During the meeting, after I realized that everybody thought that I was Fung's Empress for some reason, I immediately derailed the entire discussion into another direction and I got everybody’s brains busy with tracing back the rumors towards the initial source of the information.
By having everybody state out loud from whom they had heard the rumors in the first place, we were able to figure out the starting point of the entire debacle.
In the end, the innkeeper, Lord Jaden, and the Rheina the huntress had “come clean”, with the girl turning out to be originating point of the rumor because of her newfound invisibility skill, Jaden being at fault for the public reveal because he had interrogated the drunken girl within the “unsafe” confines of the tavern, and the innkeeper being the main culprit for the spread of the rumors because of his passive [Skills], even though the entire streak of occurrences had been from start to finish a total accident.
This strange chain of events had hammered-down even further into the minds of all of the present villagers why it was necessary for everybody to keep their mouths shut from now on since it had become obvious that even a random accident could become the source of a disaster.
Therefore, I decided to also perform a little bit of a mental manipulation on the crowds to alleviate the difficulty of that particular endeavor because I knew that nobody would be able to stay silent for real.
As a result, I then suggested to all of the villagers that they employ the tactic of “word substitution”, where everybody in the village would simply start calling the Heir to the Throne as “Boss Fungus” from now on instead of “Emperor”, as the alternative nickname was both correct from a political point of view as well as an organizational one, but at the same time, it was a “harmless” title that did not reveal any dangerous information, even if somebody from the exterior were to overhear it.
Of course, I then also urged everybody to call me “Supervisor Trina” instead of “Empress”, and I also told everybody that they should try and “replace” any dangerous words that they might come across with other “inoffensive-sounding” phrases, like for example calling the Nobles a bunch of “Fancypants”, the Cultists a bunch of “Fruitcakes”, the Ancient Evil a “Really-Angry-Old-Critter” and to even refer to the Ruby Throne as the “Red Big Toilet Seat”.
Both of the new “titles” and all of the funny new “replacement words” immediately got rooted into the mind of the crowd because they were some easy-to-remember appellatives that could replace the “Emperor” or “Empress” titles alongside with many of the other “problematic things” that we were currently facing against, and they were also a good way to avoid making any further verbal blunders as far as all of the villagers were concerned.
Plus, the “funny factor” also raised local morale. I mean, it felt easier to face against a bunch of Fancypants, Fruitcakes, and all of the Tiny Minions belonging to the Really Angry Old Critter when you were managing the whole problem from the comfort of your Red Big Toilet Seat.
Therefore, even if the crowds were to talk behind our backs from now on about our exploits like I knew they would, they would simply use the non-hazardous nicknames for everything, even if everybody in the village continued to remember what those titles actually represented.
After I settled that, Lord Jaden suddenly came forth with a proposal and told everybody that he was willing to pledge his household troops of 5000-or-more men to support the rightful claim of “Boss Fungus” to the “Red Big Toilet Seat”, but that he first needed to go back home to his Xiaomai Estate and report the disappearance of the Magistrate to the official authorities, so that he could inherit his Father’s Lands and Title before he could even try to gather any military troops under his banner.
This, of course, would lead to an Imperial investigation-team being sent down here from the Capital to assess the truth of Jaden’s letters, so he would also be forced to report the sudden appearance of the uncharted Dungeon within his fief since it had been the true source of the former Magistrate’s disappearance.
Of course, Jaden would then severely downplay the danger level and resource output of the Dungeon in front of the “Inspection Team” by reporting it as a simple “low level” Dungeon of lesser importance, so that the Imperial Inspectors would lose interest in the whole place immediately, as it was not a truly valuable item if it was “only” a low-level Dungeon, as weak Dungeons of 2-3 layers could be found almost everywhere in the world.
While having 5000+ more men come over here and give us a hand did indeed sound like an attractive proposal, I immediately decided to put Jaden’s idea on hold, as we still did not have a stable-enough manpower base down here to start taking any major risks by informing the Imperials about our existence, even if it was a bunch of twisted information that would be sent to the Capital.
For the moment, everybody was still alive because nobody out there in all of the three Empires knew what was occurring down here, so I planned on keeping it that way for at least a few more months.
Only after Winter was over could Jaden’s plan of “gathering the troops” become an actual viable thing, because there was no way that the village of Piece would ever be able to feed 5000+ men throughout the entire cold season, even if we were to include in the equation a constant influx of rooster-meat from the immortal chicken. Until spring, it was simply wiser to just stay put and work with the locally-available resources instead.
