I check on my comatose wife still sleeping on my lap, and pat her head. Lucy is still flicking in and out of existence every now and then, but it is becoming way less frequent. Can't be too much longer until she's cured and hopefully wakes up again. Please...

"That story is all nice and good, Eclaire, but I asked you why you haven't taken any additional classes yet, not about... whatever that story was."

She hesitates for a moment, "Oh, uh, isn't that obvious? Before you agreed to marry me this morning, Lucia still had to pay my full upkeep, and we were not sure if we can afford to give me more classes under these circumstances, so we simply haven't made any decisions yet, it wasn't relevant, we had more important things to take care of. Also, we thought it would be more fun if you were present as well."

Hey, don't blame me for this! This was your idea! Or Lucia's, allegedly.

Maybe Eclaire's class choices are relevant to Lucy's plan and that's why she has to wait. Spirits have fewer restrictions on which classes they can take, they only need the slot for it. And thanks to our engagement and Lucy's [Unholy Matrimony] she should now have plenty. That one is clearly part of the plan but where does that lead? Do they have a specific class build in mind that exploits a loophole I don't know about?

Hmm... no clue, too many possibilities with what little I know about her plan. There are thousands of classes and skills, too many to guess the correct one.

It seems like mulling will get me nowhere, "Fine, we can deal with that later."

Maybe now is a good time? Eclair should know what Elly is doing

"Say, do you kn-"

Eclaire cuts me off before I can finish my question, "No, I can't tell you."

"That was suspiciously quick."

She responds after a moment of collecting herself, "You were about to ask about Elly, right? I... left her out for a reason when listing the whereabouts of your other spirits. But thanks for picking up the cue back then, this is a sensible topic."

"That's not very helpful. What has happened? You make it sound like something big is going on with Elly. Tell me at least why you can't tell me anything, I think you owe me at least this much."

She sighs, "You see, I wasn't present. I only know what Lucia told me. It happened when Lucia revealed her plan to both Elly and Therese - no one else. Even now, only we four know about the plan. Well, from what Lucy told me, Elly suddenly flew into a rage during the explanation and attacked them. Obviously, this amounted to nothing and Lucy simply unsummoned Elly, she is detained in the Spirit Prison since then."

Spirit Prison? She probably means the space where spirits end up when we seal them away. Like I did that one time when she went too far with her nagging about titles. She didn't take that one too well...

But no matter how much I think about it, I can't believe Elly would just go berserk like that, so far she was way too level-headed for that. She even tolerated me playing with the glitched Class Core, begrudgingly but still. There must be more to this story than mere disapproval.

"Plan this, plan that. The more implications I hear about the plan the more I fear it would be in our best interests to stop it."

Eclaire shakes her head and shrugs, "No can do. Not anymore, it is already underway. The only way to stop it now is to kill both you and Lucia. And obviously, nobody wants that."

Yeah, that's not happening, not even in part. Lucy is mine and you won't take her from me!

...and there's the red string strangling me again. Damned title.

"That's not really reassuring. Look, I know you're trusting Lucia more than Elly but consider, she's a spirit. As such she's forced to be loyal to us, and going for the kill is as far from loyalty as I can imagine. There must be more to that story."

She sighs in frustration, "I can't tell; as I said, I wasn't there. But if I had to guess, I'd say it is simply very likely that the glitches in the atmosphere - or in you - got to her and drove her crazy. I've already seen enough people tear into each other recently. Non-familiars in a panic over the unknown situation, due to sleep deprivation or fear of the more monstrous Hybrids, some outcast Hybrids that went mad for no reason and went on a rampage; at this point, Elly's case is just that to me. One case of insanity among many."

I try to protest, "But she's-"

"If you have to know, just wait until Lucia wakes up. Blindly guessing will lead to nothing but unnecessary frustration", she says while taking me into a hug and pressing my head against her chest.

If she intends to distract me with that then it doesn't work.

Or maybe it does. Sandwiched between my two wives like this, I give up - but only for now, "Maybe you're right, I'll wait. But can you at least tell me anything else? What happened to our servants? I haven't seen them yet, did they make it?"

Eclaire sounds happy that she doesn't have to deal with the previous topic anymore, "Oh, yes, certainly. Once she found out that you can go beyond the familiar cap thanks to your weird skill, Lucia got to them. She said it was because good personnel is hard to come by. But if you ask me, she's taken quite a liking to them, even if she'll claim otherwise. Except Carl, he's...", she trails off with no conclusion.

Carl? Who was that again?

Oh, right, the Dwarf-Elf. He was supposed to become an assistant, easing our workload. Shows how much of an impression he left on me...

"What is with him?"

Eclaire takes a moment to gather herself, "You would've found out soon enough anyway. Lucy couldn't free him from his slave status. Apparently, Anna was a one-time deal."

