Day 15 Evening - Plans, food, and slight misunderstandings

““““We are terribly sorry! Please forgive us!””””

I looked over the four maids lined up in front of me and bowing in unison, and I couldn’t keep the sigh from escaping my lips.

“I told you already. I'm not angry.”

“Our conduct was truly shameful,” Sera, the self-appointed head of the group, spoke up, completely ignoring my attempts at dismissing them. “I can only hope that you can find it in your heart to forgive us. However, if you can’t…” She paused meaningfully, and then took a step forwards. “I am willing to atone with my life.”

“N-No Sera! You can’t do that!” Eriza cried out in shock.

“Right!” Alvilia agreed solemnly, “It will totally mess up the night shift again!”

“Agreed,” Came the taciturn response from the fourth maid.

“Then what do you propose?”

“Draw lots?” Amaria spoke again.

“Noooo! That still won’t resolve the night shift problem!”

“W-Why are you so focused on that?! Sera might die!”

“Quiet, all of you. As your senior, it is my responsibility to—”

“Oh for the love of god…” I groaned aloud and with a flick of my finger I gave form to the snoozing Little Flame coiled up on the top of my head.

The eyes of the maids opened wide in unison, and even the otherwise calm Amaria let out a short cry before they stumbled back and rushed out of the dining hall. I waited for a couple of seconds to make sure they were gone before I exhaled through my nose and retracted the flames, making the blissfully unaware Little Flame incorporeal once again.

“P-P-Please do not summon your elemental so casually,” Razzie objected timidly while tugging at the neck of his black suit. “It’s… erm… a little disconcerting, you see?”

“It worked,” I answered casually before I rolled my shoulders and got myself a second helping from the incredibly delicious pheasant stew in front of me.

As for the current situation… Well, long story short, after I healed the bruised nose of the herbalist maid, she excused herself and told the others about how their suspicions about me were wrong. More importantly though, she informed them about the fact that I was able to, at least from their point of view, casually summon an Elemental whenever I wanted.

Now, normally I wouldn’t go into details about [Elementals], and instead just let the facts speak for themselves, but in this case it seemed like my perception of Little Flame was radically different from how others viewed it. First off, a little background of what an [Elemental] is on the first place.

According to Razzie, who might or might not have still been dressed only in his underpants at the time I dragged him out of his bedroom to ask him about these things, it went something like this: This world had two kinds of entities that the system couldn’t cover. The first was the creator god of the world, the [Nameless Architect]. At first I thought he meant that Tih A’maer guy, but apparently the two were different gods. The Architect was the one who made the world. Tih A’maer came later and created the [Divine Administration]. As powerful as the latter was, he still couldn’t get the Architect to play by his rules, so he was left out of the System. Apparently this didn’t cause any problems, since the Architect was a chill guy who was content with just watching the world develop.

The second kind of entities, however, were much more fickle. Yes, they were the Elementals. Obviously. I mean, why else would I talk about all this mythical stuff about gods and whatnot if they weren’t involved with it?

Now then, Elementals, unlike the already existing greater and lesser gods, didn’t play along with Tih A’maer, partially because they weren’t distinct entities. An Elemental was, as far as Razzie could explain, a physical embodiment of the element it represents. While there's only one Elemental around at any given time, they are never the same, and because of that, even if one Elemental agreed to be part of the system, the next time it came around, it wouldn't even remember the deal, let alone keep it.

Not only that, since they are the representative of all fire, earth, water, or air in this world, they are so horribly overpowered that even gods wouldn't mess with them, so Tih A’maer had a bat’s chance in hell to force them to play by the rules. Because of that, they are not covered by the System, explaining how observing Little Flame gave me no useful information.

However, unlike the Architect, elementals are fickle and can be coaxed into interacting with people under the System, though not throughthe System. I presumed that meant they couldn’t be summoned with skills, though this fact did make me wonder about Smaragd’s [Friend of the Flame] Trait.

So, in short, there were ways to get the attention of an Elemental, which usually involved grand sacrifices whose gnarly details I wasn’t particularly curious about, so I stopped Razzie from explaining them. Still, I've learned that summoning an Elemental was usually considered to be a last ditch effort when trying to get rid of a huge threat, like a rogue "God of Evil", or something of that caliber. They apparently also have a kind of aura that the inhabitants of this world can instinctively recognize, explaining why Razzie was shitting his pants when Little Flame showed up in the throne room.

But that’s enough about the inexplicably omnipotent winged fire-snake snoring on the top of my head. At the moment I was enjoying life, stuffing my face with some of the tastiest food I've ever tasted. There were pheasant stews, and stuffed boars, and mushroom soups, and mutton chops, and all kinds of heavy but incredibly tasty stuff, and I couldn’t get enough of them. Also, since we resolved the misunderstanding with the maids, none of them was poisoned.

