Interlude One - Arc Four
Interlude One, All Hail the Crown Prince of Drachenreich!
It was a good thing we were in a rocky area or else I would be concerned about accidentally causing a forest fire with today's event. It was a sunny day but the temperature was just right for a picnic, or in this case, a brutal showdown between brothers to decide who would be heir to the throne. Not that anyone not in the family would believe what the real reason for the fight was.
Earlier that week.
I was walking along and then I suddenly overheard Johen's voice.
"It's settled then, the winner gets the summer house!" What? Surely that's not what I thought it was.
"Agreed!" Came Greggory's voice. Oh no. This was something I had to put a stop to now before it was too late!
Turning the corner, I saw my sons just starting to walk away from each other.
"What's this about the summer house?" I asked, my mom voice in full effect.
The two of them turned to face me before glancing at each other. Johen was the one who spoke, "We were deciding who got to move into the summer house with their family. We all know that sooner or later that only one person is going to stay here long term, too many valuable assassination targets in one easily explodable location for too long and all that. The summer house is our favorite place and where we grew up so both of us wanted to move into it. In the end, we decided to have a sparring match in a few days to decide who gets it."
I hmm'd, before saying, "there is only one problem with that, the summer house is currently the palace of the elector count of Drachenruhe and only said elector count gets to live in it. If either one of you were willing to become the elector count along with all the responsibilities of being such then I'll pass down the title to you." There! Neither of them had shown much interest in running their own piece of land in years, so I'll probably get to keep the summer house. If one of them decides to take that load of work off of me then I still win!
""Deal!"" They both exclaimed at the same time with zero hesitation. They turned and looked each other in the eye and I could see the sparks fly as their eyes met, literally, there were tiny lightning bolts that I could sense with my domain that were battling it out. I guess that I probably should have considered what anime would do to my sons before I recreated those shows via illusions. They both broke off eye contact at the same moment, blinking a bit, likely from the spots in their eyes from having continuous lightning streams in their field of vision.
Greggory spoke up this time, deadly serious. "We were going to have to settle this soon anyways, winner gets the lighter workload and the summer house, loser has to be emperor and deal with the Goddess Forsaken Paperwork Mountains?" What? Was he referring to the stacks of paper I kept around as props? I thought they would have noticed by now that they were all blank slips that I used for official business or secretly practicing my mangaka skills for my plans in my retirement.
"Great minds think alike as Mom says, you have a deal. At least this way, neither of us gets to complain about being the only one saddled with work while the other spends all day with their family." Johen said nonchalantly, shrugging.
Seriously? Well, I guess I didn't have to have a talk with them about who exactly was going to be emperor anymore. They figured it out themselves, though their faces when they realize the, as they put it, Goddess Forsaken Paperwork Mountains were all blank slips was going to be hilarious.
And So we were over at an old quarry that held plenty of room for them to go all out while allowing me and their families to watch. Though, I had to wonder at what happened to my family's fertility considering how many kids they ended up with. Seriously, I had twins and then Greggory ended up with a set of twins and a set of triplets while Johen almost immediately had conceived a son the moment they were eighteen? That's not normal. I shook my head and turned my attention to the seating arrangements.
On my left was Greggory's harem and kids. Irina with her daughter Nessa were sitting next to Reinhild with her son Karl near me. Susanna with her twins Salvo and Sandra had gone a bit further back and up the quarry, sitting along the cliff side with Tallis with her triplets Chase, Dash, and Fortune. At the bottom of said cliff side was the nonhuman part of his harem. His dark elf lover, Radara Mizzenscale, his high elf lover, Ofnari, as well as Corsa, a storm dragon he met soon after the Border Wall Siege as the event became known as. Sitting in the currently humanoid dragon's lap was the little terror, Artoria. I waved at the tiny tyrant who had everyone wrapped around her finger, she giggled and waved back before the both of us turned away to other things.
And over on my right, was Johen's wife and son, Luciana and Alfonso. Personally, as amusing as it was at times to have a harem protagonist for a son and how much I enjoyed having so many grandbabies, I was quite happy that Johen managed to avoid having over half a dozen women of varying species and nationalities following him around. I might have had to check for slaaneshi taint far more often than normal if both of them ended up with a horde of women following them around.
