The rest of the day goes by smoothly without much really happening.

Dokkan finishes her job, and I can now walk around in my old fully-human form without issues as long as I don't try to move my tail or use [Soul Manipulation] on my draconic parts.

[Jaleowzeh Magic] actually warps reality, so I can finger as many women as I want without shredding them into ribbons with my claws. I can also sit down on normal chairs again without having to care about my tail getting in the way.

The downside is that the girls actually find me far hotter in my weredragon form, and the dragon inside me gets a bit grumpy when his characteristics are suppressed.

The illusion is still useful due to how convenient it makes things for me, so I'll definitely use it a lot.

I call Almaria and give her a request: grow a portable house for me.

"'Portable'?" She flatly repeats and blinks blankly in disbelief.

I nod firmly and clarify, "I have a very large [Item Box], so I want a 'portable house' that I can store in it. We just need something more solid to replace our tents for whenever we sleep outside of the castle."

"Oh, I understand, my Lord," she softly responds with a polite nod.

"There's no need for anything fancy. Just the basics since we also have [Nature Magic], so we can grow whatever we might need later on. It also needs to be done fairly fast because we only hired Dokkan until the Lordship Ceremony, and that's the day after tomorrow."

She nods energetically. "Understood. I'll organize the Nature mages, and we'll work through the night." Then she bows and keeps her head low.

I cringe and look away as I apologize, "I'm sorry to give you this task so suddenly."

She raises her eyes to meet mine and adjusts her small glasses. "But you still gave it to me." Then she smiles cheekily and straightens her back.

I smile back and chuckle softly. I like her attitude.

For bath time, Alissa and Hana are too tired for anything, so I focus on the other girls.

I sink my claws onto Ciel's ass and do her on top of Lina.

The two Chimera maids that are attending us this time can't hold themselves back and openly do each other while they wait for us to finish, but we take so long that they end up finishing twice before it's time for them to clean us up.

The slender, Doberman-headed maid sniffs me, entranced by my smell, then she starts panting but holds it back and looks down in shame as she apologizes, "Forgive me, my Lord, but the rumors are true, and I find it hard to hold myself back. You're just too alluring to me."

"Any female maid can do whatever they wish with me and my wives. You don't need to hold yourself back," I magnanimously state.

She breathes in deeply, discreetly taking in the scent again, then forgoes the towel and uses her mouth to clean us up.

The other maid is more reserved and doesn't do anything lewd, letting her colleague do as much as she wants.

I know for a fact that they're both lower Chimera noblewomen, so it's a bit surprising to see that they're willing to do this kind of work.

Unfortunately, they're already spent and their desire is currently fairly low since they have just done each other twice, so I don't get to taste new a woman this time.

The rest of the girls don't want anything special right now, so they get the Tentacle Monster. And this kind of attention goes perfectly well with the not-Jacuzzi bath.

At dinner, we have a new guest that was invited by Hana. Romy, a spearwoman from our Lordsguard. She's a new recruit, but she's also an experienced mercenary, so she's adapting very well to her new position.

She's definitely exotic, though. She's a tall Asian from Wideberg. She has caramel-colored skin from working in the hot sun, black hair with a blue sheen from her dragonkin ancestors, and a fit body that's quite a bit more muscular than Hana's.

"What brought you so far from home?" I ask curiously.

"I heard that there was some trouble brewing around here, so I came and made a lot of money," she replies with a shrug and gives Hana a knowing smirk.

"That's exactly why Dad came here, too," Klein blurts out, then Romy raises an eyebrow at her, and Klein blushes as she realizes something. "Wait, not like that!"

There's a very profitable place for women in the army: prostitution. Especially when the troops are deployed somewhere without a brothel, the prostitutes can serve as a way to keep morale up and tension down. When Mavel still ruled and the soldiers were overworked protecting the town, the prostitutes saw a huge increase in business.

Romy can fight, and that's the only reason that she was accepted into the Lordsguard, but she also benefits from having a useful "second job."

And she does both of them very well.

Osaria and Roxanne join Hana and me after the first round, and we have a party right here at the dining table.

Romy's alluring smirk suddenly vanishes as she remembers something very important, "You're using a seed-killer, right?'

I point to the ring hanging from my neck, and she hums in understanding.

Ciel and Lina make bets on who's going to fall first, and Lina gets all of hers right while Ciel gets the last survivor wrong. Roxanne is just going with the flow, so she taps out first; then Osaria is next because her thirst has been somewhat lower now that I pound her every day; followed by Romy, since even though she has significant stamina, it isn't enough to compete with us; and finally, I give up last because I've already been ridden a few times today.

Hana stands victoriously on top of the multiple corpses dripping with fluids. She's the victor of the Love Battle Royale, and she receives a round of applause for her inspiring accomplishment.