Still, Jaden’s idea had brought to the surface the village’s general lack of any ORGANIZED manpower, so I took the opportunity to ask the Mayor exactly how many people currently lived inside of the village. The following census had been easy enough to figure out, with the total headcount resulting in 553 people. The youngest one had turned out to be 4 years old and the oldest one 71.
Hearing that the oldest person was 71 did not actually surprise me that much, since people tended to live a whole lot shorter lives in the Middle Ages due to the poor standards of general healthcare. 71 was actually quite a high number if you looked at the whole thing from a local context, as most people died in their 40’s or 50’s.
Yet, on the other hand, hearing that no children had been produced in the last 4 years had seemed even stranger to me, but I was told that I was simply a misunderstanding and that it was not the case, as all of the young ones that had come about during the last few years had simply died due to various causes, mostly because of childhood diseases.
That turned out to be one of the sad facts of life, as infant mortality rates were also quite high in such uncivilized villages like this one, but there was nothing that I could do about that for now.
I knew that increasing the Education standards of everybody would solve that problem by itself, once I got some of the classes rolling.
And since I was planning to Awaken EVERYBODY, I also told all of the villagers that they all needed to start learning how to read from now on, because any-and-all cultivation-related manuals or scrolls that they would come across during their entire lives or I would pass onto them for our training purposes would most certainly come in a written form.
Therefore, one of the currently-empty shop buildings near the Village Square that was similar in size to the Clinic or the Smithy immediately got “reassigned” by universal vote to become the new School building, with Xibei subsequently receiving the “grand honor” of becoming the new Teacher for all of the illiterates from now on, since he was the most skilled in the belletristic and artistic departments.
Liliam and Lingfeng also volunteered to take some of the other shifts to compensate for the large number of students that would be coming to the “literacy classes” in the nearby future, and that was quite a blessing.
For the duration of the next week, the Mayor got tasked with making a list of all of the people in the Village and was also told to find out how they could be grouped in “classes” based on their availability and free time, as all of the villagers still needed to maintain their farms each and every day outside of being forced to go to school.
Also, even the Guardsmen themselves still needed to take Watch Duty at the Dungeon’s entrance to keep the flood of Demons at bay, besides learning how to read.
Fortunately, the harvest season had already ended, as we were currently around the middle of the month of October, so everybody in the village had already started their own preparations for the upcoming Winter time, as this planet had an extra “Winter” month compared to Earth's 12 months, the 13th “Undecimber” month.
The months on Pangerra were also generally denominated based on their associated animals and lacked any “scholarly” names like those from Earth; they were the months of the Rat(January), Ox(February), Tiger(March), Rabbit (April), Dragon(May), Snake(June), Horse(July), Goat(August), Monkey(September), Rooster(October), Dog(November), Pig(December) and Cat(Undecimber/13th month).
Each month had exactly 30 days, unlike Earth’s with its 30/31 cycle, and the only month that had 31 days was the 13th month of the Cat, with an extra day occurring only once every 5 “leap” years, to compensate for the numeral inaccuracy that resulted from the planet’s rotation around the local Sun.
By having 13 months, it also meant that Winter always seemed to last one month longer than all of the other seasons, due to the way that the planet moved in an ellipsis around the Sun, with Winter placing it at the furthest point away from the “heat source” and compounding the effects with the planet’s axis tilt which was the cause of the Seasons in the first place.
Pangerra was tilted on its rotation axis in a very similar fashion to Earth at around 23 degrees of inclination instead of 23.5, but unlike Earth who was the furthest away from the Sun during July at the Aphelion, Pangerra was furthest away from the Sun during winter and closest during Summer at the Perihelion or at least the continent that we were on simply was on the “wrong” hemisphere like Earth’s Australia, who had its summers “reversed” compared to Europe or North America.
That simply meant that the Summers were really hot, and Winters were really long and cold, so all of the preparations from the incoming frosty period were quite necessary, especially for the poor people living out here in the boonies. I was just glad that a day still had only 24 hours, even though I wasn’t quite sure that 1 Pangerra hour precisely equaled 1 Earth hour, even though they sort-of felt about the same in length.
Of course, this did not mean that Winter was ACTUALLY longer than all of the other seasons. No, the distribution of the Sun’s heat throughout the seasons was still even, with the simple extra fact that the Winter season was in the MINDS of the local population longer by one extra calendaristic “month”, as the harsh conditions of the cold weather tended to affect them more than the rest of all of the other seasons.
