Gathering the reports.

The next morning, Nobu officially ended all deployments of Hold's forces, putting them on a training schedule until the War Between Worlds. This resulted in Hold becoming much more quiet as everyone focused on improving their strength.

Most of my Guards also asked for a leave of absence to train, leaving only my Shadow Guard and Maiev on duty. Until they have returned, Rita and Lin will accompany me as guards in their stead.

Now, I was in my office going through documents concerning the Academic City. Dr. Mei and Shennong were also here, as they are responsible for the city.

-"Your tea."

~"Thank you, Rita. Mei, Shennong, I wanted to ask you two about your opinion on the subject."

-"The city operates on minimal capacity, be it shops or entertainment facilities, around five percent are used. We need a population aside from students who will permanently take residence there."

-"Miss Mei is correct. While those who moved to the city as refugees before made it possible to keep it alive, we need to invite more residents."

~"Hmm... Easiest people to gather as refugees, but the risk of introducing so many new people to a new environment can't be ignored."

-"I spoke with Astraea on the subject before, and she proposed bringing people from Cultivation worlds, as populations there are absurdly high."

~"Not a bad idea. I will speak to Shen Meng later and organize the migration with her. How many people do you wish to take in?"

-"Right now, the city has fifteen thousand residents and three thousand students. If the schools operate at maximum capacity, the number of students will rise to a hundred thousand. To achieve that, we will need at least ten million residents to not negatively impact other aspects."

~"Ten million is too many to take in in one go."

-"Yes, that's why I prepared a plan. At first, we will raise the population to a million. After everything operates smoothly, we will increase it again to three million and, in the and, to a full ten million."

~"How long will that take?"

-"Idea is to be done in two years."

~"By promising safety and access to commodities, we can easily attract mortals or weak Cultivators, but you would need a strong policing force to control them."

-"Shennong is in charge of governing the city."

-"Yes, because the number of people interested in joining the military is beyond what Domination can train at once, many decided to join policing forces in lieu of direct military training. Rather than a year of training before becoming a soldier, they will work for five years for us and train during this time."

~"Second chance for those who didn't make the cut? This can indeed work, but be sure also to form the core of permanent members."

-"Yes."

-"There is one last matter that you personally need to take care of. The naming ceremony."

~"Right, our cities need names. Sure, when do you want to host it?"

-"How about two weeks before the Festival of Domination?"

~"Good, just be sure to coordinate everything with Astraea and Ningguang."

After two of them left, I finished processing the documents.

-"Master Yue."

~"Rita? What's the matter?"

-"Why didn't you just create more humans or some other race? Both Long and Yaoshi did so before, and now that you are Aeon, I believe you can also do so."

~"You are indeed correct that I can do so. Valkyries can be considered a race that I created, but I also have plans for other creations. Sadly, it's not easy to bring race into existence."

-"I see."

~"If you are interested, try talking with Mobius and Ruan Mei, as they are working together with me on the project to create a new race."

-"No, It's not a Maid place to snoop around a Master's secrets."

~"Then what is maid place?"

-"Always by Master's side."

~"I sometimes wonder if what I mean by maid is the same thing that you mean when you speak of Maids."

-"Is that so? Maid is Maid."

~"Right, can you tell me where did you send Rin? I haven't seen her these past few weeks."

-"Rin wanted to become a better Maid, so I sent her for training."

~"I'm a little afraid to know, but please tell me where."

-"Dungeon of Orario."

~"Hmm? Quite normal. What is her job there?"

-"Build a restaurant and hotel bellow thirtieth floor, manage and defend it alone until she served the thousandth guest. It must be cleaned spotless and have perfect reviews throughout."

~"I take it back. I have no idea what maid is anymore."

-"Maid is Maid."

In the evening, before returning to Inner Palace, I once again sat in the office, looking over the documents while listening to reports.

-"The budget for the Palace needs to be increased by 9,87% to cover additional expenses, and as the end of a year approaches, the survey needs to be performed, and bonuses need to be counted. Few of the Palace Guards used their vacation days, so this also needs to be addressed before those accumulate."

