She is a liar.

  All this time, she only wanted to impress her friend, so she told many lies about her life before they came around. Everything she's happy about her life didn't come before Rontress crashed into it with the force of a falling tree but after.

  How could she brag about all the things she's proud of when Rontress is the reason why they even happened? Wouldn't that just mean she's talking about the same things the two of them did anyway? How stupid is that?

  Forging events and pretending to have an amazing life before Rontress came around was the only option that she had to impress her friend, and after a while, Ifira just sunk herself into the depths of her own lies.

  Now it's all coming back, taking their toll for all the giddiness and brief moments of satisfaction her lies provided her in the past. Ifira wanted to run away, or at least tell Rontress the truth, her friend wouldn't hate her for doing something like that.

  Yet she also doesn't want to. No. She refused to.

  There's nothing wrong with telling Rontress the truth but her friend has placed her trust on Ifira expecting her to succeed, even if Rontress forgives her, Ifira wouldn't be able to live with the fact that she did nothing while Rontress went out to fight an army of aberrants.

  She has no choice but to do this, if she doesn't send letters to other nobles when why did she even agree to staying behind? She should have just gone with Rontress to fight the invaders!

  Crinkling noises made themselves clear and Ifira's focus went back to her current task, the paper she was supposed to write on got crushed within her grip and it is now unusable. She threw it away and stood up, there's still time for her to finish her task without Rontress' interference so she should use every resource at her disposal to do it.

  Pride was the first price she had to pay, it wasn't given to Rontress but instead the payment went to her mother, she made the decision to tell Rontress the truth yes, but that doesn't mean she wants to destroy her image in Rontress' eyes for no reason.

  Unnecessarily clinging to the image of herself that had plenty of friends during childhood was harmless anyway, so why not commit to it?

  "Mother." Ifira opened the door to her mother's study and confronted the woman who she knew would have a solution to her current problems. "I need to write letters to other noble houses, I am afraid to do so as I know that our relationship with them has been rather sour."

  "Why do you need to send letters to them?" Euthiel straightened her back, her body going tense. Ifira, for the past four years, has turned into a much better version of herself, this did not mean that the cruel child who killed anyone who annoyed her is gone. Just hidden.

  "Because Rontress said so, I don't know what she's thinking but if she told me that we need the help of other nobles then I believe her." Ifira glossed over the reason for why she's sending letters and addressed the real problem she's facing. "I lied to Rontress about being friends with them."

  "And now you're scared that she might find out?"

  "What?! No!—" Ifira quickly denied.

  "That's okay, Ifira, even if you don't acknowledge willingly, it's obvious to me that you don't want Rontress to find out that you weren't as popular as you claimed to be in the past." Euthiel was calm on the outside but her heart was racing. She rarely ever has a meeting where her daughter is alone nowadays, it's always with Rontress. "That's perfectly normal to be scared about, it can also be fixed."

  "What do you mean?" Her daughter's head tilted to the side and she eyed Euthiel with extreme focus. "How do I fix something like this?"

  "It's simple, you first have to acknowledge that this isn't as big of a problem as you think it is, you are just simply sending letters are you not? You want people to come here, that's normal." Euthiel thought Ifira would respond but she was just staring. "The real problem is you having lied in the past about your relationships with other nobles. You take that away and I'm sure you would have sent those letters without hesitation, you would have demanded the other nobles to come even."

  "But I did lie, and I don't want them to come here." Ifira murmured weakly. "Are there other nobles I can talk to? Ones outside our territory?"

  "They'll still be at the party Ifira, and worse, doing this will ruin our relationship with the local nobles because you didn't invite them while your attempt at making new connections won't bear any fruit because they belong to another family's faction."

  "I can convince them—"

  "I wasn't finished." Euthiel hid the satisfaction that she was feeling when she saw Ifira flinch. "What do you think happens if Rontress comes to the party and all your "friends" are ignoring you because you invited nobles outside of our influence instead of them?"

  "She'll think I was lying."

