The Quantum Wanderer

I feel a tug on my shirt. I turn behind, and there is a dryad.

“Big brother, why does he want to move the table?”

“Oh, hi. I was just thinking of having some tea with my friends here, but the tables are too small…”

She looks at the people around. The elf waitress is frozen. The other waitress that were called were still coming out of the shop, they are now frozen.

“Next time big brother can just ask us, no need for the… the…” She looks at the defeated elf with his staff. “Theatrics…”

She melts into the ground, and the second table moves close to the first one. We move out the chairs. Muninn is laughing. I shoot him a look suggesting it is not a good idea, and he starts holding it in. Autumnstart sits with us. The waitress is looking at me, hugging her tray.

“By the gods! I have never seen an arbormancer this skilled before! And a dryad invocation! We had never seen a dryad! I never knew they were so cute!”

The other two elf waitresses are nodding. This was apparently a huge thing. Over the time I have had contact with the dryads, I would never think of them as shy.

We sit down. Cecilia is throwing daggers at the waitresses. The other two go back inside the shop, and our server takes a look around the group. Muninn and Huginn are almost disturbing stuff, they are too big. They make themselves smaller, and land on the corner of the table. The waitress is again flaberghasted, her chin down. Cecilia addresses her.

“I will have the same tea she is having.” Cecilia points to Roberta.

The waitress comes out of her stupor.

“Of course, my lady. What are the other requests?”

I let them order. The dragonesses ask for some fruity cocktail. Autumnstart orders wine. I get my new favorite, wine-ale.

Once the waitress brings our drinks and goes back inside the shop, Rudolph clears his throat.

“Lord, here is the bag of holding, and here is the money you gave us.”

“You were not allowed to spend it as well?”

Roberta shakes her head. Rudolph has this comic look to him.

“May I report, sir?”

“Of course.”

“I chose all the fabric as you told me to. I must say I don’t think we should use fabric this expensive, but since lord had provided the coin and asked for it explicitly…”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Of course, lord. When I started checking out the fabric, the sales clerk asked me if I was with lord Marcelo. I proudly answered yes, his demeanor improved. As we were finishing the the sale, he told me that the cost for the fabric would be 1 gold coin per roll of spider silk.”

Cecilia interjects.

“That little prick!”

“What?” Autumnstart asks.

“He charged us 2 gold coins per roll!”

Autumnstart takes a look at her, and looks at his cup of wine.

“Was that before you helped the dryads?”

“Yes… It was kind of during… So ok…”

Rudolph clears his throat.

“Anyway, as I was saying, I ended up setting apart 5 rolls of white and 5 rolls of black fabric for our uniforms, lord. When I placed the coins on the counter, the strangest thing happened. I don’t know if it is normal around here. A little plant started growing out of the counter. It produced some round seeds, that fell on top of the counter, and then it shriveled. The merchant collected the seeds and the coins.

“Then his shop started changing. The opening to the back closed. The display with the exposed fabrics started to cover the merchandise. The wall behind him started to move towards the front, making the room smaller. He sales clerk panicked, and gave me back the gold coins. Once that happened, the shop started reverting slowly to what it was when I entered.”

Roberta was taking a sip of tea, she stopped to nod.

“That happened with me as well, lord. In my case, though, the sales clerk just refused my gold, saying that it was paid. She handed me the gold back, with the goods.”

I look at the tea shop. Not at the waitress, but at the shop itself, the construction. I whisper a thank you. We hear the laughter in the wind. Roberta and Rudolph are a little uncomfortable with it.

“Don’t worry about this laughter. That is an answer from the dryads. They are the ones that paid for the goods. I wasn’t sure it would happen again. I appreciate their generosity, but I didn’t feel completely comfortable asking for it.”

“Of course, lord. I understand.” Rudolph answers.

We finish drinking our teas, it is getting kind of late. I gesture to the waitress. She comes to the table, and bows.

“How can I help, lord?”

“How much did we consume?”

She makes the math, telling me the prices. The most expensive drinks are a large copper, that being Autumnstart’s drink. The prices vary, but the total is 6 large coppers. I place a silver dwarven coin on the table. The plant with the seed money grows, drop the seeds and shrivels in front of the waitress. She is looking at the seeds at the table. Autumnstart clears his throat.