My mental musings were pushed aside when my sons finally took their places a bit over three American football fields away. I stood and used a bit of magic to send my voice down the quarry to the pair.
"Before we get into this, I want to ask if you both are sure about this? If you both say yes and then years later I hear about the two of you getting into a fight because one of you held a grudge about this, don't think you're not too old for me to spank you. Got it?" I asked them, losing some of my intimidation factor from how far away from them I was.
The two of them did their twin telepathy thing for a bit before rolling their eyes in my direction. "Look Mom, besides you, not even our wives can tell when we switch off with each other. If it ever gets too much for us, we can just switch off and no one would know. If that doesn't work, we are mature adults and are fully capable of talking it out." Ah, when did they get so mature? It sure wasn't my doing.
"Alright then, as the two of you decided, the winner of this match will be the future Elector Count of Drachenruhe and sole ownership of the summer home estate there while the loser will begin their training as heir to the throne." I said aloud to both them and their audience. Not that the last part was entirely accurate. They did just admit to swapping places at times so that means Mordred's Heir Boot Camp for the both of them!
"On three, Three!" I shouted, getting side-eyed for skipping numbers one and two by the twins before they clashed. Johen started off with a wide fiery sword beam at knee height towards his brother, Greggory countered by literally bouncing it back with a spell. Johen lightly jumped over the reflected beam only to use his sword to block when Greggory followed up his reflection with a blast of lightning from his spear. I belatedly realized that the distance we, the audience, was at wasn't nearly far enough away and quickly raised a magical barrier to contain the devastation.
Johen drew back his sword and started making quick short swings in his twin's direction, sending half a dozen sword beams his way. Greggory in response raised a massive wall of stone which started melting away from the blasts of fire it intercepted. Not that it melting mattered as Greggory cast a spell, exploding the molten rock wall into tiny pieces of hot shrapnel, causing countless small craters as well as pelting Johen and scoring the first solid hit of the fight.
It was then followed up with a Master Bolt which quickly zoomed across the arena and smashed into Johen. The shielding I had put around the makeshift arena spiked in magic consumption as it blocked out the thunderous noise and mass collateral damage.
"First blood goes to me Johen!" Greggory crowed triumphantly, though perhaps a bit too early as the dust settled and his brother was revealed.
"Well, you managed to ding up my armor some but I wouldn't say blood was drawn yet." Johen commented cheekily, mostly unharmed by Greggory's spells.
"Well, it's not like we're monsters made out of raw power like Mom, managing to do that much through our magical resistance is pretty good. Besides, we both know that neither of us were going to do much damage to each other with simply magic. It shall be our strength of arm and wits that determine the victor today." Greggroy said, shrugging. Said shrug was turned into a dash as he closed the distance between him and Johen.
Johen counter charged and their weapons clashed in a spout of sparks and flames, the ground around them cracking like this was an anime. Greggory stabbed out his spear, often getting deflected but small nearly unblockable jets of lightning would sometimes lash out of the speartip and hit Johen, scoring small but important bits of damage. But in return Johen clearly held the edge in the melee, his preference to fight with sword in hand instead of raining down death from above like a mage granting him a fair bit more experience than his opponent when it came to close combat.
In the following exchange Johen managed to kick away a low thrust and get a good swing at Greggory who leapt backwards but took the fiery beam across the length of his body. Greggory went to cast a spell, possibly to cool off from the lingering heat from the blow, but Johen pressed his advantage and started the exchange of blows again. It was moments later that Johen seemingly got the better of Greggory and his armor was slashed open by the blow, a bloody gash across his side.
Johen quickly paused in concern at the wound he inflicted on his twin which gave Greggory all the time he needed to unleash his spell upon Johen, revealing that the blow hadn't done much more than dent his armor and the rest was just a clever illusion. The ground dropped away from Johen as a gaping pit formed below his feet. The bottom of the pit was pitch black and Johen fell like a rock down into it.
This was when I knew the end of the match as fiery light shone from the pit and Johen expelled massive amounts of his magical reserves to thrust him up into the air, rapidly clearing the top of the pit and perfectly aimed for him to land near the edge. Unfortunately for Johen, that burst of magical energy got him out but now he was at a big disadvantage from using so much of his magical reserves.
