## Chapter 326 – Obediently… Uh…?(2)
Dozens, no, over a hundred pairs of eyes were looking up at me.
Vivian, Ranier, and Aurora were watching these countless eyes, which couldn’t possibly belong to just the beastkin female Henias, and they wore contented smiles…
‘Is this… right…?
Is this okay…?’
I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I’d somehow become the head of a huge family, and even though my worries were ridiculously luxurious, I had something to say about it…?
.
.
.
After somehow resolving the ‘dungeon emergence’ incident, dungeons under the strict control of soldiers were gaping open in various parts of Groden’s royal capital, waiting for humans to challenge them.
In the past, I would have been exhausted just trying to stop the monsters pouring out of them, but thankfully, we could now seal the gates, preventing any monsters from escaping to the outside.
Of course, even though we solved the problem that way, it didn’t simply undo the damage we had already suffered.
The royal capital, thrown into a frenzy of reconstruction due to the damage caused by the dungeons, had suffered a large number of casualties, resulting in significant human losses.
In many cases, husbands died protecting their wives and children, or both parents died, leaving children orphaned and alone.
These people were rapidly emerging as a new problem within the royal capital.
Children who were not yet mature enough to contribute to society’s labor force, and women who could not provide the same level of labor as men.
Having suddenly lost their breadwinners, they didn’t know what to do and were desperately trying to do anything they thought they could to survive.
However, given the situation in Groden’s royal capital, our family’s disaster was also someone else’s family’s disaster.
With everyone experiencing hardship, many people couldn’t find work even if they wanted to.
‘Earning someone else’s money isn’t easy…’
Moreover, even when jobs were available, they were often related to building restoration or reconstruction, which were far removed from the kind of work women could do.
Moving heavy construction materials that had to be carried solely by human strength in a world without heavy equipment was beyond the capabilities of most women.
The only thing they could do was run errands at such construction sites, but even those jobs were scarce.
In the end, the best option for these female-headed households was to sell their labor in less physically demanding tasks like sewing…
But even then, some people did well, and others failed miserably.
And when things didn’t work out, the final option was obvious.
Becoming a partner for the surviving men to relieve their sexual desires at the end of the day.
“Um… if you’d buy me…”
“Oppa!! Want to have some fun with me…?
Ah-ha!! See over there? How about we go together?
Let’s go!! Quickly…♡”
However, with professional prostitutes already operating around the brothels, it was only natural that newcomers or freelancers would be outmatched in the skill of flirting with men.
When women who were still hesitant to sell their bodies finally mustered the courage to reach out to a man, he was already surrounded by numerous women competing for his attention.
“How about… five silver coins…?”
“What? That’s too expensive!
I could get two girls for that price somewhere else.
Forget it, get out of my way.”
“Then… four silver coins…!!”
“I said it’s too expensive, didn’t I?
Don’t bother me, just move!!”
Moreover, when price competition came into play, women with children to support, who needed more money than single women, were inevitably at a disadvantage.
“Ugh… annoying… I’m getting fewer customers…”
“Is this something anyone can just do…?
Haa… in the end, we’re the ones who lose out if our reputation drops…”
Newcomers struggled due to a lack of competitiveness, and professionals struggled because the pie they had to share was shrinking.
If this situation continued, it was inevitable that those around them would see it as a problem.
Currently, Flora’s was repairing the damaged areas.
The women working there were relatively better off because they were under the protection of the brothel and gigolo cartels, but they felt a sense of crisis as they watched the events unfolding around them, realizing that it wasn’t just someone else’s problem.
“Please…!! I have a child…!!
I’ll definitely pay the rent next time…!!”
“I told you we’re spending a lot on repairs!!
How can you be late on rent in this situation?
Get out of this house right now!!”
“Ahhh!! Waaah… please…
Just until the end of the month…”
For now, they left their children in the den and went to work, feeling a sense of unease as they witnessed the situation around them.
If they were thrown out, the houses they had been living in were often destroyed or needed to be rebuilt.