I massage Romy caramel abs as I give her battle scars some gentle kisses.

"If everyone made love like you, I'd do it for free until I starved," Romy mumbles as her eyelids droop shut.

The girls are starting to get jealous, so I leave Romy and give some attention to Roxanne and Aoi, who each get half of my body to cuddle with.

Klein wants her share, too, so I assume direct control of Alissa and cuddle with her. The brown monkey girl is really tired today, so Alissa and I work together to [Massage] her entire body and help her relax.

"How's the Lordsguard treating you, Romy?" Yunia casually inquires.

"Non-stop training, though I can't complain since we're serving Lords," she drowsily replies and shrugs.

"I'm pretty sure all of our officers are elves. How would you compare them to human ones?" Her tone is entirely casual, but the contents make me turn to her and pay closer attention to the conversation.

Romy raises an eyebrow and wakes up a little. "Permission to speak freely?"

"Granted."

"Uptight, hot little assholes with tight, hot little assholes."

Well, it seems that the system could barely handle the nuance of her phrasing.

"I've been having to use the fake sword quite a lot, though. You elves are really damn loose," she adds with a grin.

"Hopefully, you can help 'loosen' them up," Hana follows suit with the innuendos as she smirks.

"I hope so, too," Yunia agrees with a wry smile. "But I mean for the 'uptight' part, specifically."

Romy turns her smirk towards Hana and shares some more of her perspective, "Snobby elves like to butt-love each other in their little circles. Nothing new about that, though they have been 'letting me in' more often."

Hana suddenly feels inspired. "Look at you, 'entering' their 'rings,' 'plowing' through their 'fields,' 'forcing' yourself upon their 'untouched and pure' elven traditions."

"I'm 'pollinating' their 'flowers,' 'fertilizing' them with my humble, human 'seed of knowledge.'"

Hana nods sagely. "Ah, yes. They must all have a 'share' of you. It'd be a waste if they never experienced the delight of 'enjoying' your 'person.'"

Romy opens her arms wide as she tries to look dignified and magnanimous. "I'm merely a worshiper of the Goddess of Love, bringing love and loosened butts to all."

Lina's Trivia: This isn't really blasphemy since the Goddess of Love was a well-known free-loving freak.

Yunia lets herself smile wryly for a short moment, then she continues, "But about a more serious matter, I do hope that you're all trying to integrate. It'd be bad for the cohesion of our troops if the different races refused to work together."

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

Romy shrugs. "We're doing fine, though the elves are still being elves."

What she said is just a bit worrying, though. If the elven soldiers aren't trying to meet the rest halfway, then they'll bring the whole Lordsguard down.

We retire to our room, and Romy returns to her barracks. Since we're just going to do our Lordsguard whenever we want, I feel like meeting with Hukarere and Kaatohe, but they're both with Hihiriwa, so they're on duty, though they are coming back tomorrow. I might just do them both together to save on time.

While the girls play around before calling it a day, I mess with my points in [Summoning Magic] to try to understand anything I can about [Otherwordly Summoning]. Its wording is different from [Summon Monster] or [Summon Elemental], so perhaps, there's something different about the way it actually works.

I meditate and reflect on my knowledge of [Summoning Magic] as I add and remove points, trying to detect any changes in my understanding of the magic school.

I feel a sort of "intuition" becoming stronger whenever I add more points, but it feels like it's almost impossible for me to derive any specific knowledge from that.

Someone taps my shoulder, and I open my eyes to find Yunia gazing kindly at me. She offers me a small piece of simple cloth with a circle of blood painted on it.

"Let's test out [Disruption Field]," she proposes, and I accept because it's a more efficient use of my time.

While this test is informative, it's also painful as hell.

I whimper like a kicked puppy as my entire draconic hand twinges in pain. It interrupted [Fireball] and [Lightning Bolt] perfectly, no matter what way I used to cast it, but it had also increasingly irritated every last atom in my hand.

Ciel inspects the affected area with concern. She's trying to remain clinical, but her heart is filled with pity, and she's trying her best to help me. [Heal], [Refresh Body], and [Purify Body] just don't seem to have any actual effect on the pain, though MP potions do ease it a bit.

"L-let's try this," Yunia suddenly suggests, then a blue, glowing, spiritual hand grabs my own as she uses [Spirit Touch]. Her heart isn't aching as much as Ciel's is, but like with all of the girls, her protective, motherly instincts have flared up from seeing my cute, pained face.

And just like that, in just a single moment, my fearsome, draconic image is shattered. Considering how every part of my body is being tightly hugged, sinking into many pairs of pillows of varying sizes and shapes, it isn't so bad…

Yunia's spirit hand dulls the pain, and I finally understand what happened: my soul was damaged by [Disruption Field] because my hands aren't fully physical anymore.

