SSV 4 Chapter 3 (Patreon)

As soon as Daeva and I had stepped out of Skel’s lab, Daeva took off, flying into the air.

I followed her closely. “What’s happening?”

“A fight.” She grinned. “East side of the city. You met one of the guards when you entered, yes?”

“A butterfly lady.” I replied remembering the woman flying with large butterfly wings.

She nodded. “There are more than a few that have some sort of insect mutation. The antennas work wonders for long distance communication, some of them can even pick up telepathic signals.”

“They aren’t those kinds of antenna.” I chuckled.

“Work the same. Anyway, there are a few telepaths among them that help give everybody early warning.” Daeva flew fast enough that I had to grab Stella and Melody, pulling them with me to keep up.

There was a crowd of supers flying in the air already. When Daeva arrived, they cheered.

“Goddess, there’s a powerful monster coming, about two miles out.” The super that spoke was the butterfly lady. I saw her eye my group. “Do you want us to keep an eye on your visitors?”

“No, this is a good opportunity.” Daeva tapped her chin. “This man here is a god that I’m trying to recruit to the city.”

The butterfly lady gave me a new wide eyed appreciation. The others flying nearby added little gasps.

“Putting me to work?” I frowned at Daeva.

“Only if you want. I can’t and won’t force you. But if you’d kill the monster and help us bring it into the city, it would be a valuable resource. And you are welcome to use your resources to pay for others or take coin. It would help your time here.” She replied.

I nodded, feeling a little weird about bringing a monster into the city and using it for its raw materials. But it did speak of a simpler time.

Reaching out with my sense of kinetic energy, I let the grayscale world become my eyes, and I felt around. It didn’t take long to locate the large disturbance and identify it. “Looks like some sort of giant alligator.”

“Bet that skin would make nice boots.” Melody smirked beside me.

I raised a brow.

“What? I can’t pull off alligator skin with this skin tone, but it makes a girl think.” Melody shrugged.

“Fine, I’ll handle it.” I wasn’t one to stand by during a fight anyway. And it would give me a chance to see their system more deeply.

Flying in the direction of the alligator, I noticed a gathering of guards. They seemed to follow me as Daeva positioned herself like she was going to protect them.

I didn’t really see how they’d get injured. They were up in the air.

But then a pair of long jaws snapped up above the treeline, catching a bird the size of a house and wrestling it to the ground.

“The big ones always start to run out of food.” Daeva added some commentary as I heard the bird getting crunched. “That’s probably why titans come ashore. They likely have used up most of the food in their environment and begin to venture out for more.”

I studied the alligator, ignoring her current theories on titanal ecology.

I was much more concerned with the miles-long alligator smashing through the forest, stopping to snap up something it disturbed.

The monster below was large in size, but it didn’t have the ki density of titans I’d seen.

A bead of destruction formed in my hand.

“Wait, master, don’t destroy it. Then we won’t have anything to sell.” Stella grabbed my shoulder.

“Really?” I rolled my eyes. The bead of destruction was so efficient.

“I want pretty things. Please.” Stella batted her eyelashes. “Besides, this place is kind of fun. You don’t have to hide, and all these girls give you googly eyes when you walk around. We’ll find you a perfect new addition to the harem. So, I want to stay for a little bit. You should get us some monster meat to trade.”

Letting out a sigh, I shifted my hand. “Fine.”

I opened just a pin prick hole in the bead of destruction, letting it loose.

The world went white with the power of the complex energy I released, and a black beam consumed everything in its path as it seemed to rip the world apart.

I moved it, shifting it to the alligator’s head. The bead destroyed the head, but the rest of the body remained.

Then I closed back up that small prick I’d made in the bead of destruction, sealing it once more and letting it disperse.

The air hummed around me from the blast.

I turned back to Daeva, the alligator threat gone. “So, do I just drag it back or is there some sort of rule?”

Daeva was grinning at me, and the guards behind her were looking at me with a new level of reverence. The butterfly guard was staring at me with wide scared eyes.

She was probably thanking her lucky stars that she hadn’t offended me when I arrived. That and people of high power tend to be dicks.

“Don’t worry, I don’t bite.” I made a little biting gesture towards her.

“He does give great sex though.” Stella piped up from beside me. “He’s the god of fertility, and I’m his little goddess of lust. Also, I am recruiting.”

“Stella.” I started to warn her, but I also knew Stella wasn’t ever going to be contained. “Don’t overdo it, okay?”

“That wasn’t a no.” Melody pointed out with a raised eyebrow.

“Stella is a part of the family. If she wants to find more, so be it.” I lifted my hand, and the remainder of the alligator lifted into the air, my power straining from lifting something so heavy.

