No Need for a Core?

Kazue would have been jealous about Moriko’s shopping trip and dinner with the princess if she wasn’t so happy having her friends visiting her. Well, okay, she was still a bit jealous, but only a little. Given the two options, she’d rather have her friends over.

Her little ‘camp out’ had been fun, and also given her a chance to test out the rest area. The layout wasn’t quite perfect, and she’d made some mental notes to tweak things once her friends were in the library, such as adjusting the layout of the kitchen area to make things more convenient.

Once everyone was ready to continue, Kazue had called the shrine maidens together and gave them all a mischievous grin. “I’ve adjusted the rules of the next area just for you. Your primary goal is simply to find me, that’s your way forward. However, you have some bonus quests; each of you may tell me one new thing you learned from the library to earn a bonus reward, and you may each correct one wrong thing you find presented as truth in one of the books. Which means stories and myths don’t count.” As far as she knew, there were no incorrect records in the books currently in the library, but there was always a chance. And these bonus quests were something she’d had in mind for visiting sages anyway. Her friends were not so knowledgeable, but all of them had more than a bit of book learning, so they might happen to spot something.

“There’s a separate bonus for each.” Not that she’d entirely decided what those were yet, but she was keeping a tally of what they’d done so far. She and Mordecai had talked last night about rewards in general, they’d been mostly customizing things to make a good impression, but after this it was probably time to create standardized rewards for most groups. It was just a lot of effort to always come up with something new, and they’d sort of already come up with a few specialties they handed out regularly, such as the crystal-honey potions. “Now, good luck in finding me!” Kazue had her core create a swirl of wind and a light bit of sparkling dust as she did a spinning jump while de-spawning her avatar, making herself vanish into thin air dramatically.

It had taken days of practice to nail the timing. If she was going to become a famous kitsune, even if as a dungeon, Kazue felt that she should try to live up to some of the myths when she could. But it turned out that it takes a lot of work to pull off special effects like that.

As she settled her avatar back down in the tea shop, she realized a slight flaw in her plans for the day. While her avatar was a focus for the dungeon area around it, her avatar was not really suitable for tracking stuff further away. Which only left her with one focus to follow her friends and to follow the priest’s party. “Er, Mordecai? Could you…?”

“Of course love.” Came his amused reply. He’d figured it out while she was hesitating on asking, and had shifted his core’s focus to the library’s combat path.

With that concern taken care of, Kazue focused her core on tracking her friends’ progress while her avatar practiced some of the spells she’d been learning from him, plus some of the techniques Moriko had taught her previously. She wasn’t very good at chi manipulation in general and didn’t anticipate becoming so, but the practice did help her with mastering the aura that let her enhance her foxfire and imbue it with spells.

Mordecai was doing some practice of his own, working his way through various imaginary combat scenarios in each of his forms. He already knew how to respond in his humanoid shape, but these hybrid forms were unique to his experience and he wanted to know the strengths and weaknesses of each. The larger the body the harder it was to sway and slide past an attack, but this came with tougher skin or scale, making it easier and safer to use a limb to deflect a blow. With the bit of testing he’d done so far, he was pretty certain that in his battle or war form he could safely deflect a nonmagical blade so long as he got the angle right, and most magical blades with the addition of a bit of chi channeling.

But his core was still free to pay attention to the explorer’s party. He quickly queried the residents to get what instructions they had gotten from Kazue, then compared her assessment of the party to his own. They were pretty much in agreement and he saw no reason to change anything.

The wandering Bunbrarians would be traveling in pairs, which would make any encounter where they engaged after hearing other combat a sufficient challenge for this group. If they were instead waiting in a location without other creatures with them, they would be in a group of three.

Biblios was going to engage them without support from Horace, but with support from the smaller bookwyrms and the biting words.

Moriko’s intended schedule had been totally demolished, so her day was spent dealing with all the goods that had arrived the night before and arranging to get most of them off to her father-in-law for him to arrange shipping. Once that was all settled, she turned her attention to studying the papers her master had sent her.

Thankfully she wasn’t going to have to worry about more than two generations. She’d been informed last night that Prince Gou would be the youngest person at the dinner, and the oldest of Princess Kagami’s children was thirteen, three years younger than Prince Gou.

So, from the top: King and Queen, Yoshihiro Apifera, 56, and his wife Phaedra Apifera, 54, who had previously been a daughter to a coastal duchy. Moriko had known their names of course but hadn’t been aware of what noble family Phaedra had come from.

Both of their faces were on coins minted in the past seventeen years. The previous king had abdicated in his mid 60’s and was still available for consultation but was now in his 80s. Given the tendency of the royal family to live near to or even over one hundred, retiring was common practice so that succession was not a series of old men replacing each other. Yoshihiro had claimed the throne at the age of 39.

