The morning light pierced through the tall, arched windows of the castle chambers, brushing against Seraphine’s face. The golden rays immediately tore her from her deep slumber. She sat up in bed, rubbing her aching shoulders and letting out a long, drawn-out yawn.
Her body was still screaming from yesterday’s punishment - nearly every single muscle burned like liquid fire. Despite the agonizing soreness, she didn't entertain the thought of resting for a second.
Instead of the heavy, stifling noble gowns, Seraphine reached for far more practical training attire. She pulled on a cropped, tightly woven linen top that firmly bound her chest, exposing a flat, albeit painfully bony stomach. Below, she donned a pair of soft, loose-fitting trousers - reminiscent of modern sweatpants - secured by a drawstring at the waist, allowing the fabric to drape easily over her narrow hips.
Dressed for the grueling work ahead, she descended to the courtyard and immediately launched into her daily calisthenics routine, pushing herself for well over an hour.
By the time she trudged back inside the castle walls, sweat was cascading down her body in glistening rivulets. The thin linen of her top had become completely saturated, turning practically translucent and clinging ruthlessly to her hardened nipples and the firm curves of her breasts. With every heavy, ragged exhale, the damp fabric pulled taut across her torso, while the loose trousers clung fiercely to her flushed thighs and buttocks.
It wasn't until she had soaked for a full half-hour in a scalding hot bath - scrubbing away the grime and coaxing the agonizing tension from her muscles - that she finally felt human again, her strength returning to tackle the day.
She changed into a casual, yet remarkably comfortable women's garment: a simple, soft gown featuring a plunging neckline, laced up the back, with a high, daring slit up the side that allowed for absolute freedom of movement.
This abrupt, radical transformation left not only her family but the entire castle staff utterly staggered. Waking up at the crack of dawn, throwing herself into grueling physical torment, devouring massive slabs of meat, and showing a razor-sharp interest in the domain’s administration - these were all things the old Seraphine had avoided like the plague. Once the fever broke, she had essentially become an entirely different person in their eyes.
And they weren't far from the truth, given that two wildly distinct lifetimes were constantly weaving together inside her skull. She wasn't entirely certain if she was the original Seraphine enlightened by Evelyn Weiss’s encyclopedic memories, or if Dr. Evelyn had outright hijacked this young futa’s body.
Ultimately, it didn't matter.
She was Seraphine Karsfeld now, and armed with modern engineering knowledge, she possessed the tools to violently forge her family's stagnant domain into an absolute industrial empire. Though it would require a mountain of time, blood, and sweat, she felt it was her absolute destiny to drag Karsfeld kicking and screaming into the era of steel and steam.
However, as an untested heir, her direct authority was practically nonexistent, and she couldn't rely endlessly on the fabricated tale of Far Eastern merchants to pull wool over Adelgarde’s eyes. The stubborn Baroness wasn't about to blindly trust her daughter's word; she had summoned the local master artisans to viciously vet the feasibility of the blueprints.
Since the experts hadn't arrived yet, Seraphine decided to utilize the downtime to ruthlessly audit the domain’s financial health.
She chose to take her meal in the castle's sprawling library. Sitting hunched over thick, leather-bound ledgers, she meticulously combed through the barony's historical income and expenditure records.
What she uncovered swiftly plunged her into deep, agonizing despair.
Despite Karsfeld practically drowning in raw natural resources, the ruling dynasty had completely failed to forge that geographic lottery into real economic power. She shook her head in disbelief and violently slammed the heavy leather cover shut.
This is exactly what happens when a clan of warmongering meatheads plays at being omnipotent administrators over four hundred square miles of territory populated by twenty thousand souls...
She fully understood that the technology of this era had severe limitations, but the fact that a barony famous for its rich iron veins was barely investing a copper coin into deep mining bordered on pure absurdity. Whatever pitiful amount of ore they did manage to drag out of the earth was immediately sold off raw to the grand cities of the empire for absolutely laughable pennies.
Such catastrophic squandering cried out to the heavens for vengeance.
The domain’s entire economy leaned almost exclusively on primitive, subsistence-level agriculture - it was the textbook definition of a stagnant, backward feudal backwater. Even the nearby town was little more than an overgrown village, lacking even a shadow of organized craft guilds or centralized manufactories. Just reading about this staggering level of primitivism made her temples throb with a fresh headache.
Just as she was about to curse out loud, she caught a glimpse of Marielle Karsfeld from the corner of her eye.
The girl was cowering behind one of the massive oak bookcases, staring at her from afar with sheer, reverent terror. Seraphine almost snorted with laughter at the sight of her younger sister, whose wide eyes were darting around like a thoroughly spooked rabbit. Evidently, the elder futa’s sudden, violent metamorphosis had terrified the poor girl - the child’s head was likely already spinning with theories that Seraphine had been possessed by some foul devil.
This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.
Taking a slow sip of water from her goblet, Seraphine didn't even bother lifting her eyes from the parchments. Once Marielle deemed herself perfectly concealed in the shadow of the bookcase, the elder sister let out a soft sigh:
“Marielle, I know you’re standing right there…”
The young girl flinched violently. Unmasked by her sister - or perhaps by the demon wearing her sister's face - she completely panicked and bolted from the library without a word, the fine skirts of her girlish gown rustling frantically down the stone corridor.
Seraphine chuckled softly under her breath.
She perfectly understood the root of the girl's fears, but she simply didn't have the mental bandwidth to indulge childish terrors right now.
