A Date with Cassandra, 2

The moment they stepped out of the guild and into the main square of Oakhaven, Cassandra stopped walking.

"Oh," she said quietly. "It's... clean."

Mordecai smiled. "Yeah. It's all thanks to your hard work." He said.

Cassandra couldn't help but blush a little.

"I didn't do anything special..." She said.

It was too clean. The cobblestones of the central plaza gleamed as though they had been individually polished by hand, which, Mordecai reflected, they very possibly had.

Not a scrap of litter anywhere. No rotting vegetables in the gutters, no suspicious puddles of unknown origin, no drunk adventurers passed out in doorways.

And moving through the square with brisk, cheerful efficiency were the reason why.

Skeletons. Dozens of them, all wearing tiny yellow high-visibility vests over their pristine janitor outfit, pushing little carts and wielding brooms with a level of dedication that bordered on the religious side.

They swept, they scrubbed, they collected waste into neatly labeled bins sorted by material type. One skeleton was on its bony knees, buffing a single cobblestone until it shone. Another was gently escorting a stray dog away from a flowerbed, patting it on the head with a gloved hand.

At the center of it all, clipboard in hand, stood Nyalen.

The poor guy who died of fall damage, now a revenant serving the Ravenloft Holdings™.

As a citizen walked past, one of the skeletons paused its sweeping, turned, and gave the passerby a slow, encouraging thumbs up.

The citizen, who had clearly grown used to this, returned the gesture without breaking stride.

"This must be Larry's work, I'm sure of it," Mordecai said.

"It is. He literally taught all these skeletons how to properly work on their own. Everyone in town loves Larry; he's like a celebrity here." Cassandra said.

"I know, I know. 90% of the Higher Realms viewers are actually still watching this show only because of him." Mordecai scratched the back of his head.

Then, a small notification blinked into the corner of Mordecai's vision.

[OAKHAVEN SANITATION: 100% EFFICIENT. Citizen satisfaction at a record high. The undead workforce reports high morale. (They don't get paid. They are dead. This is somehow still an improvement over the previous management.)]

Mordecai let a slow, satisfied breath out through his nose.

This was the part nobody in the isekai novels ever bothered with. The heroes charged off to slay demon lords and the cities they left behind stayed filthy, corrupt, and broken.

But if you fix the garbage collection, you fix the sewers, you make sure the streets are clean, and you make sure people are fed, suddenly a place starts to feel like it might actually be worth living in.

Literally, the old Oakhaven was full, wall to wall with garish advertising, every flat surface hawking some overpriced miracle product to desperate people.

The worst of it had been the vending stalls on every corner selling little glass vials of "Saintess Lucy's Blessed Bath Water." He'd had every single one of them shut down within a week of taking over the city. No more bath water or soul-cleansing subscription tiers to OnlySaints, just clean streets and clean fountains and skeletons who gave you a thumbs up.

He considered it one of his finest achievements.

"I think that Nyalen has done well," Cassandra murmured, watching a skeleton help an elderly woman carry her groceries.

"I'm pretty sure that he hates this city for some reason," Mordecai said. "But he's good at what he does. He's probably overworking himself because he wants to see his family as soon as possible."

Then, they walked on.

Cassandra kept looking around at everything with wide eyes. And Mordecai noticed that she looked lighter than he had ever seen her.

The rigid posture she always had loosened. She was almost smiling.

He also noticed something else, and the noticing turned into a question before he could stop it.

"Hey. Random thought." He glanced sideways at her. "You're a banshee. A ghost. A spirit. So how, exactly, are you walking around on two solid legs right now? You've got footsteps, and you even cast a shadow. Ghosts aren't supposed to do that."

There was a brief, dignified pause.

Cassandra didn't know what to say.

[Obviously our doing,] the System supplied, sounding smug.

"Obviously," Mordecai said flatly, out loud. "How did I not think of that?"

Cassandra tilted her head, not understanding the exchange, and Mordecai waved a hand. "Never mind. Talking to management."

Then, a different notification chimed. This one had a soft pink border, which meant it was personal.

[Incoming message: LUCY.]

Mordecai opened it with the resigned patience of a man checking a text he already knew he wasn't going to enjoy. During his time on Earth, a text from Lucy while he was at work indicated that she needed something or was feeling unwell.

"I feel too nauseous, Kaito! Even Divine Tier magic doesn't work! And, for some reason, I'm so hungry. Buy me some salted peanuts, please. Love you, Electrician-san."

He looked at it for a moment, sighed, and then closed it.

"Alright," he said to no one.

He would get the peanuts. Of course he would get the peanuts.

Nausea and cravings. Kaito didn't seem to bother about it. Why? I don't know either. Maybe he was just too busy playing the corporate edgelord.

