Today is the 7th.

The Chimeras have already departed, so I summon a dozen wind elementals to search for them since I forgot to leave a summon behind on the Carrier. I trust the knights, but I'd like to be able to see what they're doing.

If the elementals don't find them, then I'll just ask for a Space mage to open a [Gate] for me. I trust that Alcander didn't forget to set up a few of them inside our ships.

My [Dragon Transformation] increased by 1 (now 4).

Roxanne increased her [Mana Control], [Mana Efficiency], and [Alchemy] by 1 (now 8+32, 10+10, and 1+9).

Hana increased her [Draconic Body] by 2 (now 3), and her [Spear Use] and [Intimidate] by 1 (now 2+18 and 3).

Ciel increased her [Light Magic] by 1 (now 10+30).

Lina increased her [General Enchanting] by 1 and [Magic Tool Carving] by 2 (now 7+13 and 2+8).

For breakfast, Krysta adds eggs Benedict on nutty muffin to the menu, though these are Dragolite eggs, which require a much larger muffin to fit it all.

There's no way around it, Lordship is going to spoil us pretty thoroughly, and I must say that Yunia really was raised properly, but I can't see the twins actually resisting all the luxury and hedonism of Lordship.

After we eat, I pass by Mimi's office to tell her about Osaria's position.

Her stony face remains unmoving, except for a single eyebrow, which she briefly raises. "A representative or a diplomat? They're similar positions but they have very different expectations regarding payment," she clarifies.

I pensively scratch my horn and think it through, "Oh… I think she'll be a diplomat. A representative could be any sort of person whose job is to promote our interests while a diplomat has to use more skills, like negotiation, and has more authority when brokering deals. For someone as experienced as Osaria, I think she fits better as our diplomat."

Mimi nods in understanding. "Then diplomat it is."

Today, neither Yunia nor Alissa have any pressing matters to attend to, so they'll be able to join us for training. It feels nostalgic to gather in a room and train near each other, but not all of us have spent months in a maze, so they don't feel like it had really been that long.

Dokkanchee is escorted to the castle shortly after breakfast, and she immediately gets to work.

She inspects my scales again, and this time, I pad them so that she doesn't get cut.

"You're… forgive me, but you're 'odd,' my Lord," she softly comments and looks up at me.

I snort softly and ask bemusedly, "That, I know, but why do you think so?"

She wets her lips and pushes herself up with her cane. "Your scales have the concept of Okross, its 'indestructibility,' and they've only been seen on the Symbol of Might, one of the most ancient and powerful dragons that we know about, but you don't strike me as someone who represents 'might.' Your [Mana Body] and shape-shifting skill make me think that you're more of a mage." She sighs and stares at my scales again. "Your contradicting characteristics are truly perplexing. I don't have the faintest idea about what could have happened to make your body change like this."

Hm… this is rather interesting.

She already has to keep my condition a secret until the Lordship Ceremony, so one more secret wouldn't hurt.

I decide to bring her up to speed, "The truth is that the Gods made me into a new race inside a dungeon. I'm a weredragon, a fusion of man and dragon, so perhaps my 'human' side is magically powerful, while my 'dragon' side is physically powerful."

She immediately looks up and intensely stares into my eyes for a moment, then she looks around and observes the girls training their skills.

"I can't say that this is unexpected…" She comments and chuckles, then sighs tiredly and goes into work-mode again. "Though impressive, the 'indestructibility' aspect of your scales interferes with the illusion magic. It doesn't make it impossible to achieve the masking that you desire, but it really makes my job harder."

I shrug and lean back on the sofa. "We're Crown Lords. If we can throw money at you until the problems disappear, we will."

Her face cramps, and she shifts uncomfortably on her feet. "It won't be necessary for you to go that far," she whispers nervously, and I simply nod graciously.

Dokkanchee sets up crystals all over our training room, and it reminds me of when I put up cameras for VR with Lily.

Dokkan's illusions aren't just some sort of hologram, though. She needs extreme, reality-bending powers to fool hundreds of commoners, the subordinate Lords that will be staying close to us, and the Crown Lords who will act as witnesses to the ceremony. It's no simple task, and we know of no one better than the shopkeeper who routinely fools customers just to gauge their aptitude for seeing through illusions.

