15: Void Expansion – Infinite…err no, not yet…
15: Void Expansion – Infinite…err no, not yet…
Ari looked at the two of them — Gojo still draped over the gate post, Levi still radiating quiet, unimpressed intensity — with the flat dismissal of a woman who had gotten exactly as much entertainment out of this conversation as she currently required, and turned on her heel without another word.
She walked toward the edge of the city instead, unhurried, hands tucked into her sleeves, leaving both men blinking after her.
“Wait, that’s it?” Gojo called after her, genuinely wounded.
“You’re just leaving?
Mid-conversation?” Ari didn’t look back.
She stopped at the ragged border where Void City’s pale stone simply ended and the endless dark began, stood there for a moment, and — silently— gave the command.
System.
Expand.
[Executing command.
50,000 Void Points deducted.] For one full second, absolutely nothing happened, and Ari had just enough time to wonder whether she’d been scammed, when the ground beneath her feet began to hum.
She lifted one hand and, with the unhurried, theatrical flair of someone who had clearly been waiting her entire afterlife for an excuse to do something dramatic, made a slow, sweeping gesture — the exact motion of a woman clearing smoke from the air, except there was no smoke, only the sudden, overwhelming sense that the world itself had just taken a breath.
The whole city shook.
A light poured out from where she stood, something deeper — pale and silver and metaphysical, wrapping around her and the empty edge of the square like the void itself had decided to lean in and watch.
Stone rose out of nothing in great smooth sheets, climbing and folding and settling into shape, until where there had been only bare ground and starlight, an entire new district now stood — three-story buildings in clean, pale architecture, windows catching light that had no obvious source, streets already paved as if they’d simply been waiting under the surface the whole time.
Behind her, the entire gathered crowd went dead silent, and then did not stay that way for long.
“She just—” Sheldon’s voice cracked slightly.
“She just manifested architecture.
From nothing.
That is not how construction works.
That is not how anything works.” “COOLEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN,” Naruto shouted, both fists in the air, practically vibrating.
Harry had gone very still, staring at the new buildings with wide eyes.
“That’s — she just did that.
Just now.
With her hand.” “Waku waku!!” Anya screamed, spinning in place, apparently having achieved a level of excitement beyond words.
Cinderella pressed both hands to her mouth, eyes shining.
Robin, for her part, simply laughed — low and delighted, the laugh of a scholar who had just watched history rewrite itself in real time.
Tanjiro bowed instinctively, several times, to absolutely no one in particular.
Sakamoto’s expression didn’t change at all, but he did, very slowly, lower his sunglasses to look at the new district properly, which was, for Sakamoto, the equivalent of a standing ovation.
Even Gojo had gone quiet, both eyes fixed on the new skyline with something that looked, for once, genuinely unguarded.
“Huh,” he said softly.
“Okay.
That’s — yeah.
Okay.” Levi said nothing at all, but his arms had uncrossed, just slightly, which anyone who knew him would have recognized as a full five-alarm reaction.
After a moment, Ari turned back around, entirely unbothered by the stunned silence she’d left in her wake, and patted her hands together twice — brisk, satisfied, the exact gesture of a woman dusting off her palms after finishing a chore she’d found mildly inconveniencing.
“There,” she said.
“Done.” “Done,” Sheldon repeated, faintly.
“She built three stories of city and called it done, like she just finished the dishes.” “I have never,” Robin said, still smiling, “seen a woman so thoroughly unimpressed by her own miracle.” Ari ignored all of it, scanning the crowd until she found the two faces she was looking for.
“Mary.
Ai.” Both of them straightened at once, appearing at her side with the speed of employees who had clearly been waiting for exactly this moment.
“Yes, Ari-sama,” they said, nearly in unison.
“What are your orders?” Ari’s gaze drifted, slow and deliberate, toward the three small figures currently clustered near the back of the crowd — Harry, Naruto, and Anya, who had spent the entire display shrieking and pointing suddenly felt a chill down their spine.
“Formulate a training regimen for those three,” Ari said.
“They look idle.” Three separate wails went up in unison.
“Training regimen?!” Naruto yelped, already backing away.
“I just watched you build a whole city with your hand, and your first move is homework?” “Anya doesn’t do training,” Anya announced, with the solemn dignity of a queen declining a peasant’s request.
“Anya does peanuts.” “I feel like there’s been some kind of miscommunication,” Harry offered, considerably more diplomatically, though no less desperately.
“We’re guests.
Guests don’t usually get — regimens.” “You’re idle guests,” Ari said, entirely unmoved.
“Mary, Ai — sort it out.
Nothing extreme.
Just enough that they stop bouncing off the walls.” “Understood, Ari-sama,” Mary said, already producing some manner of scheduling ledger from thin air, while Ai gave all three children a smile that was somehow both warm and deeply, deeply unnegotiable.
The rest of the guests, watching three small children attempt to bargain their way out of structure and fail spectacularly, dissolved into unabashed laughter.
Even Sakamoto’s mouth twitched, faint but unmistakable.
Ari, apparently considering the matter of the children fully settled, turned back toward the shop panel floating at her side, and purchased another set of five intermediate invitation cards without so much as a change in her expression.
[Five Intermediate Invitation Cards added to City Lord’s storage.] She lifted her hand, and — with precisely the same amount of ceremony she might have used to flick a bit of lint off her sleeve — tossed all five cards out over the edge of the new district and into the endless dark beyond it, like she was emptying a dustpan.
The crowd, which had only just begun to recover from the district appearing out of nothing, stared.
“…What is she doing?” Sheldon asked, very slowly, to no one in particular.
“Sending out invitations,” Ai supplied helpfully.
“Same as she did for all of you.” A long, stunned silence followed.
“She just threw them,” Naruto said, mouth hanging open.
“Like garbage.
Like actual garbage.” “They weren’t chosen,” Harry said, working through it out loud, still staring at the empty dark where the cards had vanished.
“We weren’t chosen.
She just — bought some cards and chucked them into the void and we happened.” “Yes,” Robin said, delighted.
“Yes, that does appear to be exactly what happened.” “We are not special,” Tanjiro said quietly, with the profound, faintly devastated calm of a man arriving at enlightenment against his will.
“Nope,” Ai confirmed cheerfully.
“None of us were special,” Sheldon repeated, staring at his own hands as if they’d betrayed him.
“I built my entire identity around exceptionalism, and I was recruited via littering.” Somewhere behind them all, Gojo let out a low, delighted whistle.
“That’s — actually kind of incredible, not gonna lie.” Underneath the laughter, though, something had genuinely shifted.
Every guest standing in that square — now stood in front of an entire new district that hadn’t existed ten minutes ago, conjured by a woman who’d looked, for the whole display, thoroughly bored by her own power.
Whatever they’d expected the title City Lord to actually mean, it had just been proven, decisively, without a single wasted word.
• • It was Gojo, predictably, who broke the reverent silence first, ambling back over with his hands in his pockets and his usual grin firmly back in place.
“So, Ari-chan—” “City Lord-sama,” seven voices corrected him, immediately and in near-perfect unison, with the reflexive, practiced horror of people who had apparently already anticipated this exact violation.
Gojo blinked.
“Wow.
Okay.
Democracy.” “Ari-chan,” he tried again anyway, entirely unrepentant, grinning wider.
“City Lord-sama,” the chorus repeated, louder this time, with Naruto and Sheldon notably shouting it in stereo.
Ari, for her part, said nothing at all — just let the argument roll on around her, faintly amused, already turning to walk back toward the mansion.
Gojo trailed after her anyway, entirely undeterred.
“Ari-chan it is, then.” “CITY LORD-SAMA!.”