Isaac had a bright smile, seeing Chairman Lucius needed his help.
Chairman Lucius looked at him with an expression that said, very clearly, that he did not find his smile amusing.
Isaac gave Chairman Lucius a pat on the shoulder — perhaps a touch more cheerfully than was strictly necessary — and moved to the living room.
Everyone had settled back into their own conversations after breakfast, but Isaac could tell that Alice was waiting for them, and Celia was practically radiating curiosity from where she sat, pretending to be absorbed in something Charlotta was saying.
He set the spatial ring down on the table in front of Alice.
"Father-in-law brought gifts. Go ahead and look through it," he said.
Alice picked up the ring and directed her perception inside.
She was quiet for a moment, then raised her head and looked across the room at Chairman Lucius, who was standing near the doorway with his hands clasped behind his back and an expression of careful neutrality.
"These are beautiful. Thank you," she said.
"Mhm," Chairman Lucius replied.
He couldn’t help but be nervous, thinking Alice might ask where he brought the clothes from. Thankfully, no such things happened. Or so Chairman Lucius thought.
Celia materialized behind Alice’s shoulder.
"Show me, show me," she said, and leaned in to look through the ring herself.
Her eyes went wide almost immediately, and she straightened up with an expression that had passed directly from delight into bewilderment.
"This is from Govania! That’s the most famous designer brand in Fortified City 22! They have a waiting list that runs months in advance. How did you even get these? Did you know someone? We tried to order from them last spring and they told us the earliest they could take a commission was nearly a year out." Celia rattled.
Chairman Lucius stiffened.
Alice looked at the expression on his face, then looked at Isaac.
Isaac gave a single, small nod, barely perceptible to anyone who wasn’t already watching for it.
Alice understood his intentions immediately.
Before Celia could finish drawing breath to ask the next obvious question, Alice stood up and said, "Let’s go try them on."
"Yes, but I want to know how he managed to — "
"Come on." Alice took Celia firmly by the arm and steered her toward the stairs with the calm, decisive energy. Emily, reading the room perfectly as she usually did, floated up behind them without needing to be asked at all.
The three of them disappeared upstairs.
Chairman Lucius exhaled slowly. He looked to his left and found Isaac standing there with his shoulders shaking slightly, as he tried to suppress his laughter.
"You should go to change as well," Lucius said, clicking his tongue.
"I did," Isaac said.
"...?" Chairman Lucius gave him a look of mild confusion.
"This is a clone. My main body is getting changed upstairs," Isaac said. By now, he was getting so used to switching clones and the main body that barely anyone noticed.
It didn’t take long for the three of his wives to come back downstairs. Isaac turned to look at them properly. He was prepared this time, learning from his last experiences. He wouldn’t gawk this time, stunned by their appearance.
But...
He froze when he actually saw them.
Alice had gone with black trousers that fit well against her long legs and a white button-down shirt with a structured belt cinching the waist. The design was clean and sharp.
The colors complemented her perfectly. The white against her blonde hair, the black setting off the particular red of her eyes, and the whole thing quietly framing the black of her horns rather than competing with them.
Her sleeves were rolled up just below the elbow, and the top buttons of her shirt were left open, which gave the outfit a slightly "wild" charm that suited her.
A slim watch sat on her wrist.
Emily wore a pleated skirt in deep ivory and a fitted blouse in soft grey-blue, tucked in, with long socks and knee-high boots in dark leather.
The cut of it was precise and a little formal, but the combination of the skirt and boots gave it a warmth that kept it from feeling stiff. It suited her platinum hair and the sea blue eyes.
The designer clearly knew what they were doing.
She looked lovely and cute like a doll, which was something Emily herself never seemed to realize.
Celia had worn a fitted deep burgundy dress with structured shoulders and a nipped waist, its skirt falling to just above the knee.
The cut was elegant but there was something a little playful in it — a slight flare at the hem, small gold details at the cuffs — and it worked beautifully against her pink hair and the soft warmth of her complexion.
Her black tail flicked contentedly behind her and her wings were folded close, the dark feathers providing a contrast against the rich color of the fabric that looked like it had been planned specifically.
