The Kingdom’s Baby Boom

Wahhhhhhhhhh! There was crying in the distance.

If we could hear it at this volume when we were seemingly so far away,

it must have been incredibly loud. When that kid started crying, she

absolutely wailed. I was in the governmental affairs office handling

paperwork, but I could never ignore that voice.

"Hey... Can I go take a look?" I asked Hakuya, who was working with

me, and he let out a sigh.

"There are already plenty of other people looking after her, so you

joining them isn't going to do any good. Focus on your work."

"B-But...she's crying so loudly."

"Princess Enju is loud to begin with."

The cries belonged to my recently born daughter with Juna. She was

my third, following Cian and Kazuha, but she was Juna's first...and a girl

too. Her name was a mixture of Juna and her grandmother Excel's: Enju

Souma.

She was a cute girl, taking after Juna, but with darker hair, and her loud

voice was no doubt inherited from the Prima Lorelei. She cried loud enough

that, had we lived in a residential area back in my old world, we'd have

been reported to the police for potential child abuse.

That said, normally, she didn't cry that much; only when she was

hungry, wanted her diaper changed, or was sleepy. The essentials, so to

speak. Despite this, she was actually surprisingly easy to take care of. I

sensed Juna's parentage in that natural consideration for others too.

"If you want to go check on them, then finish your work quickly. Sir

Julius is taking time off to be with his wife as she's soon to give birth, so we

don't have enough hands around here."

"Roroa's just about to give birth too..."

"I am sure she is more than prepared. You've already ensured

everything is in order, sire. Now, please, focus on your work."

"Okay..."

I used my Living Poltergeists ability to its fullest in order to sort out the

mountain of paperwork in front of me.

Things were unstable with the Great Tiger Kingdom running wild up

north, but we weren't publicly opposing them. We had alliances with the

Empire, Republic, and Nine-Headed Dragon Archipelago, and our relations

with them were good. If you looked only at the Kingdom itself, things were

remarkably stable, and I was able to focus on internal policy.

Because of that, there were no major problems, and work went

smoothly.

Working at an even higher pace than usual, I made it to Juna's room,

stumbling a little due to overtaxing my spiritual energy. Juna was there,

holding Enju, and so was Liscia, watching them warmly.

Liscia looked at me, pressing her index finger to her lips. That meant,

Be quiet.

I looked at the rocking chair where Juna was sitting and saw that she

was sleeping too. The way she held Enju lovingly with her eyes closed was

so divinely beautiful that I wanted to capture it on video, in a photograph,

and have the court artist paint it too.

"She just fell asleep," Liscia said in a whisper when I got closer. "Juna

nodded off with her."

Lowering my voice so as not to wake them, I said, "Good work. How

are Cian and Kazuha?"

"Aisha and Roroa are looking after them in the nursery room. They

started crying too when they heard Enju's wailing."

Cian and Kazuha could already stand by pulling themselves up, and

could waddle around on unsteady feet or crawl around surprisingly quickly.

Kazuha, in particular, would move all over the place if you let her, even

trying to leave the room, so we couldn't take our eyes off her. I was glad

she was growing up healthy, but it was troublesome that she was as much of

a tomboy as her mother.

"Thanks, Liscia. For being supportive of Juna."

"She was there for me, so this is the least I could do."

With that said, Liscia clapped me on the shoulder, adding, "Well, I'll

leave the three of you alone now. I need to check in on Cian and Kazuha."

Liscia was probably trying to be considerate of Juna's mental state after

giving birth by making time for me, Juna, and Enju to be alone together.

"Thanks, Liscia."

"Hee hee, this is part of my job as first primary queen."

"Oh, come to think of it, you didn't mention her, but where's Naden

gotten off to?" I asked as I remembered.

"Oh..." Liscia nodded. "Naden's at the Magna domain today. They've

got one too, remember?"

"I see..."

That made a lot of sense to me.

◇ ◇ ◇

A baby was sleeping quietly in its crib. When she saw its little baby

hands were formed into fists, and its mouth was hanging just a little open,

Naden couldn't help but say, "I-It's so cute."

"Heh heh, I know, right?" Ruby agreed, puffing her chest up with pride.

"Wait, what are you so proud for...?" Naden looked at her dismissively.

This was Halbert's parents' home, the House of Magna's mansion. The

baby had wisps of red hair, and tiny little fox ears spurting out of its head.

This was the child that had been born to Halbert and Kaede. And Ruby, the

second wife of the family, loved it too.

"She's Hal and Kaede's. That makes her practically mine too."

"Yeah... I know how you feel."

Naden loved Liscia and Juna's children like they were her own as well.

Because dragons were one of the long-lived races, they were not very

fertile. Also, because dragons were naturally inclined to highly value

propagating their species, their love for their families was intense. That was

why, even if the children were born to another wife, they adored them all

the same.