“You can receive the payment in elven coin, girl. The dryads are paying you, and telling us that his money is not to be accepted within the city.” He laughs.

She grabs the round seeds, and pockets them.

“Thank you for your patronage, lords and ladies.”

We stand up. I look at the tables that are together. I feel kind of silly, but I whisper towards them.

“Can you please put the table back where it was?”

The table moves to it’s original position. We place the chairs back. Autumnstart is staring at his staff again.

We say our farewell to Autumnstart. We go to an empty alley nearby, and portal back home.

Roberta and Rudolph go very excitedly to the back of the house. The girls and I go up, we have a nice shower and we prepare for dinner.

The flavor on the food is different tonight. The smell is enhanced by several levels, the taste is almost carried in the air. Our beverages are different as well. The cold tea we are having is the same one available in the elven city.

Charles and Lucille go completely crazy with the new smells. I catch Opal closing her eyes to enjoy the smells before eating. Once we do start eating, I realize that it is not false advertising. The food is indeed a lot more flavorful. The flavor interacting with flavor, this dinner is a work of art. After we are done, I go to the kitchen.

“Roberta.”

She leaves the washing she was doing to another maid, and approaches me.

“Yes, lord?”

“This dinner was just… Absolutely fantastic. I have never eaten anything so good. Thank you!”

She produces a courtesy, a little red on the cheeks.

“Thank you, lord.”

“And don’t forget, share everything with our people. We can always get more.”

“As you wish, lord.”

I go back to the living room, where the girls are. They have this happy expression to them. They are still remembering the food’s taste.

We sit and talk on the couch, a pile of girls on top of me. After some talking, we retire for the night.

On the next day, I wake up with the girls all over me. When they start to wake up, though, they show me that they are more interested on what is going to be served for breakfast than me. I have to say, this kind of hurts… But I keep in mind that it is only going to happen until they get used to the new cooking with elven produce.

When we go downstairs, I understand the issue. The smells coming from the kitchen get me watering. I look at the girls, they are almost drooling. Opal let scape a small drool that she sucked up when she noticed. I am going to remember the picture of the ever noble Opal drooling forever.

The breakfast is exquisite. I over-eat. The girls over-eat. Lucille and Charles make sexual faces. After the food is gone, we are all sitting around the table. The feeling of having this much pleasure with food feels weird. We stay silent. Even Muninn and Huginn.

Rudolph is watching the scene.

“Is everything alright, lord?”

“Have you tasted this food already, Rudolph?”

“No, sir.”

“Why? You have had dinner yesterday, haven’t you?”

“Roberta is saving the elven spices for the lords of the house.”

I sigh.

“Can you please call her?”

I am not sitting straight. I still taste the food. I can still feel the endorphin running through my body. I wonder if the food contains anything that would be considered illegal on Earth. I am relaxing, enjoying the feeling.

A moment later, Rudolph and Roberta approach us.

“Lord, how can we help?” Roberta asks.

“First things first. This meal was… “ I look at the girls. “It was so good I don’t know how to describe it. It’s the best thing I have ever tasted. I am even afraid of sharing this with anyone, we might get Anthon or Edward addicted. And I mean willing to cut their left hand off to get another plate addicted…”

Roberta’s face is red.

“Thank you, lord.”

I nod.

“That being said, there is no reason to not share that food with everyone else in the house.”

“But lord, these are rare spices, from a far away land.”

“A land that you can buy stuff and be back in less than a day. And we haven’t even been able to spend our coin, so, basically, free.”

“Lord, you treat them, us, -“

“Roberta, I treat you all the way I want. I want to share those things with everyone in the house. Besides…”

I take a pause. Roberta gets curious.

“Besides what, lord?”

“Besides, I doubt that anyone would betray us, if they risked stop eating this.”

Roberta laughs, Rudolph giggles. I continue.

“Thank you, Roberta, the dinner was exquisite. If I decide to make Anthon really envious, I know what I have to do.”

Roberta smiles. She does a courtesy, and goes back to the kitchen. I am still enjoying the sensations. After some time, I hear excited noises and shouts from the kitchen. Laughter, celebration. It’s almost as if people are having a party there.

I laugh a little bit. Cecilia smiles. She then turns to me.

