“Kyra, what are you doing?” Nel’s voice carries a dangerous threat. Not the sort that I’m used to dealing with, as no sword, shield, or magic will protect me from her should she choose the path of violence.

“What do you mean?” I ask, buying myself a little more time to figure out how to respond or to secure an escape. Adler leans casually against the doorframe, the difficult look that she gives me is a warning that I should not run.

“Kyra…” Nel walks closer, wrapping her arms around me before looking up into my eyes. “You’ve been avoiding me.”

“I have not,” I say, bristling at the accusation. “I’ve been trying to clean up my empire, do you know how much mud people are tracking back into our city? The lake is going to be stained with all the rust if we don’t do something about this!”

Nel glares quietly, heatedly, no longer saying my name but instead grabbing my chin, she directs my sight back down to her. I hold her gaze, biting my tongue before I start throwing more words out there.

“You’re scared,” Nel says, rubbing a hand on her belly which has grown significantly since we first arrived here. It won’t be long before our kids arrive.

I still have so much to do before then.

“Of course I’m scared,” I say, “What if something happens to them? What if someone tries to use them to get to me? What if they get bullied by the other kids? Or what if they turn into bullies?

“I’m not ready for that!” I say.

“Were you ready to rule an empire?” Nel asks.

“Hell no, I’m still not ready!” I shout. “I’m just putting it all together as we go, hoping for the best.”

“Then that’s what we do as parents,” Nel says. “We do our best.”

“If it’s not good enough?” I ask.

“Then we try harder until it is enough,” Nel says, smiling as she clicks out the syllables carefully. “It will be fine, Kyra.

“So stop running from me,” her glare returns with passion as she steps back from me. “I need love and affection, Kyra. I’ll wither and die, otherwise, and I know that you’re the same. Stop putting up these silly walls for silly reasons.”

“Right, sorry,” I say, lowering my head. I’ve been avoiding those thoughts to try and stay focused on doing the things that I know I can do. If I can make this world a little better before they arrive, then I’ll be achieving more than if I spend my time sitting around in anxious worry.

“Kyra,” Nel squeezes my hand tight. “It’ll be okay. We have all the rest of our lives ahead of us. Don’t get stressed about the things that might go wrong, think about all the great things that lie ahead for us.”

“Screaming babies and no sleep?” I ask, shrugging.

“You can’t think of one thing that you’re looking forward to?” Nel asks, raising a brow.

“I mean… I haven’t thought about all that,” I admit. “I never really thought of raising kids as fun. Satisfying seeing them grow up? Yeah. Would it be nice having more family to love you and who you love in return? Yeah, I get that, too. Fun? I can’t think of anything, not that I ever thought that it needed to be fun.”

“What about celebrations?” Nel asks. “Surprising your kids with gifts? Seeing them smile, or playing games with them? You don’t see yourself having fun with all of that?”

“I guess,” I say. She’s just making me feel increasingly uncertain the longer she talks.

“Well, it’ll make for a better surprise for you if you don’t know what to look forward to,” Nel says. “I don’t expect you to be home all the time, but I do want you to help raise our kids while you are home. It’s important to build up a relationship with them, even while they’re babies.”

“I’ll be here,” I say. “My parents were always off doing their own things and were never actually home. I don’t want that.”

Nel nods slowly a sad smile rising on her lips, as she takes a seat on one of the couches. We still have some time before I have to run off to a war council. I may as well relax for a while longer.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“The recruits are ready for battle,” Red says, glaring at me as if daring me to contradict her. “They’ve trained for long enough, and they can easily deal with most threats on the surface. We’re already going much further than any of the armies that I’ve fought for.”

“How much attrition are we anticipating?” I ask. “People are going to die, how many?”

“From my experience?” Red asks. “With our strong teamwork, focus on survivability over achieving objectives, and competent leadership, we’ll only lose people from unexpected accidents and traps.

“To answer your question, we will eventually lose people from those waves,” Red says. “Every team that leaves the cavern will have a survival plan in case they’re out in the open when a wave comes in, but we will still lose people to them.”

“Why do we need to send out the army?” Adler asks, leaning back in her chair as she considers her own question. “What’s the rush?”

