...

A week later, (Outer Circle or) the private lounge in the Wintersleep Hotel

Every few hundred years, a new literary era formed, which showed the current mindset of a generation led mainly by young nobility. These people expressed themselves through various forms of poetry, fairy tales, stage plays, art, music, and literary works in general.

Like with every new era, negative criticism from more senior scholars was expected, as they showed no understanding of the youth and why they had such an ethos at the time.

In comparison, looking retrospectively at an era made it much easier to capture its true essence and see its appeal at the time. There was a reason for this, though, since those ideas didn't come from anywhere and usually arose because of other factors like the economy, culture, or politics at the time. Consequently, having all the facts available to peruse always made it easier, and the subsequent opinions became much more understandable.

However, there was one literary era that Narsiz despised, unable to find anything of substance there. It showed the suffering of commoners and their hard and simple work as beautiful and authentic, while the higher-class work, like in governance, was depicted as fake and soul-crushing.

Paintings from this era were especially cringe-inducing. They depicted young nobility posing and dressed as adventurers, milkmaids, and craftsmen but in such expensive clothing that commoners of said profession would need decades to afford such attire, if at all. Fortunately, it was mostly a trend in central Mal-Gil, with the occasional Earl's puppy in Moorgrel having their phase.

This specific literary era, called White Blacksmith, began with the portrait of a young nobleman, a cat-kin, who wore a complete blacksmith set, showing him hammering at a piece of cheap iron.

Stylistically, it was beautiful, with vibrant colors and a lot of symbolic meaning packed into every centimeter of said painting, though the meaning was the product of the time.

The young nobleman ordered an excessively costly blacksmithing set, only to wear it once for the portrait. The apron and gloves were pure white, visibly made from legacy wings and other rare materials. The hammer was made of adamantium, and his eye protection was a magic item that created a thin and transparent hardened mana layer to protect the eyes by using specially refined mana gems as a power source.

This painting also became exemplary of that era, and little changed throughout said period. Therefore, the artists of that era who engaged in the White Blacksmith trend weren't remembered fondly, and later scholars' commentary usually mocked or ridiculed their conduct in those arts.

However, not everything was terrible since Narsiz fondly remembered a drama from this era written by the young nobleman who posed as the White Blacksmith. It was so awful that it became good again. Every time he thought about it, he wanted to reread it to have a good laugh.

'...and Charlotté looked Josephine in the eyes, begging and crawling before her, pleading and crying. Her face, full of ink stains and her clothes ripped, showed her ample bosom, not able to hide her shame for failing the task given to file a tax deduction. She says, her lips protruding forward, her tears slowly falling on her decollete; please save me from the monster, which is the feather and ink. All I have left are these hands and the smithy I inherited from my dearest Father! I will do anything if you let me leave!'

It was an idiotic drama about lesbians and how they ran away, becoming blacksmiths because their jobs as administrators were too much, depicting them as if they were getting constantly sexually assaulted and raped while writing reports.

Regardless of Narsiz's derision against it, many saw genuine romanticism, especially in the portrait of the young nobleman working as a blacksmith.

If Narsiz was charitable, he understood that the boy hated his work and saw a certain beauty in the simplicity of a commoner banging a hammer repeatedly against a piece of metal without understanding the hard work behind it.

The same was true for all those eras depicting Knights unrealistically and somewhat romantically. He never understood what was so romantic about endlessly training and getting pummeled so he could then fight monsters, demons, or other sapient races who would pummel him again. If one were good, they could pummel back, though.

However, why did Narsiz suddenly think about the White Blacksmith era? Was it that he needed a good laugh? Maybe, but the main reason was that he felt slightly overwhelmed and wanted to escape toward the safety of the ample bosom those humble crafting professions emitted so seductively at the moment.

For the last three hours, Narsiz led a meeting, reviewing extensively all the likely trade and supply routes by sea. He studied the night before, barely having time to sleep so that he could inform all the listeners as well as possible.

