Chapter 73 Twelve winters pass.

Time passed quickly, a year in fact had passed. And for Lili that meant that twelve winters had passed for her in this world and as before the passing of time had brought with it some changes.

Although for Lili these changes were not quite as huge as she would have liked them to be. From 118 centimetres tall of a little midget girl a few winters ago. She had now grown to be almost a 130 centimetres tall little girl. Which, while good progress did put her quite a few years behind the average height of a girl her age. Although these numbers Lili herself didn't agree with, surely she had to be taller than that by now, she said to herself often not wanting to believe the maids measurements.

After all she had been eating quite well now. Surely she should have grown more in height, for she had most definitely gained some weight. Although by the looks of herself it wasn't really the type of weight that she would have liked to gain.

She most definitely wasn't fat or anything close to that, but due to her neglecting her exercises she had mostly been gaining weight in the wrong departments.

For instance. Her abs weren't as well defined as before, now she just had a triangle shape there without the well defined individual abs really showing. And overall she had grown out her curves more with more fat there than real muscle. Especially her chest didn't seem to hold no muscle at all. Or it at least wasn't visible at all under the flesh bags she had.

But all things considered this really didn't feel bad at all to her. Her more maturing womanly looks were just fine to her, they made her look quite cute in her opinion. And it wasn't like she was in any danger here or in need of fighting anyone or anything like that. So why should she have big muscles, or strength, or anything like that, at the moment those things seemed quite unnecessary to her.

So she mainly began exercising to stay flexible and in good shape. Now she no longer tried to reach for something great. Sure she did like exercising and would have liked to train more, but here she just couldn't. She didn't have time for it and she had more important things to do now.

And besides she was flexible now which was what she had always wanted to be. In her past she lacked flexibility and died because of that and so she already had basically reached her goal in that department in this life. Plus she did get praised a lot for her looks by the other sisters, maids, princesses, even the Queen and on occasion the guards and knights, which made her feel happy.

Especially Chad and Jack had been giving her many strange looks and comments like. "Your holiness, your beauty is truly divine today like always." Or things like. "G go good morning, Miss Lili, yo yo you look stunning as always. How can I serve?" Or typically it was something like. "Wait miss Lili, let me open that heavy door for you." Or things like. "Wait miss, let me carry that for you. You ought to not strain yourself with minial tasks such as this."

Things such as these had become quite common from the two. And they always made her blush in shame and turn away as she muttered a shameful thanks to the two.

To hear men praising her looks like so, or offering to help her, as if she were some frail cute little girl just felt so strange. She wasn't quite used to it and had no idea how to handle such things. In her past life men merely gave her comments like. "Fuck you copper, you dead, you fucking dead man!" Or things like. "Wow wow wow, chill out big boy, I ain't gonna resist, I swear. I still want to live a few more days at least, ok. So please man don't break my arms." Or things like. "Ahhhhh, your crushing me, I can't breathe God damnit, I can't breathe! Man I'm so gonna sue your ass for this! I want my lawyer, I want my lawyer, I know my rights you tyrant white gorilla, I know my rights!" Or things like. "Come on you pussy, shoot me, shoot me you fuck!"

But never had she gotten such comments as she was getting now. Where were all the threats and I'm gonna kill you quotes. Damn life as a girl was strange.

Although all things considered it was not bad, especially considering all the attention she had started getting from the ladies. Especially the maids had begun coming to her with praises and great many requests.

Apparently she had predicted the birth of a young maids child correctly. She had said it to be a strong healthy baby boy, and indeed she had apparently been right in her assessment. So now others came to her asking if they were pregnant and if so then was it a boy or a girl and such things.

Some people had even begun coming to her for health check ups. Guards would stop her in the castle halls and ask things like. "Miss Lili, I'm sorry to disturb you, but please listen? You see today I was feeling a bit weak and my nose was clogged up so I was wondering if I might be coming down with a fever and what should I do? Can you help me? I know it is not right of me to ask you of such things, but I heard that well you could help."

Of course Lili never told them of her powers, but she did end up helping them anyway. With the help of her magic and past lives knowledge she could give basic diagnosises for people and then heal them. Of course she never told them of the healing and just assured them that it would be ok, after she had secretly already healed them.

But despite doing this it seemed that she was somewhat busted. Rumours had begun spreading around. People were noticing how everyone around her were looking really healthy, becoming basically younger and none ever fell ill and were at peak physical conditions all the time.

The biggest of all giveaways were probably Sir John, Grandma Linn and the old maid that were all not looking so old anymore. Rumour had it that the old maid had even managed to hit it off with Sir John. And that the two were going at it as if they were youngsters in their early thirties.

