"Time since the start of the project to turn the crown-shaped mana manifestation core into a curio: three hours," a bratty-sounding female child announced in the second-floor bedroom, her voice a mix of Nuenala and Lizu's pitch while employing the speech patterns of Inkaro, and, the most important part, her tone is naturally that of a bratty child. It was so natural that no one would realise it was a synthesised voice. Continuing from her prior announcement, she added onto it with, "Minutes since project's completion: seven and a half."

  "Fa- Creator, don't forget to make a gate device for the beegirls... Father?" the bratty child murmured as she poked at Inkaro's cheek. Despite her efforts to get the guy's attention, no matter how many times or hard she poked him, Inkaro remained committed to sleeping face-down on the kotatsu table, brought on by supposed energy deprivation.

  With her creator out of commission, the bratty G.Galore was left with no other choice but to brave the risk and try waking Lizu up, rationalising that she was the only person present who could hope to rip Inkaro out from the boundless depths of his sleeping state.

  She, with wobbly and staggering footsteps, made her way across the bedroom.

  G.Galore stepped over Enetha, still contentedly sleeping within the embrace of the kotatsu's blanket and whose sleeping posture had become just as obnoxious as Lizu's, with how her cloth-like appendages were snagging and binding her dainty limbs.

  But the bratty girl had no time to think about any other royalty. So she silently marched her way over to the dragolyte she saw as one and had assigned the denotation of queen.

  The rising sun soon arrived, bested by Inkaro as he long since completed his birthday present for Lizu and turned his attention to setting up the teleportation device for the beegirls before his commitment to keeping his face against the kotatsu. It came as a surprise to G.Galore how quickly Inkaro completed the latest addition to her design; perhaps, reluctantly to her tsundere-learned programming, the grimoire had to give Enetha some credit for helping and unintentionally aiding her creator.

  With a real pair of eyes, she saw things in a new light, one with colour.

  Looming over Lizu, whose sleeping posture had evolved into a more tame formation, a humanoid-shaped shadow crept its way in between the early morning sunlight that once covered Lizu's face. The abrupt change in illumination and warmth on her face stoked Lizu, and, after a small amount of effort, Lizu lazily forced her eyes open, only to snap them to a half-lidded state as the sight of a familiar person who shouldn't exist presided right in front of her.

  Although the name Grimoire Galore was the first to pop into Lizu's mind, ultimately, a name she'd hope to impart to her future daughter came to the front of her mind much more swiftly. The two names bouncing in her mind bore quite some similarities, but the reason for it was unintentional on Lizu's behalf, not so much in Inkaro's case.

  "Mori... lore?" Lizu mumbled semi-consciously as she sat up in her bed, while the sun blocker floated out of the way. Despite being in such a groggy state, Lizu was sure the girl standing before looked just like a certain someone who only her dreams had managed to bring to light. The sight made Lizu want to blush from a mix of pride and shame at seeing her childhood drawing brought to life: the type of shame someone gets when their embarrassing childhood photos get revealed.

  The Morilore, G.Galore's new form's name as coined by the dragolyte, tilted her head to the side, expression devoid of any semblance or resemblance to emotion, as she computed the name to memory.

  [Morilore Freubread is a three-foot and a half tall, eight-year-old-looking female human child; she has super unkempt neck-low hair that's a swapping zig-zag pattern of deep pink and pale beige with a freakishly large blonde ahoge. The zig-zag pattern appears to be superimposed over her hair as if you held a cut-out over a painting and moved it around. She also has a dark pink to pale blonde left eye and a pale violet to silver gradient right eye (left eye starts as dark pink at the top and right eye starts as silver at the top), mostly very fair skin with her arms/legs being fair and her hands were tanned, and her skin has a ripple and shimmering effect]

  [Morilore is wearing a fluffy wool sundress that has a white outline no matter the angle, and the colour of which changes depending on her mood(blonde for snarky, deep pink when pouty, white when neutral, and beige to silver when intrigued). The dress has an obnoxiously large hood, a charcoal-colored flower-shaped hem, and visually appears to slowly fade out of existence at around the hem]

  :Attributes:

  [Base]

  [Mana Capacity: NA]

  [Mana Control: U]

  [Mana Tolerance: U]

  [Advanced]

  [Affinity: Control]

  [Proficiency: Mana Manipulation]

  "Is that the name you wish to assign to this version of my physical form?" Morilore, The Eternally Glamorous of All Grimoires, asked in an impossible mix of brattiness and stoicism. The living grimoire's unsubstancial reaction, mixed with Lizu struggling to mentally keep up, left the dragolyte girl momentarily stunned.

