Even though the conversation Reivan shared with his brother was ominous, in the end, it was a problem for the future.

  They could do little but prepare contingencies and ponder solutions for now—which might all be a wasted effort in the end. After all, none of them might be alive by the time it would happen. Or perhaps the resources required to solve the problem were used for something else. There might even be a much bigger problem that completely trumps all other worries they may have.

  But they had to do it anyway. They had to think of all the bad things that could happen and prepare a countermeasure. That was their duty as the royal family.

  'Ah, well... Technically, I shouldn't be included in that anymore, but it's not like I can just happily relax. Especially considering what I know.'

  In any case, Reivan believed that he'd earned himself a time of reprieve. And what better way to spend that time than with his precious newborn son?

  "Who's a good boy? You are, Arthur. Yes, you are..." Reivan cooed as he held Arthur to his chest, poking the baby's chubby cheeks and lips—which were still puckered from sucking on Helen's teat.

  Eventually, just poking wasn't enough, so he peppered his beloved boy with kisses. His son didn't seem to mind, though he supposed that a week-old baby couldn't protest in any way.

  "You're slobbering all over my baby," Helen said from the side, fixing her dress—which was halfway between a nursing dress and loungewear.

  "He's our baby."

  "Give him here..."

  Reivan grimaced at her, wrapping his arms around Arthur almost protectively. "My dear son, look at this terrible demon trying to take you away from me."

  "Arthur has to go to sleep."

  "He doesn't look particularly inclined to sleep, though?"

  "He doesn't look particularly inclined to do anything, Van. Arthur was born barely a week ago."

  "That's what you think." Reivan sneered. "You're just incapable of telling what our son is feeling."

  "Reivan."

  Knowing that he'd gone a tad too far with his tomfoolery, Reivan immediately held Arthur up in front of him as a shield. Not because he was a coward who would sell out his own son, but because this past week had revealed that Helen was very reluctant to raise her voice around Arthur or even show negative emotions. Even ones that weren't truly negative.

  Apparently, she thought it would influence Arthur somehow. The sentiment had a nugget of wisdom somewhere in it, but then again, Arthur was only a week old.

  Quite frankly, Arthur wasn’t very responsive to what was happening around him—which was perfectly normal for a baby so fresh out of his mother’s womb. The boy hadn’t even opened his eyes properly yet. Only the hands and feet were surprisingly animated.

  Still, Reivan didn’t hate the idea of maintaining calm and civility in his son’s vicinity.

  Reivan inched closer toward his annoyed wife, placing their baby between them. Eventually, the tension in her face melted away as Arthur neared. And it was downright replaced with a motherly smile when Arthur’s fingers coincidentally managed to latch onto her dress.

  “Time for bed,” Helen took Arthur, easing the baby into her arms like he belonged there. “Your papa is supposed to be busy with something, so he should leave. Now.”

  “Fair enough…” Reivan chuckled sheepishly. He did, indeed, have some matters to attend to while he was back in his hometown.

  For one thing, he wanted to check in on all the stuff he owned. An entire organization and a few sky arks were just a few of these so-called belongings. Reivan also wanted to visit some acquaintances whom he hadn’t seen in months.

  Also, there was that thing with the concubines. But he would do his best to avoid that conversation for now.

  Or so he thought.

  “Lady Vianna asked for you.” Helen turned to him with a pointed gaze. Clearly, she knew what his mother wanted to talk about. “You’d best hurry.”

  Reivan cleared his throat and slightly loosened the collar of his shirt. “Right. Where is she, by the way?”

  “The maids outside should know. Have them lead you.”

  “Right…” Reivan nodded sheepishly, trying to think of a way to lessen her annoyance.

  In hindsight, wasn’t this the reason she got angry so quickly earlier? Then again, Helen wasn’t exactly the paragon of patience, so the two incidents may be completely unrelated.

  ‘Doubtful.’

  Even after a full three seconds of overloading his brain, Reivan couldn't think of a good way. With nothing else to do, he simply walked over and wrapped his arms around her in a hug, leaving Arthur nestled comfortably between them.

  “I’ll see you and Arthur later,” Reivan said as he gave her a peck on the forehead, which surprisingly didn’t earn him a violent reaction. And was it his imagination, or did she seem less annoyed now? Her face was back into its normal stony expression, though.

