After getting dropped off at the palace by mom we went to the hall where she did her duties as an empress; issue orders, be bored to tears and listen to boring people and their troubles, and come up with ways to fix them. She sat down and spoke to us.
“Gregory, Raishin, and dear son of mine, you have made a mess in the capital and flooded the main road to the eastern gate to the point that it became a small river. The creativity you've shown to create a unique event in the city is truly remarkable!” An advisor interrupted my mom, reminding her that she is supposed to be scolding us and not praising us. Mom corrected herself. “So obviously this is a problem, you kids could have died! I wouldn't be able to bear the thought of you kids dying in an unspectacular and lame way!”
“Wait, Empress Edea!”, another advisor said shocked, “That is not the issue! Their lives are important but the damage!”
“A market can be rebuilt but a life snuffed out early is unrecoverable” Mom said with a serious intimidating tone. The advisor broke out in cold sweat and physically backed off. “So, tell me, dear son of mine, why cows? Don't kelpies make for a more exciting race?”
As expected of my mother, kelpies make for a more interesting race, yes but the kelpies were on holiday this week and Raishin kinda had a fight with one of the younger kelpies, so out of pettiness they didn't want to be around him.
“I see,” Mom said while in deep thought. “Anyways I have to hand out punishment, or else these pain-in-the-ass advisors will never shut up. I can't even have my son have the freedom to adventure when and where he wants, she said dejectedly. I hoped you wouldn't feel as caged as I do but unfortunately, I was wrong.” All the ministers and advisors looked uncomfortable.
It was known throughout the empire that my mom loved freedom and adventure, but the citizens decided that they wanted her to be their leader. So, my mom is quite literally and figuratively a bird in a cage, stuck to rule a group of organized citizens that she loves and this is where she was conflicted, if anyone could take over for her, she'd drop being the empress immediately, but nobody with those qualifications has been found yet.
“So, I will delegate Gregory's and Raishin's punishment to Nadila and Felicia. But your punishment is to peel 2000 potatoes.”
Whud?! Please! Not the potatoes again! We don't even eat that many potatoes!
“I know my dear”, my mom said with a complicated look as she approached me and hugged me. “Please help your mom out, I skipped an important meeting yesterday to visit the village an old dragon friend of mine started. My uncle gave me a punishment to peel 10,000 potatoes. You know how much your mother hates peeling potatoes.”
But you're the empress! Can't you just tell him that potatoes are overrated and that we don't need them in this empire?
"I diiiid!" Mom said "But uncle told me I'm not allowed to come on the expedition to investigate a dimensional crack, which is in 4 hours, if I don't finish peeling these potatoes, I will have to sit out this adventure ehm investigation. I already peeled 8000 potatoes!” I shudder at the thought of peeling any number of potatoes that exceeds 1 potato. “And it would be embarrassing if the empress wasn't allowed on an important adventure, eh investigation like this.”
Fine! I said unhappily
But you'll have to take me on a flight again and catch me some fresh yellow-finned spirit salmon and cook it with your golden flames, these are the best!
“Of course, I will”, my mom answered while giving me a warm hug and separating from me. The comfortable warmth of being hugged by a mother and a phoenix left with the separation and I had the urge to ask for another hug, but I controlled myself. I wondered if I should tell her about the underground cave with strange energy in the other dimension, but I missed my chance.
I decided to tell her later. It seemed like Raishin and Greg also got their scolding and punishments. “Even though you kids just got your punishment, you still need to eat, my mom said with a cheery tone, it is time for them to awaken their soul containers and get some extra lives because at this pace they might get themselves killed.” Most advisors agreed and we went to the dining hall on the 4th floor.
When arriving at the dining hall my mother started explaining.
“Soul Containers make us mythical and legendary creatures that have multiple lives when killed you will return to the physical and magical state you were in, moments before you died. Some effects can occur when this triggers, like restoring some health or gaining some mana but those need to be developed. When your soul container is empty, you're out of lives and you will die for good. There are some caveats to that but I will not discuss them today. All you need to know is that to increase the number of lives you have to eat a certain thing or you can extract them from others. The things that give you more lives are quite rare. So, treat every life as if it is your last,” my mom warned us.
We were quite hungry but we still listened to what she had to say. “For Agnis” Mom continued, “There are red sky mangoes and blue ghost truffles since he can use both the phoenix and nine tail method to replenish the soul container, Gregory has the liquid shadow potato and Raishin gets some magnetic dynamo beans.”
