The return to the Estate was a dull affair and after six days it was over.

  They arrived around noon of the st day of travel. A number of other carriages were parked in the lot before the main entrance. Everyone who visited the Estate came streaming out with his haremettes. Despite the onlookers, they greeted him in the usual fashion: naked in the foyer.

  “Such good girls,” Rykard complimented them each and gave them quick kisses each. “You have been good girls, right?” he asked, while scratching the elven twins behind their pointy ears.

  “”Yes, Master,”” the duo answered in purring unison.

  Miyo turned to the crowd of emissaries. Her nudity did nothing to detract from her regality. “You are dismissed. Help yourself to the food and drink, if you are so inclined. We will pick up the administrative matters after our king has been briefed.” With softer eyes, she returned her attention to him. “And once he has informed us on what has transpired.”

  The little crowd dispersed. Many eyes followed the nude haremettes while they moved towards their favourite bathroom. Once there, Rykard and Helenn stripped. Where the cherub just had to pull her white gown off, the king required several yers to be removed. The drawbacks of royal clothing.

  “The swift journey points towards either immense success or a terrible failure,” Vyra commented, while she hung his various clothes from racks outside the main bath.

  “I would call it neither,” Rykard answered and pushed open the door. Before him id the mana-powered bathhouse of his choosing. Grazing a mana crystal near the entrance, he swiftly fueled the half-depleted resources of the structure. The warmth in the room rose swiftly from a pleasant room temperature to an even more pleasant hotness. Springs of water in the corners of the room flowed with renewed strength and soon began to steam, causing the naked crowd to glisten.

  There were pools near those springs, deep tubs for a regur cleaning. Rykard headed for the shallow tub in the middle of the room. The rune-covered construct of smooth metal and water-resistant pillows had its own water cycle. Hey poured a few oils into the water, to make it soapy and to add pleasant fragrances.

  Rykard lied down at the centre. Typically, Miyo would have gotten behind him to serve as his pillow. Today, she left that duty to Mena. Hey and Vyra took the side positions, using their massive tits and handfuls of water to clean his arms with grinding motions. Lyvia and Tena did the same with their mildly more modest curves for his legs. Helenn, short as ever, straddled his midriff and rubbed her rge chest over his pecs, while Miyo enveloped his cock with her wet folds.

  “Not going to wait until after I expined what happened?” Rykard asked. “It might upset you.”

  “I’m prepared for that,” his first haremette sighed. She rolled her hips, a motion that was a little less attractive for the early roundness of pregnancy and yet more attractive because of it. It was difficult to put a thumb on that particur aesthetic. “I’ve been dripping wet for days. I wasn’t informed that being bred would make this… mhhmmm… horny.”

  “Can you listen?”

  “I can always listen,” Miyo answered.

  “The summary of it is that I met with the Contestant of the area. They had made contact with Benhuldran, but no alliance was forged yet. We had amicable talks, then he suggested he’d become my vassal.”

  “You refused, I expect?”

  “Indeed I did.”

  “Good,” Miyo sighed. She raised her hips just high enough that Rykard could catch a glimpse of her stretched quim behind the cover of Helenn’s bouncy butt. With a loud moan, she plunged back down. “A Contestant so eager to be subjugated is not to be trusted.”

  “He was going for the Queastor gambit.”

  “Quaestor gambit…? Ah, the steward strategy.” Miyo nodded a few times. “What did you do in response?”

  “Put him in his pce and decred war,” Rykard answered casually.

  Miyo inhaled deeply, remaining seated on his p, and closed her eyes. “Did you destroy him then and there?”

  “I opted not to.”

  “Why?”

  “Helenn was there and I thought it would be more entertaining this way.”

  One of the vixen’s eyes flicked at some invisible irritation. “An unwise decision,” she stated pinly. “He could band together with your opposition or, worse, attempt to summon threats to you.” She opened one eye again. “You must be aware that threats to you are threats to the bance of this world?”

  “I’d rather not have this world end as ours did, before the Twinned Goddess intervened,” Tena said.

  “I’ll solve it,” Rykard said simply.

