“I think this is the limit.” Felicia looked upon her kingdom. Standing on a balcony, she oversaw rows and rows of spacious cages, stacked floors of sand covered paddocks, and interlaced feeding chutes. She spotted Sue and her kids running back and forth here and there, either carrying large buckets of animal excrement, bundles of feed or fully grown animals. She waved at Vola as the girl gently lifted a large and fluffy beaver into the kill chute. Felicia had gotten Agren to make colourful drawings around the dark and gaping hole. Sue had given her even more odd looks than usual after seeing the happy images of frolicking bunnies and smiling mice around the twenty-meter deep spike trap.

The stout housewife had asked fewer questions that Felicia had expected. Had she been in her position, she would have been suspicious as fuck. But then again, the few short conversations the two women had had about non-work related stuff had given her the impression that the world outside these walls might be rather harsh, medieval and primitive. There was no telling how Felicia would have grown up, has she been raised in a small village lacking technology and modern education instead of in an Earthern first world country.

“Three hundred. I hate it. I love it. I don’t know what to think, you know. I started life commanding single-celled organisms to fight to the death, and now I'm just an accessory around some number abusing woman’s neck.”

“Do you really hate it that much?” Looking around, Felicia saw the stream of animals being thrown to their doom. She had scheduled four full-time jobs worth of time. Four times eight hours a day in pure dungeon core focussed labour. Two people were needed to harvest the plants and throw the crops into the hatches, two positions where required to throw the newly fully grown animals into the death traps. The two additional people available to her - Sue and herself - made up for any errors, slacking and other household chores like making food and washing up. One thing to note, Felicia had adjusted her worldview to the concept of twelve hour days. They had been working hard over the past week, but the results spoke for themselves.

“No. I love it. But it feels like my body is all wrong. I can’t explain it. I keep scanning through all the memories I got from the people who appeared up there and got their heads blown off…”

“So?” Morbid curiosity forced Felicia to ask for a better explanation.

“Like… Like someone was making love to you. Someone was fiddling with your reproductive organs in the best and most pleasurable way possible. That would feel good, right? But then you realise that the rest of your body has been amputated. All that’s left is you and your squishy bits. No legs, no arms, no face or organs, just you and yo-”

“Okay, I'm sorry I asked, okay?” Felicia held a hand to her mouth, forcing herself not to throw up.

“You asked. It’s nothing like that, honestly. It’s just the most similar experience to what I’ve learned about humans so far.”

“I’m really sorry I asked. I will not inquire about this subject again unless you can bring me a solution to this entire problem. We're still stuck inside a breeding farm type prison, after all.”

“That’s the worst part. I absolutely hate what you are making me do, but I can’t think of anything better. Had you not been here, I’d just be stuck inside that room. I’d be able to eat a few humans each week, but that would be it.”

Deep silence hung between the woman and the stone as they looked towards the efficiently running animal breeding operation. “So, what’s the number?”

“Over five hundred. And yes, I also think this is the limit. I can understand what you are doing on a number based level, and this is the maximum with the number of people we have.”

“There is a critical level, though. Having enough personnel to place one person at each post permanently will be another massive step in productivity. Preventing downtime because of travel and re-acclimatisation will be a large productivity boost. We will need to start giving our employees free days, though. This work is varied, and the walks between posts can be seen as a small break. The human mind does not cope well with long stretches of repetitive tasks.” More silence hung between Felicia and Agren as they both mulled over these words.

“Who?”

Felicia had a heart attack. She spun around at the unexpected voice. Seeing the tender face of Yuuk was both a relief and a dreadful thing indeed. Knowing full well not to ask something dumb like ‘how long have you been standing there’, she smiled and addressed the boy. “Hey. What who?”

“Who you talkin to?”

“Myself.”

“Okay. Mom told me to get you. Dinner.” And the angelic boy was gone. Felicia was not one for gossip and she had no one to gossip to, or she would have blabbed about her theory to the first woman she saw. There was no way that kid had the same father as the elder three. Neither his temperament nor his looks matched the twins or the girl. Felicia decided to ignore the fact that the kid had been spying on her for a long time - Agren told her that Yuuk had managed to listen to half their conversation - and followed the slender kid. The balcony overseeing the entire operation was accessible from the central room. One of the many changes that she had Agren make over the past week was the addition of a community kitchen and dining room combo. Felicia’s weird and honestly rather disturbing lack of need for sustenance did not apply to her employees. She had wanted to kiss Sue’s feet from the moment the stout housewife managed to whip up a tasty meal from the simplest of ingredients. Just the fact that she managed to light the stove Felicia had Agren made was enough for the businesswoman to be thankfull to the rotunde mother.