~"Slow down, Keqing."

-"Did I make some mistake?"

~"No..."

-"Then, I will continue. The Palace requires minor renovations and modifications in certain places. I already prepared basic blueprints of said areas, but Lady Hestia would need to work on those before implementation."

~"Well..."

-"When it comes to Moon Palace, it was agreed that I would also be put in charge of it, so I compiled all necessary staffing roles to be filled and missing equipment that is urgently needed. Maiev, Lunara, and Tyrande agreed to help on their side, but it still needs your confirmation."

~"..."

-"I compiled all reports and bills until yesterday, and they have already been archived. That's all for urgent matters. The rest is in the document."

I looked at over a hundred pages given to me by Keqing when she entered.

~"You prepared this report yesterday?"

-"Of course not. It had to be done today, or some yesterday's reports might have changed something."

~"Did you even sleep?"

-"Why wouldn't I? Being tired would only make me commit mistakes."

~"Keqing, tell me, when did you take a day off last time?"

-"Three months and seven days ago."

~"And what did you do then?"

-"I helped Ningguang during some talks."

~"You truly are a lost cause. You know what! I have an idea. I received an invitation to watch some kind of exam next week. While I wasn't going to participate, now I have changed my mind. I will go there with you, and we spend the full three days of vacation there."

-"But..."

~"Are we clear?"

-"Yes..."

~"Good. As for your report, I will give you everything tomorrow as I need to go through it."

Keqing nodded while muttering something about me being no better when it comes to work.

After finishing this matter, I left a puppet in the office to deal with the paperwork while I moved to Inner Palace, where Tingyun and Fu Xuan were already resting. I entered the kitchen to prepare food for all of us and joined their conversation.

-"So that case from two days ago was solved?"

-"Right. Luckily, it was only a childish prank that went too far. Aside from some community service, there was no need for a harsher punishment."

-"It's good that there are so few serious cases."

-"It's not strange. Living here is basically paradise for most people, and, as the punishment for any serious crime is banishment, few would risk that."

~"Sadly, contentedness is not something that lasts."

-"You think that the situation would slowly deteriorate?"

~"I haven't Divined it or anything, but I believe that in the year, be it homicide or murder, they would occur."

-"That's almost certain. That's why I focus so much on establishing strong laws now. They will be necessary in the future."

~"Indeed. The Hold is an empire. No matter how we wish to care for our subjects, Hold will always come first."

-"And you are our only Emperor, dear."

-"If not for me knowing better, I would think that Tingun and you are making some kind of movie."

~"I hope that my life is too boring for the movies. I would like to avoid all those intrigues and plot twists that Nian is putting in her 'masterpieces'."

-"True. How to say it... I hope you are not as vulnerable as a certain god in her movie."

-"Ugh. Don't remind me of that. Defeated by the power of dance... How in all that's holy did she come up with that?!"

~"Her creative ideas are beyond what we, ignorant mortals, can comprehend. And I think that this time ignorance is true bliss."

-"I can't agree more."

As my family evening was going on, our work on Akivili traces finally produced results. Looking at the black squirming energy before me, I contemplated our next move.

-"Yue?"

~"Don't worry, da Vinci, communicators are working fine even in Chaos."

-"What's the matter?"

~"It's a curse. What caused Akivili's downfall was a curse."

-"Is that a problem?"

~"Cusres are similar in the way they work to blessings. You can call them punch-down techniques. They would only work on being of similar or lower power than the caster."

-"Curses same as blessings?"

~"They come from the same idea, just used in reverse. Blessing uses the caster's power to augment others, while curse uses the same power to interrupt and restrict those afflicted with it. That's why they don't work well on more powerful opponents. Weaker power can't strengthen or oppose stronger one."

-"But even a minuscule effect, if combined repeatedly, can show effect, so why countless weak beings can't curse one stronger?"

~"While it is possible, there comes the main problem. Curses and blessings require a constant connection to the one afflicted. Connection that can be traced back. If one was to break a curse, the caster would receive a backlash. The stronger the curse, the greater the damage he would receive."