  With her brain perfectly fried from the audible paradox, Lizu could only mutter out a feeble, "I... yeah, let's go with that, Morilore."

  "Understood," Morilore remarked bluntly, devoid of the stoicism but somehow with even more brattiness. Both of her audible changes were utterly unintentional, at least, from what Lizu could tell. With that, Morilore hovered slightly higher in the air before fluttering off while purple mana ribbons dispensed from her ankles that snagged onto the bedsheets to pull them fully off Lizu, tail excluded.

  Somehow, Lizu found ribbon ankles the least bizarre part about the living grimoire's new appearance, if the fact that she can fly without wings is ignored.

  Lizu tried to make sense of it all before realising something and coming to an obvious conclusion; trying to make sense of something that was the result of Inkaro's logically illogical mind was a lost cause. In fact, the mere act of trying to understand it was the height of stupidity and insanity.

  Lizu didn't even get so much as a foot out of her bed before yet another unprecedented sight graced her presence, its only grace was that it was far more normal. With a hand to her head, Lizu exhaustedly sighed, emotionally, not from tiredness, as she turned her attention to the scene at the kotatsu.

  Stolen story; please report.

  "Sooo... why is she here?" Lizu asked whilst pointing the tip of her tail at the slumbering Enetha rolling past her feet, only to narrow her eyes as she noticed the glaring fact that the princess was wearing one of Inkaro's shirts: an observation made on the sole fact the shirt didn't fit the princess or herself, meaning it wasn't hers... unless the common tradition of a boyfriend's clothing unspokenly belonging to his girlfiriend is included.

  "..."

  Morilore refrained from speaking and turned her head an accurate ninety degrees, acting like she'd spotted something truly captivating, while pretending not to have heard the question to begin with. How Inkaro-like, Lizu thought.

  Turning to face the manifestation of the daughter born from the depths of her dreams, Lizu eyed Morilore with so much suspicion that not even the living grimoire could avoid feeling a little uneasy and nervous. Speaking with a stern voice devoid of any existing drowsiness, Lizu uttered, "Morilore."

  Despite none of it making it through her bratty tone, Morilore nervously let out a breathless whistle, finding her logic modules being stress tested as she wished not to disappoint Inkaro or Lizu by ignoring their opposed orders. After much deliberation within herself, Morilore thought of a compromise of an answer that some might consider a half-truth. "... if I had to summarise it, she was helping Fa- Creator for compensation in the form of treats."

  "Helping... with what?" Lizu asked while wondering what Inkaro could possibly need help with, and whatever it could be that Enetha would be the key to helping. It was doubly annoying to Lizu when she was right next to him the whole night but didn't get asked to help.

  Her ignorance of how deadly she is to be near when asleep has never been brought to her attention, making the living grimoire avert her new eye even harder.

  "I'm not permitted to divulge such info at the present moment," Morilore stated boldly, using the pretence of it not being of her own will to gain a new wave of confidence. Since, if Lizu got mad, Morilore could just dump the blame of angering Lizu onto Inkaro, should it come to pass. Defying the grimoire's calculations, Lizu sighed in amusement. It was just one obstacle after another, with the only saving grace of the situation being how Morilore averted her head and gaze in an identical way to how Inkaro does when trying to hide something, just like a cute puppy.

  However, after the shock of everything and the last embers of her drowsiness slinking away, Lizu finally had a chance to think clearly.

  [Lizu's thought process: Inkaro being secretive = his flying text magic thing that he refuses to talk to me about]

  Lizu shook her head, finding the line of reasoning flawed; given the context, she decided to try again.