I know; I tried back then to make a still-slave a familiar, didn't work. So if you add the current hostile environment...

I feel cheated, I wanted to put the slavers out of my misery personally, preferably bloody, and not just get Diabolus-Ex'd on that front.

Consider yourself lucky, Ludwig, you get to choose a different profession instead of becoming a stain on the wall. I'm totally not vindictive, just stay under the radar or else... I might give you two seconds of a headstart, maybe three if I feel generous that day.

No, gotta calm down again. This is the wrong topic for now.

So why couldn't Lucia free the slaves? It was because of something the lich said, right?

"Because of DP?"

She nods, "Yeah, how did you figure?"

"Just a hunch I had. Initially, I believed she simply had elevated rights thanks to her divine class, but once the lich Basluth dropped the concept of DP on me and hints about what you can 'pay' with it, it wasn't that much of a stretch that they are related."

She forces a smile, "Yeah, it is... and Lucy tried to keep it a secret from you because... of how she made me kinda alive again. She did that with the last few remaining DP she had. She was afraid to disappoint you if she couldn't free the other slaves."

"I guess so. And thanks to what is going on now, she'll never gain any DP again, right? Given what we know about Glitches and Hybrids, this probably won't change even if we can revert the atmosphere of this world. No more miracles for us, I guess. Not that we got many. Speaking of, we didn't get to it in the meeting but do we know anything about how to end this dungeon? We've got no exit to just leave, at least."

She hugs me even tighter, "We know nothing about how this fake dungeon works. Well, aside from that it is frequently expanding."

"It is growing? So... not only our fortress is in danger but - again - the whole area, if not the continent or the entire world. Great, and here I thought we could take our time with solving it. We're supposedly immortal now after all. I had a faint hope we could just train here until we're strong enough to overrun whatever obstacles are between us and the alleged demon artifact. But obviously, even that is now off the table. So how fast does it grow?"

"That's the thing, it doesn't exactly grow at a constant rate. Most of the time the dungeon border stands still and then suddenly the next moment it jumps ahead and absorbs several hundred square DUs. We've several troops on patrol outside that keep watch on the development in case it gets close to another settlement."

"I see. I guess they have orders to add the survivors as familiars, right? Do they have any methods to hide the non-human traits and prevent panic?"

She shakes her head, "No idea, that's something you better ask Therese or Darius during the next meeting tomorrow."

"Alright, I understand. But what are you doing then if you aren't involved with those affairs? I doubt Therese would let you sit around idly."

Eclaire chuckles, "Why, I'm living up to my class of Holy Maiden and working at the church. For some reason, a position of church head recently opened up, and who better to take charge than the current chosen one."

That's gotta be some form of cosmic irony. The head of church that sent the saintess to her death was replaced by the successfully(?) murdered saintess, and was put to death himself. How the turntables.

And since when can spirits hold divine classes?

She clearly does, didn't expect that. At least she didn't keep the cursed [Undead Bait] skill.

I see the skills our familiars get. I would've never thought of that before, the limit of familiars was too restrictive for any experiments in that direction. Is that a general option, or does that only work because of Eclaire's strange half-spirit-half-non-spirit state? I may never know.

Well, are any of her new skills interesting?

Damn girl, be careful where you let that loose. That would hurt Lucia and me a whole lot.

Seriously, Eclaire, do you want to become our nemesis? Oh, right, saint. This was a stupid thing to ask.

This leaves the two random, "divine" skills my skill grants to my wives, what did she get?

Nice, this breaks all known rules of spirits. We don't have to deal with her upkeep cost, and she can even use spells. But what are you going for with your skills, Eclaire? Basically, everything you have is usable once. Will you be our one-hit wonder?

I don't get it. I expected the gifted skills to be a random mess, but they are strangely normal, they even fit quite well to their circumstances. Like, if Eclaire is serious about guiding their religion and playing their local saint, this would be very fitting with their tenants. Self-improvement, helping others in their endeavors, and everything. No idea what this means.

Also, why does she have the imp race?

"Sounds like our little nun is finally moving up in the world. Congratulations, my dear. But your status says you have the imp race, where does that come from?"

"Lucia added it, she said it would fit me, can you believe it? Me, the Holy Maiden, a saint, a mere imp!? Urgh! How does that 'fit'?!"

I mean it gives her wings, and she certainly is a little imp-ish at times.

"Uh, I think Lucia might be on to something. Can you show me your wings? They could possibly add to your image as a saint."

"You think so?", Eclaire lets go of me and gets up, then reveals her wings. Large, dark purple, bat-like wings. And when I say large I mean it, they are longer than I'm tall.

Come on, Lucy. Did you really have to ruin this ideal image of a biblically inaccurate angel by choosing the wrong second race? You could've simply given her the same race as Elly, a Valkyrie, among many other options, but no...

