After the banquet, Ars, Kuina and Otojoō, stayed at the palace for the night.
Ars and Kuina got one room and Otojoō got one she never would use. She spent the night in Shirahoshi's room, with Shirahoshi and the 3 princes, in the middle of the night Kuina also moved into Shirahoshi's room, Ars did notice her going but decided it didn't matter too much, the guards probably wouldn't cause trouble for her.
The next day, everyone came out and said goodbyes to them. Shirahoshi was also here, outside for the first time in years, crying again. Kuina quickly approached her and kissed her on her cheek, while patting her forehead.
"Don't worry you are free now, that creep is in jail."
Shirahoshi looked at her and replied, while weeping without stooping.
"Kuina-sama, I'm gonna miss you and Otojoō-sama, can't you guys stay a bit longer?"
Kuina looked sorry but replied with a sad expression.
"We can't, but in the future we will be able to visit more often, so we will see each other again, you can also talk with us by den den mushi, you can also visit us in our island, nobody will discriminate or try to hurt you there."
Otojoō looked at Ars with some resentment, he just rolled his eyes at her.
Neptune looked at Ars and then asked him, a bit away from everyone else.
"Your majesty Ars, talked about doing business in the future, so we will meet again in the near future right?"
Ars nodded and replied calmly.
"Yes, most likely we will meet in the future again, or at least meet someone from my kingdom, even if it's not me in case I'm not available. And she will probably come along."
He then pointed at the distracted Otojoō. Neptune smiled at him, with a thankful smile. When his family talked with her they felt like they were talking to queen Otohime. They were right about it, but had no way to know it. Neptune wanted her to stay with Shirahoshi, while everyone enjoyed having her here, it was Shirahoshi who needed her company the most.
"Probably once we finish negotiations, Otojoō will become the one responsible for coming here to buy and sell stuff, but it will probably take a few months, and before that, I need… I would prefer to find someone to be in charge of the business area."
Neptune heard Ars and nodded. Otojoō also heard him and was going to offer herself but Kuina put her hand over her mouth and stopped her. She looked shocked at her and seeing her confusion, Kuina said calmly.
"I will explain later, but you don't want that position. Trust me, Ok?"
She nodded, a bit confused and disappointed she couldn't stay here doing 'business' but she did her best not to show it.
With everything settled, Ars, Kuina and Otojoō went to meet Gluppy and Pecillia at the mermaid café.
When they found them, they were already waiting for them, along with everyone from the café.
Shyarly approached with an apologetic face once more.
"We came here to say goodbye to our friend, hope it's not a problem… And I would like to apologise once more for the previous incident."
Ars smiled and replied warmly.
"I already forgave you guys, and it's no problem… I think anyone would understand!"
Kuina from the side interrupted him.
"Don't worry about it, more importantly you guys should take one of these days off and visit our kingdom, it's safe there and i'm pretty sure everyone would love to see you guys there visiting."
All the mermaids smiled and came to hug everyone who was going to go back, with the exception of Ars, who was a male. And added with the problem from before, where they caused problems and they were a bit embarrassed of interacting with him.
Surprisingly, Shyarly actually hugged him.
"Thank you for proving my suspicions wrong and bringing our friends back, and I will visit your kingdom in the future for sure."
He hugged her back and answered calmly.
"You will be welcome there."
After the goodbyes they quickly went back by catching a ship to the new world, and on the way back Kuina looked at Otojoō and finally explained.
"Sorry about stopping you before with no explanation, but you don't want that position, because someone in charge means to become a queen in our kingdom, and it would become quite difficult to go to fishman island every time. What Ars meant is I need to find a new queen to be in charge of the business and treasury. And what you want is, to be an envoy in charge of negotiating with fishman island specifically, so you can go there as often as possible."
She nodded, she would indeed want to come as often as possible, she looked at Ars with her eyes questioning.
'When do you intend to get a queen for that area? You should hurry up… My happiness depends on it!'
Kuina just laughed.
When they arrived back home, Ars went back to work and quickly met with Nene and Fierzy, who had been waiting for his return to talk about 3 things.
They both welcomed Ars back.
"Welcome back, your majesty, hopefully your trip was fruitful and uneventful."
Ars smiled and joked a bit.
"I honestly would prefer if it was a bit eventful, but nothing special really happened."
He took a seat in his work room and inquired.
"Well, I doubt you guys are here just to welcome me. So what do you need."
Nene nodded and started.
"I have 2 matters to discuss with your majesty."
Ars nodded and looked at Fierzy next, who also confirmed his suspicions.
"I also have 1. But Nene-san can start first."
They both nodded and Nene quickly started explaining.
