After taking a few more minutes to make sure that his new informant was going to be properly cooperative, as well as calm her down over the fact that he was having her search for a woman with his last name, Seth moved out to the castle courtyard.

He had already had Corvus positioned out there, looking over the gains from the portal outbreak and, like the good squire he was supposed to be, Seth fell into place behind his Lord.

The issue with the portals had been resolved whilst Seth had been working in his lab. It had already been brought under control by the time he was retreating to his studies, hence why he felt comfortable doing so, but only now had it finally been truly resolved. At least as much as possible.

Since it was an issue that stemmed from the weakening of the space around the city, and possibly beyond, it wasn't something that could be solved for good. But with Lee's help, they at least had it under control.

The initial flood of portals had been severely reduced down to a mere trickle, with the so called 'Master of Space' now being on constant watch for new breaches opening and thus able to send a team to intercept the beasts that would come out.

They hadn't yet figured out a reliable way to detect the power level of what was going to come through the breach, so the teams were instructed to bring a few Unkindly Guards as back up, but they were doing well so far.

It was thanks to this portal crisis, 'The Shattering' as some people were apparently calling it, that Seth was left with heaps and heaps of monster corpses to deal with, as well as construction operations to fix up the homes and business' destroyed in the outbreak. Luckily, he had the most special superpower in the world, the power that every leader loved to use at every opportunity they could.

Delegation.

That's right. He was pawning it off onto other people to deal with, a wonderful strategy if he did say so himself.

He was getting pretty good at it in fact. He had wanted to create a simple production line to mass produce things for him, but had instead created actual life and set that life to work for him. A prospect that seemed far more cruel when he said it like that... but they seemed happy enough.

Plus, they could even use a small contingent of puppets themselves, like officers commanding a small section of his grand army, and impose their will onto their creations through those puppets. So even if he hadn't gotten his wonderful endless production line, he had still gotten production he didn't have to do himself and it was of better quality. It was a win really.

Production of items, butchering of corpses, distribution of meat and so forth. All of this was currently being delegated to others. Corvus just had to give them the right instructions and help people understand what their jobs were, such as what could be eaten and what couldn't, how much meat to give out to the different people or the new price of it on the market. So on and so forth. All very boring, bureaucratic stuff that definitely wasn't numbing his mind.

If only he could delegate this process too. Most kings, or Lords or whatever he was, would have a loyal and well educated butler to take care of all these things for him. Unfortunately, his butler was also him. And he was an idiot when it came to such things.

He currently had their cities economist, someone who had been a 'layabout' when they were living in the Library and was only now showing their usefulness, talking incessantly in his ear about the impact all this would have on the already unstable, still blooming economy that they had established only recently.

It was this gentleman that was the reason they even had money in the first place and had helped them set up a mint that they had... ahem, liberated from the ruins of their previous society.

Their coinage was very basic in its naming; bronze, silver, gold and crowns, which was what they had in place of higher currency notes. It was a 'decimalisation', which he had later looked up in his collection of knowledge and realised simply meant it operated on sets of one hundred.

100 bronze equalled 1 silver, 100 silver equals 1 gold, so on. Simple, easy to understand. As for what 100 crowns equalled... they'd come to that when it was needed.

Beyond that, Seth had no idea how it worked. But he didn't need to. Details were important for those he delegated to. He simply looked over the results and made sure he wasn't getting swindled.

His latest task primed for delegation was going to be a bit more tricky. Rolling up his sleeve, Seth gazed at his arm with a concerned expression on his face. Where he should be able to see his pale, moon kissed complexion, instead all he saw was a sickening barrage of different coloured alien markings.

He looked like a wall covered in graffiti, the tagging type not the creative artistic type. Otherwise known as the worst type.

This was mainly down to his collection of Requitals, which were unfortunately stored as tattoos on his skin. A wonderful idea, until they were lost alongside a limb or he had hundreds of them at once. Both of which he had the misfortune of experiencing.

Calling upon Angel to show him his status screen, he was met with a wall of text so dense and overwhelming that even the dictionary would think that there were simply too many words.

'Okay Angel, Let's see now. Is there any way we can sort this?... I don't know, maybe by type. Like weapons, armour, accessories... Well if they don't fit in a category just make a miscellaneous one for them and stick them in there.

