Epic of Caterpillar
chapter-146

[Day 134]

It seems that the assassins and spies have stopped coming inside of the Grand Forest due to the constant disappearances. The Champion of Psychic Eyes would be wasting soldiers by sending these people endlessly, she already understood that she cannot spy on me as easy as she thought.

Yesterday I commanded Alice to begin the war preparations. She has ordered all her hypnotized Noble slaves as they started to intensively debate against each other and other non-hypnotized ones.

Blaming those that are backing Nanako Maki of "treason" or calling the Champion a mediocre woman that does not deserve her position, anything did. The situation quickly became heated and the disputes increased swiftly.

The King and the Royal Family lacked the power and influence to grasp the situation and were left on the side. Due to this, most of the Nobles backing the Royal Family alongside the Champions and Knights were distracted and some even believed the lies that those hypnotized blabbed about.

Although things are going steadily, war will never happen all out of a sudden. Although the nobles are incredibly furious about their opposite side ideals, they are still wary and cautious merchants, each one being a sharp and greedy person that doesn't want to waste money so easily. Because of this, both sides will continue their dispute until one of the two decides to spend money on war preparations, making the rest finally respond to this. The one who started it will be blamed as the cause of the war if that side loses, so it's a sticky situation.

Thanks to the several hypnotized nobles and the influence of Alice, I could easily command any side to start the war right away. However, I want to see how far can they resist until these people finally explode. For the following days, I will prepare and train my people, while making sure that my soldiers are ready. There are still some Goblins, Trolls, Monkeys, and Wolves that have not reached an adult state yet and need a quick and intensive training.

The surviving Dhampirs and Flesh and Slime Minions have reported me about several foreign humans, not from the Athetosea Kingdom going around the capital in there. They seem to be spies from other Kingdoms, probably these Kingdoms want to somehow benefit from the internal disputes in Athetosea. If their wealth is enough, they could even shift the balance and give one of the sides an upper hand.

I'm not letting any of them take this juicy meal that is the Athetosea Kingdom in front of me. My Dhampirs working alongside my Flesh and Slime minions have been steadily taking care of these spies without leaving them any time to report back to their home. Dhampirs are obviously vastly stronger than just some low leveled human spy or assassin, so there aren't many problems.

From what they have gathered, there seem to be three Kingdoms spying on Athetosea. The first one is the Thanatos Kingdom, which spies distinguish themselves by having brown skin and scarlet eyes. This Kingdom is said to have been made by mixing various Demon Tribes and Humans, so most of the humans here have small horns on their forehead and dreadful auras.

The second one is the Azuma Empire, which spies distinguish themselves by their Japanese-like robes, resembling a classical ninja suit. Also, most of the spies were half-demi humans or pure demi-humans specialized in information gathering like Dodomekis and Kobolds. This Empire is said to have a very open mind over different races of demi-humans, to the point were both humans and demi-humans live together in harmony.

The third one is the Everwood Kingdom, which spies are mostly Dark or Pure Elves, or a mixblood between the two. This Kingdom is ruled by a strong family of Pure Elves, who are said to be the descendants of a [Supreme Spirit of Nature]. The Kingdom is located very far away, on a gigantic forest which is probably three times larger than the Grand Forest named Emerald Forest, on its center inhabits the Mythical Spiritual Tree of life, which it is said to have been born from a seed from the World Tree Yggdrasil.

This about sums it up, the rest of the spies were from small and weak demi-human only Kingdoms like Cat People from the Moonfang Kingdom, Lion and Wolves beast men from the Nulgror Kingdom and the occasional sand demon or brown-skinned human from the Darksand Kingdom. All these Kingdoms are located too far away from Athetosea, so the spies were no more than two or three.

After assessing the situation I let the Dhampirs eat the spies to gain their abilities while leaving no evidence. After a human transform into a Dhampir, they are classified as [Demi-Human], [Undead], and [Fiend], so they can obtain my shared blessing, becoming stronger by devouring monsters. Using this I have commanded them to hunt around the Athetosea Kingdom and stockpile on abilities and body-boosting skills for them to have a better chance of survival.

I decided to spend the rest of the day inspecting the Kingdom's progress and population growth.

Today, I decided to summon two new "unique" Spirits, which are similar to Nereid and Brontes, being a one-time-only summon, however, these spirits are vastly stronger and possess amazing potential, which has been shown as Meiji's spirits have evolved and became amazing assets in my Kingdom. After their third evolution, they will be able to gain enough intelligence to command troops, becoming strong generals. However, only Brontes and Kjata have achieved their third evolution, the others still need to train harder.

Using [Wind Spirit Summoning Magic: Harpy Empress Ocypete], I activated the skill as a majestic green colored magic circle filled with letters of a forgotten language that began to spin around. As the bright green light flashed, a feminine figure started to form from this light.

After several seconds, the summoning was finished and a breathtakingly beautiful woman was standing next to me, over where it used to be the magic circle.

She had a very mature body of voluptuous proportions. Her skin was pale white and her eyes of a scarlet color. The woman had a beautiful and long hair of purple, blue and green color, which ended on several feathers of these same colors, beautifully put together, resembling a majestic and tribal crown.

Her appearance was that of true beauty, with a thin chin and red cheeks, she had a small pointed nose and pointed ears. She had a wide waist and plump legs, with majestic and round breast, that ended on rose-colored tips. They were on the perfect size to squeeze.

Each of her arms ended up on gigantic wings that reached the five meters long, these wings were decorated on bright colors, ranging from green, blue, purple, and red. Her legs were covered on a series of yellow-colored scales and ended on two bird talons, made of four fingers that had sharp white claws.

