Chapter 1543 – Lovable Everyday
“Do you have twenty minutes to get through the basics?” Lydia asked, her voice a knot of genuine interest and sickness at going through these layers repeatedly.
“Yes, but I really don’t fucking care. Give me the short of it.”
“Fundamentally, as titles were bestowed, so too was there a degree of law giving powers for the domain attached to the title. Whether a title superseded the authority of another body of governance was often either not declared, in doubt, or repeatedly challenged.” Lydia groaned. “A vast majority of these laws are defunct, but I still have to follow certain protocols to dismiss them. For example, keep laws affect fortified Illusion Barriers, typically with a keep in them, and to undo laws regarding them, I will have to find nobles that own at least half of the keeps in Rex Germaniae. However, keeps have been out of use in Rex Germaniae for over 400 years. Bureaucratic efforts to keep track of keeps has been good, thankfully, but a lot of the nobles are not aware of the keeps they hold and the ones that are are attempting to delay my summons.”
“Why?” Salamander asked.
“Power,” Undine answered simply. “Keeps allow lesser nobles to have a local haven of supreme authority. They wouldn’t want to lose that.”
“And larger lords that have inherited several keeps over time often hold them outside their own territories and having things change about their summer vacation home would be annoying,” John added.
“They are more than aware that I, given the chance, would do away with the entire category.” Lydia rubbed her forehead. “At least I would wish to combine it with others. There is no need to have separate but co-equal layers of law between keeps, Protected Spaces, and workshop barriers.”
“You know, whenever I hear about the depth of the problems you have to deal with, I’m just happy that I only have to mediate small-time border disputes about mostly empty land.”
“With every day I govern, I further understand why so few rulers ever wish to deregulate. Not only is it a tremendous pain, it is also a gargantuan time sink.” Lydia shook her head. “My cabinet has decided to put these plans on ice for the time being. It will be easier to get through these steps once I have furthered my support base.”
“Must be hard to try to centralize certain things while federalizing all around,” Salamander noted.
“Accusations of hypocrisy are numerous, as they always are from one’s political enemy.” Lydia shook her head. “It has reached a point where certain words or phrases are avoided in my offices, especially when conversing with outsiders.”
“Another unfortunate reality of conversing with political enemies,” John groaned. He was all too familiar with saying certain things about whatever topic and then having to go through a familiar dialogue tree. The issue didn’t even matter, neither did it matter what side he was talking to. Left, right, centre, up, down, so many people had a set of immediate responses to certain issues that came like they were reading cue cards.
It wasn’t even that they were necessarily wrong in their assertions. Many oft-repeated arguments had staying power because there was at least something true to them. The issue was more that hearing them for the fiftieth time in a row wasn’t going to move the conversation in any way. The argument had been considered and, for whatever reason, either ignored or discarded.
“Do you have something similar?” Lydia asked.
“Somewhat, but not to the same extent. There’s just certain formulations I avoid in general to not make it sound like an invitation to a discussion,” John said.
“Personally, I have to be really careful how fucking nice I am to people,” Salamander weighed in. “Everyone’s gotten so used to me playing the part of the ‘cruel bitch’ that they go absolutely bonkers if I’m too nice.”
“That feels like an extension of your kin being prone to extremes,” Undine said, a bit of amusement swinging in her melodic voice.
“Do you let yours finally talk about your mom?” Salamander presented the question neutrally, without critique. ‘Chequered’ was the nicest way to put Undine’s relationship with the Mother of Water.
“I am considering it.” That was the entirety of the abysstide elemental’s answer.
A short lull in the conversation was nearly immediately filled by Salamander pivoting. “It’s been pretty fucking nice to hang out at this beach.”
“It’s been hot,” Lydia stated.
“Tremendously hot,” John agreed.
“Almost unreasonably hot,” Undine finalized.
Salamander snorted with amusement. “You three are couch potatoes.”
One of Lydia’s eyebrows rose sharply. “The only times I ever spend a stretch of time on a couch is in the presence of all of you and typically for debauched purposes.”
“And you still barely leave your house.”
“I am almost always on the move.”
“Are you?” Salamander asked, a tad surprised.
Lydia placed her half-raised glass back down. “Do you not recall the stretches of time I am incapable of visiting you, despite the convenient teleportation device located in my central lawn?”
“I honestly forgot that you keep driving all over the fucking place. When can you tell your nobles to come to you instead?”
“It is typically regarded as improper to hold a true meeting within the walls of my residential palace. Various meeting places have been arranged throughout the city. If it is a meeting of several days, the surrounding countryside is declared as a point of interest instead.” The queen shook her head. “I honestly don’t want to go on about another spiel of the inconveniences of inherited social traditions.”