Okay, Okay. Now filter it by power level... Strongest one's at the top, obviously... Thank you. Now I just need a way to separate them... Wonderful, thank you again Angel.'

One quick mental conversation later, Seth was one more faced with a colossal wall of text. One that was at least somewhat more manageable to look at, but even then it was still overwhelming.

He didn't realise just how many Requitals he had gained through his Unkindly Guards. Perhaps he should start a service of hiring them out... for protection of people, of course. If he was going down that road, he might as well equip them with a soul sucking machine too...

Yes. Yes that sounded like a wonderful idea. He would need to get the crafting twins on working on that once they were done with their current tasks.

For now, he just had to scroll through these lists of Requitals and pick out the ones he was going to give to their quarter master, to sell and rent out to others for their use. Obviously, he would be keeping the best stuff for himself.

His Lord might have had some good equipment, but his real body was severely lacking. He needed some stylish equipment of his own, befitting that of the Lord's squire. After all, he was supposed to be playing the part of a moderately weak cripple riding the coat tails and humping the leg of his powerful saviour.

So surely all that leg humping should at least get him some good scraps, right? Even dogs got food scraps every now and then.

While Seth was perusing the seemingly endless list, the members of his adventuring party started to arrive one by one, having been brought here by the summons of their 'Lord'. The first to arrive was the towering Alexandra, who had seemingly grown another foot since he last saw her putting her at over 8 foot tall, and his gelatinous friend Cynthia who was sat quite comfortably on Alexandra's shoulder in the form of a small ball of slime.

Upon their arrival, with Alexandra strolling through the gates with long, confident strides that ever so slightly shook the earth beneath her feet, Cynthia slipped off of Alexandra's shoulder and quickly slithered her way across the ground towards Corvus.

She formed herself into her usual self, the gelatinous copy of her previous appearance before everything had changed, and bowed her head slightly towards her Lord. She spared a glance towards Seth, smirking at him slightly as he gave her a gentle wave before focusing back on the never ending list of Requitals.

"It's good to see you again Cyn."

"Good to see you too silver, although it's still creepy when you do that. At least you're over there. When you're together, I never know who to look at when we talk."

"It comes with the territory unfortunately. But, I see that you and the Amazonian have grown considerably close. Anything you care to share about that?"

If Corvus had an expressive face, instead of a blank face hidden beneath a veil of shadows cast by his hood, he would have been giving Cynthia a devious smirk and wiggling his eyebrows at her. He briefly considered gluing eyebrows to his puppet, just to achieve such an effect, but it would have been useless anyways.

Still, even without the wriggling of caterpillar eyebrows, Cynthia got the hint through the tone of his voice alone. Her usual cyan coloration immediately shifting to a light crimson, as the acid compound within her body bubbled nervously.

"I... Uh... I don't... Oh look, the others have arrived. Why don't you go annoy them instead."

Corvus chuckled softly, glancing at the other arrivals as they made their appearances one after the other. First there was Fox, the older man with light grey hair and a pair of katana's strapped to his hip. He must have searched long and hard for those type of Requitals, or his guardian only made weapons into katana's out of pity.

Next was Alfie and Erik, his gas producing bespectacled friend and the azure skinned, valiant knight. They were currently bickering between each other, about what Seth had no idea. But it seemed unlikely that it would get physical and more akin to friendly arguments, so he stayed out of it.

Then, finally Astra arrived. The last member of their adventuring group, dropping from the skies like a true goddess and landing in the courtyard as gentle as a leaf on the wind, barely a sound as she used her Electrokinesis and carefully placed metal accessories to levitate herself.

Seth did give her a friendly smile and a slight wave, but she simply regarded him with a cold, irritated glare and quickly turned her head away from him, but not after sparing a glare towards his alter ego and Cynthia.

What he had done to annoy her so much, he had no earthly idea. He didn't get much time to ponder upon it, as once more Cynthia spoke up after finally regaining her composure, and her usual colour.

"So how is it we are getting to... wherever it is we are going? Also, where are we going?"

"Tell me Cyn, have you ever been to the arena?"