Basically, having that one extra month meant that each “season” was (390 days of the year divided by 4) = 97.5 days long, which then created an awkward “offset” that made each season get “delayed” by one extra week.
I was actually surprised that even the “uninformed” people down here in the village were using an actual “modern” and accurate calendar for their timekeeping needs instead of some sort of a primitive version, but that was probably the System’s fault, since all of the Players most likely just wanted an accurate accounting of their playtime whenever they arrived on this planet instead of getting gunked-up in many convoluted Calendars like it had happened back on Earth with the Julian Vs Gregorian Vs Islamic Vs Chinese Vs Aztec Vs Mayan Vs the many other calendars that had been available.
As far as the villagers were concerned, this year's harvest had been rather prosperous, with no drought or insect plagues having shown up to diminish the output of the crops, which had resulted in an excess of produce that would make the upcoming Winter a lot easier to endure for everybody.
The second boon to the village had come from the fact that no Taxes had been imposed upon the village's harvest during this year, because the Xiaomai household retainers who generally acted as the Tax Collectors had unfortunately died together with the Magistrate inside of the Temple, and even Jaden (who had now become the current acting Landlord) wasn't foolish enough to redirect any of the available resources away from this place while the Dungeon crisis was still undergoing.
This had left the village with a rather unusual large amount of produce on their hands, and after stashing away the crops that did not spoil easily like the rice or the grains, all of the excess amount of vegetables had gone into pickling jars and all of the excess amount of fruit had been placed inside of barrels and left to ferment, so that moonshine could then be created out of it.
In fact, during our current week, most of the villagers had all been busy with brewing, as most of the local folk had begun to create alcohol from all sorts of fruits and even from some of the excess rice, causing the few stills that could be found across the entire village to churn out almost non-stop all sorts of alcoholic beverages of dubious flavors and concentrations.
As far as I was concerned, this was ok in my book. Well, at least as long as the villagers did not drink themselves to death, because I was also receiving a lot of fruit-based-alcohol jars as gifts that I would be able to double-refine with my own alchemical tools further down the line into a more pure medicinal ethanol that had a higher degree, a product that both myself and Ping would be able to use around the Clinic as a reliable disinfectant, since many wounded people from either the Dungeon or simply from the village’s daily work-life still kept coming to our healing shack each and every day.
The Dungeon exploration teams had also grown in size, so they currently needed to be given a new “structure” that would be able to accommodate the new influx of the “fresh recruits” that were resulting from my Awakenings, therefore much to their chagrin, some of the “old” veterans who had been fighting at the Dungeon’s entrance ever since day one had all been given several “newbies” that they had to now watch-over, and they had also been tasked with “showing the ropes” to the freshmen whenever they had the chance.
Of course, not everybody fared the same whenever they arrived at the Temple’s conflict zone. Some of the more soft-hearted people just simply could not stomach the violence and the gore of the fights, so they immediately ran back to the peaceful life of the village after even a simple small Demon took a swing at them.
But having experienced for themselves the cruelty of the Dungeon’s Hellspawns, all of the non-combatants who had dropped by at the Temple were now looking upon the Guardsmen and Warring Monks with a newfound respect and appreciation, causing everybody to subsequently work even harder at their own support jobs.
Therefore, all of the villagers who could to fight for whatever reason had now taken up some sort of a crafting or maintenance job which helped the “fighting troops”, from gathering wood-shafts in the forest and then fletching arrows out of them, since those projectiles seemed to get used in very large quantities down in the Dungeon, to washing the dirty blood-soaked clothes of the Dungeon delvers, cleaning and repairing the dented armors, or even cooking very large meals that could feed many people at the same time.
Everybody was pitching in, even the little kids, who had also been doing whatever small jobs that they could execute on their own, like washing the dishes after all of the fighting troops had eaten their meals or fetching fresh water buckets from the well.
And because I had increased the number of daily Awakenings ever since the Capital Cities had been attacked, almost all of the villagers had now become Awakened, including most of the women.
While most of the members of the fairer sex had been unable to swallow the violence that occurred inside of the Dungeon and had chosen to engage in “safe” support jobs, a bunch of “exceptions” had also shown up who had taken to the whole “Crushing Demon Skulls” experience like fish to the water and had even left some of the Veteran Guardsmen in total awe at the fierceness that they had displayed during combat as the newcomer females.
