As ussual Rex woke up quite early. He glanced at Mel, who was in his bed, still sleeping after last night. Quite content he left without disturbing her sleep. Val and Irina were sleeping in their rooms, after Rex moved the two there once their marathon was over. he preffered to have one, maximum two of the girls to sleep in his bed at night. It just felt somewhat right. After feeding his cats, and petting them for a short while, he had some breakfast as well and using a certain hiden backdoor tunnel the mansion had he left unseen and exited a small and very forgettable building. He wanted to check the city, as such he was doing his exploration in his ussual clothes not the mages garb.

His girls had notified him at the dinner table that for a few days already the atmosphere in the city had changed quite a bit. Rex saw more guard details moving around, much more servants were running around fullfiling all manner of tasks, given by their masters. He noticed quite a lot of well dressed people around the market areas, as well as different new stalls selling their wares. The air felt heavier than ussual, shoving the tension in the air. With the grand auction being less than a week away quite the few aristocratic families had sent their representatives over to hunt for benefits and maybee establish some new connections. Such evens often were the ground zero for the begginings of new alliances and blood feuds, since the more of the younger generation were present, the bigger the possible scenes could be made.

Rex had zero interest in most of them, if not all. He had seen his fair share of nobles in this city already, and it painted no good picture of them. Like Kanaelia, most of them were arrogant pricks who thought that anyone not currently part of a noble house were lesser than them, and as such, expected for all non nobility to bow down before them and aquiesce to their demands. And, unfortunately, reality often went along with their wimms and desires, enforcing such groundless arrogance, and the few times where they were knocked down a peg were quickly forgotten.

And while the servants and the smallest of merchants and stall ovners were visibly tense, the more promonent figures of the markets were already out and about, doing everything to grab hold of this unique oportunity to expand their market. It was a possibility to aquire new long term contracts for sale of their goods to some faraway lord or a noble house since they just happened to enjoy the given merchants wares, products or services provided. Rex also enjoyed the new and more versatile collection of wares offered, and there were quitea few new fruits he tried out, interested if there were any he would liek to stock up on.

What he noticed however was not all nice and bubbly. With the increase in the traffic of people, came the shady elements as well. Every few streets there were some unsavory and shady individuals, spying on the conditions and oportunities to practise their less than savory arts. His sharpened senses picked up some petty crimes here and there, some shady dealings and even some recketeering. The guards however were no slouches with their job, and Rex saw the racketeers to be quite quickly beaten up and aprehended. He took no part in the altrecation and only watched as it happened. The guards were quite well trained and were performing with high efficiency, ensuring the best possible enviroment to for a triving economy.

Another quite unpleasant thing he noticed were the people of the echlisiarchy. More and more priests and some sort of of preachers were moving around the town, more so in the residential district, and trying to convert more of them into the followers of their god. Rex had double the dislike for them. First- those people were dirrectly responsible about quite a lot of his tough early years. Secondly- they were quite fanatic, and as such Rex coiuld not entirely predict their future plans and course of action of a fanaticly orriented psycho. Whats more he could almost see the change in their aura when they noticed him. he felt almost tangible hatred and bloodlust towards him from these people.

'Stay away and keep your heads down if you want to live' He though to himself. He had no desire to bother himself with the hastle that it would create once they would be disposed of, and Rex wanted to rest and relax while waiting for the auction to come.

Most of his girls would sometimes come to the market districts do buy fresh vegetables and other daily necesities. Irina was one of the few girls Rex didnt want to roam the city purely because of her beauty, and that was even more true now, with all the retarded young masters roaming around, thinking they are the hot shits, and can do almost anything. Why wouldnt they try and have fun insanely beautifull women, who cares about the consequences.

Finishing his rounds in the market district, after he bought quite the assortment of new fruits, he went on his way back home, to the small unasuming house he left from. As he was walking he mulled over the visible improvement of the physical quality of his girls with the constant consuming of the meat from the deep floors. Their flaws were slowly dissapearing and as Rex had guessed, they were becoming more beautifull. All his maid could now be classified as seven out of ten from the six before, Aisha and Mel had also gotten more beautifull. Their skin was smoother and complexion better. Some blemishes that could bee seen before had entirely dissapeared, and other smaller changes that Rex noticed. If they kept on getting better, he was sure that his girls would eventually all reach at least eight or nine out of ten rating. He would have to think of some extra measures to protect his girls on their shopping runs. maybee an S rank being that was much more compact in size than his tigers, so they could always be next to the girls to be protected.

