AN: Well, here it is, the coronation was pretty much glossed over because I was feeling lazy but I hope the rest of the chapter is enough to make up for it.
Chapter Three, Long Live the Queen.
I stared down at something the world couldn't handle, too much for me to handle, not even the combined forces of the Chaos gods could handle this much cuteness~ Ah, my twin sons are so adorable aren't they? It was agonizing to get them out but it was all worth it~ I might be gushing a little too much but since when has Maes Hughes been a bad parental role model? Outside of that one case of unintended child abandonment via death I mean.
I wiggled my fingers in front of both of them. Greggory was already trying to put my finger in his grip while his brother Johen was just giggling along, enjoying my teasing of them. It has been a long couple months since I gave birth to them, you would not believe the issues I've had with superhuman babies.
I glanced at the broken bars of the crib from Greggory's recent escape attempt. Turns out that normal cribs don't withstand babies with human adult strength very well. It really didn't help that my two sons had developed way faster than normal babies and I've been scrambling ever since. I guess this is what happens when your everything is superhumanly strong and your kids inherit a fraction of all of it right from the start.
I reached down and picked up the pieces of wood that had acted as railing and transmuted them back onto the crib before weaving a quick but long term reinforcement spell onto the crib itself so it wouldn't break again from being smacked by a baby with full adult strength. I was going to have to get one of my craftsmen to make a far more padded and sturdier one so the twins couldn't hurt themselves or break the crib. Maybe something made out of steel would work as long as it was covered in enough padding?
I was in my office at the moment since even the soon to be crowned queen didn't get a break from paperwork, not even for being a new single mother. The twins were with me since I was a little paranoid that something would happen to them when I wasn't there to protect them so they went with me whenever I could reasonably swing it and they were under more guard than the treasury the rest of the time.
I finished up with placating the twins before I moved back over my desk and sat down in my especially comfy chair, I'd make a comment about how nice and temperate my office was too, but I was always at the perfect temperature regardless of how hot or cold it is so instead you may stew in your envy of my amazing and convenient biology. Though, I doubted it was actually biology that let me do the things that I do.
Anyways, I sat down in my very comfy chair to continue my wrist ruining work, much to my sons' disappointment. Sorry boys, momma has to work so the country doesn't go up into flames with everyone murderfucking each other to death on massive battlefields, covered in pus and boils, all according to plan. That was probably too graphic to actually tell them until they are older wasn't it? Good thing I tended to do this monologue thing in my head instead of out loud.
Most of the paperwork I was working on was mostly just the usual stuff along with the extra work of the construction of hundreds of waystations and fortresses along with reports of the new recruits and how they were doing. There were a couple that stood out, one from the mage's council that reported an enterprising mage cobbled together a spell to use for prospecting the vast stretches of land I just conquered.
The dwarfs had already sent over their records of the prospecting they did oh so long ago but no one knew if they found it all or what had been tapped since they last checked. The iron mine in that Arabyian settlement was still going and probably would for a while now but that was a rare case. Most sources of wealth here in Drachenreich were not minerals or metals but some form of cattle like cows or sheep or making use of the forests that lined the mountains.
So far, only a few previously unknown, to both man and dwarf, deposits of natural resources had been found via the spell but it was just the beginning and it was still more than what we had thought we had. Trade was fortunately picking up quite a bit with Tilea, now that the entire country was far safer than before and getting even more so. Trade was shaping up to be something that was going to feed quite a bit of wealth into Drachenreich, even if reliance on trade was not the best plan.
I tapped my fingers against the desk and leaned back, thinking. It was rather fortunate that Drachenreich was so well positioned, with coverage of all land routes to and from Barak Varr and being a major route to and from Tilea and the empire as well as being the main land route from and to Araby, we were well situated for trading.
That's not including the fleet of ships that would soon be readied and they would have some of the first cannons to dominate the sea until the rest of the world caught up. It would be costly and any losses even more so until our industry caught up and then it would be merely expensive but to be one of the first to arm their ships with cannons instead of bolt throwers would be a great advantage.
Leaning forward again, I looked at the next stand out which was a thank you letter from a dwarf runesmith for the dragon's blood and bones. Most of it was from the skull of that punk dragon who couldn't see Mount Tai that had been collected since it was still a very rare material but some of it came from the neck since I wanted to give something that hadn't been splattered across a mountain pass.
The main reason why I had gifted them anything was because I was hoping to avoid them all rushing me to get some dragon parts for whatever runic item they wanted to craft. I had plans for the remaining dragon, it was all carefully preserved using both magic and mundane techniques.
Ah, that reminded me, I shuffled away my boring paperwork and pulled out from my secret drawer, a small stack of notes and diagrams. I had a few years before my kids would be fully grown but there was no reason as to why I couldn't start prepping my plans for two sets of dragon armor and a weapon for each.
