Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

"All of those considerations rely on a single assumption, dear," Fay spoke out after patiently waiting for me to finish my deduction.

"And that is?" Turning my head over, I asked with a fair dose of curiosity. 'Did I miss something?'

Fay sighed lightly before moving closer and grabbing my hand, only to move it over to her perfectly flat stomach.

Rising my eyes up to her face, then back to where she pressed my hand, and then right back to her face, I looked into her eyes, failing to catch her drift.

"Look," Fay ordered in a stern voice.

'But look at what?' I wanted to ask, only to bite down on my teeth, keeping my questions to myself as I pushed my mind to figure out Fay's intention without asking.

And a short moment dedicated to thinking proved to be enough to solve this relatively simple mystery.

'How could it grow so fast?!'

Even though the presence I'd noticed the day before was purely based on the aura core currently residing in Fay's womb, the presence of this weird mix of my own and Fay's cores now lost some of its vibrant essence.

It didn't grow weaker. In fact, within a single damn day, this core actually grew to twice its power from yesterday while gaining only a tiny little bit when it came to size.

But if it grew stronger, how could its presence vane, one could ask.

It was the answer to this question that made me so shocked.

The reason why the core of what I believed to be my and Fay's child has lost some of its luster… Was because now there was a flesh for it to anchor itself on.

A physical root that allowed the core to better lodge itself into the real world, using the defenses established by biology to keep the anomaly of a core safe from the direct influence of the chaotic world around that grew uniform only when talking about some insanely massive scales.

'Just like Earth is supposed to be closer to a perfect sphere than a damn bowling ball, if I were to distance myself far enough, the world's aura would appear pretty much uniform and stable. It is only when putting my perspective close enough that its inner chaos comes into view.'

I released a heavy sigh, feeling the burden of yet another, potentially false or outright stupid, realization that struck me.

'Either way, looking from up close or from afar, our cores… No, aura weave of any form is an anomaly. A morph of the naturally existing power that couldn't come to be and then survive to exist through time all on its own. That is unless there's something I have yet to learn about.'

Taking a deep breath, I allowed the fresh batch of air in my lungs, focusing on extracting as much oxygen from it while trying to stall the production of the carbon dioxide, holding my breath for as long as I could.

This exercise allowed me to focus my thoughts, pulling them away from another topic they so eagerly moved on to and dragging them back to what I was really supposed to focus on.

'It grew. It grew faster than it should be possible. But even with aura, it's still a biological process. So, all of the nutrients necessary for the cells to grow and divine and so on…'

With my hand still atop Fay's stomach, I raised my eyes to look at her face.

It was only upon taking a closer look that I've realized Fay's skin lost its usual luster, the light of her eyes dimmed a bit and there even were small bags under her eyes!

All in all, she went from looking a hundred times better than the world-class beauty of the earth to looking merely ninety times better.

'It's just like I thought…' Letting go of Fay's stomach, I brought my hand up to her cheek, resting my inner palm against her face before driving it up a bit, lifting her head so that I could stare right into her intensely blue eyes.

"Fay, just like you asked me to look, I now want you to do the same and take a proper look at yourself," I requested while still caressing Fay's cheek with a growing sense of concern in my soul that soon started to reflect all over my expression and eyes.

Driving her eyes up to my face, Fay gave me a confused look… Only to twitch and squint her eyes when she noticed the changes on my face.

Following through with my request, Fay intentionally fell forward, perfectly confident I would be there to catch her.

And in all honesty, she wasn't wrong to think that.
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By the time Fay's lifeless body fell into my arms, her eyes were already shut close, with her mind fully focusing on the self-inspection of her internal state.

"How…"

To the back, Claudy stared at the scene with a weirded-out look on his face.

Without the instinctive understanding that allowed my conversation with Fay to consist of merely snappy buzzwords, he was now forced to try to figure out what the hell was going on while knowing pretty much nothing beyond the fact Fay was pregnant and we were worried how the influence of the light of stars could affect our child.

He didn't know about the abnormal rate of growth of our child, be it the biological growth of its body or the insane growth rate of its aura-weave that would easily put him into the top ranks of ascended if not into the low ranks of supreme by the time of its birth.

But what if the starlight infusing itself into our kid's soul wouldn't just exhaust its use over time, infinitely accelerating its growth instead? What would that mean for us if we were to stay in this place for another day, week, or month?

"I think I know why you didn't notice," I muttered while wrapping my arms around Fay's frame and holding her in a tight hug.

Now that she's realized just how exhausted her body was, the safety of my embrace was what Fay both needed… And as I could tell thanks to our bond, craved at the moment.

Up until now, Fay forced herself to put on a brave front, focusing on the glorious side of finally reaching the stage where our love would take a physical form. But what I was only starting to notice right now, was how below the level of confidence and self-assurance that Fay displayed to the world around her…

She still had all the worries and doubts any woman would have upon learning of her first pregnancy.

Sure, those were joyous news. And no matter what anyone would try to claim, I was sure she was happy with that news.

But that didn't mean she wasn't plagued by worries, stress, uncertainty and doubts. And it was those very emotions that I targeted while cradling her into my embrace in a pointless attempt at replicating the subdimension Fay once created with her hair.

Powerless to manage my aura on that level, I could only keep my hands wrapped around her frame, hoping for my body warmth to soothe Fay's strained nerves and offer her solace.

"I don't want our kid to come at the cost of your well-being," I announced in a hushed voice, not so eager to let Claudy into our private world for just the two of us. "And as happy as I am to learn of your blessed state, I'm always and forever going to prioritize you above anything and everything else."

Patting one of my hands against Fay's back while using the other to brush my fingers through her lush, white hair, I suddenly decided that right now was just the right moment to push through the agenda that formed in my mind the second I'd realized just what kind of prize Fay had to pay for our child to grow inside of her so damn quickly.

And so, I first relaxed my hold over Fay's frame to indicate to her about the coming change. Then, as soon as she threw me a curious stare, I grabbed the girl by her shoulders and pushed her away as far as I could without letting go of her shoulders or straining my joints.

"For our child to grow so fast, it's been literally cannibalizing you. Draining your biological life force for the sake of its own growth.

While I do believe it's the influence of starlight that led to this conclusion, it's also the very same starlight that gave you the sense of growing stronger, thus masking the side effects of having to sacrifice your own health for the sake of rapid growth of our child."