I mean, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” or a mother-bear with a child to protect down in the village. I even began calling them “The Valkyrie Squad” when they were all sticking together, even though they had no idea what that title really meant.
Of course, getting so many freshmen had also become a burden on poor Carmine who was still the only qualified Smith in the village, as she was now having trouble to keep up with the weapons and armors demands of the people, even though she was still using her incredible crafting speed to churn out many items each and every day.
Therefore, a new “contribution” system now needed to be deployed, so I told everybody attending the meeting that while [Green] and [Blue] quality items would still get provided free-of-charge from the Mayor’s Office to all of the new “fighters”, any further upgrades to [Purple] would now require a hefty donation of rare materials from the delver which desired a replacement weapon or an armor upgrade.
I told everybody that a conversion list from the Dungeon-retrievable materials to Contribution Points was going to get posted later in the week once all of the details and costs would be ironed out with Carmine’s help, and that all of the troops would become eligible to trade-in their Contribution Points for better gear and even trade their earned CP’s among themselves, like for example if a certain group wanted to gear-up their “Tank” in full purples first, and then later do their Damage-Dealers and Healers.
Some of the people who were incapable of fighting had also chosen to take up “harvesting” jobs like woodcutting, collecting medicinal herbs inside of the nearby forest, or even clay-gathering for pottery, so I also told them that if they could continuously keep on providing enough of the resource-type that they specialized in, they would also become eligible to earn Contribution Points, and those could then be used to purchase “better” crafting tools instead, or simply given away to support their more militant family members.
A mother and child would most definitely give away their accumulated CP’s to buy the Father of the family a better [Purple] armor-piece that would keep him safe within the Dungeon’s confines, if they had any.
The need for more resources, especially wood, had come about after I had “unlocked” that “Buildings” tab at the Weirdwood Tree, which now basically allowed me to purchase “Building Seeds” whenever I offered a “tribute” to the Face-Tree in the form of building materials like Wood, Stone, Clay, Concrete, and even Metals and Gems.
Of course, as a “trial run”, I had picked the cheapest building that I could find on the list which required only three wooden logs as a tribute and resulted in a single “seed” that subsequently spawned a simple 3-by-3 meter giant cube made out of interlaced Weirdwood branches, a cube which “grew” to its maximum size within one day’s time after being planted into the ground.
Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.
As the test, I had used those new plant-cubes to “patch up” all of the holes in the village’s defensive outer walls by plugging them with the new weird structures one crack a time, and it had worked wonderfully.
Once a tribute got placed on the Weirdwood Tree altar, the “old man’s” face would then spew a large wooden “seed” out of its mouth. While I had that seed on myself, whenever I used my Qi vision I would also get a holographic-like overlay that would show me the 3 by 3 cube that could be summoned from the seed as a ghostly apparition which aided me in “planting” the item with great accuracy wherever I wanted, and it also helped me “connect” together any of the already existing structures if I had more than one seed on me.
Planting a “second” seed near an already-existing cube would simply cause the old cube and the new one to intermingle and create an uninterrupted single structure, a gimmick that now basically allowed me to continuously “stack cubes” together in whichever direction I desired.
My gamer self even thought about experimenting with how tall I would be able to stack the cubes on top of each other before they became unstable, since the cost of a 3 by 3 cube was barely 3 wooden logs which was dirt-cheap, but I then abstained myself from doing so because this was really not the time or place for playing around like that, given the danger we were in. Having a 50+ meter tall tower made out of white wooden branches sticking out of the ground for no apparent reason whatsoever would simply draw too much unwanted attention to this village, no matter which way you looked at it.
Still, the “Buildings” available had turned out to be quite varied, but the more complex the “seeds” seemed to be, the more they cost. Also, most “buildings” were still grayed out and unavailable for purchase at the current moment, because I had not met the pre-requirements for unlocking them yet, which were a series of weird Achievements related to building an entire settlement from scratch.
Still, “creating more buildings” was not really my priority at this moment, since we already had more dwellings in the village than available people, as some of the villagers who had died during the Cultist attack had left many empty homes in the wake of their departure from this world.
Of course, if Jaden would be able to actually muster his 5000+ men come next Spring and then bring them down here as he promised, things would change drastically, as a lot more housing would suddenly be required, but I would cross that bridge once I got there.
For now, everybody in the village had agreed to attend a weekly meeting that would occur each and every Sunday from now on, where at least one representative from each household would come to the meeting and debate the problems of the community with the rest of the people, even if it meant having hundreds of people in the same location at the same time.
