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Chapter 536 - Chapter IV: The Golden Age (Part 4)

An: 'Tis the year 20 of the 5th era.

(General POV)

The halls of Tamriel's most revered edifice were abuzz as a grand debate was taking place, hundreds upon hundreds of dignitaries from both Hammerfell and High Rock stood against each other as they disputed and fought, and debated in search of an answer for a most important question...

The territorial rights over a tiny port island in the Iliac Bay.

(Reyvin's POV)

"Thank fuck for simulacrums." I snorted as I pondered my Orb™ "If we were actually there I'd probably have ashed one or two of those retards by this point at the least."

Good thing we were enjoying a 'retreat' all the way across the continent atop my tower in Silruhn Fell then, ruling has never been quite so easy until we decided to just have our magical echoes deal with it.

"Not if I got to them first." Minthara scoffed, sprawling backwards on the couch we shared like a bored cat, her long hair almost touching the floor below "Some culling might remind the fools exactly how much their opinions matter."

"No tyranny" I sighed and flicked her forehead lightly "Dealing with rebellions is annoying."

"Then let them rebel!" She threw her hands up "I haven't gotten to do anything fun since Black Marsh decided to offer itself on a silver platter."

"You are very welcome for that, by the way." I quipped, exactly as my simulacrum decided to dress down a Redguard Sultan who just tried pushing a bit too far.

She sat up and stretched "And to make things even worse, we still don't have ships good enough to reliably get us to Akavir." She leaned up to me to share my view and immediately rolled her eyes at what she saw.

Pretending she didn't want to teleport to the Imperial City and murder a few fools, she returned to the previous topic "At least the trade is good."

"Still can't believe you bought ten of their stupid little swords for your collection." I rolled my eyes, purposefully ignoring the fact that while I could have come up with ship designs myself, I refused to do so and spend the next three decades warring for that continent.

Oh no, we had to infiltrate the shit out of them first, create a bunch of prophesies that would just coincidentally fit with our invasion, and then attack. Should take us only a decade then.

Minthara looked away and huffed "They were nice looking swords, and historically relevant, alright?"

"Heh" I chuckled teasingly "Totally has nothing to do with all those stories about the 'Tsaesci slaying swordmasters' they got you hooked up on."

And who would have guessed? 'Totally not Samurai' actually worth their titles rebelling against snake-vampire rule and killing a bunch of the cunts.

The fact they still weren't done was but an arrow in my proverbial arsenal, one that I shall keep hidden for now.

Her retort was as prompt as it was wise "No comment."

Another verbal spat broke out in the conference chamber, and our simulacrums got to work diffusing the idiocy, something that made me roll my eyes and tune the whole thing out, my mind drifting in other directions.

Both Minthara and I were in our forties by now, seasoned by war and rule, masters of a prospering continent with a booming population and literal cults to our names.

And blessedly when compared to most other rulers, thoroughly satisfied with the progress of our children.

Martin was excelling in his legionary officer training at a mere 16 years of age, and his battle magic studies to boot.

His little clique I 'most definitely did not nudge his way I pinky swear' was making a name for itself as they dealt with a few minor monstrous upheavals, and even some minor Daedra-fuckery incidents as well.

Even if I still observed every single one.

The proper Daedric fuckery incidents were in turn smashed posthaste by yours truly.

Reminding the demonic fucks who the real masters of Nirn were was becoming more and more of a chore as they kept trying increasingly minor shit just to annoy me while not provoking me enough to just up and invade their domains.

Or they were just out of Dremora and couldn't try anything bigger.

Whoops.

Guess perma killing their demonic hordes over and over again was worth something in the end.

Daedric fuckery aside, Elena, unlike Martin's more martial focus, decided to join the Grand Imperial College earlier than planned at a mere 13, and yes she was more than qualified and there was no real nepotism involved.

Well, besides letting her actually take the test, but why be Emperor if you can't abuse it a bit, right?

In fact, she was already excelling at Dwemercraft of all things, coming up with (slightly) modified designs of the more basic worker drones and all in all increasing their efficiency.

It was a mere 2% on average but that stuff added up over time.

As always, the world conspired to annoy me, and the moment Elena met that madman Vakir I immediately got the premonition that our deep sea ship problem was going to solve itself sooner rather than later.

And honestly? I was unsure if I should be proud at the fact or annoyed.

Eh, who am I kidding, I was proud as proud can be.

And just a bit miffed.

