Moriko was both excited and nervous about the adjustment they were going to make regarding faeries and inhabitants.

  This was the first time where her role as Faerie Queen was going to directly affect the dungeon's rules and inhabitants, and she was eager to participate in this aspect of her spouses' lives while also having some s about her performance.

  Because of her , Moriko had been spending a lot of time oher Side while Mordecai and Kazue had been w on the o zone. She's speime meditating on her e to their faerie domain and expanding her awareness of it as thhly as she could.

  Now Mordecai and Kazue had let her know it was time to begin.

  With the two of them sitting in the back of her head to help, Moriko began the process. First, she made herself aware of all the fey creatures who owed allegiao them and were within their borders. These were all citizens of their faerie domain.

  After that, she filtered those who were already inhabitants into oegory in her mind, holding them off to the side. This was almost exclusively the little pixies born of Kazue's whimsy, and they vastly outnumbered all the rest.

  She theed ay category that Moriko mentally beled 'future inhabitants'.

  Separately, she started creating role cepts, such as pying the part of townsfolk or w at the onsen but also including participating in various bat roles.

  The non-bat roles were then attached to both the future inhabitants category and the broader citizens category, while bat roles belonged exclusively to inhabitants, whether current or future. These roles then had filters applied to trol which types of fey might fill which roles. Moriko made sure to include fey from s that were not represented in their current citizens, such as selkies.Selkies were appropriate for any role in the o zone and creating this preset filter might make Azeria an inviting potential home.

  Some roles had general filters rather than specifies. W at the onsen required having the ability to take on a bipedal form that would be sidered at least aesthetically pleasing to most people, though this was ly the same as attractive. Physical transformations were required as they expected to have delvers able to casually see through illusmours and wanted a more unified experiehan that.

  bat roles in the river or o zones required the ability to breathe uer and live in that type of water, while the o zone had the additional requirement of being able to fly. The wetnds had looser requirements as there were multiple ways of being funal in that enviro.

  Creating this mental framework and holding it all in her mind at once was extremely difficult. In fact, Moriko would sider this impossible for almost anyone who didn't have some sort of extensive mental training. Her own training and experience were just barely enough to keep a mostly stable mental struct of this size and plexity, and that was with Kazue and Mordecai able to provide a little bit of assistan keeping track of it all.

  Moriko spent several hours building this struct using all the information she and her spouses had collected and discussed previously. One of the cores could have do much faster, but Moriko wao be more involved and this was one of the few things she could do that was integral to how their pce worked.

  When it was plete and verified by both Mordecai and Kazue, Moriko started implementing this rule set.

  The first part wasn't difficult as she ected to the fey citizens as their Queen and attached them to this mental struct.

  Then allowing citizens to a non-bat roles was only slightly difficult, though the es were thinner and weaker than those between inhabitants. In short, any citizen w in the dungeon's territory under one of these roles would be ag like a lesser version of a tractor, and be reized as an ally by inhabitants automatically even if they could not mentally unicate the way that a proper tractor could.

  Bridging that final gap to eizens to choose to bee inhabitants and fall into roles automatically, was the part that Moriko couldn't quite do. It fell too far out of her powers as a Faerie Queen and solidly into the power of the cores. Even with the passive authority that came with being their spouse and viewed by the inhabitants as nigh equivalent, the magic of the dungeon didn't respond to her attempt to set rules.

  When Moriko reached her limit, Kazue gently took over for her and finished ying the e and rules that implemehe mental struct. It was emotionally painful to feel so close to that final bit of e yet to be so pletely uo reach across the gap.

  Releasing the st of the work to Kazue brought Moriko's attention back to her body, which immediately colpsed with exhaustion and strain. That strain came with a hefty dose of pain rag along her nerves.

  While she had gotteo her personal powers, Moriko had little experieh her powers as a queen and had pushed herself to her limits. Mordecai was there in an instant of course, and Kazue only took a little longer as her ied avatar couldn't be moved the same way. The only reason their avatars hadn't been with her was because Moriko had insisted that they take care of business as usual while they were doing this.

  Mordecai's healing touch felt good, but the sort of strain Moriko had uaken wasn't so simple a matter to fix. She'd pushed the limits of her power, spirit, and mind, and the pain of her body was mostly a refle of that. "Thank you loves," she said with a smile, then slowly sat up. "That really took a lot out of me. Your cores do this and more all the time?" It gave her a whole new perspective on how distracted her husband and wife get when w on parts of the dungeon.