However, those who were listeners didn't have an easier time since they wrote it all down and would need to later explain that information to whoever they represented or worked with, or worse, use it for something practical like trying to buy the correct sea vessels by using his hastily put together assessment.

Due to the specific circumstances surrounding the project, Narsiz was forced to manage it like that. Usually, he would get as many experts as needed so they could advise him on those topics he had no idea about.

For obvious reasons, it wasn't wise to involve even more people in what was essentially a conspiracy, risking far worse consequences than lack of sleep and the delusional thoughts he experienced occasionally.

As such, while he wrote on the blackboard and discussed the topics he barely understood with people who were as stressed, if not more, than him, he started to daydream of being in the painting White Blacksmith.

However, he didn't want to be the nobleman who pretended to be a blacksmith but instead, the piece of iron, longing for his head to be smashed in, preferably by an expert and not a pompous little asshole.

Crack! Clack!

With a little too much pressure, he accidentally broke the chalk in half. Fortunately, Narsiz was done summarizing the key points of his analysis.

"Okay, I guess we clarified the transportation route problem for now..." Narsiz sat down on the couch's armrest, looking tired, barely able to stop the jitter he felt from the overconsumption of apple sugar and, ironically enough, a brand of wake-up tea called Jitearry, "...I need a break."

Narsiz's tail hung low. He needed little willpower to control it, not swinging from happiness, as he hadn't felt any for the last week since the day he decided to take the lead.

Fortunately, he didn't suffer alone, making it somewhat bearably, hoping it would be easier to kill each other in some kind of suicide pact than to do it himself, should he reach a point of overwhelming despair.

After the first meeting, when everyone was present, half were left now, with many interchanging periodically. The camp's representatives were now three in number, with Arlgo and William entirely gone as they decided to attend to their other businesses, slowly closing many down and gathering their people.

The fire-djinn sisters also halved, with Lila doing much organizing work in the background, like buying rations and other miscellaneous items. While it sounded stupid to purchase perishable goods now, there was a good reason for it: preparation and testing.

After no discussion at the second meeting, Alexander stood suddenly up, saying that he wanted the camp to start preparing and them to test out how they would supply them. While he acted like some retard, he had a point.

Narsiz agreed that starting their supply operations early on could be beneficial. This would make mistakes more forgiving, and they could learn how to do it with little to no stakes, collecting experience in that sense for later.

As such, they already put 1,000 average gold coins into the camp, wanting to finance them for the next months with medicine, food, casual clothing, simple training manuals, and other necessities they would need later.

Knowing Alexander's finances now, this sum was worth the initial risk and the practice they would get from it.

This investment was also the reason half the people were gone. Only one of Alexander's retainers remained: Aurum, who occasionally switched with Ariana, but for now, only Aurum was here.

Everyone worked and tried their best to quickly gather information, connections, and resources so everything could work as it should. Such thoughts made Narsiz's tail move slightly from side to side, feeling slight happiness. It could also be the jitter from the tea since his eye was also twitching slightly.

Clank

"Hello, honey!"

"I am soooo hungry!"

However, his thoughts about his deteriorating health were interrupted by the door swinging wide open. Sarah and Linuel strutted cheerfully inside, greeting them and immediately offloading everything they had bought in their early morning errand.

Linuel went to the bar counter in the private lounge, taking out all sorts of food, mainly from larger restaurants and other establishments that could produce much food quickly and reliably. However, she only bought unfinished food samples. It was for a good reason.

Alexander's maids took the food, brought it into the kitchen, and then tried their best to prepare it as simply and tasty as possible, recreating what the camp had available so they could later teach them how to do it in the best way possible.

Besides that, they had already started delivering rations to the camp. However, they were terrible, making everyone agree to put more coin into better food, not wanting to ruin the increased motivation there.

Those were bought from the places that supplied adventurers and mercenaries, which explained their suicidal conduct in battle and their greed for more coin. Nobody wanted to go back to such terrible food.

