I woke up one day and realized I’d been in this world for over a year now.
The forest was now its own independent country, but I wanted it to become a place people visited frequently. It wasn’t out of some altruistic love for humanity; I just wanted them to challenge my dungeons and earn me some points. If I had to make the whole thing into a trade hub or a tourist trap to get challengers to show up, then that’s what I’d do. As more people challenged my dungeons, I earned more points, which I could use to make all kinds of improvements. By the way, anything that was a permanent fixture still cost me points, but I could make a lot of stuff for free.
I discovered that I could create just about anything in the Unseen Realm and then bring it back with me, but that didn’t apply to items too big to fit in my inventory. So I couldn’t, for example, bring my castle in the Unseen Realm back to the tower with me. I could bring small pieces of furniture, but anything bigger than that was a no-go. Since I spent points nearly as fast as I earned them most of the time, I always wanted more. So when I received a request to hold a conference with the leaders of all of the neighboring nations in attendance, I readily accepted.
The purpose of the conference was to negotiate the details of a trade agreement between all of the countries around the Grimwood—a sort of trade alliance. Of course, that included the Grimwood itself, but I already had pacts with each nation individually. In this case, since my country was central to the whole trade pact, I was expected to act as a sort of moderator while the other leaders hashed out conditions between themselves. If anything related to the Grimwood came up during discussions, I would weigh in as a representative of my nation, but otherwise I was just babysitting the discussion and making sure things didn’t get too intense. After all, there would be rulers whose nations had once been at war with each other attending the conference. Honestly, though, I was more interested in getting more people to challenge the dungeons than anything else.
On the day of the event, I was in my room, attended by Charlotte. After I defeated the Lake Lord, Charlotte became one of my subordinates. At first I didn’t really know what to do with her, but she turned out to be pretty good at weaving, sewing, and designing cute dresses. She was also good at helping me into the clothes she made. Charlotte held up one dress after another in front of me, eyeballing how each one would look if I wore it. My wardrobe had grown by leaps and bounds in the weeks following my acquisition of Charlotte, and I now had an entire room dedicated to just my own clothing. It was so huge, I couldn’t bring myself to call it a closet. I still kept my original outfits from the game in my inventory, but some of the new dresses rivaled them in terms of useful abilities.
Once Charlotte made an outfit, I could imbue it with various effects. All I had to do was bring the item in question to the Unseen Realm and I could give it whatever interesting abilities I wanted. In this instance, I added the abilities without visiting the Unseen Realm directly. Fortunately, my control of the Unseen Realm had improved enough that I could send an item there remotely, imbue it with effects, then retrieve it. That was how I’d made Sherin’s Hero Bear. In that instance, I made the item in the Unseen Realm, imbued it with effects, brought it back to the mortal realm, and given it to Sherin. Working with something that already existed was much easier.
“Hmm. I think this one would be best after all. This blue is really your color.”
The dress Charlotte was holding up really was in a favorite color of mine, the same blue as a clear summer sky. Her earlier attempts at dressmaking were best used as bedroom attire, but this piece had a really tasteful shape. I preferred dresses where the bottom puffed outward like a bell or a flower at the bottom. I wasn’t sure what that style was called, but it looked good on me. It helped disguise how absurdly wide my hips were, and also hid my curvy legs. It wasn’t that I thought they looked bad, I just rather not share them with the entire world.
Charlotte helped me into the dress, and we arranged the white bows and ribbons. There was also a great deal of white lace, which almost looked like clouds against the sky-colored dress. The front of the dress was attached to a white choker around my neck, and the straps for the shoulders hung limply to the side for aesthetic, rather than functional, purposes. The dress didn’t have much of a back covering the upper torso, which made it easier to deploy my wings should the need arise.
As I admired my dress in the mirror, Charlotte was already braiding my hair. Using her six arms, she tied my hair into three separate ponytails, and braided them together with two blue ribbons that matched the dress and one white one. With all three ribbons woven into the braid, the effect was striking. I usually used the twin-tails style, but that made me look a bit childish. This was a formal occasion of great importance, so I wanted to inspire more respect.
Once my hair was done, I studied my reflection once more. “Wonderful job, Charlotte. You’ve perfectly captured the look I wanted. Now I can hold my head high among the other leaders.”
“Your Majesty looks absolutely wonderful in anything,” she humbly replied. “I just listened to your instructions, and acted accordingly. Nothing so praiseworthy.”
“I disagree. You’ve grown a lot since I put you to work as an attendant. It’s only right that I recognize your improvement.”
“You honor me—”
“Yes. Yes I do.”
My refusal to allow her to be humble caused a smile she couldn’t hide to appear on Charlotte’s face. She looked so cute when she smiled. The adorable sight rejuvenated me. I was ready for the conference.
As I mentioned earlier, the conference was a gathering of all of the leaders from every nation bordering the Grimwood. I already had agreements with every single one of them, but this conference was meant to solidify this group of nations into a multinational trade alliance. Since agreements negotiated between nations usually went through diplomats instead of the leaders directly, I was meeting most of these leaders for the first time.
King Doma was the only ruler in attendance whose country didn’t share a border with any of the represented nations except mine, and there were a few members of the group who bore old animosities toward the other nations. It was only natural that countries with shared borders would argue over things from time to time, and in some cases, that escalated to war. It was sometimes difficult to let go of such grudges, even if they were caused by events that happened before the current ruler had been born. In the histories of some nations, there were wars that started over grudges neither side could remember the root cause of at the time.
Today’s meeting wasn’t meant to address any of these old wounds, but to discuss trade between nations. During the latter half of my first year in this world, I’d tried to establish my nation as a trade hub. In other words, to make it a place where people could come to exchange currency for goods, or vice versa. I was dealing with many different nations, and each had their own currency, so my people acted as money changers for merchants who wished to travel into other nations, and they were pretty good at it. As the trade volume between nations increased, people had started murmuring about how much easier trade would be if there were only a single currency for the Grimwood and the nations bordering it.