  [Lizu's thought process part 2: Inkaro being secretive + my birthday = secret present]

  [Secret present + Grimoire Glaroe looking like Morilore + Enetha's presence and expertise = Inkaro made something unreal for her birthday present]

  That must've been it. As she thought it over, the answer became clear: the thing that caused this Morilore-looking form for G.Galore to puppet must be related to the birthday present Inkaro intended to give her later. So, to keep herself from forcing Inkaro awake to reveal the gift too early, she had to distract herself, doing so by diverting her attention to the waking Enetha.

  "Where are your clothes at?"

  "Are you in any position to ask that, at least I have something on. Thanks to your fiancé's hospitality.". Enetha punctuated her retort and rebuttal with an over-the-top pout, a pout all so pouty it turned the smallest girl's cheek a petty pink. Lizu didn't like Enetha's truthful retort one bit, aside from how bratty the princess tried to sound, but only ended up sounding cute. Morilore felt jealousy for the first time by being out tsundered.

  So she felt obligated to knock the princess down a few pegs, if not, all the way down to the ground from whatever cloud-high high horse she usually lived on. And with that goal in mind, a delightfully mischievous and good-natured-looking idea formed in Lizu's mind.

  "Hmph, then I'll just have to give you some Uythunova-styled hospitality, so you'll feel right at home," Lizu said, speaking with a sickeningly sweet, nice tone that only the most heinous of two-faced otome villainesses could hope to pull off. Enetha shot her eyes open, knowing immediately what Lizu was alluding to, especially with the condescending look in her eyes. Not wanting to partake in something so embarrassing, not that she was unused to it, Enetha tried to flee, only to just then discover the dire state her mobility was in as all she could barely muster was a worm-like wiggle.

  Enetha realised her grave mistakes, ticking off Lizu and, more importantly, not checking if she could get away.

  All the princess could do in the face of her impending doom due to her pride was to silently cry as she'd have to go another day without getting the chance to bathe solo for the first time. Lizu, feeling the slightest bit of pity, not enough to match up to the pettiness she felt from seeing Enetha in Inkaro's shirt, grabbed one of Enetha's cloth-like appendages that wasn't fully tied up.

  From a safe distance called the balcony, Morilore peeked through the parted gap between the two sliding glass doors. Her face almost spelt out sympathy, nothing but pure hapenstance from how the sides of the doors smushed and squished her cheeks.

  "It would appear... I miscalculated..." Morilore murmured in an emotionlessly bratty way as she watched Lizu drag the self-bound Enetha down the floating staircase of mana. With each step that she took, a stair formed in and out of reality when Lizu went to take the next one, and Enetha was dragged off of one; it similarly disappeared.

  Eventually, the two girls disappeared into the area underneath the second floor, followed by a set of doors opening and swiftly shutting, followed again by muffled footsteps outside.

  "Well, I didn't," Inkaro whispered as he opened an eye, revealing his deep slumber to be nothing but a facade. G.Galore bonked Inkaro on the back of the head, bringing down the full might at her disposal using the new crystalline addition to her book body's form: a small glowing purple crystal chain. At the end of the chain is a human eye-sized pale purple crystal shaped like a crown that's covered in glowing purple Inkaro-fonted runes and glowing purple lines that resemble connected jigsaw pieces.

  "Fa- Creator, you were awake?"

  At hearing the sound of footsteps and the drawn-out sound of Enetha sliding on sleek planks, Morilore dashed into the house, her body morphing like jello as she squeezed her way through the narrow gap inbetween the doors before her body slapped back to normal.

  "Why so surprised? I've stayed up for a week straight before, so a mere twenty-four hours is nothing to me."

  "You have an artificial, authentic hot springs in your backyard?!" Enetha blurted out, her voice not reaching past the confines of the residence, thanks to the noise-blocking barrier Inkaro set up.

  While he and the living grimoire got to work, the impending antics of the duo outside began to escalate, doubly so, as Lizu tried to untie Enetha.

  "Isn't that an oxymoron? W-wait, don't- one of your tendrils is still wrapped around my-."

  A booming set of cannonballing-worthy splashes, one succeeding the other, exploded from the outdoor hot springs with enough force that the pillars of rising water could be seen through the balcony door. Inkaro softly sighed as he rose to his feet, signalling for Morilore to assist him in setting up the teleportation tapestry mirror before Lizu finished with her morning bath.

  "Eek! Careful, stop brushing your tendrils against my tail!"