Speaking of which, the four women were all peeking around the large doorway leading into the dining hall, but I decided to ignore them. Instead, I turned to Razzie and smiled at him.

“I have to admit, I finally feel like a proper guest. Good job, mister host.”

“You're… welcome?” he answered a tad uncertainly, probably because he wasn’t expecting the praise.

“Indeed,” I nodded and sipped some wine. By the way, for some reason, the system classified alcohol as a poison, so I kept getting warning messages after every glass or so, but by now I learned to ignore them. But back to Razzie. I redoubled my efforts to appear casually superior and inscrutable as I told him, “Indeed. The dining hall, the food… the dress…”

I looked over myself and for a moment I slipped into my thoughts again. Don’t take me wrong, it was a perfectly nice dress. Sleek, black, elegant. Not showing off too much skin. Only slightly uncomfortable. Actually, that last one was the thing that bothered me a little. I really didn’t feel that uncomfortable wearing it. Taken, I was female at the moment, but that brought up another question: why was I still in this form?

I've seen enough males, including the demon just over there, to make myself a new appearance, so why was I still in this shape? Part of me wanted to say it was because I was too busy to change, but to tell the truth, I honestly started to feel really comfortable with my current shape, gender and all. Well, okay, looking at myself in the mirror while naked still made me hot and bothered at various places, but otherwise I found myself thinking that maybe staying in the shape of a fair goblin, at least of the time being, wasn’t such a bad thing.

Unfortunately, my pondering lasted long enough to make Razzie uncomfortable again, so he cleared his throat and looked at me questioningly.

“Is… Is there something wrong with the dress?”

It took me a long second to rewind my train of thought to the point where I last spoke, but then I quickly shook my head.

“No, I don't dislike it.” I paused, then added, “Though, to be completely honest with you, I think I prefer pants. The skirt is awfully breezy.”

“I… I see. I'll tell my women to look around the wardrobes, though I'm not sure we have any in your size.”

“Don’t mind me,” I told him amicably before I cleared my throat and put down my vine-glass. “But speaking of "your women", there is something I wanted to discuss with you.”

Both the demon sitting at the table and the women behind the doorframes gulped audibly.

“Do you… wish to punish them?”

“Hm? Ah, you are still talking about the whole "trying to slip poison into my food" thing?” I purposefully paused at this point to let them squirm a little before I continued with, “No. I told you I'm not mad about it. It was at least a little amusing, and it was nothing dangerous. It would be childish of me to try and take vengeance over minor pranks.” I could see Razzie’s brows ease with relief, so I quickly raised my hand before he could speak up. “However, I would like to borrow one of them.”

“B-Borrow?” the floor-master repeated after me with a pitiful expression.

“Yes. I'd like you to lend me Eriza in particular.”

“… Is… is it because he made the poisons?”

“Well, kind of, but not the way you think,” I answered mysteriously, but since he only looked at me like a dejected puppy whose bowl was just taken away, I chuckled and let the cat out of the bag. “I have a plan. You know that I'm in debt with the Dungeon Master, right?”

“Y-Yes, I am aware since you told me.”

I nodded and opened the DMI. We have previously established that, unlike the status menu, this was something where Razzie and I saw pretty much the same things, though in his case the information was in a book, while in mine it was on the familiar semi-transparent panels. I gestured at the corner of the panel in front of me and waited until I was sure he knew what I was pointing at.

“Currently I have just a little under five thousand Credits, right?”

Razzie looked over the menu and nodded.

“Yes, as the Area Guardian of 1-B, that’s how much you inherited from the previous Guardian.” I didn’t answer immediately, so he hastily added, “Y-You see, the Old Widow wasn’t really smart enough to do anything complex with the Credits, so that’s why she hoarded so much. I think.”

“In understand. Five thousand is indeed a lot.” Razzie didn’t know this, but since I had the same AP level as him, I could see the amount of credit available for the other Area Guardians. One of them actually had even more, nearly seven thousand, while the third was hovering around a hundred. But back to the conversation. “However, I poked around in the menus, and it doesn’t seem enough to fix the damage I caused to the floor.”

“Was it… really that extensive?”

“You haven’t checked yet?”

Razzie hurriedly averted his eyes and muttered, “Sorry ma’am, I just never had the time.”

I sighed and continued explaining.

“According to my calculations it would take me at least nine thousand Credits to restore the area, and that’s just the landscape. Then there is the replanting of the forest, the re-establishment of the spawning points, and so on. I can probably cut down the expenses a bit by using manual labor, but the bare necessities would still cost another thousand Credits at minimum.”