Simultaneously, Sarah immediately went to the giant table in the corner of the room, dumping various parchments from her spatial pouch onto it. She had bought them from all around Wolfsteeth, which the camp's representatives used to note down information.

Why not paper? It was a safety measure since the pieces of paper could be traced back to them. It was a little redundant and required a lot of time and work, but safety, in this case, was always a priority.

After they were done, Sarah was the first to walk casually toward a couch, plopping on it and almost toppling it, "Whoa!" Surprising herself as she barely reeled the couch forward again.

Sarah had become massive, undergoing a growth spurt, following their Father's constitution, who was ~2.1 m in height (~6.9 ft). As such, she towered Narsiz, with her being ~1.85m (~6.2 ft), growing from her initial ~1,7m (5,6 ft).

Furthermore, in addition to her height, she also became much more musculous. She had broad shoulders and refined muscles, making her look incredibly buffed.

Sarah's growth in strength and constitution began when she started an insane fitness routine designed by Alexander. Narsiz visited her sometimes as he was also doing fitness since he needed more core strength for his techniques. Because of that, he witnessed her bench pressing 500kg (~1100 lbs) for half an hour straight, which was indeed an experience to behold.

However, because of her arguable self-harming training methods, she regularly ripped her muscles and tendons apart, broke her bones, and even made some blood vessels pop, making her bleed excessively. Besides that, she started drinking various deadly potions before and while training. Obviously, Ipe was there to heal her daily so she could train as usual the next day.

Sarah followed Alexander's routine, focusing only on her physical fitness. She even wore his old weight increase artifacts day and night, copying him for some unknown reason.

The Leonandra household, while heavily specializing in martial arts and movement techniques, wouldn't train their physical strength too much but instead concentrate on their energy control. However, she wanted to focus on her energy training after her first mating season, saying it felt right.

Fortunately, she also now wore clothes that fit her better. Wearing a summer dress would look comical since she had lost her girly figure. She wore a more casual look, like a lazy adventurer, with baggy leather pants, a shirt with the upper buttons opened, showing her ever-growing chest, and adventurer boots.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

However, when Sarah looked toward Alexander's maids, she became slightly nervous and shy, making the scene enjoyable to watch. Whenever she wanted something from them, she became unsure how to act.

Even though she could now rip their heads out without using any energy, like a giant, she became much more nervous, not knowing how to act with her newly developed strength and stature, far from her brazen self some time ago.

Fortunately, the maids were quite friendly toward her, as Sarah would probably starve otherwise. She now ate at least 15,000 calories a day, and because of that, the kitchen was at work day and night, without a break, trying to feed everyone in their mansion.

'She looks like she hasn't eaten anything for weeks.'

Sarah nervously looked towards one of Alexander's maids, trying to sound confident but friendly, making her almost bite her tongue, "Could you please..."

However, Francesca didn't care, as she was running around, already under stress, organizing all the parchments into neat little stacks and switching them up to make every stack as various as possible.

After a short moment, she looked towards another maid, who was bringing food into the kitchen and screaming at her, "Cloelle! Slaughter a pig for the goliath and give her some of that sugary wine! This will keep her from eating us!"

Cloelle put everything down and brought Sarah a wine bottle, smiling at her, "He... Here you go, Ms. Sar... Sarah. Please don't eat o... our hat... hatchlings while we cook for you."

Sarah smiled at her, opening the bottle, "Thanks..." She scratched her neck sheepishly, with Cloelle already back to do her tasks.

The maids tried to be more casual toward her since she became so meek, wanting her to get used to her new body. Looking at Sarah, she seemed okay with that, even liking and slowly adjusting to her physical stature.

Plop

Sarah opened the bottle and drank it like water without even taking a breather in between. Furthermore, the wine had a ton of herbs, which would burn his throat after a sip, but she was okay, probably only wanting to drink it because of the sugar.

