“Elaya… about earlier…”

“Do you still want to enslave me?” Elaya asked, not meeting my eyes.

“Yes, more than anything.” I admitted.

“It looks like you saved your honesty.” Elaya responded, turning to me and smiling. “I don’t dislike your possessive side. There is no reason that I wouldn’t happily be your slave, but only if you promise to have me forever.”

“I do.”

“I mean it… forever is forever. I don’t mean the rest of our lives.”

“Well, I mean, when we die…”

“Exactly! You have to find a way to live forever, and for me to live forever. I will be your slave for eternity, not a day less.”

“This…”

“Hmph…” Although she said that, she had a smile on her face and seemed genuinely happy. “The day isn’t getting any younger. Don’t you have a mission? I’ll be here when you get back. Think about it. Because once you take me… I’ll also take you, and I’ll never let you go.”

“Okay, I’ll think about it.”

I wanted to say yes right away. Every impulse in my body wanted to jump on it. What was the point of waiting? Would my mind really change? Thankfully, I managed to keep myself from jumping ahead. After offering to have babies with Ruby, I learned my lesson. I left Elaya, and then walked over to the rest of the girls.

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The old team was back together again. Thankfully, the girls didn’t use our recent revelations as a reason to postpone the trip. Perhaps, they even understood more about why this trip was necessary. I raised a hand, and then summoned a Portal. The group of us stepped through, and found ourselves in a town that was nearly unrecognizable from the one we had left two weeks ago.

“Come… this way.” Shao said.

I had sent Shao to scout a couple of places the last three days, and she had stopped here. She hadn’t said how the once small and quaint town that seemed oddly filled with incest had grown to the point where it was larger than the original Chalm. There were a few hundred residents. They had built a dozen more buildings, and even put up a small wall. It was an impressive feat, and more than I had expected of them.

We stopped soon, and I saw the familiar old man who was the leader of the village back when it could still be called a village. “My Lord returns!”

He bowed, and everyone around him bowed. It was enough to make me feel shy.

“Hey…” I said, feeling a bit awkward. “The place has changed.”

“After you encouraged us all to gather, and even went out of your way to save us, we have redoubled our efforts. We pushed the bandits out of our area and reclaimed as much as possible. Rather than form a bunch of small villages once again, we decided it’d be safer if we kept together. Thus… this city was born. Impressed?”

I had felt like I had kind of abandoned them, although, if you thought about it, it had only been a few weeks. Under normal circumstances, movements weren’t that fast. Most people didn’t have Portals that allowed them to jump around the country. Had I just made a round trip to Alerith and then back without any time in between, it probably would have taken a month. So, being back in two weeks probably felt like barely any time for them.

That also meant that although they cleared out the bandits, the reason the bandits haven’t retaliated yet might be because they’re waiting for a better time. This might be the best time to relocate.

“It is impressive,” I responded. “But, all of you need to…”

“Yes, welcome to the city of Deeksville!” He seemed to have been waiting to announce that.