The next morning, I woke up with a throbbing headache. I had really drank too much at the celebration. I remembered my conversation with the guild master, and I remembered Celeste being resurrected and turned into a Sylph, but then things got a little foggy. I had dreams of sleeping with Celeste, but that was impossible. Celeste was just a a little fairy now.

As I got up and peed in the commode, I realized my mouth tasted like glitter again. That had to be a coincidence. I decided to let the past be the past. Rather, I needed to start planning for my future. Heading downstairs, I saw the three girls all up. Celeste appeared to be sleeping on the couch. See? We couldn’t have been up all night having weird body-altering sex, she was out here!

Lydia was cleaning stuff, and Miki had her forehead furrowed as she looked through an alchemy book. It was good she was looking at alchemy. I had used up all of my potions, and we’d need to revive it. I noticed Lydia and Miki both looking at me. What? Did I have glitter somewhere I wasn’t supposed to? When Lydia’s stomach suddenly growled, I realized what it was.

“Oh, you’re hungry.”

“Ah… M-master… you don’t need to cook every meal for us.” Lydia blushed.

“You say that, but you’re also pulling out uncooked food for me to cook.”

“Th-that’s just because Master is the best!”

Lydia’s cooking ability was pretty low, and if she had it her way, every meal would simply be meat. As for Miki, she had a larger diet, but she kept making me feed her. Now that I had seen her fight in the dungeon, there was no way she was going to pull that one on me anymore.

I prepared a light breakfast with some meat and bread with an au jus to dip them in. I was getting pretty good at cooking, and I didn’t mind seeing the girls enjoy my meals. On the other hand, it’d be nice to find a high-level maid. Perhaps, that is what I should aim for. I probably should have maids, what with the lord title and the mansion. A cook would be par for the course. Although, I didn’t really like that. I liked everyone who lived there to pitch in a little. It was nice to see Lydia clean and Miki do alchemy. Hiring someone to clean for us felt lazy and unhealthy to me.

So, if I wanted a cook to join, I’d either need to train up one of these girls or get a new slave. I winced at the idea and touched the tattoo on my shoulder through my shirt. This was a curse that refused to allow me to free anyone I enslaved. It was way too dangerous. Admittedly, slaves were supposed to be lifers, but I didn’t like the idea of a woman being forcefully bonded to me without any choice. That meant I needed to look into this and see if there was a way to remove the curse.

“Anyway I look at it, it seems like the Capital City is my next target.” I sighed.

According to Figuro, slaves could be bought in the Capital. Similarly, if I wanted to hire maids, the Capital was the place. The Libraries in the Capital would be the best place to research my dungeon curses. Furthermore, the mission that the Guild Master had sent me on involved going to the capital. This wasn’t some attempt to use me to fulfill some goal. Rather, I needed to go to the Capital and petition the government to include Old Chalm in its borders. My mission was to announce my lordship over the wildlands and claim them for the Capital City.

“We’re going to the Capital next?” Lydia asked.

I nodded. “As soon as we settle everything here, we’ll head out. The journey will take nearly a month. Just about anything could happen.”