Something Greggory knew as well as he used a basic version of Mana Burst to attack Johen, smacking him out of the air and causing him to crash into the ground across the pit from Greggory, creating an outline of his body in the newly formed crater. Johen recovered quickly and leapt at his brother, fire covering him as if a second suit of armor and almost wing like jets of fire burst into existence as if he was some sort of winged god of fire.
But Greggory was ready for him, he was wreathed in lightning and raw magical energy as he combined his physical and magical might for one final clash between him and his twin. An explosion of fire, lightning and raw power occurred as they met, almost collapsing the magical barrier I cast. As the rest of the audience blinked the spots out of their eyes, I watched as Johen who was looking very bruised and battered, surrendered to Greggory who was also looking worse for wear.
I stood up and clapped my hands together, gaining the attention of both the audience and my sons. "Congratulations Greggory on your win, as promised, you get to be elector count of Drachenruhe. Johen, you did well, unfortunately the amount of magical energy you spent getting out of that pit put you at too much of a disadvantage when the two of you did your final clash, I'll make sure to teach the both of you a simple spell to handle things like there being no ground to stand on without spending half your reserves on a massive jump." I said, to the tired groans of my sons. Yep, that's right, I'm turning this into a teaching moment boys, you can't escape education! Learning for life!
"Please excuse me, Your Majesty, but what exactly happened? One moment the fight started and then mere seconds later it was already over and now it looks like multiple gods decided to smite the very land." Irina asked, gesturing at the now ruined quarry. The rest of my sons' wives turned to me as well, waiting expectantly.
I looked over the oozing magma, many glowing craters, the gaping pitch black pit and cracks running like veins interconnecting it all and said shrugging, "A pretty basic spar, usually it takes a bit longer and is typically more evenly matched but it's been a while since they last sparred and Greggory used a new trick that gave him a big advantage over Johen this time. I'm sure that next time it will be far more evenly matched and last at least a full minute."
That didn't seem to reassure them at all, if anything it seemed to make them far more worried than before… Damn, I wish I could laugh at their faces but that would ruin the gravitas of the moment.
Arda grimaced as she watched high ranking nobles swarm her goddess and the goddess's sons. She didn't care for how lax they were when interacting with the goddess but since said goddess was clearly tolerating it, she would let it go. Why her goddess came to this ball with both sons in tow was beyond her considering how few balls they ever went to.
The reasoning for the ball was to celebrate the completion of the over a decade long construction of the undercities of Drachenruhe. Built in mimicry of the dwarf's own holds and pathways, there were now entire cities built underneath other cities and interconnected by tunnels across the entire province of Drachenruhe.
Talk was already starting about continuing this expansion across the rest of the empire although it would take even longer, not counting these rumors of rat beastmen that lived underground and had been recently discovered. She didn't know much about the subject but having to face beastmen while trying to build underground was something she was sure would take much longer than normal.
Turning away from the surrounded goddess, she made her way to the food table, something that was rumored to originate from the goddess herself. She didn't know about that but it was very convenient for avoiding nobles who wanted to get into her favor, or more accurately, she thought while rubbing her glowing arm, her goddess's favor.
"It's pretty amazing that you've managed to keep that arm, you know?" She jumped as a voice suddenly spoke to her from close by. Turning, she saw Prince Johen mere feet away from her.
"Is it, Your Highness?" She asked, she knew that very few were granted any sort of permanent blessing by the goddess but she was curious as to what his reasoning was.
"Yes, she doesn't talk about it very much but I do know that in order for that to stick around like this would mean you are very devoted and faithful to her. Stuff like that is powered off of your own faith and devotion to her but she doesn't tolerate blind zealotry so somehow you must strike the right balance of intense faith and following your own path regardless of what her teachings are." The prince told her, watching her reaction closely.
She blinked in surprise, that would explain why so many of those without limbs had failed to receive their own replacements, many of whom had been even more devoted than she was and yet couldn't maintain one or even manifest one at all. She popped one of the delicacies from the table into her mouth to give a few moments to think on this. Prince Johen seemed to find whatever he was looking for and turned to eat something as well.
