章 5: Quo Vadis?

"It mayhaps appear forceful of me, but I have personally chosen you to be my husband, in which you seem to accept consciously." Owen raised one of her eyebrows, sculpting a playful snicker on her face.

"And I didn't regret a single thing- I mean, the bunny ears- I mean… to be exposed to bunny- I mean, this kind of experience!?" Nagan said, still trying his best to accept the reality he was in. "It feels surreal. Many people out there, most of them enslave away their life for a corporation, or die trying to pursue their dream without being able to bring food onto the table, as some really unlucky few could do nothing but to commit to something that was forced onto them. Some are successful enough to cast those scenarios away, it even took quite some time before I'm able to live the life I truly want…

"Which puts me in great disbelief on why you chose me out of many. After all, with all due respect to your decision, uhm, my Queen, I'm just your average nobody!" said the former Deus innocently, the person who created a mountain of corpses out of Earth's invaders not a long time ago.

"Fufu, the role of the Patriarch isn't a role fit for any person to fill. And I truthfully trust my judgment." Owen opened her right hand. The familiar whirring sound of space could be heard as her palm was engulfed in darkness, before shining in prismatic light. She inserted her other hand to the portal of her palm, taking out a strange machination of technology. "To understand this, you need to understand the foundation of my race, along with the context behind the theater of violence that's happening in your world."

The machination contraption appeared to be some sort of wand, as Owen gripped the handle and pointed the asymmetric edge into the sky. A spurt of light was unleashed, before forming a cubic formation in which holographic images began to take form.

The rabbits didn't react much to it, showing that they had already seen or knew of the 'wand' existence one way or another.

"Unknown to many dwellers regarding their world, an unfathomably large-scale event is happening across every world within the sector of Grand Filament, to put it in our lingo. Your universe is within such a radius~

"We don't really know the intrinsic nature of this enigmatic event, but its influence has orchestrated everything into our current timeline. The catalyst for conflict and destruction of magnanimous scale…

"Mmm, to put it simply, a large-scale board of war and conquest have sweeped every instance of comprehensive worlds inside the Grand Filament, and we have no choice but to submit to this development~

"However! Before this event happened, the United Usalian Empire had already sent two hundreds of their princesses into numerous worlds of their own choosing, to find a fitting representative of foreign species to be Patriarchs, and build an independent Kingdom, scattered all over speck and fabric of the jointed reality, to ensure the survival of the Usalian race as a whole.

"Aaaand for your food for thought, Usalian is an unisexual species, and there will always be only one unique individual referred to as the Queen within the colony, the sole producer of offspring within the Usalian community.

"And we always need at least one host of foreign races to reproduce, otherwise the progress of the community will be put into a great halt. Parasitical or outsource dependent, that's up to your interpretation.

"But regardless, as long as you're here, this unique kingdom will remain brimming with potential~!"

"I see." Nagan's eyes sharpened in a confident manner after seeing the marvel of theater shown on the cubic hologram. "So, the unisexual factor and the unheard patriarchal system aside, your system of society works similar to that of a bee hive, and maybe insects in general…

"Wait no, you're basically a sole brood queen within a cooperative colony, the Usalian is a mole rat!" Nagan declared with gravitas.

After hearing that, Owen looked as if she was really perplexed but tried her best to hide it out of goodwill.

"I… I actually can't disagree with that."

"And it makes me even more sorrowful that I married one without any proper preparation…!" Nagan put on a defeated face, muttering something out of his half-stiffen smile of shame, "I didn't even prepare a dowry, nor did I'm the one who proposed first…!"

Owen was just glad that he didn't bring up the mole rat any further.

"I mean, you can start preparing the dowry later…" Owen meekly gestured her fingers.

"It would really look bad on me if I didn't! Makes you wonder what are the chances for an alien from another world to look human enough for interracial marriage. Also, feel free to remove anything I said from your memory."

"Mmmh~ well, for a starter, don't think that every princess is the same either. In terms of appearance, that is." Owen slightly tilted her head with her half-lidded gaze prying elsewhere, putting on a smirk. "From the start, we already chose a world and adapted our body to be compatible with one of the representative races chosen to be our Patriarch.

"In my case, I appeared much more sapient in terms of form." Her eyes went back to latch onto her husband. "To further enhance the compatibility of our mating process~"

Owen then winked promiscuously.

Nagan wasn't dense enough to ignore the implications.

"... Now I know why my hips are aching." Nagan eyed the young Usalians who looked at him with all sorts of expectation. "So they really are mine… Wait, how long have I been unconscious?"

