As I said last time, today is Janina’s rebirth day. Well, she didn’t die, so… It's the date she decided would be her birthday.

And like always, it means breakfast in bed for the birthday girl. Well, they also serve my breakfast when it is my birthday, so not exclusive to women. And no, we didn’t take the breakfast just to the scale copy of Janina living on HomeBase. We prepared one for the copy and another one for Janina’s true body. Yes it meant that we had cooked up a ton of meat, as Janina can eat a ton. More like multiple tons, but you don’t ask a lady dragon how much she eats. You just feed her until she is satisfied. And no, don’t count how much she eats.

Okay, I actually know because of Storage, but I’m not going to mention that to Janina. And I also have a good estimate on how much she weighs because of what happened a year ago. We watched that memory again and I made an estimate based on my stats at the time, as well as the way I used my skills. Sure there is a margin for mistakes, but it should be good enough.

But let’s get to the scale copy Janina’s breakfast. The copy doesn’t actually eat all that much, mostly eating for the taste. She can sustain herself on magic alone, but the food we make tastes great, so she eats a bit.

So we made her an assorted pile of different things she likes, and put them on small crêpes. Everything from fruit to more savory things were offered, totaling fifteen mini crêpes.

For her drink, Janina had a new soda flavor I mixed up with the help of Sharon. It is basically dragon fruit punch from Earth. I didn’t actually remember the flavor profile as it isn’t something I drink that often, but with the Memory Palace, I was able to find a couple of times I drank some. And since the Memory Palace recreates all sensations perfectly, we were able to remake the flavor from that.

Speaking of drinks and Memory Palace. Thanks to it, we’ve now made what is basically a perfect copy of Coca Cola. And some other soft drinks Hero wanted to recreate. And I’ve also copied movies from back on Earth and made them available on both my Internet and in the Factory.

After the scale copy of Janina enjoyed her breakfast, all seven of us teleported to the Dragon’s Coast. The scale copy then turned back into just the scale she originally was as Janina temporarily absorbed her copy. She did that every now and then to update the copy, since her knowledge on magic has also grown thanks to my monsters, and every time she does the copy becomes a bit better.

She didn’t yet remake her copy, deciding she’d remake one at the end of the day. So instead, I began pulling out her breakfast from Storage. It was mostly meat, with a few giant fruits on the side.

The giant fruits are something I began to make after I realized I wanted giant grapes. Along with them, things like pumpkin sized apples and oranges were added to goals I had. And between HomeBase, Natrix and the nature spirits, it was no issue making new plant species.

The problem was that they wouldn’t grow without daily use of Nature Magic and highly nutritious soil, but we had that covered as well.

After Janina was satisfied, she took the last bits into her own storage magic. Even that has advanced since we met. She’s always been able to do it, but unlike my Storage, hers doesn’t keep things fresh for that long. Sure it is like a fridge, keeping things much longer than they would in room temp, but it isn’t Storage which can keep food forever. Now Janina’s storage magic was more like a freezer, able to keep food for a couple of years. Still not forever and she’d have to reheat anything she held there for a long time.

From there, we moved onto something Janina had requested, and the reason all of us really needed to be here. Janina wanted her body cleaned and her scales polished. And I don’t think I need to tell you that with just one person, even if we are completely superhuman, it would take the whole day.

Luckily with the six of us, and our skills to produce more arms, use magic, and fly around, we got it all done in just a bit over an hour.

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With Janina shining, we moved onto a cake break before giving her some gifts.

We actually had two different cakes. One was regular sized for us, while the other was way larger for Janina and the other dragons of the Coast. The giant one was sadly made HomeBase’s core, as we simply couldn't get a giant cake to raise and bake right.

Luckily making food with HomeBase was very cheap, so even a giant cake didn’t cost much energy.

Janina used her claw to cut a big slice to herself and we enjoyed our cakes. I then took the rest out to the other dragons to eat. And by now Agunan and Ria had flown here from HomeBase, as the fire dragon also had a gift for Janina, so I left them in charge of making sure the cake is evenly split while I returned to Janina’s cave.

Then came the part each of us had been worried about. Gifts.

It took us a long time to come up with anything we could give Janina, because there really is nothing she needs or wants. Well there is one thing she really wants, but I can’t give it to her yet.

I did consider just showing her more memories with the Memory Palace, but that wouldn’t really come from us. But it did lead to the gift we all finally decided on.

Showing Janina what we learned thanks to her. Sure it might not be a physical gift, but again, it will hopefully show just how much each of us appreciates her.

That began with Alice. She has learned a ton of magic for Janina, so it was easy for her. Be it her Soul Magic or a lot of her custom spells, she had gotten help from Janina in many aspects.

For Lua, it was mostly Healing Magic and Corrupted Healing. She needed a practice target for Corrupted Healing, and Janina has a ton of HP. And since it is healing, it goes straight through Janina’s defenses. Well it did until Janina figured out how to counter it. Lua also had her Divine Lifesaver title thanks to Janina, as who else would have the HP required for the title upgrade.

Cailie didn’t have as many things. And while Janina helped her with Aerial Swimming and Wind Magic, it wasn’t all that much. Instead the big thing Cailie had learned from Janina was how to make her sound reach further. The voice of a dragon carries itself across huge lands while staying clear and concise. Cailie learned how to do that, which really helped her singing skills.

