Finishing Floor 143 and heading back, I was in a very good mood.

I cleared another floor, surprisingly easily at that as well thanks to my new weapons, my pocket space was filled with jar after jar of high quality blood, and on top of that I had just enjoyed quite the sublime meal.

I couldn't help but feel that today was a very good day.

Which was way the vertigo I felt when that mood of my did such a reversal rocked my very body.

(The sun's down! It's already midnight!)

Perhaps getting far too into progressing in the dungeon, I had completely lost track of time. Usually I was good at this, but the rapid progress made on both floor 142 made me think that I had time to at least explore floor 143 a bit, only to end up clearing the entire thing instead.

Despite how fast I was able to clear it though, there was no way I could do two floors within the span of a single day.

(Shit shit shit!)

I rushed over to my home, ignoring everyone who stopped to wave or greet me.

*Bang!*

The door to my room slammed open. I had something more important to worry about than a bunch of wooden boards anyways.

There, a pair of figures sitting nearby on the floor jumped a bit.

I cursed myself for being so careless at a time like this, but I kept it to myself. This wasn't the time.

"Alicia? Fate?"

As I called out their names, my two babies turned as one.

""Mommy!""

They both called out together, but as I tried to approach them, they puffed their cheeks out.

""Mmmm!""

"I'm sorry, Mommy's sorry."

Falling to my knees, I hugged the two of them, but they looked away with their arms crossed.

"You promised to come back before everyone went to sleep."

"It's Mommy's fault. Mommy's sorry."

""Mmmm!""

Alicia and Fate's cheeks puffed out even further, as if it was some sort of contest.

(I hate to admit it, but they're cute even like this.)

I had to suppress the urge to poke at those puffy cheeks.

Those soft, spongy cheeks that were asking to have the air let out of them...

(No! No! That's not what's important here!)

It was better to do it when they got angry at someone else. At this point, I deserved their anger, and redirecting the reason like some manipulative bitch wasn't the way to earn their forgiveness.

"Mommy's sorry for being so late. But why didn't you play with Claret in that case?"

That greater dark spirit familiar of mine wouldn't have refused the opportunity to play with the two of them. Unlike most of the fluffballs and the other greater spirits, she had a great relationship with Alicia and Fate.

But the two of them buried their faces into my chest and just shook their heads rather than give me a proper answer.

My eyes drifted over to the corner of the room where I felt the last presence here. As I thought, the one over there was Claret, but as to why she was squatting in the corner all by herself...

Rather, I could guess. Claret wasn't one who took rejection by those she cared about too well, and the sight of her like some dejected dog that was just yelled at by its owner, frankly, equally made me feel that she looked cute, as she did make me feel sorry for her.

While normally Alicia and Fate didn't have problems playing with Claret, most likely they refused in anticipation of me coming home on time. And as the night grew deeper and deeper, Claret probably tried repeatedly to distract the two, only to have them shut her down completely.

I could only hope that the two of them would be able to become a bit more independent as they grew older.

But not too soon. Despite knowing full well that it wasn't the act of a good mother, I couldn't help but enjoy being with my babies, even if they were acting up so selfishly.

"Alright. How about this? To make up for it, Mommy'll play with both of you all tonight and all day, alright?"

"And tomorrow night?"

Both my babies deflated their cheeks and looked up, Fate nodding to her older twin's question.

"And all tomorrow night as well. We'll be together the whole time."

""Yay!""

Both of them yelled out in pure joy and they hugged me as if all that anger was entirely fake or something. But while a part of me thought it was certainly possible that it was all an act, the rest of me couldn't imagine that they were able to plan things out to such a degree at their age.

I stroked their silky hair as they pressed their little bodies against my own, savouring the feeling of their warm bodies.

"Alright, so what do you two want to play first?"

After a while, I pulled myself away from my two babies reluctantly. While continuing to hug them like that was great and I could do that forever, it wouldn't be good for their development. At the very least, they should play like children, not purely be coddled like infants.

Though, my chest tightened when I saw a flicker of loneliness in their eyes when I pulled back, their eyes started to glitter once they heard my words.

"Umm...I wanna...umm...I wanna..."

"Celestials! I wanna battle!"

Unusually, while Alicia was hesitating while she fell into thought, Fate was the to voice an idea first.

"Ahh!"

Being beaten to the punch for once, Alicia glared at her little sister for a moment before turning back to me.

"Me too! I wanna battle with my Celestial too!"

"Ahaha, I see. You both want to play Goddess's Realm with Mommy that much?"

""Yea!""

Getting up, I took out a small Goddess's Realm board from my pocket dimension. It was a late preproduction prototype version, but it functioned almost identically to the actual production version, so there shouldn't have been any issue to use.

Alicia and Fate sat down on the seats I placed on one side while I stood on the other. The two placed their Celestials to their starting positions and placed their hands on the crystal orbs that served as control inputs. The orbs faintly glowed as they pushed their own mana into them, and their dolls, little figures in a black cloak identical to the ones they usually wore, rose up to their feet.