It seems that she was summoned on an adult stage, or perhaps already evolved. However, she still had a curious glare of "where I am?" or "who I am?".

"Welcome to the Kingdom!"

"Huh? A-Ah… Are you…? My Master?"

In reality, I am not her original master, as I devoured him before he could summon her… He was most likely of the Wind Nomads Tribe.

"That's right…! How about you put up on some clothes, after I finish summoning someone else, I will show you the place around. Is that fine with you?"

Ocypete looked at me with a curious expression while slowly nodding.

"It is… fine"

The next and last summon will be [Sacred Earth Spirit Summon: Gemstone Princess of Gnomes, Smilkas], a skill that I obtained after devouring someone from the Divine Oracle Tribe.

As I activated the spell and a similar show to Ocypete's summoning happened, she was surprised by the show of lights and flashes, even to the point of being slightly intimidated, hiding on my backside.

This time the magic circle was brown colored with red hints, the circle was also smaller but contained more letters inside. As a bright yellow light flashed, a small figure began to materialize. The body was also that of a woman, but resembled a small one, like that of a young girl on her teens, however, the thing that made it clear that she wasn't a small child were her notably massive breast.

She had light brown skin, resembling the color of clay. Her body was rather chubby, which an adorable belly and plump arms and legs. Smilkas eyes were brown colored and she had an adorable round face, with a small nose and pointed ears. She had long scarlet hair, that shined so brightly that it seemed to be made of ruby gemstones. On her whole body, she had very small gemstones of various colors incrusted on her waist, hands, shoulders, and chest, alongside a rainbow-colored one on her forehead.

Unlike Ocypete, Smilkas was more open and cheerful.

"Yaaay! Are you my Master? I am so excited! What are we going to do? Oh! What a nice place you have in here, it looks like a Royal Family throne room! Eh? It actually is! Hahaha!"

"Welcome, Smilkas. Indeed, I am your new Master! I hope you don't disappoint me! Here, have some clothes…"

Smilkas suddenly realized her nudeness as she looked over her naked breast, which reacted to her movements on a "boing boing" sound.

"Oh! Well, it's not like I mind being naked. But thanks, you, Master. Hm? Who is the timid chick behind you?"

At Smilkas comment, Ocypete was enraged by being called a "chicken" as she busted out from behind me with an angry expression.

"W-Who are you calling chicken, short stack?!"

"Oh? Hahaha! She is funny, Master! Hi! I am Smilkas, I was once a Gnome Princess… and that's as much as I remember… Now I am an Earth Spirit somehow, isn't that ridiculous? Life is truly full of surprises! How about you?"

At the sudden burst of words from Smilkas, Ocypete felt overwhelmed as she went back to her calm and shy self.

"I-I… I don't know…"

"Well well, aren't you quite the shy one. Don't worry, you have me and Master here, there is nothing to be shy about!"

"H-Huh? I-I'm not shy! I… It's just hard to formulate words…"

"Hahaha! I've never heard such an excuse for someone's shyness like that! Are you sure you weren't a comedian before?"

"Geezz… I'm not shy, you shrimp!"

While still being naked, Smilkas laughed while approaching me, she only reached my breast, but it was fine enough for her to talk comfortably with me as almost equals.

"Master, I like her! So, what are we going to do?"

Seeing such a beautiful naked body was really making me flustered, so I quickly told her to get her clothes on before it was too late.

"Sigh… I told you to put on clothes!"

"Oh…"

After the two spirits had their clothes on, I gave them a quick introduction through each facility of the Castle alongside a quick trip through the Kingdom town. Smilkas was fascinated by the food and the mining activities on the several mountains we had around. Meanwhile, Ocypete seemed to be interested in her same kind, with the Harpy Girl and her father alongside the Gale Bird Valkyries.

After giving them a quick introduction, the Rin sisters gave each one a nice introduction of the several activities while testing their strong points. Smilka was exceptional in mining and had an amazing ability to detect and know the hidden composition and usefulness of almost every ore, gemstone, or mineral. She also had an amazing strength for being just a recently summoned spirit, with amazing magic and fighting talent.

Smilkas has a skill named [Earth Spirits Wonderful Grace], that increases the chances of rare ores, gemstones, and minerals to form on mountains where she is working, alongside this, she also increases the stats of her miner companions and can even enhance the quality of what she mines.

Ocypete, on the other side, was battle oriented, with a good talent for information gathering and weather deciphering. Her strength, although not compared to Nephiana, was rather unique, as she had a stronger affinity with Wind Magic and the environment, having a different fighting style than the physically oriented Harpy girl. I saw potential on both learnings from each other, so I assigned them on the same group alongside the Gale Bird Valkyries, who welcomed such beauty with open arms.

I didn't realize as all the introductions I had to do for the two girls took me the entire day, so when I finished everything it was already night and the stars were shining brightly over the dark sky. The moon was brighter than usual.

As I saw it, I wondered if the moon is somewhere in the Astral Road or outside of this space. If the sun and moon were to be inside of this Road, and if it's possible to travel through this place using a special skill, then it would be possible for me to travel to such mystical places that would have only been dreams on my past life.

Just thinking about the excitement that something like that would bring, filled me with expectations over the future.

What kind of beings would inhabit the moon? Or the sun…? I wonder if they are tasty…

As I kept looking over the brilliant moon while imagining myself exploring such a strange land, I felt the warm hands of Brontes over my nude shoulders.

"Big sister, do you like the moon?"

"Brontes… I suppose I do. What about you?"

"I… I do like it, it's pretty. Like you"

"A-Ah… Since when have you become so expressive? Well, it's not like I don't like it"

Brontes gave me a sincere smile while nodding.

"Hmm, I'm working on it… Let's go eat with the family"

"Alright, let's go"

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