My fists impacted the surface of a punching bag, the sand within shifting strongly as the bag was sent backwards, threatening to swing into me–An outstretched hand was all that was needed to prevent this from happening.

  I sighed and wiped the sweat off my forehead. It was nighttime currently. Eleanori had made me so mad that I hadn’t seen time pass as I expressed my desire to break her bones by doing some intense workout and training.

  I stretched my arms and felt the articulations pop strongly, the sound echoing throughout my empty residence–I was never one to feel the need for servants or the likes, so I had been alone here ever since Leton had moved out a long while ago now, but it felt hollower than ever before… The silence sat somewhere between comforting and off-putting.

  Aah… A nice little bath at night should help clear my mind… I wasn’t a very big spender despite all the money I had accumulated, but since I was so rich, I had made a few changes to the house, and in particular, to the bathroom.

  There was possibly the most comfortable bathtub of all of creation in there. It was refined stuff designed for the water to stay clean for as long as possible, and also keep it warm. I had fallen asleep in it more times than I could remember.

  …There were a bunch of pipes at work there as well, courtesy of another invention of Leton. Of course, since it was he who had done the naming, it was officially called a ‘Pipe System’ or ‘Piping System’. He had always loved adding ‘system’ to stuff he named.

  When the bathrooms came shut, it was like I was isolated from the world. I locked myself in there, ensuring that I wouldn’t be disturbed no matter what. The water flowed, steam rose, and soap formed into fragrant foam. I looked at myself in the mirror as it began to fog up.

  Vile, bitter, and lonely, huh? I don’t believe myself to be either of those first two adjectives, but I was definitely quite lonely. Not in the strictest sense, of course… However, I did find myself lacking when it came to romance. I had gone on so many dates, but none of them had ever made me feel anything. I knew what I wanted. I knew that men like I was imagining existed, but I couldn’t get my hands on a single one of them.

  I have everything to be attractive, don’t I? I have the looks, I have strength, I have status, I have wealth, I can cook, and I am perfectly willing to be submissive as long as it's the right man… Why can’t I even find any of those nobles who would want a strong wife to bear strong offspring of theirs? Is it because of my magical inability? Do people think it is hereditary or something?

  A sigh escaped my lips… And I could have sworn I saw a shadow behind me, but when I turned around–There was nothing.

  …Odd, why did I… Why did I feel like I needed to worry about something else… I saw the shadow, and rather than thinking that I was in danger, I definitely nearly thought that I needed to look out for someone other than me… Multiple other people, perhaps?

  …I am too tired.

  I laid into the bath, resting my head against a nice little pillow made specifically for this, and closed my eyes. By using a little device, I was able to control the light to grow dimmer and more relaxing–This was light through mana crystals instead of electricity, though… Water was a bit too conductive for lightning for me to feel comfortable putting some anywhere near where I took baths.

  Now this is relaxing…

  I don’t know when or for how long, but I definitely fell asleep in the bath. When I woke up, I found that the lights had somehow gotten completely dark. I need to light them up again despite the fact that they should have stayed just like I had left them… Maybe I groggily turned them off at one point? It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing if I didn’t remember half-waking up and doing something so minor as fiddling with the device to sleep better.

  The bathroom was filled with steam, I could barely see anything in there, so after stepping out, drying myself, and throwing on a bathrobe. I opened the bathroom window to evacuate everything.

  Mmh… I had no clue why the lights had turned off, and I wasn’t really pressed to find an answer to this question. I was starving right now. I headed down the kitchen, which I had also spent some money on renovating… My nice little Kitchen Corner–Corner? Why did I call it a corner? It is an entire room on its own.

  I guess staying in the bath for so long made me a little dizzy. I’ll just focus on eating for now… Although Leton had invented a way to preserve food using a machine, the preservation circle method remained superior in terms of efficiency. Nonetheless, his ‘refrigeration’ idea was like an icehouse, but way better. It was cheaper to install and maintain than a magic circle, so it was still seeing widespread usage.

  On my end, I am rich, so I use the objectively superior method to keep all my food from going stale. It’s very important for me since I tend to eat a lot. I need to nourish my muscles, and frankly, I have always been one to eat like several women combined into one.

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  Mmh… I guess I’ll have this. I don’t really feel like cooking something right now. I grabbed something and put it in a special furnace. The advantage of a preservation array or circle was that it allowed me to prepare things that needed to go through a trip in the furnace–In advance, without having to cook them, and then freeze them.

