Chapter 53
Passage from the material plane to the plane of angeli was the only celestial access point with an immense and dangerous challenge: a tower.
The connections to every other celestial plane, like moving from the angeli to the archangeli plane, were gates akin to what I could buy with a dungeon core.
One needed only to step across the threshold to leave one world and enter another.
That threshold was well-defended, of course, but I was thankful I wouldn’t have to climb a tower every time my army advanced on a new world.
Well before I was a threat, the archangeli sealed off the gate from their side, and according to Queen Lace’s intel, we could expect to face a heavily fortified killbox.
When my constructs broke through the seal, they would find themselves walled in and surrounded by soldiers ready to rain arrows and spells down upon them.
As ascended angeli, archangeli looked similar to their counterparts on the lowest celestial plane, but they grew the beginnings of a second pair of wings low on their back and always seemed to glow, like their entire bodies were mage lights.
Having seen Arcturus in person, I could imagine how that second pair of wings would grow even more if the archangeli managed to ascend again.
The glow itself was its own kind of status symbol.
A freshly ascended angeli took on a deep golden glow. As they neared another ascension, that light grew paler. Among other requirements, that light had to be perfectly white before they could move on from the plane of archangeli.
My original plan was a brute force rush.
I hadn’t lost any Byron bots on the angeli plane, so there was a chance that their damage immunities would nullify archangeli weapons as well, but I had to assume they wouldn’t.
Punching through such a concentration of defensive forces would come at a cost, but I didn’t have a choice.
Until Queen Lace offered us an alliance.
For the last week, we secretly amassed forces in her city while a smaller, more visible force gathered in Safina, the city Invia now ruled.
That smaller force used an Unholy bomb to break through the door erected on the archangeli side of the gate, clearing the way for Byron bots and silk soldiers to charge through and attack.
Their advance was measured and patient. Where my earlier attacks relied on sudden, overwhelming force, these units went through the gate in smaller, staggered groups.
Their objective was not to win but to distract and delay.
When the battle had waged for a few hours at that gate, the forces in Queen Lace’s kingdom began their assault, blowing the gate in the same way before the much, much larger force poured through to invade.
That simple tactic was more effective than it ever should have been, to the point that I worried the archangeli were the ones playing tricks on me.
I kept waiting for their secret plan to unfold, a follow-up force striking when their machinations lured me into the perfect moment, but that never came.
The archangeli couldn’t fathom any celestial, not even the angeli they spat on, allying with a human.
In addition to that mistake, their hubris led them to underestimate my force.
Despite knowing it had torn through the angeli plane in mere days, they believed that their power was unbeatably superior.
In reality, my small distraction force nearly broke through my enemy’s best defenses on its own.
As for the primary attack, the gate was poorly defended as Queen Lace had predicted. A few dozen archangeli were on the other side when my army of thousands burst through.
With a foothold established in the middle of an archangeli city, my dungeon-generated angeli flew into the world carrying Intoxicate+100 and Bolt bombs just as they did for the first celestial plane we conquered.
The sale of Byron’s Blessing and Byron’s Bliss had pre-seeded a good deal of Byron-dick addiction, but soon, every archangeli within 100 miles of the gate would rather get fucked by a Byron bot than killed by one.
Predictably, the archangeli scrambled forces to counterattack, the masses of approaching winged warriors looking like flocks of birds in the distance.
Their forms reflected in the deep blue waters that made up the majority of the plane as they passed over hundreds of smaller island paradises to reach the city my army had claimed.
The enemy never arrived. A few of my angeli had already been dispatched and were ordered to wait miles away from the city.
When the archangeli passed overhead, my angeli flew FAB bombs into the sky and detonated them, killing thousands of archangeli in an instant, sending massive waves across the serene waters of the archangeli plane.
Since our forces at the first gate had fared far better than we expected, I decided to follow Abaddon’s example and deliver a level of violence that shocked my enemies.
While part of my army secured Queen Lace’s gate, I sent more Intoxicate+100 angeli through the one in Safina, followed by a slew of FABs.