  Feeling somehow reinvigorated, Reivan left his chambers and followed a maid into one of the palace’s many gardens.

  While most of the gardens in the palace were filled with flowers, this one housed one of his greatest adversaries.

  His Mother.

  “My son has finally arrived,” Vianna Aizenwald grinned as she gracefully enjoyed teacakes in a gazebo. “Come on, sit. Sit.”

  Reivan looked around and found nobody but him, his mother, and a few maids scattered here and there to handle menial tasks such as preparing more tea and procuring snacks to accompany them.

  The coast seemed to be clear, so he took a seat opposite her and was immediately served a very fragrant cup of tea that was different from the one his mother usually liked. He thanked the maid curtly and waited for her to pull back so far that she wouldn’t hear Reivan and his mother talk—unless they yelled, of course.

  With a smile, he picked up the cup and let the lovely fragrance waft into his nose before asking. “What’s this? I’ve never had this one before.”

  “It’s new.” Vianna nodded, sipping from her own cup. In his eyes, she was the perfect depiction of what a queen would look like—which told him that she didn’t intend to play particularly nice today, because she would’ve let herself loose otherwise. “Experimental tea leaves, apparently.”

  “Is that so? That’s interesting, to experiment on the royal family.”

  “They wanted to name it after me,” she said with the barest hint of exasperation, though she couldn’t completely hide her delight. “I certainly do like the scent and the taste, however. More so than any other leaves I’ve had. Go ahead and have a taste. Tell me what you think.”

  Reivan obliged, taking a few moments to gather his opinion. “It’s certainly better than most leaves, yes. Whether it's artificial or bred, they obviously spent a lot of effort to get it like this.”

  “Right?”

  “A bit too sweet for my taste, though. I’d personally give it a seven out of ten.”

  Vianna’s brows rose a little. “That’s better than I expected. You’re a picky one, after all.”

  Reivan grinned. “I gave it plus two points for being named after you, Mother.”

  “Sounds fair.”

  They both took a few moments to silently enjoy their drinks and even had some of the little pastries on the tiered serving tray—of which some were Reivan’s favorites, clearly prepared just for him. The silence hung heavy between them, and though neither said a word, it was like they were daring the other to start talking.

  In the end, it was his mother who broke the silence, showing the characteristic impatience that Reivan had come to know.

  “How is little Arthur?” she asked with a warm smile.

  Reivan rolled his eyes, the corners of his lips also tugging upwards when he thought of his precious boy. “I was told you visited this morning, so why are you asking so soon?”

  “Can you blame me?” Vianna snorted. “You said he’s a full human. Human babies aren’t known for being hardy. They apparently get sick all the time. There might also be unwanted discoveries as well…”

  “None of that, according to the Saintess. Our Arthur’s brimming with health. Lady Frey said that she would eat her coat if he got sick in the next three or four years.”

  “That’s good. Very good. I’m somewhat interested in how that Saintess will eat a coat, though.”

  “You wouldn’t be alone in that,” Reivan said, the mischievous part of him almost opting to intentionally give Arthur a light cold just to see if the holy woman would stay true to her words. It was already a familiar practice in some Aizenian cities to intentionally make a child sick so they'd build a resistance to worse diseases. Soon enough, the church might just start releasing the world's first vaccine.

  But this was his son they were talking about, and he didn’t want to take the risks when he didn’t absolutely have to—no matter how insignificant those risks were.

  Suddenly, he cleared his throat and hesitantly said something that had been on his mind for a while now. “He has my [Darkness] affinity and Helen’s [Wind] and [Lightning]. But he doesn’t seem to have the [Ice] affinity.”

  Vianna’s brow twitched for a moment, but she soon shook her head. "While that is not the outcome I wished for, he is still your blood. Meaning he is family. He is one of us, plain and simple.”

  ‘Yeah. I don’t know what I was worried about. It was obvious that Mother wouldn’t shun Arthur just because of that.’

  The lack of an [Ice] affinity meant Arthur didn’t have an ounce of Reivan’s warbeast bloodline in him. Not enough of it, at least. That was the source of Reivan's frosty powers and his resistance to cold, so it was clear what its absence meant.

