“It is common for a man to have a child at your age, Adrin, you are already what? Twenty-one if my calculation is right,” the girl with a bright red head nodded a few times, agreeing to her mental math. She couldn’t be any further from the truth, and she should know that age doesn't matter as much in this world.

‘She can’t be serious right?’ Adrin mused. ‘And where did the bump on her stomach go? Don’t tell me it was really just obesity.’

Adrin knew the huge secretive meeting was probably about him, but he had never expected this news to hit him. He had almost lost it when he heard the news as it felt like a huge slap at the back of his head. Had he been too focussed on his work?

He had questioned it but now he was relieved that the bossy girl had insisted that he take a seat before delivering the news. The Matriarch had said that Lily was confirmed to be carrying his child, that was why the maidservant wouldn’t attend to his needs anymore.

‘As I need her to attend to anything,’ he scoffed inside his head.

Bella alone was enough distraction he could barely handle. Thanks to her ever-ravaging needs, his money-making projects were crawling at a snail’s pace.

He needed them to complete as soon as possible so he could escape this golden cage he had found himself in. Almost every day there would be a new girl who would introduce herself and make herself freely available to a point even his dense self realized what was going on.

The family had many more minor factions in itself and every faction had sent their prettiest girls to win him over. Some of them were just too pretty to be mere maidservants and he was right after a few questions. Many of them had unknowingly admitted to being daughters of smaller branch family members looking for opportunities to enter the main family.

He was just a fool to not see it the first time it had happened.

Adrin was too distracted with his many projects and the lady to realize it earlier. Thanks to all these distractions, all he has now is a pair of oversized armored legs which helped him stand up straight and walk on his own.

The mech-armor had hit a solid snag until he had to put it on hold. It was almost as impossible as to stabilize the plasma projectile in his railgun spell project. That one was also a bust.

It had turned out translating modern circuitry into a magitech version of it was more difficult and tricky than he first thought. At this rate, it would take years to make it combat capable and now this metaphorical bomb exploded right onto his face.

Of course, he had daughters before, even if they weren’t his blood, but he had loved them with all his heart, at least, for a considerable amount of time. That life, however, didn’t reflect well on his current life. Lily wasn’t even close to a wife and there were a lot of things to consider about the child she was carrying.

And this was truly his biological child, for god’s sake. He didn’t need such development but he couldn’t just shrug and move on.

A hand waved in front of his eyes and his attention snapped back to reality. The girl chuckled like his daddy's problem was nothing.

It was everything, god dammit!

“So what do you think?” the young Matriarch probed.

“Can I at least meet her?” the question came naturally out of his mouth.

“Not without strict supervision,” Ana said sternly, “she is no longer your maidservant, I remind you. The Elders find the child worth more than your pity needs,” the girl chuckled. “We have many other girls you can choose from. Why don’t you choose them, why do you still want Lily of all the others?”

“I need to know her opinion on this, without anyone present pressuring her,” Adrin explained. “Believe me, I know carrying a child and giving birth isn’t easy.”

It wouldn't have cost arms and legs if the procedure didn’t have huge risks. It might only be true in the country where he was from, but the fact did not change. It might be, or should be different here, but bringing a child into the world still would be a huge thing to handle alone.

“For a moment there you almost make believe you cared, but you only want to be alone with her, don’t you?”

“Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying,” Adrin didn’t deny it because he knew that look and tone.

“You men are all the same,” the redhead huffed. “If all those pretty maids aren’t worth your time, then what about me?” the girl said before she lowered herself and elegantly took her seat on his lap.

She leaned on, pushing her modest chest onto him, making her intention clear even to the dumbest man alive. At least, what she had wanted him to believe. His raging red-pill years were not for nothing.

“I’m flattered,” Adrin said while placing his hands on the girl’s wide birthing hips. “But who am I to entertain such an offer?”

Adrin literally pushed her naive advances away.

Ana’s eyes were wide open as he removed her from his lap by the killer hips as he stood up. To the young Matriarch’s credit, she didn’t double down and lose her mind about the whole thing.

Adrin appreciated that, but a top beauty like her must have never gotten used to rejection. The word ‘no’ might be even alien to people like her and he could see the confusion in her large pretty eyes.

She still couldn’t believe this was happening as he moved away from her. Processing the rejection would take some time even after she recovered from it.

Unlike her though, Adrin was already used to rejection. He got rejected all the time and it taught him valuable life lessons.

It was too bad but at least he got something else out of this. The mechanical ‘muscles’ whirled smoothly and were able to support all the extra weight on his arms. The magitech motors and the gears were solid in their brute force, but they were still nowhere near to be combat ready.

He could easily dispatch a dumb animal with this but it was useless against fast-moving giant claws or swords. The armor would need something faster. Much faster.