I had no idea what weapon they would prefer so I was just making a plan for each weapon type instead. I was picking up what I could of forging in between everything else, I had an idea I could only test if I knew how to forge. I figured that if I did the enchanting process while forging the item, the enchantment would be enhanced or something along those lines. I had spent hours theory crafting and doodling out potential frameworks for spells on these pieces of paper.
I started with the sword since I figured at least one of the twins would be momma's boys and go the dumb route with the sword. Don't get me wrong, I loved Clarent and it was fantastic, but there was a reason why most people used basically anything else on the battlefield. Cavalry used them because of the speed advantage they had and they did situationally help in places while they were also symbols of status but an axe, mace or spear was usually better in reality.
The enchantment for not only the sword but all of the others started with the framework and power system, it needed to be as fool proof as possible while as effective as possible. If I was going to be making my own magical items, they could not be inferior to the dwarfs in any way or I might as well give up and let the dwarfs handle it all. I pulled out the enchantment power system diagram and started tweaking it as I mentally went over the current plan.
First was a series of magical veins and hubs built throughout the weapon, a network that would be very robust in terms of wear and tear and other damages and used excess magical energy to fate style reinforce the weapon and enchantments built into it. The handle had the manual energy input where any mage could insert magical energy to quickly restore the weapons power.
Of course this had side effects with high magic enchantments. As from what I learned from my limited experiments, it would cause the enchantment system to permanently switch to that wind alone, weakening the entire enchantment system quite a bit as it deprived it of seven eighths of all available power and becomes far less flexible as it could only perform what the single wind could do. And you really don't want to feed a mono wind enchantment a different type of wind since that makes instant dark magic and causes the entire thing to explode like a bomb.
The saving grace was that it also had a magical energy capturing system that, while taking days to recover from complete loss of power, could let the weapon be used at full power for up to ten hours of constant use, and if it wasn't completely used up and given several hours to recharge, it could recover to full power without forcing you to wait several days.
The sword enchantments themselves were simple but effective, first was just a general improvement of all the sword's functions. It would be sharper, far more durable, and require very little maintenance. Second was an elemental system that wouldn't be fully finished until the twins were tested for elemental affinities but I had the five main elements down.
How the elemental effect worked was actually based off of a character from a game. In Genshin Impact, Noelle's ultimate had this very clean earth element empowerment on her sword that I loved the idea of. Sure, there was intimidation in throwing around massive amounts of wasted mana into the sky with a giant fuck off beam but that's what it was, wasted mana.
Instead this enchantment was all about the clean lines of contained and compacted magical energy, creating a glowing energy blade that extended almost triple the length of the blade and made the flat of the blade wider. As an added benefit, this all could be boosted up the more power inputted manually by the wielder, so the large stores of mana my sons are bound to have would let them make huge fuck off blades of doom at the price of having to actually spend mana on maintaining it.
And unlike Noelle's, it would last hours before it ran out of juice. I also reserved a third and final slot for a specialized enchantment that I would tailor to the preferences of Greggory and Johen. Perhaps a little ironically, my planned enchantments had three slots for enchantments much like how the dwarf runes had the rule of three. I hadn't planned on it but that's how it came to be.
It wasn't a hard rule but even with the use of high magic, there wasn't enough energy generation for the power system to fuel the enchantments for very long and any magical energy used to power the weapon meant less energy the wielder had to use on other things. Not to mention, I had recently realized that this enchantment system could be passed down to my mages to make useful magical items far more common than they were. Which meant the number of enchantments had to be sustained off of the passive collection system.
I also had a spear enchantment system which had very similar enchantments but instead of the extended energy blade, it instead sent out spikes of deadly magic with every thrust and empowered every sweeping blow.
I also had a plan for a bow, I wasn't a bowyer but I had crafted a few small game bows before. The plan for this bow was pretty simple, it was made out of whatever parts I could use for the body of the bow while the string was a tendon from the dragon. I would line the entire bow so it would shoot arrows made out of magic.
Simply said, it worked by drawing back the bow string and then an ethereal arrow made of magical energy formed and the longer the arrow was knocked, the more powerful it was. Holding back the bowstring for five seconds was how long I set it to allow for energy to flow into the arrow. Any more and it could damage the bow and harm the wielder, mostly by exploding in their hands. The diagrams of the enchantments were not nearly as reassuring here as the past two so I made sure to mark down to do more testing on this before continuing on with my quick mental recap.
My mace and axe designs were mostly just copies of my sword design but I could always do some reworking to make them more unique later. Today I wanted to focus on the two sets of armor for my sons. I stretched my back while sitting in my chair out of habit, even after a decade and a half of no back problems, I still felt the urge to stretch out my back every once and a while.
