A fellow Gifted, huh? His story seems similar to mine, back when we ran to Confiel for safety, though he lost everything, while I managed to keep the girls safe.

But we'll make use of him as he wishes, for sure.

"We need to have him sworn in as a knight as soon as possible and even give him advance payment," Yunia suddenly chimes in.

"Why?" I question.

"The Purification doesn't accept last-minute additions, so if we wish for him to participate, which we really do, then we need proof that he's our knight before it starts."

"I don't think he'll be ready for it. It's too soon, and he probably wants to fight monsters, not other humanoids," Ciel sternly chimes in.

But Yunia is ready with a categorical reply, "If he wishes to serve us, to be useful to us, then he needs to do more than just kill monsters for us."

Ciel understands that, but she still thinks that Brett's mental health is more important. "We'll see how well he heals," she affirms with finality.

"Wolf, what's wrong?" Lyle confusedly asks.

And I decide to just let him in on the secret, "I have a way to communicate wordlessly, and I was using it just now."

He blinks blankly, not sure how to take that, so I just smile and pull us back on track, "What we should build next is a 'state storage.' It needs to store the zeros or ones, the falses or trues, in 'addresses,' which should all be arranged in a numbered sequence. This way, the 'reader' can be moved left or right any number of times to access these addresses."

He nods impassively. "Okay, but why should we do that?"

I calmly answer, "To store data. We'll store numbers in binary so that the 'reader' can access them at later dates."

"Wouldn't it be faster to just write them down?"

"Not if the reader is fast enough. With complex calculations, there are dozens of numbers, so inputting them manually and writing down the results can be time-consuming and prone to human error. With automatic storage and retrieval, there's little room for anything to go wrong."

He suddenly hums excitedly as something occurs to him, "Ah~, the priests of Mac Gantus use large engines to calculate the phases of the moon; they'll have a lot of use for this!"

I grin in delight. "Then perhaps they'll be our first client."

 

Ciel returns to the Lordsguard party while leaving a few men with Brett, then Yunia secures a hundred gnomic enchanted weapons that we'll distribute among the villages in our territory since they need them the most.

I pull out the golems. They'll definitely be very useful in helping me remember how to build computers from scratch because four heads are better than just one.

In the middle of the afternoon, Hukarere suddenly appears in the castle and joins me. Lyle's eyes follow her bare ass, but his gaze doesn't actually seem to be lewd.

"Hey, there," I softly greet my white wolf with a smile.

She gives me a guilty smile and cutely explains, "Sorry for intruding on your conversation, but I was just feeling a bit bored, and Poosh told me that you might not mind."

I nod and motion for her to come to me. "Of course, I don't. Come here."

She sits on my lap, and my claws immediately go for her pale breasts and ghost nipples.

Lyle's eyebrows slowly rise up his forehead, but he doesn't get a boner.

He might actually be gay… it would explain a few things.

"There's certainly enough bi women around you to justify having a few gay men, too," Roxanne's giggly voice suddenly echoes in my soul space, but I just ignore her.

My hands wander all over Hukarere's body, but I avoid her increasingly warm and reddened pussy lips. I feel like playing with her today.

Her breathing gradually quickens, then she suddenly turns to the side and starts slowly licking my neck, letting out little growls whenever I touch a nipple. Gify knows where this is going, so she just drops from my shoulder and nestles on the sofa's arm.

She's indeed a work of art. Her abs, her breasts, her furred back, her glorious wolf head, even her strong, draconic legs are alluring. But she still isn't dazzling enough to distract me from my nerd talk, though I might as well be developing a lewdness sub-process for my whole body instead of just my tentacles since I make her wet without even really paying attention.

Lyle ignores her completely, and we continue the conversation, but then she starts fondling my cock through my pants, telling me that she's ripe for the taking.

I run a claw along her entrance and scoop up some of her sticky juices, then I raise the claw and show it to them. "Do you mind if I fuck her? I think I've made her too wet," I kindly ask with a smirk.

"G-go ahead…" Lyle sheepishly replies, then Hukarere happily frees my throbbing boner from my pants.

I nod and assure him, "The Chimeras like to do these kinds of things in public, so you'd better get used to it if you want to live here."

"Hm…" He hums absentmindedly as he stares at my cock being slowly stroked by her pale hands.

Yep… definitely a bit gay.

Hukarere licks my cheek and releases my cock, then she bends over on the sofa and spreads her sticky pussy lips apart as she gives me "that look." The smell of an aroused woman is enough on its own to make me ready to go again, but those eyes awaken the dragon, forcing me to keep myself under control so that I can talk and fuck at the same time.

I push my hips forward and spread her pussy apart with the head of my cock, making a moist, lewd sound.

That's the good stuff.

Then my body moves on its own as my mind focuses back on the conversation again.

 

The girls come back one by one, and Lina decides to join us, the talking, not the fucking. She feels a bit envious of Hukarere, but she definitely doesn't have the courage to be fucked in public.

Once Yunia returns, though, Ciel reminds her that she has something very important to do before tomorrow.

