The room that Zadiris had prepared for Bilde's childbirth was one of the countless rooms in the ruins of Talosheim.

The room had been cleaned and a rug made of the soft fur from a Needle Wolf's belly had been laid out on the floor, and Bilde was lying on top of it.

「First,【Sterilization.】Bilde, are you alright?」(Vandalieu)

There were three other Ghoul women in the room other than Bilde. They were likely women who had experienced childbirth before, acting as midwives.

「V-Van.」(Bilde)

Probably due to the pains of labor, Bilde's breathing was rough and there was sweat on her forehead as she realized that Vandalieu was there and reached a hand out towards him. Vandalieu took that small hand... that was still bigger than his own, and she gave his hand a squeeze.

「I-I'm going to do my best and give birth to a healthy baby, okay?」(Bilde)

What was a man supposed to say in response to this? This was a difficult question to answer in Vandalieu's position. He was aware of his own expressionlessness and flat tone of voice, so he thought he might come off as cold if he just said,「Do your best」, so he hesitated. Trying to sound as reassuring as possible, he said...

「It's alright, I'm here with you, so just relax.」(Vandalieu)

Vandalieu didn't have a doctor's license, nor had he ever witnessed childbirth before, so he didn't know what exactly was alright or on what grounds Bilde could relax, but encouraging her was the top priority right now.

In fact, his expressionlessness was convenient in situations like this. His lack of confidence didn't show on his face.

「Okay!」(Bilde)

It seemed that Vandalieu had succeeded in encouraging her. She definitely seemed to be in pain, but she still smiled.

When Vandalieu thought about the fact that had made her smile, the pain of her claws digging into his right hand seemed to be a trivial matter. Ah, they pierced his skin.

... But he could see a faint shadow of death on her face.

「Control your breathing, short breaths in, long breaths out.」(Midwife)

「Check your Status if you can; has your Vitality dropped?」(Midwife)

「I will make sure to deliver your baby. Rest assured.」(Zadiris)

Looking at everyone else, Vandalieu realized that Bilde wasn't showing any strangeness or visible signs of her condition worsening. She showed no signs of being ill, and there shouldn't have been anything abnormal with the baby, either.

「I'm going to examine you a little, okay?」(Vandalieu)

But Vandalieu could definitely see the shadow of death, so he used【Spirit Form Transformation】to transform his unoccupied left arm into spirit form and placed it inside Bilde's abdomen.

And then he found that the umbilical cord had wrapped itself around the baby's neck. At this rate, the baby would be strangled.

『I'm glad Zadiris called me over here.』(Vandalieu)

Thinking this, he loosened the umbilical cord from around the baby's neck... though it would have been easier to do it with his right hand.

「How is everything, boy?」(Zadiris)

「It's fine, I've resolved it.」(Vandalieu)

The bones of Vandalieu's right hand were creaking and Bilde's claws had dug into it so that her paralyzing venom was entering, but there was now no problem with the mother or the child.

「Alright! The rest is up to your effort, Bilde!」(Zadiris)

After that, just as Zadiris said, the childbirth continued with Bilde's efforts while Vandalieu offered her encouragement while having his right hand squeezed.

It took six hours for the child to be born, and Vandalieu learned just how great the mothers of the world were.

A gray-brown baby with a wrinkled face. She was the first new Ghoul born into the Ghoul community in a long time.

「Look, it's a girl. I can't give your whole name to her, Vandalieu, but is it alright if I borrow half of it?」(Bilde)

Bilde was holding her child, looking visibly exhausted but incredibly happy.

Vandalieu was fine with it, but would the child's real father not mind? Bilde looked so happy that Vandalieu was hesitant to ask.

「I don't mind.」(Vandalieu)

And so this was the reply he gave.

Vandalieu would ask about this later to learn that newborn Ghouls were generally named by their mothers, or their names would be decided after consulting with the chief of the tribe. Since Bilde was the mother, nobody would say anything about her decision to give her child half of Vandalieu's name.

