"Sowry... for not being able to open my eyes to check if these work," Anazenpha murmured meekly as she sheepishly fiddled with the Serpent Sircles sunglasses in all their circular greatness of goofiness. The snake girl was led upon a plushy limb of BRM Umbra Termination, belly down, with her other arm and legs left to limply dangle towards the floor as her little tail pointed towards the ceiling like a surrender pole. Yuuvia, unlike the sulking snake demon, was still out of it from having been pinned under Ana and her deceptively tremendous weight.

  "There's no need to fret over it; if anything, it's a good sign," Lizu teased, using a reassuring tone in the way she spoke as she eagerly caressed Enetha's face.

  With the princess securely on her lap, Lizu had free rein to smush and squeeze the little princess's pliable cheeks to her heart's content. Under the influence of Lizu's passionate hands, Enetha finally made all kinds of visual expressions, even if she hadn't actively moved her facial muscles to do so.

  "Heh?/It Does?" Ana and Enetha asked, respectively, with enough confusion behind their voices that it was almost impossible to ascertain who was more confused. Feeling the vibrations of the lap-bound girl's words course through her fingertips, that would liberate a weaker-willed person of their soul, Lizu playfully pulled at Enetha's cheeks until the little princess was making a goofily entertaining smile. Enetha felt conflicted towards the predicament subjected to her at Lizu's affectionate discretion, because she couldn't understand why she enjoyed the sensation so much. Enetha considered whether she was too tired to think straight.

  Adding on to what she said a moment ago, Lizu was happy to put the others at ease: "I'd say, it only shows your body recognises it is giving the same effect as your catalyst pills, so your body is acting on muscle memory; that, and I'm certain my tome sketching is up to snuff, so of course I'm confident in the effectiveness."

  "You sure?" Anazenpha muttered meekly, wanting more than anything to believe her friend, but just couldn't shake the uncertainty she felt towards herself and how she didn't trust her baser instincts. If the short girl had to assign something to compare the feeling to, it would have to be joining a sports event only to be a no-show on the day of the event. The mental comparison of her own thinking somehow left the demon girl more disheartened than before, leaving her to weakly sway her little tail in self-directed, deflated dismay. Her woes didn't go unnoticed by the others, paining their hearts so.

  Inkaro also noticed. However, he wasn't stoked in the same way like the girls were; in fact, it wasn't a stretch of the imagination to say he was emotionally indifferent, but that indifference didn't keep him from saying something to help the mood that impeded his concentration.

  "Don't discount Lizu's skills just because she used to have a handwriting font that was eye-catching for the wrong reason," Inkaro mentioned calmly with a sheet of blueprint paper in hand and a pen in the other that he used to scribble away at some new creation commission.

  "Oh, ok." The two shortest girls of the gang said with no hesitation, taking Inkaro's remark at face value, much to Lizu's offended disheartenment and demoralisation. The dragolyte even whimpered out a pitiful whine as she relinquished her pinching of Enetha's unquestionably pinchable cheeks. The dragolyte wasn't sure what was more of a critical hit: the girls' easy acceptance of her fiancé's explanation or the fact that Inkaro outed her for having poor handwriting as a kid. Nonetheless, Lizu was left stunned to such an extent that a second strike against her mind would certainly do her in, just like Yuuvia currently was.

  "Inkaro isn't capable of being morally sneaky; he's always straightforward, to a tee, unlike someone," Enetha stated bluntly, getting an especially violent shudder out of Lizu as Enetha's words struck her meaner than a physical gutpunch. Such a verbal gut punch, given how mighty it was, left Lizu a stuttering and dishevelled mess that could only babble out the odd word or two. However, unlike Yuuvia, who secretly allowed herself to remain in the clutches of disorientation, Lizu swiftly snapped back to her senses before she found herself the victim of Enetha's little hands kneading her cheeks, who imparted the very same treatment she'd received from the dragolyte but with tremendous interest.

  That interest manifested in an unexpected way: in the form of Enetha magically sticking some of her Mould Breaker chess pieces to the dragolyte's cheeks by their bases, followed by some on her forehead, and finally, one of BRM Umbra Termination's plushy tentacles being directed to rest on top of Lizu's head.

