The Castle in the middle of nowhere.

The next day, I was awakened by excited voices from the adjacent room. Irene was sleeping near me as usual, but after gently kissing her cheek, I stood up and showered. While standing under the warm water, I quickly looked at the newest reports. Eva was doing an excellent job, and I found nothing concerning. The Legions in Arcadia were finally stationed in military fortifications inside the Dungeon outposts, so I claimed a tremendous amount of mana. Summer was slowly coming to an end, and the harvests were decent outside the Dungeons, thanks to the Dryads. Last year's drought was far more devastating than I had initially anticipated, and even Zephyr's hard work of bringing storm clouds with his winds wasn't enough to improve the soil's condition. I started looking at the Cridian's canals a little bit differently lately. They weren't even remotely effective as a means of transport, but maybe they could be used for irrigation. While I wasn't worried about a famine, the real threat of wildfires was highly concerning. Arcadia wasn't a particularly water-rich region, but the construction teams found many dried-out riverbeds, raising safety concerns about the railroads. That was a problem, but nothing that couldn't be solved. Each suspicious place was additionally reinforced to withstand possible influxes of catastrophic water, and even the rails were raised to avoid blocking the water flow in case those rivers awakened again. That wasn't wishful thinking, though. We were fully aware of the World's Leylines and already had proof that unlocking them would drastically change the harsh climate for the better.

I sighed and finished my morning shower. Once I entered the living room, I found my wives around the table, inspecting various materials and discussing something. At first glance, I ignored the subject of their scrutiny, but after a moment, I realised they weren't excited about the beauty of the samples. Instead, they were reviewing practical applications of new materials.

"Yes, we can use this material for cheap clothing, but it would be a waste." Luna stretched a strip of fabric that expanded significantly before returning to its previous sizes like rubber. "But let’s face it, Amber. This thing is uncomfortable and would make you sweat like crazy. However, we could use it as a waterproof coating for..." She spaced out for a moment before she just shrugged. "For everything, I guess. It's an extremely capable material."

"Hmmm." Amber huffed and tightly covered her arm with the white material. After a few moments, she took it off in disgust and swiped off the sweat from her forearm. "You are right. It would be a nightmare to wear it all the time."

"What's this?" I plucked the strip from her hands and kissed her cheek. "Good morning, my Sunshines."

"Morning, Theon." Lavender waved her hand with a smile. "Wendy brought us some new materials that she and her subordinates managed to produce from available resources."

"Oh, nice." I sniffed the strip and played with it for a moment. "It's just like rubber but a bit more robust..."

"Rubber?" Amber tilted her head at me slightly.

A shy and unfamiliar knocking on the door puzzled everyone. Only Sebastian and the other Slimes knocked on those doors, but this sound was a more informative knocking that proceeded with instantly opened doors. No one else could get so far into the Palace without being captured or outright killed. When the doors opened, Freya slowly entered the room with a wide smile painted on her face.

"Good morning everyone! I was afraid that you might be asleep because the entire Palace was so silent." She tucked a strand of her dark brown hair behind her ear. "Sleeping was incredible after so long. Thank you, Mi- Luna."

"Hello," Luna smiled and waved her hand. "Don't mention it. It wasn't a problem."

"Good morning." We smiled back and promptly returned to our affairs.

I grabbed a sandwich from a nearby platter and invited Freya to help herself. While the Maids and Butlers usually served other meals, we all had our firm opinions about breakfast. It should be available for a long time, which was typically needed for Irene and sometimes Luna to even have one, and there was a general lack of agreement on what we all wanted.

"Oh, no. Every room in the Palace is soundproof because some of us don't like to be woken up too early." Aoi giggled, and Irene's meaningful absence was enough for Freya to smile awkwardly.

"I see..." She looked at the variety of food on the table and shook her head. "It's incredible. You always eat this good?"

"It's just breakfast..." I shrugged between the bites and took a sip of fruit tea.

"Wait..." She grabbed something from the table and pointed at it accusingly. "Strawberry muesli with chocolate?!"

Lavender looked at the Dwarfess with a smile. "I like it with milk."

"I know! I love it too, but I never expected to see it again, not to mention tasting them!" Freya filled the largest bowl she could find with the cereal and added milk. "You would face the wrath of a betrayed woman if you had managed to convince me to divorce, only to have found out that you have hidden my favourite food away from me!"

She pointed at me with the spoon accusingly, and without waiting for a response, she took a spoonful. She hummed in delight and cradled her cheek in her free hand. After a moment, I refrained from commenting altogether and finished my sandwich. In the meantime, Amber, who ignored Freya completely, picked up a few more material samples and inspected them.

"What are you doing exactly?" I asked them after a while.

"Oh, we have put an entire Materials Science division of the Royal University to work and tasked them with recreating most of the textiles we have deemed useful." Amber rubbed her finger over the smooth textile sample that stretched slightly under her touch.

"But we focused on those... How to put it nicely." Lavender took a deep breath, after which she shrugged. "Well, only those that are Eco-friendly. We don't need to produce tonnes upon tonnes of indisposable garbage like your people did on your planet."

While I felt a bit embarrassed about the undeniable fact of Earth's pollution, Freya snorted and almost choked on her breakfast. She started coughing and patting her chest until Aoi, who was the closest, smacked her back. She thanked the Dragonkin with a feeble voice between her coughs.

"Sorry..." She lowered her head and took a deep breath. "I just never expected to hear a Dryad speaking about Eco-friendly materials. It's just... Strange."

"Why?" Lavender looked at her, surprised. "Right now, we are applying technologies and materials that have no right to appear in this world, Freya. Thanks to Theon and his knowledge, we are skipping entire generations of progress and mistakes already made elsewhere. Why shouldn't we learn from your mistakes? I'd like to remind you that I'm in charge of Arcadia's natural resources and agriculture. Who other than me should evaluate the risk of potentially dangerous materials and their impact on our environment?"

