Chapter 135: Chapter 127 – Tactical Espionage Action

"Dun dun DUN! Dun dun DUN!"

I suddenly raised my head from the form on my desk.

Ever since I got the paper mill set up, work had grown much smoother.

By printing templates for people to fill in, the accuracy and readability of the submitted forms had explosively improved to the point that I didn't have to put in much effort into correcting them anymore. The amount of work correcting and copying them onto new sheets had decreased to the point that I only had to do it a few times a day.

But by the same token, the ease in which to using our services having improved so much, an altogether unexpected problem ended up rearing its head, and that was the sheer quantity of requests that had started to come through our doors.

Almost anything which came from the dungeon people had learned to come to the Hunter's Guild to make the requests to get. It wasn't just the crafters and artisans, but many families wanting everyday goods had started to make requests when they wanted specific things that wasn't being traded at the markets.

It had gotten to the point where we had been forced to set up standing requests for commonly requested ingredients, to accept from any and all who brought it in at any time. Then we simply sold those in bulk from our warehouse to the traders who would then sell at one of the markets.

We denied sale of those common ingredients below our bulk numbers so as to not disrupt the markets and allow those systems to grow as naturally as they could considering the situation.

But the paperwork didn't end. It was relentless.

At least in comparison to what I was hoping when switching from bark to paper. Even setting up the printing press in a nearby building and hiring someone to operate it for me to set up a steady supply of printed request forms didn't lower my work load nearly as much as I was hoping. Though that was entirely because the number of requests were increasing.

Maybe if I was lucky, I could get more helpers under me in the near future, as fixing mistakes had grown less and less important lately.

"Barara~ rararaRa~ra~ rarara~rararara~ra~..."

The singing which had originally caused me to raise my head continued, and was distinctly closer than before.

While I couldn't see who it was singing the sons of liberty theme, [Sense Presence] had no trouble tracking the one who was doing it.

Starting from the partially open window, the singer was moving along the walls and close to the floor while approaching me. Whether she was actually making an attempt at sneaking or not, it was hard to say considering her kind.

"La~la~la~ bararaRa~ra~ Lalala~ bararala~la~ eeek!"

Right as she reached the climax of the song, I grabbed the figure who had reached my chair and was reaching a hand through he arm rest.

"Nooo! I was so close!"

"What do you think you're doing Orphne?"

I glared at the little fairy as she hung in front of my eyes while I pinched the back of her shirt.

"No, well, I came to visit you know!"

"Visit who, exactly?"

The fact that her eyes were glued firmly downwards rather than meeting my eyes did nothing but confirm my suspicions.

Somehow, the requests to touch my belly had only increased since my baby bump had grown pronounced.

On one hand, I could understand the desire. I kept catching myself gently stroking my belly whenever I had a hand free. Something about it was calming, and filled me with a warm feeling.

On the other hand, they were requesting it of another's body! Seriously, ever since I had gotten pregnant, the attention I had been getting for this one feature of mine was grown to preposterous levels.

(I'm not an exhibit, damnit!)

The fairies especially were bad. Maybe it was because they had such poor inhibitions in the first place, but it wasn't uncommon for some of them to suddenly show up out of nowhere and greet my baby before even acknowledging I even existed.

To be frank, it was actually a little cute, and was mostly tolerable. If they didn't also include a quick rub or hug along with it.

"You! Obviously!"

The little fairy's response came after a bit of deliberations. The fact that her arms were waving to my lower body hardly made her case any better. Though at least she was being honest.

But the fairies in generally tended to avoid lying, and were completely honest to their desires in the first place.

"Anyways, quit it."

I tossed the little figure up into the air before grabbing the stack of papers in front of me.

"Noooo! I wanna touch the baby!"

"You touched her two days ago."

"Two whole days! She must've grown bigger since then!"

"Of course she has, but not so much that you could tell."

"You won't know if you don't try!"

"OF course I know. I check every day."

"That's unfair! I wanna check every day!"

"It's my body. It's my right."

"That's unfair!"

What was actually unfair was that she really thought that it was, and had no mind to separate from that line of thought.

The best I could do was to put up a block of air to push her away whenever she came too close. All the while I quickly scanned through the papers and confirmed that there wasn't any major problems with them before tossing the entire pile together with the other checked forms.

"Anyways, no is no. Try again in a week."

"But that's forever!"

"It's not. It's only a week. Or do you want to make it two weeks?"

"Erk!"

It was a card I didn't like using, but against the fairies, hardly anything else worked. That or threatening to cut the desserts they got, but the more the economy of this country got on its feet, the less the threat worked as they had a steady supply of treats and desserts to enjoy.