Cassandra glanced at him. "Something important, my Liege?"

"Peanuts," Mordecai said. "Well. Possibly very important. But nothing I can do anything about right now except buy peanuts." He rolled his shoulders. "Come on. We've got shopping to do."

And then, they walked.

Their first stop was a merchant selling dried fruit, and for some reason, he was also selling salted, toasted peanuts.

Kaito immediately bought four packs of them and put them away in his void inventory.

One pack for the daily dosage, and the other three for the next few days.

'She's becoming more and more demanding every day... I need a serious talk with her.' Mordecai thought.

"Is everything alright, My Liege?" Cassandra asked, worried.

"Yeah. It's just that... Using teleports just to come here and buy salted peanuts every day is becoming more stressful than raiding an SSS dungeon." Kaito pinched the bridge of his nose. "Now let's go; I have to buy some things for Yssrath."

Cassandra smiled.

"Okay. Lead the way, My Liege." She said.

And then, they walked.

The children's goods district of Oakhaven was, mercifully, less insane than the guild hall, though it had its own particular flavor of madness.

Mordecai and Cassandra stopped in front of a well-stocked shop with a wooden sign shaped like a swaddled infant, and stepped inside.

He had very specific things to buy. Everything had to be fireproof, heat-resistant, and rated for sustained exposure to open flame, because Yssrath had recently discovered he could produce his own, and Vera's territorial fury would be nothing compared to the aftermath of a baby human/dragon/wyvern setting his own crib alight.

"We need the flame-resistant line," Mordecai told the shopkeeper, an elderly woman with reading glasses and the unsurprised look of someone who dealt with unusual requests daily. "Everything. Blankets, clothing, etc. Assume the child is, functionally, a small human dragon."

The shopkeeper didn't even blink. "Aisle four. Everything there is rated up to twelve hundred degrees since we get a lot of wyvern families these days."

Then, Cassandra walked behind him through the aisles, and Mordecai began carefully selecting every item.

He took fireproof swaddling cloth, woven from salamander silk, a crib liner rated for direct flame contact, and a set of tiny, heat-resistant onesies in a cheerful shade of green that would, he suspected, match Yssrath's scales.

Mordecai was about to walk away when Cassandra stopped him.

He turned, looking at her with a confused look.

"M-my Liege..." She said, handing him a set of draconic diapers. "You forgot this."

His eyes widened.

"Ah. You're right. Thank you, Cassandra." He took the diapers and then smiled at her.

"Y-You're welcome, My Liege." She smiled too.

Then, they reached the pacifier display and paused.

There was, naturally, a gacha version. [Legendary +5 Pacifier of Eternal Silence, Gacha Exclusive, 0.4% drop rate.] There was even a subscription-based smart pacifier that tracked the infant's mood and uploaded it to the parents' brain. There was even another one that was, inexplicably, on fire as a feature.

Mordecai ignored all of it. He reached past the flashing, glittering premium options and picked up a plain, simple, unremarkable one from the bottom shelf.

A very rare [SSS Ordinary Fire-Resistant Pacifier.] with no enchantments, subscription, or drop rate.

Next to it, he also added an [SSS Ordinary Draconic Cotton Bib], soft and plain and exactly what a baby actually needed.

"That one?" the shopkeeper asked, mildly surprised. "Most folks go for the Legendary."

"Most folks are being scammed," Mordecai said. "This one does the same job for a fortieth of the price and doesn't harvest my child's emotional data. We'll take it."

He also collected several tins of the powdered draconic formula, the good stuff, the kind rated for high-temperature offspring.

He even noted that the brand was a subsidiary of Ravenloft Holdings. He was, in effect, buying baby formula from himself. The money went in a circle and came back to him. Vertical integration. Even his grocery run was profitable.

'Efficient.' He thought.

Through all of this, Cassandra had gone very quiet.

Mordecai glanced back and caught her watching him hold up two different fireproof blankets, comparing them, while the look on her face was doing something complicated.

Her cheeks had gone faintly blue at the edges, the neon glow she got when she was flustered.

She was standing there in her plain adventurer's clothes, in a baby goods shop, next to a man carefully selecting soft cotton bibs, and the picture the whole scene painted was, well.

It looked like they were shopping for their child. Classic.

When Cassandra realized he'd noticed her, she immediately looked away, clutching her hands together. "I- I apologize, my Liege. I was simply... observing your selections. For efficiency. In case I need to make such purchases on your behalf in the future. That is all."

"Sure," Mordecai said, and let her have it, because pushing would only make the blue glow worse.

Then, after taking everything, they paid.

This time, he carried the bags, and Cassandra walked beside him out into the afternoon light with her ears glowing a soft, mortified blue.