The Demon Lord Is An Angel-Chapter 501: A Cup Of Coffee
Year 19 of the Veiled Era
Kir didn’t awaken so much as he arose from a deep meditation on the composition of copper crystals, trying to find ever more efficient uses for the element, since Norneau needed a lot of it and they didn’t have a lot of the versatile element. At this rate, he’d need to come up with some other method to push electrification beyond the city walls...
But the city’s needs could wait.
Upon the mattress of what had been dubbed the "babymaker bed," Kir had the delicate task of extracting himself from beneath Rainier, Kordia, Ferro, and Malzkael- who had conspired to tear him away from his work for a long, long night on the only bed in the house that could reasonably host the entire Constellation.
It was just the six of them in bed, and while four of them didn’t technically need as much sleep, Kir had been thorough in his quest to bring everyone to a completion of their desires for the night. And he realized he’d needed it more than he’d been willing to admit.
A surge of sadness rose in him as he contemplated why he was even here, the battle he’d lost against the woman who presently held the entire world hostage to her twisted definition of a better future...
Rainier hummed in his sleep, perhaps disapprovingly, as if sensing Kir’s disturbed thoughts. He was always particularly fierce when Kir’s mood descended, and last night had been no different. He’d started things off by challenging Kir to spar, getting his blood up enough that the rest of the "ambush" went off without a hitch.
Malzkael was less restrained than Rainier when it came to showing Kir how ridiculous he was for "punishing himself." She wanted Kir happy to make Rainier happier, and she was more than willing to be a bit brutal in bed when it came to pulling Kir out of his depression. Kir submitted to the pain, relishing it as if a little pain could somehow make up for his failings...
A disapproving grunt sounded, this time from Kordia. Kir’s foxkin lover was curled up around his arm, her pregnant belly possessed of a different heat than the hands with which she held onto him. She was pregnant with his child, and he wanted to plant a kiss on her forehead, the way her fennec-like ears flicked with the movement of her closed eyes was too adorable, but trapped as he was, he realized no normal movement of his body would let him escape.
Kir sighed, remembering that it was likely the bond he’d restored to them, and the entire Constellation, that was transmitting his morning thoughts into their dreams. He quickly eased the constant flow of mana and quietly dampened his connections before teleporting to the edge of the bed, careful of his tail as he stood and walked naked to the nearby dresser, atop which was a hot plate and a carafe.
Kir crouched and reached down for the relatively tiny latch, a bit of a feat given his typical three-meter height, and opened the drawer containing a box of dark, precious beans that were the lifeblood of the city.
He didn’t need the energy, since he was in control of his body such that his mood had more to do with his energy levels than any mere physicality, but there was something in the act of preparing coffee for the ones he loved that served as a meditation of sorts. A way for him to reset his wayward thoughts and just... be.
Lifting a handful of beans into the air with magic, he floated them, checking for any husk fragments, which sometimes made their way into allotment boxes, before nodding to himself that they were detritus-free.
Using magic to increase the pressure in a small sphere of space, Kir powdered the beans to the loosest possible size of grain before compacting the particles into a spinning disk that he floated above the carafe.
Condensing water from the air was simplicity itself for him, as was heating it to precisely ninety-three degrees Celsius. After producing exactly one liter of water this way, he passed it through the rotating disk of coffee grains, leading the browning water into an area of high-pressure vacuum that infused it to a degree presently unattainable from any other source.
From there, he held the orb of thickly infused water in the air as he let it steep, only gently stimulating the grounds with magic to add mana to the brew. It was a final step that no one added because of the degree of precise control required, but Kir liked it because it somehow made the coffee taste more "real" to those he’d served it to.
Chancellor Lumin had been obsessed with acquiring the method from Kir before she...
Kir felt his mood drop. Five years later, Lumin’s assassination was still shaking Norneau. The city, already on the cusp of dividing by factions, was virtually defined by those divisions now.
With the constant monster attacks and the turmoil surrounding the Academy’s ever-increasing political importance, it was all Kir could do to keep the Constellation as neutral as possible... Even with the pressure to do more, his goal remained to keep his family safe until the day the Veil, as the protective dome encapsulating Norneau for a ten-kilometer diameter centered on the blue crystal tower in the middle of the city had come to be called, lifted. And with his role in the apocalypse hidden by Lumin’s careful management of the truth, he longed for that day because it would be the moment he could finally avenge the dead and take those he cared about away from the games of power...
Because for him, it would be all too easy to just take over... 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚
Again, he told himself the city’s needs could wait. Shoving aside those worries took more than enough time for the steeping to finish.
Letting the excess steam pass into the air, he slowly filled the carafe until there were about seventy shots worth of the resulting substance swirling in the bottom. A thick, earthy scent filled the room from where he stood, and to his surprise, he felt something warm and fuzzy latch onto his leg the moment his ponderous work was done.
"’Mornin’," Ferro said, brushing his muzzle against Kir’s outer thigh as he cuddled into him. "Cobepe?" he asked, muffled by the playful mouthful of Kir’s tail that he nipped as it wrapped up and around him, poking his lips with the tip. Even at the peak of his evolution, Kir’s tail had a mind of its own.
Ferro was by far Kir’s most relaxed lover, aside from Stella, but she had a one-track mind. Ever since his sister had come back alive from another trapped city, Chainsfree, he’d met every day with a happiness Kir envied a little but loved to share in. They’d bonded well over their love of family, especially as their family had grown and grown. One day, he wanted to bear a child for him.
Kir reached down and pet Ferro between the ears and down his striped and spotted fur, unwrapping the rust catkin from his tail. "Even better," Kir smiled. "Espresso."
Kir pulled a small sphere of espresso from the carafe with magic, hovering it to Ferro’s lips and watching as the catkin drank it with a kiss. He was about to lift Ferro up for a real kiss when a toll sounded, its source the center of the city. It sounded again, and Kir knew he had to act...
A monster was about to attack.