Of course, Fung, my party members, Jaden and the Mayor would still have the last say in any of the matters, but I was strongly encouraging all of the villagers to speak out all of their problems because solving those would reduce any discontent that would come into existence from the continuously-stressful situation of having the entire village combat Demons on a daily basis, and the fact that we were all still sitting on a literal timebomb in the form of that Ancient Evil.
We then all agreed that the gathering should occur inside the Monk’s Temple from now on so that everybody might be able to participate including the Guardsmen and Warring-Monks that were off-duty and were waiting near the Dungeon Entrance.
In truth, I was actually thinking of making Will-E take an entire “shift” at the entrance by himself while the weekly gathering took place, as the strange Dwemmer Automaton was now totally capable of smashing to bits any of the annoying red Demons and skinless rabbits that kept coming up from the Dungeon’s depths.
I mean, the little golem had been “born” above level 50 and had some incredible amount of strength and precision due to his robotic nature, not to mention that his defensive plates were already military-grade, so a stab from a rusted dagger wielded by some random Demon or the sharp teeth of a skinless rabbit would not even leave even a single scratch upon his metal frame.
Of course, Will-E could still get defeated by stuff like gravity-based traps or maybe even some weird snares strong enough to disable all of his limbs, but I really doubted that any of the Demons on the first few layers of the Dungeon had the brains or the power to create such complex contraptions.
Since his combat protocols had been enabled by Fungus, Will-E was now totally capable of smashing Demon heads all on his own if we ordered him to do so, therefore I had taken the liberty to also instruct him to change his own spirit stones once he got low on power and to also freely store any valuables or reusable items that the Demons dropped inside of his orb-inventory.
Of course, because of the limits that had been instilled upon him by his “Household Automaton” pre-programming, Fung and myself had been forced to first “approve” several times the liberal use of the 1000+ pile of spirit-stones which we had put aside from the main bundle of Grand spirit stones, a stack which had now been “reserved” and “designated” specifically to the purpose of ensuring that Will-E’s power-needs could be continuously met no matter where he was or what he was doing.
Also, we had also been forced to go through many “ARE YOU SURE? THIS IS A BAD IDEA!” prompts to “unlock” the self-access protocols that would subsequently allow Will-E to place-inside or pull-out items from the warehouse-sized storage-space of his own orb, before he was able to actually use the damn thing by himself without a prompt, as the old Dwemmer engineers had left many safeguards behind to prevent too much autonomy from their mechanical slaves.
An Automaton that was capable of changing its own power source, was free to collect outside resources and was also capable of using its own immense internal storage space however it pleased could indeed become a recipe for disaster during a robot uprising, but it was truly not the case with Will-E and our group, as we had all been treating the little guy quite nicely.
And he was also quite aware of that fact, especially since I had talked to him many times about his “rights” and about the “freedom” that I wished I could bestow upon him, so he was currently considering most of our party as his “family members”, therefore the danger of a murderous unrestrained AI was almost nonexistent for the moment.
As I was mentally planning to use Will-E as a Bodyguard/Dungeon exploration Farming Bot during the weekly village gatherings, I also realized that it would be nice if he had some strong gear that belonged only to himself while he was going down there, like a weapon and maybe even a shield that he would be able to constantly carry into combat.
Therefore, after the whole village-wide meeting ended, I immediately proceeded towards the Smithy building together with Carmine as I started bouncing my ideas of Dungeon-Botting against the dwarven smith’s opinions.
Of course, I was now also dragging behind me by the scruff of his shirt His Indescribable Importance, Boss Fungus the Unknown of the Red Big Toilet Seat towards the Smithy building so I could whale on him for that Empress stunt that he had just pulled during the meeting with the villagers. Yet despite the pain, he still kept laughing like a fool.
On the other hand, I was rejoicing that the whole rumor problem had been cleared up and that the people of the village had become a lot more aware of their own blunder, a realization which had caused them to stop talking about any of the more sensitive info that could get everyone killed.
Immediately as we entered the Smithy, I tossed Fungus into a corner, and then I told him to wait for me until I finished talking with Carmine. After that, I told the dwarf smith what I wanted from her, so she immediately understood how useful having a Dungeon Farming-Bot could turn out to be. Therefore, she immediately began whipping out her best available materials and also told Will-E to give her some pen and paper so she could sketch some weapon plans.
