"Arriving to the court of Acting Duke Eris Nukem of the Red Wind," the herald called out, "Archmage Lucifer Morningstar, and Knight-Bachelor Rachel Miranda of the Black Wind."

I hadn't just been making textile machinery in the past month. A lot of the textile-making process was just repetitive labor invested over time that I couldn't reasonably speed up, and just had to wait for it to be finished. Well, that couldn't be sped up until I finally figured out how to turn washed fibers into spools of roving fit for a spinning jenny, but I hadn't made that much progress on it.

So, I did some other stuff, too. Some of it was still fibercrafting; I bribed the town hatmaker with extra materials to teach me how to make sturdy, good-looking felt hats, and she helped me make my wizard hat- which I fucking adored, honestly, even though I recognized that it was not terribly practical as everyday wear, because the point came up a foot and a half above my head, and if I combined that with my new boots, it would clear eight feet off the ground and brush against any ceilings that weren't in the halls of nobility. I certainly wouldn't be getting through doors without ducking like my name was Donald.

But plenty of it wasn't. Some of it was securing a big supply of sawdust and woodchips-

"We usually burn it and spread the ash and char on our gardens," Rebecca had said at the time. "That's mostly because we don't have anything else to do with it. Take as much as you want."

-so that I had plenty of material to work with when I was trying to make wood paper. Sure, my first batch turned out really shitty, but then I read a book on alchemy and played with a houseplant using biosculpting, and I finally figured out how to properly delignify- that is, remove the lignin from- the sawdust and wood chips, leaving me with fairly pure, pale, off-white cellulose. And that is where I made a lot of paper, exploiting my elemental manipulation abilities to suck the water straight out of the freshly-screened paper, pressing it in the process without having to put it on felt in a drying press. A much more efficient process for making paper by hand, but it was still making paper by hand, and I would really like to be able to one day foist this work off onto a machine as well. Unfortunately, I hadn't spent nearly as much time figuring out how paper mills work.

So, after I'd spent a few days figuring out how to make paper, and then making a lot of it, I moved onto my next project, copying books without having to pick up a pen. That one was... I'm not gonna lie, it hurt me inside because I pretty much completely gave up on using mundane technology and just used magic, but ultimately, I wanted copies of precious books from the Duke's library more than I wanted to prove how big-brained I was by building a fucking photocopier from scratch. And hey, copies I now had- mostly of rare, potent, heirlooms-of-a-mighty-ducal-house-quality skill books.

See, "learning by doing" is good and works just fine, but some things you can't practically do all that often. So you've gotta learn by studying. And so, in this wack-ass LitRPG system I lived in and tried to avoid thinking about too much, there existed a Teaching skill that, at a sufficiently high level, could be used to write skill books for any skill they had. Once they were written, someone else could read the skill book and get XP for the skill in question, modified by the author's Teaching skill and the reader's Learning skill, and limited to the author's own skill level in the skill being taught.

As a reminder, House Nukem was fairly fucking wealthy, and had good relationships with a port city that also housed the Grand Temple. So naturally, they had rather a lot of opportunities to acquire high-grade skill books that could carry a reader pretty far. Including a lovingly-produced copy of a Teaching skill book penned by the long-dead founder of the modern Grand Temple of Kotor, who'd written the book after finally attaining a Teaching skill of one hundred. As a guest of House Nukem sponsored by a well-regarded knight, I was allowed into the library, and could read the books. I wasn't allowed to take the books out of the library, but when I asked the librarian, I'd been informed that I was very much allowed to copy any of the books and then take those copies out with me. A policy that was either incredibly generous, or that was not designed with semi-independent void users who figured out how to copy books with a single spell in mind.

So now, all of those legendary skill books- and a few less-than-legendary ones, because I had spare paper and didn't feel like leaving skill books on the table- had been copied onto wood pulp paper, which in turn had been enchanted for durability and waterproofness, and bound into books that I now owned, safely tucked away in my void space where I could access and read them whenever and wherever I wanted.

"Archmage Morningstar," Eris Nukem intoned from the throne. "Sir Miranda. I have called you two before me today for a task of great importance, long-overdue."

"We are ever at your disposal, Your Grace," Rachel said.

"Excellent," Eris said. "But first, a question. Archmage Morningstar. When last you stood before this court, you claimed you received the patronage of Sir Miranda. Do you deny this?"

"I do not," I said. "Sir Miranda's patronage has enabled nearly all of my work."

"Would you deny any loyalty to her?" Eris asked.

"I would not," I said. "She has been good to me. Whatever aid she needs, I will provide if only I possibly can."

"Good, good," Eris said. "Sir Miranda, I congratulate you on your retainer's loyalty. You will need it for the task at hand."

Yeah, like hell I'm gonna make Rachel deal with whatever bullshit you're about to drop alone. Just get on with it, you smug snake.

"What is the task at hand, Your Grace?" Rachel asked.

"You will be retrieving the Teapot of Eternity," Eris said simply, provoking gasps and low murmurs from the peanut gallery. "This task is long overdue; as a favored knight of my father's household, you have been slated to prove yourself and earn my hand in marriage. However, it would seem that the horrendous beating that my mother delivered to Tepes has taken all of the fight out of them, and we are in an unprecedentedly peaceful era. As such, I have graciously deigned to make such an opportunity for you. Return with the Teapot of Eternity, and I give to you my hand in marriage, as well as my status as the heir apparent to the Dukedom."