“Mana,” Red says. “We need mana to grow stronger, all of us. You can’t carry home enough to satisfy our people.”

“No one is starving or dying of mana shock,” Adler says.

“No, but they will die because they’re too weak,” Red says. “If we don’t grow, and quickly, then we’ll end up face to face with those who are stronger than us, and we won’t be ready to stand against them.”

“Like the trees?” I ask.

“Like some of the rebel factions,” Red says. “You’re not strong enough for them to treat you as a peer. Heck, if we’re too slow about it, the republic and monarchy could overwhelm us.”

“Right,” I say, letting out a long sigh. “We’ll allow for military actions beyond the caverns. You’ll be acting as hunters in the swamps, and with the help of our engineering teams, you’ll secure us a surface base where we can trade. It has to be capable of surviving the waves.”

“A good first mission,” Red says nodding slowly. “How is our relationship with the tree? No base we make could survive that monster knocking on our door.”

“The tree is quiet,” I say. “From what I can figure, she’s competing with the rest of her kind in an extremely long-term competition. I don’t think she realizes how fast we move and grow.

“Our current plan is to push out away from her, if we start to starve her out then she will retaliate, alliance be damned, so be careful how much we hunt until we can extend out to beyond her reach.”

Red nods slowly, I have no doubt that she has experience in this sort of complicated balancing game. Measuring threats and stealing what you can until you’re ready to deal with the enemy face to face.

“I’ve sent you some simple reports already, but I’ll mention that the republic and the monarchy have both made a play to grab caverns within our new dungeon home,” I say. “As far as I know they’ve made no real moves to try and claim the surface yet, they’re more focused with growing the lands that they’ve taken.”

“Shouldn’t we do the same?” June asks, leaning forward in her seat. “We still haven’t fully used the caverns that we have.”

“We should,” I say, nodding firmly to her. “I don’t have all the answers, unfortunately. We need to keep the crystal farming going, but aside from that, I don’t know what to do with the land.”

“I’ve heard some of the slayers discussing the volcanic cavern,” Slan says, and Eshya sits up in her seat. She is technically the ruler of those lands. “I can’t say I recall everything said, but it might be worth following up on.”

“We could sell plots of land,” Nel says, hesitantly. “I’m sure that there are people interested enough to reach out to us.”

“We don’t need the money or anything else they might trade us,” I say, shaking my head. “We want the land put to good use, to build up our entire empire into something greater. Full coffers mean rather little at this point.

“A competition, maybe?” I ask, leaning back in my seat. “Reach out to people, ask what they would do with the land, and those who are most eager can be awarded rights to the land.”

“So, we’re encouraging entrepreneurialism?” Asks one of my human advisors. “Do you think it will work? From what I understand, most people here come from rather top-down power structures, do you think they’ll respond well to such an event?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “It’s a nice thought though, isn’t it? We could perhaps have people voting on it, too. We don’t know what to do with the land. So, let’s open up the gates for everyone else?”

If they do anything too awful, I can always just strip the land away again and see it handed to someone else. I’d really rather not, but I can see some situations in the future where it might be necessary. Just my limited experience with the selfish manipulations of corrupt and powerful assholes makes me aware of potential issues.

The idea of artificial scarcity enforced by monopolistic practices comes straight to mind. An extreme version of this would be owning all the farms but letting half the food rot just to sell the other half for four times the price to a market of desperate starving people. As the Empress running the show, I want everything running smoothly, and while I won’t begrudge any of my people a chance to enrich themselves, it cannot come at the cost of the rest of my people.

Even so, I can’t let these fears stifle the growth of my people.

“June, Slan, can I put your organisation in control of managing this competition?” I ask.

“We can handle that,” June jumps in with overeager energy. She’s come a long way from doing volunteer work like street sweeping.

“We’ll look into the matter,” Slan says, the bronze-skinned snake-man glaring at his peer as he accepts the burden. They have enough freedom to claim whatever manpower they need for the project, so I’m hoping for the best out of them.

“Is there anything else on today’s schedule?” I ask.

“We still need to develop rules and a proper process for incorporating new tribes into our empire,” the kidnapped elvish student says staring down at his hands. “If they’re too beastly they’ll start killing and stealing from our people, but if we leave them separate, then they’ll develop a separate culture that could make it challenging to enfold them in the greater culture of our empire.”

