"Argh…" I muttered once I finally got to drop down on my bed.
Back when I moved out of it in the morning, I didn't expect that the entire day would turn so damn busy and hectic.
It was all supposed to be just the first step of freeing me and Mia from the burdens of managing the town and dealing with everything ourselves… but it ended up with the two of us managing the town all on our own and doing most of the now increased workload by, yeah, you guessed it right, our damn fucking selves!
"Now, now…" Mia patted my shoulders only to push me down on the bed and then leave for the depths of the room. "It wasn't all that bad, was it?" she suggested, busying herself with looking through the shelves of the kitchen area of the room. "You want something sweet or rather sour?" she asked, seamlessly changing the topic from what happened during the day to what I would like to eat.
"Something sour, please. Eating sweets for the night won't do us any good," I replied, only to turn around on the bed and dig my face into one of the makeshift pillows that one of the craftsmen prepared.
"AAARGH…."
Another moan of exhaustion, pain, and boredom sank into the pillow.
My fingers and wrist were hurting like hell. They felt as if I was jacking off for the entire day while writing math exercises with my other hand. And in fact, when considering what motions it took to inscribe a rune onto a stone, this kind of simplification wasn't that far detached from the truth.
After all, I did indeed move my right hand up and down when carving delicate lines into the stones and used my other hand to track both the patterns and the number of stones of each specific pattern that I've made.
"Still, we did quite a lot today," Mia pointed out while she stocked several different items on the small countertop before proceeding to cut and mix them like some sort of high-level alchemist. "I've heard you managed to complete all of the basic stones for that formation of yours," she pointed out only to turn her head and grace me with a beautiful smile. "Good work today!"
'Ahhh….'
A soul-born sigh of bliss coursed through my spirit.
Good work today. Such a simple, three words long sentence that held such an astonishing power I needed to use such two times just to begin to approach its might.
With those three simple words, Mia managed to offset all the trauma of spending ten damn hours straight in the shed doing nothing but inscribing runes upon the stones.
"I've heard you did quite a lot yourself," I spoke as I turned on my back so that I could look at Mia properly.
Even her just moving around in the kitchen while she whipped out something for us to eat was an art in my eyes.
The gentle way in which her robes swayed, the delicate lines of her bodyline that kept on teasing my imaginary, a slight smile or wink she would treat me with whenever she noticed my stare…
'I guess that's what it means to have a wife,' I thought.
Just a few moments of watching Mia was enough to pour more fuel into my muscles.
Unable to contain myself, I moved over to the edge of the bed before tripping forward.
Being the cultivator of a level more or less comparable to royals, something as silly as tripping was far beyond my ability to do… But whenever in private with Mia, my entire self somehow reverted back to the average, normal human that I was before appearing in this world.
It was as if this girl created a zone around herself that when unperturbed by anyone else, deprived me of all my powers and rationality alike.
Powered by my desire, I closed the gap between us in just a few steps, approaching Mia from behind only to throw my hands forward and wrap my arms around her shoulders.
"Huh? Wait!" Mia protested lightly as her body shook. Then, her face darkened a little. "No! Bad Arthy!" she scolded me down while whipping her delicate fingers against one of my hands embracing her. "I'm cooking right now! Go back to the bed and wait for me!"
I froze.
It was the first time Mia to scold me like that… But how come I enjoyed it?
Was it the excitement of learning a new part of her? Or maybe the joy of seeing how she finally managed to overcome her reservations and drop the unnecessary respect that she had towards me due to how our relationship began?
Or maybe I was simply a masochist who just found out he liked to be treated roughly?
'I better not think about it too hard,' I thought, my own face darkening a little as I obeyed Mia's commands and retreated back to the bed.
"Oh, don't sulk so much," Mia rolled her eyes… but her face softened as she spoke.
'Did she misinterpret my expression or something?' I thought, caught off guard by the sudden fluctuation of emotion in my love's voice.
With a few more moves of her hands, Mia finished whatever she was preparing and put everything on a simple, wooden plate. Then, she went right back to the bed where she sat on the edge and placed the platter down by her side.
"To answer your question from before, yeah," she said as she grabbed one piece of what turned out to be chunks of bread smeared with what smelled like herbal butter and dipped in some sort of a slightly thicker, meaty sauce.
"We managed to clear…" Mia paused as she stuffed her mouth with the piece before using one of her fingers to catch a stray drop of gravy that slid down the corner of her mouth. "We managed to clear the entire area and even started to build the foundation for the mainframe," she elaborated a little before wiping her hands clean and turning to face me right as I reached out for a piece.
"Now, lay down on your stomach and close your eyes," Mia ordered.
My eyebrows moved up. Once again, this damn girl managed to take me by surprise!
Still, powered by my newly found si… no, my newly found fascination in Mia's new side, I obeyed Mia's orders and lay down flat on my stomach.
"Why do you need me to do that?" I then asked while turning my head to take a peek at the girl.
"I didn't even need to touch you to see how tense your back is," Mia said as she grabbed the edges of her robe before pulling its outer part off, leaving only a few pieces of cloth to cover the most secretive parts of her body. "So, I want to try massaging your back!"