Rachel inhaled sharply and near-silently through her teeth, something I felt with my magical awareness of air currents rather than actually heard. Personally, I was mostly just glad I'd went through the trouble of copying all the skill books out of the Nukem library.

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"May I be so bold as to ask what, precisely, the Teapot of Eternity is, Your Grace?" I asked.

"Odd, you have never needed my permission to be bold in this hall before, Archmage," Eris remarked. "But, like my father before me, I will humor you for a moment. The Teapot of Eternity is an artifact that was lost hundreds of years ago, capable of producing, from nothingness, an infinite amount of tea. It is a remnant of an empire that fell thousands of years ago, and the carrier of the last known intact Seed of Infinity. You speak of prosperity? You claim for yourself such grand personal capability that you would appear like that before the court of a Duke? Then prove your mettle and find the Teapot, and bring back to Nukem a prosperity and plenty beyond your wildest imagination.

"But be aware, your boldness, your disrespect for this court, has not been forgotten or forgiven. You will prove yourself the greatest hero our history has ever known, or you will never again darken the halls of my ancestral home. You will return with the Teapot, or you will not return at all. And Sir Miranda, as Archmage Morningstar's patron, this goes for you as well. You have had ample opportunity to prevent your client from making a mockery of this court, and failed disastrously in this indescribably simple task. This is your punishment, and your path to redemption."

Rachel stood there, eyes wide, mouth open, gaping in disbelief, watching her life crumble before her eyes. Sure, I might have made a new life recently, and it wouldn't be much more than a medium pain in the ass to do it again somewhere else, but... well, Rachel hadn't. She was pretty firmly rooted in this place, in her role.

And now, here Eris was yanking her out by the roots and throwing her away.

I couldn't let this go unopposed.

"You overstep your authority, Acting Duke Eris," I said archly, stepping past the end of the nave and into the transept, getting rudely close to the throne. This was not how you spoke to a Duke, after all. This was how you spoke to a misbehaving adolescent. "Your goal here is plainly obvious to anyone with eyes."

"Enough of this inso-" Eris got out, before I used [Void Manipulation Level 14] to rip the air out of her throat.

"Do not interrupt me, child," I roared. Her knights stood up, armor and swords rattling, but I popped a single-use magic bauble I'd made to boost Void Manipulation by another few levels for a minute, and forced the knights all down to their knees, their armor locked in place by my will. "You see that someone else has excelled in ways you have not, and rather than support them for the good of the realm you personally will inherit through no merit of your own, as you seem to lack merit entirely, you have chosen to throw away a talented knight of your father's household the moment her back is turned. Do you think, for even a moment, that the Duke will let your decision stand? Do you think this will be anything other than a titanic embarrassment for you? Do you think at fucking all, you cretinous WRETCH?"

I let Eris breathe, finally, and she gasped and rasped, coughing and choking still.

"You demand I respect the dignity of this court?" I asked quietly. "Then first show me what dignity this court has with you in its throne. Come, Rachel. We are done here."

I turned on my heel, grabbing Rachel's hand and pulling her along as I strode out of the Grand Hall.

"Wh- what the fuck," Rachel hissed as we strode through the doors, having finally composed herself. "You- what have you done, Lucy?!"

"I've taught a brainless aristocrat that I'm not fucking scared of her," I said. "Come on. We're going to Kotor to talk to Duke Nukem ourselves. We're not letting this shit stand."

"Lucy!" Rachel all but yelled, yanking her hand out of mine. I turned to face her, and saw... actual, genuine anger written on her face. "You assaulted the daughter of a Duke! Everyone saw it! You didn't challenge her to a duel and win, you didn't defend yourself from a physical attack, you choked her because she was interrupting you. Oh void, the Duke will kill you for this!"

"The Duke is a reasonable woman," I said, folding my arms. "We'll go talk to her, explain the situation, and return with her blessing."

"Reasonable?!" Rachel shrieked. "Reasonable?! Lucy, I have watched the Duke execute someone gruesomely and publicly. She used illusions and biosculpting to torture them in their own mind, until their heart simply gave up and they died from the pain alone. What do you think she will do when she learns you choked her daughter and shamed her before the court?"

"Then what exactly do you think we should do?" I demanded. "Just tuck our tails between our legs every time some shithead with a rich father decides they're better than us and makes it our problem? Huh? That is no fucking way to live, Rachel. I won't fucking stand for it."

"I just- I can't-" She choked for a moment, then screamed.

"Come on," I said firmly, pulling her into a hug while she broke down into sobbing. "We'll go back to your room. You'll pack your things into your void space. And then we'll go to Kotor and speak with the Duke. You saw how I disabled those knights like they were nothing, Rachel. I've been making machines for the past month, sure, but I've also been doing magic constantly, with a Learning bonus of 20. I'm strong enough I could hold off the Duke and the Duchess while we run if they decide to kill us. I... I know you have, ample reason to not trust my judgement, but... This isn't the end, Rachel. Even if we have to go somewhere else and make a new life... I've done it before. I can do it again."

"I haven't," she wailed.

"I'll teach you," I said gently. "We'll make a new life together, my sweet knight. One where we don't have to hide who we are. Sound good?"

She sniffed. "I, I hate you, right now," she admitted. "But I can't- I've already lost the family I was born to. I just lost the family I spent nearly twenty years growing up in. I can't- I hate you, but I can't lose you too."

"...I'm sorry," I said.

She just kept crying.