He led them deeper into the forest. His mana sense had picked up two smaller signatures nearby — boar-class, juvenile, about the girls' size. Perfect.
They found them in a clearing. Two young boars, tusked, about knee-height, rooting through the undergrowth. Not the armoured monsters from the deep forest — smaller, faster, but still dangerous for their size. Hardened leather skin, sharp tusks, aggressive temperament.
"These two," Yuki said. "Do you think you both can defeat at least one of them and provide a feast for the family?"
Kana's eyes lit up like stars. She drew her practice sword — the ironwood one, not the enchanted blade — and dropped into the stance Rafael had taught her.
Hana stepped behind her sister. Both daggers out. She was trembling slightly — not fear, Yuki decided. Adrenaline.
"Together," Yuki said. "Watch each other's backs."
Kana charged.
The first boar squealed and met her head-on. Tusks versus sword. Kana swung — a clean diagonal, good form — and the blade bounced off the boar's hide. The leather was too thick. The ironwood couldn't cut it.
The boar charged. Kana dodged — quick, clean, fox-kin reflexes saving her — and circled. She swung again. Another bounce.
She can't cut through with the practice sword. The hide's too tough.
A flash of silver.
Hana's dagger flew. It left her hand in a throw so fast Yuki almost missed it — a flick of the wrist, no windup, pure instinct. The blade crossed the clearing and buried itself in the boar's eye socket.
The boar dropped. Instantly. One throw. Perfect accuracy.
Yuki blinked.
Lira's lessons have greatly improved her marksmanship.
The boar's life force dissipated — a small pulse of mana and experience energy rising from the corpse. Yuki watched it scatter into the atmosphere, unabsorbed by anyone nearby.
If there were a way to capture that. Direct it into them. Strengthen them.
He tasked three parallel minds with the problem immediately. Mana absorption was his unique trait — his body did it automatically. But there had to be a mechanism. A process. If he could understand it, replicate it, create an item that channelled defeated enemies' energy into the wearer —
Later. Focus.
The second boar was charging Kana. She'd adjusted — knowing her blade couldn't cut, she was using it to deflect and redirect. The boar lunged. She sidestepped, parried the tusks, and brought the ironwood down on the back of its neck.
The boar staggered. Not dead — stunned. Kana hit it again. And again. Battering it with blunt force until it collapsed, stunned senseless.
She finished it with a thrust to the soft tissue behind the jaw. The ironwood was blunt but the force was enough. The boar shuddered and went still.
Kana stood over it, breathing hard, practice sword dripping. Her silver ears were straight up. Her tail was rigid. Her amber eyes blazed.
Yuki clapped. Slow, deliberate, genuine.
"Excellent teamwork. Hana — that throw was incredible. One shot, perfect placement. Kana — you adapted when your blade couldn't cut. That's real combat thinking."
Tails wagged so hard they blurred.
He gave them both headpats — one hand per fox child. Kana leaned into his hand and made a sound suspiciously close to purring. Hana closed her eyes and swayed.
"You hunted well," he said. "These are your kills. Tonight, we eat what you caught. You should be proud."
He threw the boars into storage and scooped the girls up.
"Now. Let's go home."
The flight back was uneventful. The landing was not.
He touched down at the main gate — the same gate he'd flown out of that morning, in front of the same guards and an even larger crowd of citizens and soldiers.
Oh no.
The queue at the gate had grown. And every single person in it was watching the young man descend from the sky with two armoured fox children in his arms.
He landed. Set the girls down. Walked to the checkpoint.
The guards were different from this morning — more of them, positioned at the edges of the gate in a formation that was less "routine checkpoint" and more "we've been told to watch for someone." They straightened when he approached.
He showed his Gold tag. The guard inspected it, wrote something down, and waved him through. As Yuki passed, he caught the guard turning to his colleague. Whispered words. His name. His rank.
They're flagging me.
He walked faster.
"Yuki," Kana said from beside him, looking back at the guards. "It's probably because you flew in and out of the city right in front of them."
He stopped walking. Looked down at her.
"Are you serious? Did I really do that?"
"Twice. With a big crowd watching. Both times."
He closed his eyes. "Is it really that rare? For mages to fly?"
Kana tilted her head. "You're the only person I've ever seen fly."
He thought about that. The grimoires had listed spatial magic as the rarest school. His flight spell combined spatial displacement, telekinesis, and wind magic in a way that no formal system in this world had developed. Because nobody in this world could develop it — the mana reserves and parallel processing required were beyond what any native mage possessed.
He'd been casually doing something impossible. Twice. In front of hundreds of people.
I'm an idiot.
He grumbled the entire way to the guild.
The guild's monster processing yard was behind the main building — a large open area with scales, butchering stations, and appraisal counters. Adventurers hauled kills here for assessment, payment, and material harvesting.
Yuki walked in, found an open counter, and started pulling serpents from dimensional storage.
The first tempest serpent materialised on the yard's stone floor. Fifteen metres of scaled, ridge-backed, electrical predator, landing with a heavy thud that shook the ground.
People looked over.
He pulled out the second. Thud.
The third. Fourth. Fifth.
By the seventh, the yard had gone quiet. By the tenth, a crowd had formed. By the time all fifteen were laid out — fifteen massive tempest serpents, each between ten and fifty metres long, covering most of the processing yard's floor space — the silence was deafening.
Kana stood beside Yuki, silver tail wagging, surveying the chaos with open delight.
Does this girl get a kick off of chaos?
The processing clerk stared at the serpents. Then at Yuki. Then at the serpents.
"These — where — how—"
"Subjugation quest. East of the city. Nest clearance."
"There are fifteen."
"It was a big nest."
"You did this solo?"
"Yes."