“I wonder what Lulu would have to say about them,” John hummed.
“Can’t you ask her?”
“Could… but her mouth is full right now.”
“Hah!” Salamander laughed, slapping the table in her amusement. Undine tugged softly at his mind, offering to do the same for him at this current place, but he refused with a little shake of his head. This was nice, no need to introduce sex into it. There would be plenty of time for that later.
“Personally, I don’t deny still being a couch potato at heart.” The Gamer stretched, one of his hands reaching just far enough to catch a few of the sun rays beyond the parasol. “I just have so much else I also want to do besides relaxing. When I finally reach max level, I’ll enjoy taking a few weeks or months to clear my Steam library, though.”
“The indoors are nice,” Undine added plainly, then pivoted. “Do you think there will be nothing left to do when you reach your level cap?”
“There are definitely endgame mechanics in place. I already have one in the GP shop,” John told her. “Not sure whether Gaia is going to add more. I’d be interested in whether or not there will be ways to raise my level cap further. Maybe, if the level of magic in the world increases further, I can get an expansion set or something?” He chuckled, but only a bit. There was a greater than zero chance that would turn out to be true. The chance was also less than a hundred percent. “Who knows.”
“Sucks that there are no reviews or something you can look up about how your powers work,” Salamander hummed.
“Reviews are useless anyhow.” Undine’s tone was harsher than at any previous point during this conversation, causing the other three people at the table to turn to her. “Too many people believe that their opinions are gospel. People are more driven by negative opinions than positive ones. The result is a stream of people that feel very strongly about topics expressing themselves. Rarely are they worth something.”
“Momo keeps moaning about how terrible book reviews are,” John said thoughtfully. “Personally, I think reviews are only worth something if they come from a person that you trust or if the sample size is so giant that individual biases balance out. Anything else is hit or miss.”
“I tend to agree, although I rarely consume entertainment media outside the time spent with all of you,” Lydia said.
“I mean, I guess?” Salamander looked at the underside of the parasol, trying to remember something. “Don’t even know when I last looked at a review of something to decide whether I should watch it or not. I usually just do it based on word of mouth.”
“A lot of the time I watch a review because the review is more entertaining than the actual series…” John half-mumbled to himself.
The conversation stopped for a moment, loud voices alerting the sitting quartet to the presence of returning haremettes. Before anyone else, Hailey stuck her head out around the corner. Covered only in a leather bra and hotpants, the country girl was as stunning as ever. “Howdy,” she greeted them, tipping her trucker hat.
“Welcome back, how was the city?” John asked. Hailey had returned to their temporary home at the same time that Aclysia had set out for the meeting point with Lulu. Obviously, she could not be allowed to continue her experiments without a bodyguard around. John was too paranoid for that. She had joined several of the girls on their exploration of Rome, though.
“Still interestin’,” Hailey drawled. Today like all previous days, her accent made his ears tingle in delight. “What ya talkin’ about?”
“Frustrating things, for the most part.”
“Did Lyly bring up her law difficulties again?” Hailey stripped out of the little clothes she wore right then and there, throwing them back into the room she had come from. Someone inside, shouted back something complaining. “I know this is difficult for ya to follow, Deli, but have ya tried not bein’ a mass’ve brat?” A moment later, Hailey caught her two-piece swimsuit with her face.
Salamander laughed loudly, overpowering Undine’s melodic chuckles. While the fire spirit was still cackling, the abysstide elemental said, “There you have your answer.”
“Swear to the Lady, if I had half your brat breakin’ prowess, I would be bendin’ that gal over a barrel and spankin’ her red thrice a day. Why, that egg-suckin’ dawg and her annoyingly endearing laugh!”
“You know you love me!”
“You love me too!” Hailey shouted back.
“Yeah, I do!”
Hailey did a kissing motion in the general direction of the changing room while putting on the swimsuit. “Ain’t it a lovely day?”
“These three don’t think so,” Salamander pointed out. “Indoor addicts.”
“We never said that,” Undine pushed back. “We just said it’s hot.”
“It is hot, even by sweet home Oklahoma stand’rds,” Hailey agreed. “Am I turnin’ even tanner, by the by, or is that just me?”
“That’s just you,” John was quick to tell her. He had been inspecting the matter carefully and Hailey had reached maximum tan already, save for the lines that were kept deliberately.
“Love that ya keep such a detailed eye on me, purrdy man,” Hailey purred. “Wanna go for a swim?”
John considered it for a moment, then he nodded. Sounded like a good way to kill a bit more time. “Sure thing.”
And the evening continued.