Once our primary forces were out of range, we detonated the FABs, leveling the city. I had originally planned to claim that city as my own, but I saw an opportunity to humble every kingdom on the archangeli plane, so I took it. Besides, I didn’t actually want the city anyway.
Erasing a metropolis in an instant sent the message that, like the angeli, the archangeli would be wise to surrender and lobby for peace.
This battle was won, so I sat back to appreciate my work.
Watching the pandemonium of our initial invasion of the angeli filled me with pride. Watching Byron bots conquer angeli in every way possible, from death to fucking, was entertaining, and seeing hosts of winged warriors disintegrated by FABs instilled a joy so pure that it stirred in my cock.
I looked forward to those feelings returning as archangeli fell, but they never came. I had done this before. Doing it for a second time neared tedium.
With the deluge of good-aligned levels, I summoned 100 shadow Byrons and sent them through to search the city we hadn’t destroyed.
Queen Lace assured us she knew the location of Arcturus’ secret warehouse, allegedly full of items that were illegal or taboo to own on any of the planes, and my shadows had orders to find and secure it.
Queen Lace watched all of this happen from a balcony in her palace, and I joined her. Events she couldn’t witness firsthand were delivered by scrying glass, so she was privy to every development I recounted here.
When the FAB bombs went off within the city limits at the other gate, for example, she wept.
“I thought you wanted to conquer the archangeli?” I asked.
“That was thousands of people… thousands of civilians. Archangeli, yes, but not fighters or politicians. They were living a normal day one moment and were dead the next.”
“Yeah, that’s unfortunate,” I said.
I offered lip service, but the words were quite obviously hollow. I meant to make that statement more believably empathetic, but I couldn’t be bothered. I simply didn’t care.
“Invia and Podni will take it from here,” I announced.
“Do you mean to depart already?” Queen Lace asked, her opal eyes and marble face wet from tears. “It has been a mere few hours.”
“My soldiers don’t need me watching them to perform.”
“Do you care so little for life that you won’t offer your enemy the dignity of being present?”
“When was the last time you saw archangeli lose a battle?”
“Never. My father told stories of a Demon Lord who slew thousands, but that was before I was born. He said that battle happened right outside of our very walls.”
“You made this possible,” I said. “My victory may not have come as easily without your help. You deserve credit for this success too. Let yourself enjoy it.”
“Enjoy the deaths of innocents? You’re mad.”
“Suit yourself.”
I departed.
“Are we looking for anything specific?” Solara asked me as we again searched the 101st floor for a way to access the tower core. “Or are we hoping for new inspiration?”
“New inspiration,” I answered.
“Fair enough. For what it’s worth, I believe the tower core exists. It may not be where Queen Lace told us it was, but it exists.”
“What makes you certain?”
“The mechanics of dungeons and towers are too similar for the forces behind them to be radically different,” Solara answered.
“Even amongst ourselves, we talked about towers as being vertical dungeons, and I know that’s partially conceptual, but for me, it’s literal.
Something keeps this place running, and the way it goes about that looks exactly like what a dungeon core would do. ”
“I agree,” I said. “I’m not sure we will ever find it, but I do believe it’s in this tower somewhere.”
“Beyond the 101st floor would make the most sense. In dungeons, the Dungeon Lords are at the bottom, the end of the journey, so to speak. Since towers are cleared in the opposite direction, the Tower Lord or whatever you would call them would have to be at the top.”
“Also agreed.”
I was happy to have Solara making conversation.
The diversions were fleeting, but every moment I didn’t think about Abaddon’s next move was a reprieve.
In the time it took to travel from Queen Lace’s balcony to the 101st floor of the tower, I was given troubling news: Abaddon’s army had pulled out of the southern lands.
Every last soldier had disappeared, and the people who lived on the populated side of the mountains could now rebuild.
That meant Abaddon was wise to the dumb trick of a misleading name. Any minute now, I would receive word that his army had been spotted moving on the northern lands. The few cities along that border would fall, and then the demon force would cross the mountains and traverse the northern wasteland.