It was almost a minute later before she decided to ask the question she had been wondering since the start of the ball. "Your Highness, if I may ask, why appear at this ball? You and your brother normally avoid such things, traditionally only going to a few balls held each year."
He scratched his cheek and grinned sheepishly at her before saying, "well, it should be announced soon so it shouldn't hurt to tell you. My brother and I have finally settled who was going to be the emperor which should give everyone some peace of mind that we won't be returning to the feuding of the past empire. Since we had done so, it was decided that the two of us needed to interact a bit more with those under us and brought us here."
"Oh? I had heard that the debate on which of you would inherit the throne was quite fierce. How exactly did Your Highness manage to settle it?" She asked with a raised eyebrow, absently noting that many would-be eavesdroppers were leaving the area, eyes glazed over.
"Ah, in the end we decided that the ever dramatic but simple duel would be how we settled it. It was a fierce fight but it was what decided that Greggory shall become the elector count of Drachenruhe and I will be the next emperor." He said cheerfully.
"Well then, allow me to be the first to congratulate you on your victory, Your Highness." She said, raising a dessert in salute. Only to be confused by the awkward look on his face.
"Ah, about that, I was the one who lost the fight." What? Does that mean neither of them wanted to be the emperor? Did they not care for their subjects? In that case, why bother assuming the position of heir in the first place?
"I know that sounds bad but it is the truth. The reason why was because of the sheer amount of paperwork involved, Mom has had piles of it stacked to the ceiling going wall to wall and it has never gone down once in my entire life. Mom only needs to sleep maybe once a week and I know that she spends hours each night working on paperwork and yet the piles never shrink." He said desperately.
She laughed to herself, of course, it wasn't that they didn't care but that they feared for their lives. If what he said was true, and she was inclined to think it was, then it was a good thing Her Majesty was a goddess, or else even she might die from exhaustion. What a thing that would be, death by paperwork, something that even demigods fear.
AN:
Me: Wants to do more time skips but without being so scattered like last chapter.
My Muse: Laughs at my desires and proceeds to write Johen and Greggory duking it out.
It was a good thing we were in a rocky area or else I would be concerned about accidentally causing a forest fire with today's event. It was a sunny day but the temperature was just right for a picnic, or in this case, a brutal showdown between brothers to decide who would be heir to the throne. Not that anyone not in the family would believe what the real reason for the fight was.
Earlier that week.
I was walking along and then I suddenly overheard Johen's voice.
"It's settled then, the winner gets the summer house!" What? Surely that's not what I thought it was.
"Agreed!" Came Greggory's voice. Oh no. This was something I had to put a stop to now before it was too late!
Turning the corner, I saw my sons just starting to walk away from each other.
"What's this about the summer house?" I asked, my mom voice in full effect.
The two of them turned to face me before glancing at each other. Johen was the one who spoke, "We were deciding who got to move into the summer house with their family. We all know that sooner or later that only one person is going to stay here long term, too many valuable assassination targets in one easily explodable location for too long and all that. The summer house is our favorite place and where we grew up so both of us wanted to move into it. In the end, we decided to have a sparring match in a few days to decide who gets it."
I hmm'd, before saying, "there is only one problem with that, the summer house is currently the palace of the elector count of Drachenruhe and only said elector count gets to live in it. If either one of you were willing to become the elector count along with all the responsibilities of being such then I'll pass down the title to you." There! Neither of them had shown much interest in running their own piece of land in years, so I'll probably get to keep the summer house. If one of them decides to take that load of work off of me then I still win!
""Deal!"" They both exclaimed at the same time with zero hesitation. They turned and looked each other in the eye and I could see the sparks fly as their eyes met, literally, there were tiny lightning bolts that I could sense with my domain that were battling it out. I guess that I probably should have considered what anime would do to my sons before I recreated those shows via illusions. They both broke off eye contact at the same moment, blinking a bit, likely from the spots in their eyes from having continuous lightning streams in their field of vision.