「Will you hold her?」(Bilde)

「With pleasure.」(Vandalieu)

Now he took the peacefully-sleeping baby with both arms... The bone fractures of his right hand still hadn't healed and it still didn't move very well after having paralyzing-venom-secreting claws piercing it for hours on end. So he took the baby with his left arm and placed her on top of his knees.

「She's light and very warm.」(Vandalieu)

The baby's body felt very light to Vandalieu. But this baby would grow up and live for three hundred years. As this thought occurred to him, he got a sense of how mysterious life was.

The birth of a new life was an emotionally moving event. Vandalieu felt this for the first time in his three lifetimes.

When he had lived on Earth, even when watching that kind of documentary that told him,「This is how a new life is born」, his only reaction to that was,「Hmm.」After all, he was just watching a complete stranger on a screen or the birth of an animal, so he hadn't felt emotionally moved at all.

But he had experienced death twice... Including the time after he became an Undead, three times. And now that he was trying to bring Darcia back to life, he could really feel the emotion of this event.

He decided to do everything he could to protect this child. He wasn't the child's father, but he was the Ghoul King, after all.

「And so I'm postponing my trip to the Dungeons.」(Vandalieu)

Borkus and Vigaro made lonely-looking faces when Vandalieu told them this, but they understood that it couldn't be helped.

The remaining nine women would give birth one by one in the near future. If an unexpected situation arose while Vandalieu was in a Devil's Nest or Dungeon, he wouldn't be able to deal with it.

「It's been so long since I've heard a baby crying!」(Vigaro)

『You can take your time to calm down first, but make sure you show the baby to us as well.』(Borkus)

「For a new life to be born in these ruins that were merely waiting to turn into dust, this is a truly happy event.」(Nuaza)

『How great, now we can have some drinks.』(Titan)

『If there's any alcohol to be had.』(Titan)

「There is, though it's not very tasty!」(Titan)

For Vigaro and the other Ghouls who had been troubled by their problem of low fertility, it was clearly a happy event, but even Borkus and the other Undead Titans were truly genuinely happy to see the birth of this baby.

Incidentally, one might have questioned whether it would be hygienic to allow the baby near the Undead, but it wasn't a problem. Vandalieu had already cast the【Sterilization】,【Bug Killer】,【Deodorization】and【Preservation】spells on all of the Undead Titans.

Once a drain system was established, Talosheim would become a fortress city as hygienic as any city of the Amid Empire. There were relatively few people living in the city considering its size, so it would never lose the feeling of being a ghost town, however.

「Also, I want to strengthen Talosheim's defenses and use【Alchemy】to make the Magic Item that that will increase the Ghouls' fertility. I'll leave the adventures and training for in between those.」(Vandalieu)

Those dedicated to the path of being a warrior or a mage might have scolded him for his lack of dedication, but nobody here scolded Vandalieu.

「Alright! We'll just decide on the order we'll do things here!」(Vigaro)

『This is perfect. Nobody's gone into the Dungeons for two hundred years, so who knows what they'll be like inside. The number of monsters will probably have increased, so I'll thin them out for you!』(Borkus)

『It could be that they have been abandoned for so long that new, unknown levels have appeared in them.』

「What will we do about the unarmed* fighting lessons? For now, I suppose we'll go over the basics.」(Basdia)

TLN*: "Hand-to-hand" was bothering me too much, so I've changed this to "unarmed" in this chapter and all previous chapters

『Jyuh! My lord, in that case, I shall increase my Level and work hard to catch up to my companions!』(Bone Man)

「We'll be taking this time to learn our skills as well!」(Child)

In this moment, Vandalieu realized once again just how much kindness he was surrounded by in this third lifetime of his.

The first thing to do was to create the Magic Items to fix the Ghouls' fertility problem. Strengthening Talosheim's defenses would have to be done after the forest Devil's Nest was completely removed from the city, otherwise they would be up to their necks in Raptors and Needle Wolves.

「Holy Son, please give us a few more days.」

So he was told. It seemed that the problem was indeed the number of monsters, not their strength. Though the Needle Wolves weren't problematic, the Raptors were intelligent enough to run away if they knew they couldn't win a fight, so exterminating them was likely very difficult.