He had no trouble returning home, but he had to shake off some unwanted stalkers discreetly. He saw that the Eclisiarchy people were tailing him for some reason, but he sucsessfully managed to escape without giving them knwoledge that he had noticed their existence. Once home he spent the rest of the day training his mana controll and other skills he had developed, stopping Irina came to him to request something. She had not done anything like that before, if he excluded her need for some physical love, so Rex was quite interested to know, what was that she wanted.

Her request was quite simple and something Rex had promised he would do anyways, it had slipped his mind with all the grinding he wsa doing in the dungeon to grow stronger and develop his skills so he could ensure the safety of his girls. Irina wanted to enjoy the city, having heard stories from Aina how fun it could be, since the girls had bonded quite well ever since the Silvermist family incident. She wanted Mel and Val to join as well, and she was hoping Aina would be there as well. Rex though for a moment and agreed. he said that they would have the outing the next day since he wanted to sort something out and day was qiute close to the evening. He asked irina to inform the other girls regarding their plan for tommorow and ask Aina to visit him in the study.

When Aina arived in the study Rex had been waiting for about thirty minutes, mulling over some things he will have to consider in the future and on how to better explain what he had planned to offer her. Rex stood up from his comfy chair he used and sat down on a sofa, signaling the girl to sit next to him. His facial expresion was quite serious, indicating this was going to be rather important topic.

"There is something I wanted to ask you, since i am quite worried about your safety." he started "And keeping you here in the mansion all the time would be quite unreasonable, even if I would like to keep you all to myself" he spoke with a rather warm expression on his face. He liked the girl and he had though quite extensively on how to solve the current conundrum he was facing. He even spent sometime in the dungeon during the last few weeks working on the solution he had come up with. All it took was the sacrifice of a few dozen unlucky beasts.

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"With you being part of our family, I was in quite the conundrum, since I had to come with a way to protect you against some insidius individuals who might try to harm you" Rex was somewhat darting around the idea, still trying to come up with a proper wording, to ensure his reasons and thoughts would come across properly. Once more resolving himself he spoke to the heart of the matter

"I have created a blank brand. It has two purposes. First is to protect the person from being enslaved by anyone else, as the normal brands work, the second purpose is to give a sort of connection to the caster, that could be stirred, notifying the other person. It does nothing else that any other brand would do. No rules, no punishment, no controll. I am scared someone might enslave you and either try to get to me, or your old family."

Aina sat there silent, watching anything that would show anything that was out of the ordinary. And she saw nothing but his genuine worry about her, and his akwardness regarding the topic.

"Let me get this straight. You made a brand, that would not work, but still protect me from other forms of control magic?"

"Yes, as long as the caster in weaker than me, which should be almost always." There was a slight hint of pride in his achievement.

"And why wasnt the normal brand good enough for the same purpose?"

"Because it enforces absolute loyality, and I was afraid it could affect your personality. Even more, you have just gained freedom, there is no way I want to take that away from you."

Hearing Rex answers, a smile bloomed on her face, a hint of mischievousness in her eyes.

"Anything else regarding the connection?" she asked

"It should be usable, to indicate the other person you desire to see them, maybee other emotions could be transferred as well, but im not entirely sure. I would need to test them."

After a few minutes of thinking, the elf had hatched quite the masterplan in her head, her eyes were almost sparkling with briliance.

"It seems to be nothing but safety for me, so i see no reason to refuse, however, I want you to agree to one of my conditions. There will come a time when I will ask you to help me with something. You will help me when the time comes. No question asked."

"Anytime." Rex smiled and happily agreed. He was really happy Aina took his offer and was not suspicios towards the idea. And they proceeded to implement it right then and there. Since Aina was willing, and allowed the brand to set on her sould, there was no need to chain her down with his spell, and wery soon Aina had her own unique brand on her person. She felt nothin out of the ordinary after the brand was placed besides the aforementioned connection. It felt liek an invisible and intangable string that connected her to Rex. She also felt a soft, but comforting warmth coming from Rex through the connection. There was not a shred of malice or any other underlying scheme.