And Grandma Linn had even stopped having her daily naps and instead spent a lot of time in the gardens painting and walking around looking at stuff or something, she didn't really know.

But despite this all, nobody had luckily pressured her for answers to it. Everyone seemed to have their own opinions and theories about the matter, and that was just fine by her.

Other than these things other things had also been going on in the castle. For instance the Queen had at winter time suddenly fallen deathly ill again. She was bed written for a few days until Lili with the assistance of Sir John snuck into her room and fixed her up.

But as she did this, she had noticed that the same type of dark spots as before had begun spreading all over the Queens body. It almost looked like cancer or something like that, but not really as there seemed to be something dark and magical about it. The sickness was not normal for sure, Lili figured it to be something to do with the Queens genes maybe, like a allergy or well she didn't really know.

She figured this because the princesses had also come under similar sicknesses recently. Although theirs were not as bad as the Queen's, but nonetheless all were healed and ok for the time being.

The Queen and princesses although did seem suspicious of their surroundings now. It was as if they felt that something wasn't right, but then again the sicknesses had passed so fast thanks to Lili that they didn't really seem to know what to think anymore.

But after the whole thing the Queen had suddenly started ordering her meals to be made by Lilis little lantern Inn. Lili not wanting to mess too much with the local economy with her superior cheap foods had made a rule that she would not allow people to take food from the Inn home with them. But for the Queen she had to relent and let her have her meals.

The castles chefs got to keep their jobs, but they weren't looking too happy about it all. Although Lilis business was looking quite good.

In a years time they had made a little over six hundred gold coins in net worth. Which was a lot, in modern terms they had made over six hundred thousand dollars in cash. While not a huge number in modern standards, that is if you take in account all the expenses and such. But it was really good considering that Camelot was a city that was owned by the royal family, aka they had free rent. Plus Lilis sisters were free labour and most of the ingredients in the Inn were self grown and free.

And one other factor to this was the surprisingly small size of the city itself. At first Lili had thought it to be really big and populated because people spoke of it as such, but reality was quite different to this. Sure it was large in these dark age medieval terms. But the city barely had a population of 15 thousand living in it. So basically to gain the amount of coin that they had gained, meant that their Inn was extremely popular in Camelot.

The place was so popular in fact that people came to it daily for their meals and even people from further away came to eat there. Even the holy men of the church had come there to eat and listen to Lilis or the girls songs a few times. There had even been a few traders from distant lands that had visited, although in the medieval age distant lands basically just meant people from Franchia.

And so thanks to this success, a second Inn was opened in the city. This Inn Lili and the princesses named as Lilis North Lantern Inn. North because it was up north, close to Camelots outer gatehouse. A gatehouse which guards really appreciated the Inns existence and in turn acted as its security.

The Inn was designed much like the last and had its own little tunnel in the basement that was connected to the other Inns tunnel. Like so supplies could easily be moved back and forth between the underground and two Inns.

Although the Inn was not the only new addition to Lilis little business chain as the princesses had also purchased the two shops next to the first Inn. So now Lili was in charge of a bakery and a tailoring shop.

While this was great in itself Lili did not feel like having these shops original owners become jobless and be replaced by her free labouring sisterhood. And so Lili hired the original owners.

However Lili was once more forced to convert more people because of this to her cause, which she saw as a great risk but did it nonetheless out of her good will. The middle-aged baker and his two sons, the middle-aged woman tailor who was apparently married to the baker and the three young orphan girls working as her helpers.

Overall this added 3 men and 4 women to her cause. If she wasn't wrong that meant that she had thanks to this, all in all about 66 loyal followers. And surprisingly enough these newcomers did quite quickly turn to her side, after seeing the elder tree in the hideout, plus the economic situation in the kingdom was not good. So these people were more than happy to have a stable job under Lili who worked for the royal family.

Speaking of which, the slave trade had been having a deflating turn of events. With poverty and famine in Europe people seemed more than willing to turn to selling their own in turn for some coin and so the amount of slaves grew and the prices fell.

And so because of this Lili was quick to spend all the money which she earned on slaves. All and all after getting her share of twenty percent of the profits she had gotten, a huge 120 gold coins to her name. Or in modern terms 120000 dollars. To Lili this was huge as she had never really had any money in this world and to immediately receive such a sum was quite crazy.

But she didn't take this money for granted and immediately went to spend this money as she got it throughout the year. 82 gold coins she used on buying three different tribes of Lycans, although once more these Lycans were all only women, and so she got 76 Lycan women that were all the Lycans in Camelot.