  Reivan wasn’t scared to admit that he’d been a bit worried if his mother would accept a child that wasn't even part warbeast. Truly, it was only a bit. He had only been a little worried.

  In the end, however, she hadn't disappointed him. Reivan’s heart was filled with relief at the outcome.

  He didn’t know how he would have taken it if his mother had responded any other way. Would he have been infuriated by her stubbornness? And if so, would he have had it in him to cut ties with his own mother?

  Or would he have accepted her opinion and raised Arthur away from her? In a few years, Arthur would grow old enough to wonder why he never saw his grandmother. What would Reivan tell him then? Would he simply have to skirt around the issue and avoid answering it forever?

  Thankfully, he no longer needed to ponder those issues. Because his mother wasn’t a bad person. Just as he'd expected, she cared about the right things.

  “How does it feel, hm? Being a parent, I mean.” Vianna reclined slowly and crossed her legs, clearly having grown more relaxed. “Well?”

  “What else can I say?” Reivan scratched his head sheepishly. “I don’t know if anyone else will agree, but I’m a completely different person from before Arthur was born.”

  “Same as me, then.” Vianna giggled. “So many things you were once concerned about just seemed so petty now, hm?

  “Exactly,” he said, beaming. Truly, he had so many things in common with his mother. Even when he already had a developed personality when they first met, spending so much time with her and learning from her had truly made him her son.

  As he sat there, enjoying tea with his mother and talking about his newborn son, Reivan suddenly felt overwhelmed with happiness.

  This.

  This was what he’d been longing for in his past life, wasn’t it?

  A very simple happiness with the people he loved. He had a father, a mother, and even a brother. Sisters too, though they were adopted. Reivan even had women who loved him enough to build a family with him, and now he could even hold his first child.

  Truly, he’d come a long way from that idiot stuck in a white room that smelled of medicine and death, counting the seconds and whiling the time away until someone came to visit him—until someone proved that they still remembered that he was there. That he wasn’t dead yet.

  ‘Loneliness… Hah. What did that feel like again?’

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Honestly, he could no longer remember. The closest thing he could feel now was a lesser loneliness caused by not seeing some of his family for an extended period.

  But that wasn’t true loneliness, wasn’t it? After all, he could visit them if he wanted, and they would welcome him with open arms. He had many people who cared about him in this world. They were there, they just weren’t around all the time.

  And that was fine.

  That was enough.

  “Seeing as you've realized the joys of fatherhood, how would you feel about making some more babies?”

  Reivan had expected this before he even came here, but his mother still managed to catch him off guard. She was incredibly talented at that, when she wanted to be. No other woman in the world knew how to put him in a sentimental mood more than his mother. Her very existence made him sentimental all the time, after all. Just thinking of his previous life without a mother figure was enough to do that.

  He feigned a cough into his fist, before sighing. “You’re very blunt, aren’t you, Mother? I thought we were going to dance around the subject a bit more and then I’d get to go home."

  Vianna rolled her eyes. “You said you would willingly help in restoring our warbeast bloodline. I wanted to confirm that. Are you still willing to help? Speak honestly.”

  Reivan also reclined as far back as he could, letting the soft velvet of his seat heal his soul. Looking into his mother’s eyes, he could somehow tell that if he refused right now, then she’d retreat without a word and never speak of this matter again.

  It was that special way of communication between them, where she would act haughty or overbearing. But on the inside, she still tried her best to strike a balance between what he wanted, what he needed, what she wanted from him, and what she wanted for him.

  “That’s still the case.” Reivan, of course, wouldn’t break his mother’s heart. Never. “No matter what, I will see our bloodline flourish once again. I promise.”

  Vianna’s mask of queenly elegance fell off a little as she beamed. “My boy...”

  ‘That’s right. I am your boy. Now, and forever, Mother.’

  Naturally, he wouldn’t say that part out loud. It was far too embarrassing for a grown ass man to say it. For what it’s worth, he hoped the emotions were conveyed, at least.

  Vianna looked about ready to pounce on him and put him on her lap like she did when he was still small. But she thankfully managed to restrain herself, instead taking out a stack of paper and setting it in the middle of the marble table.

