one important was listening, was more than enough for Aki to have several minor and some middle noble households in the palm of his hand.

The money flew to his pockets like moths to a flame, but anyone looking at the new number one academy student would think they are currently bullied out of every peny they had. Unless one stopped to think about why Aki was actually hitting people with heavy purses filled with gold coins, they would not notice the white ass maniac mumbling about ways to do this and that better. Aki had already tried plenty of things, but every time he went home, it didn't matter if something had happened or not, he'd worry a lot and end up more tired than he should be.

This ended making his wife feel terrible and irritaded. After all, she both knew why her spouse worried and that he worried too much about it, blaming both of then at once and entering Aki's circle of sadness and regret.

On the second week of this.

"We should break up." Said Aki while sitting in the sofa in fornt of his wife.

"What?" She most definetly did not expect something, anything like that coming from him even if they were passing through something like this. "I know i..." Said a surprised and afraid Tsu. She herself understood that was the right decision, she'd seen that coming. She just didn't want to see that coming.

"I don't care Tsu. I've tried, we've tried. This doesn't work. I've had more than one friend having a toxic relationship, and this isn't even intentionally caused by either of us! It's a ridiculous cicle of sadness. This was great, but i don't think we can work as lovers. Friends? Sure. But i'm just not looking for this kind of idi... this kind of stress. The problem is not something we can fix together." Aki explained calmly while obviously restraining himself from showing a lot of reactions. "This was my first relationship, and I loved it, maybe even grew more because of it, but l also understand that the way I act and what I do make it hard for you to finish this mistake. It's a psicological effect similar to gratitude and I don't know how to..."

"Don't you dare try to explain that, because we both know how it will sound." Resolutely said Tsu while interrupting him and pinching the bridge of her nose while curving her back a bit.

"Sorry. I'm just... OK. Focus." He said pausedly while stopping himself from diverging from the talk. It was quite rare to need to do so now, but these days have not been good on him. "You're amazing on everything you do and I love being with you, that's why I want to end this well and stay friends. You're still the dungeon's first queen, but not my wife." He paused for a bit and almost as an after thought added: "What do you think?"

"... I never liked how you got when you talked like your mother, but yeah, I agree. At least I won't have to... Nothing. I don't want to be mean to you even if I feel angry. This much I can control myself. I will go chill my thoughts if you don't mind, but I still want to be your friend." She said while looking her now ex in the eyes before standing and leaving.

*****

"Teach, are you okay?" Asked the worried girl with a mostly blank face with emotions only a protagonist could detect. Or her mother.

"Just looking at this system message saying i lost three titles. It..." Aki started saying, before the words cloged in his throat. It was too soon. He was truly sad about this. So sad he didn't even cry.

[Congratulations! Pain resistance is now level 9]

"It's all fine. I'll just get better ones instead." Allow me to say that no, he is not even remotly remenbering the empress fits his tipes perfectly, neither would he be strong enough to just ignore his current state and try something stupid no matter how much this sentence make it seems so.

As such, he completely ignored the classes and practically left his avatar on stand by. Peny had a hard time actually getting his attention when they had to go to another room for the next class, but he went anyway.

At the end of the day, Aki ditched his apprentice with a random excuse and started wandering through the city. Though the underdark didn't really have a climate so much as it had areas that didn't have lava or other strange shit, the capital still had plants and parks with a mild spring breeze flowing most of the time. Thank magic.

After visiting two parks in a row, Aki decided to simply walk towards the empress' spy. Well, to the wall the wood elf who looked like a drug dealer who tested his products on himself while drinking was resting against.

"Hey, you good there friend?" Aki calmly asked.

"What's tha to do with ya?" Grogly asked the man with an obvious accent.

"Well, i was looking for some fun. You seem like someone who would know where to get it." Aki answered on the same tone as before while he scanned the mild crowd currently on the park.

"That depends. Wha's in it for me and wha do ya want?" The man seemed to sober up just enough to deal with a costumer the moment he focused his eyes on Aki.

"I'd help you have some fun in exchange. Where i come from we call it sugar tits." That made the agent cough a little blood on the inside. "But i believe that here you call her black dragon." That's the empress' moniquer, yes. Yes, it is actually also a drug.

"Why didn't ya say sa sooner? Come, come, ma mate has some on the good stash and we were waiting fo just the right p'rson" Said the man while having some problems with his accent.

Walking through shady streets till a bakery of some renown and using it's passage to get into the castle, the man dropped his accent, though it wasn't fake, and told Aki to go through and leave dealing with the straglers waiting for him outside to him, to which Aki thanked him and passed his hotel keys to the man before knocking on a trapdoor with the code given to him. He didn't need to turn back and look to know the agent was already running back to the bakery to make sure he was seen going back to his hotel room with newly bought drugs.

