Kaori steeled her resolve and spoke in her office manager voice. “Yaju, I was wondering, are all of your clan like you? Is this the form of all undermen or do you look different from them somehow? You seem to imply that you are different but I didn’t really want to pry into your past. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
Einoro looked away from her with a pensive expression but Yaju didn’t seem to mind too much. “I suppose I should probably explain that. I was cursed by an evil spirit of the forest. Our clans normally look a lot more like them. *He pointed at the hundred statue-like dwarves in the first group.* But I got bit by the spirit and turned into one of them. When that happened, I lost control and did something unforgiveable. Then I was killed for that and ended up here.”
“I probably would have gone to Veranon, the afterlife of the undermen, and been tortured by the act till the end of my clan. The only thing that kept that from happening was that I wasn’t in control of myself at the time nor at the time of my death. Thanks to my clan, I was spared that fate and ended up working for the beastman god. But I even managed to screw that up. You would have been well within your rights as the new supreme goddess to get rid of me entirely but instead, you had mercy on me and even let me keep working for you.”
Suddenly, Yaju got down on his knees and bowed his head to the floor. “I Yaju Stonebeard, former god of the hunt, pledge myself to serve you for as long as you will have me. You could have discarded me but you didn’t and I will forever be indebted to you for that.”
Kaori looks awkwardly at Einoro and then back at Yaju. “I thank you for your service and look forward to working with you for… well, going forward. Come on, stand up. look, I don’t want to seem impolite but I have to ask this of you. Could you take a bath and then put some clothing on? Oh, I guess you probably don’t have any do you? Hold on a second.”
Kaori summoned her book, opened it on the index then flipped to the relics section. She looked at the clothing portion and found that all the item listings were exceedingly powerful. Thinking a little bit about it, she came to the conclusion that what she wanted was something she should be able to simply conjure on her own. Looking at Yaju a bit closer she figured his rough measurements but wasn’t confident about them. Then she got a great idea, she made the clothes as a minor magical item with the ability to shrink or expand to fit each wearer. The thing she decided would suit her tastes best for her pantheon to wear were business suits.
Kaori got the other two to follow her out of the summoning circle. When they returned they were back in her treehouse. Kaori then created a bathroom with a toilet, tub, and shower that would create cold and hot water without any supply and dispose of the waste. She made sure it was stocked with shampoo and body wash as well as razors, combs, brushes, and every other item she remembered from her own apartment. She then partitioned this room and reinforced the branches to fill every gap in the floor and walls of the room. Lastly, she made a round glass pane for the window of the bathroom before deciding that she would make one for each of the four windows.
Kaori looked around sheepishly, not knowing how to ask her next question. Just as she was about to make the awkward request, Einoro whispered in her ear. “Kaori-sama, I was wondering if I might make a request? I know this may seem a little forward of me but… *The angel clenched her fist and steeled her resolve.* May I please bathe Yaju? I know that he is your subordinate but I would really like to ask this of you as a personal favor.”
Kaori was a bit taken aback by the sudden request when she was gearing up to ask that very thing of her. She just nodded a little before turning away so that the blush on her face wouldn’t be too obvious. It wasn’t that Kaori was ignorant of men, she just didn’t have any experience. To take her mind off the place it was heading she concentrated on making the clothes she had in mind.
A moment later, she was holding a pair of short black slacks, a white button-up shirt, a pair of white socks, a pair of black loafers, a black and red pinstriped tie, and a black blazer. Aside from the resizing capabilities of the rest of the suit, the tie would tie itself. She was quite proud of her creation. She had even chosen the red pinstripes to represent Yaju’s title of god of the hunt.
She held the final product out to Einoro. “Here, I’ll be counting on you. Get our associate here looking presentable. We’ll talk when you’re all done.”
As the somewhat reluctant and obviously bewildered Yaju accompanied Einoro into the bathroom, Kaori sat at her table and began reading her book again. It had been over an hour since the pair entered the spacious bathroom when Kaori started to hear sounds coming from that direction. At first, she wasn’t sure what she was hearing but then she heard a gasp followed by a moan. As her face turned completely red, she quickly exited the house and just began walking through the sky in the opposite direction.
Kaori had suspected that Einoro might be a little attracted to Yaju but she had never suspected the angel of going that far. She then began to wonder about the divine nature of angels and demons. In church, she had always imagined that angels were pure and never did anything like that. Clearly, they weren’t as chaste as she had always imagined them. To get her mind off the subject she summoned her book and began making her selections for what she would need on this world.
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She chose a weather system, a set of backgrounds, and several other tidbits. She found the section she was after with the land remodeling kits. She found that there were a few variations. The cheapest one only allowed the user to change the landscape of the world one time. She decided immediately that she didn’t want this one.