“My villain, what are the plans for today?”

“I was thinking of starting work on our private seward thing?”

“No elven city?”

“I don’t know. It depends on how long the thing will take.” I turn to Muninn. “Muninn, I already know a lot of earth magic, but I am not quite a grandmaster. Can you help me acquire the knowledge?”

“Right now, father?”

“Sure. Let’s make it now.”

“Ok. Please lower your protections.”

I close my eyes. I relax. I breath very slowly, I relax my muscles. I start feeling the probing against my mind. I invite it in, as an old friend I want inside my home. A connection is slowly stabilished, and the knowledge starts flooding in. Several different lessons about the earth mana, the enriched soil, how it differs to metals, how all earth magic is connected to the planet. On a deeper level, earth magic connects to elements and to life simultaneously. Not a dead magic, but there is life in the bacteria mixed in. The different compounds. It adds a level of magic that I didn’t have before.

I relax, I let the new knowledge soak in. I let it get to the border of my soul. I relax until I recover from the wave of knowledge. I open my eyes. The girls are still sitting around the table.

“How long did I stay out?”

“Just a couple of minutes, my lord. How does it feel?”

“It feels… amazing. I think I am ready to do the thing. Are you girls going to the elven city? Or school?”

“We want to walk around the elven city.” Cecilia responds.

“Ok. Have fun. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.”

The girls smile at me. I stand up, and I go to the back yard. I sense the house construction. I open a small well-like whole in the ground, and jump in. I make it over 20 feet deep. I create an empty area by compacting the land around me. I create pillars, and a place that looks like an inverted pyramid, pointing down. I make it a large place. Very large, so that I can redirect the house’s waste and still have a long time before it is filled.

The pillars are shaped into huge archs. I touch the archs and check the weight they are going to sustain. It is a lot of work, I enlarge the pyramid, I increase the archs. I keep doing this until the structure is around 50 feet deep, and the pyramid’s base is 75 feet x 75 feet. The thing is huge, with a lot of arch pillars made of compact earth around.

I make sure that it is all impermeable. I get out of there, I close the hole I used to get there. I divert all the sewage going out of our house and the employee’s condo there. This should be enough. Even if the amount of high mana meat the employees eat is a lot smaller, it still happens.

I take a look at the result. I am happy. I do some checks, and it even feels like it has always been this way.

I take a look at position of the sun. It is past noon. I hope the girls are having fun. I look around the room, I think about what I can do to have some fun. I think about the bags of holding. I go to my study, I start working on the first one of them. I use Malagar’s wing, the kraken gem. I have a lot better knowledge of the rune system now, and I can enhance my eyes to design them in a much better way on the leather. I improve on the technique, using mana channels. When I am done, the sun is already setting.

I hear laughter in the living room, the girls are already back.

“Hi girls.”

Each of them give me a peck on the lips and greet me.

“Did you have fun, my villain?”

“Not fun, but I did do the thing I needed. It is deep beneath us, so not much changed in terms of our house in particular. It should work. I also did another bag of holding.”

“Another one? Each of us already has one, and a spare.”

“I know, but I have some better materials. And I thought that if I do two more, I can leave one bag of holding with Roberta, she can use that to buy our food, one with Rudolph, and have a spare for emergencies.”

We go up and wash ourselves. We get ready for supper. The girls had a nice tourism day in the city. They said that the whole not paying for stuff felt a little weird, but it happened everywhere.

We have our dinner, and retire for the day.

Next morning, after our again orgasmic breakfast, Muninn turns to me.

“Father, I think you should see this.”

I let him in my consciousness, and again I am in the body of a bird. I am in the edge of a forest. In front of the forest there is a big city. About a little bigger than Orora, smaller than Ironhold. Still, a very big city, apparently.

In front of it there are several soldiers, split into rectangular formations. There is an arm marching towards the city. At the head of the marching army is the official that I have already seen, and Skylar.

They start to position their armies. The invading group is a lot smaller than the one in front of the city. That is not going to help much, though. The army organization is taking a lot of time. The soldiers are training, but they are still arriving at the place.

This is going to take all day, apparently, and I don’t want to get stuck to Muninn’s consciousness. I let the connection go.

“Is that Elator’s capital?”

“Yes, father.”