"Simply perfect. You'd be the ideal icon of a religion in my old world", I lie through my teeth. Well, I didn't say which "religion", so is it really a lie?

She's just missing a tail, maybe some horns, and the Halloween costume of a succubus in a naughty nun cosplay would be complete.

I better keep these thoughts to myself.

Eclaire blushes, "You, you think so?"

Why did she buy that!?

"Oh, yeah, totally. Say, do you have any long-standing plans with your religion I should be wary about, or do you simply intend to keep it going as is?", better change the topic before she catches on that I'm just trolling her.

Eclaire starts beaming, "I'm glad you asked, dear. Truth be told, we don't have a real plan yet but Lucy and I are investigating options to make sure what happened to her with the head priest doesn't happen again. But all of that will be long-term."

Oh, this better be good...

"So basically just reforms of the hierarchy?"

She retracts her wings and joins me again on the bed in watching over Lucy, "That but we're also considering removing any mentions of the gods of refinement and balance. If they wanted our belief they should've put in some actual work by now, and not only send in some poor fool every couple of decades. Uh, no offense, dear, but we've suffered long enough."

"Don't you fear retaliation, Eclaire? I don't think Jeff, or any other god, would take kindly to losing his followers."

Although on second thought, if gods receive nourishment from prayers but glitches are kinda the opposite, wouldn't prayers and belief sent by glitch-infested Hybrids slowly kill them? Well, once this barrier is gone at least. If that is true maybe we should keep them as idols? Can we?

She sneers, "They had their chance, now is ours."

I don't like where this is going...

I sigh, "Please tell me you do not intend to turn this into a personality cult."

"Maaybee?"

"Eclaire..."

She just laughs it off, "Yeah, don't worry, we won't do that. I promise you that."

"...good, I'll trust you."

So in summary, the flood is over and we somehow ended up starting a conquest of the surrounding area, as well as usurping a religion.

How did everything end up like this? I reincarnated as a vampire with the goal of saving a world and then retiring, enjoying eternity - potentially with a family I'd start. Now it turns out that I'm just the plaything of some gods that have an undisclosed nefarious goal which somehow pushed me into playing local Demon Lord. And as my first official act, I turned half the continent into a nuclear wasteland.

Everything derailed so hard...

"Well, you can tell me about the rest later. But now that I think about it, there was one other thing I was conscious about. How do you really feel about our engagement? We're not really in a... fair power dynamic. Like, look. I'm your summoner, right? That gives me a lot of power over you."

"Is that everything you're worried about? That you could abuse your power over me? Ha, I wanna see that. Come one, try!", she challenges me.

I oblige and issue the first order that comes to mind, "Strip."

In my defense, I still suffer from the Happily Married title. I can't help but think she's hot, a total snack - in several senses of the word.

She immediately refuses, "I might have considered it if you said 'please'. But don't you think the mood is a bit lacking for that? We could do with a nice dinner first, some candle li-"

I interrupt her, "Alright, alright, I get it. Enough with the teasing. So, how come you're above my orders?"

She pouts, "Ugh, don't be such a killjoy... Ah, well. Quite simply put, Lucia screwed up when she turned me into a spirit. Well, it isn't something that should've been possible in the first place, so saying she screwed up is a bit harsh. But the truth is, as you might have noticed by now, the System doesn't know how to handle me. At times, it treats me like a regular spirit, at times like a non-spirit human, and sometimes... it just throws up and does nothing. Cleaning the vomit from the message boxes is a pain, I tell you. By the way, it just did again, got a towel?"

I hand her a towel from my inventory, "Here. And if it wasn't for this confused state, the marriage wouldn't have been allowed either."

Wait, why was there a towel in there? Did Lucy leave it there?

...I just hope that the answer is yes, and it wasn't a part of all those glitches that are crawling through my menu,

Eclaire nods, "Yeah, exactly. So you don't have to worry, I'm not in danger of domestic abuse by you, well, not more than regular people at least. But as for the nightly dangers..."

I purr back, "Oh, you're certainly in those. But seriously, even if your control is not at risk what about denial of freedom? We can unsummon spirits and imprison them... somewhere. Aren't you worried about that?"

She just waves it off, "Eh, Lucy tried that already when I pissed her off, several times, didn't work."

"Honestly, I'm not sure if that relieves me or makes me more worried. It opens the possibility that you can't be revived like regular spirits, and considering how spirits are simply weaker than regular people..."

Eclaire gets a bit somber and leans more into me, "Yeah, I understand that worry. I also don't want to find out, so I promise I'll be careful, okay, darling?"

We continue our small talk and awkward flirting until Lucia finally wakes up.

3QGN73

Carl was supposed to be more than just background noise, but sometimes you create facts that make the original plans impossible. It happens.

Ludwig was the slaver from chapter 46 that gifted Jared Anna and Carl - I totally didn't have to look that up myself.