Bringers of Peace

Once again, the days started slowing down, yet would leave little to no memories that would allow the Vixen to feel like any time actually passed. Right now, each day was a bit of a drag. But once it was over, it was almost as if that day never even happened. Distant events started feeling like they happened just yesterday and nothing new was happening. Were these the signs of the girl’s increasing age? No, surely not. In reality, she was thousands of years old and days or even years would not make much difference to her in this way. It was something a little different.

Walking distance away from the Mountain Village there stood a big, yet somewhat humble looking oriental mansion. Due to the nature of these mountains, it often snowed and even now, the building was mostly covered in the white powder. While not too known in the rest of Fiore, locals already knew very well what this building was. That is a fairly new Hotel and restaurant that also provided natural Hot Springs. A luxurious establishment that was built by a girl known as Eris Sytry. A name that Noheme used when introducing herself to complete strangers. But these days, she was actually embracing her true name more than ever.

She was a moon goddess that originated in the Void between worlds. Eventually receiving power from a Miracle Demon, she was able to create an Astral Realm. A world much like Earthland, but consisting only of Islands that floated in the air. This realm was now mostly abandoned due to the many unfortunate circumstances. Something that resulted in the goddess now taking residence in this world, Earthland. And after she received power that could rival the strongest individuals in this world, she decided to settle down. Not for good, but she was spending a lot of her days in this establishment of hers.

Exchanging the action-packed days of being with other mages or alone and fighting for her life for the quiet and long days of doing almost nothing. She had hired plenty of staff to take care of the guests and the only real excitement she had in her life right now was occasionally peeking into the female section of her hot springs and admiring the beauty of her costumers. After all that, one should not have any trouble understanding just why the girl felt so alone and lonely from time to time, her days dragging on without anything going on.

But today was to be different. Despite being a proud owner of this place now, she did still go out into the field from time to time to enjoy some of the more carnal desires. Some time ago, she had received a message about a large army of monsters advancing to more populated areas from the Fat Monsterland. Wanting to see it for herself, she had moved to the battlefield and started fighting the monsters herself. And to her luck, she encountered an old friend along with his group there. Together, they destroyed a considerable portion of the enemy forces.

And along with the rest of the mages from this land, they eventually pushed the monsters back completely without that many causalities on their side. It was good news to hear for sure, and Noheme did feel a bit of pride for helping, but mainly for the fact that the younger generations of mages were capable of defending even against threats of such scale. This world became pretty dear to her, so she wished to protect it by passing on the torch of power to others. To teach the young mages how to properly fight and defend the land they owned.

Today, there would be another trial. She had one of her servants gather information about the Magical Council and its movement, as well as the monsters that were pushed back. While they were no longer advancing, they were still present in the Monsterland, hiding and increasing their numbers again. And time to remove them for good was approaching quickly. Taking a piece of paper with the location from her servant, the golden Kitsune smiled. All nine of her golden tails would sway in the space behind her as she sat on a royal looking couch in her room.

“Good job. Go and enjoy the spring on the house for today as a reward, dear. I won’t be around for the rest of today.” Dismissing her servant, she would require a moment of time alone as she prepared herself. Well, there wasn’t really much that she needed to prepare. Mostly just her own will, the fact that she would once again enter combat. A little stretch before she would transport herself. And soon enough, shadows in the room would start gathering beneath her divine form, her physical form sinking into them and becoming one with the Earth.

Only a few seconds later, she would emerge from shadows in Fat Monsterland and not too far from one of the monster bases. She still wore her white and purple oriental wear, but there was a single katana by her side now. Her magic was already active, her magical energy unable to be felt by those who were of lower rank than herself. However, she made no true attempt at remaining hidden for now. She knew from her servant’s report that there was an official operation from the council going on.

And as such, she was interested in seeing if there would be any young and strong mages here, attempting to bring justice to the monsters and save their homes from their aggression. Walking on the plain and barren land, she looked around and sighed out. If there were any, she would probably sense them and they would eventually see her figure in the distance. Thanks to the many tails coming from her lower back, her figure was quite large and very hard to spot even from distance. And, well… it was always much more pleasant to be in someone’s company rather than going at it alone.