"I told you he would be too stunned to speak," Celia said, giggling as she looked at Isaac.
Emily had gone a little pink at the attention, but she was smiling. Alice was looking at him with her usual expression — composed, and calm — but anyone who knew her could tell she was waiting for Isaac’s words.
"You look good. All three of you," Isaac finally said.
"I know," Celia said, delighted with herself, and then she turned and crossed directly to Chairman Lucius. "Thank you for the beautiful clothes, dad."
The word landed in the room and stayed there.
Chairman Lucius froze at the word "dad".
Celia noticed his expression and hesitated as she spoke, "I... can call you that, right? Of course, i-if you’d rather I didn’t, I completely understand, I just thought — "
"It’s fine," Chairman Lucius said.
He knew enough of Celia’s history — and Vale’s — to understand what family meant to someone who had grown up without one. She was in Isaac’s life, and that made her part of whatever Chairman Lucius’ daughters’ family, and there was no reason to make her feel otherwise.
Celia’s expression lit up.
Chairman Lucius reached out and patted her on the head, once, with the slightly awkward care of someone who didn’t do that sort of thing often but had decided it was warranted.
Isaac watched the exchange from a few feet away with an expression he was working to keep neutral.
’Is it me, or did she just trick him into getting the permission?’ he thought. It made him realize the devil knew perfectly well how to use her charming and cute appearance to lead people.
Even the veteran businessman was fooled so easily.
Afterward, Arlene, Althea, and Avery drifted over to the three of them, and the conversation moved to the clothes themselves.
Althea obviously did not know of Govania, but was interested in them. She was already thinking about how to get in contact with them. Avery’s reaction was different. She looked at the clothes quietly, and her expression was harder to read.
Isaac glanced at her with Inspect out of mild curiosity.
[Status: Wondering whether her name would be enough to move her to the front of the waiting list. Then again, would the designer—a human—even recognize her? Should she just kidnap them? Actually, the waiting list is only six months long. That’s barely a moment. She could simply wait.]
Isaac was stunned.
He wasn’t entirely sure what surprised him more.
That the Water Elemental Spirit had casually entertained the idea of kidnapping a fashion designer as a logistical option before dismissing it as unnecessary, or that she had landed on six months as a trivial amount of time and genuinely meant it.
He decided not to say anything.
"So when are you coming down? You’re taking longer than we did, and we are the ladies here," Celia said.
"I’m managing multiple bodies simultaneously, so give me a moment. It’s hard to move all of them always," he said.
Celia opened her mouth, then paused, and looked toward the stairs.
At that same moment, the version of Isaac standing in the room felt his clothes dissolve as his main body reached the stairs.
He came down the stairs wearing black, a high-collared shirt and fitted trousers with gold embroidery.
A short cape draped from one shoulder, the inner lining a deep muted gold.
Celia stared at him with her mouth open for a moment. Although she made fun of Isaac’s moments ago, she was just as surprised now.
Alice gained a faint blush.
Emily looked at him, and said shyly, "You look good."
"Thank you," Isaac replied with a smile.
"That’s... you’ve always looked good, so I honestly didn’t think you could look better, but this... I was clearly wrong," Althea said from the side, studying him with an expression that was caught somewhere between admiration and mild exasperation at the unfairness of it.
Isaac chuckled and thanked her, then turned toward the door.
Everyone began moving, gathering themselves and drifting toward the two vehicles parked outside the mansion.
The city was already enjoying the festival. There were several reasons for the festival itself.
There was the growth of the city, which had expanded significantly and overcome problems that would have broken smaller settlements. There were the monster waves that everyone had fought through together, the weight of that finally lifting. There was Celia’s concert in the evening, which had people excited in a different and more joyful way.
And beyond all of that, many Lords had arrived and were waiting for their meeting with Isaac.
The combination of it all led to Isaac organizing this festival. The city was enveloped in a warm, festive energy, which was already visible on the streets.
Human awakeners, Orcs and Nagas moved in pairs along the patrol routes, and in one of the wider squares several children were playing some kind of game with the Naga summons, laughing loud enough that Isaac could hear it from the street.
