I, a Heroic Soldier from the Last Demon War, Became a Father to a Pair of Demonic Beast Children. Am I Really Fit to be a Dad to These Adorable Kids?

04: Digging a Hole

Adam placed the last log into place, surveyed his work, and concluded: it wasn’t half bad.

It definitely lacked the magical protections, but the walls for his fort were solid enough to take a charging behemoth…

At least a hit or two. He didn’t expect to see too many of those, but anything mid sized or less would have a Hell of a time breaching it.

It was a good starting point, but the buildings still needed work. For one, he’d only marked out places to smooth the ground for the Keep, the inner wall, stables, carpenter, and communal food prep areas.

The keep too…

He snorted.

It was currently temporary as he’d made a basic log cabin so they wouldn’t be rained on or have a cold wind wake them up in the night. Volcano or not, Death Mountain could get quite chilly at night.

He set his tools aside and went back to the cabin to find Alicia and Kanna playing with a salamander.

As in, an actual elemental salamander. Those things just crawled out of the lava from time to time, and this one must have been a total baby.

It looked up at the two girls curiously, tilting its head before belching, the flames up its spine briefly burning higher as it scrutinized the two girls who he was fairly sure abducted it given they usually stayed close to the mountain.

“What are you up to, girls?” Adam asked as he approached, eyeing the salamander.

“We caught another salamander, so we’re talking about who gets what half today!” Kanna smiled.

Alicia just sighed. “…Salamander is good.”

Adam raised an eyebrow before shrugging. “Well, be sure to let me know if you spot a big one coming out of the caldera. Can be a little dangerous. Not like the dragon!” Adam quickly added, not trying to alarming. “Just a lil bigger,” he said, hoping he hadn’t just brought up horrible memories for them.

Both of them flinched.

He cringed. Great. He was so bad with children and…

Who was he kidding? He had no idea what he was even doing here with them. In the campaigns against the Demon Lord, he’d rarely found children. Alive, that is. When he did, they usually got sent off to priestesses for care. So he’d had more interaction with children in the past week than he had in the past ten years.

He opened his mouth and tried to find something to say, but ultimately couldn’t.

It was at this point his stomach rumbled.

Alicia looked at him, picked up the salamander, and brought it to him. “…You’ve been working.”

He stared at the offered salamander, and the ultra serious expression on the Lamia girl’s face, and broke immediately. “Thank you kindly,” he said, taking the offered salamander that blinked up at him.

“How have you been eating these salamanders?” Adam asked, scratching his head. He was pretty sure they hadn’t been making their own campfires…

“Oh!” Kanna smirked. “It’s crunchy and sweet, like spicy candy. And it cooks itself when you bite the head.”

Adam tilted his head, thinking on it, and shrugged. It wouldn’t be the weirdest thing he’d eaten.

He bit down on the salamander. It was a little unnerving to feel it squirm and wiggle, but once he got past that, he found it was wonderfully sweet and tinged with a bit of spice. It hardly tasted like meat at all.

“Huh. Thank you, that was delicious,” he said, nodding to the two girls.

“Well, what do you think of the cabin? I know it’s not the Den or anything, but it’ll keep the rain off atleast, right?” Adam asked. For him it was fine, if spartan. But for the girls? He had no idea what kitsune and lamia considered comfortable beyond snaccs and bedding. Which he didn’t even have much of at the moment.

“…Is it warm?” Alicia asked, her tail shivering a little.

“Ah! Lamia need fire to be warm. I can make fireballs if there is a fire pit, but I’m not very good at it…” Kanna admitted.

“There’s a hearth, let me get some wood for you so you can be comfortable,” he said, going to do just that. He was a little impatient so he just shattered branches with his bare hands rather than working them with an axe until they were the right size.

Then, he brought the wood back to the hearth, and showed it to the girls. “There, filled it with kindling and wood. Wanna try Kanna?”

“Oookay, here goes!” Kanna puffed up, lighting her tail on fire somehow, and just scooping that with her fingers to light the fire.

…This was not how Kitsune used their fire. What in the world?

Adam blinked, and blinked again for good measure. That really wasn’t how any of the Kitsune he fought made fireballs. Usually they formed a ball of fire at the very tip of their tails, or even in their hands, or in one hand in their mouth, not lighting themselves on fire.

“See? Fireballs!” Kanna said, juggling a few more of them before tossing them into the hearth to help get the fire really going.

Adam hummed, observing. Kanna seemed a lot more physically minded than other Kitsune he’d seen. “Good job?” he ventured. It sure beat a flint and steel, at least.

Alicia seemed to reach out, making the fire rise with her own magic, before grabbing Kanna for a nap. Once Kanna was all wrapped up, much to the struggling foxgirl’s laughter, Alicia booped her on the nose and sighed. “…Quiet, I’m sleepy.”

“Awwww,” Kanna whined. “But you’re always sleepy.”

“I’ll leave you girls to rest,” Adam said, leaving the two behind with a smile.

There was a lot left to the fortress to make, but he had promised to make Kanna a Den. Although, it wouldn’t be exactly a Kitsune Den. And tunnel network wasn’t a good name either. It was accurate, but it’d be more than just a cellar or dungeon.

Under fortress? Now that sounded better.

With that, he grabbed a shovel, and got digging.

His plan was just to get a single entryway going so they could make steps leading down, and then he could start working on digging out and reinforcing rooms. Ideally, everything would eventually get a nice stone reinforcement and flooring, but for now he’d settle for wooden struts.

