“I will get them enchanted and make a gate to the shadow plane, just give me a day or two.”

  Brightfire says “Alright. No rush. I want to train them without the gear first so that they don’t learn to depend on it.”

  “That’s a good plan. I will still get the gear done soon, but that doesn’t mean you need to hand them out right away.”

  Brightfire says “True. So, what made you so distracted that you forgot that you didn’t enchant them?”

  “Oh, Queen Amercy came to visit so I have been having to do diplomatic stuff.”

  Brightfire says “That explains it. We all know how much you hate diplomatic stuff.”

  “Mercy isn’t that bad. To be honest, Lin and Myria want me to take Mercy as my third wife. They think that I will need a queen who actually knows how to rule.”

  Brightfire says “Third wife?! I thought you were completely against taking any more wives?!”

  “I am. Well, I was. Lin is very convincing and it is hard to argue against both of my future wives.”

  Brightfire says “Sounds like you are in a tough spot. What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t know yet. Your father brought up some issues that I need to figure out.”

  Brightfire says “What kind of issues?”

  “He thinks that if I take two humans as wives that people will start to think that I am prejudiced.”

  Brightfire says “That is highly likely. People tend to view things based on their own thoughts. It is likely to make the races that aren’t linked to you by marriage feel insecure.”

  “That is part of what I am worried about. I need to talk to Lin and Myria about it, but I am afraid I already know what they are going to say.”

  Brightfire says “What’s that?”

  “That the answer is to just take more wives.”

  Brightfire smiles and says “What is so bad about that? Just as long as you aren’t tricking them or forcing them to marry you, it is fine. They will go into it knowing they aren’t your only wives and should have the appropriate expectations.”

  “It isn’t that simple!”

  Brightfire says “It will only be complicated if you make it so. If a woman loves you enough to be willing to share you, they will be happy to just be with you.”

  “Is that how you feel?”

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  Brightfire says “Yes! It is. Which is why I can say for sure that you are overthinking things. I know that we have talked about this before and that you have hang ups from your old life. You need to leave that behind you, this is a new world and a new culture. You can’t keep living by the morals of your old world.”

  “Ouch, that is a little harsh, but I guess you are right. I never even thought about how my first life is affecting my attitude in this one.”

  Brightfire says “Do you believe that a woman has the right to choose her own path in life?”

  “Yes, of course I do!”

  Brightfire says “Then why do you keep trying to make the choice for them?”

  “Um…”

  Brightfire says “Exactly! I am going to leave now, but I hope that you will seriously think about what I said.”

  Before I can think of anything to say in response, Brightfire has already left the room. She seemed fairly upset, but that is understandable since I did exactly that to her. She has probably been wanting to say that to me for several months at least.

  Well, if I do end up taking an elven wife it is definitely going to have to be Brightfire. I owe her at least that much, besides I do like her and I am pretty sure that Lin and Myria do too. I may lose the argument against taking more wives, but I am not going to give up on having my wives get along.

  This whole situation is going to be crazy enough without having any of them fighting for my attention. I can’t believe I am even contemplating this, but I don’t see any way out of it. If I stick to just marrying Lin and Myria, they are likely to be miserable after I am gone.

  Either that, or I am going to need to give up on keeping the kingdom together after I die. However, if I do that then chances are that things will just go back to how I found them and I don’t want that. If nothing else, ending slavery permanently is worth dealing with all of this craziness.

  If I unify the peninsula and make slavery illegal then it should have an effect for at least a generation. If my queens can keep the empire together after my death, then it might last even longer than that. We might even be able to build an empire that will last for a few generations.

  That is going to depend on how things go after I die, all I can do is build the foundation. There is still a lot of work for me to do to do that and there are other things that I would like to do. Despite all the work I have done already, I haven’t really taken much off of my to-do list.

  If anything, adding the system has created more work for me, but it will be worth it in the end. The system will make managing an empire and keeping track of everything much more doable. At least the system is done for now, I just have to worry about expanding the network.

  Thinking of that, I decide to stop worrying about other things and gate back to the castle. The others aren’t back yet, so I head down to my workshop and start enchanting the gear. While I am doing that I go back to working on the design for the golem birds.

  Luckily, they only need to be able to fly around, see the landscape, and report back to the system. Even with that, I am going to have to go pretty light on the enchantments or there won’t be enough room. These birds can be considered disposable, so I don’t plan to make them out of the good alloy.

  That will make it easier to make them, but it also limits how much mana capacity they are going to have. In fact, the enchantments to allow them to connect to the system are going to take up most of it. I won’t know for sure until I make one, but they might not even have room for a self-repair enchantment.

  If that is the case, then I am going to need to make a golem that can repair them. Maybe I should just make a golem that can make the birds so that I don’t have to do it myself. That is probably the better idea since I can just put the golem under Jarvis’ control.

  Actually, I can give Jarvis access to the system and let him take care of a lot of things. It would give him something to do and also allow him to see what is going on outside. As soon as I think of it, I call Jarvis down and ask him if that is something he would like to do.

  Jarvis says “Yes, maker. That sounds interesting!”