Why do they get these yummy-looking things and I get beans!? Raishin said as he seemed to be upset about this unfairness.
I'm glad I didn't get potatoes.
My mom and I shuddered at the thought of being a three-tailed shadow cat and having to peel liquid shadow potatoes. Felicia grabbed some beans and shoved them into Raishin’s mouth.
Hmpf?! Hey, these things taste pretty good!
“Thought so”, Felicia said while shoving more beans down her son's throat. Everyone was watching that scene while silently eating their dinner, which had these special ingredients as an extra. I had some pasta with a creamy cheese sauce with the ghost truffles added to the sauce, with a fruit salad on the side.
Gregory had a bowl that just looked like a liquid shadow but it was supposed to be mashed liquid shadow potatoes with some potato wedges and greens, but they all got swallowed by the liquid shadow. Gregory looked confused about how to tackle this dish. He decided to take the bowl with his two hands and pour it down his throat. I don't blame him for making this decision since everything looked liquid. But there clearly was solid food in it, so he poured the bowl down his throat and started choking at the first pieces of solid food that left the bowl.
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Nadila rushed at him, took the bowl out of his hands, and performed the Heimlich on him. A piece of liquid shadow potato shot out of his mouth and landed next to my mom. The violent appearance of a potato shook her and she lit the potato and with it, part of the table on fire. During all this, Felicia was still shoving beans down Raishin’s throat.
The butlers were panicking and grabbing cans of water from the table to douse the flames. But my mom is the empress and a very strong phoenix, some mere water wouldn't be able to douse the flames. The water violently evaporated causing a small steam explosion, sending all the food on the table flying.
My mother's uncle walked into the dining room to a bowl of liquid shadow potatoes flying in his face. He removed this shadowy dish from his face and witnessed pure chaos in the dining room. Raishin, getting sick of getting beans shoved down his throat, tried to get a bite from my food, but I didn't let him because my food was really good. Felicia was chasing him in the meantime with a half-finished bowl of magnetic dynamo beans.
Mom was lighting every potato she saw on fire, Gregory was grabbing some liquid shadow vodka that his mom was drinking and trying to wash down what he just ate while Nadila was trying to calm down my mom while the butlers were trying to kill the fire with water magic, setting off more steam explosions. Yuna was trying to stop Gregory from drinking the liquid shadow booze, while Xelia, my eldest sister, was ehm, I don't know what Xelia was doing, it looked like she was daydreaming. Tallys was looking at everything and laughing her ass off while Jusay, Gregory’s older brother tried to convince Tallys to help fix this chaos. Mom’s uncle stepped into the room and spoke up with an air of composure and confidence.
Sadly, nobody paid attention to him and the chaos continued. Uncle was quite strong but he was also a doofus sometimes. I decided to help him and froze everything. Only my sisters, my mom, and my uncle managed to not get frozen. Guess I didn't help much after all, but at least the chaos and fire died down. After releasing everyone from the ice they were transported shivering to the hot springs to warm up. I got put on potato peel duty and my mom got called in by her uncle, probably for some scolding. Uncle is the only family from my mother’s side, everyone calls him Uncle so I kind of forgot his name.
He is probably also the only one who can make my mom do stuff she doesn't want to. I have heard that she fought back many times but only has about a 40%-win rate against him. But he doesn't mean any harm, he is kind of a father to her and he is quite wise. That's why he is the head advisor. My mom still challenges him when she disagrees with him because she knows that she can win and a lot of times she gets her way, but seemingly she lost this time and had to peel 10000 potatoes. And at this moment I am looking at the legacy my mother left behind for me, a mountain of 2000 potatoes.
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As I stand before my archnemesis, I look at my equipment. Sadly, peeling potatoes has become quite frequent lately because I keep getting caught doing cool stuff. I have 2 sharp knives and a short sword. Actually, it is a big knife but since I'm only 7 years old and I'm not so big it is a short sword for me. I have become quite adept at using knives and short swords because of the constant battle I have with my arch-nemesis. I have already slain over 30000 potatoes and I won't let a mere 2000 become the end of the road for me. If it was just cutting them up it would be easy but I have to peel them so a great deal of accuracy and precision is needed when doing this fast and correctly.