“That’s… That means you are five thousand Credits short? It took Old Widow more than a thirty years to collect that much!”

“Precisely. Because of that, I plan to invest the five thousand I already have into a plan I came up with after discussing things with you. As the official Floor Master of the first floor, I felt like I should tell you about it to avoid misunderstandings in the future.”

“Official?”

“Yes. Are you not?”

“I-I am, but…”

“So you are.” I nodded sagaciously. “Anyways, here’s my plan in a nutshell: I need to generate a lot of Credits in a short period of time. The normal methods you previously described won’t cut it, as the low-level adventurers just don’t generate enough Lux for us during the short trips they take to the first floor.”

“Adventurers?”

“Upworlders. Anyways, to change this, I first indent to use my dungeon credits to change the goblins in the area.”

“I see… So you wish to make goblins into the staple of your area. It makes sense…”

“Yes. Next I plan on taking all the goblins on the floor and having them create a town where, in the future, I could house the adventurers.”

“Wait…!” Razzie stopped me with an astonished expression. “You want to keep upworlders in this "town"?”

“Yes. As we discussed, adventurers give us Lux just by being in the dungeon. Therefore, by providing them with a place to stay, I can milk some extra Lux out of them.”

“And that’s why you need to modify the goblins? So you can hold them there?”

“That’s the plan, yes. Then once the housings are established, we might even see families and kids in the future, earning us even more Lux.”

“Won’t that cause problems?”

“I don’t think so. I already thought about the logistics a bit. I can provide water by buying a few fountains with water-stones from the DMI menu, and as for food, I was thinking about increasing the spawn-rate of the giant rats and lowering the rates of the natural predators to create a food surplus. I also came up with a plausible refrigeration system idea, but that’s for later.”

“Re-free gerasun?”

“Ah, it’s a kind of cooling system to freeze food and keep it from spoiling. You’ll understand when you will see it in action.”

“I see, but… Even if your plan succeeds, what will happen if they send down a subjugation force?”

“Well, then I welcome then to stay in the town as well.”

Razzie stayed silent and stroked his goatee for a while before he finally muttered, “If it’s you, maybe it can be done.”

“I'll try,” I answered his faith in me with a modest smile before I turned serious again. “And that brings us to Eriza. I wish to ask you to let me borrow her for a while.”

“Yes, but… Could you, maybe, tell me why you wish to have her? Please?”

“Of course. There are two reasons. Primarily I need her as an advisor for the time I'll be constructing the accommodations for the adventurers. I don’t really know how those are supposed to look like around these parts, so having a native help out would be much appreciated. I also wish to exploit her knowledge of herbs. Since the White Widows are gone from my area, their silk can no longer be used to lure adventurers over. I plan to replace it with rare herbs and, in the future, medicines, and I need her help for that.”

“I understand…” Razzie spoke melancholically. “I will… speak with her.”

“Great. Thank you.” I told him with a satisfied grin before I glanced down at my plate and my expression immediately withered. “Oh. I was so caught up with the topic I forgot to eat. My soup went cold.”

“Shall I call someone to heat it for you?”

I hesitated for a moment, but in the end I shook my head.

“No, I wanted to try something out for a while. This is a good opportunity.”

As I said that I carefully raised the half-empty plate with one hand and activated Fire Magic. I don’t want to brag, but I felt like I was getting really good with it, as I quickly managed to create a small blue flame hovering in front of my index finger. I willed the flame to go under the plate and heat it, but before it could start moving, Little Flame suddenly woke up, jumped off my head, and chomped down on the flame, once again bursting into material form.

“Wha-wha-what!?” Razzie panicked so hard his glamour was getting out of sync with his real body. As for me, I rolled my eyes and glared at the fire serpent happily coiling around my hands.

“Little Flame, behave yourself.” It glanced up at me, its increasingly expressive eyes showing confusion and a kind of puppy-dog innocence that made it hard to be mad at it. “I wanted to use that to heat my soup. Don’t just eat my flames without asking.”

Little Flame lowered its head with a deep purr, but then a moment later it suddenly perked up. It let go of my arms and instead it coiled around the plate, holding it up in my stead. The flames on his back flared up, and a moment later the soup in the plate became steaming hot again. Little Flame looked between the plate and me and then he extended its neck in my direction. I couldn’t help but chuckle and pat it on its head.

“Oh fine. I'm not mad at you anymore. Thanks.”

As I continued petting Little Flame I noticed the Razzie was mechanically shoveling food into his mouth at my side while obviously trying not to look my way. I stared at him for a while, but since I quickly got bored of looking at the sweat-beads rolling down his face, I returned to my dinner without any further ado.