She smiled at him once more, and they talked a bit about their outing tommorow. Where to bring the girls, what to do and so on. The plan was very simple. A walk through the market, stopping near any food stalls the girls might be interested in, letting them enjoy whatever they desire. They did reach the a genius idea as well. Taking Aish awith them was a must. Aina resoned, that with her supperior senses she should be able to recreate any dishes they end up enjoying, so it could be made home as well. Plus it was always a good idea t oalow you cheff to expand their horizons. She reasoned that Aisha has earned it with her always increadible food. Rex coulnt agree more, and Aina departed to inform the wolf girl. Val, Mel and Irina were super exited about their coming tour through the city and they showed it during the night.

If Rex had to guess, he usually got up at around five or six in the morning, his girls somewhere around eight or nine. Aisha, kitchen staff and maids around seven, to prepare food for everyone and feed the cats. After breakfast the five girls came together, and spent some time to choose their clothes from their meager collections, a problem Rex decided he would fix as the first thing today. The girls would all get some new and nice clothes. He was loaded with cash now, since his meat business with Eredar was raking a boatload of money in ordinary days and now it was even more proffitable with all the rich and pompous nobles around.

Once the girls were dressed and ready for their foray in the city, Rex informed them of their first destination- Eredars shops. They were a bit confused innitially, but assoon as they learned of the reason, Aina went ballistic, tackled Rex, hugged him and kissed him on the cheeks a few times, a maniacal glint in her eyes.

"I will dress them, so everyone sees just how trully beautiful they are." she spoke as she looked at the remaining girls, to witch Rex added

"Make sure they are well covered. They are only for me to oggle and enjoy. They are mine. All mine." obvious posesivness in his voice. And while it could seem like a bad trait to some, Rex was quite proud in his exessive desire to protect what was his, both physically or spiritualy.

To reduce the amount of annoyance and stupidity they would have to deal with, Rex was in his full on mage garb. His face was concealed, and everyone with even a few brain cells knew to avoid the mage and his entourage.It was also just early enough to ensure no young master would be in the streets, bumping into them an annoying the party. And while the common folk in the merchant district stood out of the parties way, they still looked quite a lot at the charming and beautifull ladies acompanying the mage.

Reaching Eredar's with no annoying encounters, and once inside, Rex tasked Eredar, to summon a few ladies from his stores to help the girls find clothes they wwoudl enjoy, and Aina took charge of the mission. While the girls did what girls do best, Rex spend a bit of his time talking to the merchant to arrange an entry in the auction. When asked what Rex had in mind he just replied

"Will a few killos of gold grade deep floor meat suffice?" Stirring the merchant in to a frenzy of sorts. Eredar almost drooled over Rex, and once he came back to the land of the living from his astral travels, he smirked and noted a few things in his notebook, then proceeded to ask Rex if he could secure some more of the gold grade meat for super rare ocations to use. Rex wasnt even suprised that it took the girls a few hours to find the correct color and material and the designs each wanted for their clothes. Each girl had been ordered almost ten dresses, guaranteeing a job for the tailors for quite some time. They each were wearing a set of the new clothes, and were beaming with joy. They were all wearing a rather simple and light getups. Sweet. light dresses in warm but subtle colours, not emphasizing too much their killer bodies, but exuding modest and subtle charm.

The remaing part of the day was spent with the girls moving from one stall to another, tasting many different dishes prepeared by the various stalls and vendors. They were also having a very light and cheerfull conversations throughout the day, about all manner of things, and often being about the food they just ate, how could they be recreated with whatever they had acsess to back home. And while the girls could not see his face or the expression it adorned, they could sense his joy and happiness leaking through their links, energising them even more. Even Aina and Aisha felt his great mood and how he cared for them.

The sun was finaly starting its decent, indicating the slowly aproaching end of the day, and they decided to return to the noble district, where their home was situated. They had been lucky as the biggest eyesore had been some stupid adventurer, from who knows where, decided to try his luck with any of the girls. He was quite savagely thrown away like a bag of garbage by Val, recieving quite the harsh words for annoying them.

Rex was quite happy with how the day turned out to be. His girls had a lot of fun, he secured spot in the auction for the golden grade meat, and their party had not met any retarded young masters. And as soon as they entered the noble quarter, only having some twenty minutes to walk to their property, Rex sensed something in the air. A rather stale and unpleasant energy was moving their way, and Rex coudnt help but sigh.

"I had to go and raise some damn flags!"