“Princess, doesn’t the morning mist make for such a lovely greeting?”

Not as nice as the smell of smoke, why not indulge? I hear mortals tend to find comfort in such things.”

Better to start the day energized,” Another voice said. “I’m pretty sure the subtle signals in your biochemistry will-”

“I don’t need to be electrocuted, thank you,” Thera said as she walked through the halls, surrounded by the new great spirits of the world as she dealt with a small side effect she hadn’t fully expected to have to handle when more of them were made.

Her family, the original members of it at least, were the eight great spirits who’d come to that new planet after the fall of their old one and for good or ill, their opinions of her hadn’t shifted anywhere near as radically as the regular spirits’ had when they’d changed how they viewed her. Now though, that was no longer true. Swarmed by the new great spirits who’d been born of those who loved her and inherited those feelings as well, it seemed that she wouldn’t be losing her place as their princess any time soon.

But with a place of ruling came the occasional need to be stern as she looked at all of them who surrounded her, keeping their original forms for the moment with nothing else picked like her father had and leaving her to speak up.

“All of you, I know you’re excited but you each have a lot to do, don’t you? Great spirits don’t get to rest so easily.”

Not just looking after the small ones, they had to figure out what part, if any, they wanted to play in the planet’s defense, all of them being given the same freedom of choice as Mora so long as what they wanted wasn’t going to actively hinder the others, and on top of that, they needed to devote time to understanding who they were as well.

Great spirits were less defined by their element than the regular ones could be but that didn’t mean it had no effect on them at all and they were each just so new. Even in the normal case where a great spirit would die and be replaced, the ones who would combine into a new one each had an eternity behind them to make up what they were but not so here. Except for Bloom and Grace, every combined great spirit had spent at most only seconds as the regular ones after they’d been born. The mana that made them up would carry some of the memories and information of the spirits who’d created them but they didn’t have experience as beings of their new combined affinities and all of them needed to put time into learning just who and what they were.

With the comment of their princess having the weight to make them go to start figuring it out, leaving one by one, just as cheerful as when they’d arrived with only a few parting words before giving her some breathing room.

I wonder if I’m ever going to get any downtime again after all of this? She couldn’t help but ask herself. Even then, her mana empowering was as stretched out as it could be with all of the new spirits taking advantage of it to help grow their numbers and while she had no issue with any of them seeking her out for help or even to chat, it felt like it was going to be coming a lot more.

Still, it’s for the best. She told herself, feeling a genuine smile touch her lips as she opened a door to the packed room beyond, with Lux watching over Seren and Mora, the toddler sitting comfortably on his technically younger cousin’s lap while Mora did his best to talk to a few of the soul spirits who were hanging around him, with none of them being the ones to notice her enter.

No, that privilege was reserved for both the fairy and the earth spirit among them, with the first darting forward to plant herself squarely on Thera’s face.

“Thera! It’s been too long!” Insia yelled out, her flames warm and muffling as Thera tried to reply.

“Sorry I haven’t been able to come by in a bit, Insia. Work’s been a lot and I’ve been…” Avoiding walking through here since I didn’t want to discuss Mora with my parents and-

“Anyway, I’ll be popping through a bit more often again so I’ll make sure I stop to see you when I do, okay?”

“Okay!”

“And it’s good to see you too, Rocky. Have you been doing well?”

“As always.”

“Good, good, and I see you’ve both met Mora now? The family only ever gets bigger, huh?”

“Yeah, it’s great,” Insia laughed before flying over to her newest cousin. “The baby of the family!”

“I’m not a baby,” Mora said, still speaking with his mana to the spirits in the room as he answered.

“You’re not even a year old yet!”

“So?”

“So, that means you’re a baby! Not to worry though, if you have any issues, just come to your big cousin,” Insia told him, puffing out her chest proudly. “I’ll help you out.”

Thera chuckled at the small exchange, enjoying it for all it was worth. Even if Mora was being a bit quiet with Insia for now, she was comfortable chalking it up to shyness compared to what things had been like in the past. Even just yesterday he’d been a lot more talkative with both her and Ben, finally feeling like he was really opening up to them.

It’s nice.

While they had their little back and forth, her aunt patted the seat beside her, the invitation clear for Thera as she went to sit down, resting her head on Lux’s shoulder.

“Nice, isn’t it?” The light spirit asked.

“It is, I should have brought him sooner.”

“Oh, don’t worry about such things too much. Parenthood is something you figure out as you go along.”

“Mmh.”

She still stood by that she was acting as his guardian but when it came down to it, it didn’t feel like there was really a difference so she held her tongue; for Mora’s sake too. She didn’t know how he’d feel personally if she kept insisting she wasn’t his parent and with things going so well, she didn’t want to risk ruining the progress they’d made with a thoughtless comment either.

And I guess it doesn’t really matter in the end. She told herself. The roles are the same, it would just be nice to know what he thinks about it too.

The boy’s relationship with his actual parents was a whole other issue they hadn’t spoken about, nor did she know if she should. There were levels of complications to it that she didn’t have any idea how to begin to address. How did one talk to a child about his abandonment, or for that matter, about the expectations behind his birth and how the two were connected?

But I didn’t ask him about why he didn’t want to use his magic either and look at all that happened. She thought with a heavy sigh. But this and that aren’t necessarily the same things either but there’s no way to know if it will cause issues down the line if I don’t try to talk to him about it but maybe it will just make things worse for him if I do when it seems like he’s moving on from it and… Maybe Lux is right.

