Chapter 127 – Tactical Espionage Action (2/2)

Speaking of...

A bout of nausea. had started to swirl around in the pit of my stomach.

(Damnit, again?)

I sunk down below the leafy canopy and quickly planted my feet onto the ground though the waist high snow, I leaned against the closest tree trunk.

My breathing hastened as I futilely tried to keep the feeling of nausea from spreading. I knew it wouldn't work. It never even helped, but I couldn't help but try again and again, because I hated what came next.

”Hurgh!”

I bent over, almost planting my face into the white softness as my guts tried their hardest to expel their nonexistent contents.

Never once had these actions ever resulted in anything coming out, yet my body refused to acknowledge that fact and kept trying several times a day. I could only say that it was nice that my body was considerate enough to warn me with giving the nausea a head start.

Pretty much all of my enjoyable time farming dragons got interrupted at least once by these non-puking events.

”Master! Are you alright?”

I nodded, trying to answer my ever faithful familiar, but what came out of my mouth was...

”Hurgh!”

Unable to even thank my precious spirit guardian for her concern, I was forced to return to my parody of a mother bird's feeding routine.

Going through morning sickness for the last few months first hand gave me some newfound respect for my mother in my previous life. The things she had gone through just so I could exist. While I didn't know if it was anywhere near as bad as what I was experiencing, she probably did go through at least a bit of it.

(They say mothers are strong, but knowing that most of them go through this just to become one, it's hard to think that they're anything but.)

To be honest, I was quite amazed just how far my perception of the process of bearing life into the world had shifted by going through the process myself. I had thought that aside from the birth, it wasn't really a big deal.

Now though, I wanted to smack the previous me for thinking that. If what I was going through was normal, then I was at awe of at all the mothers who had voluntarily gone through the process more than once.

(Ugh, geez. I hope this'll stop soon. The others said that morning sickness usually ends by about four months since...their last period was it?)

The measurement was a bit vague with quite a lot of variance, but overall, I should be near the end of all this nausea and fake puking. Most mothers didn't have to deal with it past this point. Though I didn't forget to note that the operative word there was 'most.'

I really hoped I wasn't one of the exceptions to this standard, but bearing the fact that I was pushing the upper limit of what was normal already, my hopes of being rid of this symptom before birth was rapidly dwindling.

”Haaaa...fuuuu...”

The moment I felt well enough again to straighten my back, I took as big of a breath as my lungs would allow. Even that felt like it had been inhibited a bit. My lungs weren't able to inflate quite as much as normal, though fortunately it wasn't to the point that it interfered with any of my actions, even combat.

”Have you recovered, Master?”

”Yea, thanks as always.”

”It's my duty to protect you with my all!”

Finally, once she was sure that I was over the worst of the bout of morning sickness, did my dear Claret turn to face me. The dark spirit relaxed her guard and turned her attention away from the surroundings and entirely on me as I pat her on the head.

All these bouts of nausea and vomiting was tough, with the worst being the fact that it could come suddenly out of nowhere.

I couldn't even count the number of times that it would suddenly strike in the middle of battle and my loyal familiar was forced to fight a dragon stronger than even she was just because I was losing control over my own body.

It was a pretty terrible situation, but at the same time we didn't exactly have much of a choice in the matter.

Going down in floors would reduce my XP gains even further, but going deeper into the dungeon was definitely too risky at this point.

The option of cutting down on raising my level was...not really an option. If I did that now, then I was looking at years of being unable to raise my level significantly. Once Alicia was born, she would need my attention more than ever. Not until her body had grown enough that she was able to gain a bit of independence that I would be able to dedicate real time to farming XP.

Even the best case scenario put that at about two years.

No, I had to gain as many levels as I could before I was no longer capable of effectively farming XP. My level was going to stagnate for at least a year once I got close to childbirth.

I felt bad putting so much of a burden on Claret, though she herself would never admit that it was one. For that matter, she was probably happy that I was relying on her so much, but I didn't like how much I was putting her at risk because of it.

Though, at least there was a benefit to all of this. Claret's level, which had never gone up since we had met, had markedly increased. She was rapidly catching up with the dragons we fought, and she would soon exceed them.

The fact that she could finish beating a lesser dragon I started engaging, things looked very good in that she likely could already beat one by herself from start to finish.

I looked up at the darkening sky in between the thinning canopy.

(I wonder how much time I have left until I won't be able to fight safely anymore?)

No matter what, Alicia's life took precedence. Even if I didn't think I was strong enough, I still had to stop once fighting grew too difficult.

I handed over a normal mana treat, not a special one I gave her as her regular meals.

”Alright, let's go Claret.”

”Yesh, Mashtah!”

Already chewing noisily on the treat, I adjusted my bra before turning my back to her so she could latch on. I should have been expecting it, but the fact that my underwear wasn't quite fitting as well as it used to was starting to get annoying. I needed to talk to Anthousai about fixing my bras or making me some new ones. Preferably making them adjustable so I didn't have to keep going to her as I grew even bigger than I already was.