Chairman Lucius stopped beside Isaac just as the group was sorting itself between the two cars.
"How much longer will Selene’s evolution take?" he asked, keeping his voice low.
"A few more hours at most. She’s progressing smoothly. I’ll look after her, and I’ll make sure she gets the clothes when she’s done," Isaac said.
Chairman Lucius nodded, satisfied with that, and moved toward the first car. Arlene, Celia, and Emily followed him in. The second car took Alice, Avery, Althea, and Charlotta.
Emily had clearly wanted to ride with Isaac, but Celia had taken her by the arm and steered her firmly toward Chairman Lucius’s vehicle before she’d had a chance to say so.
The reasoning was practical — one car genuinely couldn’t hold everyone — but Isaac had the feeling Celia had also made a calculation that this was a good opportunity for Emily and herself to spend time with the man who was going to be their father-in-law.
He shook his head slightly as he watched it happen. She really was remarkably good at moving people into positions without them noticing.
He was walking toward his car when a voice reached him.
"Do you want to see how I look?"
It was Catherine’s voice, coming from somewhere to his left.
Isaac stopped.
He did want to see her. He genuinely did. He recalled the clothes. Those would look ridiculously—
"Just kidding."
Isaac was stunned.
He swiftly activated the Celestial Truth-Seeking Eyes and the Demonic Eyes in the same instant — one from Catherine, one from Emily — and his vision shifted, one eye going gold and the other deep violet as he swept his gaze across the street, the cars, the storefront, the spaces between things where someone with her ability to conceal herself might be standing.
Nothing.
She wasn’t there. His skills should have rendered any concealment she was using completely visible, which meant she had sent a clone to speak to him and cancelled it before he’d turned around. She had timed it precisely.
Isaac clicked his tongue.
Fine. If she wanted to play it that way, he could play it that way too. He sent out several of his own clones quietly, dispersing them through the area to search, and then got into the car and started the engine.
As he drove, Ruby’s hologram materialized on the center console, steady and blue-white in the daylight coming through the windshield.
She walked him through the day’s schedule. About the timing of the Lords’ meeting, what was expected before and after, the concert in the evening, which would draw most of the city’s population toward the central stage by nightfall.
One thing about the schedule genuinely pleased him, which was that Emily was staying through all of it.
Normally she would have gone back to manage her own City by now, but her AI system and one of Isaac’s clones were handling things there today, which meant she could be present for the celebration.
The official reason was that she needed to be available to make talks with the Lords’ later.
While he drove, he also pulled up the blueprints that Emily had received as her Lord Quest reward.
She had shared the information about them with Ruby, and the AI was now displaying them across the passenger-side screen.
Resonance Watchtower, Rare Blueprint x5.
Veinforge Foundry, Rare Blueprint x2.
Hollow Sanctuary, Rare Blueprint x1.
Thornwall Barricade, Rare Blueprint x10.
Echoing Archive, Rare Blueprint x1.
’All of them are Rare Blueprints ,’ Isaac thought. Until now, Isaac had only one Rare Blueprint. Praying Altar. It was an extremely useful building that allowed him to collect Faith from his people, and use it to increase the speed of building constructions.
A smile appeared on his face, and he said, ’System, share the blueprints!’
He didn’t hesitate. "System, share the blueprints."
Resonance Watchtower, Rare Blueprint x5 gained.
Veinforge Foundry, Rare Blueprint x2 gained.
Hollow Sanctuary, Rare Blueprint x1 gained.
Thornwall Barricade, Rare Blueprint x10 gained.
Echoing Archive, Rare Blueprint x1 gained.
He grinned. Unlike items, blueprints could be shared. Which meant, he could build these powerful buildings in his own City too.
’Now that I think about it, can I share the troops of Emily? What about buildings?’
Isaac could share her summons, so troops should be possible, right? Or did they count as different categories?
What about the buildings?
Would the buildings be counted as items, and he could not share them?
Or, since the buildings were ’bonded’ to Emily as she was City’s Lord, he could share them?