"Brás," we all clearly hear a rare cheekiness in Ciel's tone.

Yunia stops at the entrance of the Network, slightly irked that she's been clashing with Ciel so often, but the thing that annoys her the most is that she's right. Yunia did say to Lord Lotus that she'd visit her former fiance soon.

"Fine…" She grumbles through gritted teeth and returns whence she came.

She sends a short message to Lotus and only has to wait a few minutes for the reply, which informs her that they're ready to receive her, then she crosses the [Eternal Gate] to Goldcross.

The air instantly becomes a lot more humid and cold as it's currently raining in the busy merchant city, and the high ceiling of the mansion she's in only helps the temperature fall a few more degrees.

Built in the overgrown style, there's moss and vines covering most of the brickwork, and delicate-looking plants make up the decorations. Silken flowers; long and colorful leaves that act as curtains; fuzzy-looking, unknown plants. The construction isn't impressive, but the decorations certainly are.

An elven maid guides Yunia further in, up to the fifth floor of the tall mansion, and out onto a glass balcony where the cutest Trap I've ever seen was waiting for her, sitting at a glass table.

Brás Angila is the spitting image of Lotus, his mother, though he's cuter and obviously a lot younger. However, he's not as feminine as Silvano. His face may share many traits with a beautiful woman's, but the overall shape is still that of a man's, though his long, wavy, fabulous hair hides most of it.

A flood of memories comes rushing back to Yunia as she takes in his beautiful face, and they show that his appearance is quite different from his personality. He's a strong, determined man, the proud son of a Crown Lord, and someone who takes offense when his former fiancée, who was set to be executed, instead survives and never comes to say even a single word to him.

His glare is quite intense, and the dragon in me commends him for his composure, but Yunia isn't some innocent maiden who needs to be babysat by me, so I just let her fight this on her own.

 

Intermission – Yunia

 

The storm within my heart takes hold of my body, freezing me in place, but the moment it begins to die down, righteous anger rises to the surface and overwhelms all other emotions.

"You don't have the right to be that angry at me!" I exclaim as I take a seat before him in a huff, then I cross my arms and legs and glare right back at him.

His pretty face warps into an angry scowl, actually managing to strike fear into my heart. "You…! I thought you were dead! That the rumors were lies! I mourned for you!" He growls in fury, and I clench my jaw, matching the intensity of his expression.

Sure, I understand what you went through, but it wasn't so simple for me!

"I gave myself to another man!" I shout back, and the way he grimaces shows the effect of these specific words on him. I learned from Alissa how to be brutal against a man's confidence. "Everything changed after that, so I didn't believe anything good would come from us meeting again."

"You made that decision for both of us," he slowly points out, a little more composed than a second ago.

I slam my fist on the table in indignation. "I had to!"

And his anger flares once again. "Mother was right, you became a coward!" He bitterly shouts.

I snort in derision. "Your words sound hollow to me. You have no idea what we've been through."

"This isn't-…!" He catches himself, then looks away and shakes his head as anger is quickly replaced by disappointment. "This isn't how I wanted things to go. I just wanted to…"

I mercilessly finish for him, "To what…? Return to the old days? Become lovers again? Neither of those things will ever happen."

His anger recedes as he begins to see the truth, but he still insists with a hesitant suggestion, "Just friends…?"

And that's just another wound for my heart. I shake my head and decline, "I don't want to be friends… because it hurts to even look at you."

This takes him aback, and we both fall silent, struggling to put our feelings into words. The gentle rain dulls our anger, but the gloomy atmosphere only makes us sad, instead.

I just don't know what to say, or what to do to fix this situation. Or maybe, we just can't fix it…

His posture relaxes, and he closes his eyes. "What happened to you wasn't fair," he suddenly mumbles, then his green jewels stare at me again, this time with a hint of kindness.

But I don't want to let him get close.

"It wasn't… not to the Chosen Descendants who were executed where I lived," I bluntly reply.

He grunts back, "Fuck imperial law."

And I remain impassive as I slowly explain, "It's there for a reason. Look at me, I came back, and now I'm in a position to exact revenge, but can I truly execute another Chosen Descendant without becoming a hypocrite? And then, what if the Descendant I spare decides to take revenge on me, on my family?"

He sighs annoyedly and adjusts his gorgeous golden hair, then he frowns at me. "Alright, alright. You're in a horrible position, I get it, but that doesn't excuse never trying to get in contact with me, at least to explain yourself, to save me from the grief of mourning."

I resist the urge to cast [Mask] because Wolfy hates that spell.

No, it's because I'm a coward…

I'm afraid of the pain, and I use pragmatism to numb me to it.

[Mask] is how I got over the death of my parents without shedding a tear. It's how I managed to integrate into the Ryders without losing myself to grief. It helped me pack away my pain until I had time to deal with it.

And perhaps now's the time to deal with part of it.

"I'm sorry… I didn't think of your pain," I finally admit, and I feel the tears starting to well up. "I loved you, I truly did, but now, everything's changed, and I can only think of my husband."