Parenthood is something you figure out as you go along. Perhaps it wasn’t perfect advice and she didn’t know if she could really be a parent to Mora but she could be his family and she’d do her best, with it clear she wasn’t going to be alone in it either. She had her family, all of them both new and old and that wasn’t all she had as the door opened once more, both her mother and Ben coming through.

“Sorry that took a while,” He said. “Needed to give Valaria a bit more help than expected and she asked if I could try to help her raise her connect a level before I left. Everything good here?”

“Fantastic,” She told him, this time patting the seat beside her as he squeezed onto the couch with them while her mother took her place beside Mora. “Anything else happen?”

“Ah, not really. I spoke with the smoke and mist spirits a bit while I passed them, the two seemed to be in a pretty heated debate about their affinities and wanted some outside opinions but lucky for them, they happened to ask probably the only guy who knows entire books of spells for such obscure branches.”

“Ha, it feels like you’ve won from this as much as anyone,” She teased. “Mister magic expert right here now has swarms of people who are going to be figuring out all of the finer details of every weird and obscure combined affinity.”

“Well, not exactly every one,” He sighed. “What I wouldn’t have given for just a handful of time spirits to have stuck around. What’s so good about the end of the universe, anyway? If they’d stayed, forget all of the time branches, Mora should have been able to, in theory, create a general magic spirit. Ugh, the loss of potential right there, it’s gonna drive me insane to think about…”

Now there was an idea that would never get to see its full worth. They already knew Uriel who’d started with a general magic skill, one that combined all of the affinitied magics of the world but it was a path the spirits would never be able to replicate, with Lux laughing at the thought.

“Ah, it would have been far nicer if they never went at all but sadly, our nature as we know it means not a single time spirit could have stayed behind, the paradox of it trapped them all here unless they all left together.”

“Paradox?”

“Only one great spirit of any affinity can exist, it seems that’s true of the combined affinities too,” Lux said, nodding Mora’s way and seemed to have asked him a similar question that Ben had while she’d been alone with him. “But if the great time spirit moved himself to the future then in the present, there’d be no great time spirit and a new one would be born. Then once time caught up to whatever future they sent themselves to, there’d be two of them and they could just repeat the process again and again, creating an endless supply but it seems there’s no way to cheat that one bit of our nature.”

“Huh, interest,” Ben muttered, the idea driving him deep into his thoughts at a fact that Thera couldn’t help but regard with only mild interest. Even if they hadn’t known what would happen to their race and their world as a whole, the time spirits had in essence abandoned the rest of their kind to whatever fate they’d hold. It wasn’t something she held against them, she didn’t really feel anything for them one way or another, she just couldn’t help to think that if she’d been driven by some desire to do the same thing that they had then she would have at least broken the trip up into fragments. Jumps of a hundred or even a thousand years at a time, what did it matter? For beings with an infinite lifespan, why be in such a rush to reach its end?

Well, it doesn’t matter anymore.

They’d made their choice and if by some chance they ever did reappear before the end of everything, they were sure to be in for quite the surprise. A lost world and, if they managed to find that new one, so many new members of their kind the likes of which they’d never before imagined.

“Well, speaking of going,” Her mother spoke up, having managed to get Mora, Insia, and Seren all tight in her arms during the brief distraction the conversation had provided. “You’re taking on another tower in a day or two, aren’t you?”

“We are, mom. Don’t worry though, it’ll be fine.”

“Who’s worried? I just thought you’d need someone to babysit for you. Mora, sweetheart? Wouldn’t you like to have a day or two to be spoiled by grandma?”

“…I think I just want to stay with Delair please.”

“Boo but fine, I suppose I need to put in some more work making sure you’ll choose me next time then which means my mean, mean daughter needs to make sure you visit more.”

“I’ll be bringing him by plenty from now on so he can see everyone in the family and what do you mean by mean? I’m basically a saint for putting up with your antics for as long as I did.”

“You are literally a saintess though,” Ben muttered, getting his nose flicked as a result and making Pelenia’s mock sadness slip for just a moment before she put it back on and started to play it up.

“You didn’t introduce me to my first grandchild, for what? Weeks? I wasn’t able to properly bond. I wanted a little grandma’s boy.”

“Mora, if she’s too much then you can come sit with me and Ben.”

“It’s okay, she means well,” He said before flinching at the naked joy his answer gave. “Right?”

“When she isn’t trying to entertain herself then she does,” Thera relented. “But that doesn’t mean you should just let her get away with everything. If she makes you uncomfortable at all then just let me know, I’ll make sure she doesn’t do it again.”

She watched her mom mouth the word ‘parent’ at her with a playful grin that she ignored, not wanting Mora to mistake who her glare was meant for. 

And no matter what she can be like, she doesn’t hesitate to show people she loves them at least. She admitted, giving her mother the smallest of passes. After all, she herself didn’t think she was great at it but she wanted Mora to feel loved. The more who could help with that, the better.

<MANA EMPOWERING LEVEL INCREASED>

<MANA ENHANCEMENT LEVEL INCREASED>

<SPIRIT COMPREHENSION LEVEL INCREASED>

<LIFE SENSE LEVEL INCREASED>

<DARK SENSE LEVEL INCREASED>

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep