As the warm orange hue of the slowly encroaching sunset bled through the sky, Inkaro popped the last piece of his original clothes back on his body. The one piece of his attire still excluded from him was his combined magic tool, the Coupling Binding Mana-Crystal Metal and Dragonbone Steel Chain Type-29 and Storage Golden Agate Type-41, that had been sitting on his second-floor workbench since his clothes were unjustly confined to the washing machine.

  "Not going in your second loadout?" Nuenala spoke in jest, flexing legs, arms, and tail with a bizarre bridge-like stretch to ensure her limbs were sufficiently limber for her upcoming gaming beatdowns at the Phasmo Catalyplex.

  As she stretched, she watched the underside of the second floor and traced Inkaro's location as she heard his footsteps, but she eventually hopped to her feet in front of the door as she heard Inkaro heading in her direction.

  "Lizu wouldn't let me hear the end of it if I allowed those clothes to get fast-food stains on them," Inkaro stated, explaining his position as he attached the free end of his tapestry chain to its spot on his coat.

  As she pulled the front door open with a tiny amount of effort, from brute forcing the mana-frequency sensitive latches to give way, Nuenala peered back at Inkaro over her shoulder with a cheeky grin plastered on her face: "Huh? How do you know Phasmo Catalyplex has fast food? Have you secretly been there before? How sneaky of you."

  With a groan of dismay at having to hear Nuenala's teasing words, Inkaro hopped straight down from the second floor, skipping right past the mana staircase, and trotting his way right towards the open door.

  "You mentioned the place has pizza, so it wasn't hard to extrapolate the other types of food this place you objectifiy might possess," Inkaro retorted as he and Nuenala exited the house, closing the front door with an over-the-top amount of care, so as not to wake Lizu.

  Left to her devices while she sat in front of the floating TV, Enetha watched the four player characters meander about the screen whenever she pressed a button on their corresponding controller using the fluffy ball at the end of her cloth-like appendages to do so. Button press after joystick push, all four of the characters moved about according to Enetha's command as she had the characters act out the exact same movements they employed from the prior match, with Enetha's P4 character getting knocked out instantly by Nuenala's P1 character. Enetha frowned, angered by how she'd managed to get defeated within five seconds of her first game. "Stupid blacksmith... thinks she's all that for targeting a princess. If she had gone through with having us fight for real, I'd show her..."

  "Did they already leave?" Lizu grumbled sleepily as she poked her sleepy head over the edge of the second floor, expression resembling a sad puppy watching its owner leave for work. Eyes trained, the dragolyte girl scanned the path Inkaro had taken, starting from the second floor till long after he left the house. "If only I had more self-control, then Inkaro would still be here, misfortune on me."

  As she wallowed in her apparent lack of restraint and Inkaro's newfound absence in her presence, Lizu soppily dragged her tail against the carpeted floor, swishing it from side to side with unquestionable frustration that was buried underneath her drowsy state.

  The dragolyte's transfer from slumber to half-asleep could be called graceful, aided in most part by how little activity was going on up in her head, in the way it wasn't explosive but instead fairly subdued in its execution. Lizu's state of awareness leaned far more towards the sleepy side, so much so that she didn't even register Enetha using her cloth-like appendages to hoist herself onto the second floor and plant herself beside Lizu without a sound.

  The little princess peered her head from side to side, even poking Lizu gently in the cheek to test how responsive she was to external stimuli. Lizu's response was nonexistent. Enetha was convinced a cardboard cutout of Lizu would've had a stronger reaction to her than the real Lizu, probably by tobbling over or something if poked by her.

  Even as Enetha plopped the sphere-shaped ends of her cloth-like appendage on Lizu's back and tail, plotting out their positions as to distribute the other girl's weight out as evenly as possible, Lizu didn't so much make a peep of resistance from the contact.

  Enetha stared the other girl down.

  The look in the little princess's eyes could only be described as stern. It was the sort of sternness born from envy, formed from many years of denial on something she deeply desired, all concentrated into a single moment of rare visual expression: a weak pout.

  "Must be nice... being able to act how you want, whenever you want," Enetha whispered, not that anyone was present to warrant her needing to whisper, to her knowledge anyway. Her fireceness lasted for but a moment, swiftly replaced by a somewhat strained, neutral expression as her cloth-like appendages heaved and wiggled, struggling to lift Lizu barely a few inches off the floor. Heave after heave, all Enetha's efforts amounted to was moving Lizu around a hand's length away from the edge. If things couldn't get any worse for the princess, Enetha felt her body give out, dropping Lizu with a barely audible thud, before collapsing on top of Lizu. "Her weight goes way beyond having extra assets... how didn't Inkaro feel the need to struggle or suffocate earlier?"