"Five days," Owen answered casually.

"Wait, then how could they…"

"Unlike human mothers, where they need to nurture their vulnerable offspring for a long time inside them, I can skip what you call the 'pregnancy process' and instantly deploy our children into existence~!" Owen played with her fingers, the whirring sound of space appeared with a small spark of prism. "When the Patriarch's form of 'seed' is extracted, it is filtered and selectively chosen, before it is fused with the Queen's eggs to form an Usalian 'kit'~!"

"Heh, and here I was almost led to believe that you're just an otherworldly sapient mole race. I mean, an alien—that just has a similar trait with a bunny." A satisfied carefree open-smile could be seen on Nagan's face, who noticed that Owen used the term 'kit' instead of a 'newborn', which is a word that is often used for 'baby rabbit' and other younglings of mammals in the animal kingdom. "So you're truly a rabbit queen~!"

A gaze that read 'That's what is troubling you??' appeared on Owen's face.

As they continued the pry on each other's decks and histories, Owen took Nagan for a fun tour on the barely minted infrastructure of the Unnamed Kingdom, as the usalian marched curiously, listening attentively to the interaction of their queen and biological father. Some however, had the conversation entered one ear and exited the other. Some didn't even listen at all.

Despite the medieval-esque progress of the kingdom, the Usalian had built a lumbering station on the west side of this private civilization. There wasn't any woods in this isolated world, much less anything else outside of slopering hills and grasses, so Nagan assumed that the usalian were hauling the lumber from Earth in one way or another.

It also wasn't much of a working station when there was only a large space and saws secured to a platform, and nonexistent roofing. Which begs the question on whether there was a weather cycle within this private realm, along with the needs of roofing in the first place.

"Is there even rain here?" Nagan asked.

"Sometimes~"

"How does that even work-"

Continuing the subject of resource processing ground, there was also a smelting area with a single furnace-looking structure installed just right beside the lumbering station, with a couple others still in construction. Owen summarized her plan for the neighboring areas that would consist of forge and other industrial wonders. Nagan began to see the resemblance of a 'base building' mobile game that he rarely touched on break hour.

One of the important structures of the Unnamed Kingdom that had been erected—reversely, was the all-prideful underground storage that was dug without much care by the usalians using rather high quality round-mouth shovels that were stacked disorderly on the side of the sloping entrance.

Nagan asked where Owen got these shovels.

Owen answered that she stole them directly from the manufacturer location.

Immediately after, she also said that she still had a lot more in her pocket storage.

Nagan inquired why she didn't bring a generator and modern power tools to quickly advance the infrastructure construction, considering that he didn't see any tech beyond the medieval era within this private realm.

"Well, it might be a little bit boastful of me, but," Owen continued looking rather proud with her puffed chest, "Usalian have already evolved their adaptability and capability to effectively reproduce in number!"

It technically didn't answer his question, but she was cute when doing so.

It was as if she was suggesting that the numbers of the current and future usalian to make up for the lack of modern tools that gave a great boost in human's quality of life.

On the spot, Nagan thought that it was capitalism at its finest.

"Ahahah, indeed. If I already have twenty children in just five days, corresponding to the amount of seed that you squeezed from me…" he intentionally muttered down the second half of his statement, before talking normally again, "Then the concept of fetal phase doesn't exist within Usalian biology, correct?"

"The concept of age doesn't affect Usalian as well." Owen earnestly raised her finger, intrigued by his husband's sufficient amount of interest on the topic. "There is no such thing as a senile Usalian, as our cells don't deteriorate like species on Earth do, and living long won't grow our body either. Instead, we grow mature physically with experience~!

"The more experience a Usalian harnesses, the more their body evolves and mutates according to these experiences~!

"To support this trait of ours even further, a Queen is capable of imparting her memory and reflexive patterns to these kits. As such, these 20 Usalian Peons in front of you are merely a pack of former vulnerable kits, just a few days ago.

"The moment they are born, they are integrated with a proper reflexive instinct and needed knowledge to properly integrate with Usalian society, and learn their own distinctive, sometimes-specialized experience~!

"Hence their appearance compared to human growth in terms of age~"

"... Interesting information. Quite vital, even."

A loud twang could be heard in the background. It was Karasaki, throwing her shovel for a headshot at another rabbit who appeared to be named Hopscotch.

Hopscotch was knocked down unconscious for a while.

Karasaki was gagged and tied to a pole afterwards.