Sure this purchase price seemed quite high for the Lycans, but it actually wasn't. And it was only as low as it was thanks to the Princesses and some intimidation from the knights. Otherwise the price of the Lycans would have been much more, but in the end she managed to save them all. Sure there were more enslaved Lycans around the country, but for the moment Camelot had no more Lycans on sale and that was good.

Other than that Lili then freed an additional amount of 120 young girls for 18 gold coins. These girls were luckily not valued as high as they were not special or unique. Most of them were from Albion, some from Franchia or Tiefland, and so all in all Lili managed to add 196 girls into the hideout during the year. So at the end of the year Lili had 262 followers in all.

And so Lili was forced to spend the rest of her coins to see these girls live comfortably in the underground. To do this she personally placed a few orders for the city's blacksmiths to create cotton gins and other tools such as scythes for the girls. With this and the rest of her money she intended to start building homes for the girls in the underground.

Homes where there would be beds that were mostly made of fine wood and cotton from the underground. And to do this she needed more cotton production and more workers which she now had.

Like so the underground farms had quickly begun having their production increase. More and more things were grown and the farms had expanded to almost full capacity of the underground greenhouse. She also added chickens, a few cows and sheep into the underground.

Lili even began planting plankton into the underground water sources, especially in the large sword altar rooms water had plankton planted there. She lit the areas with her light stones and plans for planting fish into these water sources had begun.

So the underground slowly started to turn bright and full of life. Although there was still a lot more for them to explore as the underground was absolutely massive and full of unknowns which did cause concerns amongst some of the sisters.

Because of this, the sisters slowly started demanding arms, walls and defences for themselves. They did not trust a few knights to keep them safe and so this was also something that Lili needed to start working on.

But all and all life in the capital seemed quite good. The City was full of life and happy smiles. No one was starving and if they were, then Lili would more than happily provide food for these poor souls and so no one truly starved. Crime was extremely minimal or basically nonexistent. Diseases and deaths were few and far between.

Lili not only fed the people and healed them secretly with this food as she did so. But she had even begun clothing the people, keeping them warm like so and of course for a low price.

This intern had begun slowly drawing attention from across the land and overseas. Some came to see what was going on, try the food, the holy water in the church and some even began migrating to the capital from all across the kingdom of Albion. Also rumours of people planning to come in desperation to this city of hope from across the sea had also come.

To Lili these were all great things and life seemed good to her. But unknown to Lili all was definitely not good in the land or world for that matter.

The food situation had become extremely critical in Albion and Europe. The seed grain was mostly gone and reports of people eating grass or whatever they could get their hands on to stay alive had begun emerging.

This caused many large groups of starving beggars to emerge. These groups travelled around the land in search of work and food for their starving selves and families, but found nothing. And so as they wandered around, bodies slowly began emerging on the road sides as these beggars fell and died one by one as they walked.

Many reports of robberies, murders and crime emerged, even some reports of cannibalism came, although these were quite few. Most of all the reports coming from Franchia and Tiefland were not good. There parents were said to not only be selling their children to slavers, but more horrifyingly reports of people eating their relatives, loved ones or even children had emerged.

This in turn caused major worries for the Queen as she tried to find solutions to these problems not to come so severely to Albion. Some grain had been obtained from Aragon and Andalusia, but most of their food was being delivered to Franchia where the problems were the greatest.

And so the Queen as well as Wilfred, and Edgar had turned to Lilis potatoes for help. First it had begun with Wilfred who had returned to his territories and as he did he had been horrified by what he had seen there. And so in desperation he had turned to Lili and from there ordered large batches of potatoes for his people.

While the order had come quite late in the year, the potatoes of Lili were strong and resilient and so a batch of potatoes were grown successfully in the lands of Westfield. This in turn had lightly helped the people, but it wasn't enough.

Like always with famines people crowded together in unsanitary conditions. Diseases began to spread, which was further worsened with the people's weakened bodies and immune systems due to malnutrition. Bodies were also left unburied and so the vermin's spread.

Luckily Queen Wilda and Edgar, Edgar who was guided by Grandma Linn had also begun ordering potatoes from Lili. And so the effects of the famine were lightened somewhat. How Lili had acquired so many of these potatoes nobody knew, but luckily nobody asked. Although Lili did feel like the time for her to reveal her secret to the royal family was soon to come.

Despite all these things Lili mostly was in the dark to them. She was not told of the going ons in the world and mainly lived in her little bubble in the capital

She studied a lot, worked on her future technologies, tried to teach her girls English reading and writing along with basic skills important to her businesses and most of all farming, plus a huge amount of her energy was used to create light stones for her sisters. And so the year went on without much further worries for Lili at least.