Her behavior was quite cute, initially making Narsiz skeptical that she would even want to join their scheme. Besides her changed personality due to her body undergoing extreme stress, there were also those mental scars from their Mother's punishment when she did something far less extreme.

However, while reluctant, she still joined them after ensuring they genuinely needed her. Narsiz felt terrible to put her in such a position, but he needed her, as every person in their scheme was helpful, and he barely knew anyone he could trust to such an extent. Because of that, she was now his personal guard, along with Linuel.

Looking at Sarah and being genuinely thankful for her coming to his aide, he suddenly blushed as a specific scent invaded his nose, having one of his moments. He stared at her growing breasts, not able to look away, and felt a strange pressure, not knowing how to release it. The chalk he still held crumbled into dust, slowly dropping to the floor.

Narsiz gulped, unable to look away, suddenly flinched when someone touched his shoulder, "What?!"

Looking to the side, he saw Linuel smiling at him and rubbing his back, "Are you fine?"

Narsiz nodded, trying to regain his composure, but before he could say anything, Linuel sighed, shaking her head, "You look terrible, and your smell is something else. Look..." She nodded toward Sarah, who had also stopped drinking, and blushed, looking down, "...we can smell that you are going through something terrible, okay?"

Narsiz closed his eyes and tried to calm down, slowly counting down from ten like his younger brother suggested. His pheromones were going insane, and even though it was months away, he already had this annoying sensation, but he couldn't do anything about it.

Worse, it happened so often that Narsiz thought about isolating himself in some hut at the estate. He also stopped his communal bathing entirely since he stared at his siblings and parents, barely able to control himself.

There was even a shameful moment when he accidentally touched his Mother's bottom, apologizing afterward excessively while she expressed understanding. Other times, he barely controlled himself in not touching Alexander's retainers, like Quill.

Fortunately, Alexander and Janina had barely any scent he was attracted to. Still, he knew the closer his first mating season was, the more sensitive his senses would become, even wanting to go after far younger ones.

Fortunately, Linuel was there to calm him down, and he was even luckier since she became his personal guard, too. She accepted it immediately, even before telling her the whole story, that they were watched by Lili and blackmailed, only to be saved by Alexander.

Initially, she panicked for hours, always mumbling that she would die a horrible death. Now, though, she was fine, even excited since his Mother asked her to look after him, seeing how he sometimes became absentminded and sometimes had problems controlling himself.

Opening his eyes again, Sarah stood before him, blushing and smiling sheepishly, "Sorry, Narsi, I know how you feel."

She was also about to go through her first mating season, far earlier than Linuel and him. This made her an outlier, especially since she wasn't having the same outbursts as him. The reason could also be that she trained ten hours daily and could calm down through this.

Narsiz sighed, apologizing too, "I should apologize. It is obviously my fault, and I can't just control it."

Linuel came closer, taking him around his waist and pushing toward her, "Don't worry, we can train as much as you want later, okay?"

For one moment, Narsiz felt loved and valued in an environment he hadn't expected. Everyone, even the ones outside his family, understood him and acted cordial, even though he became much more unhinged in his phases.

However, his pheromones went wild again, making Sarah and Linuel blush heavily, 'I really need this to end as fast as possible.'

From Linuel's telling, Fiorello was the same, a wreck the year before the mating season. Apparently, the higher the charisma and the more one could emit, the more intense the first mating season would be.

Narsiz didn't like the sound of it, even thinking of rushing into it by drinking a potion, but he also had some clearer moments, refusing to do something this stupid since his goal was to get the skill.

Clank

"Yo! I really had a shit day, needing to burn down some fucking tree..." Alexander stopped suddenly, sniffing the air, "...what's the weird smell here? It's like Mom at breakfast when Dad is at home..."

Alexander shrugged, ignoring it quickly, and waltzed inside, coming directly from the Copper house, ruling on some cases. He still had his duty to do a case once a week. As such, he made a deal to do a small one per week for the next months while doing this whole scheme.

