I waved goodbye to everyone as we decided we were all full and many of us far too drunk to keep going.
So of us had to be forced to stop.
Surprisingly, Aurae and her fellow fairies as well as Geirskogul didn't need to be told to stop. Though it looked like the fairies were going to keep drinking once they got back to their ho.
Hopefully they wouldn't be suffering serious hangovers the next day, but it wasn't exactly my problem. They were adults so they knew what they were getting into. It wasn't my responsibility to baby over them.
Though speaking of babies, mine did need my attention, so I headed ho myself to where they were.
I hurried back ho. Alicia and Fate were probably hungry and would start kicking up a fuss pretty soon.
Rather than walk, I simply warped space and popped up in front of my bedroom door.
"Fate, no!"
"But..."
"No!"
I froze.
Through the door, I could hear yelling, and it wasn't just my good pointy eared hearing. I could probably hear it without problems even if I was still human.
My hands shook as worry overtook .
(What happened while I was away?)
"...okay Alicia. I'm sorry."
"It's okay."
"I love you Alicia."
"I love you too Fate."
But it sounded like they rembered my lessons and made up, whatever it was that had caused them to fight just monts before.
Steadying my hand, I grabbed the door knob and passed through the door. I was greeted to the sight of my babies hugging each other, Alicia patting her little twin's head similar to how I patted them all the ti.
Claret was floating off to the side, warmly watching them. It looked like she was doing a good job taking care of the two while I was away.
It was good, since I would have to spend more and more ti away in the future, and the fact that they didn't seem to have too much of a problem ant that I wouldn't have to worry.
"Mommy!"
Alicia was the first to notice arriving and quickly turned and ran on her stubby legs, the bright expression on her face making prominent how the rest of the world was already forgotten.
It was quite unfortunate as well, as Fate was the one to suffer from that single mindedness. As the loss of her support ant that she was now off balance as she flailed her arms wildly. Panic filled her face almost as quickly as it did mine, and I thrust out my shadow to catch the little girl.
Relief swept through as I safely caught my younger daughter before she unceremoniously hit the ground. I slowly pulled her to .
Perhaps not even noticing what had just happened behind her, Alicia jumped into my bosom.
"Mommy! Welco ho!"
"I'm ho Alicia."
I wrap an arm around my little baby's body, holding her tight and savouring the warm softness of her body as she hugged .
"Mommy mommy! Today...!"
"I think there's sothing else you need to say before that."
I pulled in Fate into my my chest opposing Alicia. My other baby tightly grabbed as she sniffled, her brows creased as she did her best to hold off bursting in tears.
"There there Fate."
I stroked her silky hair as she pressed her face against as hard as she could.
"MmmmMMMM!"
Alicia pensively looked up at , before making herself to look to her side. Her expression was forced, but soon enough it lted.
"I'm sorry Fate."
Hearing her sister's warm words, my younger daughter released and looked over before giving a nod.
"It's okay. I love you Alicia."
"I love you too Fate."
The two hugged and kissed each other on the cheeks.
"There you go. I love you two as well."
Pulling the two of them into an embrace, I kissed both of them on the foreheads.
"I love you too mommy!"
" too mommy!"
Both Alicia and Fate kissed back on the cheeks as well before we all dissolved into a ball of giggles.
"Welco back Master."
Once we all cald down, Claret finally greeted .
"Thanks. How was everything?"
"Alicia and Fate behaved themselves."
My eyes slowly scanned throughout the room, eyeing all the toys scattered around without abandon.
But it didn't look like anything was broken, nor was anyone hurt, so at the very least, nothing particularly bad had happened.
"Thanks for the good work then. Here."
I tossed over a condensed mana treat, the special type I usually fed her.
"Thank you Master!"
"Take a break and enjoy...it..."
But before I could finish my response, that familiar of mine had already gone ahead and started eating, drowning herself in the joys of her food. It wasn't really anything new, so it wasn't like I was surprised, but it would have been nice if she had at least waited until I finished my sentence.
"Well, as long as you're happy I guess."
Claret, of all her failings, was still my family. What I wanted most of my family was their happiness, so as long as they were smiling, I didn't really have much to complain about.
(Well, that's total BS. I've got a ton to complain about, but voicing those won't an much when it cos to Claret.)
I let out a sigh while staring at the dark spirit gorging herself out on that glowing jawbreaker.
""Mommy...""
I looked down as my girls tugged at my robes and the sound of growling reached my ears.
""We're hungry.""
"Ah, right. Then...how about...huh?!"
*Fwomph!*
As I dug into my folded space, looking for a suitable jar of blood to take out for Alicia and Fate to try, the two of them suddenly pulled open my robes.
