Well, that was quick.

With barely any effort at all on my end, Honey was already twitching on top of my lap, her body limp against mine and her head rolled back over my shoulder, and all I did was pet her head. I didn’t even start the grinding and rubbing yet. Literally all I did was pet her.

My hands must have decided to go into overdrive mode without me noticing it. Either that, or Honey was just exceptionally weak to them.

Or maybe it was proof that I wasn’t giving Honey enough attention? Maybe I touched her with my hands the least out of all my wives, and so she was exceptionally weak to them since she didn’t get a good chance to build up a tolerance?

Well, in that case, the right thing to do was clearly to touch and spoil her with my hands as much as I could throughout the battle. After all, I didn’t want her to feel excluded or anything like that. She needed to feel just as loved as the rest of my wives.

Right?

“Don’t worry, Honey,” I whispered to my twitching wife. “All you have to do is stay sitting here.”

Honey tried mumbling something to me, but I couldn’t tell what she was saying. If I had to assume, though, then she was almost definitely asking me to pet her some more, so I did. I returned my hand to the top of her head and gave her another stroke, causing her body to convulse on top of me as she rubbed the back of her head even harder against my shoulder.

Life was good.

But teasing Honey aside, I turned my attention over to the battlefield where Clawdia and the tank crew were. The tank crew made sure to keep pointed away from me to avoid showing Luca anything, but Clawdia… she was facing me, and her mecha looked weak in the knees while watching me and Honey.

That made me curious about something.

What if Clawdia’s mecha was one of my wives, too? Was her mecha actually alive? It was humanoid in shape, could be piloted by somebody else, and made out of metal. Going by my roster of wives, Clawdia’s mecha already matched the several different requirements to be one of my wives. The only one that was really missing was whether or not the mecha was alive in the first place.

Then again.

Did something even have to be alive to be my wife? And how was being alive even defined? Having a soul? Could something have a soul but not be alive, and could something not have a soul but be alive?

Cells were alive but cells didn’t have souls. Mariet was, for legal reasons only, “alive,” and she did have a soul. What about Postia? Did Postia count as being alive just because she had a soul? In that case, what defined life?

If something could be alive but not have a soul, and if something could be arguably not “alive” but have a soul, then what was life? Was life simply being aware of one’s surroundings? Was it being able to think? What if somebody was aware but not able to think? What if something could think but was not aware? How was awareness even defined? How was thinking even defined?

Unfortunately, even though I basically became a god, I still didn’t understand what “life” truly was.

That was why I snapped my fingers and declared, “Life is officially whatever life is! New rule of the universe!”

…

I got no response.

The battle already started, Honey was convulsing too much, and everybody else was busy. That normally would have been the perfect time for somebody to ask me what was going on or for Window to tell me to stop being stupid, but there was nothing.

That was pretty disappointing.

Even so, my new rule was already in effect: life was life. Life is life. That’s all. Life can be anything and everything so long as it’s life, including things not alive.

In that case, whether or not Clawdia’s mecha was a wife of mine was entirely dependent on whether or not I wanted Clawdia’s mecha to be a wife of mine.

Did I want to add a walking, humanoid robot that could shoot missiles to my relationship?

Screw it, why not? I already had a tank and mailbox as wives. A cool robot—mecha, I mean, might as well be my wife as well. And if Clawdia’s mecha wasn’t truly alive and sentient yet, then I would just make her sentient.

Wait, was that it? Was sentience the answer?

No, that was too simple. I’d just stick with the superior decision I made instead: life is life.

Everything was probably going to become my wife with the current rate of things, which made me think of something.

Could my greenhouse turn into my wife?

What about my plants? My garden itself? A garden wife and plant wives… made me think of one big, caring, motherly type of wife with a bunch of smaller and cuter wives who she took care of.

That would be cute.

I—

No.

I couldn’t just make anything and everything my wife.

Or could I?

Well, I could, but should I?

…

Maybe.

For the time being, Clawdia’s mecha would be the only new wife I’d consider. The rest could wait for later. I had to give the wives I already had attention, especially the newer ones, before trying to add every other possible wife in existence into my relationship.

As for the battle, since that was more important than anything else at the moment aside from making Honey twitch and shake even more, it looked to be going pretty well. No new enemies appeared yet which made dealing with the first few waves pretty easy, especially since Clawdia and the tank crew both seemed pretty overpowered. Clawdia was more than capable of handling any enemies that were sent her way, able to hold her own against both single targets and multiple targets, and she could even help out the bees by launching homing missiles at the enemy bats. Meanwhile, the tank crew, Valkyria in particular, was one heck of an immovable object. Her DPS might not have been as high as Clawdia’s just due to the far less frequent attacks, but her fewer attacks dealt tons of damage and basically instantly wiped out any enemies unfortunate enough to be on the receiving end.

Then we finally got a new enemy for the battle.

New Enemy Discovered!

Mech Necromancer

Threat: ★★★★★★★

HP: basically nothing.