  "Yeah," Kazue replied as she fidgeted with a tail, "but, our cores are built for it. It's what that part of ourselves does."

  Moriko wao be part of that aspect of their lives more, which was the reason she had pushed f to implement this rule. An option only possible this time because of her e as a queehe faerie half of this equation.

  "I appreciate that you want to be a part of this," Mordecai said, "but the way you push yourself does worry me at times."

  "What's to worry about?" Moriko asked with a smile, "In the worst-case sario, I wake up on the reset."

  "Mm," Mordecai said, then shook his head, "Yes, probably, but that's not the absolute worst case."

  Moriko stared at him for a moment and could see Kazue doing the same. Mordecai gave that little half smile he teo use to soften a topic he didn't want to talk about. "It's not something I've seen happen, but I'm not sure how much our core help a soul heal. It's very hard to harm a soul, but your soul's raw material is the same as your spirit's raw material, so it could happen. Your spirit will not heal instantly the way your body would."

  Mordecai sighed and said, "I'm probably w too much. Your spirit is strong, it's just not used to this particur application. Think of it like having had to use several muscles you've never had to use before, and coordinating that motion. While your stronger muscles help to aent, your weaker muscles still take the brunt of it. But like other exercises, this is something you adapt to, within limits."

  "You are a worrier," Moriko aowledged with a smile, "and I think one of the things I love about you is that you worry without trying to coddle me." Thinking ba it, he'd always been willing to fight by her side and ried to keep her out of harm's way. The closest was when he'd bought time for her to catch her breath after her run from the bandits.

  "Now," she said, "you two help me up. I figure that by the time we get me bathed and ed, we'll have a few folks wanting clearer answers. Hopefully, I won't have any shakiher." Moriko didn't miing sweaty from being physical, but pain-induced sweat always smelled different. her form of sweat articurly regal, so she o get anyway before meeting with their fey citizens.

  Nearly two hours ter, Moriko and her spouses were seated ohrones on the faerie side of things, though it was far less formal than the party that they'd first held here. The group gathered to ask questions was small as they represented only a portion of their faerie citizens, and they had less than a hundred of thht now. Many fey were not bothered much by the cold of winter, but it was still not a time of year that enced much travel.

  Not that they were certain that there was going to be a rush of applits e spriher. Reputation was a currency, but different types of reputation bought different things. Being new aic brought visitors while uainty about their future and stability limited people who wao settle here.

  Which meant they were getting many of the more desperate folk.

  Well, there was only so much they could do about it. For now, Moriko was going to try to be a responsible queen at least. Not that she felt very queenly.

  The whole thing was still weird. While traveling, she had been mostly ed about the impact her title had on herself and her power. When they had arrived at home, there wasn't much ge in that immediately as their domain had been a growing and shifting thing that was not fully stable nor inhabited, so it didn't matter much.

  It was only when they had their opening ceremony that it started to hit home that she really was a queen of sorts now, however small that kingdom.

  She also found that it was easier to be formal and more distant with their fey citizens. While the rules that Moriko had id out earlier were known to the citizens of the domain as soon as they were created, this only applied to rules.

  There was al or emotional unication or other es like a dungeon's inhabitants had. Part of her had been expeg there to be more, but that expectation hadn't been thought out. It had simply been an instinctive anticipation based on her experiences with the dungeon.

  After a couple of hours, everyone's questions and s had been answered as well as they could be. None of them were eager to jump at the idea of being an inhabitant and being bound so thhly, but some were certainly sidering the option.

  However, more of them were ied in the non-bat roles and she retty certain that over the week or so they would begin trig in.

  Fey didn't always o have jobs in the same way more mortal beings did, many could happily subsist on a wild way of life, but some thrived the most when they felt useful to others.

  With faerie matters tidied up, Moriko was happy to head back to their home and enjoy a rexed evening with family. Tomorrow she had different duties to perform, as it was her turn to give some training to their group of youths. Derek wasn't here yet, but Fuyuko, Shizoku, and Gan were all avaible for the sort of physical torture that made for strong bodies.

  Zagaroth