"First, I would like to inform your majesty that we are building the City on the other side, in a similar fashion to this city, with similar buildings and facilities. But i would like to know, what kind of building your majesty would like to build to replace the port and shipyard on the other side, after all its in the middle of a land mass, we have a river nearby, but no reason to make a port or shipyard as big as the one on this side, and there are no reasons to build it yet either."
Ars thought about it, and after a few minutes, he replied.
"While I don't really want to destroy the forest on the other side, we do need to make space, and we do need wood to build, so how about a lumberyard? And yes there is no need to build a port either, but build a small dock in case we need to use small boats, that will suffice for now."
Nene noted it in her notes and then introduced the second thing she wanted to talk about.
"The second thing is the lights project, we managed to decide what we are going to use to offer light at night. It's this rock that when exposed to the light, it absorbs it, but at night it emits it up to 72 hours, quite intensely at that. The building crew tried it a few different ways and then decided to go with making a small hole in the ceiling where the rock is put, and a few path ways made with glass and mirrors that lead the light during the day to the rock, and finally to stop the light they just made a wooden cover for it."
Ars nodded, he was impressed, and commented.
"Thats interesting, and well done. When they are ready they can start introducing it in the buildings around the kingdom and when done, they can start creating complete houses with it. And now we can start to dismantle the small temporary houses, once they aren't needed anymore. I also remembered just now, tell Maon to come here to get a few more hundred million berries, with so many new people, it's probably hard or even impossible to pay them all with what we had, so I got a little bit more money, it won't solve the problem but it will help."
She nodded and left.
Fierzy had a very serious look the whole time, and once Nene left… And a few seconds of silence, she commented.
"We have a problem, we have found 3 spies trying to send information to the outside, we did manage to confirm that there were only 3 after 'politely' asking them. And after a deep investigation we made sure there were no more spies in the kingdom."
Ars nodded and now he had a very serious look.
"Where are they at? And did they manage to send any information out?"
"They are at the palace jail, and we got them in time so we don't think so."
Ars showed an amazed look.
"I have a jail in my house?"
Rook could only look at him with an awkward smile.
"That's what is troubling you? Not the spies but the jail itself?"
Ars looked at Rook's face and calmly said.
"Yes."
Rook could only sigh and think about what's going on in Ars mind. But he persisted, insisting on Ars coming to meet the spies.
"Should I take you there to check on the spies?"
Ars nodded, got up and started following Rook to the jail, but on the way there he started mumbling.
"I wonder if I can make it a kinky jail…"
Rook listening to that couldn't help but comment.
"I didn't know you were in that sort of stuff…"
Ars showed a very confused expression.
"I'm not, though? I just thought it would give me an interesting reaction from criminals. Can you imagine, you go to jail and see a bunch of kinky toys nearby, and they are massive. The prisoners will definitely show a bunch of interesting reactions and most will ask about it, then we just need to point at the biggest one and say… See that one? It's going up your ass… Can you imagine how much they will freak out?"
Rook couldn't help but remember that Ars sometimes could be a bit hard to manage, but even he at that moment would want to see the criminals reactions, that sounded interesting indeed, but then he laughed and looked at Ars.
"What if they like it?"
Ars, looked at him and replied amusedly.
"Thats why the majority of them needs to be absolutely massive, completely unusable in reality. Just used to freak people out. But if they like it even like that…. I don't know… Maybe we just don't do anything, not even talking to them and leaving them guessing. Or maybe we put an old lady in charge of it and then, she forgets every time after preparing the toys…"
Rook couldn't help but start laughing quite hard. If this went for quite a few days, that would indeed make people freak out quite a bit.
They got to the jail, and entered. Unlike what Ars expected, the doors were normal, not big, not small, not adorned with interesting stuff, just a normal plain old door. Ars suddenly looked very unhappy.
"The door needs to have an aura that makes people fear what's inside… This is just normal and boring…"
He looked at one of the guards and said quickly.
"Get someone to design a more threatening door, and when done spray it with blood."
"Your majesty, should we use human blood?"
Ars thought about it and replied.
"No, any blood will do, it is just to deliver a message and make it have a more fitting aura…"
Rook just stood by the door waiting for Ars, with an expression that screamed…
'This is the king we have… What can we do…'
Then he laughed and said with an amused smile.
"Let's go meet the spies, they probably have finished talking with each other."
Ars looked at him like he was an idiot and asked with a very shocked expression.
"You put them all in the same cell?"
Rook nodded, and that made Ars complain even more.
"You never put prisoners together unless you need to… Now they have the time to talk it over and make a useless story, and they most likely will try to tell it… The horror…"
Rook understood what he was talking about and replied.
"We already got most of the information out of them, so it doesn't matter anymore."
Ars nodded but was still dissatisfied, he could have done a few things to make them think they were betrayed, not that it changed much, soon they would have not much of a choice.