I considered myself relatively in shape. I had more muscle on me than most humans probably did, ate healthily—and by healthily, I mean I ate animals and enjoyed a glass of whiskey with most dinners, and I also worked out on a regular basis incorporating cardio, lifting, and bodyweight exercises into my routine to target my whole body rather than only focusing on a specific group of muscles.

Yet, I never felt like my ass was kicked as hard as it was after being forced to dance.

The good news was that dancing thoroughly tired me out enough to immediately fall asleep when I returned to my tent. The bad news was that it made me look like an idiot—like a grounded octopus chaotically flailing my tentacles around in a desperate attempt to keep up with my dancing partners.

I was glad that Enna and Thad were asleep for that. I didn’t want them to see me in that state.

Unfortunately, I was the only one glad about it. The first person I saw when I woke up in the morning was Enna again, and she had a pretty mean pout on her face as she stared at me from next to my bed. Though, as soon as she noticed I was awake, she tried to hide her disappointed expression.

“Something wrong?” I asked, still mumbling a bit seeing as how I had only just woken up.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Enna said, suspiciously quick to answer.

“Something’s wrong.”

Enna waited for a few moments before saying under her breath, “I didn’t get to see you dance.”

I sighed. “I was hoping you wouldn’t hear about that.”

“Of—of course I would. Everybody is talking about the new dancing style you invented last night.”

“They’re what now?”

“They’re saying you moved your body around like a Hellmaw in heat.”

“A what now?”

“They’re beasts of Hell known for being the size of buildings with hundreds of tentacles that they use to hunt prey.”

I might have compared myself to an octopus when dancing, but I was really hoping nobody else would make that connection. Unfortunately, they did… albeit to Hell’s version of an octopus, apparently.

“And I feel bad… I slept through the celebration. I completely forgot we were going to have one,” Enna said.

Thankfully, she changed the subject on her own. “Don’t worry about it. As much as I appreciated it, it was hardly worth being called a festival. Wait, didn’t you give the girls permission to sing that one song? How’d you forget about it?”

“I… I was really tired…”

“Fair enough. Anyways, as much as I appreciate the gesture of the celebration, it wasn’t exactly an impressive one. You didn’t miss much.”

“It’s more about the meaning than how impressive it is!”

“The American way is to make sure that the display matches the meaning in intensity. That’s why we celebrate the greatest holiday there is, Independence Day, with grilling and fireworks. It’s not a celebration unless you’re trying to blow up the sky.”

“Blow… blow up the sky?”

“I’ll show you someday. It’s a promise.”

Enna might have started off pouting, but I got her to smile before long. “I will look forward to it!”

“Good girl.”

And now she was smiling even more.

With a satisfied Enna, I pulled up the system menu to check on the latest updates.

With a new population unit, I figured I should go see how long the next one would take to get. Plus I wanted to check on the building queue.

“Not bad,” I said. I also noticed we had enough influence to claim another tile, so I opened up the map to claim the next lava lake tile and to check on our military units.

Tomorrow would be a big day. We’d get to discover two new regions as our military units were at the borders of the known map, and we’d also get to claim the tile with the spires. There was also the fact that the thinkers’ hut would be complete. Between the thinkers’ hut and the spires, we’d be getting an extra six science per day to push us to a total of nine per day. With nine science per day, we’d almost be getting a new technology every day. If we could get just one more point of science from somewhere, we’d be up to ten a day.

And it just so happened that the hot springs directly north of our territory offered a point of science to go with the happiness bonus.

So, first was grabbing the magma spires, and then we’d grab another basalt plain to connect two tiles to the hot springs before getting the springs themselves. That would add an extra two days before grabbing the volcano tile, but I believed it would be worth it to work on advancing technology faster. Plus the happiness bonus would give us an increase to everything which would make all other tiles, the volcano included, more valuable.

That aside, I went back to the city menu.

Claiming the new lava lake tile didn’t have much of an effect other than reducing total time spent on the building queue by a day. It would be clear in five days rather than six. Still, every little bit helped.

“Alright,” I said. “Ready for another day of—”

A throbbing pain overwhelmed my head, causing me to grab it and lean over.

“What’s—what’s wrong?” Enna asked, crouching down in front of me as I sat on the bed.

I felt a little bit groggy, but I figured that was just due to waking up. The pain reminded me that my body was still expecting some meds.

All I could do was hope that it wouldn’t be as bad as the day before, and that it wouldn’t last for much longer.

“Sudden headache,” I answered before getting up. “I’m fine. Now, as I was saying, ready for another day of work?”

“Are—are you sure?” Enna asked. “You don’t need to work. Everything will get done on time regardless of what you do, and nobody would blame you if you take a day o—”

“I’d blame me. The day I sit around and let others do everything for me while I laze around in bed is the day I lose all respect for myself as a man.” Trying my best to continue being the man I wanted to be despite my lack of medication was the only thing keeping me sane. “I’ll be fine, Enna. Promise.”

“If… if you say so. Also, I—I wanted to ask if… it’s alright if I call you Clay, too?”

“I never did tell you my name, did I? Sorry. I’m guessing Thad spread it around?”

Enna nodded. “But if you have something else you would rather me address you by, I would be happy to oblige!”

“I don’t think our relationship is intimate enough yet for me to request the titles I have in mind.”

“In-intimate enough? What… what sort of titles… would require that?”

I grabbed Enna’s chin and held her head steady as I looked into her eyes. “Despite the negative connotations, from a purely fetish point of view, I’ve always liked the sound of ‘Master.’”

“Ma-master? But… what would being intimate have to do with—”

Enna froze as a red blush slowly spread from her neck up to her horns. At that point, there was nothing she could say. She couldn’t even make herself move.

So, I gave her a pat on the shoulder and said, “Meet me outside when you’ve recovered. We’ve got work to do.”

I got no response, but I did make sure to look over my shoulder to see her standing in the same place shaking from embarrassment.

Maybe it was sadistic of me, but flustering her helped my head feel just a little bit better.