Greggory spoke up this time, deadly serious. "We were going to have to settle this soon anyways, winner gets the lighter workload and the summer house, loser has to be emperor and deal with the Goddess Forsaken Paperwork Mountains?" What? Was he referring to the stacks of paper I kept around as props? I thought they would have noticed by now that they were all blank slips that I used for official business or secretly practicing my mangaka skills for my plans in my retirement.
"Great minds think alike as Mom says, you have a deal. At least this way, neither of us gets to complain about being the only one saddled with work while the other spends all day with their family." Johen said nonchalantly, shrugging.
Seriously? Well, I guess I didn't have to have a talk with them about who exactly was going to be emperor anymore. They figured it out themselves, though their faces when they realize the, as they put it, Goddess Forsaken Paperwork Mountains were all blank slips was going to be hilarious.
And So we were over at an old quarry that held plenty of room for them to go all out while allowing me and their families to watch. Though, I had to wonder at what happened to my family's fertility considering how many kids they ended up with. Seriously, I had twins and then Greggory ended up with a set of twins and a set of triplets while Johen almost immediately had conceived a son the moment they were eighteen? That's not normal. I shook my head and turned my attention to the seating arrangements.
On my left was Greggory's harem and kids. Irina with her daughter Nessa were sitting next to Reinhild with her son Karl near me. Susanna with her twins Salvo and Sandra had gone a bit further back and up the quarry, sitting along the cliff side with Tallis with her triplets Chase, Dash, and Fortune. At the bottom of said cliff side was the nonhuman part of his harem. His dark elf lover, Radara Mizzenscale, his high elf lover, Ofnari, as well as Corsa, a storm dragon he met soon after the Border Wall Siege as the event became known as. Sitting in the currently humanoid dragon's lap was the little terror, Artoria. I waved at the tiny tyrant who had everyone wrapped around her finger, she giggled and waved back before the both of us turned away to other things.
And over on my right, was Johen's wife and son, Luciana and Alfonso. Personally, as amusing as it was at times to have a harem protagonist for a son and how much I enjoyed having so many grandbabies, I was quite happy that Johen managed to avoid having over half a dozen women of varying species and nationalities following him around. I might have had to check for slaaneshi taint far more often than normal if both of them ended up with a horde of women following them around.
My mental musings were pushed aside when my sons finally took their places a bit over three American football fields away. I stood and used a bit of magic to send my voice down the quarry to the pair.
"Before we get into this, I want to ask if you both are sure about this? If you both say yes and then years later I hear about the two of you getting into a fight because one of you held a grudge about this, don't think you're not too old for me to spank you. Got it?" I asked them, losing some of my intimidation factor from how far away from them I was.
The two of them did their twin telepathy thing for a bit before rolling their eyes in my direction. "Look Mom, besides you, not even our wives can tell when we switch off with each other. If it ever gets too much for us, we can just switch off and no one would know. If that doesn't work, we are mature adults and are fully capable of talking it out." Ah, when did they get so mature? It sure wasn't my doing.
"Alright then, as the two of you decided, the winner of this match will be the future Elector Count of Drachenruhe and sole ownership of the summer home estate there while the loser will begin their training as heir to the throne." I said aloud to both them and their audience. Not that the last part was entirely accurate. They did just admit to swapping places at times so that means Mordred's Heir Boot Camp for the both of them!
"On three, Three!" I shouted, getting side-eyed for skipping numbers one and two by the twins before they clashed. Johen started off with a wide fiery sword beam at knee height towards his brother, Greggory countered by literally bouncing it back with a spell. Johen lightly jumped over the reflected beam only to use his sword to block when Greggory followed up his reflection with a blast of lightning from his spear. I belatedly realized that the distance we, the audience, was at wasn't nearly far enough away and quickly raised a magical barrier to contain the devastation.
Johen drew back his sword and started making quick short swings in his twin's direction, sending half a dozen sword beams his way. Greggory in response raised a massive wall of stone which started melting away from the blasts of fire it intercepted. Not that it melting mattered as Greggory cast a spell, exploding the molten rock wall into tiny pieces of hot shrapnel, causing countless small craters as well as pelting Johen and scoring the first solid hit of the fight.
It was then followed up with a Master Bolt which quickly zoomed across the arena and smashed into Johen. The shielding I had put around the makeshift arena spiked in magic consumption as it blocked out the thunderous noise and mass collateral damage.