"It's a boy, right?"

"The long-awaited first son of the House of Magna. They call him

Bill."

"Bill Magna... That's kinda cool. He's a mystic fox, I see."

Because Halbert was a human and Kaede was a mystic fox, their

children could be born with the traits of a human, a beastman, or a halfbeastman. However, the mystic fox race's defining traits were only those of

half-beastmen (ears and a tail), so the only difference was if the baby had

fox ears and a tail or not.

"He gets his red hair from me," Ruby chimed in.

"More like he gets it from his father. If you get carried away and start

making him call you momma, Ruby, his real mom's going to get mad...

Real mad."

"You're...speaking from experience, huh?"

"It wasn't just me. All four of us (excluding Liscia) did it."

"What is our royal family even doing...?" Ruby said in dismay. Then

Bill started moving his hands and feet around in his sleep.

""......""

They both grinned and returned to watching Bill.

"Babies sure are great, huh?" Ruby said.

"Yeah, they are," Naden agreed.

"I want one."

"Me too."

"I'll need to make Hal work hard at it."

"Souma too."

"If you look at him with hungry eyes like that, your husband's going to

get put off by it, you know?" said Kaede, who had just returned, and was

clearly weirded out by the way the two of them had been talking. She'd

been having them watch Bill for a moment while she went to fetch some of

his baby clothes.

Naden cleared her throat loudly, possibly out of embarrassment. "By

the way, are you returning to the military, Kaede? Or will you be staying

here in your domain?"

Kaede grinned at Naden's question.

"Let's see. I think I'll return as a staff officer when Bill's more grown.

Sir Ludwin, the vice-commander of the National Defense Force, and Julius

are both in the castle, and His Majesty has told me I can leave Bill in the

nursery there."

"With me around, Hal can commute to his post from anywhere, after

all," Ruby added, thumping her chest—which had grown considerably in

the last few years—with one hand.

It was true that with a red dragon, they could join the National Defense

Force from the Magna domain, Parnam, or anywhere else.

Kaede giggled. "We can trust Father Glaive to handle the domain in our

absence too."

"So you two and Bill are going to live in the capital? Won't his grandpa

be lonely like that?"

"Well, yes, but Mother will keep him company... I expect Father will

still come visit us in the capital regularly, though..." Kaede's smile was a

little strained as she said that.

It might have been part of the national character in this country that the

father doted on his family, and the wife kept him firmly under her thumb.

That's what Naden and Ruby thought as they remembered their own

husbands.

◇ ◇ ◇

Ginger's Vocational School had an experimental farm near the capital.

Being that it was still early on in the year, nothing had been planted yet.

Objects were stirring on the lightly snow-covered ground, though. Those

"objects," with their firm but mutable skins, were the gelins that had played

such an active role by becoming udon during the food crisis. However,

these gelins were pink—colloquially known as agricultural gelins.

Poncho, the Kingdom's Minister of Agriculture and Forestry, and

Ginger, the principal of the vocational school, watched the agricultural

gelins crawl around a field that had been growing tomatoes.

"Do you think those agricultural gelins will prevent the damage from

growing the same crop repeatedly, yes?" Poncho asked and Ginger nodded.

"Yes. They'll be a trump card for the Kingdom's agriculture."

If you keep planting the same crops in the same fields, it's not good for

the soil. It disturbs the balance of nutrients, and pathogens and insects that

prey on those crops spread. The former problem can be managed with

fertilizer and new soil, but the latter remains an issue. In Souma's old

world, pathogens and bugs were eliminated through the use of agricultural

chemicals, but those sorts of things didn't exist yet in this world.

Ginger crouched down and placed his hand on the ground.

"Thanks to the microscope that His Majesty directed the development

of, which proved the knowledge the three-eyed race had, we learned of the

existence of bacteria and other microorganisms. As well as the fact that they

can cause illness."

Poncho nodded in agreement.

"His Majesty spread ideas about 'sanitation' that only the three-eyed

race had before now. I hear that because we've learned to wash our hands

and clean our mouths with well water, the number of people who have

gotten sick has gone down, yes. When the midwives started to focus on

using clean water, the number of deaths during childbirth decreased

considerably, yes. I get chills thinking about what might have happened if

Serina and Komain had given birth before we knew, yes."

"I feel the same way."

Poncho and Ginger let out a joint sigh of relief.

If their wives had been giving birth when the mortality rate in childbirth

was high, they'd have been beside themselves with worry. No, they might

have been rolling the dice on their wives and children's lives without even

knowing it, and the odds were stacked against them. It was horrifying to

think of.

