A year has passed since Lucia completed her tribulation. The gate to the immortals’ plane is still floating in the sky like a new celestial fixture. Too bad it can’t be used practically since it moves around as Lucia does. Not much has changed. Durandal hasn’t left his weapon body ever since I installed that formation on him, much to Lucia’s dismay. Luckily for her, Softie gave birth to a healthy baby squirrelkin. Back in the pocket realm, marriages between beastkin, humans, and demons were fairly uncommon, simply because the chance of a child being born between the three was extremely low to the point of nearly impossible. However, the virility pill was enough to put aside those differences. That being said, the baby squirrelkin is quite interesting. She has a black tail, black ears, and black hair with skin as pale as Softie’s. I imagine she’ll grow up to be the spitting image of Softie except with a tail and ears. Lucia’s impurities could only influence a child that far. Lucia wanted to name the baby Lucia Jr., but Softie shut that down. In the end, they compromised and named her Sophia—which was my suggestion. I simply mixed Softie and Lucia, but I don’t think they’ve realized it yet.

Anyways, enough about Lucia and Softie’s baby. With a parent like Lucia, the strongest person on the Immortal Continent, there’s nothing at all she’ll have to worry about. She’s guaranteed to live an easy life, unless Lucia does something dumb. Now that I think about it, Sophia might need some of my concern after all…. Well, maybe when she gets a bit older, I’ll teach her a thing or two, but for now, I should focus on something much more important: building an army. One day, I’m going to become an immortal, and when that day comes, I’ll lose everything I’ve built up upon stepping foot through that gate in the sky. I don’t want that to happen. I’m going to gather all the resources of the Immortal Continent and take it with me to the immortals’ plane. However, just taking it like that is asking for trouble. It’s not a crime to own a treasure, but it’s a crime to own it if you’re weak. If people know I’m carrying all the wealth of the Immortal Continent on me, I’ll die within my first few days of becoming an immortal. As such, I’m still going to take all the resources of the Immortal Continent, but I’m going to use it all to raise an army of immortals, as many as I can support. Since I know that the gate to the immortals’ plane will float above and wait for us, the army of immortals I raise can enter all at the same time.

How long will a grand plan like that take? Many, many years. I’m going to wait as long as possible. As a sky-realm expert, I can live for over five thousand years. Conquering the Immortal Continent to funnel all the resources into one point is the fastest part of the plan. Within twenty years, all of the Immortal Continent should be under my control. It’s only been a year, but I’ve conquered every sect within the inner region of the Immortal Continent. I started by defeating sects from the top down, converting the losers into my own combat potential through the use of contracts and some hostages for good measure. At some point, I honestly thought an immortal would descend to stop me, but I think Lucia is the largest deterrent I have. If an immortal descends, he’ll be restricted and weakened down to Lucia’s level. If she fights him, and I aid her with the help of over a hundred quasi-immortals, he’ll die. Anyway, at this point, the only difficulty of conquering the Immortal Continent is the distance. My people might be capturing sects within a day or two, but it takes a while to travel between each sect, not to mention there’s such a huge number of sects.

Along with conquering sects, I have a separate group of people going around clearing out tombs. The Tomb Hunter Association’s knowledge is extremely helpful in achieving my goals. So I conquered them. Other associations must’ve felt a little threatened by that action, and they banded together. Originally, crafting associations and merchant associations were close, but they grouped together even with rival organizations after that incident. It was nice because it let me subdue them all in one fell swoop after defeating the main force they hired. Of course, I suspect there’ll still be some resistance in the future, but as time goes on, I’ll incorporate them into my fold.

The Immortal Continent is huge. It’s not very practical to dream of conquering all of it, but if I don’t dream big, then what’s the point? I already know there’s going to be a lot of issues controlling this many people and organizations, but honestly, a lot of it is already set up for me. I can leave parts of it alone—

“Ilya!” Along with that voice, a nearly blinding pillar of light appeared in my room.

“Hi, Lucia. Can I help you?”

“Have you seen Sophia!?” Lucia was holding a bundle of something that I couldn’t really discern thanks to the light. Were those blankets?

“…No? Isn’t she only three months old? She can’t even crawl. Did you misplace her or something?”

“Well.” Lucia’s face brightened, and she extended the bundle of blankets towards me. “If you haven’t seen her, then look! Isn’t she so adorable?”

…Is that what she meant by seen her? Does Lucia literally have nothing better to do than to show off her baby to me? I mean, I guess her tail is pretty cute, and her eyes are big and round. Her fluffy ears look a little too big for her head, but she’ll probably grow into them. “Yes, she’s very adorable, Lucia. Is there anything else you needed?”

“Nope!” Lucia beamed and cuddled the bundle of blankets to her chest. And, with that, Lucia disappeared, suddenly making my room seem much darker than normal without the blinding light. She’s an idiot, but at least she’s a happy idiot. Hmm, I think I’ll take a quick break from reading all those reports. It’s been a while since I’ve last stepped outside.

“Sister Ilya! Have you seen Sophia!?”

And here comes the other idiot. Softie looks a big haggard. With Lucia taking Sophia and teleporting around, I’m not surprised Softie has it rough. “Follow the great beam of light and you’ll find her.”

“Many thanks, Sister Ilya,” Softie said and sighed. “Oh, before I go, you wouldn’t happen to have another virility pill, would you?”

“I don’t.” Cores of the world tree are pretty rare. It’s a good thing Mirta’s raising a world tree right now. In due time, I’ll be able to harvest its offspring for cores, but that’s still many years away. But why would Softie need another virility pill? It looks like she has her hands full with a single baby.

“Oh, I see.” Softie nodded. Then she disappeared. Off in the distance, I swear I heard her shout, “Lucia, I need to feed the baby!”