Frowning, I reduced the gravity on it. There was no reason to strain myself.

It floated up much more easily, and I pushed it forward.

“This way. We should get back to make sure the city remains safe from any other threats.” Daeva led the group. “There is a large park where we can set it down.” She assured me.

The butterfly girl fell back and flew with my group. “I apologize if I offended you when you first arrived.”

“No harm done.” Melody assured her. “He’s just a prickly man. What you’re seeing right now is actually Miles when he’s relaxed and happy.”

I scowled at her.

“See. He’s just generally grumpy.” Melody used my scowl to prove a point, smiling to herself.

“I’m not grumpy.” I grumbled.

“You are a little grumpy, Master.” Stella landed on my back rather than fly herself. “But that’s why you have us. We help make you grunty instead of grumpy.”

I didn’t need to see her face to know she was mostly likely bouncing her eyebrows and grinning like a mad woman.

“Oh.” The butterfly woman nodded, her antenna bobbing with the motion. “That makes sense. By the way, when you put that down, people are going to come up and offer to pay for pieces of it. They are just intermediaries. They are people whose powers make them effective at skinning and butchering a monster. They then sell the pieces for more than they paid you, but it is the easiest way.”

I nodded. The city was relatively simple, but it made sense they still had specialties. A leatherworker didn’t do their own skinning. “Should I do those things myself? I could likely skin and butcher it in a few minutes.”

She paused and then shook her head. “It would be a deviation from what they expect. And people’s livelihoods revolve around those jobs. Besides, they have a trade network in place. They likely already know their customers before they start working.”

I nodded. I had no need to go look around for customers, figure out the going rate, and then deal with all the exchanges.

“Thank you for the advice.” I nodded to her, and she shot away from the group to get to her position on the outskirts of the city.

Daeva led me over to a park, and I placed the corpse onto the grass.

It was only moments later that a number of heavily mutated supers came up to their goddess.

She laughed at something one said. “No, I did not kill this. Please, this man here is a god I’m trying to recruit to our city.” She gestured at me. “He killed it with a flick of his wrist.”

Many of them were appraising me with new interest.

“How much for the skin?” A woman asked, a small group trailing behind her.

I shrugged. “What’s a fair offer? I’m new here, Miles.” I introduced myself with a hand out.

She shook my hand with a slow nod I’d seen from contractors before as they tried to gauge a job. “Five hundred for the skin only. It’s in pretty good condition.”

I had no idea what five hundred was worth, but I also noticed everyone else in line seemed to be waiting for her to finish.

If she took the skin, she was likely the first to go to work on the monster.

“Sure.” I agreed, and she reached behind her as one of the people in her group put a leather sack in her hands. She then dropped it in my palm.

I hefted it with a raised eyebrow. It didn’t feel like five hundred things.

“Shit, here. The goddess said you were new, but I didn’t realize you were that new.” She opened the bag and scooped into it.

There were a variety of coins. “Bronze or copper are worth one, the silver metals are worth ten. If you see a brass or gold coin, it is worth one hundred. But I don’t get any of those in my business, sorry.” It seemed a little easy to make more coins, but I guess getting the metals would be the hardest part.

I shook my head. “No, thank you for answering that. Okay, who’s next?” I turned to the next person in line. They indicated interest in its claws. A few others in line had been looking at it and shook their heads, wandering off because either what they wanted was taken or maybe because the lack of a head ruined it for them.

Some wanted ligaments, others a particular organ, but I doled out the meat to three different teams.

It wouldn’t take long before the alligator was completely disassembled and put to use in the city before the day was done. The people were crawling all over the corpse, quickly dismantling it and taking it apart in cart loads.

I finished up with the workers. Stella and Melody had already wandered off with a good bit of the coins I’d collected to go do some shopping at the market. They must have found some goods they liked, because they’d been gone for a while.

“Well done.” Daeva had been standing nearby, watching all the exchanges.

“Why don’t you just strip it for them?” I asked.

She shrugged. “It is good for them to be useful. Their powers are useful. See that one there?” She pointed to the woman who had asked for the leather.

The super was growing blades from her arms and working through the tough hide like it was butter while her team worked behind her making rolls of the leather she cut.

“That power made her a villain in Mountain City. I mean, what use is being able to make blades from your arms in a city that is mostly corporate offices and financial spreadsheets? Sure there were mines there, but those blades didn’t work too well on stone.” Daeva scoffed. “Here, she has more of a purpose and we don’t judge her just because her power makes her look scary.”

“The cities have people that did manual labor. There were crop fields and people hunted monsters.” I reminded her.