Her magical school is called [Jaleowzeh Magic], which Roxanne says is a contraction of "fake realm" in [Southern Maokai Language]. It's one of those magic schools that requires specific tools and doesn't have much in the spells department, so there's no point in any of us trying to learn it ourselves.

While she works, the girls all go about their training.

Alissa tries out an enchanted bow that lets her subtly control the direction of her arrows. It's a neat enchantment, but it's really complex, rather sensitive to interruption, and difficult to control, making it not very practical to use.

Roxanne takes a little break from her [Alchemy] to improve the power of her [Explosion] by adding [Warp Space] to it. It's something that she's postponed for a while now, so it'd be best if she just finished it already.

Hana tests out her armor and all of its enchantments. Using them isn't just like pressing a button since it's necessary for you to continuously "feed" them with mana, and it takes some practice to differentiate between all of the enchantments. She also needs to learn how to avoid ripping her armor off her body when she uses [Draconic Body] to make the gear actually useful.

Ciel practices [Light Magic]. First, she [Heal]s Dokkanchee and [Refresh]es her body to help her with her pains, then she tries out [Detect Evil] and focuses on understanding the feedback that the spell provides her with.

The spell makes her hand glow, and allows her to see someone's "color" when she touches them. White is for normal, faithful humanoids; red is for the Wicked; black is for monsters; gray is for animals; and summoned beings have the same color as their master, though it has a "fake" feeling to it that's easily noticed through the spell.

Curiously, Aoi is white, but semi-transparent. She doesn't have a single speck of "blackness" to her, but she also isn't fully humanoid yet. It makes me wonder what Ciel would have seen if we had cast it on her sooner.

Lina continues studying my [Materialization], which is now being renamed to [Solidify] by the Spirit mages. She's also starting to carve an experimental magic tool for it, so she wants to finish it before she continues with her combat training.

Aoi continues training her fire breath. Apparently, Hana quite literally channels her anger into her breath, so Aoi is having some problems with improving her fire since she's nowhere near as angry as Hana.

For a dragon, she's pretty calm and kind. If she didn't enjoy being dominated and having rough sex so much, she could even pass for just a big lizard or something.

"Hey!" She shouts inside my mind and sends me a human pout.

"I-… I didn't mean that as an insult, it's just that you're not what I expected a dragon to be," I hurriedly explain myself.

"She was never a 'normal' dragon, to begin with, but I think she's better this way," Alissa chimes in and sends a mental head pat to Aoi.

"Wasn't she raised by all of you? Without a dragon to guide her, she was bound to grow up different," Yunia remarks.

"She's a weirdo," Roxanne jabs, the system translating the Maokai slang into something more palatable.

"I'm special!" Aoi proudly states, seeing nothing wrong with being different.

"Dokkanchee is giving us odd looks; let's keep it quiet in my head, okay?" I try to calm them down. I still remember the fact that Dokkanchee can "see" it when we communicate through [Bind].

"Okay!" Aoi deliberately yells, so I poke her soul.

Yunia works on her [Spirit Magic] while also learning how to use her armor and weapons. She wants to make [Soul Blade] and [Soul Shield] a more prominent part of her fighting style, so she uses my memories of multi-limb fighting to accelerate her progress.

Like how Yunia is benefiting from my memories, we're all also able to take a look at how the others use their armor's enchantments to speed up our own progress, so it's not like we're losing out too much. With how connected we are, our experiences transfer between one another quite easily, so if any one of us progresses in a skill, everyone else learns a little from it, too.

I also practice my transformation since Dokkanchee doesn't need me to remain human all the time. The most difficult part is getting my scales to be affected by her magic, so the shape I'm in doesn't really matter right now.

The more I transform, the more I feel like I'm going crazy. When I'm a dragon, I feel like pushing down Lina, sinking my claws into her ribs, and fucking her with no lube until she bleeds. Once I transform back into a human, I start to think 'what the fuck is wrong with me,' then I transform back into a dragon and the desire comes right back, but I feel like I'm perfectly normal.