The physical body serves as a "hiding place" or "shield" for the spirit, and now that my body is slightly magical, it leaves my spirit slightly vulnerable. This fact is also why Yunia could potentially kill me with [Disruption Field], and why I need to learn how to resist it.

It's not like I'd be left unscathed if I didn't have [Mana Body]. Long exposure to [Disruption Field] would give me mana radiation sickness just like when I was bad at using the mana circulation routine.

Aoi helps out by using her own [Soul Manipulation] to envelop my hand, which gives me a boner, but it's quite easy to manage, so I keep myself from pouncing on her. Her method has a similar effect to [Spirit Touch], though it's more on the removing the pain side than actually healing my spirit.

All spirits heal on their own if damaged unless they were altered by something like [Alteration Magic], so this test isn't going to leave me with any lasting damage.

I do have to use [Pain Resistance] to endure it, though.

Today is the 10th.

Klein wakes me up quite vigorously.

I pat her head and lovingly play with her brown monkey ears, but my heart pangs with a single throb of pain. The dragon is still asleep, so this is my human side wanting for more than what I can have from her.

I'll still pay the price for getting too attached for a while, but it's manageable. Either my time in the maze has dulled the emotional pain of it, or my draconic side increased my resistance.

My "Strength", [Mana Body], and [Dragon Transformation] increased by 1 (now 15, 3 and 6). I've finally reached the end of my training, though I'll still try to keep leveling my Transformation. I'm now bigger than my human form if I stand on my feet, so I want to grow until I'm larger than Aoi and can fully dominate her at her largest.

"Yes, please!" Aoi shouts happily. Not having to hold back during our "wrestling" will be quite refreshing for her.

Alissa increased her [Illusion Magic] by 2 (now 2+13). It seems that she learned a lot from watching Dokkanchee, even though they aren't using the same type of illusion magic.

Roxanne increased her [Space Magic] by 1 (now 4+11). I've also added some more points to it to help her with [Warp Space].

Hana increased her [Two-Handed Sword Use] and [Draconic Body] by 1 (now 10 and 5).

Lina increased her [Axe Use] and [Throw] by 1 (now 11+14 and 3+7).

Yunia increased her [Sword Use] and [Two-Handed Sword Use] by 1 (now 3+12 and 3+17).

Though we've had a lot of free time to train and get used to our armor, we now have to actually organize the Ceremony, so we'll most likely be busy for the whole day.

The morning starts off very chilly since it rained during the night, so I go down to the kitchen to request that they make something warmer today.

Below the ground floor is the kitchen, a huge hall with all sorts of ovens, grills, smokers, stoves, family-sized cooking pots, and an army of elves working at the tables, preparing the meals for everyone in the castle. They wear simple, white uniforms that cover everything but their hands and heads, so I guess not even the elves want to deal with burns from kitchen accidents.

The room is far cooler than I expected it to be, but then I notice the large fans of palm leaves on the ceiling that are pulling the air up, and a very fresh breeze coming in through the grates on the floor. I guess they know about the dwarven wisdom of air cycling.

A clumsy elf cuts his finger when he sees me entering the room, and the sight of his red blood wakes up the dragon within me, exciting it quite a bit.

I glide towards the cook with [Telekinesis] and touch his hand with a claw, then I cast [Heal].

The cook shouts in surprise, then bows at a right angle as he exclaims, "Ah! My Lord! I'm honored that you've graced me with your aid!"

"Rise," I gently order, then I just give him a kind smile and leave in search of Krysta.

I find her sternly instructing some young elven apprentices on how to not screw up the bread like they just did. Imperial bread is made in some different way that they just neglected, or something like that.

As I walk towards them, I get a bit annoyed at the fact that everyone seems to stop and look over at me for a moment, but I can't really do anything about that since this might be the first time that they've ever seen me.

Krysta suddenly notices my approach and gives me a sweet smile.

"My Lord. To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" She politely asks, the angry look from before completely gone, though I don't think the quick switch was unnatural.

"I just wanted to request a specific recipe from you. I think it'll suit the weather today pretty well," I softly respond, trying not to scare the terrified apprentices further.

She raises her eyebrows in amusement. "Oh? I know you have a good taste for food, so I'm curious to see what challenge you're going to give me this time."

I chuckle softly. "Not much of a challenge, I'm afraid. Also, how about you and Anton join us so that you can have a taste of it, too?"

She nods energetically. "Sounds great to me."

"Ah, there's just one thing I should ask you about…" Her smile almost fades away completely, then she takes a step closer to me and starts whispering, "Did something happen between you and Klein? She's suddenly become a lot more serious lately."