  I could just keep it ‘raw’ and cook it when I needed to eat, which really helped keep all the best flavours and freshness. In any case, what I put in the furnace was a dish Leton, and I had pretty much introduced to the general public. It came from a country quite a fair distance away, where it was quite common.

  It wasn’t the most popular thing in your restaurants, but everyone liked it–Pizza. The only problem with it was that many people didn’t eat the crust, so back in the day, I had to find people who raised a whole bunch of chickens or pigs to get rid of the crust left without having to put things that would rot in the trash.

  People had praised me for this, but I really only did it so that no rats or raccoons would start hanging around the restaurants–I personally wouldn’t want to eat or leave my kid in a place where wild animals roamed in search of food.

  …People seemed to prefer my sandwiches–Yes, MY sandwiches, I came up with them on my own at the beginning of the restaurant… They are made from baguettes filled with all sorts of goodness, like ground beef, sausages, cooked onions, and whatever else. They are popular because sandwiches can be carried around, so people going and coming from work could just swing by the restaurant and get themselves something to eat.

  After the sandwiches, more traditional dishes were the most popular. Frankly, we offered a wide array of things to eat, and that is all thanks to preservation arrays. We can keep stock forever, especially since we have a partnership with several mages to ensure that if any array were to stop functioning, it would be fixed before the food could begin to experience the toll of time.

  Honestly, I was always very proud of what we built. Not just because it was successful and made money, but because it was genuinely a great place where I would want to eat if I were a customer… Turns out that actually having consistent quality and standards was a good way to build a loyal customer base. It sounded obvious, but looking at various other businesses… You would think that it is weird to actually care about serving good food.

  I really need to make sure my own location has the same standards… I would need to hire lots of people, and at the beginning, there would be some uncertainty about how trustworthy and competent they were. I could definitely have a trusted employee move from the main restaurant to help with the vetting and training, but not too much, as it might hurt the main location instead, which would be very counterproductive.

  …The pizza came with me as I went into the workshop in the basement. I opened the door and locked it behind me, finding my blueprints and notes exactly where I had left them.

  Alright, last time, I had finished with the designs and basics of the three main entertainment automatons. They still didn’t have a name, so I just referred to them by their primary colour–Red, Blue, and Yellow.

  Next, there were the automatons that I would call the ‘stand-alones’, as in, they had their own shows in different parts of the future location, providing entertainments of a different kind, for different audiences, or simply serving a certain purpose that I am sure would make many people happy.

  First on the list wasn’t actually a lone automaton, but a dynamic duo that would represent a ventriloquist and her puppet. She would be primarily pink and have the job of telling stories to children. Not all spawnlings could be convinced to run around and get tired by Yellow, so for the calmer ones, there would be an area where they would be able to listen to stories told by Pink and her puppet–The latter simply being a much smaller automaton.

  The ventriloquism wasn’t intended to be realistic, and instead was portrayed in a more magical manner, with a puppet who could talk and move on its own… My storyteller would work closely with another automaton, whom I believe will be the favourite of the parents.

  …Indeed, I saw big for this location, it was more than a family restaurant, it would be a daycare as well, and this is where ‘White’ came in. Dressed in all white and wearing a cute nightcap on her head. She would be in charge of the place where children could take a nap, with her job being to watch, count, make sure none of them went away without supervision, and that no one without authorisation got into this area.

  The last part was crucially important, so she was going to be as tall as Red for some dissuasive power.

  …Though she probably had the most adorable face of the bunch, I intended for her to always look happy and sleepy. She would have a cute smile and nearly closed eyes. Naturally, I would make sure that she was extra quiet when she moved around, but this could certainly be solved by designing special shoes for her to wear.

  Onto the other two–I noticed the screen nearby lighting up. Another invention of Leton. the so-called ‘computer’. Weirdly, I could wrap my head around the concept right now, despite having never understood it in the past.

  Most of those things were linked directly to the buildings they were in–In fact, the only exception was the one I was looking at right now. I didn’t have the explanation, but Leton had managed to hook this one up through some invisible force to not just the main location, but all of our official places, which only numbered three. All other restaurants were franchises.

  While I used to not care about how it worked or was built, I had learned how to use a computer quite well.

  Right now, it was telling me that the night watcher at the main location had submitted a report, which was definitely odd. It wasn’t morning yet, so it had to be a mistake, or something important…

  My first guess was that someone had tried breaking in, but had failed and run off. It wouldn’t be worth it to alert authorities, so a report would be deemed enough… I was correct… But it wasn’t the last report this particular night watcher submitted that night.

  I’ll have to check some things out myself.