The heart is a scary place

"I mean, I could probably sell her as a slave after doing a facial change or other. I'd have a mole into a den of a slaver and no guilt over my consciousness either way, but I should at least check her memory to see if... Yeah, no, she's complete human trash. Ima gonna rob her house later." Aki muttered out loud while deciding what to do with one of the women present, which didn't take more than a moment looking at her mind thanks to Aki's prowess in the field. A flick of his hand later and she was dead, her imprint on storage rings rendered moot. Moving his gaze to the servant looking woman in a terrible state though, Aki immediately healed and cleaned her out of simple decency.

The bandits had probably raped and mistreated her in front of the noble for the fun. Looking at her memories only confirmed Aki's guess. Seeing the simple and virtuous life she lived before this though, he couldn't help but shudder in anger at what was done to her.

Gathering all the souls around, Aki started using the bandits as fuel to construct better memories for the woman. She'd long been broken, he'd not be able to do anything for her without removing at least her second month of captivity. He wouldn't simply leave it at the bare minimum though.

"It must be fate playing, who would have guessed that our arrival at this forest would be so close. Well, I know what I will do next." He said and kissed her forehead, completely sealing her memory. She'd have to grow to deal with this, and Aki saw no reason to not take his due while at it.

Calling for Arcenis, Aki told her to get the naked woman into the simple clothes he'd gotten over her and to transport her with care to the bunny village before he left to deal with ALL the badit camps in the forest.

His last round had simply been for collecting resources, but it seemed he got too worked up.

*****

Even as Aki made sure to kill all people who were actually criminals or worse in his forest, he actually found some people who relentlessly begged for their life, some who threatened others as they actually read past his acting, one bitch even directly tried to undress herself and suck him, but there's a limit even to guys who like groveling and begging, and Aki isn't even into that. Anyway, these people with hatred for him could not be manipulated while they were in soul state without causing their destruction, so Aki decided to turn their hatred against themselves.

All on all, Aki had won five dullahans, one light stalker, one depraved charmer, twenty humans, twelve elves and three dog kin, including the first lady he saved, so there was a high amount of movement all over the forest as the driad opened a path for all those rescued and whatever was transporting them.

Strangely enough, Aki didn't need to do much 'convincing' to get the beastkin to accept the undead as guards. Or the charmer as a priest. She seemed to really like kneeling and getting her prayers on day. She even blushed when asked to whom she was praying. It was black, clothed blood, but it was undeniable that she'd blushed. Aki decided not to think much about that.

She was a beautiful lady while alive, and the small scar on her neck didn't change that, she was even more beautiful with that raven black hair actually, but she was definitely a fanatic, and Aki wasn't going there.

After explaining to the living people that he'd rescued them on order of the recently awakened driad, Aki also had it easy with making everyone stay, even those who still had their memories.

Most of them were women, and the pretty boys weren't actually that much better. There was this one muscled guy who'd been the stress bag of the camp and had several damaged organs and a fractured arm, the only one who hadn't been raped from all those Aki saved, who, after healed, imediatly swore eternal loyalty to Aki while bawling his eyes out and kneeling.

He didn't have much reaction to that though, simply touching the man's shoulder and bringing him into a half hug.

"There was this little girl in the same camp as you, I had to completely wipe her memory. Your sole duty from now on is being responsible for her."

The man stopped sobbing and lifted his head, looking at Aki's serious expression. He cleaned his face and gave a military salute before leaving with a resolute look.

This whole ordeal took around thirty six hours to finish and Aki didn't rest much between dealing with all the camps that had slaves.

Non surprisingly, there were tons more of camps that dealt with illicit drugs for some bigger company, some that sold magical equipment outside the countrie's regulation and some that were just hiding after getting a high bounty for past crimes.

Aki didn't have the stamina to keep going for that long nor the experience of a black company's salaryman, so he imediatly flopped on his luxurious bed recently installed in his cave.

*****

He was now level 81 in both race and class, but he doubted he'd evolve again at level 100 though. Right now he was focused in a more important matter.

"Can I get a hug? We haven't been together for three days! I'm lonely~!" Aki was currently trying to get some affection from his lover. By groveling at her feet. "Forgive this lowly dog my lady! He is never complete without you and didn't know better~!" He said while latching to her thigh.

Ela and the kids were kind of stunned by this out of nowhere reaction, but they were all actually enjoying the show.

"I'm not actually angry, you even had Arcenis guard and contact us, get up." She said with her usual expressionless face. Aki was a man of the twenty one century though, he was teached again and again to never trust that first sentence, specially when it comes from a woman. He obeyed the second one though. "Are you sure? I was going to offer a massage and a relaxing oil bath though..." He said with pure innocence on his face while sending messages to the kids. 'Learn at least this from this old wolf children, when a woman says she isn't really angry after you have done something bad, you must make her feel special be she angry or not!'

"Well, when you offer something like that..." She caved in with a twitch of her ears and was led by the hand to a deeper part of the forest. Needless to say, he didn't stop at the massage, though his skill leveled up to five thanks to synergy.

