Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

"Care to tell me what was this all about?"

Even though the meeting was now over and the number of people in the room decreased from nearly forty to just five… I was nowhere near ready to leave.

Not when the nice, cooperative attitude the princess showed before I left for my trip suddenly turned into combativeness.

"That's the question I'm asking myself," Makary shook his head before heaving a long sigh from the very bottom of his guts. "Do you think it might have something to do with your… advancement, or whatever you call it?"

I looked over at Makary while grabbing a cookie from one of the plates displayed on the table before passing it over and feeding it to Fay.

"Do you think she's jealous? Or maybe insecure?"

Now that Makary mentioned it, when our cooperation first started, we held an overwhelming military advantage over Etaria. Yet, when it came to the number of supremes, it was her force that held the upper hand.

Between Etaria herself, Claudy who turned out to be a different sort of a supreme, and then at least one more supreme I was sure she kept hidden, there was at the very least, a total of three supremes siding with her. Enjoy more content from empire

On the other hand, when it came to our group, there was only Madam… and that's pretty much it.

Sure, she might have loads more experience and practice when it came to using or outright understanding her powers… But she was still just one supreme.

But now?

With both me and Fay reaching the level of a supreme?

"That might be it," Makary sighed. "And if those… supremes are really as valuable as everyone makes them to be, it wouldn't be easy for her to have more of them reinforce her group. And that…"

This time, rather than finishing up his sentence, Makary simply looked over at my face while pretending to ignore how I kept feeding Fay all sorts of snacks that I could find at the table, all the while she relaxed back in her chair and gracefully allowed me the joy of spoiling her.

"Yeah," I nodded my head before taking a deep breath only to then sigh it all away. "It might be stupid, but it's not like our history was built by cold-hard logic alone."

Most of the wars erupted not because of an actual conflict but because of the emotions of the population that the rulers had to, to a degree, listen to.

Wars often erupted because of some stupid sleights or insults. Even the legendary conflict between ancient Greeks and Troy allegedly started because of a personal conflict between the rulers and the stealing of Agamennon's wife by the young prince Paris.

But when it came to wars that were cold and pragmatic?

Even after scouring through my head for quite some time, I could only come up with a few examples.

Examples that upon further examination, revealed to have emotions and personal conflicts at the very foundation of the latter, logical reasons for the war to start.

"In other words, it would be best if she could get some reinforcements or…"

I sighed.

Makary didn't need to finish this sentence either.

If Etaria was worried about her position and how much she could do for the empire without the advantage of having more supremes than we did, and if it would be problematic for her to receive the support of further supremes from the Empire's interior, then the easiest way to solve her worries was to remove the new supremes from the equation.

Or, in simpler words, to have me and Fay leave the camp and move somewhere else, where our presence would bother the princess all that much.

"I'm sorry man, but I'm not going to have Fay tag along again, not when she is pregnant."

The very moment I said those words, I could feel the difference appear in Fay.

It was a simple thing, her mouth froze while her teeth failed to crack the cookie I fed her.

"Pete…"

"Fay, dearest," I turned over to face my girl properly. "I don't want to go on a public rant about how much I love and treasure you. Not because I'm ashamed of it, but because we can both tell how annoying it would be for everyone else in the room," I stated outright, giving up on pretending not to notice the looks Makary and two of his lieutenants gave me.

"I'm married myself, so don't mind me," Makary interjected while putting a small smile to hide his annoyance. Yet, before I could respond, he looked over at the two of his single subordinates, "but I cannot say it's the same for everyone."

I rolled my eyes and looked back to Fay.

"I know that you are as worried for me as I am for you. But crossing that damned plain is something we have to find a way to do. At the same time, I would rather give up on this whole world than have you enter it again before getting an extensive check-up that will prove it's not actively harmful to our child."

By now, the cat was long out of the bag. And while Fay's stomach had yet to bulge out, all the people important enough to interact with me or her were already in the know.

"Miss Fay, I know that you are going to be worried about Peter, but such is the nature of humans," Makary joined in and actively supported my point albeit in a way I didn't expect. "It was always the role of the men to go out and hunt while the women would stay back home to care for the children.

And sure, things changed over time as our civilization developed, the perception of things changed, the roles of each sex also changed…"

Makary shook his head as his face grew darker and darker.

Knowing the most recent history of the earth, I could pretty much tell what he was going about.

"Whether it's right or not is not for me to judge. But when looking objectively at history, it was the very attempt at upsetting this ancient balance, balance ingrained into human DNA, that the world suddenly started to go to shit. And again, it's not my place to judge which was the reason and which was the result…"

Makary shook his head again.

"In the end, right now it's not just your life and health that you would be risking by going with him."

Hearing those words, Fay reached out and grabbed my wrist only to move my arm away, pulling the half-eaten cookie away from her mouth.

"While that's most certainly true, even if something happens to our child, we can always make another. A possibility that will no longer be there if Peter fails to return due to the lack of my support."

I blinked my eyes a few times.

'And here I thought we've already agreed on this topic..'n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

Still, regardless of how much I wanted to whine about it, I simply couldn't refute Fay's words. After all, if not for her presence alone serving to reinforce my mental state during the week that I struggled to get accustomed to the influence of the starlight, there's no telling whether I would find it in myself to actually return.

'Imagining a scenario where I just decide to lay down and die…' I took a deep breath. 'It's really a lot easier than I would like it to be.'

There was no denying the dangers of the starlight plain. Not after witnessing and then experiencing them firsthand. And to top it all off, we have yet to find a way to overcome a burden that appeared to be impossible to crack!

Or rather, we have yet to test the methods for simply ignoring the problem of the barrier of the true, direct light of the stars.

"Okay, let's drop this topic for now," I suggested, knowing full well it wasn't the time nor the place to discuss this issue. Quite honestly, I couldn't bring myself to consider Makary as a valid person to join in on this conversation when it wasn't his kid's or his wife's health that was at stake. "How about we talk about what we need to cross that damned plain instead?"

Heaving a sigh of relief, Makary nodded his head before putting on a more serious look on his face.

"First, I'm glad to hear that you seem to have an idea on how to tackle that… barrier, was it?" he admitted before cupping his hands together and leaning over the table only to rest his chin atop his hands. "The question is, what it is that you desire of me?"

'I really didn't expect him to look at me in this way,' I thought, taken aback by the situation.

Up until now, I was under the impression that we were on the same team, we were trying to achieve the same goals. But from the man's expression alone, I somehow realized that getting the one thing that I believed could solve the issue of that damned barrier…

It might not be as easy as I hoped it would be.

"It's fairly simple," I sighed. "If it's autonomous vehicles that can ignore whatever spell or illusion it is that stops people from moving away from that barrier, then there's one, prime candidate for how we could cross to that barrier's other side," I claimed before leaning back in my chair and looking Makary straight in the eyes.

"In other words," I smiled a little, "if you want to earn my fancy, hovercraft give me, Nancy."