Of course, we also asked Will-E himself what sort of weapons he desired, so in the end, we settled for a hammer-pick as the “main hand” because the weapon could be used both as a tool for digging as well as a blunt instrument for smashing Demons and skeletons apart, and a sword in the “offhand” for slashing and cleaving purposes.
A lot of people across the world thought that the king of all weapons was the sword because of its swiftness and agility, beauty and skill required for its proficient use, but most of us folk down here at the Dungeon really tended to prefer items that did heavier damage in one single swing, even if the speed was slower and the weapons themselves required a whole lot more strength to be wielded properly.
Swords indeed worked wonders against foes that were made out of flesh, as you could bleed an opponent to death with 1000 cuts, but against the reanimated constructs of the Dungeon like the Skeletons or the Mummies, a bladed edge was a piss-poor item to swing about, even if it was some sort of a godly artifact.
On the other hand, a heavy blow from a hammer would crumble one of those skellies in one single swing. Also, while it would not cause a target to bleed to death, a well-placed mace-strike would most certainly crack any bones beneath the flesh and cripple any living target immediately, even if it somehow managed to survive the first attack.
Moreso, if the wielder used a hammer-pick type of mace like the one we were designing and the target was proving to be too resilient even to the delivered blunt damage, the combatant could always turn the mace around and use the pointy-end instead, which was quite a devastating tool against any heavily-plated opponents, as it could pierce right through the target quite thoroughly since the whole “weight” of the hammer-head got accumulated on only the tiny area at the sharp end-tip during the swing, which then caused the pointy bill to dig-in deeper inside the body of the armored target than even a sword or a dagger could ever do.
When we both asked Will-E if he also wanted a shield, he told us that it was totally unnecessary since he was not made out of flesh and his own base plates could also take quite a lot of punishment, so the optimal weapon setup for him would be a combo of bastardized weapons which could then be used in either a 1-handed grip or a 2-handed hold based on the user’s mood or the circumstances of the combat and would also maximize his damage output.
Therefore, his finalized weapons we all agreed would be a hammer-pick in the main hand for dealing with the undead and all of the heavy-armored creatures, plus a bastard sword with a sharp blade on one side and a jagged bandsaw-like edge on the other for the offhand, a weapon that would become dedicated to handling most of the “fleshy” targets since it would be able to cleave through multiple Demons and rabbits at the same time, unlike the hammer-pick which sucked at Area-Of-Effect attacks but performed best at single target damage.
Dual-wielding said weapons was no problem for the Automaton since he wasn’t right or left-handed, as he had been “born” ambidextrous in the first place, so having access to blade, blunt, and piercing-point at all times would also increase his combat efficiency by a huge margin.
The little guy had even told us that he had studied all of the motions of the Guardsmen and of the Warring-Monks during their fights and that he had compiled a set of strikes that seemed to be the most efficient “forms” out of all of the observed data, but that I first needed to “approve” those combat models that he had devised before he could actually use them in a real conflict situation.
Of course, I immediately enabled the self-learning and self-upgrading sections of his combat protocols together with Fung and even told the Automaton to take the time to write down all of his current findings, as we could all stand to improve together after reading through his observations since they allowed us to eliminate many of the flaws that occurred during our fighting techniques.
Immediately the little guy went into “printer mode” and with a couple of sharp pencils in each hand, he began scribbling on a large pile of papers complex diagrams that were detailing all of the forces involved in a strike down the muscle groups used on the humanoid skeletal frame, the balance of the body, the g-forces involved, the expected damage output, and even the required training methods to achieve such results.
Well, dang...that had been an unexpected but pleasant surprise...Shifu Will-E, please teach us more of your automated wisdom!
The training methods that he was describing in the papers were also applicable to every mortal. The diagrams he was making weren’t any System-designed combat [Skills] like you might have expected, as [Skills] like that were bunch movements executed by the Mother System as it took control over the body of the User and then automated every action, but instead, they were pure down-to-earth combat diagrams of masteries that could be obtained from real-life training and the conditioning of a person's reflexes, manuals that would have worked even on the people of Earth.
But after the Dungeon-Bot problem got settled, it was now time to crack my knuckles and smash me some Fungus! Therefore, I dragged Mister Emperor-wannabe to the other room and I left Carmine to her forging and Will-E to his diagram-printing.
"Ok...Seriously, Fungus, what the fuck was that whole shit about me being your Empress? Now the whole village thinks I’m your wife!" I tossed Fung inside of the adjacent room.