"I'm sorry, Miss Lavender..." Freya lowered her head, but Lavender just frowned.

"There is no need for apologies or that Miss part, Freya." She tilted her head and fell silent, seeing Freya’s beetroot-red face. "What happened?"

"I... Sorry."

"All right!" I clapped my hands and arbitrarily interrupted that slowly rolling train of awkwardness. "Freya, you know that environmental concerns are real issues. Besides, we would have them anyway, so reducing trash items to as few as possible is very important. Lavender, Freya just knows that it took our civilisation ages to get to the point where we could afford to try to be reasonable with the trash we produce. However, by the time we had the luxury of not fighting for survival, our planet was already severely polluted, and there were places covered in an unthinkable amount of trash. Unfortunately, some people in power decided to be greedy and before we knew it, bam. A resource war."

Freya paled. "A resource war?"

"Well, yeah. Never heard about it?" I sighed, feeling sad like whenever I spoke about it. "It was a big thing back on Earth. Some people called it World War III, but the name implied that some countries would have a chance..."

"So there was a World War III..." she muttered in shock.

I looked at her inquisitively and slowly shook my head in disbelief. "I'll be damned... You never heard about it?"

"No... I died in the summer of 2024."

"That explains everything." I sighed. "It officially started in ummm... God damn it, I can't remember... It started after your death as World War III, and it's a long story. I'm no longer sure I have it right since many memories are missing from various moments in my life. The point is, the war that started due to the usual culprits quickly became a war for resources."

"How bad was it?"

"We almost killed all the cockroaches, gassed a few countries, and killed untold millions in the process."

"Oh, my God..."

"Yeah... I wouldn’t drag him into our madness. But in the end, I, the other Alliance commanders, and even the field marshal from the opposing side forced our civilian overseers into peace talks—under the threat of killing those bastards right then and there. So, peace came, and the survivors united under one government. On a side note, I can tell you some of those stubborn bastards didn’t walk away from that day. We, the officers from both sides, took the blame for it. But the people were too worn out from the war—they hailed us as heroes. Still, we were quickly shoved out of the political scene, seen as relics of a bygone era. They shipped us off to a glorified retirement home and revoked our rejuvenation treatments. I think they wanted us dead, but didn’t have the guts to do it directly... Oh, damn..."

"What?" Freya blinked in shock but I just realised that I might have been fighting much longer than I previously thought.

“Nothing. Just…” I forced a quick smile, eager to shift the topic. “We’ve got this world to worry about now. Whatever happened on Earth doesn’t matter anymore.”

“If you say so…” Freya nodded slowly, but I could tell she wasn’t convinced in the slightest.

If anything, she was just starting to grasp that her world was gone, and I was one of the people responsible. She stared down at her cereal with the grimace of someone who wanted to finish their meal but had lost all appetite. With a sigh, she put the spoon down and buried her face in her hands. I couldn’t help but wonder if I had a hand in killing her family, but that was a pointless thought spiral. As I sighed heavily and turned towards Amber, I caught the stunned look on her face.

"You should try to deliver such news differently..."

“How, my Dear?” I lowered my head and shook it weakly, feeling that all-too-familiar sting in my eyes—the kind that never turned into tears. “There’s no good or bad way to tell someone that the world they knew is gone. Just like there’s no gentle way to say that a loved one died on the front lines. No matter how much you try to honor their sacrifices, the fact remains: they’re dead, and sometimes we couldn’t even bring back the body. No words could ever comfort the families left behind.”

She slowly lowered her gaze. "I... I don't know what to say."

“That’s the point, Amber. No one knows.” I leaned back in my chair with a weary sigh, pushing the sandwich aside as I lost my appetite. “I think... I can’t be sure because I’ve lost so many memories, but I think I spent decades trying to find a better way to deliver those messages. Even the superior officers had to write those letters when our direct subordinates fell in battle… But I’m afraid I never found a good way. There just isn’t one.”

"Major Thomas O'Neal..." Freya asked quietly. "Do you know what happened with him?"

“Tommy Gun? Haha! That old bastard was practically immortal! We got promoted around the same time but on opposite sides of the globe. He survived seven nukes, four sinkings of his flagship, and every bit of nonsense those politicians could throw at him.” I let out a dry laugh, recalling the countless hours my friend and I spent trying to reform the Alliance’s armies to operate under a unified command. For half of that damned war, we carried the weight of leadership together. “Wait… you’re his daughter?!”

She just nodded, her big green eyes locking onto mine. Thomas rarely spoke of his daughter, and now I understood why. She had died before all that madness began…

“So it was you with his wife in that photo he always kept in his pocket…” I nodded slowly and sighed, feeling a heaviness settle over me. I turned my head away, unable to meet her gaze. “Your mother… she died during the bombings, early in the war. I’m so sorry, Freya. And your father… well, he passed three months after the war ended. Tommy was the first to decline the rejuvenation treatment. One day, he just fell asleep and never woke up again. He told me once that he couldn’t wait to see you and your mom on the other side. He was a true hero, Freya. It was he who convinced the Union officers to sit down and talk to end this madness. He saved Earth."

"So my parents died..." She smiled sadly. "I think Dad is disappointed not to find me there..."

“I wouldn’t be so sure… I think he’d be happy knowing you got a second chance at a good life.” I chuckled briefly, smiling slightly. “Though he might be a bit amused that you were stubborn enough to marry me, of all people.” I let out a short laugh, then took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, gazing upwards. The words came softly, naturally, like a well-worn promise, but they were genuine. “Don’t worry, my old friend. I’ll protect her, Tommy…”