Chapter 49: Draconic Maternity Leave, Spectral Biscuits, and Roadblock Strategies

CRACK.

The sound echoed through the sterile, freshly sanitized summon room like a gunshot.

Mordecai, who was already running on a dangerous deficit of sleep and sanity, slowly turned his head. The [Rotten Legendary Dragon Egg]—a catastrophic item that smelled like a landfill on fire—was violently vibrating on the stainless-steel surgical cart. Thick, acid-green smoke was hissing from a jagged, luminescent fissure traveling down its mottled, pink-polka-dotted shell.

"Oh, no," Mordecai whispered, the color draining from his face. "No, no, no. I didn't cast anything on that. I didn't include it in the ritual..."

But the egg didn't care about his intentions. The ambient dark mana in the room, combined with the residual apocalyptic energy of the aborted ritual, had jump-started its dormant biology. It seems like it reacted to all the edgy necromancy magic in the room.

However, it wasn't hatching. The shell wasn't breaking apart to release whatever foul monstrosity lay inside despite the visible crack. Instead, the egg was pulsing. It was taking a ragged, desperate breath. It was freezing cold, shivering violently, emitting a low, mournful hum that vibrated in everyone's teeth.

It probably needed a nest or incubation. And, more importantly, its ancient, primitive instincts were desperately crying out, having sensed the presence of a true draconic entity somewhere within the fortress.

"It's going to detonate," Valeria, the tsundere swordswoman, shrieked, instinctively crossing her arms over her chest. Despite the fact that her [Mythic Metallic Bikini] offered absolutely zero coverage, she struck a classic, defensive anime pose, a deep blush of panic dusting her cheeks. "B-Baka! Do something, Master! If that thing explodes, it'll ruin my silver hair!"

"Nya! It smells like a wet dog that rolled in toxic waste! Nya!" the catgirl thief wailed, hiding behind the absurdly endowed cleric, Seraphina, who was currently clutching her staff and trembling like a leaf.

"CEO, I'll text Cassandra to file a lawsuit against the Gods for excessive bad smell. Biological Hazards are not allowed in workplaces." Brenda said, while holding her nose with her fingers.

"Do whatever you want, Brenda," Mordecai gritted his teeth, stepping back from the vibrating, stinking egg. "I fix electrical panels. I don't deliver radioactive reptiles."

He frantically tapped his magical earpiece. "Vera! Vera, get immediately down to Sub-Level 4 immediately! Code Green! I repeat, Code Green!" (He invented a random code on the moment)

Less than ten seconds later, the air rippled, and a localized teleportation circle snapped open.

Vera stepped through, the sharp clack-clack of her designer heels cutting through the chaos of the room. The Green Wyvern, currently serving as Ravenloft Holdings' Head of Aviation Logistics, looked immaculate. She wore a perfectly tailored, charcoal-gray pencil skirt, a crisp white blouse, and a sleek blazer. Her vibrant green hair fell smoothly down her back instead of her ponytail, perfectly framing her slitted, reptilian emerald eyes. Sweeping elegantly behind her, casually brushing against the stone floor, was her thick, scaly green tail.

'Ah. She looks normal.' Mordecai thought.

She took one look at the chaotic harem, the terrified anime girls, the furious monkey deity, and the exhausted CEO. She adjusted her glasses. "You called, Boss? Are we conducting a hostile takeover of a lingerie catalog?"

"THAT'S HER!" Seraphina suddenly shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at Vera. The cleric's massive chest heaved with exaggerated, cliché panic, her cheeks flushing bright red. "T-The Calamity Emerald Wyvern of the Emerald Peaks! Master, stay back! She wiped our party three times during the beta test!"

"I-It's not like I'm scared of you, you overgrown lizard!" Valeria stammered, stepping forward with her sword drawn, though her knees were visibly knocking together. She turned her head away with a classic hmpf, a fierce blush of embarrassment, and lingering PTSD coloring her face. "M-Master, get behind me! I'll protect you... not because I like you, obviously!"

Vera merely arched a perfectly manicured green eyebrow, looking at the girls with absolute corporate disdain. "Oh. The Level 50 fodder party. I remember you. You tried to hit me with a 'Holy Smite' while I was kindly minding my own business in loneliness. It was profoundly annoying."

"Majestic demi-humans-shapeshifters creatures aren't allowed in private places. I'll need the CEO's signature for a suspension." Brenda said, taking out a notepad and a demonic pen.

Before Vera could issue a verbal reprimand, Sun Wukong stepped directly into the line of fire.