“A lot of soldiers are going to die today.”

“What happened?” Cecilia asks.

“Romuela’s army has just reached Equator’s capital.”

“Oh.” Cecilia just lets the interjection out and looks at her dirty plate.

We stay in silence. The silence is different for different people. For Cecilia, Lucille and Charles, it is a heavy silence. They know that a lot of people are going to die. For the dragonesses and the brâns, it is a light silence. The words I spoke are of no significance to them.

We decide to go visit again the land of the elves. It has been fun there.

We casually, and jump through a portal, to our house there. It feels kind of weird to call it our house, though, considering that the place is sentient. Once we get there, we are greeted by Ipê.

“Good morning, big brother…”

“Good morning, Ipê. How are you?”

“We are all well, big brother. Your wives told us that you built the food collector?”

“The food collector?”

“Yes, we talked about it. The hole in the ground.”

“Oh! Yes, I built it yesterday. I am giving it a little time so that we can get it some nice volume before we try the transfer thing. Perhaps tomorrow?”

She seems a little sad. She is touching her indexes in front of her lowered face. This is, apparently, how dryads show they are sad.

“Don’t worry, we are going to do it tomorrow.”

“Ok…”

She merges to the ground. We leave the house through the a door structure that opens itself to us when we are close. We again reach the city.

The movement in the city is a lot more normal now. There is still an elf in front of our house, that runs he sees us. I take a look to where he is going, the direction ends up being Autumnstart’s residence. I don’t really mind.

We start our walk around the city. Contrary to the human one, there are no slums. Part of elven commercial activity is helped by the forest itself. The lands raising the condiments have the help of the dryads to raise whatever they need. It is outside the city, though. Spider silk and silk are created with the help of insects, but the insects are not killed for it. It is a peace with most animals around that is brokered by the dryads apparently.

I would normally enjoy going to the guild to talk to other guys. This is something that I miss a little bit. Being able to brag is a precious part to being married to five beauties. Meanwhile, the girls and I are touring through the city. Nothing wrong with that either.

We end up again meeting Autumnstart. I don’t think he even pretends anymore.

“Good morning, lord Marcelo.”

“Good morning, lord Autumnstart. How have you been?”

“Very well, very well. Are you touring the city? What do you think of our city so far?”

“The city is very nice. We are having a lot fun in it. Everybody has been treating us well.”

He laughs.

“You are already legendary… The way you talk to the dryads… It is unprecendented.”

“I still don’t see them being that shy.”

“Not with you. But then again, I think you are the first one to give without asking for anything in return.”

“Well, they just asked. They didn’t try to pressure, they didn’t try to buy their way in. It was something that I would have done without any payment. It is a pity the dragon forced my hand, but those things happen.”

“I see you are kind of a pacifist. Is this correct?”

I think a little about everything that has happened so far.

“Mostly, yes. But I don’t really hold back when someone goes too far into my interests. But I try to be mostly fair.”

“Can you give me an example?”

“Sure. There was this one ball where I was challenged to a duel by a noble. When I accepted the duel, he placed a champion to fight for him. Of course, I questioned the champion, the guy was fighting for money. After I won the duel, I got the noble’s head as well. If you are prepared to kill, you should be prepared to die.”

“Hum… I see. And what is it that drives you? What would you consider are your aspirations?”

“Aspirations?”

“Yes, what is it you want?”

I take a look at the girls.

“I want nothing else. I am spoiled by everything around me right now. I have more money than I can spend in some lifetimes. I have five beautiful wives that spoil me in all ways imaginable. The house I live in is comfortable, very comfortable. Food for everyone near me. I get to do what I want, mostly. What is there to want?”

“Would your wives allow for a harem?”

“They do. I have one, actually. Perhaps I should visit it once in a while.”

“Really? How many women do you have there? Humans?”

“Demonesses.” I turn to Opal. “Opal, do you have any idea on how many demonesses in the harem?”

“I don’t, my lord. The number fluctuates a bit. The new batch after the training should be ready to be used. And I don’t know how many there are in the other locations.”

“The other locations?”

“Yes, my harem is kind of a religious order in the demons. They are under their church.”

“I think I heard about a new church being born among the demons… ARE YOU THE GREAT ADVENTURER?”