In a white space, two figures sat on opposite sides of a small table. One was an old man with long white hair and beard that stretched all the way to the white floor and clad in a long gray robe while the other was a young man with short black hair and dark blue eyes, wearing a white robe that hid his intense mana with a golden staff hovering by his side.

The pair was, of course, Great God of Reincarnation Arogal and Sage Ren. These two powerful individuals were currently having some tea and cake after a long discussion on what'll be happening to Earth. The cake and tea were made by Ren because Arogal didn't know how to make any deserts and his tea brewing skill was only subpar,

"A Great God who has lived for 750 thousand years doesn't know how to make desserts for guests along with barely passable tea brewing skills, how disappointing" Ren spoke in a calm yet sharp tone that pricked at Arogal like a thousand needles.

『Cut me some slack, I've been busy with the Circle of Reincarnation constantly getting fucked over by Demon Lord and your people!』 Arogal tried to justify his lack of basic skill with work but the look in Ren's eyes never changed.

"Blaming other people for your lack of common skills, how incompetent of a god can you be? Also, your argument doesn't really stand since there's usually at least a ten years gap between the death and revival of a new Demon Lord. Even if I factor in the previous Sages, we only appear every several thousand years and the average ages of all the Sages are around a thousand years, so what were you doing with all those free time, hmm?" Ren completely shot down all of Arogal's excuses in seconds, making the God of Reincarnation stiffen up.

『I was…uh…』 Arogal couldn't think of any more excuse that seemed plausible and froze up. Even a god can't outwit Ren, and the reason for that is his [Divine Mind]; at present, his thought processing speed was on the same level as the Great Gods, it'll be hard to trick someone on the same level of thinking as you.

"Not answering? If I were to guess, you were playing around with mortal women weren't you?" Ren looked to the Greek Mythology of his world for an example and felt like Zeus and Arogal were quite similar in some ways.

『I would never!』 Arogal adamantly refuted with conviction in his eyes, which told Ren he was telling the truth. However…

"So, Female Angels and Goddesses, then?" Ren calmly asked, his sharp eyes still on Arogal.

『…』 Arogal fell silent and started to sweat profusely because Ren had hit the nail on the head with his guess.

"Oh?" Ren smirked upon seeing Arogal's reaction and knew he had hit a bull's eye.

Seeing the smirk on Ren's face irritated Arogal but he didn't let it show and just averted his eyes, swearing to get him back for this.

"Well, whatever. What you do in your free time doesn't matter to me" Ren dropped the subject entirely and went back to thinking about what to do in order to get the outcome he desires.

『…』 Arogal clenched his trembling fist under the table while thinking 'If it doesn't matter, why did you-' but stopped halfway because something else caught his attention. Peering through the path that linked Earth to Mirkaz, Arogal looked into the Circle of Reincarnation and found a small discrepancy in the flow of souls. 'What could have happened?' He pondered over it but his attention was drawn back to his avatar body because of what Ren said.

"Looks like he got another page"

『What do you mean?』

"I'm saying 'he' got another page of the tome" Ren didn't show any real concern about this and went right back to thinking. However, Arogal showed an annoyed face at this news.

『Ugh… I'm gonna have to put in more work to get the soul stream back to normal』 Arogal complained, feeling even more annoyed when he thought of the work he would have to do.

『Why can't you just get rid of him? He has been a thorn in our side ever since that detestable book fell into his hands』 Arogal expressed the headaches the Great Gods of Mirkaz has had because of that man.

"I see no benefit in killing him off this early, he's essential in keeping the Demon Empire in check. You all may see him as an annoyance, but I see him as a valuable rival for Aizel, someone who he strives to kill. He is a large factor in Aizel's rapid growth in power, so he is still useful" Ren spoke of his opinion in a cold tone; he had already said it many times before to other gods and Great Gods, and he's not gonna budge on this matter. If someone does something that will benefit him, who was he to deny their goodwill?

『Sigh, well we can't really do anything about it anyway, just make sure it doesn't get too out of hand. We're trusting you to take care of it when the time comes』 Arogal decided to just drop the subject since he saw no way to convince Ren to do what he doesn't want to. Also, it's not really a major problem anyway; it was just a mild inconvenience to all the gods.

"No need to worry about it, I'm not dumb enough to let him complete the Tome of Demonic Will" Ren reassured the old god, who looked a little defeated at not being able to convince him.

Arogal stayed silent at Ren words, he sipped the black tea that Ren brewed to show him how superior skills can make so much of a difference. Tasting the black tea made Arogal remember all the criticism he got for being only decent at brewing tea that it made the delicious tea taste a bit bitter, but that's just him, not the tea itself.

