“Okay, everybody, stand up!” I said, speaking in a tone of what I’d like to call authoritative sing-song, to what was basically a small class of very similar looking, antenna-bearing, semi-translucent, little girls.

“What time is it, ladies?”

“Time for silly-billy jumping jacks!” cried the crowd of children.

Then we jumped and jumped. Waving our hands and legs in the air. Some of us, not even bothering to properly come down to the ground as we utterly pissed on the very concept of proper form, to just sort of thrash about to expend our excess energy.

“Alright, girls…Time for a bit of a cool down. There are snacks and fruit water at the back of the room,” I said.

“Yay!” cried the chorus of children.

The girls were all young Empty-Harvesters. Larvae. Bodies much smaller. Skin slightly paler, and slightly see-through, compared to their adult mothers and big sisters. Lacking in the wings and chitin plating, that they’d gain once they’d pupated and emerged as fully-developed, if not necessarily fully-grown, harvesters.

I was visiting my in-laws with Kalpana, and I ended up helping out with some of the playtime/training classes for the kids. Apparently, I had quite the affinity for dealing with kids, which was good news, I guess, because it seemed like me and my six wives would soon be having some kids of our own. No one was pregnant yet, but I had a feeling that I’d get the news sooner or later.

Tch, that brat Yoshino Yuki, and his wives Hong Soomin, Zhou Weifen, and Yin Qing, have already had like nine. You’d barely be able to recognize him if you saw him now, he’s gone from being a gritty would-be protagonist to looking like the wise but goofy dad-character. He’s even purposely changed his form to gain just enough of a gut to rock a proper dad-bod for some reason.

The Pradhan clan was not only continuing to grow in terms of Trefor, Miya, and Nila’s kids, but their older kids were starting to have kids of their own. Then there’s Alisha and Garvan, who have their own little spark of rabbit-eared firebrands running around.

Hell, even Alina, our Empty-Society’s Head of Marketing and Finance, found time for her and her expansive harem of male and female beauties to start making mini, cutthroat, immortal merchant-warriors. Then Kian had to return to her imperial palace to take care of things in the Shattered Heavens Dragon Empire, for a bit, because her number-two needed to step out for maternity leave. Simply put, everyone we know seems to have already started having kids, and it's feeling pretty inevitable for us as well.

Ah, sorry…This probably feels a bit abrupt and apropos…It’s been, let me see, 5000…no, 5 million years, since I’ve bothered to update this journal last. *OOF*, that’s one hell of a time skip, I know… Sorry. What can I say? Life caught up to me, and a lot of the time, I just wasn’t feeling it. However, honestly, aside from four very low-key weddings, you didn’t miss much. Hell, we’re still technically at war with the DSO, even if the House and the Division had thoroughly kicked their teeth and forced them to give up a good deal of territory and resources amidst all the fighting.

In summary, a lot of time has passed while you weren’t looking, but none of it was particularly worth mentioning. Not unless you’re interested in the oodles and oodles of updates and upgrades that the Empty-Network and Empty-Dream got, but if you’re like most people I doubt you’re going to get hot and bothered over bug fixes, server expansion, and increased memory efficiency. No need to lie, even I only found a few of those memory-efficiency upgrades and bug fixes sexy, and I was the one who programmed them.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

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Eventually, Kal and I finished our tour of the multiverses held by the Empty-Harvesters, and our visit with my many, many…many, in-laws.

“Thanks, hon…I know that was…a lot…” said Kalpana. Giving me a kiss and a hug.

“Heh, don’t mention it…I always like seeing your folks, and your sisters are pretty cool…in small doses,” I said. Shrugging and smiling. Trying not to grimace over the fact, that I still occasionally got weird flirty vibes from a few of the Harvester-Princesses and, I couldn’t tell if that was something real, or if I’d just gotten a big head, and thought I was the cosmos’ gift to women, after bumble-fucking my way into marrying the six most wonderful ones.

“Hah…yeah, well, still…Thanks for coming out here with me,” laughed Kalpana.

Kalpana and I traveled in comfortable quiet. A massive swarm of immortal insects and cloud of ravenous, data-assimilating nothingness, sailed through the endless void. Sailing side by side. We made a few stop-overs on the way for lunch, and to maybe buy some souvenirs for the rest of the family, and those of our friends we still saw regularly. I happened to sniff out a group of DSO operatives. They were demons this time, which was actually a bit odd, since the Dark Song Orchestra was largely made up of gods, dark spirits, and fae.

After the fight, there was another stopover for…other types of exercise. Killing and eating still makes me incredibly randy for some reason, and Kal was down to clown so to speak. Then we continued our trip. Repeating the process until we finally arrived home.

“That was fun…We should do it again with the others next time, but I liked having you to myself for a change,” said Kal.

“Yeah…” I said. Agreeing.

Then Kal teleported away, because as much as nice as our vacation had been, we both had other things to do. Especially since our Empty-Society’s territory had swelled from being 122 multiverses to being a whopping 2300 multiverses. That might not seem like a big jump, but in terms of territorial control, we had been the equivalent of lucky tech-billionaires who’d managed to catch lightning in a bottle. 122 multiverses was already a huge deal and we now had more than 18 times that number. And that was assuming you didn’t count the virtual multiverses hosted within the Empty-Network and Empty-Dream.

So, naturally, I also had things to do. My entire family spent a lot of our time working on managing and administering the territories that were placed under our care. It was hard work, but we were used to it, by now. In fact, a lot of the time, it was a bit boring because we weren’t terrible at our jobs, and the circumstances were just favorable enough that a lot of the time things fell into a steady routine.

Kal and I went our separate way. I checked in with the rest of my wives, to give out gifts, and see if anyone needed anything. Then I changed into my true-form, a massive cloud nebulous nothingness roughly the size of multiple multiverses, and I got to work. Part of my mind also turned inwards as I did so. Turning its attention to the Empty-Archive that lay within the core of my soul.

Thanks to the Empty-Network and Empty-Dream, the Archive got a lot of visitors, and a lot of juicy new data, and I had to sort, and process all of that data, while keeping an eye on the visitors. The War with the DSO was another source of data, which meant even more data-processing.

I didn’t mind though. It was basically what I was meant to do/be. I “was” the Empty-Archivist, after all. Besides, the average shift of looking over and looking after the territories of the Empty-Society could last between a decade, or several centuries, so it was nice to have something that I could do during the dead hours.