Ana was biting her thumbnail when he spared her a glance. The girl must have thought that he was just like any other handsome or rich man with plenty of choices all around him. This world might have magic but there wasn’t an otherworldly difference when it comes to relationships between the genders.

She thought a man like him would have swooped her by the feet and threw her onto the bed without even thinking about it. Every man wished for nothing else when the girl was as gorgeous as her, but honestly, he felt sad for those who ended up with the same opinion.

Those who had terrible experiences with heartless chads or tyrones would have the exact opinion that men were all the same horny dickheads. It was hard not to blame others and find fault in your own decision.

But he couldn’t naively assume that she had made the same mistake. The girl was too smart to make such a mistake. It made him wonder who had torn the girl’s heart apart and it would be a pleasure for him to teach the man a good lesson.

It must be impossibly hard to be in such a position while being so young. Both her peerless beauty and lofty position would attract all kinds of men into her life, good and especially bad ones.

He used to think that all handsome men should die at gunpoint, well, when he was much younger. As he got older, he learned that even a girlfriend-snatching-handsome-fool still had its uses. This also made him wonder if he should introduce guns to this world or not?

Adrin was about to continue his work before another question popped up inside his head. The same question that popped up every time he saw himself in the mirror nowadays.

“Did you tell the elven healers to reshape my face?”

—

Ana was taken aback by the sudden change of topic. It had pulled her out from the mind limbo she was in after being rejected so effortlessly.

This had never happened before. She had many admirers but she hadn’t been as forward to any of them. A flick of her hair was already more than enough. Boys hadn’t or couldn’t ever be able to push her away as if she was no one.

“It was Bella’s idea to make you more pleasing to the eyes,” she replied absentmindedly.

“Am I more pleasing to your eye?” the crippled young man strapped in mysterious whirling metal bracers turned around and asked her. A genuine, humorous smile was plastered on his face.

Ana’s face heated up for whatever reason.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Adrin chuckled. “No wonder those maids keep staring at me,” the young man shook his head.

It was very rare to have such a genuine moment in her life, but she had no idea what to do after the odd banter. It felt like she was talking to a mysterious man from another world.

Ana shook her head. Of course, she was talking to such a man.

But he should still be like any other man, right?

She had come here dressed her best, mind and body prepared to do her duty. She would bear the child of the [Lightbringer] for the sake of the family. It should have been a simple, mindless interaction with the man while she pretended to enjoy it.

A question nagged her insistently as she stared at the man’s back.

“What does Lily have that I lacked?” the question rolled out her lips before she could think thoroughly about it.

The odd tiny whirls of his metallic fingers silenced for a moment.

“I don’t know,” Adrin sighed, almost in defeat. “Probably because the girl only had me, her master, to depend on?”

“Then what about Emilia or Nerina?”

This time Adrin groaned out loud and his palms clinked on the metallic table. Ana could imagine how devastated he had been but he should have recovered from the reveal. She also had learned that he hadn’t touched Nerina at all, they had plans after the meal, well, before everything sadly turned out as they were.

The girls opened up to Ana after almost losing hope in him. Ana couldn’t blame them as it was a harsh time for everyone close to him. No one could believe it when he suddenly woke up, but their happiness had clouded their minds at that time. Nerina was especially affected when she found out about how he truly felt right after he woke up.

“What I had with Emi was to ease each of our worries and fears,” Adrin suddenly answered, melancholy in his voice. “I also owed her too damned much,” the young man added.

He looked at the walls of his, as he called, man-cave as if he could see something very far away from the city. Ana could tell that Emi was more than a lover to him. Leaving the girls as they were would be unwise on her part, but could she even trust the young man before her?

“As you should already know, death is just on the other side of the wooden fence from where we grew up,” Adrin continued to explain. “It felt like our life could end at any time and it would be a huge waste not to enjoy life fully while we could still breathe. Our object of fear only changed when we first came here and they could only trust me to keep them safe at the time. My absence was good for them, it seemed,” he chuckled derisively.

Ana could feel the longing in his voice. Adrin missed them, not as bed warmers but companions he could trust with his heart. The young man wasn’t able to say it, but he couldn’t even trust the girls anymore when their hearts were already stolen by other men.

What he would do if he knew that those men were slick scoundrels and huge liars. Ana couldn’t tell what kind of reaction she was going to get, so, she had to keep it a secret.

But the fact dug by the family’s agents didn’t change anything about him. Immensely talented crafter as he was, Adrin felt alone in this world.

He was just as lonely as she was, if not more.

“I’m sorry,” was the only thing she could say after a short silence.

Maybe they could be more than just friends like Adrin had with the girl, Emilia. Maybe this was the best for her and the family. Something deep within her agreed with the idea.