I caught myself absentmindedly adjusting my loose shirt back to full skin coverage. It was ironic, that as a man, I had been raised to be pretty body conscious since no one wanted to look at the shirtless fat kid. But as a woman before merging, I had held little mind to how skimpy the things I wore were.
The compromise I had found between the two extremes had been wearing things like tube tops and short shorts regularly in private and with close friends or family but wearing things like jeans and normal shirts in public. Or at least, that was the new version since it was pretty scandalous for a woman to wear a tube top and short shorts in public nowadays. Back on Earth Bet, elastic basketball shorts and a sports bra was typically the order for the day since nine times out of ten I was either training or lounging around reading fanfiction online.
Shaking my head, I tuned back into reality from the mental rabbit trail I went down. The two sets of armor would be nearly identical to each other in design, with only a few changes made so the two of them could be told apart. The armor would be made from the dragon's hide with the scales solidly attached to it so as to not lose the additional protection they brought.
The enchantment framework and power system was far more robust and powerful, with each piece of the armor working together to protect the wearer as much as possible and provide the strongest protective enchantments possible. With the increase in size and material to work with, it could handle far more enchantments than the weapons could.
Resisting the urge to crack my fingers, I went to town on creating new notes and diagrams. First was a comfort enchantment, they would likely be wearing these for long periods of time, possibly days, so making them as comfortable as possible was a good idea and also fairly low energy. It also doubled as a life support system in a pinch. Next was a no duh enchantment and it enhanced the durability of the armor itself, letting it take hits far more than it should be able to with less overall damage.
Third was a gradual self repair system, not very useful if it got destroyed from a thousand cuts and I'd have to go find another conveniently evil dragon to kill to make a new one. So, a self repair system was a good idea. That led into the next one which was regeneration for the wearer, it would help with fatigue and potentially save one of their lives or limbs if they had a healing factor so I added one.
The fifth was actually inspired by Bob the unicorn, while it was guaranteed that they would have some magical resistance since they had their own magical cores which were far more powerful than magic circuits and those granted a degree of magical resistance.
I figured it was better safe than sorry and spent a lot of time figuring out how Bob was eating magic and created my magic eater enchantment. It was nowhere near as good as a unicorn, even if it only ate thirty to fifty percent of the magic in a spell, it still reduced the power of a spell by thirty to fifty percent and granted that to the armor itself.
Sixth was a built in radar that would act sort of like a Call of Duty mini map but with permanent enemy detection and would show the surrounding area within one hundred and twenty yards in three hundred and sixty degree range, granting them metaphorical eyes on the back of their heads.
How to get the effect I wanted was a bit of a pain in the ass, I was thinking using a broad scanning divination spell that "pinged" every few seconds which then sent the information to an illusion spell that displayed the simplified results to the wearer. But divination is notorious for its inaccuracy and was vulnerable to the Chaos gods, which was a problem when you are expecting a group of allies to come around the corner and find out it was instead a bloodthirster.
Now, what else should I add? I had room for at least one more before I ran out of room and started running the risk of too quickly using the energy available to the system. I tapped the bottom of my writing instrument against the desk as I thought to myself. Ah, right. I almost forgot, I needed to add some shock absorbers to prevent the wearer from getting rattled around and dying from their internal organs from bursting. Even if the armor was stab resistant, that didn't stop giant hammers from making your insides burst from the strength of the blow.
I quickly started writing out my notes, the magical formula of the enchantment taking form as I kept brainstorming. Perhaps rerouting the kinetic energy into the ground? Not very helpful if they were midair or standing on something breakable like a ship or the second floor of a building. Convert the energy into magical power for the armor? No, I didn't know how to do that and it wasn't likely to be able to handle the amounts it would need to.
Perhaps I could make the armor store the kinetic energy before releasing it once full like a burst dam? It was likely going to need a cooldown of sorts which would leave them vulnerable for however long that takes but it would have at least a stagger effect on those around the wearer when it releases which is better than the outright failures of the other two options. Rolling my neck, I decided to plan on using the third option but if I came up with something else I wasn't so attached to the idea that I wouldn't replace it.
Hearing the footsteps I had been waiting for coming down the hallway, I started putting everything away. Better not leave my sensitive documents out in the open even if I did have a couple wards to take care of any spies or thieves. Just as I was picking up my sons to put back in their rooms while I had my special moment, there was a knock at the door. Using my amazing flexibility, I used my foot to remove the trio of solid steel bars from the door.
I then hooked my foot onto the lever that functioned as the door handle and opened the door to reveal Cobbelly in all his halfling glory. "You ready for your big day princess? Or should I say 'my queen?'" He asked cheekily while holding his arms out for one of my babies.