Nobody has time to peel 2000 potatoes one by one in the traditional manner. No! I am gonna put my skills to the test to finish this as swiftly and efficiently as possible. Regrettably, I'm still a bit tired from my earlier adventure, moving that big mass of energy took quite a toll on my body. But I don't want to waste time on these stupid potatoes. I made 2 more tails appear and focused magic into my eyes. Because my eyes tire quite fast, I will have to do batches of 500 potatoes per session. I can only accurately peel 100 potatoes at once, by throwing them into the air and swiftly dashing about, cutting the skin off before they fall. Getting to this point involved a lot of trial and error but now I'm confident of peeling 100 potatoes before they hit the floor.
I scooped up 100 potatoes with 2 of my tails and threw them in the air. I grabbed my potato peeler short sword, focused my eyes on the potatoes, making my eyes turn orangey yellow with a crosshair pattern, and moved to cut the potatoes. The potatoes looked like they were falling in slow motion and with the help of my Elgards eyes I mapped out a path to dash which would make the peeling of the potatoes as efficient as possible. I used my third tail to balance myself while dashing about.
At this point, I can only make 4 tails appear. Making them appear and being able to use them well is something that comes with age and practice so I am not too worried that I can't access all nine yet. I did however get to use my 4th tail quite recently so I'm not too used to it. I tried using it in my last potato peeling session but it was more of a hindrance. Imagine if you would suddenly grow two more arms! It will be useful in the long run but just thinking of how you would make them move and what would you use them for would be new and hard to deal with in the short term. Another example is using a task you can do very well with your non-dominant hand. It will feel slow, clumsy, and awkward and you'll be better off using your dominant hand.
After 500 potatoes I took a short break, I put the peeled potatoes in a barrel and swept the potato peels with my fourth tail. I've found that doing this speeds up my familiarity with my new fourth tail a bit. After the second round of peeling potatoes, I wondered if I could speed it up more. It took me 30 minutes to peel the first 1000 potatoes. I knew I had an affinity for lightning but I never really used it much besides pulling pranks and zapping people. I remembered how Raishin and his family imbued themselves with lightning and gained a lot of speed and power due to it. I wondered if I could pull something off like that and peel more potatoes at the same time if I used that.
I focused on the memories of when I saw members of the Torai family use that technique and I tried to analyze it and formulate a method of how I could pull it off. I tried some things out but I couldn't find a way to generate enough lightning to successfully imbue myself for longer than a split second. Generating lightning in large amounts isn't an easy feat but the six-tailed tigers can more or less create energy from thin air so they have no issues with that. I don't have that luxury. I tried thinking of how I could use being a nine-tail. I could try to deceive myself with illusions to think that I am a six-tailed tiger.
There were two problems with this idea though, my illusions aren't strong enough yet to make me truly think and believe that. And even if I could it might not work. Another problem was that a possible paradox might occur which could deal a lot of damage to myself because using a nine-tail technique, making myself into a six-tail momentarily might not work because six tails can't use illusions, and if six tails can't create illusions, I can't use illusions to make me become one, or I would be stuck at being a six tails. Thinking about the possible loopholes in this and the implications gave me a headache. I scrapped this idea. I got another idea, and it was because of the dinner we had a while ago.
Raishin got dynamo beans. If I could replicate the workings of a dynamo I could make as much lightning as my stamina or magic would allow. I settled on having my fourth tail be the static component and make it mimic some copper coils and make my other three tails spin around it mimicking magnets. After spinning my tails for a couple of seconds I discovered how effective this was at generating electricity. I sped up the rotation and the intensity made the lightning shift color. In this world, some elements have different strengths or properties within the element. Fire has default orange-red but goes to red into blue indicating an increase of power, fire also has colors outside of those but they indicate a specific property, for example, light gold flames replenish stamina and help against fatigue.
With lightning, the color indicates its power. It goes from white I stopped my tail dynamo and threw up all the remaining 1000 potatoes in the air. I fired up my tail dynamo again, imbued myself, and went for it. I would say it went quite well; I peeled all the potatoes perfectly with a lot of time to spare. One problem though was I didn't know how to stop it. So, after I peeled them, I kept bouncing off the walls till I got tired and couldn't control the huge amount of energy I had left and crashed through a wall. I gotta say, crashing through a wall of fortified steel was quite painful. The pain and fatigue made me pass out since that is the last thing I remember.