The next type was one that would randomly reshape the world and could be used a set number of times by price. Next, she found one that would slowly change the structure of the world over a long time and she realized that this was what earth had. She liked earth but she preferred a different one. The last and most expensive one gave the user the permanent ability to change the landscape any time they wanted to. Although she was gritting her teeth, Kaori hit the purchase button on this one.
She also found an entry in the phenomena section that would let her create floating islands but it required the purchase of a floating metal out of the material section. The two entries had both purchase buttons listed in each, an obvious setup. She didn’t begrudge the creator this sales tactic and simply made her purchases. She imagined the glorious floating islands that would grace the skies of this world and her inner otaku started going nuts.
Once the world was running properly, she resolved to take a run through some of the various places she would create as a mortal, maybe with a false memory in place to make her think she belonged to the populace of this world for a time. First, she still had to finish setting everything up. she reminded herself that there was a lot of stuff to do. She was still standing in midair and strumming through the book looking for neat features when she found an entry on dungeons.
At first, she doubted that it was the same thing she was thinking of. In a lot of light novels, manga, and anime about other worlds there were dungeons that would occur for various reasons. These were long maze-like constructions filled with monsters and treasures. There would be boss monsters in special rooms at various points in the dungeon. Some of them were simply abandoned structures that had been taken over by monsters but other stories featured dungeons that were living beings that grew off of the death of the adventurers that came to challenge the dungeon.
Kaori read the first few paragraphs of the entry and was astounded to find that this was an entry for the very same type of dungeons from those kinds of stories. She would be able to add real dungeons to her world! She finished reading the entry and found that there were several different types available. She wasn’t sure which she would need in her world but she was determined to get them.
Just as she was puzzling over whether to get the kit for purpose-built dungeons or the self-growing dungeon starter kit, she heard wings flapping. Einoro was approaching her from behind. Kaori turned around and began walking back to the treehouse. As soon as Einoro saw that she returned to the ledge in front of the door and waited for Kaori.
Einoro’s face was beet red when Kaori got back to the house. “Kaori-sama I – I, uh… we err…”
“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it. I just figured that I would give you a bit of privacy.” The words were exactly what Kaori meant to say but instead of bold and confident, they came out in a trailing whisper. Both her and Einoro were red faced and looking away from each other. Kaori wasn’t sure how to defuse this embarrassing situation but fortunately, Yaju came out of the bathroom at that point. He was wearing the business suit and looked so much better, although, he still looked like a beast.
Kaori looked at him contemplatively. “As I thought. That is a good look for you. I think I will ask all of the gods under me to wear a business attire for work. Although, we may adjust a few things to make them more comfortable and may have to customize them a bit more to represent each god’s role a bit better. Thank you for agreeing to this. It’s a lot easier talking to you clothed than while you’re standing around naked.”
Yaju looked at his sleeves and his legs and kept looking at different parts of himself. Finally, Kaori realized she had forgotten a vital part of the bathroom. She waved her hand and a floor length mirror appeared on the wall. Yaju noticed the movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see himself standing there. Not recognizing his face at first, he yelped and jumped back a bit. Realizing his mistake, the moment his brain caught up, Yaju looked hard at his reflection and seemed to be concentrating. Suddenly, his face changed and the wolflike appearance of his features was gone, along with much of the hair that was still visible on other parts of his body.
Einoro gasped and began looking a little dejected. Yaju turned at the sound and his form reverted almost instantly. “I thank you Fujiwara-sama. I had almost forgotten what I look like and hadn’t considered the way that I appear to others in a long time. I have to concentrate to stop the curse but at least now I know that it’s possible to do. I plan to practice that so I won’t scare people when I talk to them anymore. It’s too taxing to keep it up long though.”
Einoro let out a sigh of relief and Kaori just smiled. She hadn’t known him long but, in that time, she had become accustomed to his appearance. The only thing that had been bothering her was that the only thing hiding his nether regions was his hair and beard. She had been thinking of him like some kind of animal so it wouldn’t bother her as much. “Not a problem. I imagine that those meeting you for the first time would appreciate you holding back your bestial appearance as well. While you were’ Ahem’ busy in the bathroom, I was getting together various elements of the new world from the book. There are many left to find though. Would you and Einoro kindly look through your copy of the book and find a few things that I’m having trouble finding?”
They all sat at the table and looked through the books for the rest of the evening. By the time night rolled around, they had found almost all of the elements for the new world. The time to pause the world and begin remaking things was drawing ever nearer. In the morning she would begin on a new project to advance her goal even closer, an afterlife!