“And there is Fel! Please have a seat. Today we are having, umm” - here Sue cast a half-guilty glance towards Vola - “baked land rat and green stew.” Now with a smile on her jolly face, Sue lifted the lids of the pots. Felicia had wanted to exert her dominance over her employees by leading the dinner processions, but this had proven a bad idea. She had read that taking a leading role in all aspects in life was a good rule to have for yourself. Seeing an angry mother glare at her as she fumbled through the many dinner rituals that any family has was a harsh lesson in humility for the high-strung businesswoman. Instead of winding herself over the perceived loss of control, Felicia spent her time smirking at Vola. The girl seemed absolutely infatuated with the bunnies inside the breeding farm, and watching her chow down on what Felicia recognised to be bunny meat was amusing on a deep level.

She then took a bite, and all petty thoughts of revenge vanished from her head. They had access to salt nor pepper, yet this woman managed to make a meal as delicious as many a proper restaurant. The flavour profiles in Sue’s arsenal did contain weird things like animal kidneys, grasses and occasional bits of intestine, but it was nothing Felicia couldn’t get used to. And she had missed eating. Not being required to eat was different from not needing to eat, and she preferred to be able to eat any day of the week. She kept enjoying the homely atmosphere, having missed the simple joys of family life for far too long now.

“Fel, it’s happening.”

Until Agren’s voice woke her from her idle musings. She stopped observing the dynamic between mother and children as she put herself in the correct mindset again. “Dinner’s over. New people are coming. Do you all remember what you need to do?” The steel in her voice caused everyone to pay immediate attention. “New people are coming. Everybody up.”

“I’m not done eati-”

“Wooo, new peop-”

“Why do you sound sca-”

“NOW!” bellowed Felicia, layering every single bit of control and power in her voice as she could muster. The kids and even Sue jumped at her command. She ignored their reactions and turned around, starting to run up the stairs. “How are you going to neutralise them,” she asked.

“Already told you. The power is in the middle of the collar. I got to eat the central core, and they stop resisting. But you should know I’m about to fill up with ma-”

“Good. Prepare yourself.”

“I’m always ready, you know. I don’t have mood swings. But please take note that I’m almost full.”

Felicia was too busy to shout at the stone around her neck. Running up the stairs with all her might caused her to be out of breath instantly. She nearly fell over when she realised she had to wait for her employees. Standing outside the stairwell going down into the earth, she impatiently waited for the mother and children to emerge from underground. Herding the kids up the stairs, Sue looked at Felicia before scurrying off towards the central hut. Agren took action the moment the twins stepped into the open air. The low stairwell vanished without a trace, becoming dirt and plants as Agren used a relatively large portion of his mana to hide the entrance to the farm quickly.

Felicia turned around just in time to see Sue being cut down by armoured men. The kids followed, and she stood there, paralyzed. She observed the sprays of blood gushing from slashed throats. She saw each detail as Velo, Yuuk, Dako and Dylo, and Sue got cut down by sharp swords. The capacity to react in a meaningful manner was absent from her body as she looked at the soldiers murdering her employees. Shining metal. Full-face helmets. Slits where the eyes should be. Gender-less breastplates. A combination of the leather strip skirt of Roman soldiers and the chainmail vests of the medieval times. Swords that seemed too long to be practical in an enclosed or wooded environment.

Felicia was still idly observing these inconsequential details when she was slashed open by a sharp blade. The choker around her neck burst apart from the sheer force of the blow. Her guts spilt and she didn’t react in any meaningful manner as she fell.

As she lay there, choking on her own blood, tears streaked down her face. She should have reacted, she realised. She could have ordered Agren to spent all his mana to kill the group of shining solders. She could have saved Sue. She could have saved the twins. She could have-

As Felicia died, the armoured people looked around. “Clear!” shouted the one at the back.

Wiping his sword on the odd-looking blouse draped around the small dead girl, the middle soldier spoke. “The core is gone. Wegland will be pissed.”

“Wegland won’t know about this. He’s lost more than his fair share of marbles, and he won’t hear it from us, no?”

““No sir!”” shouted the group in unison.

“Great. Teleporting in five.” The soldiers all gathered around their commanding officer as he put away his scanning tool and activated his teleportation item. The squad of guards vanished with a bright flash and an acrid smell of ozone.

Felicia idly observed this entire procedure. Her head had nearly come loose from her body, only being attached to her mortal frame by half of her spine. She noted the empty tones of conversation. This was just another day on the job for these people. Killing children was just another tedious task. Her heart wanted to quail at this fading realisation, but it just couldn’t find the energy to care. Instead, she thought of inconsequential things. The bright flash of teleporting guards was just a distraction from memories of happier times to her. She failed to take note of Agren’s fractured state. She didn’t even register the strike that nearly shattered the diamond, sinking it into her chest after it cut through bone and flesh with ease.

And so Felicia and her employees died an ignoble death.