"Amercy cares a whole lot about her people and she is intelligent enough to know what is coming. I can convince her to ally with us against both the empire and the demons without marrying her. Now, what do you mean about the elves?"

Lin says "Well, normally marrying Brightfire would be so that you have a connection to the elves and a wife to rule them for you. However, Brightfire is not the ruler type, not to mention you already have someone to rule them for you. I think Myria said her name was Core?"

"That's right."

Lin says "Since Brightfire won't be the ruler, marrying her will only be to have a connection to the elves and give them peace of mind. Of course, I am only talking about the practical side, not the emotional stuff."

"Do you think the elves really need that kind of connection considering everything we have been through?"

Lin says "For the leaders, no. They trust you completely. The rest of the elves, on the other hand, don't know you and don't see you very often. They have nothing that makes them feel secure, so they would need such a connection."

"Huh, I didn't think of that. I just figured that returning to their ancestral home would be enough. I didn't really want them to depend on me, I wanted them to bond with Core once we get back."

Lin says "Myria couldn't really explain who Core is. Can you fill me in?"

Since she asked, I curl up with her in the chair and tell her how I met Core and who she is. Of course, since it is Lin, I have to spend even more time explaining the barrier. She is absolutely fascinated with the barrier, but that is no surprise since it is magic.

By the time I am done answering her questions a couple of hours have passed. Since it is late, we head to bed and have some fun before going to sleep. When I wake up Lin is still sound asleep, so I head downstairs to have breakfast with the kids.

As expected, they have all completely recovered from the training and are raring to go. I eat breakfast with them and spend time with them until Chloell shows up. After they all go through the gate, I head upstairs to check on Lin, but she is still sleeping.

I feel like being a little evil, so I sneakily climb under the covers and attack her. It wakes her up, but she doesn't resist until later when she goes to return my attack. This leads to use spending the next two hours going through several rounds of fun until we are both exhausted.

Lin says "You know you aren't fooling me right? You can stop pretending."

"What are you talking about?"

Lin says "I know you aren't exhausted. I know you have a beast's stamina and that I can't hope to keep up. I appreciated you pretending to make me feel better, but you are not a very good actor."

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

"Uh, how long have you known?"

Lin says "I realized after the first week or so."

"What?! Why didn't you say something sooner?"

Lin says "I couldn't figure out how to bring it up without risking upsetting you. Besides, you trying so hard was extremely cute!"

"Um, so what now?"

Lin says "You stop pretending to be exhausted just to make me feel better. You may have helped me go beyond a normal human, but there is still no way I can contend with your monstrous stamina. Maybe when Myria and I team up we will stand a chance. Until then, we just continue as we have been without the bad acting."

"Okay. If you say so."

Lin says "Good! Now, I am starving so let's go get breakfast."

"Actually, I ate with the kids before I came to wake you up."

Lin says "Fine, then I will eat without you!"

Lin pouts at me before she gets up and heads downstairs to eat breakfast. I laugh at her antics and then follow her downstairs to keep her company. After she is done eating Lin goes to her library to read and I try to decide what I want to do.

I am tempted to just go read some manga, but I feel like I should accomplish something first. The problem is that I am not sure what I should do that is productive. When I can't think of anything even after several minutes, I just start working on my core.

Core Upgrade Progress: 22%

I stop to take a break when Lin comes down from the library to have lunch. We eat together, then Lin goes back to the library and I go back to working on my core. This time, I only work on it for a little over an hour before I am interrupted.

Core Upgrade Progress: 29%

The interruption is the kids and Chloell returning from the shadow plane. I wasn't expecting them to be back before dinner, but it doesn't look like anything went wrong. No one looks injured, so I ask them why they are back so soon.

Chloell says "It is my fault that we had to return. I ran out of divine energy."

Mulan says "It's not your fault. You only ran out of energy because you used all of it healing us."

"Did you guys get hurt that much?! What happened?"

Chloell says "There weren't any major injuries. Just endless small injuries."

Mulan says "We were exploring and accidentally disturbed a nest of rats. Each one was extremely weak, but they were endless!"

Nala says "No matter how many we killed, they just kept coming!"

"Ah! Yeah, swarms are hard to deal with. I am glad that all of you made it out okay!"

Mushu says "I never thought we would end up having to run away from a bunch of rats!"

"The only real way to deal with a swarm like that is using area of effect attacks. Like your fire breath, Mushu."

Mushu says "Yeah, I burned a lot of them, but I can't use my breath again and again."

"No, neither can I. You need to come up with other attacks to use between breaths. If you can't, then the others will need to be able to cover for you between attacks. Do you understand?"

Mushu says "Yes, I do now."

Mulan says "It's partly my fault. I've never practiced using my flames over a large area. It is not something I thought I would need to practice."

"It sounds like you all learned an important lesson. Later, in the soulscape, I will create some swarms for you to practice on. Before then, think of things you can try against them."

Albion says "Unfortunately, I don't have anything that can work on normal beasts other than physical attacks."

"That's fine. Your job as a melee fighter would be to protect the others to give them time to cast spells or use abilities."