While Moriko was being wined and dined by the princesses, Mordecai mulled over the information he’d learned from ‘eavesdropping’ ohoughts. And if he uood everything correctly, the spymaster Lady Yuriko was also a princess, albeit from a few geions ago or more. She would have joihe much the same way as Orchid had, and probably returned as an advisor only after the pain of loss had faded from her closest family being cimed by the passage of time.

  Long life amongst the long-lived was easy. Long life mingled with those who were not so long-lived was hard. He suspected the royal family was slightly longer lived than most pure-blooded humans, especially those who showed signs of other bloodlines such as young princess Bridgette, but given what he learned of the Azeria almost all of the ‘verted’ princesses could expect to live several turies, depending on how powerful they grew and thus how many tails they gained.

  One of the more iing things to learn alsht him a bit of relief. While it wasn’t enough to plete the picture of what was going on with Kuic, seeing how they had bined shopping with ter-espionage and probably a little bit anda helped normalize the kingdom a bit from his point of view.

  While hardly utopian, the try as a whole had struck him as being almost too serene and egalitarian. This minor bit of political maneuvering showed that a lot of thought and work went into keeping it that way, which fit with what Aia had told him about his daughter having taken some effort in designing the try she helped found. And he retty certain that the princesses were sincere, rather than just putting up a good cover. He might be wrong, but it seemed rather unlikely. False paradises teo be a touch tid in weird pces, and so far he’d not gotten any signs of that, and there was no attempt to mask it as an actual paradise.

  Mordecai was torn about his decision to tuck away so many specific memories. It seemed so logical at the time, it had been so very long and the atta the vilge had been thh, and holy, it made fog on the life he had here now easier, but he alsretted not knowing the names of all his children. And though he khe names of some of his children thanks to the genealogy book, he sort of dreaded the idea of learning the way they would be pronounow and then having them csh with his memories of them when he did finally retrieve them.

  Perhaps not his most rational choice ever, but even if his primary brain was made of crystal instead of the messy goop that made up his avatar’s braiions were ly rational. Especially where family was ed. And the thought of family turned his mind back to the princesses. They were quite the array for a single geion, but given the number of nonhuman and possibly empowered bloodlines supposedly present, this was not as much of a surprise as it might have been. Mordecai really hoped that when the dungeon had greater capacity, either Orchid or one of the other royals would be willing to be thhly examined, he wao see what was going on for their heritage paths.

  All biological life used a physical pattern to carry information from the parents, mingling to create a new pattern. While this was not well known outside of people who had reason ahods to research it ih, what was less well known was that there were more carriers than the physical.

  The most on iritual patterns, energy waveforms that imprint from a strong individual onto one whose spirit and soul were just beginning to form. Between sympathetic magid literally surrounding the embryo, mothers had the stro imprinting of spiritual patterns onto their offspring. Typically fathers had the sed rgest impact. However, suffitly powerful entities could leave imprints upon those who lived hem for long periods of time, which is why tribes or vilges of more mortal races who served a single dragon for many geions teo take on draic traits, despite no actual mingling of bloodlines.

  Then there were the bloodliravelers, the blessings and curses specifically tied to an individual and all their progeny. While normal spiritual patterns mingled and could ge and fade, these acted more like symbionts or parasites, exactly duplig themselves and attag to each desdant during ception. Upon occasion a particurly powerful yet poorly structed curse acted like a disease, iing all future progeny of ahe actual carrier had sex with, even if that other person did not ceive a child with the curse bearer. Blessings being so poorly structed were even rarer, but it was with good reason that most people preferred being ignored by the sidhe aining even their blessing.

  Beings that did not innately have a physical fenerally did not have a physical carrier or pattern and relied entirely upon spiritual waveform patterns.

  structed entities were all over the pce, assuming that they could pass oable information rather than just manually strug a y.

  As for dungeons… e to think of it, he didn’t know if there was a way to pass on dungeon-specific heritage information. They didn’t have parents. His avatars could pass on physical information based on the form he structed, and he retty sure he made at least a small imprint in the way of spiritual energy, but he had no idea about passing oable information for his core. Could that be done?

  For that matter, with his new avatar form: if he fathered a child with this avatar, what information would be passed on? What would be the default ‘true’ form for the child? He had no idea, that had not been part of his siderations when making this pattern.

  While Mordecai tio muse over this thought via his avatar, his core was focused mostly on Moriko, while occasionally cheg in on Kazue. Moriko seemed to be handling things better now that she’d adjusted and most of her fears id to rest. He was somewhat curious about how she’d e to have such a high level of about iing with the court. To be fair, her worries were irely unfounded, but she was also getting the ce to learn a lesson about power, whether it be political or fiscal. The more power one held and the more securely one held it, the less one had to worry about all the minor proprieties. A well-established monarchy was much like an ‘old money’ family, they did not have fear or envy or need eating at them.

  Moriko’s s about such games would more likely e into py around minor nobility who cared about raising their rank and standing. From what he’d seen through Moriko’s experiehat seemed most likely to be sed or third-geion new nobility, as the first-geion folk seemed to be people like that champion, Bellona.

  The night waned on, aually, a well fed Moriko made her way back to the temple intending to fall asleep, only to find her room filled with boxes she had to figure out how to handle.

  As for Kazue, well, he had the attention of her core at least, but her avatar was having a little ‘adventure’ for the night, aher party had ventured into the library yet. Instead, they had set up in their respective rest areas, and Kazue was having a little ‘camp out’ with her friends.

  For the shrine maidens, Kazue had asked them to have this little party with her after they had fihe pys. It had been early enough they probably could have pushed through the library if they had focused on just solving normal puzzles, but this was a ce for these friends to reect. Plus he suspected that she had some special pns for the library the day.

  As for the explorers, they’d had a slightly rough time. It seems his wife had been feeding the ganthros all the information about the tactics that the party had been using, and the rabbit folk had put together teams to stress ahe explorers, taking advantage of numbers and foreknowledge to make up for the raw power.

  Running through five different groups of coordinated batants who had prepared themselves for exactly the party’s anticipated tactics had worn their patiehin. The harassing attacks and traps of the third floor’s boss room had then pushed them to their breaking point, and they stopped trying to serve their resources, unleashing their stro spells and straining flesh and boo their limits to finish Betty and Umbrowl off as fast as they could. Which wasn’t as fast as they would have liked, as the pair had taken notes and did their best to py keep away while throwing ed attacks and triggering traps. her of the bosses were quite strong enough to solo any of the kitsuh great odds of success, but in this home enviro and with the advantage of the redesigraps they were able to push the kitsuo their limits before Kazue had called the fight in the visitor’s favor.

  So now they were resting and healing up as they prepared to challehe fourth floor’s library the day.

  Zagaroth