With another day drawing to a close, Vahn was preparing to transmit his end-of-day report when a Gate opened within his tent.
"Has she finally returned...?" Vahn wondered aloud, his left brow rising slightly as a buxom, dark-skinned redhead with golden eyes emerged from the Gate. Unfortunately, while their outward appearance matched Lupusregina's in her Adventurer attire, their aura wasn't quite the same.
As Vahn was wondering why a Greater Doppelganger had been sent to him, two others emerged from the Gate—a spunky-looking girl with wavy red twin-tails, bright aquamarine eyes, and a petite but busty figure, followed by Aura.
"Yo! Lord Vahn! How's it hanging...?" Aura greeted, raising her right gloved hand and beaming radiantly.
"Aura, it's good to see you," Vahn replied, adopting a smile and extending his right hand to caress Aura's head as she approached and naturally bent forward to present it.
"Lord Vahn's hand is so big and warm~" Aura hummed happily, guiding Vahn's hand from her head to the side of her face, allowing her to nuzzle his palm with her cheek.
"Thank you for the compliment," Vahn expressed, smoothly retracting his hand before asking, "But what brings you here? If you just wanted to hang out, you wouldn't have brought these two."
"Oh, right. Hey, you. Come over here and introduce yourself to Lord Vahn," Aura ordered, her brows slightly furrowed and her tone suddenly harsh as she glanced back at the unfamiliar redhead.
"U-Understood, Lady Aura...!" responded the redhead, performing a quick salute before stepping forward with her arms at her sides, shouting, "Lord Vahn! It's a pleasure to meet you! My name is Lupica Ludmilla Lupical! I'm one of Lady Lupusregina's subordinates!"
"Ah...it's nice to meet you, Lupica. Tell me, how has your Lady been these days...?" Vahn questioned. At the same time, he casually extended his left hand to caress the roughly 150cm tall Werewolf's head, spurring a pair of fluffy wolf ears to pop out above her twin tails.
"Lady...Lady Lupusregina is well! A-And she really missed you...!" Lupica responded, her face beet red and a fluffy tail swishing behind her as she raised her hands to her chest, balled them into fists, and leaned forward excitedly.
"You're a spirited one..." Vahn hummed, retracting his hand from Lupica's head to avoid her becoming too excited and to preclude Aura from acting against her out of jealousy.
"Alright, you two can stand watch outside. I'll call you back inside when Lord Vahn and I are finished talking," Aura instructed, giving Lupica a light push to hurry her departure.
'As usual...she really doesn't like seeing me be friendly with other girls...' Vahn noted, exhaling faintly from his nose. Aura even pushed the actual Lupusregina around when she was present, so he wasn't surprised to see her shooing the stand-in outside like an unwashed dog.
Now alone with Vahn in his lotus tent, Aura clapped her hands together as if she had just finished a job before looking back at him and grinning from ear to ear, revealing, "I have some news regarding what we discussed the last time. But before that, let's take a bath together."
"Hmmn...I don't mind. But you'll need to behave. That means no clinging or rubbing your body against my back with the excuse that it's faster than using your hands. Understood...?" Vahn clarified, his tone gaining a hint of firmness.
"Tsk..."
Though it was brief, Vahn didn't miss Aura clicking her tongue before she presented a toothy grin, waved her hands from side to side, and playfully attested, "But my hands really are small, you know?"
"Which is the reason we have sponges..." Vahn sighed, shaking his head but maintaining his smile as he produced a large white porcelain tub from his Inventory and began filling it with warm water. As he did, Aura rather eagerly undressed, unable to prevent a smile from her face as she greatly enjoyed bathing and enjoyed being bathed even more...
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After washing up and rinsing off, Vahn set Aura in the bath by the pits of her arms before descending into the water across from her. The bath was nearly three meters long and a meter-and-a-half wide, so there was more than enough space for three, much less two people.
"So, you know how the Theocracy and the Elf Kingdom have been at war for a long time, right? Well, we recently received intel that the Theocracy is readying a full-scale invasion. Their goal is the assassination of the Elf King and the complete enslavement of his people~" Aura revealed with a little too much excitement and bloodlust.
"Wouldn't that suggest that the Theocracy has someone above Level 80 in their ranks...?" Vahn noted, his brows rising slightly. After all, they had all but confirmed that the most powerful combatants in the Kingdom and Empire were around Level 35. If the Theocracy genuinely had people who were stronger than Level 80, then what reason did they have to bait much weaker nations into fighting?
"We haven't been able to verify their identity or confirm their strength ourselves, but the person in question has the codename Certain Death. Sounds pretty delusional to me," Aura contended, spreading her hands and shaking her head in feigned exasperation. Then, while trying to link her toes through the gaps in Vahn's, she stated, "Anyways, the plan is to incite the Dark Elves into attacking when the Elf Kingdom is on the verge of collapse. We'll drive out the Theocracy, and during the chaos, take out the Elf King on our own terms."
"Is there a timeline for when all of this is set to transpire...?" Vahn asked, simultaneously emulating the Bubble Bubble Fruit's power to top the bath with a thick layer of fragrant bubbles.