"Alright, we went a bit off-topic. Let's continue where we left off" Ren changed the subject and went back to what they were discussing before Ren had to ruin Arogal's whole tea brewing career, not like he had one in the first place.

『Yeah, this is kind of important』 Arogal cleared his mind and brought his attention to the ideas that Ren proposed before this happened.

Arogal thought about it for few minutes in silence; Ren kept quiet for these few minutes and was just doing something else, like modifying a certain staff for his avatar body to use from now on. It eluded his mind this whole time because he got shits to take care of, but when his avatar woke up a moment ago it reminded him of the shortcomings of avatar bodies; they take a while to get used to and in that time they're in their weakest state. He's gonna have to keep that in mind for the next avatar he makes.

『I think it could work, we just need to work together to make sure nothing goes wrong』 Arogal came to a solid answer to whether Ren's idea will work and the outcome he can perceive were all successes in the condition the two joined power to make it happen.

"That's good to hear, I was only half certain that it would work. If this works, we should see a pretty big increase to the mana that's being generated" Ren held his chin with one hand and thought about the countless things he would do after more mana is available.

Before, he didn't need that much mana for his growing power but after hearing from Arogal the things he could do now as a Ruler that will accelerate his power growth; one thing popped into his mind, he could move his plans up by a few steps and fully unlock his Sage legacy in around two years' time. For that to happen, he needs more mana, a lot more mana.

Not even the other half that Arogal will be taking is enough for what he wanted to do and since he already agreed to Arogal's conditions, the only way to secure more mana was to hasten Earth's growth even more. Earth may be growing at a pretty fast rate compared to other worlds, but it's not nearly fast enough. Take the mana it's generating, even with the 5 times jump in mana generation, that's still only a bit less than half of a percent of the mana that's used on Mirkaz every day. Now, half of a percent was still huge if it was used by only two people as compared to the billions of people using it back on Mirkaz, but that's only on the pretense that two powerful existents are using it as individuals.

However, as Ren is the Ruler, the world was now trying its best to power him up so he would have enough strength to protect the world, which uses a ton of mana every passing moment.

Although with Arogal's help Ren managed to stop it, for now, they still need a permanent fix so they don't have to always work around it. Hence, for now, Arogal will not be taking the mana that they agreed upon and will instead use it to boost Earth's growth, which will in turn increase the mana generated in the long run.

And the first step was the idea that Ren came up with. You see, currently, no other living creature is using mana which means it'll keep piling up slowly, but that's not the most efficient way of using mana. The mana in the world is akin to money in the economy, if no one uses money then it becomes useless and they stop printing it; the same applies to mana as well, currently, there's nothing that's using mana hence the world doesn't see the importance of using everything available to it to generate mana.

For instance, the billions of living souls that inhabit Earth; souls are a living creature's existent, no living creature can survive for long without a soul; emotions, thoughts, survival instincts, senses, and many other things that a living creature use every day comes from the soul. Souls generate a lot of those, and those things can be turned into the basics of all forms of energy, mana.

In fact, the sudden spike in the mana generation was from souls, just lifeless souls from another world, those don't generate as many things as living souls meaning they aren't very efficient for converting into mana. The living soul of humans and animals though, those are very efficient; so efficient in fact, just from the human souls in China, the amount of mana generation will shoot up by around fifty percent.

If they can execute this plan correctly, no harm will befall the inhabitants of Earth and they get free mana; plus the negative emotions that linger around places and people will get turned into mana along with all the other stuff too.

And that's only the first plan, there are still many more things that will sky-rocket the mana generation to a whole new level, but it'll take about a year or so to get all of it done so he'll have to remain on Earth for the whole operation or something might go awry.

『Are you ready? This first idea will take a few weeks of continuous work so you might want to get anything you want to be done with, out of the way first』 Arogal spoke in a serious tone, unlike his usual self, his dark eyes glint with a white silvery hue.

"I'll finish up with this staff and send a message to my avatar first, then we can get to changing the world's system at its core" Ren directed his attention to the staff that's in his [Personal Box], hastening the speed of his work by activating three Unique Skills [Lord of Creation], [Ruler of All Elements], and [Sage of Magic]. His body emitted a faint iridescent light as the space around rippled and time slowed down; his mana flared showing its true colorless form and honey-like viscosity.

Arogal felt cold sweat run down his wrinkled back when he saw the colorless mana unique to the Sage legacy line; one's mana reflects their personality, power, and innate attribute. Colorless mana is unique to only the Sage legacy line, representing their ability to learn and use any and all forms of magic, techniques, martial art, and use all the 14 elements.

They are like blank slates, anything they want to learn will be learned no matter what; they are not bound by any limits as they are the only descendants left of the once-great High Human bloodline. This is one reason why the Sage legacy line is unrivaled in all tiers, with all of them trumping anything within the same tier, standing on the same power scaling as the True Dragons, Ancient Demons, and any other extremely rare Mythical creatures.