Both of the little shits could easily be called full fledged experts in the Thu'um, and both were younger than I was when I started!

Of course Minthara considered all of it to be perfectly natural...

Damn Akatosh cheat codes.

Now then, one might ask themselves, if you are so successful then why ramble and complain? Right? 

Well, dear imaginary voice in my head-

'Fuck you pops.'

-We have recently come to a rather startling realization.

Neither myself, nor Mitnthara looked a day over twenty five.

Oh sure, we changed a bit, with Minthara growing more stern in bearing and dressing more like an Empress and less like a warrior, while I grew a mustache to go with my goatee, but immortality was always to be expected, right?

Well, it was one thing to know intellectually that something was going to happen.

It was another thing entirely to actually start experiencing it.

I think it finally truly hit us when Titus died two years back.

Our lives were continuing on as usual, implement wise (totally not stolen) reform here, put down a rebellion led by ambitious demagogue there, and play around with the kids so they don't grow up with mommy or daddy issues.

Don't want to give superpowered kids those, no siree!

Anyway.

One moment, everything was fine. And the next, Titus invites us to come visit him in his villa.

And there he lay, dried up and tired as if time had finally caught up to him.

Naturally, I offered my express healing services, but the man (somewhat reasonably) wanted to go and rejoin the family he had lost over the years and forcing him to live would be just a tad dickish when I knew for a fact the afterlives were quite real.

Even for me.

And so, Emperor Titus Mede II was buried with all honors, and Minthara and I were faced with the truth of mortality far too quickly.

It hit me far less than it did her, after all I did see many people fall to time even in my previous bout of existence, but her?

The experience hit her like an avalanche, both immense and visceral, not nearly strong enough to shake her into thinking immortality wasn't worth it of course, but certainly enough for us to suddenly start visiting all our friends whenever we could find the time.

Some of them even accepted my offer to prolong their stay on Mundus, the most surprising of whom was Durrak, who understood he needed more time to change his people fully before Hircine and Malakath got to do glorious battle over his soul.

That and his brood of twelve fucking sons were not going to make succession pretty anytime soon, especially since every single one of them inherited his strength, but not his wisdom.

I did not envy the poor orc, and I did not envy myself if he died and I was forced to deal with the threats to Tamriel the only way one could.

Aaaand promptly burying that thought away!

Aside from the hit of panic Minthara suffered, I was given my due reminder. 

There was a goal I wanted to pursue, and the admittedly good for my ego act of rebuilding an entire continent was ultimately not it, even if objectively it was a life far more worthy than most.

Immortality was a very long time, and while we could have shifted our focus fully on Akavir we both knew that did not solve our problems, and neither of us wanted to retreat to my tower after a hundred years of rule and fade from history.

Which led me to the book.

That accursed thing the system dropped on me and didn't even have the decency to translate! Merely deciphering the winding tongues (and yes, there were at least a dozen languages used) took me months of subjective time!

On the bright side, I was now a grandmaster linguist, so there was that.

It took me further subjective years of focused research and experiments, all of it leading to today ,when we would give our simulacrums one final stress test, and I would attempt my first world walk.

And it would be only me to start with, no matter how much I wanted Minthara to take the leap of faith with me, or how much she herself wanted it.

My research into portal-craft was thorough, and even when I cracked the secret of planar travel I did not stop there. No, I was more ambitious than that.

There would be no blind jumping into the void for me, for I would both ensure I was going somewhere that would be interesting (in the Chinese sense of that word) and even more importantly, that I'd be able to return.

Only then, when we were certain our children would not inherit the pure chaos left behind by two escaped godlings, would the two of us go on our first little... vacation.

The prospect both excited and terrified me.

There were of course setbacks, and many of them at that.

Breaching through a place as well watched as Aetherius first required authority, and the ability to escape the grasping gods and demons that populated the space between me and it.

My... rapport with Magnus ensured I had something of an easier time but meeting with meddling Et-Ada spirits who all wanted me to jump through hoops to satisfy them nearly had me going full bookburner on their shiny asses.

Thankfully, with some Mephalan aid, that was avoided.

That eldrich abomination was far too good at sweet talking, I swear to myself...

And speaking of the most chitinous of cunts, the moment she realized I could hop about as I willed now, she kept pestering me to visit her in her domain, and frankly I was less traumatized by her supernatural attempts to get into my robes than I was at the fact her innermost domain mirrored my own living space almost perfectly.

Little shit had the temerity to shudder in pleasure when I looked at her with all the disgust I could gather.