Leaning forward, Aura scooped up some of the aforementioned bubbles with her arms before sitting up, giving herself a beard and allowing the suds to slowly trickle down her body as she revealed, "Demiurge thinks it will happen within the next two to ten years. Right now, the Theocracy is investing a ton of manpower and resources into strengthening its border with us. They really don't like that Lord Ainz is an Undead who welcomes people of all races into his Kingdom."
"Two to ten years...not a long period, but not a short one either..." Vahn muttered, closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the sponge-like material lining both ends of the tub. He was used to things developing and resolving quickly, but to an ordinary nation and its people, investing a decade into war preparations was close to baseline.
"We could totally speed things up if we went on the offensive and took the fight to our enemies," Aura argued, leaning back against her own bath pillow and sitting cross-legged as she contended, "I'm pretty sure this is Lord Ainz and Demiurge accounting for your warnings and the fact we're short on capable administrators. Lord Ainz was even considering sending Mare and me to school to learn statecraft."
"Mmn...as the Sorcerer Kingdom expands, it would make sense to have the Floor Guardians become Governors or Lords of their own domains..." Vahn agreed, opening his eyes to stare at the lotus tent's canopy as he stated, "The obvious caveat being that it would increase your individual susceptibility to assassination and conspiracy..."
"I'll follow what Lord Ainz tells me to, but if I'm being completely honest, it sounds like a massive pain in the butt..." Aura sighed, reaching her right hand into her personal Item Box before pulling out what looked like a sake bottle. There was no minimum drinking age in the setting of OL-2138, but even if there had been, Aura was a few months shy of seventy-seven. As such, while Vahn couldn't help adopting a slight frown, he didn't have the leeway to tell her that she couldn't drink.
Fortunately for Vahn, Aura had high Resistance and immunity to a wide array of poisons. Thus, while her cheeks and the tips of her ears turned red after taking several audible gulps of plum-smelling sake, she would need to down several liters of the liquid to get drunk.
"Haaaaa...that hits the spot..." Aura expressed with an exaggerated sigh. Then, raising her gaze to meet Vahn's, she smiled and asked, "How about it? Want a taste?"
'She must be trying to show me how mature she is...' Vahn concluded, his expression softening into a mix of exasperation and amusement. Lucky for Aura, he wasn't unwilling to humor her, as he knew for a fact that nothing would come of it. He also knew she was under a lot of stress due to being placed in charge of numerous construction projects. With that in mind, he accepted her offer and granted her the indirect kiss she was fishing for by drinking from the same sake bottle...
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"I'll drop by again soon! Let's watch a movie together next time~!" Aura expressed, smiling and waving back at Vahn before stepping through the Gate that had opened to return her to Nazarick.
"Alright, take care," Vahn responded, offering a relaxed hand raise of his own before turning his attention to the entrance of his tent once the Gate had collapsed in on itself. A fair amount of bloodlust had been radiating from it for a while now, so he wasn't surprised when he stepped outside to find Lupica and the faux Lupusregina confronting Keno. They weren't attacking her physically, but they were giving her a brutal dressing down for believing she could visit him at her leisure.
"What's going on here?" Vahn asked, his tone calm but suffused with an effortless authority.
"Lord Vahn! This unclean wench is insisting that she visits your tent every night! Please give me the orders to throw her out with the rest of the trash that has infested your spring...!" Lupica exclaimed, looking more cute than fierce as she posed with her hands on her hips and forced Keno back with a pillowy chest bump.
"Okay...you're seriously starting to piss me off..." Keno growled, tensing the fingers of her right hand, causing her nails to grow and turn sharp as daggers. Instead of attacking, however, she turned just her eyes to Vahn and entreated, "Please talk some sense into your companions..."
"How dare—!"
Before Lupica could tell Keno off for daring to speak casually to him, Vahn silenced her with a calm, "That's enough, Lupica. I greatly appreciate your willingness to fight and defend my honor, but Keno here and the members of Blue Roses are our colleagues. We will also be working alongside them in the coming weeks, so be sure to treat them with due courtesy..."
"Yes, Lord Vahn. I understand..." Lupica responded, her expression pouty and her aquamarine eyes boring into Keno as if she wished she could fire lasers. Keno was nearly twenty Levels her superior, but that wouldn't have deterred her from doing everything in her power to rip the home-wrecking blonde apart if Vahn permitted it.
"But even if you are Lord Vahn's colleague, you should have had the good sense to turn away when you saw us," stated Fauxregina, emitting an aura even fiercer than the original as she asked, "Do you believe yourself to be better company than his actual companions?"
"I wasn't trying to compete with you..." Keno retorted, her brows creased to their limits as she asserted, "More to the point, now that the two of you are here, shouldn't we assemble to discuss our joint request? We've been waiting here for more than a week."
Interjecting before Lupica or Fauxregina could further antagonize Keno, Vahn plopped his hands down on the duo's heads, smiling at the latter as he stated, "I'm sorry, Keno, but please return for the time being. We shall discuss our forthcoming departure at tomorrow's breakfast. Please let the others know..."
"Fine..."
Though she felt a pang of frustration and betrayal at Vahn's dismissal, Keno understood that he likely had sensitive matters to discuss with his just-returned Party. The fact that she hadn't heard of Lupica suggested he had allies she didn't know about as a mere colleague, so after casting a pouty glower at the two redheads, she snorted disdainfully and turned to leave...
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