  Miyo let out a long sigh. First it was a sound of elegantly expressed frustration, then of renewed pleasure. The vixen was back to gliding up and down his manhood, massaging the length of his cock with her twitching folds. “Your confidence is warranted. I would have advised differently had I been there, yet this does not have to be to our disadvantage. Does he have the forces to strike at us?”

  “He summoned a champion to face me specifically by the phrase of the Hexagon. I crushed that man in a duel.”

  A little smile pyed around the redhead’s lips. “Of course you - ah! - did.” She picked up in her pace, crying loudly as she brought herself to the first orgasm of his return. Once the spasms had ebbed away, the fox woman dismounted her Master. “Hey.”

  Fluidly, the succubus switched positions with the first haremette. The clenching folds of the semen demon enveloped him just as readily. Giant tits swayed while the pregnant embodiment of lust danced on his cock. Miyo, meanwhile, settled at his side, cleaning his arm as she spoke.

  “Perhaps this wasn’t the worst choice then,” Miyo hummed.

  “Excuse my ignorance in matters of politics, but how could this be of benefit?” Mena asked.

  “If I may?” Vyra spoke up and the harem queen gestured for her handmaiden to continue. “It is not just the matter of diplomacy but of the specific rules we find ourselves in. Galvanizing our opposition early means that the Contestants may form a true bloc in opposition earlier. The rules of the game dictate that only independent Contestants may pce Hexagons.”

  “Ah, in other words, if the three to our north-east want to work together tightly enough to oppose us, they’ll have to elect a leader, taking the other two out of the game?”

  “That is how such an alliance should py out, should they make it.”

  “It could also be that they waste more time on ultimately fruitless diplomacy,” Miyo furthered the expnation. “Benhuldran is not the kind of man to accept a corrupt chancellor. He strikes me as an individual that would rather lose in a principled fashion than win by any means necessary.”

  “I agree.”

  “Still, it could also be that their diplomacy is successful; that they do summon a champion that can take you on, or enough to drown you out. Worse, they could summon a danger of apocalyptic proportions that they cannot control.” Miyo shook her head. “I would have advised against this course of action.”

  “I would have taken it anyhow. What is a world conquered without a worthwhile opposition?”

  “I do put my absolute faith in your victory, Rykard,” Miyo stated. “Of that, you can be assured, no matter the tone of my council.”

  Rykard’s response was deyed by the peaking of his own pleasure. Cum gushed up into Hey, who threw her head back. Howling at the ceiling, the seed-starved succubus gushed all over their joined sexes. The cycling of the shallow water increased at the detection of impurities.

  “Tena,” Miyo said casually. The moment Hey regained control over her twitching curves, she switched positions with the redheaded elf.

  “This fat cock really makes the wait worth it,” the druid sighed as she sank down.

  Rykard cleared his throat. “Let me give you another reason for that absolute faith then,” he said and conjured the windows that tracked his development. “Most of it was travel, but I did still fight a worthwhile opponent.”

  Mild growth all around, but growth nonetheless. Beyond the numerical values, Rykard felt that he had realized a few more tricks in utilizing his magically bolstered muscle mass as a conduit for his more aggressive spells. That had been something he had picked up during the fight with Ahdean.

  There was also something he had been working at in his head during the trip back.

  “I have theorized a new spell,” he told them all, after they had analysed his progress. “One that I would like to test on you, Lyvia.”

  “My body is yours, Sir,” the leviathan dy assured. “May I ask why me specifically?”

  “The obvious reason,” Rykard answered and gestured at her ft belly. Testing spells, specifically the one he was contempting, was typically harmless if they were unraveled quick enough. However, any dependant on that system, like a growing baby was, may not be able to cope as well with the sudden flux of mana in the bloodstream, especially if that mana was unstable.

  Lyvia gave him another mechanical nod. Tena quickly rode him until orgasm, then the arrangement in the bathtub was temporarily dissolved. Lyvia id down on the heated stone floor.

  “The magic is fundamentally weak. You can resist it as it forms and you can probably oust it at any point after that just by concentrating on it,” Rykard expined. “You need to trust me for this - you need to want it.”

  “I want all that you want for me, Master,” Lyvia assured.