"We'll...help..."
"Yea..."
The two of them put their hands on the buttons on my under dress, as if they had nothing but milk on their minds. Their fingers clumsily worked the small features of my clothes. Only the outer robes which I had habitually left undone aside from the top button in recent tis due to how often I had to undo them was easily opened by the two before working on the buttons that only existed to ensure my decency.
"Well, if you've already gotten this far..."
(It's kinda late for to try giving them blood this ti.)
Giving up on trying to start weaning the two again, I adjusted their position in my arms so that they could drink as easily as possible.
"Scarlet!"
"Oh hey, Orphne. Perfect timing."
I looked up from my work as the little fairy ca flying in through the partially open window. The shutters in my room were set up to prevent sunlight from entering, though half of it was because they were facing north west.
Alicia and Fate were playing with so dolls.
I had suggested that they try playing house, being girls. I had no idea if it was sothing all girls played, or even at what age they played it. But I thought it might be good to introduce it to them.
To think it would have backfired as badly as it did, as they started to imdiately argue who got to play the mother, which quickly escalated into a fight. I had to put my foot down to stop it and we ended up deciding to just stop it with playing house all together.
It probably wasn't a permanent solution, as they would probably gravitate towards playing house again in the future even if I didn't ntion it.
Maybe.
I never played it myself, being as I was never a girl growing up, so I didn't even understand what it was like to play house.
For now, they were just playing with so blocks while Claret watched over them.
As for , I was working on the second generation of Goddess's Realm golems. This ti they would be versions that would suit the physiology of various races. Not only were they human shaped, which could roughly approximate elves, dwarves, dokkalfar, demons, titans, and beastkin, but there were versions that would suit the physiology of all the races.
Mostly that was in terms of wings for dragonkin, fairies, and imps, but tails for the beastkin as well.
Though I had no idea if that would make a difference as we didn't have any beastkin in our nation to test them.
The new version also allowed the players to set how much mana went to each part of the body, so they could be customized to have especially strong legs or arms, or maybe a single limb could be extra strong at the expense of the rest, or just have a strong core. Of course, it was so that the extra limbs could also be as balanced as possible.
Wings could only allow flight if you were willing to sacrifice enough power from the rest of the body to allow enough strength to flap hard enough. Though if gliding was all you wanted, you didn't actually need to allocate much mana to the wings according to my early tests.
It was quite fortunate that I was experienced in using wings myself, as I didn't need to recruit others to do the early testing for the wings. Though the dragonkin also had long tails on top of the wings, so I would need help there soon.
But for now, Orphne had just appeared, so she could test the one designed to mimic fairy physiology.
"Can you try moving this new celestial?"
"Oooh! This one's got fairy wings! Does that an it can fly?"
"More like float, I guess. It doesn't work the sa way as real fairies, but hopefully it should let the celestial float in a way that feels similar?"
This particular design was aesthetically designed to appear like a fairy, but the wings were actually enchanted with [wind magic] to allow them to float and move around. The rest of the body also got an unaspected enchantnt to reduce its weight, and the two working together allowed the fairy model celestial to finally float and fly around a basic degree without devoting the entire body's allotnt of mana to just flight.
It used a significant percentage of the total mana, but it was still low enough that in theory it could still fight. Though the legs couldn't even move in this configuration, and I didn't know if it would hold up against a decent player.
And also, I had no idea if the movent would be similar enough to a fairy so that they could intuitively use it. It seed fine enough to , but I was no fairy.
Seating Orphne on the fairy sized control seat, I placed the fairy type celestial onto the small practice table I had at ho for testing.
"The enchantnts should activate automatically, so just try thinking about moving it around in various ways."
Tightly gripping the control orbs, the little fairy leaned in and licked her lips in excitent as she concentrated.
The celestial lifted off as its weight was magically reduced and the wings provided so thrust. Then Orphne started to move it around. Slowly at first, but faster and faster as she got used to it. Soon, she was making it do loops and zood around the tiny playing field.
(It looks good. The movent is almost perfectly like that of a real fairy. Was this more of a success than I imagined?)
"It's moving really well."
"...It's not."
"It isn't?"
By all accounts, the movents were really good. I certainly had no complaints when it ca to how quickly Orphne managed to learn to move it. A few more hours, and she might be able to play a decent match using this new celestial.
"The feel is all weird. It doesn't move anything like a real fairy."
"It doesn't?"
(Guess I was wrong?)
From there, Orphne gave a lecture on what flying felt like to a fairy.
It involved lots of exaggerated arm movents and sound effects, making it feel more like those old picture gas.
But I got the general idea, and after several rounds of modifications and trials, we ca up with a workable prototype. It just needed more testing from several others and it could go into production once the smaller issues gets resolved.
