Chapter 359: More Than Just Puppets

In the chair beside him, which he would have sworn had been empty just a second ago, Yuki was sitting with her legs crossed on the table and her back reclined against the backrest.

She watched him with her usual calm expression as she nibbled on something that looked like a pink ice bar.

"Are you okay, Master?"

"Yeah... just a bit tired."

Yuki studied him in silence for a few seconds. Mark could tell perfectly well she hadn’t bought the excuse, but in the end she simply shrugged.

"If you say so."

Yuki pulled the strange pink block out of her mouth and held it up in front of her. It was elongated, roughly the thickness of two fingers, and stuck onto a small wooden stick.

Mark couldn’t help but look closer.

A faint cold mist rose off its surface, and a pink drop started slowly sliding down the stick. Yuki caught it with her tongue before it reached her fingers.

"What is that?"

"Fruit ice."

Mark leaned in to get a better look. And now that he saw it clearly, there was no mistaking it.

It was a popsicle.

More specifically, a strawberry popsicle, almost identical to the ones he used to buy in summer back in his old world, the ones that always ended up melting before he could finish them.

"Where’d you get that?"

"Hilde sells them at the market," Yuki answered, not taking her eyes off her popsicle.

Mark frowned. It took a moment for the name to click, until he finally remembered that was the name of the royal cook.

She was a gray-haired elf who wore her hair in a bun, and during their first days in the palace, had taught Zilu how to cook things a bit more sophisticated than meat over a fire and basic stews.

"And how did she end up inventing this?"

"Because of the cold storage chambers," Yuki answered with a shrug. "About three months ago."

Mark still didn’t quite follow the connection, and it must have shown on his face, because Yuki kept explaining as she continued eating.

Apparently, one of the first cold storage chambers the dwarves had installed in the palace had ended up in the kitchens.

Hilde, distrustful of anything with a mana stone inside it, had spent the first few weeks using it reluctantly, only to store things like meat and milk.

But one night, Hilde accidentally left a glass of strawberry juice inside the cold chamber, and when she found it the next morning, it had turned into a completely frozen red block.

And though her first instinct was to throw it out, curiosity got the better of her and she ended up tasting it, reasoning that if the chamber could preserve meat and vegetables, the juice probably hadn’t gone bad either.

To her surprise, she liked it so much that she decided to repeat the experiment.

From there she started playing around with the idea. She swapped the glasses for molds, tried different fruits, adjusted the sugar, and eventually stuck a little stick in the center so she wouldn’t freeze her fingers eating them.

Once Hilde decided her ice treats were finally ready, she started sharing them with the other maids, and the idea spread with an ease that even she hadn’t expected.

After that, the success came almost on its own.

Aria saw the potential right away and turned that experiment into a small business, getting Hilde a cold storage chamber, a stall at the market, and everything needed to sell them.

Since then, Yuki had started going there every morning because she wanted to try new flavors, but she’d quickly grown fond of the market itself too.

The arrival of merchants, workers, and visitors from other regions had mixed together customs that had barely crossed paths before.

So now it wasn’t unusual to find elven recipes sitting next to beastmen dishes, or ingredients most of the capital’s residents didn’t even know how to use.

And Yuki had taken a liking to discovering them.

Every morning she’d try a new ice flavor, and almost always ended up coming back with some other food she’d never tried before.

Mark watched her keep eating, and then remembered a conversation from months ago, when several of his wives had insisted that Yuki needed a hobby.

Maybe this was exactly that.

Mark felt something strange as he realized just how much she’d changed.

The Yuki from months ago had no favorite flavors, no little indulgences, no curiosity to try new things, because almost her entire existence had revolved around him and whatever he needed from her.

But that woman wasn’t the one sitting beside him anymore.

The Yuki next to him had started building small pieces of a life of her own.

And the more he thought about it, the more obvious it became that she wasn’t the only one who had changed.

Aria, for instance, had gone from living for his approval to making decisions that affected an entire empire.

Mark had brainwashed her into agreeing with him on everything, so for a long time any nonsense that came out of his mouth had immediately earned a "what a great idea, Master."

But now she could sit across from ministers and merchants, argue with them, and decide for herself what was best without needing to ask him first.

Alice wasn’t the same either.

The former Grand Inquisitor who had always kept her distance from the others, especially from Rose, now seemed far more integrated and close to them after everything they’d been through together.

Ely, for her part, had learned something Mark had long believed impossible: giving him space. She was still jealous, and probably always would be, but she no longer needed to be glued to him every second to feel at ease.

Rose, perhaps, was the exception.

Not because she hadn’t changed, but because her sadism seemed to have simply shifted schedules. Specifically, to nighttime.

Since that was when Mark let her drink his blood while they had sex, and the marks Rose left on his neck afterward were pretty solid proof that that side of her was still very much alive.

Mark scratched his neck without realizing it, an uncomfortable feeling starting to creep up his spine.

None of those changes were actually new; they’d been appearing gradually for months, so slowly that he’d barely stopped to think about them.

But after seven months away, all those small differences seemed to have piled up at once, and now they were impossible to ignore.

Until now, he’d always taken it for granted that Consciousness Modification was something fixed.

By reviving them, he altered how they thought, gave them a new personality, and that, in theory, was who they’d be from that point forward.

But maybe it had never worked that way.

His wives kept learning, making mistakes, developing tastes, and changing over time just like anyone else, which meant that what he’d done when he revived them had only ever been a starting point.

And it was exactly that conclusion that turned his unease into anxiety.

Because if their personalities could change on their own, nothing guaranteed their feelings couldn’t change too.

They could stop loving him, could start questioning him, and worse, maybe someday they could recover memories of their past lives and understand exactly what he’d done to them.

If that ever happened, what would he do?

Subdue them with his power?

Kill them again and revive them once more to start from scratch?

Mark felt a chill run down his spine.

Luckily, before his mind could drag him into even worse scenarios, the meeting room door burst open.

"Master!"

Aria came running in, hair a mess, a stack of papers clutched against her chest.

"Sorry, sorry, sorry for keeping you waiting so long!" she said, visibly flustered. "Something got complicated at the last minute and I couldn’t leave it half-done, but I swear it was worth it, because I’m bringing good new—"

But then her foot caught on the leg of Yuki’s chair and she went flying forward, papers scattering through the air, and she crashed face-first onto the floor.

THUMP!

For a few seconds, the only sound in the room was the rustle of pages landing one after another on Aria’s back. The last one landed on her head.

"Need some help?" Yuki asked, an amused smile on her face.

"...No," Aria mumbled into the carpet.