(Hmm? They have little decorations now.)

The robes had little silvery lines along the ends, similar to how the gems on my favourite robes was oriented.

(Geez, these two.)

An unsurpressable smile leaked onto my face as I looked at the two eagerly doing a prematch test of their dolls.

"Hmmm...alright then. Claret? Come over!"

"...Master?...Master~!"

I kinda felt sorry for the girl, so I called her over.

But against my expectation, after raising her head to my call, she started shouting while flying towards me at high speed, tears running down her cheeks like a river.

"Erk!"

"Master~~~!"

That dark spirit familiar of mine hugged my neck as she whimpered like one of those videos I've seen of a cat welcoming its owner after a long absence.

Though we weren't apart for more than a day or anything.

"There there Claret. I was wondering if you wanted to play Goddess' Realm with us?"

"Ahhh, of course Master~! Anything to be of use to you~!"

"There there. You're always helpful."

I wasn't sure exactly how she had gotten to this state of mind, but even still, I combed her hair the same silver as my own with my fingers as I comforted my dear familiar.

"But...but...you always send me away, and even today when I was supposed to care for Mistress Alicia and Mistress Fate, they got angry at me!"

Claret stared into my eyes as she cried out her woes.

(Or rather, I had no idea that's what she was feeling when I was making her do all those errands.)

"Well, you seemed to enjoy them, so I figured I'd keep coming up with stuff like that for you. But I guess I was wrong."

"No! I, I want to be useful! I want to be part of your strength! Even if I'm not strong enough to fight with you..."

(Ah...I see...)

Thinking about it, or rather, the realization came to me like lightning regarding how she was feeling. I really hadn't taken this girl's thoughts into consideration and had just been giving her random tasks to keep her busy, but in reality a decent number of them were just menial chores.

That in itself was fine, but I hadn't been properly rewarding her for them. Just giving her a word or two in thanks and feeding her some treats like she was some pet, there was no way she'd be satisfied if that was all I gave her. She was a person, not an animal. She needed to feel like she was needed. That 'I' needed her.

Certainly, I did in fact need her, being such an important part of my family. But I wasn't treating her that way lately, being way too engrossed in my many projects, taking care of Alicia and Fate, and spending so much time in the dungeon.

(Neglect, huh?)

It seemed like my daughters weren't the only ones who lacked independence, though Claret was like this at her age, it was unlikely that she would get any better without some real work.

"You are useful to me, Claret. You're always helping out around the home, doing all sorts of things I don't have the time for. And you're one of the few people I can leave Alicia and Fate to without worry."

"Master...!"

That last bit was a lie, even if only partially, but I really wanted it to be true. The three of them needed to learn at least a certain degree of independence from me, and if it meant that they'd have to do it by learning to depend more on each other instead, I'd say that it was progress.

""Mmmmmm~!""

"Ah, erm..."

But as I was trying to console my dear familiar, two pairs of eyes glared at us, with cheeks puffed out cutely below.

""Mommy~!""

They both cried out in unison.

"You promised to play with us!"

"Yea, yea!"

"Ah, ummm, I was thinking, what if rather than just the three of us, but we include Claret? I mean, the more the merrier, right?"

However, the look in their eyes said that they weren't convinced at all. So before they could argue, I added an additional point.

"Alicia, Fate, you two are my daughters, but haven't I also always said that Claret family as well?"

Alicia and Fate's expressions of firm desire weakened as my words resounded within them.

"We're all family here. It wouldn't be nice to exclude family, right?"

For a moment, there was a bit of defiance in their eyes, but in the end they gave up and relented. The four of us started to play Goddess' Realm.

Though I did have to make sure that Claret didn't go too hard on the two. Her eagerness to prove her worth to me was something which I had to manage while giving Alicia and Fate a fun time.

 

The four of us spent most of the night playing Goddess' Realm, every once in a while changing things up by reorganizing the teams or going for free-for-all battles. Though those tended not to go very well, as Alicia and Fate usually ended up either ganging up on Claret only for me to blindside them in order to keep things fair or Claret to be completely ignored while they glared at her every time she tried to interfere.

I felt pretty bad for our family spirit, but on the other hand, she seemed to really enjoy getting the attention she was receiving. I couldn't decide if it was worrying or if it was fine because at least Alicia and Fate were interacting with her a bit, even while I was sitting across from them.

But there was only so much we could play this game in one night.

Or rather, only so much I should let these three play.

"Alright! I think that's enough for one night!"

"Wha?! We can play more!"

"I wanna play more!"

"Now now, it's not good to play so much. You need some balance in life."

Moderation is key!

"But Mommy spent all day playing in the dungeon!"

"Yea~! Mommy goes into the dungeon every day! Mommy's cheating!"

"Mommy isn't cheating. Mommy's working to clear the dungeon and bringing back things that people need."

Though, truthfully speaking, the occurrences where I needed to do that sort of work had been steadily decreasing over the years. Even if it's slow, there were others who were able to get their hands on the three rare metals lately, not to mention all the items made from them that had been circulating through the nation for a long time now.