He gives me a pained look, warping his beautiful face in ways it shouldn't, but I need to make it clear that there's no room for him in my heart.

He suddenly turns his head away and sniffles, not ready to share his pain with mine. "I'll one day become a Lord, too, so we need a working relationship," he changes the topic, his tone beginning to waver.

"That is a given," I softly reply with a nod.

He swallows heavily and stares at me again as he affirms, "Then perhaps, with time, we'll be able to make each other laugh again…"

I nod and feel the silent tears running down my cheeks.

"Perhaps…" I breathe.

He flashes a pained smile, then looks away and goes silent again.

"I think I should go," I whisper, and he nods once without looking back.

 

Intermission end.

 

"I think we've covered enough of the baseline concepts for you to begin work," I suddenly interject, then I gently free my thigh from Hukarere's sleeping head and get up. "I have something else I need to do right now."

"Of course," Lyle accepts with repeated nods and starts organizing the papers on the table.

I walk back to the Hub Room and find a stone-faced Yunia as she comes back from Goldcross, then I immediately pull her into a tight hug.

"You can let it go now," I whisper into her long ear as I stand on my tiptoes.

She used [Mask] so that the men wouldn't see her cry, but now she's home, so she drops it, and her face warps in pain.

She's in need of comfort, so I grow tentacles and gently caress her back as she silently cries on my shoulder.

This is a really awkward place to cry, though.

I lift her up with my tentacles and open a [Gate] to our bedroom. She squeaks in surprise, then giggles softly as I lower her onto the bed.

"There we go, now we can cuddle comfortably," I whisper huskily and climb onto the bed, then I spoon her and massage her elastic ears with my tentacles. Her glorious drills are kind of comfy to hug from behind, and their perfume is also a plus.

She sighs tiredly, then rests her head against my chest and closes her eyes. She finally pulled that tooth, so now, her heart needs some rest.

 

Ciel leaves the comforting to me since she has something else she needs to do today.

She goes to the outer Shell of the castle grounds and climbs up to the balcony on it that overlooks the Prasa de Ananci. Teresina greets her with a curt nod without getting up from her seat, and Ciel returns a gentle smile.

A large crowd gathers below them, curious about what she has to say. The number of people watching her gives her butterflies, but we're all inside her head, ready to give her support whenever she needs it.

She hesitates for a couple of seconds as she builds up her courage, then she approaches the railing and takes the offered [Project Voice] magic tool from Poosh.

The murmuring dies down as they recognize her, which is easy considering that her huge portrait is right above her.

She holds the tool against her throat and begins her speech, "Gentlemen and gentlewomen, today I've called you all here to announce a new benefit that the Lordship has decided to grant all of our citizens, no matter your class or social status.

"Right now, there are over a hundred healers traveling to every city, town, and village in the Western High Forest. They've been hired using the money you pay as taxes, and their job will be to offer treatment to those who need it the most."

The crowd starts murmuring in wonder, but the Townsguard scattered among them quiet them down.

"For those who pay their taxes on time every month, you'll receive a small blue mark in your ID tablets. If you show this mark to any one of those healers, you'll receive up to ten silver coins' worth of free treatment every month!"

And now the crowd bursts with chatter, the commoners sounding quite excited while the nobles just snort and begin to leave.

Even for adventurers, ten silver coins is just one bad fight, but for the poor and the old, just this amount of treatment on its own will make a big difference in easing their injuries or saving them from diseases.

After waiting a moment to let them talk a bit more, she raises her hand, and the Townsguard silence the crowd again.

"I repeat! Make sure your taxes are paid on time, and you'll benefit from free health care. Even if you lack a home or a job, you can still receive free care if you show proof of citizenship!"

The crowd then becomes slightly confused. Nobody expected that we'd care for the homeless too. Aside from the temple, few ever do. Giving people a chance to get well and return to society doesn't hurt, though.

But we aren't doing this to be seen as saints. Our first goal is to make sure that everyone has IDs, the second is to get a census on the people and what their conditions are like, the third is to encourage the workers to value paying their taxes, and the fourth is to get the lower class on our side.

The merchant class is our future enemy. They hoard the wealth that we want and control the minds of the workers, so if we try to tax them more, they'll quickly turn on us and fuck us up.

The Guilds and Companies control nearly all of the Tribunal since its representation is based on the number of hired workers, so if we can get the Guilds on our side, then we'll have one foot in the Tribunal already while our relationship with the Leigelas family might help us get the other in too.

The Root Lords will all fall in line as well once they receive the gnomic weapons and the Shell project for the villages takes off. The Crown Lords are seemingly neutral towards us (except for Confiel) since we still need to prove ourselves to them with our maneuver against Katasko, but we have nothing to fear from them. The Elder Council is a wild card, but hopefully, they'll leave us alone since their policy is one of non-interference unless we fuck up.

That only leaves the Heart Lords for us to persuade, but there's still a long road ahead for us to get them on our side.

The talk of plotting calms Yunia down, helping her mind focus on something else besides the pain, so we have a casual conversation about our plans for the Purification.