Chapter 193: Celestial Spirit King

“Father, we’re home.”

“Oh, Mai and Mei, it’s good to see you both return.”

This was the Spirit Sanctuary located in the center of the Spirit Realm.

I am the Celestial Spirit King, the master of the Spirit Sanctuary and the king of all the spirits.

My adorable daughters have finally come home.

Shouldn’t they tell me beforehand if they plan to return?

Let’s celebrate Mai and Mei’s return with a banquet.

— Oops, my wife will scold me again if I decide to do that arbitrarily.

Then, it’s fine if I didn’t do something too ostentatious — I would just gather all the spirits in the Spirit Realm to welcome them.

That’s why I wanted them to contact me beforehand.

Hm?

What?

Don’t do that, you say?

That’s precisely the reason why you don’t contact me and just go directly here?

R-really, then sorry about that.

...I mustn't do that from here on?

G-got it.

I won’t do that next time, too.

B-but, can’t I really go out to welcome you?

If I want to, not only the ones here at the Spirit Realm, I can also summon all the spirits in the Human Realm, and we can give you a lavishly magnificent welcome —

N-no!

Sorry. That’s just a joke.

I will never do that!

That’s why dear Mai.

Please don’t call my wife through telepathy!

Recently, I noticed that my daughters were treating me coldly.

In the past, whenever I summoned and gathered a large number of spirits, they would praise me, saying things like “Daddy, you’re so awesome!”.

By the way, my wife scolded me to death whenever I did that. She would say “What the heck are you thinking, gathering all those poor busy spirits just for nonsense!!”

I just wanted to show off how cool I was in front of my daughters! Isn’t it fine if I just used a bit of my authority as king!!!

— When I reasoned out to my wife, she would give me an earful about “what is the duty of a king” for several days.

My wife is also a spirit, so she doesn’t get tired.

In the first place, my wife was a spirit born from the deity that governed knowledge in this world, so possessed an astounding amount of knowledge.

My wife’s fervent speech could continue on for several days without a single second of rest because of that.

I couldn’t go against my wife, but I was also a VIP.

The deities ruled over this world, with Creator God-sama standing at their pinnacle. However, there was a rule that forbid deities from directly intervening in the affairs of the people.

That’s where my spirits come in. Their role was to convert [Mana], the source of this world’s energy, into different energy types.

[Mana] was the driving force that moved this world.

The most familiar form of [Mana] for the residents of this world would be magical energy, which they also referred to as mana.*

We spirits converted [Mana] into magical energy. In short, in this world, spirits were definitely present in places where people used magic.

It wasn’t just among the people.

The spirits that convert mana into magical energy existed in the magical stones inside the body of the Bakemonos, as well as the so-called “dragon vein”, which was a ginormous river of [Mana] that flowed beneath the earth.

The spirits in the dragon vein filled this world with magical energy.

By the way, the spirits that do the conversion from [Mana] to magical energy didn’t have their consciousness.

Moreover, it was also our, the spirits, role to convert magical energy’s attributes that the people used whenever they applied attributes such as fire, water, wind, earth, lightning, darkness and light.

The spirits who did attribute conversion included those spirits that didn’t have any consciousness, as well as high level spirits such as Mai, Mei and I, who had our own will.

Spirits like us who had our consciousness rarely formed contracts with people, and we usually applied magical countermeasures so that they couldn’t control or use us.

This world was run by spirits.

And here I was.

The KING of ALL those spirits.

I could stop the dragon vein and destroy the world if I so wished to.

In conclusion, I was an amazing person no matter what anyone said.

I could do anything I wanted to.

And my daughters relied on me.

“Father, do you know anything about Bunshin Magic?”

— that’s what they said.

Of course I knew it.

I was the Celestial Spirit King, after all.

The one who held all the magic that existed in this world in the palm of my hand.

I knew all about it, but I was bothered about the reason why my daughters were interested in it.

Bunshin Magic was a spell that created an alter ego, and the magical power of the main body would be divided into the created clone. For example, if a person with 10,000 mana (magical energy) points created one bunshin or clone, the magical energy of the caster’s body and the clone would be 5,000 each.

However, this magic typically consumed 5,000 mana points to activate, so the caster’s magical energy would be depleted all at once. The moment the spell was activated, that person would also die because the magical energy ran out.

If the person was lucky enough to convert his life energy into magical energy right on time, by a stroke of luck, he would be able to escape death, but he would still suffer from severe lack of magical energy.

In the first place, there were only a limited number of people in this world who possessed more than 10,000 points of mana.

That was the reason why people who could use such magic rarely appeared.

And that was precisely the reason why I was bothered about the reason for my daughters’ interest in this spell.

...Ah!

C-come to think of it…

I knew a person who could possibly — no, who could definitely use Bunshin Magic.

That person was no other than my beloved daughters’ — Mai and Mei — contractor, and the Bakemono who could forcefully summoned me, the Celestial Spirit King.

“It’s just a wild guess, but...are you guys planning to make Halt use this Bunshin Magic?”

Just imagining that Bakemono increasing in number was already giving me a major headache.The spirits were currently discomfited because that guy kept on scattering an inexplicable amount of magical energy.

Well, the nine-tailed fox beside him absorbed most of the magical energy that he kept on spreading, so we’re somehow getting by — that was the current situation.

“We want Halt-sama to use Bunshin Magic, but is it a no?”

… Seriously?

My daughters planned to let that Bakemono master Bunshin Magic, apparently.

“Reason — can you tell me the reason why you want Halt to use Bunshin Magic?”

If the reason was reasonable, then I thought perhaps it would be fine if I taught them about Bunshin Magic.

It was extremely rare for my daughters to ask me for help.

I wanted to support them, even for just a little bit.

“Ahm, that’s —”

My daughters blushed.

W-what’s that bashful expression!?

They had never shown me such an expression before!

“We want to increase the days we can sleep with Halt-sama.”

- Huh?