O3 Demon King and the Game of the Goddesses

“Now, where are we?”

“My apartment.” Yara, my new wife, seemed a bit annoyed with me as she started throwing things into bags. “Help me pack, will you?”

“And why are we packing?”

“Look, the cops might not know who you are, but they definitely ID’d me. So, our time here is limited before they come here to search. I’ve already wiped my hard drives, so now we just need to salvage what we can and make our escape. We’ll need to find somewhere to lay low until searching for us becomes too expensive for them to continue. Here.” She tossed me a metal box filled with paper.

“What is this?”

“Money. There’s about a mil’ and a half in there. That should be enough to get us a house of some sort outside the city.”

“Ah yes, we will need to get me a castle in this world. One with enough rooms for you and any other wives I might get.”

She seemed to freeze at this. “W-what do you mean other wives?”

“Oh, I suppose a human doesn’t know much about demons. Hmm. Okay, so a demon’s magical power is increased by forming contracts. The easiest and one of the most powerful of these contracts to perform is the “contract of matrimony.” It can double a demon’s power, but it requires consent from the other party. Mind control and possession don’t work for this contract either. Most demons will try to gain harems as it increases their magic power”

“So, am I just a tool for you to gain power?”

“No!” I slammed my hand onto her shoulder, “Never think of yourself as a tool. You are a partner to me.” I thought back to my wives back in my own world. What were they doing without me there? I hadn’t chosen an heir before I left, so their connection to the throne would have been shattered. “I’m sorry to thrust it on you so suddenly, but my wives are all precious to me. However, I can’t feel my connections to them, I only feel you right now.” I couldn’t even feel my connection to the Demon God… “Wait, that’s it!”

“What’s it?”

"Why my powers aren't working correctly. This world must have different gods than my own. I will need to make a contract with this world's Demon God to regain my power!"

“I don’t know if we have one of those.”

"Nonsense. If you didn't have a Demon God, then why does the sun always set at night?"

“...because the sun is lighting up the other half of the planet?”

"Yes! The contract between the gods allows the demon's continents to have light for half the day and the human's continents the other half, right?"

"No? Our planet just spins because, like, it's a magnet or something… Here, put this on." She threw me some clothes. "You'll be less conspicuous if you dress like a normal person."

"How do you intend to be the Demon Queen if you are so uncertain of this world's knowledge?" I looked at my appearance in a long mirror attached to her wardrobe. Ceatha's clothes were a little revealing, which was nice to look at, but I felt rather uncomfortable wearing myself. In fact, everything about this body felt awkward. My center of balance was off, and Ceatha was taller than I was. I had never used transformation magic before, but I had a new respect for the demons that used it. I was starting to miss my horns as well. The hardest part about keeping balance was how top heavy I was. I took off Ceatha’s dress and stood staring in the mirror before I put the shirt on that my wife had given me.

“So… this is what Ceatha looks like naked.”

“You need to hurry!” Yara said, having already changed clothes herself and put on a pair of spectacles. “And were you not wearing a bra?”

“I don’t even know what that is.” It was probably clothing unique to this world.

“Gah, let me help you then.” She hurriedly dressed me in a shirt with long sleeves with a sleeveless shirt on top of it. She gave me a skirt and some leggings as well. I put my boots back on while she tied my hair into a ponytail. “Do you have supplies with you? Any money or anything.”

“No, not really. Just this bag.” Yes, I had with me Ceatha’s purse which was filled with various crystals. I was sure that they were data crystals, but I didn’t have the slightest idea how those worked..

“Fine, just shove as many things around the room as you can in there. Also, with the whole queen thing again. Even if I do believe that you’re from some alternate universe or that you’re a king, there is still no kingdom here for you to rule. How are you a king when there is nowhere you rule.”

I stood frozen for a second. She was right. Who was I to be a king without a kingdom, and without people to rule? "Well… we will have to solve that problem when we get there. Worst case scenario I have to establish a new demon race in this world."

“Right... Anyway, our time is about up.” She thrust a backpack to me that she had already filled. “Let’s get out of here before any cops show.”