His features were a mix of the two common lineages, which itself was more common in this kingdom than someone who was distinctly one or the other. The northern empire by contrast mostly had folk with rounder eyes. Half-elves tended to look more almond-eyed than their human ancestry alone would account for, as the elven side of their ancestry tended towards those features as well.

Queen Phaedra and Princess Kagami looked much alike according to what she’d heard, so Moriko rather imagined that it would be hard to tell the older woman’s age. The notes she’d been given also mentioned that sylph bloodlines ran strong in the queen’s family, which explained why they had such ethereal appearances. She was generally calm and poised and known to wield both air and ice magic when called for.

Princess Kagami, 34, eldest of the royal children, was married to Lord Zarod, a younger son of a southern barony. They lived in the royal estates at the center of the city and had three children, all sons.

Prince Ailwin, 33, first son and heir to the throne. He resembled his father but with a slightly longer, thinner face. His wife was Lady Amhis, a half-elf who had previously been a commoner and was a merchant who had made herself wealthy. She had not entirely retired from business either, though she kept a slightly more distant touch on her concerns for the most part. Moriko suspected that at least one of the merchants she had dealt with previously had actually been working for her. They also had three children, two sons and a daughter, with the daughter being the youngest. As heir, he had a suite near the center of the palace.

Princess Kitiara, 31. She and her wife Lady Catherine split their time between the capital and the northern border. They were a bit of a power couple and tales told of how quickly the two of them could cut their way through a group of bandits. Their soldiers were said to both fear and worship the two women.

Princess Tiriana, 28, engaged to an elven noble named Ilimater. Plans were to have the wedding here before they moved back to his lands for their permanent residence, where there would be a second reception for locals that would be her formal introduction as the lady of the estate.

Princess Bridgette, 21. No known romantic affiliation, but very gregarious and seemed happy to accept almost any dance invitation during balls. Her bloodline had been confirmed as phoenix, but it was uncertain when that lineage was introduced or even what side she got it from. It was probably from someone who had married into one of the families without knowing they carried this potential.

Prince Gou, 16. Second Son and youngest child. Taller than his siblings and already well-built, there were hints of a draconic bloodline stirring in him, though it had not fully manifested. Which dragon heritage it was had not been revealed yet. Even without draconic manifestation he was a young powerhouse and quite handsome, and had the eye of a few young ladies of the court. Though he seemed to enjoy the attention greatly, he’d shown no interest in a particular girl.

Moriko sighed and thunked her head onto her small desk. This was the dozenth or so time she’d read through it all, and the third time she’d written a summary to try and hold it all in her head. It was time to get some food and take a nap before going over the list again along with the basic etiquette rules. They weren’t quite as bad as she had feared, but it was still a lot more complicated than anything she’d dealt with in the temple outside of full-blown ceremonies.

At least over dinner last night they’d slightly changed the plans, the carriage would pick her up from the clothier instead, which would also give mistress Ula a little more time to finish the dress before it was time for Moriko to put it on.

Mordecai did his best to offer his emotional support to his frustrated wife, but Moriko was grumpy from all the studying and only in the mood to accept so much comfort. He had copied her memories and thoughts as clearly as he could, and would use them to prompt her if she needed them during the dinner, but that he didn’t mention to her just yet.

Moriko was intelligent and could focus on a task well enough to memorize this list, but she was far from a natural academic. He didn’t want to give her any subconscious excuses to slack on learning this, and he felt that she would feel more accomplished if she did it all on her own. Mordecai just intended to be her safety net if needed.

But with her attention turned towards food and sleep, Mordecai turned his thoughts to a different consideration. “Kazue love, given the gender discrepancy in your clan, how do romantic relationships generally work out?”

“Mmm, it’s a mix. If a girl wants to be with a boy kitsune, she’s probably going to have to accept being one of a few or even several. Sometimes a guy insists that a particular girl is the only one for him, but honestly, it's pretty rare given the options. If she’s happy to be with a human or an elf or such, well, my dad’s human and it’s not all that rare. We probably also have more female couples than in other places, but that’s just a guess. On the flip side, though a guy usually winds up with a group of women, and has a lot of open dating early on, the final group of women usually self-selects out of the women he’s been seeing and work out who is compatible with who, and then present themselves to him together. His options are all or none. Most guys aren’t foolish enough to try and be picky in this circumstance, and the rare one that is, risks finding himself with no one. For a while at least, long life spans and all that, so if he gets wiser a younger group of women may form around him, with the advice and supervision of older women.”

That sounded well put together to him. Not perfect, but given the circumstances rather healthy. Communities with even a temporary gender imbalance were better off if the larger population gender was cooperative about the situation rather than competitive, he could only imagine how bad it would be if all the kitsune women were competing for a small pool of men across generations and centuries.

And that information solidified how he was going to approach something when the time came. But right now it was time to see how this group did against Biblios.