CORE Vol. 3 pt. 15 (Patreon)

((Blame me being late on 2020. If we can blame everything else on 2020, we can blame my lateness on it. Also, I'm going to try to write EDO, LDQ, and TTE today. Will I actually be able to do it? Who knows, but I'm going to try now that I feel properly motivated.))

Have you ever had a day where you sat down and knew that you had something to do, but you failed to find the motivation to do it? Instead of doing that which was expected of you, you simply sat there hoping that it would somehow magically be finished on its own so that you could do something else?

If you have, then that is entirely unrelatable to me!

I wish I could so proudly declare that, anyways.

The truth is, my reader, that I am having one such day. I feel that I will not be able to sleep soundly at night if I am not able to finish writing at least some of this today, and I do wish to write it, yet there is simply no motivation. My mind is empty. I feel as if staring at a wall would be more productive.

This should not even be difficult for me considering that all I have to do is retell events that have already happened. I already know everything that there is to write, yet actually putting the words down on paper feels increasingly difficult.

Apparently, artists sometime feel this way. They struggle to turn canvass into beauty no matter how desperately they wish to. “Artist’s block,” they call it. I believe I am having something similar to that at the moment.

But I am CORE.

I am the emperor of this world! I have slain the most powerful of monsters! I have crushed armies underneath my feet! I have even successfully kept my many wives happy!

If I can do all of that, then do you truly expect me to allow a piece of paper to defeat me?! Of course not!

Ah, I needed that. Since you are not aware of what I just did, I punched myself in the face as hard as I could. I lost a couple of teeth and am bleeding, but I will be fine so long as I find where the teeth are and make sure not to drip any blood onto the paper!

But the teeth can wait! Whether I have myself healed now or later does not matter. And so long as I keep my head tilted back, no blood will drip onto the paper! After all, I feel motivation now! I would not allow this motivation to go to waste!

Ah, but there is one thing I would like to say first. Perhaps you do not ever need to hear this. Perhaps you need to hear this on a frequent basis. Regardless of what it is, I will tell this to you now. It is alright to feel blocked at times. Whether you are trying to solve a problem, write a story, paint a picture, train your body – whatever it may be that you feel blocked in regard to, it is alright to feel that way. Some people feel blocked and they use this feeling as a sign that they are failures and that they should give up. That is never the case.

Most importantly, you are not a failure. Second most importantly, so long as you continue to try your best, you will eventually overcome whatever challenge may be in front of you. Even if the challenge is impossible to overcome, you will find a way to break right through it! Reach out and seize your destiny with your own hands! Should a mountain ever dare to challenge you, crush it within your palm and leave it behind to watch you move on!

Even the most overwhelming of mountains will eventually be reduced to pebbles should you assert your will over it for long enough. It may take hours or it may take years, but you will eventually succeed so long as you never give up.

When I was struggling to write, what did I do? I sat down and forced myself to write! Even if most of what I have written thus far has been the ramblings of your emperor rather than continuing on with my past, I am still writing which I was struggling to imagine myself doing just minutes ago! I was worried that I would be sitting here for the rest of the evening having no idea how to write. Then I forced myself to write. Now here I am, nearly two pages later with the motivation building within me as the mountain of a block is left behind!

I am living proof that this method works.

…

Well, I suppose that you would not know about this if I do not tell you about it right now. However, I feel like that would be dishonest.

I fell asleep.

Yes, right after I wrote about how I am living proof, I was coerced into the bedroom, engaged with my wives, and proceeded to fall asleep afterward. It is now the middle of the night. I woke up and wondered why I felt like I still had something to do. It was then that I realized I still had to finish writing this chapter. However… on the way to this room, I came across something that I never expected to come across.

My children were awake and playing. They were supposed to be sound asleep at this time of night! How long have they been staying up past their bedtime without us noticing?! I have no idea when they started this misbehavior, but I made sure it ended tonight! Such impudent behavior could not be allowed to continue!

That was why I took the children at fault out onto the palace grounds, and we chased each other in a game of tag until they were all exhausted and could no longer continue! Naturally, I made sure to carry them to bed and tuck them in afterward. They are now sleeping soundly and will continue doing so until the morning hours! Hopefully, since I caught them and tired them out, they will not complain about being tired later. Them staying up all night playing together explains why they have been so sleepy during the day lately.

Now then. With all of that out of the way with, let us continue! It should be easy now that I know how I want to go about this.

Rather than describe every little day-to-day happening of my life back then, I will go ahead and summarize a stretch of time so that we may get to the next important event. 

Much of what happened in the days after what I last wrote about was related to the kobolds. They were determined to train, farm, and mine.

Each morning started off with training led by my monsters. Only a small handful of the kobolds were able to actually keep up with the training, but they all tried their best. From exercising to sparring matches with one another, the kobolds trained their hardest.

Also, just to remind you once again: when I refer to the new kobolds that came to live within my territory, there were more than just kobolds there. Aurbolds and some mahaguin were included. It is simply easier to refer to them all as kobolds since they were both older versions of kobolds and because kobolds made up the majority.

Moving on, once the training was over, the kobolds split up into different groups – well, after eating and resting for a short time, of course.

These groups consisted of growers, miners, and gatherers. The growers tended to the plants growing from the seeds in the lava rows set up for them, the miners began to strip the nearby tunnels directly outside of the dungeon for their valuable metals while working underneath the Emperor’s Picks, and the gatherers explored the tunnels under the protection of the Obsidian Guard for anything valuable or edible. They also gathered more milk from the cave leeches.