The monkey waifu’s golden eyes narrowed to dangerous slits, her wild, static-charged hair flaring out. She recognized the draconic aura instantly. It triggered deeply ingrained memories from a classic Chinese literary masterpiece that had no business existing in this LitRPG universe.

"A Dragon?!" Wukong snarled, a mischievous, battle-hungry grin exposing her sharp fangs. She cracked her knuckles, stepping protectively in front of Mordecai. "I don't care if you're the Dragon King of the East Sea dressed like a boring mortal! You owe me a new pillar, lizard! Nobody threatens my Buddha!"

With a swift, practiced motion, Wukong reached into her ear, pinched something microscopic, and yanked it outward. In a flash of golden light, the tiny needle expanded into her legendary, devastatingly heavy magical staff. She spun it in a blur, creating a localized hurricane in the dungeon, pointing the tip directly at Vera's flawless blazer.

"Try me, monkey," Vera hissed, her slitted eyes glowing, a wisp of green, acidic smoke escaping her lips.

'Vera is being... different.'

[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: SINCE YOU'RE DENSE, WE'LL TELL YOU.]

[VERA IS JEALOUS. SHE HATES SEEING OTHER FEMALES NEAR YOU, SPECIFICALLY THESE ONES.]

[CAUSE: SHE ALREADY FOUGHT WITH THOSE PEOPLE, THEY'RE HER ENEMIES.]

[SUGGESTED SOLUTION: ACTIVATE YOUR HAREM SKILL BEFORE A FATAL ACCIDENT ON WORK]

[SPOILER: IT WOULD BE A MASSACRE.]

'This is so F*cked up.'

Mordecai felt a blood vessel throb violently in his temple. The headache was now a full-blown migraine. He was surrounded by screeching anime tropes, a jealous monkey god, a stressed dragon CFO, and a stinking egg that was about to go critical.

He had reached his limit.

"System," Mordecai growled, his voice deathly quiet. "Activate Skill."

[SKILL ACTIVATED: HR Catfight Mediation]

[Description: A direct parody of harem members fighting for the protagonist's attention. Forces participants to resolve their emotional grievances via corporate bureaucracy.]

[Cost: 50 Mana and one pack of stale office biscuits deducted from inventory.]

The dungeon room warped.

Suddenly, the cold stone walls were overlaid with the soul-crushing beige wallpaper of a 1990s corporate conference room. The flickering torches were replaced by the buzzing, depressing hum of fluorescent tube lights. A massive, spectral mahogany conference table materialized out of thin air, surrounded by uncomfortably stiff rolling chairs.

In the center of the table sat a plastic plate piled high with incredibly dry, tasteless digestive biscuits that smelled faintly of dust and despair.

Seraphina, Valeria, Nya, and even Brenda were instantly, forcefully teleported into the chairs. Their weapons vanished. Instead, they found themselves gripping cheap, blue ballpoint pens, with towering stacks of "Form 12-B: Notice of Interpersonal Grievance" resting before them.

"W-What is this?!" Valeria gasped, her Tsundere rage instantly evaporating, replaced by a crushing wave of [Meeting Fatigue]. She slumped into her chair, her blush fading into a sickly pallor as she stared at the sixty-page document. "Item 1.4: Describe your emotional outburst in 500 words or fewer... I... I can't..."

"Nya... the biscuits taste like cardboard... Nya..." the catgirl whined, nibbling on a stale cookie with tears in her eyes.

"Fill out the forms in twelve copies," Mordecai ordered from the head of the table, projecting his best middle-management voice. "No one leaves this spectral dimension until the ink is dry."

He turned around. The skill had successfully neutralized the anime harem. But it had completely failed to capture one target.

Sun Wukong was still standing in the middle of the dungeon, her staff gripped tightly, her golden eyes flashing with rebellious fury. She was a deity born from a stone, a rebel who had waged war against heaven itself. A mere HR mediation skill was not going to chain the Great Sage Equal to Heaven.

"You think you can trap me with paperwork?!" Wukong laughed, a wild, feral sound. She hefted her staff, ready to smash the spectral conference table to splinters. "I erased my name from the Book of Life and Death! I don't do forms! I'm going to smash that lizard!"

"Wukong. Stop." He said, his voice dropping an octave and his violet eye pulsing.

Mordecai didn't shout. He simply issued a flat, absolute, uncompromising verbal command, laced with his Necromancer's Authority.

Wukong froze.

The magical choker secured tightly around her neck—the modernized, eroticized version of her legendary golden circlet—suddenly hummed. It delivered a sharp, localized shock of magical electricity directly to her nervous system.

It wasn't painful. But it was entirely, overwhelmingly authoritative.