"In return, I'll do another story time when I get back, alright?"

"Really?"

"Really. So gather up a group in two days, alright?"

"Okay! It's a promise!"

I waved away the little fairy as she dashed out of the room's sole window.

*Sigh*

Story time, along with the doll duels, had grown to be the few real weapons I had to placate the fairies lately.

Between the two, story time had actually come first, but it took a bit of time for them to latch on to it properly. The original stories I told were the old fairy tales from Earth, but it seemed like they weren't very receptive to such tales. The dark people's kids enjoyed them well enough, but while they were cute, the fairies were the ones I was most worried about as they were mostly out of control in the first place.

It was when I moved on to retelling stories from various shows, movies, and games, complete with singing their theme songs, that the fairies really took to them. Especially when it came to the music, they had grown to enjoy singing them as well wherever they thought was appropriate.

Though singing an epic style theme song while sneaking was hardly something which worked together, even if the place it had come from was a stealth oriented game.

Leaving my office, I made my way out, even though the sun was still continuing it's last stand, it was soon to falter.

"I'll be taking tomorrow off. Think you'll be all right without me?"

Before leaving, I made an announcement of my sudden vacation. I really needed some time away from people treating me as a mobile carrier for my ever expanding belly.

The fact that each of my subordinates glanced at my belly before acknowledging my words was proof enough.

With a light sigh, I left the building and headed towards the dungeon entrance as my feet made crunching noises as the thick late winter snow compressed under my feet.

I was again thankful of my high stats, as it seemed to prevent me from feeling particularly cold. At worst it only felt cool despite how thin my clothes were, but I couldn't help but worry a little if maybe Alicia felt cold and my actions weren't good for her.

Elli's words ran though my mind again, saying that as long as I personally didn't feel too hot or cold, my baby would feel the same being protected by my body's natural resistances. It was reassuring. Especially because everyone else I had asked said virtually the same thing.

But I repeated their words softly as if it was some sort of mantra as I arrived in the fountain room.

 

I floated through the air, magical wind pushing my back as fast as it could take me.

Despite the time I spent gathering the various things I might need on this trip, the sun still refused to relent its assault. Thus flying the proper way was hardly a choice at this time.

But this method was still pretty slow and mind numbingly boring, so I turned to my thoughts.

Two months ago, I had managed to meet up with Mint, and we wrote up a business deal regarding the paper. Solid prices for both the paper and the products I was trading for the paper as well. I had no interest in arguing over prices each time we met, or in general for that matter, so I simply went with his prices. They all looked reasonable, though if all the prices of my goods rather than just a few were deflated, I had no way of knowing. Even checking other places for the prices mattered little as it didn't take into consideration the differences of conditions of our own trade deals.

Mint seemed like there was something on his mind, but as he refused to elaborate on it I had little choice but to just leave the topic be.

In regards to the next shipment, as we had decided that the would come monthly, there was still a week before I had to come to make the trade, so there wasn't any point in visiting Edgeworth Village at this point.

The neighbouring Linsington City on the other hand, I still hadn't made my way over yet.

I was a bit curious how the kids at the orphanage was doing. Philia as well...

My cheeks grew a bit warm at that thought, but I quickly shook my head free of that. I had no time to deal with personal relationships. There was still a lot of work everyday at the Hunter's Guild, and my levelling had slowed in the dungeon ever since I decided to prioritize keeping Alicia safe.

My level had broken past the 300 mark though, but the further it rose, the more my levelling slowed down as I wasn't facing stronger monsters.

(Level 308. It's hardly a number I could consider safe.)

Maybe once I reached level 350, I could consider myself strong enough to be safe from future assassinations, though I wouldn't know until I actually faced more such threats.

In fact, it would be really nice if I could concentrate on just power levelling. Being someone who played games as I grew up, wandering around farming XP or other resources for hours on end was hardly something foreign to me.

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In a particular game series, I've even taken on the same 20 minute monster fight over and over to get a 5% drop, only to end up realizing I needed more than one once I managed it. In the end, the worst of those incidents, I had ended up killing almost a hundred such monsters on my own to get three of those special drops.

Either way, mindlessly wiping out those lesser dragons every night had turned more into a habit than anything. At this point, killing them had turned into a great way to destress for myself. Something I really needed. The way that I was able to blank out my mind and practically enter some sort of zen state going through the same routine for hours on end.

I was quite thankful for the therapeutic effects those lesser dragons were giving me, not to mention how great being able to drink two or three dragons worth of blood every night.