「I am thinking of making two kinds of Magic Items.」(Vandalieu)

「One to make the sperm and egg cells survive longer, and the other to prevent fetuses from dying before they reach a certain size, if I recall? Creating Magic Items with both functions would be difficult, after all.」(Zadiris)

In the building next to the (temporary) maternity room, Vandalieu was discussing the creation of the Magic Items with Zadiris, Tarea, Basdia and several other Ghoul women.

「Regarding that, I'm thinking of making the Magic Item that makes the sperm and egg cells survive longer something that is easy to put on and take off.」(Vandalieu)

「Indeed, if it were something that stayed on permanently... we would produce children endlessly.」(Tarea)

「You're right, it'll be hard for everyone's habits to suddenly change.」(Basdia)

Up until now, Ghouls had experienced difficulties in getting pregnant, and even if they did, most of their children were not born successfully. Because of this, they had no marriage system and it was natural for their society to do their utmost to try and create children. Even after Bilde and the others became pregnant, they hadn't shown any signs of holding back.

Even if Vandalieu were to create the Magic Items, they wouldn't suddenly say,「Alright, let's do proper family planning from now on.」

There were no convenient contraceptive devices or pills like on Earth, so that would make this only more difficult.

Well, there wouldn't be problems in having a large number of children for a while. In fact, it would be a good thing; Talosheim still had plenty of space and there was a near-endless supply of food.

However, reproducing to the point of filling up all of the land would be a problem. Unlike Braga and the other monster children, Ghouls did not age to maturity in the span of a single year.

「There will definitely be problems. Having one child is already a handful, but having two or three children at once...」(Tarea)

「And there are many who are raising a child for the first time, including Bilde.」(Zadiris)

There were no nurseries like on Earth, nor were there books, television programs or the internet to refer to in order to learn how to raise a child. As Tarea and Zadiris had experienced raising children before, they were concerned that there would be mothers who would suffer from maternity-related anxiety.

Well, that didn't necessarily mean that having only one child would prevent maternity-related anxiety, however.

「So then I think it would be best to explain about contraception while I make the Magic Items.」(Vandalieu)

「You're right. Unlike humans, our lifespans are long. It's good for us to have many children, but we should be fine having a child once every five or ten years.」(Basdia)

For humans, especially for those living in farming communities, there would be circumstances where they wouldn't have the luxury of spacing out their children because it was a lot of work to raise them, and they probably didn't understand the concept of family planning anyway.

Because medical technology was not well-developed, there would be a strong notion that they should have as many children as possible while they were still young and healthy. But as Basdia said, Ghouls had long lifespans so it would be easy to convince the Ghouls to adopt this policy.

Humans would have opposed this strongly, however.

「But can the men hold themselves back? I think once every five or ten years is impossible.」(Basdia)

「That is why it will be an accessory that can be put on and taken off. It can be put on only when wishing to have children.」(Tarea)

It would be a reverse-contraception device.

「So what kind of accessory will you make it?」(Basdia)

「Right now, I'm thinking of making it a pendant or a band that goes around the thigh.」(Vandalieu)

The shape and part of the body that the Magic Item would be worn on was very important. These factors would affect the difficulty of creating the item with【Alchemy】, the materials required and the strength of its effect when completed.

For example, if there were a Magic Item that allowed one to walk on air as if it were the ground, would it not be likely that most people would expect such a Magic Item to be a pair of shoes?

At the very least, nobody would think it would be a pair of glasses.

In contrast, if there were a Magic Item that allowed one to see through objects while it was worn, most people would expect it to be a pair of glasses, not shoes.

In this way, certain shapes and where the Magic Item would be worn would make it easier to create the item and produce a stronger effect, depending on what kind of effect was desired.

Something that granted physical strength would be a ring or armlet. Something that granted some kind of vision would be glasses or, alternatively, a circlet. Something that let one run at high speeds would be shoes or an anklet.

Of course, Magic Items such as socks that allowed one to see in the dark apparently existed, but creating such items would require a high level in the【Alchemy】skill and expensive materials.

At present, there were more Alchemical materials available than food. The reason for this was that anything that they obtained from hunting monsters, they had to use themselves.