Even if they had their own houses, the cost of repairs or even reconstruction was not cheap.
It wasn’t that there were no houses that could be considered intact, but it seemed that the monsters had wreaked so much havoc that at least the windows and some furniture in each house had to be replaced or used as they were, broken.
It had gotten to the point where carpenters who smelled money were coming on business trips not only from the royal capital but also from surrounding cities.
But what if, in this situation, a family didn’t even have a house and was living in someone else’s house, paying rent?
If they couldn’t pay the rent on time, they would be evicted and forced to wander the streets with their children, which was a fear they couldn’t help but have.
‘Many of our women were in that situation…
They’ll all suffer if they leave…’
Human women had flowed into the den through various circumstances.
Sometimes they were kidnapped due to Vivian’s schemes, or they voluntarily entered for prostitute training, and there were quite a few women who came to the den in various ways.
Of course, some of them, like Aurora, were free spirits who had lived fiercely in the back alleys alone since birth…
But there were also quite a few cases where they were working in secret from their families because they needed money, whether for their families or for themselves.
There was even a woman who was working to save up even a little bit for her seemingly talented child’s academy tuition.
These women were mostly branded with the ‘suppression mark,’ a modified version of Nemea’s and a symbol of Enic’s hive mind slaves, along with the reward of being embraced by tentacles. This physically prevented them from leaking secrets.
Moreover, Vivian added ‘persuasion’ and ‘conversation’ to prevent them from divulging information about the den.
Most of these human prostitutes, although their bodies had been taken and they had become dependent on pleasure, still loved their husbands and children, their families, just as much.
Although in most cases, their family circumstances were not good enough to support their families by selling their bodies, the sight of husbands dying to protect their wives in the end seemed to indicate that the husbands were not entirely hopeless.
But whatever the past may have been, the present is the present.
Since it was difficult for them to live even when they had husbands, there was no reason to believe it would be any different after they became widows, so I was thinking of bringing the women into the den one by one.
‘It’ll be much better here than living outside anyway…’
Although I knew that at first, they wouldn’t easily make such a decision out of fear, even for the sake of their children.
Even now, they were anxious about leaving their children in the unfamiliar place that was the den, as they were, inevitably, ‘mothers.’
But the options available to them in the outside world would only continue to dwindle.
In the end, many of them would have no choice but to enter the den.
“Is that really true…?”
“Yes…!! I saw it myself…”
Although they were not allowed in all areas of the den, and they did not understand all the systems within the den.
At least they understood how the beastkin females, the Henias, who lived in this place like old-timers, were treated in this place.
After all, they worked together at Flora’s during the day, and unlike other beastkin, they were treated very humanely by the female leaders such as Vivian, Ranier, and Aurora.
Moreover, there was a bad example among the high-class prostitutes who had been kidnapped from Mademoiselle in the past, who looked down on the Henias as beastkin, not knowing their place, as they had done in human society.
“Ehh… eugh… khehit…♡ I’m sowwy…
I wun do it agwain…
Eueh… ehehet… euhihit…♡♡♡”
The women who witnessed firsthand how miserably she was broken as a demonstration case showed a tendency to avoid the Henias afterward, fearing that they would be caught doing something wrong.
And rather, when they occasionally became aroused and had to relieve their lewd withdrawal symptoms, they had to ask the Henias to tell Ranier or Aurora.
“Um… Miss Betty… can I ‘go back together’ today too…?”
“You want to do it after a long time, nya? I’ll ask the Mistress, nya!!”
There didn’t seem to be any foolish women among them who would throw away the chance to come to the den and be filled with pleasure by the tentacles, an opportunity that wouldn’t come every day, just because of their pride as human beings.
“Th-thank you…
You’re so kind… hehet…”
Therefore, getting along well with the Henias was, rationally speaking, more beneficial to the human women themselves than antagonizing them just because they were beastkin.
By treating each other well, they gradually learned about each other, who were not so different except for their species.
So it could be said that they quickly became familiar and close to each other?