My appetite had grown quite a bit in the last month, and in a sense, it was nice. Less of the dragons was being wasted due to that, and I was able to spend more time enjoying the rich flavour. My time on the 101st floor was quite decadent, I had to say. It was as if I ate nothing but cake all night, though I had no reason to doubt the nutritional value of dragon blood. So far, I couldn't feel any problems with my body aside from the occasional pain and nausea.

I had asked around, but it was only confirmed that what I was dealing with was quite normal during pregnancy. Even after being examined by some of the experienced midwives introduced to me by Elli and Frigg, they had concluded that there was no abnormalities, though my symptoms were noticeably on the worse side, it wasn't anything which should be harmful to my baby. Though they did stipulate that they didn't know anything about vampire bodies, so their assessments might not have been accurate.

Speaking of...

A bout of nausea. had started to swirl around in the pit of my stomach.

(Damnit, again?)

I sunk down below the leafy canopy and quickly planted my feet onto the ground though the waist high snow, I leaned against the closest tree trunk.

My breathing hastened as I futilely tried to keep the feeling of nausea from spreading. I knew it wouldn't work. It never even helped, but I couldn't help but try again and again, because I hated what came next.

"Hurgh!"

I bent over, almost planting my face into the white softness as my guts tried their hardest to expel their nonexistent contents.

Never once had these actions ever resulted in anything coming out, yet my body refused to acknowledge that fact and kept trying several times a day. I could only say that it was nice that my body was considerate enough to warn me with giving the nausea a head start.

Pretty much all of my enjoyable time farming dragons got interrupted at least once by these non-puking events.

"Master! Are you alright?"

I nodded, trying to answer my ever faithful familiar, but what came out of my mouth was...

"Hurgh!"

Unable to even thank my precious spirit guardian for her concern, I was forced to return to my parody of a mother bird's feeding routine.

Going through morning sickness for the last few months first hand gave me some newfound respect for my mother in my previous life. The things she had gone through just so I could exist. While I didn't know if it was anywhere near as bad as what I was experiencing, she probably did go through at least a bit of it.

(They say mothers are strong, but knowing that most of them go through this just to become one, it's hard to think that they're anything but.)

To be honest, I was quite amazed just how far my perception of the process of bearing life into the world had shifted by going through the process myself. I had thought that aside from the birth, it wasn't really a big deal.

Now though, I wanted to smack the previous me for thinking that. If what I was going through was normal, then I was at awe of at all the mothers who had voluntarily gone through the process more than once.

(Ugh, geez. I hope this'll stop soon. The others said that morning sickness usually ends by about four months since...their last period was it?)

The measurement was a bit vague with quite a lot of variance, but overall, I should be near the end of all this nausea and fake puking. Most mothers didn't have to deal with it past this point. Though I didn't forget to note that the operative word there was 'most.'

I really hoped I wasn't one of the exceptions to this standard, but bearing the fact that I was pushing the upper limit of what was normal already, my hopes of being rid of this symptom before birth was rapidly dwindling.

"Haaaa...fuuuu..."

The moment I felt well enough again to straighten my back, I took as big of a breath as my lungs would allow. Even that felt like it had been inhibited a bit. My lungs weren't able to inflate quite as much as normal, though fortunately it wasn't to the point that it interfered with any of my actions, even combat.

"Have you recovered, Master?"

"Yea, thanks as always."

"It's my duty to protect you with my all!"

Finally, once she was sure that I was over the worst of the bout of morning sickness, did my dear Claret turn to face me. The dark spirit relaxed her guard and turned her attention away from the surroundings and entirely on me as I pat her on the head.

All these bouts of nausea and vomiting was tough, with the worst being the fact that it could come suddenly out of nowhere.

I couldn't even count the number of times that it would suddenly strike in the middle of battle and my loyal familiar was forced to fight a dragon stronger than even she was just because I was losing control over my own body.

It was a pretty terrible situation, but at the same time we didn't exactly have much of a choice in the matter.

Going down in floors would reduce my XP gains even further, but going deeper into the dungeon was definitely too risky at this point.

The option of cutting down on raising my level was...not really an option. If I did that now, then I was looking at years of being unable to raise my level significantly. Once Alicia was born, she would need my attention more than ever. Not until her body had grown enough that she was able to gain a bit of independence that I would be able to dedicate real time to farming XP.

Even the best case scenario put that at about two years.

No, I had to gain as many levels as I could before I was no longer capable of effectively farming XP. My level was going to stagnate for at least a year once I got close to childbirth.

I felt bad putting so much of a burden on Claret, though she herself would never admit that it was one. For that matter, she was probably happy that I was relying on her so much, but I didn't like how much I was putting her at risk because of it.

Though, at least there was a benefit to all of this. Claret's level, which had never gone up since we had met, had markedly increased. She was rapidly catching up with the dragons we fought, and she would soon exceed them.

