Hadn’t Phei been complaining about One Above and Consort always keeping an eye on him?

Well problem solved!

’...Actually, not quite.’

While the Perfect Domain was indeed a magnificent ability in Phei’s arsenal like a cosmic tool a any man fantasized about possessing during the specific 3 AM hours when the awareness that omniscient beings were watching his sexual performance became too existentially unbearable to endure sober — it did not, in point of actuality, resolve the problem he had been dreading fro sometime now.

The problem was not capability; the problem was optics.

Because, Eira could, in principle, conceal everything he did from Consort and her master — and could weave a shroud of Void-Ice obscuration dense enough to render him imperceptible to the Crimson Consort’s crimson gaze.

The capabilitive advantage existed but if Phei availed himself of that shroud — if he deliberately obscured his actions from the One Above — that was tantamount to bellowing across the firmament to One Above that he was engaged in something he didn’t want them to witness.

The act of concealment was in itself a confession:

A man who shuttered his windows was a man who had something worth hiding, and a being as ancient and paranoid as the One Above would interpret the shuttering not as privacy but as provocation.

It was the equivalent of a man who had been living under a security camera for months suddenly draping a cloth over the lens. The concealment itself would become the confession.

’Hiding is louder than whatever is being hidden.’

So yeah...

Neither the Perfect Domain nor Eira’s capabilities could ameliorate that particular predicament...

...Not with the One Above and Consort; those two were watchers he had to tolerate — had to perform transparency for — because the alternative was a World Transcendent assassin kicking down his door to ascertain what, precisely, her master’s favourite toy had decided required concealing.

But were they the only entities Phei was circumspect about?

’Are the One Above and her katana-wielding emissary shortie, genuinely the sole pair of eyes I need to concern myself with?’

Let’s think smaller, Phei... shall we?

Danton, for instance; the boy had the Jörmungandr bloodline and the Golden Flames of Beginning and a grudge that was metastasizing by the hour.

Could Danton be observing him right now? Through some progenitor ability Phei hadn’t yet been aware of? Through some inherited faculty of the World Serpent’s lineage that permitted surveillance across distance?

’Or it could be some other unknown entity entirely, really.’

Like some third party whose existence Phei had not yet been apprised of, lurking in whatever celestial balcony in the cosmos furnished for beings who preferred to spectate rather than participate.

Phei wouldn’t know. Couldn’t know; not unless Eira detected them or isolated him within an impenetrable domain of her own construction.

And even then — what about someone more powerful than Eira’s detection threshold? What about someone who operated above the ceiling of her awareness?

Because given his luck and his meteoritic, absurd, cosmically conspicuous trajectory of his ascent from invisible Charity Case to Void-Ice Cosmic Dragon in the span of a few weeks — who was to say there wasn’t some god or Immortal or primordial hermit observing him from whatever omniscient vantage point they had selected?

Some ancient being, seated on a throne carved from the compressed boredom of tens of thousands of years of existence, who had stumbled upon the live broadcast of Phei Ryujin Tiamat’s life and decided it was more entertaining than whatever else the cosmos was offering this aeon.

’Hopefully not some licentious Immortal who gratified themselves while watching me bed my women.’

The thought alone made his skin crawl with a revulsion so profound it bordered on the theological.

The point was — Eira’s shroud had its limitations. And those limitations terminated at the realm of gods.

Her concealment could baffle mortals, confound demons, perplex most supernatural entities operating below the divine threshold. But a genuine deity? An Immortal with true omniscience or an ancient being whose perceptive senses had been refined across epochs that predated the invention of linear time?

No matter how assiduously Eira attempted to conceal him, someone out there could be watching him without impediment whatsoever; streaming his existence like it was one of David’s live broadcasts — casually, recreationally, with the idle voyeuristic investment of a viewer who had nothing superior to do and found the programme’s protagonist sufficiently compelling to justify the continued subscription.

And Phei’s life was exceedingly interesting lately.

’Cosmos forbid the watcher being some dude.’

That was where the Perfect Domain earned its designation.

The System had; in a clear voice and texts, imposed no constraints upon it. No caveats, fine print or asterisked disclaimers reading does not apply to beings above Tier X or effectiveness diminishes in the proximity of divine-class entities.

The moment he activated it — the instant the hundred-metre sphere crystallised into existence around him — nothing could perceive what transpired within its boundaries unless he explicitly sanctioned the observation.

Nothing:

Not gods, Immortals, primordials or ancient hermits who had retreated into very quiet mountains and hadn’t emerged for reasons that were between them and the mountains.

Perfect to the letter.

So the stratagem — the elegant, deceptively simple, almost laughably practical stratagem — was this: to maintain his transparency with the One Above and Consort, all he needed to do was activate the Domain and permit them (Consort and One Above) to see through it, granting them their accustomed access letting the crimson eyed beauty continue her surveillance and her master continue their omniscient cataloguing, in a way also making them believe — correctly, in fact — that nothing had changed in the arrangement.

’While keeping the perverts out.’

The unknown watchers, unidentified gods and the hypothetical Immortals with their hypothetical thrones and their hypothetical voyeuristic proclivities:

All of them — every single uninvited spectator who had been enjoying complimentary access to the Phei Ryujin Tiamat Day In a Life — would find, the next time they tuned in, that the broadcast had been terminated their screen going dark as if the programme had been cancelled without notice and the network had declined to provide a forwarding address.

Phei’s smile settled into something quieter.

Something satisfied. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

He pocketed the Perfect Domain notification the way like a key he knows he’ll need — not today, not tomorrow, but soon — and he turned his attention to the bottle of wine Victoria had left for him.

The evening was still young.

His shadows were still waiting for that toast.

Somewhere very, very far away — at a distance that could not be measured in any unit the mortal realm had devised, on a throne carved from the petrified silence of a dead star, a chamber that existed between the folds of reality the way a bookmark exists between pages — a being of considerable antiquity and even more considerable power paused mid-observation.

Blinked at Phei’s thoughts...

...And coughed and smiling sweetly.