I rolled my eyes at him and handed Greggory off to him as I walked past him into the hallway and towards the kids' room. "I'm ready to be over with it all, the stress of waiting is starting to get to me and there is only so much time I can use to destress by cooing over my adorable sons before I actually work so the country doesn't fall into pieces." I replied.
"Well, fear not my queen, the coronation is finally happening after a number of delays and in a couple hours from now, you'll have the power and legitimacy of being the queen of Drachenreich, formerly the Border Princes. A shame that you vetoed the fireworks display." He said mischievously.
"As if you haven't already arranged for them to go off anyways, I do keep tabs on what everyone is buying, remember? And several hundred crowns of fireworks is something I'd notice." I said, sarcasm thick in my voice while I gave my friend a look.
He raised his free hand up in surrender but didn't respond as we approached the first gate before we entered my sons' room. After fifteen minutes of various checks and inspections, we were past the three gate houses and actually entered the room. It took only a few more minutes before we had the twins laid down and asleep. Another fifteen minutes of inspections as we left and we were off to the throne room where the ceremony would be held.
The throne room was packed, something that has never happened before in the history of Drachenruhe. Not that the history of Drachenruhe was very long but it was the first time in the half a decade since it was founded that the massive cavern I called a throne room was filled.
I stood on a platform that allowed me to look over the crowd below without letting them see me. I was dressed in one of the most ornate dresses I've ever had the misfortune to wear, it was such a pain in the ass to even move around in, albeit not for the same reasons a normal woman would have. If I was normal I wouldn't have to worry about tearing it apart with a slight movement because of how restrictive it was.
But enough about this infernal dress, I was busy studying the crowds and going over things I already knew to avoid my nerves acting up. Anyways, the throne room wasn't normally filled because there were only so many nobles in my kingdom and even with a few of the peasants being allowed in along with the staff and guards, it always felt enormous.
Not so now, There were far more nobles here than normal, along with foreign nobles from all over that included Kislev, Estalia, Tilea, and a rare few from Bretonnia. There were also the dwarfs with several runesmiths and the kings of Barak Varr and Karak Drazh in attendance. But this was not what caused the room to be packed full.
It was the numerous peasants in attendance that caused that. My coronation was a public event but through politics and other nonsense, it was decided it had to be done inside my throne room. But it originally meant to be a display for the public and not a party for the top percent so I had drawn the line in the sand and made the whole thing available for the public to witness. It wasn't perfect on who got in but I deliberately made sure to let some every type of social ranking from the beggars to the obnoxiously wealthy merchants could get in.
I had to repress a smile as I remembered how close it came to me placing some of the most annoying and stuck up people I knew right next to the beggars, I eventually decided it was too cruel to make the beggars deal with them. Oh well, maybe another time would come up so I could free myself from them.
The ceremony was going to be pretty swift by itself, it was everything after that, that was going to take up most of my time. I'd make my grand entrance flanked by my most trusted advisors and walk up to right before the throne where everyone could see me. From there I would swear my oath as the ruler of Drachenreich before the trio of head priestesses for Shallya, Verena, and Myrmidia who would place the crown presented by King Neldogg Truefist onto my head as I knelt down.
From there I would rise to my feet and the audience would applaud and then the "afterparty" would start and my torment via being forced to talk with my peers and hanger ons while in this FUCKING dress would begin. Urgh, I needed a distraction quick, I was going to wind myself up if I thought too much more about what was coming.
A bell rang, the sound echoing in here as people quieted and moved to their places. It was the sound signalling we were about to begin. I moved as quickly as I could down the steps and to my position, I was just in time as the large doors to the throne room opened up to reveal me and the others walking down the hall with me. Trumpets sounded and other musical instruments played as I did the long walk over to the throne.
Finally, I reached the throne and turned to face the priestesses three. I swore my oaths to reign with Mercy, Honor, and Justly for as long as I reigned. I knelt as King Neldogg Truefist approached with crown in hand. He made a speech praising me and my good deeds to him specifically and just generally dwarf kind over all, it was honestly a little overboard in my opinion but I kept my peace as he spoke. He then ended off his speech by handing the crown to the three priestesses who jointly picked it up and placed it on my head.
Cheers broke out as I stood up, ranging from nobles to the beggars, everyone was very happy that I was crowned queen despite the fact that some of them shouldn't be so, since I had just conquered them and took away a lot of their authority as a border prince. I was distracted from this thought as I rapidly turned up my mental time dilation as my soul growth went into overdrive.
Patterns formed and moved rapidly, power surged across my soul as it was quickly consumed and became a part of my very being. It was when I became aware of the lightning storm that was happening in the northwestern corner of Drachenreich that I realized what I had been desperately hoping wasn't true was happening. I was becoming a goddess.