Dragon thoughts only make sense when I'm a dragon, and human thoughts only make sense when I'm a human. I still spend most of my time as a human, so my dragon thoughts feel very "foreign" to me.

Do I become a danger to the girls whenever I shift into a dragon?

"We'll always be here to stop you if you do because [Bind] works both ways, oddly enough," Ciel's comforting voice and embrace enters my soul space.

"I feel like mating with you and forcing you to impregnate me every time we have sex, but I never do," Alissa shares her own experience with strange impulses. As the resident wereanimal, I think I should rely on her more. "Yes, please do."

"But you do have a thing with clawing at his back," Yunia comments smugly.

Alissa's ears go flat as she feels a little ashamed. "Well, sometimes the wild side bleeds over."

"Haven't you ever had that dark little voice in your head go: 'wow, I could kill that person with a flick of my wrist'? It's the same thing with violent desires," Hana chimes in with some surprisingly good advice. "Hey! Fuck you!"

Aoi stops nurturing her anger for a moment just to nod at Hana's words, then Roxanne's voice worms its way into my head with unusual gentleness, "I'm not a succubus from the myths, just a humanoidized version of them. I want to ride every dick I see, but not really."

Hana nods internally and grunts in agreement. "Oh yeah, I definitely get that."

Ciel, Lina, and Yunia share a worried look. They've never felt anything like that, so they have the same perspective as I do: the other races are fucking crazy, but we don't really believe that. It's just something so alien to them that they find it hard to relate to it, giving me a bit of comfort since it explains why I'm having difficulty adjusting.

"I don't envy you, Wolfy," Lina says with a rather pitying tone, and the other two girls nod internally. She walks up to me and silently pats my scaly head, and just the act of that alone is enough to comfort me because I certainly can't feel much with her small, soft hand.

Gify pops into existence on my draconic back, making Dokkan jump in surprise. "Gih!" Gify shouts angrily inside my head. She can see my brain, and she knows that I'm fine, so she wants me to stop with the crazy talk.

Dokkan grumbles a bit and continues her work, then Ciel gives her a guilty smile in our stead.

I sigh and sit on my hind legs. I think my human side is really whiny, or maybe it's just the dragon that's grumpy. "So I guess the dragon thoughts will be always 'there,' and I just need to find a way to 'deal with it'?"

"Gih!" Gify angrily claws at my scales, but I barely feel anything.

"Yes," Alissa, Hana, and Aoi agree in unison.

I snort, exhaling smoke through my nose, and give everyone an internal head pat as I say, "Alright. Thanks, everyone."

"Hehehe," Roxanne giggles cheekily, proud that she actually helped this time instead of just being the useless comedic relief. "Oi!"

"Damn right, she's useless!" Hana piles on and chortles.

"Comedy helps people heal! Isn't that right, Ciel?" Roxanne angrily presses her for an answer.

Ciel tries to make herself small, but everyone's internal eyes are already set upon her. "Hm… yes, it does, but I can hardly say that what you do is comedy. It's borderline bullying," she awkwardly admits and holds back some chuckles.

"Ahahaha!" Hana lets out a belly laugh.

"You bitches…" Roxanne grumbles, and her presence starts to fade into the background.

"Anyway…" Alissa tries to clear my mind by giving them each a few glares. "You should explore what both of your sides want, treating them like separate personalities, or outright embrace both sides like a dragonkin."

I hum in thought and reflect, "I don't really feel like the dragon side is 'me.' Maybe a different 'me,' but not the original."

"Embracing both makes you stronger. It's easier to use your muscles when you like them," Hana advises again, and the image of her proudly pounding her chest as she grins is sent into my mind.

I frown, which makes my draconic face look menacing, but I don't let Dokkan see it. "I don't 'like' my dragon side. I don't want to mix with him."

Alissa pats my head through Lina. "Then separate personalities it is," she kindly says.

We all stop talking, and I glance at Dokkanchee, who seems to have become distracted. She wets her lips nervously and picks up the pace again.

Alissa suddenly starts to hear some low rumbling coming from far away, so I summon a bird and send it to investigate.

It quickly discovers that it's the sound of the court mages training together. Alcander uses [Ritualism] with the Space mages to throw two-meters wide boulders at Silvano, who destroys each one with a single [Lightning Bolt].