I had plans in place to slow that advance, but I could still feel my defeat approaching, like a rider on the horizon in the distance, galloping toward me.
“How long until we invade the plane of principalities?” Solara asked after a long stretch of quiet searching.
“We’ll need a week or two to replenish our forces and secure our holdings. If luck is kind to us, that will be the last full-scale invasion we need to get the attention of the seraphim.”
“And if they don’t come to us, we keep going?”
“Indeed.”
“Since we’re on the topic of our futures, have you begun work on your phylactery yet?”
Solara’s mission to create phylacteries for our family was complete. Each of us now had a blank tome containing 3,400 blank pages as well as a generous supply of enchanted ink. To complete the phylactery ritual, we had to fill those pages with stories from our lives.
“Not yet,” I answered. “I know it’s important, but I don’t want to die halfway through storing my soul when I should have been focused on the war.”
“I understand, but please don’t put it off much longer. We will win this, but if we ever need to start over, I want you to be there with us. Eternity won’t be worth living without you.”
“I promise to get it done.” And I didn’t bother mentioning that Solara would never have to worry about that. One of the conditions for her undeath was that I still be alive. When I died, anyone whom I granted undeath would die as well.
“Thank you.”
We reached the stairs down to the 100th floor with nothing to show for it.
Solara rubbed my back. “I’m sorry.”
“We knew that failure was a possibility,” I replied. “It’s disappointing, but I think it’s safe to shelve this project until we have new leads.”
“The craftsmanship is remarkable,” Solara mused, looking first at the statue of the Goddess at the top of the stairs and then to the rest of the sprawling floor. “I wonder if his techniques are still known, like the seraphim have a library full of guides for building a place like the tower.”
“You would love that.”
“I would never do anything else. The power to create whole new places with their own creatures and their own rules? That sounds unbelievably fun.”
I meandered around the Goddess’ statue. “Would you be as committed to detail?”
Solara laughed. “Sure, my sculptures will have realistic dicks, vaginas, and buttholes. Just for you.”
“I appreciate the kindness.”
Solara paused next to me, both of us looking at the lips on the statue of the Goddess.
“How close is that to Princess Lace’s?” Solara asked.
She had heard the story of the angeli princess offering herself up to me.
“Hers was a bit more tucked in, but for the most part, it looked exactly like that.”
“A vagina that looks like a statue, how strange.”
Yeah. Very strange, but the designer was infatuated with the Goddess, and, perhaps, sexually repressed. I hoped to never be so desperately horny that I got myself off with a hot statue.
Huh.
“Get me hard,” I commanded.
Solara grinned. As she knelt, she used both hands to collect her hair into a ponytail and tied it with a ribbon.
She kissed my shaft over my pants.
“I love starting this way,” Solara said in between pecks. “I like feeling it get harder each time my lips return, like a present I can’t open but know that it’s getting better and better each second.”
I looked down on her, watching her work.
She glanced up as her mouth pressed into my balls, the warmth of her breath bleeding through the silk fabric to my skin.
She giggled as she closed her eyes and traced the growing outline of my cock.
Instead of full kisses, she touched me every so slightly with her lower lip and slowly dragged it up my shaft.
It was the barest of touches, lighter than a feather, but the sensation was as powerful as if I was sliding down her throat.
Teasing, the anticipation of more, could be just as good as the actual contact.
“Good girl,” I praised, guiding her head away from me. I turned, climbed on the dais with the statue of the Goddess, and dropped my pants.
The lips of the statue parted for me when my tip touched the marble.
The welcome softness of flesh was there, but it was cold as stone and tight enough that driving all the way in hurt a bit.
When my fingers had probed this part of the statue before, it was nothing more than regular marble. For my dick, the lips spread gladly.
Solara sat on the ground next to me, spread her legs, and leaned back. I let her get by with only her fingers for a moment before sending a tentacle dick to pleasure her.
After a few minutes of thrusting, during which time my sorceress came twice, I blew my load in the statue of the Goddess. With my hips resting against her hard ass cheeks, I watched a set of stairs descend from the ceiling, leading up to a hidden floor.