Inside the bath. All the princesses were whispering about how getting close to Cain required walking into hell. This made their task seems like a distant dream, but a mirage that keep disappearing as soon as they got close.

“You can’t just go alone!” Hati approached Mary.

“Hehe, it was hard but I managed to make it. Good luck to you.” Mary replied with a smile, now Hati was left alone. (With Skoll) in their journey to get the wives’ approval.

“Now I have another one, at this rate it will never end.” Hati sighed.

“You needn’t worry, you have my approval from now.” Mary said thinking, ‘The more of us there are, the better our chances. We can’t just be a burden.’

“Is that so..” Hati smiled. She tried to hug Mary but she jumped away.

“Not in the bath!” Mary cried as she stood a bit away.

After the bath, Cain walked out to meet his father. Carefully avoiding Farryn as he was a bit uncomfortable around her. He prefers not to deal with her unless absolutely necessary.

“Can we take a walk?” Cain asked.

“I was going out for a drink, care to come?” Chad replied.

Cain knew that his father usually went to drink at night, probably trying to keep himself in check.

“It’s just drinking right?” Cain asked.

“Of course, are you disappointed?” Chad replied.

“He has been surprisingly tamed those last days, probably knowing that he has a son helped him a bit.” Ariel walked after them.

Chad usually had a severe problem with women, he wasn’t known to spend a night without one but he held himself well.

Cain gave Ariel doubting looks, knowing his father and that she has been spending the night with him. He could probably call her stepmother at this point.

A maid approached them, “Dinner is ready, please head to the dining room.”

“Should we go out after dinner? I doubt the king has good drinks.” Chad said and the maid frowned. “We have the best of wines from the green hills of..”

“Yep, it was bad the moment you said wine. I don’t care about refined taste or rare wine. I like a cold, big, mug of beer or ale.” Chad replied.

“He’s right, nothing beat cold beer with some grilled fish. Even I don’t like eating with a toothpick.” Cain was with his father, he disliked the nobles’ eating habits’ that focuses on eating slowly and with grace, as well, as sipping wine.

“I thought the white mage and his esteemed father would appreciate a royal feast.” The maid said with a smile.

“A feast is when you eat as much as you can. What your royals prepare is slow fine dining, which we don’t like.” Even Ariel seemed to agree. Heaven didn’t have fine dining, it’s an endless wilderness where anything you wish appears in front of you. The food there is as natural as it gets, with fresh fruits and roasted meat. For drinks. When you wish for it, it appears like a river so you can drink as much as possible.

“If you have informed us earlier we would have prepared a roasted leg of lamb and a beer barrel. As they say, heroes eat a lot.” The maid replied with a sad voice.

“You needed to worry about it, let’s go and have dinner,” Cain said, even if it wasn’t to their liking they had to attend.

At the dinner table, the food was plenty. But as Cain and Chad feared, it was only the expensive small portion stuff. The best thing Chad could see was the five roasted pigs, but considering the place had the king, and the queens as well as them, five pigs seemed like a small number.

“Cheer, for the white mage’s victory.” The king lifted his cup.

“Cheers!” Cain lifted his cup while stealing glances at his father’s disappointed face. Chad was looking at the tiny plate of salmon roe in front of him.

“Can this even feed a cat?” Chad mumbled and Ariel pinched him.

Chad wasn’t alone thinking like that, Zaleria was also glaring down at her plate. She used to sit at a river and gulp salmons in batches. Seeing the tiny plate in front of her was just sad.

“Should I really be here?” Nemmoxon asked, she has been fully healed by Alice. The maids even gave her new clothes and fixed her hair.

“What is it Cain, you seem a bit disappointed.” Cassius approached him.

“You know we have two a dragon here? The quality is nice but that won’t matter when the quantity is small. Do you really expect a dragon to be satisfied with three plates?” Cain asked.

“What do you usually feed her?” Cassius asked, they expected her to eat as humans do.

“At least a full lamb a day, she can eat several large monsters in one sitting so that’s on the low side. And it’s not just her, I, Father, Ariel, Nemmoxon, and even Sofia eat a lot.” Cain replied.

“Don’t worry about that, Mother has thought about it and she seems to have ordered some special meals to be made. It’s just that they will take some time to get ready.” Cassius replied.

“So this is just an appetizer?”

“For you, for me and father it’s probably more that we can eat,” Cassius assured Cain. It’s just that the day has been hectic and they failed to prepare in time.

As the dinner went on, Cain ate slowly anticipating what Cassius told him. It took about an hour to arrive. Roasted Kraken meat, and a lot of it.

Cain simply stared at it, I had to be that, the fleet had brought a lot of it.

The feast continued, with each bite, Cain regretted not returning to Furberg to eat his maid’s cooking.

After dinner, Cain went out with his father and Ariel for a drink. Their destination was the local tavern. The guards asked to go with them but Cain just rejected them.

Before going out, Cain used [Invisibility]

Walking from the castle Gate, Cain could see the tavern ahead, there was a straight road leading to it.

“Why are we using invisibility?” Chad asked.

“I don’t want people to see us walk from the castle, which will just create problems,” Cain replied as they walked across the lively streets.

From one of the castle’s windows, Mary was watching them with keen eyes. After a long discussion with the girls, they have reached the conclusion that she will become the sixth wife but won’t have a marriage as she requested.

‘A marriage will only slow things down, Cain has more important things to work on.’ Mary thought.historical

Her first night was decided to be after Marina’s, all that remained was informing Cain of everything. That would be Sofia’s and Gracie’s job tonight.

Mary turned around and walked toward her bed, gently sitting down and looking at Cain’s sword and armor. She has gotten them from Alice with the excuse of using them as a reference to search for new weapons for Cain in the capital.

“Gorgon’s iron, it’s lacking.” Mary grabbed Cain’s sword in her hand.

“This should be better.” With a feint green light, a metallic blade emerged from her other hand. “Now I only need to take it to a blacksmith to make the handle and the sheath.

As she looked at Cain’s armor, he seemed to prefer light leather armor over medium or heavy armor. “I guess we have to buy that, the quality will be dubious thought.” She mumbled with a sad face, the quality of the armor can make the difference between an instant kill and a survivable hit.

After making sure everything was fine, she went to sleep. Tomorrow will be a long working day for her.