"First blood goes to me Johen!" Greggory crowed triumphantly, though perhaps a bit too early as the dust settled and his brother was revealed.
"Well, you managed to ding up my armor some but I wouldn't say blood was drawn yet." Johen commented cheekily, mostly unharmed by Greggory's spells.
"Well, it's not like we're monsters made out of raw power like Mom, managing to do that much through our magical resistance is pretty good. Besides, we both know that neither of us were going to do much damage to each other with simply magic. It shall be our strength of arm and wits that determine the victor today." Greggroy said, shrugging. Said shrug was turned into a dash as he closed the distance between him and Johen.
Johen counter charged and their weapons clashed in a spout of sparks and flames, the ground around them cracking like this was an anime. Greggory stabbed out his spear, often getting deflected but small nearly unblockable jets of lightning would sometimes lash out of the speartip and hit Johen, scoring small but important bits of damage. But in return Johen clearly held the edge in the melee, his preference to fight with sword in hand instead of raining down death from above like a mage granting him a fair bit more experience than his opponent when it came to close combat.
In the following exchange Johen managed to kick away a low thrust and get a good swing at Greggory who leapt backwards but took the fiery beam across the length of his body. Greggory went to cast a spell, possibly to cool off from the lingering heat from the blow, but Johen pressed his advantage and started the exchange of blows again. It was moments later that Johen seemingly got the better of Greggory and his armor was slashed open by the blow, a bloody gash across his side.
Johen quickly paused in concern at the wound he inflicted on his twin which gave Greggory all the time he needed to unleash his spell upon Johen, revealing that the blow hadn't done much more than dent his armor and the rest was just a clever illusion. The ground dropped away from Johen as a gaping pit formed below his feet. The bottom of the pit was pitch black and Johen fell like a rock down into it.
This was when I knew the end of the match as fiery light shone from the pit and Johen expelled massive amounts of his magical reserves to thrust him up into the air, rapidly clearing the top of the pit and perfectly aimed for him to land near the edge. Unfortunately for Johen, that burst of magical energy got him out but now he was at a big disadvantage from using so much of his magical reserves.
Something Greggory knew as well as he used a basic version of Mana Burst to attack Johen, smacking him out of the air and causing him to crash into the ground across the pit from Greggory, creating an outline of his body in the newly formed crater. Johen recovered quickly and leapt at his brother, fire covering him as if a second suit of armor and almost wing like jets of fire burst into existence as if he was some sort of winged god of fire.
But Greggory was ready for him, he was wreathed in lightning and raw magical energy as he combined his physical and magical might for one final clash between him and his twin. An explosion of fire, lightning and raw power occurred as they met, almost collapsing the magical barrier I cast. As the rest of the audience blinked the spots out of their eyes, I watched as Johen who was looking very bruised and battered, surrendered to Greggory who was also looking worse for wear.
I stood up and clapped my hands together, gaining the attention of both the audience and my sons. "Congratulations Greggory on your win, as promised, you get to be elector count of Drachenruhe. Johen, you did well, unfortunately the amount of magical energy you spent getting out of that pit put you at too much of a disadvantage when the two of you did your final clash, I'll make sure to teach the both of you a simple spell to handle things like there being no ground to stand on without spending half your reserves on a massive jump." I said, to the tired groans of my sons. Yep, that's right, I'm turning this into a teaching moment boys, you can't escape education! Learning for life!
"Please excuse me, Your Majesty, but what exactly happened? One moment the fight started and then mere seconds later it was already over and now it looks like multiple gods decided to smite the very land." Irina asked, gesturing at the now ruined quarry. The rest of my sons' wives turned to me as well, waiting expectantly.
I looked over the oozing magma, many glowing craters, the gaping pitch black pit and cracks running like veins interconnecting it all and said shrugging, "A pretty basic spar, usually it takes a bit longer and is typically more evenly matched but it's been a while since they last sparred and Greggory used a new trick that gave him a big advantage over Johen this time. I'm sure that next time it will be far more evenly matched and last at least a full minute."
That didn't seem to reassure them at all, if anything it seemed to make them far more worried than before… Damn, I wish I could laugh at their faces but that would ruin the gravitas of the moment.
