Chapter 326: The Hold of Hearts (3)

After parting ways with Pallas, Akasha and the rest of the group kept chatting with Nova as they made their way toward the imposing Hold of Hearts.

The New Skies Pantheon was hardly news to Akasha—of course not.

This Pantheon served as the governing body of the Multiverse of Bounded Hearts, led by Vivian Elum, daughter of Asmodeus Elum, the Multiversal Emperor of the Pantheon itself.

Aside from upholding their philosophy across the Multiverse, they didn’t really have any other purpose.

However, as mentioned before, Akasha knew only that much... and he didn’t know a thing about the situation itself.

"You three," Nova said, gesturing forward as they finally arrived at the heart-shaped stronghold.

"Head in through there... a herald is already ready to receive you."

Up close, the Heart was a wall of curved pink-gold stone, the entrance a pair of doors tall enough to push a palace through.

Two incubi in black armor stood on either side of that seam with spears at rest and eyes already on the new arrivals.

"Not bad," Akasha said as he walked forward, with Melvin and Calyx trailing a half-step behind.

Nova watched him pass, and though Akasha didn’t spare her a single glance, she couldn’t hold herself back.

Her pale skin flushed, and her knees gave way beneath her.

"Ah!!"

Just from his scent, heat kept rising in her lower stomach until she was entirely overwhelmed on the pale road.

"Nnh... ah, ah—"

She shook through it with her eyes on his back, breathing hard with slick running down the inside of her thigh.

’I have to tell the higher-ups about him... as soon as possible,’ she thought.

Melvin and Calyx exchanged puzzled glances over their shoulders, clearly trying to make sense of what had just unfolded. At the same time, Akasha remained utterly unfazed, paying no attention to the incident at all.

The doors then slid open with a smooth motion reminiscent of something you’d see in a modern building, revealing the very base of the stronghold and bringing them straight into its depths.

----

Inside, it was spacious and bustling, yet everything remained perfectly organized.

Naked succubi and incubi moved across the floor in streams, keeping universes in line, six sectors marked across the chamber.

"Hmm," Akasha glanced around, unfazed by the naked bodies, noting the orderly rows of various races standing in place.

However, a few races stood out, as if they were the leading race of each sector.

A Prime Human man stood at the front of sector one, tall and broad-shouldered, with short dark hair and smooth, porcelain skin.

Near him, the Dark Merfolk held a woman with black-and-blue skin, faint webbing between her fingers, long black hair cascading down her back, and a curvy shape.

The Nine-Tailed Foxes gathered around a woman, with nine black tails tipped in red.

She had long black-and-red hair and red slit eyes that stayed stern while the rest of her invited the opposite.

Storm Hawks took another stretch of the floor as humanoid bodies under hawk heads, feathered throats, hooked beaks, and taloned hands.

Flame Djinn appeared as half-people, human from the waist up, made of pure fire.

Lastly, Worldroot Dryads were an all-woman race with wooden skin, bark along the arms and collarbones, long hair, faces and breasts, and long legs.

"Sector Six. Pantheon of Infinite Dreams."

Akasha, Melvin, and Calyx turned at the sound of the voice.

Standing before them, a naked incubus stood in the aisle with nothing on him but a condescending smirk.

"Put some damn clothes on," Akasha said, and all three frowned at the same time.

The incubus looked him up and down, and after his initial shock passed... he scoffed, turned his bare back on the three of them, and started walking.

"This way, little king... Try to keep up."

Akasha smiled at the lofty spectacle unfolding in the Bounded Hearts Multiverse, but he went along with it, not particularly bothered—for now.

The herald led them off the main floor into a side hall that ran deeper into the Heart.

As they walked, they passed tall, narrow windows showing the hanging universes, and more naked members of the New Skies Pantheon.

"Master," Melvin said, not bothering to keep his voice down, "Can I just get rid of everyone? I don’t understand why we’re even going through all of this."

The incubus stopped so hard his tail snapped.

He turned all the way around, closing the space to Melvin instantly.

"You... dare utter such words?" he questioned, finger pointed at Melvin’s chest but not quite touching it.

"Whatever status you held before coming here... it matters not! From this moment on, you follow protocol and the rules of the Bounded Hearts!"

Akasha shook his head with a chuckle, and with a single thought, the Incubus stepped into the Incubus’s dreams, making a few subtle adjustments to the man’s Incubusude.

Instantly, the incubus stepped off Melvin as if a switch had been flipped in his skull, the pointed finger already curling back into a hand that did not know what it had been doing.

Thud!

He dropped to his knees and put his mouth on Melvin’s boots.

"I—I don’t know what came over me," he pleaded. "Forgive me! I... didn’t realize."

Melvin glanced at Akasha over the bowed head, his anger, which had been on the verge of erupting, fading entirely into bewilderment.

"Now is not the time to be going around slaughtering Pantheons," Akasha said. "I want to enjoy myself for a while... and too much noise will ruin my peace before it even begins."

It wasn’t that Akasha was trying to put a leash on Melvin or anything, but here, within the Multiverse of Bounded Hearts, he wanted to savor the moment for as long as the fatality lock would allow.

So, instead of wiping out the Multiversal Rulers, he was doing his utmost. Incubus things cool.

The incubus got up, shaking, and led them through the rest of the hall with his eyes on the floor.

The room he opened had a table, a tablet, a naked succubus already seated over the glass, and a human woman standing beside her with short black hair and blue eyes.

"Universe 51, Sector Six... led by Universal Ki—"

Snap!

"Alright... I don’t have time for all of this nonsense," Akasha said as he once again stepped into the Dreams of the succubus and made her sleep.

As the embodiment of dreams, such things were quite literally possible for anyone in this vast... well, Multiverse.

If he wished, he could extend his Divine Sense to encompass the entire place, tapping into the dreams of everyone present.

But there wasn’t really a need for that right now—his only intention had been to see who might be offered to his Universe for "marriage."

When the succubus slumped over onto the table, unconscious, Akasha cast a single glance her way, a slow smile spreading across his face.

"Tina Malright," he said softly. "How nice it is to meet you."