  "Exactly." Euthiel nodded, glad that her daughter is at least sharp enough to be able to do this now. She's always believed that Ifira would be the kind of girl who didn't know how to read social cues. "Don't convince outsiders to join our side, do that to the local nobles instead."

  Euthiel waited for her daughter to respond. Ifira isn't the best at social situations but she can be a tool to guarantee a good outcome from them. The nobles of their territory knows of Ifira's reputation, of her strength, which means if her daughter approaches them with the intent of making allies, they would willingly take their side.

  This increases the strength of their army several times over, it may even allow them to export more items out of Ghorise.

  However, this would just be the start, as trading routes usually expand if the items being exchanged are valuable enough, which they are. Some merchants should soon sniff the kind of things being exported out of Ghorise and see an opportunity.

  Whether or not this paints a target on their back does not matter, they're already being targeted and Ghorise has two powerful people living within it, making enemies wouldn't be an issue for their territory.

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  "Very well then, can you help me write the letters?"

  "Of course, Ifira."

  ...

  Rontress looked around the interior of Bylor's tower, this was just the first floor and yet the amount of items inside of it already exceeded all of her expectations. "You know, I really should have visited more often."

  "You didn't have to." Bylor waved his hand, the pile of books a few steps ahead of her got lifted and moved aside. "Visitors would have meant my research slowed down, and I can't have that."

  "How can you live like this? Being a hermit sucks honestly." A bookshelf somehow placed away from the wall moves in an arch, paving way for her once more. "Who do you even talk to? The moving items in your tower? You did make that broom didn't you? The one that cleans on its own?"

  Originally, she was the one who acted as the custodian of this tower and she did it so well that she got a class out of it. It was her own way of paying Wardcruncha for all his help but eventually, her own work became redundant when the old man decided to create a moving broom.

  Whether or not it’s sentient was a good question that Rontress didn't bother to say aloud, it moves and that's good enough for her.

  "Talking? Wouldn't that just take time from my research?"

  "Okay, wow. You used to be so social but after you got your tower you just decided to stop talking to anyone?" Never did she understand this kind of behavior, she's a recluse herself but she has limits. "You just research things all day? What even is there to do? It feels like we've discovered everything we could when it comes to magic."

  "Not everything, it's not even close." Bylor stopped and so did Rontress, the floor beneath them shook and then separated itself from the ground. "Pricorians had a civilization centered around magic and that is the true peak of what the energy can be used for."

  "Talk to me about them then." Rontress scolded herself for forgetting that this old man had lived for long enough to see the Pricorians. "I don't think it's that good honestly."

  "Oh but it is, they lived in living towers connected by veins and arteries grown from vats of flesh, their own brood were used to create their homes, in fact, their cities consisted of nothing but their young."

  "You think that's impressive? I asked you to tell me about magic and you give me that instead?" How does she even react to being told that? Does acting amazed and pretending that using babies to build houses is a good idea?

  Wait, that description doesn't fit, the Pricorians grew houses out of babies. They lived in their own children.

  "I was merely setting up context, Pricorians were strangely harmonic with the corruption that magic causes upon usage, it was what made them thrive where other races died." Was he saying that they were natural magic users? "Corruption wasn't just harmless to them, it was beneficial."

  "What are the chances that my guess of them mutating their own children to build stuff is correct?" Judging by Wardcruncha's expression? 100%. Rontress frowned, "Bylor, why would... You know what? Who cares, let the Pricorians do their own thing, I'm sure their culture only developed that way because of circumstance."

  "Culture and architecture are vastly different things, the way they built their houses had nothing to do with their gods or even the way they acted, Pricorians had unique rituals and practices completely detached from their corruption-based physiology."

  "Hold on, now that you mention gods, the current one humanity is praising..." Which is to say, the giant light house in the center of the continent. "... Is it alive? Please don't tell me it is."

  "What do you think?"

  "Oh my god. The Light House is a Pricorian?!" They grew buildings out of their babies and then lived in it, then doesn't it make sense for every structure in their civilization to be, well, a Pricorian? The dungeons must also be alive if that's the case.