"And you stored them — in what? No spatial bag has this capacity. These creatures are — the largest one is fifty metres—"
"I have a big bag."
Kana giggled. The clerk looked like he might faint.
The crowd murmured. Yuki caught fragments — "Gold rank," "solo," "is that a flying mage," "the one from the gate this morning." Word was spreading. Fast.
The payment was substantial — fifteen Gold-ranked monster kills, plus material value on the scales, venom glands, and electrical organs. The clerk counted out a very large stack of gold that Yuki swept into storage.
He turned to leave. Kana was already at the yard's exit, bouncing on her toes.
Then he saw them. Coming through the guild's back entrance. A group of men — not adventurers. Official-looking. Military dress, polished armour, the bearing of people who answered to someone important. They were heading straight for the processing yard.
Straight for him.
They're fast. Someone at the gate reported the flying mage and they've already sent people.
He didn't wait to find out what they wanted. He scooped up Kana with one arm, grabbed Hana with the other, ducked around the corner of the processing building, and tore a hole in space.
Three steps. Front door of his new home.
The spatial tear sealed behind them. The guild yard, the official-looking guards, the crowd of gawking adventurers — all of it vanished, replaced by the warm, familiar smell of their house.
Yuki set the girls down and exhaled.
"That," Kana giggled, "was exciting."
"That was me being stupid. Repeatedly."
He rubbed his face. Flying in public. Pulling impossible quantities of monsters from dimensional storage. Soloing Gold quests that should require full parties. Every single thing he'd done today had drawn attention he didn't need.
Too late to worry about it now. However, it won't take long to figure out where im staying or at the very least ambush me next time im at the guild. Ugh, I forsee a meeting with an official or a noble in my not to distant future.
He walked from the kitchen toward the front hall.
And stopped.
Two people were standing in the entry. A young very beautiful woman — early twenties, brunette, slender, wearing a crisp black-and-white maid's uniform with a pressed apron and a headband. Beside her, a girl — maybe seven or eight, dark-haired, clearly her daughter in a matching maid's outfit scaled down to her size. Both stood with their hands clasped, posture perfect.
They bowed in unison.
"Welcome home, Master."
Yuki's brain experienced a catastrophic systems failure.
The brunette was — she was — her eyes were warm brown, and the uniform was fitted, and she had this gentle smile that was somewhere between professional and devastating, and the little girl beside her had a matching outfit with a matching bow and —
Maid. Uniforms. Bowing. "Master."
His face went nuclear. Every anime trope he'd ever consumed collided with reality at full speed. His mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. Sound came out but it wasn't words.
"I — you — the — welcome — what—"
SMACK.
Lira's palm connected with the back of his skull. Not hard enough to hurt — just hard enough to reboot his brain.
"Stop drooling," she said, stepping around him. "Yuki, this is Elena. She's our new live-in maid. And this is her daughter, Miri."
Elena bowed again, graceful and practiced. "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir. Lady Lira has told me a great deal about the household."
"Lady — she's not — I'm not—" He was still stuttering.
Miri — the little girl — peeked out from behind her mother and looked at Kana and Hana. Three pairs of young eyes met. Kana's silver ears perked forward. Hana tilted her head.
Miri waved. Small. Shy.
Kana waved back. Not small. Not shy.
Lira took Yuki's arm and steered him toward the kitchen, leaving the children to their introductions.
"Elena is twenty-three," Lira said, her voice softer now. The clipped efficiency faded. "She and Miri are refugees. From the Veldmark."
Yuki's red face cooled. "The Veldmark."
"They served a noble house near the border. When the Dominion invaded, the family was slaughtered. Elena's husband — the household butler — got them out before the soldiers reached the servants' quarters." Lira paused. "He didn't make it out himself."
The kitchen was quiet.
"They arrived in Veldara two days ago with nothing but the clothes on their backs. I found them at the merchant quarter looking for work — any work. Elena, Miri, standing in a hiring line with a hundred other refugees." Lira looked at him. "I didn't even hold interviews after that. We have space. She's a trained noble household maid — experienced, skilled, an excellent cook. And I wasn't going to turn away a single mother and her daughter who'd just lost everything to the war we keep hearing about."
Yuki sat with that for a moment. The Dominion. The same war that had swallowed the Veldmark and was creeping toward the Confederation. It wasn't an abstract geopolitical problem anymore — it was standing in his front hall in a maid uniform with a seven-year-old daughter.
"You did the right thing," he said.
"I know." She crossed her arms. "The third floor has extra rooms, their own space. Live-in position, salary, meals included. She cried when I told her."
"Then it's settled."
"Good." A beat. "You're still red, by the way."
"I am aware."
"It's a maid uniform, Yuki. It's professional attire."
"I know what it is."
"Then why does your face look like a tomato?"
"Everyone has weaknesses. Anyway, we have two beautiful boars that Kana and Hana took down all by themselves. I will go prepare the meat and we can have a party to welcome our two new members of our house."
"Your trying to change the subject."
He couldn't argue. He just walked to the table, sat down, and put his head on the surface until the blood left his face.
From the front hall, he could hear Kana introducing herself to Miri at full volume. Hana's quiet presence somewhere nearby. Elena's gentle voice asking if anyone was hungry — steady, warm, the voice of a woman who'd lost everything and was choosing to keep going anyway.
And Lira, still laughing, pulling out chairs for dinner.
My household now includes two fox children, a merchant's daughter, a war refugee maid, and her daughter. I've been in this city for two days.
He lifted his head from the table. Looked at the kitchen — the big kitchen, the one Kana had demanded. Listened to the sounds of people filling the house he'd bought yesterday.
I predicted the hose would grow.
Faster than expected. But not unwelcome. Not unwelcome at all.