Since Queen Mira had come to stop in and remind me of the lovers around me, things had not slowed down in the least. I sent messages to my lovers, and I started to learn what had been happening to them. My time was limited, and I wished I could spend more time with them, but they all understood that I was incredibly busy.
To my stunned surprise, though, Ashasi and Trisha came together with massive smiles. The Twin Elves were absolutely blasting their happiness to the world when they entered my office not long after I sent a message. They came in with those smiles and Mana showing them at the B-ranked Adventurer status. Their opposite mana paths emanated from them as they took frost and fire as their specialties. They were happy that I finally contacted them after the war was basically over, but they had been busy advancing.
Which was a more tactful way of saying that they were happy with their concentration, and I would have been a distraction. They showed off their new strength, a little, showing Fire and Frost spells combining together. I was honestly intrigued by how their manas combined together and did things that should not be. Magic was something that was based on imagination, though, as my mother's electric snow was in account. Why she combined the two was something that I did not understand, but that did not mean it was not happening in front of me.
Ashasi and Trisha had combined their spells to freeze people and set them on fire, making their combined spells deadly. They were working on more things, including spells that they learned from how the Empire operated. Iceicles that could be sent a distance with fire inside to blow up in their faces. It was a great way of creating chaos on the other side.
Honestly, it was a bit of a bummer not to be able to see it happen before me.
If only I could have seen them use their new combination spells on the Empire's army.
Unfortunately for them, they only broke thugh as they took a break from patrols in the City. They broke through only about half a month ago while I was busy slamming their general with Doorknocker for a month straight. Their excitement over their breakthrough and being able to show off to me was palpable.
Then I was attacked by them, happily looking to soothe their desire. Something that I quickly understood was that all my women were missing. Each as they came to me soothed their lust as they attacked me, and I learned of their exploits, which, while the war was still ongoing, were significant till we reached the Border City's conquering. Something that I learned from them is that many in the Elite army actually hated how they became the human population's guards.
They knew they could do better in the front, but those other than the Succubi who went to the front were relegated to becoming city guard. IT was something even at the time I did not wish to do, but it was a must. So, they all sat on their hands except for the small rebellion, which we quashed. So achievements for them went vacant against their own wishes.
Well, except for Taylor, who was having the time of their life looking into the Necromantic mana in the city. She was researching why it was behaving in a certain way and how it had come to be. She seemed oddly invested in the adventure and only stopped by for a bit of fun, and went right back to her studies.
Betsy, on the other hand, was now on the cusp of C-ranked, looking to break through and enter the ranks of B-ranked, and seeking that inspiration. She came by a couple of times in the coming days since I sent out that message. But she did not find inspiration from her lust being satisfied like my mother. Instead, she was out dueling other beast-kin to find something to bring her to that final cusp and become a B ranker.
It was odd how independent they are, but I also liked that about them. I had my fun, and they came to have fun with me, and we cared about each other. But I also did not need to worry about them being bored while out of my sight. The only one I could think of that would be waiting for me at home, wondering how I am, just hoping for my safe return, would be Emily, and I hoped that she was with the kids, raising them for me properly.
My heart warmed thinking about Emily, but I had to concentrate on the world around me.
Rose became the woman with whom I had the most communication, as her letters began to report more frequently about the need for additional manpower and the shortage of carriages from Border City. Her outcry for more manpower and pregnant women grew, and so I went back to impregnating women one after the other when I was not otherwise doing other work. I started to put aside at least five hours of my day towards impregnating as many women as I could again, but I no longer could just sit in a dark room fucking.
Negotiations were also underway, and Duchess Greenwald was delaying the process; we discussed potential avenues for them to retrieve the rest of their soldiers. Then, the Demon Lands sent a massive force to assist with asking slaves whether they wanted to come back to the Beast-kin nation.
Things from there got extremely busy as the Beast-kin slaves were overwhelmingly choosing to come back to their original nation. It was surprising how many were choosing to stay, which I was expecting, about thirty percent of those asked under supervision to stay. At this point in time, in just the capital, it was at a solid five percent choosing to stay. That was with a beast-kin soldier, a Demon lands neutral party, and an Empire soldier talking to them. They had to be removed from all sources of distress that might color their opinion, and all three signed off that they believed they showed that they were underderess, which meant that those who wanted to stay had something holding them there.
I could not save them all, but five percent was a shockingly low figure for those staying. I would not have been surprised if fifty percent chose to stay slaves. The mind is the biggest shackle when it comes to slavery, and the slave collars were not as common as I originally believed.
But because of all the slaves being freed in droves, we started to reach a new logistical nightmare. They were essentially refugees from slavers for centuries, finally coming back to their homeland. They were broken people, many of them, and had survived horrors, and now we needed to feed, clothe, and shelter them before sending them back. Thankfully, I had a place for them to go, and beast-kin by the droves were being sent back to the city and from there back to their tribes if they chose to.
The humans that I was sending back would go in separate batches so as to keep the freed slaves from doing something to them. The slaves that were in Border City had long been freed and sent back to the Beast-kin nation if that was what they wanted for themselves.
But the war was not technically over, and months passed by quickly as negotiations continued to stretch. The Dragonic were getting annoyed that we had not either continued the war or brought it to an end. The populace I was hearing was extremely dissatisfied with the Dragonic for not pitching in more for the war effort. As the strongest Tribe, they were expected to contribute the most, but when it came to spending, the Bunny-kin tribe spent the most, and a couple of the smaller tribes, like the Dog-kin tribe, spent almost as much.
Because of this, they started to wonder why the Dragonic was the controlling Tribe overall, although that did not mean much in my mind. Still, it was something that I was happy about, and I knew that Rose and the Bunny-kin tribe were working on just this sentiment becoming more and more apparent. The Dragonic Tribe came across as weaker than the Bunny-kin Tribe because of my contributions to the war effort.
We were the ones to kill the first A-ranker. A Bunny-kin Elder was the one to destroy the walls of Border City. Although a bunny-kin was not the one who did everything, it appeared to be my achievements under my new army that did many of the major achievements. Where did the Empire falter, too? In a battlefield where I was in charge. These things were unfair to Isabelle, who was facing more and more pressure from her Elder Council to finish the negotiations at this point.
But with Duchess Greenwald doing her best to stretch negotiations even longer, there was nothing they could do. We continued to stay on a war footing for five months before I finally got another secret message from the Duchess.
The message was simple and came through a note in a meeting with herself and increasingly annoyed advisors.
The message was: Meet me in no man's land five days from now in the north.
And so I went to meet her with Queen Mira hiding in secret, and my mother in a place where she could be seen, but her mana hidden, so A rankers in the distance may not find her. I went to see what all of this delaying was for.
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