Everything proceeded as smoothly as one could hope for. The new arrivals had no issue serving underneath my monsters, they were all able to keep themselves busy, and new resources were brought into the dungeon at a rate far higher than anything before. Lumps of metal, mushrooms and other edible plants, the corpses of monsters killed by the Obsidian Guard while protecting the gatherers – we developed a sustainable economy in just weeks. And yes, it did take weeks, and several weeks passed by without issue much to our surprise. Most of us were sure that the humans or ancients would attack again within that time, yet nothing happened. The humans avoided coming into the volcano more than ever before. There were no suspicious movements coming from them either when checking the observation contraption that Lucia had. Though, according to her, it was probably a bad thing that the humans were waiting so long before trying anything else. If they were waiting… that meant they were preparing. They would likely be even more careful in their next attempt at exterminating us.

Then there were the ancients. While theories could be thought up as far as the humans were concerned, the same did not apply to the ancients. None of us truly understood them nor did we have any idea where their main hives were. All we knew was that their scouts could occasionally be seen roaming through the tunnels, and they were always killed when spotted.

As for my monsters – well, Corra took her “punishment” extremely seriously. She made sure to, quite literally, never leave my sight. Whenever I sat upon my throne, she either sat on my lap or stood in front of me. Whenever I trained with Ahti or Crim, Corra made sure to always position herself so that she was ahead of me and behind my opponent. There were several times where we simply stood in front of one another staring at each other. Whenever I was thinking about what to do, Corra would stand directly in front of me and stare up into my eyes with a smile on her face. I often stared back since there was nothing else for me to do while thinking, resulting in what likely looked like a staring competition to anybody else.

When it came to Ahti, she also became much clingier. While Corra did not have any standing orders aside from staying within my sight, Ahti was responsible for checking on our defenses, training the kobolds, and sparring with myself and the others. She may very well have become the busiest member of my dungeon aside from Novla. This led to her making the most out of her free time.

Ahti’s first responsibility when free was to sleep. Whenever she did not need to sleep, though, I found her all over me. She would hold my arms, hang from my back, sprawl out across my lap as if she were a small animal in need of her belly being rubbed, and she also – well, I suppose I could go into a bit of detail with something she would do.

Imagine me sitting there on my throne with Corra standing in front of me, happily staying within my sight as ordered.

Now imagine Ahti climbing up onto my lap while purposely positioning her head right in front of mine so that I could not see Corra.

“A-Ahti!” Corra whined. “I’m supposed to stay within my lord’s sight!” She tried moving to the side a little, but Ahti tilted her head in the direction that Corra moved while looking into my eyes with a smile.

“Ahti and Master time,” Ahti said. “Ahti wants looked at, too.”

Corra was quick to pout and try to get within my sight in every way that she could think of, but Ahti’s masterful attempts at blocking her from my sight prevailed.

It essentially became a game between them. Corra kept on trying to get into my sight while Ahti kept on blocking her. Ahti grew increasingly smug about her victories while Corra grew increasingly pouty. It was only when Corra finally had enough that she climbed up onto my lap directly behind Ahti and forced her head next to hers over her shoulder, resulting in both of the girls having their faces right in front of mine.

Personally, I found the entire scene amusing. Watching their little game made me smile and took my mind off of thinking about how else we could prepare for the humans and ancients since that was what I spent most of my days thinking about.

Ahti was not done teasing Corra, though. Now that Corra finally made her way back into my sight, Ahti leaned forward and placed a kiss on my left cheek before turning to look at Corra. Corra, naturally, turned red and panicked a little. She knew what she had to do, but she found such a thing far more embarrassing than… for example, humping my hand in front of a crowd, or grinding against my leg in front of the other monsters. After all, those were things she did while lost in lust. This would be something that she did while fully aware of herself and the situation.

“What are you waiting for?” I asked her. It was obvious to me that she was jealous of what Ahti did, and I had no problem with either of them doing it, so I failed to see what the issue was.

“My – my lord!” Corra said. “Is it truly alright? May I really have the honor of—”

Because she was taking so long, I grabbed her by the back of her head to pull her a bit more over Ahti’s shoulder and mimicked what Ahti did by pressing my lips against Corra’s cheek. This ended up turning her into a bright red, stuttering mess atop my lap.

Then Ahti had an idea. She grabbed my attention and pointed at her lips. Given that she did that right after what I did, I assume she wanted me to do the same thing to her lips. So, I did. I pressed my lips against Ahti’s and turned her emotionless expression into one of happiness and smiling. Though, only a little bit of smiling.

Corra was still flustered from the first kiss, but I figured that she would have liked me to do that with her after I did it with Ahti, so I took ahold of Corra once more and pressed my lips to hers.

Her reaction was one that I did not quite understand. She made a high-pitched noise that sounded like a combination of squealing and moaning, while gently smacking her fists against my chest, while also closing her eyes and leaning into the kiss.

Though, as soon as she stopped smacking my chest, I let go of her since something didn’t seem right.

Her body went limp.

Had I not still been holding onto her, she would have fell right off of my lap and onto the floor behind Ahti since her eyes were shut and she was completely gone. She was still alive, but she was not conscious.

I will admit that I panicked a little.