For Wilma, it was learning how to work with dragon scales. It might be one of the lesser things, but Janina was still happy to see that we’d finally managed to make armor from her scales.

Unika didn’t have much with Janina. It is just a matter of circumstance. Before her permanent union with Stella, she was mostly an archer with taming and summoning as her additional capabilities. But afterwards, not only did Unika learn Soul Magic for Janina, but Janina also helped her figure out good ways of using her new unique magics.

And last, myself. Not only did I learn how to work with dragon scales like Wilma, I also learned draconic enchanting, just generally got better with my dragon scales, learned about dragon orbs, learned Soul Magic and probably seven other things. But the biggest thing was getting a really good idea on just how powerful my God monsters are. I can scale those monsters against each other, sure, but Janina is a living example of a god-level being, always reminding myself that just because I can summon gods, doesn’t make me the strongest.

And perhaps to remind us of that, when I was finishing telling her everything, each of us got an emergency call from our System Supports, asking us to come to the Factory.

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And with a quick dimension shift, all seven of us materialized our avatars in the Factory. And there waiting for us was a visitor I didn’t expect to ever have in the Factory.

The Goddess herself in their combined form was here, along with another person who had a similar presence as the Goddess.

He was a tall male with beast-kin features. Judging by the massive mane and the tail, he was a lion-kin. And like the Goddess, his mane was shifting in color, but unlike hers which was RGB rainbow colored, his shifted from dark brown, to lighter brown, to orange, to some reddish colors before returning to brown.

And the only people I know who can do that kind of color shifting are Gods, so this must be one of the other three System Gods.

Laura and our other System Supports had immediately taken them to the hidden parlor room of the Factory, and quickly called us here.

“We are sorry to bother you on a day of celebration.” The Goddess began. “But there is an issue and we’d like you to solve it.”

“I’m guessing not a fissure since we have another God visiting.” I got straight to the point, because if there is something that counts as an emergency for all six of us, Janina doesn’t have a System Support, it must be big.

“Yes.” She said. “Please, go ahead.” She let the other God take the stage, so to speak.

“Thank you. And I’m pleased to see you responded quickly.” He began. His voice was deep and had a slight growl to it, maybe because of his lion characteristics. “As you likely realized, I am one of the System Gods, the Divine Lord. I’ve come here to request for your help, as a problem has appeared on my continent.”

I quickly took a look at the others, but they didn’t have a comment, so I urged him to continue.

“As at least one of you knows, there once was a great evil. They learned how to manipulate both mana and miasma to the extent that they became nearly immortal, someone who would never die unless they are killed by someone as strong or stronger than them. And after his death, calamity level creatures he made were left sleeping across the world. Not just near this continent, but all of them.” The Divine Lord explained. “... And one of them has woken up.”

… okay. Well, that wasn’t on my list of birthday surprises I wanted Janina to experience.

“And let me guess, you want us to deal with it?” I asked.

“Yes. While I would like to rely on people of my own continent, it is simply not feasible. The power boost they would need would likely drive them insane.”

“... like the Gojira experiment.” I realized. So the same can happen to a person if you level them up too quickly. Luckily I never level up the overall level more than once a day. And humans also experience level up sickness, so that might be a protective measure as well.

“Meanwhile, you six and the divine dragon are already capable. I cannot offer you missions, as I am not the God of your continent. Thus…”

“I would like to offer all six of you the mission of dealing with it.” The Goddess said, as a mission screen opened for the six of us.

I didn’t hesitate, and I was ready to go. I’ve never met with one of these ‘Outer Gods’ or whatever you want to call them. Immortal Beast might be better, even if the one we know is based on an Outer God.

I turned to the birthday girl, and the one of us who wouldn’t get anything out of it. She would be the deciding factor. If she doesn’t want to, we wouldn’t go.

“We shall accept.” Janina said before I even had the time to ask. “If another one of those creatures threatens people, I will take it down like I did the last one. And this time, I won’t lose anyone.” As she spoke, I heard her determination build up to an unshakable vow.

“Thank you, lady Divine Dragon.” The Divine Lord said, not sounding like a god at that time. Even his color altering mane had stopped shifting, staying on the wine red hue for quite a while before the color circling began again.

I then brought us back on track, so that we could take off as soon as possible.

“Okay. First location. I need it. If I have it, I can teleport us there.” I said, knowing that the Numeron Code can teleport us anywhere in the world as long as I have sufficient coordinates. “And second, describe the enemy.”

“Y-Yes.” The divine lord1Purpesfully lower cased D and L here to show that Brian doesn’t at this moment view the Divine Lord as a God. muttered at first, but got his act together. “I’ve shared the location with your System Supports, please use them to figure out the teleportation. As for the creature, it is a massive tree-like creature. It has bark that is extremely dark, and its branches move like the tentacles of a kraken. It also spawns quadrupedal beasts that are covered in dark tentacles. Those beasts carry anything and everything back to the large tree and the tree consumes all to create more beasts.” He explained.

… okay. Outer Gods. Tree looking thing with quadrupedal beasts covered in tentacles.

Yeah, I think which Outer God wannabe we are dealing with.

Mother Goddess. Lord of the Woods. The Black Goat of the Woods. Or The Goat with a Thousand Young.

Whatever of its titles you want to use, it can only be Shub-Niggurath.