-"I see. If you were to cast an effective curse on a strong opponent, backlash from its breaking would kill you."

~"Yes, this is something rarely done for this reason, as the risk of using it on an enemy of equal power is often too great, let alone someone stronger. From this, I can infer that Akivili's enemy is of similar power to him, and as Akivili is Aeon..."

-"We must be dealing with an enemy of Outer-God level strength."

~"Da Vinci, seal any information concerning the traces we just researched. Without my direct permission and supervision, none is to work on this subject. This is an order."

-"Yes."

~"Also, halt all projects trying to locate Akivili."

-"Are you going to stop the search because of that curse?"

~"No, but we have to make some preparations beforehand. I'm not an expert on curses, so I don't fully understand the way it works, but from what I know about Souls, this curse is cast on someone's Name, or rather an Identity, to be exact."

-"Is that similar to your power of Naming?"

~"Yes, that's why it's a problem. We researched countermeasures against Divination, but we have no way to resist curses, especially as devious as this."

-"I will make sure none is afflicted with anything."

~"Thank you. I will mobilize Progress to find a way to resist both curses in general and also abilities that can manipulate the Identity."

-"What about you?"

~"I will stay here and try to gain more insight into this."

-"Then allow me to assist you remotely."

~"You are more than welcome."

Without trying to trace either the caster or the curse's target, I started to analyze the energy before me. I used everything at my disposal, wanting to uncover laws that governed this power.

For the remaining few days before the general meeting, I mostly stayed in my workshop, while leaving documents and such to my puppets. Having gained inspiration from inspecting Rhongomyniad in Avalon, I decided to work on some ideas that I was unable to test before.

The first thing I did was study the Angelic Artifacts, which I recovered from Svartalheim after my fight with Angels. After uncovering their secrets, I used them as materials for my other works.

I once again worked on my Oath of Silence, wanting it to finally become a weapon equal to other Artifacts of Hold. In the end, I needed to infuse both Al'maiesh and Solarion to finally elevate it into [Oath of Silence].

Its appearance hadn't changed much, but now my hagoromo scarf could be used in a similar way to how Al'maiesh was utilized by Angel Auriel. For my ease, I decided to call my hagoromo scarf Al'maiesh from now on.

I also tested some things on El'druin, wanting to create a sword fitting for myself, but nothing came from it. For now, it remained hung on the wall, waiting for the day when I found more materials.

The remaining two Angelic Artifacts, Talus'ar and Chalad'ar, were used by me to create an artifact that will replace the Veil given to me by Mythus, as because of my growth in strength, it wasn't able to fully hide my aura and presence. I needed to strengthen it or create a replacement, and still looking for personal Omniscia, it was a good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone.

Using Solomon's Rings as the base of the new Artifact, I infused them with Path of Ordination to strengthen their concealing effect. Thanks to my understanding of the Soul, I was able to hide my Karma to the point of almost erasing any record of it from reality.

My plan was to achieve a similar effect to Terminus, who removed herself from the Axis of Time, but with reality, as my power was in that field. If Terminus is never there, existing at no point in time, you can only detect traces she left. Then, I exist only in the present, and to an outsider, I possess no Karma nor Fate, making it possible to detect me only by direct observation.

This level of concealment easily allowed me to cover my aura and presence, giving me the ability to decide how much of it was noticeable. Now, I only needed to make it into Omniscia for myself. Here, two Angelic Artifacts came into play, as their domains over Wisdom and Fate perfectly fit the requirements.

Infusing the Artifact with those two powers, I molded it into a ring so that it may always be on my person. After naming it [Wyrd] to solidify its domain over Fate, Destiny, and Karma, I wore it on my ring finger as I lacked a wedding band before. [Wyrd] looked like a simple silver ring, but it would shimmer with runes when I used it to perform any Divination.

After making plans to create similar rings for all the girls with whom I have relationships, I left the workshop and went to the [Throne Room], where all participants of the upcoming general meeting started to gather.