Truthfully, he would need some help to get it properly done, but again, that was the same for everything. He was just getting the basic down so that the final fort could get finished all the faster.

“Wooooo?” he heard a fox howl from behind him, a fluffy tail wagging in the air as Kanna rushed around in front. “Diggy diggy? A fox can dig too, you know?!”

Adam paused. “Already finished with your nap?” he asked, thinking back to how securely Alicia had Kanna bound.

“I escaped!” Kanna giggled, transforming into a tiny fox. “Kon kon kon~”

Adam raised an eyebrow. “You know I can’t understand you like that?” he asked.

“Kon!?” the fox child exclaimed, before starting to dig a little hole.

Adam smiled, bemused. At the rate she was going, she’d be done with the entryway in several years.

But she definitely had the spirit. Better than some troops he’d been with who hated trench duty and would lollygag right up until their lives were in danger and Hellfire rained above them.

With that, he turned back to the hole and went right back to it to the fox’s immense enjoyment giving the way her tail wagged.

~~~~

Later, Adam concluded the entryway, really a slightly slanted tunnel a bit taller than him going about twenty feet down and called it a day.

He stepped out of the tunnel entrance and found Kanna, wagging her tail and sitting next to the huge pile of dirt he’d made, looking utterly pleased with herself. “Work hard, did you?” he mused.

“I made a hole too!” she giggled. “And I buried a nut there, so we can have these nuts sometime!”

She showed him some more of the nuts. They were small, white nuts, that smelled faintly sweet.

“Huh,” Adam said, sniffing. “Good job?” he ventured. Farming was…

Adam had been to a few military gardens, places meant to supplement food at long term forts. He’d been banned from working them given he had a black thumb that seemed to make all plants wither and die if he tried to care for them. “I’ll let you take care of it, then,” he said which elicited a smile from Kanna.

They went back to the cabin and he prepared another set of roast skewers for the dragon meat he’d left soaking in water. The smell of cooking food got two sets of curious and utterly ravenous eyes on him as he made up their dinner.

The meat skewers were eaten with a familiar ravenousness, finishing even before he got through his own, prompting another batch to satisfy the abysses in their stomachs. But the end result was a young Lamia and a Kitsune child both leaning against each other with droopy eyes and fat bellies.

Figuring now was a good time, Adam posed a question he’d been wondering. “So, I know you, uh, had your families. I’m not them, obviously, but I am good at traveling. Do… do you want me to see if I can’t return you to your people? I’m sure I could find some with enough searching,” he asked.

Whether they would accept the girls was another matter he couldn’t be sure of, but he hoped so.

“Nar!” Kanna said, looking absolutely put off by the idea.

Even Alicia put her arms across her chest in a big x, and shook her head.

“They’ll make us into slaves for their families,” Alicia responded.

“They’ll make us mate with their icky boys!” Kanna shivered.

Adam was taken aback. “Do… do you even know what mating is?” he inquired.

“Um… It’s when boys make kissy faces, and a baby comes in the mail?” Kanna asked.

‘Oh thank fuck it’s just that and not something way worse. Yeah, putting this can of worms back, thank you very much,’ Adam thought. “Close enough,” he said, shaking his head.

“Well, I can take care of you a while longer, until we find someone that can and, well, be nice,” he amended. “But, well, I’m new to taking care of kids. Is there anything you two really want? Know the fort’s a work in progress, but I’m working at it…” Adam trailed off.

Kanna bounced up to her feet. “Eggies! Eggies are yummy!” she giggled.

Alicia nodded. “Eggs are an important part of a healthy breakfast.”

“Huh, didn’t bring any chickens with me, and not like the horse can lay eggs. I hope, at least,” he thought, remembering some corrupted life in a wild spell gone wrong.

Whatever the wizards of that tower had been up to trying to defeat the Demon Lord was bad. It corrupted the local life, and he would never forget going up to what he thought was a loose horse, offering his hand, only for the thing’s rib cage to open like a set of teeth and pull him in and try to eat him.

He’d ripped his way out, of course, but other soldiers hadn’t been so lucky. Finding eggs and a nest nearby had just added to the nightmare.

Adam was so glad when Wizard Tim and his retinue of mages from his much better managed circle brought down a rain of fire to cleanse the whole town.

Horrid memories aside, he couldn’t exactly get chickens without going back to the nearest human settlement…

Which would leave the two girls unattended. He felt responsible for them, given there was no one else at the moment. Taking them back with him would also be a no go. Not everyone was trigger happy about demons and monsters, but plenty were, even if they were kids…

Lots of pain. It wasn’t right, but it was what it was.

So that left with harvesting wild eggs. He could get some bird eggs, but that wasn’t too reliable. But…

A light went off in his head.

On the way to Death Mountain, he’d passed by a colony of egg laying monsters…

Usually they were pretty nasty, but if you knew how to handle them, they weren’t so bad. And they were prolific egg layers.

“Say, girls… have either of you ever heard of a cockatrice?”

~~~~

AN:

Kitsu: We shenan until we igan all up in this hizzous. Fr fr, the foxxo has no NRG, nor the Rizz to make this chapter Skidibi Mango Mustard quality, but it looks better than that, because the chapter ain’t 67 giga lookmaxxing uber-chud tier over 9000 with the speed of sound sonic on my ahh.

HiddenMaster: I’m going to repress having read that.

Here, a bit more getting to know the girls, the outer wall is finished up, and setting the stage for some future events.

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