There was no Adventurers' Guild to take Magic Stones to, so Braga and the other monster children had been playing with them like marbles.

However, Vandalieu, the only one who could create a death-attribute Magic Item, had a skill level of 1 in【Alchemy.】Creating a band that went around the thigh close to the abdomen or a pendant that would hang similarly close was the limit of his ability.

He also had the option of making it a belt, but the Ghouls didn't have a culture of wearing belts, so it might have made the use of the Magic Item unpopular.

... Vandalieu would find it difficult to create an item that would be worn even closer to the relevant body parts than that.

「So, are there any colors or designs that you like?」(Vandalieu)

Vandalieu had included Basdia and the other women in this discussion to ask them this. Since they would be the ones wearing it, it would be best to ask them for their preferences in color or shape.

... Because of its intended function, it would be constantly worn during intercourse, after all.

「Let's see... Everyone likes white, black, silver and gold.」(Basdia)

「I don't think anyone likes seeing red unless it's in battle.」(Woman)

「I think everyone likes things that look like wings. Also, hearts, maybe.」(Woman)

Basdia and the others offered their opinions on what Ghoul women liked. Vandalieu had no confidence in his sense of fashion, so this was greatly helpful.

Incidentally, in Lambda, the heart was apparently a symbol of the goddess Vida. As to be expected of the goddess of the life attribute.

However, a black heart would be a bad omen, so perhaps silver would be better?

「For now, we shall try making some.」(Tarea)

「I'm counting on you.」(Vandalieu)

The ones actually making the objects would be Tarea and the other Ghoul craftswomen. Creating a Magic Item required the【Alchemy】skill, but that was simply imbuing an object with magic. The object itself was generally made by another craftsman.

There were some alchemists that did everything on their own, from gathering materials to creating the items themselves, but those were exceptionally unusual.

「So what will you do for the Magic Item that keeps the fetus alive? It would be problematic for this one to be something that can be easily taken off.」(Zadiris)

Zadiris had been whispering,「Gold and silver? Youngsters these days sure like their shiny things...」But now she asked this question, and Vandalieu replied,「This is a little problematic.」

As Zadiris said, it would be better for this Magic Item to be difficult to remove. If it accidentally came off and was lost or the mother forgot to put it on and the baby died, it would be seriously problematic.

But that didn't mean that it could be something put inside the body...

The two of them nodded as they thought about this...

「How about a tattoo?」(Zadiris)

「A piercing, after all?」(Vandalieu)

『Eh?』(Both)

They both looked at each other after coming up with totally different answers.

「Boy, a piercing would be too far from the abdomen. A tattoo will not disappear, and it can be applied anywhere.」(Zadiris)

「The piercing wouldn't be on the ears, nose or lips, but on the belly button. As for tattoos, who would apply the tattoos to begin with?」(Vandalieu)

It seemed that Ghouls hadn't come up with the idea of piercing their belly buttons. And Vandalieu hadn't thought of the idea of making a Magic Item out of a tattoo engraved onto the body.

And then after discussion, they settled on using belly button piercings.

「If we use tattoos, won't they become strangely distorted when the stomach expands? The baby would have grown big enough by the time that happens, but re-applying the tattoo every time you want to become pregnant wouldn't be an option. In that case, I think piercings are better.」(Basdia)

And so Basdia's opinion was accepted.

Incidentally, the idea that piercings were applied on the neck and above was something that not only Ghouls, but the entirety of Lambda possessed. Belly button piercings would spread and become greatly popular, starting in Talosheim, but that would be a story set in the distant future.

From then on, Vandalieu lived a lifestyle that was more lenient than usual, but still harsh on a three-year-old boy.

He would typically rest one day a week, and if one of the pregnant women went into labor on that day, he would still have to attend. He would take three hours' rest the next day to compensate. With this as the basic rhythm of his lifestyle, he spent his time continuing to repair and maintain the city of Talosheim as well as training in unarmed combat while waiting for Tarea and the other craftswomen to create prototypes for the Magic Items.

The repairing and maintenance were simple.

「Get up, join together, get