So there were people in this place after all! Having to wait a fair bit of time before even sensing anyone managed to make Noheme start losing hope. Not that she would actually really care if she was here alone. In fact, that would only make what she wanted to do much, much easier. Her power was great and destructive, so if she was to be by her grand lonesome, she could just unleash it all and destroy every single one of the monsters in the area in an instant. But if allies by her side, that kinda fell out of the list of options she had, unless she wanted to do some bad friendly fire.

Which she didn’t. By default, she was fairly kind to strangers that were not hostile right away. She wished to help the younger generations, not to destroy them! Though she had to admit that it was sometimes fun, teasing the younger and less experienced mages by releasing a great deal of her power and showing them exactly what she was capable of doing. Though that was generally done only in the less dangerous of situations. Honestly, Noheme wasn’t beyond obliterating a D-ranked foe with H-ranked magic just for the sake of entertainment.

In a way, she was a truly sick individual. But that had to be expected to a degree. After all, she was a goddess. And deities such as herself were generally fairly self-righteous and stuck up. She was no exception to that, though it didn’t come to the surface as often as with the other god-like creatures she knew. All that aside, she now had to pay attention to this male that came out of nowhere and started demanding said attention. Not literally, but by his presence alone, that was. Looking at him, the vixen was… surprised?

Surprised at the fact that he didn’t seem all too surprised by her visage. Though he did say that he was at least surprised by meeting another living creature here. Surprises were always quite fun! It all made the nine-tailed Kitsune grin, an expression that she partially hid behind the hand-held fan of an exotic design. “Oh-ho? I am surprised that you do not take me for one of such wild and malicious beasts, boy. Or have you perhaps met a Kitsune before?” Even if he did, ones with all nine tails were incredibly rare in this world.

For every hundred years, the fox spirit would gain one tail. And those who would obtain all nine would apparently reach divinity. At least that’s what was told to Noheme in the past. It was part of the reason why she chose this form for her physical and material self, as she found it rather appropriate and fitting for herself. To be a literal god, wearing a body of another god-like being in order to interact with the mortals of this world. If that fact was known, this girl’s ego feeding habits would become quite apparent to just about anyone.

“But since you’re asking - no. I do know that the Council took it upon itself to stop the monsters in this land, but I act on my own. Even those in their ivory towers don’t dare to tell me what to do~.” She would chuckle again. Indeed, she came here out of her own will and to pursue her own goals. And it was rather easy to figure out from this boy’s words that he was called her by the Council. So it really was taking action. Well… forcing others to take actions instead of them more like. But better than nothing, probably.

Actually, scratch that. The Council seemed to be just as powerless and megalomaniac-like as ever. Oh well, it was probably a bit too much to expect a chance of that magnitude. For now, she decided to pay attention to the creature in front of her. In fact, something caught her attention. Taking a whiff of it, again and again, she gradually got closer and closer to the male until she was easily breaking his personal space. Her nine golden tails were towering behind her menacingly as if they were claws of a titan behind her that was ready to grasp them both in an instant.

“Ah, so that smell really is… You are a Venom God Slayer, is that right, boy?” At first, she thought that it was the content of his pipe. But the smell was far too familiar for it to be a substance to be enjoyed like that. No… it was his magic that she smelled. The venoms that coursed through his body. It was only natural that she could recognize this magic even before it was used. After all, she was a Venom God Slayer herself before her true powers returned to her and even upgraded to the status of Shadow Fox demon slayer.

But as she asked, her gaze was suddenly directed to something different. Her deep emerald green optics, staring into the distance as they started focusing on two figures approaching. “It’s far more lively here than I expected, how interesting~.” Once again in that rather playful tone of hers, she would speak to no one but her own self. She recognized the two humanoid shapes as people that were not interested in fighting, at least not right away. And one of them even gave off a much stranger feeling.

He smelled like a dragon. The vixen’s senses were naturally far superior to ones of humans, and that was only enhanced by her slayer magic. And she had plenty of encounters with dragons before, so this was actually nothing new. Nothing forth mentioning or even pointing out. She just left the fan in front of her mouth as she narrowed her eyes and watched every movement of the three figures spread out in front of her. “Good day to you all. My name is Eris Sytry, but a humble Kitsune and a hot spring owner. And you lot might be?”