Arda grimaced as she watched high ranking nobles swarm her goddess and the goddess's sons. She didn't care for how lax they were when interacting with the goddess but since said goddess was clearly tolerating it, she would let it go. Why her goddess came to this ball with both sons in tow was beyond her considering how few balls they ever went to.
The reasoning for the ball was to celebrate the completion of the over a decade long construction of the undercities of Drachenruhe. Built in mimicry of the dwarf's own holds and pathways, there were now entire cities built underneath other cities and interconnected by tunnels across the entire province of Drachenruhe.
Talk was already starting about continuing this expansion across the rest of the empire although it would take even longer, not counting these rumors of rat beastmen that lived underground and had been recently discovered. She didn't know much about the subject but having to face beastmen while trying to build underground was something she was sure would take much longer than normal.
Turning away from the surrounded goddess, she made her way to the food table, something that was rumored to originate from the goddess herself. She didn't know about that but it was very convenient for avoiding nobles who wanted to get into her favor, or more accurately, she thought while rubbing her glowing arm, her goddess's favor.
"It's pretty amazing that you've managed to keep that arm, you know?" She jumped as a voice suddenly spoke to her from close by. Turning, she saw Prince Johen mere feet away from her.
"Is it, Your Highness?" She asked, she knew that very few were granted any sort of permanent blessing by the goddess but she was curious as to what his reasoning was.
"Yes, she doesn't talk about it very much but I do know that in order for that to stick around like this would mean you are very devoted and faithful to her. Stuff like that is powered off of your own faith and devotion to her but she doesn't tolerate blind zealotry so somehow you must strike the right balance of intense faith and following your own path regardless of what her teachings are." The prince told her, watching her reaction closely.
She blinked in surprise, that would explain why so many of those without limbs had failed to receive their own replacements, many of whom had been even more devoted than she was and yet couldn't maintain one or even manifest one at all. She popped one of the delicacies from the table into her mouth to give a few moments to think on this. Prince Johen seemed to find whatever he was looking for and turned to eat something as well.
It was almost a minute later before she decided to ask the question she had been wondering since the start of the ball. "Your Highness, if I may ask, why appear at this ball? You and your brother normally avoid such things, traditionally only going to a few balls held each year."
He scratched his cheek and grinned sheepishly at her before saying, "well, it should be announced soon so it shouldn't hurt to tell you. My brother and I have finally settled who was going to be the emperor which should give everyone some peace of mind that we won't be returning to the feuding of the past empire. Since we had done so, it was decided that the two of us needed to interact a bit more with those under us and brought us here."
"Oh? I had heard that the debate on which of you would inherit the throne was quite fierce. How exactly did Your Highness manage to settle it?" She asked with a raised eyebrow, absently noting that many would-be eavesdroppers were leaving the area, eyes glazed over.
"Ah, in the end we decided that the ever dramatic but simple duel would be how we settled it. It was a fierce fight but it was what decided that Greggory shall become the elector count of Drachenruhe and I will be the next emperor." He said cheerfully.
"Well then, allow me to be the first to congratulate you on your victory, Your Highness." She said, raising a dessert in salute. Only to be confused by the awkward look on his face.
"Ah, about that, I was the one who lost the fight." What? Does that mean neither of them wanted to be the emperor? Did they not care for their subjects? In that case, why bother assuming the position of heir in the first place?
"I know that sounds bad but it is the truth. The reason why was because of the sheer amount of paperwork involved, Mom has had piles of it stacked to the ceiling going wall to wall and it has never gone down once in my entire life. Mom only needs to sleep maybe once a week and I know that she spends hours each night working on paperwork and yet the piles never shrink." He said desperately.
She laughed to herself, of course, it wasn't that they didn't care but that they feared for their lives. If what he said was true, and she was inclined to think it was, then it was a good thing Her Majesty was a goddess, or else even she might die from exhaustion. What a thing that would be, death by paperwork, something that even demigods fear.
AN:
Me: Wants to do more time skips but without being so scattered like last chapter.
My Muse: Laughs at my desires and proceeds to write Johen and Greggory duking it out.