  "A lot of their buildings often are, even their roads are Pricorians, you can do a lot if your species starts as a tadpole-like nymph that can morph into almost anything during puberty. Doubly so when you can direct that growth and fuel its success with magic." Bylor's explanation did shed some light on a few things, mainly why the Pricorians were so open to using their babies.

  If they start out as tadpoles then it makes sense as to why the adults give little to no care about them. "So they lay eggs instead of giving live birth?" At Bylor's nod, Rontress asked another question. "How many eggs get laid every spawning season?"

  "A few thousand per female."

  "Now I see why they do that." She would make the same decisions if she was in the Pricorian's shoes as well. "They'd probably over-populate if they let their kids grow normally right? It makes sense why they chose to turn them into buildings instead."

  "Yes, that is true..." Wardcruncha looks like he's considering the idea himself. "Fascinating. Anyway, their technology is also made with organic material, this is why I'm so open to using the local aberrants as test subjects for my experiments."

  "Are their items also made from their children?"

  "No, not really, most of their standard technology is grown from vats or created from other creatures." Ah, that's good. "The only exception to this would be their ships and vehicles, which they grow from 3 to 7 of their own spawns."

  "What a weird number." No really, 3 to 7? That's such a big disparity, did a smaller number of offspring to make it mean a smaller vehicle? It totally does, right? "And how do they stack? I can't wrap my head around using more than one tadpole to make something."

  "The other tadpoles parasitized their sibling."

  "Ah." Well now she feels bad for them. "Let's move on from the Pricorians, I don't like talking about them anymore." The platform is still far from the tower so they have time to talk about other things. And she needs to tell Wardcruncha about what's happening in Ghorise anyway.

  "What do you want to talk about?"

  "Ghorise is being attacked."

  "Yes, you've said that to me earlier, you even brought a corpse of an aberrant here. Actually, it's right there." Wardcruncha pointed somewhere to their left and his face morphs with a mix of disgust and fascination. "Not the best work I've seen but it is definitely impressive."

  "No, it's not just about..." Rontress sighed, she didn't want to acknowledge the other group that's attacking them. She has way too many problems as is. "Nobles, and I mean higher nobles, are planning on bringing down the Haromago, Ifira's mother is probably doing things and I have plans myself but it won't always go well you know?"

  "Higher nobles. Petty politics. Isn't there a war currently happening?" Wardcruncha's confusion was incredibly justified, Rontress herself thinks that the ambitious bastards trying to take the local territory are stupid.

  "Yes there is, but that's not gonna stop idiots from being themselves, you do know that right? Anyway, I just want to let you know that there will be more than just aberrants but I want you to deal with them." Rontress thought that Wardcruncha would say no, but he nodded. "Thank you, I would help if I can but I'm pretty busy right now."

  "Because you're the daughter of Flotol's head?" A reluctant nod was Rontress' response.

  "Euthiel told me earlier that we got an invite for a gathering in Rhutwell, I'll have to leave soon and probably socialize with a bunch of nobles, so that's nice."

  "Well, luckily for you, there's a wizard living in Misery Swamp and he can take off some of your workload, but what happens if I'm not here to help?"

  "Ghorise and Flotol would get destroyed I guess." What else would happen? "That or I tell everyone that there will be attacks soon and that we need to prepare but I think that the latest invasion would make them aware of that already."

  "Their preparations won't be as thorough as it would be when you and Ifira aren't around, the citizens expect you two to come down and save the day, chances are, they're probably thinking all they need to do is sit on the safety shelters and wait for everything to calm down."

  "Yeah, I know, this is why I think a civil war wouldn't be a good thing, how are the mages by the way?"

  "They're doing well." Wardcruncha informed her. "They should be ready to join the Murk Men in two weeks."

  "Here's to hoping they're as effective as I thought they would be."

  The platform stops and Rontress follows the wizard into his alchemical lab followed by the shell and corpse she brought here.