She spent the remainder of the day buried in the library, ravenously absorbing knowledge on the region’s finances, harvest yields, mining output, and the delicate balance of political power. As a lower-tier noble house, Karsfeld was strictly subordinate to far more powerful feudal lords. They were direct vassals to House Falkenrath, the sovereign rulers of the Duchy of Ardenia and the County of Tyravia.
Interestingly enough, her younger sister Cordelia was already betrothed to one of the daughters from a branch family of House Falkenrath - Emilia Falkenrath - a political match considered an immense, crowning honor for the Karsfeld dynasty.
Seraphine, on the other hand, despite being the firstborn futa and the adult heir, remained entirely unattached. It was all utterly due to her historically dismal health and the very real doubts over whether she would even survive long enough to sire an heir of her own.
Seraphine didn't particularly mourn the situation. In her previous life, Evelyn had spent her entire twenties with neither the time nor the luck required for stable, long-term relationships. She knew full well, however, that in this world, securing a suitable match would become infinitely easier the moment she packed on muscle and forged a formidable physique.
Purely based on her facial structure, she was stunningly attractive - once she coupled that with a taut, athletic body, she was guaranteed to turn more than a few women's heads, even if it ended up being a simple commoner.
The cold, hard truth, however, was that her noble house would never permit a marriage beneath her station. Feudal customs violently enforced the social hierarchy, even in this world comprised entirely of women. Seraphine decisively shelved those thoughts - if she wanted to dictate the terms of her own marriage bed, she first needed to amass real, unassailable power and forge an ironclad constitution.
And she still had a long, grueling road ahead before reaching that point.
As twilight bled across the sky beyond the windows, she realized the entire afternoon had evaporated. She decided this was the perfect moment to find out exactly what Adelgarde had decreed regarding her technical blueprints.
She neatly stacked the heavy tomes back onto the shelves and stepped out into the stone corridor, heading straight for her Sire’s study.
Before she could even raise her knuckles to rap against the heavy oak door, raised, fiercely irritated voices bled through the thick timber. She immediately picked out Adelgarde’s deep, commanding bass, clashing against two other speakers.
“I don't give a damn what titled house Lady Petra hails from!” bellowed a slightly raspy, mature woman’s voice. “I’ve been working with mechanics and the forge for over thirty years, and I am telling you plainly: these designs are absolute genius! This will work exactly as your daughter described, my lady!”
That bold declaration was instantly met by a condescending, venomously arrogant sneer from a younger futa:
“Oh, please. Do not listen to this grating lowborn hag. She is a common tradeswoman; she hasn't a shred of the highborn academic education I received. I assure you, these scribbles are nothing more than the idle delusions of a sickly girl who fancies she understands the intricacies of engineering!”
Standing utterly still outside the door, Seraphine needed only that single sentence to perfectly diagnose the speaker: a wildly self-important aristocrat who owed her entire station to her pedigree rather than her competence.
Fortunately, Adelgarde did not disappoint. Having heard out both sides of the bitter argument, the Baroness let out a sharp hiss of breath and mercilessly butchered the debate with a cold, iron-hard tone:
“Lady Petra, you are dismissed. I still have much to discuss with my chief engineer.”
Seraphine smiled with dark, vindictive satisfaction, perfectly picturing the look of absolute fury on the dismissed noblewoman’s face.
A split second later, the heavy iron latch clattered down and the door was violently yanked open. Seraphine found herself standing face-to-face with Petra Holtz.
Petra was a young futa, barely pushing thirty. She wore her light brown hair pulled back into a severe, sleek ponytail, beneath which furious, emerald-green eyes glared with raw venom. She was draped in an obnoxiously opulent, feminine velvet tunic featuring a plunging neckline that aggressively flaunted her heavy cleavage. The garment was choked with gaudy gold embroidery, screaming of her family's vast wealth, and a heavy signet ring bearing a boar’s head gleamed on her finger.
Petra Holtz was the privileged spawn of one of Adelgarde’s most decorated knights, and it was entirely through those inherited connections that she held a position at the Baroness's side. Even by the staggeringly primitive standards of this era, her technical knowledge was an absolute, tragic joke.
When the furious aristocrat laid eyes on Seraphine - the very person she had been so brazenly slandering mere seconds ago - the blood instantly drained from her face. The absolute last thing she wanted was to be caught red-handed by the firstborn heir.
But the damage was already done.
Seraphine didn't dignify the woman with a single word; she merely raked her eyes over Petra with a cold, intensely amused sneer - the exact look one reserves for a particularly pathetic, puffed-up clown.
Petra shoved past her in a blind rage, the heavy silk of her skirts rustling violently as she practically fled down the corridor. Meanwhile, Adelgarde’s commanding voice boomed from the depths of the study:
“Enter, Seraphine.”
The Baroness knew perfectly well her heir had been waiting right outside.
Seraphine stepped over the threshold.
Standing dead center in the room, directly across from Adelgarde’s massive desk, was Sabine Keller. She was a hardened, fifty-something master artisan with heavily calloused hands, thick, powerful shoulders, and a sharp, calculating gaze, dressed practically in a heavy leather apron thrown over a rough-spun tunic.
Under the crushing, expectant stares of the terrifying Baroness and the stern chief engineer, Seraphine involuntarily felt a faint thrill of tension ghost up her spine - feeling exactly like a university student stepping before an unforgiving thesis committee...