Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

It wasn't my first time experiencing the influence of Madam's voice.

The last time it happened, though, was when she was just a few steps away from her target, easily able to control the flow of her mana to only affect Loraz instead of all those within the range of the voice.

This time, however, things were different.

First, Madam was nowhere to be seen, only further proved by how distant her voice was. Second, her voice affected everyone at the same rate, suddenly turning the air around me into the same, thick slurry that I was already used to traverse.

And lastly…

The power of her voice just now was only a fraction of the power I felt surging when she used her voice directly rather than shouting over some sort of a great distance.

'Move!'

Loraz's fist slowed down considerably… but it still continued to move. It carried enough momentum to keep pushing ahead, even when his will and ability to move any further were robbed by Madam's words.

And so, Loraz's fists continued to move, at a considerably slower rate… but I had no doubt that the moment it connected, the restriction of Madam's words wouldn't apply to the force it carried.

On the other hand, I struggled to move even an inch. My body simply repelled the idea of pushing through the thick slurry of condensed air, remembering the cost that came with doing so while within the framework of my skill.

The only one who didn't seem to be affected by Madam's words at all… was Fay.

Whether it was because she was Madam's daughter or maybe it was all thanks to the insane density of her own aura in her direct surrounding? Or maybe there were some other forces and laws at play that I had no idea about?

Still, my task for now remained the same. And as wrong and lethally dangerous as it felt to move through this condensed slurry of air in my greatly weakened state… I managed to push my head an inch… and then another…

Yet, it still wasn't enough. And with the prospect of Loraz's strike reaching my face once again, I tensed up, trying to brace myself for the attack…

"RIAGH!"

Fay uttered a weird scream right as her aura surged. The patterns of the flow of Fay's aura changed. And as hard as it was to describe this otherwordly sight that I couldn't even see with anything but my intuition… Fay's power started to expand.

It didn't grow stronger or denser… just changed the three-dimensional shape that her aura's paths made. Bit by bit, the area suffused with Fay's divine sparks continued to bloat up, creating a considerable bulge of space within her control.

The bigger the bulge grew, the faster its growth became. And by the time I nearly closed my eyes with Loraz's fists mere millimeters away from my chin… The bulge of Fay's aura exploded.

And two things happened at the same time.

To my side, roughly twenty meters away, a nimble, elegant body dropped down to the ground. And as if doing the basics like trying to soften the drop with a roll, the newcomer simply squatted down and rested their hand in front of them in what any modern person would recognize as a typical superhero landing.

But as glorious of sight as it was, I could hardly pay it any attention when Fay's aura surged forth, passed through my body while easily mixing with my aura… and then surged even further forth with much greater ease than before, as if her power anchored itself on me and thus extended its effective reach.

Still, this was merely the first step. And as soon as the surge of Fay's power reached her dad's fist, her body turned into a flash of light only for the girl to suddenly reappear right in front of me, her fist aimed right down at her father's hand.

BOOM!

The noise of the two divines striking fist-to-fist was pretty much on the level of the discharges of the neugarand rounds. The shockwave of the powerful energies clashing shook the slurry of air surrounding all of us.

And for the third time today, Loraz ended up thrown back, overpowered by the fury behind Fay's strike.

'Shit!'

As glad as I was to be saved from one hell of an axe to my face, I instantly overcame my innate fear of challenging the slurry of the condensed air, throwing myself forward.

For a moment, it felt as if air offered no resistance to me whatsoever, making me question whether or not I actually managed to free myself from Madam's spell…

Yet, right as my hands fell down on Fay's slightly shaking shoulders, the pressure from before has returned, proving this theory wrong. As my hands rushed down Fay's shoulders, arms, elbows, and wrists, all the way to where they reached her hands, I couldn't help but figure out yet another detail.

It wasn't Madam's spell that failed to keep me in check. It was the plume of Fay's divine aura that she used to push her mother's hex aside, carving out a path for herself to move through.

Fay's leftover aura quickly either dissipated into the air or pulled back towards the zone where she could keep it in its condensed form, once again unleashing the force of Madam's hex on me…

But by now, I achieved my objective. With my hands on Fay's wrist, I pulled her hands up while taking a look over the girl's shoulder, inspecting her knuckles and fingers in general for even the tiniest hint of a wound or bruise.

"Does it hurt?" I asked, raising my eyes from Fay's delicate hands to her slightly startled face.

'I know she most likely is, but still…'

For how feeble Fay appeared… she was actually quite a bit stronger than me. In her normal state, she already boasted the ability that would put any and all of Earth's athletes to shame. In her awakened state, her attributes were more than twice as high as my old ones while being pretty comparable to my current limits.

But in her promoted ascended state that I saw her achieve when her divine aura first started to spark up…

"Huff…. Huff…" Instead of replying, Fay breathed heavily while letting out mouthfuls of steam for every breath that she released. Her eyes refused to as little as twitch, zeroed in at the body of her father in the distance where Fay's counterstrike sent him flying.

"You kids okay?!" Madam called out, finally crossing over the distance from where she appeared and sliding on the ground to come to a stop just a few steps away from us. "Oh, right," her face twitched when she saw us completely frozen.

And without a single word of caution or advice, the pressure of her hex suddenly diminished before vanishing altogether. As soon as the air appeared to thin out to its natural form, it instantly started to thicken up when a new, much more overwhelming sense of aura filled my mind.

Fay's divine aura was extremely condensed, much more potent than the aura one could naturally pull from the world and then cultivate within oneself through various experiences.

On the contrary, Madam's aura… didn't really exist. Or rather, I couldn't really tell where her own aura and the world's aura turned from one to the other.

As if…

I gulped my saliva down.

'As if she assimilated all the aura of the world around.'

My ability to sense the movement of the aura flows proved that either this statement was absolute… Or the limits of the aura Madam controlled simply reached beyond the range of my perception.

Either way, while Fay's aura was heavy and authoritative…

Madam's aura had hardly any feel to it.

There was no pressure, no sense of tightness in my chest. Not even my instincts screamed out in alarm, even though I was quite sure the apex predator was pretty much standing shoulder-to-shoulder with me now.

Bothered by this inconsistency, I attempted to take a deeper look into the aura, not willing to let an opportunity to learn more pass…

Only for my mind nearly to fry when I opened myself up for the aura of the world to flow through me in order to better sense it… Only for it to suddenly all converge…

No.

That wasn't it.

The aura didn't move.

But right at the moment Madam's expression turned ugly, it felt as if the world itself suddenly came to a stop.

"You dare to raise your hand against my daughter…" Madam's words were silent, no better than a snake's hiss…

Yet, every single one of them felt like a drum of the apocalypse shaking the very foundation of the world's laws and matter.

Or maybe that's how I felt because I suddenly found myself entrapped within the perfectly controlled flow of the world's…

'No, at this point, this aura has nothing to do with the world,' I thought, gulping my saliva for one last time before this weird feeling of being held hostage by the world' aura vanished when Fay turned around, looked at me for a second before pulling me into a deep hug and showering my surroundings with her own, divine aura.

Ting!

There was no noise… but I clearly felt something snap when all the aura of the world ended up repelled by the much thicker, sparky aura of my girl.

"Thanks…" I uttered, heavily falling into Fay's embrace, only now realizing just how quickly connecting up to this world aura ended up draining my own reserves.

"No biggie," Fay chirped, leaning her head to the back to allow me a quick look at the happy, relaxed look on her face. "Mom is here, so we can take it easy now."

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