That left the one modelled after dragonkin, the larger sized ones for the titans, as well as the beastkin ones that would probably not get tested for years as we didn't have anyone to do the testing in the entire country.
Though leaving the last one aside, the rest should be nearing its production phase within a week or so. It was quite fortunate that the modifications weren't difficult to do. In fact, the enchantnts for the fairy one was the hardest as it involved ddling with the existing enchantnts that allowed the whole thing to move in the first place.
As for balance, most likely the large amount of mana used in the extra enchantnts would keep things relatively balanced. If anything, the fairy ones might be a bit weaker than the rest. Though the sa issue might exist for the dragonkin one.
The titan model would be hard to determine how things would balance from a theoretical perspective, since the larger celestial body ant that there was more capacity to have a greater amount of mana flowing through its body. But if that was allowed, then it was possible that it would be overpowered. But its larger body did an that it would move slower and was more vulnerable to attack. Then again, its size ant that it had better reach as well.
Balancing would have to wait until it was properly tested.
"Oh yea, I forgot!"
"About what?"
"Work!"
After spending all afternoon engrossed with working on the celestials, Orphne of all people was pausing play to talk about work.
I was tempted to check to see if she had a fever or sothing, but held off since she seed like her usual self aside from that one oddity.
"Ah, right. You went to go trade for this month's paper shipnt."
Once my pregnancy had progressed to the point that making the trip beca difficult, I had handed off trading food and other materials for the paper produced in Edgeworth Village, the place where Alicia was born and raised in her previous life.
Once I had built a paper mill there and started trading their services, the village went from the brink of destruction to prospering almost overnight.
A large part of it was the value of paper. Materials to write on was quite expensive in this world, as usually people relied on writing on bark or strips of wood, and on parchnt on the rare occasion when the costs were justified.
But by teaching how to make relatively cheap high quality paper, and promising trade from the Hourai Commonwealth for that paper, Edgeworth had prospered quite a lot.
Orphne, who had beco my subordinate after she ssed up a few years ago had ended up taking my place delivering and trading the materials and goods that we in the Hourai Commonwealth gathered in the dungeon. and our crafters produced for the paper that they grew and produced.
While Edgeworth had managed to quite increase the production of paper to remarkable levels in over two years since they had started, it has hardly been keeping up with the demand.
Initially the amount we were purchasing was vastly greater than our usage, but as people grew used to using the paper and writing everything from invoices to other permanent records, from concept sketches to art, the demand for paper has skyrocketed.
Even I had used dozens of sheets just this day to sketch out various magical formula designs to try out and modify the designs.
The pressure to develop further increase production has been increasing every month. At this rate, it was possible that one of the elders would ask that I let them build a paper mill inside of the commonwealth.
Though I'd oppose it, that was purely because if we did that, we would erase Edgeworth's sole industry and return it to poverty in an instant.
Instead, I'd rather develop pulp paper and turn Edgeworth's milkweed paper into a premium product that was used similar to how parchnt was used elsewhere.
Of course, that depended on actually getting usable pulp paper in the first place. I only knew the theory of the Kraft Process and hadn't actually put it into practice yet. Without that, it wasn't possible to bleach paper cheaply and any pulp paper made would be pretty dark in colour, preventing it from being easily usable.
"Yup yup! Like usual, they had a party when I traded all the food and other stuff for the paper! It was fun! They even let have a cake again!"
I wanted to warn her that it was an abuse of power, but at the sa ti it sounded like a minor thing, and the people were probably just trying to thank her in their own way. They always tried to get involved in their feasts when I ca for the trades, but I was hiding the fact that I was a vampire from them. A feast was simply impossible for .
But if Orphne could enjoy their feasts in my place, it was probably better that she was the one doing the trading. It would cent our relations better in the first place.
"Well, if you enjoyed yourself, then it's good."
It was the norm at this point anyways. There really wasn't any need of her to report such a thing to .
"Ah, but they gave this though."
From the magic bag which I gave Orphne to use to carry all the goods ca out a single envelop. It was sealed with wax, though there wasn't any sort of mark on it. Rather, the was white as well, rather than the red I imagined sealed letters used.
If anyone was sending a letter, it was probably the rchant Mint who I had made as my primary contact in Edgeworth Village. It made the trade smoother as he understood what sorts of preparation needed to be done. Leaving things to professions was much preferable and he had a good personality that I could trust to sweeten the deal.
[Please co as soon as you can. There are people you need to et.]
Once I unsealed it, the contents of the letter was quite simple, making really wonder what was going on.
It seed like I would have to visit Edgeworth before visiting the next floor of the dungeon.
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