I hold myself back from cringing since the watchful elves might misinterpret that and make the rumor mills start spinning, then I answer her in a low and casual tone, "We just settled our relationship into something more casual while reaffirming that we're still close friends. She doesn't want to officially join the harem, and I don't want to force her into it."

She opens her eyes wide and lets her mouth hang open in shock. "I'm surprised, my Lord, that you'd do something like that. Especially after… becoming more draconic."

I smile a bit sadly as I confess, "I wanted to, but I won't force her to commit, so I'll simply cherish her while she still wants to stay close to us."

Krysta stays silent for a moment, simply humming in agreement and nodding while she thinks. "Thank you for keeping what's best for her in mind."

I simply nod back, and we drop the matter. The loneliness I felt when I was trapped inside the maze taught me that I should always value what I have, and I won't jeopardize my relationship with Klein by forcing her into the harem.

After we let the seriousness of that exchange fade away, I teach her how to make waffles, then how to garnish them with Chantilly and a sweet, syrupy sauce, which she flavors with either not-strawberry or not-blueberry.

We bring it back upstairs together and enjoy a happy breakfast. Klein's "seriousness" certainly isn't a side that she shows to us.

The castle starts to bustle with activity, and with eight leaders working in perfect sync, we can get things done and organized in record time, reducing our workload by a factor of eight, though I can't really go outside the castle yet, so I won't be able to help out as much as I could.

Dokkanchee works on our bedroom while we wait until the portable house is done, and I make sure that the room has been completely cleaned of all evidence of our love before she enters. I really don't want to make the old woman suffer through that.

I go down to our underground dungeon to get some emellanat shackles for our [Otherworldly Summoning] test. The guard suddenly becomes stiff and very quiet when I state my request, so I think that he misunderstood the purpose.

"I'm testing some dangerous spells, so I want to have these as a guarantee that I won't mess things up," I explain as the guard hands me the shackles, and he hums in understanding, then smiles awkwardly. "We already have enough chains to roleplay as much as we want, so we don't really need anything like these for that."

Then I leave before the guard can even process what I just said.

I test the emellanat with Jarn's help, and I quickly learn that this metal actually hurts my skin, lightly bruising it after just a minute of contact. If I ever get sent to prison and shackled with these, I feel that my hands would end up just falling off after a few days. There is a skill to resist the emellanat, though it also makes its interrupting properties less effective, so there's no way for me to escape the pain.

It takes a bit for me to build up enough motivation to proceed, but I manage to start testing the shackles as a way to interrupt my spellcasting, though I might need to get some thicker shackles since the metal heats up when they absorb spells, and there's a possibility that they'll actually melt if the spell is too powerful.

Midway through my tests, Sandoro arrives at my office to discuss the Ceremony taking place tomorrow, so I allow him in without a second thought.

I realize too late that seeing your Lord chained, with his wrists bruised, while locked in a room alone with bimbo-Yunia might be a very odd sight to witness. He doesn't show it, though, aside from taking a moment before coming in.

Just as we start talking, Ereia sends us a letter telling me that some nasty rumors are being spread among the commoners about me. Half-truths twisted to make me look bad. Though they aren't blatantly false, she suspects that their origin is artificial.

"The opposing Lords can't openly rebel without severe consequences, so they might be going for the long play where they try to slowly erode our reputation," Yunia theorizes through [Bind].

"And what do we do to put a stop to these rumors?" Alissa immediately questions, her voice full of heat and hate.

Yunia smirks internally. "We do something that we're getting quite good at: we put on a show."

And with almost perfect timing, our fleet gets back with a glittering prize for us, so I send Hana and Lina to greet them.

Intermission 19 – Sandoro

My Lord is an eccentric man. Very, very eccentric.

I knew that it would be so since the first time I fought him, but Weepers' Dream, he's eccentric.

In the end, his personal behavior doesn't matter if he can make the Western High Forest flourish. I believe in Lord Yulania, and I trust her judgment. The Ryder family is young, and they will definitely inject new life into elven society.

However, I definitely won't let my wife ever meet with him if I can avoid it.

I remember the stack of protocols I still have to review and hold back a sigh. I'm not completely confident in our security measures, but I don't think I ever will be. Knowing what happened at the Innocent Nymph makes me believe the heretics to be capable of anything, and how do you even try to prepare against that?!

I just have to be ready for everything, right?

I chuckle internally, and it lightens the weight on my shoulders.

Only the Gods can keep the heretics away, or at least reveal them for us to see…

The memory of my Keystone surfaces in my mind. It's a simple, unadorned inverted trapezoid stone, a small decoration for my desk, but it still holds a powerful meaning. I always found it odd that the God of Law would choose a symbol from imperial architecture instead of something elven, but I'm only now starting to realize the importance of it.

I look out through the window of the office and stare at the ships lowering onto the sky docks.

I'd better start praying more.