The elven mind stone stood about 10 centimeters long, and was blue and glowing. Pef wasn't surprised at that, but at the hue of this blue.

The same exact hue as the blue cores of the demons.

It wasn't the time to ask about it, yet.

"So, what do I do now?" he asked instead.

Nellie glanced at him and simply floated the stone to his forehead, gently touching the skin.

A rush of information assaulted Pef's mind, straining his new mind shield, and he struggled to keep himself awake.

'It's okay, Pef. Let it in.' he heard a soft voice in his head.

Pef hesitated for a fraction then did just so. His mind shield popped open, and then nothing.

Sometime later he awoke with fresh knowledge in his head, and lessons from a hundred elves faces, droning on and on about mind battlefields and demon tactics.

"Huh, I was lucky. A better trained demon might have taken over my mind..." he mused with sudden apprehension. Next to him, the elf goddess seemed asleep, yet sitting gracefully and upright. Maybe just meditating, he concluded.

Nellie opened her eyes, which were greenish blue. "Mental domination isn't that easy. And nearly impossible to higher ranks of cultivation. But, you did have some scars on your mind, took me three days to heal them."

Pef scanned himself, noting the lack of pain in his temples.

'The elf is correct. I observed her work, and she's very skilled.' the glove admitted as well.

"Many thanks, princess. So, mind training is complete?" Pef asked in a hopeful voice.

"Haha. Absolutely not." Nellie replied with an amused giggle.

Pef threw back a sheepish smile. "I need to practice then..."

"Yes you do. But first, you need to cook. I do love your cooking." Nellie explained shamelessly.

Our hero sighed in defeat. Another voracious eater. She'll fit right in with his other wives.

Pef rose and flew to his new house and began preparing a large feast.

Lia arrived by his side, observing him for a few moments. 'New wife?' she asked with a qi pulse. Of course the oracle would know. She always did.

'Most likely. Bring over more pots. I'll make noodle soup and roasted pig today.'

'There are about 500 people with white auras here. Xie is out on the field, training them. Aria is healing broken bones.' Lia added with a small smile.

'Anything dangerous around?'

'Nope. The elven hunters keep the beasts under control. Nothing over a Core rank.'

'Good enough. We'll still need our own Guards, but they don't need Wall type of gear.'

'I've already set a Spirit rank ward around the town. When Aria is free, we can start on a germ sterilization barrier.'

Pef thought for a moment. 'No. There's a dozen races here, and they don't have the same immune system. The barrier might kill one's race stomach flora or make other's race skin rot off.'

Lia mused for a minute, glancing around. 'We'll segregate the hospital wards then. I'm not sure the morlok biology is even compatible with human germs.'

'Their green blood was the clue, eh?' Pef asked a bit amused.

'Shut up and cook, beloved husband.'

For a week, Pef continued his mental training, sparring with Nellie in mental battlefields and losing every time.

Then one day, his mental assault pierced through, making the elf goddess wince.

"That's about it. You completed the basic training." she explained while rubbing her temple.

"Really? I thought I'm barely a novice..." Pef wondered a bit confused.

"Yeah, you are a novice. But now you're strong enough I can't beat you easily without my mental shields. And you won't break those in a million years. Not even Elder Gornesh can." Nellie replied with a smirk.

Pef sat beside her, not so pleased about him anymore. "Oh. You got special training then?"

"My Queen mother. It wasn't pleasant, fighting her mind. Sadly, I was the youngest child and only got to know her for 90 thousands years. My brother had our mother to himself for a million years, not that he gained much from it. Ceres is more of a sword and spellcaster than a mind mage."

Pef nodded at her. "Your mother seemed nice. Strong and protective. I would have loved to meet her."

Nellie smiled sadly. "No you wouldn't have. She'd have you grovel and beg at her feet. Plenty of our court were secretly happy when she died."

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"Weaklings all of them. I love strong women. The stronger, the better. Not that weakness is a problem, but then weak people are fragile and die easily." Pef spoke while staring at the sky.

"Shut up. She's dead now, so she wasn't strong enough. If my father had been a real man..." she sobbed.

Pef hugged her with one hand. "If your mother was the woman you say she was, then it was her choice. She looked at the odds, and decided she was stronger and had the best chance to win. Was she the strongest?" he asked softly.

"Yeah. Back then, father was still a Grand Duke or like you called it a Tier 3. And it takes two Dukes to fight off a Greater Demon. He and Elder Goresh had to stay to defend our last planet."

"That strong, huh? Something to do with the mind stones?"

Nellie turned her face, looking at Pef with new eyes. "Exactly. But for opposite reasons. While we elves nurture and grow them, filling them with our thoughts and dreams, the demons just devour them, fueling themselves and their powers. If you meet a Greater Demon, don't stay and fight. Just run."

Pef took out a few demon cores, holding them in his palm.

"How? How do they devour a mind stone?" he asked while poking at the core with his coresense.

"It's a demon ability of some kind. They just put them in, and they bond somehow. Drain them. And after that, it's no longer a mind stone, just a demon core. Luckily, only a small portion of them have the ability or access to new mind stones." Nellie explained with a hateful tone.

'What do you think, my glove?'

'That you'll try anyway, and die in hideous pain?' it answered with a rhetorical question.

'You know me so well. Still, I'd rather not die, and gain that ability for our Legion.' Pef replied inward with a shrug. Power was power, and this seemed a great opportunity to gain a lot of power.