Wukong gasped, dropping her staff, which clattered loudly against the stone. Her knees buckled slightly. A massive, violent wave of heat rushed to her face, turning her cheeks the color of a ripe tomato. Her slit pupils dilated massively. Her furious, rebellious monkey tail instantly curled up and wrapped tightly, submissively around her own thigh.

'He... he commanded me. He told me to stop.' A deeply suppressed, entirely inappropriate shiver of pure excitement ran down the monkey deity's spine. The thrill of absolute submission—a bizarre kink engineered by the System's waifu-fication algorithms—short-circuited her battle lust. She fell to her knees, panting softly, her hands resting on her thighs, looking up at Mordecai with wide, incredibly needy golden eyes.

"Y-Yes, my Buddha..." she whispered, her voice trembling with an emotion that was definitely not anger. "I'll... I'll be a good girl. I'll stay perfectly still."

Mordecai chose to ignore the disturbing psychological implications of what had just happened. He had more pressing matters.

He turned to Vera, who was standing at the edge of the spectral conference room, looking highly confused.

"Vera. Forget them," Mordecai sighed, walking over to the surgical cart. He carefully, gingerly picked up the heavy, vibrating, foul-smelling [Rotten Legendary Dragon Egg]. He held it out toward the Green Dragon.

"I don't know what to do with this," Mordecai said, genuine exhaustion bleeding into his voice. "The ritual messed it up. It’s not hatching, but it’s alive. It’s freezing. It’s crying out. You are the only one here who understands this biology. You’re a wyvern, and in this moment, you’re the only one who can help me with this. Please."

It was a desperate, pragmatic plea from a tired boss to his most competent employee.

But Vera was not just an employee. She was a wyvern who had lived in isolated, miserable solitude for centuries before Mordecai had given her a purpose.

When Mordecai handed her the egg, Vera’s slitted green eyes widened to impossible proportions. She stared at the pulsating shell, and then, she looked up at Mordecai’s tired face. The CEO had just chased away all the other women and subdued the violent monkey. And, most of all, he had handed her an egg, explicitly stating that she was the only one who could understand it. The only one who could help him.

Vera’s draconic logic circuits made a catastrophic, romantic leap.

'An egg... He made an egg. For me. He isolated us from the harem... He handed me our future. He is asking me... to be the mother of his child. Finally. After all this time, he chose me.'

"B-Boss... no... my s-s-soulmate..." Vera whispered, her voice cracking.

Her thick green tail began to wag—a slow, hypnotic, rhythmic swish that betrayed her overwhelming joy. A deep, feverish blush spread across her pale cheeks, traveling all the way down her neck.

She cradled the stinking, rotten egg against her pristine white blouse as if it were made of fragile glass. She placed her free hand gently over her own womb, her breathing suddenly becoming heavy, ragged, and rapid.

"This... this is our child," Vera panted, her eyes misting with tears of profound, obsessive devotion. "You... you chose me. You finally took me as your mate."

Mordecai blinked, his brain lagging. "Wait, Vera, no, that's not—"

[SYSTEM ALERT: CRITICAL BIOLOGICAL SHIFT DETECTED!]

[Subject 'Vera' (Green Dragon) has experienced a massive hormonal surge. Draconic Reproductive Cycle (Heat) initiated!]

The air around Vera literally began to shimmer with intense heat. The temperature in the dungeon spiked by ten degrees. Her eyes locked onto Mordecai with a terrifying, predatory, overwhelmingly lustful hunger.

"M-my soulmate... my love... You accepted my feelings..." Vera whispered, while licking her lips in a predatory hunger.

[WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT IMMINENT.]

[To comply with the Higher Realms' PG-13 Broadcasting Terms of Service, the System is enacting an emergency override!]

[Diverting Libido into Hyper-Maternal Instinct!]

Vera blinked rapidly. The predatory hunger in her eyes faded, instantly replaced by a soft, glowing, fiercely protective maternal warmth. The System’s censorship algorithms had completely rewritten her immediate reality, convincing her exhausted, infatuated brain that she and Mordecai had already consummated their relationship, and this egg was the glorious fruit of their union.

"Our child," Vera cooed, nuzzling her cheek affectionately against the stinking, polka-dotted shell. She looked at Mordecai, tears of pure, unadulterated happiness streaming down her face. "I understand now, my love. I understand why you've been so stressed. You were preparing our legacy."