But she shook her head. “Manual labor.” She echoed. “Such a city term. This is valuable labor. And it’s far more valuable to the village than owning large buildings and renting them out.”

I grunted, not quite disagreeing. “That’s just how it is.”

“Well, not here. Humanity needs to change. Powers, strong powers are more valuable than money. Heroes are paid wonderfully, but they are still working for a pittance of what your mayor likely earns just by owning things.” Daeva flipped her hair.

“So, we are gods, above it all then?” I asked, pushing on her beliefs.

“It isn’t easy being a god. When they come to me, I need to act. And that means more than just defending the city. They bring me gifts and ask for my help for a great piece of construction or other work. You see, by making ourselves available, they can come when they need help. That is a great service.” She nodded to herself, fully bought in on their way of life.

I would have pushed a little more, but Stella came bounding back with a large bundle of multicolored cloth. “Miles, I found this. It’s perfect! You should wear more purple.”

“Please tell me that wasn’t worth the entire sack.” I raised a brow at Melody who would have been the responsible one on their excursion into the markets.

Melody shook her head and produced the leather bag of coins that didn’t feel much lighter. “We found a vendor for togas, and then Stella found one that could change the cloth’s color. It was fifteen total for all that.”

Daeva raised an eyebrow. “See. Even a power as simple as changing colors here has value.”

I looked through the bundle that Stella brought. Many of the togas were brightly colored, and all of them had gold borders on them. “Why the gold borders?”

“Cause we are gods now, duh.” Stella rolled her eyes at me as if it was an obvious answer. “You’ll have to try some on when we get back.”

“Seems they are getting used to the city nicely.” Daeva smiled at me. “You can stay as long as you’d like.” For a crazy woman she had a nice smile. As her blonde hair fluttered in the wind it was easy to forget that she smashed open a prison and ran away with all of the prisoners.

I nodded. “We’ll see what we can do with the monster fruit and what you have to show me about the titans.”

“Yes. The Fenris Wolf still resides around the fallen Valley City. We can check on it later. I should also take you down to South America, but that’s a trip for when you feel like your ladies are more settled. I like Stella.” Daeva smiled and put a hand to my chest as if checking if her words had an effect on me.

“Why would that excite me?” I asked.

She pouted. “I’m trying to understand you. If you are to be my god king, then I need to understand what excites you and makes you love.”

“You don’t have your pick of the men here?” I asked. There had been a number of decent looking men milling about with the teams working on the alligator body.

She wrinkled her nose. “None with the type of strength that interests me. We know that even though powers themselves aren’t inherited, the strength of the power is. You are a man with one power capable of blasting a hole in the large beast and lifting it here on your own. I used three powers to match you and still failed.”

There was a wild glint in her eyes as she watched me.

“Your children will be powerful. The kind to be hailed as gods.” She smirked. “So to answer your question. No, I’m only interested in men that can give me little goddlings.”

As her hand left my chest, she dragged her nails against me and smiled as my heart picked up a little.

“There we go. You want me to have your children?” She pressed her hand to me again and frowned. Then she dragged her nails along my chest again, her face pressed up against my chest. “You like that?” Daeva looked up at me.

I was frozen by her oddly intimate action of putting her face on my chest. It was also like having a poisonous spider on you. I didn’t want to startle her and end up standing in the middle of a crater.

Stella looked up from playing with her new clothes. “He likes it rough in the bed. If you really want to get his heart racing, you should get on your knees and…” She trailed off, miming a blow job.

Daeva frowned at the gesture and pulled away from me.

Stella giggled, clapping her hands with glee. “Oh, the things I can teach you!”

I stared at Daeva. Given her power, her innocence was a little shocking. She could establish a new society, but she’d never learned about love or sex. There was probably a whole list of things she was ignorant of and no one was likely to try and teach a goddess or correct her.

I didn’t blame her for that. From what little I’d learned of the experiments done on her, she didn’t have a normal background. But I wasn’t sure how to help her understand love on a deeper level.

Stella went down on her hands and knees, wiggling her butt in the air as she started describing different sexual positions to Daeva.

I rolled my eyes, quickly trying to change the subject.

“How often can I bring back a giant monster?” I asked Daeva. “I assume this one will take most of the afternoon to finish up.”

“Yes. The city can probably only handle one or two a day.” She nodded. “Though, we only get one monster every other day or so now. That gives some of the hunters jobs to do though. They hunt the smaller ones.” She explained. “We should head back. It is getting close to supper time.”

“Food?” Stella perked up, getting up off her hands and knees. “Yeah, let’s eat.”