'Of course you do. Store them in, and I'll try to find a way. Foolish human!' the glove grumbled.

Nellie watched the cores sink into his glove, and poked it with curiosity. "This is your Tier 6 glove?"

"Yep. It also talks."

"Really? A sentient artifact?" she whispered in awe.

"Yes! It's much smarter than me." Pef explained with a sad grimace.

"Hehe. That's not a hard thing to achieve. And why do you wear my mother's diadem around it?" Nellie asked with a sterner tone.

"Well, it does offer some protection against mental attacks, right?."

"It does. If you're of our bloodline, and wear it on the head."

"Have elves married humans before?" Pef wondered looking at the elf goddess.

Nellie leaned in and tasted his lips. 'Very rarely.' she whispered in his mind.

The next morning, our hero woke up staring at two gorgeous orbs and poked them curiously. Then more heatedly. A lazy slap on his head stopped him.

"Your wives. They don't mind?"

Aria entered the room carrying a tray with tea and sweets. "Wakey wakey! Nice catch, hubby!" she announced with a voice full of mischief, then ran away.

Pef coughed a bit embarrassed. "See? They like you."

"That's...good. I did wonder how you manage so many wives."

Pef shrugged while serving the tea. "We used to be more, in our family. But more than half died while freeing our home planet."

"Demons?" Nellie asked with an emphatic voice.

"Much worse. It was a wretched human Tier 1, teamed up with a huge worm, bigger than a mountain. And its larvae, they infested anything alive. Animals, beasts, people...a whole continent died."

Nellie sighed, then drank her tea. "But now, your world is free."

"It is. Same thing, it won't be possible in this galaxy though. I've seen what's out there. The demons are strong and many and have taken all the livable planets. There's even a huge barrier around the galaxy." Pef said with a worried voice.

"Yes. The scepter is linked to the outer barrier and its field. That's why it's so powerful. It can detect and strike anyone in the galaxy. Makes resistance quite hard." Nellie explained with a more subdued tone.

'Sounds familiar, my glove?'

'No, but known powers and range are closely within those of a Tier 4 artifact. Galactic detection range, able to kill a Tier 4 elf queen. Nothing special, but a bit much for you, right now.' the glove said flatly.

'My knife has those things too?' Pef asked hopeful.

'The knife does. You don't. If you were a Tier 5, you could send it to kill anyone in the universe, if they weren't too strong.' the glove explained with a snort.

'Still, the energy requirements for long ranged strikes would be tremendous.'

'Yes. And a True God has more than tremendous powers. Which is why they do not have competition in that same universe. One true god and all. There no room for two.'

'This Archdemon. If he reaches Tier 5...'

'If. He would squash you like a bug. And this planet too, regardless of magic wards. It's possible he could do it even now, if that scepter artifact is fully charged. The demons don't mine impure jade for fireworks.'

'Can you locate my gun from here?'

'Legion ident tags open, per direct order. Opening galactic map.' the glove answered with a robotic voice, its timbre alien and scary. The galaxy appeared in Pef's mind, partitioned into quadrants and travel routes, while close to the center a handgun tag was blinking rhythmically.

His own location, along with various tags for glove and knife, and his wives marked with a pawn symbol were also present.

The newest Guard recruits were only marked as a pitchfork sign and a number: 506.

'Peasant levy?' Pef asked with a short laugh.

The map vanished and the glove returned to its normal mode. 'My programming reverted to safe mode for some reason. A bit impersonal, was it?'

'Yeah, don't do that again. I'm rather fond of you as you are, my orange friend.'

'Not my call sometimes. There are some hardwired instructions for safety reasons. Most of them deal with Legion's primary weapon, the power word gun. As you've seen, some of them trigger safe mode automatically.' the glove explained with a shrug.

Pef thought for a while then agreed. Like nuclear weapons codes or something. Made sense to implement safety protocols to verify the user. Wouldn't want some demon firing his gun by accident.

'Could I recall the gun, to my hand?'

'Of course. But only after you are authorized. I advise you postpone any demon core experiments for now. The weapon might retaliate or self-destruct if it suspects you've been compromised.' it advised with a warning voice.

'Universe goes boom?'

'Big boom' the glove replied with a snort.

Then it began checksum scans, looking for whatever else its maker had hidden inside the code. Now that it knew what to look for, hundreds of hidden partitions were revealed, all under lock and key. One of them was heavily damaged and could be hacked.

The glove began to dig deeper, decrypting the backup files and the hidden clauses. Almost half of the red impure energy was consumed for this task, but it was worth it.

Data began pouring in, exabytes after exabytes of classified intel and research files. Races and cultivation methods, weapons tests, quarantine dossiers. It wasn't the whole picture, but enough to begin extrapolation.

An entire Legion battlegroup, lost to the enemy. The General herself gave the order to euthanize and re-settle the lost into this universe. Over time, more and more of the fallen had been sent to reincarnate here, under close observation.

No wonder the over-abundance of gold and white auras. And other Dominions cooperated with this, sending their fallen here to be quarantined but kept safe, while the war ragged on outside.

Medical triage.

Experimental cures and skills, implanted for various reasons.

Diluted war agents, included in the hope of obtaining anti-bodies.

The heaven's lighting lied. The Legion was losing, and so were the others. Somehow, its idiot ward was now the multiverse's only hope. And he was fondling an elf woman without a care.

The whole existance was doomed.