Damage: no damage.

Defense: pretty much 0.

The Mech Necromancer might sound like a pretty weak enemy… but they have been specifically designed by yours truly to counter somebody trying to be unfair by only sending giant mechanical heroes up against hordes of the undead! While they might not fight themselves, they’re capable of summoning powerful allies who can properly stand up against OP cat girls in mechas and lolis in tanks!

Admittedly, that actually sounded like an actual threat.

And it turned out to be one.

The mech necromancer, who basically just looked like a skeleton wearing black robes with a fancy stick that had a robot’s skull on the top of it, stepped onto one of the lanes and waved their staff around which caused a mecha just as large as Clawdia’s to climb up and out of the ground. The mecha looked like it was falling apart and barely functional, but it still managed to move… and proved to have working guns mounted to its shoulders.

New Enemy Discovered!

Undead Mecha

Threat: ★★★★★

HP: Not much, BUT

Damage: A lot.

Defense: Even more than a lot. It might not have a lot of health, but it has super high defense.

The Undead Mecha is the summoned monstrosity of the Mech Necromancer. Once having been used to wage war against an intergalactic enemy who really didn’t like spirals because of entropy and stuff, this undead mecha has been given life once again and is determined to destroy everything in its path!

The undead mecha was in Valkyria’s lane and didn’t waste any time focusing fire on her. The machine guns mounted to its shoulders started peppering Valkyria full of holes while she slowly turned her turret to point her barrel at it… and then she fired.

Valkyria’s shot went straight into the undead mecha’s torso, exploded, and then… well, there was no more undead mecha. Or well, there was, but only its arm and hand. Said arm and hand were sinking back down into the dirt all on its own, and the hand made sure to give a thumbs-up while it sank.

I felt like I was missing several references, but I didn’t spend enough time not gaming and gardening to pick up on them.

So, even though the undead mecha supposedly had a ton of defense… it still wasn’t enough to withstand a single shot from Valkyria.

Unfortunately, only the mecha was dealt with. The one who summoned it wasn’t, and the mech necromancer summoned another mecha from the ground while slowly walking down the lane. The skeleton wasn’t within range of any of the towers yet, and the bees were too occupied with an aerial battle to deal with them, and both Clawdia and Valkyria were busy with an extra powerful wave trying to force its way through them. Neither one could split off to focus on the necromancer, and the newest mecha looked like it was about to take Valkyria out since smoke started rising from her engine.

To make matters worse, that swirling vortex above the battlefield was harassing our defenses even more than before. It kept on dropping off random ghosts who would attack our forces to deal a bit of damage and then disappear. They weren’t bad on their own, but they made sure to keep our troops and towers distracted and their health slowly ticking down.

Things were starting to look pretty bad.

And then, as if purposely timed to wait for me to think the situation was getting bad… a trick similar to the final battle of Clawdia’s castle was brought into play: bringing back the previous bosses.

Mr. Skeltal and Mr. Bones both stepped onto the battlefield, one per lane, and looked ready for revenge. Though, both of them glared at me rather than their actual opponents.

I couldn’t blame them.

And on top of the two bosses coming back for revenge, there was still whatever the final boss was supposed to be. Clawdia and her mecha were the final boss of her area, so it was probably safe to assume that Mariet would be the final boss of her area… but how would that work seeing as how her body was stuck back at the house?

Unless…

It all started to make sense.

The reason behind the fluff.

The reason behind life.

The reason why we were fighting.

The reason behind everything.

The final boss wasn’t going to be Mariet.

It was going to be Claire, and I had a gut feeling telling me that there was a greater amount of fluff than ever before being prepared.

I could feel it in my soul.

But we were only going to reach the final boss wave if we survived that long, and with the situation looking pretty grim as it was… my wives, and daughter, needed some motivation.

“Clawdia!” I shouted. “I’ll treat you like a worthless object who only exists to serve me for a week without stop if you survive!”

A powerful, deadly aura of energy immediately surrounded Clawdia’s mecha as if she just unlocked a new power level after screaming for multiple episodes in a row.

“Valkyria, I’ll get you housewife lessons! Eliza, I’ll build us a bingo hall! Luca, I’ll buy you a pony! But you have to survive and win this!”

Another aura, with two smaller auras inside of it, surrounded Valkyria’s body.

I knew what my wives wanted.

Well, Eliza… I was just stereotyping what she wanted based off her age, but it worked out in the end.

Old ladies still loved bingo even if they looked young and small.

“Now, go!” I shouted. “Tear our enemies apart! Make them regret ever coming back to life! Subject them to out-of-season Christmas music and bad online reviews! Every second longer you take is a second longer it takes until I spoil you all!”

With that, my wives charged forward with greater ferocity than ever before.

All that left was Honey who was still trembling on top of me.

She clearly needed spoiled more, too, so I decided to tease her by giving her neck a little bite.

The mumbled gibberish that drooled out from her mouth after that could not be understood even as a god.