Ginger shook his head to dispel the unpleasant thoughts before

changing the subject. "We've learned that bacteria, microorganisms, and

insects are the cause of problems with monocropping. And it was known

that planting the same plants in the same place repeatedly made them grow

less well, but now it feels like we finally understand the reason."

"That's true. The farmers seemed to have an instinctive understanding

of it even if they weren't aware of the cause, yes." Poncho nodded. "They

handled it by changing the soil, letting fields lie fallow, or changing the

crops, yes."

This world had a system of crop rotation just like Souma's old world. A

famous example would be England's Norfolk four-course system, which

cycled wheat, turnips, barley, and clover. However, crop rotation required a

sizable area of land, and different methods of harvesting each year. That

was the same in this world too.

"If we could raise the same crops in small fields, it would let us develop

better techniques for cultivating them. We might be able to produce wheat

and rice with higher yields, and vegetables that are more resistant to insects

and the cold, yes."

"You have a point. We have a lot of babies being born healthy in the

Kingdom now. We can expect the population to grow. And with Fuuga

Haan retaking land from the Demon Lord's Domain up north, people are

starting to go back there. The demand for food is going to rise even more."

"We need to increase our food production capacity, yes. And that's

what the agricultural gelins are for."

Ginger nodded in agreement, pointing at the agricultural gelins.

They were a subspecies of the gelin subspecies known as the medical

gelin, which members of the three-eyed race like Dr. Hilde used to produce

three-eyedine. The agricultural gelin had been selectively bred from the

medical gelin, which lived in places with high levels of toxins.

"Our agricultural research team worked with the three-eyed race to

create these gelins, adjusting them to feed on excessive insects and

pathogenic bacteria in the soil. In combination with the fertilizer that the

Empire taught us how to make, we can limit the damage done by

monocropping, and shorten the time the fields need to lie fallow."

These agricultural gelins killed specific bacteria and insects, thus

functioning like agricultural chemicals, in a way. However, unlike liquid

chemicals, the gelins maintained their shape to a degree, so even after they

finished crawling around there weren't parts of them left in the soil. While

they were still in an experimental state, Souma was hopeful that there

would be no effect on people who ate the finished crops.

"This is all sounding good, but are there any drawbacks, yes?"

"It would be easy to make a gelin that eats every bug and bacteria in the

soil, but much harder to make them only eat specific ones. The pests and

bacteria that grow out of control vary from crop to crop too, so we also

need to make a gelin for each type."

"Hmm...that does sound time-consuming, yes."

"The only ones we have results for so far are the gelin for tomatoes, and

the gelin for wheat, which has been our top priority."

The agricultural gelins were still being tested. They definitely needed

them for grains, which were easily preserved. The ones for other crops

wouldn't be introduced until after that. It was frustrating, but they had to

keep striving towards the dream of one day raising their food production

capacity by leaps and bounds.

Suddenly, a voice could be heard in the distance.

"Lord Gingeeer!"

It was the voice of a woman who was waving from on top of a hill

nearby. She was Ginger's wife, the raccoon beastman Sandria. Her belly

was heavy with child; currently nine months pregnant.

"It's about time for lunch, you twooo!"

"Okay, San!" Ginger replied, waving back. "Let's get going then, Sir

Poncho."

"Yes, yes."

They both headed over to where Sandria was, and there were two other

women with her. These were Poncho's wives. A sheet was laid out on the

ground, and there was a basket of bread along with veggies, cheese, and

ham to make sandwiches with.

In the middle of the sheet there were two large baskets, each containing

a darling little baby with a round face, sound asleep.

Poncho asked his wives, "Are Marin and Maron sleeping, yes?"

"Yes, dear. They went right to sleep as soon as we finished

breastfeeding them," Komain replied with a smile.

Marin and Maron were the daughters that Serina and Komain had given

birth to at nearly the same time. Because they were born so close together,

they decided to give them similar-sounding names too.

They looked like twins, having both inherited Poncho's round face, but

Komain's daughter, Maron, had a slightly redder shade of skin, so they

never confused the two.

Serina pressed a hand to her cheek and sighed. "It's good that they eat

well and sleep well, but I worry they may grow up to be built like my

husband."

"Ulp! I-It'll be fine, yes. I think they'll be just as beautiful as you and

Ms. Komain."

"Hee hee, it's okay, Serina. Poncho was able to lose weight when he

tried."

Komain chuckled, perhaps thinking back to the emaciated Poncho of

not so long ago. Serina giggled too.

"You have a point. He's already regained his original shape, so why

don't we slim him down again? Hee hee, I think I'd like a boy this time."

"Oh, I'd like a boy too, darling."

With his beautiful wives pressing towards him with smiles, Poncho felt

a chill run down his spine as he recalled just how he'd lost so much weight

before.

Ginger and Sandria watched the three of them with wry smiles on their

faces