While the supply of the mythical metals had reached a decent level even if still rare, the demand had gone down for the most part. Most of the time people were content with using lesser materials where possible. Aside from the magical experiments and certain devices, the demand for the mythical materials was comparably low.

The biggest reason most likely was that the vast bulk of materials that were in demand from the dungeon was easily retrievable without needing equipment as high quality as mythril or the other rare metals.

Only the few high level parties that prioritized pushing their own limits and continuously delved deeper and deeper into the dungeon had any real use for a large amount of the mythical metals.

"Then, then I wanna go into the dungeon!"

"Yea! Dungeon time!"

"No, I think it's still a bit early for you two."

The two of them had quite the inflated stats due to being vampires, in addition to all bonuses that they had from their meals over the years, but having high stats and skills was far from being actually good in combat. And the two were still young. I preferred if they would wait at least a few more years.

"We're strong though!"

"Yea! We beat Iaso!"

I desperately resisted the urge to press my fingers against my temple.

"What did I tell you about fighting?"

"It...it's not our fault! It wasn't even a real fight!"

"Iaso said that she was going to become the strongest and become the next chieftain!"

If I remembered right, Iaso was the dhampire daughter of Epione, one of the victims during that bastard vampire incident. Epione was someone who had practically become the leader of the victims and all the women and their dhampire children thanks to the initiative she took when I first discovered the group and started giving them my aid.

Though while I did what I could to help them at the time and gave them some money to help them restart their lives, the whole group ended up migrating to the Hourai Commonwealth in the end due to the stigma of their children's dhampirism.

While the adults never forgot their gratitude towards me, most of their children weren't even born back then. It wasn't uncommon for them to feel like the stories were being blown out of proportion. Or rather, they probably really were being way blown out of proportions.

And it might have been that they were starting to enter their rebellious phase, but there wasn't any shortage of dhampires that's been pushing back against their mothers' preaching.

Frankly, the way they occasionally give me looks of mild hostility was actually quite refreshing.

(...Hopefully that's not me awakening to something bad.)

"Yea! So I said that there was no way she could beat Mommy. She probably couldn't even beat us!"

"So we had a match and we won!"

"I...I see..."

Dhampires were an odd race that inherited attributes from both their parents' lineages. For example they could survive without being horribly burned under the sun like their mothers, they could also absorb strength from their prey like us full blooded vampires. Though from what I heard, the effect seemed to be more mild.

Due to that, despite her young age, Epione had already let Iaso enter the dungeon in a party together with a few of the other dhampires. From what I had heard, they seemed to even be pretty successful as well.

Though, then again, considering that the Hunter's Guild had a policy to only allow people who could pass its training course or were already known to have at least a certain amount of combat ability to enter the dungeon unescorted.

And on that point, there were few escorts as worthy as myself, who was capable of exploring deeper into the dungeon than anyone else, on top of doing it solo. This also didn't take into consideration Alicia and Fate's claim that they were stronger than someone who was already actively hunting in the dungeon.

Maybe their request wasn't as bad as I first thought.

And it's a good excuse to have them move their bodies as well. Alicia and Fate seemed to spend a lot of their time during the day involved with Goddess' Realm, either playing it or watching others play.

Though I didn't know if exercise had any real effect on our bodies, being that we were mana based life forms like the fluff balls. Even if we did have physical bodies unlike them.

But teaching them to enjoy a wider variety of things would be better than letting them get too obsessed with Goddess' Realm. I doubted that becoming e-athletes would be a viable long term career goal. The entertainment industry in this world wasn't nearly well established enough at this point.

And that wasn't taking into consideration that e-sports was something that was completely at the mercy of industry trends. It was one thing for a human to get into it, as they could get a good five or ten solid years, not too much less than that of a traditional athlete.

But Alicia and Fate were vampires. We didn't age, so our careers would have to last us for much longer than a few decades unless if they were willing to job change on a regular basis. Of course, it was nothing so easy as just swapping your combat class in a game, so I'd rather they at least get a wide breadth of experiences to be able to have the greatest ability to chose something they would enjoy. And if not, then at least be equipped to be able to change their careers with relative ease.

"Well, alright. If you promise me these two things, I'll let you enter the dungeon, alright?"

"What is it?"

"Promise what?"

"First of all, you can only enter the dungeon with Mommy or Claret. You must never enter the dungeon on your own until Mommy says it's fine, alright?"

""Okay!""

"Second, when you're in the dungeon, you must always do what Mommy or Claret says, and you can't stray far from us, alright?"

""Okay!""

Their double stereo confirmations were enough to satisfy me. They didn't hesitate in the slightest, nor was there any indication that they were answering with anything less than pure intentions.

I could only hope that they remember their promise, but I hadn't had much of an issue on this front so far, so at the very least, I was having it better there than most other parents were dealing with.

"Alright. Well then, let's get prepared to enter the dungeon. You're coming as well Claret."

""Yay!""

"Yes, Master!"