  “And this is...?” Reivan slightly tilted his head in confusion, his gaze falling on the bound documents that almost seemed like a fantasy novel with at least three hundred pages.

  “This one is a revised list of your human concubines,” she said, sliding the stack toward him.

  “Revised…?” he echoed. “Why was it revised?”

  “Because some of the candidates decided to back out.”

  “Oh... Wait, why? A lot of time has passed since I've corresponded with them, but our previous interactions were pleasant...”

  For a brief moment, he thought that the wool must have fallen from their eyes at some point. Sure, Reivan wouldn’t be leashing them to him forever. After they popped out a baby or two for him, he would free them from their "service" and they could live out the rest of their lives with a nice monthly stipend. He would even support them if they found someone else to marry.

  Reivan viewed it as a primitive form of surrogacy. But looked at another way, it could also be misconstrued as prostitution.

  The benefits of being his concubine for a few years were clear. But so were the consequences—a former prostitute would not have very good marriage prospects in a relatively conservative nation like Aizen.

  Sure, the kingdom was getting more and more open-minded lately. Too open-minded, actually, since freaky sex cults pop up a bit more often now, according to his brother.

  But all in all, they might be seen as dirty.

  Some people would definitely see the concubinage as a boon, though. For it meant that any man who got to marry them would have a woman “fit for a prince”. It sounded a bit disgusting and wrong, but that was just how minds worked here. The royal family was extremely revered by the common populace, after all, and there were lots of weirdos like that.

  Not everybody was so crazy, of course. But they were not an insignificant minority.

  “Oh, it’s not a big deal,” Vianna waved her hand noncommittally. “When they realized just how many concubines you would welcome, some of the women backed out because they didn’t think they’d catch your attention.”

  “Catch my attention…?” Reivan frowned, his confusion growing. “Why would they want to do that when I’m already set to make a baby with them? Is that not enough attention already?”

  “You fool.” His mother sighed and curled her lip in disdain. “You do realize that among your concubines, some will have volunteered because they genuinely want to seek you out romantically?”

  “Well… I may have realized something to that extent… But I was sure it was just superficial. You know, they just like my face or something.”

  “That is part of it, of course.” Vianna nodded in acknowledgement. “You're my son, after all. So you can’t be ugly.”

  He couldn't help but chuckle at her blatant but also deserved confidence in her genes. “Don’t forget about Father, though. He helped, too.”

  “Yes, yes. Your father may have had a part in it too, I suppose. Anyway. The point is, they volunteered to be your concubines because they saw it as a chance to get closer to you. To live out those storybook dreams of a prince falling for the commoner girl. Honestly, I understand them. Being essentially raised here, I also dreamed of those scenarios happening to me... except it actually did happen to me.”

  Reivan scratched his head. “But the numbers made them falter. It made them think there wouldn't be many chances at all…?”

  “Exactly.”

  ‘That’s… I kind of feel bad. Even though it’s not my fault.’

  It was like he’d accidentally led them on for a few years, making them feel like their fantasies were attainable. Even though it wasn’t.

  And now he felt awful.

  Reivan sighed as he flipped through the documents, recognizing many of the portraits.

  He’d exchanged letters and personally met almost all his concubine candidates. It was back during that wonderful period of his life when his biggest responsibilities didn’t have fatal consequences for those under him. A time when if he'd made a mistake in the paperwork, it could be fixed with a single word and all he didn't even have to apologize—though he still did it anyway.

  ‘Hm?’

  Once he reached a page with a woman he didn’t recognize, his flipping slowed for a few pages before speeding up again. And then it sped up again, and again, and again.

  “Uhm, Mother…” Reivan’s brows furrowed as he gazed down at the very thick sheaf of documents. “There’s so much more now… I thought it was thick because there were multiple pages for each candidate. But everyone has a page for themselves.”

  “Yes, well, about that,” Vianna raised a finger. “Don’t be mad.”

  “That’s not a very good way to start an explanation, Mother. That’s not a good way to start an explanation at all.”

  “So after a bunch of the human candidates left,” she sped through. “I thought, ‘Hey, since there’s less now, I have to fill out all the empty slots’. It’s only natural, right? Perfectly natural.”

  Reivan wanted to ask what exactly was natural about treating his concubines like some quota that had to be met. But he held his tongue for now.

