"Who do you have in mind?" Alice asked.
Ashen leaned back slightly. "I was thinking Sabrina and Edward for starters. Also, my sister and Braun too."
"Your sister makes sense," Alice said. "You'd naturally want to keep an eye on her and hear what she's been up to. But why the others?"
She folded her arms, her tone turning more serious.
"This little meeting of ours was created with the idea of sharing secret information between us. The names you mentioned may be trustworthy, but no matter how trustworthy they are, their motivations are fundamentally different from ours. If we force our views on them, friction would eventually follow, and what started as something useful would turn into a headache."
"You're right, Alice. But you've got one thing wrong…" Ashen shook his head. "When I came up with Absentia, it was not merely to share secrets between us. It was also meant to become the foundation of an organization on Seravelle."
"Sabrina and Edward, for example, are transcendents. But aside from their power, their influence can't be underestimated."
"Edward might not be able to fight right now, as you saw from his condition, but the influence of the Kingmaker would not disappear just because he is powerless."
"And your concerns are valid too, which is why I came up with something." A sly smile crept onto Ashen's face.
"Oh? Now you have my attention. What tricks are you planning to use on those poor souls?" Alice asked.
"Hey! There's no trick involved. I'm not that bad, right?"
The three women answered him with amused smiles, and for a moment, Ashen began to doubt his own integrity.
"Anyway… my idea is simple. Instead of asking them to join an organization with unknown motives, we simply loosely tie them to us through missions, requests, and trade."
The three women immediately understood what he meant.
"So, like an adventurer guild in fantasy stories?" Seraphine asked.
"Yep." Ashen pointed at her with approval. "That's an apt comparison."
"This dreamscape would be the headquarters, and the adventurers would be our members. But instead of accepting anyone, we would only filter in the most influential and strongest among them, turning it into a gathering of the elite."
The benefits were obvious, but Lucia voiced them anyway.
"Every transaction and every piece of information would pass through you. And on top of that, you'd have a group of people at your disposal, ready to take on any task as long as you can pay for it."
Alice nodded. "And as long as the group's overall influence increases, so will yours as the master of the gathering."
"Yes." Ashen nodded with a satisfied smile. "So, what do you all think? Is it feasible?"
"Hm… in theory, yes," Seraphine said, scrunching up her face slightly. "But you'll need to come up with all sorts of missions and the resources to pay for them."
"That's easy." Ashen smirked. "The missions and resources can come from the gathering members themselves."
"The members are already established in Seravelle, so they must always have needs and the means to pay for them."
"Take Sabrina, for example. She likes to act as a devoted maid, but she's the second in command after the Wrath Sin Lord herself. I'm sure she'd have a thousand unresolved problems spread across the entire domain, with nowhere near enough manpower to handle them all."
"Edward is probably the same. That old geezer can even pay with lessons, since he likes teaching that much. And the lessons themselves can happen here."
"That's a great concept," Alice said with a nod. "But we'd have to sacrifice a great deal of our secrecy to make it work."
"Not necessary." Ashen shook his head. "We just disguise everyone here, no? In my dreamscape, I am god. Masking everyone's identity is a trivial matter for me."
"And if a request involves moving physical resources, I'm sure the parties involved can handle their own anonymity."
The three women fell silent, each quietly weighing the idea.
After a few moments, Alice nodded slowly. "It seems feasible. Should we try it and see what happens? We won't lose anything even if it fails. No one would know our real identities either way."
Ashen glanced at Lucia and Seraphine. They both nodded in agreement.
"Good. Also, about Lapis and Braun, I won't deny there may be some feelings involved in that decision. But that's not all of it."
"I'm certain that, in time, they too will become influential enough to stand beside the Saintess, the treasure lady, and our famed con artist." He winked at them.
Seraphine smiled helplessly. "Now that I think about it, this group of four is already stacked enough, right, our mighty war hero?"
Alice didn't miss the chance to strike back. "Yes, how could we forget that we have a famed noble in our midst, right, count?"
"Indeed." Lucia nodded with mock seriousness, though the smirk at the corner of her lips betrayed her. "Our dear Ashen here even wants to spark a racial war and is already making headway at it. If that is not influential, then what is?"
"Ah… you girls are ganging up on me again… damn it."
Ashen tried to look distressed, but it was obvious he was enjoying every second of their banter, even if it came at his expense.
"Alright." Alice shook her head with an amused smile. "Now that the basic idea is in place, how are you going to convince all of these influential people to take it seriously?"
"For that…" Ashen stretched the word with a mysterious smile before speaking.
"They will have no choice but to take it seriously. After all… they will be in the presence of a God."
"Hah?" Lucia tilted her head in confusion, while Alice looked at him with pity.
"Ash, dear? Is all the power finally getting to your head?"
Seraphine was the only one who had even an inkling of what he was getting at. After all, she had already encountered godlike beings before, in the form of a vampire primordial, and she had even had her heart swapped with a god's own.
"I already told you… here, I. Am. God."
With those words, his presence changed abruptly.
In an instant, the atmosphere around them shifted. The three of them suddenly felt as though they were standing before something incomprehensible. Ashen's figure vanished behind a great mist, leaving only a dark, towering silhouette with golden eyes staring back at them.
The intimidation they felt was artificial, and they knew it. Everything was artificial. Yet no matter how clearly logic told them it was all hubris, what they felt was entirely different.
"Do you understand?"
A deep, resonant voice rang out, as though the world itself was speaking for him.
"No matter who they once were, within my dreamscape, all are destined to bow their heads before me."