  "Inkaro's being too quiet; he better not be making a design with no taste," Lizu murmured aloud, not batting so much as a strand of her eyelashes at the visual disaster of a chessboard Enetha had left her in. Enetha grumbled as she plucked the chess pieces back with feverish efficiency, one she carried over to stashing those same pieces in her kitsune handbag before planting her fists on her hips. While her cloth-like limbs partook in her feverous demeanour by hovering behind her ominously, Enetha stared down Lizu, face still sporting an absence of emotion. However, her actions clearly told another story, or so Lizu could guess. What Lizu couldn't have guessed happened next: Enetha swinging a strong, pointing finger right at Lizu's nose, but not daring to boop it and look childish.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  "I challenge you, Lizuranti Feubread, to a Duel of Glamour!" Enetha exclaimed passionately, face still not changing to match her tone. For extra, bombastic flair to her proclimation which she thought would get her message through to Lizu more effectively, Enetha thrust her hands forward, attempting to push Lizu over with a chest shove to assert dominion in the interaction, only for her little hands to be rebounded back at her with enough recoil for the little princess to almost lose her balance.

  Whilst Lizu watched the scene before her of Enetha flailing her arms and clothey appendages about before tumbling backwards and getting stuck upside down between BRM Umbra Termination's tentacles, the little princess could only use her legs to kick about fruitlessly. Such a sight Enetha's self-imposed predicament was.

  Lizu exhaustedly asked, "Isn't it a little late for something so physically active?"

  "Fine, we can settle things during the next weekend!" Enetha declared while remaining stuck, voice muffled through the fluff-filled tentacles of her own activated golem. BRM:UT lostly gazed at her creator's flailing legs, unable to get a clear message out of the little princess other then loosly stringed together orders that conflicted with the last. Before long, Enetha found herself tumbling to her back as her active golem parted its tentacles around her when it reverted to its chess piece mode.

  "Can't yuu have a food eating competition?" Anazenpha suggested eagerly, already drooling from her missspoken 'you,' happily imagining all the food that would need to be put in front of her for it to even scratch of begining of her current limit, that being around the size of Lizu and Inkaro's house. As she continued to drool uncontrollably, with some of it splatting on Yuuvia's face until the noble snapped awake, Anazenpha fiended for an especially juicy steak of a Minorunko, knowing the unruly chewiness of its outer skin was worth getting through to reach the delicacy buried underneath. The thought was truly divine to the snake-like demon.

  "I... suppose, but it can't be a quantity-based one," Enetha grumbled reservedly, choosing to remain led on her back as she slowly entombed herself with her clothy appendages, wrapping herself up until they were tightly around her like a cocoon. Shortly following, the little princess could be faintly heard snoring within.

  Lizu faintly slumped forward, unable to tell if the influx of suggishness she felt was relief from Enetha relenting on fighting her, or begrudging amusement that Yuuvia was busy wiping Ana's saliva off her face. But as the soft ambient snoring within the clothy cocoon grew and grew, the dragolyte almost wanted to join Enetha in taking a nap. It sounded quite appealing, extra so when the thought of training her memoria popped into her mind. However, the moment she'd fall from the fence of whether to sleep or not was when she spotted Inkaro waving his fingers at her, waiting for her to notice. The simple fact he wanted her was enough to slap the sleepiness out of her.

  "Would you like to add some feminine charm to this?" Inkaro asked openly in an unimposing whisper, whilst one of the worker beegirl led atop her head. Following a subdued giggle of self-satisfaction, Lizu rose to her feet and sauntered her way over to him with pompous flair, jokingly remarking that Inkaro would end up making the body too pragmatic and unstylish if she left him to work on the design alone.

  Taking a seat and sitting down like it was her rightful throne, Lizu plopped herself on Inkaro's lap while wrapping her tail around him subconsiously, like it was second nature and unnecessary of question. With her legs crossed, postured relaxed, and certain of her comfortability in where she sat, Lizu inspected the designs Inkaro had already drawn up. Pursing up her lips, searching for any instance that Louailanye —based on how Inkaro described her and what she'd written on the request form— wouldn't approve of, Lizu realised Inkaro hadn't drawn enough for her to point out anything. So with nothing to point out, Lizu decided to comment on something else instead: "But to think we'd get a personal request from the strongest demon, no, person in the world and the pope at the same time. Although I only understand one of them."

  "The request for a new core for the churches infux mana converter?" Inkaro asked swiftly as he handed the pen to Lizu for her to have a go at sketching some designs. Gladly taking the pen, Lizu twirled the non-magical pen between her fingers, leaving afterimages of it in her wake, as she got her mental juices flowing.

  "Yeah, that one makes sense, but a golem body for a phantom kitrunai certainly is bizarre, and that's coming from me," Lizu said in playful jest as she fine-tuned what Inkaro had already sketched.

  While the two common-sense destroyers were working away and covering for the other's shortcomings so easily, Yuuvia was in a daze as she blankly stared at the designing-focused duo, her jaw hanging low at the sheer outlandish gall of the two for acting so nonchalantly about getting personal requests from the pope and thee Kalusozalna Life, let alone at the same time.