And as a godling, trust me I could gather a lot of fucking disgust!

Not to mention poor Ithelia who was just sitting there, tired, dead-eyed, and no doubt coerced into joining the discussion...

And... of course... this resulted in me getting said fate-fucker's aid with the calculation matrixes I needed to develop for successful world walking, so I ended up owing Mephala even more.

It was just too bad I enjoyed her somehow genuine friendship, if eldrich abominations could even have those, to actually try and get rid of her.

Just another fly in the web, I suppose.

And it was a web I was content to remain within, so long as the weaver in question remembered this fly carried a flamethrower, and was more than willing to use it.

A groan of annoyance drew me out of my thoughts.

"They finally done annoying us?" I asked, not even bothering to open my eyes.

"Nope~" Minthara said with far too much cheer "It was decided that discussions will continue tomorrow."

My neck quite literally creaked as I turned to look at her.

Our eyes met and we both agreed in an instant.

"We are making that island a legion navy base." I said.

"Yup" She nodded.

"They can all go fuck themselves." I went on.

"With a cactus." She agreed.

"Right up the rear" My fingers twitched.

"Why stop there?" Minthara's false cheer was replaced with her genuine irritation "Might as well transmute it into steel while you are at it! Hell, make it expand as well!"

The air started cracking as her voice rose and I gave her a long look.

She huffed and crossed her arms.

We stared at each other and then as one slumped back into the couch, sighing at the delightfully happy thoughts of just painfully murdering everyone who said anything against us.

"You should accident that Sultan" Minthara said after a few moments "I know you said we should keep the nobility so they aren't just replaced by merchants but there is a limit."

Nobles at least had to pretend they had their subjects' best interests in mind, so bite me I am not making a capitalist hellhole just because I dislike feudalism.

"Yeah, yeah" I grumbled "I know, I will throw Jackal at him."

"The Dremora?" She quirked an eyebrow before nodding "He does good work."

"I have no fucking idea how he is so good." I shook my head.

Then I remembered "The Sultan have an heir?"

"Three of them" She said "Just let them fight for the throne as punishment."

I blinked and looked at her "A bit harsh, no?"

She looked just about ready to double down but then sighed "Yes, letting thousands of people die just because I am annoyed is bad, I know. I will choose the best one later."

"I'll just tell Jackal to come to you for instructions." I waved the whole situation off.

And then took in a deep breath.

Minthara sounded hesitant as she asked "Finally going to do it?"

"Yep" I popped out "No use in delaying it anymore."

Not bothering to get up, I engulfed the whole couch with my magic, and snapped my fingers.

Suddenly we were both in an isolated chamber within my tower, the center of which contained a grand edifice of magic, and one that had cost me millions of septims.

"Best we got to it." Minthara said, and we got to work.

She was still nowhere near my level when it came to magic, but with her bullshit Akatosh cheat talents she was still pretty damn good after many years of practice, and our testing passed in mere minutes.

"Everything seems to be in order." I said, scratching my chin.

"We've checked ten times already" My wife laughed softly "Nothing changed."

"Yeah" I exhaled "Guess it is time."

Without any further preamble, I activated the grand portal, shoving all of my considerably potent Magicka into the thousands upon thousands of Magnusite runes carved into its surface.

They lit up as one and instantly synchronized with each other, making both my physical and metaphysical senses vibrate as I saw the echoes something I was still too mortal to ever truly comprehend.

With a bone-shaking snap the two grand arches that made up the portal were divided by a magnificent vortex of swirling pruple-blue, and for just an instant, I beheld a familiar infinity.

Before I could take an unconscious step forward, I was stopped as I felt Minthara grab me and turn me around, a deep kiss was then followed by a command "You better come back to me, understood?"

Blinking my enraptured state away, I grinned and saluted "Yes ma'am."

And then, having grabbed a backpack with a bunch of supplies just in case, I stepped unto the void.

-----

The house expects its customary tribute to be delivered promptly and without delay.

Delivering the tribute to our new associates, the Machine Cult is also acceptable.

The moste terrible locale of the Patreon is possessed of 16 chapters of Sorcerer's Tale and 12 chapters of Shiny and Chrome should you decide to rise above the rabble and eat more than mere soup (at patreon .com/ Rastislav156)

If you want to discuss the story or just meme about join my discord server: https://discord .gg /6nyrX9gE (link should work for a week. refreshed as of 18.9.25)

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