However, he also needed to manage his other projects, which required his involvement. There was a new and very prominent one in the estate that took a lot of time: cultivating slimes that ate feces so they could produce certain ingredients.

Now, using the new ingredient, he could produce even better paper and sell it for more. His focus on this new undertaking made sense since it was his most important source of income, which could finance more projects.

As such, seeing the new pieces of paper, they were much better, and the mana inside increased significantly. Even their Mother allowed it, though, for her, it was more vital that Alexander would finish his Nobless Oblige.

'He looks even worse than me.'

Narsiz sighed, also seeing Alexander's tiredness and stress. He was jittering slightly from all the tea he drank and his lack of sleep. He was probably working almost the whole day on either this scheme or his other projects without a break, while everyone else at least had something to relax after ten to twelve hours of going through these sessions.

He smiled at him, showing compassion and wanting to be sensitive to how everyone was to him, "Do you want a break or a nap? We can continue in an hour or two if you want."

Alexander plopped on the couch while opening the upper button of his blazer. A maid immediately brought him some wake-up tea, which smelled incredibly strong. Taking a sip, he looked around, with giant bags under his eyes, greeting everyone with a nod and sighing, "Do I look like some puppy? Are you taking a break now, or can we continue? I hope I didn't interrupt you."

Narsiz sighed, smiling dejectedly, knowing Alexander was not in the mood for such things. Everyone else either chuckled or sighed.

As such, the previously created moment, which was adorable, was destroyed. With that out of the way and his mood dropping, he ignored it and concentrated on what was important. He stood up and walked to the blackboard, starting the next session, "All right, now about the kinds of sea vessels..."

Narsiz called a maid to him, giving her a small spatial pouch from which she took out many drawings of ships of all kinds. In addition to his technical illustration, various pieces of information were written down, like the average price, their positives and negatives, size, etc.

She distributed it to every group, giving them a copy so everyone could look at it while he explained their rough specifications and gave his opinion on them.

His idea for conducting the meetings and deciding on things was to get a rough idea of what everyone wanted, eliminate every disagreement, and repeat the process multiple times, going into more detail in every iteration.

It was working, though their process had a lot of redundancy and unnecessary work. Yet, it was a must for them to do it like that. Everyone needed enough time to digest the information and work out current arrangements.

Usually, it was much more straightforward, but since the parties were new to each other, every new topic they chose became a little awkward because they would need to compare their information, which cost a lot of time.

They discussed weapons, armor, food, logistics, building materials, seeds, potions, temporary housing arrangements, etc. There were too many things to count. Since the camp would literally start a new civilization there and never had done anything rudimentary like farming, they also needed to gather all the information about those subjects.

Fortunately, Alexander took care of this massive undertaking. Since he built schools, he ordered his underlings to gather all the needed information, with detailed instructions that even puppies could understand. His reason was that he would use those as material for the lessons and just copy them for the camp, too.

He also did everything else, splurging the funds excessively to quicken every process. Narsiz agreed that throwing some gold coins in a merchant's face was easier than looking for weeks for someone cheaper and comparing dozens of them.

There was also a slight problem with the supply of food and other resources, which Alexander temporarily solved. He would buy some resources disguised as educational material, siphon part of them away, and ship them toward the camp.

While everyone agreed to use the fire-djinn sisters primarily for such things, they quickly became overwhelmed because they underestimated the camp population. Therefore, they decided to help them until they temporarily solved their problem.

Alexander, for Narsiz, was like a Core. While unpredictable and socially inept when he was more casual, he was also a massive help, which he tanked him, creating more awkward moments.

One of those was that his younger brother couldn't sleep alone. He was always visiting his siblings at night and cuddling with them. While cute, this became a problem for Narsiz, who was going through a terrible phase.

When Linuel was away, he also came to him, making him unable to sleep because of what he was experiencing, which also made him go insane. Yet, he let him while controlling himself.

Regardless, every time an issue popped up, a certain pattern emerged of where it came from: They were too young and inexperienced. Everyone, even the camp representatives, never did something like this, making it a novel experience.