“Okay. That being the case… there is somewhere I would like us to go as our first stop.

“Are you sure this is going to work?”

"Shut up, I know what I'm doing." I was preparing the ritual one had to undergo to be crowned Demon King. The purpose of the ritual was to be granted the power of the Demon God to create contracts. However, my contract ability seemed to still work fine. This means that the Demon God, or at least some equivalent, holds some power in this world. That being the case, that should mean I have a line of communication to the gods that could tell me why my power isn't working.

“Are you sure? It looks like you're just marking scribbles on the ground.”

"This is the ancient demon script. Assuming the magic principles of this world are the same, this should get me a direct line to at least a god. Hopefully, it will be one that can help me. And yes, I can read this. I just can’t read human script."

“I'm pretty sure the gods have abandoned us. Have you seen some of the stuff on the Internet? I would have split if I was a god.”

“Gods don't just ‘split.’ Their life force and power are dependent on the belief of their worshippers. If they don't have any on this planet maybe they would try to colonize another, but they never really leave. Also, I have no clue why I would need a net to talk to gods, is that how humans do it?”

“No. And how is that not leaving?”

“I mean, from what I learned of the Demon God’s teachings, gods don't ever leave their own planar systems. If that's the case, they should still be within contact range… And done.” I finished the sigil I had been carving into the ground.

“And fill me in, why are we doing this here?”

“This is a node on a Leyline. I told you that.”

“Yeah, but… In a public restroom at a Pizza le Casa?”

“Sewage systems often run along Leylines, so toilets are a good spot for magical connection.”

“If you say so…” Yara seemed exhausted. “Hopefully you figure something out so we can get out of here.”

“Alright, now I just need to cast the spell.” I closed my eyes and focused on the sigil. “Dizze wrâld dy't jo spultsje is, jou my mar in part. Lit my jo publyk sjen. Ik rop jo god fan 'e argyfynden!”

The world began to spin around us in a blinding light.

…

“Hey, Athy, can you check the door? I think the pizza is finally here.”

“Yeah, yeah... Oh, it's just some mortals.”

I opened my eyes to the voices I heard. I found myself staring up into one of the most beautiful faces I had ever seen. Plus, she called me a mortal… that’s definitely a goddess.

“Ah-are you the Demon God?”

“Pfft hahaha, I’m glad to see mortals still have a sense of humor. “Sophie, we have guests!” The goddess walked back inside and beckoned me inside.

Wait, ‘guests’ plural? I sat up and looked over my shoulder, it looks like Yara made it here too.

“Hey, wake up…”

“Huh, what?”

“We’re here I think?”

“Where?”

“The realm of the gods!”

“It looks like a condo in L.A.”

“I don’t know what that is or where that is, but a goddess invited us inside, so we should hurry.”

“If you say so.” We stood up and dusted ourselves off, walking slowly into the house.

“Welcome to our bachelorette pad. We haven’t had a mortal visit in... about two hundred heliocycles? Not many even send us prayers anymore. Though that number does seem to be increasing as of late.”

“I wonder why?” These were gods after all, shouldn’t they have some followers?

“I told you, remember? No one believes in the gods anymore. It’s all just either the one big God or atheists. I’d say it’s a pretty small minority that worships the old gods, at least in the West.”

“Ah, so that’s what happened.” The goddess sighed. “Well, we knew Iuris would cause problems, but it seems that it’s a bit worse than I thought.” The goddess seemed to ponder for a bit. “Anyway, let me show you our hangout.”

The goddess drew a door on an empty wall and opened it into a strange room on the other side. Three other women were all sitting around a table holding devices similar to the ones in Yara's room, and also wearing strange headwear. Each was equally as beautiful as the first but in different ways. "What's going on?" I looked to her out of confusion. "Where are the altars? The sacrifices? The magic circles?"

"Hmm? Oh, we don't really do those anymore. About 150 years ago we predicted these computer games. Ever since we have worked towards developing the perfect game. And so, for the last 50 years, we've pretty much been playing that."

“You’ve been playing games?” How could this be? “What about magic? What about the world’s balance?”