His mana quickly runs out, and they switch to using smaller boulders for the rest of the mages to practice with. This creates a lot of dust, so the Wind mages have to regularly clear the air.

I notice that Alcander seems to be trying to not look at Silvano, and I don't blame him. Silvano's silver robes shine a bit too much, like Oritiki's armor.

The eccentric elf moves non-stop between the mages, giving them little tips to improve their spells, while Alcander takes his time, observing each mage until he's either satisfied or he finds a point that needs improvement. I can't say that they don't work well together.

One of the elementals reaches the ships and enters the Carrier through the window of a Trinity Cannon, but the gunner and the guard stationed there don't let it pass.

"An elemental… isn't our Lord a summoner?" The gunner questions and scratches his deer horns.

The crocodile guard nods with confidence and speaks with a female voice, "He is, but I saw a lot of summoners during our morning practice with the court mages, so it could belong to anyone. Though I think she does look like one of the Lords."

"The fox one?"

The crocodile rolls her eyes. "Obviously."

"But you're not sure?" The deer presses on.

The guard frowns and looks away from the elemental. "No…" She whispers ashamedly. "You?"

The gunner clears his throat and whispers back while looking away, "N-no…"

The two of them chuckle nervously. For the Lordsguard to not know the faces of their Lords is shameful, to say the least, buu~t they're excused since I've hardly left the castle in the few days since they started serving us.

The elemental offers a simple letter with the Este's Lordship seal, and the guard accepts it gingerly then frowns when she sees the seal.

"I think this is the Lordship seal," she whispers to the gunner, unsure.

"You think?" He retorts like it was obvious.

She coughs nervously again. "S-should we open it?"

He shakes his head vigorously and suggests, "Obviously not. I think we should deliver it to the Marshall."

The door to their compartment suddenly opens, and a small, female, cat-headed Chimera officer comes in, then she scans the room. "I've detected the intrusion of a summon. I take it it-… she isn't hostile since you didn't sound the alarm?" She presses the two stooges.

"Hm, yes. Uh, here…" The guard awkwardly gives the letter to the officer, who takes it and stares at the seal for a long moment.

"What should we do…?" The guard whispers hurriedly.

The officer raises her head and scans over the elemental's entire body, her cat face locked in a stony mask. "Let's escort the elemental to the Marshall," she confidently orders, then quietly adds, "and hope that the Lords don't strangle us."

Lunchtime arrives, and the chefs give us a tongue-gasm once again.

Back on Earth, I wasn't exactly sedentary, but I certainly would grow fat from the amount of food we've been eating. Even Lina is eating a lot, but her body is still as flat as a board. If our lifestyle slows down even a little, we'll definitely have some problems…

After fattening ourselves up, Lina meets with Sainalai to get her opinion on the [Solidify] enchantment that she finished carving this morning.

For once, the two of them don't appear small because all the furniture in Sainalai's office is properly sized for her. It's actually quite easy to do that since most elven furniture is literally grown out of the ground.

The freckled halfling takes the beautiful ruby and inspects it closely, then she pulls out a polished marble polyhedron and presses it against the gem.

Lina knits her eyebrows in confusion, then Sai feeds the gem some of her mana, and a naked, tall, and muscular horse-headed female Chimera materializes beside her.

"Hm… quite interesting. Not the cheapest enchantment, but it's well-made," Sainalai comments thoughtfully while rubbing her chin, then she looks at the Chimera. "How is it? How does it feel?"

"Feels good, actually, but my muscles aren't as powerful as I remember them being. It's much better than what the other mages can do, though," the Chimera immediately answers as she jumps around and tests out her senses, then she stops in place and starts touching her herself. "Wild winds, now this feels good."

Sai gives a surprised side glance to Lina and holds back a chuckle, making the shy little dwarf blush heavily.

The Chimera gets a bit too into it, so Sai pulls out a blanket that she spreads out on the floor, underneath the woman.

"It seems that your version of [Solidify] will be best suited for 'leisure' activities," Sai tactfully comments with a wry smile.

"Yes. I suppose it will," Lina quietly agrees, refusing to look Sai in the eye.