“That’s a long discussion…” I say, rubbing at my brow. “Does everyone still have plenty of time today?”

Red and Eshya grumble quietly, while Adler leans in with clear intrigue. No one contradicts me or complains about something they have to do, so we continue on.

This is Adler’s sort of conversation and I’m not surprised when she takes over control five minutes in.

We delve into the question of acceptable risks, and necessary cruelties.

“We must ensure that the involved species aren’t going to revert to hunting other citizens of our empire,” Adler says. “Already we’re dealing with both predators, in the blue-skinned angels, and prey, in the form of the ferrets. We cannot let their past conflict continue once they’ve become citizens.”

“That’s fine in theory,” I say, “But how?”

“Lesser forms of citizenship rights, like what we have for pets and children,” she suggests. “We could separate them into certain sections of town until they’ve proven themselves.”

“If we treat people as beasts, then we can’t be surprised when they act like beasts,” I say. “No, I’ll… I’ll take responsibility. I can keep an eye on them.”

The most grating part of this conversation is that there are no perfect answers. In the end, we contend with an endless list of compromises.

Make things easier for immigrants, then we increase the risks shouldered by our own citizens. These aren’t just humans with a slightly different colour palette, like when you hit a new stage in an old video game. These immigrants are sometimes actively hunting and eating other groups of immigrants we want to bring in.

Earth politics is much, much simpler by comparison, and seems almost silly looking back at it.

Whatever we do here, problems will arise. There is no one single solution to make everything work perfectly, no ideology that can bring us all together in a Utopian civilisation.

Instead, we stumble ahead, anticipating the problems and working on solutions without losing our momentum. There is a world to claim, countless enemies to fight, and peers to come to terms with.

“That went longer than I was expecting,” Vii says, stretching her wings out wide. I’m sure that she’s recorded the whole meeting for the sake of writing her history books, but even she is weary as we step outside.

“Well, we’re preparing to fight an expansionist war on the whole universe,” I say. “All without losing our basic moral groundings, with the goal of creating something better than what we destroy to get there. It’s easier said than done.”

“So, what’s next?” Vii asks.

“Something even more difficult. Making a school worthy of our kids,” I say. “No more excuses, it’s time to ring in the school year.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Stats and Skills

~Mana Form:

Current mana crystallisation:

-0.4% at 78,231 (Stage 2)

-99.6% at 60,892 (Stage 1)

Current mana volume: 30,304 / 30,304 shards

Mana volume at Stage 1 crystallisation (Max. mana volume):

Kyra: 30,271 shards

Kyra’s armour: 20,777 shards

Kyra’s throne: 1,109,298 shards

~Forms

Mana Canon

-Annihilation Heart (Adapted)

-Blood Fuel (Adapted)

-Bone Magic Storage (Adapted)

-Nail Shifters (Adapted)

Dancer

-Flash Nerves (Adapted)

-Quick Perception Mind (Adapted)

-Burst Reflex Muscles (Adapted)

-Layered Space Muscles (Adapted)

Turtle

-Rebinding Tissue (Adapted)

-Catalyst Sweat Glands (Adapted)

-Repulsive Skin (Adapted)

-Prehensile hair (Adapted)

-Fatty Tissue Blood Storage (Adapted)

Investigator

-Wide eyes (Adapted)

-Wide ears (Adapted)

-Sharp nose (Adapted)

Misc.

-Clean bowels (Adapted)

-Mana Drive (Adapted)

~Favourited Skills:

Magic:

-Annihilation Magic (Customised)

-Fire Magic (Functional)

-Space magic (Broken)

-Force magic (Functional)

-Ice magic (Broken)

-Wind magic (Broken)

Movement:

-Hand-to-hand casting (Mastered)

-Mana surge movement (Customised)

-Stealth (Functional)

Senses:

-Eyes of an Empire (Customised)

-Combat Awareness (Mastered)

-Watchmen (Functional)

-Hidden bug (Mastered)

-De-tagging (Mastered)

-Anti-stealth sight (Mastered)

Special:

-Spirit Transformation (Broken)

-Conformity (Broken)

-Training mana form (Functional)