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  "Dragolytes are known for their density for a reason, you know. As for father, years of experience is my best evaluation," Morilore stated in her usual simulated tone, her dress in its beige to silver colour of intrigue, as G.Galore hovered beside her head.

  While Morilore bent down in the air to keenly poke at one of the six base mode Mould Breaker rings on Enetha's cloth-like appendage, Enetha mentally groaned as she used her normal arms to weakly climb onto Lizu's back: "Would've been nice to know that before I almost shattered my spine."

  Enetha winced, arching her back as she felt a rather invasive stinging shoot up her back. The sensation triggered an abrupt surge of frustration in the small teen. In a lapse of judgment, Enetha slapped her hands against Lizu's tail in frustration.

  Somehow, that slap of Enetha managed to get a reaction out of the sleeping Lizu, in the form of a giggle indicative of someone being tickled.

  Naturally, that angers Enetha even more. Her bubbling transformed into a fury of powerless punches against Lizu's tail, the lack of power being subconsciously intended so as not to seriously hurt Lizu.

  In no sort of coincidence, Enetha's punching managed to stir Lizu just enough to momentarily pick herself up from the floor, leading Enetha to slide off her back and fall belly down on the carpet with a light thud. With a mighty yawn, not willing herself to open her eyes, Lizu incoherently mumbled about not sensing Inkaro nearby, complaining that no one should dare to wake her up again until her Inkaro got back. Grumbling some other words that were barely words, she crawled her way back onto the floor, catching Enetha underneath her in the process before the princess had the chance to roll away.

  Trapped within the authority of Lizu's weapons once again, Enetha blankly stared forward with her cheeks burning red like the earliest possible sunrise.

  After shuffling embarrassedly for minutes on end, Enetha managed to get her hand free and reached into her small light cyan kitsune-head-themed handbag, rummaging around its contents before pulling out her glassy bowtie-wearing silver king piece.

  She shuffled a bit more until her Chess piece-grasping hand escaped from under Lizu.

  With a laboured toss, Enetha sent the piece flying, straight through the Mould Breaker ring, balancing on top of one of her appendage hands. The piece left the boundary of the M.B. ring, and its emerald jigsaw pattern morphed into fissure-looking cracks.

  Tumbling through the air, the Silver King chess piece exploded into an emerald spiral of mana. Snaking and coiling, the mana reconfigured, reformatting its internal glyph nodes and chains from their chess piece mode to its golem mode formation, as its once compacted mana was free to take on its meister's intended form.

  Taking no time at all, the spiralling mana finished formatting, leaving Morilore lying in the air, kicking her legs back-and-forth like a lovestruck tween watching their crush, excluding the sappy smile that the mana puppet lacked the capability to do so.

  Suddenly standing in the bedroom was Mould Breaker's Base Ring Mode Silver King Golem: an adult-sized suit of silver armour. Its insides are a glowing emerald green. It is covered in glowing emerald lines that resemble jigsaw pieces. Protrusions on its head that resembled a crown. Behind its head is a large floating opaque white glass-like bowtie that appears to be held together with a muted yellow crescent star-cut moonstone at its centre.

  "Ooh~," Morilore murmured with more of her Inkaro side showing through her synthesised voice as she fluttered a few twirls around the Silver King Golem.

  Turning its head toward Morilore, much to the grimoire's non-visible amusement, the Silver King Golem silently judged whatever the sentient grimoire was thinking. With seniority-influenced professionalism, it only acknowledged the mana puppet for a moment before it generated a green dome of mana, with a glowing emerald jigsaw pattern, from its bowtie's emerald.

  Morilore clapped her hands at the display, her claps slow and methodical, making her attitude come off as condescending. Once the mana field passed over the bed, the sleeping Lizu was instantly teleported on top of it, much to Enetha's relief as she heavily panted from lack of breath.

  "You don't mind if I have a look over on this eye candy for a bit, as payment for keeping quiet about this little incident of yours with my sleeping mother; is this a fair deal, princess?" Enetha found no joy in how condescending that offer sounded, quadruply so at the sentient grimoire's annunciation of her social title. But her self-confidence wouldn't allow her to spin a vocal retort, so Enetha just silently nodded as the mana puppet continued to spin round the Silver King Golem, subjectively drooling over it for hours on end, long after its dome had been dispelled and Enetha returned home by herself.

  The sight of his pseudo-daughter having a crush on something was certainly a surprise to Inkaro when he arrived home by himself another hour later, not that he particularly minded the development.

  Although the way Morilore snickered every time Lizu and the Silver King Golem were both in her view did leave him the tiniest bit concerned. The fits of amusement expressions left her creator wondering what G.Galore pulled to get Enetha to leave a literal piece of national treasure in his and Lizu's home.