"SO? What’s so bad about being Empress?" He continued to snicker.
"Nothing! And Everything! Ugh! Look, man, I already told you many times that I AM A DUDE and I can’t look at you in any sexual way, because I simply don’t feel any sort of attraction towards you!"
"Well DUH! Of course I know that! But then again, let me ask you something else in return." Fung put on a serious face. "Do you acknowledge that you currently possess the body of a FEMALE?"
"Well of course I do! If the tits and the cave entrance weren't dead giveaways for that, I don’t know what could count as hints about my current bodily gender!"
"Well then...here’s my honest to Gods line of thought. If you are a Female, then it means you are capable of physically bearing my children.
"GRRRR!"
"Waaaait, don’t hit me, let me finish!
"Ok, so you don’t like my face and have zero physical attraction towards me. All fine and dandy, I get that. But ask yourself, do we work together well enough to be able to cope up with each other's bullshit on a regular basis? So far, I think we've been doing quite admirably when it comes to handling both of our own character’s flaws. Yes, you are obviously a DUDE inside of your head and it shows, and you say you like girls and that's fine because I like girls too. We can even go skirt-chasing together if you want to.
"But this is not about your sexual inclinations, it’s all about how stable of a relationship can exist between the two of us. You should know very well that being married is more like going into a “business arrangement” with a partner rather than becoming a couple based on true love or physical attraction, especially when it comes to the politically arranged marriages that are so often employed by the Noble and Imperial Houses.
"I also realize that you will probably never look at me with that type of womanly love because you’re not really a woman. But we don't really need to “tick those boxes” to be able to establish a solid “business arrangement” between the two of us and to make progress in our common interests, including the furthering of the Imperial lineage.
"So yeah, I get it, you don't like my face. I also realize that I'm not really that handsome, and I would never really be able to even hold the candle against someone that was naturally gifted in the looks department like yourself or Xibei.
"But is it really that inconceivable for you to put up with me for at least one night during our “business arrangement” to produce some offspring? I think that if I can get you drunk enough, you won't even need to remember what happened."
"Gah! You even thought that far? PERVERT! Well...I mean...I dunno...I like kids, but I never thought about having any brats by myself. The whole “hey, you have a body capable of bearing children” idea has not really settled down inside of my brain yet.
"Not to mention that I wouldn't really want to pop-out any progeny until I was at least over 20, preferably around 25-ish, which is waaaay too far into the future for me to practically think about, all things considered.
"You're asking me if I would be able to put up with you if I were drunk or stoned enough? Well, yeah, I would be able to do it with a Rainbow Dragon Unicorn and a Pink Giraffe in that sort of a state, but I'm not sure that the results would be the ones you so much desire.
"Heck, I'm not even sure if this clone body can even HAVE children. Sure, I might SEEM fertile and have a menstrual cycle, but that does not mean that I can automatically get pregnant with you. Even a simple difference in my genetic makeup or a misalignment of the chromosomes would be enough to throw off my entire breeding capabilities."
"Trina, you're doing that thing again where you spew information that nobody can understand whenever you get in a panic or you find yourself cornered inside a discussion…" Fung narrowed his eyes.
"GEH! If you’re asking whether I'm totally against the idea? Probably not. I mean, if I ever were to have kids with somebody, having their father be the actual Emperor of an entire country could indeed count as a “good business arrangement.
"But that's ONLY if the Emperor was the TRUE “official one” and was actually holding the reins of power in his hands, instead of being chased down by some Noble Houses or Demonic Cults. I mean, I most definitely would not want my kids to grow up in an environment where assassinations were commonplace."
"Well, of course, neither would I! I would personally make sure that such a thing could never happen in the first place! It's a given fact that I would first settle all of the problems inside of the Empire and do something about the instability of my own position before I would even begin to think about starting a family!
"But what I'm asking here is if you are willing to go in such a “business arrangement” with myself, as long as all of the negative factors get eliminated."
"Brother, that's a lot of “ifs” and “maybes” for me to be able to give you a straight answer. We don't even know if we will survive until tomorrow. What if that Ancient Evil suddenly decides to escape from beneath the earth through some unknown method and then eat all of us?
"Either of us could die from any stupid reason at any given moment until then, so agreeing to anything that you are proposing right now is absolutely pointless. Would I be willing to generally accept such a “business arrangement”? Most likely yeah, I mean, what fool wouldn't? But all of the benefits must definitely outweigh the problems BY A LOT before I would even start to think about it."