  Vianna hid her lower face behind a fan she’d pulled out of nowhere before continuing. “In any case, I leaked rumors to promising families with promising daughters that we’re taking concubine candidates once again.

  "So the same way as last time."

  "Yes. But the rumors spread quicker than anticipated. Or maybe the target women bragged about it to their friends, sparking even more rumors. So when I officially started taking applications, a whole lot of women showed. And at some point, the rumors were twisted and people started thinking anyone close to your age was viable, regardless of their origins. There was a lot more than last time.”

  “More than last time…”

  “You're famous, after all. Likely because you’re all over the papers all the time.”

  “The papers…?” Reivan frowned. He didn’t know he was on the damned papers in Aizen.

  But if he really thought about it, it actually made sense if he was. If a prince was away fighting a war, it would obviously be relevant to the common populace who was very invested in the life of the royal family. Also, his "valiant efforts" would improve or maintain the already high approval the citizens had of the crown. Good PR and all that.

  “Wait a minute…” He licked his lip in contemplation for a second. “Even if more showed up, couldn’t you have just filled in the spots left behind by the girls who quit?”

  Vianna nodded. “I could have done that, yes.”

  “Why didn’t you, then?”

  “There were so many nice girls, so I ended up accepting more than I had to.”

  “Oi.”

  Vianna raised her hand in placation, snapping her fingers so the sheaf of documents in front of him flipped to a certain page. “Don’t complain too soon. Look, son. I picked out some really nice girls. Their temperaments are fine as well, so I'm sure your relationships will be harmonious, if not a little boring. But just look. I even made sure to capture their entire body figure for you…”

  Reivan grimaced but curiosity compelled him to get a better look at the documents.

  ‘Hoh…’

  While there was a painted portrait for each and every one that showed everything above the collarbone, there was also a sketch-like drawing that depicted their figure.

  And with every flip of the page, he realized something—all of the new women had a bombshell body. Not as great as Elsa, but they were still very nice. Actually, even the concubine candidates from the first selection were tailored to fit his tastes. Everyone was filled up in all the right places.

  No lolis, of course. Because although he was someone who got isekai’d, he did not suddenly think children or women with childish bodies were attractive, like so many of the isekai protagonists he read about.

  Reivan found nobody who wouldn’t score at least an eight out of ten on any heterosexual man’s scale. Most were definitely nines, with quite a few tens. Of course, his Helen and Elsa were ten billion out of tens in his heart, so these women sadly couldn’t compare, but still.

  Suddenly, he realized something.

  ‘Merciful gods… My mother just made the fantasy world equivalent of Tinder… Except everyone’s already swiped right on me.’

  Reivan was finding it increasingly hard to protest. Though he knew that it was his duty to make some babies, it wouldn’t hurt if the women just so happened to suit his tastes, right? Surely it wasn’t wrong. He just wanted to make things a bit more bearable.

  He couldn’t be blamed for that, right? Of course, he couldn’t.

  “So?” Vianna smirked behind her fan. “You find this acceptable, right?”

  Reivan cleared his throat. “There are at least three hundred women here…”

  “Three hundred and fifty, to be exact.”

  “Yes, right. Isn’t that too much? The initial plan was for a hundred at most… You literally tripled it, Mother. You went too far.”

  “Fool. Can’t you count?” Vianna closed her fan with a snap and sharply slapped the table with it. “Which one will allow you to restore our clan faster? The future where you have only a hundred concubines or the future where you have three hundred and fifty?”

  Reivan frowned at the trick question. “The latter…”

  “Exactly. This is more efficient. Look, instead of having three kids with a hundred women, you can have three hundred and fifty kids with three hundred and fifty women instead. You spend three years in the former and one year for the latter. It’s so efficient!”

  “Three hundred and fifty…”

  The thought alone was enough to make his lower back ache. That was almost one girl for every day of the year. Realistically, he could probably do a lot more than just one girl a day, if he dedicated all of his time to the act and didn't care about their feelings.

  ‘I’m being treated as a breeding stud…’

  Oddly enough, he didn’t feel that bad about it.

  Giving up, Reivan sighed as he idly flipped through the sheaf of documents again. It would be easy to tell which women backed out of concubinage.