  “Good girl,” Rykard purred, making the order-stimuted monster girl squirm where she y.

  Carefully, the mage wove his magic into a fine point. Esoteric slowness brought his index finger down on the lower abdomen of the blue-skinned woman. An almost bck, deep blue light hovered just off the tip of his digit. He pushed it into her skin.

  The ritual was concluded just like that. Her body accepted the magic with submissive readiness, letting it bloom under her skin into a heart-shaped mark above her womb. Rykard traced its shape, connecting to the spark of his own magic now connected to her magical matrix. Everyone with the faintest supernatural senses would be able to notice this brand of consensual ownership.

  “A harem brand is hardly something new,” Miyo commented, looking over his shoulder. “You offered me one years ago.”

  “And you refused,” Rykard reminded her.

  “Had I accepted, the scandal would have likely caused civil war.”

  Rykard just shrugged, he felt like that would have been worth it. “This is no simple harem brand, this is mine. It will sap some of my mana to replenish itself when I am in close contact with you and weave a number of beneficial passive effects, primarily to alleviate the various concerns of pregnancy and such. It should act preventatively rather than reactively.”

  “Are you truthful in that cim?” Miyo asked, hope rising in her cool voice.

  Before Rykard answered, he continued his scans to be doubly sure. Lyvia gave him ready access to her body, the kind of control that not even healers were usually given. Had he been of lesser moral fibre, he could have used Manipution magic to wipe her mind clean or at least eliminate a good chunk of her personality before instincts cast him out. The sheer dominance of that act was enticing. Beyond that, nothing was. Rykard enjoyed women, not dolls.

  “All seems to be working as intended,” he confirmed, then smirked at the rest of the harem. “All that would like to be marked as my personal property, please lie down so I may administer the procedure.”

  The haremettes all eagerly got down on the floor. One after the other, Rykard made a carefully crafted spark of his magic seep into them. There was no reason why it had to take the shape of a womb tattoo, but it always did. Rykard chose the pce, their psyche the shape. Colouration and exact form differed from woman to woman, but all were a heart shape surrounded by fallopian patterns. Only those that already had a simir mark before, Hey, Helenn, and Mena, remained visually unchanged. On the level of the soul, the spark was clearly visible regardless.

  “Assuming a regur level of difficulties, the mark should have storage for up to 60 days,” Rykard expined to them. “It will replenish quickly as long as you are in contact with me. This level of Restoration will not hinder me in the slightest even if I have to fill up the reserves for all of you.” He showed Miyo a repentant smile. “This should make it bearable when I take the angel and the fertility druid with me.”

  “It ought,” Miyo agreed, then purred. “Back in the bathtub with you, Master, you have more than earned services provided.”

  Not two minutes ter, Rykard found himself back under a yer of nubile women, cleaning every centimetre of his body. Vyra took her turn to ride him.

  “Now, how did my realm fare in my absence?” Rykard asked.

  “Well, is the short answer,” Miyo answered. “Advances have been made in all fields, except for our military. Not for a ck of trying, it ought to be said. The sailors of Regalia are simply being occupied at an equal rate at which we recruit other soldiers.”

  Rykard scratched the back of his head. That was the disadvantage of an all-female fighting force: they weren’t flexible. Once they started building families, they could hardly be called out of civilian life. Best case, he pulled a mother out of a home, worst case, he conscripted a pregnant woman. The tter was entirely inconceivable for any military campaign. They could be supply line organizers or something simirly stationary, not actually army men.

  Pulling fathers out of their homes was still not optimal, but it was generally less devastating to the family life. Optimal was a pool of young men with little to lose and glory to win.

  An issue for another time.

  “In an established world, I would consider using our prosperity on mercenaries,” Rykard hummed.

  “You could summon a Hexagon of men motivated by riches,” Hey suggested. “Your realm could use a few selfish elements to put all this wealth that is being generated to some grander projects. Great individuals are the backbone of progress and greatness is not found among the agreeable.”

  “An idea for the back of his mind,” Miyo stated. “He has plenty of other things that he should take care of.”

  A not-so-subtle hint at the fact that he had various requests still pending. It was about time to decide what to do next anyhow.