For that matter, something needed to be done with my robes as well. Depending on the posture, my robes exerted a bit of pressure on my belly. I didn't need an experienced mother to tell me that was bad for my baby.

An entirely new robe felt a bit wasteful considering that I wouldn't be wearing it for very long, but maybe something I could wear underneath? Something simple and doesn't waste too much of Anthousai's time, considering that I would only be wearing it for a few months.

Once Claret wrapped her arms around my shoulders, I kicked off the ground and took to the skies.

As to where to head, the orphanage was sounding nice, but was only putting my immediate problems to the side.

My level was a long term issue that could become immediate at any moment, but my other problem was all the stress I had been accumulating from all the attention people gave me. There were only two ways I could think of to solve the latter.

The first was to redirect everyone's attention to something else. As to what that was, I couldn't think of any actual ways to achieve that, so it was already moot.

The other option was to simply not be available for people to bug me for more of the day than before.

The problem with that, was that I was already secluding myself in my office for most of the day, and spent my nights inside the dungeon where only Claret was around to keep me company. The only way to reduce my exposure to people was to avoid work. Or at least working in my office.

In theory, I could achieve that by working at home, but I already relied on my few subordinates to deliver the papers to me. Having them spend all the extra time to deliver them to my home would do nothing but make our established system much more inefficient.

The guild was already getting pushed to its limit, and training more personnel would take weeks if not months before the benefits started to show themselves. Taking time to personally do the training myself wasn't going to make things better either, and would only add to my stress.

Stress, something which the midwives really pressed home was bad for Alicia's well being.

(The best option would be to find help, but nobody who could do such a thing long term existed inside of the country.)

The outside wasn't exactly much better. The number of acquaintances I had was small, and the number of people who could do the work I needed was so small, it was almost nonexistent.

There was Mint, but he was busy with his own work, and his son was the same.

Everyone else of Edgeworth probably couldn't do the work, so they were out.

Philia was busy as well taking care of the orphans. Even if I could find someone to take care of that front, it was questionable that she could do the work

After that, the only other people I knew were people who worked at the various branches of the Adventurers's Guild.

They all had the skills needed, and aside from two or three, the work ethic as well. But they were all busy. I'd have to convince them to quit their jobs to work for me instead.

But then again, that would apply to anyone else I could pick. Anyone who didn't need to quit their job probably didn't have the skills to do the work needed in the first place.

Once that thought was established, the possibilities started to expand a little.

The guild master at Linsington City was a bit iffy, but the secretary there treated me well, and seemed competent enough. She was a decent candidate, thought it might be a lot of work to convince her.

The guild master at Knossos City...he was out. He either didn't have the drive to do the work or simply was unable to at a timely manner. The sub guild master though, she had the drive and ability, but was overworked due to her incompetent boss.

(Huh? Doesn't that mean that she both has the ability and a reason to quit?)

Peitho was a pretty decent person, though she completely used me to her own ends twice. Despite that, she seemed to be a decent person, just one that was forced into a bad corner.

And the things I did because of her.

(That means she owes me, doesn't it?)

She also liked my food, which was now being sold on a regular basis in the Hourai Commonwealth. Bribing her was probably going to be easy. All I had to do was promise her good pay and easy access to the food she liked.

And if that alone didn't work, coercion, or rather forceful recruitment, or rather asking her to pay back the favours she owed me should do the trick.

It'll make us even at least, and she could do with a long vacation as well. Maybe once Alicia is born, I could give her that, since I won't be of much use anywhere else for a while.

Peitho was someone who could become a vital part of our nation. As long as she could get used to being around dark people.

That was the only bit which was worrying, but as long as she knew that both the fairies and fluffballs were fine with things, she should be able to accept things in time.

With my mind made up, I changed directions and headed south.

Ninetailed_Furball

Hi everybody! It's your usual furball! (≧∇≦)/

Well, looks like people really got excited regarding the last chapter! Some of the ideas people came up were quite interesting as well. (●＾o＾●)

Anyways, so time skip! So now we're in the second trimester, and Scarlet's really getting to know what pregnancy's like. It's really unfortunate that she ended up dealing with some pretty heavy symptoms. At least she's not even capable of having about half of the possible range of symptoms, so maybe that's a consolation? (=_=)

Well, maybe things'll get better, or maybe they'll get worse. We'll find out in the future chapters.

And Peitho! How many of you still remember her? Well, it hasn't been as long as some of the others, but I'm sure some of you've been hoping to see more of our plotting, overworked elf. ＼(^o^)／

Of course, we can't forget Orphne's little stunt. Who but the fairies would ruin their own stealth mission by singing a theme song while doing it? ^m^

As an aside, I've been working on Scarlet's updated status page due to popular demand, and that'll be a separate post this weekend since it doesn't fit any of the chapters.

So, hope everyone's doing well!

I'll see you next time! (^o^)／