'He may well be the only one of his kind to ever rule over an entire world, and maybe even the last of his kind' Arogal felt melancholy because of something that an old friend of his told him years ago, this made him remember a meeting all the Great Gods held after discovering a new Sage was born; the meeting where all the Great Gods agreed to help this new Sage as much as they can.

The contents of the meeting brought a sour taste to his mouth just remembering it so he quickly banished those memories away. It was still too soon to assume things will play out as they have predicted, after all, none of the Great Gods had predicted that the new Sage will come to be a Ruler of a world; yet that was what happened.

'I'll just do the job I was given and help him in ruling his world, it's the least I can do for him for taking that spirit away for us' Arogal remembered the times he would smash tables and chairs because of a little Time Spirit's mischievous antics and weakly laughed internally.

While Arogal was deep in his own thoughts, Ren finished everything and the colorless mana around him started to fade out along with the elements stabilizing. Everything reverted back to the way it was before like nothing ever happened.

『Are you done now?』 Arogal immediately noticed the change and snapped out of his thoughts.

"Yeah, let's do this" Ren nodded with eyes filed with convictions.

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In the Ishia house, around 6 in the morning. I just finished cooking Full-course English breakfasts and putting them under the effect of [Preserve Item] before turning my attention to arranging the bento boxes for everyone. This time I cooked everything by hand because I wanted to; cooking is quite relaxing and enjoyable whether it's cooking by myself or with someone.

I don't know if it's because of Mom's influence or the influence of the [Master Artisan] skill, but I just felt like making something today and cooking breakfast just seemed more enjoyable than creating key chains or phone straps.

Oh also, when I woke up an hour ago, I found a staff and a magic letter on my desk. The staff was the Soul Weapon I thought of modifying last night, but it seemed the main body had already reformed it for me, I say reformed because it looked and felt completely different from the [Staff of Chaotic Vortex] form before.

It's not even a Soul Weapon anymore, it's Legendary Grade now; granted it's on the bottom end of Legendary Grade but that's still a very powerful magic staff. The name changed too, it's now the [Staff of Endless Cycle]; sounds kinda boring but the Weapon Skills fit the name perfectly. The staff is mostly focused on casting spells in rapid succession and prolonging spell effects for as long as the wielder's mana permits it; the concept of the staff is, well, an endless cycle. It also boosts the power of spells cast, increasing the wielder's mana recovery by exponential levels, helps in mana and spells controls, and an automatic spell casting system that's controlled by the soul that was residing in the original staff.

Even a normal High Mage could kill a King-tier in a one-on-one fight to the death with this staff. Tis the power of Legendary Grade weapons, with a compatible one you can fight those of a higher-tier on an even playing field. Though it can't really close the power gap between Demigods and Gods, you would need stuff at Divine Artifact Grade to even fight a God to a standstill while still being a Demigod.

Anyway, enough about the staff, it's not really that important. The important one is the magic letter. Magic letters appear to just be a blank card, but if your mana signature matches the required one it'll reveal the content. There wasn't much written on it, just a few sentences telling me what's going down on his side; I mean, he could've just sent the information through our mind link, writing a magic letter was totally unnecessary.

Back to the content of the letter, seems he won't be available for up to a month, meaning I can't barrow some Unique Skills if I need it and he can't help me, if something happens I have to deal with it myself. Also, it mentioned something about siphoning emotions and other stuff before converting it into mana; this got me thinking if it'll help Akirou too since the root of his problem lay in the negative thoughts and emotions because of his past.

I hope it does.

I just about finished up with the five bento boxes when I sensed Dad's presence close to the house, I guess he's back. I neatly wrapped up the five bento boxes and set them aside on the counter before taking off the yellow apron I had on while cooking and hung it to the side.

I cast [Clean] on myself to clean anything that I might have missed before heading to the front door. There I saw the front door opening and Dad in his business suit holding his briefcase where his laptop is; he has dark circles under his eyes, clearly from pulling an all-nighter.

"Welcome home" I walked up to him and took the briefcase from his hand.

"Ah, Ren. I'm home" Dad's reaction was a bit delayed and he even tried to cover up his tiredness with a bright smile.

"Don't try to cover up the fact you're tired. Have you eaten breakfast yet? I made some English breakfasts, eat before going to bed" I headed back to the living room while Dad followed me with a helpless smile.

"You sound so much like your Mother" Dad commented while slowly following me.

"I am her son" I countered back.

"Hahaha…" Dad chuckled, looking a little livelier.

Like that, the father-son pair made their way to the living room and started having breakfast together before the others.