"Well, maybe YOU indeed currently find the whole thing pointless, but as far as I'm concerned, just knowing the fact that there is a CHANCE that we could end up together, no matter how weird of a relationship may develop between us, is enough to give me wings and drive me forward to break-through any obstacles that will bar my path."
"Oh, silly little Fungus...I mean, I really appreciate the sentiment, but I should totally steer you away from making me your whole “raison d'etre”. I’m sure that you can find some real girl that you can fall in love with that will be able to love you back as well, instead of focusing on my problematic self."
"Sure, just as you say, maybe I’ll find that nice girl someday, but she would only become my second wife, because until both of us can find that “true love”, we can still work together as BROTHERS to keep the Empire from crumbling into pieces.
"Having a heavenly-sent Empress as a state-figurehead would simply mean that the whole Empire could now have two pillars to rely on instead of just the Emperor, and none of the Noble Houses would even dare to question your weird background if they found out that you are an actual LEGITIMATE Prophet of Aadmin, which is the real truth!
"So I’m not pushing you to become my Empress for LOVE or anything like that, but rather I’m asking you to be my “partner in crime” as we proceed to lie to all of the Empires for the greater good, since you are the best-qualified person to take up that job. Heck, if Liliam or even Carmine had been the heavenly-sent Blessed Child instead of yourself, then I would have asked them to marry me instead. But unfortunately, YOU are the weird person with the otherworldly knowledge, BRO, so fake-marry me and then maybe even have my kids if we ever manage to take back the Empire, NOHOMO!"
ARRGH...Ok…that was a strong hit under the belt from Fung because all of my logical circuits inside of my head were now telling me that he was somewhat right, but all of my sentimental circuits also kept screaming at me that I should get the fuck away from here as fast as possible before I fell into his honey mind-trap.
I felt like simply running away like any other indecisive Isekai protagonist and leaving it all for later, but then I immediately realized that I would fall into the Mother System’s narrative trap by doing that and I hated that prospect.
No, if I were to ever commit any relationship suicide, then I would do it with my own two hands, and not because Mom Sys manipulated me into it!
"HUFF...Ok, Fungus, you’re right, so I’ll play ball. I’ll pretend to be your Empress, but we have to settle some ground rules before that:
"First, no sex! I’m not gonna be your sugar girl! I don’t like your face, and I would only have sex with you if you had a pillow over your head and I was terribly horny and addled in the mind for some reason.
"Second, if by any chance I do find someone I like and I actually fall in love with that person in the future, I don’t want to hear a single peep of jealousy out of you, because you knew what you were getting into from the start, even if that partner turns out to be MALE.
"Third, the production of kids is an acceptable outcome, but only if there will be a safe-enough environment for them to grow up in, and the world itself will be during peaceful times. Nobody’s ever going to try and murder my offspring if I do pop them out of the abyss, if you know what I mean.
"Also, if by some weird chance I also have some kids with someone else too, you will STILL accept them as your own, even if they are fucking mutant dragon-squids with a single eye and seven testicles!
"If you can accept these ground rules, then maybe we can work something out. Otherwise, fuck off!"
"Ok...Fair enough...But I’m not sure that I can treat you like you do not possess the body of a female all of the time. I mean, if you keep running around naked in front of me like you did last week, I WILL get a boner, because I’m still a healthy young male."
"Bro, if by any chance you DO somehow wind up getting into my pants somehow, either because I was too tired, stoned, or drunk to ward you off, then it’s going to be my fault for letting you in, rather than the other way around.
"Yeah, I do have a female body, and I know what it can do to men. I will also exploit that vulnerability in any target that I can find, so get used to it. Call me a “bitch”, a “skank” or a “slut”, whatever, I don’t care. But it does not mean that I will ever LOVE you as a woman. I simply can’t, so don’t ever ask for that out of me."
"Good enough, as far as I’m concerned." Fung nodded. "I would take a solid Bromance over a fickle relationship with a woman any day of the week, and considering that your body is still female, I can even get the benefits of being able to spread my genes to the next generation if everything goes OK. What more could I even ask for? Hehehe..."
"RAAARGH! GRRR! Great! AAAAHH! Now you forced me to become your waifu, Fung! UP yours, BRO! I will have my vengeance somehow! I swear that I will find a spell that can turn males into females, and then I will make you my bitch, so you can feel my suffering! We’ll see who’s going to be the “Empress” then!"