"Vera, please listen to me, that egg dropped from an S-Tier Dung—"

"I won't let anyone harm it," Vera interrupted, her voice gaining a fierce, draconic edge. She held the egg tightly to her chest. "I will take it to my quarters immediately. I will build a nest of shredded financial reports and pure gold. I will incubate our baby with my own body heat. I am not alone anymore... I finally have a family. After all these centuries... I have a family."

She gave Mordecai a look of such profound, touching, and utterly delusional love that the electrician was struck completely speechless.

"I will make you proud, husband," Vera whispered, her tail wagging rapidly.

With a swish of her tail and a spin on her stilettos, the Head of Aviation Logistics activated her teleportation magic and vanished, taking the biological hazard with her to begin her heavily mandated, entirely fictional maternity leave.

"My child... my beloved child... you're the blessing of our love... finally... someone accepted me for who I am..." Vera mumbled before teleporting away.

Mordecai stood alone in the center of the dungeon.

Behind him, at the spectral conference table, the anime girls were softly sobbing as they filled out page forty-two of their grievance forms. To his right, Sun Wukong was still kneeling on the floor, blushing furiously, waiting for another command.

Mordecai slowly reached up and massaged his temples. He didn't have the energy to correct Vera’s delusion. He didn't have the energy to deal with the monkey. He just wanted to lie down on the cold stone floor and sleep for a week.

PING.

The sharp, metallic sound of a priority System notification sliced through his headache.

A small, blood-red holographic screen materialized in front of him.

[INTELLIGENCE REPORT: VILLAGE OF RENEA]

[Operation 'Bureaucratic Inhibition' executed with 100% efficiency. Mayor Galadron successfully repelled the Hero's party without shedding a single drop of blood. Hero 'Nick' was fined 50,000 Gold Coins and suffered severe psychological trauma.]

A small, tired smirk ghosted across Mordecai’s lips. "Good job, Galadron. You magnificent, tone-deaf bastard."

But the notification wasn't finished.

[WARNING: The Hero's party has retreated and is currently fleeing at maximum speed via the Eastern Trade Route.]

[Projected Destination: The Capital City of Oakhaven.]

[Risk Assessment: CRITICAL. Hero 'Nick' has positively identified Sir Galadron. Upon returning to the capital, the Hero will inform King Cuckus III and the Church of Light that the deceased Paladin is alive and serving Ravenloft Holdings. This will confirm the rumors that Aldmax (The Original Dark Lord) has returned.]

Mordecai’s smirk vanished instantly. The exhaustion momentarily faded, replaced by the cold, calculating dread of a CEO looking at a plummeting stock graph.

"Damn it," Kaito muttered, crossing his arms and pacing the floor, completely ignoring the sobbing anime girls behind him. "If that blonde idiot reaches the capital with that information, the King won't just send adventurers. He'll authorize a full-scale Crusade. The Church will mobilize its high inquisitors. They'll lay siege to Fort Blackstone."

Mordecai stopped pacing. He looked up at the stone ceiling, his mind racing through supply chains, defensive perimeters, and employee safety protocols.

"A war is terrible for business," Mordecai analyzed coldly. "It disrupts the supply chain. It damages the infrastructure we just paid to pave. And most importantly, I absolutely refuse to pay overtime to the goblin engineering corps to rebuild the fortress walls."

He couldn't let Nick reach Oakhaven.

But he couldn't just assassinate the Hero either. Nick still possessed the Goddess’s blessing, which meant lethal force would likely trigger a divine intervention, or worse, a resurrection arc that would only boost the Hero's popularity ratings.

"Physical violence is out of the question. Bureaucracy worked once, but he'll be expecting traps now," Mordecai reasoned, his single purple eye glowing with a sinister, corporate light. "If I want to stop him, I have to break his spirit completely. I need to humiliate him so profoundly that the King and the Church won't believe a word he says. I need to turn him into a laughingstock."

Mordecai turned toward the spectral conference table. He looked at Brenda, the hyper-competent HR Manager from Hell, who was currently berating Seraphina for incorrect spelling on her grievance form.

"Brenda," Mordecai called out, his voice sharp and authoritative. "Wrap up the mediation. Put the new hires through standard onboarding. I have a specialized task for you and the acquisitions department."

Brenda looked up, pushing her designer glasses up her nose, a terrifying, professional smirk touching her lips. "Of course, CEO. Shall I prepare the termination papers?"

"No," Mordecai replied, pulling up a holographic map of the Eastern Trade Route. "We are going to set up a roadblock. Prepare the non-disclosure agreements and the psychological warfare manuals. We are going to ensure the Hero never wants to speak of this night again."

The CEO of Ravenloft Holdings smiled in the dark. The Hero thought he was running back to the safety of the capital. He didn't realize he was just running into another department.