With the right procedures done, Aki was left on a waiting room next to the royal chambers without anyone seeing him.

Not even five minutes later, Aki had finished writing on a notepad and was looking directly at the empress as she seeped some tea on the other side of the palace. That made her look back. Seeing the idiot looking like he'd just watched ten heartbreaking dramas in a row while holding a notepad with the words "Can we talk?" written on it, she sighed and teleported to the door even before he maid could inform her she had a guest waiting.

"You don't seem to have anything urgent to say, so why are you here? You should know the position i'm preparing for you needs achievements to be possesed, but the public knows none of yours at the moment." Slowly said the powerful woman, more curious than anoyed.

"Well, it's just... It will be easier to show. Not an actual attack by the way." Aki said before releasing a breath and letting his killing intent blow out. Fantasy moniquer asside, his emotions mixed with his huge amount of mana literally caused a strong gust of wind to form as he released his hold on his anger and sorrow. It pulsed like a heart and trembled as it tried to damage everything around. The walls of the room quickly lost their collor, the food rotten away in a second, the wood and stone cracking a bit, but mostly holding out thanks to their magical nature and enchantments. That was about ten second of Aki letting go of his control.

"That certainly seem like a problem. Though i don't see why i should help." Said the empress to the crying face with trembling lips in front of her.

"I will supply you with amnesiatic drugs without side effects." He answered through telepathy while blood fell from his avatar's mouth as it bit it's own mouth to stop the shaking.

"Can i see it?" Said the woman who tried to hide her enthusiasm as she approached.

Aki made a vial of a viscous black liquid appear. The reinforced glass tube was only a little bigger than a finger, but it had a very ominous aura. It had a very strange lid though. Three square teeth, like those of a cog, around a black circle in a white surface with three arrows pointing to the center.

Then empress imedialty appraised it

[Name: Y009-02

Rarity: Blue (almost purple)

Description: A substance made mainly from the bodily fluids of a great terror. Highly attuned to death, mind, void, life and space attributes material. Even in a proper container it will still loose it's properties if not refined within a week of it's extraction. You don't want to know how to make it. You have been warned.]

The woman imediatly backed off to the corner of the room.

"I will give you one chance. Explain to me why you have something even the system would consider this dangerous?" She said while preparing to galvanize the whole room if needed.

"Because i made the substance myself. Got a permit to use it as long as i don't mention how to produce it to anyone else though. Really, it was extremely easier than i'd thought it'd be to recreate something like this, but now that the system knows about it through me, it has made it so i can't perfect it without incuring penalties and no one can copy it without a dungeon, which it practically controls. I'm currently trying to make something on the same level as 469 and 610, but those two are... Right, you have no idea what those are. Anyway, they won't matter to you unless you plan to go down my dungeon. The meat that hates can even be safely consumed by normal people, nevermind adventurers so forget it, but my point is, i was trying some shit out and made this. No side effects to ussing the actual product. This one is for free and here's a table with the amount you need to give someone to how much time will be wipped from their memory and how to specify things. That was actually harder to get than the actual product. Be sure to not gift it to the spider goddess though. Wanna sit to finish hearing me out?" Aki asked while signing the other sofa to the still empress who had calmed down somewhat thanks to his claims of having permision. She did so before asking the question.

"What do you want in return for this?"

"Let me work as a ranger unit." He replied imediatly.

"That's..." A very strange request she didn't expect and would problably need to reject.

"Just work. Monster. Anomalies. Something i can shove my mind and focus into for real." Aki clarified while holding his face with a hand.

"Much more reasonable. I will see what i can do. If you don't mind though, would you tell me what got you like this?" She asked with real curiosity in her voice and no shadow of malice in her eyes.

"It's actually easier to tell this to someone i care less about, and it is supposed to be terapeutic, so, sure. I just finished my first romantic relationship. I actually loved her too. Thought we'd be able to go through with whatever, but i was wrong. Even if i'm in a good situation from my point of view, it does not mean it is perfect. I guess it made me more mature to this kind of thing and a bit more confident i'm worthy of love, but i don't truly know what to do from here. There. Ooof, that actually took a weight off my shoulders. Say, you're a drown empress, anything you'd recomend for feeling like this? Besides fucking, specialy with a dragon, i'm just too tired mentally right now." Said Aki while ranting about his problems. The empress didn't actually expect a direct and easy answer, but not like that was a bad thing either.

"Do something stupid and fun even if you don't feel like it. Just try not to murder too many people." Nonchalantly said the more experienced woman, who just got the psicology skill out of this. This was actaully the first time she'd tried helping someone with the mind games she knew. At least personaly.