The following days though, Aki used his spare time to gather the rest of the bandits with no more surprises or deviations.

Though he was surprised by some of the good quality equipment he recognized and happy about getting even more money and jewels, there were no more undead, no secret village or rare beast found either.

Throughout all this though, Aki maxed out the amount of wisdom he could get from eating third tier humans.

Yes, big surprise, humans, demons and elves are the most well known source of WIS in magical meat. This world even has some cannibal tribes that have not been eliminated because of that. Ironically enough, eating human meat is the mainstream way for beasts to gain sentience.

Since we're at it, 'source of sentience' is a physical condensation of enlightened souls that have passed through a death magic ritual, being completely cleaned in the process and regressing to a point where they would only be able to inhabit a bug, a small piece of vegetation or some other small scale organism. Not a permanent thing, obviously, the process is just exhausting and can't affect karmic ties or such.

Aki has no clue yet as to how to destroy a soul either.

Altering one is a different story though.

As he stood naked in a viscous, black and oily substance, Aki extended his claw and started to carve at the driad heart in his hand.

This time, she didn't bend over, she held onto the basin's edge, Aki's order was quite unnecessary to have her not touching the disgusting liquid, even if she knew it would help her, it was still an aversion of all she'd believe in.

They both just stood there as she slowly cried golden tears into the pool, seemingly not causing any change in it.

Her hair curled a bit again, causing beautiful waves over the mane, her eyelashes became longer, her eyes more almond shaped, her cheeks filled out a bit, her breasts firmer and meatier legs.

"Now you look like a latina? Well, however long this is going to take, it still has plenty of steps, because the only relation I have with those sets of characteristics are my eyes, hair and ass, but I guess your's has always been bigger than mine." Aki commented while getting closer to her. Giving it a check, he nodded. "Yup, definitely bigger. Want some squat series? If it just keeps like that it will make you look fat." He calmly offered.

"Why do you do this?" He answered her with a questioning look that was very easy to translate as 'are you stupid or did I hear you wrong?' "Why do you still speak to me? I'm already your slave and your torture grinds away at my very self in a rate I forget how I looked before this happened! What do you have to gain from acting like a fool!?" She sharply intoned with a higher volume, but her face didn't change at all.

Aki just giggled.

"I'm not an actual God, I don't need or want servants and pawns without personalities." He laughed at her "Look, you want to know how I got to you so easily?" He looked at her with pity. Her eyes didn't betray anything, but he told her anyway. "It's because your build is naturally flawed. All driads are like that. You can squash me, won't burn away for more than a second and can kill me with any other magical school you have learned through the millenia you have lived." He giggled again. "And yet you didn't do that because you believed you could keep going no matter what since we were in your forest. Girl, I don't know how high your stats go, but I doubt your wisdom has reached even a thousand. You have the regeneration from all the plants in the forest plus anything you can take from the earth, why would you bother to raise it? Oh, right, because it also affects your willpower. Your's is shit though. The moment I isolated you, your will was softer than Slime to the touch. This might seem like a great task to you, but even I, as a noob mind mage, know hypnosis. It works great for cutting and messing with hives, you know?" Aki booped her in the nose as realization started to change her expression and make her skin tone closer to Aki's. "Just another piece of info dear."

"Stop." She weakly muttered.

"Humans use and abuse this stile with summoning." He softly said, no more mockery in his voice. Only pity.

"They would have attacked." She weakly rebuted.

"The humans from this world are not smart nor old enough to notice that. Bees, ants and other colony types all use a similar system with naturally formed substances, but some can use mind magic and make a link between every individual of the colony. Generally focused on the egg laying queen at the bottom of their nests."

"I never heard of such species." her voice got higher.

"Why would you? Anything like that would have been exterminated by the gods when they set foot in this world. No life would prosper with then around. You as you were before meeting me would have been imediatly eaten by the roots the moment you went to sleep. Maybe you'd kill millions with magic or so, but they don't care. They are merely drones for the hive. Sometimes their colony is part of a greater hive, connected to a hive queen, which controls each and every mind of the colony. Do you see the resemblance or do you need me to say it out loud?" He asked her with ternure appearing in his eyes. "We will be family in the future, you can count on me for at least this much. Or you can just scream in my face." He explained before shrugging.

"She cares for all life." She said in a monotone.

"Which King doesn't love all its subjects? They are it's source of power. Can you tell me she sees you as more than a leaf to feed a worm with though?" He held his forehead against her forehead, locking their eyes. "If you spit on me I'm kissing you, just saying." He warned.

"Of course I am." And she spit into his mouth. And then he kissed her before freezing them together.

'Then why has she not killed this worm?' That made her cry. Cry much more then when he carved at her soul. He heated their lips again and unlocked them. She didn't look mighty pissed, just hurt.

Aki pulled her closer and hugged the smaller woman while kneeling in the tub, her tears burning at his shoulder. "I'm getting plenty of vitality training with this, so cry as much as you need and them as much as you want." And he ment it.