As such, Narsiz tried his best to adjust the plan and address the issues. He was trying to simultaneously accommodate three different parties with all their problems, worries, and duties, making his work quite the headache.

The other problem was that the two parties were only representatives. After days of exchanges, the camp representatives always needed to return and present the current dealings to their council.

It consisted of the most powerful and successful of their camp, who also had thriving businesses in the Teeth cities, though in the underworld.

However, when they gave them the first supplies, it became a simple formality. They were also strong supporters of Alexander's idealogy, making it, again, redundant work.

Regardless of the efficiency issue, it was also somewhat important. They informed not only the council but also the residents in general, making them much more motivated.

Nonetheless, when they returned the next time, Narsiz would send Sarah away with Aurum, who would represent them and see if what the camp representatives said was true.

While Narsiz could remedy the problem with the camp and even try to gauge some information from them, the other and rather unexpected issue came from the fire-djinn sisters, Helena and Lila.

They also needed to go back now and then, report superficially to some of their retainers and aides, and try to organize everything on their side while they were there.

As such, Narsiz decided to go there the next time, presenting himself as a future neighbor and trying to perceive their notions about those girls and his household. Later, he could tell his Mother he liked it there and wanted to administrate the region close to them. It was a good plan.

Everything was perfect. Narsiz held this project like a broken vase, only glued together by their youthful energy. Unlike Huxian, who was apparently terrible regarding her duties as Lady, he could do it, making himself envision in a spurt of insanity as better than her.

Narsiz was proud of himself. He loved what he did, no matter how tired or jittery he was. He held everything together and moved it forward at an ideal pace, having all variables covered, or so he thought.

However, one variable, impossible to predict, gave him an ominous foreboding. Who? His brother had been smirking for the last ten minutes, ignoring what he talked about, 'I... please don't.'

Against his better judgment, he asked Alexander, still feeling something amiss, "What are you smirking at? Is something wrong with the ships? Even though one is too big, we can ignore it and concentrate on the smaller merchant ones."

Alexander emerged from his stupor, shaking his head and smiling widely while his tail went wild, "Nope! I have nothing against the frigate but am waiting to announce something. It can wait after you are done, boss."

Narsiz sighed, "Don't call me that and..." He looked at his pocket watch, "...do you want to do it now?..." He looked around the room, and everyone was quite tired, "...We definitely need another break."

Alexander himself looked around and shrugged, "Okay, chief..." He stood up and went to the table before him, pulling something out of his spatial pouch and smiling widely at the camp representatives, "...I have a surprise for you, my dear militia group."

Narsiz frowned, as he could only imagine something nonsensical or terrifying that would make him work through the nights again to devise new timetables and schedules.

With the worst thoughts creeping into the forefront of his mind, the philosophy of the White Blacksmith era slowly tempted him, making him imagine himself as a cobbler—a pretty good one at that.

Makol stopped writing and looked at Alexander, already overwhelmed by all the support. He visibly suppressed his frown since he also needed to present it all to the camp. In a chat with him, it seemed that his people became more eager than ever to rush into battle immediately, and the more aid they got, the more they felt genuine gratitude, wanting to pay it back.

However, it wasn't that easy because of all the overwhelming planning, with him needing to calm them down every time, sounding annoyed, "Mr. Alexander... by all due respect, we have so much to look at; there is probably nothing..."

Alexander interrupted him by pulling out a small leather pouch and throwing it onto the table. Some weird powdery blackish substance spilled out. He sounded excited, "Who wants to guess what this is?"

Everyone looked at it, not understanding it like Narsiz. The camp was similarly confused, with Petra wanting to touch it but getting her hand smacked away by Jorsh. However, when Makol saw this, he smiled from ear to ear, "Black powder?"

Narsiz looked at it in shock and back at Alexander, not believing it, knowing that he would have weeks without much sleep before him, 'Maybe tailor?'