“Oh, no one really cares about that… Starting about 2000 years ago we started getting a lot of complaints about things. We set up Iuris to control the world’s physics and ecosystems so we could get some peace and quiet.”

“What’s this ‘Iuris’ thing you keep talking about?”

“Oh, let me introduce you.” She pointed to a large device at the end of the room. “This is Iuris. I believe humans refer to it as a ‘Supercomputer.’” A light emerged from the device, the light took the form of a young girl who bowed to me.

“|-|ello.” Her speech seemed to be a bit corrupted.

“Oh, and I should introduce myself too. My name is Athena. The ones you see with their headsets on are Artemis, Sophia, and Hestia. Hecate usually hangs out with us too, but she said she had some errands to run. She would be the one you would want to talk with, she’s the goddess of magic or whatever.”

“What about a Demon God? Do you not have one of those?” I had to find an answer.

“Not anymore. She’s busy somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.”

“C-could I try out your game?” Yara spoke up from behind me. “If you don’t mind…”

“Sure! I would love to get an opinion on our game from a mortal.” Another headwear appeared in Athena’s hands.

Yara took the headwear and put it on her head. "Wha-, what is this?" Yara was moving her arms around. "I can see and hear everything, and smell things too? Is this full dive? No… What is this? I... I can't even tell... How did you get this type of thing to work? Is that a 5-dimensional space? Woah, an enemy. How do I fight it? … oh, okay that makes sense. My hand hurts a little from hitting it too… Woah, I can be in the third person? What even is this?"

“Fufufu, how is it?” Athena seemed rather proud.

“It’s amazing! How does it work?” Yara seemed very impressed by the device.

“It’s something you mortals won’t be able to fully develop for a while. It takes advantage of the subsoul to generate commands based on what the user wants, all while keeping it balanced to all users on the server. If you want to do something, the game figures out what you need to do to do it.”

“Sub... soul? I don’t really get it.”

“Yes, like I said mortals still need to take a while. You still haven’t found where the soul is, let alone the subsoul. We were able to program it thanks to this knowledge and the data Iuris compiled over the past millennia.”

"Well, I suppose I can't ask all your secrets if you're a god and all."

“It’s all good. Say…” Athena placed her hand on Yara’s head. “Ah, you’re still a virgin I see.”

“W-what? How did you know?” Yara seemed flustered and her face reddened.

“Hmm, it doesn’t look like there are any dragons left on your world...that’s good. Dragons think that virgins taste better for some reason, so I wanted to make sure you weren’t at risk.”

“What? No dragons either?” No magic and no dragons… How was I going to take over this world?

“Anyway, I can have Hecate check into your magic problem. Since we don’t get visitors often, I will forgive the impudence of a demon trespassing into the realm of the gods.”

“Wah, you can tell?”

“Of course, you think you can disguise yourself as an elf, but those haven’t been on Gaea for millennia. You think we wouldn’t notice the other elf with the same signature you’re trying to copy?”

"Wait, what do you mean the other elf?" As I asked a bell chimed in the other room.

“Pizza delivery.” A man’s voice called from outside. He sounded slightly out of breath.
“Ah, that’s our cue. Well, I need to get back to our game night, so we shall end our meeting for now. Please don’t come back unannounced. I’ll add our contact info to your device, so we will contact you if we find an answer to your question.”

“Wait, that’s it?” I had more questions I needed to ask.

“Yup, so sorry. Goodbye.” I reached my hand out to Athena as I felt the floor fall out from beneath us. Before long the whiteness of the sky overtook our vision and became the ceiling of the toilet room.

“Well, that got us no answers.” I punched the floor, upset. “Damn that goddess, she was toying with us the whole time.”

“I take it back, apparently there are gods here.” Yara was looking at a small glass rectangle in her hand.

“Yeah, see I do know things!... Oh…”

Yara looked up from her device. “What’s wrong?”

“I… um… haven’t gotten used to this body yet… I will need you to step out of the room for a bit.”

“Yeah, if you say so.” Yara smiled as she opened the door and let herself out.

This body might take me a bit longer to get used to than I expected...