The fact that she could finish beating a lesser dragon I started engaging, things looked very good in that she likely could already beat one by herself from start to finish.

I looked up at the darkening sky in between the thinning canopy.

(I wonder how much time I have left until I won't be able to fight safely anymore?)

No matter what, Alicia's life took precedence. Even if I didn't think I was strong enough, I still had to stop once fighting grew too difficult.

I handed over a normal mana treat, not a special one I gave her as her regular meals.

"Alright, let's go Claret."

"Yesh, Mashtah!"

Already chewing noisily on the treat, I adjusted my bra before turning my back to her so she could latch on. I should have been expecting it, but the fact that my underwear wasn't quite fitting as well as it used to was starting to get annoying. I needed to talk to Anthousai about fixing my bras or making me some new ones. Preferably making them adjustable so I didn't have to keep going to her as I grew even bigger than I already was.

For that matter, something needed to be done with my robes as well. Depending on the posture, my robes exerted a bit of pressure on my belly. I didn't need an experienced mother to tell me that was bad for my baby.

An entirely new robe felt a bit wasteful considering that I wouldn't be wearing it for very long, but maybe something I could wear underneath? Something simple and doesn't waste too much of Anthousai's time, considering that I would only be wearing it for a few months.

Once Claret wrapped her arms around my shoulders, I kicked off the ground and took to the skies.

As to where to head, the orphanage was sounding nice, but was only putting my immediate problems to the side.

My level was a long term issue that could become immediate at any moment, but my other problem was all the stress I had been accumulating from all the attention people gave me. There were only two ways I could think of to solve the latter.

The first was to redirect everyone's attention to something else. As to what that was, I couldn't think of any actual ways to achieve that, so it was already moot.

The other option was to simply not be available for people to bug me for more of the day than before.

The problem with that, was that I was already secluding myself in my office for most of the day, and spent my nights inside the dungeon where only Claret was around to keep me company. The only way to reduce my exposure to people was to avoid work. Or at least working in my office.

In theory, I could achieve that by working at home, but I already relied on my few subordinates to deliver the papers to me. Having them spend all the extra time to deliver them to my home would do nothing but make our established system much more inefficient.

The guild was already getting pushed to its limit, and training more personnel would take weeks if not months before the benefits started to show themselves. Taking time to personally do the training myself wasn't going to make things better either, and would only add to my stress.

Stress, something which the midwives really pressed home was bad for Alicia's well being.

(The best option would be to find help, but nobody who could do such a thing long term existed inside of the country.)

The outside wasn't exactly much better. The number of acquaintances I had was small, and the number of people who could do the work I needed was so small, it was almost nonexistent.

There was Mint, but he was busy with his own work, and his son was the same.

Everyone else of Edgeworth probably couldn't do the work, so they were out.

Philia was busy as well taking care of the orphans. Even if I could find someone to take care of that front, it was questionable that she could do the work

After that, the only other people I knew were people who worked at the various branches of the Adventurers's Guild.

They all had the skills needed, and aside from two or three, the work ethic as well. But they were all busy. I'd have to convince them to quit their jobs to work for me instead.

But then again, that would apply to anyone else I could pick. Anyone who didn't need to quit their job probably didn't have the skills to do the work needed in the first place.

Once that thought was established, the possibilities started to expand a little.

The guild master at Linsington City was a bit iffy, but the secretary there treated me well, and seemed competent enough. She was a decent candidate, thought it might be a lot of work to convince her.

The guild master at Knossos City...he was out. He either didn't have the drive to do the work or simply was unable to at a timely manner. The sub guild master though, she had the drive and ability, but was overworked due to her incompetent boss.

(Huh? Doesn't that mean that she both has the ability and a reason to quit?)

Peitho was a pretty decent person, though she completely used me to her own ends twice. Despite that, she seemed to be a decent person, just one that was forced into a bad corner.

And the things I did because of her.

(That means she owes me, doesn't it?)

She also liked my food, which was now being sold on a regular basis in the Hourai Commonwealth. Bribing her was probably going to be easy. All I had to do was promise her good pay and easy access to the food she liked.

And if that alone didn't work, coercion, or rather forceful recruitment, or rather asking her to pay back the favours she owed me should do the trick.

It'll make us even at least, and she could do with a long vacation as well. Maybe once Alicia is born, I could give her that, since I won't be of much use anywhere else for a while.

Peitho was someone who could become a vital part of our nation. As long as she could get used to being around dark people.

That was the only bit which was worrying, but as long as she knew that both the fairies and fluffballs were fine with things, she should be able to accept things in time.

With my mind made up, I changed directions and headed south.

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