  He had perfect memory of the previous list, so all he had to do was remove all the new faces from the revised list and cross-reference the recognizable ones in the revised list with the old list. That would leave only the absent ones, which were the girls who backed out.

  ‘They were all the sweet and innocent types, huh…? Figures, if they wanted to become concubines for romantic purposes. That’s not what concubines are traditionally for, though it isn’t impossible.’

  Reivan shook his head, thinking that the girls were better off finding love elsewhere. With a man that would look at them and only them for the rest of their days.

  After picking out all the quitters, however, Reivan realized something else about the revised list.

  “Mother.”

  “Hm? Yes, my dear boy?”

  “This revised list…” Reivan lightly tossed it atop the table. “Where are all the warbeasts? I didn’t see a list for them in the past. But I just realized there weren’t any on here, even though this is supposed to be the revised list.”

  The thought of absolutely no warbeast volunteering entered his mind. There were no other warbeasts in Aizen except for his family and the Terracatta Clan, so it was obvious where warbeast candidates would be pulled from.

  But the idea of absolutely nobody applying quickly died in the cradle.

  There was no way the Terracatta would pass up an opportunity to establish a stronger connection with his mother and uncle—who were apparently part of the ruling bloodline back then. Furthermore, he was a prince, so by marrying him, they would have a more direct way for their clan's words to reach the throne's ears.

  Just a few representatives from the Terracatta Clan would provide so many boons.

  And though he didn’t want to brag, he was apparently very popular among warbeast ladies his age. Something about smelling good or whatever. Warbeast fuckery, he was sure. Reivan was raised as a human, after all, so he couldn’t quite understand.

  Whatever it was, it made warbeast girls more receptive, though. Weird, but it was definitely a good thing.

  ‘Ah. Maybe that’s why Jiji is like that? As expected, there’s always an explanation for the eccentricities of the world…’

  The thought of asking his mother about the specifics of whatever it was occurred to him. But for some reason, his intuition was giving him a soft warning.

  It was better to stay ignorant.

  Reivan decided not to ignore his instincts. Especially when they'd never failed him.

  ‘Anyway. Why are there no warbeasts in this document…?’

  “Oh, that?” Vianna nodded. “I kept it in a separate set of documents so it was easier to arrange. Here you go.”

  And with that, she pulled out another stack of documents bound by string.

  “Uh…” Reivan stared at it before gingerly taking it into his hands and feeling the weight. His gaze switched between the earlier stack and the new one, comparing their thickness. “It’s half as thick as the other one…”

  “Yes. Well, there are comparatively fewer warbeasts here in Aizen than there are humans. It’s as expected.”

  “I feel like there are way too many, though.”

  Vianna laughed. “Yes, well, that’s what happens when every groomless warbeast girl between the ages of nineteen and twenty-five volunteers!”

  Reivan blanched. “Every…”

  “Yes. I only picked out one hundred fifty of the best ones. Even the younger ones wanted to, but I declined them for you. I know you don’t like them that young. Nobody does, I suppose.”

  “Thank you, Mother.” Reivan clicked his tongue. “You should’ve refused more. Combined, isn’t that five hundred concubines…?”

  “Yes. What’s the problem?”

  “Are you crazy? That’s too much!”

  “My son…” Vianna frowned. “Back in our homeland, men of power would have three thousand concubines sometimes. You only have five hundred, so some lords will even mock you.”

  ‘What the hell? Wouldn’t that complicate the family tree if some of their descendants ended up getting married a few generations later?’

  Warbeast fuckery again. Probably. Maybe it was just their culture, but having three thousand concubines was just unreal levels of craziness.

  And he lamented the fact that he had a sixth of that number already.

  “Wait a minute, Mother.” Reivan looked at her with suspicion. “Weren’t you a child when you left the Eastern Continent?”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “And you know all this stuff from back then?”

  Vianna shook her head. “No, it was your Uncle Viktor. He told me a lot about our homeland and convinced me that it would be fine for you to follow in the footsteps of ancient emperors.”

  ‘Uncle Viktooooooor…!’

  Reivan internally vowed that when he Ascended, the first thing he was going to do was to shave his uncle’s hair off.

  All of it.